No More Copycats.

Today's Marketing Cookie is about being brilliant.

To shine is way better than to reflect! Oh man. Thank you, Natasha, for sending this fortune to me. Can I just say, I absolutely love this one! It's really too easy to write. In fact, this thing practically writes itself! The reason I love this fortune, however, is not because of how easy it may be to write, but rather because of how perfectly true it is. It is true in your marketing and it is truer than true in your life.

When our clients call us in to "fix" their existing marketing, they tell us a long story about how they need to rebrand the company, they need fancier collateral, a website redesign, or something like that, but they are usually lying to us. Yep. They lie. They may be saying all this stuff they think they need, but the truth is what they really need is more sales. Can you believe that!? If we listened to what our clients say, we might have done all that work to cure the symptoms without examining the cause of their disease. Hmph.

Once we can dial everything back to the real problem, we set out to prescribe a solution. We start building a bridge to cross the chasm between what their customers want and the value they would bring to the market. As we determine the right solutions together, we take a look at what the competitors are doing, their positioning, and messaging. Then, right in the middle of our intervention, the client has a tragic relapse and falls into the "me too" trap. We catch them trying to look, walk, and talk just like their competitors. They point saying, "I want to be like them!" They stamp their feet saying, "I want a website like that". They sound like Veruca Salt talking to Willy Wonka saying, "I want a golden goose now!", but she was a bad egg. We can't let our clients be bad eggs, no matter how tempting or how much easier it is to be a copycat. Grrrr.

Just like our clients, you are already bright and brilliant. Let your light shine. Don't just copy what others are doing. When you do, you deprive the world of your unique value and starve off your potential for growth. When you copy a competitor, you reflect their light, although just not as brightly. You may potentially gain some new business by being a copycat, however, the light you are reflecting is not your own and will never be as strong as what you would generate if you let your own light shine.

I challenge you to do as today's fortune prescribes. Put away all of your reflectors, don't be tempted to copy the "other guys" and have the confidence to plug into your own brilliance. If you do, you'll be truly amazed by how attractive your brightness can be!