Joseph Rueter

Media is segmented. Habits are not what they were. Culture is changing. Business is undergoing massive shifts. Technology is enabling communication, new habits and behaviors faster than culture is changing or embracing them. Agencies are in turmoil. It’s a crazy time. Some feel like they’ve been hit by a train.

Users are being considered in the design of products. We’re all our own publishers. Transparency is a new currency. The crowd is on the rise. Industrial design firms are doing marketing. Heads up, there is another train coming.

image via bridgepix

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.

Problems are obvious. Most of them are anyway. They exist.

Most problems exist because some system is broken. They stare us in the face. They plague thoughts. We might think, “If I could just get X solved, or maybe I could just get it to go away.”

Most of the services and help we seek are to solve or fix problems. At home we get the plumbers, mechanics and the like to fix problems. At work it’s managers, outside providers and so on.

When working to create value from a problem first stand point we nearly always assume the premises of the problem, the system it was created by or that it lives in. We accept the system cart blanch. In doing so we nearly always accept the boundaries of the system and all it’s rules.

Solving problems that way can work. Sure, people do it. Sure, it can be somewhat successful. However, success is a relative term. What if we were far more interested in solving for opportunity?

Opportunities are widely available but they’re not often obvious. They need to be solved for. They tend to come from disparate ideas being combined. Most opportunities don’t yet exist. They can be tricky to “see.” They’re not yet actualized.

Solving for Opportunity… It might seem like a subtle shift from solving for problems. Sure. A problem might be why you direct your attention to finding a solution or finding an opportunity. However, a problem and it’s system need not command the boundaries, the playing field, for finding a solution. It need not be the only reason to look for a solution either.

Solving for opportunity is exciting. It offers an approach that first finds the opportunities available. Then, it crafts solutions for not yet existing value.

One approach protects value. One creates value.

image via jup3nep

I’ve been apart of a number of conversations recently regarding web startups in Minneapolis/Saint Paul. It’s curious.

I think we’re bound by the culture. Yet, I wonder if we can leverage that culture in someway and push the current community. Towards what? Towards an increase in delivered solutions. We live here but we don’t necessarily have to think here.

The Scandinavians and farms in our linage have influenced us to be stable, to take little risk, to fit-in and thereby stick to our jobs. Not terrible traits. We also have a tendency toward equity and an interest in making things work. After all that’s what you do on the farm.

I think there’s significant enough potential for our Midwestern-ness to be modified for increased yield in the startup space to be having discussions and asking questions. Foremost on my mind… where is there a climate where we can hybrid our tendencies with that of start-up activity? Does such a thing exist? We have hybrid crops. Why not have a hybrid climate of our culture traits and startup community traits?
So, why this post? Because I wanted to say “I am excited by the prospect. I am thinking about this.” You?

Down on the farm when you need a windmill you’d piece one together. You make it with what you have. We’ve have the Midwest. We have the internet. Do we want to a startup farm?

image via eye4it

Toyota is electrifying and connecting your wifi machine in public places via “Solar Flowers.”

Marketing is experiencing changes. Not only that but ads find themselves in dramatically different environments than ever before. The previous dominate mediums of words and images — read print and TV — changed in minor ways every couple years. When they changed assumptions were rarely challenged. The web is providing communication new dimensions, it’s democratizing information, and driving social realities toward new behaviors. It’s forcing change and change more rapidly.

The innovators are developing and including new mediums in marketing ecosystems. Marketing as operations, marketing as manufacturing, marketing as fulfillment and here with the solar flowers, marketing as service comes to mind. Who knew marketing could do stuff for people? Who knew it could help people accomplish what it is they are already doing? Who knew it could go beyond impressions that raise “awareness”? Marketing as service can drive past “consideration” and possibly strait to “preference” if it’s done in a way that helps. I mean, why not have a preference for someone or some brand that’s provided for a need of yours with out you having to ask or even realize you needed it?

Here I am reminded of the Ritz Carlton Service model. How can marketing anticipate needs, provide for them without being asked and respond with “our pleasure.”

image via Toyota USA

Many assume each page of their website needs be treated equally. What can Baseball teach us?

I watched the Bluejays host Boston last Wednesday streaming live on my iPhone while on the treadmill. While I could talk at length about behaviors changing because of diversified media channels I find the stats on Toronto pitcher Roy Halladay more intriguing at the moment. The Bluejays are paying attention. Close attention.

When Halladay pitches the Toronto infield seems to huddle together on the right side between first and second like it’s cold outside and that’s where the bonfire is blazing. The second basemen stands dramatically to the first base side of the bag and the shortstop covers second from about 10 feet to the third base side of second. To bad for third. He stands alone in this lopsided arrangement. You can almost see him shivering. Metaphorically of course.

Moreover, the infield ought to pay extra special attention to the first pitch each batter gets. Why? 34% of all batters facing Halladay hit the first pitch. The highest in the league at the time. The graph of at bat connections off Halladay shows a highway of hits to the right side of the field. Thus the unusual arrangement of men with mits is because they know the stats, they want to win, and they believe they can give themselves the best chance by acting accordingly.

Now baseball is fanatical about it’s stats. That’s the first and obvious take away. How many of us are paying the kind of attention to our website stats like a coach does for his baseball players? The data is easy to get. I suggest we all take a page from baseball and get above, way above, 500 on our websites!

Figure out what your visitors are doing and help them do more of it.

I was recently asked to guest post on Andy Santamaria’s http://connectingmetoyou.com/. I thought why not post it here too. Thanks Andy for giving me a reason to focus my thoughts.

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

The crowd is here to stay. Feel what you want. Or don’t. Think or say what you want. I suspect it won’t cause the crowd or it’s influence to shrink. It’s up from here.

So now what?

The bounds of the crowd and what it can do are now defined by the social structure it finds itself in. Come to think of it, it always has been. By that I mean that what’s OK for the crowd is whatever the social context lets it get away with.

Until now it wasn’t OK in the vast majority of contexts to embrace the crowd. For various characteristics like cost, the need for speed, the ubiquitous internet and more, the social structures are shifting to accept crowdsourcing. Moreover, technology is changing behavior and there in culture. The question now is what do we all think “OK” is for crowdsourcing? What does/would acceptance look like? What will we let the crowd get away with?

Three questions at the end of a recent post by John Winsor stick out to my mind as leading points for engaging/giving boundaries and guiding the crowd. They are:

1) How do you manage and inspire the crowd?
2) How do you make meaning from all of their input?
3) How do you build brands in such a noisy environment?

My snap reaction to these these questions is say that the context of the crowdsourcing opportunity guides the answers. For example, inspiration depends on the crowds characteristics and motivations (specific shared interest, cash, public recognition, etc.), management and meaning depends on understanding objectives and tight/specific direction given to the crowd, and building brands in a noisy environment is definitionaly contextual.

If those are adequate working answers what else stands in the way of actualizing the potential of the crowd? Maybe sensitive it’s information that the legal team wants NDA’s for that stands in the way? Maybe it’s the cultivation of the relationships with decision makers? Maybe it’s a culture of innovation that needs to be in place before a crowd is turned too? Maybe its a strategy before tactics approach to knowing what to do with what the crowd produces? Maybe it’s a methods or process to working with crowds that has just not been written or published yet?

Ideas maybe free, sure… but to my mind they are only as good as the context they’re given to cultivate in. So how well do your crowdsourcing desires support and work with the the culture you’re working in and the culture of the crowd. What are we going to let each other get away with?

image via Peggy Collins

Sell many small ideas before you go for the BIG one.

Selling ideas can be dramatically easier if it starts with small ideas on a measurable schedule that get’s better and more complicated over time. The big idea does not win alone. It needs a context. Start with something the client already has. Make it a bit better. Lead them toward the big idea.

It’s not unlike lawn maintenance. You got to have upkeep. With focused intention and simple action on a schedule with discipline. The weeds go away and the grass gets thicker and greener. The state of the upkeep says something about the owner for all to see. It also says something about you. Rest assured, the client sees. Or in the very least their ROI likely will, over time.

If I come to you and talk all day about the “fantastical” equipment and chemicals and pedigree of the lawn operator in my company and process virtues, and on and on, does that make you want to buy? Maybe. Likely not.

Certainly! You could mow your lawn yourself. But if I can do it better and you don’t have the time but you got the cash, all that’s left is trust. Do you trust I could make your lawn better? Have I given you reason too? If I have, you’ll give me a try. If all I’ve given is theory you’ll likely be reluctant. But if I’ve been working on a 10×10 patch in the corner that now looks great, you’re in for it, right? It’s easy to buy results.

Selling ideas in a way that is initially like tending to a little section of a yard provides an easy way to build trust. Low risk. When your work is reevaluated it’s easy to see success (or failure).

Weed and edge and feed your ideas and relationships with clients. Sell the big idea after you’ve built trust. It’s like lawn maintenance.

image via dugglesworth