Return on Intention

There is no shortage of stories about the tension between short term and long term goals. There is a constant struggle in organizations to try and balance the two. For profit and public corporations seem the worst hit by this dilemma due to pressures to constantly grow and produce ever more profits, but non-profits and social organizations have the same issues. The bulk of the major mistakes that companies run into is by optimizing for one of these goals, and ignoring the other. As Jim Collins and Jerry Porras pointed out in Built To Last, the right answer in this situation is never thinking about the OR, but taking the time to figure out the AND. Instead of deciding what is the best set of goals to deliver on are short term OR long term, the right answer is the one that can accomplish the short term AND long term goals.

The tragedy in Haiti is a great example of this problem. The Red Cross has done some really amazing things to mobilize a mass of people to raise funds for this problem. In a catastrophe like this, the short term goals have to be the major focus, after all, lives at stake. There was also plenty of media coverage about the use of social media and mobile technologies to raise an incredible amount of money for the relief efforts, but what doesn’t get much attention is that the amount of money raised, while impressive, is no where near the amount of money needed to create a good long term solution for Haiti.

This is not a criticism of the Red Cross or their efforts, the money that was raised so quickly (from what I have heard) has brought in enough food and clean water to provide for the victims. The next faze of this recovery is the hard part, and the really expensive part. The infrastructure that needs to be rebuilt (or built at all) will cost billions, not millions of dollars. Raising that much money is going to take more than can be raised through text messaging in a a month. The real problem is that there is no way that a plan can be put in place that can take into account everything needed for a crisis like this. Its impossible to know when something like this will happen, but it is known that something like this WILL happen again. The fund raising efforts for catastrophes of this scale have to be in place for years, not to mention a plan to help mobilize and coordinate the various agencies required to deliver aid in these situations.

The need for the AND solution for long and short term results seems clear for organizations of all sizes to deliver on the value they add to the world. It takes a lot more work, and some creativity, but the payoffs are worth it in the end.

Once upon a time in a kingdom far away, there was a mighty river. This river was the sole water source for the kingdom, and had been flowing for generations. One day the water stopped flowing, and the king summoned the bravest knight in the kingdom to the castle, Sir Steve the Noble. The King dispatched Sir Steve to go up the dry river bed to find out what had happened. Sir Steve traveled for days and nights until finally finding that a dam had been built, stopping the water. Sir Steve destroyed the dam, and the kingdom lived happily ever after.

As stories go, that wasn’t very exciting. There is something missing. Lets try that story again and see if we can make it better.

Once upon a time in a kingdom far away, there was a mighty river. This river was the sole water source for the kingdom, and had been flowing for generations. One day the water stopped flowing, and the king summoned the bravest knight in the kingdom to the castle, Sir Steve the Noble. The King dispatched Sir Steve to go up the dry river bed to find out what had happened. Sir Steve traveled for days and nights until finally finding that a dam had been built by non other than the Duke of Darkness. The dam was guarded by hoards of the Dukes minions. Sir Steve, knowing that his chances for victory we’re slim, charged ahead into battle without hesitation. Sir Steve knew that without water, the kindly village people of the kingdom would suffer. With the faces of the village children pictured in his mind, Sir Steve battled through the minions until there was no one left standing except for himself, and the Duke. There, in the middle of the dam, an epic battle raged between the Noble knight and the evil Duke. Back an forth the swords flew, only to be stopped still with a clang as it landed on armor and shield. For hours the battle between the two men raged, until with the last of his strength, Sir Steve struck the fatal blow to the Duke of Darkness. With the villain gone, and the safety of the kingdom in hand, Sir Steve destroyed the dam and the kingdom lived happily ever after.

Ok, so I’m not much of epic story writer, but I think its clear the second attempt was much better than the first. Both stories have the same set up an the same conclusion, but the second allow the reader to become more emotionally invested in the outcome for two reasons. 1.) There was a villain; and 2.) Details about what the protagonist is thinking and feeling. The addition of the villain gives the audience something to focus its attention, and disdain on. A good protagonist is one that the audience can either identify with, or at least root for. The audience needs to get on the side of the stories lead, and in order to do that, you need to know why the protagonist is doing what he’s doing.

So much of marketing today is about story telling. The story could be  about the founding of an organization, or the triumph of a product. To get the idea across to the audience, its going to take more than the  just the facts. Look at the story your telling. Who is the protagonist, and what is the conflict? What is at stake, and who is the conflict with? Why should the user care, and how do you get them on the side of your protagonist? How much story is in your story?

If the goal of an organization is to provide value, then it must be considered, what is value? There is no single answer, as value is something internalized in each of us. For some, comprehensive coverage of an event is valued above all, so waiting for a “professional” source to gather all the facts is acceptable, and this valuable. For others, timeliness of an even is most important, so expediency of delivering whatever data is available is what constitutes value.

The traditional view of value was utilitarian, or to put it another way, what I can do with a thing. This is what leads to bullet points of features on the sides of packaging, and cramming a clock onto every electronic appliance because “it can be done”. There are at least 5 clocks in my kitchen.   There are types of value to consider, like emotional and psychological. With current car designs, we can only get so many horse power out of the motor before the car itself cannot handle it. This creates a ceiling on what we do to further the power a car can provide, but the feeling you get driving your dream car provides value that has little to do with the limitation of our engineering.

Providing value is relative, so learning what type of value you provide has more  to do with your success  than your manufacturing capabilities. What need do you fulfill and/or what are the needs that your target market has? The value you provide is what matches you with your customers, not the industry you are in. This is why listening is such an important yet underrated part of business. Social media is a good tool for this, but often we find people trying to hard to talk (old sales and marketing stuff). Apple is notorious for not being involved directly in social media, but you can bet they listen, and its working for them.

What do you think?

There has been a lot of debate lately about whether advertising agencies, PR firms, Digital shops or Social Media boutiques should be the first point of client contact to get marketing work done, and some even debate if any or all of the verticals should even exist. I think it stated with an Ad Age article saying the most qualified group to be the “Lead agency” was the digital guys, because they have the data, and the channels where the most people are. This article really got people up in arms as the traditional guys defended their historical turf and the digital guys staking a claim in the new environment.

A similar debate (again started by an advertising magazine article, only this time it was from AdWeek) reared its ugly head on the cross-posted podcast for Jaffe Juice / Six Pixels of Separation. It’s a very good listen, so I encourage you to check it out, but at the end of the show, much like the comment stream on the afore mentioned Ad Age article, there was no real resolution. From my perspective on both debates, what seems to really be the linch pin here is the lack of a standard vocabulary or lexicon to accurately describe this space. If you polled 100 people on what marketing was or meant you would undoubtedly find so many different responses you would wonder where everyone was the day they taught us that in school. Or did they? More on this in a further post, but for now lets get back to idea at hand.

One of the biggest computers of any industry is the ignorance of the market. When the market, or at least portion of it doesn’t know the definitions of all these words then it only makes sense that there will be confusion. Even if the industry gets it, so many people don’t that it all gets confused. Choosing an agency should not be done by what they are called but what they can do for you. Of course every business has different needs, but good agencies that assist in creating a solid strategy and excellent execution have a better chance to get a company where it wants to go than what it says on their business card. So if you don’t know what to call it, how do you find the right agency? Look for results. Ask the agencies on your short list about their past successes and how they reach their decisions. If you don’t have a short list, and don’t know where to start, find work that has achieved good results, call the business owner and ask them who they use. Forget the names and labels and go for results.

Being noticed is one of the biggest challenges facing small businesses. Startups and established businesses both suffer from the problem of being remembered. Increasing numbers of competitors, along with the general ignorance of the market leaves many local businesses struggling to get their perspective customers to know or remember they exist; however it’s not usually the competition that keeps companies from standing out. Most often, it’s the company itself.

There is a prevailing myth that being “professional” means to be “boring”. Businesses suffer from this idea that doing something risky is risky. It’s been said before that the only risky thing to do is to play it safe, and the safe thing to do is be risky. To be noticed, do something worth noticing. To be remembered, do something memorable. Doing the same thing as your competition but “better” is usually not memorable. The “better” that many businesses are defining themselves by are usually things that doesn’t effect the customer or are completely missed by the customer  because they are not  knowledgeable enough in the industry to know whats better and what isn’t. If the customer can’t see it, or doesn’t understand it, they won’t remeber it.

Do something different. Give your brand some character. You are different than your competition, so look, act and be different. Don’t try to bury the personality of your brand in “professionalism”. Jingles are silly and corny, all the things a professional isn’t supposed to be. They also work. A rubber duck doesn’t have much to do with real estate, but customers remember it. Just ask Rick Miner from Duckin.com.  Have some fun. Be different. Be memorable.

Standard economic theory says the value of a good or service is directly related to the supply of that good or service in contrast to the market’s desire for that good or service. Simple supply and demand. If there is a high supply and low demand, the value is lower. If the supply is low and demand is high, the value is higher. What does this have to do with blogging? Everything.

This isn’t just a blogging problem, but a problem for all social media channels. The early theory of social media was that anyone could publish and we as a community could produce content just as good as the broadcast media, if not better. The best part of social media channels is that you don’t have to interact with concepts, topics or brands that you don’t want to interact with. When you watch TV, you have to watch whatever commercial comes on, but on social media channels, you can pick and choose what is most relevant to you. This is where the problem starts. In order to participate you have to be able to find what is most relevant to you. With new blogs being started everyday, the supply side of equation is exploding.

Let’s say you are really into pig farming. You can stay up to date on the industry of pork farming by reading blogs that cover that market. If there are only a few blogs, then great, you can stay up on the times pretty easily. Now imagine that there are over 1,000 blogs on pork farming. You can’t read them all—you’ve got pigs to farm. So what do you read and what don’t you read? And what about all the podcasts, Facebook groups and Ning sites? You can’t keep up, and trying to becomes a time-consuming pain. Staying on top of the industry is harder now with all of the choices.

When there was one blog on the subject, it was very valuable.  There wasn’t any pain involved in keeping up when it was simple. But now if there are 100 or 1,000 blogs, you can’t read them all, so you pick a few and stick with them. Now if you read four, then each of them is only a quarter of the value that the first one was. The tragic part is that the first blog on the subject is probably still as relevant as ever. Blogging is hard work, but the value is diminished by each new entrant regardless of how hard the first blogger works.

To have a successful blog, podcast, or personal brand you have to have a reputation for providing value to your community. This hasn’t changed and never will, but now you have to work harder just to be as valuable as you were before. This becomes even more true if you are just starting out now. Building a reputation for value in a sea of competition is harder than fighting a value recession. Perhaps its time to think about that blog or podcast you’ve been meaning to start.

Advertising, and marketing communications are generally viewed as an unwanted intruder. If you get it in your mail box it’s called junk mail. If you get it in your email it’ s spam. This view is not based on marketing communications being inherently bad, but rather it has come about from years of marketers and communication professionals sending irrelevant messages to us. If it’s irrelevant it becomes irritating. Basically, as marketers we have done this to ourselves. Most often I don’t think this was done intentionally and certainly not maliciously, but rather because we had mass media, so we got used to (and rewarded) for getting the message out to as many people as possible. The industry got too focused on quantity over quality.

Email is a great example. Email is so easy and inexpensive to use that spam has gotten out of control. When you are judged by the size of your list it becomes more important to blast out to 5 million than it is to blast to the 5 thousand that should get it.  As it stands, email is a fantastic medium. Social media is the new hot thing, but you don’t always want to talk about doing business in the middle of the party. Look at email as “Private Media”, the corner of the room where you and your buddy go to get away from the rest of the party just for a few seconds to really engage with each other. Email can be powerful, but not if its just a conduit for spam. Here is how to make sure you do it right.

Clean your list

Forget quantity. Go for quality. Look at your open rates and systematically cut out the bottom 10%. If they aren’t opening your emails then sending it to them makes no sense. Its a good idea to send them a plain text only email first, making sure they still want to be on the list. If they don’t, or don’t respond, remove them.

Segment your list

Not all your customers are the same. There are groups in your list that  have different interests. Segmenting your lists, and then sending different emails to each group that has more of the types of content they want will make your email more valuable to them. When the information is valuable, then its not considered spam. This is easiest, and most overlooked part of good email marketing, but it can make all the difference in the world.