Just about every business has a byproduct of some sort. Next time you think about the next product line look at what is being thrown in the trash. Time and time again you hear stories about how one company turned their trash into a pile of money. One of my favorite examples is Kingsford Charcoal. After all, it is grilling season now and people are lighting briquettes like nobody’s business. Here is an excerpt from the Kingsford Wiki page:

Kingsford is a brand of charcoal used for grilling, along with related products. The brand is owned by The Clorox Company.

The Kingsford Company was formed by Henry Ford and E.G. Kingsford during the early 1920s. Charcoal was developed from Ford Motor Company’s factory wastes (wood scraps). The Kingsford Company was formed when E.G. Kingsford, a relative of Ford’s, brokered the site selection for Ford’s new charcoal manufacturing plant. The company, originally called Ford Charcoal, was renamed in E.G.’s honor.

Today The Kingsford Products Company remains the leading manufacturer of charcoal in the U.S., enjoying 80 percent market share. More than 1 million tons of wood scraps are converted into charcoal briquets every year, making Kingsford the pacesetter in the charcoal industry.

Pretty cool to be able to take your scrap wood and turn that into a $350 million a year business! Who knew there was so much money in making, selling and marketing charcoal?

When looking for your next great marketing idea take a look around your trash bin at the office and see what it is your are scrapping that could be re-proceeded and turned into money. Talk about being “green” – more like making green from your trash heap.

Of course this doesn’t stop with physical objects, how could you transform your extra processing power or rack space into a product people need or want. It doesn’t cost you much to convert the things you already have into additional revenue generating sources.

The question of how to get people to trust your product is one that everyone asks whether conscious or subconscious. I recently read an article talking about some of Tiger Wood’s endorsers starting to drop the famous golfer over his recent car crash incident. Now for the record I was not there and I have no idea what actually took place that night. What I do know is that Tiger Wood’s Lawyers suck and he has some major damage control to conduct on his brand.

The one thing that Tiger Woods can’t take back about the incident that happened is the forgone conclusion that people have reached about the actual event regardless of their factual accuracy. When people are left to their own devices they will conceive whatever they want based on the limited facts they know. Remember the story about people shooting up grain silos in the middle of the night after tuning in late to the radio broadcast of War of the Worlds?

An invisible line was crossed by Tiger that spoke loud and clear to everyone, that he is as human as we are and has skeletons in the closet. Those two revelations have shattered the trust and opinions people have formed about Tiger over the last decade or two. All of the branding and advertising that Tiger has taken part of by some of the biggest companies in the world have made his likeness to be that of a perfect and happy family man who is extremely gifted at golf. That foundation has been cracked.

I can almost say with certainty that Tiger or another family member called one of his lawyers and told them what happened that night. The lawyer probably determined that the best course of action would be to not talk to anyone, including the police (legally fine in Florida). This has some major problems from a branding perspective because 10 minutes after the event took place, everyone on Twitter already knew about it. Now the world knows about what happened that night, which is worse than knowing exactly what happened.

I have dealt first hand with Tiger’s lawyers regarding a domain dispute. The same course of action was taken with me, in a very lawyeristic form: don’t talk, just hit people over the head with legalese. I decided because of how Tiger’s lawyers went about the issue I would put up a fight as I was legally right and they had no real leg to stand on. Had they simply opened up dialogue with me and expressed what they wanted, I probably would have simply given them the domain.

What does all of this have to do with getting people to trust your product? Simple. With the advent of instant communication and the Internet, brands can not go about things the same way they used to. Listening to lawyers all the time can damage your brand just as much, if not more (even if they are legally right). I am sure Tiger’s lawyers were doing the right and correct thing from a legal standpoint, but now Tiger is losing endorsements and suffering for lack of transparency. The brand water has been tainted.

People who get a hold of information that is not resolved will want a resolution. If your brand has an issue, the best thing to do from a brand standpoint is to address that issue head on, hopefully via the same medium. All of the lawyers might cringe when this happens, but what is worth more, the brand’s integrity and future profitability or having that lawyer around?

Don’t get me wrong, this is not a post about how bad lawyers are. This is about the court of public opinion for which lawyers don’t hold degrees. When this type of problem arises with your brand, it is important to think about legal and social ramifications of the solution. Once done, some things can’t be undone.

*picture from http://pspinc.net/wordpress/?p=495

If you haven’t already seen the original post on how to Develop A Story In Order To Sell More Products, I recommend you do that before reading/listening any further.

I sound like a little kid in the video, ha. I have to laugh at myself sometimes. Oh well.

Thanks for taking part in my little case study. Leave your dissatisfied comments below.

Of course somewhere in the world you will probably be able to find one of these knives. I just don’t know where. I also don’ t want to be selling a product that is illegal in most of the countries/states my visitors come from. The real brand name of the knife is Min Sheng so good luck if you do find one somewhere.