Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

Glee celebrates it.  Austin wants to stay that way.  Apple embraces it.  But what can marketers learn from being different or even a little weird?

In this brief TED talk, Derek Sivers explores how weird can just be the existence of the opposite of what you’re expecting, given your past experience and circumstance.

I left this talk wanting more, more, MORE!

There are in fact several lessons to be learned from being outside the mainstream, and being willing to embrace the weirdness within and without you.

1. There is Purpose. There is a fearlessness in being exactly who you are when there seems to be no one else even remotely similar.  There’s a reason why ‘blue oceans’ exist, and it has to do with the pack mentality that most business unfortunately operates under.  Where most see a ‘blank space’ as no opportunity, some see no competition.  But knowing that a specific uncharted territory is your destiny requires a deep-rooted knowledge and belief in what your purpose is, and a comittment to seeing that purpose through.  It’s a kind of belief in yourself, your co-workers and your product/service that can guide all that you do - your North Star.  Because Weird knows where it’s going.  Weird doesn’t look over its shoulder.  Weird looks straight ahead.
2. There is Differentiation.  Nothing sets you apart like a viewpoint or look or functionality that shows that you have a completely different approach to solving a problem.  This is an important place where retro parts ways with weird - because a retro feel is also ‘against the grain’, but it tends to stay in line with pre-established aesthetics, which can allow lots of different brands to try to tap into its energy.  But Weird can never be mistaken for another Brand.  It makes its own sauce, and always has distinctive flavor.  Copycats have no power over Weird.
3. There is Freshness.  A viewpoint that is not apparent to everyone at first glance that can break through established patterns.  You may have to come at a problem or customer or shopper situation from an angle that you haven’t thought of before.  You may even have to dismiss some established beliefs about what types of solutions may exist.  In the end, you may need to explain a bit just why you chose to make some decisions that you did.  And those decisions may make the final product or experience something that makes you stop and think, because it’s not using the same old same old shorthand for looking at the world that everyone else is using.  And that’s a good thing for Weird.  Because Weird wants you to listen - to try to understand.  Weird wants to bring you along for its strange ride and come to embrace it.  Because Weird is not following a trend - it’s creating one.  Do you want to join?
4. There is Vision.  In order to showcase your weirdness, you must convince others that you have the right idea and perspective.  And this persuasion only comes with a vision of the world or market that you can share with others in a way that they can come to embrace.  This is where it gets tricky for most creatives and marketers, as they think all they need is a bizarre approach or tagline, but they neglect to discover and preach the strange logic that makes your weird approach the right one.  Weird isn’t doing anything the wrong way.  It’s doing it the right way in a wrong world.

What weirdness can you bring to bear to change your perspective on your market, product, service or customer experience?

I’m thinking of having a Weird Summit.  Anybody interested in speaking at it?

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The interwebs have been full of eulogies and tributes to Steve Jobs - but some of my favorite articles have been the ones that talk about what people learned from the man behind the Apple.  Because you don’t have to like or own his products to see and respect the many lessons he learned and principles he lived by.

My favorite (and I realize that this might look like an odd choice) was this: 10 Lessons The Restaurant Industry Can Learn From Steve Jobs.

Ok - I know - I’m not in the restaurant industry, and probably never will be, but you can’t tell me that these don’t apply to your everyday work and couldn’t make things better for everyone.

The customer-user experience trumps everything else

Keep the brand simple and contemporary

Get inspired by the small things

No man or woman is an island

And list goes on and on…

It’s sad to have such an innovative leader pass away young, but it may be a comfort to some that he leaves a legacy of powerful business practices we can all learn from.

Photo: Zimbio

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Recently Netflix in the US changed how their business model works, and in the aftermath they have experienced a steady stream of abuse in the media (here, here, here, and you get the idea), and significant losses in share price. The noise is mainly the sucking sound made by tribes of angry subscribers leaving after price hikes and planned changes to the service (including splitting the service into two separate companies).

What’s interesting about all the hullabaloo, is that some very real principles about what customer service has become are starting to be codified, using the company’s missteps as object lessons of what not to do.

1. Get inside your customer’s heads when it comes to value. You have to do your homework to understand how the price-value equation works for your customers.  Just because there is a way for your planned changes to drop the price for one element of your service, doesn’t mean that your customers view your service that way. It’s like the opposite of how bundling works - you can charge more for bundled services as long as the customer sees a discount hiding in there.  By unbundling their products, NF gave their customers the reverse stress of seeing a full-price paid for each service, rather than a deal.

2. Realize that your best customers don’t care about your business model. It may be obvious to you why you’re making changes to your service or structure, but keep in mind that users see you (hopefully) as a solution to a problem that they have, not an enterprise with a long-range plan.  If you simply have to make a change, then be prepared to show the users how it benefits them directly, not just why it’s good for you.

3. Don’t underestimate the need for continuity amongst your users. Understand that if you’ve done your job right, then your customers feel that THEY own your brand, not the other way around.  There are so many great examples of how angry people can get in this regard: Gap’s logo gaffe, recent Facebook changes, and the list goes on and on.  It’s not that you can’t ever change things successfully, but you have to be sensitive to how it impacts your user community.

4. If (or more likely, _when_) you have to apologize, make sure that you sound humble. It can be grating to read an apology that reads defensive and seems to imply that the reader doesn’t ‘get it’.  Try to sound more like you’ve learned something, rather than you’ve been misunderstood.

Have you learned any other painful nuggets of wisdom regarding customer service for your product or service?

Photo: David Armano, on Flickr

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Sometimes a technical, abstract product benefit is just the thing you need to force you to deliver a creative, fun promotion.  Nice job, here, by Volkswagen:

Via Peter Kirsch via Digital Amazingness

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Check out this lovely TED Talk Julian Treasure on 5 ways to listen better.  It’s much more than just a typical “You should listen actively”-type talk.  It’s more about how we develop real understanding with each other and the world around us.

He discusses the lack of listening skills that have plagued humankind, practically from the invention of writing, and also talks about some pretty magical ways to listen better in your everyday life.  I was reminded of the You Are Listening To Los Angeles site we featured here a while ago.

Julian talks about listening positions, which planners should be well acquainted with, where you shift the attitude of what you’re listening to or the filters you’re receiving the information through from active to passive, from being critical to being empathic, from in or out of your cultural norms.  It’s a great technique to get conscious about the filters and ‘move to different positions’, i.e., develop your understanding of the topic or conversation in different ways.

What caught my attention, however, was the section where he talks about listening for leaders, teachers, spouses, parents or friends.  He uses “Rasa”, the sanskrit word for essence or juice, as an acronym for:

Receive - pay attention

Appreciate - show that you are engaged

Summarize - make sure you understood

Ask - expand your knowledge

I would change the last one to Ask/Act - and encourage marketers to examine their actions and activities to see if they are following through to truly expand knowledge together.

Are you consciously embracing listening?  Are your actions full of Rasa?

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I call it Cellular Pausely: That thing where you are having a lovely conversation and then everyone takes out their phones and stops talking to each other.

How often has this happened to you?  How often have you done it?  Do the alerts, flashing lights and vibrations of our phones create irresistible an Pavlovian response to get connected with our virtual lives, even while we are standing or sitting next to perfectly available humans?

photo via: only can die once

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Here’s a fascinating example of building demand for your future consumers through play - the Toyota Backseat Driver.  It’s a smartphone application that allows you to drive a virtual car while riding in a real car - and the virtual ride is linked by GPS to your actual driving route, including the passing of virtual landmarks.  Playing the game earns you points to customize your virtual car.

It’s some fun creative work from Party in Japan

Via Japan Trends/C Scout

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Beautifully done.  Create and explore a virtual archive of your social life.

A wonderfully crafted, rich experience - but I wish you could have a little more control over the navigation.

Via Adverblog

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With a great example of showing that you care about the passions of your customers - Friskies created three branded HTML 5 / CSS3 games for tablet devices, that generate “cat-gagement” by awakening the natural instincts of cats to react to movement.

It’s not the only example out there, and some may say that the branding is a little off, but my cat had a great time going fishing.

Via Digital Buzz Blog

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I recently had the pleasure of being a panelist at Kellstadt Marketing Group’s 2011 symposium: Click: Emerging Media and the Empowered Consumer. My panel covered Business Intelligence, and how managers can get CRM working in their enterprise. One of the questions the audience put forward was about how to start, and what to expect as you start to bring actionable data in.

In our discussion we compared the stages of the enterprise to the evolution of a new country or civilization - where some brave souls have to enter the wild frontier, and establish outposts to grow from. As cities develop and expand, the industry and economy evolve into new and more powerful forms, eventually becoming information-based.

The first stage is The Frontier - a scary wilderness where the enterprise functions without any structured data at all.  Some businesses have huge areas of activity that don’t collect or manage any data at all. Up until recently, many consumer packaged goods manufacturers were in this phase.  Just like the frontiers of old, this creates vast unknown areas, brimming with opportunity and ready for exploration. And it only takes one brave soul (or a group of them) to get to the next step.

Colonization - the stage where companies start to use data to make suggestions to users, or personalize experiences.  Companies in this stage are testing the waters, so just like the first colonies, there are only a few outposts - not a real support network. They are looking to provide a solid case before investing any real infrastructure money. That said, if you’re in this situation, then make sure that your operation is properly set up to prove ROI, because your ’supply ships’ will stop coming if you can’t prove that using data is a winning proposition. Many services companies get caught in this phase, with their management waiting to see proof that it makes sense to invest in anything more than a basic customer database. Once a case is made and accepted by management, then expansion into the next phase is possible.

Industrial Revolution - the stage where things start getting automated at scale. More and more of the company becomes dedicated to getting customer personal and behavioral data pulled into the stream, and infrastructure gets built on a massive scale to expand the reach of data both in the company and out to users. Some banks are good examples of this kind of enterprise - with each product group in the company depending on their customer data to excel, but tending to work in silos, without a centralized view of the customer. Just like in the actual industrial revolution, there are stories of both winners and losers. Some companies will not adjust fast enough. Some areas of the company will hang onto ‘how things were done in the past’.  Winners get to move to the next step, which is also a revolution.

Information Revolution - this is where data becomes so central to how the business operates, that the company can say that information drives the business forward.  In this economy, if you’re out of the data stream, you’re out of the picture. Due to technology advances in handling large structured and unstructured data sets, massive amounts of internal and external data get joined together to predict behavior, needs and barriers. Models are built to ensure correct customer handling, even with imperfect data, and the enterprise continues to search for what new metadata could be added to make better decisions and offers. Things change quickly in this economy (five years ago who would have predicted that social media would need to be tracked in consumer databases?), and companies like Amazon and Netflix are good examples of leaders that know that continual reinvention and innovation is crucial in order to stay ahead.

With this path to sophistication in mind, we can recommend some steps to get you from where you are to the next level in these Evolutionary Stages:

1. Know where you are. You have to be honest about ‘Where you stand Evolutionarily’.  And there are likely to be multiple, conflicting opinions in the company about how data is used. Talk to stakeholders, and avoid proclamations too early in the process. It will take time and persistence to develop a clear picture that everyone can accept.

2. Start at the top. Does your CEO know where the company stands? Does he or she agree that data can help the company evolve?  Educate through examples - showing how adding data into company operations can avoid costly mistakes, angry customers, and ineffective campaigns.

3. Make the case to evolve. Investment in infrastructure and process change must be earned. If tests and pilots are not planned to give evidence of ROI, then all the logic in the world won’t convince management to take action on data, so keep the end in mind when agreeing to how experiments will be structured, run, and measured.

4. Think big, but start small. Develop a vision of how your company could be operating if you had perfect knowledge of your consumer, and use this to guide an long-range plan. But since you know you can’t get there overnight, keep the steps in the plan small and manageable. Many successful companies value failures for what you can learn, but it’s also true that a CEO’s favorite ‘learning’ project is small, fails quickly, and delivers information that lasts.

So, are you an Information Revolution company? How are you planning to get there (or stay there)?

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