Posted by Way back in the day (which is another way to say I don’t know when this happened, but it was at least 10 years ago) an online marketer recorded a bunch of videos to sell as a product.
The product had something to do with online marketing, but I don’t remember the topic. I also don’t remember who the marketer was, although at the time I think he was pretty well known.
What I do remember is that while he was recording, a dog in the background kept barking.
And thus, rather than go with a standard name for his product like the, “Get More Traffic!” product or the “Make Tons of $$ with Social Media” product, he called his video set…
“The Barking Dog Videos.”
My point here is simple: After all this time, I STILL remember that name because it was different from everything else out there at the time (or perhaps since, too.)
He could have rerecorded the videos to make them more “professional,” but if he had, I suspect his sales wouldn’t have been as good.
Not only did he have a catchy, memorable name – he also had a STORY that his affiliates could tell in just a few words.
In a nutshell: “Great product, silly name because of a crazy barking dog, check it out.”
I remember a tourist type of place with a huge gift shop and restaurant on a main road on the outskirts of town. I drove by it all the time, and regardless of what time of day it was, the place was PACKED with people.
The name of the place? “The World’s Worst Restaurant.” People stopped just to be able to say they ate at the world’s worst restaurant and shopped at the world’s worst gift shop. You know that when they got home from their vacation, they told their friends about the place.
Would they have told others if it was called the Magnolia Café? I don’t think so. In fact, they probably would have forgotten all about it after a week or two.
We might want to be “professionals,” but the fact is that being different, strange, weird and even fallible will sometimes win out over everything else.
Create great products with just a little bit of built-in gimmicks or craziness and see what happens.
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“True security lies in the unrestrained embrace of insecurity – in the recognition that we never really stand on solid ground, and never can.” – Oliver Burkeman