Tom Asacker

Change leads to insight

Creating an enduring brand is a huge challenge in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace. It’s similar to raising a child: it requires focused attention, intuition, and a lot of patience. It also requires a desire to change and adapt. Our natural instinct, however, is to shelter our brands, like our children, from the knocks and bumps that come in life. We want to keep our arms around them, keep them safe and under our control.

But for children and brands to thrive in today’s world, they must grow. We must encourage them to try new things, trip and fall, learn the hard lessons, find out what works and what doesn’t, and be exposed to a variety of outside perspectives and truths.

The culture of the world is different today than it was years ago, just like raising a child today is different than it was years ago. And although we are exposed to a dizzying amount of opinions and techniques, the best way to address the complex job of brand-rearing is to recognize that, like raising a child, raising a brand takes a village. 

And that village is the complex web of relationships among your people, your customers, your partners, and other stakeholders. So teach your brand to be compassionate, authentic, appreciative, respectful, and, by all means, vibrant and alive.  Allow it to stretch and try new things.  Because in a confusing environment, and as Milton Erickson made clear, "change will lead to insight far more often than insight will lead to change."

Beware (be aware) of abstruse ideas

I once read about a psychological study designed to see how people would react to flawed reasoning, even when it flew in the face of their own very sensible judgment.  It was quite revealing. In the study two people, A and B, were seated on opposite sides of a dividing wall, looking at a screen. Each person was instructed to learn by trial and error how to recognize the difference between slides of healthy cells and sick cells. For each slide, they had to push one of two buttons in front of them, “Healthy” or “Sick,” at which point one of two lamps, labeled “Right” and “Wrong,” would light up.

Person A received true feedback, meaning that his “Right” lamp would light up when he was correct and his “Wrong” lamp would light up when he was incorrect.  These people—the A’s—learned to tell the difference between healthy and sick cells with a high level of accuracy.  Person B’s situation was quite different. His right or wrong lamps lit up based not on his own guesses but on Person A’s guesses. He didn’t know it, but he was searching for an order where none could possibly exist. 

A and B were then asked to work together to establish the rules for determining healthy vs. sick cells. The A’s told the B’s what they had learned and what simple characteristics they had looked for to tell the difference.  Bs’ explanations, by necessity, were subtle and quite complex—and completely bogus. 

Here’s the amazing part. After their collaboration, all B’s and nearly all A’s came to believe that the delusional B had a much better understanding of healthy vs. sick cells. In fact, A’s were impressed with B’s sophisticated brilliance, and felt inferior because of the pedestrian simplicity of their assumptions. In a follow-up test, the B’s showed almost no improvement, but the A’s scores dropped because the A’s had incorporated some of B’s completely baseless ideas.

This study teaches us two important aspects with regards to branding or, for that matter, any business concept. First, once an explanation for something has taken hold of our minds, information that should refute that explanation may produce not an appropriate change of mind but rather an elaboration of the flawed explanation.  It also teaches us to beware (be aware) of abstruse ideas, no matter how convincing the presentation or how brilliant the so-called expert.

The signal-to-noise ratio in the fields of branding and marketing is becoming dangerously low as the level of background noise becomes more and more obtrusive, enabled by platforms like blogging and Twitter and amplified by traditional publishers desperately searching for an audience for their rapidly shrinking businesses.  If you're an A in this environment, you should be very, very careful.  And try like hell to stay away from the B's.   

Interesting Week 26 of 2009

1. Hyatt’s Random Acts of Generosity

Loyalty is one thing, but the Hyatt hotel chain wants to engender something even stronger in its guests: gratitude. This summer, the company will bestow free drinks, room service and so forth on random guests in hopes that grateful guests will come back for more.  The NY Times Magazine

2. The Nike Experiment: How the Shoe Giant Unleashed the Power of Personal Metrics

When Nike decided to bring Web 2.0 technology to the sneaker, it reached out to Apple for help, writes Mark McClusky. Together the two companies developed Nike+, an advanced pedometer system aimed at tapping into the reasons why runners exercise and then elevating those impulses with the motivating power of statistics.  Wired

3. Boosting Engagement While Cutting Costs

Yes, it’s possible. Here’s how one hospital turned the budget over to its employees and reaped a windfall.   Gallop Management Journal

4. The Divine, Too, Is in the Details

Great metrics are every bit as important as great ideas and great execution, Prescription Solutions CEO Jacqueline Kosecoff says in this Q-and-A. It's important to set the measures of success in stone before a project begins, she notes, because otherwise success can be redefined to meet the project's eventual outcome.  The New York Times

5. You can’t have a strong brand without a strong business

Millward Brown's Nigel Hollis on aligning brand and business strategy. If you get a chance, comment on his closing question. You know my opinion, but I'd really like to hear yours.    Nigel Hollis

The future of Twitter?

Twitter has felt strangely familiar to me for a while, but I simply could not put my finger on it.  Well, it just hit me.

I was born in Louisiana and raised outside of Boston.  Each summer my father would pack us into the family car and make the 1,700 mile trip back "home." 

One summer in the late 70s, as I loaded the car with luggage, maps and snacks, I noticed a strange black box with a bunch of dials and knobs mounted near the floor between the driver and passenger seats. 

I asked my dad about it and with a wink and a grin he simply replied, in a strange Southern drawl,  "Breaker breaker, good buddy." 

For the next three days I was subjected to more of the same (much more), like:

Break 1-9, this is Lobo looking for that Jive Cowboy, you got your ears on?

Yeah, this is the Jive Cowboy.

You got that big bad bear storm? Come back.

You're clear up here, Lobo.  Though there's lotsa bears in the bushes up around the 105, so back off the hammer.

10-4, I'll catch you on the flip side.  This is Lobo and I'm out.

Citizens' Band (CB) radio, a free, two-way radio service with each channel shared by many users, was an exciting, yet short-lived fad with my dad (thank God), and with many others.

However, it does remain popular among long-haul truck drivers to communicate directions, traffic problems, speed traps and other time-sensitive information of value.

Twitter reminds me of CB radio, only with many more potential contextual applications.  Now, if we can just reduce the growing number of alligator stations. :) 

P.S. BTW, wasn't this Twitter?

Exchange creates change

One of the biggest challenges in today’s marketplace is the ability to notice change, because we all like to mentally grasp for security and predictability. We resist changing the way we look at the world. But we must, because every new marketplace change and exchange creates some kind of cultural change, which in turn creates more marketplace change and exchange.  Most importantly, it creates a change in customer expectations.

Before Amazon.com people expected websites to load fairly slowly and to require multiple screens to place an order. Not any longer. Prior to nursing homes, people expected to care for their elderly family members in their homes. Not now. Prior to the Internet, people would deal with a recession by modifying their behavior in the short-term, eventually returning to their comfortable buying habits motivated primarily by mass media advertising .  No more.  Today people have become active discerners of marketplace value and their well-informed changes are becoming more permanent.

Marketing, technology and innovation change brands (which are expectations) whether a brand does anything to change itself or not. If you're part of your audience's world, if you're engaged with them, you'll be able to stay on top of their changing expectations and deliver value in ways that are meaningful for the times.  If not, well, you can always try changing your brand name, logo or tagline.  That might work.

Go back to the original meaning

I like this quote by Richard Pinder, chief operating officer of Publicis Worldwide, in Sunday's New York Times:

"People have been a bit sloppy with the word advertising. I think we’re going back to the original meaning of the word, which is to say, I hope that people are aware of my brand and interested in knowing more about it."

Exactly.  Branding today can only work through ideas that customers want to connect with. People can neither be hypnotized with media images nor cajoled with flowery prose or “indisputable” facts. You must truly understand their pain, speak their language, and make your brand feel like a part of their inner world of hopes, dreams and desires.

Branding isn’t some kind of mysterious process that only the experts can understand. It’s a caring attitude and a trusting relationship. It's about creating awareness, interest, trust and on-going support by being different, desirable, real and interesting.  It’s about mutual respect and involvement - a feeling of reciprocity. And it's ultimately about improving people's lives and making them happy through the strategic and creative employment of limited resources.

Anyone who tells you otherwise - and there are a lot of them out there - is either stuck in the past, defending his or her shrinking turf, or, more likely, both.

Design determines results

I’m sure you’ve heard the definition of madness: Doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. But have you heard of the "First Rule of Holes?”  When you’re in one, stop digging!   I see it all the time. Organizations are lost, but they’re making really good time.

Ask yourself, and really think about it: Is my organization producing the growth in customers, members, revenues, donations, profits, etc. that it is designed to produce? Like it or not your answer has to be “yes,” because the design determines the results.

The challenge for anyone in a leadership position in today’s hypercompetitive marketplace is to stop digging, get over one’s aversion to the word “branding,” and fully understand the concept. And then to make sure that your entire organization truly understands and conveys the essence of your “brand” - the unique expectation of value that you create and deliver - in every single word and action.

Stop spending time and money on activities that no one cares about. Follow the wisdom of Peter Drucker when he said that the purpose of an enterprise is to “create a satisfied customer and deliver all of the parts of the enterprise in the service of the customer.”  It’s not about fulfilling a mission, making sales, garnering donations, or even making profits. Those will come naturally when you create customers and keep them motivated to return and to bring their friends.

It’s about being other-focused and making the discovery and fulfillment of your customers’ desires part of everyone’s daily work routine: from conversations around the water cooler to meetings, presentations, and even quality improvement activities. Branding must become everyone’s job! Your new imperative is to assess and appeal to your audience’s desires and feelings and induce behavior—period!

Feelings and behavior are the basis for all profit generating consumption in a market at the mercy of customer choice. Focus on feelings, especially the subtle ones that customers themselves cannot articulate. And if you’re doing something that has no impact on their feelings and behavior, ask yourself: Can we make it have an impact and how? And if not, can we eliminate the activity and save precious time and money?

Winston Churchill said a long time ago that no matter how beautiful the strategy, occasionally you have to look at the results.  I'm sure you have a very beautiful strategy.  But if your results are lacking, it's time to change your design.

Interesting Week 25 of 2009

1. Customers Your Company Doesn't Want

Aiming to please too many different types of customers can be a fatal flaw. Focus on your core audience and don't waste money on the rest.  BusinessWeek

2. The 10 Questions Every Change Agent Must Answer

Bill Taylor on the questions that leaders must ask of themselves and their organizations - questions that speak to the challenges of change at a moment when change is the name of the game. The leaders with the best answers win.  Harvard Business Publishing

3. Smart Balance Keeps Tight Focus on Creativity

Heart-healthy food developer outsources manufacturing and distribution to target in-house strength on new products.  The Wall Street Journal

4. Mixing memory with reality can bring pleasure to the routine

Consumers frequently consume items to the point where they no longer enjoy them. And rather than satiation being a fixed physiological process, it appears that it is at least partially constructed in the moment.  Scientific American

5. Advice From Rich People

Highlights from 10 commencement speeches by the likes of Bill Gates and Larry Page. Google CEO Eric Schmidt advised graduates to find their computer's off button. "It's possible to spend your life inside the computer. Life is the people around you," Schmidt said.   The Business Insider

Become a social media superstar!

Gain thousands of friends and followers.  Negotiate a sweet book deal.  Secure scores of high paid speaking gigs.  Start a boutique consultancy.  Blah, blah, blah.  If that's ALL that you're after, best of luck.  But don't expect everyone to share your enthusiasm.  Especially me.

With all of the problems we face today, from healthcare, education, energy and elderly care to the help that organizations need to effectively employ all of the new digital tools and platforms and make a difference in people's lives, a consumed focus on attaining celebrity status appears shallow and uninspiring.  At least it does to me.

A mission is not a strategy

Times are tough.  People are hurting. Your mission to help people is critically important.  But please don't confuse "mission" with "strategy."

Let’s say that your mission is to feed the hungry. How do you intend to achieve that mission?  What has to happen and who has to do it? My guess is that you’ll need financial support of some kind.  Or donations of food or time.  

So where will the money or resources come from?  Most likely from donors and volunteers.  And to inspire those people to support your mission, you’re going to focus on . . . ? Communicating the problem and the need, right?   Wrong.  I used to think that way too. Let me tell you a little story.

Years ago I owned a medical device company. Our mission was to help improve the lives of people who suffered from a range of respiratory disorders through the development of innovative products. 

In order to accomplish our mission, we had to appeal to the network of people who served those patients — physicians, nurses, hospital administrators, insurance companies, government agencies, home healthcare providers, et al.

We tried to appeal to those people by tugging on their heartstrings or, as some would say, through emotional branding. We were mission-driven, in our marketing, advertising, sales, in everything. And it was a huge waste of time and money.

Now, it had nothing to do with their missions. Of course they were the same as ours: to improve patient care. But their desired feelings — their expectations of a new product — were much different.

Those feelings included things like reducing costs, simplicity of set up and use, ease of cleaning and disposal, and so on. In addition, a complex web of relationships existed among the people in that network. And so long as we appealed to them with our mission instead of with their feelings, we struggled.

Being mission-driven is a sure way to inhibit your organization’s growth. Instead, be purpose-driven. And that purpose should be to appeal to your audience’s feelings. To understand and empathize with their priorities and aspirations. What they value, as well as their fears, anxieties, and pains. And especially their desire to belong and to make meaning with the exchange of their money or time.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all for having a clear and compelling mission or cause. One that inspires employees and volunteers and engages customers and donors. But being driven by one’s mission — whether it’s to safeguard the planet, feed the hungry, or educate our youth — is an inside-out strategy that is designed to fail in today's marketplace.

So, instead of blaming the economy or the competition or trying to change people’s minds, change your strategy. And you can start by accepting the realities of the marketplace and transforming your organization’s mindset and activities from inside-out and mission-driven, to outside-in and feelings-driven. Make your mission come alive for the benefit of your customers and members.

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Note: Charitable giving fell last year.   “The biggest decline — almost 13 percent — affected human services groups providing aid to the disadvantaged.”  NPR

P.S. If you're reading this and you're the person who called me during dinner last night (for the fourth time this month) asking for yet another donation, please accept my apologies for my demeanor. And, please tell your boss for me that her mission is quite worthwhile, but unfortunately, for everyone involved, her strategy is worthless.