In terms of stocks, buying low and selling high is pretty easy information to absorb. Easy to understand, hard to do. Because what it requires of a savvy investor is to avoid the natural urge to conform. When other people are racing to buy a hot stock that is causing a lot of excitement, you must hold back. Instead, look for the undervalued item that no one’s interested in, and invest in that. It’s the logical thing to do, but it flies in the face of our emotional programming.
Marketing also rewards the nonconformist. Basic marketing principles include standing out from the pack, and not delivering the same message that everyone else is delivering. But we are pack animals, and historically, standing out from the pack is a very hard thing to do. Those who stick out are often bullied, and not just in their younger years. Workplace bullying is unfortunately still very common, and not only results in reduced productivity and higher turnover, but also has an adverse effect on an organization’s creativity.
So it takes a rare bird to actually be willing to stand out, and take the inevitable heat for doing so. Kris Lindahl, CEO of Kris Lindahl Real Estate, is one such bird. There is some unwritten law somewhere that every realtor wears a suit and tie, and strikes the classic arms folded pose in their marketing images. It’s the same image, over and over and over. Kris Lindahl decided instead to do a giant billboard in a button down shirt, and with his arms outstretched, as if he were about to deliver a massive hug. It certainly got a lot of attention, and was undoubtedly part of the reason he went from founding his brokerage in 2018 to becoming a household name throughout Minnesota. In those same two years he also expanded his business into multiple states, and his brokerage surpassed $1 billion in sales.
Of course there was backlash. Social media was characteristically cruel, and lots of people throughout especially the Twin Cities loved to make fun of the image. Someone even made their own billboard to spoof Lindahl’s. But here’s what some people still don’t understand about marketing. The more he got made fun of, the more people knew who he was. The more people knew who he was, the better his business did. “I’ll take down the billboards when they stop working,” Lindahl has said on numerous occasions.
And true to his word, when he felt that this image no longer was generating enough attention, he switched it up just this past month. But the other thing Lindahl has done is whenever people made fun of him, he got in on the action. That spite billboard? Though this didn’t make headlines, Lindahl actually helped fund it. And when the Mars Perseverance rover landed, social media feeds in the Twin Cities soon were peppered with images of Lindahl’s grinning face photoshopped onto the early rover landscapes. That same night, Lindahl sponsored a meme contest, offering $500 to whoever came up with the best one.
Have the naysayers softened? Not at all. But that doesn’t matter when the goal is to stand out. In some ways, permanent naysayers are a sign you’re doing something right. “Not everyone’s going to like what you do,” Lindahl says. “But that’s not a reason to stop doing it.” Standing out will get you attention…and all the good things and bad things that come with it. The key is not to mind when you also attract some mean tweets, but instead, take it as a compliment.
Marketing and branding is definitely not for the faint of heart, and it would be a better world if creativity and standing out were rewarded instead of punished. But as long as people keep including your brand name when they’re trashing it, don’t get discouraged. See it as a win in disguise. To use the parlance of our times, haters gonna hate. And the very best thing you can do is to take the advice of Taylor Swift and shake it off.
