Take a Chance

Think about all the commercial offerings you see, and consider how many you actually pay any attention to.  I’ll bet it is usually the ones that are out of the ordinary, or which do something unexpected.  There is a psychological reason for this.  When we see or do something, we get used to it and create patterns in our mind to deal with the situation.  It normally saves us time and energy, otherwise we’d have to decide every morning which sock to put on which foot, which item of clothing is right for what you are doing etc.  Once you generalise, you know ‘Hey, I’m going to work so I need a suit, shirt and black socks’.  In other words, you’ve created a useful habit.

But this function of the brain spills over into other areas, such as watching television and reading magazines.  Here, you see a crazy ad the first time and think, ‘that’s cool!’  The next time, though, you’ve seen it and your mind has connected advertisement to the funny image, and even worse it generalises to all similar images.  ‘Been there, done that’ becomes the adage.

So how do you stand out?  Keep being different!  That’s the only way.  You have to keep taking a chance and be less ordinary.  Big companies aren’t good at this because they get set in their ways, which is why entrepreneurs can take the lead.  And if you don’t want to keep changing?  Sorry, but our mind developed over a few million years, so it’s either you change your approach or wait a few million more to see if our brains catch up.