Why joy?

Yesterday, I mentioned I’d be popping up in your inbox with a little joy.

Which brings us to a rather interesting question:

What’s joy got to do with business?

Quite a lot, it turns out.

Running a business can keep you firmly planted in the weeds. There are features to explain, benefits to promote, competitors to worry about, emails to answer, and approximately 47 other things clamouring for your attention.

So when it’s time to communicate with customers, the temptation is to play it safe.

And when everyone around you is communicating in much the same way, doing what everyone else is doing can seem like the sensible choice.

Until you realise that sensible is often invisible.

That’s where joy comes in.

A little surprise. A clever idea. A playful twist. Something that makes someone stop for a second and smile.

People notice those things. They talk about them. They remember them.

And when they’re ready to buy, being the business they remember can be rather useful.

That’s the idea behind Oddly Obvious: stories of businesses that made their marketing a little more surprising, a little more interesting, a little more fun… and saw the difference it made.

Sometimes that difference shows up in sales. Sometimes in attention, word of mouth, enquiries or people simply remembering who you are.

These are the stories I’ll bring you. Some might simply make you smile. Others might give you an idea worth stealing.

Perhaps that’s the real trick: making room for a little joy can make your business a lot harder to ignore.

Until next time…

Monojoy​
Storyteller, Oddly Obvious​

PS: Richard Branson, founder of Virgin, has a thing or two to say about fun in business.
​This gem comes from Like a Virgin: Secrets They Won't Teach You at Business School.

Consider this a rather uplifting business strategy.

Because good stories like good company: