Horatio Caine is one of those TV characters that you love to hate. For those who don’t know him, he is the lead detective in CSI Miami played by David Caruso and in short, he is the master of cheese.
Cheesy poses, cheesy one-liners and cheesy plots all rolled into one…
… and yet out of the TV hit series he has developed a cult following that you wouldn’t believe. While it is not “empirical evidence” I did a quick search on Facebook – Caine has 36000 plus fans in his fan page versus the 900 odd that Gil Grissom (of CSI Las Vegas fame) has.
Much like “The Hoff” or Chuck Norris, Caine’s fame has grown far beyond the likes of CSI, Baywatch or some bad martial arts flicks. They’ve become something a little quirky and different.
Even the mighty Google – which does not bow down to even the mighty Chinese government – pays homage to Chuck Norris. If you go to Google search and type in “where is Chuck Norris” and hit the “I’m feeling lucky” option you will get the message:
“Google won't search for Chuck Norris because it knows you don't find Chuck Norris, he finds you.”
You cannot buy publicity or brand awareness of that nature.
I think there is a fantastic lesson in that for small business owners – particularly those who are just starting out - and that is that you need to be quirky to try and stand-out.
There is obviously a very fine line between “quirky” and “immature” and the line is often very difficult to see, but try and do something that is going to make you stand out a bit. Think about Nando’s and its in-your-face advertising campaign as an example.
If you are going to compete against 1000 businesses and they’re all going to be rolling out corporate identities which are very similar to the next one, then how are you going to stand-out?
I’ve said before on my blog that I think we are about to enter a generation of small business. This is going to change the way you pitch for business.
For your bread and butter revenue, you are probably not going to be pitching to a corporate in a suit and that means that you can afford to be a little quirky and different… provided that like Horatio Caine you always deliver the goods.
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Marc Ashton is a financial journalist and entrepreneur. He is managing editor of industrial title ManufacturingHub.co.za and operates the Bad Entrepreneur blog as well as organising the Rival Pioneers entrepreneur initiative
