Time today for another Important Business Principle (ideas worthy of capital letters). This one derives from the ad biz, but I’d like to expand on it: “The success of an advertisement or product, just like a business or a career, depends upon the skillful combination of association and differentiation.”
By “association” we’re talking about “What’s it like?” and by “differentiation” we’re asking, “How’s it different?” It’s the second of those we need to focus on. After all, one of the “human universals” — traits common to all human societies — is that we learn by imitation. Thus, we are all natural idea associators.
What’s rare is the gift for differentiation, and today I want to offer up a story of a master of that art. That master is one Tony Little. Yeah, the guy with the blond ponytail who hawks fitness equipment on infomercials.
You might not want to take Tony Little seriously — and that’s understandable because he doesn’t take himself seriously, gleefully participating in a spoof of himself on a recent Geico commercial and in bits on every manner of talk show. If anyone has created a lively, playful brand out of himself, it’s Tony Little.
Yet, the man is not the brand. When I spoke with Little, I found him to be quiet and thoughtful, someone who shrewdly turned himself into the nation’s leading pitchman. The guy you see on TV is a character, like, say, Larry the Cable Guy (who is the creation of Daniel Whitney, a Midwesterner who went to Baptist University in Georgia and was a bellhop at a Ramada Inn).
Little was a competitive bodybuilder until a car accident left him depressed and 60 pounds overweight. He observed Jane Fonda’s success with exercise videos (this was in the ‘80s) and thought, “Somebody is her trainer, but she’s making all the money.”
Little went to the local cable company to inquire about his doing an exercise program. The deal was this: 16 shows for $15,000. Which doesn’t seem like too bad a deal until you realize that it was Little paying the station the 15K, not the other way around.
Not having the money, Little asked himself what business he might start to raise the money. He knew health clubs and had noted their questionable cleanliness standards, so he went into the business of cleaning them. Notice the tidy balance of association and differentiation in that business decision.
He said: “I wanted to make a video. Jane Fonda had the video-rental stores locked up, so I went to HSN (Home Shopping Network). They turned me down. But then I learned that the son of the founder of HSN owned a gym, and I got him to introduce me to his father.”
The father, Lowell “Bud” Paxson, was willing to offer Little a deal: He’d put the video on for four airings, and if they sold 400 copies, then he’d order more. They sold the 400 with the first airing.
I award Little a Master’s in the Art of Differentiation for what he did next.
He explained: “I looked at all the personal trainers, and the guys all looked the same — they had short hair and wore tank tops. So I let my hair grow and wore polo shirts buttoned to the neck. It was a channel-stopping technique. People would look at me and try to figure out who I was — this was not a typical get-in-shape guy.”
Most people work to imitate success, but successful people work at not being an imitator.
As for the hyperactive presentation style, that was part of his learning curve. Little explained that being on HSN was the equivalent of a marketing biofeedback machine. He could see instantly the effects of everything he tried: “You say something and see if the lines light up.”
That’s how he learned to put more and more energy into his performance, saying: “I learned that everyone wants to be a part of positives vibes. Enthusiasm sells.”
Still, Little doesn’t count on energy alone. If he’s doing a 6 p.m. show, he gets there at noon and fills presentation boards with sales points and how best to present each one. He says, quietly, “Here’s how I think about it: If you go to war, do you want more ammunition or less?”
That brings us back to my all-time favorite Important Business Principle: “Different isn’t always better, but better is always different.”
Little works hard, but so do thousands of lesser sales presenters. What makes him unique is his insistence on being unique. He wasn’t born with the sales personality you see on infomercials; he learned it and he earned it.
Dale Dauten is the founder of The Innovators’ Lab. His latest book is “(Great) Employees Only: How Gifted Bosses Hire and De-Hire Their Way to Success.”
