The Empty Whitecoat

New Year's Revolution

Gary Hamel from "Leading the Revolution". One to stick on the cubicle partition for 2004.

Are You a Revolutionary?

All that matters is whether you care enough to start from where you are.

So ask yourself.

Do you care enough about your integrity to speak the truth and challenge the little lies that jeopardise your company’s future?

Do you care enough about the future to argue with precedent and stick a thumb in the eye of tradition?

Do you care enough about your colleagues to help them get off the treadmill of progress?

Do you care so much about the magnificent difference you can make in this world that you’re willing to try and change it with your bare heart?

Do you care enough about finding meaning and significance in the 80 per cent of your life you devote to work that you’re ready to start a movement in your company?

Do you care enough about the creative impulse that resides in every human breast that you’re ready to help everyone be a revolutionary?

Do you care enough about doing something so wonderful and unexpected for customers that you are willing to put your comfy job on your line?

Go ahead, ask yourself, Do you care enough to lead the revolution?

For the first time in history, our heritage is no longer our destiny. Our dreams are no longer fantasies, but possibilities. There isn’t a human being who has lived who wouldn’t want to be alive right now, at this moment so pregnant with promise. Among all your forebears, among the countless generations who had no hope of progress, among all those who were betrayed by promise, you are the one who now stands on the threshold of a new age – the age of revolution. You are blessed beyond belief. Don’t falter. Don’t hesitate. You were given this opportunity for a reason. Find it. Lead the revolution.

The Paradox of Choice: A Scarcity of Certainty

An ironic thanks to Jennifer Rice for adding to my problem of plenitude! She blogs about the new book from Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice, about the staggering array of consumer goods from which we must choose and how consumers "have begun defecting from the culture of shopping, surfeited with information and alienated by what increasingly seems like the mere illusion of choice."

This of course give further support to the argument that we are paralysed by choice, a theme which I recently wrote about in my white paper, "ValuePATCH: A framework for creating positive brand, marketing and customer context"

Whilst it cannot be argued that the explosion of choice has occurred without an accompanying consumer demand for differentiated products and services, the benefits of greater choice are ultimately founded on the continued ease by which people are able to find the most appropriate solution for their individual needs. But in today’s highly cluttered and complex markets, where brands are differentiated in superficial ways that often hide their functional similarity, an excess of choice can become an excessive burden. In many respects, a surplus of choice is creating a scarcity of certainty

Undoubtedly, consumer attitudes to choice and negotiation are still evolving as the world becomes increasingly tailor-made. In the now bygone age of mass-consumption and standardised products, the idea of having more customised choice had a strong appeal. Choice enabled consumers to jump out of the standardised box to become the specifier. In the years ahead though, as mass-customisation becomes a conduit to infinite choice, people will take this for granted. What they will then want is help in knowing how to choose.

One of the core value propositions at the heart of the buyer-centric movement is precisely to help people overcome the burden of choice, by helping them make smarter decisions and to cut through the clutter. Just as business has for decades focused on reducing its own transaction costs through an emphasis on efficiency, optimisation, engineering and incremental improvement, - buyer-centric organisations do precisely the same, but for individual people. They implicitly recognise that our own "go-to-market" costs are increasing as choice proliferates - costs which signal a new opportunity and likelihood for brands to reduce them.. Reducing these go-to-market costs can be achieved with an emphasis on meeting four drivers of future "consumer value" - "value-for-attention", "value-for-time", "value-for-knowledge-access" and the integrating "positive context" or "value-in-my-life" drivers. Collectively, they address the "scarcity of certainty" problem.. More on these value-drivers can be found here. They are also explored in another new publication on this theme, The Ten Demandments by Kelly Mooney..

Marketing's "little innovation boulders" No. 1 - Facial Action Coding System

Here is a great example of a little innovation boulder (see previous blog) as reported in a recent edition of Business 2.0 (subscription req'd). I'll let them describe:

Ever since Columbia University sociologist Robert Merton performed what is considered the forerunner of the modern focus group -- a 1941 interview of radio listeners regarding their views on the U.S. government's morale-boosting shows -- market researchers have suspected that subjects deny, exaggerate, and otherwise misreport their own emotions. Merton himself, in his 1956 book The Focused Interview, warned that societal norms might cause interviewees to "censor their self-reports, denying (sometimes even to themselves) the stirrings of sentiment." He imagined that marketers might one day invent an "introspectometer," but noted that "since no such device exists, the nearest equivalent available is to have each subject act as his own introspectometer."

Sensory Logic is an East Cost scientific market research business that "specializes in the analysis of the psycho-physiological responses of consumers to an organization's products and services." Founded by Dan Hill, it believes it has finally developed something close to the "introspectometer". Based on the Facial Action Coding System developed in the 1970's by US Sociologist Paul Ekman (which classified over 3000 facial muscle movements - the "eyelid tightener" expresses anger, for instance, and the "nasolabial fold deepener" manifests sadness), the system has "proven to be highly accurate". Sensory Logic of course, uses facial expressions to identify and interpret consumer reactions to advertising. (My own facial expression is currently registering "disbelief" and "astonishment" at this claim):

To measure initial gut reactions to a commercial or ad, Sensory Logic first attaches electrodes to the side of a subject's mouth (monitoring the zygomatic muscle, for smiles), above the eyebrow (corrugator muscle, for frowns), and on two fingers (for sweat). Hill says the facial muscle movements reflect appeal, while perspiration translates into what he calls "impact" -- emotional power. Last summer Sensory Logic wired up 40 subjects recruited from a Pittsburgh mall and showed them a Nationwide Insurance TV commercial called "Smashworld," which depicted a parallel universe with no insurance -- and streets full of dented cars. When onscreen Nationwide agents saved the day (by processing claims), appeal and impact scores soared (wow! - CL). But when two men had an accident in the final scene -- added for comic relief by Nationwide's ad agency -- appeal tanked. "With this methodology, you really see where audience attitude goes south," says Nationwide market researcher Michelle Tufford. She went instead with a spot that had a happier ending.

After Sensory Logic founder Dan Hill takes the initial readings, he ditches the electrodes and then videotapes the interview with each subject. Later his FACS-trained team reviews the video, second by second, cataloging emotions. Replaying the tape of a young woman who says she's "bored" by one version of Nationwide's logo, Hill points out that her expressions say much more. "Her eyebrows come together in a triangle," he says. "And see that upside-down smile? She's approaching what we call a 'super-sneer.'"

"Super-sneer" indeed. One wonders about the next development in facial expression research. Maybe people sitting at home could volunteer to be wired up for an evening's viewing in front of the TV ads or we even could wear the face connectors whilst out shopping in the mall, helping brands understand people's reactions to the mix of goods on the shelves. Seriously though, there must surely be a limit to depth and scope of understanding this technique brings. It would appear to be a classic "little marketing innovation".

Why doesn't someone think about recording people's overall reaction to growing commercial encroachment of media and ads into our "mental environment". Maybe we could invent a "Super Brand BS Detector", one that records our multiple frustrations, thoughts and experiences with businesses as we go about our daily lives ... Hmm. maybe not ...

Marketing's "little innovation boulders" .. An introduction

Jim Maxmin and Shosanna Zuboff argue in The Support Economy that dominant managerial capitalism has reached the end of its adaptive life. In the failure of the market to meet the needs of a "new society of individuals" shaped by self-determination and unfilled, intangible wants, Maxmin and Zuboff identify a widening chasm between new forms of individual value and values on one side and firm's "consumerist" objectives, behaviour and actions on the other - actions characterised by an "incremental tinkering" of, rather than a radical and discontinuous breakthrough in, the means to identify, create, design and deliver "consumer" value.

Gary Hamel in Leading the Revolution discusses such incrementalism at length, and pinpoints a failure of organisations to ...

build a deep-capability for business concept innovation – a capability that continually spawns new business concepts and dramatically reinvents old ones. … Despite all the pro-innovation rhetoric that one encounters in annual reports and CEO speeches, most still hold the view that innovation is a rather dangerous diversion from the real work of wringing the last ounce of efficiency out of core business processes. Innovation is fine so long as it does not disrupt a company’s finely-honed operating model. … As change becomes ever less predictable, companies will pay an ever-escalating price for their lopsided love of incrementalism.

Using Zuboff & Maxmin's chasm analogy, we can view this adaptive market incrementalism as generating the “innovation scree" that lies deep in the rift between commercial organisations and individuals. In marketing in particular, many new attempts or approaches to identify, predict, understand, reach and respond to the new individual are now being “lobbed off" the side of the chasm by a marketing profession desperately searching for the next breakthrough in efficiency. Unfortunately, most just roll off the side of the chasm, fall into the abyss, and end up only a few feet ahead of the previous "little innovation boulder"!! And as all this activity continues, the new society of empowered and engaged individuals amasses on the other side of the chasm, conversing in new terms and new ways about their value-goals and the "value-failings" of the organisations on the other side..

There are some "excellent" and “astonishing” examples of marketing’s "little innovation boulders". Some of these brave attempts to breach the chasm have the flavour of Vance Packard's famous expose of the subliminal marketing techniques of the 1950's and 1960's (as described in his book "The Hidden Persuaders") ... They represent a last desperate attempt to squeeze a little more life out of the adaptive reaches of managerial and market capitalism ...

In the next few days, I’ll be blogging about these little boulders.

When is enough about enough enough?

I have now started reading Culture Jam by Kalle Lasn, of Adbusters fame. As is customary of someone like myself with a muddled and cluttered "mental environment" as Lasn describes it, I have only managed to get about 20 pages done in the past few days. Nevertheless this is riveting stuff, and I only wish I had discovered it earlier...

One early passage in the chapter "Ecology of Mind" resonated beyond its immediate meaning about the "consumer binge" into something more personal I have been experiencing of late:

While most people tend to associate suffering with scarcity and deprivation, there is a very different kind of suffering that's caused by plenitude. Plenitude is (American) culture's perverse burden. Most have everything they could possibly want and they still dont think it is nearly enough. When everything is at hand, nothing is ever hard won and when nothing is hard-won, nothing ever satisfies. Without satisfaction, our lives become shallow and meaningless. In this era of gigantism - we embrace the value of More to compensate for lives that seem somehow, Less. Eat the instant you are hungry and as the Buddhist master put it, "You will never find out what your hunger is for". Plenitude feeds malaise as it fills the stomach.

Now my unfortunate problem is that I am suffering real bad from a plenitude of plenitude, i.e a curse of consuming plenitude itself, i.e. a deep desire to consume all the books, articles, comments, papers, journals, magazines etc etc. that discuss issues of plenitude in modern consumer society. And its driving me nuts, to the point that sometimes I feel that I just want to give up - a real case of "Amazon Overload"!!

As Lasn continues,

Could it be that all these things together - the curse of plenitude, the image explosion, the data overload, the hum of the media that are always awake and bustling - are driving us crazy?

Well I am beginning to think that some days, Yes!! I'm finding it increasingly difficult to stay "on task" with all this stuff, and as Lasn points out with his own analysis of first-order plenitude, many people are experiencing higher-highs and lower-lows - "We soar the skies one moment, then feel slack and depressed the next" - I know what he means, and I am not afraid to admit it. It feels like someone is holding a magnet to my inner compass - pulling me constantly towards consuming more stuff about consuming more stuff...

Anyone else feel the same?!! When is enough about enough enough?

Buyer-centric and Customer-centric part II

Jennifer Kirkby argues "Lets have more action (and promotion of it) and stop playing word deckchairs" in response to a few blogs Jennifer Rice, John Moore, John Porcaro and I have had on the changing status and meaning of the word, "customer"... (actually, our debate was about different conceptions of customers - the constant in all this - as objects, partners, or subjects and also about the differences between customer-centric and buyer-centric but anyway...)

Now, gotta say that this is one iceberg (iceblog?) I knew would be coming. Pardon me for looking over the horizon at the looming forces of change which threaten to drive a big hole into the hull of our collective customer-centric failings... but it just happens that the ship I am on aims to steer a passage through the icy myths of modern "customer relationship management" and marketing... and the only way I can give appropriate instructions to the captains of industry is to use new language to build a new set of navigational aids in order to provide a new set of directions.... !! Here is why ...

We need new language and terms to discover, express and design more appropriate ways to understand and respond to ongoing shifts in society, business, consumer behaviour, culture etc etc... Indeed, some time ago, the term "customer-centric" was created to do precisely this - to help businesses to identify and comprehend a new set of business value drivers centred on the customer and to then codify, articulate and deliver relevant strategies that recognise the fundamental differences (in needs, value, expectations, behaviour) between these customers..

The problem is that the consensus of meaning and actions now attached to the term "customer-centric" have become corrupted, manipulated and specifically, inappropriate to modern customer needs. Why? Because the typical customer-centric (for that, read "firm-centric") strategic and delivery framework focuses first and foremost on achieving efficiency and productivity goals for the firm and not those of people as individuals...

Importantly, when we have a consensus of this kind, language can often limit potential for breakthrough change and innovation. Our tendency is to focus on incremental change, to play around at the edges of existing knowledge and consequently, to miss powerful new opportunties for disruptive and radical change....

So, it is to overcome this consensus of thought and action that we must invent, use and socialise new terms and concepts, er, such as "mutual marketing".

Buyer-centricity and customer-centricity

You don't hear from me for days then ten blogs come along at once... like our British public transport system.. (much maligned)

I was asked by Jennifer Rice of Brand Mantra, what is the difference between customer-centricity (CC) and buyer-centricity (BC)? Never one to refuse a challenge, here is my late night attempt to answer!!

It can be semantics but sometimes we need new language to distinguish new thinking and concepts, So my summary is that BC is the link (hence PATCH) between customer-centric and Support Economy (www.thesupporteconomy) thinking. Basically it argues that businesses, even customer-centric ones, dont serve people as individuals and address the value-gaps we have - time, attention, knowledge, privacy, trust - which are marketer- and commerce-created.

The only way to address these forms of intangible value is to step outside of our organisational mindsets and put ourselves totally in the frame of people as individuals. Customer-centricity tries to do this but it is still geared to selling more stuff - done BY the orgn TO the consumer to max the orgs goals, and not looking at things the other way around - which naturally implies an inversion in the marketing process - hence "reverse marketing"

BC is all about solving people's problems when we "go-to-market" ourselves - !! Just as business goes to market with its brand and comms, targets etc, we go to market and experience similar transaction costs - which are growing due to choice proliferation, complexity, functional similarity in products etc etc - and in the most extreme case, we end up being trampled by desperate shoppers !!

Objects, subjects, partners

Scott MacStravic has a nice opinion piece on alternative marketing / commerce / managerial capitalism conceptions of customers, which lead to contrasting outcomes, objectives and modes of thinking about buyer-seller relationships and the types of knowledge used to drive decision-making (partic marketing) etc. He classifies these consumer conceptions into three forms: object, subject or partner

Object - Modern marketing, indeed, market capitalism itself, treat customers as objects to be attracted, retained, developed and “mined” as exploitable resources for the benefit of the firm. CRM has instituted a new era of “scientific” exploitation, aiming to “manage” customers, demand chains, interactions and transactions to continuously improve the effectiveness and efficiency of sales, marketing and customer service functions. It aims at identifying and prioritizing customers based on their current and potential value to the firm, and differentially “handling” them to promote the attraction and retention of more profitable customers, while reducing the costs of serving and the numbers of unprofitable customers.

Subject - The new paradigms of “reverse marketing”, “buyer centric commerce”, and the “support economy” envision and predict the emergence of customers, mainly consumers, as subjects rather than objects. Consumers are deemed to be tiring of both traditional marketing and CRM with their exploitative aims and devices. Rather than let sellers control marketing and sales communications, consumers are taking over, with phone and spam lists attempting to deny sellers access to consumers, permission marketing controlling whom they will listen to

Partner - Both the dominant model of seller centric, and championed models of buyer-centric commerce see commercial transactions and relationships as essentially adversarial, with buyer and seller on opposite sides of the table, battling each other for dominance in order to maximize what each gains from the other. Yet there is a third option, already highly recommended for business negotiations. The “partnership” model envisions sellers and buyers sitting on the same side of the table, working to solve a problem or achieve a goal for both parties simultaneously, i.e. realize WIN/WIN rather than WIN/win or win/lose outcomes.

But, I am not so convinced that the distinction between subject and partners and their respective alignment with Buyer-centric / Support Economy models and the Partnership model is really that clear-cut. I perceive buyer-centric relationships to shuffle between "subject" and "partner" (or as John Moore puts it, "co-dependency and interdependency" modes). The nature of such engagements are defined by the scope and size of the customer problem, be it transaction complexity, degree of risk or emotional importance. Critical highly-involved and co-creative interdependent engagements can sit quite comfortably with the more transactional (yet still highly relational) episodes, both of which will be pervaded with higher trust-flows and deeper forms of customer-partner engagement.. The trick is to ensure balance by using the richer "partner" knowledge exchanges to make the easier exchanges flow more seamlessly and accurately and to reinvest the knowledge gained through the rich exchanges back into the support community of "purpose".

New OMC Group Paper released today

Today, I have released the new OMC Group paper, "ValuePATCH: A framework for building positive brand, marketing and customer context". A copy (.pdf) can be requested directly here...

Here is an extract for the temporally challenged:

To prevent further diminishing returns, commercial organisations must begin to ask some fundamental and searching questions about how their brands need to be renewed to create sustainable and authentic relationship value in the future – especially as the business model shifts from “make, sell and tell” to “listen, serve and customise”. The future goal must be to build a brand and align an organisation by working back from individual human values and needs and by adopting radically new thinking that translates into radically new solutions. It requires brand management to augment traditional marketing performance and brand value measures with new indicators of brand relevance and reality, indicators that reflect the true value of human intangibles such as trust, knowledge, reputation, relationship, privacy and authenticity

At the heart of this shift in brand development and marketing is a greater understanding of human behaviour, attitudes, values, relationships and perceptions of value. Brands that do not develop a finely-tuned sensitivity to market learning, a capability to adapt and respond to the changing needs of all stakeholders and high levels of transparency and collaboration will suffer.

Buyer-centricity is just one means to develop a more human-centric brand focus, one which begins to more authentically address "consumers" as individuals and which develops radical new solutions and services to optimise people’s currencies of information, knowledge, time, attention and access. By using ValuePATCH as a framework to comprehend and identify the scope and opportunity for buyer-centric innovation, we can at least begin to address many of the underlying vulnerabilities and weaknesses that limit the potential of modern day marketing, branding and business practice.

Bowling for Nokia

Watched "Bowling for Columbine" for the first time on UK terrestrial TV this weekend (yes, about time I know).

In Michael Moore's powerful investigation of why the US is gripped by a misplaced fear of gun violence, a comment by Marilyn Mansun seemed to make a lot of sense. He argued that the potent mix of "fear and consumerism" on US TV (partic the news networks) was warping people's minds. And in many ways he is right. There is a powerful cocktail (almost "Molotivian") in the contrast between the instant gratification of live news broadcasts (often of the latest violent shooting hunted down by the networks satellite trucks and helicopters) and the "out-of-reach" gratification of the TV ads, showing the latest Lexus or HUV for example. Going back to my blog below on social anguish, one can see how this can cumulatively add up to a detrimental impact on society.

But, what was particularly irksome about Sunday's broadcast was that in the second ad break after Mansun's comments, up pops a new ten second ad from Nokia. It was an ad for its new N-gage mobile handheld game - I didnt catch the name of it but the voiceover went something like this, "From next week, you become the hunter and its time to hunt them down. The new first person shoot-em-up for N-gage" accompanied by screen animation of the game character firing an automatic rifle at his human targets...

Maybe this is the only recorded case of reality-entertainment-reality TV or something like that... even so, how damn inappropriate and a clear case of "cleverness over relevance"