Creative Inconvenience

In a recent episode of Showtime’s “Homeland” the teenage son of a potential presidential candidate is driving with his girlfriend, and in trying to impress her attempts to lose their secret service escort. This in turn leads the couple into a fatal hit and run with a pedestrian. The story plays out where the guilt ridden couple ultimately confess the accident to their parents, at which point a moral dilemma ensues.

Do the presidential parents act on what is morally right and report the incident, thus risking the presidential bid, or do they use their power to suppress any investigation? In this fictitious scenario the issue’s morality lost to its ability to restrict personal gain, and as such the event went unreported.

This dramatized example of morality of convenience, where ideals are sacrificed for gain, has roots in reality and takes on different shapes, some that lay outside of black & white moral purity.

For instance we love the entrepreneur - the creative rebel who by the very act of their non-conformity changes social behavior patterns and the standard approach to business. However the inconvenient truth is that most business ventures fail. So even as we admire innovative success and celebrate the ideals behind the success, we also tend to ignore the multitude of failures that surround those successes and gloss over the price of achieving them.

Creative innovation requires taking risks, accepting failure, rejecting convention and exploring unproven methods. Despite the fact that Corporate America has created a cottage industry on promoting the ideas of innovation and creativity, the fact is most are structured to stifle innovation. Like Homeland’s hit and run casualty who fell victim to the morality of convenience, so is corporate innovation the victim of creative inconvenience.

The 4 Dynamics Of Stifled Innovation

1. Cultural Homogeneity:

Organizations typically recruit employees that best fit into their existing culture. This creates a self perpetuating cycle where any deviation from that culture tends to be met with dissatisfaction and thus gets weeded out.

Social experiments have additionally shown that when faced with a majority point of view, individuals tend to adhere to that viewpoint, even if it goes against a believed truth. This behavioral conformity is particularly prevalent where departures from the social norm negatively impact status - such as one’s ability to get promoted.  

The result - homogenized thought with a singular voice in support of the existing order.

2. Innovation Inefficiency

In The Medici Effect Frans Johansson writes that in any given field 10% of the creators are responsible for 50% of the contributions - Picasso created 20,000 pieces of art, Thomas Edison filed a record 1,039 patents  and Richard Branson started 250 companies.

The point is that successful innovation is a numbers game of high output for minimal success with high reward. Unfortunately most companies are structured to minimize costs through operational efficiencies and to deliver consistent returns, not to absorb the loss of excess capacity in search of a home run.

3. Decision Incentives

Directly resulting from the above points, in most corporations it is more dangerous to make a bold, potentially high return decision and fail than it is to make a consensus decision and fail. As a result people tend to model their decisions to satisfy those who will be evaluating them instead of making choices based on their potential to deliver.

4. Risk Aversion Biology

Since the hunter gatherer days when unnecessary risk could be fatal, humans are biologically wired to minimize risk. Social experiments have again proven this whereby giving people a choice between a larger, less certain reward and a smaller more certain one people will generally choose the more certain, lower payout. Innovation requires risk and risk taking is not in our DNA.

Achieving innovation and creativity in the corporate sense are clearly not impossible since they happen often enough. However the next time you attempt to push creative boundaries realize that despite what people say they may not be ready to pay the price for innovation, and your ability to bridge that price gap may ultimately determine the fate of your idea.

Wine Box Economics

Charles Antin is a writer and wine enthusiast who attempted to barter a $43 box wine for a single bottle worth at least ten times the price. The process was designed to tell an interesting story and maybe learn if consumers valued wine differently than the merchants who set the prices. In reality it illuminated a core principle of marketing - the true definition of value.

Swap 1: $43 becomes $109
Box wine is typically perceived to be of inferior quality, which lends itself to a tough trade. Mr. Antin realized to start he needed a good product, which in fact does exist in a box wine. More so, he needed a unique selling point to help a buyer get over this perception of box wine inferiority.

Box wine is equivalent in volume to four standard bottles, however the 3-liter box format has a much smaller carbon footprint. Mr. Antin had a Californian friend for whom he figured this sustainable benefit might appeal. Furthermore, this friend was an avid cook who regularly held large dinner parties for which 3-liters of wine would be useful.

Trade 1 complete - A $43 box wine for $109 in four bottles of off-the-grid, artisanally made wines.

Swap 2: $109 becomes $140
The next challenge was to trade four interesting bottles of artisanally made wine that no one has ever heard of. Again Mr. Antin mused who would place value in a wine’s unique story over its brand name? The answer - the wine world’s equivalent to a hipster - a sommelier.

Sommelier’s at good restaurants have already tried everything, including the world’s best wines, so something new with potential excites them. Plus most sommeliers have their own collection, which usually include some pretty good wines they long ago got bored of - perfect trade bait.

Trade 2 complete - $109 in four obscure, artisanal wines for a $140 premier Burgundy.

Swap 3: $140 becomes $245
Trading a high quality wine from a top producer in one of the world’s most prized wine regions seemed a simple task. However, Mr. Antin quickly realized that his attempts at a bottle-for-bottle swap wouldn’t work. In his own words, “It was like my fifth grade friend who tried to trade me his raisins for my Fruit Roll-Up based on the premise that they are both dried fruit.”

In a bottle-for-bottle swap value becomes more of a 1:1 comparison highly predicated on price. People were at most willing to swap for a bottle of equal cost, but wouldn’t knowingly swap a bottle of greater cost for one of less. The conversation needed to return to value, not price.

To do so Mr. Antin again sought to trade one bottle for multiple bottles. He knew someone with a large quantity of a single wine who found value in trading extra capacity for something different.

Trade 3 complete - A $109 premier Burgundy for $245 in five lesser bottles of Burgundy

Swap 4: $245 becomes $290
For the five lesser Burgundies Mr. Antin leveraged the wines’ sense of exclusivity, since they could only be purchased through a charity auction that the vineyard hosts annually in France.

Mr. Antin looked for someone who had attended the vineyard’s charity auction and catered to their sense of nostalgia and appreciation for the event’s history.

Trade 4 complete - $245 in five bottles of Burgundy for a $290 Burgundy Magnum.

Swap 5: $290 becomes $520
For the next swap Mr. Antin found a Burgundy lover - someone who valued the uniquely delicate style of Burgundy wines over non-Burgundy wines. He then leveraged that style preference to trade for four combined higher priced bottles of full bodied wines.

Trade 5 complete - $290 Burgundy Magnum for $520 in four bottles of Rhone reds.

Final Swap: $520 becomes $600
For his final swap Mr. Antin used data. The four bottles of Rhone had all received scores of 90 or higher from an acclaimed wine reviewer. Mr. Antin took these to a wine merchant friend and offered them for a bottle of extra stock that didn’t appeal to the merchant’s client base.

Mission complete - $520 in four Rhone reds for a $600 Grand Cru White Burgundy

Knowing The Price Of Everything And The Value Of Nothing
How does a $43 box of decent wine become $600 of elite wine from a renowned producer? By focusing on value over price.

In each instance the recipient of Mr. Antin’s swap may not have received an equal dollar value to what they gave, but they were satisfied because what they received served a personal need or desire that existed outside of price.

Mr. Antin conveyed that value by understanding the unique benefits of his products and positioning them in a way that appealed to the emotional sensibilities of his buyers. The one time he strayed from that approach he got nowhere, because when a proposition is based on price value alone people will always look for a deal.

Brands provide value that appeal to both emotional and physical sensibilities. Products only provide physical benefits that can more easily be valued by price. Build brands based on total value, don’t sell products based on price value.

Black Belt Creativity

The rank system in Japanese martial arts is communicated through belt color from white to black. The symbolism behind this system is that as a beginner you are completely empty of technique and knowledge, and as such your belt is white - void of color.

As a practitioner matures in experience their belt gradually darkens to represents that accumulation of knowledge. The common misunderstanding is that the black belt, being the darkest color, is a symbol of complete knowledge, or mastery. In reality the black belt is like the white belt - void of color.

The black belt, or shodan, literally symbolizes a return to the beginning - with the ‘sho’ in ‘shodan’ using the same character as ‘sho shin’, which means “beginners mind”. The black belt rank assumes that you have developed adequate proficiency in the basic techniques so that you are now able to see them in a new light, enabling you to evolve their application. It is creative freedom through structure. Innovation through strong fundamentals.   

Only through the complete understanding of the concepts of basic technique are black belts able to free themselves of the rigidity of the basics’ framework, and adapt those techniques into a unique expression of their personal style. This is the reason why a punch from a black belt appears different than a punch from a white belt, even though both are identical in their essence.

There is a common belief that creativity is hindered by structure and that in order to be creative one must break away from the limit of fundamental principles. The black belt would argue that structure provides a framework for creativity, and that only through absolute familiarity with the fundamentals, does the foundation for creative freedom derive.

You cannot view differently that which you do not see clearly. Without foundation there is no basis for support. Without structure there is no format. The basics are not boring and restrictive to creativity, they are essential to its cultivation.

Rather than view traditional tactics as dated and look at basic fundamentals as irrelevant to modern vehicles, we should instead embrace them to the point of intimate familiarity. For it is only through the employ of those basic tenets that we will fully exploit the creative potential of emerging principles, regardless of the field.  

We should employ black belt creativity.

Why Your Social Media Plan Doesn't Deliver

Many brands enter social media because they feel they have to, so as not to “miss out”. They read about Old Spice’s Mustafa or get forwarded the Double Rainbow meme and have visions of millions of adoring people sharing and talking about their brand for zero dollars invested.

They start a Facebook page or open a Twitter account, quickly realize it is a commitment, and after telling their agencies that they want a viral idea, one of two things typically happens:

1. Through perseverance they stumble along until slowly, they figure it out
2. Upon failing to achieve their viral dreams they say social media is not worth the investment, which they came to realize was more than zero dollars, and thus add to the scrap heap of dormant brand pages that exist in a half-life state of digital carbonite - a permanent echo of aspirations unrealized

Is that overly dramatized? Sure - but it is not entirely unrealistic either. The fact is, Point 2 can be avoided and Point 1 can be optimized by identifying metrics that link back to actual business goals.

Is that oversimplified? Not really - yet I am continually impressed by how few brand marketers think in those terms when it comes to social media.

The reason being is twofold. First, so many agencies falsely claim social media proficiency in order to cash in that it is difficult to get legitimate strategic direction. Second, many marketers erroneously assume that once they have a sufficiently dense following, their message will automatically spread throughout that following, be positively received, and will ultimately result in people falling in love with their brands and buying their products.

Getting “Followers” Is Not The End Goal - It Is Merely A Means Towards One
A recent Digiday article on digital ROI showed that 40% of marketers aren’t measuring social media at all, and for those that do, top metrics include: purchase (67%), time spent (54%), sharing (51%) and likes/followers (less than 33%).

The thing that struck me in this article, other than 40% are not measuring ROI at all, was not so much that these are the wrong metrics, but that these metrics (except for maybe purchase) are actually only part of a solution to broader challenges. However in discussing ROI, marketers often fail to link these metrics back to their business objectives, and are in turn forcing them to stand alone without context for measurement.

Do you need to create greater brand awareness? Is yours a premium priced product in an inelastic commodity category? Are you facing better resourced competitors?  The potential challenges facing brand growth are as endless as they are diverse, but I can definitively say that the end solution to any of these challenges is not to get more Facebook “likes” or Twitter followers.

If your objective is to get 100 or 100 Million followers but you are not tying that back to how it solves for your brand challenges, then you are only looking at half of the puzzle, that is to say, you are not answering the real question of; “Once I have this community, what would I like them to do for me and what will I provide in return for that ask?” The answer to the first part of that question is your objective to measure against and the answer to the latter part is your strategy to achieve it.

Followers, time spent or any of the myriad digital metrics are merely just a means to a greater end, and if you look at them in isolation to that end, you are essentially just staring at Plato’s shadows on the cave’s wall. You have to make your metrics tie.

The Misguided Rationale Behind Facebook "Likes"

The Need For A Paradigm Shift In Your Marketing Approach
If you follow Social Media and the conversations around it you will hear a common refrain that many, even most, brands/businesses are doing social media incorrectly. I believe there is a lot of truth in that statement and I think the underlying reason for that truth is that social media, really all digital media, requires a paradigm shift in the thinking behind how to build a brand vs. how marketers have traditionally used media vehicles to do so.

Since ages past the basic premise of marketing, in simplified terms, has been: define your target consumer, identify the media vehicles that consumer uses and craft your brand message so that it interrupts the content on those media vehicles and thus “reaches” your consumer. Over time as the types of available media expanded, the concept of “surrounding” your target consumer with your message, or of delivering an integrated message across different media types emerged, but the basic premise of reach and interruption remained unchanged.

The challenge with social and digital media is that the concepts of “reach” and “interruption” no longer hold true in the same manner as they do with more traditional media forms. The reason being is that in digital formats the consumer has infinitely more control over whether or not they wish to see your message. Yet many marketers still approach social and digital media through the same lens as they approach traditional media. They have not made the paradigm shift in thinking from reach based messaging to messaging that adds value to a community, which is what is required for effective digital programming. Facebook provides a convenient example to this point.

Facebook Example Of The Misguided Quest For Likes
In my experience most marketers approach their Facebook programming with the goal of gaining “likes”. Although “likes” can be a reasonable metric, unfortunately the motive behind acquiring “likes” is often to create as large a fan base as possible to deliver your marketing message to, or put another way, to create a large consumer population that you can easily reach with your ad message.

That rationale basically applies a traditional “reach” based approach to a social channel. However, the goal of putting your message in front of as many people as possible is not social, it is self serving, and doesn’t necessarily work in social channels.

Instead of thinking about how to acquire likes and thus expand your potential “reach”, you should be thinking about how you can develop something that people will want to discuss and share. The latter is a fundamentally different approach and necessitates the assumption that people are not automatically going to like your brand or message simply because you are on Facebook and saying something. Rather it requires you to think about how to earn their likes by creating content that provides genuine value to the people you want to follow your brand.

This thinking holds true for all types of social media vehicles, not just Facebook. Beyond evolving their approach to digital/social channels, marketers will also benefit from correctly defining their goals & adapting their message to the medium, both of which I will explore in future posts.

The Social Media Conundrum

I just finished reading the Forbes article - Marketers Have It Wrong: Forget Engagement, Consumers Want Simplicity, and in the article the author makes the argument that marketers are:

"...trying too hard to engage with consumers via social media, marketers are generally pushing out too much information, causing people to over-think purchase decisions and making them more likely to change their minds about a product"

The author also uses statistics to show there is a disparity between what marketers believe consumers want out of brands in social channels (to be part of a community) and what consumers actually want (to get discounts). 

This speaks to a point I made in an earlier blog post, The Danger In Forming Brand Relationships, that the relationship consumers want with a brand is based on three basic premises:

1.      Provide me a quality product that meets the need it promises to meet

2.      Provide it at a price that is competitive

3.      In some instances provide me with a self-image boost derived from the cache the brand provides

The challenge I have with the author is in his dispute of a popular marketing theory that the best way to engage people is via social media. My challenge is not so much with the dispute itself, as I do think there are other, non-social media tactics that are incredibly powerful in engaging people. Instead my dispute is with the fact that in providing a solution to the overly complex, message inundated dynamic that the author says marketers are creating, two of the three tactics he lists as solutions are social media tactics.

How can social media be both, not the most useful tactic to engage people with, and two-parts of the solution of how to better engage consumers?

The author's point of view highlights what I think is a common issue in social media; that many marketers and people in business have a only a surface level understanding of the depth of social media and how it should best be navigated. This in turns leads us to three errors:

1.      Marketers enter social channels with the wrong assumptions of what consumers want - e.g. They see people forming relationships with like-minded communities and assume that in turn those people want to form similar relationships with their brands

·      Dave Trott calls this phenomenon a Category Error and you can read his deeply insightful post about it here

2.      Marketers often view these communities as a way to deliver a message vs. a way to add value to them

3.      Marketers often enter social channels simply because they don't want to be left out vs. identifying the business goals they think social media will help them to achieve

It is not so much about marketers being wrong in thinking social media is an effective tactic to engage consumers with. Instead it is about marketers making the wrong assumptions about what consumers want from brands in social channels (it is value, and that doesn't necessarily mean discounts). To Mr. Trott's point - as marketers we are making a category error in how we approach social media.

Social Spam Brand Building

Father’s Day recently passed, and similar to what happens during every holiday in our digitally social age, Facebook was alight with posts addressing the festivities and the importance of the day. Alas, not to let an opportunity pass them by, opportunistic brands and marketers everywhere also tried to capitalize on the holiday, like they do every other holiday, by posting calendar-related nonsense, like this example from Old Spice, in the hope that the timely relevance of their post will inspire fans to like or respond in kind, thus sharing the brand’s message with their respective fan bases.

This got me thinking about how brands communicate on Facebook in general, and more specifically, it got me thinking about a problem I have long had with how most brands utilize Facebook to deliver brand messages.

Take this post from Coca-Cola for example. They are not offering anything of value here, either from a content, offer or enhanced experience perspective. Breaking it down to the most base motives, Coca-Cola is essentially delivering a lowest common denominator message to try to exploit their fanbase into propagating their brand. And this is certainly not exclusive to Coca-Cola, it is status quo across most brands utilizing Facebook to engage people.  

Am I crazy or is this approach no different than the spam about purchasing Viagra and cheap prescription pills that we receive in our inboxes daily? Put another way, when savvy brands look to do email based CRM programs they perform rigorous exercises to ensure that the content they provide is valuable, that the frequency of delivery is palatable and that people opt-in to receive their messages so the brands are not providing them with messages that they don’t want. Why should Facebook or social media be any different? Would you send an email to your opt-in database about broadswords & mobile phone cases and with no other content of value whatsoever?  

I realize that email and social media don’t make for such direct comparisons as illustrated above, but I can’t help but feel that in the digital social space many brands are taking advantage of the connections they have built with people. I also realize that when brands first started popping up on Facebook there may have been a novelty to interacting with a brand or having a brand comment on a post. However I have to believe, now that brands have more or less saturated the space, that people don’t really care when a brand asks them what their favorite color is, nor do they believe that the brand cares about their answer.

To that point, I am linked to a number of brands on Facebook for professional tracking purposes, one of which happens to be Old Spice, and when Old Spice’s randomly comical posts like, “Is your mind currently generating mastodon steak recipes while your body is rescuing a baby panda from a pack of angry cougars?” first started appearing in my newsfeed, I admit I found them entertaining. However, after a few weeks they quickly lost their novelty and began to annoy me in their frequency and repetitiveness.  A sprinkling of these posts within the larger context of content with actual value I might have been able to handle, but in the absence of that content it simply grew old quickly.

Am I alone in this thinking? Am I giving people too much credit in what they should expect out of brands in social media? Am I being too idealistic in how I think a brand should activate on Facebook and other social channels, which is to say, to provide content of value, however that may be defined by the specific brand in question?

There are definitely brands out there that are doing just that, and doing it well, unfortunately most are focused on lowest common denominator nonsense. And to their credit, Coca-Cola is actually creating deeper based content which they share off of their Facebook page, such as this and this. Which in turn begs the question - is it worth it?

I truly believe that it is, yet still I question whether that is correct. This is something I will continue to explore in this blog.

Use Protection: The Hidden Danger Behind Brand Relationships

I recently read an AdWeek article written by the Ad Contrarian which basically stated that the prevailing dogma around digital and social media providing an opportunity to finally meet the unfulfilled desire of people to form relationships with brands is bullshit.

I have high regard for the Ad Contrarian and I believe that If you had to read only one industry blog it should be the Ad Contrarian blog, as it is one of the most insightful commentaries on the business of marketing and advertising, period. I also generally agree with the article’s point of view. However I do believe, as is the nature of the Ad Contrarian (and honestly part of what makes the blog great), that the relationship dynamic depicted in the article was painted a bit too black & white.

And now my shades of grey...

I do think the notion that people have an overwhelming pent up need to form deep relationships with their denture cream and throat lozenges is completely ludicrous. That being said, we also have to acknowledge that the advent of digital media has altered the way in which people  interact with advertising, in that, interruption based messages (e.g. a TV commercial) now have a harder time breaking through than they did prior to the evolution of the digital space. This dynamic is particularly accentuated in environments that have only ever existed in a digital form (e.g. online), which is why banner ads are, in most cases, completely useless.  

The main driver behind this circumstance is the simple fact that digital platforms; whether they are computers, TiVo, tablets, Digital Video Recorders, etc., allow a greater ability for people to control whether or not they see advertising messages, and given that choice, most naturally opt not to. In order to counter this dynamic marketers are attempting to integrate their advertising into people’s media consumption in a way that compliments vs. interrupts the experience, and unfortunately in doing so, have created this distortion that people want to form relationships with brands the way they do with other human beings.  

There is a relationship people want with brands and its parameters are simple:

1. Provide me a quality product that meets the need it promises to meet (this includes appropriate levels of customer service based on the complexity of the product and/or category)
2. Provide it at a price that is competitive
3. In some instances, again depending on the product and/or category, provide me with a self-image boost derived from the cache the brand provides

For those two to three things, I the consumer will provide you with a limited amount of loyalty until you screw up.

That is it. What vehicles you use to communicate your part of the relationship does not change the parameters of the relationship, it merely changes the parameters of the communication. I will further extrapolate on this point in another post titled “The Stupid Shit Brands Do On Facebook”