A marketing approach that has worked wonders over the years is to sit back, view the current landscape and then find a way to present a marketing argument that goes against a current fad or perception.

This strategy can be a great way to win occasional media attention. Media folks are commonly taught to get “both sides” of the story. So, if everyone is preaching the merits of X, they will search high and low for someone who says Y.

Books are great harbors for this kind of perception busting. Freakonics, a current best seller, is all about using numbers to question conventional thinking. I think the book is an entertaining read (nothing genius about it though) and presents one of the great principles of contrarian thought – you can make numbers support any theory you have.

The point is you should look around your industry for ways to buck trends or start trends and then publish an article, blog post or ad to help differentiate your way of thinking. Be careful though, contrariness for contrariness sake or bucking a belief that is so firmly established as be beyond a trend can end up making you look foolish. A month or two ago I started to see some stories questioning the value of blogs for businesses – now that’s just silly!