Moving Forward Part 1: Creating Permission

Posted on November 10, 2009 by Scott Gould

I’m going to address over the coming weeks some of the stages of Social Media and P2P program development in order to provide a structure and direction for really three sets of people;

First, practitioners of Social Media and the even more exciting P2P (people-to-people) organisational model who can use this content in their dealings with their clients,
Secondly, for CEOs, MDs, and other c-suiters who are already doing some degree of Social Business, but want more structure,
And thirdly, for those mid-level employes in larger organisations who desperately want the organisation to start using Social Media.

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Making The First Move

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Scott Gould

I recently captured some thoughts from a discussion I’d had with Benjamin Ellis, a very astute consultant based in London, on the subject of business mindset and innovation. One of the things we discussed was what is known as first mover advantage – the term given to those businesses that make the first move into new innovative technologies ahead of their competitors. Continue reading →

Solving Not Selling

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Scott Gould

I read this awesome article, Stop Selling and Add Value on Monday from the N2 Growth Blog. Mike Myatt, and his awesome moustache, writes:

Call me crazy, but I don’t want to talk to someone who wants to manage my account, develop my business, or engineer my sale. I want to communicate with someone who wants to service my needs or solve my problems. Any organization that still has “sales” titles on their org charts and business cards is living in another time and place while attempting to do business in a world that’s already passed them by. It’s time for companies to realize that consumers have become very savvy and very demanding. Today’s consumer (B2B or B2C) does their homework, is well informed, and buys…they are not sold.

This is right in line with what we’ve discussed on the subject of ‘Making It Personal‘, and in the ‘PR 2010 Framework‘. By making your product or service an experience by actually solving the problem (of course, the user may not see the problem until you highlight it) rather than providing the tool to do it, you are engaging far deeper with your customer, and can also charge a higher markup.

In fact it’s not just Mike and I thinking about it. Jeremy Epstein (have you seen his client list?) wrote an article yesterday entitled “your value = your relevance“. What a title. Your value to your customer is equal to your relevance to your customer. Beautiful. But also very conceptual. Let’s break it down:

The History Of Economic Progression

A hundred years ago, tell a commoner that they’d paid £50 for a haircut and dry, and they’d laugh at you – why pay when you can do it yourself? 10 years ago, tell average Jane she’ll pay for shopping to be home delivered, and she’d reply she’d rather save the cash and pick them up herself.

The history of economic progression is one of paying for someone else to do what you used to do yourself, for free. My examples are rather peice-meal and conceptual, but there are very intelligent people out there writing about this is hard cover books. My simple understanding is that as technology enables us to become better specialists, and as we culturally have more responsibilities and roles, we are more willing to pay others to handle the things that we don’t have time to.

Of course, we don’t pay them just for their labour. We pay them in accordance to their expertise, their relevance to our needs, the results – the value they impart. Quite simply taking a book, we know that we aren’t paying merely for the product in our hands, but the time and effort that produced the intellectual property that we are reading and receiving value from.

An excellent example is Nike+. Consider the fact that to measure your running day on day, you can simply use a map and a stop watch, and then a some paper to graph it out. But Nike solve a problem by removing the map, watch and effort of drawing by simply giving you something to put in your shoe, and watch in amazement as it charts everything online for you. In fact, what Nike have done is lifted restrictions and just made everything easier by doing all the work for you.

And the happy catch is this: you are paying far more than the free DIY version. But you are getting greater value through expertise, technology, and the reduction of your time, effort, and in some way, the stress of having to do it. As I often say to clients “make it one less thing your customer has to do.”

Solving Not Selling

All this stuff appeals deeper than fiance. It gets down to advocacy, passion, experience, change. Sure, there are inventions that are cheap and cheerful, but the majority of these game changers are lifestyle products and/or services in some shape or form. And very often, they are ahead of the curve.

I’m sure right now that you can think of plenty of ways to solve problems, rather than sell stuff. But as is the nature of innovation, only certain people buy it – early adopters. Many times I thought I had a great idea and everyone would swoop at it, only for it to flop. So I have realised that the need to 1. know you target market, and 2. grow by trial and error, is significant when solving problems. Some tips:

The best place to start, in my opinion, is with Guy Kawasaki’s ‘Art of Innovation‘. It’s helped me no end, and continues to.
Sound the depths. Segment some clients and experiment. Use social media to test the waters, as it is very cost effective and quickly helps you draw conclusions.
Continually re-think and re-write to get down the core of your ‘solution’. I’ll be honest with you, I still haven’t got mine down to a single phrase. If you can only describe it using examples or a paragraph, then you know that you have too much of ‘you’ in mind, and not enough of your customer.
Draw on others. Pass it round the office, bounce it off your friends. Their perspective with save you lots of time, and open new paths to explore.
Adapt in public, rather than perfect in secret. This way you gather a following while you are growing (even if things are unclear), you pick up people who do get it, and you also get criticised and challenged which will sharpen you and help you cut out the rubbish.

I trust these points help you solve a few more problems this week!

Lift The Restrictions

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Scott Gould

Last week I attended the launch night of Carluccio’s in Exeter. I got to talking with the PR guys who had handled the event about my freshly released New PR in 2010 framework, and to illustrate the point, I conducted a little test. I quickly tweeted if anyone had anything to ask the people at Carluccio’s, and within seconds I had responses that kept coming for ten minutes or so. I was able to show to the PR guys that there had firstly already been a conversation about Carluccio’s taking place earlier that day, and that I was able to obtain instant reviews and carry out realtime customer service, with very little effort. You can see the tweets here.

Today I want to show why real time micro media is so important, using my framework from last week.

The model above illustrates the link between spreadability and relevance, measured from static to dynamic. My point is that as technology advances, existing technologies become more static. This means that the difference between static and dynamic is comparative between old and new technology.

As I did last week, let’s take TV as our example. Initially, TV was exceptionally dynamic in comparison to radio and/or theatre. Theatre was fixed to a location, and radio was fixed to a single sense. Television lifted these restrictions by providing entertainment and information without the need to be at the source and instead allowing access from the comfort of your own home, and without the need to supplement what was heard with images produced in their own imagination. Previously, location was governed; now location was guided because individuals could be entertained and informed wherever the user desired (to a certain degree.)

As tapes, and later DVDs, were introduced, this newer technology made TV in its existing form more less dynamic and more static. The medium of tape allowed people to record programmes and play them when they desired to, as well as hiring or purchasing other recorded videos. This lifted the restriction of time, because the viewer no longer had to watch when the programme was aired. Time had previously been governed, but now it was only guided. And so it continues:

Cable and satellite increased the number and therefore lifted the restriction of channels, and increased variety. At this point, terrestrial television became, like, so last season. And again, the number of channels means that the choice is less governed and more guided.
Built in DVD, VCR, Freeview, etc, lift the restriction of dependencies, because they are built into the device.
Hard drive recording on satellite and cable devices lift storage restrictions.
IP TV lifts device restrictions, as you now watch the programmes on your laptop, mobile phone, etc.
YouTube lifts even further time, device and channel restrictions.

Track back over each of these iterations of television and you will also note that each advancement increases the spreadability (ease of access, ease of use, ease to share) of television by becoming more dynamic, more customised, and therefore, more personal. And with each restriction that is lifted by the enabling of new technology, the less governed and more guided it becomes.

The more dynamic and therefore personal a technology is, the more spreadable it becomes.

Applying This To Small Business

I’ve said it again, and again, and again, that mobile technology will merge offline and online together. Recently the User Experience consultant Darren Smith wrote about Foursquare and the ubiquitous world of the future, and how social media technology is enabling real life interaction. I totally agree.

As in Darren’s article, as per my test at Carluccio’s, as well as the recent Exeter Tweetup, and in running Like Minds, real time micro media is a shinning example of guidance over governance, and the resulted spreadability, and the convergence of two opposites of on- and off-line becoming one.

This isn’t for everyone. But for the innovative few out there: by customising your offering through being more personal and more dynamic, by lifting the restrictions that your static competitors fix their customers to, you gain market differentiation and offering a far more compelling experience by creating an alternate, dynamic reality from the existing static one.

Phew! Quite a statement. To illustrate, consider the following restrictions pertaining to micro media and how they can be lifted:

Location. How can you provide high level of support wherever your customer is? Your static competitors require a phone or website – they haven’t even considered a tweet or facebook from a mobile phone.
Time. What happens when your customer is frustrated and it’s out of hours? Your static competitors are sleeping, not tweeting.
Device. Do you have mobile friendly portals for all devices? Your static competitors, if not friendly to none, are friendly only to the device they use.
Channel. Can you be found on whatever social network and micro media your customer prefers? Your static competitors, if they don’t just snub social media right out, probably only have a dead Facebook group at best.
Dependencies. Do you offer a simple and complete service, from start to finish? Do you have procedures to get the info you need in a few 140 messages? Your static competitors require signups, feedback forms, and long processes – all of which just frustrate an already frustrated customer.

By lifting static restrictions, you increase your ease of access, ease of use, and importantly, ease of shareability. As in the Carluccio’s test, realtime reviews come hard and fast, and a dynamic, personal experience will produce positive reviews that will be instantly shared.

Much Ado About Something

Posted on August 11, 2009 by Scott Gould

Yesterday, Facebook bought FriendFeed. To the Digitalls, this is a thing of hot debate and plentiful discussion. But to the Digicools and Digitools, they will have read to this point and still understand nothing I’ve said because they have no idea what FriendFeed is, nor know why it even matters that Facebook has acquired them. But bear with me just a while…

Right now, famous technology evangelist Robert Scoble is talking through all the nuances and possible outcomes of this deal. The post is worth a read. For those of you who don’t know, Scoble made FriendFeed popular among the geeks, and has promoted it tirelessly and ceaselessly, whilst spending pretty much most of his working days on there for most of this year. Now, it appears, all those thousands of hours, all those ideas, all the marketing, all the effort of his life for the past year or so, will fade into time as FriendFeed gets sucked into Facebook.

The thing I find funny about all these Digeratti, as I call them – the top innovators and Digitall elite – is that they make so much noise about every big and every little thing. Reading Scoble’s article, many things that he is now saying he simply wasn’t saying early this year. One minute they are all expending energy on one thing, and now it is being expended on another. Blogging is dead, they cry, meanwhile, the mass market hardly knows they were ever alive. So, while I was reading Scoble’se article yesterday, I kept asking myself – “Does the mass market care? Does it even matter to the mass market? Will history change for it?” Because it certainly appears that all that effort is, well, much ado about nothing.

So it appears.

Fast forward a year or so and see the then half a billion Facebook users – the Digicools and Digitools of the mass market – now grappling with more changes and updates to Facebook. See 6 months after that, when all the ‘I hate the new, new Facebook’ pages have died down, and this mass market will be using Facebook in new ways with new technologies, based on what the Digitall have been using for years prior. And all that effort from all those FriendFeed users and engineers finds its place – it was thinking the way forward into the future.

That’s innovation.

Innovation – creating new ways to do things – is all about thinking way ahead of your time, and way ahead of the mass market.

Perhaps you’ve been wondering what that picture of a chair above is meant to be doing. That, my friends, is known as the ‘Wassily’, a chair designed by Marcel Breuer for Wassily Kandinksy at the Bauhaus. I have one in my living room. Want to know when he designed it? 1925. That’s 84 years ago. Can you imagine how innovative his thinking was to create something that is beyond even contemporary design? 84 years ago people were sitting on wooden chairs but Marcel was a thinking person who saw beyond even the imaginable future.

That’s the thing about innovation – it takes place years, and even decades before it makes sense.

Before it makes sense. Ah, there’s the rub.

There’s something that I do that, to some, doesn’t quite make sense. I run an Experience Agency. I talk about compelling experiences. But it’s ahead of where the mass market is right now. And when you’re ahead, what do you attract? Criticism. Misunderstanding. Just plain mockery. And you experience fear. You make mistakes. At times, you even doubt whether you’re even on to something at all. But then you reach down to the innovator’s compass inside of you. Your gut. And you know. You know that, given 5 years, it’ll be all the more relevant. Make it 10, and they’ll all be kicking themselves that they weren’t listening. Give it 20, and it’s a non issue.

Know that your innovation and your thinking is not much ado about nothing – but just like Scoble and FriendFeed – it’s much ado about something, the reward just comes later.

The decision you have, then, is to continue to innovate or imitate. Do the daring. Do something new, or line up and be the next cheap copy of a great original. But if you are doing something new, then beware that all the effort you put in will not have immediate return on investment. Understand that people will look at you and think what I was thinking about Scoble – “Will it work?” “Does it matter?” “Who even cares?” My recommendation, if you do innovate, is to buy yourself a Wassily chair. And every night when you sit in it and reflect and think things through, realise you are sitting in someone else’s innovation, and one day, others will sit in yours.

So here’s to all the innovators in the crowd. We are the future. My chair tells me so.

What are you are innovating?

That Certain Something Else

Posted on June 28, 2009 by Scott Gould

If you ever want to get inspired, watch any of the TED talks. It doesn’t matter which one I watch, I end up wanting to work with that person because their passion and drive emanates across the medium of video and touches the desires within me to cause change and transformation in this world.

When you listen to Pavarotti, when you watch Hamlet, when you hold an iPhone, see a photo of Rosa Parks, stand at the Washington Memorial, know a cancer survivor, or read about the death of a martyr, there is something else, something different about that person that separates them from average. Not that the average man and woman is devalued, but these people have gone through more than the average allocation of pressure to stand tall in the pages of someone’s history.
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