listen up

There—I said it. Your product or service is boring. Most are. You are a business coach, home inspector, retailer, printer; the list goes on. Very few people in any industry make it out of the boring box, and into the fun, exciting, interesting box. I’m not talking just in marketing, although that’s an easy place to start.
How can you find ways to make your product or service NON-boring?
First, know your audience. If you are too silly, less people will want to buy car insurance from you.
Second, keep it clean. Fun doesn’t mean you can get away with spiteful, crude, racist, demeaning or demoralizing. Ever.
Third, experiment. Watch the results, and change if needed.
Fun Case study.
I found this great application for my mac, that is like a super utility. It can search local files, the web, launch applications, run math, and more. All at a click of a keystroke. A super utility tool sounds boring right. It is. I mean, it’s great that it can do so much, but that doesn’t excite normal people. Just geeks. So The company behind the application made it fun. They named it Alfred and gave it a butler look and feel. Now it has personality on top of style and function.
Check this out. they even gave the preferences some nice fun.
 
Notice the last button.
Special: Do Not Press This Button
You know I had to click it. The result? A fun little video called The Marshmallow test. Nothing elaborate or cheesy, just a splash of fun.
So take your product or service, and think about your customer. In what ways can you add some fun to it? Make it unique, interesting, engaging, bold, or even silly if it works. Try something and report back what happens. I’d love to hear what you did.