John Winsor

Flipped Excerpt: Too Many Choices, Not Enough Time

With too many tangible offerings, people create filters and use other tools, like social media, to make sense of the many messages they’re bombarded with every day. In every category of business there are more product choices than anyone could ever try, let alone purchase. No matter how much branding or advertising a company does, it’s increasingly difficult to wade through the clutter. Studies have demonstrated that providing too many options – particularly when the real distinctions between them are small (there are over three dozen different flavors of Crest Toothpaste, for example) can cause people to feel overwhelmed and overloaded, and as a result, less likely to pursue any of the options available.

People want variety, but they want companies to be reasonable at the same time. When the products available to them are relevant to their needs and their lifestyles, customers will feel that those companies have actually done their homework. Throwing out dozens of choices and assuming people will find something they like doesn’t foster intimacy between companies and their customers. People don’t necessarily need more choices; they need choices that are personally relevant. The reality is that in response to this product overload, people are suggesting that more isn’t always better; that perhaps quality – or at least relevance – is more important than quantity. The only possible exception to this way of thinking is in people’s ongoing quest to somehow find more time.

Articles in the 1960’s and 70’s used to talk about the rise of leisure time we would experience by the year 2000 because of the promise of productivity following the development of technologies like the computer. What happened? Remember how many futurists accepted the notion of a four-day workweek as the norm for most of us at the turn of the century? What happened? With our infinite choices, from 500 television channels to 125,000 new books every year, we’ve filled up our “extra” time pretty fast.

If there is one constant for all of us it is our lack of time, whether real or perceived. I look at it this way: I’m 49. The average American male lives to be 77.8 years old (according to the National Center For Health Statistics). That’s 28,397 days, so I’ve got about 10,512 days left. If you’re like me, you: sleep eight hours per day (if you’re lucky) – 3,565 days; eat for two and a half hours per day – 1,114 days; spend half an hour per day in the bathroom (hot showers rule!) – 223 days; work eight hours per day (16 years, maybe, maybe not) – 1,927 days; work out one hour per day (hopefully) – 446 days; commute one hour per day (at least) – 446 days; hang out with the family two hours per day – 892 days; do things you don’t really want to do one hour per day (pay bills, listen to telemarketers, do yard work) – 446 days. That leaves 1,453 days, or about one hour per day, left for following your bliss.

I don’t know about you, but anyone hoping to get my attention these days better make it really mean something to me, especially if it infringes on that one sacred hour.

(Check out more of  Flipped here)

Is Your Customer Service Ready for the New World of Openness?

In a great example of how companies need evolve their customer service in the new world of openness, I wanted to share this story with you. My 8 year old son, Harry, loves to draw planes. In fact, that's all he likes to draw. After drawing a couple of hundred pictures over the last six months, Harry had a great idea. He'd send one of his favorite drawings to Boeing and ask them if they'd like to build his new jet he designed. He was so passionate about it and must have rewritten the letter a dozen times. We sent it off. You can only imagine what happened.

Yep. We got the form letter, above. It's the standard fare that most legal departments send out to make sure they aren't at risk of any IP infringement issues. As a business owner, I get it. It is logical. But, my sense is that companies who don't figure out how to do customer service and innovation in the world of openness will, in the short-run, stunt their growth and, in the long-run cease to exist. And, if you don't ave any customers you certainly don't need customer service.

Some brave companies are venturing into the deep end to figure this out. Zappos, Best Buy, Nokia, Starbucks and Dell have all set up web sites to accept customer input in new and open ways. These are the leaders of the revolution. They are the early winners in the first days of the age of openness.

Now, I have a moral dilemma. Do I show the letter to Harry and kill his dream of being an airplane designer or throw it away and tell him I didn't receive anything so he keeps his artistic passion alive.

What would you do?

Flipped: Thanks for the Help

  As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I decided to use elements of crowdsourcing and collaboration and put the manuscript of Flipped: How Bottom-Up Co-Creation Is Replacing Top Down Innovation on a wiki and invited the world to help edit and update the book. It was a great exercise in tapping into the power of the crowd. Thanks for these folks for volunteering to help:

Brad Noble, Alain Thys, Alex Ames, Ally Polly, Anita Lobo, Asher Adelman, Barry Polley, Ben Kaufman, Ben Malbon, Gerard Blokdijk, Bob Weil, Brandon Berger, Brett Macfarlane, Christopher Caen, Conrad Lisco, Dave Hampton, David Cary, David Friedman, David Wiggs, Dennis Bernhard, Diego Otero, Dragos Lupascu, Edward Boches, Ed Markey, Ellie Banwell, Eugene Chung, Ewan Adams, Gareth Kay, Ginger Conrad, Graham Furlong, Helen Walters, Jacob McNulty, Jeff Howe, John B. Winsor, Joseph Rueter, Jane Tabachnick, Justin McCammon, Karen LaBerdia, Kathy Huynh, Mark Earls, Matti Copeland, Nick Gundry, Nikki Kauffman, Noah Robinson, Oliver Wright, Pam Markhall, Paul McConaughy, Peter Thomson, Philip Tribe, Lilly Evans, Regan Mead, Robb Shurr, Rohit Nand, Scott Gwozdz, Sean Net, Doug Seibold, Scott Karambis, Shaun Abrahamson, Abbey Smith, Scott Prindle, Steve Tennant, Tate Linden, Warren Ng, Wayne Addy, Wendy Dembo, Wesley Robison, Luke Wicker, Zack Grossbart, Walter Knapp, Peter Majarich, Koert Bakker, Heather Lefevre, K. Hayes, PB Ferrigan, J. McKeown, K. Quain, S. O’Brien

The Unbearable Lightness of Software

A couple of days ago I noticed that the bike computers, on 2 different bikes, needed their batteries replaced. Bike computers are awesome but have always been pretty finicky for me.

Just when I was on my way out to drop $20 on batteries for the computers a friend mentioned an iPhone app called, B.iCycle that essentially does everything a cycling computer does but with a few advantages. I've had a chance to use it for my last couple of rides and it works well. First, it records my rides on any of the bikes I'm on. When I ride road, mountain or cyclo-cross it keeps all my stats in one place. Secondly, the app was $9.99. Compare that to a decent cycling computer which costs $40.00. Beyond the actually dollar cost there is the energy and environmental costs of manufacturing and shipping. Software, like B.iCycle, has a wonderful lightness when it comes to the environmental, energy use and dollars spent.

It's almost impossible for a physical product to compete. Talk about a paradigm shift.

Day 8 of Super Flag: The Ego Smackdown

Yesterday was day 8 of the annual Super Flag adventure with Paul Fuller. The weather for the last couple of days has been a bit harsh. So, we were both feeling pretty proud of ourselves with only two days to go to complete the 10 days. That is, until we came upon Jim Raybin riding up with a buddy of his. Jim, 74, has been a friend of mine and mentor for a long time now. He's been riding Flagstaff for forty years.

As Paul and I passed Jim and his friend, I yelled over to Jim: "How many times have you ridden Super Flag, Jim?" I knew the number was big but when Jim said, "Probably 5000 times now," it made me smile.

So much for feeling special for the eighth day in a row. That's what I love about Boulder. Every time you think you're doing something unusual there's someone who's been doing the same thing for the last 40 years.

Pretty amazing.

The Art of Suffering

Check out Winston's great post.

Harry and His Truck

Combine a truck and a mud puddle and you get instant fun.

Posted via email from johnwinsor's posterous

Flipped is Out

I am pleased to announce that my new book, Flipped: How Bottom-Up Co-Creation is Replacing Top-Down Innovation is out. Well, it's not totally a new book. Doug Seibold, Eileen Johnson and the good folks at Agate Publishing suggested that we republish my 2004 book, Beyond the Brand. Both of us felt that the book needed to be updated and that the original title didn't really capture what the book was about. We decided to go back to the name I had initially proposed to my first publisher, Flipped. To update the book, I put the full manuscript up on a wiki and invited people to participate. 79 people kindly offered to contribute to the updating the book. (I'll do another blog post with a list of these wonderful folks tomorrow.)

So much has gone on in world of co-creation in the last six years. I've been surprised and humbled that the things I wrote about still ring true.

Power to the People

People today expect the ability to co-create and lead innovation, forcing companies to devise creative solutions to be competitive in this new bottom-up age. Such an environment generates opportunities for companies who are creative and intimately listen to the cultures they are involved with; joining forces with other creatives including artists, journalists, filmmakers and musicians to create new ways of expression and creation. The resulting products that demonstrate a real understanding of their customers in the context of their lives will be successful. Instead of thinking globally and acting locally, the successful philosophy will be to think locally and act globally.

In the vast middle of the market, people will continue to treat brands as resources. These people do not have the time or the energy to be proactive in developing their own, relevant products. Instead, they will allow their peers to do most of the heavy lifting in creating new cultural materials – and then adopt those products as their own. Brands that connect with people’s imaginations, that inspire, provoke and stimulate, helping them interpret the world that surrounds them, will be successful. Brands that are able to make the transition to provide honest, original, cultural materials, offering space for co-creation will win. Proactive people will carefully weed out and broadcast those products, and companies, that they do not trust. Many companies have already discovered that being good corporate citizens can be good for their brands. In this new era, it’s the creative citizens of a community – the people and the brands – that will help companies survive by co-creating from the bottom-up.

Enjoy the book and be sure to give me a shout if you have any comments or thoughts.

The Need For Speed

Put an 8 year old boy in front of a speed gun and he'll want to know how fast he can run.

Posted via email from johnwinsor's posterous

It's Only the Beginning

The business of marketing is in the midst of a massive cultural shift. While buzzwords like co-creation, mass-collaboration and crowdsourcing are all the rage, there’s actually a much bigger and deeper change going on with the way work gets done. Three disruptive forces: the expectation of transparency, the further digitization of the workforce and the rise of the curator class, all coupled with the current macro-economic conditions, have changed the world of marketing forever. Like it or not, from professional creatives to consumers, people want to be involved with your brand.

The exciting thing is you can take advantage of the new tools being developed in this new age. Just look at the exposure Doritos received from its crowdsourcing efforts. Two weeks after the Super Bowl the four Doritos spots owned the post game marketing conversation. Together they had nearly 18 million views, or 40% of all Super Bowl ads online.

The tide is shifting quickly. How can you thrive in this new paradigm? Brave brands, including Doritos, have begun to knock down their marketing walls and explore the world of abundance. They are discovering that there are many ways to do it:

1. Starbucks, Dell and Best Buy have all set up idea marketplaces that allow customers to share their product innovation and marketing ideas.  This is a great way to open the flood gates to let people play with your brand. Get ready. They’ll love it.

2. Cisco has involved customers to produce its latest Flip video commercials. Consumer generated videos worked well for Flip because of what it is, but it can work for anyone. Your customers have the tools. Let them tell the story.

3. LG used Crowdspring to engage a large community of consumers and designers to design a new cell phone. What a great way to get new ideas in the product design process.

4. And, Unilever dropped its agency Lowe and used Ideabounty.com to crowdsource its TV spots for Peperami. They wanted more ideas and more value.  In fact, they loved what they got so much that they awarded an additional prize-winner.

Every day there are new tools that emerge that allow you to collaborate with people on current social media networks, from Facebook to Twitter, or their own community. The key is to use the right tool to solve the right problem.

It’s only the beginning.

So, how do you use the mass collaboration and crowdsourcing tools available to build more momentum for your brand? How do you manage the unruly and talent rich crowd, while maintaining the speed, flexibility and cost savings of the new digital ecosystem? Here’s what we’ve been learning about doing marketing in this new world:

1. Focus on connecting with your consumers - While pundits love to point out the failures, there are already many successes. Mystarbuck’s ideas is a good case in point. What started out as a small way to capture product ideas from customer’s has become a major driving force for Starbucks’ innovation. Two years into the project the brand has received more than 80,000 suggestions, hired a staff to deal with such an outpouring of involvement and turned 50 of the suggestions into innovative products that now sit on the shelves of stores. But, most of all Starbucks turned customers into passionate fans and got them involved in the brand. Follow Starbucks’ path. Get customers involved, listen to what they want and engage them in innovation. Start to experiment.

2. Develop strategies that can inspire great work from a crowd of creatives, strategists and consumers – You have to play an active role in working with any crowd. Writing a strategic brief for a crowd is much different than writing it for an internal team. You have to not only write a great brief, but also participate in an ongoing dialogue as the work moves along.

3. Focus on getting more people involved – Look for ways to broaden particpants, from customers to top creative and strategic talent. Use social media, from Twitter to Facebook, to create more momentum. But remember, it’s great to ask for participation but that goes two ways. Many people think of social media as a broadcast tool. It’s not. It’s the start of a conversation. We can all learn something from Barry Judge, the CMO of Best Buy. He’s out there blogging, tweeting and participating in a conversation. He solves problems and gets feedback from his followers.

4. Focus on ideas – Open Source marketing and crowdsourcing allows for an overwhelming number of ideas to be developed to solve your marketing or product design problem. To keep up with the volume, the very structure of marketing organizations must change. The mentality has to become more iterative.

There are lots of different ways to play with crowds. You can start by running a project on one of the public crowdsource platforms, such as Crowdspring or Innocentive. These platforms are great to get mass participation, but they rely on you to write the brief and creatively direct the crowd. Another way to go, especially with more strategically sensitive projects, is to use a smaller, private crowd, which is a strategy we’ve implemented with a lot of success.

While it’s anybody’s guess what the precise future of marketing will be, one thing is for sure: This new model of marketing can be seen as a threat to what you do or a powerful force to distance yourself from your competitors. This new model no longer tries to control the brand but recognizes that a brand exists in the collective consciousness of culture. In this new model, guidance and inspiration go much further than command and control.