LeapFrogging Brands

The common sense of the day is that developing nations have the ability to leapfrog technology. In other words, these countries can skip building entire infrastructures of phone lines since so many people are adopting the cell phone.

So taking that logic, there is a distinct possibility for certain brands in this economy to "Leapfrog" their competition. Of which brands am I speaking?

Any brand that is considered 2nd tier or below. Some particular candidates are 'house' or generic brands offered at supermarkets for example. Due to the upheaval of our recession these brands have the ability to take the learning of the past and utilize the technologies of the present, namely the myriad of social networks, to leverage the brand's future. One of the things I've learned is how quickly image and perception can change for a brand when the right message is delivered over a relatively short time.

Ideas to Action

What is the best way to drive ideas to action? How does one convert even one idea, not to success, but into a first step? In a lot of ways I find myself bogged down in ideas and concepts, that no matter how simple, seem unattainable without major buy in, which requires time and tunnel vision stubborn headedness. Or it requires major resources, as in the ability to pay for someone to help.

This is where design thinking is supposed to come in at its first step, to take a problem and turn it into a project. Part of that project step is being able to break the project into smaller more manageable steps.

While in a lot of ways I find this to be helpful, it fails to consider how to account for the distraction of other projects trying to get attention.

I read recently about how the Stanford University design program is beginning to focus on teaching its students how to decide on which projects are worth taking on. This is a great idea. I would be very interested in this process, and it may help to narrow my search as I look to convert my ideas into action.

3 Solutions to Save the Publication Industries

We have all seen or heard about the terrible state of countless newspaper and magazine publications. Every week some journal or glossy is shuttering its doors, succumbing to dwindling ad dollars. Just last week I picked up a few of my favorite magazines and I could feel a noticeable decrease in weight from so many missing pages.

Many people are quick to blame the advent of search and online media. While this may account for some of the advertising exodus, I don't think it is the only problem.

People still love the hard copy of their newspaper or magazines. While there is much to be said for the feel, and convenience of print, its usefulness is being quickly outstripped. People are so accustomed to the portability, sharability, saveability, and not to mention mostly free info online, they are willing to strain their eyes and backs reading articles at their computer.

I have one suggestion and three solutions for the publication industry that could save its hemorrhaging readers, revenues, and writers.

Suggestion: The entire newpaper and magazine industry should band together and form a Pub Council.

1) Newspapers and Magazines are suffering from a major image crisis. As a unified group they should hire an advertising agency to re-brand, re-image, and relate the benefits of print and reading the news or magazine articles.

2) As a unified group they will also be able to decide upon industry ad standards and streamline the entire ad buying system. Part of the headaches of advertising in various pubs is that every single publication has completely different standards for buying and placing the ad. Running a national campaign can be headache, from purely a management point of view. Streamlining the order process, some ad sizes, and measurement standards (for crying out loud!) would greatly reduce needed manpower and reduce costs of this sort of advertising. And, if this were standardized could you imagine a single Media plan building software that had all the vital info automatically incorporated and could find any publication no matter how obscure based on certain search criteria?

3) Finally, there has to be a more complete embrace and seamless weaving of print and online. As a unified industry it would be possible to develop an application that people could use to save and share any articles a reader chose to mark using their cell phone or computer. A person at the beach, for example, could read an article, enjoy it, and decide to text a certain number or use a certain code in a cell phone app that would send the digital version of the article to their personal online binder. This would help publications become more dynamic, saveable, shareable, as well as increase trackable eyeballs to articles. An entirely new metric could be implemented, measuring the amount of times an article is saved and passed along. (solving the lack of trackability often reported in magazine/newspaper advertising)

While my suggestion and consequent solutions may be easier said than done, these steps that are necessary if the industry at large hopes to succeed or at least remain in existence.

What do you think the Newspaper and Magazine industries need to do to succeed?

If you are someone from these industries and would like to discuss bringing these solutions to life let me know.

Darwin Selects Innovation During a Recession

Recently, on his blog, Design Thinking, the CEO of IDEO, Tim Brown, posted several questions regarding successful innovations during turbulent times in lieu of an Eskimo proverb saying, "the storm is the time to fish." Before coming upon his post I had been doing some research for EngineRoom about marketing, innovating and small businesses in a recession. Everything I came across said that it should be done(marketing/innovating in a recession), but no one was really discussing specific examples. Hence his question asking for real examples of innovation in turbulent times caught my attention.

I gave his post some thought and some research and came upon this answer.

I believe the best way to think about successful innovation is to equate it to Darwin's theory of natural selection.
"Darwin captured the only way that apparent design can arise without a designer: relentless selection on random variation." -Helena Cronin, Darwinian philosopher, London School of Economics.

However, innovation in business is not random variation, it is the biological equivalent of the cross insemination and mutation of ideas, (mostly) informed and strategically developed. While the market can shift and still select relentlessly, there is a lower degree of failure (we'd like to hope).

There was an article some time back that highlighted Sharper Image's failure, claiming that innovation is not the answer. This struck me for a moment, yet after entering the store's going out of business sale a few days later, I realized there was something vital the author failed to notice. Sharper Image's products were innovative for innovation's sake. In other words, they offered superfluous items for an extravagant era, unfortunately that era had passed. A few years back there were people who had everything reasonable (and unreasonable), so what could you get them as a present? Something from Sharper Image.

While this had been successful in the past, the economy shifted and they were selected out of the business gene pool because they were not nimble enough to evolve.
On the other hand, in a recent study by the Kauffman Foundation, they found that companies formed during a recession (excluding the Great Depression and World War II) were actually slightly more likely to go public than those formed during non-recessionary times. This makes sense within the Darwinian model because it is during a recession that people can more accurately gauge what traits have worked in the past, which have failed, and where the necessities will be.

For example, some successful business traits that are being passed down to new companies include the proper treatment of employees and a focus on the environment. Many businesses and industries are in turmoil during this recession, as old methodologies are being dropped by the way side. What traits or business models will emerge from this upheaval? I could name a few. However, it seems clear that it is up to innovation to determine the final outcome and eventual turnaround of the economy. Furthermore, it is the innovation during rocky times that yields the most rewards. Both Microsoft and Southwest Airlines were started in a recession and they both disrupted their industries by offering industry innovations.

I plan to expand on these ideas. What do you think?

Learning About Social Media from MacFarlane for You, or Your Brand

I guess it makes sense to start this blog with the topic that I struggled with many months ago when I decided I wanted to start taking part in the global online community. Social media has become a recent buzz word and while so many people are jumping in and singing the praises of blogs, twitter, and networks like facebook and linkedin, there are still a vast number of people who are still sitting on the sidelines looking on.

I found the hardest part about getting involved in social media is deciding how I wanted to portray myself. One's online involvement is a reflection of who you are and I constantly found myself shutting down ideas and essentially avoiding anything that had to do with social communities because I wasn't ready to commit to my digital self. I was unwilling to establish my personality, who I was, what I thought and believed in for fear of alienating people. I guess I thought my online, social self, had to be well liked and received by everyone.

Until I read an article in fast company about Seth MacFarlane and his shows--namely 'Family Guy.' To sum up, the article dubbed MacFarlane the content creation king of the new digital age for two main reasons. First, because his content is easily broken into bite-sized, digestible portions that can be shared and enjoyed across multiple mediums. Secondly, and here's is the key, because his content purposefully offends some groups he has developed an even stronger, more devoted fan base. [To the point where Google paid him $2 billion to create cartoons for their ad network.]

In other words, the trick to social media is to establish and target your content to a community, or not be afraid of the groups you exclude by virtue of what you are interested in contributing. It is not about mass appeal, but (no pun intended to my name) about tribal appeal. People seek and consume content that supports their own world view, so you are bound to appeal to at least some population of users in an online social community.

While many will say "Duh, that is what the social media revolution is all about!" I respond by reiterating that there are many people who are sitting on the sidelines, unwilling or unable to establish their opinion. It is the fear of the unknown that paralyzes them and me until I learned from Seth MacFarlane.

This learning also correlates directly to companies afraid of taking the plunge into social media. In this era a brand that wants to get involved must embrace its unique characteristics and allow that brand to be transformed by its follower. These are the new standards of branding 101.

What a lot of companies forget when it comes to getting involved in the social media revolution is that their brand has certain characteristics, and it is ok to exclude some people to make more ardent supporters for your product or service. 80% of sales comes from 20% of users (figures vary), so logic dictates that a blanket, mass, dry approach is not the way to go. Unfortunately, many brands that do have a social media presence tend to overlook the understanding that to be succesful they must target content that resonates their brand's voice. Creating generic, corporate, and sterile content in this realm is suicide, or at least grounds enough to be ignored.

So pluck up your courage and begin contributing to the global chorus. Or should I say cacaphony? We'll leave that one for now.

What does everyone else think? What drove you to contribute / why don't you contribute already? Do you need help getting started? Let me know.