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…
