Years ago, a young entrepreneur in Australia named Dick Smith started his own small business. He opened his own small store and called it Dick Smith Electronics. As the name suggests, he started selling electronics. But not just any electronics. Dick sold only novelty electronics. He bought electronic from overseas. He bought products that were not yet introduced in his own country and sold it in his small store. Thus he differentiated himself from other small electronics shops that were cropping up everywhere.
People often heard about his store from their friends and would visit it too. The store was prospering slowly but steadily. To speed it up, Dick Smith decided to do some advertising. To get more people to visit his store, he ran small ads in the local newspapers. The ads didn’t cost him much and did attract a few people to his store.
But his ads got lost between tons of similar small ads in the same paper. Dick wondered if he could beat the other ads and make his ad stand out without spending more. And so he tried one tactic: He ran all his ads upside-down!
There were still dozens of other ads on the same page. But now, people would notice his ad first! Dick beat his competition without spending more. Even with a small ad, Dick received a better response than most half-page ads do. Many people told others to check out the upside-down ad too and the word of mouth Dick received was phenomenal!
Action summary:
° Sell something that others can’t or don’t. Dick charged more for his products than they were worth because they weren’t available in other stores.
° Do something different in your advertising campaigns. Be outrageous. Get peoples attention. You can’t sell your products without winning peoples attention. Thus all your ads should try to win attention first and make the sale second.