From The Head Of Zeus Jones

Image via jurvetson

Still thinking about nonlinearity in culture, presentations and in strategy. Haven’t formed a full thought here but starting to play with the idea that nonlinear strategy is about establishing a mutually beneficial direction for a company and its customers to head towards, rather than defining a fixed point or goal as is usual in traditional or linear strategy.

The difference being that traditional, linear strategy is predictive and relies upon people, companies and things playing a specific role that has been forecast in order to succeed. On the other hand, nonlinear strategy accepts that people, companies and things tend behave in erratic, and individual ways and creates a framework for those individual actions to contribute to the strategy rather than detract from it.

There are a host of other things that this idea entails, for example, linear strategy is done TO people, while nonlinear strategy is done WITH people. Linear strategy is opaque, non-linear strategy is transparent.

All a bit academic at the moment I’m afraid but I will look for examples and post those shortly. In the meantime, if any of you strategy types have waded through this, I’d love to hear what you think?

Technorati Tags: linear, nonlinear

As you may have seen, OKCupid posted another brilliant analysis of dating tips and tricks using data generated by their members last week. While these posts get broadcast and re-syndicated widely, they also function as a service to their current members by delivering information that allows them to improve their performance, and therefore usage of the site itself. It’s a completely circular, yet brilliant example of how an internal asset can be used as marketing, and of how value – generated by your customers – can provide even more value to your customers.

Here’s their CEO talking about it:

Technorati Tags: OKCupid, operations, operations as marketing

A lot of strategy is about storytelling; the knitting together of different facts, observations, insights into a coherent framework that allows you to envision a path to success. But, if you buy my argument from yesterday (this one isn’t for you ) then perhaps we need to think about breaking apart the form of our strategy presentations into something a lit less linear?

I had a go at this a few years ago:

But I think the real point would be to turn the presentation from a storytelling device which is designed to convince you of my point-of-view, into a collaboration device which is designed to help presenter and viewer create something new together. Anyone seen anything like that anywhere?

Technorati Tags: nonlinearity, presentation, story, storytelling, structure

Like everyone else, I am currently reading Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. While I haven’t read enough to have a point-of-view on his main thesis, I am intrigued by the idea that we are losing our ability to read long-form content (like books) and to follow a linear argument. Carr’s view is that we can’t focus. This is something that has been echoed by a number of other researchers.

While it’s quite possible that this is a sign of the decline of civilization and the end of the world, I wonder if a simpler, and more prosaic explanation is that we are bored.

Christian recently pointed out that discussion threads on Fark and Slashdot follow an incomprehensible arc to those who don’t understand the culture of these communities. While conversations (IRL) have historically been constructed around a central theme that gets built upon and enhanced, discussions in many online communities are purposefully non-linear. The idea is not to extend a logical theme, but rather to create tangents or unexpected and surprising forks. Micro conversations will often form, skilled conversationalists will inject obscure cultural references and, in general, attempts to steer the thread into unexpected places are cheered.

In fact, I think that’s the point. I don’t think this happens because the participants can’t follow or focus upon the logical thread, but rather it’s because we know all too well where the logic leads. More importantly, we all know that everyone else knows where the logic leads, which sort of eliminates the need for the conversation to follow the logical path. Therefore, we are working together to create something entirely new and unexpected to all parties.

These are subtle yet important changes in the way we interact with one another, as well as the expectations for how others will interact with us. It’s all very meta and post-postmodern (which of course makes me a huge fan!), but more to the point it’s all quite fundamental and basic which means that these are dynamics that affect many areas of culture and society and by extension marketing and branding.

I wrote about Being New a little while back, and  I think this is one of the basic qualities of being new. In contrast, I think linearity, logic and to some extent, story are qualities of Being Old. What do you think?

Technorati Tags: conversation, linear, nonlinearity, society, story

I mentioned a while back that I thought big corporations were starting to adopt Modern Brand strategies with a twist. Since then, we’ve found some more examples of innovation from big companies that adapt the principles of Modern Branding, but which take advantage of the specific attributes and strengths of large companies.

Some context before I launch in: I think Modern Branding evolved through necessity rather than by design. Small, innovative startups, faced with larger, better funded competition, decided they had to be more resourceful and smarter about using what they had to compete.

As a result, they developed strategies that enabled them to use their existing assets in creative ways in order to offset the fact that they had no money to spend on outbound marketing. However, this is actually a strategy that favours those who have more assets. And, if you have more to work with and you have money, this is a strategy that can take you even further. That’s what I think these examples show:

Barnes & Noble more in store.

While it’s questionable whether B&N can compete with Kindle and iPad in the e-Reader market (or even survive), I think the idea of using their one advantage – brick & mortar stores – as a place to sample content is really smart.

Hyundai Equus iPad Manual.

On the surface this feels like a giveaway but buried deep in the article was this nugget:

“… owners will be able to use the iPad to schedule a service appointment online and arrange for a pickup to take the car in for maintenance.”

Because service is one of the best places for dealers to get additional revenue, it’s clear that the real goal of this was to create an on-going channel for dealer/brand to customer communications. Essentially this turns the owner’s manual into a revenue stream and takes advantage of the fact that big companies like Hyundai have diverse partners and revenue streams to spread costs over.

P&G Connect & Develop.

Through relying upon their partners to innovate for them, P&G reduced their R&D expenses by 30% and created over 100 new products. Big companies have more partners and they have more leverage.

The GreenXchange.

You probably know about this but I think that using IP around sustainable practices to generate marketing and revenue is brilliant.

Subaru Badge of Ownership.

Subaru has an owner base that is large and loyal; one that includes lots of repeat buyers. And one that is arguably more interesting and diverse than its product. This is a genius way to use it.

IBM World Community Grid.

Like Seti@home but for solving human problems. This is IBM using its reach and customer base to connect people together to do something amazing.

Walmart Sustainability Index.

Creating change by forcing vendors into transparency around their sustainable lifecycle. This is big bad business, but for good.

Hyatt Andaz.

While Andaz is a line of hotels, it’s also a real-time lab for customer service innovation for Hyatt. When you’re as big as they are you can do a lot of experimenting.

Cisco Emerging Technologies Group.

Large companies can also create startups inside themselves. Cisco did this in 2007 with the Emerging Technologies group that behaves like a startup but can tap into the resources of a behemoth.

What these examples how are the ability for large companies to use the strategies of disruptive upstarts against them:

• They have many assets in place that they can re-imagine.
• They can use their scale to increase the impact of their actions.
• They can leverage their many properties to create lab locations and test new programs.
• They can harness the power of a large work force to generate innovation internally
• They can tap into their large customer bases to help develop their marketing

How will small companies respond?

Technorati Tags: corporation, modern branding, startup