iPlot

On TED.com: “3 Ways To (Usefully Lose) Control Of Your Brand”

I am super-thrilled that my TED University talk from this year’s TED Global conference that took place in Edinburgh in June made it onto the TED.com homepage this morning. It’s very flattering and, like being on the actual TED stage in person, also a bit nerve-wrecking.

Titled “3 Ways To (Usefully Lose) Control Of Your Brand,” the 6-minute talk explores – as much as that is possible in such short amount of time – how companies can respond to evermore demanding customers and employees who are empowered by hyper-connectivity and the ‘radical transparency’ of social media. Popular belief holds that commitment is fickle, reputation volatile, and loyalty scarce. In short: Companies have lost control – over their workforce, their customers, and as a result, their brands.

But have they really? In my talk, I argue that companies have never been in control, and that they actually have more control over the loss of control than ever before – in fact, they can design for the loss of control…

Also see this great summary on the TED Blog.

...and a related, longer article on design mind (republished by Rotman Magazine)

...as well as a brief reflection on my experience at TEDGlobal…

Sinnfabriken, Berlin

In January this year, on the eve of the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, I wrote an op-ed for Germany’s leading daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung titled “Sinnfabriken” (which you can roughly translate as “meaning factories”; also see this interview on the Werteindex blog.). The title was meant to be catchy, but my thesis was more earnest: Revisiting milestones of the history of brand theory, I argued that brands can now evolve from enablers of sales to arbiters (and in fact, producers) of meaning. The underlying thought experiment was to posit that we have entered the “meaning economy” in which the mission of business is no longer just to create profit and jobs, but to create meaning – spiritual, intellectual, and emotional experiences that help connect the individual to society and vice versa. Transcendence instead of transactions, simply put. Along with this, I tried to make the case for an appreciation of intangible assets, the “soft power” of companies, with their brand as the most tangible factor.

I received some very positive, encouraging responses to the article, but of course not everyone agreed. Why should, of all societal actors, companies bear the responsibility to recharge a largely secularized society with spirituality and meaning? Isn’t that just another cynical trick of the “masters of persuasion” to lure consumers into buying stuff they don’t need? Well, maybe it is, but the reality is that the power of brands is undisputable. What we buy reflects (and even determines) who we are, and most of us spend the majority of our lives at work. So when it comes to meaning, why not start with the institutions that have the strongest influence on our everyday lives?

The question also came up in an interview I gave to German public television (ZDF) in Berlin a couple of weeks ago, and the interviewer insisted on the dangers of entrusting companies with our spiritual and intellectual well-being. These are legitimate concerns of course and the risks are real, but if we manage to change the nature of the game and create new parameters of success in business, perhaps we can truly change companies’ behavior over time. If we make business leaders aware of their responsibility as “chief meaning officers,” if we give them the tools so that their companies can create an added value of meaning with every single traditional transaction they make, then we can maybe indeed generate a completely new business paradigm (and a critical mass of adopters) that can very well deal with a few free riders. Other questions I faced ranged from how to distinguish meaning from CSR and whether Europe’s humanist heritage might present more fertile ground for this new notion of business. I could tell the ZDF-reporter wasn’t fully satisfied with my answers, and neither was I. My jet-lag aside, it was one of those interviews that raised more questions than answers, and it is always humbling (and motivating) to realize the power of an idea but also the gulf that still exists between this idea and a cohesive philosophical framework. I have my work cut out for me.

Later that day, I gave the closing keynote at the Annual Congress of the Federal Association of German Market Researchers (BVM), as part of a session with the fantastic Michael Braungart (of the EPEA Institute) and Erich Joachimsthaler (of Vivadi Partners). Titled “Meaning Factories,” it presented my key theses in 20 minutes, and I was delighted that the audience seemed very attentive (especially given that the German national soccer team was to kick off its Euro quarterfinal a couple of hours later). If you’ve been to Germany, you will know that Germans are notoriously glass-half-empty people. A deep mistrust in all-too-smooth plausibility and in all-too-simple formulas is the companion to most public debates, mixed with a lust for the argument and for revealing self-acclaimed truth-tellers as impostors. If you are an emperor without clothes, a German audience will make you feel really, really naked. I am glad to report that I left the stage with my clothes on.

Here are the slides from my Berlin talk (in German):

Sinnfabriken – Marken als Produzenten von Moral und Bedeutung

Push to Pull

In light of the Arab Spring and the rise of India and China, and propelled by social technologies, the concept of ‘soft power’ (the phrase was coined by Joseph Nye in his 1990 book, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power; defined as “the ability to obtain what one wants through co-option and attraction”) is ever more relevant. Or, in marketing terms, Push is out, Pull is in. If an idea, aspiration, product, goal, ideology, culture, narrative, or national identity is attractive to its constituents, it minimizes the need for constant reinforcement and regulation – whether that is advertising, promotions, and other persuasive efforts, or bureaucracy, command-and-control, and coercion. Pull is powerful (as John Hagel illustrates in his riveting book The Power of Pull). It has a lot of Pull (pun intended) because one doesn’t have to push. It saves energy that can be invested otherwise, for example, in whatever “it” is that creates Pull. No surprise then that individuals, organizations, societies, and entire nations wish they could rely on it more.

But how does one create Pull? Even the most ardent Pull apostle will admit that Pull doesn’t just emanate from nowhere. How much hard power do you have to leverage to create soft power? How much Push is needed to generate Pull? I conducted a mini-poll on Facebook asking that exact question, and the responses ranged from “the answer to this you can only feel” to “a lot.” I sketched a diagram for myself to better understand the forces at work between this power couple, and I came up with three Push-to-Pull ratios that may help you get your “Pull-Push balance” right.

- Positive push-to-pull ratio: If you deploy more Push strategies than the Pull that they generate, then you over-invest in Push and inevitably create an undercurrent, a backlash that can even decrease the current amount of Pull you have. You risk dissolving the entropy of the overall system. Your idea, your narrative, your brand will be seen as intrusive, and in the worst case, as spam.

- Neutral push-to-pull ratio: If your Push and Pull energy levels are in balance, then you achieve the perfect equilibrium. You don’t generate any incremental Pull but you also don’t lose any. You need to be vigilant not to overdo your Push efforts, or you compromise your Pull. One could also say that the very point at which Push threatens to exceed Pull is the demarcation line between ‘cool’ and ‘uncool.’

- Negative push-to pull ratio: The last and ideal state is have Pull exceed Push. This happens after a long period of Push when the scale of Push needed to create Pull decreases. Or when the idea, aspiration, narrative, and culture is so strong that it sustains and amplifies itself. If that’s the case, your job is to simply enable connections for the “idea” (in this case, refering to brands, you can speak of “brand ideologies” or “intrinsic brands” such as IKEA, Nike, Apple, or Starbucks).

These three relationships sit along a continuum, and perhaps it makes sense to consider them to be stages in the evolution of organizations. Fledgling start-ups will rely more on Pull (for they often lack resources to invest in Push), but as they mature, they will inevitably explore means to amplify their intrinsic Pull with Push. Eventually they are so established that they can rely solely, or mainly, on Pull, however now with far bigger impact than the one they were able to achieve as start-ups. There are two critical junctures on this continuum and corresponding decisions: When exactly, in the early stage of an organizational or brand development, do you start to invest in Push? And at what point do you decrease the level of Push so you don’t “push too hard,” over-reach, and jeopardize the valuable Pull you’ve generated? (Ever come across an ad from a brand that you adore and disappointed that the company had to advertise in the first place?)

Pull is a function of cultural power, of the routines and rituals, of the energy that is flowing through an organization. Energy here translates to intensity: not only the level of activity (knowledge flows, productivity, social interactions), but also the tension between actors, the battles between conflicting ideas. If your organization experiences tension, then it is “intense.” An intense organization is always stretched, intellectually and resource-wise, and it is constantly operating at capacity of what it is able to imagine and execute on – it is in a state of emergence, a permanent crisis, with a heavy dose of ambiguity, uncertainty, and even paranoia. This is a good thing: the fearful are paralyzed, the paranoid are proactive (and creative).

Pull comes from an original idea, a compelling story, a contagious meme. Astrophysicist and philosopher David Deutsch defines a meme as "an idea that is a replicator." “A rational meme replicates because people find it valuable,” he writes in The Beginning of Infinity. “An anti-rational meme replicates by disabling its holder's rational thinking so that one has no choice but to spread it.” That’s the difference between Pull and Push, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, empowerment and enforcement, creativity and bureaucracy. Brands, countries, and movements that are built on rational memes have real Pull – and almost infinite staying power. The others will be pushed out sooner or later.

[image credit: timmonsandcompanyblog.com]

Marketer sind die Feuilletonisten der Wirtschaft

The German Werteindex blog has published an interview with me (in two parts, in German) about values-based-based leadership and how marketers can act as “chief meaning officers” to fight the disentchantment of business.

Part 1

Herr Leberecht, Sie bezeichnen ein “meaning surplus”als grundlegend für zukünftige Markenloyalität. Und während sich unser gesamtes Wirtschaftssystem im Umbruch befindet, rufen sie gerade Marketer dazu auf, diesen Prozess des Wandeln federführend zu gestalten – als Interface zwischen Kunden und Unternehmen. Was ist das Neue an der Idee von “Meaning”? Inwiefern unterscheidet sich dieses Meaning von anderen emotionalen Markenbotschaften?

Ich sehe “Meaning” als ein vorgelagertes oder weitergreifendes Konzept. Emotionale Markenbotschaften sind Instrumente zur Verbreitung von Meaning. Aber die Botschaft ist nicht die Marke. Erfolgreiche emotionale Markenbotschaften berühren den Konsumenten nur dann, wenn der Markenkern für ihn von Bedeutung (“Meaning”) ist. Die unmittelbare Erfahrung der Marke kann (und sollte,  im Idealfall) emotional sein, aber der Markenkern – die Werte, die die Marke verkörpert und der Sinn, den sie stiftet – sind eher langfristiger und übergeordneter Natur. Die beiden Ebenen sind interdependent: Emotionale Momente in der Markenerfahrung verstärken die spirituelle Grundbindung an die Marke, und die bisweilen religiöse Bindung zur Marke (siehe Apple) manifestiert und festigt sich in emotionalen Marken-Momenten.

Aber das Neue am Meaning-Konzept ist nicht der Wertekatalog der Marke. Wirtschaft ist per definitionem kein wertefreier Raum (niemand wusste dies besser als der Moralphilosoph Adam Smith, der ja bezeichnenderweise vor Wealth of Nations eine moralphilosophische Schrift mit dem Title Theory of Moral Sentiments veröffentlichte). Schon immer haben Werte die Entscheidungen von Unternehmen und Organisationen geprägt: vom nach innen gewandten Arbeitsethos – wie arbeiten wir miteinander und behandeln wir unsere Mitarbeiter? – zum nach aussen gewandten moralischen Kodex – wie gehen wir mit unseren Stakeholdern um, und welche Werte liegen unseren Produkten und Dienstleistungen zugrunde? Seitdem zahlreiche Studien aufzeigten, dass Konsumenten “moralische” Marken bevorzugen, haben Unternehmen verinnerlicht, dass die Triple-Bottom-Line-Ausrichtung einen echten Wettbewerbsvorteil darstellt (“doing well by doing good”) und durch Modelle wie CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) und zuletzt Values-Based Management Werte externalisiert und ethisches Handeln zunehmend als strategischen Erfolgsfaktor in ihr operatives Geschäft integriert. Noch einen Schritt weiter geht der stark wachsende Bereich der Social Enterpreneurship: for-profit Firmen, deren Geschäftsmodell einzig und allein auf der Schaffung sozialen Mehrwerts basiert. Schon jetzt sind 10% aller europäischen Firmen Social Enterprises (mit insgesamt 11 Millionen Angestellten), und die Europäische Union hat gerade eine neue Social Business Policy erlassen, die diesen Sektor weiter stärken wird.

Was das Chief Meaning Officer-Konzept von all diesen Paradigmen unterscheidet, ist, dass es das Unternehmen – und hier Marketing als die treibende Kraft – als den Urheber von “Bedeutung” begreift, der aktiv Moral schafft, und zwar nicht nur als Grundlage und Checkpoint für die Moralität des Geschäftsgebarens, sondern als vorrangiges, philosophisches Ziel der gesamten Unternehmung, jenseits von CSR und Social Enterpreneurship: “The job of leadership today is not just to make money. It is to make meaning”, schreibt der US-Autor und Consultant John Hagel. Meaning ist nicht auf die soziale Verantwortung eines Unternehmens begrenzt, sondern reicht weiter und meint die Produktion von Bedeutung. Diese kann sich in einer intellektuellen, emotionalen, spirituellen oder ethischen Kategorie manifestieren, oder idealerweise in allen gleichzeitig. Unternehmen sind nicht nur ein moralischer Kompass für Konsumbürger und bieten Orientierung; Meaning Officers produzieren selber Moral und stiften Sinn. Sie setzen auf intrinsische Motivation und erweitern die Maslow’sche Pyramide um Meaning – um eine transzendente Erfahrung, die über materielle Bedürfnisse und die Selbstverwirklichung hinausgeht.

Wie können Meaning Officers das bewerkstelligen?

Dies kann durch umweltfreundliches Handeln geschehen, durch das Wahrnehmen von Verantwortung in der örtlichen Kommune oder die Achtung von Menschenrechten, aber eben auch durch individuelle Sinnstiftungen abseits der großen CSR-Themen, wie z.B. die Schaffung von kleinen Ritualen. Ein bisschen ist das wie Religion for Atheists, um den Titel des jüngst erschienenen Buches des britischen Philosophen Alain de Botton zu zitieren, der eine Art Gebrauchsanleitung zur praktischen Re-Spiritualisierung  unserer säkularisierten westlichen Gesellschaft verfasst hat. Chief Meaning Officers kämpfen gegen die “Entzauberung” der Wirtschaft, gegen die Diktatur von ROI und Excel-Tabellen, und gegen Marketing als objektive Wissenschaft. Sie bringen die Kultur zurück in die Technokratie, verbreiten Ambiguität und Geheimnis in einer weitgehend prozessbestimmten, zweckorientierten Arena, und schaffen Erfahrungen von Intimität und Exklusivität in aller Öffentlichkeit.

Diese neue Art von Leadership gewinnt an Bedeutung vor dem Hintergrund der aktuellen Ereignisse – von Lehmann Brothers zur Euro-Krise, dem Arabischen Frühling zu Occupy Wall Street. Wir erleben den Autoritäts- und Vertrauensverlust der traditionellen Institutionen und eine fundamentale Legitimitätserosion des Kapitalismus, und beides sind letztlich moralische Krisen. Konsumenten und Bürger erwarten mehr von der Wirtschaft, aber nicht nur im Sinne von praktizierter Umwelt- und Sozialverantwortung, von “guten” Produkten und moralischer Orientierung. Es geht um die Transformation von Wirtschaft an und für sich, um die ‘raison d’etre’ von Unternehmen, um die “Moral von der Geschichte”. Und da legen es die jüngsten politisch-ökonomischen Entwicklungen nahe, ein radikaleres Umdenken zu fordern. Was ist, wenn der Sinn des Wirtschaftens in der Sinnstiftung liegt? Oder aus der Marketing-Perspektive: Machen Marken nur dann Sinn, wenn sie Sinn machen? Der amerikanische Ökonom Robert C. Solomon argumentiert in seinem Buch A Better Way to Think About Business – How Values Become Virtues, dass das Marktsystem sich nicht durch Effizienz oder Profit rechtfertigen lässt, sondern nur dadurch, dass Menschen vor allem soziale und emotionale Wesen sind. Märkte bieten ihnen einen Mechanismus, eine “sympathetic community”, wie er das nennt, zum sozialen Austausch.

Wer in diesen Communities, diesen Netzwerken, florieren will, muss eine eigene, identifizierbare Kultur pflegen und jede Menge Sozialkapital mit einbringen. Marketing – ganz im Sinne des in jeglicher Hinsicht prophetischen Cluetrain Manifestos von 2001 – ist daher immer eine kulturelle Leistung, ein Diskurs. Chief Meaning Officers sind die Feuilletonisten der Wirtschaft. Sie schaffen die Soft Power, die den langfristigen Erfolg des Unternehmens gewährleistet. Das mag sich in der Tat “soft” anhören, aber in der Network Economy, mit ihrer zunehmenden Komplexität von Beziehungsgeflechten zwischen Konsumenten, Produzenten, Konkurrenten und Partnern, sind Sozialkapital und soziale Intelligenz zu entscheidenden Erfolgskriterien geworden.

Inwiefern sind auch Werbe- und Kommunikationsagenturen gefordert, “Meaning Agencies” zu werden? Was machen Agenturen heute schon richtig? Was machen die meisten noch immer falsch?

Viele machen vieles richtig. Die Branche ist viel smarter als ihr Ruf, und vordergründige pseudo-soziale Kampagnen wie Pepsi’s Refresh Project sind eher seltene Ausrutscher. Wie Wieden + Kennedy für Nike authentische Sub-Kulturen begriffen und behauptet hat, verdient höchste Anerkennung. Toll ist auch die Dachis Group, die den Begriff des Social Business konsequent auf alle Bereiche des Unternehmens augedehnt und eine einflussreiche Plattform aufgebaut hat, die unter anderem den Social Business Index und zahlreiche wegweisende Veröffentlichungen beinhaltet. Oder die Ads Worth Spreading Kampagne von TED (“ads so good you choose to watch!”).

Werbe – und Kommunikationsagenturen sind, glaube ich, insgesamt einen Schritt voraus und haben “Meaning Production” schon lange zu ihrer Domäne gemacht. Allerdings bleiben Agenturen aufgrund ihres beschränkten Einflusses letztlich nur Impulsgeber; die Hauptverantwortung liegt bei den Inhouse Marketing Departments – und die tun sich schwer, von traditionellen Marketing-Konventionen abzurücken, weil in der Konzernzentrale oft der Mut zum innovativen “meaningful marketing” fehlt und ihnen daher das Mandat zum umfassenden Change Management versagt bleibt.

Wo sind die größten Hemmschwellen auf dem Weg zum “Chief Meaning Officer“?

Die größten Hürden für den Meaning Officer sind jedenfalls intern. Da stoßen Meaning Officer naturgemäß auf jede Menge Skepsis, und es ist nicht immer einfach, den Zynismus der eigenen Mitarbeiter, die Kluft zwischen den Glaubensbekenntnissen der Geschäftsleitung und der tatsächlichen Kultur des Unternehmens, zu überwinden. Ein Bekenntnis zum Anderssein, kreative Risikofreudigkeit, der Mut zu sozialem Marketing und der Drang zum Experimentieren sind die Charakteristika des Chief Meaning Officers. Wie Marketing-Guru Seth Godin so schön treffend formuliert: ‚Wer sich nicht der Gefahr aussetzt, wegen seiner Idee gefeuert zu werden, dessen Idee ist nicht wirklich originell.‘ Ich weiß, das ist leichter gesagt als getan, aber Marketer müssen endlich aus der Defensive heraus und selbstbewusster ihre Philosophie vertreten – und anstelle des ständigen Nachweises des Wertes von Marketing neue Werte definieren, einfordern und schaffen.

Part 2

Herr Leberecht, Sie fordern Unternehmen auf, mehr meaning zu produzieren statt neuer Produkte. Den Marketer sehen Sie als zentrales Interface zwischen Kunden und Unternehmen, der den Prozess der meaning production führt.

 Haben Marketer überhaupt ausreichend Einfluss auf die Praxis ihrer Unternehmen in Bereichen außerhalb der Marketing-Abteilung?

Die Irrelevanz-Falle ist allgegenwärtig, aber inwieweit man reintappt hängt vom Selbstverständnis des Marketers ab. Marketing wird ja oft fälschlicherweise als Cost Center gebrandmarkt, als Luxus-Funktion für gute Zeiten, dabei ist es ein kritischer Erfolgsfaktor (wir wissen von zahlreichen Studien, dass der Erfolg oder das Scheitern von Unternehmen stark vom Marketing abhängt) und im Idealfall eine der wenigen Funktionen, die eine ganzheitliche Sicht auf das Unternehmen haben. Das sollten sich Marketers zu nutze machen. Sie sollten Beziehungen aufbauen zu anderen Funktionen und auf (Marken)Kontrolle verzichten, um somit mehr Einfluss auszuüben.

Das einflussreichste Marketing ist Marketing ohne Marketing: Marketing, das sich mehr als ein Netzwerk versteht als eine Funktion. Ich sage meinem Team immer, dass wir unser Ziel nicht erreicht haben, wenn unsere Funktion unternehmensweit an Macht gewinnt, sondern wenn das ganze Unternehmen zur Marketingorganisation geworden ist und wie ein Marketer denkt und fühlt.

Was zeichnet Unternehmen aus, in denen Marketer erfolgreich ganzheitlich gestalten können?

Erfolgreiche CMOs wie Beth Comstock bei GE sind für Geschäftsfeldbestimmung, Produktentwicklung und strategische Wachstumsinitiativen verantwortlich, in enger Zusammenarbeit mit den Business Units. Wie es Comstock vorgemacht hat, sollte Marketing nahe beim Kunden sein, eine langfristige Sicht einnehmen (und sich darin deutlich von Vertrieb/Sales unterscheiden) und als ein Change Agent agieren. Dies trifft insbesondere auf den Bereich Digitale Transformation zu: Ein jüngste Studie von Cap Gemini/MIT besagt, das zwei Drittel aller globalen Konzerne mit der Transformation zum digitalen Unternehmen erhebliche Schwierigkeiten haben. Das Thema Enterprise 2.0 – also der Einzug sozialer Medien in den IT-Mainstream und die Auswirkungen sozialer Technologien im allgemeinen – bereiten Chef-Etagen erhebliche Kopfzerbrechen. Wie Business zu Social Business wird, und nicht nur im Sinne von Social Responsibility, sondern viel weitreichender, im Sinne einer kompletten Neu-Definierung von Wertschöpfung – durch Ko-Kreation mit dem Kunden, Crowdsourcing, radikale Transparenz, usw. – diesen Wandel können Marketer als Meaning Officers entscheidend mit antreiben.

Unterliegen nicht auch Werte und Sinnstiftungen der Gefahr, austauschbar zu werden? Z. B. Umweltbewusstsein ist schon längst kein USP mehr. Welche kritischen Erfolgsfaktoren gibt es ist in der Positionierung von Werten und “Meaning” zu beachten?

Meaning hat kein Verfallsdatum. Die Produktion von Bedeutung kann nicht austauschbar werden, weil sie eigentlich immer austauschbar ist. Es ist ein Template. Mit anderen Worten: Was zählt, ist die Erfahrung, der Moment des Sinnstiftens an sich, das “Unterschiedmachen”. Mit welchen Werten und Ideen das im einzelnen geschieht, sollte jedes Unternehmen für sich entscheiden. Apple steht für die Humanisierung von Technologie, IBM für die globalisierte Nutzung von Technologie im Dienste eines “Smart Planets”, Coca-Cola für Happiness und so weiter. Marken müssen ihre These finden und dann jene Argumente im kollektiven Bewusstsein verorten, die ihnen recht geben.

Aber über diese allgemeinen Markenassoziationen hinaus: Wie produziert man Bedeutung? Was macht Bedeutung aus?  Vereinfacht gesagt, sind das, denke ich, vier Komponenten: Disruption, Seltenheit, Soziabilität und Transzendenz. Disruption bedeutet die Abweichung von der Routine, die Verletzung einer „mental map“, eines standardisierten kognitiven Modells. Zum Beispiel: Das iPhone stellte die mental maps von Computer und Telefon in Frage und verband beide zu etwas Ungesehenem, einer neuen Kategorie, die eine „dritte Bedeutung“ schuf.

Sehgewohnheiten und kognitive Muster brechen – so funktioniert Werbung. Meaning braucht daher noch weitere Dimensionen. Nehmen Sie das Beispiel der deutschen Nationalmannschaft: Hört sich trivial an, aber was würde den EM-Sieg des Teams bedeutungsvoll machen? Nun, zum einen, Seltenheit. Die deutsche Elf hat schon seit 1990 keinen internationales Turnier mehr gewonnen. Meaning ist umgekehrt proportional zum Auftreten von bedeutenden Ereignissen.

Und der Seltenheitswert eines Ereignisses potenziert sich, wenn er teilbar wird, d.h. ein soziales Moment hat. Dies kann auf vier Arten geschehen: durch die Möglichkeit, an Bedeutung teilzuhaben und sie aktiv mitzugestalten; durch das Teilen einer bedeutenden Erfahrung mit anderen (Bedeutung entsteht immer im Austausch mit anderen, ist ein soziales Phänomen – siehe „Fanmeile“); durch Großzügigkeit (wenn man mehr gibt als nimmt, entsteht ein Bedeutungsexzess, ein “meaning surplus”); und durch den sozialen Mehrwert, den Beitrag zur Gesellschaft, zum allgemeinen Wohl oder dem von benachteiligten sozialen Gruppierungen.

Letzteres führt zum Kriterium der Transzendenz: Es kann ein gesellschaftliches Ziel sein, das das individuelle Ereignis überhöht, eine Ideologie, oder eine abstrakte, universale Wahrheit. Bedeutende Erlebnisse deuten immer auf eine übergreifende Vision, eine „dritte Bedeutung” hin. Sie stehen nie nur für sich selbst. Warum wird eine Fussball-WM zum “Sommermärchen” und ein Team zum „Weltmeister der Herzen“? Das ist ja kein reiner PR-Spin, sondern eine echte emotionale Bewegung. Das konnte man auch bei Steve Jobs Tod sehen, als die kollektive Trauer fast schon ekstatische Züge annahm, oder in Obamas vieldiskutierter Präsidentschaftskampagne von 2008, in der sich Hunderttausende von jungen Amerikanern engagierten, weil sie von der Vision von “Hope” – von der Machbarkeit echten Wandels – inspiriert waren. Oder zuletzt Occupy Wall Street. Es gibt einfach diese Momente, die eine tiefe innere Wahrheit in uns bloßlegen.

Chief Meaning Officers behalten alle diese Faktoren – Disruption, Seltenheit, Soziabilität und Transzendenz – bei ihren Aktivitäten immer im Auge. Aber ein fünfter fehlt noch: Echtheit. Nur wenn die Intentionen des Unternehmens ehrlich sind, wird die Authentizität der Marke fühlbar. Ansonsten ist Meaning bedeutungslos.

Wie passt die Entwicklung zu mehr Meaning zur ansonsten ebenso immer öfter hörbaren Forderung nach mehr Meßbarkeit und effektiven ROI?

Zunächst einmal: Ich schenke der geläufigen Formel, dass man nur das managen kann, was man messen kann, keinen Glauben. Im Gegenteil: Die besten Manager sind Experten im Managen des Nicht-Messbaren. Um es noch etwas mehr zuzuspitzen: ROI ist eine Schimäre und in der Regel ein Alibi, um Chefs zufriedenzustellen. Wer keine Ideen und keine Vision hat, der hat eben Zahlen. Verstehen Sie mich nicht falsch, ich bin nicht grundsätzlich gegen die Quantifizierung der Wirkung von Marketing-Programmen. Aber nur, wenn man im Hinterkopf behält, dass diese Zahlen immer nur eine Annäherung dastellen, eine Interpretation, aber niemals eine objektive Wahrheit. Der ROI bleibt zwangsläufig oft “intangible” (Anm. d. Red.: immateriell). Wobei selbst der Sprachgebrauch zweifelhaft ist. Dass die vermeintlichen “tangible assets” (Anm. d. Red.: materielle Vermögenswerte) unter Umständen wesentlich volatiler sind als die “intangibles” hat die jüngste Finanzkrise ja nachdrücklich bewiesen. (Sie hat uns auch daran erinnert, dass ein Grossteil der Buchhaltungswerte eines Unternehmens sich als vollkommen virtuell herausstellen kann.)

Das schöne deutsche Wort der “Wertschätzung” wird immer noch unterschätzt im Vergleich zu den sogenannten “harten” Metrics wie Leads, Funnel Contribution oder Revenue Contribution. Goodwill, Reputation, Customer Lifetime Value (der Wert eines einzelnen Kunden über den gesamten Zeitraum der Kundenbeziehung), soziales Kapital oder “organizational capital” (wie es der US-Finanztheoretiker Baruch Lev nennt) – diese Werte sind meiner Meinung nach wesentlich aussagekräftiger, wenn auch ebenso schwer präzise zu messen.

Hinzu kommt, dass die meisten ROI Messungen meist kurzfristig gedacht und allein auf das Quartalsergebnis oder die unmittelbare Wirkung von Marketingaktivitäten bezogen sind. Aber das Quartal (und wie überhaupt der gesamte übliche Budgetrahmen von einem Jahr) sind recht willkürliche Planungseinheiten, die nur selten mit der Realität eines Unternehmens übereinstimmen. Der Markt steht niemals still, Kunden denken und handeln in unterschiedlichen zeitlichen Perspektiven, und die Investition in Marken, in die Beziehung zu Kunden, in intellektuelle und emotionale Erfahrungen, lässt sich nur schwer formal erfassen. Jeder Marketer, der erklärt, genau zu wissen, mit welchem Effekt er wo investiert, lügt. Der ROI von Marketing ist letztlich immer eine Scheinkalkulation.

Und dennoch machen die meisten Marketingleute das Spiel mit – weil sie durch die Machtkonventionen in ihren Unternehmen dazu gezwungen werden und glauben, sonst ihr Mitspracherecht bei strategischen Entscheidungen zu verlieren. Wer Zahlen hat, gewinnt.

Ich bin mir sicher, dass viele Marketingabteilungen 50% ihrer Zeit damit verbringen, ihre Programme zu evaluieren und ROI Reports für das Management-Team zu erstellen. Stellen Sie sich vor, wie viel mehr sie erreichen würden, wenn sie auch nur die Hälfte dieser Zeit nicht für Reporting, sondern für kreative Marketing-Aktivitäten aufbrächten! Wie viel mehr Bedeutung könnten sie produzieren, wie viel neue Kunden könnten sie schaffen und wie viele existierende Kundenbeziehungen stärken? Ich kenne viele Kollegen, die gezwungen werden, detaillierte ROI Analysen zu erstellen, bevor sie überhaupt Geld ausgeben können – aber dann ist es meistens schon zu spät. Im Zeitalter des Social Web hat das Marketing keine Zeit mehr für ausgiebige Planung – alles was passiert, passiert jetzt. Just do it! Der Marketing-Mix ändert sich jeden Tag. Das einzig konstante sind Experimente – und die Werte, die sich in langfristigen Beziehungen zu Kunden und Öffentlichkeit ausdrücken.

Ein letzter Gedanke noch: Trotz des ganzen Hypes um Big Data und die totale, Echtzeit-nahe Erfassung und Analyse von Kundendaten, sollte man nicht vergessen, dass Daten immer nur reaktives Verhalten ermöglichen; selbst die datenbasierte Zukunftsplanung ist eine Reaktion. Statt auf Big Data setze ich auf Big Intuition! Wer wirklich innovativ sein will und etwas verändern will, vertraut seiner Intuition. Die ist nämlich schneller als alle Daten. Paradoxerweise gilt in der Wissensgesellschaft: Intuition sticht Wissen aus. Chief Meaning Officers wissen das. Sie erahnen Trends, bevor diese messbar werden, vertrauen ihrem (Mit)Gefühl und machen somit den Unterschied aus, der dann in ein echtes Differenzierungsmerkmal mündet. Wer nur Daten analysiert, ahmt das Bestehende nach. Wer selbstbewusst genug ist, um Daten zu ignorieren, kann Verhalten beeinflussen und tatsächlich etwas Neues schaffen. Henry Ford hatte Recht: ‚Wenn ich auf meine Kunden gehört hätte, hätte ich schnellere Pferde produziert‘. Daten helfen uns zu verstehen, wie die Welt ist; Innovatoren und Visionäre aber (und Chief Meaning Officers sind beides!) sehen die Welt, wie sie nicht ist.

 

Disrupt and Disrupted - Notes from The Great Indian B2B Marketing Summit

I had the great pleasure of speaking at The Great Indian B2B Marketing Summit in Bangalore yesterday, organized by Jessie Paul, the former CMO of Indian outsourcing juggernaut Wipro, author of the book “No Money Marketing,” and founder of Paul Writer, a marketing consultancy cum hub that runs an influential online CMO Roundtable and other formidable programs to facilitate the exchange amongst the Indian marketing community. The program was quite an eclectic mix of topics, ranging from social media and digital marketing trends, to market development, to marketing leadership, to personal branding.

The two latter topics appeared to be the most popular, based on the audience’s response. Jessie herself provided a good overview of the main tenets of personal branding, and her session was a great reminder of the importance of creating a “personal brand map” to identify (following models by Geert Hofstede and Jim Collins) one’s “values, heroes, symbols, and rituals,” and derive one’s unique brand promise at the intersection of “passion, excellence, and profitability.” In addition to establishing personal thought leadership platforms tailored to the respective career level (entry-level execs may want to focus on processes, best practices, and creation; mid-level execs on opinions, forward-looking statements, HR issues, and organizational vision; whereas CXO execs typically address industry frameworks as well as macro-economic and policy issues), Rajeev Suri, CEO of Liqwid Krystal, offered some helpful advice for aspiring marketing leaders: 1. Stay close to the leadership; 2. Stay close to the money; 3. Never get into cruise control.

None of those are easy, and I can certainly empathize with Sangeeta Sundaram, head of marketing and communications at Capgemini India, who remarked that “marketing is notoriously over-stretched and under-resourced.” But then again, as Kiran Mani, head of industry sales for Google India, pointed out in his presentation: “Effective marketing does not have to cost much.” Jessie, with her penchant for “No Money Marketing," would agree, and ad agency executive Jon Bond goes even one step further, as quoted in a recent Fast Company article: "Marketing in the future is like sex. Only the losers will have to pay for it."

While that is a perfectly viral line from a Twitter and SEO viewpoint and might cheer up some CMOs in light of dwindling marketing budgets, it of course posits an existential threat for advertisers and other marketing services firms. "Creating more work for less money is the big paradox," says Matt Howell, president of the Boston agency Modernista, in the same Fast Company piece that depicted a rather gloomy scenario for today’s Mad Men (“Mayhem on Madison Avenue”). Both client and agency side are facing a more and more strenuous battle for attention and engagement in the light of fragmented media usage, always-on connectivity, and social media: "The irony is that while there have never been more ways to reach consumers, it's never been harder to connect with consumers," explains Brad Jakeman, now chief creative officer at Activision, the gaming company.

No wonder new models are popping up left and right. Forrester calls for “Adaptive Marketing,” and the Harvard Business Review (HBR) recently ran a comprehensive report on “Social Media and the New Rules of Branding." In one of the report’s articles, McKinsey’s David C. Edelman suggests that marketers need to respond to today’s more nuanced customer journeys. Far from systematically narrowing their choices, Edelman argues, today’s consumers take a much more iterative journey of the three traditional customer journey stages: consider, evaluate, buy, and spend more time in the additional stages of enjoy, advocate, and bond. Edelman’s main revelation: If the bond becomes strong enough, consumers enter an enjoy-advocate-buy loop that skips the consider and evaluate stages entirely.

That all makes sense, but it strikes me as unlikely that tomorrow’s marketing innovation will come from reading a McKinsey piece in HBR. These days, domain expertise ages quickly, and doing is replacing saying. Marketers increasingly have to develop added-value ancillary products, services, and apps in order to sell their core offering. Traditional marketing is disrupted by disruptive marketing, which itself is disrupting interruptive advertising. Yet - in the best tradition of Clayton Christensen’s “innovation dilemma" - yesterday’s win can become tomorrow’s burden as disruptive viral campaigns are quickly absorbed by an army of me-too’s. Benchmarking, best practices, and new theoretical frameworks often just eclipse a lack of imagination, a lack of customer empathy, and a lack of courage to be creative: “There is no one to copy, no one to follow,” says Richard Branson.

And yet here I was at a marketing conference sharing my own playbook. Jessie had invited me to present on “What B2B Marketers Can Learn from Design-Driven Innovation for B2B,” and I definitely enjoyed my role as the somewhat eccentric outlier in the line-up. I was surprised how many people in the audience knew frog when I conducted a mini brand audit at the outset of my presentation, and I was flattered by their interest in frog. I took the attendees through a quick overview of frog’s history, philosophy, and approach, before elaborating on the seven design principles that I thought might be applicable for B2B marketers. The subsequent Q&A yielded some incisive questions, although, as usual, I wasn’t able to answer the “ROI of design” one satisfactorily. If anyone can, drop me a note. Oh well. Sometimes you just need to believe (or have a stellar sales team).

Here are the slides from my presentation:

What B2B Marketers Can Learn from Design-Driven Innovation

 

 

 

Openness or How Do You Design for the Loss of Control?

 

Openness is the mega-trend for innovation in the 21st century, and it remains the topic du jour for businesses of all kinds. Granted, it has been on the agenda of every executive ever since Henry Chesbrough’s seminal Open Innovation came out in 2003. However, as several new books elaborate upon the concept from different perspectives, and a growing number of organizations have recently launched ambitious initiatives to expand the paradigm to other areas of business, I thought it might be a good time to reframe “Open” from a design point of view.

What sparked my interest in particular was the Dachis Group’s list of Six Social Business Trends to Watch which referenced the phrase JP Rangaswami coined at this year’s Enterprise 2.0 conference: “Design for the loss of control.” His point was more IT-specific, arguing that the combination of pervasive digital infrastructure, software-as-a-service, cloud computing, social software, and smart phones have enabled employee- and customer-driven solutions to a degree that renders top-down IT systems obsolete. As Dion Hinchcliffe of the Dachis Group writes: “Enterprises currently expend considerable resources trying to impose control on a situation that increasingly appears like it not only can’t be controlled, but almost certainly doesn’t need to be.”

No longer in control

The new paradigm Hinchcliffe describes has implications far beyond just IT. For one thing, employees, who are facing an increasingly hybridized work/life proposition, are eager to do what they are passionate about, and they will increasingly find the digital spaces and tools that allow them to do this most effectively without having to ask anyone for permission. Companies have to come to terms with the fact that the traditional model of managerial resource allocation and coordination (mainly coerced through extrinsic motivation in the form of rewards and punishments, such as payments, promotions, demotions, etc.) has become outdated and no longer reflects the social fabric of today’s workforce.

Moreover, customers, too, seek out relationships with brands that go beyond the merely transactional. Empowered through ubiquitous access to information and therefore radical transparency, through an abundance of choices on the web, as well as the ability to contribute and tap into social networks (and thus social capital) in real-time and on-the-go, they expect brands to offer engagement and collaboration models that match the more distributed and multi-layered mechanisms of value creation through social media.

Commitment is fickle, reputation volatile, and loyalty scarce. In short: Companies have lost control – over their workforce, their customers, and as a result, their brands. Or, more precisely, as Charlene Li points out in her book Open Leadership, they have never really been in control – what they are actually forced to give up now is their need for control.

The power of pull

So what can they do besides just bemoaning this loss and passively observing how the new centrifugal forces of the Social, Real-Time Web are disrupting their traditional business and engagement models? Li lays out how business leaders can and (must!) embrace the new rules of openness. John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison, in the The Power of Pull, provide an actionable framework for how these new forces can be leveraged through “shaping strategies” on the individual, institutional, and societal level.

These “shaping strategies,” as the term suggests, present an exciting challenge for design. If designers embrace the insight that influence is replacing authority as the new currency in the “pull economy” and that the best way to gain influence is to give up control, they will have significant impact on how this new economy is shaping up. In fact, they are uniquely positioned to develop what Hagel, Seely Brown, and Davison call levers of “access, attraction, and achievement” that provide the “creation spaces” and tools for employees and customers alike to design their own destiny, create their own meaning, and thus convert their very own skills and passions into productivity and loyalty.

In essence, businesses can use “shaping strategies” to amplify and accelerate the inevitable loss of control in order to avoid employees and customers abandon them. This may sound counter-intuitive but the upside is considerable. A deliberately designed loss of control grants companies the only remaining and arguably most critical competitive advantage – access. As long as they enable and facilitate knowledge flows, ideas, passions, skills, and experiences, they have access to them. In fact, if they fully leverage the “powers of pull,” these assets will gravitate towards them.

X-problems and social networks

Openness is no longer just a nice stunt but a fundamental requirement for any business that wants to thrive in the new “pull economy.” Because we’re increasingly dealing with "X-Problems," as my colleague Adam Richardson reckons in his book Innovation X, we need approaches that allow us to come up with creative solutions to problems we may not even know yet. In other words: Solutions that help define the problem. Or as Hagel, Seely Brown, and Davison put it: “If you want to find out what it is you don’t know that you don’t know, you need to hang out with other people who might already know it.”

The loss of control enables the creation of more weak ties in a company’s network (inside and outside of the organization), and, as social network research has shown, weak ties are more conducive to transporting foreign ideas, knowledge, and skills – because they move faster from one node to the other as the network becomes more accessible and nimble on its fringes. The further you get away from the core of your network, the less control you (may want to) have.

You could argue that designers have been designing creation spaces, feedback mechanisms, and other participatory experiences for some time now. They certainly have, but perhaps without fully recognizing or deliberately orchestrating the amount of loss of control that their designs represented. It seems like the time is ripe to understand these efforts as part of a broader shift and consolidate them into a series of formats that, going forward, shall serve as blueprints for “design for the loss of control,” across different corporate functions and disciplines.

Frequently, these solutions will involve de-institutionalizing decision-making by removing the intermediary. In many cases, this may imply an act of democratization, but it is also important not to see this as a zero-sum game. Control is not just shifting from one hand to many; rather, it is dissolving and defragmenting and along the way diminishing – or turning into something else, far more valuable: social capital that resides in the public domain and is no longer controlled by anyone. The formats that propel this new mode of collaboration and value creation are emergent and informal, and they typically carry a significant amount of tacit knowledge.

Here are some recent examples:

Open ideation/crowdsourcing: Open ideation (or crowdsourcing) is based on the assumption that the best ideas for new products, services, and business models may come from outside of your organization or from those people inside your organization who are typically (by function or hierarchy) excluded from the ideation process. Like all open innovation efforts, crowdsourcing redistributes control from an elite group of thinkers and doers to a broader group of self-selected participants. By broadening the funnel, companies can harness the accumulated or aggregated knowledge of these voices. Crowdsourcing is usually focused on ideas and insights but can also cover a wider array of collaborations with external parties throughout all stages of the innovation cycle. Dell, Starbucks, P&G, and many other organizations use crowdsourcing. Nike partners with Creative Commons and Best Buy for GreenXchange, a platform that promotes “the creation and adoption of technologies that have the potential to solve important global or industry-wide sustainability challenges.” TED is expanding its reach through TEDx, “independently organized TED events," without compromising the exclusivity of its brand. Furthermore, Victors & Spoils brought crowdsourcing to the world of advertising; and IDEO recently launched its crowdsourcing platform, OpenIDEO, inviting the public to join “creative challenges” that tackle social issues through design. And there are firms such as InnoCentive that specialize in crowdsourcing services for other companies. All these companies not only make ideas accessible to more or less open publics (to some extent, giving up control over IP) but also commit to making the follow-up on these ideas (at least partially) transparent (giving up some control over agenda-setting and strategic planning).

Open design research: frogMob, developed by frog design, is a tool for crowdsourced design research, based on the idea that everyone can be a researcher for a day, just by paying a little more attention to the world around them. frogMob uses guerilla photography and stories to take a quick pulse on global trends, behaviors, and artifacts. Launched internally first – tapping into frog’s eight global studios – we are now expanding frogMob to a broader public. Through frogMob, we are able to “mobilize” not only our internal network around a specific assignment but also external contributors on an ad hoc basis, in a short amount of time (like a Flash Mob). frogMob allows us to provide lightweight, rapid design research for clients who ask for a “trend scrape” that identifies patterns and offers unexpected inspiration. The key here is to tap into existing knowledge flows - in a nimble way that does not require too much commitment from the participants and eliminates bureaucratic hurdles.

Open strategy: Crowdsourcing can also take place as a combination of online and offline collaboration, as demonstrated by NPR and its Think-In on the future of digital media. Supported and facilitated by frog, NPR hosted an open strategy session, bringing together 60 thought leaders at the intersection of media and technology to explore new approaches to content creation, distribution, and funding for NPR and NPR member stations. The Think-In harnessed the collective expertise and creativity of an exceptional group of entrepreneurs, executives, and innovators, and it developed concepts that NPR incorporated into its organizational roadmap. The event was augmented through live-commentary and streaming via various social media channels. This social augmentation made the workshop accessible for a broader audience, which – like the on-site participants – felt so genuinely passionate about NPR that they committed some serious time to this collective brainstorming. Such passion for brands could also be put to work through a more radical version of a Think-In: a “brand hijack” that convenes customers and other interested parties to explore new directions for a brand – yet with the twist that the brand itself would not participate (but may have the option to co-opt the results of the session afterwards).

Open-source humanitarian software: In the software space, open-source projects have long been an established form of open innovation, see IBM’s Eclipse platform. Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK), founded by teams from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, NASA and the World Bank, uses open-source methods to “hack for humanity.” It describes itself as a community of “developers, geeks and tech-savvy do-gooders around the world, working to develop software solutions that respond to the challenges facing humanity today.” The group runs “Hackathons,” inviting the best and the brightest hackers from around the world, who volunteer their time to tackle disaster relief issues with through software applications. The Hackathons are designed as so-called “codejams,” fast-paced competitions that give the participants a set amount of time to solve the challenges they are given. At the end of a two-day marathon of hacking, a panel will review each hack, and the winners will walk away with prizes, as well as the right to call themselves “RHoKstars” ever after. Another example of open-source humanitarian software is Ushahidi’s CrowdMap which displays crowdsourced crisis data on maps as a free cloud-based service.

Open-(source) social networks: Lockheed Martin, the giant defense contractor, built its own networking site called Eureka Streams and released it open-source for the public to use. As Fast Company writes in a recent blog post, “The company's management had recognized that an internal social networking tool could have all sorts of procedural benefits for a large, and geographically disjointed organization. Essentially it lets ‘knowledge workers’ inside the company find and talk with other experts who may have valid input to particular projects, but who would otherwise have zero oversight or input.” Dow Chemical is another example of a company setting up its own social network, in this case to help managers identify the talent they need to execute projects across different business units and functions. Dow has even extended the network to include former employees – a smart move. Closed networks are of diminishing value. A recent McKinsey Quarterly report argues, “In the longer term, networked organizations will focus on the orchestration of tasks rather than the ‘ownership’ of workers’ and advises executives to ‘make the network the organization.’”

Open branding: In the spirit of transparency, design firm Continuum is partly revealing to the public its creative process. The specific challenge is to create a brand identity for the Design Museum Boston, a nomadic institution that exhibits mainly in the virtual space. For six weeks, Continuum is partnering with Core77 on a blog series that will reveal the firm’s process and progress as it takes on the challenge. Readers are invited to comment but it is not quite clear to what degree they can influence the creative work. It’s a non-commercial client and a low-risk project but in any case, making a creative project transparent – even somewhat haphazardly – is an interesting experiment that is worth following. The more radical experiment would of course be to put the creative control over a project fully in the hands of the “smart crowd” and have the creative team steered by a disperse group of “remote creative directors”- beyond just input comprising of insights and ideas. Other, more radical formats are imaginable: For example, sharing a company’s entire communications (some, more or less tightly managed corporate Twitter accounts are in a way a precursor to this) with the public. This would be radical transparency indeed, and an experiment with unpredictable outcome – will the benefit of enabling reciprocal, collaborative relationships outweigh the risk of reputational landmines and IP violations? Is it IP, in the end, as proprietary “knowledge stocks” (The Power of Pull), that serves as a company’s greatest asset or isn’t it rather the ability to attract talent and grant access to knowledge and skills? There’s another, softer benefit to it: Brand personality comes from being personal. The more transparent and the more vulnerable brands are, the more personal, they more authentic they will appear. Transparency is a prerequisite for authenticity – an unmasked and immediate act of communication.

Open social-capital enablers: Small, ad-hoc, start-ups are popping up that leverage the principles of self-organization, which Clay Shirky so aptly described in Here Comes Everybody, to rethink “capital” and reinvent human resources allocation in order to tackle global issues. Originated from the Sandbox network, an exclusive network of young innovators and entrepreneurs under 30, this movement calls itself “Emergent Transformation,” and Max Marmer, one of its masterminds, writes on its group blog: “Lately we have been observing an accelerated movement of ventures that are revolutionizing how we take initiative on a global scale. They can be mostly found in the areas of education, innovation, collaboration, networks, entrepreneurship, and human development: spaces that most likely will dominate the future of value creation in our society. These ventures are leveling the global resource play, unleashing unused & undeveloped human capital and leading to a socioeconomic transformation.” For example, there is Supercool School, an online school platform that strives to give people worldwide access to education by building a new global infrastructure of live online schools. Or Assetmap, an online platform that helps individuals discover and leverage resources directly from the community around them, using the methodology of Asset Based Community Development (ABCD). Max Marmer believes “One huge differentiator that sets these projects apart from almost all other organizations is their emphasis on ‘human potential’ or ‘social capital,’ rather than economic capital. The hope is that by creating a clearly defined space for these organizations to work in, there will be more opportunity to share this social capital, allowing them to achieve complimentary aspects of mutually shared visions. Their aspirations are tied to value creation, based on co-operative contribution, and will allow them to fulfill personal passions. Giving new meaning to their work, it’s helping people lead happier lives.”

Open conferences: Un-conferences are facilitated, face-to-face, participant-driven conferences centered on a specific theme or purpose. They are the antidote to the conventional conference format, radically disrupting the delineation between curator and attendees, speaker and audience. The attendees are the experts. Many organizations and groups have begun to use un-conferences to capture and externalize the full breadth of expertise assembled at conferences. Some conferences prefer to incorporate only some un-conference formats into their program – participant-driven sessions that are developed on site in real time.

Open conversations: Modernista did it. Skittles did it. And ad shop Crispin Porter + Bogusky did it. All of them use their corporate web sites as social hubs that curate what is being said about their brand rather than staging what their brand has to say. These efforts are attempts to at least co-opt the conversation on the Social Web before brand-specific aggregators could benefit from being parasites of the brand's social universe. In other words, what if a brand faced unexpected competition from a third-party site that provided a much more comprehensive and easier-to-access curation of Skittles conversations than the brand itself? Or if McDonalds suddenly saw itself confronted with a site aggregating blogs, videos, news, and tweets, all about but not by McDonalds? Think of this as the logical extension of the company profiles that already exist on LinkedIn and Glassdoor.com, which aggregate individual member data into a fairly transparent view of companies, including employee information, salary information, and recent news. Indeed, third-party brand curators might realize that brands live in the ‘social commons,’ and that whoever builds the right aggregation mechanism and establishes the most popular channels to reach a mass audience will “own” the branded conversation on the web. Take a look at how Get Satisfaction’s “community-empowered customer support” plays this – it is not an uncontroversial model, but it is “designed for the loss of control (of brands),” enabling customer-to-customer service. You could also spin the idea of a “social homepage” a bit further and not only curate the social web conversation about your brand but actually give away your whole homepage to third parties and to public service announcements, stories, or art. Give up control – gain social currency.

Open HR: Of all critical business functions, HR might be the one with the greatest potential for innovation. With dynamic, quickly accessible expertise replacing static piles of proprietary knowledge, and companies moving from organization-centric to network-centric modi operandi, HR becomes a key enabler of assets through the nurturing of relationships, developing talent, and fostering a culture of openness and participation. This is not just pep talk but includes new tools and methodologies that radically alter the relationship between employee and firm. A recent study by Birkman International that surveyed nearly 20,000 HR professionals found that 83 percent of respondents see great potential in social media-based HR solutions, particularly when it comes to improving communication, learning, and knowledge sharing. Here at frog design, we have launched frogForward, an open-ended, conversational, and social performance management app that allows our employees to provide 360-degree feedback any time throughout the year (not just during review cycles). Goal-setting is entered as a stream, and the feedback – peer, managerial, and employee feedback – can be shared openly or privately. This new approach reflects the changing realities of work performance, from a task-driven control and coordination approach with quantifiable goals to a holistic view that is more situation-and context-aware, gives the employee significantly more control of the process, and considers intangibles such as tacit knowledge, social intelligence, and relationship-building. frogForward shares this approach with Rypple, an ad-hoc social network that provides simple, direct, anonymous, and ongoing customer and employee feedback.

All of these initiatives, whether they apply to brand, CRM, product development, R&D, customer service, or HR, exhibit some similar characteristics:

- easy access;

- open platforms that harness the creativity and expertise from people outside of the organization or untapped sources inside;

- open-ended formats that can evolve as the problem statement changes;

- ample room for participation and emergent self-organization;

- easy mechanisms for tinkering and hacking (e.g. through open-source formats);

- small formats that can be easily shared

- strong incentives (ideally intrinsic motivation or social currency);

- real-time visibility (through sharable content);

- tie-ins to dormant or active social networks;

- and distributed decision-making.

Openness as permanent crisis

There is another aspect to this: The most imminent and urgent manifestation of “loss of control” is of course a crisis. And in times where terrorism, financial downturns, natural disasters, as well as catastrophic events on the individual level are a steady companion to our societies and personal lives, designing for crisis has become a default skill, forcing designers to make contingency planning an integral part of the experiences they create. Often, this means developing exit scenarios that are flexible enough to provide a structure for emergent solutions in response to emergencies. (The notion that architects design spaces so they can be escaped from has been thoroughly examined by Stephan Trueby in his book Exit-Architecture - Design Between War and Peace). In other words: an easy way out. And in. Because exits are entry points as well. If you design ways out of the system, they might as well serve as ways into the system.

If you think about it, this insight may provoke a different notion of openness – understanding it as a system where exit and entry are identical. In this line of thinking, an ecosystem on the Social Web could be seen as a system in permanent crisis – it is always in flux, and its composition and value are constantly threatened by a multitude of forces, from the inside and the outside. What if we understood “designing for the loss of control” as designing for structures that are in a permanent crisis? Crises are essentially disruptions that shock the system. They are deviations from routines, and the very variance that the advocates of planning and programs (the “Push” model) so despise. At their own peril, because they fail to realize that variance is the mother of all meaning; it is variance that challenges the status quo, pulls people and their passions towards you, and propels innovation. “Designing for the loss of control” means designing for variance.

One system in permanent crisis that contains a high level of variance is WikiLeaks. The most remarkable thing about the site appears to be the dichotomy between the uncompromised transparency it aims at and the radical secrecy it requires to do so. The same organization that depends on the loss of control for its content very much depends on a highly controlled environment to protect itself and keep operating effectively. But not just that: Ironically, secrecy is also a fundamental prerequisite for the appeal of WikiLeaks’ “there are no secrets” claim. Simply put: there is no light without darkness. And there is no WikiLeaks without secrets.

Applied to systems and solutions design, this means that total openness is the antidote to openness. When everything is open, nothing is open. In order to design openness, one of the first decisions designers have to make is therefore to determine what needs to remain closed. This is a strategic task: making negative choices for positive effects. You need to build enough variance into a system to make it “flow” and yet retain some control over the underlying parameters (access, boundaries, authorship, participants, agenda, process, conversation, collaboration, documentation, etc.). Only if you maintain the fundamental ability to at least manage (and modify) the conditions for openness, will you be able to create it. To design for the loss of control, control the parameters that enable it.

These are just some initial thoughts. What other formats and business models can you think of that “design for the loss of control” to everyone’s benefit and increased social value? What other variances can be created and effectively shaped? What design principles must be applied?

Over to you.

Old Spice and the Return of Ad-Power: Are "Transformats" the Future of Marketing?

Silver Fish Hand Catch! As the social web’s echo chamber is gushing about Wieden+Kennedy (W+K)’s masterful Old Spice campaign (actor and former football star Isaiah Mustafa wowing viewers with his smooth-talking delivery in video replies to hundreds of online queries or comments tweeted to him by web users), first spoofs are manifesting its pop-cultural credentials, and the meta-story is increasingly becoming the story ("how did they do it?"), both practical and philosophical questions arise. The jury is still out on the campaign’s commercial impact (various news sites and blogs are reporting that sales have fallen by 7%, which various other news sites and blogs dispute). I’m more interested in the campaign as a cultural phenomenon and its lasting implications: Is it a one-off nifty idea or are we witnessing the emergence of something bigger than that, a whole new paradigm for marketers and content producers, as Mashable claims?

Without a doubt, several things are remarkable about the Old Spice campaign. First of all, the numbers: A total of 183 individual video responses have been posted to the Old Spice YouTube channel, and to date the videos have attracted more than 38 million individual views. During the campaign, the Old Spice channel was the most viewed channel on YouTube, and it is now the third most subscribed channel ever on the site’s “sponsor” category. Total upload views for the channel, a metric that includes the original TV ads, currently stand at over 92 million. The final video reply, addressed to “everyone,” has amassed 3.3 million views and over 20,000 comments alone. As of today, the brand’s official Twitter account has grown to 92,000 followers.

Secondly, the campaign has exposed a key ingredient of viral content - disruption, in the form of a classic “What If” proposition that challenges conventional views: What if the main character of a commercial suddenly takes on a life on its own and starts directly responding to viewers?

Thirdly, Old Spice has probably been the first campaign to be both hyper-individualized (Mustafa's individual replies to Twitter users) and hyper-social (spreading virally as people have forwarded and embedded the replies). In fact, the very personalization of the responses has made them so unique and worth sharing. And all of that at hyper-speed: Seldom before has an advertising campaign produced so many highly personalized pieces of content in such short amount of time.

Lastly, the campaign has beamed us back into an age of Mad Men superpower, perfectly coinciding with the imminent launch of the new season of our favorite TV series this weekend. Ironically, though, rather than by relying on traditional persuasive ad-power Mad Men’s clout has been restored by an ad agency using social media of all things. Or, to be more precise: Transmedia. After already toying with them for their 2008 “Somebody Else’s Phone” campaign for Nokia, W+K borrowed the principles of Transmedia again for Old Spice – but this time augmenting them to much more visible effect.

Consider Transmedia a variation of social media. The term is commonly attributed to Marsha Kinder, who premiered it in her 1991 book Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Communication scholar Henry Jenkins (author of Convergence Culture, formerly at MIT, now with the Annenberg School in L.A.) then made it popular by crafting a theory of “Transmedia Storytelling” in a Technology Review essay, depicting it as a cross-platform narrative where each platform adds something meaningful to the fictional world – whether it’s more back story, deeper stories for secondary characters, the interactive dimension of a game, or new opportunities for the fans to participate in telling the story. More specifically, Jenkins laid out the “Seven Core Concepts of Transmedia Storytelling”: Spreadability vs. Drillability, Continuity vs. Multiplicity, Immersion vs. Extractability, Worldbuilding, Seriality, Subjectivity, and Performance.

Over the past ten years or so, Transmedia has again and again been considered the “next big thing” without ever really breaking through into mainstream. Battlestar Galactica, the Batman series, or The Matrix were sporadic examples of innovative Transmedia entertainment plays, but only as of late, the proliferation of games, social media, and mobile platforms has given rise to a more widespread adoption of the concept.

Transmedia is now increasingly popular for content producers who are facing economic pressures to maximize their assets across platforms. The NBC series Heroes is often cited as a watershed moment, and Tim Kring, its creator, is widely seen as the man who made Transmedia plausible for a mass TV audience. Kring is also one of the forces behind Conspiracy for Good, a large-scale cross-platform movement that attempts to use Transmedia to support social causes – Lina Srivastava calls this “Transmedia Activism.” At the heart of the Conspiracy for Good experience is a locative event over the course of three weeks in London, starting in mid-July and running until August 7th. Another recent example of Transmedia Storytelling is the comic franchise The 99, Naif Al-Mutawa’s vision of Muslim superheroes that he has extended to multiple media formats. Moreover, Wired UK recently hired agency Six to turn its latest issue – featuring a cover story on Transmedia – into a transmedia Alternate Reality Game (ARG). There are even some who call the iPad “the world’s first transmedia device” – a questionable notion given the rather retro lean-back mode of consumption that the iPad encourages.

Before this backdrop, the Old Spice campaign is arguably the most comprehensive use of Transmedia in an advertising context to date, and it serves as the blue print for what I call “transformats.” I would pinpoint their three main characteristics as follows:

- Transmedia: Transformats use a multi-modular presentation of narratives that extends the story across various media and allows a social web-enabled “audience formerly known as the audience” to participate in the story development. In the case of Old Spice, it went full circle: from YouTube to Twitter and back.

- Transcendent: Transformats transcend not only the original medium but also the original story, creating new meaning beyond the conceived plot. In the case of Old Spice, the main protagonist was given a life on its own and the power to directly interact with members of the audience. Thus, the story became an open-ended conversation, and the initial message faded amidst a chorus of issues (user-)generated by the cultural fabric of the social web.

- Transformative: Transformats advance marketing best practices and lift the state-of-the-art. Key here is that the design of the marketing program itself is the story (see meta-marketing), or at least an integral part of it. Case in point: The majority of coverage on the Old Spice campaign heralded its innovative quality, and many stories were background stories that shed light on “the making of.” Perhaps that’s the most powerful thing about innovation, from a marketing perspective: True innovation always is a story in and of itself.

Transformats may indeed constitute a whole new framework for state-of-the-art marketing. They may span even more media (TV, social web, movies, radio, print, AR, etc.), zig-zag more artfully between virtual and real world, and incorporate more gaming mechanics that incentivize users through “achievements” modeled on behavioral economics. Besides advertising, transformats may also have a place in media outlets: Imagine direct video responses from reporters to readers’ comments or interactive maps that enrich stories by pulling in user-generated real-time data and commentary, as a hybrid of professional and citizen journalism. Or reporters who post their intent to run a story and publicly ask for input and feedback (a moderated WikiLeaks, if you will, where readers can follow the genesis of a story). Or articles that readers can “park” after the morning read of their print newspaper, just to pick them up in the evening on their TV screen (as envisioned here by the NYTimes R&D lab). All of this would make the newsroom of the future a social media-savvy, super-convergent, real-time multimedia production studio, with the release cycles of stories shrunk to almost zero, and various media and engagement modes extending their life cycles to X.

It doesn’t require too much imagination to see transformats also play a seminal role in transforming education, healthcare, civil society, and even politics. Already, Gwynne Kostin, director of new media and citizen engagement at the General Services Administration, examines on GovLoop how to “adopt ‘Old Spice’ success to government” by embracing what she extrapolates as the campaign’s main tenets “speed, planning, talent, and trust.” While this ambition appears to be perhaps a bit of a stretch at this point, the overarching trajectory is evident: In an economy where attention is as scarce as commitment to action, stories that transcend their original storyline, set new standards for their genre, and engage people across various media can make a difference. As the complexity of our societal challenges is increasing, our solutions are becoming more open-ended. In other words: To tackle X-problems, you need to have X-conversations. Old Spice was just the beginning.

Edelman's Six Digital Trends to Watch

From “marketing in the age of streams” to the “Googlization of media” to “situational awareness” to “location, location, locaton” to “business becomes social” to “private becomes public” – in their latest report, Edelman’s digital mavens Steve Rubel and David Armano provide a solid overview of the six key digital trends to watch.

Six Digital Trends To Watch by Steve Rubel and David Armano

 

Chief Meaning Officer on Sparkcast

I was interviewed by Rogier Bikker for Sparkcast, the podcast of Dutch branding agency Energize, on my “Chief Meaning Officer” concept.

You can listen to it here (sorry about the rambling….the session was recorded in Shanghai during my last, very intense China trip, and I think I was rather tired...)

http://energize.nl/sparkcast.php

http://www.marketingfacts.nl/ (scroll down till you see the Energize logo in the sidebar)

And in the iTunes music store under ‘Sparkcast.’

Don’t Interrupt, Disrupt! How to Be Viral Without Viral Marketing

As we’re inundated with hero shots of the iPad every day, on every billboard and the back of every magazine cover, it appears to be a good time to rethink the relationship between advertising and product, between marketing and innovation. It’s not that Apple doesn’t spend any money on advertising – no, it was pouring a whopping $500 million into its launch campaign for the iPad. But what is different is that Apple’s marketing doesn’t have to be clever or utterly creative. In fact, it is stunningly not so. No major social media campaign needed to be sparked, no user-generated content contest needed to be held. And while the ongoing tongue-in-cheek anti-Microsoft ads are undeniably cute, they are not really an advertising revelation. Gone are the days of the bold “1984” campaigns. Today, Apple has earned enough attention to forgo any ostentatious marketing, in fact, so much that a cleverly orchestrated campaign would distract from the brand rather than boosting it. The company simply displays its products – that’s all it takes. Apple’s products are viral without any viral marketing.

Viral and ‘spreadable’

Before digging more into this, let’s pause for a moment to examine the term ‘viral,’ which has come under scrutiny recently, not for the first time but more critically, since transmedia augur Henry Jenkins, in ever-so-dramatic fashion, “declared war on viral media.” Jenkins wrote: “Until marketers understand the consumer's active agency and the social mechanisms shaping their circulation of content, they are doomed to insult and alienate the very people they are hoping to attract.” Jenkins suggests we replace ‘viral media’ – and, by extension, ‘viral marketing’ as the discipline that produces ‘viral media’ – with the new term ‘spreadable,’ arguing that this would more accurately reflect the consumer’s agency and the dynamics of content-sharing. Fair enough, yet Jenkins, in his academic fervor, underestimates practitioners. They know the social mechanisms of sharing all too well and are perfectly capable of distinguishing between the built-in contagious distribution of a product and the spreading of cultural memes as content that accumulates meaning as it is passed on. They are not one and the same, but innovative marketers use both notions and the outcome is similar, which is why, for the sake of simplicity, I will stick with the catch-all ‘viral’ in this post.

Advocacy and amplification

But back to Apple and the relationship between product and marketing innovation. At the Marketing 2.0 conference in Paris this spring, I had the pleasure of hearing Steve Knox from Tremor, Procter & Gamble’s word-of-mouth marketing arm, illustrate the underlying cognitive principles of viral marketing. In his view, there are two dimensions that matter: advocacy and amplification. If you have a strong brand advocate (a passionate user) but lack the appropriate channels to amplify his/her evangelism, you won’t have much of a viral effect. You are stuck with early adopters, derived from sociologist Everett Rogers’s “diffusion of innovations” theory and so perfectly portrayed by Rob Walker in his New York Times Magazine column, but without critical mass they will not convert into mainstream success. On the other hand, if you muster strong amplification, yet for a product without vocal advocates, you will fall into the over-amplification trap: Awareness of the product will quickly dissipate or, worse, the over-exposure might backfire and inadvertently shed light on the product’s flaws as the gap between visibility and user advocacy will create a suspicious gap just waiting for the blood-sucking blogosphere to be exploited. Simply put: If you generate a lot of talk, but there’s nothing to really talk about, you may end up with a lot of chatter, but no true social conversation – and thus no viral, no networked distribution.

Disruption and transcendence

So what makes a product worth talking about? Fox’s theory is intriguing: he points to two main principles of viral effects that emulate cognitive models. First, the product needs to disrupt a cognitive schema, a mental model that the mind produces to consolidate divergent information into one convergent worldview. We’re lazy and fearful creatures, easily intimidated and overwhelmed, so cognitive schemata help us make sense of the world around us by simplifying it into templates. They allow us to take shortcuts in interpreting a vast amount of information. Here’s an example: A plane in the air matches our mental model of a plane but a plane on the Hudson River presents a stark violation to our cognitive schema of a plane. It will therefore create much more attention than the routine plane picture we’re used to. It is – in other words – disruptive.

As these mental models keep us sane, it goes without saying that any truly disruptive innovation will often prompt a “This is crazy!” response. “This is crazy,” as in “This disrupts my cognitive schema.” An instant messaging service – that’s familiar. An instant messaging service that only allows up to 140 characters? That’s crazy. Paying credit card bills online. Nice and convenient. Sharing one’s credit card history with others in public? Crazy! An audio player you can walk with? Crazy! Why would you do that? Because you can. Because it’s different. Because it’s unexpected. Because it’s disruptive – and exactly what Roberto Verganti meant by describing innovation as “radically changing the meaning of things.” Steve Knox would call it “radically disrupting the cognitive equilibrium.” The surplus is (new) meaning.

Now, granted, this kind of cognitive schema violation has always been the hallmark of effective advertising: tearing objects out of context, deconstructing their original meaning and giving them a new one, breaching expectations, etc. However, the difference is that advertising does it after the fact, after the product is made or hit the market. Advertising must interrupt to disrupt, and it usually comes too late, when it is only needed as a cover-up for the lack for a truly disruptive product idea. Jeff Jarvis boiled it down to the stinging claim: “Advertising means product failure.”

The second principle of a viral effect is to take two existing cognitive schemata and combine them into a third, transcendent notion. The iPhone, for example, blended the mental models “mobile phone” and “computer.” The iPad blends “book reader” and “computer.” Or take Cirque du Soleil, the Canadian entertainment company, self-described as a “dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment” – a blend of Vegas and traditional circus. Or Starbucks: a blend of fast-food shop and community hang-out (or, on a higher level, an amalgam of coffee and social space, as the British pub is one of beer and space).

Show and tell

Truly innovative products apply either of these principles – they are disruptive as they violate cognitive schemata, or they blend two different schemata into a third, transcendent one. In any case, you end up with the most desirable product you can imagine: a category killer. Its viral effect is implicit, and as it is genuinely disruptive, that is, worth talking about, all you have to is as a marketer is to make the product visible and provide the means for amplifying the evangelism of the most zealous product advocates. That’s exactly what Apple does.

Successful innovative products are always viral because they disrupt and/or transcend and accumulate meaning as they are being shared. Their distribution will be contagious, and by being passed on by advocates they become a cultural meme that is more powerful than anything your marketing dollars could ever buy.

Of course, this also removes the artificial barriers between product development and go-to-market, between product design and branding, between product innovation and innovative marketing. They are inexorably intertwined. The product is the story. The story is the product. And it’d better be viral.