Best Experienced With: Rocky Horror Picture Show; Floor Show
(Please right click on the link below to cue up the suggested background music for today’s treatise. Let’s all meet this Saturday for the midnight showing of Rock Horror in Denver? That’s the geographical center of the country and we can all stay at Matt’s!)
Just in time for Take Over The Native American’s Country, Feed Them then Kill Them and Take Their Stuff week, The Mind of Mully offers up what many of you have been waiting for for over four years. Today we offer up pink head phones, platitudes, and platypi.
Shall we begin?
Platitudes
How did you find your wife or your husband? How did you find your best career adventure? How did you meet your best friends? The things that give you double goose bumps and depth at low tide………..how did you find them? Did you use your GPS device or did The Random take the wheel and smash you into a concrete barrier to make certain you didn’t miss what was in front of your face while you were in that face down, oblivious to the world Blackberry/I Phone pose. Our co-pilot here in The Attic is The Random and we worship the gifts bestowed upon mankind by The Random. The Random abides, just as The Dude does.
Was in Vegas with the ThaIrish ex-wife back in April, 2002 and declined the GPS option at Hertz as they asked us to choose cars. Chose the white Mustang 5 liter convertible and blew out of McCarran International at 123 mph with a neutral drop on our way to the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. Can you say “pin the speedometer”? When the Mustang hit 99 MPH, both bags of tasty fried Bugles flew out. That was our neutral drop tip to the man that checked my ID at the Hertz gate. Bugles are tasty! Neutral drops in convertibles are far more satisfying than sedans because you can hear the DROP better.
If we had a GPS device, after the majesty of the Hoover Dam we may have headed the correct direction and made it to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. There, we would have competed with thousands of white trash tourists for a glance at a great big hole in the ground. We would have eaten fried dough and chugged Fresca while unfortunate looking children wearing stained “I’m With Stupid” tee shirts bellowed “IWANNAGOHOME” at their unfortunate looking parents. The Random intervened and we got lost.
Penny and I pointed the convertible Mustang 5 liter in the wrong direction, cranked up Poison on the radio and crooned about how roses periodically prick your fingers. An hour later we stopped to ask directions and get an ice cream cone. My ice cream cone had butterscotch coating and chocolate sprinkles! The ice cream shop was the fund raising part of a large cat sanctuary so we spent the next two hours with two other couples behind the ice cream shop getting to know three lions, a leopard, two ocelots and the most beautiful black jaguar I have ever seen. The large cats were in large, open air compartments for the day and we were allowed to get within three feet of them. Most beautiful animals I have ever seen and the most amazing animal experience either Penny or I will ever have.
The proprietors of the big cat sanctuary pointed us towards the Hualapai Indian reservation; a little known and seldom visited part of the Grand Canyon. Forty minutes later Penny and I were standing on the west rim of the Grand Canyon, alone, screaming silly things out into the abyss and laughing like hyenas at the echo. Later that evening, we drove to the Graceland Wedding Chapel and took a picture on the bridge to mess with our families. That was the best unplanned day in the history of unplanned days. I love The Random and The Random loves all of humanity.
For most of us, our best experiences happen by sheer coincidence. They happen by getting lost. For a single day before 2009 ends, please put away your GPS device and get lost. Ask for directions at a gas station and get utterly, hopelessly lost for a day or two. The Random and I promise you will find something magical and mystical…………designed and destined just for you. As the Goo Goo Dolls opined, “life is more than who you are”. Life is about getting lost and finding what you are supposed to find through the journey’s confusion and disorder.
Your Attic assignment for the next six weeks is the preceding paragraph. Please let us all know what magical and mystical thing The Random crashes you into and how it changes your stars. If you are in medical surgical sales, feel free to use this as an invitation to randomly cold call in every department wherever those big blue “H” signs point you. Your pipeline can never be big enough and face to face is the only way to prospect here in The Attic.
We will all wait up here for your stories on our donated carpet squares with baited breath, Pilsner beer, and tasty Hostess snack cakes.
The Pink Headphones
Close friends know the Pink Headphone Offense. There is always a pair of bright pink headphones on my head when I fly because my friend list has been full for quite some time. I don’t want to hear your life story simply because Delta Airlines randomly assigned us adjoining seats. Moreover, the pink headphones are unique, differentiated and they carry whatever message others choose to assign to them. The pink headphones abide.
Your market space rewards you for a unique message, as well as differentiating features and benefits. The pink headphone company, Skullcandy, is a fantastic example of uniqueness being rewarded in their market space. Look outside of your market spaces for examples of uniqueness to pull into your market space. By doing this, you avoid inbreeding and the certain death that comes through natural selection when market participants only copy what their “competitors” are doing. Be unique.
Founded in 2003, Skullcandy has only 56 employees: they had revenue of $86M in 2008. That was not a typo: they really did $1.5M in revenue per employee in 2008 and will eclipse that figure in 2009. If you are a marketer, you will recognize Skullcandy and their product offering as a complementor. Skullcandy is riding the iPod wave as a complementor and riding it well. In a scant six years they have become the second most popular headphone in the world. I have been a net promoter of my Skullcandy pink headphones since I fell in love with them two years ago at Boston’s Logan airport.
Marketing friends! What have you done lately to make your company or offering as unique as the pink headphones? What market spaces outside of yours have you closely examined to import uniqueness to yours? What have you done to get your customers to be net promoters of your company and its offerings to other potential customers? What are you going to do this week to set yourself apart and be memorable?
Market spaces and investors value uniqueness and differentiation. The Random assigns uniqueness and differentiation to those brave enough to set aside their GPS devices and get lost. Did your most remarkable and memorable life experiences happen when you got lost? Put down that iPhone and look up………
Go get lost before the end of the year. That is our ask this evening.
Go get lost.
The Mind of Mully
Don’t dream it
Be it…………..
Don’t dream it
Be it…………..
God bless Lilly St. Cyr, indeed.
Two sets of Skull Candy pink headphones because we always have Plan B here in The Attic.
The Platypi
Dang it. Promised you platipi and forgot to include the platypus! Here you go. As always, we under promise and over deliver at The Mind of Mully. Thanks for stopping by for a little while; it was great to see you! Now go get lost and, as always, mind the Velociraptors as you make your way down the ladder!
A couple folks asked whether the Cincinnati to Steubenville was 100% real with no embellishment. It was, as is the experience above. See?
The Mustang and the ThaIrish ex at the Hoover Dam
Ice cream at the large cat sanctuary….no cameras were allowed out back.
West rim of the Grand Canyon…Hualapai Indian Reservation. Note the large crowds and all the fences.
“Hello. Graceland Chapel? Please get the fake flowers ready. We’ll be there in three hours. Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges”
Mom, Dad, Moira, Patti, and Melinda…….you have to admit it was a solid prank!
Mind of Mully Biz Haus Shoppe 
“You got to keep in the game
maintaining mystique while facing forward
I suggest a reading of ‘a lesson in tightropes’
or ‘surfing your high hopes’ or ‘adios kansas'”
Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk- Rufus Wainwright
😉
Am very much looking forward to the next time The Random smashes me into your concrete barrier again, Kristi. This time we are older and wiser: thus the threat level will be at bright red…..with cherries on top. And pointy sticks!
Concrete barrier? A girl can dream.
My comment was a nod at randomness- not the Show! (which ROCKS!) You already knew that.
You comment was clearly an unveiled attempt to lure me into some sort of tryst. Which I approve of. And wholeheartedly encourage. Because you are brilliant, beautiful beguiling and have a thick, thick Charleston accent that tends to stick around and maintain the memory like Chanel #5 in a church….days later. Solid flirting. The judges give you an 11 on a 4.2 scale! Winner winner, chicken dinner.