Question everything82

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QUESTION EVERYTHING

Doing the opposite of everyone else in your area of business is one way to position your brand differently, but you can shoot yourself in the foot. There’s usually a good reason industries act the way they do; the ones who didn’t might have lost their money, leaving others to carry on treading the usual path.

On the other hand, times change; new opportunities arise and the old rules can start to hold you back. It’s worth taking a risk if you’re certain you’re right, and if you know it’ll get you talked about by customers and the media.

The idea Go to the fragrance department of any shop these days and there will be testers for you to try. The air is dense with fruity-fl oral smells, the scent of the moment, all mingled together like a thousand summer puddings next to a giant bunch of fl owers. It’s tricky to distinguish the one you want to try from what’s already suspended in the air.

Take no notice of shop assistants offering you a bowl of coffee beans to sniff because this supposedly clears your sense of smell. It doesn’t. It’s another one of those rules that everyone in the industry follows simply because everyone in the industry follows it.

How do you make your scent brand stand out from a cloud of perfume?

Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle fi ll their shops with air that doesn’t contain any perfume, not even their own. In some they have futuristic capsules that looked like a cross between Star Trek transporters and technologically advanced showers. In their Liberty of London boutique people have asked if they can use it to travel to the third fl oor. They’re not for moving people, they’re for moving air.

When you want to smell one of their fi ne fragrances, your sales assistant will blast the capsule full of fresh air, open the door and spraying your scent. You stick your head inside and inhale. This way, you get the impression of what you’ll smell like when you’re wearing it, the scent cloud you leave behind as you walk through room. It’s what the French call the sillage, the wake, like the waves a boat leaves on a lake.

Their scents are expensive; they invite top perfumers to create their dream fragrances with no limit on the costs of ingredients. They want their customers to buy something they love, and to be certain they’ve chosen the right one. They defi nitely don’t want anyone realising they bought the wrong thing once they get home.

In practice • Ask yourself how your customers really experience your product or your service when they’re in the outside world. How far can you go towards recreating that? Cars should be test driven in traffi c jams, shoe shop should have areas with Tarmac, paving stones, grass and carpet.

•Go through your sales process and question all the points that you’ve never questioned before. Change the ones that turn out to be pointless. • Tell the media what you’ve done. Invite the press and your customers to try it. The traditionalists might prefer the old way, but people soon adapt. • PS If you need convincing that it’s worth trying something completely new go to YouTube and search for “How to peel a banana like a monkey”.