marginally subversive

the new laziness...

... is all about inertia brought on by fear.

Fear of the unknown.
Fear of what the big bosses will say.
Fear for one's career.
Fear for one's future.
Fear of consumers' response.
Fear of failure.
Fear of success...

The new laziness is all about the paralysis brought by fear of what could be.

From Seth Godin:

... the new laziness has nothing to do with physical labor and everything to do with fear. If you're not going to make those sales calls or invent that innovation or push that insight, you're not avoiding it because you need physical rest.

 

more is not always better, honey...

Below is what Seth Godin has to say about doing more versus doing better:

The easiest form of management is to encourage or demand that people do more. The other translation of this phrase is to go faster.

The most important and difficult form of management (verging on leadership) is to encourage people to do better.

... which made me think (as always, Mr. Godin has the knack of making me think...).

 

In a media buying pitch that I led a few years back, the brief called for savings and efficiencies in the clients' media investments.  We were up against the biggest media companies in the market - we were perhaps 1/5th the size of the smaller of these two agencies - having had a rather erratic presence in the market.

So we followed a different approach altogether: Instead of just running after "savings", we also ran after what others may call "dollarized critical intangibles".

We made use of qualitative panels, emergent online research methods, and panel of expert-observers to identify emerging trends, how these emerging trends translate to viewing patterns.

We made use of analytics and statistics to better understand the motivations behind the viewing patterns of certain target audiences.  Using advanced stats, we narrowed down our prediction errors on the TV ratings.

We made use of our network to gauge how certain programs worked in other countries that are similar to our market - and tried to understand what, in those markets, made these programs work - or not.

We also crafted a prioritization strategy based on marginal return investments per geographic area - focusing on promising profit-areas instead of going on a "shotgun" approach to media planning.

We certainly did more than the brief - and we also did better.

The media pitch brief called for X% worth of cold-hard-cash savings at the end of the year.  We delivered that - and beyond.

At the same time, we planned to deliver insights that resulted to even more savings - with measurable contributions to the companies bottomline.

 

These days, companies are once again focusing on the question, "So how much savings are you going to generate for me using your dealmaking capabilities?  And how much are you going to charge for that?"

I say, companies should ask their partners instead, "What tangible business value can you deliver to my business that goes beyond savings this year and that will lead to sustainable competitive advantage?"

And realize that more is not always better.

Marginally Subversive Thought of the Day: Success is the enemy...

Our marginally subversive thought of the day comes from Charles Hampden-Turner and Linda Arc, as quoted by Jamshid Gharajedaghi in the book "Managing Chaos and Complexity":

The most stubborn habits which resist change with the greatest tenacity are those which worked well for a space of time and led to the practitioner being rewarded for those behaviors. If you suddenly tell such persons that their recipe for success is no longer viable, their personal experience belies your diagnosis. The road to convincing them is hard. It us the stuff of classic tragedy.

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That we live in fast-changing times is an open secret. And yet we remain to be stuck with our age-old paradigms and schemas of the world. We invest and we gain - that was what it used to be in finance, in marketing, and in business. It was simple.

But we no longer live in simple times.

We are faced with competitors who are as smart as we are. With suppliers who are as protective of their businesses as we are with ours. With consumers who are armed with information gathered from a vast, constantly growing library called the Social Web. With staff and employees who are fast realizing that life in the Firm is not the only life worth living. With leaders who are far more concerned with their parachutes and exit strategies and with pleasing quarterly-results-focused investors than with long-term brand- and business-building.

And yet our response mechanisms remain to be rooted in the same old assumptions.

It is time for businesses and marketeers to wake up and smell the coffee - perchance its smell will reinvigorate them - and us - to think radically different from how we thought in the past.

Things have changed. Things are changing.

So why aren't we shifting? Why aren't we challenging our old assumptions?

Just because it worked in the past doesn't mean it will work again. And again. And again.

The world has changed.
It's your turn.

 

it’s a very simple thing:

if you don’t know where you’re headed, then any path will do

size matters...

[overheard] potentials, limits, and rules - and breaking them

So I was downstairs taking a break from all the numbers that I have spread out on my table.

Then I overheard this conversation between two presons from an ad agency who are in the same building as we are.

I am guessing one of them - the guy - was from the creative department because he was complaining about how much time he has already spent on the ad and was clearly agitated.  The girl - I am guessing again - was from the client-servicing department, because she was kinda patient - though I could see that she was on the verge of losing it.

After their smokes, the girl summarized it in a very interesting manner:

"Look.  You're young.  You're idealistic.  You're good.  You're beyond good.  You've potentials.  But one thing you need to learn in this industry is this:

That made me cringe.

I hope the young guy doesn't lose his idealism and his passion and his desire to deliver something that he is not proud of.  I hope the young guy would continue to test the limits - his and of his clients. 

And I certainly hope he will NOT listen to this advice.

 

*** I gotta thank James Greishaber for the font, Reenie Beanie which I used in the above photo using MS PowerPoint(R).  Reenie Beanie is covered by SIL Open Font License, 1.1.  Thanks!

consumers, brands, and the social marketing landscape

I was going through my RSS reading list and something caught my eye from Adrian Chan and Andreas Weigend at Gravity 7.  His latest entry was informative, inspiring, and thought-provoking - and is definitely worth a read and a discussion.

Of all the things that he said - and he said a lot of good things - these are just some of the few that really struck with as they are things that I have always believed in:

(Oh - and I will quote without shame because I believe Adrian Chan of Gravity7 has ensnared these thoughts so beautifully.)

1. Conversations are at the core of marketing

Conversation is the new marketing. Markets are no longer made by the brand, around brand image, and by means of brand messaging. Markets are made by consumers, through their connections, and interests as related in conversation. Distribution through conversation is the new mode of production.

2. Advertising, marketing communications, promotions, PR, digital, newspapers, magazines, TV spots, internet ads, digital ads, social ads - all these are not about eyeballs, reach, frequency, 'engagement'... It's about the brand and how it connects with consumers - and how consumers connect back.

This is not just a matter of the eyeballs having turned from one screen, the TV, to another. It’s not just a matter of changing medium – it’s about talking now instead of looking. And this is new, even still, to many brands. Of course brands like to see themselves mentioned and reflected in consumer opinion. But then so, too, do consumers. Consumers are the new brands, and they do their branding in person. Conversation is the highest form of shared value, individually produced, and mutually engaging. ... Conversation is the new marketing because it is the right way to engage with the medium.

 3. Brand management, brand creation, brand strengthening - heck, BRANDING is all about the relationships that consumers have with a named-product that happened to have elicited a significant relationship with the consumer.  A brand is a result of consumer's response.

It is the brand that now wants to be seen in the proximity of the consumer, not the consumer who desires to identify with the brand. The social self is now so self-constructed and socially connected that consumers expect to see themselves reflected in the brands they relate to. Consumers make brands in their own image, revealing this in their own words and interests.

 

 

[ Consumers own the brands they want.
Consumer loves the brands they choose to love.
Consumers can unlove a brand they choose to unlove.
And consumers don't just fall in love because it is the best in the world relative to others - consumers fall in love with brands because for them, it is worth loving. ]

 

who is afraid of the big bad wolf called complexity?

i am quite surprised by people who always want and demand "simple solutions".

i get it:  there are merits to the elevator pitch.  that we all are time-poor.  that we don't have time to read reams and tons of documents.  that "simple is beautiful".

but sometimes, simple is just simply not enough.

we live in a complex world.  to deny that is to deny what is real.

the truth is - to get to a SIMPLE SOLUTION we will have to go through a myriad - perhaps infinite number - of potential solutions.

but no: we want quick-fix solutions to problems:

sales are going down - let's do a promotion.
awareness is nil - let's spend money.
people are not clicking through our ads - let's bombard them even more.
products aren't flying off the shelves - let's fire the ad people, the promo people, the graphic designer.
people are not talking about us online - let's pay bloggers.
people are bashing our brands - delete their comments.
people think our products are expensive - let's cut prices.
stock prices have been stagnant for 4 weeks - let's fire the ceo.
we're the market leader - let's kill the smaller players.

we want simple solutions to problems that are very complex.

 

well.

life is not simple.

business is not simple.

marketing is not simple.

people are not simple.

how we think isn't simple.

how we choose isn't simple.

why then should we expect that the solutions ought to be simple?

 

complex problems, complex scenarios, complex decision-points require due diligence, rigor, structure.  to look for shortcuts for the sake of "simplicity" is simply laziness. sure, communicate the solution the simplest way possible - BUT never sacrifice the process that goes on underneath the search for that solution.

 

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thanks to michael.heiss at Flickr.com for the photo above.

when you let consumers and audiences decide...

... be ready to take them on fullblast!

 One of the mistakes of marketeers when it comes to social media planning is that they are not ready to take things on when the program takes a life of its own because of the interest of its audiences.

Social media planning for most media planners and marketeers is still about having a brandpage on Facebook and creating a Twitter account, with metrics such as "get X thousands of fans and followers, get Y thousands of comments, and get Z thousands of retweets".

I believe that social media planning is all about creating brand-catalyzed movements - or as Seth Godin calls them, "tribes".

Once you get consumers and audiences into your brand's program, it is no longer yours - it is theirs.

And that ownership is the ultimate sign of success.

The problem is marketeers are not ready to let go of control.  They don't trust their consumers enough.  They don't empower them enough.  They don't act as facilitators.

The thing is, once you start a movement, you just can't leave it - you have to create something far bigger than your brand and far bigger than your goals.

Will it generate revenues? 

Oh yes!  In more ways than one since it is the members who become your "conduits of information and recommendations".

It will be difficult to measure - but it is not impossible and it will certainly create returns far better than traditional, broadcast-based advertising. 

foresight is never 20/20 - but you gotta move on

I have always been fascinated with statistical models that try to project the future.  Regression-based modeling, econometrics, scenario-planning, and simulations (including techniques from the finance field) are some of the techniques that I found to be helpful in coming up with projections. 

In my previous life, we even came up with a "vision-statement" that encapsulated this view: "Empowering Foresight".

However, at the back of my mind is "foresight is never 20/20" and that "past events are never a guarantee of future events".

A constant reminder that in spite of all the due diligence, the rigor, the studies, the equations, and the scenarios that have been done, there is no guarantee that things are going to be as predicted.

Foresight is never 20/20 - hindsight is.

Seth Godin writes about this in his entry, It's (Always) Too Soon To Know For Sure.  He notes:

If you're racing, you better figure out what to do about the times that you don't know for sure...because more and more of your inputs are going to be tenuous, speculative and possibly wrong. Day traders have always understood this--all they do is trade on uncertainty. But you, too, if you're racing, are going to have to make decisions on less than perfect information.

Indeed, perfect information is hard to come by in spite of the deluge of data and the now-very-cheap methods of gathering information. 

But these days, one has to make decisions on the fly.

So what does one do?

My view is simple:

Do the due diligence, go through the rigor with the current information that you have, make a decision - but don't cast it in stone. 

Be flexible enough to change and respond to changes. 

And adapt.

That sounds like a cliche because it is.

But it is not always practiced.

It is true the doing everything that you can is not going to be a guarantee that things are going to be right. But it certainly doesn't mean you shouldn't even bother doing what you can to control the things that you can.

It will not be perfect - it can NEVER be perfect.

But that should never be a reason to skip the due diligence and the rigor:  one has to uncover as many potential opportunities and threats as possible, and come up with scenarios to respond to them. 

One will never encapsulate everything whilst planning, say, a campaign or a marketing program - that's why it's called the future.

The only recourse that we have is to plan to adapt and to learn and to respond.