Every Christmas season, the music industry re-hashes the old
Christmas tunes and serves up all kinds of new music for the
Holidays. This year, pop divas Toni Braxton and Christina Aguillera
have their own Christmas albums; sitting right here by my computer
are some fun CDs I've been listening to -- 'Merry Axemas' which is a
heavy metal guitar Christmas album, and 'Celtic Christmas'. A Quincy
Jones CD called "A Soulful Celebration" which is a rockin' African-
American version of Handel's Messiah.

Yesterday I picked up a fun new CD by Mannheim Steamroller, who
rocked the world 15 years ago with a sizzling pop version of "Deck
The Halls." You still hear their innovative arrangement frequently on
the radio and in stores.

If you've paid any attention at all to the music this season, you
realize that the possibilities of re-inventing and refreshing songs
that are 50, 100 or even 500 years old is literally endless. We'll
all be hearing exciting new versions of Jingle Bells for decades to
come!

If a 100 year old hymnn can be re-done by hundreds of artists every
year and never wear out, then you can do the same with your marketing
message. It's called improvisation, and it's the same thing people
in Jazz have been doing for years with tunes by Ellington and Cole
Porter. They take the familiar old melody and build a new structure
around it. It's fun and the possibilities are endless.

So how do you do that in your marketing efforts? First you have to
define the melody.

In marketing, the 'melody' is your Unique Selling Proposition, or
USP. It's the one or two sentences that you've spent hours, days or
weeks hammering and polishing -- whatever it takes -- that describe
exactly what you do and why customers should come to you instead of
anyone and everyone else.

Once you've got that down solid, you improvise. You use analogies,
other parts of your message, borrowed ideas from other people's
messages, and you re-spin and re-invent constantly. You do this with
your direct mail, email, advertising, magazine articles and press
releases. Fundamentally you relate the core of what you do to some
new thing, some event or new offer that you have. And you tirelessly
crank it out.

Because even if YOU are tired of it, the rest of the world hardly
notices unless they hear it over and over again. Re-inventing it,
while retaining the integrity of your essential message, keeps things
interesting and new for your customers and prospects.

If you're having a hard time with this, go buy yourself an innovative
new Christmas album and listen to what they do with those tunes. All
they're doing is combining new ingredients with the old, and you can
do the same.

You must combine your marketing message with current events,
interviews with interesting people, or new packages and promotions.
Once you learn the art of marketing improvisation, you'll never run
out of ways to get new customers!

Merry Christmas,

Perry