When I first started hearing about Sally Hogshead’s book, Fascinate, I was convinced she had it all wrong. Why would anyone want to fascinate potential customers when they could be engaging and selling to them? Fascinate seemed like the wrong word.

But I’m the one that was wrong.

Sally’s definition of fascinate comes from the Latin word fascinare which means “to bewitch.” When she says fascinate, she doesn’t just mean entertain, she means engage and influence the behavior of others. To quote from the book, “interest is not enough. Neither is awareness, intent to purchase, or having share-of-mind, or any of the other jargon thrown into Power Point slides…” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

This book walks the reader through seven fascination triggers (lust, mystique, alarm, prestige, power, vice, and trust) and explains how each can add interest and intrigue to your product or service—with the intention of selling more of it.

Best of all, Sally doesn’t just write about the triggers, she walks the reader through the process of identifying the right triggers, developing “badges” to make the triggers work, then gives a few tips on executing on the whole process. There’s a lot to like here (although I get the sense that working through the process with Sally in person would be a lot more effective than doing it on your own with only the book as a guide).

Interestingly, the section on developing badges reads a lot like this post about the places you can look to find a brand story. When it comes right down to it, Sally’s book has a lot to say about creating compelling stories for your brand.

It’s a book that belongs in every marketer’s tool box.

A Few Fascination Links:

• Order the book here.
• Find out what your personal fascination triggers are here.
• And check out a great Slideshare presentation here.
• I’ve written about Sally before, here, for example.
• Download a free copy of Sally’s first book, here.

A few weeks ago I was driving my car—running errands—with my four-year old daughter, when she yelled out, “bingo!” A few minutes later she did it again. “Bingo,” she said, “Now I have more bingos than Boo” (my nine-year old boy).

I was curious, so I asked, “What’s a bingo?” She answered, “Oh, it’s a yellow car. I have hundreds of them.”

Apparently my kids have been playing this game with each other for awhile. Each time one of them spots a yellow car, they shout, “bingo!” It’s a variation of the slug bug game I played with my brother, without the sore shoulders.

The game works for two reasons. First, bingos (yellow cars) are somewhat rare. Scan a near-by parking lot. Among the hundreds of white, blue, and tan cars, you may see one or two yellow cars, or none (I live in a city where we don’t have yellow taxis). The second reason the game works is that yellow cars stand out from the mass of other bland colored cars. They are easy to spot.

Which got me thinking about how marketers call attention to their brands using something that stands out from everything else. Let’s call them bingos. Some examples:

Apple uses design as a bingo for its products. It started with the unique (at the time) candy colored, plastic all-in-one iMacs and has spread to include every product in its portfolio. You see an Apple product and can’t help but want to touch and play with it. In the technology category, great design is both rare and noticeable. Bingo.

The rhythmic rumble made by Harley Davidson Motorcycles is a bingo. You can hear it from miles away. And you won’t hear it from a Japanese bike. It calls attention to itself in a way that no other motorcycle brand does. Harley Davidson has even filed a trademark application to protect its exhaust sound. Bingo.

Lady GaGa uses outrageous costumes and set-ups as a bingo. Some of the outfits are so ridiculous, you simply see them and think, seriously? But you can’t look away. You want to see what she’ll do next. It doesn’t matter whether her music is good or bad (at first), the costumes get your attention. In the world of music, she stands out from the crowd. Bingo.

Goodyear has for decades put blimps in the air above football games. Blimps are rare. They are pretty easily noticed, especially when the cameras pan to show them above the stadium. Even if another brand put its name on the blimp, we’d still think of it as the Goodyear Blimp. Bingo.

A bingo can be just about anything—a sign, an ad, a shape, an aroma, a color, a design, a function, a style, an idea, a behavior, a voice, an experience, a service, an employee, a distribution model, a price—as long as it stands out from everything else and draws attention to itself. In most cases, it is very hard to accomplish.

Do you use bingos for your brand? Is there something about your product that makes it stand out from the mass of bland competitors? Is there something about your product that is rare in comparison with the competition? If not, should there be?

Note: Though there is some overlap, a bingo is not a “purple cow” as defined by Seth Godin in his book of the same name. Bingos are not necessarily remarkable (though the best ones are). Yellow cars stand out and are easy to spot, but not all yellow cars are great cars. In fact, some are lemons. So having a bingo for your product will not necessarily make it great or worth buying. But it will get your product noticed. And if your product is also great, then what you have are the makings for a very strong brand.