In recent posts, we explored strategies you can use to adapt your marketing to the new marketplace.  These strategies are generic — any company can use them.  But general solutions can take you only so far.  To break out of the pack, you need unique strategies that no one else can copy because they derive from your unique qualities and situation.

Where can you find such strategies?  If only you had some resource to turn to, which understood everything about your company and its market.  A resource with vast strategic insight, creativity and energetic drive, that you could harness on behalf of your business right now.  A supercomputer that could not only crunch the data but deliver strategic solutions.   If only you had... your brain.

Yes, I know you're straining your brain already to cope with the current crisis.  That may itself be part of the problem — but you probably already know this, too.  You may know all about the "relaxation response" and how relieving stress can free the brain to perform at a higher level.

But I'm not talking about the relaxation response.  Not primarily.  I am, however, talking about recent research by the man who discovered the relaxation response, Herbert Benson.  The relaxation response was just the beginning.  In The Break-out Principle: How to activate the natural trigger that maximizes creativity, athletic performance, productivity, and personal well-being, Benson details steps to develop creative strategic solutions to challenging situations, time after time after time.

At Amazon, the book gets mixed reviews — some raves, but also some who say there's little new here, it's all been said before.  Of course!  If this is how creative breakthroughs happen, humanity wouldn't have gotten this far without it — and neither would you.

Almost certainly, you have your own ways to tap into your creative potential.  It's how you built your business or career.  But you may not understand the full range of principles involved, or the practices you can draw upon to get results systematically — in business as well as personal life, for groups as well as individuals.  It's a master key that opens countless doors.

So when you read it, don't sell yourself short with a swift, smug dismissal.  Grasp the whole system — for example, the way to select people for a "breakthrough network" and the rules by which they should operate.  The great thing is that at this difficult time, when money is so tight, The Breakout Principle is a way to further leverage the assets you already have — and assemblage of human brains — to answer your most urgent question:  "What the heck should we do now?"

In our last post, we saw that one way to combat the shift in values during the recession is to move green benefits to the back of the list, to match the downshifted values of your customers.  However, one "customer" who's moving green benefits to the front of the list is Barack Obama.

Of course, Obama is budget-constrained like the rest of us.  But at least with regard to climate change, he clearly "gets it" on environmental issues.

• On the campaign trail he spoke of alternative energy in relation to saving the planet.
• One of his first actions as President was to cancel as many of Bush's anti-environmental policies as he could.
• He put billions into the economic stimulus bill for clean energy and other environmental priorities.
• His Energy Secretary is Steven Chu, a Nobel-Prize-winning physicist.  (An Energy Secretary who actually understands energy!  Imagine!)

As the stimulus money starts to flow, some of it may flow your way — either directly or indirectly.  Obviously, this would be good for your business, and you would be wise to make moves to make it happen.  Besides that, though, is there any way you could leverage Barack Obama?

Yes, there is.  Obama legitimizes environmental concern.  On election night, he said we face the challenge of "a planet in peril."  And you can leverage that legitimacy in your marketing.  "The president has said we face a planet in peril.  Acme acne cream allows you to answer Obama's call to help, ensuring both a clearer face and a cleaner planet."

President Obama has called on all of us to help.  He has said he can't solve the problems facing us alone.  If you can position your products as part of the solution, then enlist the participation of your customers in answering that call, you can leverage Barack Obama to keep your turf green (environmentally and financially!) during this difficult economic dry spell.

Look for statements by the president about the environment that relate in some way to your own company's mission.  (No doubt there will be many more as time goes on, so repeat your search every few months.)  For example, search Google for:

+obama +environment
+obama +planet
+obama +green -dress -gown

Add keywords to your search that are pertinent to your own product areas.  See if you can find quotations that you can work into your marketing.  If you can help your customers join Obama's green team, you're doing everyone a favor.  (As we say at Brilliant Green Marketing, "Better for the planet.  Better for you.  Brilliant.")

How else can you adapt your marketing to the new green market as it suddenly turns a dangerous dry brown?  Read our next post to find out.