#8 – Claim It First and You’ll Own It

When Schlitz Beer hired the legendary ad man Claude Hopkins, they were 5th in U.S. market share were going south fast.

The first thing Hopkins did was take a tour of the Schlitz brewery. Here is what he found:

plate-glass cooling rooms where beer was dripping over pipes. The rooms were filled with filtered air, so the beer could be cooled without introducing impurities.
Huge, expensive filters filled with white-wood pulp for superior filtering
pumps and pipes that were cleaned twice daily
a sterilization process applied to each bear bottle four times before a single drop of beer ever went inside.
4,000 foot deep wells dug to the cleanest and purest water available

Finally, Hopkins was shown the mother yeast cell, the result of nearly 1,200 experiments to bring out the robust flavor. All of the yeast used to make Schlitz beer was grown from that original yeast cell.

The ad man was beyond impressed, he was amazed. “Why don’t you tell people these things?”, he asked.

Evidently, every manufacturer made beer it the same way.

Hopkins’ next move was pure genius. He created an ad campaign to explain all the painstaking steps Schlitz took to make sure their beer was pure. It was the same story any brewer could easily have told – but they hadn’t. Hopkins and Schlitz told the story first and Schlitz’s became the beer known for its quality and purity. Sales went through the roof vaulting Schlitz from 5th in market share to 1st in just five months.

If you’re looking to grow your business, all you’ve got to do is stake your claim on a process or product that your competition has decided is too insignificant to fight for.

Download the full article: Claim If First… You’ll Own It