Andy Cohen
puts trickery to work every day.
In the
process, he wants to make us question our assumptions.
The founder
of a New York-based advertising agency, Exposed Brick, is a pioneer
in marketing and idea generation who has counseled major brands
such as American Express, Merrill Lynch, Time Warner, L'Oreal and
Clorox.
He's
also an expert magician who started learning tricks from his great
uncle when he was a schoolboy in Manhattan.
He used
to keep the passions separate, but now he's found a way to use magic
as a metaphor to break down resistance to innovative thinking.
"Because
we're under such pressure – the intense drive to create new
ideas on demand and to come up with new solutions – we rely
more and more on our assumptions," Mr. Cohen said during a
recent visit to Dallas.
"Unfortunately,
we treat our assumptions as truths rather than a set of beliefs
that need to be proven. So we often wind up misdirecting ourselves."
Even
major corporations fall into this trap, Mr. Cohen said, offering
IBM Corp., AT&T Inc. and Coca-Cola Co. as monumental examples
of faulty assumptions. Big Blue thought computers and hardware were
its future and allowed Bill Gates to license its software for what
would become the foundation of Microsoft. AT&T presumed that
the cellular business was going to be locally based and too small
to care about. And Coca-Cola failed to consider consumers' emotional
bonds to its brand when it foisted new Coke on the masses.
"They
only did blind taste-testing of new Coke vs. old Coke," Mr.
Cohen said. "In essence, Coke discounted the power of its own
brand."
Showing
the way
Mr. Cohen's new book, Follow the Other Hand: A Remarkable Fable
That Will Energize Your Business, Profits and Life, comes with a
deck of cards and instructions for several low-talent tricks that
are designed to get you in a creative mode.
It began
as a collaborative effort with Stan Rapp, founder of Rapp Collins
Worldwide.
Mr. Rapp decided magic wasn't his thing, but it works for his longtime
friend and business associate. "I have seen Andy perform his
sleight of hand to the mystification and delight of audiences,"
Mr. Rapp said. "But more importantly, I've seen him deliver
amazing results for some of my clients here in the USA and South
America."
Last
month, Slingshot LLC, an advertising agency in the West End, hired
Mr. Cohen to come speak. He performed mind-expanding exercises for
Slingshot's advertising staff and clients.
"Andy
tells us to cast out the normal ways of looking at a problem and
give yourself permission to solve it with different techniques,"
said Owen Hannay, Slingshot's founder. "He's fun and engaging
with some very substantive thoughts and case studies buried in the
magic."
During
an interview, Mr. Cohen showed me his most basic illusion, which
looks like a trick where he moves a coin from his left to right
hand. But when he opens his right palm, the coin isn't there.
"If
you challenge the logical assumption, you discover a solution that
you didn't know existed before," Mr. Cohen said. "Phenomenal
businesses are created by following the other hand."
Spinning
One of Mr. Cohen's favorite case studies that he used in the book
is Florida entrepreneur John Osher, who was looking for a slam-dunk
product to help sell his toy company. Someone brought him the idea
for a lollipop that spun around.
Mr. Osher
immediately saw the potential for SpinPops, which he introduced
in 1993. The lollipops cost more to make, but he could charge three
times as much because they were the first interactive candy.
Six years
later, Mr. Osher challenged another assumption: You couldn't manufacture
a battery-operated toothbrush cheaply enough to be disposable. What's
the big deal? Mr. Osher figured. He'd done it with a sucker.
"He
needed to manufacture it for $1.40 tops to meet a price point of
under $5," said Mr. Cohen. "And he did it."
Then
Mr. Osher vetoed Procter & Gamble Co., which was his marketing
partner at the time. P&G wanted an advertising blitz for SpinBrush.
Instead, Mr. Osher created packaging that allowed consumers to push
a button and see the toothbrush in action before they bought it.
"He
and his friends spent $1.5 million developing SpinBrush," Mr.
Cohen said. "Eighteen months later, they sold it to P&G's
Crest for $475 million."
Today
Mr. Osher is quite taken with Mr. Cohen's magical metaphor.
"I
have made my living my entire life by following the other hand,"
said the 59-year-old serial entrepreneur.
"It
takes tremendous patience and discrimination to find the coin in
it. You have to know most of the time the hand you think it's in
is empty."
E-mail
cherylhall@dallasnews.com
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