April 25th, 2006 by admin

Yesterday, I examined the hermeneutic philosophy of Hans-George Gadamer in relation to spreading a brand’s message.  Extrapolating from Gadamer’s writings, I found that for a brand’s message to resonate with a consumer, it must match that person’s conceptual horizon.  Gadamer, not being a business man, used abstract terms such as individuals, understanding, and the fusion of horizons.  Seth Godin, on the other hand, is a business man and restates the same principle nearly 46 years later when he wrote, "Your story has to be grounded in the worldview of your intended audience."

Whether you like Gadamer’s abstract choice of words or Seth Godin’s, the principle remains the same.  The marketer is the one who has to adapt to match the consumer.  The consumer is viewed as an unchanging force that must be adapted to.

This piece of advice, while valuable, has risky implications for the marketer whose task is to develop a long term strategy.  The risk is that the marketer will be too fixated on matching the current world to properly come up with a plan to get consumers from their current worldview A to a worldview B five years down the line.

A  marketing strategist’s task is to not only match the customers current state, but mold the customer and prepare them for a future vision of the world.  How does one do this?

A popular tactic many companies use to accomplish this task is through movie product placements.  Think back at how many movies you have seen that showed actors using fanciful products with actual product names.  The movie script enables the marketers to transport the viewer to a future point in time where that particular world view makes sense.  While watching the movie the viewer has a willing suspension of disbelief and the otherwise disjointed marketing message magically resonates. Years down the linem, when the product does come out, the customer remembers the scene from the movie showing just how useful that product can be. 

If your task is to prepare an audience for a product five years down the line and your company doesn’t have 50 million dollars for movie product placements, then your task is much more difficult.  However, it is not impossible.  What you need to remember is to not fall into trap of simple tailoring or message to current worldviews and expectations.  In the words of Seth Godin your message simply has to be "grounded in the worldview."

Build the seeds of long term strategies into your short
term marketing pieces.  these seeds need to be subtle.  Ideally, customers will not even
notice these seeds until it is time for them to sprout.  When it time for the seed to sprout their message resonates.  This resonation is possible because as the seeds germinated, they subconsciously shaped a future world view that included a demand for your new product.

April 24th, 2006 by admin

In my last post I talked about how a brand message must be able to leap frog different spheres of conceptual  horizons in order to be successful.  Specifically the message must resonate both with the original niche audience as well as the larger populace.

However, I left out one obvious point.  For a brand message to resonate at all with a customer it must match their horizon.  To the extent the brand horizon and the prospects horizon are in sync is the extent it will be successful.  I just finished watching Seth Godin’s presentation at Google.  He points out that the effectiveness of adwords is that it hits the viewers eyes just when they are thinking about the product.  In this golden moment al la Hans Georg Gadamer there is a fusion of horizons between the viewer and the ad.

Seth Godin, in his latest book latest book, All Marketers are Liars, states that the marketers job is to tell a story.  The most effective stories are those that match-up with the prospect’s world view, or horizon.  A few days ago, Seth summed this point up succinctly by writing in his blog,

The world as it is

Two things marketers do:
1. Do the work necessary to be sure that your perception of the world is similar to the world as it is.
2. Create the stories (and the experiences to back them up) that change the world as it is.

Most marketers fail at #1. By focusing on what they want, or by
having a selfish view of things, they miss the reality of what the
world believes.

And that can cause us to miss #2. Your story has to be grounded in the worldview of your intended audience.

 

April 24th, 2006 by admin

What can philosophy teach us about marketing?  In one word - Lots.

As an exercise,  I examined the Dialectical Hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer to see if his theory could shed any light into how brand popularity spans cultures, age groups, and socio-economic strata.  In the end, I came up with a helpful new maxim:  To the extent a brand’s message shares a fusion of horizons with different social groups is the extent that the brand message can effectively travel between them.

Most successful brands such as Starbucks and Netflix started off with a niche group of consumers such as coffee addicts in Seattle and independent film watchers.  Over the years, Starbucks has been able build brand presence to the point now they can move into nearly type of neighborhood and be reasonably certain the store will be successful.  The marketers at Netflix have achieved similar success with its customer base.  The other day, I participated in a Netflix focus group whose members ranged from an 18 year old college student to a 78 year old man who lived in a nursing home.  Netflix brand message resonates positively with each.  The question is Why?

I found an answer in Gadamer’s writings.  Gadamer teaches that to the extent people understand one another is the extent that they share the same conceptual sphere, or fusion of horizons.  At the most primitive level we are all humans and experience the same human emotions.  Geographic distance, cultural values, social mores, and age diffuse this horizon. 

For example, if you placed two culturally isolated people together such as a Kalahari Bushman and a native from one of the outer islands off of  Papa New Guinea.  They would understand each others basic human emotions such as happy, sad, and angry, but little else.  If you placed one person from Europe and one person from the United States together, they would understand a great deal more because of cultural overlap.  Two people from the same country share a greater overlap, same city greater still.  On down the road until you get to coffee addicts in Seattle.

Here is where most marketers make a mistake.  They wrongly assume that since people speak the same language such as English and live in the same location they understand the same things.  The closer two groups appear to be social and culturally similar the more this assumption is made and the more it backfires.

Marketing history is filled with glaring examples of wrong assumptions.  A classic one is the case of the Chevy Nova.  To the branding department in Detroit, the word "Nova" spoke of stars, space and the unknown.  In the Hispanic communities of Southern California the car was mocked as the one that meant "No go" in Spanish.  Although it is an urban legend that sales faltered,  the fact remains that GM would have rather not had the cultural misunderstanding.  (If you want a good laugh take a look at the Chevy Nova Awards).

So, the question remains: How did Starbucks and Netflix, borrowing a phrase from Geoffrey Moore,  cross the chasm of cultural horizons?  The answer is that they centered their marketing messages on ideas or horizons that had a fusion between cultures.  For example,  Starbucks’ success may attributable to many things, but the least of which is its coffee quality. If coffee quality were the focus of Starbucks’ message, then the brand would still be regulated to towns and locations with coffee snobs such as Peet’s Coffee and Tea.  Instead, Starbucks focused on the sensory experience.   The brand flourished because its conceptual framework was based on primitive sensory experience which easily spans cultural horizons.

How did Netflix do it?   Instead of creating a single common transferable horizon, they created a product that had many different benefits and let the cultural niches come to them.  To a immigrant from India, Netflix has the largest selections of Bollywood movies available anywhere.  For the independent film buff, Netflix offers the best recommendations based on her own personal idiosyncratic viewing history.  For the man in the rest home, Netflix represents freedom.  Now he has access to any movie he wants.  He no longer has to wait for a ride to the local rental store.  For the college student, Netflix represents simplicity.

Over the last two years we have seen Apple’s Ipod cross a similar chasm.  How did they do it?  One way was that they chose to make dance the focus of their advertising.  Rather than showing all the great features of the ipod or its ease of use, their advertisements simply showed someone’s silhouette dancing to their favorite tunes.  It is difficult for me to think of a more pure expression of human feeling than dance.  Apple picked a perfect vehicle to cross cultural horizons.

Learn from the examples from Starbucks, Netflix, and Apple.  To effectively expand a brand presence find a fusions of horizons.

February 2nd, 2006 by admin

THE CLUETRAIN MANIFESTO

http://www.cluetrain.com

95 THESES

1. Markets are conversations.

2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are
  conducted in a human voice.

4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives,
  dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is
  typically open, natural, uncontrived.

5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this
  voice.

6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that
  were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

8. In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked
  employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new
  way.

9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms
  of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more
  organized. Participation in a networked market changes people
  fundamentally.

11. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far
  better information and support from one another than from
  vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to
  commoditized products.

12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than
  companies do about their own products. And whether the news is
  good or bad, they tell everyone.

13. What’s happening to markets is also happening among employees.
  A metaphysical construct called "The Company" is the only thing
  standing between the two.

14. Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new
  networked conversations. To their intended online audiences,
  companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of
  business — the sound of mission statements and brochures –
  will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the
  18th century French court.

16. Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the
  dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.

17. Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that
  used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves.

18. Companies that don’t realize their markets are now networked
  person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined
  in conversation are missing their best opportunity.

19. Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If
  they blow it, it could be their last chance.

20. Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At
  them.

21. Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less
  seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.

22. Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on
  the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a
  little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.

23. Companies attempting to "position" themselves need to take a
  position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market
  actually cares about.

24. Bombastic boasts — "We are positioned to become the preeminent
  provider of XYZ" — do not constitute a position.

25. Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to
  the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

26. Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are
  deeply afraid of their markets.

27. By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant,
  they build walls to keep markets at bay.

28. Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the market
  might see what’s really going on inside the company.

29. Elvis said it best: "We can’t go on together with suspicious
  minds."

30. Brand loyalty is the corporate version of going steady, but the
  breakup is inevitable — and coming fast. Because they are
  networked, smart markets are able to renegotiate relationships
  with blinding speed.

31. Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked
  knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own
"downsizing initiatives" taught us to ask the question:
"Loyalty? What’s that?"

32. Smart markets will find suppliers who speak their own language.

33. Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It
  can’t be "picked up" at some tony conference.

34. To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns
  of their communities.

35. But first, they must belong to a community.

36. Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures
  end.

37. If their cultures end before the community begins, they will
  have no market.

38. Human communities are based on discourse — on human speech
  about human concerns.

39. The community of discourse is the market.

40. Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will
  die.

41. Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a
  red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than
  against their own market and workforce.

42. As with networked markets, people are also talking to each
  other directly inside the company — and not just about rules
  and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.

43. Such conversations are taking place today on corporate
  intranets. But only when the conditions are right.

44. Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR
  policies and other corporate information that workers are doing
  their best to ignore.

45. Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are
  built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct
  something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate
  conversation.

46. A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the
  word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.

47. While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily
  on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge.
  They need to resist the urge to "improve" or control these
  networked conversations.

48. When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and
  legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage
  sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked
  marketplace.

49. Org charts worked in an older economy where plans could be
  fully understood from atop steep management pyramids and
  detailed work orders could be handed down from on high.

50. Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect
  for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract
  authority.

51. Command-and-control management styles both derive from and
  reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of
  paranoia.

52. Paranoia kills conversation. That’s its point. But lack of open
  conversation kills companies.

53. There are two conversations going on. One inside the company.
  One with the market.

54. In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost
  invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete
  notions of command and control.

55. As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are
  broken. Command and control are met with hostility by
  intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in
  internetworked markets.

56. These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are
  speaking the same language. They recognize each other’s voices.

57. Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable
  to happen sooner.

58. If willingness to get out of the way is taken as a measure of
  IQ, then very few companies have yet wised up.

59. However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now
  online perceive companies as little more than quaint legal
  fictions that are actively preventing these conversations from
  intersecting.

60. This is suicidal. Markets want to talk to companies.

61. Sadly, the part of the company a networked market wants to talk
  to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of
  language that rings false — and often is.

62. Markets do not want to talk to flaks and hucksters. They want
  to participate in the conversations going on behind the
  corporate firewall.

63. De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We want to
  talk to you.

64. We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and
  strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will
  not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites
  chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.

65. We’re also the workers who make your companies go. We want to
  talk to customers directly in our own voices, not in platitudes
  written into a script.

66. As markets, as workers, both of us are sick to death of getting
  our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless
  annual reports and third-hand market research studies to
  introduce us to each other?

67. As markets, as workers, we wonder why you’re not listening. You
  seem to be speaking a different language.

68. The inflated self-important jargon you sling around — in the
  press, at your conferences — what’s that got to do with us?

69. Maybe you’re impressing your investors. Maybe you’re impressing
  Wall Street. You’re not impressing us.

70. If you don’t impress us, your investors are going to take a
  bath. Don’t they understand this? If they did, they wouldn’t
  let you talk that way.

71. Your tired notions of "the market" make our eyes glaze over. We
  don’t recognize ourselves in your projections — perhaps
  because we know we’re already elsewhere.

72. We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are
  creating it.

73. You’re invited, but it’s our world. Take your shoes off at the
  door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!

74. We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.

75. If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it
  something interesting for a change.

76. We’ve got some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some
  better service. Stuff we’d be willing to pay for. Got a minute?

77. You’re too busy "doing business" to answer our email? Oh gosh,
  sorry, gee, we’ll come back later. Maybe.

78. You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.

79. We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic
  self-involvement, join the party.

80. Don’t worry, you can still make money. That is, as long as it’s
  not the only thing on your mind.

81. Have you noticed that, in itself, money is kind of
  one-dimensional and boring? What else can we talk about?

82. Your product broke. Why? We’d like to ask the guy who made it.
  Your corporate strategy makes no sense. We’d like to have a
  chat with your CEO. What do you mean she’s not in?

83. We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take
  one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.

84. We know some people from your company. They’re pretty cool
  online. Do you have any more like that you’re hiding? Can they
  come out and play?

85. When we have questions we turn to each other for answers. If
  you didn’t have such a tight rein on "your people" maybe they’d
  be among the people we’d turn to.

86. When we’re not busy being your "target market," many of us are
  your people. We’d rather be talking to friends online than
  watching the clock. That would get your name around better than
  your entire million dollar website. But you tell us speaking to
  the market is Marketing’s job.

87. We’d like it if you got what’s going on here. That’d be real
  nice. But it would be a big mistake to think we were holding
  our breath.

88. We have better things to do than worry about whether you’ll
  change in time to get our business. Business is only a part of
  our lives. It seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who
  needs whom?

89. We have real power and we know it. If you don’t quite see the
  light, some other outfit will come along that’s more attentive,
  more interesting, more fun to play with.

90. Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more
  interesting than most trade shows, more entertaining than any
  TV sitcom, and certainly more true-to-life than the corporate
  web sites we’ve been seeing.

91. Our allegiance is to ourselves — our friends, our new allies
  and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Companies that
  have no part in this world, also have no future.

92. Companies are spending billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can’t
  they hear this market timebomb ticking? The stakes are even
  higher.

93. We’re both inside companies and outside them. The boundaries
  that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall
  today, but they’re really just an annoyance. We know they’re
  coming down. We’re going to work from both sides to take them
  down.

94. To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear
  confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster
  than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules
  to slow us down.

95. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching.
  But we are not waiting.

———————–

Copyright 1999 Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger
  ringleaders@cluetrain.com
  All rights reserved.

However, world rights granted for non-commercial use
  on condition that this page remains intact,
  including this notice.
  Rip it, steal it, web it, mail it, post it.
  This message wants to MOVE!