Can You Love (and Market) Your Ugly?

CAN YOU LOVE (AND MARKET) YOUR UGLY?

This is one of the premises of the great stand up comedy. You share all the things about yourself that you don\’t like with a roomful of strangers and before you know it, they\’re laughing, you\’re laughing and you feel free.

Now, if you can do the same with your business, you\’ll find yourself embracing your flaws, which in turn will humanize you, and give you great market niche.

Question is, can you let the press – and your consumers – know about the ugly, sticky icky parts of you? You can\’t be perfect at everything but by flagging up your weaknesses, you can find strength, and then market it as such.

Think about this: Barbra Streisand has a big ugly nose but she\’s still beautiful and her talent shines through. If she\’d have gotten a new nose – like she was told to do – it would have ruined her career. Look at what happened to Jennifer Grey after Dirty Dancing – she got a nose-job and became instantly unrecognizable. It all but sabotaged her acting career – suddenly she looked like a homogenized version of everyone else. She was quirky and quirky sells. If she had learned to love her ugly parts she would still have a career.

Recently, I discovered a wonderful new fruit called the Ugli fruit – it comes from Jamaica and is a hybrid of grapefruit, an orange and a tangerine. It looks like a wrinkled pug but tastes delicious. It was marketed in the store as “Ugly Fruit” and me and my family love it. We started making juice out of it and laugh as we serve each other “Ugli Juice”.

We\’ve been serving visitors Ugli juice and buying Ugli fruit by the bushel. We howl with laughter. But the genius here is that they\’re marketing ugly – good thing too because that fruit ain\’t no pageant winner. But you know what, we\’re going to be Ugli customers for life.

So what\’s your ugly? And how are you going to make it beautiful?

Because your ugly could be the one thing that sets you apart from the crowd.

Ugli Customers for Life