Influential Marketing Blog

2012 Edition: 15 Marketing and Business Trends That Matter

Let me tell you a little secret.  I look forward to putting together an annual trend report the same way that some people look forward to having Turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. I realize that may sound a bit strange, but ever since I did my first trend recap last year I was hooked.  This year, the process of collecting the trends took all year.  I have a folder on my desk labelled "Trends 2012" and throughout the year I would rip out articles from magazines or printout webpages to save. Last November I started actually writing my trend presentation and finally released it on Slideshare yesterday. 

 

A few things surprised me about the trends this year. Here are a few of the most unexpected things:

1. Only 2 out of 15 trends are based on innovative technology (Trends #10 and #13). Given the prominence of technology in our lives and more and more digital tools, I expected that more of the trends for 2012 would be based entirely on technology innovation. That ended up not being the case as most of the trends focused more on either behaviours or the use of sites and technology that already exist and don't really require much innovation in order to keep growing.
2. Creativity and design are more important than ever. While it would have been too obvious to point this out as a trend on its own, many of the trends that were included in the presentation were highly dependent on encouraging more creativity and delivering great design. Measuring Life, for example, has taken off in part thanks to great product and interface designs. Pointillist Filmmaking or Social Artivism are clearly based on creativity and design. Even Retail Theater, Tagging Reality and Charitable Engagement are all trends that require creative thinking and  strong ability to use design to engage people.
3. People actively seek opportunities to participate, collaborate or experience something. Doing something together came up as a big motivator for many of the trends this year, as Social Loneliness led people to look for more opportunities to have great experiences or be part of something worthwhile. Pointillist Filmmaking, Civic Engagement 2.0 and Retail Theater are all examples where people are seeking the chance to participate in something. Charitable Engagement ChangeSourcing and Co-Curation are other trends where people offer their time and passions to collaborate together on something.

Let me know what you think about these trends with a comment here or on Facebook, or feel free to send me an email at influentialmarketing@gmail.com.  Next week I'll be starting my trend folder to gather stories for 2013 ...

If you would like to get a downloadable version of this presentation, you can find it on my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/rohitmarketingauthor.

Why Caves Are Better Than Holes: A Personal Story To Start 2012

Before I ever wrote my first book, I had always heard a few things about the process of writing.  The most common was that the experience is kind of like digging yourself into a hole. You "hide" in there while you are writing and finally at the end of the process, you emerge. You deliver the book and start talking about it to try and get people to buy and read it.

For long time readers of my blog, you've probably noticed some drop off in how often I have been writing posts over the past few months. Knowing that I have been working on Likeonomics, most of you probably assumed that I was in "the hole" trying to finish the book. It is nearly done - but I've been thinking that this analogy doesn't seem quite right for me.

Instead, it feels like I've been in a cave.

A hole is something you dig yourself into and then find it tough to get out.  A hole is lonely.  A cave, in contrast, is a place to explore.  People go in there together.  They find things they didn't expect.  They emerge somehow better than when they went in.

For my part, the cave has helped me to focus on writing the book.  It has also let me spend a lot of time thinking about what is in store for marketing and business in 2012. To that end, I have just shared an exclusive download of my 2012 Trends report on my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/rohitmarketingauthor. Later this afternoon the presentation will go live on Slideshare. 

It's just one of the interesting pieces of content and thinking that I will be working on to share this year as I reemerge from the cave to start blogging more often and rejoining the online community above ground. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the trend report and happy new year!

Survive The Modern Believability Crisis: Be Meaningful

Last year when I spoke at a TEDx conference on reinventing marketing, I asked what I thought at the time was a relatively innocent question: "how many people in the audience feel that marketing is adding something positive to the world around them?" Of the few hands that went up, the majority came from people in marketing ... underscoring a gulf that has exponentially multipled in the 16 months since that talk. Today people around the world are launching full occupying demonstrations against big corporate brands and new research points to the US as the only country to see trust in all institutions decline from 2010 to 2011.  The bottom line is we are fully into a modern believability crisis.

And it is not just a crisis for marketing people either. When we live in a world where people become skeptical of everything around them and wary of any type of manipulation, we all lose. Society itself becomes a tougher place to interact with others and survive in. People only consume news they agree with, compromise is seen as surrender and the bickering of politicians becomes just a precursor to a similar toxic dissent which may start to invade the rest of our lives and interactions. 

If this seems like a doomsday scenario, the good news is that this week signs of hope emerged from some very unexpected places:

Though certainly colored by politics, Bill Clinton's new book Back To Work was profiled in yesterday's New York Times. In the review, reporter Michiko Kakutani says that Clinton "serves up a succinct common-sense argument for why America needs a strong national government, why both spending cuts and increased tax revenues are necessary for addressing the debt problem."

Also this week, communications agency Havas Media released a global study which showed that "only 20% of brands have a notable positive impact on our sense of wellbeing and quality of life." In the research which polled 50,000 people in 14 countries, they found that "most people would not care if 70% of brands ceased to exist (and in the US alone this number goes up to 82%)."

In a related point, they found that "nearly 85% of consumers worldwide expect companies to become actively involved in solving these issues (an increase of 15% from 2010)." The underlying message of the research is that companies must find a way to stand for more than just the products they make.  The impact they have on the world around them is becoming increasingly important to increasing customer loyalty.

Today I am speaking and participating in BrandsConf, a conference all about how brands can rediscover their humanity. More than two dozen speakers will share their thoughts in short bursts of 5 or 10 minutes each on how to add more humanity to the way that large organizations communicate. It could not have come at a better time. This idea of more human brands is closely related to why companies matter more to people.  Yes, a big part of it is how you choose to do business in the world and whether it is sustainable and responsible.  The other important piece, however, is the people who represent your brand and the human connection they can offer.

The real battle today isn't one of perception ... but one of meaning. In a sense, this is the big problem I am writing a book about how to solve (Likeonomics) - and one that the many speakers today will likely cover. Ultimately solving it will require a new level of organizational vulnerability and commitment for them to be more human and more honest. Honesty creates trust, and trust leads to us changing the culture of business and our culture itself.

I saw this first hand last week at the Opportunity Nation Summit as well, where business, religious, political and media leaders came together to talk about the importance for all of us to create a nation of opportunity for everyone. For too long, as the summit shared, the zip code you are born in determines our future. That shouldn't be the case.  Business has an important role to play in this revolution ... and it isn't to sit back and let the attacks fly.

In a skeptical world where honesty has become the most unexpected thing of all ... making your brand meaningful to your consumer's life comes first from finding a way to tell the truth when you answer the question of whether you are offering anything positive to the world. Being meaningful is the new secret to creating long term brand value.

What Steve Jobs Really Gave Us

A few weeks ago I was asked an interesting question about what inspires me.  As I thought about my answer, I realized that for me it isn't a person but rather an action that I find most inspirational.  The people around the world who have an idea and decide to do something about it deserve to be celebrated. Entrepreneurship itself is the thing that I find most inspirational. 

Last night as I was watching all the media coverage honoring Steve Jobs and his life, it got me thinking that perhaps his biggest impact on the world wasn't just the products that he helped create, but rather in showing the world just how much people can achieve when they are inspired. Inspiration itself can be like that - a lightning rod that takes an army of smart people and helps them create something real. To me, his power to inspire came down to three things:

1. Passion - By all reports of the people who worked with him, he lived and breathed the products that his company would work on. He would call engineers in the middle of the night, stress over a font or color choice and sometimes micromanage those small details. Still because of that passion and desire to be involved in the day to day work - not only could he make the products better, but he knew the products so well that when it came time to introduce them on stage to the world he wouldn't need to rely on bullet points prepared for him by product specialists. 
2. Purpose - With every new product release, you got the sense that Apple was focused on changing the world in some new way. The ecosystem that each of the products allowed, from new operating systems to iTunes to the billion dollar market for Apps were all poised to make a big impact on how each of us experiences the world. This was the higher purpose behind Apple, and you could see it through the products they released. 
3. Simplicity - When asked by biographers about what made Apple so powerful, one thing Steve Jobs always pointed to was the fact that Apple had always been a company which made less than 10 products. This extreme focus on simplicity carried through in his conversations with employees and how he would present products to the public. Simplicity can inspire because you strip away everything that is unimportant. What you are left with is a big idea which can move people. 

No doubt there will be countless books, articles and stories written about Steve Jobs and his impact over the coming years. For me, the biggest lesson I learned from watching and reading about Steve Jobs is the power of inspiration and how it can lead people to change the world. 

More posts about Apple on this blog:

• Steve Jobs And The 4 Counterintuitive Business Strategies Of Apple
• The Real Secret Of Apple's Success

Facebook, Cauliflower And How Liking Anything Just Became Important Again

I actively hate cauliflower. In marketing terms, you could call me a brand dectractor ... as I am generally pretty vocal about my dislike of the sweat-sock-smelling-mush-flavored vegetable. Hate is often extreme like that, and most of us believe passionately in what we dislike. What we "like" on the other hand, has been getting devalued for some time. Five years ago, I might have described my likes with a similar passion. Now I might click a "like" button just to download a free PDF, or get a coupon for a free drink. Facebook made the "Like" button a price of admission, and in doing so, they started the trend towards devaluing the idea of liking anything.

Last week at the f8 Developers Conference, they announced a fix that will not only change how you use Facebook - it will also change the way that we generally perceive the value of liking something as well. As Mark Zuckerberg described in his keynote, "you don't have to LIKE a book - you can just READ a book. You don't have to LIKE a movie, you can just WATCH a movie."  Over the coming weeks, Facebook will launch a standard set of buttons for "watching, reading and listening" - as well as using their Open Graph to let developers create buttons of their own (follow link for source of the mock graphic list of potential Facebook buttons at right). As the AllThingsD blog from the Wall Street Journal notes, this will likely lead to an "oversharing explosion" as people can get over the barrier of not wanting to broadcast an implied endorsement for something that they may just be consuming but not really "liking." 

More importantly, I think this will help us all return to the importance that we have assigned for centuries to the idea of actually liking something. Now I don't have to like something as a cost of entry, so I'm free to only declare my like for those things that I truly feel that way about. Likeability always mattered - but with Facebook's latest update it can finally return to the importance it once had.

By rethinking the Like button, Facebook has finally made liking anything as important as it used to be. 

Author's Note: I had a special connection to this topic as I'm working on a book with a working title of Likeonomics. It is not a book about Facebook, it is about the value and importance of likeability to marketing, communications and personal success. Though I am not finished writing it yet, you can bet this story and Facebook's mixed history with the "Like" button will be an important story in the book ...

Toyota Venza Reminds Us Of The Dangers Of Evangelism

If there is one universal truth that almost no one in the world of technology or social media has figured out, it might be this: everyone hates evangelists. No matter what they are "evangelizing" - the world view anyone who claims this title for themselves usually has is that the product, service or idea that they have to share with the world is one that everyone should adopt. Evangelists don't see the world as it is - they see it as a place that would be better if only more people agreed with them.

That kind of one-sided thinking is dangerous, whether for joining Facebook, adopting a religion, buying an iPad or anything else. I found an unlikely reminder of this several days ago through a brilliant ad for the Toyota Venza which pits an active middle aged couple against their teenage social media obsessed daughter. As they go out into the world and enjoy their lives, their daughter laments about how "anti-social" they are and calls their 19 friends on Facebook "so sad." Check it out:



How many times might any "social media enthuasiast" find ourselves in exactly that same position? In the ad, the daughter (played perfectly by Allyn Rachel - @allynrachel on Twitter) is an evangelist for a technology that her parents are managing to do just fine without. For me, the ad stood out as a rare reminder that there is a hidden cost to our growing culture of evangelists. As marketers work to build "brand ambassadors" and ordinary customers find pleasure (and sometimes revenue) in becoming the unofficial voices for brands - there will be a coming backlash against those who are overly evangelical.

So instead of so much dueling evangelism, what if each of us just focused on ourselves instead of "converting" others to our point of view?   In an ideal world, people should always feel free to share their passion about the things they love ... as long as we all don't have to agree on what those things are.

How "Case Study Blindness" Can Kill Innovation

Last month while working on a strategy for a large client, we had a brilliant idea. This was not the kind of idea that agencies come up with all the time while sitting in a room by themselves drawing pictures on a whiteboard. No, this was the kind of game changing idea that could solve a client challenge and completely engage their audience in a way that no one in their industry had before. Our day to day main client loved it, and the budget was no problem, but before sharing it with the CMO they had a simple but toxic request that I had heard dozens of times before. "We need a similar case study to prove why this will work," they asked. And of course, the idea was so new that there was no comparable case study to be found. And as quickly as it came, the idea died before we could even present it to the CMO who probably would have loved it. Sadly, this is not an uncommon situation. Every day in business, great ideas are killed because of a simple lack of skill and education on how to properly use a case study.

In the business world today, there are few sources of information as revered as the case study. Harvard, like many other business schools, write their own and to be positively featured in one of them is considered to be a badge of honor. MBA candidates learn from case studies, and business professionals in every industry are forced to write and share them with one another in an attempt to transfer earned knowlege from person to person or from division to division within large organizations. The intention is noble: to learn from other's successes and failures as you build your own business or marketing program or operations.

Yet for all of our fascination and idolation of case studies, there is disturbingly little education in the business world about how to properly read and use them. As a result, usually intelligent people voluntarily put on blinders when trying to learn and apply lessons from case studies that they ordinarily would not. This "case study blindness" refers to the situation where businesspeople desperately seek a case study to use internally as permission for starting a new initiative, and are unable to build consensus or support to innovate without it.

It is not that I don't believe in the value of real life examples, or feel they have something important to teach. In every talk I have ever given at hundreds of conferences around the world, I always use real examples and share lessons from them. There is no better way to learn than looking at real experiences. The problem comes in treating a case study as a roadmap - which will only work if you are starting at the same place, with the same product, and the same end goal, at the same time with the same audience. Want to guess how often this is the case? Never.

Instead, what if we used case studies and real life examples as they are best intended ... to spark a new idea. They would no longer be used for justification of good ideas, but as inspiration for for new untried ideas that might work and what we could accomplish with them. Getting over our self inflicted case study blindness may be one of the most important things that any business can do to help create a more innovative business culture.

How Donald Trump Can Save America (Without Running For President)

This is not a piece about politics, it is about marketing. Earlier this year, Google announced that they would launch a new product that was widely reviewed by those in the know about the consumer electronics industry as a brilliant money loser. The product, called the Nexus One, was anticipated to be the ultimate contradiction in the closed and monopolistic world of mobile phones and carriers in the US ... sold unlocked and open for any network.

It failed in part because the price point was more than any normal consumer was willing to pay in a country where most phone purchases are subsidized. Still, the Nexus One served an important role for Google, it showed other phone manufacturers what an Android phone could and should do. Today, there are many more phones available with the Android platform, in part because the Nexus One and its predecessor (the Google G1) inspired that innovation.

What does any of this have to do with Donald Trump? I believe he is using the same strategy as Google to inspire innovation and action in the world of politics. Disagreement and the inability for politicians to work across parties is causing a deadlock over just about every issue in Washington. It takes a crisis for any decision to get made. Added to that, the definition of a politician seems to have become anyone who is afraid to have an opinion about anything. Into this world, Donald Trump is the ultimate opinionated non-politician. For example, here are a few choice quotes from a recent piece about his bid for President published in this weekend's Washington Post:

• “I would go in and take the oil. I would take the oil and stop this baby stuff.” Otherwise, he would not go into Libya at all. As for the Libyans, “I’d give them plenty so they can live very happily,” he says.
• He longs for the times when empires acted like empires. “In the old days,” he told [Candy] Crowley, “when you have a war and you win, that nation’s yours. This country is a laughingstock throughout the world.”
• He believes that, despite the amount of U.S. debt held by the Chinese, the United States has a stronger hand. “They have some of our debt. Big deal,” he says. “It’s a very small number relative to the world, okay?”
• If the Chinese did not respond to his overtures, he says, he then would impose a 25 percent tariff on all Chinese products coming into the United States. “As soon as they believe it’s going to happen, they will behave so nicely because it would destroy their economy,” he says.

You may admire his no-nonsense approach, or you might consider him a media-savvy opportunist - but he has proven himself a skilled negotiator and direct businessman unaccustomed to the usual politician double talk. The Washington Post article referenced above even notes that other politicians should "take him seriously." Which leads to the big question ... will he win President, or even run?

I think not, because it is simply not a profitable business decision for him to run. But will his threat and voice in the media force politians to emerge from deadlock and actually work together to accomplish something? Let's all hope so.

What David Ogilvy Can Teach You About Good Manners

There are some things in business that no one really teaches you. It is the "instinctive" part of being a professional, and it mostly refers to little things. A powerful reminder of how important those little things are comes from the founder of the brand I work for, David Ogilvy, who said:

"I always use my clients' products. This is not toadyism but elementary good manners."

We all have a filter when it comes to biased reviews or people who we feel are simply being paid to flack for some product. The point most of us forget is that knowledge and proximity can easily translate into affinity. In other words, we often buy the brands we work with - not because we have to, but because we want to.

Of course, there are always examples like the loyal Coke drinker who is required to drink Pepsi because of where he works ... but for every example of forced allegiance, there are dozens of others where the affinity is real and authentic. It should not be a foreign concept that people believe the best product on the market is the one they work for and the one that they know the most about.

The flip side of this is that negativity comes from personal experience as well. For example there are several brands that I had such a sour experience with while pitching for their business that I will never be a customer of their products or services. The point of all this is simple: your employees and the organizations your brand works with are potential advocates, or potential detractors.

So the next time you consider bringing on a new vendor or hiring a new employee - remember that how you treat them makes a difference.  The little things (like good manners) still matter ... as they always have.

South Africa & The Age Of The Leaderless Revolution

I used to sit in the front seat of a taxi. When I lived in Sydney, it was a cultural rite of passage ... a learned behaviour that revealed an acquired understanding about the Australian culture. As I headed towards the southern hemisphere earlier this week and landed in South Africa, the impulse struck me again to choose the front seat, and I did.

Amidst an ordinary chat with my driver about the unusually overcast weather in "Jozi" - our conversation turned to the remarkably recognizable face of Nelson Mandela still iconized on billboards along the highway headed into downtown Johannesburg. At 93, he is still very much the heart of this young nation that many look to for inspiration. As we talked of his impact, my driver asked:

"If a man held prisoner for more than 27 years could forgive the men who held him captive - what right do I have to remain angry or seek vengeance against those who may have hurt me?"

He was sharing something that anyone who has been inspired by a real leader might feel. Mandela was the face of a revolution because he offered hope for a world most people wanted to live in. Much longer ago in India, Gandhi offered similar hope and was the emblem of how a peaceful revolution could overthrow a colonial invader. In Tibet, it was the Dalai Lama. The Czech Republic had Václav Havel. Much longer ago the Americans had George Washington, and the list could easily go on and on. 

Throughout human history, it has become an obvious fact that revolutions are fueled by extraordinary leaders. At least, it was obvious until now. In both Egypt and Tunisia, the revolutions in those countries have often been described as "leaderless."

It is not just political revolutions happening without leaders either. As large groups of people self organize around ideas and self identify with ideals, revolutions of thought from the profound to the every day are taking place without the guidance of one person. There is no President of Wikipedia.

All of which leads to a big question: in an age where leaders are becoming optional, are ideas alone enough to unite us? My driver may have supported a revolution, but it is Mandela who inspires him each day. People inspire people - and in a leaderless revolution what can replace human inspiration?

This was the first big thought that struck me as I landed in South Africa. The second was that I should really sit in the front seat of a taxi more often.