Many of us know Bruce Lee as the martial artist extraordinaire, film star, and tragic case of a man who died in his prime. He became a cultural icon in both Hong Kong and the United States and brought the spotlight to martial arts as no other man has.
So what can he teach us about marketing? Well, the obvious answer would be to look at how he developed his career and marketed himself to such fantastic heights. But, it’s his philosophy of combat that I would like to use as our teacher today.
Many of us are only familiar with Lee from his movies. Flashy kicks, incredible acrobatics, and speedy combinations are what we see in his acting. A raging debate among modern day martial artists continues to ask the question, “Could Bruce Lee have won in a real fight or was he all just show?”
There is no doubt about the fact among those that have actually studied Lee’s early life that he was an incredible martial artist whose ideas were well ahead of their time. His main philosophy was what he called “Jeet Kune Do.”
Jeet Kune Do was developed as “the style of no style.” In other words, it is the idea that there is no one perfect style of martial art. In order to be effective, you must flow like water, taking the path that gets you to your destination quickly and efficiently. Do not be constrained by any one method, he admonished, but use whatever works with objectivity.
An underscore of his philosophy occurred when he was challenged to by a professional wrestler in a friendly exhibition. The wrestler muscled the much smaller Lee to the ground, pinning his arms to his side. With a smirk he asked Lee, “What would you do to get out of this?” Lee replied, “Why I would bite you of course.”
This was Jeet Kune Do at its most literal…do whatever you had to do to accomplish your goal. The parallels of Jeet Kune Do and effective marketing should be obvious to you by now.
Far too often we are taken with one or two marketing methods and dismiss all others outright as being ineffective…often without even trying the additional methods!
Everyday we hear clients say, “Telemarketing doesn’t work” or “Direct mail is dead.” Our response is that there are no inherently bad media…only bad uses of media. Just the other day a client asked “What do you think about billboards? I think they are ineffective.” My response was, “Well maybe they are ineffective for your business, but if you had a restaurant and the billboard was on the freeway just before the exit someone would take to get your place then I would argue that you could probably use that billboard very effectively.”
The point is, the billboard wasn’t bad per se, only the particular use for it may have been. To dismiss it outright is naïve and short-sighted. For some it works, for others it doesn’t.
In summary, I would urge you to keep an open mind when choosing media for your marketing campaigns. Test new methods and new media to see if you can add a new lead generation tool to your marketing tool belt.
Above all, remember the master Bruce Lee and “Absorb what is useful; disregard that which is useless.”
Posts
-
