Unusual Combinations Create Secret Sauces
The best way to stand out with your marketing, content, businesses, and career
Welcome to the Creativity Business, a newsletter about earning attention and differentiating yourself as a marketer or content creator. If you’re not a subscriber, sign up and get content & differentiation strategy delivered to your inbox every two weeks for free.
If you’re looking to earn attention and stand out from the crowd, there is one strategy that almost never fails:
Combine unusual things together.
Unusual combinations are, by definition, surprising. They defy expectations and break normal patterns. And when things surprise you or don’t fit normal patterns, you pay attention.
On the flip side, pairing things together that almost always go together is boring and forgettable. Peanut butter and jam. Research and white papers. Podcasts and long, unedited interviews. SO BORING!
Generating something entirely new by pulling from multiple sources that have not been used in a particular way before is what creativity is all about. It’s new and it’s yours because you’re the one who chose to combine the unusual elements together.
These unique combos are the stuff of great brands and marketing. They are the stuff of great content. They are the stuff of great companies and of great careers.
Unusual Combinations for Your Brand
Sometimes, a brand combines such unusual things bravely that it really pops… or in this case, poops. One of my dream clients that I have yet to work with is Poo~Pourri, the toilet spray designed to mask the olfactory evidence of pooping. We had Poo~Pourri in Pacific Content’s office bathrooms and I used to cackle out loud reading the copy from this brave and brilliant brand. If you enjoy clever writing and don’t mind poop jokes, there is no greater enjoyment than reading the product descriptions on Poo~Pourri bottles. For example:
Poo~Pourri Parisian Poo takes your senses on a stroll down the cobblestone streets of Paris—the brick walls lined in overgrown lily and lavender, the sidewalks shaded by mature rose trees in full bloom. You stop for a citrus refreshment as you’re serenaded by a street accordionist. You accidentally tip him like 100 dollars, because exchange rates are confusing AF. But it doesn’t matter—you’re in botanical heaven. Actually, you’re pooping. Book a first class ticket to France without ever leaving the comfort of your own toilet. Poo la la!
What’s the unusual combination? Using humour and playfulness to openly talk about what other scented sprays don’t: masking the smell of excrement.
Unusual Combinations for Your Content
If you know the subject matter of your content, one of the best ways to differentiate your work is to pair the subject with an unconventional format or genre. When you do this, it makes your show unique, differentiated, and memorable. It’s also often much more fun!
Subject Matter + Unusual Format = Content Gold.
It could be a local plumbing company deciding to make a Gordon Ramsey-style reality-show video series of regular homeowners trying to fix plumbing problems (and realizing that they should probably call a plumber). Working title: Hell’s Toilet.
I am taking this approach to heart with the project of marketing my book. I decided to make videos in a fake documentary format (like The Office). I don’t know if anyone else has made book marketing content in this format and so far, I’ve had a lot of great feedback about them because it’s fun, it’s not hard-selling the book, and it’s effective - everyone who watches the videos knows I have a book coming out soon.
Unusual Pairings for Your Business or Career
Here are some questions that you can ask of yourself or of your business that can help identify and take advantage of unusual combinations of talent you possess:
What are your unique strengths?
What do you find easy that others find hard? (For individuals, where do you lose track of time and enter flow states?)
What do you believe that many others don’t?
What do you consciously do differently than others do?
Who do you serve that others don’t?
For me, the magic combination was mixing my background in content creation with my passion for business and marketing strategy. This combination has opened up so many doors for me, from working with absolutely amazing clients at Pacific Content to writing a book about earning attention to this newsletter, called The Creativity Business!
So where can you use the power of unusual combinations to create a secret sauce all your own?
Are there strengths, skills, or experience you or your company has that would create value when paired together?
Are there unusual genres or formats for your content that would make it stand out in a very crowded playing field?
And are there authentically unusual parts of your brand or culture that you can exploit more aggressively to build a bigger moat around what makes you special?
And finally, if you’re ever stuck with a problem, especially a creative one, ask yourself if there are any unusual, non-obvious ways to solve it. Brainstorm the weirdest and strangest possible couplings or combinations to see if anything jumps out as a brilliant solution.
New and unusual almost always trumps predictable, status quo, and boring.
What’s Earned My Attention Lately
James Clear on the power of unusual combinations:
"I'm not the best writer, but it is a strength. I might be a 90th percentile writer.
And I'm not the best marketer, but it is a strength. Again, maybe 90th percentile? I'm better than most, but if you pass 100 people on the street it won't be hard to find some people better than me.
What I have gradually learned is that it is not your strengths, but your combination of strengths that sets you apart. It is the fact that writing and marketing are mutually reinforcing—and that I enjoy both—that leads to great results.
How can you combine your strengths? That's something I would encourage everyone to think about. You will find talented people in every area of life. It's the combinations that are rare."
Michael Bungay Stanier on Differentiation
Michael Bungay Stanier, best-selling author of The Coaching Habit and The Advice Trap, on embracing what makes you different. I love this story so much and it aligns with strongly with my own thinking.
Earn It Updates
There’s a big sale on at Barnes & Noble from July 10th through 17th - Premium and Rewards members will get 25% off all preorders with promo code PREORDER25 at checkout. If you haven’t done it already, it’s a great time to pre-order your copy of Earn It :-)
The audiobook recording was a ton of fun and I’ve now heard a full edit of the first chapter - I’m confident this will be a very unusual and unconventional audiobook that sounds a lot more like a podcast than a traditional audiobook. Thanks again to Pedro Mendes and Gaetan Harris for making this a special experience and a great audiobook!
New Gary & Perry videos, with Perry regrettably preferring the Accounting For Dummies cover to the cover of Earn It, and we discover the complimentary skillsets of my book marketers: Perry is the artist and Gary is “the Hammer.” Coming soon, you will meet my social media trainer, Bob, and my new book agent, Larry, also known as “The Negosh” for his negotiating prowess.
And finally, a huge thank you to James Duthie, the TSN broadcasting legend and genius storyteller for this week’s Earn It testimonial:
“Steve Pratt is the Wayne Gretzky of content strategy. He doesn't go to where audiences are—he goes to where audiences are going to be. (He asked me to say this…)”
Contrast is everything 🙌 I took a satire writing course once that showed me the value of pairing the expected + unexpected to create delightful interactions. This reminded me of that and was a fun read!