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Posted Oct. 15, 2008 8:01 p.m. by dylan
In General Business - 800 CEO Read Blog
Jonathan Salem Baskin and Michael Cayley met through the concurrent release of their manifestos in the 50th issue of ChangeThis, and have coauthored the following article on the nature of networks and crisis leadership.
Invest in Your Networks
by Michael Cayley & Jonathan Salem Baskin
Lincoln and Roosevelt are heralded as great American leaders in times of crisis, and their vision and fortitude are recognized as drivers of their historic accomplishments. However, we think their greatness had far more to do with their abilities to be catalysts for network effects.
If we're right, it reveals a very different interpretation of the calls we're hearing for "leadership" to restore confidence in our economic system. In fact, there's a good chance that no government policy gesture or announcement will mollify the worries of businesses and consumers, let alone stabilize the markets.
Confidence must emerge from the networks in which we all participate. We need to lead ourselves.
This raises intriguing issues and opportunities for corporate marketers looking to craft a way forward.
"In times of uncertainty consumers rely more on trusted relationships when making purchasing decisions," says Dr. Brent Simpson, an expert at the University of South Carolina who specializes in understanding how social order is formed.
Stanford University's Matt Jackson, a leading social network theorist, adds: "People's friends and trusted social relationships are important in influencing their behavior, and people learn from and emulate their friends. Attitude certainly can play into that, especially in turbulent times.''
So what does this mean for businesses directly impacted by the financial crisis, like banks, brokerages, and insurance companies, as well as any consumer business facing the prospect of declining (or less profitable) sales?
First and foremost, you can't brand your way out of it. You can't rely on spin doctors to declare your path through the crisis; your customers must see and verify it. While your hired guns are hatching ads and press releases to statically "position" the situation, your networks are trading information and defining it in real-time.
And that information, whether accurate or not, has absolutely nothing to do with how the brand has been envisioned, promised, or promoted. Every network is founded upon the tangible realities of action and reaction, just as the mechanism of their function is cause and effect.
How do you empower these networks to step up and lead?
Know your networks. Invest in software to map connections between people and content. Move your enterprise closer to customers, employees, partners and investors. In the past we talked about flattening hierarchies; now it is time to integrate internal & external sources of value. Trust opportunities that emerge from the exchange (don't just talk, and certainly don't lecture). Make information a utility as ubiquitous as electrical light. If what you share isn't affirmed and forwarded, don't repeat it... instead, recast or re-imagine it, and find new ways to prove it to your networks. Demand feedback and ideas. Stop looking for "home runs" and play "singles and doubles" by finding small wins, frequent trials. Make constant adjustments. Allocate resources to winners and abandon losers without blame.
The larger revelation of today's various crises is that the era of symbolic branding is waning, if not over. The woes of the financial institutions have graphically illustrated to us why.
It was always untenable for lenders to ignore the details of weak/bad relationships and to expect instead that homes or property (i.e. commodities) would appreciate in value with no accord to the strength of home owners (i.e. the source of value that differentiated the commodity). Instead of accessing and fostering the relationship to make the loan a better product, the banker chooses to focus on the derivatives.
All businesses face similar risks. From toothpaste to software services, consumer brands invite significant downside threats when they focus on manufactured identify and perception, and not on the drivers of true business strength: connection, interaction, involvement, collaboration, consumption and the other aspects of human behavior.
There are no brands, or businesses, without the networks of people who make them real. It is in, and through, the behaviors of these networks that the Lincolns and Roosevelts for our business and social communities will ultimately arise.
Jonathan Salem Baskin recently released the book Branding Only Works on Cattle. Catch Jonathan's blog at http://dimbulb.typepad.com.
Michael Cayley recently released the ebook Introducing Social Capital Value Add: Value Based Management for the Networked Age. Catch Michael's blogs at www.socialcapitalvalueadd.com and www.memeticbrand.com.
ChangeThis: Issue 50
Posted Sept. 10, 2008 8:10 a.m. by dylan
In Uncategorized - 800 CEO Read Blog
That's right folks, Issue number 50. For this landmark issue, we brought ChangeThis founder Seth Godin back to discuss Tribes, the opportunities now available to lead a tribe of one's own, and what the Grateful Dead has to do with any of it. Next up, we have John Kotter, providing us with A Sense of Urgency while writing about its fundamental importance to organizational change programs. The third spot in the lineup is filled by Jonathan Salem Baskin--author of Branding Only Works on Cattle--with 10 Rules for Branding in a Post Branded World. Hitting cleanup is Vince Poscente, former olympic speed-skier and member of the Speaker Hall of Fame, with a manifesto on how to excel in this, The Age of Speed. And, bringing the issue home, we have Michael Cayley, discussing his "spin-out of brand management," Social Capital Value Add, and Andrew Abela--author of Advanced Presentations by Design--who will show you how to give an effective presentation before a smaller audience (as most of your presentations probably are).
Snippets and links below. Happy reading everybody!
:::::
How to Sell a Book (or Any New Idea)(step 1 is the hard part) by Seth Godin
"My friend Fred has a new book coming out and he was trolling around for new marketing ideas. I think he'd be surprised at this:
Sell one.
Find one person who trusts you and sell him a copy. Does he love it? Is he excited about it? Excited enough to tell ten friends because it helps them, not because it helps you?
Tribes grow when people recruit other people. That's how ideas spread as well. They don't do it for you, of course. They do it for each other. Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work. If Fred's book spreads, then he's off to a great start. If it doesn't, he needs a new book.
You don't get to take step 2 if you can’t do step 1."
Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.
It All Starts With A Sense of Urgency by John P. Kotter
In a turbulent era, when new competitors or political problems might emerge at any time, when technology is changing everything, both the business-as-usual behavior associated with complacency and the running-in-circles behavior associated with a false sense of urgency are increasingly dangerous.
In bold contrast, a true sense of urgency is becoming immeasurably important. Real urgency is an essential asset that must be created, and re-created, and it can be.
Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.
10 Rules for Branding In a Post Branded World by Jonathan Salem Baskin
"We live in the twilight of a branded world born over 100 years ago.
Most marketing remains blinded by the fading glare of its old, outdated promises.
Yet there is a new approach to brands ahead of us, based upon a definition that is less about static image and imagined identity, and more about real-time interaction and actual involvement between company and consumer.
This is your Manifesto for making branding work in a post-branded world."
Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.
The Age of Speed Manifesto by Vince Poncente
"In the following manifesto, we will explore our present relationship with speed and examine four behavior profiles that can help you determine if you (a) embrace speed and (b) harness the power of it. By the end, you just might discover that our 24/7, CrackBerry, more-faster-now world is not threatening to eat you alive, but rather, to set you free."
Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.
Social Capital Value Add: Value Based Management for the Networked Age by Michael Cayley
"The marketing/communications mix is completely different than it was before 2004. Broadcast's monopoly on attention is dead. The symbolic brand, which has been the fastest growing source of corporate value for the last quarter century has reached its pinnacle. It is being absorbed and replaced by memetic brand. Technologies have evolved and mapped so tightly against the way humans transact, form relationships and create self-identity that it is time for business management to link the pioneering academic studies of social capital and social network analysis (SNA) to value based management and the priorities of marketers.
The transition required is no less abrupt than that moment when the search of Dorothy, the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Lion reaches confrontation with the Great Oz façade and the curtain is pulled back to reveal a mere mortal. The corporation is at risk of being the 'humbug' caught shouting into the loudspeakers and pulling at the mechanistic levers of the past."
Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.
Presenting to Small Audiences: Turn off the Projector! by Andrew Abela
"The typical presentation to a small group today is designed just as if it were being made to a large group in a big auditorium. We follow the same advice in creating our slides, and then we turn on the portable projector and inflict slide after deadening slide on our audience--vintage Death by PowerPoint.
Too much of this effort is wasted. There is ample research evidence that projecting lots of text and speaking at the same time is so distracting to your audience that it is less effective than projecting your slides and asking your audience to read them while you remain silent, or speaking with no slides at all!"
Click here to visit the site.
Click here to download the PDF.
