Copy, Copy, Copy: How to Do Smarter Marketing by Using Other People's Ideas

4 WHERE TO COPY FROM: THE PATTERN BOOKS 52 different strategies to copy, borrow or steal

“ So many books, so little time. ”

— Frank Zappa

WHERE

What this chapter will cover:

When you know what kinda thing you're dealing, you're in a great place to work WHAT kind of strategies might serve you best.

This chapter contains our archive of 52 different kinds of strategy, sorted into the four quadrants of our map.

Each strategy is illustrated by 2-3 examples from a range of different contexts – marketing and behaviour change.

The point here is to make it easier for you to pick one or two (or three) to copy.

This kind of collection of ideas is most reminiscent of what the construction industry has long known as a “pattern book”.

So that's where we start

‘INDOCILIS PRIVATA LOQUI'⁵⁴

Let me tell you about a secret society which has long operated in the shadows of our world – just out of the corner of your eye, invisible to all but those who know where to look. All these years, this dark brotherhood has fiercely guarded the arcane wisdom and the secret books of know-how and knowledge collected by its members and passed down over many generations; ex-communicating (and even perhaps, you might suspect, executing) those who dare to share the forbidden truths. You might think we'd landed in a cloak-and-dagger Sherlock Holmes story, a Dan Brown novel or one of the darker parts of the ...