Are you deviant? Advertising executives need one very important thing every day - new ideas. How can we generate more new and breakthrough ideas?
What are the best selling concepts? The Deviant's Advantage is an interesting book giving readers insights and ideas on how to truly think outside the box. When you are really bored with standard marketing and advertising copy, this book may be your best and most enjoyable alternative.
"Devox" is the core idea used by Ryan and Watts to illustrate and to explain the voice, spirit, or incarnation of deviant ideas, products, and individuals. They use the 'devox' as a metaphor to illustrate the point that things have changed and continue to change at such a rate that conventional language is no longer an effective tool for describing what's going on around us. Devox moves in steps, from "Fringe", "to Edge", "to the Realm of cool", "to the Next big thing", and finally to "Social convention".
The devox' moves from "fringe" to "social convention" and builds markets in its wake. The closer it moves to the centre, the larger the market potential becomes. During the moving path, devox reaches audience from personal contact to mass market, it communicates with customers from word-of-mouth to advertising and marketing and it builds relationships with conventional society from antagonistic to acceptance.
This evolution of the devox is the outgrowth of deviant thinking. There are abundant cases we can refer to from the greatest inventions of all time, the most successful corporations in history and the greatest works of art and triumphs of science. Without deviant thinking in history, we could not wear a pair of Shox from Nike, watch 24-hours news from CNN, have real-time connections with friends by Yahoo Messenger, buy books from Amazon.com and have video conferencing with your business partners anywhere through 3G mobile phones in the near future.
Last part of this book, examining "Abolition of context" and how business deviants are transforming the landscape of commerce, really inspired me to think and revisit certain important impacts of devox on business -deviant corporate cultures, deviant consumer behaviours, markets, marketing, products and brands. Case studies from Ford, Kodak, Hallmark and Northwest Airlines, illustrate the potential yields of their deviant core-mining exercises.
For instance, Ford told customers to use the automobile not just as a means for transportation, but as a third place (in addition to home and work). It revolutionised minds and future automotive design, engineering and production.
A very important quote from Ryan and Watts is "Everything is changing, faster than we can imagine and in ways we can't". Under the ever-changing media landscape, new communication technology and fierce market competition, "think deviant" not only allows us to grow on a personal level; it helps build the success of both brands and corporations; and most importantly, enhances our overall competitive ability and knowledge management.
To wrap up: "The world of business you woke up to today will be very different from the one you woke up to yesterday or the one you will wake up to tomorrow."
Ralph Szeto is business director, MindShare, mdigital, Hong Kong.