Bloghound

Frustration is a good thing.  Really? During a conversation this morning with my wise friend Lissa Bergin-Boles over at TrueCallings, Lisa explained that being frustrated can be hugely constructive as it’s a recognition that we know something is wrong and needs to be fixed. If you put the frustration on the table and tease out what’s going on, you can usually figure out how to fix things. (Although there are those who use frustration to just whine.)

Having been with many different companies this week I heard a lot of marketing frustrations, and on this Friday afternoon I’m reflecting on what might be behind the frustration:

• “We’re just not getting any value from our public relations agency.” Is it the agency — or is the real issue that traditional publicity-driven public relations isn’t as valuable as it was five or 10 years ago?

• “I’m blogging for my company but am not sure it’s valuable. Just how do you measure this social media stuff?” My question to this gentleman was, “Why are you blogging?” If you have a purpose or goal, you’ll more easily be able to assess the value. Turns out there was no real goal, hence the frustration.

• “We’re not generating enough sales leads.” Is it the lead generation strategy — or is market interest waning in the overall category? Or is it that your product has a reputation for being hard to use? Or is it that you’re not making it interesting enough for people to want to know more? And just what is considered a lead — registration information from a podcast — or someone who wants to talk with a sales rep?

• “It’s hard to get people to contribute to our online community.” Is there a good reason for them to contribute? What do they get from it? Or is it that your tools make it too hard for people to contribute?

• “I really have to find another job.”  Is it the job? The company? Or something else? During one particularly frustrating point in my career I thought the answer was to get out or marketing.  On closer inspection I just hated commuting three hours a day. I got rid of the commute, stayed in marketing, and glad I did.

• “I’m so frustrated that it’s Friday and I can’t stay focused on getting this project done.”  Admit that you hate this type of work and stop taking it on.  Focus on those projects that give energy vs. take it away.

Thanks again Lissa — and if I missed any other advice, please share!

If you want to really understand how social media/tools are changing how we work, play, activate change and live, pick up Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. And if you are seriously considering communities as part of your marketing strategy, Do Not Pass Go without reading this.

Here are some of my takeaways:

There are three essential pieces of a community, starting with purpose:

1. Why: what’s the the promise of the group/community? Why would anyone want to join or contribute? “Creating a promise that enough people believe in is the basic requirement. The promise creates the basic desire to participate. ” Note: in my experience this is where marketers usually spend too little time. Or, rarely challenge their own. assumptions.

2. How: this is where you figure out which tools will help people do what the community is all about. Note: too many companies are buying tools and then trying to make a community fit the tools. A recipe for disaster — or, at a minimum, enormous frustration.

3. Rules of the road: this the what Shirky calls the bargain: “If you are interested in the promise and adopt the tools, what can you expect and what will be expected of you?”

People have always wanted to share and help one another. Pervasive, easy-to-use communications tools and ” the collapse of transaction costs makes it easier for people to get together — so much easier, in fact, that is changing the world.” “Social tools don’t create collective action — they merely remove the obstacles to it. This is why many of the significant changes are based not on the fanciest, newest bits of technology but on simple easy-to-use tools like email, mobile phones and websites, because those are the tools most people have access to and, critically, are comfortable using in their dauly lives.”

Incentives for participating are not financial: Attention, the desire to see your work spread, the desire to help others and be helped.

Why some communities grow and others don’t: “They grow if enough people care about them, and die if they don’t.” (This goes back to getting the promise right.)

How did you do that?: communities where a group of people help one another get better at some share task or interest — called communities of practice — are especially pervasive and appealing. The basic question that can trigger a community of practice: “How did you do that?”

Not everyone needs to be passionate, participate a lot: in the old model we had to work hard to get people passionate enough to act, because acting was a lot of work. Today you can have a handful of highly-motivated people participating a lot — and “people who care a little participate a little, while being effective in the aggregate.”

A small number needed to get things started: “The number of people who are willing to start something is smaller, much smaller, than the number of people who are willing to contribute once someone else starts something.” Tap into a small core of passionate people; don’t expect a lot of people to contribute at the get-go. Many are more comfortable adding to what someone else has started.

Forget conventional wisdom when it comes to managing corporate reputation. In fact, transparency matters the least in building stakeholder trust (employees, customers, suppliers, investors) and can actually erode trust, according to a fascinating new study by Harvard University’s Michael Pirson and Deepak Malhotra, published in the summer issue of MIT Sloan Management Review. (”Unconventional Insights for Managing Stakeholder Trust.”)

The authors studied four different organizations to find out what matters and to whom. Highlights:

• Transparency is over-rated. In fact, transparency can diminish trust depending on what is disclosed. Also, it has little relevance in terms of building trust.
• Integrity is important, but. Stakeholders close to a company (employees and customers) need to feel that the company genuinely cares for their personal well-being. Integrity alone doesn’t cut it if people feel the company is being fair but “callous.”
• Trust is built on different types of competencies. Employees and investors look for management competency. Customers and suppliers more concerned about technical and quality competency.
• Shared values is hugely important to all stakeholders: All stakeholders want to associate with organizations with values they identify with.

“We have found that that although value congruence matters most to employees, it is also an important factor for every other stakeholder group we studies. In other words, stakeholders of all types are interested in associated with organizations with whom they can identify — and with whom they perceive a match in values.”

This study has interesting implications for marketers and corporate communications professionals.

• Trust means different things to different stakeholders.
• Marketing needs to focus more on two key trust-building factors: the company’s genuine interest in their customers’ success and well being, and the company’s technical ability to deliver quality products and services.
• What beliefs? It’s essential to clearly articulate the company’s values and beliefs. (Maybe even help uncover them. ) In my experience few organizations — especially marketers — focus on these beliefs, or even know what they are. But as this study shows they are critically important to building affinity and trust with customers.

A big part of SOCIAL media is being more social as companies — online and in the real world. But many executives have asked me, “how do you measure sociability and friendliness?”

In a 48-hour experiment with blackjack dealers at Ameristar Casino J.D. Power & Associates found that a highly social, outgoing blackjack dealer collected 13 percent more money at his table than at the serious table where the blackjack dealer held to the standard, “don’t talk unless spoken to” rule.

In explaining the experiment Chris Denove of J.D. Power and author of “How Every Great Company Listens to the Voice of the Customer,” told a group this week that there’s no reason to believe that the same relationship doesn’t hold true in other business environments. Why? People like spending time with people who are likeable.

Naming your organizations’ beliefs can guide decisions and inspire talent much more effectively than the traditional mission statement, which is usually pretty flat, descriptive and, well, boring.

Here are some examples of organizations’ beliefs.

Google

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There’s always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn’t good enough.

Zappos

1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

And my firm, Beeline Labs:

1. Deliver the wow and the whoa
2. Activate change
3. Go fast
4. Try new things; OK to fail
5. See new possibilities early
6. Don’t compromise; the work needs to be meaningful
7. It’s all about delivering business value
8. Bee vs. me
9. Integrity rules

What are your organization’s beliefs? Please share!

I was recently invited to share my views on the effect of social media on the 2008 Presidential Campaign for an upcoming feature article in the Public Relations Strategist.

Here are a few highlights:

Is the use of social media mainly tactical or strategic?

• If a goal of the candidates has been to convey a message of change, the use of social media represents a clear change from traditional ways of reaching out to and engaging voters.

• If a goal has been to engage with young voters, the use of digital has been a hugely successful strategy. According to Rock the Vote and CIRCLE (Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement), voter turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds has doubled and tripled in almost every state primary and caucus. These young voters’ preferred way of learning about candidates and participating in the campaigns is through social media and word of mouth marketing. According to a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press study that looked at voter behavior, two-thirds of Web users under 30 use social networking sites, and only 25 percent watch television news for campaign news.

• If a goal has been to manage positive and negative feelings about the candidate - and help people connect with candidates’ personal characteristics — social media has been strategic for Obama, but far less so for Clinton or McCain. Obama has shared more about himself- and social media is about people wanting to connect and share with people. He has also used a relaxed conversational communications style vs. speaking in “message points” during interviews and in videos. Clinton and McCain have used social media more as a channel, filling it with traditional “produced” videos and ads. Clinton and McCain haven’t adjusted their content or communications style for the new medium nearly as well as Obama, although Clinton has done a better job than McCain.

How has social media changed the game of the campaign so far?

The three biggest impacts of social media on the 2008 campaign:

1. Fund raising: Changed the game on how candidates raise money, putting more power with the everyday people than in any previous race. In March alone Obama raised $40 million, largely from the campaign’s 1.5 million Internet donors. According to Clinton’s campaign she raised $2.5 million after winning Pennsylvania primary and asking people to go to her site and donate. According to the most recent Federal Election data, 43% of contributions to Obama’s campaign have come from donors of $200 or less, compared to 27% for Clinton and 20% for McCain.

2. Traditional media: Changed the influence and role of traditional media, with more and more people going direct to hear and read about the candidates - viewing speeches on YouTube vs. TV, and going direct to sources vs. reading journalists’ coverage and analysis. For example, after Obama’s speech on race in March, the transcript of the speech “ranked consistently higher on the most emailed list than the articles written about the speech,” according to The New York Times (“Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass it On.” )

3. Advertising: Showed the diminishing effectiveness of “packaged” TV advertising. Leading up to the Florida primary Mitt Romney spent $29 million on 34,821 ads, more than three and a half times as much as John McCain who spent $8 million on 10,830 ads, according to analysis of data through Jan 27 by the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project. The effect of the big advertising spend? No lift for Romney who soon pulled out of the race.

In addition, millions of people are tuning into candidates via video vs. TV ads - on their campaign sites and on YouTube and other video sharing sites. Obama’s speech on race, “A More Perfect Union,” has been viewed by almost 4.5 million people on YouTube since March.

Hillary Clinton is extraordinarily intelligent, ambitious, and tenacious, but many people just can’t connect emotionally with her. As Prof. Drew Weston, author of The Political Brain, says:

“After party affiliation, the most important predictors of how people vote are their feelings toward the candidates.”

Here’s my view on Hillary’s failure to connect, excerpted from Beyond Buzz:

Bill Clinton gave an inspiring, emotionally charged, off-the-cuff speech at Coretta Scott King’s funeral, peppered with one-liners that the audience boisterously applauded, including “You want to treat our friend Coretta like a role model? Then model her behavior.”

According to many observers, Senator Clinton’s remarks were more formal than her husband’s, delivered in a measured, restrained, and deliberate style. The contrast between the two Clintons was vivid, as was the audience’s reaction. They cheered Bill, while they respectfully listened to Hillary.

“I think Bill Clinton delivers inspiring addresses,” explained Theodore C. Sorensen, one of John F. Kennedy’s best-known speechwriters, wrote in The New York Times. “Hillary is more likely to deliver learned lectures.”

A few years back, I had lunch with the late MIT professor Michael Dertouzos who had just returned from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he had heard Mrs. Clinton speak.

“She was absolutely brilliant,” he said. “Her understanding of complex issues and her ability to get up and talk about those issues was remarkable. I don’t think anyone else at Davos came close to her in being able to articulate such cogent perspectives on today’s social, political, and economic issues.”

Yet, because Mrs. Clinton speaks formally, in full paragraphs and with little emotion, it’s often difficult to see things from her point of view and to connect with her as a person. Like many CEOs and marketing programs, Mrs. Clinton’s knowledge is substantive, but because her style lacks emotion and the language of conversations, it often fails to move us.
To succeed in a conversational world, we marketers (much like Hillary Clinton) need to reset our style so people can more easily understand our points — and get who we are as people.

Activating change needs an emotional connection.

Getting management to buy into innovative marketing approaches can be tough.

Here are six facts to support change, based on performance data that Copernicus Marketing Consulting has collected from more than 500 marketing programs (consumer and B2B products and services.)

1. 84% of programs are resulting in declining brand equity and market share.
2. Customer satisfaction averages just 74%.
3. Most acquisition efforts fail to reach break even.
4. No more than 10% of new products succeed.
5. Most sales promotions are unprofitable.
6. Advertising ROI is below 4%.

For more, see the Harvard Business Review article, “Don’t Blame the Metrics” by Kevin Clancy and Randy Stone.

Maybe it’s time to retire the war metaphor from business and marketing. “Winners” no longer defeat the competition by battling them, capturing customer share, locking customers in or making them loyal. (Sounds like some sort of waterboarding torture done to customers.) The new metaphor may be tribalism.

Widipedia’s definition of tribalism: “Due to the small size of tribes, it is always a relatively simple structure, with few (if any) significant social distinctions between individuals… it is a precondition for members of a tribe to possess a strong feeling of identity for a true tribal society to form.”

In the book Consumer Tribes editors and university professors Bernard Cova, Rob Kozinets and Avi Shankar take a deep dive to examine how tribes work and possible implications to business and marketing. Here are a few highlights I found particularly interesting:

“The allure of the primitive, of the tribal, lies in its ability to arouse our desires and passions.”

The concept of a tribe is at the same level as that of entrepreneur and craftsperson. A craftsperson is a creative person who believes in a passion and transforms this into a business idea. This passion pushes the craftsperson to share ideas and emotions with other individuals sharing the same interest, thus forming a tribe.”

Takeaway: tribes need to be built around passions. If you’re considering a business community the first question to ask: how passionate are people on this particular topic/issue? If the passion exists, in what ways do people want to tap into the issue - learning from “experts,” sharing their experiences, helping others, simply being identified with the issue in some way? What business value might there be for us to be associated with this issue?

“The most potent tribes are built in the interstices, in the margins, on the fringes.”

Takeaway: some of the most thriving business communities are likely to be around issues that aren’t “core” to your value proposition or business strategy, but tap into passions on issues that are on the edges. If a goal is to engage customers or employees, we need to open up to those fringe issues that matter to them - vs. just the messages we want to convey. There may be more value sitting on the margins than anyone inside the company realizes. Also, creating “a” community may be a flawed strategy; perhaps a better approach is facilitating many tribes or communities around many issues.

“One of the most important ways in which members of a cool tribe distinguish themselves from mass culture is through an emphasis on authenticity….Authenticity is in any case a deeply ideological discourse that denigrates popular culture and privileges the exclusive.”

Takeaway: To really connect with cool people companies have to be willing to hear people talk about why the old ways and products are lacking (or worse.) Even if we’re hosting a community, people are likely to bash beliefs and products that we hold true. If we’re going after cool and innovative, we have to be prepared to hear the negative. Second, cool people want to be insiders and have exclusive access to information, ideas, and people. For companies, this may mean embracing smaller communities, where access and inside information is granted to the cool few. Once a community gets big and accepted by the mainstream, it may no longer be a community.

“Companies do not need to send totally coherent messages to the marketplace. Consumers fill in the blanks, and they often do a better job of colouring in the picture than marketers would do.”

Takeaway: Do we spend much too much time and resources trying to perfect messages? Perhaps it’s better to get our products and services out in the market and take a more iterative approach to branding and messaging, tuning in to what our tribe members have to say. This idea is similar to what Harvard Business School marketing professor John Deighton has said for many years, “Marketers offer brand ideas to the market, but those ideas don’t truly become brands until they are accepted, adopted and made over afresh as part of the lives of those who use them.”

Tribes, influence and persuasion

In thinking about tribalism, it’s interesting to go back to a Harvard Business Review article Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Science of Psychology, wrote in 2001, titled “Harnessing the Science of Persuasion.” Many of his fundamental principles of persuasion are also principles of effective tribes, social networks, online communities, and groups.

1. The principle of liking: people like those who like them. (Uncover similarities and offer praise.)
2. The principle of reciprocity: people repay in kind. (Give what you want to receive)
3. The principle of social proof: people follow the lead of similar others. (Use peer whenever it’s available.)
4. The principle of consistency: people align with clear commitments. (Make the commitment active, public and voluntary.)
5. The principle of scarcity: people want more of what they can have less of. (Highlight unique benefits and exclusive information.)

Cialidini had one other principle, which may not be relevant in a tribal culture: The principle of authority: people defer to experts.

Perhaps we do defer to experts. But who are the experts we defer to today? Aside from those we respect and trust in our various tribes, who do we listen to? And what are the implications to marketing?

War metaphors stunt problem solving

For starters, let’s stop using the war metaphor in marketing and think in new ways. Linguists have found that people who frame problems in a militaristic manner tend to have a limited perception of the problem and how to tackle it. As noted Berkeley cognitive linguist George Lakoff has said, “This is not language, this is the way people think.”

I’m thinking tribes. And you?

How do you change the perception of museums being boring places for intellectual, rich people — and still not alienate your core market? Maybe take a page from MoMA — page A5 of today’s Wall St. Journal to be exact.

• The full page ad thanks a sponsor, Target, for supporting free visitor nights. (There goes the price issue.)

• Referring to a new Helvetica exhibit the ad says, “Just thinking about Helvetica totally makes us want to get down and party.” Get down and party? (There goes the stuffy museum image. And who knew type was considered art?)

• And then the party really kicks in. “We’ll clear out a dance floor and check out the finest collection of modern art in the world. We’re going to rock out to Philip Glass all night long and gab to somebody we just met about how much Expressionism inspires us. (Museums aren’t just for art — there’s dancing, a chance to meet new people on Friday nights, and you’re likely to get inspired. Talk about adding “new features” to your brand. )

Here’s the full text. Accessible. Conversational. Strategic. Nice.

Thank you.

This is a message from MoMA to thank Target for their generous support of Target Free Friday Nights and to commemorate the arrival of our millionth free visitor this past Friday evening. It is set in 29-point Helvetica Roman, widely considered the official typeface of the twentieth century. Helvetica conveys an undeniably modern aesthetic clarity and is in fact the subject of an exhibition at MoMA. Just thinking about Helvetica totally makes us want to get down and party. Maybe its the triple Chococcino talking here, but suddenly we feel like screaming, ‘Thanks a million Target!” while mingling outside in the Sculpture Garden. Okay folks, here’s what we do: Meet us up on the third floor and check out the finest collection of modern art in the world. We’re going to rock out to Philip Glass all night long and gab to somebody we just met about how much Expressionism inspires us. Then,if the mood is right and all our planets are aligned, we’ll show our new friend what Expressionism really means. It happens every Friday from 4 - 8 p.m.