lead/marke | ralf schwartz

[L/M NET] Tim Kastelle "Answer Four Questions to Improve Innovation"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

There are obstacle to innovation everywhere. Risk aversion, lack of resources, lack of enthusiasm, not enough time, not enough ideas, too many ideas – the list is potentially endless.

You can help your organisation be more innovative right now (today!) by answering these four questions:

1. What is one idea that I can execute right now to make things work better? We often mistake generating ideas for innovating. But to innovate, you have to execute new ideas that create value. One way to create value is to improve your processes. I’ll be you have plenty of ideas about how you could make things work better. So execute one of them right now.

   Then do the same thing tomorrow.

   By getting into the habit of executing ideas you can get over one of the biggest innovation obstacles. Not all of them work, but the net value of a great idea is zero. It’s only be testing them out that you find the value in your ideas.

2. What would I do differently if everyone reporting to me was a volunteer? When you answer this question, you start identifying obstacles for your team. And you shift from a directive approach to a supporting one. This usually leads to better innovation.

   Identifying these obstacles might give you some really good ideas for your answer to question number 1 too.

3. If we were starting our business right now, would we do it this way? If you were starting a brand-new newspaper right now, would you invest millions of dollars into an editorial system that prevents you from easily sharing stories between print and digital outlets?

   Probably not.

   And yet, most big newspapers have systems that do exactly that.

   The problem is, their new competitors don’t have these. The new news organisations and those of the future won’t have to deal with this obstacle.

   Answering this question will help you identify the structural and processual obstacles that your firm faces. And it will give you some ideas about potential business model innovations.

4. Who can I connect with to generate some interesting new ideas? Most great ideas come from the intersection between two different bodies of knowledge. You may know your field extremely well. So who can you connect with that has a completely different body of knowledge?

   Think of someone, and connect up. Send them an email, or a tweet. Invite them for a coffee.

   One way or another, make a new connection.

Innovation requires the execution of ideas. By answering these questions, you generate new ideas. By acting on these new ideas, you can get into the habit of innovating.

It may be that none of these questions trigger huge game-changing innovations.

But then, you won’t know that until you test them out, will you?

 

(ralf says: Good questions! To illustrate the first one a little bit more, I linked a post I wrote in Jan, 2011: Doing Things Right for the First Time.)

Tim is a lecturer at The University of Queensland Business School. He researches, writes, teaches and consults on topics relating to effective innovation management, with an emphasis on studying innovation networks. He blogs at The Innovation Leadership Network. Twitter: @timkastelle

[L/M NET] Drew Neisser: Brands Need An Alternative to Facebook

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

While the rest of the industry hailed the announcement of Facebook Timeline as a great leap forward, I can’t help but wonder if Zuckerberg & Co. have pulled a fast one on brands and their fans.  In the pre-Timeline days, brands might have felt they actually owned their fans or at least had some control over the relationship.  In the post-Timeline era, it is now clear that Facebook owns these fans and brands can rent them if they want to pay for them.  And while I have no problem with Facebook “monetizing” its network, after all it needs to make the post-IPO math work, it still seems a little shocking that brands have so little control on their part in the social network.

You have 5 more days to become a visual storyteller
Pithy posts may have carried the day on the old Facebook, but Timeline puts a particular premium on images and videos. Not only is there an enlarged photo “cover” on the landing page, but photo albums are featured more prominently. Brands can also “star” images, allowing them to expand across an entire page. And while all of these changes should increase engagement, brands without an arsenal of images will need to assemble one mighty quick. (Ready or not, Facebook will convert all brands to Timeline on March 30th, 2012)

Fan acquisition costs are rising
One of the beauties of the old Facebook was that any brand could build up a following at little to no out-of-pocket expense.  Add some compelling content, throw up a “fan gate,” and you could watch those Likes rise like the national debt.  With Timeline, Facebook seems to favor paying advertisers at every turn. Sure – “fan gates” are back as of late last week after Facebook fixed a technical problem, but you can only drive traffic directly to these pages if you pay to do so or link to them via a post.  Otherwise, the default landing page is your Timeline home page and the fan gate will be on one of your secondary “tabs.”

Fan engagement costs are rising too
Prior to Timeline, brand communications were filtered through Facebook’s mysterious algorithm to an unknown subset of fans. Well, that mystery is no more. Facebook announced that marketers will be able to reach only 16% of their fan base for free. If you want to reach more fans, you’ll need to pay to do so via the “reach generator,” which enriches Facebook but not necessarily the brands that support it. A number of brands have already seen their engagement rates drop substantially after making the switch to Timeline.

If you don’t have a history, you have a few days to make one up
For illustrious brands like the New York Times and Coca-Cola with long and well-chronicled histories, Timeline is a dream come true. These brands can now publish “milestones” as far back as they want, adding a rich texture to their Facebook presence. For new and younger brands, Timeline will take a lot more creativity. Perhaps these folks will hearken back not just to the inception of the business idea, but to the conception of the founders themselves!

Pin your hopes on the weekly pinned post
With the cover photo now taking up so much prime-time real estate, much of a brand’s content will now fall below the typical screen viewing area. To help address this, brands will now be able to “pin” one particular post to the mid-left side for an entire week. Deciding what to pin will become a weekly ritual — but one that perhaps belabors a minor issue, since so few people actually return to a fan page after their first visit.

Engage - or else everyone will know you’re not
Facebook is so serious about pushing brands to become engaging storytellers that they will now make it easier for everyone to see how you’re doing. A quick click on the Likes box just below the cover photo reveals not just the number of Likes and “people talking about this” but also the most popular week, most popular city and most popular age group. A nifty little graph tracks new Likes and “people talking about this,” accenting the probable correlation between engaging content and fan growth.

The good news: managing complaints just got a lot easier
Most brands will welcome the fact that Timeline includes an optional Message tab that allows consumers to contact them directly and privately rather than just post a complaint publicly. In theory, this will help weed out the whiners who broadcast their complaints from those genuinely seeking immediate assistance. Taking unpleasant conversations “offline” is a customer service department dream come true – and should hasten the integration of social and service-related activities.  (It also appears that brands can avoid unpleasant posts altogether but electing to approve them in advance.  This sounds good but could lead to complaints escalating in other venues so brands will want to try to be as transparent as possible dealing with complaints.)

Bottom line: it’s time to develop a Plan B
Time will tell whether the new Timeline actually improves a brand’s ability to engage with its fans via Facebook. What we do know is that the cost of engagement with all your fans just went up, and that Facebook will not hesitate to impose its will upon your efforts. So while few brands can afford to be without a Facebook presence, given how much time consumers spend there, this is as good a time as any to start thinking about how you can engage YOUR fans in other less dictatorial arenas.

FYI, Renegade converted to Timeline two weeks ago.  The process is relatively easy although digging up all the old content to fill in timeline is indeed time consuming.  If you have yet to make this conversion for your company, Facebook will do it for you on March 30th!

Drew is the CEO of Renegade, the digital & guerrilla marketing agency from New York City that helps clients make more out of less by transforming communications into "Marketing as Service." Twitter: @DrewNeisser

[L/M NET] Tim Kastelle > "The Best Social Media Strategy of All Time!"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

I constantly run across blog posts, emails, and spam comments on the blog that promise to tell you the perfect strategy for getting a higher PageRank for your website, or more twitter followers, or a higher Klout score.

And the problem with all of these strategies is that they are faulty. They might results in a higher PageRank, or more twitter followers, or a higher Klout score, but they don’t have any effect at all on what really matters: impact.

And the fact that these “strategies” don’t change your impact is a big problem.

But unlike all of these scam artists, I actually do have the best social media strategy of all time. And because I’m a nice guy, I’m doing to give it to you for free.

Ready?

Here it is:

Do awesome work.

If you do awesome work, it doesn’t matter what keywords you use in the meta tags. People will respond to it.

If you do awesome work, it doesn’t matter what time you tweet about it. People will find it.

Here are the principles of the Do Awesome Work strategy:

• There are no shortcuts. There. Are. No. Shortcuts. If you get twitter followers by following a bunch of random people so that they’ll follow you back, it doesn’t help you spread your ideas, because they don’t care about your ideas. I can’t say this enough – there are no shortcuts.
• You have to do the work. Don’t follow your dreams, follow your effort. All genuine social media success is built on actually putting in the hard work.
• Social media success without awesome work is a pyrrhic victory. Let’s say you do manage to get thousands of twitter followers and a high PageRank, and tons of people go to your site, only to find that the content sucks. Then what? Have you actually gained anything? No.

  You are much better off with a modest number of followers and so-so search results, but with great content. Because then people will engage with it, and you will have impact – and that’s what really matters.

Why can I give this idea away for free? Because the simple fact of the matter is that most people aren’t willing to put in the effort – they want the shortcut.

And that doesn’t do any of us any good.

I want you to do awesome work. Because then I can read it, and be inspired. And I can think about it, and build on it. And if we’re lucky, maybe we can do some awesome work together

So please, follow the best social media strategy of all time:

Do awesome work.

(ralf says:
Do Start Today!)
 

Tim is a lecturer at The University of Queensland Business School. He researches, writes, teaches and consults on topics relating to effective innovation management, with an emphasis on studying innovation networks. He blogs at The Innovation Leadership Network. Twitter: @timkastelle

[L/M NET] Tim Kastelle: "Your Customer Isn’t 'Everyone' - Seven Innovation Thoughts Triggered by Peter Drucker"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

Of all the management writers I’ve read, Peter Drucker probably generates more interesting quotes per page than anyone. Tom Peters and Joseph Schumpeter come close too. Here are six thoughts triggered by reading his book Management Challenges for the 21st Century:

1. "And yet very few institutions know anything about the noncustomers—very few of them even know that they exist, let alone know who they are. And even fewer know why they are not customers. Yet it is with the noncustomers that changes always start."

   Drucker is making a slightly different point here – that we need to look outside of our normal networks to innovate. True. But also, your customer isn’t “everyone.” Even Coke has more noncustomers than customers in the world. A big part of strategy is making the choice of who your customer will be. This choice is based on value, however:

2. "The starting point has to be what customers consider value. The starting point has to be the assumption—an assumption amply proven by all our experience—that the customer never buys what the supplier sells. What is value to the customer is always something quite different from what is value or quality to the supplier. This applies as much to a business as to a university or to a hospital."

   Innovators often don’t know what their idea is for. This is a strong argument for two things: empathy and experiments.

3. "Everything improved or new needs therefore first to be tested on a small scale, that is, it needs to be PILOTED. The way to do this is to find somebody within the enterprise who really wants the new. As said before, everything new gets into trouble. And then it needs a champion. It needs somebody who says: “I am going to make this succeed,” and who then goes to work on it. And this person needs to be somebody whom the organization respects. This need not even be somebody within the organization. A good way to pilot a new product or new service is often to find a customer who really wants the new, and who is willing to work with the producer on making truly successful the new product or the new service."

   New ideas need champions. This is a critical part of piloting or prototyping, which in turn drives experimentation. This is one of the best ways to find out what customers actually value – testing.

4. "Every organization operates on a Theory of the Business, that is, a set of assumptions as to what its business is, what its objectives are, how it defines results, who its customers are, what the customers value and pay for. Strategy converts this Theory of the Business into performance."

   Theories of Business need to be tested – this is how to design the experiments. Start with the assumptions in your business model, then test them to see if they are true.

5. "An entrepreneur who does not learn how to manage will not last long. A management that does not learn to innovate will not last long. In fact, … business—and every other organization today—has to be designed for change as the norm and to create change rather than react to it.

   The main reason is that a policy of systematic innovation produces the mindset for an organization to be a change leader. It makes the entire organization see change as an opportunity."

   The consequence of this is that innovation is a process, which can be managed.

6. "The first change policy, therefore, throughout the entire institution, has to be Organized Abandonment. The change leader puts every product, every service, every process, every market, every distribution channel, every customer and end-use, on trial for its life. And it does so on a regular schedule. The question has to be asked—and asked seriously—“If we did not do this already, would we, knowing what we now know, go into it?” If the answer is “no,” the reaction must not be “Let’s make another study.” The reaction must be “What do we do now?” The enterprise is committed to change. It is committed to action."

   If we were starting today, would we do this? This is the blank slate approach described by Jeffrey Phillips, and it is an important tool for evaluating your business model.

7. "To try to make the future is highly risky. It is less risky, however, than not to try to make it. A goodly proportion of those attempting to do what this chapter discusses will surely not succeed. But, predictably, no one else will."

   Or, as Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” You improve your chances of succeeding by systematically looking at the drivers of innovation opportunities.

Here it is in a nutshell: Innovation drives change, and change drives growth. We can’t know in advance what will work, so we need to use experiments to discover what customers value. It’s risky, but less risky than doing nothing.

(ralf says:
How to comment on this? With just another quote!

8. “People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.” - Peter F. Drucker)

Tim is a lecturer at The University of Queensland Business School. He researches, writes, teaches and consults on topics relating to effective innovation management, with an emphasis on studying innovation networks. He blogs at The Innovation Leadership Network. Twitter: @timkastelle

[L/M NET] Helge Tenno > "The next 80% (manuscript to slideshare presentation)"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

The next 80%

View more presentations from Helge Tennø

Intro / gap

- According to Microsoft people have moved on, they have explored and adopted online communication / connected technologies to such a degree that they’re online habits are almost unrecognizable compared to only five years ago.

- Think about that, five years ago most people didn’t know what either Facebook or smartphones were.

- We have to understand that people have an adoption mindset and culture – our history is a history of embracing technology, and then having the technology adapt to us. People have always been on the move, and will continue to do so.

- Contrast this to companies who calculate and protect. Businesses aren’t people, but they have to operate within the same world, they have to understand individuals and apply to their way of thinking and doing. This is where the gap begins, and especially these last five to ten years.

[L/M NET] Tim Kastelle > "Don’t Be First to Market, Be First to Scale"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

Often when people have an idea for a great new product or service, they rush to be first to market with it. We keep hearing about first-mover advantage and how you need it.

The only problem with first-move advantage is that it doesn’t seem to exist. The academic research on the topic shows that there is no such thing.

[L/M NET] Adrian Ho "We Build Modern Brands - Defined By What They Do"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

So Ad Fed have asked me to talk about the evolution of Zeus Jones next week.

While there’s a bunch of things that I could cover, I think the most interesting thing about our evolution is how little resemblance the company of today bears to the company we imagined right up to the day we opened our doors. We weren’t just a bit wrong about things, we were dramatically wrong. In almost all circumstances, our imagination around the specifics of our business was simply more naive and (thankfully) much less interesting than the reality has turned out to be.

[L/M NET] Tim Kastelle > "Eight Business Models, and Why They’re Important"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

The term Business Model is one that gets thrown around a lot these days. Even though it might sound like a buzzword to you, it’s important to understand what a business model is, and how they are useful.

One of the confusing things about the business model concept is that there are a wide variety of models of business models, and it seems as though everyone that talks about them makes up a new one. This can be frustrating if you are trying to figure out how to use the concept.

At their core, all business models address this questions: how do we sustainably deliver value to our customers? In this instance, the sustainable part refers to your organisation – how can you deliver value so that you’re still around in the future?

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > Product Proliferation or "Category Management should include Clarity Management"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

Some brands are line extension machines. To jockey for shelf space, they launch waves of new SKUs each year, often without meaningful differentiation from what is already there.

I’m sure there are category management justifications for every niche item, but most supermarket shelves are cluttered and hard to shop. Does Crest really need 40 varieties of toothpaste? Clutter causes confusion and confusion causes paralysis.

I love the refreshing simplicity of Help Remedies. I first spotted the healthcare brand at Duane Reade a couple years ago. Against the clutter of a typical drugstore aisle, they stand out.

Help’s rally cry campaign is “Take Less”: “Everybody in the drug aisle likes to talk about more, bigger, extra, super, and maximum. But we’re not going to talk about that … Help is a new type of drug company—a drug company that promises you less.”

I’d love to see the “Take Less” philosophy in more categories. Category management should include more clarity management.

As HBS professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter observed, “When everyone else suffers from over-complexity, there is a market for products and services that simplify life.”

(Marketoonist Monday: I’m giving away a signed print of this week’s cartoon. Just share an insightful comment to this week’s post. I’ll pick one comment by 5:00 PST on Tuesday. Thanks!)

After drawing this, I remembered I drew a similar cartoon back in 2003, Flanker Madness. Here’s one from the archives.

(ralf says:
Tom mentioning Crest reminds me of my own tooth paste & brush history at GlaxoSmithKline (I was responsible for media strategy not product strategy).

Flanker sometimes make sense, but to do it right is the most difficult to do. If you do not know the benefits of a brush, or your consumers, and their problems, you will fail.

Exaggerations do not make sense at all - which eventually led to my comparison of the brushes' history with that of sneakers: they grew from the most basic tools to some fashionista's gadgets. But the best were still the plain ones (which in the sneakers case we love as 'retro' or 'originals' today.), I guess. Best in the sense of effectiveness, not sales. The best in the sense of product life cycle and profit contribution. Some of them exist even 15 or 20 years later.

"Take less" is my favorite philosophy.

Tom is cartoonist and founder of Marketoonist, helping organizations communicate with cartoons. He draws from 16yrs of marketing, most recently as Marketing VP at method. He speaks about innovation, creativity, and marketing, using cartoons to visualize. @tomfishburne

[L/M NET] Helge Tenno "Simple (part 2 of The next 80%)

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

The reason large parts of the corporate Internet is boring, difficult and of little direct use / effect is because we are unnecessarily complicating it. The Internet should be one thing: simple.

This is the second part of my presentation The next 80%, find the first part here:
Part 1: Introduction

 

.

Let me demonstrate with a couple of examples how even minute tasks get unnecessarily complicated online.

Example A:
Comoyo is an Internet based content service. The first thing that happens as I fill in the form is that it refuses the password that I use on 95% of all my Internet accounts. Why would you do that? Why would you start of by inviting people to a service they don’t know what is, offer them a log in and the first thing you do is just crash the whole process? If the system is to complex then redesign the system. We are putting to much of the responsibility on to people, instead of IT.

Example B:
This is the beta version of my Internet bank, the picture is from a sneak preview they offered their customers. Now, I have a bank because I need help doing bank-things. Most often (95% of the time) this means checking my account or paying some bills. The best thing the bank can do is offer me a service that makes banking better. But they don’t. Approximately 15% of the interface is spent on banking, the rest of it is navigation, CRM or a media platform that wants to sell me stuff I don’t need. They give me everything except the actual banking service that I should be demanding (people are just to polite and don’t know that their experiences are being robbed online. In the words of Richard Saul Wurman, the creator of TED: “I would have designed a much better Google interface, it’s not difficult.”).

Now, the reason the Internet isn’t simple, is because of technology. We are treating online as something complicated, something that doesn’t work, something we don’t understand. – And my question is: how much do we really need to understand?

Take a look at other pieces of technology: bread, asphalt, language, bicycle, chairs, door knobs. Now do you think about these things as technology? They work and they are, no questions asked. But this is not the case with the Internet, why?

Understanding the nuts and bolts of the Internet is as important to a business as understanding the complexities of the mechanics that goes on inside the door when we twist the door nob.

Unfortunately the fog of technology diffuses the process of building something meaningful by trivializing the discussions and spending to much time focusing on irrelevant details. When we think of the Internet we are not thinking business models, identity and brand value. We are thinking users (what is a user?), HTML5, responsive design (why would you offer the same service in every situation?), apps or clicks.

The Internet is fascinatingly simple, if we just stop referencing it as technology and start thinking of it as a loaf of bread – because our customers already are.

(ralf says:
All those gurus out there are very deep into the technologies and secrets of the internet. But they cannot transcend the easiest mechanics of it.

To the opposite of my father I never wanted to understand a radio, a television set or loudspeakers. And he was limited by that understanding. He always told me that small speakers cannot - due to the laws of physics - create deep sounds. But they can these days. I showed him. He said: No they can't. They just sound like they can.

We are in the very early stages of the web. We have to get it out of our way. We have to understand that it is not important to understand it. We do not have to understand oxygen to understand that we have to breath. We even do not have to understand that we have to breath. We just do.

We just have to take care of the web's independence, its neutrality, and ubiquity. We must take care that politicians do not sell it to corporations like they did with our water systems and resources ... as simple as that.

The more simple a medium (in McLuhan's sense) is the more precious it will be for us and our future.)

Helge works as a Planner for SDG, helping brands and organizations discover WHY they are valuable in consumers lives, and HOW they can create deliberate value on the arenas and inside the interfaces where they connect with them. Twitter: @congbo

[L/M NET] Drew Neisser “Long-Term Success is Made Up of Short-term Successes”

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

While doing homework for another article, I ran across a recent study by IBM called “From Stretched to Strengthened” that offers insights into the challenges facing CMO’s around the world.  The study is well worth reading, especially if you are a CMO, and stresses a number of important themes including the needs to:

• Deliver value to empowered customers
• Foster lasting connections
• Capture value, measure results

After reading the study, I reached out to IBM with some follow up questions and got in touch with Yuchan Lee, General Manager of IBM’s Enterprise Marketing Management business.  I think you will agree that Mr. Lee has smart things to say about measuring ROI, using social media for research, the importance of having a clear “corporate character” and finally, the need to think long-term when it comes to customer relationship building.

DN: Is ROI the right metric for CMOs or just one of many important metrics? 
It is the most important, as reflected by our CMO Study. Other than a metric based on reflecting customer up-take (e.g., revenue, satisfaction level), which most companies already measure, marketing ROI is essentially the highest level scorecard for an organization’s ability to efficiently and effectively allocate its resource to hit marketing goals.

DN: Why do you think so many CMOs struggle to demonstrate ROI? 
The heart of the challenge is the nature to which marketing activities influence buying behavior, and how behavior manifest itself over time. Measuring ROI in marketing involves sifting through tons of noise in the data to connect all the pieces of evidence that influenced the purchase behavior.  This is an inexact, statistically-based science that, until recently, was too hard to tackle.

DN: Why do you think marketers have been so slow to embrace research via social channels? (i.e. only 14% mine blogs)
Before a company embraces a social channel, it must first believe it has to.  This requires a shift in strategy based on the realization that consumers are more in control and the company is losing its grip on branding.  In my experience, this shift is scary to many companies and many are slow to realize it and to turn this realization into action.  Furthermore, even if one is ready to take action, the newness of engaging social networks makes it challenging to know where to begin.

DN: Why should marketers expand their research horizons beyond traditional channels to things like blogs? 
We believe traditional marketers need to expand not just research but all areas of market and customer engagement as well as demand generation to the social channels.  That’s where the center of influence for purchase decisions is and will continue to be. That’s where detailed, real-time, and unfiltered market feedback data can be best gathered and analyzed, and ultimately where the brand of a company will truly be reflected in the future (if not already!).

DN: What’s in it for the more proactive marketers who are mining new digital data sources? 
Additional data, if incorporated properly, allows a company to know what is relevant to its customers — potentially down to the individual customer level.  We believe the ability of a company to deliver relevant communication in sales/marketing/services is the basic ingredient to a successful customer relationship and a prerequisite to staying in business.

DN: A lot of marketers pay lip-service to their corporate values.  Will developing a clear ‘corporate character’ really deliver competitive advantage? 
Having clarity on a company’s corporate character is a necessary but not sufficient element of success.  It must be followed by execution by the organization, every day, delivering a consistent customer experience that is aligned with the corporate character.  The true reflection of the corporate character will come out quickly, most likely in social media.

DN: Your report emphasizes the need to “foster lasting connections.”  Is this goal in conflict with the typically pressing need to deliver short-term revenue?
No.  In our experience, being relevant and adding value to the customer in every communication and interaction is the common denominator for forging a lasting connection with the customer AND the ability to drive successful short-term revenue.  After all, long-term success is made up of series of short term successes!

(ralf says: What I have to say you'll find there: Marketingleiters eindrucksvolle Bankrotterklärung. In German, sorry.)

Drew is the CEO of Renegade, the digital & guerrilla marketing agency from New York City that helps clients make more out of less by transforming communications into "Marketing as Service." Twitter: @DrewNeisser

[L/M NET] Helge Tenno > "10 Projects Changing/Challenging the Concept of Communication"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

Do we fail to see the extent of what communication is / has become?

Here are 10 projects that should / hopefully would change / broaden our idea of what communication is:

1. The Copenhagen wheel
The Copenhagen wheel is a perfectly designed combination of a lot of separate ideas, that collectively demonstrates the potential in modern communication. It offers both immediate interest and value through personal benefits in the context where it is used, but also ads a layer of communal value – and taking us one step further in creating the connected cities of the future. It’s an exceptionally complicated idea made into something people could understand and want immediately.

2. Life of George
LoG is a small initiative exploring the interface between technology and reality. It has been extremely well concepted and designed. This might not be an eye-opening revolution, but it is a very well thought through commercial mass-produced product. It has been through all the barriers and ended up as something that could easily, and hopefully, be adopted by the mass (iPhone-owning) market.

3. Sniff
Sniff is only a prototype, but demonstrates with beauty the life an inanimate object can have as soon as it takes on some form of well designed behavior. There has been digital technology inside toys for tens and tens of years, but Sniff approaches the idea of what technology is, not what it outputs.

4. Nokia Push Snowboarding
The way the technology has been implemented into the culture of the sport it is trying to augment is the most impressive feet. Nokia and Burton have pushed the snowboarding culture first – and then designed itself to it – which could not be said for a lot of other commercial technology…

5. Nest the learning thermostat
The objects learns by recording our behavior – and calculating something on top of that recording. Objects are still dumb, but in a very intelligent way. The Nest is an example of everyday appliances becoming a second brain, and a demonstration of how digital objects have gone from furniture you hide away in small offices upstairs to objects you display and want to talk about.

6. Up by Jawbone
How does a wristband with no screen and no sound communicate with its carrier? A vibration in itself says nothing, the interesting thing is how we learn what the vibration means in different contexts. This is a perfect example of the rich unexpectedness of communication – the one without the spoken/written language – and how quickly we adopt and learn new forms of communication.

7. Zeebox
Zeebox is one of several new products being launched to augment the TV experience. Behind it lies the concept of increasing the value of something local by connecting it to the rest of the world – through a parallel system. In this case the linear TV experience. Now any idiot could do that, but it is the tools by which they try to achieve the connection which is brilliant. Zeebox is a first generation concept in this arena, but demonstrates the potential of what is to come.

8. Waterpebble
Ideas don’t have to be big and shiny, they can be small and solve minute problems. It’s the aesthetic of the idea that is the important thing: How does the mechanic of such a small thing change the dynamic of something bigger… Now, if they only could connect it to the Internet…

9. The Wattson
The Wattson gives us access to things that previously where invisible and not present in our consciousness. Just because we can’t see things and talk about them doesn’t mean they aren’t important. The Wattson gives us access to a layer of reality that we haven’t been able to see before but which is highly real and important.

10. Nokia kinect
Now the first nine examples have been impressive, most of them include sensors and things which gives us access to a part of reality that we haven’t explored before. But it doesn’t stop with the invisible data… The next generation handsets gives us access to the layer of communication that emerges as objects becomes haptic and kinetic, opening a whole new world of interaction and behavior, through the sensitivity and richness of touch and force.

In conclusion:

“in the future we will communicate with identities, if these are people or objects doesn’t really matter” – 180360720.no

“Our goal is to first connect all the rabbits, and then connect everything else” – Rafi Haladjian

(ralf says:
This just tells me in its own way and means, that we still do not understand the true scope of the web. We still do not understand what we would sacrifice, if we choke the web with obsolete rules and laws and stuff.)

Helge works as a Planner for SDG, helping brands and organizations discover WHY they are valuable in consumers lives, and HOW they can create deliberate value on the arenas and inside the interfaces where they connect with them. Twitter: @congbo

LEGO rules the world ..solves Rubik’s Cube Faster than Human World Record

I WANT A CUBESTORMER II!

 
Via Helge Tenno, member of lead/marke NET.

[L/M NET] Drew Neisser > "Are You Waiting for a Social Media Crisis?"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:

Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

The clock barked 4:30 a.m. Or was it our dog Pinky, whose cries got us out of bed just in time to let the police in. A strange night, indeed, as a deranged neighbor climbed over fences and tried to kick in doors dressed in nothing but his underwear. As New York’s finest took “the loony” away in handcuffs, believe it or not, my wife and I went right back to sleep, knowing all our safeguards had worked. Crisis averted.

The very next day I ran into a seasoned social media executive in a particularly jocular mood. I asked, “Why the smiles?” He explained that an unfavorable video about his company had just gone viral, and now his management would have to take social media a lot more seriously. At that moment I wondered, how many companies are waiting for a social media “break-in” before they install “security?”

[L/M NET] Adrian Ho > "Unplanned"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:

Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

Carlos is a planner in Brazil who has a very cool blog called Unplanned. He’s been collecting advice and interviews from planners all over the world and yesterday, finally, I sent him some of my thoughts. The article is here, but for the anglo-speakers, the question was, what’s your advice for young planners.

As you know, I believe that marketing is about doing things for people rather than saying things to them. A direct implication of this is that marketing ideas are things we do, not things we say.

I also believe that strategy is about deciding what we will do, not deciding what we will say. And this means that our practice of separating strategy and ideas no longer makes sense. It is a relic which holds us back instead of moving us forwards.

I hope the next generation of young planners will work to redefine the output of their agencies rather than simply trying to redefine their role within the agency.

I hope the next generation of young planners will remember that the role of planning is to move the industry forward, which may require leaving planning behind.

Adrian

(ralf says:
Fully acknowledged!

At this very moment we discuss something very similar within the comments of my Nichts ist unmöglich - Wunder dauern etwas länger: Werbung und Realität post (in German)).

Adrian is founding partner of Zeus Jones a branding company believing actions speak louder than words and that modern brands are defined by what they do not what they say. He speaks (and writes) regularly about non-communications based models for marketing & branding. Twitter: @adrianho

[L/M NET] Tim Kastelle > You Have a Choice - Act!

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

There are plenty of excuses for not innovating – for not taking steps to change things. However, if you see a way to make things better and you don’t do anything, then you’re letting your situation control you. If you’re dissatisfied with the situation, you have to change the way you act.

Here is the way that Tom Peters puts it in a post from Innovation Excellence:

I believe there is one and only one source of innovation – pissed off people.

[L/M NET] Helge Tenno > The Carpenter

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

The Carpenter from Dimitris Ladopoulos on Vimeo.

Helge works as a Planner for SDG, helping brands and organizations discover WHY they are valuable in consumers lives, and HOW they can create deliberate value on the arenas and inside the interfaces where they connect with them. Twitter: @congbo

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > 8 Types of Leader

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

[L/M NET] Helge Tenno > The Game Changer: Presence & Proof

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

What we have done up till now is limit our thinking of what online can do based on a narrow view of what marketing can do. But what happens when marketing changes?

Traditional advertising and design has one goal: to deliver a promise, either based on what the consumer wants to become, or what the brand wants to become. All traditional marketing, advertising and design is built around this core idea: the transmission of an idea from a sender to a receiver. Inside this mindset digital offers some abilities that are new, and speeds up some abilities that are old. But in essence digital is nothing more than a technological option – a choice between newspaper, billboard, TV, radio or internet ++.

[L/M NET] Adrian Ho > Think(ing) Different.

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

I have a long history with computers. I got a Sinclair Z81 for my birthday one year and the 16K ram pack for my birthday the next. I did maths and computer science at college where we learned Pascal on Vax mini computers. My history with computers became intertwined with my history as a planner when in 1992,  I started working on my first account: AST Research, a now defunct PC manufacturer and shortly afterwards Sun Microsystems, a now defunct workstation/server manufacturer.

In 1996,I started working on Microsoft and the next year Steve Jobs returned to Apple. By then, Apple had ceased to be relevant – our sights were set on companies like Netscape, Sun and Oracle. Along with most others I assumed that it would be too little, too late. And when the “Think Different” advertising launched, my assumption was confirmed.

I remember asking my colleagues, “How can an ad about what you are, a thing that everyone already knows, change what you think about a company?”

In fact, I don’t think it did. It was everything that came after that changed how we think about that ad.

And for me, it was everything that came after that changed how I think about computers, about technology, about advertising and about marketing.

Goodbye Steve.

(ralf says: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." RIP Steve.)

Adrian is founding partner of Zeus Jones a branding company believing actions speak louder than words and that modern brands are defined by what they do not what they say. He speaks (and writes) regularly about non-communications based models for marketing & branding. Twitter: @adrianho