I'm going to go off topic here for a second, but you'll see where I'm going with this….Just 18 short days ago, an unknown 12 year old boy called Greyson Michael Chance from Edmond, Oklahoma performed an amazing cover of a Lady Gaga song “Paparazzi” at a school talent show.

He recorded his performance on video and uploaded it to YouTube. There the video sat for a week or so before it was picked up by some Lady Gaga fans and forwarded it to their friends. Within days, virtually every news station in the US covered his performance, he was invited to perform on a daytime chat show with 5 million viewers, secured a record deal and took a call from Lady Gaga congratulating him on the performance.

All this within the last three weeks. Oh and he also has more than 3 million Google search results for his name and 36,000 friends on Twitter (an account he opened 2 days ago…)

You're probably wondering what this has to do with your bar? Well, the game has changed for anyone or any business wanting to get noticed. It's no longer good enough to sit back and hope the business and attention comes to you. It's not going to happen.

Instead, you have to find a way to get noticed, find a way to stand out from the crowd. In other words, what's your Lady Gaga song? What is your unique offering that you want everyone to know about? Is it a special sauce recipe? A unique Cocktail? or maybe an amazing building or decor? What is it that gets people to go “wow”!!

If you can't find what this is, then that's your problem. You first need to have something that separates you from the crowd. Once you find this, it's time to shout it from the rooftops. Grab a video camera and shoot a video about your special sauce and upload it to YouTube, take pictures of your cocktails and send them to everyone in your email database ( I presume you have one of these….)

The game has changed forever. There are new ways to get noticed, new ways to draw a crowd. You don't need to sing a Lady Gaga song or appear on daytime television, but you need to strike a chord with your customers and give them something worth sharing. Without this, you're just another brick in the wall.

Be different and tell us all about it.