Time for another story and I will borrow the words taken from “The Art of Money Getting” by P.T. Barnum where he teaches that the 16^th golden rule on how to make a fortune is to create a message that stands out, that surprises and entices people, and maybe orders them to do the opposite of what you want them to do. In this particular instance, the sentence: “Don’t read the other side” was written on a swing sign attracting people to a store.

But the real story is about “Genin, the hatter” a character who bought at an auction the first ticket to the play of a famous opera singer and paid a ridiculous amount of money for it. The news of the outrageous bid traveled throughout the nation transforming “Genin, the hatter” in a star overnight and people would turn their hat to check if it had been manufactured by him and his brand became renown by just this trick, increasing tremendously his sales.

This story fits perfectly with the experience I had today in participating to an afternoon seminar on balancing online and offline marketing held by The Wealth Building Annex in Tampa and leading business consultant Mark Katz.

Some of the key concepts I brought home from this intensive experience have been: you need to market to a need by ensuring an attractive market position for yourself, and there must be a specific emotion, event or need that is a catalyst for your business. In the example of “Genin, the hatter”, he definitely marketed to a need: people used hats extensively at those times, and he has secured for himself an attractive position by leveraging the desire of people of being appreciated or noticed, to win over the establishment. He had in fact won the bid against thousands of people from the Fifth avenue who knew nothing about him.

He had become a star overnight and a some of the emotion connected to this event could transfer to those who had bought his hat. And since he had a good quality product he kept selling from there on out. He had “sold” himself and his company first to the “influencers”, namely the press and the high society, and then these influencers promoted him to his real clients, completing the circle.

Today the cycle is the same, but most of the influencers are now on social media and the Web would be a good channel for standing out.

Roberto Mazzoni