FISH WHERE EVERYONE ISN’T

 

 

Yang Jingru was 18 years old and representing China in the Women’s 1500m Speed Skating at the 2024 Olympics in Gangwon in South Korea.

The conventional way to race is for the skaters to stay in a bunch for the first nine laps, saving their energy for a final explosive burst of speed on the last lap.

But as the race began, Yang Jingru did something totally unexpected, she put on a burst of speed and began pulling away from the pack.

This made no sense to the others, if she used her energy now she wouldn’t have any left for the final power-burst on the tenth lap.

But Yang Jingru skated flat out round the track and rejoined the pack at the back, she stayed there for the next nine laps.

When everyone put on their final burst of speed, Yang Jingru was still at the rear of the pack.

She stayed at the rear and was the last to cross the line, and then something that no one quite understood occurred – she was the winner.

She took first place because, even though she crossed the line last, she was a lap ahead of everyone else.

She won China’s first gold medal by doing the opposite of everyone else.

While they paced themselves and saved their energy for a final spurt, she did the ‘final spurt’ on the first lap and then paced herself for the rest of the race.

As she said herself after the race:

“It was a daring move, one I had never attempted before, but it was my own strategy, a secret weapon nobody saw coming.

It left everyone bewildered and unsure of how to respond.

And it worked like a charm… I achieved what I had set out to do.

My goal was to claim the gold medal, and I’m pleased that I was able to turn that vision into a reality.”

In our business, doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing is called ‘niche marketing’.

Basically, it means that most people aren’t thinking, they’re just following each other.

Most people are fishing where everyone else is fishing: they think that must be where all  the fish are just because that’s where everyone is fishing.

No one stops to think “Hang on, no one’s fishing over here, there may be fewer fish here but I can have them all to myself because there’s no competition.”

That’s a lesson I learned from John Webster.

“Don’t try to be better. Be different.”

If you try to be better than everyone else, you’re still playing the same game as them.

But if you concentrate on being different, you’re playing your own game.

I remember John said: “No one does jingles anymore, I’m going to do some jingles.”

He did, and when they worked everyone copied him.

When I wrote the Pepsi ‘Lipsmacking….’ endline, I said to John it was a pity we couldn’t use it because it was too long for an endline.

John said “That’s what’s good about it, no one else is doing long endlines.”

When I wrote ‘Gercha’, with Chas & Dave, I asked John how we should shoot it.

John said in black and white, I said why?

He said “No one else is doing it”.

When he did the John Smiths commercials, he said he was going to have a different strapline on the end of every ad, I asked him why.

He said “No one else is doing it.”

It’s called GESTALT (the mind is a pattern-making machine).

It’s as simple as OOOXOOO – which one stands out?

All the zeroes are similar to each other, but the one that stands out isn’t any of the zeroes, the X beats them just by being different.

And standing out from the pack has to be the most crucial rule of advertising.

As Bill Bernbach said:

“If no one notices your advertising, everything else is academic.”