Steal This Secret to Turn Your Vulnerabilities Into Marketing Strengths
When used for good purposes, the ability to position yourself is a gift.
Here’s a positive twist on the centuries-old strategy used by Edward Bernays, the “father of public relations,” for nefarious purposes in the early 1900s. Bernays was a master at using crowd psychology to twist perception by turning a product’s biggest weakness — like tobacco’s negative appeal to women — into its biggest strength by publicizing suffragettes marching in a parade while smoking cigarettes as a symbol of power and change.
Bernays’ motives were admittedly terrible. But today’s smartest marketers are borrowing a rule from his positioning playbook by turning their biggest product or personal vulnerabilities into their marketing strength.
Here’s how the strategy goes. What’s the biggest issue you worry about getting hit up about or that you fear will be discovered? Instead of hiding it or denying it, put the issue front and center in your marketing strategy in a way that changes it from a problem to an outstanding strength.
Consider the following examples:
A product that wears out or breaks after a limited number of uses.
A delivery strategy priced low enough to let you enjoy a fresh new (shaver, hand warmer, pair of eyeglasses) every 120 days.
A CEO with a criminal record in his or her history.
A personal backstory to a company that highlights learning and rising from hard circumstance to outstanding success.
Lack of an MBA.
A highlight on joining the model of success exemplified by other famous entrepreneurs without college degrees.
A physical or mental characteristic such as dyslexia or ADHD.
An open acknowledgement of the way an individual (like Richard Branson, for example) has used that condition to become extraordinarily strong. In fact, many of the greatest entrepreneurs consider traditional “disabilities” to be the source of their greatest strengths.
A strong foreign accent.
A focus on the unique heritage that becomes a memorable part of a company’s or executive’s brand.
You get the idea. If you feel apologetic or worried about an aspect of your product, your background or even your appearance, worry no more. Own the trait and find the ways to make the situation a plus.
For example, Helga Arminak, the CEO of Measurable Difference, was once a war refugee. She grew up in the midst of a war in Beirut.
Arminak’s father owned a jewelry store that was destroyed during the war along with his entire inventory. A bomb destroyed the family’s home, but luckily, the family survived and were able to escape to the U.S. to stay with her cousins. Without the ability to speak English, Arminak was bullied in school.
At 16, she began working and eventually became a makeup artist. In 1999, she used $3,000 in savings to a cosmetics packaging business. Three years later, the business reached profitability and today that company, Arminak & Associates has reached nearly $80 million in annual sales.
Arminak’s newest company, Measurable Difference, is an all-natural line of cosmetics made for women by women. Her unique background, rather than being a source of embarrassment, has become a part of her company’s brand and a show of her strength.
Ann Smarty, a writer who specializes in social media strategies such as Tweetchat, notes that she is Russian, but has been blogging in English for the past nine years. “When I started, I felt very insecure about putting English words into articles,” she says. “I spent hours searching Google for related phrases in the fear of not sounding English enough.”
As a result, her articles were never long, she says. So to make them more useful, she relied heavily on charts and screenshots, which made it easier for her to explain her points. While visual communications is hot new trend and a mainstay of Internet communications today, few bloggers were using visuals at the time Smarty started, so she gained attention quickly.
Today, Smarty’s posts have become iconic for their inclusion of extensive visual aids. The element that began as an aid to cover her vulnerability has become her personal trademark and strength.
So what’s your biggest vulnerability as an executive or company? Perhaps, with a little insight and effort, you could turn it into your greatest trademark or strength.
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