Grasshopper – You must be different to be noticed

• socialmedia

I just finished reading a great post on Mashable about a social media campaign run by Grasshopper. To me the campaign that grasshopper ran (read the mashable post for info) truly shows that innovation and a willingness to take a risk are what’s required to have some success in the noise of our current Web 2.x market.

Grasshopper’s approach to using traditional methods such as Snail mail to engage some potential product advocates is fantastic. Would these people have taken notice if Grasshopper had dropped them an email or DM’d them in Twitter? Absolutely not, or at least highly unlikely. But a fedex package containing a tasty and somewhat unconventional treat (I know it’s debatable – grasshoppers are quite conventional), that’s something that catches someone’s attention.

In terms of my own learnings, this really reinforces the need to be different in our current market. The more I look, the more blogs I read, the more I realise how many people there are trying to achieve the same goals that I am – and that is something to be celebrated rather than lamented. My response to that, however, is to strive to be different and thus noticable in a very noisy digital world of email, blogs, tweets and everything else.

Congratulations Grasshopper on a successful campaign, and thanks for reminding me that being different is a good thing.