John Winsor

Lessons in Post Headline Writing

Last week when I wrote about Volkswagen's new advertising and named the post I think I blew it. It seems that by naming it "Be Safe" I triggered a number of spammers to send TrackBacks. This one post has gotten 30x the number of spam TrackBacks that I usually get.

If someone with more experience thinks this post attracted spam for another reason, I'd love to know.

Are You Ready for the Rise of the Neo-Greens?

Being from Boulder, environmentalism and sustainability have always been a part of the local lexicon. Yet, as I have traveled, I noticed that if Boulder came to represent these movements, it was seen as wealthy, arrogant and a bit self-righteous. All of the signs of a market dominated by innovators and early adopters. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Yeah, well that’s Boulder!” The movement was made up of largely suburban and affluent consumers.

As of late, a number of factors have been mainstreaming environmentalism and sustainability. First, large global factors, such as high gas prices, worse weather caused by climate change and a U.S. administration that has been unwilling to do anything to be a part of a global solution, have raised the consciousness of consumers.

Secondly, the business community has become more interested because of the success of things like Whole Foods and Toyota’s Prius. Likewise, the announcement of WalMart’s entry into the organic foods market certainly symbolizes a tipping point.

Now, a whole new movement is happening. In an article in the latest Wired Magazine Daniel Pink calls it the Rise of the Neo-Greens. All of a sudden, caring about environmentalism and sustainability is cool. Pink Says:

Eco-chic is now sprawling across the cultural terrain. Bono and his wife, Ali Hewson, recently teamed with of-the-moment denim designer Rogan Gregory to create a clothing line called Edun (that's nude spelled backward). Edun produces fair-trade T-shirts, jeans, and organic-cotton sweatshirts sold at high-end department stores like Nordstrom and Saks. Gregory's been busy; he also colaunched Loomstate, which makes organic-cotton jeans that sell at Barney's for about $165. Meantime, clothing and accessories made out of obviously recycled materials - everything from newspapers and phone books to old inner tubes - are showing up on the runway and on the street. Upscale greentailers from Brooklyn's 3R Living to Green Loop outside Portland, Oregon, have sprouted like organic mushrooms after a sun shower to sell fashion and furniture to people with thick wallets and guilty consciences.

Look for the Neo-Greens to drive a new wave innovation by demanding cleaner fuel, sustainable building materials, and organic food. I suspect it will be the same kind of frenzy that happened in the Dot-com era.

How will this affect you and your brand? Well, part of this movement will be a demand for a higher degree of information and transparency about how things are made. Are you ready? How can you innovate in your marketplace to capitalize on the Neo-Reen movement?

Maximize Your Innovation Resources

Diego’s post reminded me of my conversation with Marsha Skidmore from Herman Miller for Spark. We discussed the tools it takes to maximize innovation resources. Here is a list of things to thing about:

Focus on Behavior Versus Feedback – Are you listening to your customers and really watching their behavior? I never would have told a designer I needed a mesh chair to keep cool. However, I love sitting in my incredibly comfortable Aeron chair. Your customers can give you a deeply personal understanding of their needs.

Make Innovation Iterative – Instead of trying to solve a big, hairy problem all at once, think about making innovation more iterative. Get prototypes ready and then co-create with customers to dial in the details.

Design Optimal Conditions for Innovation – Being innovative means thinking about the right conditions for innovation. Marsha and her team took on a project that was a big change from office furniture. It meant working with a new kind of customer – general contractors, rather than end-users – to more efficiently distribute power. Every customer and culture is different. How can you set the conditions for your team to be more innovative?

Keep the Momentum Going – If you’re like me and drink too much coffee, your energy might wane during the day as the caffeine wears off. The same thing happens in an innovation. Find a leader or team member who contributes positive energy and direction to keep the momentum and motivation strong.

Focus on Solving the Problem – Sometimes it’s hard to strip away the baggage a company or team brings to an innovation problem. Many times, successful companies have a difficult time staying focused on an innovation problem simply because they’re successful. Forget about past success and stay focused on the problem at hand, not just the solution.

Accept Resentment – Being on an innovation team that’s separate from the rest of the company and has a more creative mandate means you’re working on something new and fun. Eventually the novelty will wear off, but it’s a reality that some people in the company will be jealous of your apparent newfound freedom. They will learn to deal with it, and so should you.

Encourage Contribution – Involve other people in your quest for innovation by asking them to contribute. There may be someone in another department who shares a passion for your project and could contribute positively to your team. Develop a spirit of contribution so that everyone in the company feels vested in the evolution of innovation.

Day to Day Innovation

Diego Rodriguez provides a good reminder that innovation needs to be institutionalized in this post about Honda's process.

It Starts with Listening

Nigel Hollis has a thoughtful post on examining the power and implications of Consumer Generated Content and co-creation on brands as it relates to the much discussed Chevy Tahoe campaign that's worth a read. In it he says:

...listening is the first step to successfully leveraging WOM. Listening to what people are saying about your brand will help you understand what ignites their passion and therefore how you can successfully engage them in the future.

I certainly agree that listening is where it all starts but listening is such a loaded word. Where do you begin? I have written a few posts in the past on listening. In one, I suggested that there are really six steps in the listening process:

The overall goal of listening is to see patterns where others see chaos, and to make meaning that is well grounded in both experience and intuition. To achieve this goal, you have to capture the Vox Populi, or the voice of the people. Here are some things to remember:

Concentrate – It is very difficult for companies to concentrate. There are spreadsheets to fill out; there are sales to be made and the bottom line to look after. How can anybody take the time to concentrate on listening with so much to do? Yet concentration is absolutely essential to effective listening. Be

Free From Anxiety – This is, possibly, the hardest thing for a company to do. As a businessperson you know how hard it is to not focus, always, on the bottom line. It is hard to not be anxious about getting a product or service to market. Likewise, it is also hard not to think about accomplishing specific goals when you are talking to a customer. This, however, is the only way to have a successful dialogue in which you are able to hear clearly.

Imagine – Aren’t all great companies started by someone with an amazing imagination? Look at Apple: it was Steven Jobs and his imagination that created the personal computer that fueled a revolution. Likewise, Nike’s Phil Knight spent his first few years selling shoes out of the back of a station wagon. They were both out there with their customers, listening and learning. They were imagining ways to solve problems, whether for computer users or runners. Every great company has a heritage of myth and imagination surrounding its start.

Empathize – At the foundation of most great companies is a group of people that embodies the passion and commitment of their customers and has a vested interest in doing things right; in essence, empathy can be defined as the ability to relate to customers in an intuitive manner. The most straightforward way to attain this is to be a passionate user of your company’s products.

Understand – Understanding is not about simply downloading a bunch of numbers and statistics and then analyzing them from behind a desk. In this context, it means feeling an impact in the heart and soul. It is an understanding that comes from experiencing what's really happening.

Love – While many businesspeople might laugh, this is the start of great listening. Great companies don’t just like their customers – they love their customers, and their employees too. Look again at Nike and Apple. Both companies are on crusades with their customers to change the world. And their customers can feel the love. They recognize that these companies really care about them and want to spend time with them. It’s all about letting people talk and tell their stories without any screens or interruptions. It’s about slowing down enough to have the time to engage people in a passionate dialogue while in the context of their lives.

And, this all assumes that you are listening to the right voices.

Be Safe

While some have taken offense to the new Volkswagen "Safe" ads as too shocking (The NY Times quotes Cathy Collins, of Columbus, Ohio, as saying she was "traumatized because of your repulsive new advertising campaign," in a letter she wrote to Volkswagen), kudos must be given to the Crispin team for developing one of the few ads currently running that is so relevant to it's audience that it makes them so strongly.

After being in my fair share of car wrecks my reaction was to feel that I didn't "want" a Jetta, a reaction I usually have to good advertising. Instead, I felt that I "needed" a Jetta. These ads have also certainly changed the way I think of Volvo's Safety message. Talk about changing the playing field! It seems that Crispin took a page out of Karl Rove's playbook - Attack your competitor's strengths not their weaknesses.

Six Steps to Finding Inspiration

In this quickly changing environment in which we live today, where customers are acquiring the tools to become producers, especially of media, companies that get involved and thrive on the inspiration that the market provides them, can interpret it into something real. Such companies have ingrained this approach into the philosophy of their brands – it goes deeper than any individual or hired agency.

These companies all share some common attributes based on good listening to their key voices and understanding how to leverage the networks that exist in their markets. Companies that strategically find inspiration time after time – from Apple to Nike – follow some of the same steps. They include:

Be Curious – Have you ever spent time with someone who always knows what the next trend will be? The biggest factor is usually their sense of curiosity. Companies, as well as people, can be curious. The problem is that static systems stifle curiosity. Reintroduce curiosity into your company by changing the way you’re looking at the world to a more dynamic perspective. Instead of focusing on controlling the outcome when developing new product and marketing ideas, focus instead on thinking in dynamic terms and accepting many possible outcomes. Such an outlook, in and of itself, will go a long way in making your team more curious.

Be Keenly Aware – Part of finding inspiration is being keenly aware of subtle changes in your surroundings. Companies that are good at it spend a lot of time deep in their market’s network trying to find inspiration. Only by getting out of the office and living within the network participants’ worlds will you really be able to notice the subtle changes that magnify inspiration.

Do you know Jake Burton? What makes Burton Snowboards so dominant in their market is that they are intimate with every aspect of the marketplace, and know what network to tap into to find inspiration for new product and marketing efforts. As we discussed, at Burton it starts at the top, and that means that Jake is snowboarding 100 days a year. When your CEO is that well connected to the marketplace and keenly aware of the subtleties of the market, always knowing where to find inspiration, it’s hard for your competitors to keep up.

Use Your Imagination – I’m always amazed by the imaginations of my two little boys. They really started talking around Halloween last year. One of the first full sentences both of them could say was, “Oh, no! Ghost coming! Scary!” After saying it they would run around the house, laughing and laughing. One of the things that I am most struck by with small children around the house is that we, as adults, have lost our imaginations. The world is a serious place, whether it’s business, world affairs, the economy or, for that matter, our entertainment. Companies can take things way too seriously.

It seems that in today’s business environment, recovering from a recession, there is a lot of underlying stress making everyone more serious. One of the key ingredients to finding inspiration is to have an active imagination. We all have imaginations but, like a muscle, you’ve got to use it or lose it. Turn on your imagination by doing creative things. Get your team together and have some fun. Do things that encourage people to find inspiration through the use of “out of the box” thinking. When you support this kind of thinking by not criticizing it, new inspiration will really start to flow.

Have A Human Touch – I’ve been on some explorations with clients where some team members are so focused on accomplishing the task at hand that they act more like robots than humans. When looking for inspiration it’s essential that you do so with a human touch. When you’re out trying to explore newly formed network connections, you’ve first got to gain the trust of those in the network. If you’re only there to complete your business task, it’s obvious to others and doesn’t engender trust at all. Being human means taking the time to really care about the people from whom you’re trying to gain the inspiration that you’re after. That requires sharing a part of yourself. Being more human means being more vulnerable, and that’s a very hard thing to do – especially in the context of business.

Be Patient – The most important thing to remember about finding inspiration is that it’s a journey with no beginning or end. Like anything else, most of us can’t find real inspiration the first time we try: the first time you see someone, you’re not going to ask him or her to marry you, are you? Well, I guess it does happen… but that’s pure chance. Finding true inspiration is something that you’ve got to spend every day doing, a little at a time. Probably the most important way to make finding inspiration happen is by integrating it into your daily schedule. Read magazines you don’t usually read, go to new restaurants, stay in a different hotel each time you travel, and most importantly, talk to new people. It’s one step at a time.

Always Stay Connected – Apple is firmly connected to the creative graphics community, Nike has a support system of athletes, and Patagonia is connected with outdoor adventurers. Who are you connected with? Are you networked intimately enough to your group of trend translators that you can call or email at any time to explore a couple of new ideas? Do you know them well enough that if they don’t know where to find the inspiration you’re looking for, they will turn you on to their network? Not only are Apple, Nike, and Patagonia connected, but they have become a vital part of their network’s community, allowing them to consistently find inspiration for both products and marketing much faster than their competitors.

Advertising to Kids

Dino of Chroma points to an article in The Guardian featuring an excerpt from Eric Shlosser's new book, Chew on This. As a father of two four-year-old boys this quote gave me pause:

During the course of a year, the typical American child watches more than 40,000 TV commercials. About 20,000 of those ads are for junk food: soft drinks, sweets, breakfast cereals and fast food. That means American children now see a junk food ad every five minutes while watching TV - and see about three hours of junk food ads every week. American kids aren't learning about food in the classroom. They're being taught what to eat by the same junk food ads, repeating again and again.

The Revolution is Upon Us

I’ve gotten a few notes from people that have their doubts about the power of consumer generated content, saying that it television didn’t destroy radio or the internet has completely destroyed either. Yet, one only has to look as far as MySpace to recognize that the power of content generation has shifted into the hands of the end-user.

Saul Hansell’s overview of MySpace’s rise in the New York Times stated that the site is now ranked second in number of page views, with 28.8 billion last month, only behind Yahoo. Combine MySpace’s popularity with video sites, such as YouTube and CurrentTV, and you’ve got more going on than a small trend. The lines between consumer and producer have blurred.

Besides Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. many media companies are reacting to consumer generated content similar to what that Grant McCracken describes as their reaction to blogs (which is another powerful example of consumer generated content, in itself):

Stage 1. Benign neglect

Stage 2. Lordly disdain

Stage 3. Irritation plus Obfuscation

Stage 4. Panic! Attack!  Panic Attack!

As the dynamic changes happening all around us continue to accelerate, traditional media companies and brands, in general, must take steps toward building a deeper relationship with these newly empowered producer/consumers. In this new era, it is the creative citizens of a community — the people and the companies — that will survive and thrive by co-creating honest, original and relevant media and products.

More On Time

It’s easy to extrapolate the 8.5 days of commuting time the Curt calculates even further. If you add up all of the time you spend doing the things you have to do:

Commuting                                                        8.5 days

Working: 9.2 hours a day                                  96 days       U.S. Dept of Labor

Sleeping: 7.6 hours a night                               116 days       U.S. Dept of Labor

Watching TV: 4.5 hours a day                           68 days       Neilson

Eating: 2 hours a day                                         30 days

Household Work: 1 hour per day                     15 days

In the bathroom: ½ hour a day                          8 days

Upholding Social Obligations: 1 hour per day    15 days

Total                                                                    357 days

Following your passions (if it’s not work)              8 days or 192 hours

Time flies!