Logic+Emotion

Pepsi: Classically Un-classic.

Pepsi Sent me a care package including cans which included logos which went all the way back to their first one. Of course we all know that a brand isn't a logo—but logos are extensions of a brand. Symbols of what they are.  That said, I think Pepsi should change their logo consistently. If  Coke feels "classic" then Pepsi should be classically un-classic. The opposite of Coke. If Coke is Sinatra then Pepsi is Madonna—It consistently stays in a constant state of reinvention.

Anyway, my 2 cents. What do you think?

Proof of Micro-Interactions

Here's an e-mail I recently got from Mike:

"I am currently in Orlando attending Educause (an education technology show) and decide to try out some of the restaurants up-scale Disney offers at Walt Disney World. Last night I went to their "Flying Fish" restaurant in the Boardwalk area next to Epcot. During the already fantastic meal, the chef came around to all the tables to check in on us and to visit. At one point, he asked if this was my first visit to the Boardwalk and I answered something like "No. we've been here many times but this visit is so much better than the last. That time we got stuck on the Boardwalk in a horrible rain trying to get back to pick up our kids from the Disney Child care facility. We got them, no problem, but along the way I misplaced the cinnamon rolls I had purchased from the bakery as a breakfast treat for the kids for putting up with my wife and I going out to a nice dinner without them. This visit, I might not be with my family, but I sure wasn't going to miss out on the food again!"

He made a joke about me being responsible for bad weather... rain last time and "cold" this time (60 degrees as a high yesterday and the locals were in parkas). Then, he was back to visiting.

About ten minutes later, I was paying the bill and the chef came back with a white paper bag as "a little treat for later." After a "thanks" I headed out. When I got to my hotel, I unwrapped the surprise to find a cinnamon roll and a note: "a little something to warm your morning. Just keep the rain away. -C"

Yes, I know that it was not expensive to have someone add a $4 cinnamon roll to a $80 dinner, but it was done so quickly and with such personalization that I stood stunned thinking about it. Not only was he concerned about my interaction last night, but he made up for my own stupidity a couple of years ago. Disney wasn't even at fault that night... but he tried to correct the wrong in such a classy way.

Will Disney get something out of it? You bet. I'll tell that story as an example of top-notch service whenever I can. I'm sure my wife will be sick of hearing it. I have a talk coming up about changing how a school's Help Desk should refocus their thinking to be an positive service to their constituents. They need to be the folks people want to talk to, not those people have to talk to. This simple Cinnamon Roll story will be at the heart of my example. Many folks will hear how Disney is at the top of my "best service" list.

I'll be back to Disney over and over, but I suspect my Cinnamon Roll will end up being served to hundreds of folks over time who, I hope, will come away with an even more powerful respect and desire for the Disney brand.

I thought you should hear the story. thanks for giving me a framework to tell it to someone who understands the power of a simple action.

Mike"

Do the little things really matter? You tell me.  Thanks Mike for letting me share your tale of a micro-interaction that mattered to you.

The Revolution Will Be Live

At last year's Forrester Forum, we gave a raw, live and unedited look at what goes on behind the scenes at an event like this. This year we'll be doing the same as our "beta cam" has transformed into a "guerrilla cam".  Starting Monday afternoon, we'll be live broadcasting from the Critical Mass booth as well as wherever else there is a wireless internet connection. If you want to tune in and chat, just point your browser here.

The updated mash-up also plugs in some of our POV's and CM's Twitter feed. One fun little feature that we added is a new Flickr set where we will be uploading photos of anyone willing to join our revolution.  All you have to do is place your face in a little cutout that we'll have a the booth and you'll be part of movement.

So why the whole revolution/evolution theme in the first place?  Simple. The theme of this year's forum is staying ahead of evolving consumers. We believe that in order to do this, many large organizations will have to experience an internal cultural revolution themselves—breaking down departmental silos, re-thinking the internal enterprise and evolving their own marketing machines to adapt to a more nimble, environment which can react in real time.  We believe that these internal and external initiatives will provide new insights into the minds and hearts of consumers, but that in order to gain these insights, we'll all have to get used to taking some risks and moving outside of the sterile safety of business as usual.  In other words, we'll have to engage consumers on their turf as well as ours.

That's it in a nutshell. If it sounds like something you are interested in, pay us a visit. The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will be live.

Slide of the Day

From A recent post I wrote on Experience Matters:

I’ve thought about this as well being someone who lives and breaths much of the evolution we see on the Web—there is a real opportunity to become “digital anthropologists“—to gleam insights into the minds of consumers via leveraging social technologies. However, these insights will never be obtained and traditional ROI is allowed to take out the potential before we have a chance to learn something from it, and organizations may have to experience a cultural evolution before things can change.

Accidental Marketers: The Podcast

I recently recorded a fairly interesting podcast—really it's a three way conversation between myself, Gary Cohen and Jay Ehret. In it I elaborate a bit on what I call the "marketing spiral":

"Each time we act as evangelists for products, brands or services—then it becomes less about a purchase at the bottom of the funnel and more about perpetuating a constant state of “loops”.  “Accidental marketers” have always existed, it’s just that the Web has given us more effective ways to influence our own consumer behavior—which makes things a little more challenging for those “professional marketers”.

The podcast can be listened to and downloaded here.

Forrester's Consumer Forum + The Convenience Quotient

Next week I am attending and leading a discussion at The Forrester Consumer Forum. I was able to get a sneak preview of one of the keynotes from James McQuivey, Ph.D. and VP principal analyst at Forrester. The them of the conference is staying ahead of consumers by predicting what the future consumer might look like.  James talk is going to be pretty interesting in part because what he did was look to the past (a great way to predict what might happen in the future) and he identified some data points which ultimately lead to the above Framework which outlines the four universal needs which are unchangeable. They are:

Connection
Uniqueness
Comfort
Variety

James outlined that each of these may play a significant role based on current conditions. So for example, in a recession, comfort may be more important as a need. In boom times, it might be uniqueness that needs to be dialed up. But what I found MOST interesting was the way James describes the idea of convenience:

"People share a set of universal needs – satisfy those needs with convenience and you will win"

This particular statement stood out for me, because I see convenience as an often time overlooked value meaning that you can hit any and all of the above needs, but if you don't make it convenient for consumers, customers, users you'll be less likely to satisfy any of these universal needs. In other words, convenience is not a need itself, but a vehicle to satisfy a need. That's the basis behind "the convenience quotient". James says they will be blowing out this model and testing it over the years.

Anyway, sounds pretty interesting. The Forum will also include the Groundswell Awards which will be live streamed at the Groundswell blog.  We will also be doing some streaming for Critical Mass over at our Always In Beta site which will be re-designed for the event.  Lastly, there will be a major "tweet-tup" happening on Monday night. See details here

If you are going to be at the Forrester Consumer Forum next week, please look me up and say hello. Hope to see you there!

Have We Come Full Circle?

I’ve been listening to the complimentary audio version of Seth Godin’s new book called Tribes and have to say it’s fairly dead on. Except I’d frame it slightly differently. While we may in fact be returning to tribal-like behaviors and looking for “leaders” of these tribes in the process, what we’re really craving is more humanity itself. I see clues of this everywhere, from the direct engagement (people talking to other people) as enabled by Twitter, to Apple’s Genius bar which gives us live, breathing and fairly smart people to help us when a human touch is needed.
Read The full post at Experience Matters

Bridging The Social Divide

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Over the weekend I had a flash of clarity while listening to a podcast from Jeremiah Owyang about companies trying to gain a significant a foothold in "Social Marketing".  There was one particular moment that crystallized things for me.

"Most companies treat social media like interactive marketing which is computer to consumer, social media is people to people"

This is really the core issue and what currently represents a divide between the worlds of interactive marketing, and organizations who choose to participate in social media beyond pushing content. The gap itself is bridged by participation, meaning that a company empowers PEOPLE to engage and interact with other PEOPLE. This means public and private conversations, activity in comments and a commitment to be responsive in real time. This is potentially messy business and requires a long term commitment.   Interactive or digital marketing techniques traditionally do not include this dimension and as outlined in Owyang's podcast the end result often times comes across as traditional marketing using a social channel or worse, can result in a community backlash.

In order to bridge the social divide between interactive marketing and something that looks more genuinely like a commitment to meaningfully participate in networks, it's going to take organizations participation itself. Which means people on the company side getting off the sidelines and getting involved. The great irony of this post is that on the sidebar of this blog it says:

"Logic+Emotion exists at the intersection of business + experience design—where passive consumers become active participants."

I wonder if it's time to swap "passive consumers" for "passive companies".  Maybe it's time for all of us to become active participants?

Innovation vs. Litigation

From my latest contribution to Ad Age/Digital Next:
"There's a growing number of case studies of brands that go beyond putting their ads on social networks and it's becoming increasingly clear that brands that figure out how to engage customers meaningfully through the use of social media can reap rewards, but there is some risk. To help understand that risk you need to truly understand how different social media is compared to something like, say, interactive marketing.

For starters, it's social which means it's people-to-people, not technology-to-people. Secondly, you can't walk away that easily from social initiatives the way you can walk away from that microsite and banner campaign you just launched. (Well, you could -- but I wouldn't recommend it.) And lastly -- and most importantly -- you have to understand that social media as the killer app of our time has one killer feature which is designed to make your legal department cringe. It's called feedback. Even putting a simple video on YouTube means that you are opening yourself up to the opinions of anyone and everyone who has something to say. So what's a business, brand or large organization to do? I have a few suggestions."
Read the full article on Advertising Age

Perception Pyramid

Agency Path To Enlightenment

The Corporate Social Media Curve

Venn Economics

Unconventional Marketing

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As an individual, this blog is one of the most effective manifestations of "marketing" I could have produced for myself.  I have a respectable audience that comes back as opposed to visiting it once, never to return again.  People participate in through comments and the content is distributable.  But imagine if I started it the same way many large organizations launch conventional marketing initiatives. What would that have looked like?

First I would have had to do several hundred pages of strategy documentation, including target audiences, marketing segments, competitive analysis—you name it. Then I would put some concepts together and test them in focus groups to see if representatives in a lab like A, B, or C, better. Next, I would take that feedback, make a few adjustments and plan a multichannel campaign—launching the blog with all sorts of advertising pointing to it. And since I painstakingly outlined the ROI in the in-depth strategy, I'd go about measuring the effectiveness against the ROI that was outlined prior to launch.

Of course, this blog like millions or other forms of "social media" followed a path that looked nothing like that. In fact, it looked much more like the second flow.  Sure, I put some initial thought into it before ever touching a pixel, but once I launched the blog it became a never-ending cycle of content development, template design tweaks, and learning curves based off of what was going on each time I did something.

For example, when I started posting visuals, I would check my stats and could see that people from all sorts of other sites and blogs began referencing them and linking back—so I realized that the visuals were providing something people wanted, and if I wanted to continue to build an audience, this was a good way to do it.  Secondly, I had thought that my primary audience would be designers, when in fact the blog started attracting an eclectic audience of planners, marketers, librarians, even evangelists.  After each cycle of launching content or even functionality in the sidebars, I was learning about who my audience was and why they were coming.  This required me to periodically have more frequent checkpoints of "little strategy" where I would plan the direction of where I wanted to go and make the appropriate adjustments to get there. And it felt less like a straight path and more like a meandering one, because the "focus group" was happening in real time after the initial launch.

I've been thinking about this for a while because after having some exposure to large organizations, it occurred to me that there is a desire to do more "unconventional marketing" but the machine which is in place is actually "conventional"—all the things that have been done in the past. For example, it's common and understandable for the "what's the ROI?" question to be raised during an unconventional marketing initiative, but that question could derail the entire effort before it has a chance to ever get off the ground.  Sometimes the ROI is simply insights and learnings that are gleamed from actually doing the initiative. Other times, the direction of the initiative changes midway through in in unexpected ways that could not have been predicted. Many times for the better—let's not forget that Twitter was never meant to be what it ended up being today.

Speaking from personal experience, I could not have predicted many of the outcomes I have had since launching this blog, but I believe following a much more "unconventional" path is a core reason behind everything that I've learned from it.  For a couple of hundred dollars a year and a lot of dedication and effort it's priceless to me.  And so as I think about how times are becoming more unconventional—with unpredictable financial markets and political change in the air, I can't help but think that it's more important than ever to get serious about what it takes to do these types of initiatives right.  It just doesn't look like conventional marketing—it's different. And unconventional times call for unconventional tactics.

5 Things I learned From Dave Gray

I just wrapped up 2 days at the IDEA conference in Chicago and one of the highlights for me was getting to spend some time with Dave Gray, founder of XPLANE and a wonderful advocate for visual thinking.  One thing you should know about me is that I watch people very carefully and make mental notes about what I can learn about them.  Here are a few things I picked up:

It's The Delivery Stupid
Dave's talk at IDEA was very good—he explored the notion of analog benefits which have not yet translated digitally (for example comparing books and browsers), but aside from an interesting topic, what I noticed most about Dave's talk was that his delivery of it really made it extraordinary.  Dave's spontaneity, conversational style, enegry and  animation were instantly picked up by the audience. They fed off him, and in return he fed of them, and the amount of chatter going on in the back channel served as proof.

Show And Tell
I watched as Dave took notes and drew everything in his notebook. If he wasn't jotting something down as you were talking to him, he was pulling out his notebook to SHOW you something he was either thinking about or start drawing as he discussed something with you. A conversation with Dave was like an exercise in interactive show and tell.

Use What You Got
If Dave didn't have his notebook on him, he'd write something down on his hands and even in one case, his arm.  I watched Dave do this more than once. The true sign of someone who understands improvisation—you use what you have as opposed to trying to create the perfect environment.

Smile
Dave is well over 6'5" and has a deep voice that easily carries. Yet he's not intimidating when he easily could be. Why? Because he's inquisitive and generally smiles a LOT. It's a great quality and instantly disarming.  Watching Dave taught me that you can be smart, talented AND approachable.

Stand Corrected
Smack in the middle of Dave's talk—someone from the audience challenged him on something he had just said.  Dave had invited people to to this at the beginning of his talk and responded by saying "I stand corrected".  By Dave not only inviting the critique and giving it credibility, he was able to quickly move on with out disrupting the flow of his talk. And the audience responded even more positively for it.

So that's what I learned. And if you're open to a tip from your truly, consider this: don't always listen to what people say. Watch what they do—and how they do it. The insights you get from all three are more potent that just one.

People, Places + Events

Just a quick update on some events I'll be a part of over the next few weeks:

IDEA 2008
I'll be kicking off the IDEA conference next Tuesday morning and joining a great roster including Dave Gray, Jesse James Garret, Bill DeRouchey, and Jason Fried among others. IDEA is positioned as follows"

"This conference addresses issues of design for an always-on,     always-connected world. Where "cyberspace" is a     meaningless term because the online and offline worlds     cannot be made distinct. Where physical spaces are so     complex that detailed wayfinding is necessary to navigate     them. Where work processes have become so involved, and     so digitized, that we need new processes to manage those     processes."

Forrester Consumer Forum 2008
I'll be having a conversation at this year's Forrester Forum with Deborah Schultz on the topic of "Return On Insight". Deb has done some interesting work with P&G on their Social Media Lab and we'll be discussing the effect of social media both inside and out of organizations. Here's how we are billing the talk.

"Today’s evolving consumers are sophisticated, informed, fickle, and multifaceted. And they’re just getting started! To stay ahead of the (r)evolution, organizations will need to break down their internal silos and adapt to new ways of connecting, communicating, and listening. As companies toss focus groups aside for other forms of input, “netnography” and communities can yield rich insights that lead to future product and service innovations. But to do this, organizations need to rethink return on investment (ROI) from the ground up to rapidly launch and iterate efforts before they get dismissed. Learn how P&G is getting a “return on insight” through initiatives that will help it connect to the ever-evolving customer.”

WOMMA Summit 2008
I'll be joining a "town hall" style panel at the WOMMA (Word Of Mouth Marketing Association) summit in Las Vegas.

If you are going to any of these events, be sure to look me up!

The 4 Kinds of "Free"

This is an updated to my original post since Chris Anderson added a "4th Free". Actually, the ironic thing about number 4 is that it perfectly captures why I'm doing these visuals in the first place. If Chris uses them, he gets better quality representations of his ideas while my reputation benefits from additional exposure. This is a new kind of currency that we're seeing being used and what fuels it is the accessibility we have to each others through more of an open source way of working.  If Chris chose to write his book in more of a traditional way—people like me wouldn't have known about his need for help or his desire to improve the rough visuals he created.  So, this post is a testament to the "gift economy" which Chris recently added. 

Life In Perpetual Beta

By day Melissa Pierce acts as a creative coach, for entrepreneurs in the Chicago Area.  On the side she's got an interesting project called Life In Perpetual Beta. A few weeks ago, Melissa turned the camera on me and the video above is what resulted. We talked about a few topics including creativity, authenticity, design thinking and personal branding. Other contributers to Melissa's video project have been Dan Pink, author of a Whole New Mind, entrepreneur Gary Veynerchuck, designer Carlos Segura, Jason Fried,  Jim Coudal, Liz Strauss and more. Have a look at the videos. Worth checking out. for sure.