John Winsor

Do Influentials Really Influence Anybody?

Francois posts about a couple of new research reports that point to the fact that influenctials might not have as much influence as we believe.

My hunch is that the world of influencing is much more complicated than we think it is. Case in point. I've been watching the company Lululemon and the rise of yoga clothing with interest as an emerging trend. Yet, I thought they only made women's clothing. Recently, two friends, both designers, showed up with very interesting, but different, jackets. I asked both where they had gotten their jackets. They both had discovered Lululemon from their wives and really liked the men's clothing and the brands story. Well, I had to check it out. And, indeed, they were right.

No matter how much advertising Lululemon did I would have never walked in the store without being inspired by my friends.

Influence does work.

Shifting the Paradigm of the Agency Pitch

In an interesting twist, Agency.com has used the power of social media via YouTube to pitch for Subway. The agency made a video focused on creating the pitch has received 20,000 views in 4 days.

While there's a healthy dialogue going on at Experience Curve whether or not using open source marketing platforms, such as YouTube, is appropriate for a pitch, you've got to hand it to Agency.com for not only talking the talk but walking the walk when it comes to marketing in the age of social media.

Is it a good or bad thing to be so open for a pitch? My sense is that it's, in a world where information flows freely, it is the wave of the future. The only way to judge the video is whether or not Agency.com wins the business. If nothing else this has been a hell of a PR coup for Agency.com.

What do you think?

Tools to Innovate by Immersing Yourself with Your Customers #1

To go along with Michael Perman's interview, I thought I'd share a few tools to help you immerse yourself with your customers. Here is the first segment:

1. Know the Context of the Situation – So many times when we explore our customers’ opinions – usually through the use of focus groups – we have a difficult time understanding the context of their lives. It is important to immerse yourself in the lives of your customers if you truly want to understand them. Do they watch “Survivor,” take public transportation, go to the ballet? You should, as well.

2. Be a Better Listener – Good listening is hard. It’s too easy to have a conversation and listen only for the proper time to add your two cents’ worth. Slow down and really concentrate on what others say. They might be good co-creative participants. Also, remember that listening needs to be practiced with all of your senses; 70 percent of all communication is non-verbal. Such listening will give you more confidence to use your intuition when thinking about innovation.

3. Rely on Experience – The only way to become good at immersing yourself in the lives of your customers is to do it. You’ve got to take that first step. Ask the first dumb question. The more experience you have doing so, the easier immersion becomes.

4. Get Out Into the Culture – The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art recently installed a Levi’s research report into its permanent collection. Michael frequently takes people from Levi’s over to the museum to check it out. In the process, people get exposed to all kinds of culture. How can expose your team to other cultures that might have a profound influence on their work?

Perman Interview, Continued

Here's the second part of my Spark interview with Michael Perman of Levi's:

One to One

Today, we get out and try to understand the world by getting down to the individual level. In the past we looked at markets really broadly. Now there are a lot more questions being asked about real people. We may have an idea for a product or marketing initiative and we want to appeal to men, but there are a hundred million of them. Instead of trying to understand them all, what we try to do is contextualize their lives to find inspiration.

It’s important to boil inspiration down to a practical, individual level. It’s interesting; I hear more people talking in those terms around the company now – designers, merchandisers and marketing people. They are starting to talk more about the importance of leveraging an inspiration and staying as focused as possible.

Many companies do this by creating theoretical or fake personas of their typical customer. But it’s much more important to get out, immerse yourself in your customers’ lives and understand the real personas of your customers.

Using Technology

Today it’s easier to get people engaged with the immersion process through technology. It doesn’t matter how many employees you have around the world. A lot more people can now get involved with the inspiration. Technology is contributing to that.

Ride Along

In my earlier life, working for a food company, I’d immerse myself by riding in the distributor’s truck. I don’t think people ride the trucks as much any more. Most companies have downsized so much that people don’t ever get out of their offices. Riding in the truck is a bit of a metaphor, but there’s a kind of literal importance to it in that the towns you go to and the people you meet understand the reality behind the scenes. You have to have your own taste of this reality.

You can’t replicate it. I rode in the truck with what they call candy/tobacco jobbers. These guys sell cigarettes, candy and beef jerky and they go to all of the little stores everywhere and deliver their goods. When you’re immersing yourself, at this level, you see a different reality. You never forget the way the warehouse smells. It’s a combination of tobacco, chocolate and smoked meat in one warehouse, a very distinctive fragrance that’s really kind of pleasant. It’s the scent of reality.

I was recently at an innovation conference in New York and one of the speakers said something that stayed with me. He thought it was very interesting that the people in hotels who are supposed to have the greatest amount of contact with customers are more likely to be found in the back office than in a place to connect with customers.

If you think ‘Who’s the least customer-facing person in the hotel,’ it’s the front desk supervisor, who tends to be in the back of the room. There’s something very ironic about that. Most companies suffer from the same problem. How many managers get out there and spend time with their customers? They’d be better off if they got out and rode in a truck every once in a while.

No More Focus Groups

Lots of companies rely too heavily on focus groups. You’ve got to break down the two-way mirror, break the fourth wall. There are a lot of tools and techniques for making it happen, but there’s a real art to it also. I always look forward to getting out in the field to be able to do that sort of thing, and I’m frustrated if I find myself in a position where we’re still conducting interviews and not having discussions.

I’ve been at Levi’s for four years and I still need to get out more. I really want to get to one of our factories and make my own pair of jeans. And there’s a cotton farmer out there somewhere who makes the cotton that we use to make our jeans – I want to meet him.

In Context Conversations

I've really been enjoying Grant McCracken's posts on Ethnography and Anthropology as of late. Grant's a master. Because of the work we do at Radar I get asked to explain how ethnography and anthropology work, when to use them and how to use them.

At the core of both ethnography and anthropology is the in context conversation. Michael Perman, of Levi's, really did a wonderful job describing such conversations with customers in the interview I did with him in Spark. Here's part one of the interview:

Michael Perman – Immerse Yourself

So, the real question is, how does getting into the lives of customers help us be more innovative at any level? I think at the heart of our design principles at Levi’s are values that emerge from cultural and consumer-driven inspiration. It’s a pathway that’s been baked into the culture of the company. Finding deep cultural inspirations by really getting to know people extensively, as people, enables you to understand the values that drive their behavior, which will lead to design principles. From those design principles emerge great products and great marketing ideas.

For instance, our work in 2003 identified four major sea changes. One is called ‘The appearance of readiness,’ the second is called ‘Attitude trumps age,’ the third is called ‘Consumer power play,’ and finally, ‘General ADD.’ The first one, the appearance of readiness, was about people’s desire to put on personas that make them feel like they’re ready for a certain activity. They wanted to feel like they were ready to embrace the world around them, including the problems, opportunities, frustrations and transformations relevant to them.

At the time we were exploring these issues, the United States entered the war in Iraq. A lot of disengagement by American consumers seemed to be brewing. There was also a lot of distrust of society – you know, you can’t trust priests, you can’t trust Martha Stewart, you can’t trust corporations and government. There was an awareness that you’re on your own and you need to take care of yourself.

We discovered people thinking that they’d feel better if they put on some sort of a persona to help get them through. An example of this includes the Hummer and the proliferation of SUVs. Do you know how many people who drive SUVs actually use them for the intended purpose? Like many other products in society, SUVs are over-engineered because they can be. This inspiration is what led us to developing many products in the work wear category. When I talk about work wear, I’m not talking about professional grade work wear.

It’s not designed for welders or gardeners. Instead, work wear includes cargo and carpenter pants with hidden pockets. These pants include all sorts of design features that give you that kind of ‘ready for anything’ look. Surprisingly, even in our women’s apparel line we developed products that were service oriented, inspired by the functionality of Federal Express and UPS drivers and policewomen.

The key was to create apparel that lets the customer give the impression that they are providing some sort of service to the world. Another thing we found in our exploration in 2003 was the emergence of active wear inspired by yoga. Everyone may not necessarily be doing yoga, but they want to look ready for it, or at least just look ready.

Looking for Control

In these uncertain times, people want to be more in control and more in charge of the world around them. To gain this control, there is a shift from consumption to creation. Certainly, this is clearly reflected in the number of television shows like “Extreme Makeover” and “Pimp My Ride.” These shows are all about making transformations in your life. What I find interesting is that these shows are about the viewers and not about a star. It’s not about something you buy ready made; it’s about things that you have a part in creating and the idea that everyone can be a creator.

These shows reflect Richard Florida’s point of view in his book, The Rise of the Creative Class; that a lot of people want to have a sense of creation rather than a sense of buying more packaged stuff. A lot of the insights we derive from our explorations include people saying, “I go to a department store and I see an enormous display of shirts that all look the same. I’m just overwhelmed and uninspired by that.” That has led us to produce a lot of jeans for women with some real personal touches, including embroidery, little fabric inlays and things that have a more handcrafted feel to them.

Transparency and Authenticity

We also find there’s an increased desire from consumers for more corporate transparency and more authenticity. That’s good for Levi’s. But that brings up the point that it’s a lot easier to be able to ride a cultural shift than it is to fight against it. By immersing ourselves and understanding this cultural shift we could really leverage Levi’s authenticity. This was reflected in our products and advertising as well, focusing on individuals who have humble but interesting lives – they are not movie stars or models.

These people are all about being themselves and there’s something very authentic and personal about that. It’s all about personal expression, being yourself, your ultimate comfort – and for Levi’s – we have a jean that works for you.

Trend Watching

If you haven't had a chance to check out Google Trends, it's worth playing around with the service. Once Google adds a few more features to the Trends service, it will be a powerful market research tool.

Let's Discuss CGM Research

Laurent at Customer Listening is hosting an interesting discussion around Consumer Genererated Media and it's value as a research tool. Join in.

The Search for Meaning, Step 5 - Develop Narrative Thinking

In this disruptive age, the power of stories is becoming recognized as an important tool. It’s a move from cold hard facts to warm and fluid narratives. People crave a human connection with the companies whose products they buy. A cornerstone of good branding is good storytelling – but it’s a two-way street. Companies must learn to go beyond telling their own stories to listening to and understanding their customer’s stories.

By being more human and relying on storytelling and narrative strategic thinking, companies have the opportunity to be more relevant to other members of their community. Marketing strategy must be framed as a fluid, organic narrative instead of a static, immovable framework. It’s the tree versus the pyramid. Telling and listening to human stories not only provides a context to people’s lives, but also engages the imagination and interjects magic.

                                              

Founders of exceptional companies are seldom focused on their “brand” when they start their business. Instead, they focus on stories that eventually change the world, by using bottom-up strategy to see beyond the horizon.

The reality is that in the start-up phase you inherently rely on your customers, suppliers, and employees to help develop your strategy. Established companies often forget this, and try to distance themselves from their turbulent, risky beginnings. But companies would do well to rediscover their roots and revisit their own creative history.

The Search for Meaning, Step 4 - Always Ask Why

I was talking to a client recently about his company’s access to customer information. He said that the company has spent the last decade developing enormous databases of information about their customers: they know precisely what is purchased, when, and where. But even with all of this information, the client’s company was dismayed to realize they still didn’t understand why their customers behave the way they do.

All of the quantifiable data in the world won’t help you understand a person’s underlying reasons. It will not give you the cause, only the effect. Not only does the very act of asking yourself why force you to make leaps of faith and use your intuition, it also makes you more human, giving you the ability to connect to your customers on a deeper emotional level.

The Search for Meaning, Step 3 – Belong to Your Community

So many companies have isolated themselves from the communities in which they participate. It’s easy to see what happens; it happened at Radar. I started Radar in my garage. While the garage was crowded, noisy and full of interruptions from neighborhood kids, it sure was fun. It also functioned pretty well. We were all generalists. There was no need for meetings. Everyone always knew what was going on.

Now that we are in an office and ten times as big, much more effort must be made to communicate, hence there’s less time for us to be out in the community with our customers. It is also much more difficult to keep the internal community of Radar as close as it was when we started. It’s not a bad thing. But it takes a lot more effort and management than it used to, and that all can get in the way of spending quality time with the right customers.

While growth certainly demands more organization, it also means that you have to make a greater effort to be a part of all of your communities. Many of our clients are big, complex business organizations and their executives often tell us that they’re too busy to actually go out and spend time with their customers. The reality of doing all their internal tasks precludes the time or the energy it takes to get outside the confines of their offices.

In this dynamic environment, the companies who will be successful will know their customers as they know their friends. They will be creatively engaged in their communities.

To be a part of these communities, companies must develop new ways to communicate. It is a prerequisite for social and emotional connections. They must form community network strategies to give them the ability to understand and react to changes occurring in every corner of their community.