In a full page ad in Natural History Magazine (of all places), they encouraged you and me to "do what millions have already done. Find out about Rogaine - the only natural way to regrow your own natural hair."

On an additional 2/3rd page, on the back of the display ad, there were hundreds of tiny fine print words that talked about the neurological, dermatological, gastrointestinal, cardiovascular genital, endocrine, psychiatric, hematological and musculoskeletal side effects, but all of this too-small-for-my-eyes stuff came under a big bold heading that said "THE ONLY PRODUCT EVER PROVEN TO REGROW HAIR."

Amidst all the detailed ad copy, I did find that Upjohn provided these curiously interesting statistics based on scientific study:

• 26% of patients reported moderate hair growth after four months with Minoxidil.
• Half the number who continued using Rogaine (I guess that means some what less than 13%) reported continued growth after one year.
• 11% of patients using a placebo reported moderate hair growth.

This seems to imply that, of every hundred people who try Rogaine, no more than two additional people might benefit from continued use than those who use a placebo, or who don't do anything at all. Of course, the evidence does give Rogaine at least an 8.4% advantage in head-to-head tests with the placebo. Compared with the placebo, however, Rogaine is far more expensive, appears to be more dangerous in terms of side effects and cannot be taken without prescription and constant doctors care. All this, for incrementally better results? With those comparatives, we wonder if there is a scientifically valid case for marketing, not just the lower priced, non-branded Minoxidil, but the actual placebo. The placebo results may prove to be almost as good and the margins, well, the margins are down right terrific. If we could only give the placebo a good brand image like Rogaine has.

After all, don't we all know of people who have made successful careers starting with second tier products at vastly reduced prices from the front runner, then building the images of those products and finally overtaking the leaders? Of course, we do. And they do it, most often, with a strong branding strategy.

We discussed this in previous chapter, if you remember (The Power Of Branding). Then, we noted that branding is the single most important of all marketing principles. You may not stay in first place with it, but you will never get to first place without it.

Consider, with the thousands (yes, thousands) of small companies making and selling computers, Compaq, by building a brand, managed to overtake both IBM and Apple, but then lost to a better brand-builder named Dell. Word, never the top choice to professional reviewers in the word processing game, by employing a brand strategy, overtook WordPerfect. UPS appears to have overtaken FedEx. Northern Telecom, which rebranded itself into Nortel and Lucent, were once brands that would make telecom salespeople shake in their shoes. Now, who knows if these guys will even be in business next year. Cisco, unknown 10 years ago, may add to its data prowess and become the telecom brand to beat... or not.

Successful come-from-behinds learn from the leader, probe for weaknesses and are able to exploit them. Each of these successes are built on momentum created by a branding strategy.

Even pure placebo products may gain acceptance through branding, as was the case recently with a well known ram doubling software that proved to have absolutely no effect on performance, but sold like hot-cakes until brand momentum was halted and brand good-will destroyed under full public disclosure that the product was flaky (This also happened, of course, when Dr. Howard Dean stopped being the 2004 Democratic Presidential front-runner by foaming at the mouth on national television, but that was another era).

Moving further along, is there a lesson here that you can use to grow your own, er, market? Of course, there is, in these three easy steps.

Firstly, in order to build a brand, you need to develop a concept of what your brand should stand for, what should your prospect think of when he/she hears your brand name? Have you thought of what prospects think of when they hear your name? "The tightest ship in the shipping business" is the UPS way to imprint that they are more cost effective than FedEx.

UPS feels it can work on the economy image, since it feels that most of us already accept its reliability. It doesn't worry about U.S. Postal service's Priority Mail offering which lost valuable mind share when USPS was forced to modify its "2 dollar, 2 lbs., 2 days, guaranteed" program.

The Postal Service blew its brand equity the day it raised its rate 50% at the same time it rescinded its two day delivery promise. Instantly, emulating the public relations success of Dr. Dean, it became known for "2 lbs. 3 dollars, 4 ever." Now, sadly, they have decided to rent out mailboxes to FedEx, giving up the overnight biz completely. USPS doesn't know what its brand stands for, but FedEx clearly does.

Secondly, after you have determined what your brand should stand for, you need to create a logo, or image that will communicate that message to your audience. Intel, Microsoft, Charles Shwab, and even Rogain, have spent billions to create brand awareness and recognition, but you may be able to substitute well crafted intellectual awareness for a big marketing budget.

Fortune Magazine tells, in its name, what it does for you. So does Jiffy Lube, CompUSA and 1(800)LAWYERS. The important thing to remember is that your audience must think of you whenever it thinks about any problem that you can solve.

Even our own Office Technology Consulting, Inc., was suffering from an image identity problem until we focused on the fact that nobody in the business had more experience and expertise in integrating telecommunications concepts than us.

We knew we were good, but our corporate identity always needed a little bit of extra explaining. This is the sales equivalent of always starting a foot race twenty feet behind the starting line.

Thus was born the "PhoneGuru™" logo to tell, in one quick word, what we brazenly thought of ourselves. This has had a marked effect on sales. Suddenly, we had a concept of what our brand should stand for and we were able to create an instant image in the minds of our prospects.

Thirdly, in order that all this good work bears fruit, you need an ongoing program that constantly develops new ways to keep your brand image in front of your prospects and clients.

We didn't change our name, although people have suggested it, for the same reason that Former New York Mayor Ed Koch and I still refer to the "Brooklyn " Dodgers. I'm an old fashioned sort of guy who doesn't warm quickly to such radical acts (as the Dodgers moving to Los Angeles thirty years ago). Instead, we embarked on a series of moves to instill the PhoneGuru™ concept in the hearts and minds of our target public.

As you know, we created this phoneguru.com website and E-mail address (team@phoneguru.com, etc.). That is a primary medium, which, as Marshal Macluan said, is now our message. We include that cyber address on everything we send out: letters, faxes, business cards, promo materials. It reinforces who we are (phone gurus) and that we are well connected to the electronic frontier.

You've been to trade shows where people line us for hours, wasting valuable shopping time, just to get a stupid shirt with somebody else's logo on it. Well, I don't. When I'm washing the car or walking through the mall, I don't have to wear my Avaya shirt or my APC shirt, because I can wear my www.phoneguru.com shirt.

Our company name (which we already agree doesn't adequately define what we do) is not on it. Instead, for quite some time, our shirt sported the soccer-ball logo of Stamford,CT, Little League Soccer, plus this web address. We sponsored a team of eight year olds, who all wore our web address on their shirts.

The goal, which has been achieved, by the way, was simply to add one more layer, reinforcing the PhoneGuru™ brand to the business community, so that whenever there wa a business question about telecommunications, data integration, or cabling infrastructure, business knew to come to us for answers. Also, since we are a philanthropic family, this shirt thing seemed to be a good fit, so to speak.

So, to review our three simple steps for creating your own guerrilla branding campaign:

1. Developed the concept of what you want your product or service to stand for in the minds of your audience.
2. Create a logo, or image, to communicate your message to your audience.
3. Keep developing new ways to put your brand image in front of new prospects.

In addition, as we have discussed in the ram doubling case, it is important to be able to deliver quality goods to those who buy.

If you cannot, your best creative efforts will not have the staying power to make the exercise worth your while. Branding will get you noticed and get your foot in the door, not insignificant achievements, by any standard, but results, in most cases, are usually required for continued brand success.

Unless, of course, you are selling hair growing preparations, diet pills, or other forms of hope ware. In that case, the paradigm shifts and we can use scientific statistics to justify a run with the Minoxidil placebo.