Puff Daddy once said about his succes, that most people, if they knew what it entailed, would not want it. Being away from home for weeks, working 14-18 hour days, to dealing with laywers, CEO’s, accountants, artists, managers etc..
It struck me as some cliche rich folks tell. Turns out he was right. Kind of. I just could not see it. Blinded by the lights, as the song goes.
We see him party, spend money, carry bling and have all the girls. All wish to be him. But..not the entire him. Just the guy on the red carpet. Sexy money.
Which brings me to…me…and you.
Sexy or money. Time to choose.
Going after the first could mean you will have some great experiences, read great stuff, end up discussing the future of businesses, even may mean you will advice companies, go to Cannes to collect some awards and party like rockstars.
Scoping it out, it may mean you get to go to TED to listen to great men of action, dance at presidential inaugurations, participate in celebrity telethons for humanitarian causes.
Going after money means the opposite. Accepting accolades, being sworn in, speaking at TED, being the face of a cause. Only after you have achieved something. Or failing without anybody ever noticing, or worse: failing in the public eye.
I guess most of us want sexy money. We humans are like that. But if we admit that, let’s admit something else: It is not going to happen, until we choose to be/get money first. To make things happen, earn that success. Until we go out and do shit.
So…there is this idea for a business. Getting more and more concrete. Operational progress is being made. Commercial success lurks around the corner. Might be good, might not.
This is my mum. To be more precise, this my mum loving the internet. Full stop. Loving her new Vaio, even personalizing it to her.
A month before she was declaring (when she saw me working on mine) “ that is an addiction, I tell you. That internet is poisoning your brain.”
If the house was on fire and she had to choose, I think she would still choose me over the laptop. I am just saying, she loves her web and laptop.
My mum went from a technophobic commited non-user, taking pride (somewhat) in not being online, to the complete opposite in less then a month.
And all it took was one thing: interaction in a way that reasonated with her.
From the time she first started using Skype to talk to her sister in New York, to her receiving her first email to being utterly blown away by pictures of her village in the old country.
She has transitioned from one point to another in a natural and for her comfortable way. Much like a child by playing and fooling around with the machine till it made tactile, emotional and mental sense.
It would have been to complicated for me to explain to her why she should have a laptop and internet. Yet once the thing was there, we got her to try out some stuff that resonated with her. She did the rest.
We learn to use by doing. And we appreciate what we learn to use. And as psychologists know, past behaviour is the best curren$y to predict future behaviour..
So last weekend I went to watch Up in the Air. A movie about a guy (Clooney) who fires people on behalf of companies (or as he likes to say: he helps people steer their boat through desperation towards the dim light of hope…before throwing them of the boat and telling them to swim).
His life is turned upside down when a young MBA (played by Anna Kendrick) comes in and figures out that by doing the firing online and from one central location, the cost of business can be reduced by 85%. Clooney tries to convince her that this is not as clearcut as Kendrick thinks it is.
The contrast between Clooney and Kendrick serves as a nice backdrop for some practices we all know but sometimes need reminding of*:
Culture vs category Culture leads to better understanding of category
There are many problems in the lives of people, that may not directly relate to our products, but offer a chance to solve problems with tangible solutions.
Kendrick came in and saw one thing from her limited exposure and training. ” If we can cut the cost of flying by doing it via internet, we can make a killing”. Of course she is right.
Cutting cost would have made the fictional company more money. Yet what she had not experienced, was the stuff that happens all around the product they offer (in this case the firing of people).
There are issues that play a big part in the lives of the fired ones that have no relation to getting fired. Yet could have offered her company opportunities to be of bigger additional value to clients and customers than just being cheaper.
Culture (or let me rephrase that large word: an understanding of the wider lives of customers other than their behaviour when interacting with our clients catergory product) can be a fertile place for cash. But it means widening our scope.
There is this story about the public service system in Mexico around the 1950’s. It was notorious for its ineffectiveness. But gradually the productivity went up, without active involvement of the Gov. Nobody could, on the surface find a reason for this change. Turns out it was the aircondtitioning.
The siesta was something very strongly engraved in Mecixan live. Whether they be public servants, bankers, mechanics or farmers. The practice was part of the country.
So when the Mexican governement started installing airconditioning machines in city halls and other places where the servants worked, it had unexpected results.
The siesta was used for killing downtime around the hottest time of day, because it was dangerous to be outside (or that was the orginal practice, which carried over even when not entirely true for civil servants in the 1950’s anymore). Now the temperture was being kept steady at a workable one with the help of airco’s.
Slowly but surely this had an effect on the behaviour of the servants that led them not to take siestas and thus upping productivity.
Imagine if the sellers of the airco had pitched it as a means to up productivity or effectiveness, based on this insight and possible new use of product? Would that have been better than just a device to keep people cool?
I don’t know (all history tells us is, that they were bought on the strenght of other considerations), but if we had to sell airco in this day and age it would be an interesting, appealing and memorable pitch compared to standard pitches of just keeping cool.
People are influenced by all kinds of things: the context of interaction, people we look to/at, folklore, the physical world around us, previous experiences, fears, insecurities, much more… and the category product. Use it all to be of better service and ultimately more profitable.
This concludes this series of posts.
*For arguments sake I leave the morality of working for/with a company that fires people for a living out of the equation. Same goes for the actual movie. No accounting for taste.
So last weekend I went to watch Up in the Air. A movie about a guy (Clooney) who fires people on behalf of companies (or as he likes to say: he helps people steer their boat through desperation towards the dim light of hope…before throwing them of the boat and telling them to swim).
His life is turned upside down when a young MBA (played by Anna Kendrick) comes in and figures out that by doing the firing online and from one central location, the cost of business can be reduced by 85%. Clooney tries to convince her that this is not as clearcut as Kendrick thinks it is.
The contrast between Clooney and Kendrick serves as a nice backdrop for some practices we all know but sometimes need reminding of*:
Kiss ass vs Kick Ass Kiss a little to Kick alot, or not..there is no golden rule to start with just a result to end with.
Clooney is ambiguity. Kendrick certainty. She is the one with the demands and the firm beliefs about how the world should work. He is more comfortable with the idea of working with how the world is first to get the world to work how it could be.
This post flows from the previous post, but focusses more on the process of selling our services. Bells and whistles matter (to a certain extend of course, whether we care to admit or not). Awards, good offices, smart suits, leggy blonds, the truth, famous clients, solutions that make money (plain hard cold cash). They all matter.
Suppose you are a brand new manager from some FMCG company and you would know the truth about the way most of our solutions come into existence.
“Take in a load of information, letting this all simmer, working towards and hoping that what the brain comes up with will be something profitable and competitive. Because to tell you the truth, we really have only so much control over whether this will be a hit or not.”
You’d have to be walking in some pretty comfortable shoes to go “ok….appreciate the honesty and I acknowlegde that there are no garantuees, but let us proceed anyways”. Most clients are not like that from the start.
They need, and should be given, an appropriate shock/comfort ratio to transition from non (or not enough) participatory to participating (fully). The politics of business is perhaps to some shallow, but not to be underestimated or be ashamed of.
So unless you can always choose partners who, within their culture have embraced ambiguity (because they are owners of the business and have lived it themselves, or they know that conventional methods will not help them achieve their goal of topping the leader), remember that there is no shame in kissing a bit of ass every now and then.
Because given the right encouragement and results, most clients will grow with the agency and start to develop solutions that can bring out the full potential of a business.
So don’t sit in the corner sulking : “They don’t understand how it should be”. Show and prove in terms the client understands. Remember: a leader without followers is just a person walking alone.
*For arguments sake I leave the morality of working for/with a company that fires people for a living out of the equation. Same goes for the actual movie. No accounting for taste.
So last weekend I went to watch Up in the Air. A movie about a guy (Clooney) who fires people on behalf of companies (or as he likes to say: he helps people steer their boat through desperation towards the dim light of hope…before throwing them of the boat and telling them to swim).
His life is turned upside down when a young MBA (played by Anna Kendrick) comes in and figures out that by doing the firing online and from one central location, the cost of business can be reduced by 85%. Clooney tries to convince her that this is not as clearcut as Kendrick thinks it is.
The contrast between Clooney and Kendrick serves as a nice backdrop for some practices we all know but sometimes need reminding of*:
Change vs Status Quo Plan for transitions
Kendrick is positioned as the new, naive and better way of doing stuff. Clooney is the guy who is set in his ways and tries to keep the boat from rocking.
But the lesson here is that when it comes to the art of business it is not about about the binary. About embracing change or status quo..it is about the transitions. Change as we all know is constant.
Plenty of businesses, unfortunately, have picked one side or the other. Musiclabels, newspapers, the dotcom era of burn to earn. But this ignores one important insight idea.
The money is in the transition. From one to another. I once heard said about the Iphone that this was what Apple figured out and are making a killing of.
The Iphone, could be argued, has no innovative seperate things to it: phone new. Internet new. mp3 new, touch new. But they made it easy and seamless for us to transition from one position to the next.
From: “Who would need or want all this hightech stuff, I just want a phone to call and got a pc to do web stuff” to the next position: “WoW, this is very handy indeed, how did I ever do without”.
While Apple is always cheered for its ability to create evangelists out of their (cutting edge loving) customers they did not become big till they focused on the casually convert(ing)ed consumer.
The type that goes to church maybe twice a year (instead of every week), but leaves a donation everytime he does go, because that is his way of showing that he is still cares enough about, but is not totaly goverend by the church (or the next big revolutionary trend). Kinda like indulgences.
Know where the money is. It is in a lot of industries, still somewhere around the middle. They are blandish for a reason. They wish not to be, but are afraid to rock the boat to much. Help them makes sense and fun of the transitions in life and chances are you will be rewarded. In this life or the next.
*For arguments sake I leave the morality of working for/with a company that fires people for a living out of the equation. Same goes for the actual movie. No accounting for taste.
So last weekend I went to watch Up in the Air. A movie about a guy (Clooney) who fires people on behalf of companies (or as he likes to say: he helps people steer their boat through desperation towards the dim light of hope…before throwing them of the boat and telling them to swim).
His life is turned upside down when a young MBA (always them MBA’s, played by Anna Kendrick) comes in and figures out that by doing the firing online and from one central location, the cost of business can be reduced by 85%. Clooney tries to convince her that this is not as clearcut as Kendrick thinks it is.
The contrast between Clooney and Kendrick serves as a nice backdrop for some practices we all know but sometimes need reminding of*:
Client vs Agency Client + Agency = Result
Kendrick comes in and tells Clooney, who has been at this job well over 15 year (and from the looks of it getting results), that there are better ways to do it. The subtext quite clearly being: “thank heaven you were smart enough to hire me, now get me some coffee and move out of the way while I apply the newest thinking to save the day”.
So he takes her out on the road. Trying to prove that she may know about the business, but does not know what the business is about.
The nuances about customers, the different ways they react (good and bad) and how these sitiations are always openings to create positive experiences. Of course this brings some sort of personal enlightment to Kendrick, but the point is one we could do well to remember as business people.
Yes the client has issues, otherwise we would not be needed. But most likely the client has been earning their living doing what they do, for a long time. Longer then we have earned ours by doing our work. Be humble and listen to clients, they may actually teach us a thing or two that will help us help them.
No need to grovel or to behave like the Beyonder. Work together, share the agenda and it might just benefit both.
*For arguments sake I leave the morality of working for/with a company that fires people for a living out of the equation. Same goes for the actual movie. No accounting for taste.
You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don’t know where the fuck it’s gonna lead you
Lester Freamon , The Wire
I have noticed something odd recently which, while discussing it with a few people, got me in some heated debates whether or not I was aware of how foolish what I was saying, made me look (thank Lord I have my looks, ha!)
Native Dutch (from Western/Dutch descent from a cultural point of view, thus excluding third/fourth gen from non West european descent) subliminal nationalism.
As is perhaps known, the largest political party (in the polling) is the populist party PVV, led by Geert Wilders. Yet the act of publicly acknowledging that you as a Dutch native (with the sterotypical label put on you by foreigners of tolerance) are sympathetic to these views is still (though declining) taboo.
Below a picture of a radio station advert on a billboard.
A radio station advertising with “100% NL”. Again as a statement, it means they play Dutch music. Yet against the backdrop of political and social unrest it gets interesting indeed.
Dutch speaking music has always been around, and popular. But it was never mainstream. Played on local and regional radio/tv and with performers playing in community centres, so to speak. But since around the rise of the late Fortuyn it has steadily become more mainstream.
From reality shows about singers to them being covered in the big dailys like the Telegraaf and filling football stadiums for days in a row, the liking of Dutch music seems to have taken on a subtext of more than entertainment.
Now of course chauvinism is not new, as with every world cup football every nation feels a surge of pride coming on, but this feels different, coming from a place of fear rather than joy.
And now this winter. Ice skating. The quintessential Dutch sport (We/they are regular world and Olympic champions in this sport).
Yet the sudden demand for ice skate rings is almost bigger than supply. This was before the weather made for natural ice and one could argue that after a decade of no natural ice we are all going out in drones to enjoy this rare opportunity.
Having visited several rings out of curiousity around the city I can not help but sense a sort of “fist bump” effect amongst the Native: we are the same, we are Dutch in a Holland that is “tanning” in its culture (though the argument can be made that Dutch culture never was pure to begin, but that is talking rationaly when, no pain felt is untrue in the world of the victim ).
Again the above radiostation may just have put a slogan thought up in a few seconds on a billboard, but in the conxtext of changing society, demographics and culture in Holland, I find it one of the more powerfull pieces of advertising I have seen in a while (even if it just one sentence, no more).
Now of course this is all speculative, but the point is not whether it is true or not. the point is, that we often (to often) look at we want (people to want), when we plan our actions.
Not enough at what keeps people from doing stuff we want or doing other stuff than we want, which (when looked at) could reveal a less pretty picture then we care to admit, far less rational behaviour then we (by now) should know and a reality often at odds with client views of their own customer, product, buying reason and company.
And in this there are many opportunities we miss to create positive (for I am not advocating fear mongering in output, merely in acknowledging it in more diverse research and development of strategy) powerfull ideas that drive both the needs of our clients and resonate within the context of the lives of their customers.
I was really struck by the rigidness of the views of the people i discussed this hypothesis with (the absence of evidence does not mean this is evidence of absence after all) and again reminded that if we are striving to create work that resonates in the real world we should start researching and thinking in 3D, wherever the evidence (or lack thereof) takes us.
