The Beauty of Ugly Betty

I must admit, I’m often telling the kids “Stop watching so much TV and do something useful”. But the truth (just between us) is that watching TV is useful, at least for entrepreneurs.

Everything I know about business I learned from watching TV. I graduated, top of my class, from the 19″ Institute of Higher Learning.
Forget thinking outside the box. Why would you? It’s all right in there, in the box!

Take Ugly Betty for example. What a great study in character development. Ok, maybe not development… The characters are all pretty cartoony. But you’re never going to confuse the ruthlessly ambitious Wilhelmina Slater character (2 parts Alexis Carrington, 3 parts Cruella DeVille) with Henry-Do-Right, Betty’s geeky accountant will-they-or-won’t-they paramour.

On Friends, we knew which friend was ditsy, which was the clean freak/control freak, and who had the sarcastic wit. (Could it BE any more obvious?) They even had their own lines. “How YOU doin’?”

One of the best studies in character development ever seen on TV was the now cancelled Gilmore Girls. Forget the main characters. The gold was in the rest of the inhabitants of Stars Hollow– the crabby Mrs. Kim who ran the local antique shop, her repressed Korean daughter Lane who marries the offbeat musician Zack. Michel the snooty French concierge at the Inn. Emily the conservative pillar of society, Richard her stuffed shirt husband, local gossips, Babette and Miss Patty, the odious media mogul Mitchum Huntzberger, Paris the sour faced over-achiever, Kirk the quirky–not really sure what Kirk is. That’s kinda his character. Each character was well defined.

With the exception of a handful of stars, most businesses and entrepreneurs haven’t created strong identifiable characters (brands) in the marketplace. How do you do that?

Simple. You gotta Fonzify your business. More on that soon…