John Winsor and Alex Bogusky have written a book titled Baked In that posits a way forward for products and marketing working together. I enjoyed the doodles throughout and fully agree with the principles of learning by doing and prototyping often. Check out the book’s blog at http://www.bakedin.com for an example of the principles of the book embodied. It’s interesting for many reasons not least of which is that they drank their own Kool-Aid.

The thesis goes something like, creativity is an ultimate business weapon and marketing should be part of the definition of products in such a way that they market themselves. The book and blog are baked together. They each market each other and themselves due to their connection to Twitter and their invitation for people to interact and participate.

I received an early version of the book. I was eager to read and happy to do so. I’ve wondered out loud with others and ruminated about it’s contents as well as the state of industry/culture.

To my mind… current convention holds that quick profit is a premium and primary goal. Therefore convention nearly always chooses the path of least resistance for design and manufacturing. As a result, the machines that make things have become nearly, if not the only, primary audience for the design of many products. Design in this system is focused on what the machines can make. Users are after thoughts. In the common case then, marketing enters the picture as something that happens ABOUT a product or ON BEHALF of it after it’s made and most often in order to get people to buy up stock of it.

Baked In provides a conceptual framework for flipping convention on it’s head. It’s about marketing being something that happens TO products and BY products on their own behalf. As an example, what if the designers played a significant role in deciding what gets made? What if marketing was a first thing considered in product development? Baked In argues that creativity and marketing should be intimately in the mix. Marketing then would become an essential characteristic of a product. Without marketing the product would cease to be the product by definition. In fact, products not designed with marketing in mind might in the future be doomed to a warehouse stock existence.

The middle chunk of the book gets practical and offers a series of “recipes” for baking marketing in. Clever. They’re insightful and articulate. Taken together they seem like firm ground to stand on when designing/marketing products. My favorite at the moment is “Get Out Of Whatever Business You Think You’re In.”

To my mind each of the recipes can fit in to one of three categories. Inside Culture includes recipes for teams and organizations to think and work together by. Outside Culture focuses on the macro culture for a time and product and how to make the most of it all. And finally recipes for Disposition which focus on thoughts/values/approaches to be considered when baking marketing into products.

The last section of the book argues that systems are a major way forward. I agree for a couple reasons. First, I am reminded here of the work of Daniel Pink and Roger Martin. Daniel argues in A Whole New Mind that where the left brain has dominated business the right brain’s ability to consider empathy and inventiveness as it relates to value creation is becoming and will become increasingly sought after. Roger, Dean at the Rotman School of Management and author of The Opposable Mind, argues that an integrative approach that includes both business (left brain) and design (right brain) are where value will come from going forward. I see both arguments lending well to systems thinking for designing/marketing products. Let’s integrate thinking and doing and sharing (marketing).

Second, systems seem to be a logical conclusion to the argument the book is making. By that I mean that if marketing and product design are to be integrated, which would its self be a sort of system, then it stands to reason that systematic approaches to the contexts in which those products exist are also in order. Moreover, systems seem appropriate ways to build for expanding and sustaining value.

So… Baked In. It claims creativity is an ultimate business weapon. To my mind it’s not a stretch to suggest that systems are it’s ammunition. It’s time to make them.

Maybe, a next step is to bake marketing into our thoughts. Maybe we’re all idea merchants. Maybe that’s the goal of this all. How do we think things should be? The question then is how good are we at that thinking and doing. Maybe it’s about spreading ideas. Maybe it’s about prototyping and building things. After all, everything that exists is an argument in a way about how things should be. Are we happy with how things will be on our current trajectory? Wither your answer is yes or no both suggest that we get to work and make things.

After reflecting on the BlogWell event held last Thursday at General Mills HQ I looped back on my notes, noticed some key points and thought I’d share. The four (of eight) presentations I saw were General Mills (eats), Walmart (retail), Progressive (insurance) and Ford (stuff that moves). Over all I am impressed with the state of the social space being so young, even in big companies. People are out experimenting and learning. It’s an exciting time. I came away thinking that it’s not all figured out.

While at the time of the event the speaker from General mills, CMO Mark Addicks, did not have a Twitter account he did have a couple key insights to share. Goes to show that being on Twitter does not necessarily equal competence in all that is marketing. Just saying. Not that it would or would not hurt to have one necessarily.

Mark noted that scale is useful when it’s used to leverage opportunity. With respect to the social side of the internet they are finding ways to leverage their scale. I’ve thought for some time that one of the most social things we have as humans is our food and therefore it was interesting to hear that Betty Crocker, arguably the first social brand, has nearly no TV in their media plan and an almost entirely digital solution.

Walmart has some 200 Million customers per week. That, like the other numbers they shared are staggering. I mean, I know they are big, I just don’t think about it much.

The stats about their associates website were enough to perk the room up. The site is not available on corporate computers which means the associates need to access the content from non-work computers! Even so, 90% of their associates login to the site at least once every 10 days. Powerful. It seems reasonable to conclude that there are huge opportunities for most any company to grasp when it comes to connecting with staff! The staff wants it. Will companies provide it?

There was a brief ethics presentation in the middle of afternoon. The key take away is that it’s illegal to pay people for reviews. So, don’t do it. Now that it’s a new space it’s still illegal. This includes being vague about where a review is coming from. Be clear if you’re paid in anyway to say what you’re saying in the social space.

Progressive Insurance will insure most anything that moves. Apparently they are innovators, first to market with a number of “products” recently. I had not herd of them. Maybe I am not the demographic. Regardless the one feature I do remember is their insuring a family pet along with the family while in the car. Interesting.

The key point, to my mind, from this presentation was that with social media you have to find your door in. For Progressive it was/is catastrophe. They reach out to people and help them with information when they need it. They listen and respond as they can. They have all kinds of info on their site and they point people to it and other sources. I find it curious that here Twitter’s mobile characteristics are being leveraged. Seems like a very nice fit for Progressive and a strategy that has offered them a number of critical early wins.

Lastly, the vehicle maker, Ford. They have a number of active campaigns in the wild now. It’s exciting to see the experimentation and learning in social media’s relative infancy. Examples of what they are doing include giving cars to people under different circumstances and asking them to document their experiences and share them publicly. They’re listening, from what I can tell, quite actively from within the social space.

Yet, with all those perceivably “best practices” and campaigns generated by their agencies up, running and producing results I found it interesting that Scott Monty addressed leadership to the extent he did in his presentation. It’s not surprising to find leadership as a dynamic, even a critical one, whenever and endeavor includes people. What is surprising is that this presentation is the first of social media presentations I’ve seen where leadership quality was the key point. Curious.

Social media has been and usually is a bottom up kind of reality. I wonder now as the top of corporations start to notice the opportunities available in the social space if it will become like all the other parts of organizations, namely top down. Or if maybe the social realities exemplified online will play a role in influencing change in the corners of all organizations.

It’s still early. Rise and shine. Let’s be better. Let’s be social.

image via tommy_is

Three ideas from the book stick out most to me:

One, if you care about something enough to do something about it you’re in business. That seems simple enough. I liken this to wanting more to build or fix something than sit in front of the TV or do anything else. This is about priority on one level. On another level it’s about belief. You have to not only care about it enough to do something but you have to also hold the belief that it can change and you can have a role in causing that to occur.

Two, entrepreneurs aren’t in business so much as they’re being playful. I like this. I stand more often on the side of intuition. Go with your gut, be willing to change course upfront and just start trying stuff. Work stuff out as much as you can along the way and enjoy it.

Three, PR can and should be about authenticity. It seems to me that I’ve had a debilitating perception of PR that there was a right and a wrong way to do it. PR only worked, in my old view, if it was mechanical and in a sequential order. Like most things, I’ve found that if you’re more focused on what you think others think you should do you’re not likely to move forward all so fast or successfully. So, with PR, go be you. Be smart and strategic about it but authentic too.

Richard, thanks for framing your past and present in a way that was easy to engage with and curious on so many levels not least of which these three.

Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur

p.s. If you live in MSP and would like to read this book be the first to call dibs on my copy in the comments below and we’ll find a way to get it to you.

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