Web Strategist Lab

Meta link: This is a link to Stephen Colbert’s dissection of the new Domino’s ad campaign. It does a perfect job embracing the combination of “Wait, are they idiots for admitting their pizza was disgusting?!” and “Wait, are they geniuses for admitting their pizza used to be disgusting” that came with my first viewing of the ad.

The premise, that Domino’s has listened to the customer and realized that maybe their pizza tastes (kindly) like ketchup-covered cardboard and has made changes to their primary product.

This whole campaign is a perfect prism to view so many changes and issues at play in American business today.  Here’s a sample.

1) A successful business isn’t one with a good product (pizza), but with a well-designed delivery system. (It’s not the product, but the business that we wrap around it that matters).

2) Even ketchup-covered cardboard, properly positioned and marketed, can be a billion-dollar industry (you hear that Twitter-haters who think that they will never make any money?).

3) This is an age of contrition. Financial, automotive and insurance failures have shown us that no one will take you seriously without an act of contrition. It doesn’t matter if it’s real or matters a lick (like driving “regular” cars to DC from Detroit or decreasing year-end bonuses by 10%), if there isn’t a CEO begging for forgiveness for past transgressions, we don’t want to hear it (and they said we couldn’t learn anything from the Japanese!  Though, I would rather we gotten better at manufacturing than at public opinion/political kabuki theater).

4) This is the end (for now) of the 20th-century model of marketing (who’s triumph remains Crazy Eddie’s shouting commercials). Now, marketers have to show how they actually listen to their audience (instead of just shouting at them) before pitching their horrible products at us. This is what the blogoshpere/web 2.0 hath wrought: a nod to the consumer (albeit a small one).

5) This may be the beginning of the end of “Us v. Them” marketing. Think of it. When was the last time you saw a commercial or marketing campaign who’s underlying principle is that the people pitching the product actually use the product? I’m not talking about paid spokespeople or testimonials, which still are designed, filmed and produced by people who never use that product, but about people who really like the product. Do you think that Jeff Bridges drives around California in a Hyundai? Or Kevin Spacey in a Honda? Aside from the Tony Stewart Actually Likes Whoppers campaign, this is the first where I get a sense that these people might actually eat pizza.

And this is how the marketing revolution begins, people. With an end to the lies. Sure, we’ve long ago stopped the bald-faced “Four out of five doctors smoke Lucky Strike” stuff, but we still live in a world of an underlying lie: that “Us” the marketers are different from “Them” the consumer.

In other circles, there’s the idea of rapport, that we build trust with people with whom we feel some connection. In the marketing world, this is quickly turned into “mass rapport” (which is why likable Jeff Bridges tells us about Korean cars made in Alabama and we listen: we liked his movies, so we must like him so let’s listen to what he’s got to say). But we are coming to the end of that idea as we all understand how easily it is to get Florence Henderson and Mr. T and Ewan McGregor and Keira Knightly and even dead John Wayne to say nice things about our products.

What we should be searching for is real rapport: you will like us because we are like you and we like this thing. Not a picture of someone who likes this product and pretends to be like you, but produced and developed by real people with real passion for the Whopper and the Diet Pepsi and SmartCar and Geico insurance. That rapport can only be faked for a little while, so maybe we can find real fans to build these commercials (And hey, the internet is letting people build those commercials for you: go look at youtube!).

Heck, let’s get crazy and actually BE the people who like these products and try telling the world about them.

I know. Crazy, right?

In yesterday’s Wall Street journal, Gary Hamel reveals “Management’s Dirty Little Secret,” that most of the actions a manager takes, even those in pursuit of an engaged workplace, are more likely to stifle enthusiasm than anything. He talks about the amazing new results of a survey to show this.

What this survey reveals is that Mr. Hamel (and, to be fair, most management experts) has never been a real employee. Everyone who has a boss knows that most of their job is to avoid the boss, avoid their wrath, avoid their eyeline, and even to avoid their interest. Most employees know that bosses are like Baby Huey, taking interest for the moment in something shiny (Ooo… an intranet! Ahh… we need a CRM system! Mmmm…  personalized URLs!), turning it into a “PROJECT” that you are now responsible for (and all the requisite administrative burdens therein regardless of intent or return), and wander away to the next shiny thing. Woe unto those who’s bosses are interested in what they are doing.

This, of course, discounts the idea that some employees need that kind of supervision to get things done. But most of the people I’ve ever met in the “creative class” (the survey indicates that as knowledge workers become commoditized, the real value is in those who can be creative in finding solutions) are self-starting, self-motivating people who want to do amazing work, but have to be overly concerned with the interference of their boss.

So maybe Mr. Hamel is just waking up to the fact that employees, the ones on the front lines talking to customers, the ones coming up with new products, or the ones actually doing the work are a valuable part of the process and should be treated as such. Praise onto thee, company who knows how to encourage and respect their employees!

Huh. So this is what happens when you treat every business like every other business (as a money machine who’s only need is growth at any cost)  and not as an idea unto itself.

From The New Republic, “Why can’t Americans make things? Two words: business school.”

A focus on financial instead of manufacturing leads to the commoditization of business itself. A well-run and well-managed company that has a crappy product and horrible service will succeed where a badly-run business selling a kill product will thrive. For example: XEROX, IBM, Digital, and every other company the Tom Peters/Jim Collins crowd talks about as being well-run vs Microsoft and the entire music industry who made money hand over fist despite having horrible management and seeming not to be able tot do anything right for years.

Just because you can take financial management models and replace the money with people doesn’t mean that’s a smart way to run a business.

For all the talk about what makes a good leader, one show is illustrating how hard it is to manage people. The trick of it is, most of its viewers have no idea they are getting crucial lessons on leadership. They think they are watching a “reality show” about hair salons.

Tabitha’s Salon Takeover should be required viewing for every MBA student in the nation. Somehow, in 44 minutes and commercials, someone is able to evaluate a business’ issues (be it personnel, systems, accounting, inventory, or leadership), get their hands dirty by showing what changes need to be made, and comes back weeks later to see if the changes have been successful (and have stuck).

If only business consultants could do as much.

Yes, knowing the industry helps. Yes, having a blonde British vixen show us yanks what fools we are is fun. But time after time, the lesson Tabitha teaches is: be honest and demand accountability. The rest is details.

How many businesses are run into the ground because the owner doesn’t know how to be honest, they don’t realize that choosing favorites creates division (especially when coupled with denials about having a favorite) , are scared to tell an employee that they aren’t doing a good job and then explode, seemingly without cause because those bottled up frustrations get out eventually, setting expectations for employees and holding them accountable for those expectations (and not letting an employee weasel out of a tough conversation with accusations of “I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to do that” or “I’m having a bad day”), and holding themselves accountable to their employees.

Side note. Yes, I was there the day an employee caught surfing naughty pictures online and was allowed to keep their job because they said, “You never said I couldn’t do that!” Oh really? Then why exactly were you trying to hide your actions? I never would have thought to try a trick like that. Not in a million years.

Anyway, there’s Tabitha, telling this employee that she needs more training directly and without equivocation (and there’s the employee’s ostensible boss, shaking with fear behind Tabitha, finally seeing what leadership is all about). And there’s Tabitha, explaining to the owner that not being there was creating a vacuum of power and no on was stepping in to fill it, thus leading the shop to certain doom unless they stepped up. And there’s Tabitha showing the salon employees, who are really self-employed for the most part, learning about marketing, the value of repeat business and up-selling.

No jargon. No bullshit. Just Tabitha saying what’s true and some people freaking out, creating unnecessary drama. Good TV.

Side note. I was working for a software company years ago who sold enterprise flooring software to flooring manufacturers, distributors and retailers. The software pretty much took over every part of the business, from inventory to AR/AP to POS. Well, here we were in LA, installing the software and training everyone (it took a week) on how to use it and on day one, one employee was relentless in voicing their complaints every time they perceived something as wrong. It went on all day and it was easy to see the effect it was having on everyone. At the end of the day, the owner gathered everyone together to thank everyone for their hard work and ended his speech with something along the lines of , “This new system is our future. If you don’t like this software, then you don’t like our future and I invite you to find your own future elsewhere.” The entire time he was looking at the one complaining employee and everyone knew it. The next day, that guy was a tiger, eager to learn everything he could about the new system.

That’s what real leadership is: being honest and demanding accountability from every player in the game.

Tabitha knows it.

Okay, just a short post on what I’ve been reading this year. This list is certainly not comprehensive, but maybe it’ll give you some ideas on what to read next.

Maybe this is the year we start re-writing/re-thinking the laws of marketing and business. Not just because of the economy and the crap that’s been happening the last few years (okay, on second thought, maybe they aren’t unrelated), we’ve started to move beyond the “Four P’s” and “Centralization v. Decentralization” conversations that have dominated the landscape for decades. Let’s get to the business of selling and leading by understanding. Yes, Covey got there first, but he’s a cult leader because he wants you to buy his Covey-branded organizer. This is a broader movement, taken by many in different directions, but under the banner of “Not better marketing, better products because of better understanding of the audience” and “No more ‘Us v. Them’ because we are all ‘Us!’”

Best Book of the Year: The Three Laws of Performance by Steve Zaffron & Dave Logan. Maybe the thing I like best about this book is that it is 200 pages. It doesn’t dawdle. It doesn’t try to impress you with a million examples. It’s not trying to pad the story along. It’s written with the confidence of two people who aren’t trying to curry your favor or win your respect. They know something you don’t and are willing to tell you if you’ve got the ears to listen. I want to send this book to every manager I’ve ever met and say, “No! Really! There is a better way!”

Fierce Leadership by Susan Scott. I know, crazy, right? Managers should stop parsing words and covering their asses, get their hands dirty with the “employees” and show some real candor. Maybe the name of this new era should be called “The End of Ego.”

Brain Audit/Masterclass by Sean D’Souza (psychotactics.com). I can’t tell if this guy is insane or just insanely great. It’s a tough call. Either way, he’s eating his own dog food with a big fork laughing the whole way home.

Tribes by Seth Godin. What else could I say about this book that someone else hasn’t (which is probably the antithesis of the internet, right)?

Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik. Google should invent a pop-up application that’s embedded in Google Analytics a la “Clippy” that’s just an animated head of Avinash telling you what to do next. It will be full of chirpy wisdom that sounds like it was recorded by a helium-addled Robin Williams but actually help you. It will tell you to look for your BFFs and study your bounce rate. I will admit that I will repeatedly go to the definition page just to hear him tell me what the definition of a bounce is and crank the speaks up.  This guy is the Oprah of Web Analytics. If you aren’t reading him, you are only pretending to know what you’re talking about.

The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators by Eric T. Peterson. About as “getting your hands dirty with details” as a book can get, but it is full of smart ideas on how (and what) numbers to present.

The 50th Law of Power 50 Cent and Robert Green. I know. I didn’t think it would be any good, either.

Honorable Mentions:

• Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.
• Cult of Analytics by Steve Jackson.
• Same Game New Rules by Bill Caskey (Despite it being from 2003).

Hey! Where the hell is Tom Peters? I miss that maniac.

So, I finally figured what I needed to do to get things rolling (That sentence has been nominated as the “Most Vague Opening Statement (Blog Category, Over-35 Year Old Division)”) and hunker down and get it done. What did I do? I wrote a book.

The New Rule of Engagement: Actionable & Effective Web 2.0 Strategy for Non-Profits is self-published through Lulu.com at the moment. But I’m not planning on making it available just yet. The plan is to give it away to 50 Chicago-based non-profits during the holidays and try and build awareness that all these new ideas floating through mashable.com are not just for the dot-coms and the large enterprises. They can be done effectively (and in many cases better) by a non-profit with a little guts to try something new.

Once I send them out and try and create offline engagement, I’ll probably make it available as an electronic book, but I’ll have to see what my options are.

Not having written anything that substantial in many years, it was nice to see that I still know how to put these sorts of projects. I really love writing, but I tend to get caught up in the “surely someone else has thought of this” internal dialog and shut things down before they happen. And who knows, maybe this thing will die a quiet death and I’ll know that maybe I’m not as good as I think I am and have to take a new approach. But until that happens, if you know anyone in Chicago who needs a great (and published!) web strategist,  send them my way.

Oh, I also “wrote” a book called “The Perfect Notebook” which is a variety on the Muji Chonotebook (“variety” in that it uses some neat ideas it proposes and that it will be available online and not just Tokyo and NYC boutiques).  Once things get settled, I’ll shoot and market that and see what I can make happen.

That just seems like a simple maxim.

From a VP of some sort:

“We’ll do that based on our  five strategic directions.”

Someone should let this VP know that moving in five directions at once is the same as going nowhere.

Yeah, I know. It’s “semantics” but I am perpetually amazed by the looseness and vagueness of language at some places. And frankly, if being clear isn’t important to the VP, it won’t be important to their employees, who will make it very unclear for their customers.

This is the same place from whence “I don’t think there’s a difference between strategy and tactics” came.

Do you know what it costs to start a national magaizne these days? Multiple million at the very least, depending on whether or not Tina Brown or Jann Wenner is on the board.  Where does that money go? Not to writers or designers (they account a tiny fraction of the cost). Maybe a little to the sales team (gotta get all that ad revenue), but that stuff can’t account for half the cost of a magazine.

I bring this up because I’m getting sick of Fast Company. Not the web site, but the magazine. What once was a glorious beacon to those work 2.0′ers who understood the weight of Tom Peter’s “The Work Matters” manifesto, one that discussed new models in working, new ideas in getting things done, and trying to cross-pollenate ideas from one industry to the other is now In Style for the laptop-and-business-class set.

Recent covers: McGee, director of Terminator. Sure, he’s got an interesting history but… shouldn’t that be on movie magazine? Skater/surfer kid Shawn White? The current issue some cleavage-bearing woman with hair bigger than Montana. Skin on the cover of Fast Company? This is the same magazine (technically) who’s August 1997 cover was simply “Brand You,” a model just getting traction (And note that the magazine really fell down hard when it stopped putting just typography on the cover and started finding pretty people for the cover… Ning anyone?).

Ask any pro in the publication world and you’ll hear the same thing over and over again: in order to cover the sunk costs of starting up and the hard costs of printing and delivering a magazine, a magazine must sell X number of copies to justify the real engine: subscribers. A magazine doesn’t make money because you buy it, it makes money because it call sell your eyeballs to someone else.

Thus, magazines are a numbers game. If you can’t keep your circulation above certain point, it almost makes more sense to mail all the subscribers a booklet of ads.

But why buy a magaine? Is it for the ads? (Maybe it is for Vogue, but not why I used to buy Wired, Spin, Business Week, Fast Company, The Industry Standard or the Red Herring.) No.

It’s the content, stupid.

You build a customer base by having good ideas, well written and well-presented. That creates fans, increases the circulation base to justify ads. (I swear, the ad model makes as much sense as owning a grocery store not to sell produce put to collect coupons.)

But everyone seems hell-bent on skipping steps 1-5 that they make nothing but crap magazines.

So here’s the solution.

Web-based magazine (duh!).  But it’s more than that. It’s turning the model around.  Instead of building a print magazine that makes money and you build a seperate website to remind people how much they love the printed magazine, make the web site first.  Create great content. Open submissions to anyone. The crowd picks the best articles (and helps copy-edit it), adds great comments and you pick the best stuff (and the comments), package it up with ads (yes, you have to re-write the ad contract to say you are buying web ads, and that the paper ads come free) and ship it to newstands and people who are willing to buy a paper-based subscription.

How does that work? Well, everyone gets the content for free (plus ads). But in the process, everyone helps build the magazine. Crowd sourcing determines the best ideas (you know, the ones that would sell best on a newstand). You only pay for stories that make it to press. Ad buyers will pay a higher web rate knowing that their ads are also in the print peice. 

The best part is this: if you want it on the newstand or a subscription, each issue is $30. An annual subscription is $200. No one would buy it?  Wait. Who buys magazines on a newstand? People in airports waiting to fly business-class. People who can afford it. People who don’t have time to read a whole community site. People who buy subscriptions to summerized business books. Execs who have more money than time. If it’s an amazing magazine that’s built a reputation for bringing new ideas to light first in a well-managed forum (and that’s exactly what the website would be), they’ll pay for it.

The best part? Costs are like nothing. Server space and a couple of drupal managers and a team of copy-editors and designers with an editorial lead. You pay per word relative to the sales, so if no one buys the first few issues, you don’t pay the writers much. But if sales go crazy, writers get paid big bucks, thus drawing more people and ideas out of the woodwork. Print costs are unit-based just like writing, and you can even say that the first year the magazine will be web-only just to get things going.

It’s already been said: Journalism isn’t dead, newspaper are. The model must change.

A month ago, I started a section of this website called “Give It Away” (it’s in the category list somewhere).  The fact that I haven’t posted to it as much as I would like doesn’t dampen by excitement about it.

Which is why seeing this is so cool: http://stealourideas.tumblr.com/