You will never, ever guess what these three have in common. Never.
I Was Wrong
Every year (just about) I reread one particular Wikipedia article: list of common misconceptions. What I like best about it is that they’re generally not that controversial. They’re just surprising. Things “everybody knows” that are just plain wrong. You can skim the whole thing yourself, but these are a few of my favorites:
- Columbus didn’t sail to prove the earth was round
- There’s no such thing as an “alpha wolf”
- Drowsiness after Thanksgiving dinner doesn’t come from the turkey
Columbus and pretty much everyone around him knew the earth was round. He thought it was much, much smaller than it was, so he expected to run into Asia pretty quickly when he sailed west. But the earth was a lot bigger, and he only lucked out that he ran into America first.
An early study of wolf ecology made the mistake of focusing on lone wolves from different packs in captivity, leading to ideas about an “alpha” wolf. In reality, a pack functions like a unit, and similar to other animals, older parents tend to share leadership roles.
That magic turkey drug tryptophan…is actually not that concentrated in turkey. Because the amounts of the drug you’d get from a turkey dinner is so small, something else, like our fine American tradition of overeating, is likely responsible for the need to nap post-meal.
These are misconceptions that don’t really cost us anything. It’s amusing to discover we’ve been wrong about some silly anecdote all our lives, but it doesn’t change much. Then there are the misconceptions that actually cost you. We see a lot of those in our advertising work.
“If you do good work, people will hear about it”
Pretty much every small business starts with word of mouth. But the ceiling is low on how far you can grow on the good will of happy customers alone. You’d be surprised how many business owners tell us “I do better work than my competitors, but they get all the customers.” When folks choose to buy a product or service, they often call the first business they can think of. If they can’t think of you, they won’t call you.
“People love our annual/seasonal sales”
This one is dangerous not because it’s wrong per se, but because of what it leads to. People do love your sales. And when you have them at regular intervals, all you do is train your customers to wait for a sale instead of buying something when they really want or need it. If you find yourself skeptical of this little nugget o’ knowledge, just ask yourself if you’d ever buy a sweater from Kohl’s at full price?
“No amount of brand-building will make people care less about price”
We’re all transactional with some purchases (meaning we spend time hunting for deals to save money) and relational with others (we spend money on a brand we trust to save time). It’s true that most of us won’t brag about a $5000 drain tile repair we paid for. But we’ll brag about our fancy new $3000 grill. Because we love it. If people love you and what you do for them enough, they will care less about price.
Everybody’s wrong about something, sometime. What breeds success is being willing to learn from it. If you’ve never really don’t the advertising, leadership, or company culture work you need to, the best time to start was last year, or the year before that. But the second best time to start is today. Reach out, we’d love to talk.