Making Beautiful Accidents

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Sometimes small business marketing, and all the tactical things that go into it, is a little like cooking for me. People tell me I’m a pretty good cook and here’s my secret. I’m not afraid to take ingredients I like and throw them together and see what happens. I don’t measure so much as I feel. Sometimes I know what I want something to taste like, but I don’t know what it really will taste like. I don’t mind monumental flops and I don’t mind making beautiful accidents.

My mom was a great baker. Her cookies were legend. At some point she took all of her recipes and put them in a cook book. Not long after the daughter-in-laws (I have seven brothers) starting circulating conspiracy theories, because, no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t duplicate her cookies using her recipes. Upon interrogation she admitted that although she recorded the prescribed amounts of ingredients, she didn’t really know how much of anything she actually put in, she just knew when they seemed right.

I think marketers have to take this approach as well sometimes. You’ve got to be willing to try some things, go off script, take some risks, give up control of the message and be alright with getting results that nobody expected. I’m afraid there is no marketing cookbook just for your business, only a set of proven tools and ingredients. Find your filter, your one word measure of what success feels like, and then go for it. After all, a beautiful accident is still beautiful.

Care to share any of your beautiful accidents?

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Posted by: John Jantsch on Jul 30, 08 | 7:07 am
Category: Branding, Entrepreneur | Tags:

Comments

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Sarah Bray

I guess this is why I keep asking business owners I respect for marketing ideas that actually work, and they kind of look at me blankly and say, "I don't know. There's nothing that works every time."

I hope to one day have a beautiful accident to share!

Tim Rueb

Fail Big - you advance your education faster and further then any other form when you discover not only the victories of taking risks, but the lessons learned within failure.

Sean

I think that's great, but still measure the results of those experiments! Hopefully one of the accidents isn't, "do something you can't measure the results from".

Adrianne Machina

Many important inventions - like penicillin - came from "beautiful accidents." Like your mom, most of these creations came from someone who put time, energy and passion into honing their craft.

That's why I think a beautiful marketing accident will more likely be discovered by a marketing coach or a marketing director with a passion for marketing, rather than a business owner that dabbles in marketing for only an hour a week. Just like your mom knows the power of baking soda, marketing pros know the power of a strong offer.

Because marketing pros are launching experiments already knowing the fundamentals, their experiments are less likely to flop and are more likely to create a "beautiful accident" that will take marketing to the next level.

Adrianne Machina
DTM Coach

Jon W.

Absolutely! As a cook and a marketing professional, I loved your little tidbit of wisdom there.

I go by Jon in day-to-day conversation, but on my business cards it says 'Jonathan'... purely by accident, but now I know when someone calls me 'Jonathan' via the phone or email, they probably got my card via community marketing, thus I can easily track my results! Wonderful accident.

John Jantsch

@Jon - that's a really great example

Moise levi

As an ex private banker, my first question to my clients was ; "how did you do it ?"

I was always surprised by the simplicity of the patterns that did lead to their success

MarketingDeviant

Great advice there. Just do the things you think seems right for you.

Anna Sabino

I loved that personal touch, John.
Well I can apply your concept to my process of designing. I usually buy a lot of components, look at them and see what I can create. The more pieces I have, the easier it is for me to get inspired...

LindaBusiness

As usual, the timeliness of this post with my current business work gives me goosebumps. I'm experimenting with something new, a new way of marketing my business...I'm very curious to see if what results are delicious cookies or blobs of indigestible dough. - Linda

Tom Lindstrom

Great post.I have a marketing plan where I have written down exactly what I should do every day.But, the truth is that I get more things done when I´m not staring blindly at the plan.Sometimes you get the inspiration to do more, sometimes you get nothing done.

web Content

Loved this post... Great wisdom to be found there. Marketing doesn't have any hard and fast rules, you can read all the books and take all the advice you want, but at the end of the day gut instinct is what'll really give you the bes results.. Take a proven formula, add a dash of initiative, a sprinkle of ingenuity and a light seasoning of individuality and voila!! perfect marketing mix!

SEO Snyman

The critical ingredient that no cookbook can divulge is simply this.....love. Cooking is alchemy of the highest order, and the heart of the person doing the cooking is reflected in the final product. The same could be said of marketing. People can share a common recipe, however the results will differ dramatically between individuals, once the unique aspects of their personalities get projected into the mix.

SEO Snyman

Just had an internet glitch whilst pressing "post it" so am unsure if my comment actually squeezed through! What I said was that the ingredient no cookbook mentions is love. Cooking is alchemy of the highest order, and the cook's state of heart reflects in the food.

As far as marketing is concerned, one can take a recipe and apply it to a given scenario, but the results will differ according to the individual characters of the marketing people employing a certain tactic or strategy. The subtleties of the individual characters will affect the projected outcome, dramatically so in certain instances.

John Jantsch

@SEO Snyman - you're going to make me well up thinking of my own dear old mum with that one. No seriously, very cool addition - love in business, now that's an ingredient we could use more of.

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