Just in time to add it to your summer reading list, the third installment of the AOC collaborative project has hit store shelves!

For those not familiar with the series, it first started as an experimental writing project, which brought together over 100 bloggers from 9 different countries to produce the aptly titled book, The Age of Conversation.

The Age of Conversation legacy continues as 171 authors from 15 different countries came together to write The Age of Conversation 3: Itís Time to Get Busy. The book discusses the distinct shift from social media as a hypothetical consumer loyalty tool, as it was considered only a little more than a year ago, to its current state as a staple in the modern marketing toolbox. The book covers more than just social media, but the topic is woven throughout the books 10 sections:

• At the coalface
• Conversational branding
• Influence
• Getting to work
• Corporate conversations
• Measurement
• In the boardroom
• Pitching social media
• Innovation and execution
• Identities, friends and trusted strangers

My contribution to the book takes a look at the idea of making the branding process more organic, growing a brand, in contrast to the traditionally rigid structure of building a brand.

As it has become customary with past editions, all of the proceeds from this yearís book, will be donated to an international charity of the authorís choosing.

- Get your copy of The Age of Conversation 3 -

A big thanks to my fellow authors this year!

“We’ve got to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in!” – Axel Chaldecott, JWT

The idea of branded utility is nothing new. In fact, it’s an idea that has cycled in and out of popular conversations for almost a decade, and yet there is still debate on exactly what it means and whether or not brands can truly provide branded utility in a way that makes a relevant connection to the brand.

(Slide from my Micro-Pulse presentation)

I roughly define branded utility as any way that a brand can truly make the lives of consumers better. Branded utility is something that brands can create in different ways, which are often overlapping. I suggest that there are 6 key ways that brands can look to provide a branded utility:

• be creative – something new, unexpected and original
• be helpful – make something easier for consumers
• be relational – be in a convenient location
• be interesting – arouse curiosity and hold attention
• be relevant – do something that makes sense given the context
• be useful – serve a practical purpose

To make it simple, look for ways to provide value. That’s the key. Instead of looking for ways to shout a marketing message, create situations that add value to consumers so that they desire to engage with the brand.

For many this is the ending point in the discussion on branded utility. The thought is that if a brand can provide value in anyway and connect it to the brand, then they call it a win. I’m not so sure about that, in fact, I believe the Holy Grail of branded utility is found in when the solution is both utilitarian and (most importantly) on strategy. In my mind, you’re wasting your money if you can’t connect your efforts to the brand in a way that makes sense.

So what does on strategy branded utility look like?

This year at SXSW, Chevy brought some fine examples of how brands can provide value and stay on strategy.

(Disclosure: My employer, Fleishman-Hillard, was the agency for record for Chevy at SXSW 2010.)

Gowalla Airport Shuttle

Chevy partnered with the location-based travel game, Gowalla to provide a pop-up to randomly selected people checking in at the airport, offering them a free ride to downtown Austin. It was a fun way to experiment with emerging technologies, provide a helpful service to people (saving them a $50 cab ride) and give them an opportunity to experience riding in a Chevy vehicle first hand.

Read how Mike Schneider, one of the first to find and redeem a free Chevy ride, describes his experience.

Volt Recharge Lounge

During the Interactive portion of SXSW, the Volt Recharge Lounge was like finding a oasis in the desert for attendees desperately needing to charge their smartphones and laptops. SXSW can be draining, on both your body and on your devices. The Volt Lounge provided a great place to relax, recharge and even try some refreshing Sobe.

This made the lounge a great spot to meet new people and power-up community at SXSW. On a recent episode of JaffeJuiceTV, Joseph Jaffe called the lounge both “rescuing and rewarding.”

Catch a Chevy

At SXSW, a majority of the people in attendance have no choice but to walk. Most don’t have cars and if they do, parking fees can quickly add up when moving from one venue another that most choose to walk it. That all changed this year. Chevy provided attendees free rides to strategic stops around downtown Austin, helping them get to their destinations faster and save the souls of their shoes, all while experiencing a 2010 Chevy vehicle.

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Do you have any good examples of branded utility?

Where you at SXSW 2010? What do you think of the examples I’ve written about here?

I haven’t really been a fan when it comes to listing trends and predictions for the new year. After all, shouldn’t we always be looking forward? Especially with the rate of change that currently exists?

That’s not to say that I haven’t contributed my thoughts as to what 2010 holds. Check out the 100 Social Media & Content Marketing Predictions for 2010, where I along with 60+ other marketing minds made our predictions.

I find a lot of value in being able to see future through so many different lenses this time of the year. I can see what topics are repeating and if there are any irregular gems that catch my eye as something to keep a close eye on in the coming months.

So with that goal in mind I’ve listed 46 different 2010 trends and predictions posts, that I’ve organized (as much as I can) by topic.

Please let me know I missed your predictions post. Go ahead and leave a link in the comments. I welcome different perspectives on what 2010 holds.

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Digital

• 100 Social Media & Content Marketing Predictions for 2010, by Various Authors

• 2010: Year of Digital Distraction?, by Pete Cashmore

• Twitter at a Crossroads: Audience Growth Won’t Be Enough in 2010, by Josh Bernoff

• Social Media 2010: it’s time to get boring, by Jackie Huba

• Top Digital Trends for 2010, by Brian Morrissey

• What’s the Twitter of 2010?, by Mark Evans

• 5 Social Media Implications for Brands in 2010, by Sienna Farris

• 2010 Social Media Influencers – Trend Predictions in 140 Characters, by TrendsSpotting

• ReadWriteWeb 2010 Predictions, by ReadWriteWeb

• The 10 TENsions That Will Define 2010, by Ross Dawson

• Top 5 Predictions for the Next 5 Years in Business Social Media, by Tac Anderson

• 10 Ways Social Media Will Change In 2010, by Ravit Lichtenberg

• 6 Social Media Predictions for 2010, by Amy Porterfield

• 9 digital trends to watch in 2010, by Nuri Djavit

• Nick Law on 2010 Trends, by MediaBeat

• (Social Media) Trends to Watch in 2010, by Mike Sansone

• 2010 Trends: Social Media & Paid Content, by Debra Aho Williamson

• 10 Web trends to watch in 2010, by Pete Cashmore

• 100 Things to Watch in 2010, by JWT

Mobile

• How Carrier Evolution will Affect Mobile in 2010, by Vince Lesch

• What will be the major trends in mobile marketing in 2010?, by Giselle Tsirulnik

• 9 unpredictions: What’s not going to happen with mobile in 2010, by Vanessa Horwell

• 10 Trends to Watch in 2010, by David Stutts

• Six Social Media Trends for 2010, by David Armano

• Top ten digital trends for 2010, by Drew Neisser

• 8 Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2010, by Sarah Perez

Marketing

• 10 Internet Online Trends for 2010, by John Arnold

• Trends That Will Shape Market Research In 2010, by Reineke Reitsma

• 2010: The Year Marketing Dies…, by Augie Ray

• 2010 Marketing Predictions, by Matt Granfield

• Three Words to Sing in 2010, by Pete Blackshaw

• 5 Trends That Will Shape Small Business in 2010, by John Jantsch

• Four Email Marketing Predictions for 2010, by Chad White

• Top 10 Brand and Marketing Trends for 2010, by Robert Passikoff

• 11 Smart Marketers Shared Their 2010 Predictions, by Various Authors

Public Relations

• What to Look Out For in 2010, by PRSA

• PR Trends in 2010: The Future of PR, by Sally Falkow

• Jeremiah Owyang: Public relations will be impacted by ’social CRM’ in 2010, by Dave Armon

• Envisioning Media Relations: 2010 Predictions, by BurrellesLuce

• Public Relations Measurement 2010: Five Things to Forget & Five Things to Learn, by Don Bartholomew

Customer Service

• 10 Customer Service Trends for 2010, by Barry Moltz

Journalism

• 8 News Media Business Trends for 2010, by Vadim Lavrusik

• 10 Reasons Media Relations Will Get Easier in 2010, by Jeremy Porter

Nonprofits/Social Good

• 3 Powerful Social Good Trends in 2010, by Ben Rattray

• Five Social Media Fundraising Trends for 2010, by Beth Kanter

Music

• 5 Predictions for the Music Industry in 2010, by Nick Crocker

Finally, to put all of these predictions into perspective, Iain Tait from Crackunit has some mockingly humorous Trend Predictions for 2010.

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What did I miss? Let us know what you think 2010 holds in the comments, or leave a link to your trends and predictions post.

This is something I think we really started to see come to life with Twitter and the evolving network of connections it provides. We are able to maintain loose connections with large groups of people around a number of different interests. For example, I’m connected with people on Twitter around a very eclectic set of topics: branding, social media, music mashups, location (Oklahoma City), mountain biking, and other topics might be on my mind.

Some have argued that these loose connections don’t provide as much value that a smaller community that is focused around a specific problem or topic can provide, especially when it comes to solving problems or making something happen. And I agree totally, but I also think that the value of Twitter comes from the way it creates serendipitous crossroads of opportunity for us to connect with others we may never have come into contact with otherwise.

It’s amazing to watch Twitter, which is seemingly unorganized, to see how people cluster together in discussions around ideas.

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Have you found value in loose connections?

How often have these connections developed into something greater?

I’m still curious to see if any retailers have the guts to make Black Friday something more than a price war. More specifically, will any realize the day as an opportunity to create a positive brand experience and cultivate fans?

After my recent post on the topic, I was pointed towards an event that is slowly becoming something of a tradition at Bass Pro Shops. (Thanks zgilliam) It’s called The Great Turkey Campout and it happens in the parking lots of stores around the country.

Customers are invited out on Thanksgiving night for s’mores cooked on an open campfire, hot chocolate and coffee. There are also a number of drawings for camping gear and gift cards.

When the event ends, customers are invited to pitch their tents and camp out the rest of the night, where they will be first in line when the doors open on Black Friday.

Bass Pro saw Black Friday as an opportunity to create a positive experience for it’s biggest fans, instead of focusing on price along to lure customers to the door.

I hope they will continue this event in the coming years and make a tradition out of it, but I challenge them to up the ante a bit. Think of ways to further highlight and encourage the community that Bass Pro supports around camping and hunting. Here are a few ideas:

• Serve everyone deer chili.
• Bring in a storyteller to tell stories around the campfire.
• In the morning, drive coffee around to everyone in a fully outfitted ATV.

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What would you add to this list?

Have you seen any retailers like Bass Pro Shops that are breaking the mold this year?

A few months back I was approached by Leslie Scott’s publicist about setting up an interview with Leslie regarding her book About Jenga. At the time I had no idea who Leslie Scott was or why I would be interested in a book about that I assumed to be a history book for a board game.

But, luckily for Leslie, her publicist had clearly done her homework and was on target with her pitch. I kept reading and found out that Leslie was the creator of the popular household game, Jenga, and her book is packed full of stories and lessons learned on her lifelong journey with the game. Leslie’s extraordinary experiences fit nicely with unique approach to content I try to provide here at The Fresh Peel.

Jenga is a game that has always intrigued me because of it’s simple complexity. It’s such a simple game to understand, but a complex game and somewhat stressful game to master. And Leslie’s story has taken many twists and turns, with many great lessons learned along the way. (Disclaimer: I received a free copy of About Jenga from the publisher.)

In this interview, I quiz Leslie on a variety of topics that she touches in the book, everything from her experience working at Intel to her intuitive understanding of the need to maintain the Jenga brand.

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Also, Leslie’s publicist sent me a signed holiday edition of Jenga that is signed by Leslie herself. I’ll be randomly giving this away to anyone that comments at the the end of this post. You have until Friday, November 20th to leave your comment for a chance to win!

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Q: Where did the idea for the game Jenga come from?

Leslie: Jenga was based on a game that my family devised in the mid-1970s using my then five-year-old brother’s wooden building blocks. We played this game within the family, and with friends, for several years before I decided to modify it, name it, manufacture it and take it to market in 1982.

Q: What triggered Jenga’s rise to its iconic status in the world of household games?

Leslie: This is a difficult question to answer in just one sentence as it begs further questions, such as what makes a good game in the first place, and even why do we play games at all? But in brief, I think Jenga satisfies all the basic requirements we have of a game. It demands skill, involves interaction with other players, provides suspense, and takes place within a finite period of time.

Q: In the book you stated that you were, “convinced that once buyers saw it, they would tumble over each other in their eagerness to put Jenga on the shelves in their shops.” That wasn’t exactly how things played out. What additional steps would you have taken in the beginning if you knew what you know now?

Leslie: I started a company with the sole purpose of taking Jenga to market. This meant that when I launched Jenga at the ’83 London Toy Fair, neither my company (Leslie Scott Associates) nor the product I was trying to sell had any name recognition in the business whatsoever. With hindsight I now know that it is exceedingly difficult for an unknown business to break into any market with an entirely novel product. At the time, I had naively assumed that the toy and gift business thrived on novelty. If I had been aware that this was not the case, I may have tried to license the game to an established company, one that had traction in the toy trade. But would they have been interested in this unknown game? Probably not.

Q: I was surprised to read that you worked for Intel for quite a long stint early on in your career. This was before Intel was the chip inside the world’s computers. How did this experience prepare you to become the creator of Jenga?

Leslie: Whether this was deliberate policy or not, in the early days, Intel fostered a culture of entrepreneurship within the company. By this I mean, employees were encouraged to take risks, and make their jobs their own. I discovered that I thrived in this environment. As Intel expanded and my job became (by comparison) a little more structured and lot more routine, I found I wanted to recreate the excitement of those early years, and did so by starting my own business; to put Jenga on the market.

Q: What lessons can we learn from games and gameplay that can be applied to the world of business?

Leslie: Games can provide an environment in which we can test ideas, or carry out thought experiments without risk of causing any real harm. There are lessons that one can learn from playing games that might be applied to the world of business, providing great care is taken never to fall into the trap of considering business as ‘ just a game.’ It is not. Business is real life, with real life consequences.

Q: How did you come up with the name Jenga? How important do you think the name has been to the games success?

Leslie: I wanted to give the game a name that would not mean anything, at least not in English, so that in due course, the definition of the word Jenga would be my game. I was born and raised in East Africa, speaking Swahili, from which I ‘borrowed’ the word Jenga. Jenga means ‘build!’ in Swahili. The fact that Jenga is now synonymous with the game (to the extent even that the word is frequently used as a metaphor for a certain type of instability), is certainly very important to the continuing success of the game.

Q: You have had some interesting experiences with trademarks and patents throughout the course of your career. What advice would you give to those interested in legally protecting their work?

Leslie: If you have invented a new device (for example, a new kind of randomizer); then patent it, if you can afford to do so. I filed a patent pending on Jenga, but could not afford to take it any further. If the word(s) you have chosen to name your product are not descriptive of the product; then trademark the name. And always copyright your rules.

Q: When it comes to branding Jenga, you said that there were, “two key moments in the history of the game, that were decisions as a result of an intuitive understanding of the art of branding.” Can you tell us about those two key moments?

Leslie: The first ‘key moment’ came when I refused to allow either Irwin Toy or Hasbro Corporation to drop Jenga as the name of the game. Both companies wished to acquire the rights to the game (Irwin for Canada, Hasbro for the rest of the world) at a time when I was up to my ears in debt from having published and marketed the game for three years entirely on my own. Both companies loved the game, but both ‘hated the name because it didn’t mean anything’. It was a potential deal breaker, but I stuck to my guns.

The second moment came when I begged Hasbro not to publish a range of ‘Jenga wooden puzzles and games’. I was certain that this would be entirely missing the point that Jenga was known as a very specific game.

—

Thanks Leslie!

Now leave those comments.

Think about all the brands you interacted with today. Nearly everything you have done so far today involved a brand, was enabled by a brand or was accompanied by a brand. These interactions are just one of many touchpoints with a specific brand.

Touchpoints, or touches for short, work in a way similar to that of how blood flows through our bodies. Your heart pumps blood through your body, providing it with the oxygen and nutrients it needs, but the heart alone isn’t solely responsible for enabling a steady, healthy heartbeat. Every vein, artery and vessel has an impact on your heartbeat. No matter how small a constricted vein may be, it has an impact on the flow of blood.

The same true for brand touches. There are probably some big touchpoints that your organization tends to focus on, like advertising and other outward facing communications. But while the focus is being put on these areas that tend to be seen as more important, the small touches are ignored and are chipping away at the heartbeat of your brand.

Because of the abundance of times that brands touch our lives in a given day, and the fact that we now have access to brands wherever and whenever we want to, every touchpoint has become a crucial interaction.

The Micro-Pulse is an idea that I introduced a few weeks ago at OpenBeta. On Wednesday at the InnoTech conference in Oklahoma City, I was given the opportunity to give a talk that expanded on the idea even further. I focused more on touches in social media with this presentation, since I was speaking to at a technology conference, but I plan on applying this concept to both the online and offline brand worlds.

I’ve posted the deck below. I welcome your comments and suggestions on this. It is an idea that I plan on developing further.

Feedreaders click here to view the presentation.

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What do you think?

Do you have an example of a time when a small touchpoint mattered to you?

There is a lot great content on the web. (Understatement of the year.)

Everyday I wade through piles of RSS feeds, funneling blog posts and the long list of various industry and client-related keywords that I track into one spot. And everyday I come across some really cool stuff, stuff that I find valuable in some way. Whether it be an interesting case study, a informational slide deck, or an original and creative marketing approach, I take it in, store it, if I think I might want to reference it later and then share it if I think you will find it valuable.

If you are following me on Twitter (@freshpeel) you probably see some of this content, because I share a good portion of it there.

A few months back I started a posterous account to collect and share more of these chunks of content with you. I’ve found posterous to be the perfect place to record and share slide decks, infographics, videos and content that doesn’t need much, if any additional commentary. It’s become a new bucket for me share things of value.

If you haven’t already, please check it out. And I hope it will be a nice accompaniment to the content you find here at the Fresh Peel.

Subscribe to my posterous

Jeff Brenman, of Apollo Ideas, adds his thoughts in a presentation about the future of work and they are a nice continuation to the future of work discussion.

Here are a few key points from Jeff’s deck.

The future of work is…

• Transparent – Your activities will be tracked, measured and tied to the bottom line.
• Flat – Location won’t matter.
• Competitive – No one is going to pay you for a degree. Performance matters.
• On Demand – There is no guarantee of a lifetime career.
• YOU.

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Also, check out why Cubes are Evil.

I’m a believer in the idea that the way we work – the freedoms or restraints we put on ourselves when we work – has a large impact on the results that we produce, or in some cases, the results that we fail to produce. This is a topic I’ve explored this topic before with The Future of Work: Interview Series.

As our world shifts in the way that information is shared and how we are connected to one another, the way organizations function internally and externally is being forced to adapt as well. Organizations that have been quick to embrace new methodologies are reaping the benefits. You don’t have to look any further than companies like Google or Best Buy to see that there are other ways to get things done than the typical 9 to 5 cube format.

Mollie Partesotti and Ben Alter are two communications strategists that are tackling the problems in how we work for their master’s thesis project at the VCU Brandcenter. The project is a video series called Cubes Are Evil. They explain:

“We as a society need to reconsider what contributes towards and takes away from productivity.”

So far they have done just that. There are two videos in the series so far, with more to come. Watch below.

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Mollie and Ben’s work on Cubes Are Evil has me contemplating bringing back the Future of Work Interviews for a second round.

If I did that who should I interview this time?

What aspects of work should we focus on?

We’re only days away from another Thanksgiving Day celebration, spent with friends and families, eating lots of great food and watching football. That also means that retailers are just days away from another dose of Black Friday chaos.

Last year, after watching people pitch their tents in front of Best Buy stores as early as eight o’clock the night before Black Friday, I recognized an opportunity that retailers were failing to take full advantage of.

Consumers were lining up outside, weathering the cold and waiting hours for stores to open. Why not use this as an opportunity to engage with consumers and create a branded experience? I boldly suggested that retailers should start treating Black Friday more like a tailgating party with their fans, instead of the simple discount war it has become.

Best Buy, for example, could implement any or all of these ideas to create a completely different Black Friday experience:

• Hire a DJ spinning the newest music releases. Throw in some Christmas tracks here or there.
• Pull in a huge Best Buy bus with wide screen HD plasma TV’s on the side.
• Have a gaming tournament.
• Hand out fleece Best Buy blankets and sweatshirts to the crowd.
• Serve Thanksgiving turkey legs and hot cocoa.
• Draw a crowd and spark the curiosity of passerbys.

I received some flack for this idea because some see Black Friday shoppers as nothing more than crazies in search of the lowest prices. Why would a retailer waste their time and money on shoppers that have no clear loyalties?

This is a valid concern, but I think it misses some larger opportunities. Creating a new Black Friday experience would do three things for the retailer that is brave enough to try it:

1. Change the Game

Any retailer that chose to be the first to implement this would instantly change the rules. It would take the sole focus off of discounts and put it on a unique brand experience with the retailer instead.

2. Stimulate and Earn Word of Mouth
Black Friday is already a heavily talked about event. Breaking the mold would put the retailer at the front of the conversation. Instead of small mentions scattered across the web and news, think headlines.

3. Convert to Loyalists
This type of event would create a very different experience of value for consumers, and would give people a reason to interact and engage with the retailer brand beyond price. This is the perfect stage for converting this largely un-loyal group to brand loyalist.

And as I stated last year, “At the very least it would show customers that you care.”

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So are there any retailers out there that are brave enough to break the mold?

Photo via: Paul Garland

The Post2Post bus has just pulled in!

The Fresh Peel is pleased to welcome Marty Neumeier, brand consultant author of a number of the popular whiteboard overview business books, The Brand Gap, Zag, and now The Designful Company, which is the featured book for April’s stop on the Post2Post Virtual Book Tour.

It’s been very exciting for me to interview Marty because his work has done a lot to shape my own thoughts and methods when working with clients. Not only that, one quick search for on this blog for “Marty Neumeier” will show you how often ideas from his books and from content produced by his company, Neutron, inspires and shapes my thoughts here.

In this interview with Marty, we touch on a few of concepts from The Designful Company.

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Q: You open up The Designful Company with the idea that, “We’ve been getting better and better at a management model that’s getting wronger and wronger.” What’s wrong with the way companies are managed?

Marty: The management model we’ve been using is based on the cold mechanics of the assembly line. The assembly line was successful partly because it turned a blind eye to morality, emotions, and human aspiration—all the better to make your competitors and customers lose, so you can win. We’ve spent the last century making minor tweaks to this same narrow idea of success.

But now we’re finding that innovation without emotion is uninteresting, products without aesthetics are uncompelling, brands without meaning are undesirable, and companies without ethics are unsustainable. We need a new management model that replaces the win-lose nature of the assembly line with the win-win nature of the network. I call the new model “the designful company.” It harnesses broad-based creativity to build a culture of nonstop innovation.

Q: How must the traditional views of design and designer be redefined in order for a company to build a culture of nonstop innovation?

Marty: We need to get past our view of the designer as a shaper of objects. The dictionary defines a designer as someone who plans an artifact or system of artifacts—in other words, the “posters and toasters” of the 20th century. This is too narrow. I prefer Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon’s definition: “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” In this definition, design is a way of thinking, and anyone in the company can be a designer, including the CEO.

Design thinking is about refusing to accept the easy answer. It’s about imagining new possibilities that weren’t on the table before, and prototyping those possibilities so they can be tested. It’s the difference between “deciding” the way forward and “designing” the way forward. Deciding only works in a stable market where innovation is a low priority.

Q:  In what areas of business can design thinking be leveraged?

Marty: Well, of course, communications and products—the aforementioned posters and toasters—are still important, and can be designed a lot better. But we can move design thinking up the ladder to more important levels, such as brand strategy, end-to-end customer experience, organizational design, decision-making, business models, and corporate vision. When we apply design thinking to these questions, we get even more bang for the buck.

 Q: How does design thinking lead to a culture of innovation?

Marty: Design thinking creates the process and vocabulary for a designful company. It runs on human qualities such as empathy, intuition, imagination, and idealism, which in turn lead to customer focus, holistic problem solving, innovative ideas, and extraordinary quality. The overall advantage that a culture of innovation gives you is enterprise agility. It allows the company to maneuver as a single entity.

Q: Looking at Interbrand’s Best Global Brands list, are there any that standout as designful, innovative companies?

Marty: Not as many as there should be. I would say IBM, Disney, Google, BMW, Apple, Nike, and IKEA are designful companies. But Coca-Cola, Microsoft, GE, and Cisco are not so designful.

Interbrand’s formula seems to be a rear-view assessment of brand value. I’d like to see a formula that gives more weight to the momentum of a brand, which would offer a better predictor for a brand’s future value. Y&R, for example, has a formula called the Brand Asset Valuator, which takes into consideration a brand’s “energy.” Designful companies are full of energy.

Q: What will the fate be for brands that fail to fully embrace design thinking?

Marty: Generally speaking, they’ll find their products and services will become increasingly commoditized and even obsolete as their competitors race ahead.

Q: You discuss the importance of collaboration within companies, but what opportunities do you see for companies to collaborate with groups (i.e., consumers) outside the company walls? What about online collaboration?

Marty: The web is actually the technology that unleashed collaboration. I’ve always said that we don’t live in the Information Age—we live in the Collaboration Age. The web has allowed people to work together across distances in real time for almost no money.

This new connectedness has also made it necessary to work together, because there’s no place to hide in a network. Customers now know things about brands and companies that even their employees don’t know. Customers are literally running the show. So it makes sense to enlist them as a functioning part of the brand machinery. I love how Skittles has turned their website into a forum for customer opinion. What they get in return for their transparency is a direct view into their customers’ brains, plus extra credit for having confidence in their brand.

Q: In a designful company what is the attitude towards failure?

Marty: Designful companies embrace failure as a learning step. Companies with a traditional “deciding” mindset are uncomfortable with failure, since they expect to be successful immediately. The only way be successful immediately, however, is to make small, safe moves.

Q: Please explain the stage-gate innovation model and its purpose.

Marty: Stage-gate innovation allows you to make big, bold moves by turning innovation into a journey. It was pioneered years ago by oil-drilling companies to minimize investment risk. Later it was adopted by venture capitalists for the same reason. The concept is that you start with a large crop of bold ideas, then invest increasing amounts at each stage for the ones that pass muster. Only one or two ideas make it through the funnel, but they’ve been de-risked without having to compromise their boldness.

(Click to view a larger version)

Q: When it comes to measuring a potentially innovative project as it moves through the stage-gate process, what metrics should we use to determine if it should move to the next stage?

Marty: It depends on whether it’s a product, a business model, a strategy, and whatever. For the sake of argument, let’s say it’s a product. In the first stage, you might create a prototype and measure customer excitement. At the next stage you could measure usability. At the next stage you could test various price points. And so on, until you’re satisfied that you have a winner.

The beauty of the design process is that you can test assumptions quickly and cheaply, so that you never have to play it safe. Playing it safe is the most dangerous thing you can do in a time of fast-moving markets and leap-frogging innovation.

Going forward, the bottom line is this: If you want to innovate, you’ve got to design.

Thanks Marty!

The Post2Post Virtual Book Tour returns to the Fresh Peel Tuesday with Marty Neumeier, the brains behind The Brand Gap, Zag and now The Designful Company.

Marty is the president of Neutron, a San Francisco firm that consults organizations on how to build brands from the inside out, through “culture-change programs that spur innovation, build charismatic brands, and unleash organizational creativity.” He has experience in wide variety of roles, from developing brand icons as an identity designer to brand consultant, putting him in the perfect position to lead the growing conversation about bridging the gap between business strategy and customer experience.

Tune in Tuesday for an interview with Marty, but for now I’ll leave you with a few pull out quotes:

• We’ve been getting better and better at a management model that’s getting wronger and wronger.
• There are really only two main components for business success: brands and their delivery.
• The best design thinkers tend to be empathetic, intuitive, imaginative and idealistic.
  

Here is the full Post2Post schedule:

CEO’s please stand by. JetBlue has a message for you. Or really, a timely and humorous message that capitalizes on your recent lapses in judgment.

This ad along with a full-blown microsite, The CEO’s Guide to Jetting, fully equipped with some downright hilarious videos have been circulating the web, proving yet again that JetBlue is one of the most responsive companies around.

How quick do you respond? Are you timely and on target?

(Via: The Dozen)

I will talk more about this in future posts, but I think there are some key signals here indicating the speed at which brands are going to be expected adapt in coming times. In some industries, I’d say this expectation is a reality.

(View the presentation)

Please take sometime to watch the presentation, share your ideas & contribute to the evolution of design.

Metacool’s Diego Rodriguez tells of how he was delighted to receive a complimentary issue of Monocle after he had mistakenly let his subscription lapse. The unique “Human Talk” aspect of this gesture was the attached note taped to the top of the issue.

Instead of sending out the complimentary issue stuffed full of “renew your subscription” cards, Monocle decided to add a personal/human touch to make sure Diego knew they realized his subscription was up, but that he could easily renew online. Diego describes how important these seemingly small touches can be in creating a memorable experience:

When it comes to caring about all the little things that add up to a superior experience, this little flap is extremely telling of the care that has been poured in to the Monocle brand.

Here’s your challenge for today. Put yourself in your customers shoes. Now choreograph every experience customers have with your brand. Make sure you go through everything, the good, bad and the ugly. This means everything from successful transactions to those ticked off on the customer service lines.

Where can you add a touch of delight?

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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 bus has just pulled in!

The Fresh Peel is pleased to welcome Gregg Fraley, author of Jack’s Notebook, which is the featured book for July’s stop on the Post2Post Virtual Book Tour.

Gregg works as an innovation consultant to Fortune 500 companies and does keynote speeches and workshops on creative thinking, innovation, problem solving, and new product development. You can catch his podcast with Doug Stevenson where they team up as The Innovise Guys where they blend creativity and improvisation to create innovation.

Fraley is a board member of the Creative Foundation (CEF), and he teaches creative problem solving at CEF’s annual Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI). He is also a professional member of the National Speakers Association (NSA).

Jack’s Notebook is a a business novel that explores the process of CPS through the fictional tale of Jack Huber. As you will read later, Gregg defines CPS as, “a problem solving methodology and it can be used to help develop solutions for any complex challenge, problem, situation, or opportunity.”

This Post2Post stop features two sections. Enjoy!

1. Creative Problem Solving (CPS)
2. CPS in Marketing & Branding

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Be sure to check out the February Fresh Peel Post2Post stop with Ramon Vullings of Creativity Today.

Gregg Fraley is the author of Jack’s Notebook.

Greg works an an innovation consultant to Fortune 500 companies and does keynote speeches and workshops on creative thinking, innovation, problem solving, and new product development 

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity pick Greg’s brain and squeeze out some of his juicy thoughts on marketing, branding and how he thinks creative problem solving applies to the mix.

Q: When it comes to building brands, what mistakes do you commonly see?

Gregg: With regard to new brands, I’d say a lack of differentiation, a lack of consistency, and a lack of authenticity. I mean the best brands are truly unique and they stay true to themselves. Examples that come to mind are Apple, but also brands like Quaker Oats, or Budweiser. They do what they do well and they stay within the confines of what is believable and real to consumers. With big established brands the dangerous tendency is to water down the brand by extending it into areas where it really doesn’t belong. Line extensions are easy, and so they extend and extend until the brand caves in on itself.

Q: What is your view of the state of organizational marketing and branding? Where should CPS fit into these structures?

Gregg: There’s a $64,000 question! Let me give it a go.

Organizational marketing is going through a profound shift right now, a shift towards more formal process. The state of Marketing, while highly sophisticated in many ways, is still managed by informal systems within most organizations. Typically, they have no overall model for how to answer the needs of the consumer and fulfill the companies mission across the breadth of the enterprise. Each product, each brand, tends to be handled separately from the others. What this screams for is a formal marketing process that is flexible enough to adapt to the needs of various brands but tight enough to bind them to the organizational mission. CPS, being a generic problem-solving model, has the scope and flexibility to manage this.

Q: Why is understanding your motivation so important?

Gregg: It’s human nature to work harder, smarter, and more creatively on challenges that we care about. If we understand why something is important to us it’s more likely we’ll be creative about it. You can’t fool that thing some people call the soul, it knows what you really want even if you pretend otherwise.

Q: How does this concept fit into marketing? Social Media?

Gregg: Well, motivation is a two way street. As marketers we need to understand why we’re putting out something we need to understand our mission and our message. As consumers we need to feel that the mission and message of the companies we buy from is authentic and not simply a cynical way to extract money from our pockets. Marketers need to understand consumer motivations at a very basic, very fundamental, level. Knowing the consumer in that way enables a marketer to create products, services, and messages that speak to their listening.

Social media tends to magnify who we are.  If we’re authentic, that comes across, and it can be quite powerful. If we’re not, that comes across as well, and probably worse than it should. So, keeping the fact in mind that social media adds or subtracts 10 pounds to our authenticity factor, we should make double sure we know what we want to say, and why we want to say it. As marketers using social media we have to be very careful we’re providing value to the community and not simply selling products. After all, social media isn’t about we and them, it’s about us.

Q: With the introduction of social media and crowdsourcing, do you think there is an opportunity for a company to lead and monitor a CPS session with customers online?

Gregg: Yes, there is such an opportunity.  Actually, it’s already happened in a slightly different format than you suggest. Cisco just sponsored an online contest, using Brightidea.com’s system, to find a new business venture to fund. It wasn’t exactly CPS but it most certainly was high level ideation, which is a part of CPS.

Many companies are already using CPS internally via their intranets, and some are using it to reach out to partners. I’ve facilitated online CPS sessions that have involved a mix of a companies internal branding/marketing people and an international network of trained brains. They tend to be pretty successful these sessions because they allow people to work when they can, it allows for adequate incubation, and there’s lot of thinking diversity. It’s certainly a lot less expensive than flying a lot of people into some central site.

It doesn’t have to be complex. Starbucks has an online idea box if you will, which isn’t full cycle CPS, it’s a subset, the ideation step. It’s called MyStarbucksIdea.com and I think it’s a good idea for them. Subsets of the CPS process can be totally appropriate, I mean, how many consumers would even want to be involved with the detailed planning that goes into a product launch?

Virtual CPS sessions, with consumer involvement for the appropriate steps, makes total sense. It’s inexpensive, easy to implement, and potentially very high value.

Q: What would you say to an organization that is clearly stuck in the old model of marketing, which is rapidly losing its effectiveness? Is CPS the answer to overcoming their apparent risk aversion?

Gregg: What would I say? Wake up!

It’s hard to understand sometimes why organizations can’t see the handwriting on the wall. Maybe the answer is tough love. Like in the Dickens story, we have to put the ghost of Christmas future in front of them. It can be grim, or, it can be rosy. But for Tiny Tim to live, they have to wake up and change now!

CPS could be a big part of the answer. CPS is a great process for facing a fear, or a complex situation, and making some sense out of what you might do. If an organization is motivated to change than CPS can be a tremendous tool for helping them do it. Risk aversion build up in organizations as they get bigger. The bureaucracy is built to manage things as they are, and so, change threatens the well-oiled system. It puts people in fear mode. Fear has people thinking like lizards when faced with a threat lizards run, eat, (or mate!) with what’s in front of them. You can’t think like a lizard and change how your organization goes to market; you need imaginative solutions. Organizations should strive for deliberate, continuous, and holistic innovation, and CPS is a good process to enable that. And of course, Jack’s Notebook is a great way to learn CPS!

Thanks Gregg!

Have any questions about CPS in Social Media, Branding and Marketing?

Gregg has agreed to take questions in the comments section, so fire away!

More with Gregg Fraley:

Creative Problem Solving (CPS)

Gregg Fraley is the author of Jack’s Notebook.

Greg works as an innovation consultant to Fortune 500 companies and does keynote speeches and workshops on creative thinking, innovation, problem solving, and new product development.

Q: What is CPS and where can we use it?

Gregg: CPS is a problem solving methodology and it can be used to help develop solutions for any complex challenge, problem, situation, or opportunity. If you’re hunting for your car keys you probably don’t want CPS, it’s too much! If you’re trying to sort out how your brand fits in the marketplace and what do next year, CPS is an appropriate system.

Q: You shared with me a story about the origins of CPS. Would you mind sharing that story with my readers?

Gregg: Sure, it’s an interesting story. CPS has been around for over 50 years. CPS was originally conceived by ad maven Alex Osborn, a founder of BBDO. Alex was confronted with the daunting challenge of transforming BBDO. BBDO’s initial stage of growth was all print media. The dominant media of the day was newspapers. But as we know, things changed, and print was being eclipsed by the new media juggernaut, radio. BBDO almost imploded when the key sales person at the agency left and took half the customers with him. Faced with this crisis, Alex needed to give his account executives tools to help their customers adapt to the new media. They needed to think up ideas for their customers and with their customers, but they lacked the confidence to do so. Alex had developed thinking tools for his own use over the years. So, he put down his own methods for ideation on paper. He then trained his team in these thinking tools — what he called brainstorming. Yes, he actually coined that term! Well, it worked, his people brought in new customers by helping them with ideas. BBDO became known as a great ideas agency and prospered with the new media. Alex then took his thoughts about creative thinking and put them into the seminal book Applied Imagination and the basics of CPS was born

Q: What is the most common mistake you see by those engaged in the creative problem solving process?

Gregg: Well, the most common mistake is not using a process at all.  When faced with complexity the brain tends to spin or churn from one thought to another related to the problem. We tend not to write things down and so we muddle about in confusion. The value of a structured process like CPS is it helps us sort it out. Sort out what we want, what the facts and feelings are, what the challenge really is, and what are our options for moving forward. It helps us push beyond the obvious and find breakthrough solutions.

If you are already using the CPS process the answer would be not allowing enough time. A common mistake in problem solving is rushing to a solution. Taking time allows the mind time to incubate the question at hand. Time tends to lend insight and insight leads to more creative solutions.

Q: What’s the significance of lists?

Gregg: List making, particularly when it is done without judgment, is the easiest way to get into imaginative mode. The mind seems to like the incremental aspect of list making, and, it tends to give us what we want, which is more options. List making is divergence and in general we need more divergence in our thinking. Critique and analysis are overemphasized in our education and training, and divergence is left behind. List making is a great way to re-balance things.

Q: Could you give us some tips on making great lists?

Gregg: First of all, write them down (it’s not called Jack’s Notebook for nothing!). Mental lists tend to get lost in the shuffle of the 65,000 thoughts we have a day. Next, know what the questions is, what you are seeking options for, be clear about that. Most of all, defer judgment and let any option that pops into your head get onto the list, don’t edit. Sometimes silly, impractical, or wild ideas are the steps the mind needs to take in order to get to a Perfect idea. Finally, when blocked put your list aside and take a short vacation from the challenge, give it some time, then come back to it. New options will emerge.

Q: I noticed that the characters in your story seemed to always engage in CPS when they were in small groups of no more than 4 people. Was this just a happenstance, or is there a maximum number for people working together through CPS?

Gregg: Happenstance! There is no minimum or maximum, CPS can be done alone, or, with large groups. I did a session a few months ago for a cosmetics company that included over 70 people and three languages. The groups in Jack’s Notebook just happened to be about that size of four or less because it’s what the story called for. I’ve found that groups of 15 or less are optimal for corporate ideation. Larger than that it becomes a logistics challenge, smaller, and you don’t have a lot of thinking diversity. It can still be done you work with what you have.

Q: You seemed to put a lot of emphasis on the correct phrasing of questions. Why?

Gregg: Well, that’s part of the structure behind creative problem solving. Words are what we have to work with in problem solving. Words point the brain in different directions depending on how a question is phrased. For instance when you have a challenge you could say, How did this project become so expensive? That kind of question leads one to think about the past, and it invites critique. Saying it as a solvable problem takes us down a different path, so In what ways might I reduce the costs of the project? has us thinking about ideas, about options, that bring the cost down. Phrases like In what ways might I, or How might I are empowering and provide a subtle bit of hope. They challenge the brain to come up with answers that are useful, and, the brain tends to respond well to that.

Q: Many companies are quick to start planning, but are very slow to act. Often times plans never make it any farther than the board room or company retreat. Why?

Gregg: There are a lot of reasons, but that most basic one is the person or team empowered to execute the plan isn’t motivated to change. In my opinion, and it’s unfortunate, many organizations aren’t motivated to make a change unless there is an emergency that demands it. Board rooms and retreat situations often get people thinking, and that’s good, but they tend to use the critical/analytical side of the brain too much and so the plans they generate are often all head and no heart. If you don’t have the heart to do something it simply won’t happen.

Q: What should they do instead?

Gregg: It should be less of a one meeting thing and more of an all the time way of being. Innovation is holistic it’s not doing an activity, it’s being, living, breathing, eating, and waking-up-in-the morning in innovative mode. An organization needs a deliberate and formal holistic system, like CPS, to enable consistent innovation. Adopting a particular tool, technique, or hiring a dynamic and charismatic leader isn’t going to get it for you. What will get it for you is a holistic approach that blends many complex elements into a gestalt that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Q: Your bio states that you, work as an innovation consultant to Fortune 500 companies. What types of situations and problems do you typically help these companies solve?

Gregg: All kinds! Most typically it’s around new product development. My bread and butter work is facilitating intensive new product ideation sessions. I’ve also worked on and facilitated projects for internal process improvement. More recently I’m getting involved in assessing an organizations innovation culture and making recommendations on how they might improve.

Thanks Gregg!

Have any questions about Creative Problem Solving? Want to know how CPS can help you find the perfect mate?

Gregg has agreed to take questions in the comments section, so fire away!

More with Gregg Fraley:

CPS in Marketing & Branding

Last month, I shared a VW’s sounds of doors slamming music mix commercial. Now Bullet has done a series of work for Audi providing their own take on the music of car sounds, this time focusing on the orchestrated production of the vehicles.

The music blends an odd mix of elegance, quality, and edgy trendiness. It’s a lot like Radiohead or NIN in tuxedos.

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Sounds like Audi to me. What do you think?

Via: brandflakesforbreakfast