Advocacy and Action

August 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

All companies have a wide range of customers: those who dislike their products and services, those who are indifferent, and those who are raving fans. Most companies try to understand their customers’ feedback so as to improve business; some do so in a very lightweight fashion and others do it rigorously, employing complex listening systems and teams to sift through data. While these efforts are laudable, most companies overlook an important area of action – igniting their advocates to graduate from zealous fans to “virtual” sales people.

It’s understandable why companies miss this so often – because it’s not trivial to operationalize and make work. Luckily, it’s become a lot easier than it ever was.  That’s the message I got in a fertile discussion I had with the CEO of Zuberance, Rob Fuggetta. A former partner at Regis-McKenna, Rob built Zuberance to help customers understand that they have a huge asset in their advocate base and that they have to make use of this asset in the here and now.

Put simply, they have to take the potential energy and make it kinetic.

As I understand it, Zuberance is a web-based software suite that allows a marketer to, very simply, identify, manage, and energize the company’s advocates.

Pretty exciting stuff for an old hand at customer-satisfaction work. What got me really pumped up is my own (bad) experiences with programs like NPS (Net Promoter Score). The idea is brilliant but the execution against the idea is usually poor because most companies don’t do a good job actually capitalizing on the data they collect and rarely create programs that impel their advocates to take the next step.

The MR and VOTC communities have a vested interest in seeing their work operationalized and institutionalized.

Companies like Zuberance can help them.

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Clarity of Purpose

July 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I was struck by a recent conversation I had with a senior executive at a large publicly-trade e-commerce company.  This person, a friend, is an intelligent and rightly-skeptical sort whose professional success came not from the endless recitation of homilies or from spouting corporate orthodoxies; instead, he is who he is- he works hard, is intelligent, and treats people well.  His differentiator is a rare commodity: clarity of purpose.

That was the thread that tied together all of his exuberant comments about his company- that the organization has clarity of purpose and at every moment, at every juncture knows what it wants to accomplish for its customers and itself.  Every artifact build inside the company has to accrue to one or more of the immutable principles that form the foundation of the company and to which the employees have an abiding commitment.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Career, Essay Tagged With: , , ,

Knowledge Transmission

June 24, 2011 By 1 Comment

The dearth of Knowledge Transmission is the single-biggest problem afflicting the corporate world. Today’s organization is no different than yesterday’s as regards its ability to flow towards a configuration that impedes the progress of great ideas. This is the result of the malaise induced by middle-management which intercedes in favor of stasis versus change, thereby destroying ideas as they germinate. The real decision makers at the top, while not blameless, never get exposure to the brilliance that emanates from line-employees.

The ethos of majorities is almost always conservative. Elements of skepticism and irreverence are ground to a pulp in the process of “fitting in.” Winning favor in the traditional way is tantamount to ceding control of one’s own thought-process.

Couple this with the notion that great ideas come from outliers and you have a deadly combination: the modern version of The Peter Principle. Those who do rise, do so by whittling away at their own individuality. Those who don’t are often brilliantly iconoclastic and in their mental laboratories, ideas are generated at a rapid pace. But whither these ideas? They are destroyed early. Idea infanticide is a common trait in today’s corporation.

This is not yet another plea for crowdsourcing ideas. Instead, it’s a philosophical warning to anyone who wants the corporation to evolve and to be more, well, humane.

Filed Under: Career, Essay Tagged With: , , , ,

The Tyranny of the Majority

June 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The British Pacifist Arthur Ponsonby one said that “in wars it is the minorities that are generally right.”  In fact, throughout history, humanists have held that societies can be judged by the way minorities are treated.  The obverse of this is the notion of “the tyranny of the majority” in which by dint of numbers, a particular point of view wins.  It’s the logic of the Gadarene Swine.

The Corporate world is beset and burdened with this logic; its employees are bludgeoned into pulp.  It’s the bed of Procrustus.

While phrases like “the IBM Way” might seem laughable now, I believe that any of us would be hard-pressed to find a company of any appreciable size that doesn’t have its only homogenizing logic and culture.  Outliers are cut down to size.  Artists are told to put away their brushes.  Books are burned.

The ironic part is that in the long run, the corporate commissars and their willing executioners are the ones who suffer far more than the artists, outliers, minorities, and authors.  Those people typically find a place of happiness- they leave and do their own things.  It’s the former group that stays and silently suffers, sometimes with knowledge of misery and sometimes without.

Next time you are assessing an employee and you find yourself thinking “he/she is not a good fit,” ask yourself if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

In the long run the “not a good fits,“ I surmise, who will provide more value and radiate more joy than the good fits.

Filed Under: Career

Why Gamification is the Holy Grail of Business Engagement

June 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In an earlier article for Research Access, I discussed the process by which business ideas go from conceptual to institutional. The evolution from small idea to virtual ubiquity has at times taken decades; today, it can take as little as three years.

One such idea, still nascent, is Gamification.

Put simply, Gamification is about the holy grail of all business-engagement. As businesses seek to engage and excite customers and consumers, they flock to “medium-based” solutions versus “design-based” solutions all too often. So instead of finding a powerful interaction-metaphor to enhance engagement, many businesses have simply “gone digital” with nary a thought of what is at the core of engagement.

Put even more simply, Gamification is about making a game of EVERY single interaction and process internal AND external to any business.

My challenge to readers of Research Access:

1. Identify 4 processes that are causing trouble in your businesses
2. Ascertain whether the trouble stems from “lack of engagement”
3. Gamify these 4 processes
4. Re-measure. Are they still trouble spots?

I’m betting big on Gamification. I hope you’ll join me.

Filed Under: Gamification, Innovation Tagged With: , , ,

Gamification is Game-Changing

May 16, 2011 By 3 Comments

Every large economic opportunity comes accompanied with a core theme, a mantra around which people can rally. These themes then generate a vernacular that takes on a life of its own and serves to fire the engines of inspiration in generations of entrepreneurs, investors, and practitioners. Recent examples of such themes are: Web 2.0, Cloud Computing, Location-Based Services, Marketing Services, Software-As-Service, E-commerce—and scores of others.

There’s a new theme that might eclipse all of these – Gameization (also called gamification). It has the potential to be a fundamental trend because it cuts across businesses and because it is as much about process as it is about products. Ignore it at your own peril.

So what is this concept and why is it so big?

To understand this, I urge you to think about Games at their most basic level—and then read on:
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Featured, Gamification, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

This is Just Offal!

February 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A recent article in Adage alerted me to an issue that I bet scares the sh*t out of folks who eat at Taco Bell. Beef that isn’t beef. “Beef” that is made of, amongst other things “extenders.” You are what you eat.

Who should we be mad at here?

Well first of all, YUM! Brands which ought to think about truth as well as the health of its customers instead of the scraps of savings they are making by cutting the fat out of their otherwise meaty spend.

Second, the American consumer who demands ridiculously cheap food (and gas and…) and is willing to sacrifice both his own health and and fair and decent workplace for others (ask a Taco Bell employee how much he earns and how much his feet and back hurt after a shift) for it. It’s simply not surprising that you’d get an “extender” if you demand a meal for 79 cents.

So what does all this mean for MR folks and Marketers?
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Advertising, Marketing Tagged With: ,

A Market Research Opportunity in India

January 11, 2011 By 1 Comment

I have an idea for a budding market research genius; you can make a mark and make a ton of money if you do this one right.

Use your predictive skills to see which large consumption trends in the US and in Western Europe will translate to the Indian market, given the specificities and vicissitudes of one of the last hyper-local, hyper-specific markets in the world. Couple this with trends that are sustainable and don’t come at huge environmental and social cost.

Sounds like a “duh” proposition doesn’t it? The fact is, however, that not all things work everywhere but some do. Finding those that do and putting your investment wood behind those arrows is the genius of great entrepreneurship. And every great entrepreneur is driven by some combination of guts and data. MR can play a great role in combining the two, and powering innovation in places like India.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Innovation, Market Research, Marketing, Planning Tagged With: , , ,

Market Researcher as Business Anthropologist

January 6, 2011 By 1 Comment

A good Market Researcher is a good Business Anthropologist.  Or at least that’s what the MR professional should strive to be.

And he should work in India for at least two years to get REAL training.

Nuance is as important as data.  The interstices are as important as the nodes.  Data without deep context is 50% helpful and 50% problematic.  When MR becomes an exercise not only in narrow problem-solving but in culture and context creating, then we’ll sit in our rightful seat at the C-table.  In fact, we’ll create new seats for ourselves.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Career, Market Research Tagged With: , , , , ,

I am WikiLeaks

December 1, 2010 By 3 Comments

In the powerful climax of the movie Spartacus, rebellious slaves are asked to identify their leader in exchange for leniency and instead of turning on him, they all declare themselves to be “Spartacus,” thereby showing solidarity and protecting him from death at the hands of his Roman overlords.

In today’s world of secrets and power-cabals, those of us in the field of Research (truth-telling) ought to show the same solidarity with WikiLeaks, no matter if we agree or disagree with found Julian Assange’s politics.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Market Research Tagged With: , , ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »