WANT TO BECOME FABULOUSLY WEALTHY BY BEING DISRUPTIVE?

If so, here's a thought for you: Disruption happens.
 
It happens much like another word that happens.
 
And that word is one which we will not state here in the weekly screed.
 
That is because, unlike many other mediocre harangues available on the internet, we here at the Slow Burn Mountaintop Marketing Fortress wish to project the illusion that our mediocre harangue doesn't merely fire for effect by using scatological BS language.
 
But boy, does anything have quite as much stink of BS as the faddish notion of being disruptive?
 
The whole idea of disruption is merely a repackaging of a quality that can indeed make you fabulously wealthy.
 
And we know the secret. We will teach you.
 
But first, some cautionary reflection.
 
Because at some point, someone is going to say to you...
 
 
"OOOH, IT'S THE 21ST CENTURY! WE NEED TO BE DISRUPTIVE!"
 
No you don't.
 
What you need to do is merely follow the ostensible tenets of being disruptive, which means doing things that the Fabulous Honey Parker and I have been doing in our respective careers in radio and in big ad agencies for decades.
 
First, let's recap the disruption BS.
 
If you missed our last harangue about this problem, which happened some months ago, we looked at the Wikipedia page about disruption and distilled it into a single top-line thought.
 
We walked away with this: "Being disruptive is about not being mediocre."
 
Really?
 
 
WHILE DISRUPTION HAPPENS, IT SEEMS THAT AMBITION DOES NOT
 
Whatever happened to the notion of being successful by being excellent?
 
I was recently reading an article about one huge, disruptive company that, in 2015, had been valued at over a quarter billion dollars.
A quarter billion dollars! More than that! By about 50% more!
 
Hugely disruptive!
 
I'd never actually heard of this company, but this disruptive beast was all the rage on college campuses.
 
Can you guess what happened two years after that quarter-billion-dollar valuation?
 
This hugely disruptive company was sold to another hugely disruptive company.
 
The sale price: a paltry 12-million bucks.
Pocket change!
 
What the hell happened?
 
 
FOLLOW THE MONEY--WHICH FOLLOWED THE BUZZWORDS
 
It was all about social media!
 
Money!
 
Metrics!
 
Crowdfunding!
 
Changing the world!
 
Apparently, one of the failed disrupter's employees is on record, saying that the company's mission is to "Empower the collective creation of the world."
 
Collective creation of the world?
 
What does that even mean?
 
Are we basing a quarter-billion-dollar-plus vision on bringing the entire world together in one big Color Me Mine finger-painting party?  
 
If you look back at the postmortem of this company (whose name we will not state but whom we'll just call Fail), it sounds like a high-tech PT Barnum was leading a flock of pretentious and frivolous youngsters who were more interested in the company's internal culture of beer pong and hot-tub parties than in doing anything that really matters.
 
 
DOES THAT SOUND HARSH?
 
I'm sorry.
 
But a lot of allegedly smart people lost a whole lot of big money backing the blustering and fiery vision of Fail.
 
Unfortunately, it turned out that instead of having a man behind the curtain, there was little more at Fail besides more smoke and mirrors.
 
Disruptive, indeed.
Fail!
 
Recently, I stumbled across an article about the things that disrupter brands are doing and why their disruptive models work to make disruptive amounts of lucre.
 
The article had a lot of words about a lot of stuff that made a lot of money, but you can look at it all and boil it down to the F-word.
No, not Fail.
 
Focus.
 
Yes, I'm sorry, but disruption is about little more than Focus.
 
 
AS THE FAITHFUL FAN OF HOT SHOTS KNOWS, WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT FOCUS
 
And we have never once been about disruption.
 
Because focusing on disruption is stupid.
 
It propagates the notion that by somehow being troublesome and disturbing and distracting, you can rule the world.
 
You can't.
 
In fact, one of the business ideas that the disruptive model rails against is old-fashioned, interruptive advertising. 
"TV commercials and radio commercials are dinosaurs! Interruption advertising is dead!"
 
You know what the word "interruption" is?
 
It's a synonym for "disruption."
 
 
GET OFF YOUR HIGH, DISRUPTIVE HORSE, ZEITGEIST!
 
Come on back to the party and practice good, old-fashioned focus.
 
At Slow Burn Marketing, we have long preached focus to our clients.
 
One client wanted to just "run some ads" for a particular segment of their business.
 
We told them you could do that.
 
But then you'd be just another also-ran.
 
But if you focus, if you come up with a new brand that specializes in that segment of your business, and run ads for that new brand, you can then compete against the category leader.
 
And while you're going up against the category leader, your new marketing can focuses on your customer, and tell stories about the thrill that customer gets from doing business with you because your experience is better.
 
Can you guess what they did?
 
 
CAN YOU GUESS WHO STARTED MAKING A MILLION BUCKS A YEAR?
 
We had another client, a solopreneur, who had two brands in the same category.
 
One brand was business-to-consumer, and the other brand was business-to-business.
 
She was tied up in knots about having to re-brand and market both brands.
 
We said, "Why?"
 
Why do you need two?
 
They're in the same category.
 
Combine them into one brand. They both provide the same thing. You just have a pro version for B2B and a lite version for B2C.
 
She looked like a millstone had been removed from her neck.
 
Suddenly, with one sweep of her hand, she had one business she could focus on. It simplified her life and her marketing.
 
 
"OH, COME ON, IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE! DISRUPTIVE BRANDS ARE CHANGING THE WORLD!"
 
No they're not.
 
Smart, focused people are changing the world.
 
"No! Disrupters rule!"
 
OK, let's look at the rules of disruption.
 
Focus, simplification, a business model delivering a desirable customer experience, and being what the staid and established competition isn't.
 
Those are key qualities. 
By that measure, who was the first disruptive brand?
 
The Ford Motor Company.
 
 
DO YOU DISAGREE?
 
Well, Henry Ford disrupted the automotive industry.
 
He flew in the face of a business model that sold high-priced cars to people who had money to burn.
 
He did it by looking at the model for the meat packing industry, and reversed it.
 
A meat packing plant has a whole cow go in one end. It comes out the other end as packaged parts.
 
Henry Ford sent packaged parts in one end. A whole cow--er, car come out the other end.
 
Henry Ford also strived to make the automobile affordable to the common man.
 
Henry Ford also improved the customer experience by giving the common man the first-ever car with safety glass in the windshield.
 
 
HENRY FORD WAS A KING DISRUPTER
 
And he did it without ever having pretentious and pointless mission statements or throwing beer pong hot tub parties for his workers.
 
He also did it without ever being called "disruptive."
 
Today, one of the anointed kings of the alleged disrupter businesses is Dollar Shave Club.
 
How did it happen?
 
Two guys got to talking about their frustration with the high price of razor blades.
 
They started a focused, customer-centric business model: inexpensive, high-quality razor blades and razors by mail order.
 
They used their own money, and some startup funding from a business incubator.
 
They developed a fun, entertaining, engaging brand that connects with men.
 
They created an experience that let the customer in on the joke.
 
 
THEY MADE THEIR CORE CUSTOMER FEEL ONE THING
 
They focused.
 
They gave a guy frustrated with the high price of razor blades a better alternative. They did it with personality and a sense of humor that is completely lacking in the razor-blade market dominated by Gillette and Shick.
 
They made getting blades in the mail an enjoyable experience.
 
And just by the way, their first YouTube video was hilarious. It stands up to repeated watching.
They also used old-fashioned, deader-then-dead interruptive TV commercials. 
 
These two guys sick of the high price of razor blades launched their epic disruption in January 2011.
 
They did it using what amounts to pocket change.
 
In July 2016, a mere five and a half years later, Dollar Shave Club was sold to Unilever for $1 billion in cash.
 
 
WHY ON EARTH?
 
Why does a multi-national company with over $60 billion in annual revenue need to buy a feisty little company that sells a limited line of razors, blades and male grooming products?
 
To compete, apparently.
 
They want to take a slice of the pie owned by Gillette and Shick.
It seems that's the official story.
 
And Unilever already owns "disrupter" Axe, the men's body wash and (ick) body spray.  
 
But there's another, less popular take on this purchase.
 
Some folks think Unilever bought Dollar Shave Club before someone else did it.
 
 
WHATEVER
 
None of this is the point.
 
The point is that disruption is BS.
 
What wins in the marketplace is the F-word.
 
Focus.

​Focus is your friend.
 
When you focus your business model and your brand, great things happen.
 
When you focus on a single, well-defined core customer, you know to whom you are speaking.
 
Then, you can focus your marketing message in a way that makes your core customer feel one way about your brand.
 
Your brand becomes magnetic.
 
And your brand makes friends.
 
 
AND IT WORKS FOR ANY SIZE BUSINESS
 
It works for solopreneurs.
 
By focusing, Slow Burn helped one solopreneur double his revenue in a year.
 
Focus works for an established and thriving operation. That's how Slow Burn helped the business mentioned earlier launch a new brand and go from zero to a million.
 
And focus works for guys like Dollar Shave Club, who started a business based on a conversation at a party, tapped into the zeitgeist, and sold their business for a billion.
 
Disruption happens.
 
But disruption is not the goal.
 
Nor is pretentious and pointless mission statements or beer pong hot tub parties.
 
Focus is king. When you understand how to focus, you're on the way to being a brand that matters.
 
 Even if someone else decides that have to call you names like "disruptive."

As always,
Blaine Parker
Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in
Park City
www.slowburnmarketing.com