Consumer Centric

I love coming across someone writing about core issues in our field of marketing that you totally agree with, but seldom here discussed in the trenches with actual clients and campaigns.

For me, Alan Mitchell’s March 10th post for Marketing magazine on reinventing marketing is just that and much more.  You can learn a lot from considering the way Mitchell explains these six issues.

#1 – Personal information management.  People manage their own info today, so organizations need to understand how and why people want and use their info.  Different circumstances, jobs, and situations require different flow of info between people and companies.

#2 – Consumer-decision making.  It’s more critical than ever to understand how people make decisions.  When you do that, you put why we make the decisions we do in the proper context.

#3 – Brands as information services. One way Mitchell offers to reinvent branding.

#4 – Touchpoints. People choose the touchpoints that help them achieve their goals the most efficiently and effectively.  As Mitchell says so well, touchpoints are no longer a means to an end, they need to be selected based on the value they provide to the consumer.  He also notes that products, services, marketing… all touchpoints.

#5 – Marketing and market metrics. I’ve been saying this forever, but 99% of the industry still tracks things in this very one-sided way.  Advertisers measure how much they spend to reach a specific number of a group of people, and what business they pick up. The metrics capturing what happens in between, the consumer’s personal outcomes, are not included.  They have to be if you’re going to be able to address points 1 through 4 above.

#6 – Value propositions.  Mitchell’s summary is these 5 issues mean value needs to be defined from a people-centric perspective, not a company- or organization-centric point of view.

I not only whole-heartedly agree with Mitchell’s articulation of these issues, I think his explanations and examples make it easy to understand and, hopefully for brands, to apply.

In recent years working with brands who get this control shift, it has been my experience the best way to be prepared to address these “killer issues” (borrowing from Mitchell’s naming) is to more fully understand the way people make decisions.  When we’ve studied the stages of a decision-making process, the triggers that activate behavior or response, the outcomes sought, and the influences (or influencers or both) along the way, we’ve been able to help organizations understand where they can add the most value along that journey.

It boils down to being relevant and adding utility so people choose to interact with you.  Relevance.  Utility (or usefulness).  Interaction.

When you think that way, you add metrics to those you track for your marketing efforts.  What do you add?  The degree to which people, with whom you are trying to connect, reach the outcomes important to them along this journey.  When you understand the journey, you can see what people want to think, feel, or do in order to accomplish their goals.  More importantly, you know which outcomes make your products, services, or information relevant and useful.  Bingo.  Track these metrics in addition to how much you spend and how much you gain in business, then you’re tracking what matters in the system.  Then you can have authentic interaction with people — real relationships.

Alan – thanks for shedding more light and teaching me a thing or two with your packaging of these very real issues.  I’m sure Mitchell has a lot more worth reading at his website.

A recent discussion in a LinkedIn group led me to consider an interesting question, even if academic:  What’s more important, the answer to the question WHY or the question HOW?

I’m sure you’re thinking, like I was, it totally depends the intended application of the answer to those two questions.  Are we talking about doing something ourselves (why should I? vs. how do I?)?  Are we interested in understanding someone else’s behavior (why did you? vs. how did you?)?  Or, are we trying to teach someone else something (why do you want to? vs. how do you?)?

Just thinking about it top-of-mind it’s easy to see that both questions (why and how) can yield meaningful answers.

In my professional life we are always trying to understand human behavior in order to innovate marketing and/or product solutions with and for our clients.  To me, I’ve come to find that the answer to WHY has significantly more meaning when understood within the context of the HOW.  I’m specifically referring to the answers to these questions in this way:  WHY do you do something, want something, or believe something; and, HOW do you do, seek, or believe something.  Looked at in this manner, the answer to HOW you experience that journey (think of a purchase cycle, a career decision, choosing a doctor, etc.) is most important because it shows you at what points and in what ways you have a chance to play a meaningful role.

As a company or a brand, you are in a much stronger position to create relevance, interaction, and utility in the lives of your audience (consumers, customers, prospects, etc.) if you understand HOW their journey is experienced; then the answer to the WHY has some meaningful context. It is in the context where powerful innovations come in terms of how to connect with people through your marketing, products, and/or services.

Consider this example.  Smoking cessation has been studied for decades. Clinically, doctors know why people continue to smoke because of the addictive power of nicotine, etc. Socially and functionally and emotionally, however, there are many more reasons why in terms of the benefits a smoker derives from the behavior. At the same time, many organizations have studies why people quit smoking — health concerns, family pressure, etc.

As a result, smoking cessation marketing for years focused on scaring people about the health concerns. Everyone today knows that, so the most recent trend for several years has been to promote the use of tips and tricks (mostly pharmaceutical) such as the patch or nicotine gum, etc. It works for many, but far more try to quit and then end up returning to smoking.

We focused our study for the American Legacy Foundation on HOW people successfully quit so we could understand WHY they do what they do in context. The result was a clear pathway toward resolve that must be followed for a successful quit attempt: desire to quit smoking, eager for life without cigarettes, acceptance for changes I must make, ready to make those changes, and confidence you will succeed. If a smoker skips this path to resolve, it’s highly likely they will not succeed in a quit attempt.

So, what did it mean to marketing and product innovation? The American Legacy Foundation developed the Re-Learn campaign as part of their EX initiative. Instead of telling people to quit, they created TV ads, OOH executions, an online community, and other experiences that help smokers first identify why you smoke and then determine how to re-learn life without cigarettes. If you go to BecomeAnEx.org you’ll find a community of people sharing triggers for smoking and methods for replacing those triggers with healthier solutions. Once you’ve built resolve in this manner you’re asked to set a quit date.

When you understand HOW a decision is made, the WHY has the needed context to help you know how to connect. When you do this, you have a real chance to create relevance, interact, and add utility in people’s lives that results in a meaningful relationship with you (brand, product, company, cause, etc.).

I recently listened to a webcast by Tony Ulwick, CEO, Strategyn about his company’s approach to Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI). The focus was innovation strategies to reach growth objectives by developing product solutions based on a clear understanding of the “jobs” people are looking to solve in their life.

Couldn’t agree more with the basic premise that Ulwick is promoting:  people are buying products to get jobs done; therefore, companies need to understand these “jobs” better in order to create successful solutions.  He defined a job as a task, goal, or objective a person is trying to accomplish or a problem they are trying to resolve.

“Customers migrate to products that get the job done best,” Ulwick explained.

This is music to my ears.  And Strategyn appears to have perfected the process of identifying and prioritizing consumer jobs and the desired outcomes that real people are seeking.  They use these insights to identify areas of opportunity and, ultimately, help their clients implement a growth strategy based on product innovation in those areas.

This simple insight (focusing on the jobs that real people are looking to solve) has as much application to marketing innovation as it does to products and services.  In the end, it is all about a company being relevant by providing genuine utility for someone.

The path I’ve been on for a few years now has followed a similar logic train as Ulwick…

People are not only buying products to get jobs done, they are consuming media and interacting with various influencers (people, places, and things) to get jobs done in their lives.  Within the context of marketing communications, let’s refer to these media and influencers more broadly as “channels”.  Like products they sell, these channels represent various opportunities, levers, or tactics that marketers can tap into in order to be relevant to real people.

In this way, the line between a product or service and a channel is becomingly increasingly hard to draw.  Consider the obvious examples of Nike Plus and apples iPhone.  Is access to tools and a community to help you track your running a product, service, or marketing channel?  Is an iPhone app a marketing channel or a product?  Both.

It follows, then, that understanding the jobs people are looking to solve in their lives can equally influence new products or new marketing channels you create.  And we can best understand these jobs by mapping the dynamics of the “system” in which these jobs operate–in this context a system is the interaction between people, influencers, products/services, and companies.

For example, think about the last time you went out to eat and you chose an Applebee’s or Olive Garden or Chili’s, some casual dining restaurant.  The system in this case includes you, the people you went out to eat with (we rarely go alone), the things that influenced your decision where to go, the food you ate, and the experience you had.  The jobs you were looking to solve range from the functional (hunger) to the emotional (social interaction), and could include any number of different things.

Ulwick’s approach, if you were one of those restaurants looking to improve your product, would be to understand what jobs you were looking to resolve through that visit.  And he’d likely probe multiple scenarios to get the full range of eating out jobs.  From that, you can see how it would be easy to define specific outcomes you (the one eating at the restaurant) are looking for when you go to a restaurant.  We could then measure how important each outcome is to you and find out how satisfied you are with the various options available to you to deliver that outcome.  This is awesome and makes total sense.

I would go a step further.  What if we were to study the jobs that you were looking to resolve at different steps of the process you went through in deciding where to go eat?  We’d likely learn that you had a set of restaurants you like, you quickly determined which met your key needs (the jobs referenced in the earlier graph), then you took your choice to the group of friends you were going out to eat with, and then you ended up going to the place that some other guy preferred.  Your experience at the restaurant would then help you decide where you’d go next time.

Mapping the entire decision cycle in this way gives us more jobs to define, and specific jobs we can assign not to the product but to the channels that help you arrive at your decision.  The simple act of thinking what restaurants you might be interested in at a particular time and place is the first job you’re looking to resolve.  In selecting the restaurant for the group you’re dealing with a slightly different job:  successful negotiation, and success can be defined in many ways.

Knowing this, we can determine which channels are most effective at shaping your short list versus facilitating negotiation. Perhaps the actual experience and/or word-of-mouth recommendations are the best at the short list, while coupons, limited-time offers, or promotional events are the most effective at helping you win in negotiation (get to go to the restaurant you like by giving people a reason to like it, too).

Armed with this information, a marketer can see where certain decision-making process gaps are and find new and better ways to solve real jobs that real people face.  These solutions, then, are as likely to be marketing channel innovation as they are new product innovation.

Kudos to Strategyn for the work they’re doing in this area.  I think the big opportunity that is even more real in the digital world today is to apply this thinking to both marketing and product innovation.

Ulwick referenced a quote by Christensen in his book Innovative Solution:  ”The job, not the customer, is the fundamental unit of analysis for a marketer who hopes to develop products that customers will buy.”

I would make a slight modification… the job is the fundamental unit of analysis for a marketer who hopes to be relevant and add utility in people’s lives through the products and experiences they create.

A little long… but, hopefully, you get the point.

So this afternoon I just got a direct message on Twitter from someone I recently followed after being intrigued by some of his tweets.  Literally came about 10 minutes ago.

Since this is not the first message like this I’ve received, I guess the timing hit me to capture my reaction and share it.  I’m curious if I’m missing something or if others feel the same way as me.  And it made me realize an important separation between social networking tools that at least I employ in my use.

So, here’s the deal.  @Stefan_Berg I don’t know you.  In fact, I don’t know anything about you other than having reviewed your recent tweets.  I’m interested in what you have to say from what I saw, so I decided to follow you.  Over time, if you post way too much or content that offends, I’ll probably stop following you.  If you post great stuff, I’ll probably look more into whether you have a blog and what else I can learn about you.

But, @Stefan_Berg, I will not likely ever connect with you on Facebook without some direct, human, and, perhaps, face-to-face interaction.  If my interaction with you is only work related, I’ll not likely ever connect with you on Facebook.  If we do business together, or if you are connected in circles important toward my expanding my company (PURSUIT) then I’ll probably find you on LinkedIn and connect there.

My question:  why would I want to connect with you on Facebook based only upon my decision to follow you on Twitter?

Two words with different meaning:  connect suggests a binding of sorts, follow is more of look and see, listen and learn or watch.  I bind with friends and family.  I look at, watch, listen to, and learn from interesting people, sometimes friends and family, often strangers and human beings just living their lives.

I think it’s a real mistake to assume that Twitter is a way into someone’s Facebook account. Certainly, this vehicle is a way to share ideas and get attention from others.  But they’ll not become a fan or friend off the same criteria used to decide to follow you.

If others have a strong opinion how/why you disagree, I’d love to hear and learn.

To me, authenticity matters in real and in virtual social circles.  And that means there are boundaries and uses that vary, accordingly.  Twitter = listen and learn and find and share and follow.  Facebook = connect and stay in touch and share and keep track and reach out.  LinkedIn = network and promote and search and learn.  

Each social network platform I use is unique and plays a different role in the journey of my life.  I guess that’s why, @Stefan_Berg, your invitation seems so “not authentic” and/or presumptive.  You may be a very nice guy, but why would I want to connect with you?  Right now, I’m just interested in listening to what you have to say and seeing if you are interested in anything I have to say.

At the wrap of a busy week of travel, I worked my way onto the tiny plane to catch the final leg in my flight home to Austin.  I was surprised to find out I had been upgraded to first class–surprised not because of the upgrade as much as the idea that this sardine-can of a plane actually had a first class section!  

Anyhow, as I came to my seat I saw a woman in military fatigues in the seat next to me… I had no idea the impression the story I was about to hear would have on me.  I typically plug in my headphones and get work done on planes, but as Dawn told me her story I was taught a lesson in honor, commitment, and service in the face of adversity.  And I was taught it by a simple, honest, and humble woman from southwest Minnesota.

Turns out Dawn was on her way to Iraq via Fort Hood.  She is accompanied by her 21-year-old daughter and her 19-year-old son, each of them in the Army National Guard and headed to a 1-year deployment to Iraq (including 3 months of training they just wrapped up in Texas).

“I’m the luckiest person in the world,” Dawn told me. “I have three in my family serving our country.  I consider it an honor for me and for my family.”

Dawn’s unit will be stationed at the Iraqi border with Kuwait.  She and her daughter are in logistics and communications, mostly driving trucks she explained.  Her son is a gunner.

There’s a lot more to Dawn’s story.  She leaves at home her 15-year-old daughter and her husband.  The family is expected to be reunited in April on 2010.  Very fitting for Dawn, they leave for Iraq from Fort Hood around the 4th of July.

“The 4th of July is my favorite holiday,” Dawn explained. “I love the military and doing something for my country.”

It is not all rosy for Dawn, however.  In fact, she was obviously torn up inside with the pain of leaving her daughter and husband at home.  When she joined the National Guard in 2006, a unit from their area had recently been deployed, so she never expected to be deployed, at least not before her youngest was out of high school and on her own.

Dawn was fulfilling the commitment she’d made, honoring the choice she’d made three years ago to serve her country, and doing it in the face of leaving her family behind.  I couldn’t help thinking if more people put commitment before self in many aspects of life our society, our country, our families would be all the better.

To soothe her distraught 15-year-old (I overheard her talk to her on the phone right before takeoff and immediately after landing in Austin), Dawn explained they made a commitment to each other that helped give perspective.

“We told each other that every night when we look up into the sky, even though we’re so far apart, when we look up we will be looking at the same stars,” Dawn said.  The idea comforted both her and her daughter.  That, plus reflecting on the fact that our experiences in life make us stronger are what help Dawn have perspective.

“I think all things happen for a reason,” Dawn said. “If I can look at it that way it’s easier. But it’s still hard. But we’ll have email, letters, and Skype. I just don’t know how reliable it will be over there.”

Dawn’s humble, candid, and straightforward manner of facing life head on touched me.  And, apparently, not just me.  The Delta flight attendant, seeing her coming down the jetway in her fatigues pulled her aside and brought her to the first class seat where I had found her on the flight–a respectable move by Delta.

To Dawn, the act was kind, but not necessary.

“I don’t need to be honored,” Dawn said. “I feel honored to serve my country.”

You know what-she meant it.  I’ve heard, and worked with, many politicians who say the same thing.  But, Dawn… well, I believe she meant something altogether different, something very much from the heart.

Thank you, Dawn, and thousands more like you who serve daily with honor and commitment.  We can all learn a bit of how to face adversity and fulfill our commitments even when it’s not easy.

Dawn’s journey is one of genuine, simple endurance and service. Thank you for sharing!

UPDATE:  Had some questions, so I’ll add more of the story about Dawn.  

Dawn was in the Navy for 8 years earlier in her life.  After she started having children, she got out of the military.  In 2006, she was with her son meeting with the recruiter for the National Guard.  She decided to ask him, “you wouldn’t take an old lady like me would you?”  The recruiter knew she had been in the service and confirmed that, yes, in fact, they would be happy to take her as well.

So she joined at the same time as her son.  I’m not certain when her daughter joined–we didn’t cover that part.

RSS feeds, Twitter, email alerts, IM, Skype, Facebook, LinkedIn, Naymz, Plaxo, Mint, apps, phone, satellite radio, podcasts, audiobooks, Google, Google Analytics, WordPress, etc., etc. ….

Too many distractions… or tools to help focus?  Both.

I’m more certain it’s both after taking focused energy to read Sam Anderson’s well thought out piece in the New York Magazine about today’s distraction-filled digital world.  The article came out a few weeks ago, but I just happened upon it today.  

Anderson’s main point seems to be technology today can deliver extremes in both distraction and focus.  Both can be bad.  Both can be good.  But, balanced and channeled, distraction feeds focus, while focus enables distraction.  Together they can lead to a sharp and creative mind.

The truly wise mind will harness, rather than abandon, the power of distraction. 

It’s possible that we’re all evolving toward a new techno-cognitive nomadism, a rapidly shifting environment in which restlessness will be an advantage again. 

My disappearing act from keeping up with the “distractions” of Twitter and the blogosphere over the past few weeks was both due to extreme distractions that are a reality in life (sickness, new biz launch, huge project deliveries, end of school year with four kids and a zillion end of year concert thingys, first season with our pool and joy of busted lines, etc., etc.) combined with periods of paralyzing focus (working through the to-do list to the point that there’s no time to do anything!).  

So what is better?  When life hits and you do your best to push through it all–build better focused attention to get things done OR follow distractions as they come up?

Obviously, both have their benefits and drawbacks.  The solution seems to be building enough mental cues to sharpen focus enough to allow distractions to take your thoughts and abilities to a totally different level, and to capture new meaning.

Again, back to Anderson:

I keep returning to the parable of Einstein and Lennon—the great historical geniuses hypothetically ruined by modern distraction. What made both men’s achievements so groundbreaking, though, was that they did something modern technology is getting increasingly better at allowing us to do: They very powerfully linked and synthesized things that had previously been unlinked—Newtonian gravity and particle physics, rock and blues and folk and doo-wop and bubblegum pop and psychedelia. If Einstein and Lennon were growing up today, their natural genius might be so pumped up on the possibilities of the new technology they’d be doing even more dazzling things. Surely Lennon would find a way to manipulate his BlackBerry to his own ends, just like he did with all the new technology of the sixties—he’d harvest spam and text messages and web snippets and build them into a new kind of absurd poetry.

I love this.  It tells us we need to be comfortable in chaos, thrive in diversity, and work our way through adversity.  It means we have to train our mind to be able to focus, but with the goal of being able to play “choose your own adventure” with the distractions that come along the journey.  

Ben Malbon (@malbonnington) and Heidi Hackemer (@uberblond) share their own dilemma with distraction in reading Anderson’s article in their recent BBH Labs Post entitled Getting comfortable with chaos.  The behavior both expressed, however, resulted in linking together multiple ideas around the topics raised by Anderson–a product of digging down different trains of thought, but always returning to the central idea.

There’s another dimension to this I found interesting from another music example that Malbon found in David Allen’s article on the same topic recently in Wired.  Allen talks of Evan Taubenfield, a guitarist, song-writer and leader of a band.

He was telling me how he’s learned to produce an album most effectively. Some of the best ideas for his songs happen while he and his band are working on another one. Now he has a whiteboard in the studio. They’ll be in the middle of one thing, suddenly get inspired about something else, and stop to capture it. Evan said it’s chaotic, but once the band got used to it and trusted the process, they were way more productive and more creative than ever. Before he realised the power of capturing thoughts as they occur, and building in just the kind of structures that he needed to foster and support the process, he experienced lots of wasted and frustrated energy, with much less output. Trying to exert the “discipline” of staying focused on one song at a time stifled his creativity. The coolest thing about the new process, he said, was that making music was fun again.

Allen argues Taubenfeld’s experience shows the benefit of capturing meaning in the moment of distraction for later connection and use to create something new.

The trick may be to harness what happens when you’re there. One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in my quasi-scientific approach to sustained laziness is the value of storing thoughts in appropriate places, as soon as I have them. That means parking them where I will later evaluate their merit (or lack thereof) and dispose of them accordingly. Having a thought once is what the mind is for; having the same thought twice, in the same way, for the same reason, is a waste of time and energy. I also found out that having a place for good ideas produced more of them, and more often.  The new skill the next generation may bring forward is how to deal with meaning, tactically. Not “meaning” in the philosophical or spiritual sense, but rather in the harvesting of it in our ordinary lives, day to day. 

If we focus too much, we can push out the ability to capture meaning from random distractions.  If we allow distractions to meander too far we miss the original destination entirely.

Instead, we need to define priorities for what is most important, build in cues to help us see where we’re headed, and enjoy finding meaning in the moments of distraction that come along the way.

This balance of focused distraction yields productive creativity.  

The next question I have is how do we apply this reality of life to the way we engage with people through brands, products, and marketing?

UPDATE:  A few other interesting commentary and ideas on this topic in NY Times and Louis Gray (back in 8/08 but good ideas) and Dan York’s Disruptive Conversations blog and Patricia-Anne Rutledge’s The Web-Savvy Writer, among others.  Just some good reading and ideas I’ve found recently.

I’m speaking in LA and NYC this week on similar topics at two totally different events:  Persuasive Technology 2009 and the ARF’s Advertising Effectiveness Council. In both cases, we’re trying to challenge the push toward a single currency metric for ad effectiveness to be about more than reach, frequency, and, now, engagement. 

Let’s get to value. Let’s get to relevance in a person’s life. Let’s get to what helps marketers plan. 

Rewind to just a few weeks ago… I was in DC at the CTAM Research Conference, a group gathering for the cable TV industry vying for ways to prove their value as a medium. Sure, great ideas were shared. But the industry problem was blasted on a megaphone during a panel when an established player in the business made this comment:

“We need to get to a single currency, and try to get to value.”

She literally paused and then offered the second statement of “try” to get to value.  She was explaining the real problem, accepted by almost everyone in the room, is to get a metric that works across all mediums to capture the numbers of people exposed and amount of time they spend.  

The former EVP of planning at media agency Carat went so far as to explain that “a number is a universal truth.” Her position epitomized the attitude of networks and those on their side of the business:  It’s all about quantification of consumption, then I have something I can sell to you for more or less money based on that “number”.

I thought this can’t be the prevailing attitude of the innovators in the category.  But, to my surprise, an even more archaic sentiment was offered the next day by the head of analytics/research at ESPN:

“We need solid measures of reach and solid measures of time, that’s essentially it.”

You’ve got to be kidding. But he certainly was not.

Luckily, there was someone in the room who cares about more than monetizing the latest cable TV blockbuster show. It was so refreshing to hear Tony Ambroza, head of men’s marketing for Under Armour, respond to the researchers and cable execs in the room:

“If you can deliver information around the consumer and what your content means to them, that’s what we’re interested in knowing.  You all are looking at data and research to help sell your content and programs.  I’m interested in something different.”

Sure… he’s looking to be relevant. He’s looking for value. He can’t afford to “try” to look for value in deciding what strategies and tactics to implement for his marketing activities.  

We still have a currency calculated off anything but value because the money in advertising is controlled by the content providers. Where else do you see a product increasingly less valuable become astronomically more expensive? Think TV :30s spots.

The argument made at CTAM was that it is too complex to go beyond reach, frequency, time spent, and a little into engagement.  But the resources and money they are putting into these observational, data fusion, and usage patterns research suggests they know how to deal with complex issues. 

The real issue is too much money is riding on the big, old-school mediums for mass consumption. The mediums have real value. But the way they are measured and sold today has very little to do with marketing value to the advertiser. They have even less to do with relevance to the average person (you and me) watching.

What if we sought to understand how a person goes about making a purchase decision–buying a car, eating out, shopping for school supplies, etc.? What if we looked for what that person wants or needs along that journey? What if we even knew where they might look for, find, or get that need met? What if it was all about adding value to that person’s life?

This approach puts the person first. In this way, we can measure the value of information, content, and experiences with/from/through a channel (think TV, radio, online, game, FSI, word of mouth, etc.) in the context of real value.

Marketers, armed with this insight, will be in a much better position to be relevant when making channel decisions. Networks (and other content providers / channel asset owners) will be in a much better position to differentiate their value to marketers.

Most important… you and me will be treated as people and not consumers. The information we get through the channels we use will be increasingly on our terms, and we won’t quickly look for the skip button. 

But, I guess that’s still far off when it comes to network and cable TV players and the media agencies they negotiate with for rates.  I mean, this same former EVP from Carat made this last most insightful comment of the conference:

“Online video is just TV on a box, it’s nothing different.  What I love about it is there is only one commercial at the beginning, it makes it easier to watch.”

The irony of it all!