The Art of Attention-Getting
There’s A Customer Born Every MinuteFrom Dan Kennedy’s blog:
“How can you get attention in an attention-deficit-disorder world?
Never before have people been so bombarded with and actually connected to incessant distraction. It is harder than ever to get noticed, but somehow, I think, were P.T. Barnum alive today, empowered with all of our modern tools, he’d have a field day making himself the center of attention again and again.
I love larger-than-life attention getters. Barnum, Houdini. My friend Glenn Turner, who LIFE Magazine compared to Barnum — given his penchant for neon colored suits, mink coats and mink-fur boots, barnstorming the country in a private plane with its entire tail pained in his likeness, surrounded by two midgets, a blind motivational speaker.
Today, Donald Trump is certainly in this illustrious group, although he might not embrace the comparisons, at least not publicly. I would also plant the current President, Barack Obama, on this same list. After all, who else has moved the inauguration to a stadium? At the Washington Press dinner, he recently joked that in the second 100 days of his administration he’d be erecting a giant presidential library just to honor and house the memorabilia from his first 100 days — and that he intended to accomplish everything on his gigantic to-do list for those second 100 days in just 72 days, and on the 73rd day, he would rest!
George Foreman, who is speaking at our annual Info-SUMMIT this November embraced the role of flamboyant, attention-getting showman during his comeback as the middle-aged boxer-who-could, as deliberate reinvention of himself as a popular personality… leading directly to his multi-million dollar success on TV with the George Foreman Grill.
More people know George on sight and know that he named all his sons George than would recognize the current Vice-President or know any facts about him. I also put Warren Buffett in this same category, and although he would certainly deny similarity to Barnum, if you’ll read the bio about him, ‘Snowball,’ then I think you’ll agree with my assessment. This is all important to you, because, to swipe and paraphrase a famous quote, nothing happens until you get attention.
This is even germane to my upcoming 7-Figure Academy, exclusively about the making of one million dollars and up as yearly personal income. At that level, you have to choose your attention-getting strategies very carefully, but you must be a professional attention-getter.
My friend Joe Vitale’s book, ‘There’s A Customer Born Every Minute,’ based on the exploits and promotion strategies of P.T. Barnum, happens to be one of my favorite contemporary books about advertising, marketing and promotion. I think Joe did a spectacular job of capturing the genius of Barnum and converting Barnum’s principles into practical suggestions you can use today.
As Joe points out, the quote widely attributed to Barnum — “there’s a sucker born every minute” — was never said by Barnum. Instead, he believed there’s a customer born every minute. And in his own way, Barnum was very much about creating relationships with customers and delivering value to them. The book presents Barnum’s ‘10 Rings of Power,’ and I do suggest getting and reading the entire book. If it motivates you as it did me to dig deeper into Barnum, that’ll be to your benefit.
Although, if you study, you’ll discover Barnum was about much more than just getting attention with outrageous advertising, publicity stunts, and what he called “humbugs,” although he certainly was about that. And these days, clutter, competition, and some spending-reluctance all challenge us to work harder and be more creative in getting attention for ourselves and our businesses.
Joe’s book presents a number of great stories of Barnum and others’ adventures in attention-getting, along with ten ideas from Joe. I’d add that Bill Glazer’s new book on ‘Outrageous Advertising’ can provide you with a full portfolio of ideas and examples for getting attention through advertising — if you haven’t obtained a copy of it, you should do so, pronto.”
Related Posts:
- Blogging for Fame & Fortune
- The Art of Reinventing Yourself
- The 10 Commandments of PR
- Robyn Spizman: Make It Memorable
- Uncensored Sales Strategies
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Jordan McAuley
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