What kind of Halloween personality is your business?

Does your business resemble any of these Halloween personalities?:

• Spiderman – Your company is super-human and does all it can to be a hero and make a difference.
• Frankenstein – After the many merges and silos of departmental solitude, your company is only a massive heap of mismatched parts that are poorly woven together to somewhat resemble a healthy company.
• Fairy – Your company does not mind that it is not in the spotlight so long as it leaves goodness in its path.
• Ghost – If people are really still and concentrate they may get a sense of your presence but by in large your company is invisible to everyone.

What other Halloween personalities can businesses resemble?

Happy Halloween everyone!

Going backwards to keep going forwards

First, if you haven’t watched this amazing college football video of Division III Trinity College vs. Millsap, go ahead and take a little break and watch this video.

The great thing about laterals is that they seem counterintuitive – you go backwards in order to keep going forwards. In reality, there are times where this is the only way to advance.

There are many laterals in business that may help you keep going forward:

1. Firing customers. Some customers may be draining all of your resources (money, time, employee moral) and are actually holding you back. Letting these customers go can help keep you moving forward.
2. Firing employees. At other times it’s some employees that are the dead weight. It may be their negative attitude or contentious nature that is preventing further advancement.
3. Tighter focus. Sometimes the right backwards corrective measure is to sell your product to a more concentrated audience with more things in common and one who will truly appreciate and advocate for your product. Remember, it is better to be the hero to a few instead of invisible by all.

When your forward progress seems to have stopped, don’t forget that you have an option to go backwards in order to keep moving forwards. In the words of the flight attendant during the explanation of the emergency procedures, sometimes the nearest exit may be behind you.

Seinfeld on Marketing: Excuses

It’s Friday! Congrats, you made it to the end of the workweek. In this episode of Seinfeld, Jerry is discussing with Elaine his ideas for not hanging out with Joel Horneck, a guy that he’d rather not spend time with:

ELAINE: (Reading from Jerry’s notebook left on the coffee table.) “Picking someone up at the airport.” “Jury Duty.” “Waiting for cable guy.”

JERRY: Okay, just hand that over, please.

ELAINE: Oh, what is this?

JERRY: It’s a list of excuses; it’s for that guy, Horneck… I have that list now so in case he calls, I just consult it and I don’t have to see him.

As consumers we really hate to hear excuses from businesses:

• I’m sorry but all of our representatives are busy now. Your call is very important to us. Please continue to hold.
• I’m sorry Sir but that’s not my department.

Like Wonder Woman using her wristbands to deflect bullets, some businesses use excuses to try to deflect any responsibility away from them. It’s our company policy (deflect). Our computers are down right now (deflect). I’m new here (deflect).

Excuses are like eating a piece of cake with “butter-based frosting after six decades in a poorly ventilated English basement” – sooner or later they will come back to haunt you (That’s your bonus Seinfeld quote for the day).

Bonus #2: Speaking of excuses, here is a company that for better or worse is getting some news as of late. The company allows you to buy excuses that look as if they come from areal hospital or a fake summons for jury duty.

Happy Friday everyone!

This post is part of a weekly series, Seinfeld on Marketing.

What do you call it?

In an excellent poem by Mary Oliver, she says:

[A]re you breathing just a little and calling it a life?

In the same vein, couldn’t we ask ourselves:

• Are you tweaking your logo just a little and calling it a brand strategy?
• Are you playing it safe just a little and calling it smart business?
• Are you advertising just a little and calling it your marketing?
• Are you spamming just a little and calling it lead generation?
• Are you listening just a little and calling it customer service?

What other questions can you add along these same lines?

Humanness

The family and I recently watched The Jungle Book together. We got out the required popcorn and snacks and settled in for a nice evening together. Within minutes, I remembered why it is one of my favorite Disney movies of all times.

Do you remember King Louie, king of the orangutans? He wanted to learn to be just like a human being and learn the secret of “man’s red flower” (fire). Humanness is not only a trait desired by overzealous orangutans, but companies that want to succeed as well.

Shortly after Jet Blue’s 10-hour weather-related tarmac delay last February, Darryl Jenkins – an airline consultant, said: “Everybody knows now that these guys are mortal.” I think a sense of mortality and other human qualities is just what every company needs.

Forgiveness is a human quality. Passion is a human quality. Affection is a human quality. The only way to receive these human qualities from your customers is to first act more human (no surprise). The more personal and human interactions that customers have with your company, the more forgiveness they are willing to show, the more passionate they will be with your cause and the more affection they will feel towards your company.

This is why blogging for some companies really makes sense. It is a chance to bear your soul and show that your company is really just a collection of people just like me who have loved ones and a passion for what they do (for a great example, see Southwest Airline’s Blog). Showing compassion, having a sense of humor and spontaneity are human qualities that will bring the human side of your business to the surface. It goes without saying (so why am I saying it?), only your employees, actual humans (did I just write that?), can bring these human qualities to your business. That is why hiring employees that show these emotions quickly and easily makes a lot of sense.

By the way, if you are keeping score at home, having an automated telephone menu system, perfunctorily spouting off your company policies and having committee approved conversations monologues with customers only docks your humanness quotient.

How human is your company?

(P.S. I should have a picture of me on my “About” page sometime this week. Not that anyone is beating down my door to put a face to my writing, but I think it will help show that I am indeed human and not a pod – if that was ever in question).

Seinfeld on Marketing: Having a feel

Happy Seinfeld on Marketing day to you all! In this episode, there really is no need for a setup, so jump on in the pool:

KRAMER: What’s today?

NEWMAN: It’s Thursday.

KRAMER: Really? Feels like Tuesday.

NEWMAN: Tuesday has no feel. Monday has a feel, Friday has a feel, Sunday has a feel…

Does Tuesday not have a feel? Tuesday can be easily forgotten being that it is wedged between it’s-back-to-work Monday and hump-day Wednesday. Poor “feel-less” Tuesday. Without having a feel, it is often overlooked and ignored.

For businesses, “a feel” could be interpreted as a memorable and remarkable experience. Whole Foods has a healthy and natural feel. Harley Davidson has a rebel feel. Apple has a sleek and innovative feel.

Does your business have a feel? How do you get a feel? Those companies that we often associate as having a strong feel (or brand) usually concentrate their efforts on the four D’s of strong brands:

1. Differentiate. Make your business stand out from the rest. Do the opposite of what is being done in your industry.
2. Discover. Allow customers to discover for themselves why your business is so special. Refrain from “telling” your target audience why you are special. Now is the time to remember that “it is better to be a guide on the side than an sage on the stage”.
3. Delegate. Give control of your message to your evangelists that are ready and willing to spread the good news of your business to their friends and family members. Provide them with the easiest and painless way possible for them to share.
4. Delight. Continual innovation or providing moments of astonishing customer service all help to keep your customers interested and coming back for more.

At least Friday has a feel. Happy Friday everyone!

This post is part of a weekly series, Seinfeld on Marketing.

The Interdependent Group

In the last Seinfeld on Marketing, I only briefly touched on the three types of groups. Today we’ll discuss more in depth the last group, The Interdependent Group.

If you ever work in groups (and who doesn’t), The Interdependent Group is the Holy Grail of groups. In this type of group, each member is independent in work and thought yet is mutually dependent on each member of the group for the final outcome – but there has to be the right balance of independence and dependence. If the scales are tipped too much to the “dependent” side and each member relies on others unhealthily for input, the result is usually the collective bland ideas of The Consensus Group. If on the other hand the scales are tipped too heavily to the other side and “independence” reins supreme, the result is usually the amassed hodgepodge of confusing ideas of The Frankenstein Group.

A good example of The Interdependent Group at work comes from the making of the book The Age of Conversation. In this book, each marketing guru from Drew McLellan to Gavin Heaton independently wrote a chapter about word of mouth marketing and combined them into a book (by the way, it’s worth the read and the proceeds go to charity). This project seemed to have the right combination of independence (the authors submitted their chapter free from tight restrictions from the other members) and dependence on the out come (the flow of the book worked and the group relied on one another to produce the final result).

The difference between the Age of Conversation and the Novel Twists project I brought up yesterday is that the independence/dependence scale of the Novel Twists project is out of balance. Not only are the authors at Novel Twists dependent on the outcome, but given the structure of the novel they are also dependent on the input as well (if one author introduces a new character or involves a character in some action, it has to be carried out by subsequent authors).

Any relationship where people have to work together for a common purpose (albeit in business, personal relationships, communities, politics, etc.), the optimized power realized from a group will only come from the independent input and the common dependence on the output of interdependent groups.

The Frankenstein Group

In the last Seinfeld on Marketing, I only briefly touched on the three types of groups. Today we’ll discuss more in depth about The Frankenstein Group.

The Frankenstein Group tries to mix and match a variety of ideas into one idea. The problem though is that the ideas are not cohesive and sometimes are blatantly contradictory so all that is left is a great big wad of confusion. By keeping all of the ideas, The Frankenstein Group tries to stand for everything and as you know if you try to stand for everything you end up standing for nothing.

Take, for example, the Swiss Army Knife. When was the last time you actually used the saw blade or the toothpick for that matter? Short of being McGuyver himself, one does not typically need all the features of the Swiss Army Knife. I mean, imagine yourself on your patio blissfully removing the last hunk of BBQ’ed steak from teeth with your handy toothpick and you glance over to see the neighbor’s errant tree limb blocking your rightful view of the neighborhood shuffleboard court. You quickly whip out your trusty saw and go to work (not very likely).

The Frankenstein Group is usually headed by a “people pleaser” – someone who can’t or won’t say “no” to anyone. The people pleaser’s ultimate goal is group unity. With this goal in mind, the people pleaser goes out of their way to make sure that everyone in the group feels that their ideas are valid, even to the point of trying to connect all of the mismatched inputs into one bloated and confusing combination of ideas (the input is valued more highly than the end product). The people pleaser also cannot stand the thought of developing a product or idea that will exclude any user. So they add a hodgepodge of features that they feel will appeal to the widest audience in the greatest number of circumstances.

Another example of The Frankenstein Group way of thinking is the wiki-like novel being produced at Novel Twists . Each author or aspiring author contributes one page to the overall novel. I am sure that each author left to themselves could produce a very well written fictional novel. However, working together using the format that does not exclude any suggestion or idea produces only a disconnected jumble of words that is hard to follow (the novel introduces a dozen characters by name before page 22).

Just like The Consensus Group, the end result of The Frankenstein Group is usually a mediocre idea or product. But rather than throwing out all of the ideas like the Consensus Group, The Frankenstein Group produces mediocrity by trying to keep all of the ideas and shaping them into one idea. Another difference from The Consensus Group is that the ideas of The Frankenstein Group are talked about because the combinations sound great at the time – the word of mouth though is typically short lived.

The TV and refrigerator combination is one example. It sounds quite cool – having a TV built into your refrigerator (or this refrigerator with two TVs!) so that you don’t miss a beat when the World Series comes around or when college hoops begin. But the reports out there are that you are buying a pretty good refrigerator and an average TV that tends to break or is hard to see from the location of the refrigerator in the kitchen (oh, and at $3,700 it’s quite expensive).

Tomorrow we’ll discuss the last group, The Interdependence Group.

Happy Wednesday everyone!

The consensus group

In the last Seinfeld on Marketing, I only briefly touched on the three groups. For the next few days we’ll go into greater detail about the Consensus Group, the Frankenstein Group and the Interdependent Group.

First, the Consensus Group. The Consensus Group only produces ideas where all of the rough edges have been carefully and meticulous made smooth, the unique soul has been sucked dry and the proper amount of Al Gore-like boring drudgery has been dispersed through the idea.

This group loves to be non-offensive and does not want to “rock the boat” or leave anyone behind by being too “edgy” or “radical”. They also try to play it safe and appeal to the masses. The problem is that there really are no more masses. Today’s world is made up of millions of micro communities that have very specific needs and wants.

Take for example, the newly reintroduced Loaded Breakfast Burrito from Hardee’s (East coast) / Carl’s Jr. (West coast). This “meal” does not appeal to everyone, but Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr. never intended it to. To their micro community, this is just what they want… a 900-calorie, 50 grams of fat, kaleidoscope of artery clogging eggs, diced ham, bacon, sausage, salsa and shredded cheddar needed to shock their morning minds back into coherence (or something like that). The idea though is that the Loaded Breakfast Burrito makes no apologies. It’s lives on the edge.

The Consensus Group would have taken the idea of a breakfast burrito and made it smaller to appeal to the “average” appetite. Or closer to the truth, they would have found out in focus groups that many people do not like the breakfast burrito concept and would have offered a plate with two eggs, two slices of bacon and some toast (which of course would be ignored or at least forgotten by most everyone that ate it).

No one ever talks about the ideas or products developed from the Consensus Group. People need edges, something unique, in order to talk. The ideas developed by the Consensus Group are easily forgotten, are “good enough” and mediocre at best.

Happy Tuesday!

Seinfeld on Marketing: Groups

In this episode of Seinfeld on Marketing, George is discussing with Jerry, Elaine and Kramer a comeback line (remember jerk store?) that he wants to use on a coworker that was rude to him. The gang offers George some alternative comebacks, but George likes his comeback better(“The jerk store called and they are running out of you!”):

GEORGE: (Animated) All right, all right. You see? This is why I hate writing with a large group. Everybody has their own little opinions, and it all gets homogenized, and you lose the whole edge of it. I’m going with jerk store! Jerk store is the line! Jerk store!

What I think George is trying to say is there are basically three types of groups: Consensus Groups, Frankenstein Groups and Interdependent Groups. Let me explain all three.

The first group, the Consensus Group, takes everyone’s “little opinions” and tries to come to a common ground or a consensus. The results of this group are usually safe/inoffensive/homogenized ideas.

The second group, the Frankenstein Group, is also born from everyone’s”little opinions”, but this time the group tries to create life by combining all of the opinions of the group into one idea. The results of this group are usually a disjointed patchwork of ideas.

The last group is the Interdependent Group. This group is an aggregation of independently deciding individuals who depend on each other for a common goal or purpose (think YouTube). As Lily Tomlin once put it, “We’re all in this together, by ourselves.” This groups is the one that usually harnesses the powerful potential of a group.

Le me also visually explain:

Happy Friday!

This post is part of a weekly series, Seinfeld on Marketing.