Niko Herzeg Marketing

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.