What does this have to do with that?

So you're looking at the image above.  What is your first reaction?  "What's the message?." "Hmmm, pretty clever."   "I don't get it." "Wow, that's pretty funny!" Whatever your conclusions or your final thoughts, the bottom line is this: it's an attention grabber.

Before you saw this, if someone would have asked you to create an image or even explain how high gas prices and internet slang can go together, what would you have come up with?

Well typically gas prices and internet slang don't automatically go together, so if nothing came to mind right away or maybe nothing at all - understandably so. But when you see the way the two were paired above, you have to give credit to the result: An unexpected and pretty creative and interesting way of combining the two.

In today's market the competition to woo the audience is fierce.  With the internet, now your next door neighbor, the driver next to you at the stoplight, or the shopper in front of you at the grocery store, can enter the market and sell their ideas to you just as easily as Proctor and Gamble, Nike or CNN.  So the question is: with more and more ideas, people and businesses crowding the market how do you stand out?

You do this by amplifying your ability to - present novel ideas, in unique ways, in unfamiliar territory (that adds value to the market).  Easier said than done - but doable.   As with the question asked earlier what do gas prices and internet slang have to do with one another?  The image created above (cleverly) givex you an answer to that question.  With gas prices being so high, you have to laugh out loud, say oh my gosh, and what the f&#@ - these prices are crazy!  Pairing together ideas that at first seem disparate is a great starting point.  Just a handful of years ago design and computers had nothing to do with the other. Now Apple has exploited this relationship and is one of the most innovative (and successful) companies in the country.  If in the mid 90's someone asked an audience of business people to put together this new thing called the internet and auctioning. . .how many would have came up with eBay?  

In today's market the need to do business in new, creative and innovative ways is imperative.  As indicated most recently by the financial market meltdown our conventional mindsets need recalibration to "business unusual".  Unusual ideas, creative approaches, and innovative thinking by seeing, how this over here has to do with that over there, will prove valuable in these changing and dynamic times.