For everyone in the Oklahoma City area, I will be speaking at the March 18th edition of Refresh.
I will be presenting The Brand Box, which started as a simple post and has been developed into an full presentation on branding.
There is no charge and all are invited to attend. For more details go to Refreshokc.org.
Adaptive Path, one my favorite sources on experience design, in response to a recent BusinessWeek article, shared their thoughts on why “Starbucks is not about the coffee.”
While Adaptive Path makes some great suggestions on ways to refocus enhance the overall Starbucks experience, the following statement concerns me a little:
“…I don’t think it’s about The Coffee. Starbucks has to deliver a basically good product, but they don’t need to deliver a superlative product. And they definitely don’t need to sell $1 coffee that sends exactly the wrong message, in that it moves Starbucks to the bottom of the pyramid, and turns them simply into a volume operation.”
I agree 100% that Starbucks doesn’t need to sell $1 coffee. That only waters down the experience and sends them down to a level of play that Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds are currently fighting over. But I think you have to be careful saying that Starbucks is not about coffee. And if you think the quality of the coffee doesn’t matter, tell that to the coffee connoisseurs, and be ready to riot that will ensue when you start fooling around with the production of their magic beans.
Starbucks is an experience, but great coffee is what makes the experience authentic.
So what does that mean for Starbucks?
Focus on enhancing the Starbucks experience, all while keeping coffee first in the mind.
This reminds me of a post that Paul Williams’ Starbucks and the “Aroma First” Rule from earlier this month. He lays out the clear need for focus, but also makes direct ties to how coffee (specifically the aroma) plays a crucial part in the experience.
Can you present your brand consistently when you are always doing something new? Red Bull does it!
Two weekends ago my wife and I went on a ski trip to Angel Fire, New Mexico with some friends. One day while we were there a Red Bull van parked on the back side of the mountain and started blasting loud music and while they gave away free cans of Red Bull. Later on in the day they hosted the Red Bull Powder Jam, a free concert halfway down one of the runs, featuring an underground band from Albuquerque, Your Name in Lights. All you had to have to attend was some way of getting down to the concert: skis, snowboard, snow bike. The whole thing totally fit the Red Bull image, and it was a lot of fun.
The next day seemed strangely quiet, as if something was missing. It took a couple of times up and down the mountain to realize why it was so quiet. The Red Bull van was no where to be seen. I guessed they had to move on, but I wondered why they didn’t stay for a few days longer to reinforce the brand building they had done the day before.
I got my answer to that question yesterday. I’m in the process of reading Authenticity by James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II. I came across a story about one of the authors experience with a the Flugtag event which was hosted by Red Bull and started in 1991. Entrants designed their own themed flying machines and where shot off a 35-foot high platform into the water below. The author (I say author because the book didn’t specify whether it was James or Joseph.) was impressed with the event and even entered it in 2004 but after that, to his disappointment Red Bull never returned to host the event again. Then at a trade show he ran into a Red Bull exhibit at a trade show and asked why they never hosted the event again. This is what the marketing manager had to say,
“That’s not our M.O.; we don’t want to become stagnant, and turning locations off, we’ve found, helps keep the brand real.”
What Red Bull has realized, and I now understand, is that they were at there to provide a brand experience. In this case it was a renegade concert on the side of the mountain. They delivered and then moved on, leaving Angel Fire wanting more instead of sticking around to sell customers who were already sold.
Break out the party hats, simple sugar foods and of course some fresh juicy oranges. It’s time to celebrate! Not only is it Friday, but today also officially marks the 1 year anniversary of when I first started peeling fresh marketing posts for all to read.
I can’t believe that I’ve been blogging a whole year. That is, minus a little hiatus, while I was hacking my way through customizing my own WordPress theme, but lets just chalk that up as part of the whole blogging experience.
A lot of great things have happened in a years time.
So peel a fresh orange and lets drink the juices to another great year of peeling back the old ideas and traditions of marketing.
And I just want to say thanks to the Fresh Peel readers. Your comments, emails, phone callls, and even your subscriptions have played a big part in the Fresh Peel’s evolution.
Now I leave you with the Top 5 Favorites from year 1 (most views):
Focus in on strengths. Then focus on making strengths stronger.
It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for!
The Fresh Peel is pleased to welcome Ramon Vullings and Godelieve Spaas, co-authors of Creativity Today, which is the featured book for the February 2008 edition of Post2Post Virtual Book Tour.
Ramon is a skilled facilitator of innovation, creativity expert, consultant at New Shoes Today.
Godelieve is an expert on developing a conscious mind in change, and is also a consultant at New Shoes Today.
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This Post2Post stop features three sections. Enjoy!
This is Part II of a two-part interview series with Creativity Today co-authors, Ramon Vullings and Godelieve Spaas.
Ramon is a creativity guru and a skilled facilitator of innovation.
Godelieve is an expert on organizational change, and a master at creating organizational models.
If you missed Part I, be sure to check out how Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation kicked things off.
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Q: Creativity Today breaks the creative process down into three phases. What are the three phases? And what would the cliff notes summary of the book say about each of the phases?
Ramon: Creativity Today actually focuses on 4 steps:
1. Situation – What is the real question? This takes up a lot of time, after analyzing this, you’ll know what it’s really about
2. Divergence – Generate ideas and takes different perspectives, really ‘widen’ your view
3. Convergence – Select ideas, without choosing for the old perspectives. And enrich the selected ideas, so they become concepts
4. Action! – An idea/concept without action is nothing… here it takes leadership to start implementation.
Q: With your experience in coaching groups of people through the phases of the creative process, what part of the process do you typically find to be the hardest part for groups to achieve? Why?
Ramon: 1. Situation – The hardest part for many groups is to agree on the actual question/situation. Why are we here for? People have such different views on the ’same’ situation. When you get through the discussion a lot of internal ‘miscommunication’ is cleared up and there is a better mutual understanding.
2. Action – Great thinking, now the doing starts. Getting people into action ‘today’ is very hard, it’s a presuppositions that there are moments to think and other moments to act. Yet they actually need to go together.
Q: Why should we pay extra attention to naive ideas?
Naive ideas show an ideal world, it’s best to come as close as possible.
Q: What is a nearling and why is it so important?
Ramon: A nearling is a positive word for something new that you did with the right intentions, which has not (yet) led to the right result. A nearling sits right between 0 (= inactivity) and 1 (=success). you need to try and test many things before you finally have learned how to reach success, however you define success. We (the Western world) are very binary, it’s 1 or 0, it’s success or failure. And everything which is not success is a failure. While actually only 0 (inactivity) is failure, this being in an innovative context as 0 in a Zen context is success. The nearling sits right between the 0 and the 1. You’ve take an initiative which has not (yet) to the desired result, if you learn from your nearling and share them, you’ll see they offer just as much value as ‘best practices’. You need nearlings to take you from ‘bets practices’ to ‘next practices’.
Q: In a majority of the case studies presented, there was often a bottom up approach to solving the stated problems, by involving groups of people, such as front-line workers, that might not normally be involved in decision making processes. Does this indicate a flaw in many organizational hierarchies? If so what can be done to correct this? Should some organizations be restructured so that ideas can grow and ripen within?
Ramon: The basic here is the creative attitude, be open and listen, while postponing your judgment. People ‘on the floor’ know what’s happening and can provide real insights. It’s an organizational value which is underestimated in many organizations. For creativity (around 2% of the time) it’s really needed to involve a large diverse group, the rest of the time (98%) it’s ‘processing’.
Godelieve: There will certainly be a flaw, if not a typhoon, in organizational hierarchies. And if we don’t make room for it, the management will end up with empty hands. There are several reasons for that. Until now it was OK to ask people to bring only part of themselves to work. But more and more they want to feel whole in their work. So to bring in passion, knowledge, skills and responsibility, and to receive a feeling of meaningfulness and fulfilment.
Working bottom up is only the beginning. It is a start to turn the organizational pyramid up side down. The former top of the pyramid will in the future be the facilitator for the employees who are capable and responsible for their work, within the global direction and borders that the directors set. Organizations really need all the skills, and knowledge employees have to give. They need their creation power, their passion, and every single scope on any issue they can get, to become a flexible and continuous innovating and creating company.
Q: Productivity has become a buzzword in recent years as people are try to do more in less time. Is there a proper balance between focusing on productivity (the repetition and logical organization of our lives) and getting out of our routines to utilize creativity as a strength?
Ramon: By being really creative one can win time, same as with productivity. Yet many people let themselves be seduced by all new opportunities these concepts offer. Being more productive offers more time to do more. It’s a Catch-22, you need to break out of the circle, this is where creativity can help.
Godelieve: Exploration and exploitation are up till now two different things in an organizations. Many books and articles are written on this topic. And they will all tell you that exploration and exploitation do bite each other because their dynamics are totally different.
It is the challenge to connect those two. For two reasons: because the exploitation process will become more and more dynamic, for example to realize mass customization. And the second reason is that if we don t combine the two, the exploration process will be the one that gets no attention. And it is that process that creates the future. It is my true conviction that by separating the two we alienate the future from the existing companies. And it is worth some thinking through if that is what we want.
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More with Ramon and Godelieve:
Marketing & Branding
Ramon Vullings and Godelieve Spaas are co-authors of Creativity Today (along with Igor Byttebier).
Ramon is a consultant at New Shoes Today, and is a champion of selling ideas around creation, innovation and change. He has a knack for stepping back and looking at everything from a much bigger picture.
Godelieve is also a consultant at New Shoes Today, and is an expert on guiding organizations through change.
In short, if we were forming a world-wide committee to restructure the marketing and advertising industry, they would be some of the first people I would call. So I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to squeeze some fresh, juicy and innovative thoughts on marketing and branding out of them.
Q: What is your view of the state of organizational marketing and branding? Where should creativity fit into this?
Ramon: The state in general? A very mixed landscape. Creativity is used (understood) in 2 ways, the PR-people who ‘own’ creativity in terms of new ways to grab the customer’s attention and the radical new way of positioning a product or service. It requires a lot of creativity to come up with new views especially in mature markets/products.
Q: In what ways do organizations tend to limit themselves in their thinking and actions in regards to their own capabilities and their industry? How can an organization overcome this tendency and use it as a point of differentiation amongst their competitors, specifically in their branding efforts?
Ramon: In many ways, here a lot of presuppositions come in play. Many industries still limit their view on ‘how this industry works’ while actually you can redefine an entire industry by challenging the basic assumptions, the takes taken for granted. A few examples: EasyJet has clearly redefined the airline industry (do we need tickets? do we need allocated seats? do we need free newspapers on onboard? etc…). Their totally new view on the way things always have been done has opened up a full mature market.
Q: What are presuppositions? And how can reinforcing them and also breaking them play an important part in an organizations marketing efforts?
Ramon: Presuppositions are assumptions on which on view on things is based. Presuppositions are a marketer’s strongest enemy and friend if it comes to new experiences. People expect something form a product of service. Yet by breaking presuppositions you can play with the experience, doing something people don’t expect, add value where they didn’t expect it or take out cumbersome steps in processes. All aimed to alter the experience.
Q: With the introduction of social media, and the rise of conversation on the web, what new opportunities to do see for organizations to harness the power of creativity?
Ramon: The rise of social networking opens up so many options to be creative. Creativity is a value neutral term, is works for good and bad. From a marketing perspective you can be very creative with all the personal data available on the web (in example see the enormous amount of spam which is being pushed out these days), yet this is probably a bad way of using the information. Being creative in a positive way is that you can now look for new combinations in areas you would not have thought there was a connection, between people, brands and behaviors.
Q: What would you say to an organization that is clearly stuck in the old model of marketing, which is rapidly losing it’s effectiveness? Is creativity the answer to overcoming their apparent risk aversion?
Ramon: A creative basic attitude helps, yet creativity is nothing without clear leadership. The guts to let go of things (products, services, ideas) and the power to push things through, as it takes a lot of leadership to introduce new ideas.
Godelieve : Creativity is only partly an answer to that. In fact what is needed is what I call responsive marketing. Responsiveness has always been a very important capability of marketing and sales, and it will be key in the future. The focus will change from awareness of what is, to what is changing. So from one form to what is in between two forms, in between two situations. The more you are capable to respond to what is to come the more effective you can be. Of course, the moment you know what is coming up, your creativity comes in very handy, to find an answer for that.
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More with Ramon and Godelieve:
Creativity & Innovation Part II
CATEGORIES: Books, Branding, Creativity, Innovation, Interviews, Marketing
READ:View Comments RELATED POSTS:
The results are in for the Creativity Contest, which was announced at the end of January. That means that two lucky winners will be receiving a coveted MetaMemes ThinkCube.
And now to announce our winners:
Winner from the Polls
Happy Feet
Josh Carlton (Roanoke, VA)
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Winner from the Judging
(Judged by Ramon Vullings and myself)
Mirror Look Closer
Skylenberg (Flickr name)
Congratulations to our winners and a big thanks to everyone who entered!
Make sure you don’t miss all the future happenings at The Fresh Peel by subscribing to the feed here.
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MetaMemes also wanted me to pass this special deal for all of The Fresh Peel readers:
“If you had your heart set on winning a ThinkCube but didn’t, MetaMemes is offering you 30% off your ThinkCube purchase until February 29th, 2008. Just visit www.metamemes.com and enter the coupon code FRESHPEEL during checkout.”
The Post2Post Virtual Book Tour starts on Monday.
I will dig into the topics of creativity, idea generation, innovation and much more with Ramon Vullings, co-author of Creativity Today.
In one of my question and answer with Ramon, I plan on zeroing in on these subjects and how they can be applied to branding & marketing. This is something you won’t want to miss.
Below is the schedule for the week:
| Site | Date |
|---|---|
| Think For A Change Paul R Williams |
Mon, Feb 11 |
| ConnexionPastor Charles Whitmore |
Tue, Feb 12 |
| Principled Innovation Blog Jeff De Cagna |
Wed, Feb 13 |
| The Marketing Fresh Peel Chris Wilson |
Thur, Feb 14 |
| Grassroots Innovation Greg Eisenbach |
Fri, Feb 15 |
This week’s topic for Human Talk is “No Food or Drink” signs. (If you didn’t catch the bold graphic above.)
I was in the mall a few days ago wasting some time before seeing a movie, and I started to notice these signs posted on the outsides of some of the stores. Then I came to a store that had a big sign that said “Grand Opening” in huge letters and posted next to it was a “No Food or Drink” sign. It was your typical mall store for teenage girls that sells clothes and jewelry. It’s not like they were selling something Italian leather jackets and mink coats. So why were they making such a fuss?
This got me thinking, about the purpose of a “No Food or Drink” sign. It is put up in an effort to reduce the risk of a customer dirtying up the store and ruining a product by accidentally spilling their drink or getting Auntie Anne’s pretzel cheese on it. Damaged goods and dirty stores would obviously be bad for business.
Here’s the but…
This is where I think you have to look beyond what you see on paper. What about the percentage of potential buyers that don’t enter at all just because they have a soft drink from the food court in hand? For every 1 slobby customer that puts their frappuccino fingers all over the merchandise, 20 customers may walk on by and never come back just because they don’t want to pitch the $5.00 drink they just bought in the trash.
It’s a bad idea to build a business and enforce policies around changing the habits of customers that you don’t want.
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What do you think a better strategy would be?
This post is part of the Human Talk series.
If you would like to contribute your good or bad Human Talk examples, Email me. I’ll accept photos, stories, videos, audio, etc. and give credit where credit is due.
The entry phase of the Creativity Contest has officially come to a close. But have no fear, the fun has just begun. The polls are officially open. It’s time to vote on which photo, out of all 38 entries, you think best represents creativity.
To vote, simply go to the Creativity Contest Poll and begin rating each of the photos.
Here are a couple of things to note about the voting process:
If you entered be sure to tell your friends, family, minister, barista, cab driver and everyone you know to come and vote for your entry. Blog about it, Twitter it, post it to Facebook, hire a skywriter. Get creative (since that is the theme).
Meanwhile, Ramon Vullings, author of Creativity Today, and I will start reviewing the entries to select the 2nd winner.
The winners will be announced on February 14th (Valentines Day), during Post2Post week, where ‘creativity’ will be the name of the game.
So stay posted!
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Commenting:
This is just a friendly reminder that today is your last chance to get your Creativity Contest entries in.
The voting will start first thing tomorrow. The polls are open to everyone, so spread the word, especially if you submitted an entry, so that you can up your chances of winning one of the highly coveted ThinkCubes.
(Note to US readers: This is your chance to for those of your that had the chance to vote on Super Tuesday but didn’t do so, to redeem yourselves. Make your creative forefathers proud.)
If you are a regular reader of The Fresh Peel, then you are most likely aware of the ever verging and increasing power of social media. Joseph Jaffe has made it his business to keep several fingers on the pulse of this growing medium. Join the Conversation, is the latest work to be born out of his passion for the subject.
Many have reviewed the book already under Jaffe’s UNM2PNM experiment, which is an abbreviation for Use New Marketing to Prove New Marketing. So rather than create some elaborate outline telling you what you will read if you buy the book (Or win one here. Keep reading to find out how.), or repeating some of the common occurring thoughts on the book, I have offered up two reasons why I think you should read Join the Conversation.
1. Leading by Example
Even before day one, Jaffe hasn’t been afraid to implement the very ideas that he talks about in his book, into his own marketing.
My first experience with Joseph Jaffe’s Join the Conversation occurred about two weeks before I even had the book in my hands. I blogged about it the morning of the event, and then reported the successful results the next day.
On October 20th of last year Jaffe rallied his social media community around a single cause, to bum rush the Amazon and push Join the Conversation, his newly released books up the the charts. It worked! The book made it as high as #26 on the overall bestsellers list and #2 on the business book list.
UNM2PNM is also another Jaffe brainchild, built to spark fires under blogs all over the world in a marketing endeavor for Join the Conversation. (One thing I might note is that the books were given out in true social media fashion, to those who promised to review the book, no matter if their final review is good or bad.)
2. Some Starting Measurements
It’s amazingly easy to criticize a company or organization for not being as conversational as they should be. I mean it’s just learning to talk to your customers through a new channel new, right?
It’s more complex than just connecting to a group of customers that are sitting in one spot, waiting to talk to you. With over 70 millions blogs (and growing) and thousands of social networks, many companies quickly find themselves under prepared and overwhelmed. It can be easy to get caught up in chasing fads and trends, instead of meeting the social media goals they should be after.
This is where I believe Join the Conversation shines. Lots of other books and blogs make the same case for companies getting off their rumps and getting into the waters of social media, but this is where most of them stop, giving little or no advice as to how they should start doing this.
Jaffe, on the other hand offers a variety of tools to measure any companies progression into the social media forum, and it is through this less glamorous side of social media that really makes it shine. Many of these measurements are the same ones that are implemented at Crayon, where Jaffe is the ‘President and Chief Interruptor.’
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Want a free copy of the Join the Conversation?
Since I bought a few copies of the book during the Bum Rush, I’ve got a fresh new copy waiting to be mailed to you. All you have to do to get it, is answer the following question in the comments:
For a company looking to ‘join the conversation’ by getting into social media, what should be their first step and why?
I’ll choose the best answer from the comments submitted from now until Friday, February 9th.
There are only 3 days left to enter the Creativity Contest.
So make sure you get your entry in by Wednesday the 6th, for your chance to win 1 of 2 MetaMemes ThinkCubes that are up for grabs.
Remember, the voting round will start up first thing on Thursday the 7th. Click here to see the entries so far.
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