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178 | 365 Art

When your kids are 3 they are all artists. Regardless of how recognisable their drawing is we encourage them over and over again as they mass-produce their drawings and scribbles and … art.
 
By 10 many kids will realise that they don’t draw as well as other kids and by the late teens, you are either an artist or your not. Most feel useless at art and stop creating.
 
Art is defined “the creation of beautiful or significant things” and art is more than drawings or paintings. Sadly our societies, schools and families stop encouraging our kids to be artist, the way we used to when they were 3.
 
This leads to less creative adults.
 
Consequently less beautiful or significant things are created.
 
 
 
[178 | 365 Art – This is a shot of Siren drawing a picture for Talia at the Rototuna School market day]

163 | 365 Bright Spots

I like this photo because of the way the sun fuses with the water to create bright spots that look like small liquid fireworks (without the risk of burning your house down).
 
Spent the last couple of days thinking about bright spots. Things that are working.
 
It’s been refreshing because by default I focus on dull spots, i.e. things that need fixing, rather than seeing the cool picture that bright spots create.
 
The goal in seeing bright spots, is to work out why they are bright spots, and then try and replicate it to dull spots. Hmm, a complex train of thought.
 
Basically looking at why things are working, rather than focusing on why things aren’t working.

Does advertising really work?

'Old marketing is dead
10 years ago we were able to advertise a position in a paper and know that people looking for a job would see it. Nowadays you need to advertise in many papers and on multiple websites and you are still not guaranteed a good response.

It used to be that you could build a product and market it really well and people would naturally use your service. Nowadays we are all bombarded with advertising and media and information. We as consumers often ignore these messages. When was the last time you made that call after hearing an ad? It is almost impossible to make an impression and a thousand fold more difficult to actually get them to pick-up the phone.

New marketing is everything we do
Brand is no longer about just having a great logo and good advertising. Brand is now driven by everything the company does. Every time we answer the phone or deliver a sales proposal or email a client or they use online, we build our brand. The aim of new marketing is to get talked about, in a positive way of course, because of how ingenious we are!

To have a strong brand you now have to have a service that is so ingenious, so smart and edgy and stunning that it gets talked about.  Think about Google. How many of you started using Google because you saw their ad. None, they didn't advertise. You heard about it, tried it, liked it, kept using it and if you're an early adopter like me, probably told others about it.' - quote from my eBook called 'Being INGENIOUS @ agoge'

All this means that the old way of attracting candidates or getting customers works less and less. It will get harder and harder get peoples attention. Your only chance is to focus on providing a stunning service or being an incredible employer, so that you get talked about.

Finally, fyi, we measure most of our advertsing, we change ads and try new and creative things. When you measure advertising, the results generally dont make good reading, it forces you to think outside the square. You should try it!

Ingenious Rating

I have decided to create an ingenious rating table that I can rate different businesses and ideas that I can see, against my meaning of Ingenious.

Ingenious means providing remarkable and inventive and edgy and customer focused and stunning service.

5 = Ingenious

3 = Very Good
2 = Nice Try
1 = What were you thinking?
0 = Dumb Ass

The table deliberately has no #4 to remind us that there is a huge gap between Ingenious and Very Good. I will post the ratings to different businesses in the comments below.

A quest for an ingenious business

If you buy a Lighter then you would expect it to have gas in it – right? Well when I purchased one from the Oasis Superette  in Papamoa it didn’t. I went back and they put it right for me without blinking. They were really helpful and its an enjoyable experience going to their store.

The service I experience at the Oasis was great, if not very good, better than I had experienced at a dairy or superette in years. And yet it was not remarkable or ingenious (save for the fact that I now tell you about it)

I would go back to that store as opposed to the store 50 metres down the road (and recommend that you do), but I wont drive for 20 minutes to go back the next time I'm in Tauranga

A recently read book by Seth Godin called “Purple Cow” ^ which says the “remarkable is the opposite of very good”, and this has caused me to think about our ^ desire to provide ingenious services.

The America Heritage Dictionary ^ defines ingenious as “1. Marked by inventive skill and imagination. 2. Having or arising from an inventive or cunning mind; clever: an ingenious scheme.”

In business I believe that Ingenious means providing remarkable and inventive and edgy and stunning service.

Ingenious companies care about their customers and are truly creative about meeting their needs. The type of service they provide gets noticed and talked about and ingenious businesses are known to be the experts, the geniuses, the elite, the ONLY place to get that service.

I am starting a short-term quest to post comments on businesses that are ingenious and those that aren’t and why.