What are we really doing here?

The problem to be solved is...

It all begins with the puzzle of how to scale, and scale profitably. 

The notion among leadership teams, founders, and business managers, is that they need to apply best practices across the organization producing the right message, delivering it at the right time to the right customer.

The natural instinct to solve the problem is… 

To “Do.”  Hire a layer of management or a creative agency to identify a market opportunity, understand the competitive landscape, find a relative sweet spot, create a “competitive strategy,” build a website, produce content, distribute eMail, publish social media, make “better” product for the market opportunity, and measure all of the big stuff (e.g. sales) and all of the little things (e.g. conversion rate). 

Missing is the engine that makes it all go, the thing that drives and coordinates all of the doing, that defines how all of these disparate efforts manifest, work together, and produce results.

The real problem is… 

The alchemist is missing. In the above scenario, one plus one equals less than one. 

The difference between iconic brands and good businesses (and especially, bad ones) is the capability of “Being” the right thing versus “Doing” the right thing. It’s not about just producing the work. It’s about having an engine, a conductor, a source of light, an invisible hand that guides the right work in the right way.

Realizing fundamentally the difference between Be and Do changes every aspect of the business, including the financial model, the product strategy, data collected, metrics reported, the type of content produced, where it’s distributed, and the type of people and skills required to operate. 

“Being” is when a company operates as an organism instead of as an organization. Guided by an invisible hand, an organization that would normally require ideation, constant management, oversight, and leadership is transformed into an organism that empowers autonomous teams to act deliberately with purpose. The premise is that the “engine” shines light on how to operate from a set of shared principles, which then any individual knows inherently what to do and how to do it, such that the need for constant ideation is eliminated. 

The real answer is… 

The “engine,” as described, or more eloquently, the alchemist required, is a literal understanding of why and how a given customer forms a relationship with the brand—Knowing this and every key experience and milestone along the way that reinforces and assures the actualization of the relationship allows teams to create exactly the circumstance that uniquely serves its constituency. This is where productivity and market impact reside.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast… The same way my Labrador stole steaks off the grill.

Before her passing, my lab was notorious for roaming parks off the leash hunting unattended grills all the while masquerading as a willing participant in a game of fetch. Not a cheap analogy. Unattended, strategy is at the mercy of culture, especially in companies unaware of the role strategy plays in setting and maintaining culture. There’s been a lot written about the famous Drucker, Fields, whomever quote. The gist is that culture is something that needs attended to in parallel with purpose and strategy. There’s plenty of good perspective on the topic (Does Culture Really Eat Strategy?), but I’m not terribly interested in management theory. I’m much more interested in how the dynamics of groups can negatively affect outcomes, even when the spirit of those same groups is well-intentioned. This is how culture can powerfully disable strategies, planning, aka success.

Marianne Williamson “was” a 2020 Democratic candidate for President you probably didn’t hear much about as she spent the early days of her campaign well off the back from the front runners. At her peak, odds were 10,000 to 1 for her to win her party’s nomination. If you were looking for a long shot, Marianne fit the bill. In round one of the Democratic debates she quickly became the focal point of ridicule. Not because her policies are right or wrong, but because she’s a threat to what is to be expected. Post-debate Williamson responded to the near unanimous, complicit response from the media.

“The way pathology works in a group is no different than the way it works in a person. It doesn’t emerge from the conscious mind and sometimes the conscious mind doesn’t even see it. Whole groups of people unconsciously conspire in promulgating and acquiescing to dysfunctional patterns of thought. The pathological nature of our political system is that it’s basically a game of smoke and mirrors. For instance, if you do the ‘I feel your pain’ routine enough, then maybe people won’t notice that you’re not actually doing anything about it. Race is a perfect example. We have a side conversation—the theatre of sensitivity—to distract from the fact that what we’re not discussing is mass incarceration; shootings of unarmed black men; and environmental, criminal, educational and economic injustice. Welcome to politics, guys! We’re going to untangle this, but only by recognizing what is really going on.” —Marianne Williamson

Here we arrive at my point. Culture is, often times, the pathology inside of organizations that limits success outside, in the trenches, directly with consumers. Not due to the malicious intent of employees to undermine the good of the organization or even poor management, which are often the diagnoses regarding toxic culture, but rather out of the internal populace’s gravity as a group to “unconsciously conspire in promulgating and acquiescing to dysfunctional patterns of thought.” This is what is meant by culture eating strategy for breakfast. Organizations tend to harbor dysfunction.

Combatting pathological dysfunction is job one of strategic work. Good strategy creates definition, clarifies direction, highlights values, dictates action, and ultimately manifests culture. Yes, I said it. Culture follows strategy. However, because of the power of pathology all of this can be undermined by the unconscious dysfunctional patterns of thought among a team or group. Therefore, strategy cannot subsist in concept only. The requirement is its embodiment by each and every individual in the organization. This embodiment becomes the culture of the organization. Only then, when strategy is understood tactically, no longer existing as an abstract vision, does an organization become a reflection of its strategy. Only then does the pathology dissipate. Only then is there harmony of strategy, purpose, and culture.

It's all Simon Sinek's fault.

Calvin and Hobbes

With the increasing momentum around business leaders wishing to capitalize on the concept of being a “Purpose Driven” brand, Simon Sinek's blockbuster Start With Why TED Talk and book has morphed over time from inspiration into a false summit of hope. For companies looking to establish a foothold of relevance upon which to scale, they need to take heed. There’s more to leveraging the idea of being purpose driven than simply unearthing one’s “Why.”

What Sinek’s “Golden Circle” expertly makes seem so logical and obvious belies something more complex: one can’t simply devise a brand position based on the penning of one’s purpose and then prop it up with superficial taglines, mission statements, jingles, and vast investments in paid media support. In presenting the Utopian state of a brand operating from its Why, Sinek has generated megawatts of boardroom browbeating and handwringing because one’s Purpose is only made into tangible value if the idea permeates every nook and cranny of the business, operationalized as a fully wrought consumer experience.

Mr. Sinek is right, of course. Differentiated, dynamic brands are clear and consistent because their principles and purpose are well defined. However, what Sinek does not explain is how then does this fundamental belief get woven into every aspect of the consumer’s experience, nay into every aspect of the organization itself.

As companies mature—and add layers of specialization, process, and complexity—they risk losing touch with the simple, independent spirit of passion and performance that gave life to the business in the first place. The spark initially worthy of a loyal following was and is their molecular identity, the reason the brand exists, the “why.” Because the corporate veils of the past are vastly more porous than ever, being authentic to one’s purpose is more important than ever. As one size fits all marketing has waned, branding as we’ve known it historically has all but died. Customers expect authentic, curated relationship with brands they use to facilitate their lives. Without understanding that intimately, the stuff that actually constitutes a relationship, finding your “why” is not the Holy Grail it may seem, but just the tip of the iceberg of realizing the value of being driven by purpose.

Board members everywhere will continue to be bewildered at the gap between the concept that Sinek espouses and the actual, operational quality of the businesses they manage until they uniquely understand their customers' intrinsic motivations for engaging with them and purchasing their products. The brand’s “raison d’etre” being the basis for the relationship. Only when your “why” connects with your customer at literally every touch point by permeating everything you do does your “why” matter.

How my theater experience informs your customer experience.

I super love a little, local coffee place in my hometown, Ojai, Ca. called Beacon Coffee. I super less love Starbucks. Not liking Starbucks and liking a local coffee place is probably not an earth shattering revelation, but bear with me. The number one reason I don’t like Starbucks? Dirty bathrooms. The number one reason I love Beacon? Almond milk. Note, Beacon also has clean bathrooms and Starbucks does have almond milk, but Starbucks’ bathrooms are really dirty and Beacon’s almond milk, is amazing. It’s organic, made on site, is creamy, and remarkable, and they use a ton of it in their latte’s making a Beacon latte absolutely irreplaceable. Beacon’s bathrooms? They are so clean I don’t even notice.

I’m not saying everything is remarkable about Beacon, but nothing is overlooked either. They care about all the little things and by extension I believe they actually care about their customers. It’s palpable. On the other hand, nothing is remarkable about Starbucks. Why? Because I don’t think anyone cares about the customer experience at Starbucks. Well, check that, I don’t think anyone at Starbucks really cares about the customer.

Which brings me to the title of this post and my early life as an interactive theater producer.

Knowing nothing of the entertainment business, the disciplined art of acting, or the tricks and trade of live theater production, my business partner and I decided somewhat on a whim to embark on inventing an interactive entertainment product from scratch. An adventure that ended up lasting 23 years. We made back our initial investment of $15k in our little startup in three months and ended up making a profit each and every year. Astounding given we knew absolutely nothing about what we were doing.

The secret to our success was that we cared about our customer’s experience. Okay. Obvious. Maybe. Reflecting back and being perfectly fair to myself, and my partner, we really did care about our customer, not just their experience. You see, not knowing anything about theater, acting, entertainment, producer-ness, or anything other than our own experience attending plays, movies, concerts, and other like live events, we had only one means by which to design our product: Make it work for the audience.

The entirety of the experience had to be worthy of everyone’s time. It was a lot of work for the performers, directors, improvisation coaches, stage managers, and us. It was also a big commitment by our audience to take a risk on a Friday or Saturday night, to attempt to impress their date, to spend their hard earned money, and to stick their necks out walking into an interactive theater environment where most anything goes.

From that perspective, everything had to work. We had to be responsible to the risk the customer was taking. Our intention had to be delivered everywhere. Let’s just say we had very clean bathrooms. We attended to every detail, no stone unturned. Everything was as important as everything else. Makeup, costumes, script integrity, character backgrounds, sure, but also the pre-show experience, the post-show experience, how we answered the phones (back in the day people made reservations with phones), everything. We considered every single aspect from the perspective of one single principle: Audience friendly. That was our thing. Always make the audience member look good, feel good, and feel safe. We made uncomfortable situations wins, whether that was a moment when a customer was “on stage” or calling up to reschedule their reservation or just going to the bathroom. Audience friendly drove everything.

Being “Audience Friendly” is the principle that drove our early success and sustained us for 23 years, until we sold the company and retired from the entertainment business. Sure we were no Starbucks financially. But, Starbucks is no Beacon in terms of “Audience Friendly.”

Here’s the rub, Howard Schultz initially got into the espresso business, and eventually Starbucks, because he wanted to bring to America the intimacy and community he discovered in Italy’s coffee bars. Today, the contrast between the two experiences could not be more jarring. Somewhere along the way, Starbucks made a series of decisions that prioritized quantity of customers serviced over quality of the customer experience. The result is an industrial, fast-food approach to coffee, including dirty bathrooms.

To the customer, every singular touchpoint within the brand orbit is their experience and ultimately contributes to how they feel about what the brand represents. In our theater, we made sure that every little detail made it a safe place to play, imagine, and interact. That’s what made us tick. Beacon gives people a place to net something special because that’s what makes them tick. Understand what makes you tick. Then make that the driver of everything.

Share something real.

Coors Light launched a campaign in early 2016 challenging people to climb their own “mountains” in an attempt to appeal to both men and women. You can watch the full video on Ad Age.

All things considered, a well crafted campaign, pitch, brand message, what have you, if it were 1960.

“Everyone has a mountain to climb. A challenge that calls them higher. 
A half marathon. A rodeo. The next great American novel. Guitar 101.
At Coors Light, our mountain is brewing the World’s most refreshing beer.
Our mountains make us who we are.
Your mountains make you who you are.
Whatever your mountain. Climb on.”

— Coors, Golden Colorado

And yet, would it not be more interesting to know what Coors' mountains actually are? What might be the challenges they've faced, those things that have made them who they are, the things that shape them today, everyday? The world has moved on and beyond this sort of vapid Mad Men poetry. It's a show me, don't tell me world. Our curiosities are driven by the reality of the moment, the truth. Respect your audience. Share something real. Something meaningful. Something heartfelt. 

Genius.

Why do the winners (Amazon, Steve Jobs’ era Apple) seem to look so smart and the losers (Snapchat, Macy’s, etc.) look so dumb in arrears? Case example after case example reveals seemingly magical predictive qualities by the winners and seemingly obvious misses by the losers. What is an obvious, yet oft overlooked, reason is the winners run on organizing principles and the losers run on a “reaction-to-circumstances” mentality. Losers chase opportunity. Winners create opportunity from their governing principles. Tesla is the current shining example.

Early on in Elon Musk’s life he studied the state of the world and recognized the sea change required to mitigate the risk associated with our waning and antiquated energy resources. Electricity is a sustainable energy if harvested and harnessed wisely.

Downstream of this thought process has influenced everything else Musk does, from solar panels to semi-trucks, transportation in general, to survival on planet earth and/or on Mars. These seemingly disparate efforts are all related because of the organizing principle driving answers. The principle is about asking “what’s next.” As result Tesla isn’t just an electric car. It’s an entirely different platform. This is fundamentally why the cars are an aesthetic win and they perform better, and have left everyone else playing catch up. The rest of the industry was built on the existing platform that dates back to Henry Ford, making the current hybrid and electric cars fundamentally the same as Henry Ford’s Model T, but with different power plants. Tesla in contrast is not necessarily a car company at all, but more of an "energy company" that makes cars.

When we all stand back and look at Tesla, it looks revolutionary because it is, but the concept of the car in total isn’t the stroke of genius. The organizing principle is the genius. This is what most companies either neglect or don’t understand. If you don’t have a fundamental driver of your thinking then consistency, breakthrough ideas, disruption, and loyalty are all but impossible. You can chase opportunity for a while, but to sustain success over time requires principles. 

Green is woke.

The most influential customer segment in the history of commerce is about to make itself known. This looming audience is bigger than any single buying category in the history of commerce. It’s not a single demographic, an economic stratum, a regional bias, or a trend. As a group it runs across every stratum imaginable. It hasn’t arrived yet, but the scale is tipping and when it does it behooves smart businesses to be prepared.

Ignoring the obvious is never healthy. According to the best minds in the business our planet is doomed. The sixth extinction is well into its early stages and Homo sapiens are on the watch list. As the global population comes to understand this reality our motivation as a mass buying population will change from demanding convenience, style, and price to a different set of criteria, those things that will keep us alive. Elizabeth Sturcken, managing director of the EDF+Business program at the Environmental Defense Fund, in an interview with The Daily Beast, notes:

There is immense business value creation in sustainability… Companies aren’t waiting for government action. Companies are driven by data, by science. Truth matters. And the only conclusion you can come to, if your company is looking toward the horizon and you want your business to grow, is to be pro-active on these issues.

The ensuing demand for “good” is a behavioral shift of the masses that is happening in small increments now. Don’t confuse this with the affluent, educated, liberal, agnostic, coastal dwelling conscious consumerism that floated Whole Foods’ boat. This is altogether a different beast, one being born of necessity transcending class distinctions. Sturcken again underscores the coming wave, “The planetary imperative is that we need change faster and at scale… The place you see the real impact, is that sustainability is baked into everyday products that consumers who are middle-class can afford… Companies are saying that the challenges and opportunities go beyond their four walls to consumers they touch. If [companies are] thinking ahead, they’re thinking of opportunities and seeing customers demand good corporate citizenship.”

Extending the appeal of your brand, product, or service to this larger population of buyers moving into behavior ‘demanding good’ is a matter of understanding how they acquire knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, cultural influences, family dynamics, and raw sensory input. Learning how to activate them within your sphere of influence, and to understand their motivations and cognitive processes is the first step in acquiring the buying power of this audience. The market share opportunity is vast. Yes, there is Latent Demand for Good. And, learning how it operates and who is already demanding good and who will be demanding good is the next most influential battle ground in the market place and likely to be the final battle ground. 

Apology.

We humans as a collective seem to be a hard working lot, generally trying to do the right thing, taking care of our families, contributing to our communities, and along the way producing remarkable art, music, architecture, and technology, but in spite of it all we are lazy in our query. We are inherently selfish in pursuit of the obvious. Maybe it’s the dichotomy of western and eastern philosophy that we of the western perspective are born and bred to be individualistic, maybe we’ve all been convinced by madmen that we are each special, deserving more than our allotted 15 minutes of fame. Whatever the cause the result is a naval gazing and aggrandizing culture that prioritizes self-congratulatory story over the consideration of the greater good. This bleeds over into how we go to market in business as well. In fact, if business were the litmus test of our lazy thinking, branding and marketing are the worst. Steve Jobs and Apple famously enticed us to “think different.” Unfortunately, outside of academia and the sciences, we don’t query, examine, question, or spend time in discourse regarding the fundamental questions of our time.  We especially don’t spend time in consideration of how we might serve the greater good.

My work, by its nature, forces me to ask questions. Simply by observing and thinking about what it is I see and learn through my everyday work I've concluded, possibly harshly, that we as a society are erring gravely by overemphasizing the value of celebrating our selves.

Case in point… UConn's Head Women's Basketball Coach Geno Auriemma.

Parents: If you have an athlete above the age of 7 in your household, sit them down and make them watch this for 2 minutes and 20 seconds. pic.twitter.com/w8ke8KEUUB

— Matt Lisle (@CoachLisle) March 20, 2017

Here's another, maybe more graphic, depiction of self-worshipping above all else.

Jurickson Profar got picked off by Yadier Molina while he was celebrating

(Video via @WBCBaseball) #WBC2017pic.twitter.com/UHQ2j3bQiR

— Someone's An Idiot (@SomeonesAnIdiot) March 21, 2017

This behavior isn’t isolated to sport, youth sport, or entertainment. Look at who was elected POTUS and how. It’s fait accompli we are operating at a grand scale now as narcissists, and in fact we hold the most accomplished narcissists in the greatest regard. Winning is not enough. We have to humiliate and degrade our opponents. There’s no longer a shared camaraderie in competition. Simply vanquish. As if there weren’t enough for everyone, we are on a quest to own it all. We live by pirate code, “Take what you can. Give nothing back.”

The practice of defining oneself and celebrating one’s accomplishments is part and parcel what's wrong with brand management in corporate America today. The endless prattle comparing and contrasting features and benefits in order to win advantage is how most CMO’s build their strategies. The tone deafness is overwhelming. It’s all about me. A cultural bias toward narcissism unfettered. Our culture is narcissistic. Our providers of the goods and services we need, require, and desire are narcissistic. And as result so are our “branding” efforts.

Interestingly, because the pendulum has swung so far in this direction, a fortuitous opportunity has presented itself for corporations to lead the way back, back to thinking, and back to thinking about some thing other than self. And, if leadership hesitates just momentarily from the everyday grind of “taking what they can,” and consider who they serve, the opportunity will avail itself.

Here’s where the world is headed. Only 13 companies have outperformed the S&P 500 over the past five years. They've largely done it by turning their attention to the end user. Companies that are winning are doing so racing to the new opportunity serving a constituency based on highly sensitive human behavioral and need markers. Branding, marketing, and product differentiation are largely archaic endeavors in today’s market place. The winners are companies that are building user experiences via deep psychographic understanding, quantitative data, and empathic design.

Branding is dead. The polls got it right this time and the results are streaming in. Brand affinity is waning fast and furiously. 

“Brand-building” has become less and less relevant because consumers have gained more and more access to services that are constructed specifically to facilitate their needs. Consumers are filtering their preferences based on user experience. Google, Amazon, Trip Advisor, Lyft, are re-defining what consumers expect from their services by designing highly refined use experiences. Brand builders are too self-referenced to recognize they have to tune deeply into their consumer's cognitive processes in order to provide for them an optimum experience. I’m not talking about widgets, bells, or whistles. I’m talking about understanding the user experience that ultimately serves them according to their unique aspirations. Not yours! To succeed in the future, brands must behave selflessly. Anticipating the pendulum is about to swing back in a severe way in terms of selling practices, service and product providers must adopt the newly emerging disciplines of service design and relationship development, along with the ageless and selfless act of service.

Think about it. 

A lesson in planning from the All Blacks.

Years ago I read a study published in the Harvard Business Review contrasting the decision-making efficacy between entrepreneurs and managers. Both groups made good decisions. The difference was entrepreneurs took on average 2-weeks to make major decisions while managers took more than 8-weeks, if memory serves. This phenomenon along with “lean startup” logic somehow has conspired to under value the act of planning. Rather than budget for well-wrought annual strategy development, more and more companies are opting for agile development processes, leaving business plans dusty at best and as a guise to satisfy board members at worst.

I’m a fan of speedy decision-making and agile development, and I appreciate the fact that most businesses are akin to airplanes being rebuilt while in flight—they simply won’t land for the luxury of a refit. However, a good strategy can get a company to function with the efficiency of a living, breathing organism such that each and every moving part is in concert. This is the holy grail of productivity and the result of very good planning, or, to be more accurate, is the result of putting in place very clear principles of action. Ultimately it is principles that allow autonomy, mastery, and purpose. And, it is autonomy, mastery and purpose that breeds productivity, creativity, and efficiency. These are the things that make speedy decision-making and agile development work.

Arguably the most successful international sport team in history is the New Zealand All Blacks Rugby Team. They win a lot. Their approach and philosophies are recounted as lessons for business leaders in James Kerr’s 2013 book, Legacy. Of interest is the practice of the All Blacks’ coaching staff providing each new member upon making the team a black leather book, which includes the history, the standards, and the ethos of the team; and markedly, an additional five pages at the conclusion of the booklet that are left blank. It is noted that these pages left blank at the end are for each individual athlete to fill in them selves. The opportunity provided by this omission is for each team member to account for how they might leave their own personal legacy enacting the principles of the organization, shifting responsibility from the leadership and coaches to the players themselves. Imagine this practice in your organization.

Imagine your own strategic planning document penned from the perspective of history, standards, and ethos as a frame work that then enables each and every employee to uniquely contribute to its success in their own way. Agile development… Lean entrepreneurship… Whatever you call it, without clear principles crafted in advance to guide the outcome, your business will look more like a scrum than anything else. 

Probably a good idea to budget for planning next year.

Specialty Retail 2016

My first response, Duh. The fact that specialty retail is reeling and brands and specialty retailers don’t necessarily have a solution other than optimizing platforms as Mr. Galloway suggests is not a big surprise. Why? Look at their organizational structure. Most big brands have a VP of Sales, VP of Marketing, VP of Brand/or Creative Director, VP of eCom/or Direct Sales, and a CFO and COO. They are all measured on unique metrics and measured on channel sales and success. Resources are doled out based on which channel has the best ROI, business plan, or argument based not on their consumer’s end user experience, but on industry trends and big data market movement metrics. If you’re watching L2 to know what’s coming next, good on ya, but it’s looking in the rearview mirror as far as your own customer’s user experience is concerned.

Brands and retailers that structure their organization around the idea of facilitating their collective customers’ task list are the eventual winners. Meaning, companies focusing on “Service Design” are standing out. The two winners according to Galloway are Amazon and Sephora. It’s easy to see why. Their end user experiences are steeped in optimal user experience design based on the respective tasks at hand. Amazon serves the get in, get out buyer better than anyone. Sephora is servicing its customers’ tasks via contextual content. Everything you need to know when you need it in platform-relevant user interface design. The mobile experience is unique to the desktop experience because… well, because they are different. Both companies are working from an outside in perspective on how they uniquely facilitate their customer’s needs.

Take a look at your own organization and ask yourself, is my customer's experience a reflection of my customer’s needs or is my customer’s user experience a reflection of how we are organized internally? If your answer is the latter you won’t be featured as a winner on L2 any time soon.

Seeking the curious.

Success is often based on a willingness to go beyond what you know. In this Nic Askew film Seth Godin poses the question companies in times of transition ideally contemplate.

Purpose driven.

Conventional wisdom says that the right product at the right time in the right market will succeed; that product is the path to realizing market opportunity. No doubt this is true, but the inroad of a compelling product doesn’t necessarily dictate a long-term win. Product alone does not dictate sustainable sales growth because the eventuality is that all products become commoditized over time with the onslaught of competition. Unless there is further context surrounding the product to add value beyond features, benefits, and price, there is inherent risk. The observation of this notion is subtle. It’s the subtlety that brand managers miss and often times stand dumbfounded when their product falters.

The value that distinguishes one product from the next, one brand from the next, is born in the character of the organization and the people behind the scene. When the end product and brand experiences manifest the values of the organization then there is a basis for connection, a basis for relationship. The realization of shared values happens through tangible experiences and authentic storytelling. When there is no direct to consumer connection, there is less relationship. When there is limited storytelling ability, there is less relationship. When there is no purpose, there is no reason for loyalty: Less connection, less relationship, less loyalty, less growth—A painful daisy chain of affect. 

Building a meaningful direct connection with your customer is the most fruitful path to growth. It’s about transparency and authenticity… doing the right thing according to your values and making doing the right thing the basis for success rather than duping customers with superficial imagery or selling hyperbole.

There is profit to be had by engaging audiences in purpose.

Forgiving Volkswagen.

Loyal customers are a forgiving lot. Whether enthusiasts of Fahrvergnügen will forgive or no will require VW’s leadership to fully understand how the emissions standards scandal undermines their longstanding relationship.

Falling in love is an action. It takes place in a stepwise fashion moving from a first impression to a test and validation of those first impressions to a deep dive into potential shared values and beliefs. All told, all confirmed, the relationship between an individual and an organization, a customer and a company, is consummated by long-term purchasing. Once this level of understanding and commitment is established, it’s very hard to break. VW is taking a good, healthy swing at disrupting that trust right now, but will the relationship truly be severed?

My conclusion is no. Here are the three reasons:

1. Everything else is still intact: fun, reliable cars, engineered to perform.
2. The scandal will be managed by highly paid crisis advisors that will coach the company to be demonstrative in their response, step one having taken place swiftly with the resignation of Martin Winterkorn and the appointment of Matthias Muller, head of the Porsche division, as the new chief executive. Step two is in motion as leadership isolates the improprieties. And step three will follow shortly as the organization assumes full responsibility while demonstrating the remainder of the organization is operating in full integrity.
3. The fallout will take time, will linger in the headlines, and cost dearly, but the one thing VW has on its side is a loyal following, a following that wants VW in their lives.

The secret that VW needs to pay close attention to is the key lesson we all as service providers need to remember, that earned loyalty doesn’t disappear in an instant, but it can’t be taken for granted either. There is a forgiving nature to loyalty. The reason being, once love is realized, it’s immensely difficult to replicate. VW enthusiasts don’t want to go through the effort of finding a replacement. They can’t simply move laterally to another provider that provides for their needs in the unique ways VW does without a tremendous effort on their part. And, even if they do they’ll miss what they originally fell for, the history and experience of Fahrvergnügen. It’s “what makes a car a Volkswagen,” and it’s a unique identifier that VW has nurtured for decades. In essence it’s exactly the basis of the scandal itself. VW couldn’t make a low performing, low emissions diesel automobile and put it on the market as a Volkswagen. That would be blasphemous. The fact they manipulated the system to do so is reprehensible, but from the early days of the Beetle to the Vanagon to the Golf and even in its line of diesels Volkswagen has delivered an experience that is distinctly Volkswagen.

Taking advantage of that loyalty was the mistake. Leveraging the forgiveness of that same loyalty is Volkswagen’s only hope. They can do this by intimately understanding their customer’s experience right now. Understanding how this affects their perceptions about the brand and about how the brand now fits into their lives. Crisis management aside, this is the only way Volkswagen can deftly manage their way back into good stead with a fan base that doesn’t want them to fail.

The lesson for the rest of us? Spend all of your time and money understanding intimately why your customers love you and be true that in every instance.

Choosing good.

I've said it before and I'll likely just keep saying it until the vast population of companies catch on, doing good is a profit strategy. 

In a world of choice, the reasons we purchase one product over another can be driven by a multitude of factors. A recent Nielsen global online survey found that consumers are increasingly willing to pay more for socially responsible products. In fact, 66% of respondents say they’re willing to pay more for products and services that come from companies who are committed to positive social and environmental impact, up from 55% in 2014 and 50% in 2013.  — The Nielsen Company

Read the report here.

A rose by any other name...

Well, a brand by any other tagline I suppose. I attended Interbike, the cycling industry's annual trade show, last week to visit a few clients. A unique sequestering of the entire industry in one space. Each brand putting their goods on display, directly contrasting with the competition.

The primary focus for these brands is to sell their new product lines direct to their wholesale dealers. The emphasis on minute product detail, features and functions. This coupled with price points and terms rounding out the common sell in strategy. 

For me, it's much more about looking at how these brands present their unique point of view, the character of their organizations. What's their story? Unfortunately, there is very little effort that goes into telling an authentic story beyond the cliche' of the tagline and booth design. I don't mean to be dismissive, but taglines are bullshit.   

"The greatest stories are lived, not told." — I don't think this is true. The greatest experiences are lived, but the best stories are absolutely and by definition, told. Regardless, what does this mean about Scott. Why are they interested in stories, why are stories important, how do stories influence the creation of their products and/or services? I'm not sure and not necessarily truly curious.

"Through this ride, freedom." — A bicycle represents freedom... I guess. Do Simcoe's bikes represent greater freedom than all the other bike manufacturers? This is a bike trade show. Las Vegas' Mandalay Bay convention center's worth of bicycles, all, I suppose, vehicles of human powered freedom. Does Simcoe's tagline express a unique love of that type of freedom? 

"Adventure begins here." — Similar theme as Scott and Simcoe's taglines, that somehow the bicycle represents stories, freedom, or adventure. Yep. I suppose they are correct. I still can't tell one brand from another given these communications.

"Think asymmetric." — I love Pinarello bikes, if only because of its heritage and its origin, but I'm left confused about what thinking asymmetrically means... right and left brain? Nope. On their website they put forth an explanation of the forces at work that are unique to bicycles. I'd never thought of that. It's interesting. I'm not sure it summarizes the entire essence of this brand however. Feels like a good thing to talk about when delving into technology and materials. Pinarello is about much, much more having sustained relevance for nigh on 70 years.

Refined simplicity. The truth is on the trail. 

Freedom unfolds.

More of the same...

And finally, this from "Fabric" a new brand innovating on old things in the cycling world. This is not romantic. It's not a tagline. They don't have one. They just had a nice, simple display of a few of their new gadgets that make the cycling lifestyle a bit more simple. I like simple. Lots of people do. Fabric's ideas work. They are driven by this principle. They win. No taglines. A straightforward design principle. Making my life as a cycling enthusiast better. 

Good story.

The end of the world as we know it.

If you've got a 401k, a pension fund, a mutual fund, or your money is in any way managed by a financial advisor, probably a good idea to pay close attention to the following quote...

If you’ve got fossil fuel stocks in your retirement account – and most of us do, whether we know it or not – you could be in for a bumpy ride.

This from the description of "The Carbon Bubble" part of a speaker series hosted by Climate One. Fascinating to listen to investors talk about climate change and global warming. It's not a environmental issue. Not even necessarily a moral issue. It's a financial one. More from the introduction from Climate One...

England’s Central Bank has said that coal, oil and natural gas reserves that determine the future earnings of those companies, and therefore their stock prices, may be overvalued.  And as supply grows and global demand decreases, oil prices are dropping by the barrelful.   

This is essentially why companies need to learn, and learn quickly, how to have a relationship with their customers in regards to their sustainability practices. Not because it's becoming popular to greenwash, but because we are in the midst of a reality that doing good is good business and if you as a business owner, manager, CEO, founder, etc. don't have a brand strategy that is cognizant of the impact these issues are having on your market you'll go the way of the original fossil fuels themselves, the dinosaurs. 

The intersection of brand identity, loyalty, and sustainability practices is becoming all the more important. And, understanding how to navigate both the practices and the communications associated with them can be tricky. Savvy customers see right through superficial practices and hyperbole, while truly ethical brands tend to overemphasize those same practices while underestimating the remaining needs for quality and service.   

The answer to getting the communication correct is in the detail of execution. It comes in parts: 

1. Setting your own reality; i.e. where are you on the spectrum of good versus not good.
2. Do you have a strategy to be good?
3. Can you articulate that strategy, share it with your customers, and express it appropriately so they understand where you are in the continuum. 

Not everybody is perfect, in fact, no one is... But, getting on a path is going to be a requirement for success sooner than most suspect.

To listen and read the full program "The Carbon Bubble" visit ClimateOne.org

So, you want to build a website.

Understand your most loyal customers first. As an agency we get a fair number of RFP’s across our desks from well-meaning brand managers desiring a new web presence. The RFP’s typically request best of breed features and functions, brand essence look and feel captured, multi-channel capabilities, etc. etc. The best sites and the best projects all begin with one question, “who are you serving and what do they need?” It sounds overly simple, but if RFP’s were written with only the answer to this question there would be many more successful web development projects in the world. Unfortunately, the fact is most sites are developed from the same set of business rules and features and functions lists with little concern about who it is that is using the site and/or why they are using the site. Sure, agencies write personas and speak about users, but the reality is those are demographic, not psychographic underpinnings. Every brand truly is different and consumers come to sites with very particular needs. If we all developed sites from the very particular point of view of the user we would see a myriad of unique websites functioning optimally for their core audience. Unfortunately, pretty much all ecommerce sites are the same: Landing page > collections > detail page > checkout… It’s interesting brand managers and ecommerce managers are still paying premium prices for these development efforts because if you observe closely the backbone of the Information Architecture is all the same and only minimal differences in the brand content and look and feel distinguish one site from the next. In many terms the world of ecommerce has been commoditized, not because of a lack of ingenuity, but because of a lack of focus on the end user’s needs.

Clever, but is there more?

Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch is the title of a 2012 article by Shawn Parr, Guvner & CEO of Bulldog Drummond. The gist is culture is in many ways more powerful than branding and marketing. That culture is ultimately what attracts customers and aligns strategy, product and service. And in fact, it’s culture that drives brand identity and marketing messaging. Agreed.

Knowing this, now what?

How do you go from knowing culture is all powerful to creating yours? Or better yet, how do you manifest your unique culture into every nuance of your organization and customer experience?

Map it.

Take a trip through each and every shopping pathway and customer experience and map every experience. If you have a defined culture, a set of values and beliefs by which your organization thrives, make certain it manifests at the far reaches of your customer’s experience. If it lives there, it will live throughout your company.

Brand strategy is...

Branding is defining the business model that reflects and captures the values held by the founder(s) or founding principle, idea, or spark. UK based clothing brand Howies serves as an ideal example. This month Howies celebrates their 20th anniversary, and because of their purpose oriented brand strategy they'll likely celebrate a 100th year anniversary 80 years hence.

Everything they do, the product, how it’s made, where it’s sourced, the photography they choose, where they live, who they distribute to, the kind of activities they make product for, and the stuff they talk about is all authentic and rooted in their values.

Nothing is staged. It all emanates from purpose.

Doesn’t mean they’re perfect. It means they have a brand strategy.

Beyond Blink

It’s just a moment, a first impression. Malcolm Gladwell made the concept not only famous, but validated the marketing profession’s obsession with the 3-second rule, that is, “you have 3 seconds to attract a new customer’s attention.” It actually may be worse than this. We customers are exposed to 3,000 marketing messages daily. However, we have the capacity to connect, register, and remember less than 100 of those messages. In the end your first impression had better be a good one.

But what happens after that first impression? The assumption marketers make is that they should treat all of their customers as if this rule always applies, even to their loyal customers. That’s not the case. Once the first impression is made for the positive, and an actual connection is made, customers then tend to dive in. First at a product level, they browse, shop, look at details of features and functions and maybe even make a purchase.

And soon after that first purchase customers afford themselves some time. Customers having had that first positive product experience have narrowed the field. They are no longer looking across the vast landscape of competitive options. They are in relationship. They want to know more. They will now read, ponder, entertain a catalog, browse your website, watch a video, and maybe even venture into a store. This is a deep dive.

But what do marketers do? Keep sticking to the 3-second rule, providing only high-level sound bites. The opportunity at your fingertips is far more interesting. Build pathways into more meaningful content, invite customers into little hallways and rooms to learn more about why your brand exists in the first place, show the inspiration of the design, and demonstrate the values that define your company. Customers are people, and they crave deep relationships with other people, with organizations, and even with brands that sell them stuff. So, don’t get stuck in the 3-second rule. Once you’ve got a customer, invite them over for some tea.