From The Head Of Zeus Jones

Speaking of presentations, I watched a brilliant one recently on a flight back from Seattle. An anthropologist, Helen Fisher put people who are in love into MRI machines to see what was going on in their brains.

Both performance and content are brilliant. Helen uses lots of poetry to establish the intensity of emotion surrounding love before diving into the science. It’s a great combo that really worked for me.

But it was one of her findings that really got me thinking…

She discovered that the part of the brain that lights up when we’re in love is one that’s associated with reward. It’s a part of the brain that generates craving, which is why love often becomes and obsession or an addiction. However it’s also the part of the brain that’s associated with new things or purchases. Clearly this explains why lonely people (or lonely countries) go shopping more than others, we look to physical things as surrogates for relationships, we look to stuff to replace love.

While I certainly don’t condone this kind of behaviour, the knowledge that these two things are linked at a very fundamental physical level is, I think, potentially groundbreaking for marketers, especially during times like these. Because it implies that customers, who may not be able to afford the reward of buying something new from you, can be rewarded by human companionship instead. This means that even though you can’t maintain a traditional producer-consumer relationship with your customers, it’s possible to continue the same basic physiological relationship through connecting to them person to person.

So, a smart social media strategy, executed by employees of the company, may actually be a great way to preserve valuable relationships with customers during a downturn. Additionally, companies with strong relationships are likely to be the ones that benefit most when the economy improves. Combine that with the fact that social media may be the most cost-effective way to market right now and the urgency for companies to begin engaging in social media feels overwhelming to me right now.

Regular readers will know that I have a weakness for watching presentations. They are, for me, a convergence of so many different things: content, story, performance, design, structure, personality, drama, emotion, etc. that come together in magical ways. At their best they combine brilliant insight and discovery with theatre.

The analogy that I draw most often is to the world of music. In music, you have the song and the performance. Each part is important - perhaps equally important - indeed they often carry separate copyrights as the Prince v Radiohead controversy highlights. Each can shine independently of the other, although a brilliant song can be killed by a bad performance in the same way that brilliant insights can often be masked by an inability to communicate. Each can reveal aspects of the other that had not been seen before. And, each delivers revenue in different ways.

For example, while songwriters in bands may do alright, most of the money comes from live performances. There’s not really that much money in selling CDs which is why lots of artists are quite happy to encourage free downloads because they consider songs marketing for performances. Because songs are also marketing for albums, giving away songs can often also lead to greater sales. Likewise, many artists make a great living never writing anything original. They are simply masters of performing.

You see the same thing happening in the business world. IP or thinking is becoming separated from the performance. Thinkers are giving away their works for free like Seth Godin recently or are releasing their work as they write to solicit feedback like John Grant did. While both are hoping for increased sales through these tactics, it’s also highly likely that they will and have seen increased demand for their speaking as a result. In the same way that songs can be remixed and recombined, a lot of new thinking in business builds upon and steals thinking from others (just realised that Faris may think I think he steals which is not what I’m saying, but as I write this I also realised that Faris might be quite pleased to think that I think he steals). Musicians are using CCmixter and Rifflet to encourage this, business thinkers blog and stick their stuff up on places like slideshare under creative commons to achieve the same ends.

The biggest difference for me is that there are far more thinkers in business than there are performers. The really magical presenters are quite rare and often, they mask sub par thinking and content with amazing performances. But, if we’re to carry the analogy further, is it possible that a new class of profession could arise - the business performer? The business performer would know how to construct a presentation and how to deliver a presentation, but would not necessarily create the thinking or ideas. As the availability of business thinking grows, the business performer might, as in music, eclipse the business thinker in fame and fortune.

Of course this is already happening to some extent. It is unlikely that Steve Jobs or Barack Obama actually wrote or created most of their own presentations, but their delivery ability (among other things) has ensured their places at the top of their respective organisations. However, I wonder if this could be taken even further with specialised presenters who have no other skill than that of being able to deliver amazing presentations.

Gavin posted recently a sign of this coming future that still continues to amaze me. Anil Dash delivering slides he’s never seen in a Powerpoint Karaoke competition. If he ever decides to divorce his performing from his thinking, I’m calling…

via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/st0neflickr/

Marketing has always been about demand creation, this is why it’s the first thing to be cut in recessionary times. Regardless of all classic wisdom around “marketing your way out of a recession” or “using recessions to grow share,” the cold, hard truth that most companies recognise is that you can’t make people spend money they don’t have and when folks are worried about their jobs and their homes they aren’t going to be paying as much attention to your messages as you’d like. I think the better answer is: use a recession to put yourself into a better position than your competition so that you can outrun them when business comes back. Rather than fighting hard for scarce dollars now, position yourself at the front of the line to get more than your fair share when things improve.

Like many things in marketing, this makes common sense but isn’t terribly good news for most marketing companies or departments because placing yourself in a great position is largely about reducing expenses not creating demand. Historically reducing expenses has been an operations function, but now as the worlds of operations and marketing are converging we’re discovering that marketing thinking can actually be helpful in trimming the bottom line.

For us the key has been expanding our view of marketing past the creation of brand new campaigns or assets into optimizing existing client assets to perform as marketing vehicles. This goes beyond simply redeploying marketing dollars into more efficient vehicles. In a couple of recent cases we’ve been able to reduce fixed operational costs by rethinking existing programs from a marketing perspective.

Having lived through two previous recessions in the agency world, I can say that this has dramatically changed how we’re able to talk to (and potentially help) our clients. Rather than sitting on the side or proposing cheaper campaigns, we’re able to engage in more strategic conversations and be helpful in ways that don’t simply involve going away. Obviously it’s a much better place to be for us but it’s also better for our clients too. At a time when they most need advice, we’re able to continue to be a good partner.

Former Fallon colleague, current bigwig at Y&R and all around good guy - John Gerzema - has co-written a fascinating new book called The Brand Bubble. In 2004, they started seeing evidence of a worrying trend in their Brand Asset Valuator research (BAV) that while brand $ value continued to rise on Wall Street, brand loyalty and respect were actually in decline across the board. This finding led them to embark upon a journey to figure out why.

I think this book is interesting for a number of reasons:

1. It’s a brilliant demonstration of why the BAV can be a very powerful tool. I can’t tell you the number of times clients of mine quoted it and made my teeth gnash when I was at a competing agency
2. It’s a brave move by Y&R because it’s a condemnation (in my mind) of traditional communications-based marketing.
3. John and Ed and Y&R have given readers the chance to look at and use BAV for their own brands.

For these reasons and more, it’s definitely worth checking out. Also take a look at John’s blog where you can see him looking friendly yet serious and discover that he bears a striking (and perhaps unfortunate) resemblance to Joe the Plumber who is one of many topics John’s recently written about.

Well done John!

Laura and Dan, our two students from MCAD who had been working with us for the past 7 weeks have left, but before they went, they put together this brief description of us to share with their classmates. I thought you might enjoy it too.

The long-awaited sequel to the hugely popular Age of Conversation is launching tomorrow 10/29. You can order your copy or download a digital version (and then order a print copy) at Lulu. Personally I think this is one of the most satisfying things I’ve done this year. I was delighted to be included as an author. I can’t wait to read the chapters from the other authors and it’s all for a great cause. Do yourself (and the kids) a favour by ordering one of these for all of your friends and colleagues.

UPDATE:!!!!!!

In the spirit of supporting local, Minnesota has eight authors included:

Adrian Ho, Aki Spicer, Connie Bensen, Katie Konrath, G.L. Hoffman, Paul Isakson, Sean Scott, Tim Brunelle

The rest of the authors are:

Alex Henault, Amy Jussel, Andrew Odom, Andy Nulman, Andy Sernovitz, Andy Whitlock, Angela Maiers, Ann Handley, Anna Farmery, Armando Alves, Arun Rajagopal, Asi Sharabi, Becky Carroll, Becky McCray, Bernie Scheffler, Bill Gammell, Bob LeDrew, Brad Shorr, Brandon Murphy, Branislav Peric, Brent Dixon, Brett Macfarlane, Brian Reich, C.C. Chapman, Cam Beck, Casper Willer, Cathleen Rittereiser, Cathryn Hrudicka, Cedric Giorgi, Charles Sipe, Chris Kieff, Chris Cree, Chris Wilson, Christina Kerley (CK), C.B. Whittemore, Chris Brown, Connie Reece, Corentin Monot, Craig Wilson, Daniel Honigman, Dan Schawbel, Dan Sitter, Daria Radota Rasmussen, Darren Herman, Dave Davison, David Armano, David Berkowitz, David Koopmans, David Meerman Scott, David Petherick, David Reich, David Weinfeld, David Zinger, Deanna Gernert, Deborah Brown, Dennis Price, Derrick Kwa, Dino Demopoulos, Doug Haslam, Doug Meacham, Doug Mitchell, Douglas Hanna, Douglas Karr, Drew McLellan, Duane Brown, Dustin Jacobsen, Dylan Viner, Ed Brenegar, Ed Cotton, Efrain Mendicuti, Ellen Weber, Eric Peterson, Eric Nehrlich, Ernie Mosteller, Faris Yakob, Fernanda Romano, Francis Anderson, Gareth Kay, Gary Cohen, Gaurav Mishra, Gavin Heaton, Geert Desager, George Jenkins, Gianandrea Facchini, Gordon Whitehead, Greg Verdino, Gretel Going & Kathryn Fleming, Hillel Cooperman, Hugh Weber, J. Erik Potter, James Gordon-Macintosh, Jamey Shiels, Jasmin Tragas, Jason Oke, Jay Ehret, Jeanne Dininni, Jeff De Cagna, Jeff Gwynne & Todd Cabral, Jeff Noble, Jeff Wallace, Jennifer Warwick, Jenny Meade, Jeremy Fuksa, Jeremy Heilpern, Jeroen Verkroost, Jessica Hagy, Joanna Young, Joe Pulizzi, John Herrington, John Moore, John Rosen, John Todor, Jon Burg, Jon Swanson, Jonathan Trenn, Jordan Behan, Julie Fleischer, Justin Foster, Karl Turley, Kate Trgovac, Katie Chatfield, Kenny Lauer, Keri Willenborg, Kevin Jessop, Kristin Gorski, Lewis Green, Lois Kelly, Lori Magno, Louise Manning, Luc Debaisieux, Mario Vellandi, Mark Blair, Mark Earls, Mark Goren, Mark Hancock, Mark Lewis, Mark McGuinness, Matt Dickman, Matt J. McDonald, Matt Moore, Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Michelle Lamar, Mike Arauz, Mike McAllen, Mike Sansone, Mitch Joel, Neil Perkin, Nettie Hartsock, Nick Rice, Oleksandr Skorokhod, Ozgur Alaz, Paul Chaney, Paul Hebert,  Paul McEnany, Paul Tedesco, Paul Williams, Pet Campbell, Pete Deutschman, Peter Corbett, Phil Gerbyshak, Phil Lewis, Phil Soden, Piet Wulleman, Rachel Steiner, Sreeraj Menon, Reginald Adkins, Richard Huntington, Rishi Desai, Robert Hruzek, Roberta Rosenberg, Robyn McMaster, Roger von Oech, Rohit Bhargava, Ron Shevlin, Ryan Barrett, Ryan Karpeles, Ryan Rasmussen, Sam Huleatt, Sandy Renshaw, Scott Goodson, Scott Monty, Scott Townsend, Scott White, Sean Howard, Seni Thomas, Seth Gaffney, Shama Hyder, Sheila Scarborough, Sheryl Steadman, Simon Payn, Sonia Simone, Spike Jones, Stanley Johnson, Stephen Collins, Stephen Landau, Stephen Smith, Steve Bannister, Steve Hardy, Steve Portigal, Steve Roesler, Steven Verbruggen, Steve Woodruff, Sue Edworthy, Susan Bird, Susan Gunelius, Susan Heywood, Tammy Lenski, Terrell Meek, Thomas Clifford, Thomas Knoll, Tim Connor, Tim Jackson, Tim Mannveille, Tim Tyler, Timothy Johnson, Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Toby Bloomberg, Todd Andrlik, Troy Rutter, Troy Worman, Uwe Hook, Valeria Maltoni, Vandana Ahuja, Vanessa DiMauro, Veronique Rabuteau, Wayne Buckhanan, William Azaroff, Yves Van Landeghem

Click to play

Earlier this year, I participated on a panel at PSFK’s San Francisco conference. The topic was Social Media. The goal was to provide practical advice to people on how to bring social media into their companies. In a potentially business-limiting move, I suggested that marketing firms ought to get out of the way when it comes to social media and let their clients speak for themselves. To me social media is simply another channel for customers to form relationships with people at the companies they do business with. The last thing they want is some puppet-master marketer controlling or orchestrating the conversation. To compound the damage, that evening at an after party, I did my best to persuade a very nice lady from Starbucks that she didn’t need our help (p.s. If you’re reading, I’m an idiot and we’d love to work with Starbucks).

Yesterday, Barry Judge from Best Buy said basically the same thing in a speech he gave (ironically) at the AAAA Creative Summit. One of my partners, @caerickson, was there at the event and noted that there appeared to be a bit of anxiety over the role of the agency in all of this.

For an industry that is based upon crafting and delivering clients’ messages for them, social media is indeed a disruption. If, as I believe, the adoption of social media by all companies is inevitable, what role does the communications agency fulfill?

To me this is another symptom of an industry that can’t seem to address the fundamental problems with the basic assumptions upon which it is founded. It’s easier, I suppose, to pretend that it’s the tools or nature of communications delivery that have changed rather than facing up to the fact that communications, as a product, is losing relevance. It’s easier to talk about channel neutrality and being digital while not actually addressing the fact that all you’re talking about are different ways to craft and disseminate messages.

However, I think that this relentless focus (purposeful or otherwise) on communications also blinds agencies to larger opportunities that are emerging. Clients may not need help talking to their customers but that doesn’t mean they don’t need help. After the channels of communication are established and after the pleasantries have been exchanged, customers will want something to talk to companies about. The best things to talk about are things that the company is doing to make their products, services or experiences better. It seems to me that there’s still a lot of demand for help in improving our clients’ core services and making them more marketable. For applying marketing thinking to operations. Personally I find it’s actually far more rewarding to do this kind of work because you’re actually collaborating with your clients on things that are lasting and have unquestioned (rather than questionable) value within their organisations.

I also think that agencies focus on communications and their belief that they should be paid to create communications prevents them from giving their clients the right advice on social media. For most agencies, there’s little if any profit in telling their clients to get involved in social media. Even if they are helping to get the ball rolling in some way, there’s very little production or execution money associated with giving your client tips on how to follow followers on Twitter. The real money is going to be in doing Twitter for them which is exactly the wrong answer. Agencies may retreat to the sanctity of “content creation” but the idea that your livelihood is based on creating content which the clients then transmit and disseminate and share with their customers sounds just as precarious to me.

Sadly, I’m starting to believe the communications industry is rotten to the core. It’s chief product and it’s chief source of revenue are at odds, in a dramatic fashion, with doing the right thing. How then can it thrive and be honourable at the same time?

Yesterday was one of those amazing sky days that anyone who lives in the Midwest will know what I’m talking about. The clouds looked like they’d been painted by Van Gogh. My crappy iPhone picture doesn’t really do it justice unfortunately.

I started to understand Minnesota, by looking at the sky. Having moved here from San Francisco, I desperately missed the mountains and scenery. It was days like yesterday that made me realise that the sky, on the prairie, is a big part of the scenery.

The first American city I lived in was Los Angeles. In LA, the smog made looking at the sky quite depressing. As a result, most of one’s focus tended to be down or straight ahead. You can see the impact of this on LA’s architecture; on most streets, there isn’t a lot happening above street level.

I’ve often thought there must also be an impact on your outlook that comes from your visual perspective. Looking one way or another must colour how you think. Even from a physiological standpoint, the effect of keeping one’s eyes focused in close and of bending one’s neck to look downwards must have an effect on your well being.

As branding moves from the creation of imagery towards the creation of interactions, I think this sort of thinking is going to have to be embraced by marketers. Already, certain gestures are starting to become appropriated by brands. For example Apple now owns the swipe and pinch (sorry Tom) while Microsoft has long owned the “3-finger salute.”

It seems to me that a number of trends will speed this along:

• The rise of gestural interfaces: things like Apple’s multitouch or Microsoft’s Surface, as well as control innovations like Nintendo’s Wii are making movement a much larger part of any brand’s iconography.
• The spread of mobile computing places big limits on the utility of buttons and menus as the main interface paradigm. The applications and services that will gain the most traction on mobile devices will probably be the ones that deliver functionality through movements that are easy to execute on the go.
• The rise of retail and or real-world experiences as an increasingly important channel for reaching cutomers. These spaces create opportunities for companies to think more broadly about interaction cues they send out. To use Apple again, the shift to handheld card swipers has enabled its staff to come out from behind their cash registers and walk the floor. This has an efficiency gain but it also has huge impacts on the experience. Queuing is a thing of the past, employees are freed to help me navigate the store, it’s quite literally a genius move that comes very clearly from values of the brand.

To me, one of the larger questions is how marketers can incorporate this kind of thinking into what they do? The typical stewards of brands - communications experts - are woefully ill-equipped for 3-dimensional thinking about the effects of human motion on perception and emotion. And it’s unclear that any of the existing disciplines that orbit around the marketing sun have that kind of knowledge either. That leaves various branches of academia who are studying the psychological effects of human movement from a number of different angles.

Personally, I think this is a fascinating area. I’d love to know if anyone is thinking about or working on this kind of stuff right now? I would love to collaborate with you - if there’s anything I can offer. Or has anyone cracked the code on this that I can simply steal borrow? Do let me know.

I just finished a fascinating book: The new American militarism: How Americans are seduced by war. Its author, Andrew Bacevich, who is a Westpoint graduate, Vietnam vet, history professor and a solid conservative, writes about how 40 years of actions by different people and groups ranging from the military, Neocons, Evangelicals, RAND, Reagan, the Bushes and even Carter, have led to a situation where America has become so obsessed by military might that it now dwarfs the top 10 other countries in military spending and is now satisfied with nothing less than the ability to have total domination in two multi-regional conflicts at once as well as the ability to field a number of minor skirmishes around the world.

It is an insightful and erudite condemnation from someone who clearly has a great grasp on military history both as a participant and observer. I’d highly recommend it.

One of the more interesting bits of history that I hadn’t been aware of was how America got so deeply involved in the Middle East in the first place. The decision was made by Jimmy Carter who, struggling with gas shortages and inflation, and rebounding from a disatrous “malaise speech” set into motion what was later to be known as the Carter Doctrine, a policy of using necessary force to defend the interests of the US in the Persian gulf. His actions set the stage for increased US military involvement and presence, arguably spawning Bin Laden. Later administrations simply built upon this premise, accepting it and expanding it (perhaps unwittingly) to the point where America is now inextricably bound to the region.

For me, it was a reminder of the importance of applying large time scales to ones thinking. The true impacts of actions taken today can’t be measured tomorrow. If you don’t have a sense of the larger trends and movements at play, you will simply be a pawn. The Iroquois had a famous saying, when considering taking a major step, they would ask why have seven previous generations not taken this step and what will happen to seven generations to come if we do take this step. I think we need more of this kind of clarity as we look at what we do in all areas.

It’s very easy to get caught up in the minutae of what happens on a daily or even weekly basis and make idiotic proclamations like this:

“The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.”

Like Paul Boutin did in his recent Wired article that’s making its way around Twitter and the blogosphere, but that’s to forget that there is a time for brevity and there is a time for appreciating the full spread and scope of a subject.

Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/erica_marshall/

My post on the theme of the decade generated a bunch of really great comments from Mark, Susan and Nigel (Thanks!) and more importantly steered the thread, which was a question, into a very specific area.

Mark said:

“I don’t have a clever handle yet for the emerging theme but it’s that people are finally coming to grips with our inter-connectedness. There is something of a paradox here in that we are far more individualistic than ever before but spend much or our time building cooperative networks. Cooperative individualism? Sound like an oxymoron but there you are. I do not think for a minute that this movement towards cooperation is ideologically driven. It’s really pragmatic. We now realize that we are more likely to get more of what we want as individuals if we cooperate and help others do the same. Or as the saying goes,”what goes around comes around”, especially in a networked world.”

Susan said:

“An interesting note: volunteerism is at an all time high; and US charitable giving topped $300B for the first time in 2007, and at least before the past two weeks was tracking at the same rate this year. Definitely a recognition of inter-connectedness, and symbolic of the perceived failure of institutions.”

And Nigel added:

“i like where you’re all going with the idea that’s bubbling up in this thread that “interconnectedness” is the new self reliance.

this is (more) than the old “think global act local” call to action, because the “grass roots” can now be a global movement or start one.

the impact of sustainability issues on the planet IS focusing some of this–hence the huge and growing interest in green markets, local produce, organic and micro everything. and this isn’t just about politics and science–it’s also about flavour and experience–about the personal pleasure of exercising your individuality and actually tasting things.”

All of which gets me thinking. Is interconnectedness really the underlying theme that is driving behaviour today? As with anything, once you’re looking for it, there are numerous examples to prove that it’s so. From Clay Shirky’s thinking to films like the Wealth of Neighbors to Mark’s Herd. It feels lots of us are thinking about, documenting and describing the effects of interconnectedness.

Whereas media in the 90s were all around self-reliance or personal autonomy as Mark calls it, today our media are social. Whereas the 90s was the age of the “Maverick,” the 00s have favoured team-builders as leaders. And, where the car of the decade was the SUV - an intensely self-centered vehicle - the car of this decade is looking to be the Hybrid - a car that most drivers would deem a self-sacrifice for the better of the planet.

So what do you think, is interconectedness the theme that drives behaviour in our time?