How to Be Different: Create Wow!

How do you break your company or product away from the pack of sameness?

Welcome to the first in a series of guides highlighting techniques marketing experts suggest to be different and build awareness… Here are some thoughts by Tom Peters…

Who: Tom Peters

Author, motivational speaker.

What: “WOW!”

Wow is “stepping out (individuals at all levels in a firm and independent contractors) and standing out (corporations and organizations) from the growing crowd of look-alikes. Being average has never had much appeal. Better to fail with flair in pursuit of something neat…”

How You Do It

Tom offers 210 stories – some short, some long – which are examples of people and companies doing WOW things… While Tom doesn’t offer step-by-step instructions on creating a WOW idea, you will be inspired by his examples. Examples are arranged into these chapters:

• Starters
• Getting Things Done
• Milk, Cookies and Managing People
• Pens, Toilets, and Businesses That Do It Differently
• Just Say No to Commodities (And Yes to Free Spirits)
• Breaking the Mold
• The Wacky World (or [mostly] what have you done about Asia today?)
• Searching for the Diversity Advantage
• Tomorrow’s Strange Enterprises
• Entrepreneurs’ Dreams
• Lists!
• Attaining Perpetual Adolescence
• Parting Shots

Check Out

Books

• “The Pursuit of Wow!: Every Person’s Guide to Topsy-Turvy Times”
• “The Project 50 (Reinventing Work): Fifty Ways to Transform Every “Task” into a Project That Matters!”

Online

• “Wow Projects” from the Tom Peter’s company website

Articles by Tom Peters in Fast Company Magazine

(Don’t let the dates of 1999 dissuade you – this writing is just as relevant today as it was then)

• “How to Wow!” (April ’99)
• “The Wow Project” (April ’99)

Next post, Doug Hall and Dramatic Difference…