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What Is 'Remarkability'?

Being Remarkable is the best way to attract Attention. It makes your offering worth noticing and talking about.

You should design your offer to be Remarkable in order to pique your prospect's curiosity.

Aim for the edges, that's where remarkability is.

Josh Kaufman Explains 'Remarkability'

Every time I go for a run, people ask me about my shoes. They don't ask me because they're fashionable: they ask me because they're weird.

Vibram FiveFingers are shoes that look like a cross between a sock and a glove. Wearing them makes you look a bit like a frog: each toe has its own little pocket, giving your feet a slightly amphibian look-odd enough to be noticed.

I picked up a pair of FiveFingers to experiment with barefoot running-the thin rubber sole protects your feet from rocks and glass without adding any unnecessary support, which lets your feet do what they're naturally designed to do. Running or walking in FiveFingers is surprisingly fun, which is why I keep wearing them.

FiveFingers are just strange enough that people can't help but notice your feet when you wear them-they violate expectations of what shoes are supposed to look like. As a result, people ask me about them constantly-even in as "unfriendly" a place as the streets of New York City. By the end of the conversation, I've inevitably told my new acquaintance what they are, why I'm wearing them, how much they cost, and where they can purchase them.

FiveFingers are designed to overcome the #1 problem every new offering faces: if no one knows you exist, no one will buy what you have to sell. Every customer that wears a pair of FiveFingers inevitably provides Vibram all of the advertising they need to keep growing-for free.

From a business perspective, the attention-grabbing design of FiveFingers is working beautifully. On the street, salespeople confirm that new pairs of FiveFingers are flying off the shelves. According to the New York Times ("Wiggling Their Toes at the Shoe Giants," August 30, 2009), sales of the FiveFingers line have tripled every year since they were introduced in 2006, and in 2009 revenue crossed the $10 million mark in North America alone-without mass-market advertising.

Not bad for funny-looking frog shoes.

Being Remarkable is the best way to attract attention. In the classic marketing book Purple Cow, Seth Godin uses a wonderful metaphor to illustrate this principle. A field full of brown cows is boring. A purple cow is delightfully unexpected-worth paying attention to and talking about.

If you design your offer to be remarkable-clearly unique enough to pique your prospect's curiosity-it'll be significantly easier to attract attention.

Questions About 'Remarkability'

• How can you make your offer more remarkable or attention-worthy?
• What could you do to make it stand out?

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"Advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable."

Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad

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https://personalmba.com/remarkability/

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