Category: Brand

  • Monkeys, Rules and Insurgents

    There was this forward that did the rounds about 8 years back, about how businesses are run. It involved 8 monkeys, bananas and a ladder. I’m going to repeat it here for the benefit of those not familiar with it. Those who know it already, skip and read the rest please.

    Put eight monkeys in a room. In the middle of the room is a ladder, leading to a bunch of bananas hanging from a hook on the ceiling. Each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder, all the monkeys are sprayed with ice water, which makes them miserable. Sooner enough, whenever a monkey attempts to climb the ladder, all of the other monkeys, not wanting to be sprayed, set upon him and beat him up. Soon, none of the eight monkeys ever attempts to climb the ladder.

    One of the original monkeys is then removed, and a new monkey is put in the room. Seeing the bananas and the ladder, he wonders why none of the other monkeys are doing the obvious, but, undaunted, he immediately begins to climb the ladder. All the other monkeys fall upon him and beat him silly. He has no idea why. However, he no longer attempts to climb the ladder.

    A second original monkey is removed and replaced. The newcomer again attempts to climb the ladder, but all the other monkeys hammer the crap out of him. This includes the previous new monkey, who, grateful that he’s not on the receiving end this time, participates in the beating because all the other monkeys are doing it. However, he has no idea why he’s attacking the new monkey.

    One by one, all the original monkeys are replaced. Eight new monkeys are now in the room. None of them have ever been sprayed by ice water. None of them attempt to climb the ladder. All of them will enthusiastically beat up any new monkey who tries, without having any idea why. And that’s how any company’s policies get established.

    What reminded me of this? Tom Fishburne’s recent post on ‘low interest’ categories, in which he talks about how “marketers often limit ourselves by the conventional rules of a particular category”. The induction and experiences thereafter changes us from, to use Seth Godin’s words, insurgents to incumbents.

    In these times of “hit the ground running”, is it too much to ask of companies to allow new hires to just give their perspectives on the brand and organisational processes in the first month? I too believe that for the brand team, these perspectives are a great representation of the end consumer. With all the money spent on data mining and consumer research, this ‘free’ sample is given a pass, perhaps because, just like the industries itself, even businesses internally fear disruption.

    Over a period of time, the brand’s custodians tend to lose their objectivity and processes unfortunately have a way of becoming the ends rather than the means. And that’s where ‘culture’ can make a difference. Know any companies who foster this?

    until next time, this is the way things are undone 🙂

  • Weekly Top 5

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  • Designs on Data

    In the last post, I’d written about the massive amounts of data that is already being generated and will grow, whether or not organisations track/capture/use it. The question then becomes one of ‘ownership’, within the organisation’s structure.

    The consumer, irrespective of his touch point, will expect a consistent and probably even a customised experience,  basis preferences communicated earlier, and transactions which can only happen if the functions talk to each other. And it is in that context that I found this (slightly dated) post by Dave Gray very interesting.

    He cites a talk by John Hagel, in which it was mentioned that “the average life expectancy of a company in the S&P 500 has dropped precipitously, from 75 years (in 1937) to 15 years in a more recent study.” In this context, he then goes on to dissect the design of companies – from a machine like structure with focus on control, maintenance and leading to eventual wearing out… to a design based on organisms or complex structures built by humans, like cities where there exist flexible ecosystems, a shared identity and an early seizing of opportunities to grow.

    Within the same analogy, he also then shows how a ‘machine’ design also brings in a “design by division”, resulting ultimately in function based silos. The alternative is “design by connection” which goes on to the Social Business Design concept and includes crucial elements like culture, starting small and scaling and so on.

    There is another interesting angle to this – the way much of this data (I have only social platforms to rely on now) seems to be flowing, it does not necessarily have to be the organisation that uses it best. It could be any of the middlemen – from retailers armed with sensors to a platform like Facebook/Foursquare/Twitter/Groupon (the last entity is talking to cash register manufacturers to have their button pre-installed at retail cash registers!) to super users. So perhaps it is time for brands to take a more structured view of data and its custodians. I have a feeling that it will have to be a hybrid model of design by division and connection.

     

    until next time, data open

  • Data beyond social

    A couple of weeks back, when I wrote about location based interactions, I’d said that the limits of my imagination prevent me from thinking of anything beyond brand ‘controlled’ interactive sensors in individual products as a way for non-retail brands to directly connect with their consumers – at the point of consumption.

    Thanks to RWW, I found this extremely interesting presentation which gives perspectives on the future of social media analysis and how brands will capture and use the data to increase business value – for itself and hopefully consumers too. I also remembered a McKinsey “Internet of things’ report from last year in this context.

    Augmented Research

    View more presentations from Face

    “social media is still viewed by many as just a tool rather than as an immersive environment.” Must admit I hadn’t thought about it that way. Meanwhile, there is indeed a lot of focus on the data we can get from social networks. But that’s only one source of data. There are many others too, including those which don’t even involve a consumer’s active communication. One look at the RFID wiki page will give you a perspective on the possibilities.

    If brands can take cognizance of the rapid advancements in technology, and work on how they can capture, analyse and apply data, then the contexts and ways they can interact with their consumers will substantially increase. Perhaps their dependency on existing communication platforms will decrease too, especially if they consciously build their own platforms. One old but still relevant example, which I have used earlier too, is Nike+, which uses popular social tools to augment the fundamental data capture.

    until next time, data entry barriers?

  • Running for eternity

    I must confess that I didn’t like Mitch Albom’s “Tuesdays with Morrie” as much as his other book “The Five People you meet in heaven“, but writing anything negative about a non-fiction book such as this is not in good taste, so I refrained from doing a review. I also think that it is not so much a bad book and this takeout is more to do with my evolution than the writing or the concept itself.

    The good thing though is that it does have quite a few nuggets that you can chew on for quite some time. 🙂 This is my attempt to thread together a few. To be precise, three of my favourites.

    At least a couple of times in the second half, Morrie talks about how people run after the next house, vacation, car, job etc because they think that this will grant them the elusive ‘meaning, and how our culture has ‘forced’ people to feel threatened when they stand to lose their materialistic gains. This is what makes money God, and them mean. This is, of course, completely debatable, but I brought this up only for context. It led me to think that how, in infancy and in old age (from several instances I have seen, read about) and perhaps sickness, we are more concerned with needs, and at all times in between, it moves towards wants.

    On a tangent, I remembered the ‘proof of good times’ thought that I’d shared earlier, more than a year back, in ‘Progress Report‘, and how we capture images and notes, sometimes for ourselves, and sometimes for others. Ourselves, for memories, and perhaps posterity, and others, because, I thought ubiquitous social connectivity is perhaps making us inadvertently live a life we want to portray to others. I discovered a nice usage in the book that connected to this thought of eternity attempts “And tapes, like photographs and videos are a desperate attempt to steal something from death’s suitcase“.

    And while on posterity and eternity, the last one, a quote from Henry Adams “A teacher affects eternity, he can never tell where his influence stops”. I think, in that sense, every being is a teacher, and thus lives on.

    until next time, wednesdays with manuscrypts, okay? 😉