Meet Lilas Louise Maréchaud:
She's a former lawyer who now owns a hiring agency for... lawyers. We met "virtually" a few years back and "for real" last year during a private workshop I ran in Paris. But that's not what I want to discuss today.
Lilas Louise started getting gray hair when she was only a teen. When it started to spread, she quickly decided not to dye her hair—too much hassle.
Little did she know that this decision led to a competitive advantage years later. Yes, because her white streak is a distinctive feature. It's something that others notice and remember. And I love that she never took it for granted.
Even better, she embraced it, which inspired many women around her to do the same.
OK, at this point, you're probably asking yourself, What does it have to do with me?
Well, pretty much everything.
The first goal of marketing is to be noticed. There's no way around it.
But don't expect people to grasp the nuances of who you are, what you believe in, or what your product does after spending 4 seconds reading your LinkedIn profile.
The solution? We must do the emotional labor on behalf of our people so they get the 5% of the information that matters. For Lilas Louise, it's her strands of gray hair—since that's what people tend to notice about her; so she doubled down on it.
My advice to pick the top 5% that matters:
- Don't just pick random stuff to magnify.
- Pay attention to what others notice about you, your brand, your product... It could be anything from a story you told at a conference, a little panda bear you've been using in one of your presentations, or an accent your customers comment on...
- Don't take those for granted. You're used to them, of course. But for others, it's new and distinctive.
- Double down on a few. And ignore the rest.
A big merci to Lilas Louise for allowing me to use her story in this email.