Bring your weirdness, they say.

This weirdness everybody tells you to bring…. What IS it?

I don’t want to be put in a box. My clients don’t want that either. We don’t have time to do ONE thing, talk to ONE person, niche down, talk about ONE thing. We are diverse, but not scattered. We have, can, and are, SO much, and we need to bring it all to the table.

And then there’s this new trend:
The Weirdness. But what is it?

“It’s everything that makes you different and interesting”, my friend said. But if that’s true, then it’s what we’ve been talking about in marketing the last 10 - 15 years. Differentiation. What makes you different. What makes you stand out. What makes you YOU, and not someone else.

Different can be a special haircut. A hot take. A “controversial” opinion that gets you a thousand likes because a thousand other people were already thinking it. It resonated. Different can be completely on-brand. Rehearsed. Sellable. Repeatable.

That isn’t weird, though. I mean, not necessarily.
It’s taking that old concept and smack a new label on it.

So… weirdness?

I’ll be in the middle of a serious conversation, mid-sentence, about something that has nothing to do with either of us personally, and I’ll just... stop. And tell the person something I like about them. Like, “Oh! I LOVE that color of your lipstick!” Or… “You look SO good in blue! It’s my favorite color.” Then I go right back to what we were talking about, like nothing happened. A little lame, I know. It just happens, and when I catch myself, I may blush a little.

I can’t brand it, though, not consciously.
I never know when - or if - it happens.

Or I’m walking down a street, spot someone I barely know on the other side, and stop everything to wave both arms and shout their name.

Heads turn. Eyebrows go up. My friends laugh. “You’re so weird,” they tell me. Sometimes “quirky,” like that’s supposed to be the gentler word. Or they don’t laugh, they’re irritated because I made them jump. Sometimes I’m loud without knowing.

Here’s the thing.

Right now, everyone and their mom is telling you to bring your weirdness. “Bring your weirdness”, they say, like it’s something you can just pull out of your pocket whenever you want to use it.

However, really weird is the part of you nobody’s built a box for yet. And maybe it’s not even possible to do that.

Weird is interrupting someone enthusiastically because something true just needs to get said. Weird is stopping mid-stride to wave at someone through the screen in a meeting, totally out of the blue - and often surprising the others who are there. It doesn’t ask permission. It definitely doesn’t check if it’s convenient; it pushes its way through and bursts out. It’s losing grip of reality for a split second. It’s thinking WAY out of the box. And forget about the comfort zone.

Weird is when you say something totally unexpected, usually a little on the edge of what’s suitable or polite.

Weird is being so different that people think you have a diagnose, but are too polite to confront you about it.

Some people will think you’re amazing when your weirdness surfaces. Others will just feel it’s totally embarrassing and wish they were miles away.

And here’s what I’ve figured out about my weirdness. I don’t know when I am weird. I don’t know exactly what will have people raising eyebrows, getting irritated, or laughing. It isn’t something I can “bring”. I can’t force it, rehearse it, or want to BE weird on command. It’s just there. And I’m not sure I always want it to show. I just can’t control it. What I do know, is that I’ve been asked if I’m on the spectrum. I think people who don’t mask their weirdness get that a lot.

Weirdness isn’t a strategy.

It’s a BEing. It’s not something you want; it’s natural to you, but not to others. And it certainly isn’t mainstream! It can’t be learned, rehearsed, or forced.

So, when someone asks you to bring your weirdness, bring it. But don’t try. That’s the whole difference. Weird is authentic. The second you try, it turns into the same planned, sellable, repeatable thing we started with. Not weird anymore. Just different, again. Maybe turning into mainstream. So don’t force it. Don’t try to make a strategy out of it. What happens if you do, is that the weirdness is gone, and you’re back to trying like everyone else.

What happens if you’re too weird

In marketing, the entire machine runs on categorization. Ideal customer avatars, positioning statements, SEO, the algorithm itself, all of it rewards being easy to sum up in one sentence. “Too weird” is actually “hard to place,” and hard to place is known to be expensive: longer sales cycles, harder referrals (”she does... a lot of things?”), lower conversion from cold audiences who need to recognize you fast. That’s the actual mechanical reason “niche down” became “the truth”. It’s not that range is bad, it’s that range is harder to sell to strangers.

My question is: Is it really?!

In professional communication and PR, the currency is predictability. Institutional trust gets built on consistency, and consistency reads as competence. However, who said that being too weird can’t be consistent? I mean, I’m weird most of the time, trying hard to MASK it! Uhmm.. not anymore, though. Since weird is now the new black.

Who says you can’t weave that into your communication, your business, your brand? Why are weird people regarded less competent, less professional? Some of the weirdest people I know get the most profound results!

“Too weird” in a boardroom may be awkward. (Fun! But awkward).
However, who says it won’t work? You may be read as unserious, unstable, not buttoned-up, but does it have to be that way? And in a client call? It can work wonders! The people you have those calls with were attracted to you because you’re YOU!

Who want’s to be buttoned up, anyway….

All the quirky people who have been looking for THEIR coach. The eccentric, the colorful, the nonconform mavericks, the bohemians, the free-spirited thinkers. The spntaneous weirdos. They have nowhere to go if you try to be in line with the rigid business rules out there. Trying to dig out what makes you different isn’t enough. That’s just another normal side of you, a way to speak that’s safe. Weirdness isn’t safe. It’s scary as h*ll.

Before I stop: Weirdness in marketing, in expression (the weird compliments, the waving, or other things you do naturally and spontaneously) build trust with the right people. If that leads to missed deadlines, chaos, or unreliability in delivery, it erodes the trust quickly. None of us want that kind of weird. weird does not have to be chaotic.

Here’s what it actually is, then. It’s people raising their eyebrows at you when you do the weird thing. It sits totally outside the commonplace. It can even alienate plenty of people along the way.

But it’s attractive too, to the people who are wired to be attracted to exactly that kind of weirdness and quirkiness!

So don’t try to bring your weirdness. If you indeed are weird, stop masking it!