Contrast marketing – also known as The Dandelion Effect – is a little known, under used, but extremely powerful strategic marketing strategy for business owners and Entrepreneurs.

Chances are you’ve never heard of it. This strategic marketing strategy is not generally taught in business schools. But then again – the best marketing strategies rarely are.

So what is contrast marketing? What is The Dandelion Effect? What does it have to do with strategic marketing? And how can it help your business create an unfair competitive advantage?

Bryson Garbett gets it.

He understands.

He already knows pretty much everything that you need to know about The Dandelion Effect.

You’re probably wondering who this Bryson Garbett fellow is.

And you’re also wonder what in tarnation is “The Dandelion Effect”, and what on earth it has to do with strategic marketing.

Bryson Garbett is the President and CEO of Garbett Homes in Salt Lake City, Utah.

And The Dandelion Effect is an incredibly powerful marketing concept discovered by yours truly. Simply put, its a perfect example of the power of strategic marketing. It’s Contrast Marketing at its finest.

Garbett Homes is a revolutionary home builder that is pioneering the construction of all-green, ultra-energy-efficient and environmentally-conscious homes.

Their business is thriving, and they have created the “Green” model that homebuilders across the Western United States are trying to duplicate (usually unsuccessfully).

More on this exploding small business later.

Now let’s talk about The Dandelion Effect.

I want you to imagine that you have a perfectly manicured, lush, deep green lawn (for those of you in Manhattan this will take an extra dose of imagination). A lawn that you meticulously care for, spending hours trimming, edging, fertilizing, and talking to your lawn. A lawn that your grandfather would be proud of.

A lawn that is so perfect that your neighbors’ lawns are green with envy (pun totally intended).

Now I want you to imagine that one fine summer morning, you step out your front door in your bathrobe (or your underwear – but I’m not here to judge). You yawn, stretch, scratch, try to decide if you should grab the morning paper before or after starting the coffee pot, and then…

…you see it, and are stopped dead in your tracks.

There, sprouting right in the middle of your ridiculously perfect lawn is a mammoth, neon yellow Dandelion.

Your perfect sea of carefully-groomed greenness is ruined by that one stupid yellow weed.

Suddenly you don’t notice the lawn anymore. All that you can see if that DAMN DANDELION!

Guess what, folks – that Dandelion is YOUR BUSINESS.

That lawn is EVERYONE ELSE.

The whole point of the strategic marketing strategy known as The Dandelion Effect is for your business to stand out like a bright yellow Dandelion on an otherwise unbroken field of dark green grass.

So what does this have to do with Garbett Homes? Are they landscaping their yards with dandelions? (I’m almost afraid to suggest this idea to them. I’m sure they’d call it “native vegetation” and run with it…)

In an excellent example proving that they grasp strategic marketing, Garbett Homes recently found a perfect way use The Dandelion Effect.

I was driving down the freeway a few weeks ago, past the same dirty, stinky, nasty oil refinery that decades ago some brilliant city planner decided to allow to be constructed on prime commercial property alongside the freeway just north of Salt Lake City.