Think Authentic

Talking vs. telling a story

You may be talking, but are you telling a story?

You may be looking, but are you actually seeing?

You may be hearing, but are you actually listening?

The difference may be subtle, but sometimes that is all you need to change the status quo, to make an impact.

Marketing lessons from Obama

What if you had a product that:

• instilled your users with passion
• introduced normally uncaring non-users to your genre or industry and made them users
• actually made users care about the product, and care about you

I think marketers and designers have a great deal to learn from Barack Obama. As record turn-out is being reported at voting stations all across the country, and as people who were normally cynical and pessimistic about politics take time off their jobs and their leisure time to volunteer for him and money out of their own pockets to donate to his campaign, the importance of passion in influencing human behavior is shining.

If Obama was a product, it wouldn't simply be remarkable. It would be revolutionary.

It's also worth noting that there is a difference between simply having a target audience, and marketing your product in a way that makes that audience bigger. If an audience is determined by the worldviews of its members, then the only way to make that audience bigger is to change other people's worldviews to fit that of the audience. This is what Obama has done by convincing cynical and pessimistic people that change can happen and they can influence it. Maybe you can do the same with your product.

Here is a lesson we can all learn from Obama: if you want your users to be passionate about your product, you have to be passionate it first. And you have to mean it.

Unexpected is remarkable

Let's think about kindness for a second.

There are two kinds: the expected and the unexpected. People expect you to hold the door for them when you are entering or leaving Starbucks and they're a few steps behind you. But they don't expect you to pay for their coffee.

The interesting thing is that if you don't hold the door open, maybe let it slam in their face on your way out, they think of you as rude. You are failing to meet their expectation of being a nice person.

But what if you paid for their coffee without them asking or knowing in advance? They go to the cashier and order, and the cashier informs them that their coffee has already been paid for. They did not expect that random act of kindness, so they are amazed. For most people, in fact, it is probably the high-point of their day.

Meeting expectations is a must if you want to stay in business. That is what you do if you want to hang on to the status quo. Surpassing expectations, on the other hand, is a must if you want to go beyond that and become remarkable.

After all, you wouldn't tell your friends about that guy who held the door open for you. But if he paid for your coffee, he might go so far as to become a small legend among your group.

Secrets of Consulting

I'm reading a book titled The Secrets of Consulting, by Gerald M Weinberg. Gerald talks about what it takes to become a successful consultant in today's business world. Here is what I have learned so far:

• If they don't ask for your advice, don't give it. Consulting is the art of influencing people at their request. Gerald says that among consultants, the most prevalent occupational disease is offering unsolicited "help." It is bad for your bankbook, and not only does it not work, it usually backfires.
• If they ask for your advice, give it... for a price. Never fail to tell them how much it will cost, or you will not be taken seriously.
• There is always a problem. And it is always a human-related problem. Even the most technical problems can be traced back to human error or oversight.
• Do not call what you offer a "solution." A solution can only exist within the context of a problem. You don't want to suggest they have problems, because problems imply mistakes or shortcomings on the client's part, and nobody likes admitting to that. Instead, call it an "improvement." Nobody will have a problem with it if you suggest that they can improve the way they do something. It doesn't offend their ego.
• Never promise more than ten percent improvement. If it goes above that, it qualifies as a "solution," and thus a problem. This doesn't mean you cannot go above ten percent. You can, as long as you make sure they don't notice it.

Gerald believes that the intriguing phenomena where consultants who do outstanding work almost never get invited back, whereas those who seem to be accomplishing nothing get contract after contract, can be explained by the above rules (or secrets, as he calls them).

I think calling them secrets is rather apt, because they are, at first glance, irrational. After all, Gerald says, an inexperienced consultant's first impulse is to sit down and start fixing the client's problems and do an outstanding job at it to emerge as the savior of the day. But when you think about human nature, especially in the business world - where competitiveness and pettiness are the norm - the only thing a consultant's heroism accomplishes is a "thank you very much for your work, please do not come back."

New York Times Online

Why does New York Times online require you to register before you can read the articles, while a lot of other papers don't?

The first answer that pops into your head might be that they want to keep track of their online readers. But that doesn't make sense. Other newspapers want to keep track of readers too. So do companies, blogs, and basically every other voice out there that wants to get heard. They don't require registration.

Besides, today web technology is advanced enough that looking at unique page visits serves the same purpose. It's much easier, both for the writers (who don't have to deal with user information) and the readers (who don't have to deal with interruptions).

A more realistic answer is that NYT requires registration because they want to give the illusion of exclusivity. If a hundred newspapers don't, and NYT does, people automatically assume it has something better to offer. Something that will make them want to be interrupted, to take the time to fill out a form and give their personal information.

I'm not sure if it's worth it though. People are not stupid. They know that if they want breaking news, they can get it from CNN.com or MSNBC or Google News, none of which require registration. If they want reviews they can again use Google. If they want classifieds they can use Craigslist. But if they really want to read NYT's news articles or editorials, they won't register online. They'll go buy the paper.

In the old days people would feel privileged if they had access to exclusive, prestigious sources of information like NYT. Today, it's the source who should feel privileged for having people choose them over thousands of others. And requiring registration is not a very good way of thanking your readers for their time and attention, both of which are limited.

Fortune cookie

Something I came across while reading one of Seth Godin's books, Free Prize Inside.

He asks, do you eat fortune cookies for the cookie, or for the fortune inside?

When you think about it, the fortune is a brilliant way to make you consume something that doesn't even taste that good.

Not that it's going to come true. But it still makes you curious, and in your curiosity you forget the mediocrity of the cookie itself.

It's not always about the product. People care way more about the experience, about being able to tell their friends what wrote on that little slip of paper inside the cookie.

More examples.

Competition

Suppose you are running a restaurant in a busy commercial area of the city. Along with twenty other restaurants in the same area, you're offering a menu of sandwiches and burgers with various meat in them, and some vegetarian courses.

How do you compete? Well, you can start running more ads to interrupt people and invade their attention spans. You can try to cut back on costs in order to be able to reduce your prices and offer various deals. You can train your personnel for faster (though not necessarily better) service. All of this is so that what you offer is faster and cheaper and more delicious than that of the other restaurants.

Or you can scrap all the meat stuff and switch to an all-vegetarian/vegan menu. Suddenly you no longer have any competition. All the health and environment-conscious people who care about what they eat come to your restaurant. You can use the money you would otherwise have spent on ads and the time you would have spent on coming up with clever gimmicks on actually making your service and your food better, and create a customer experience worth talking about.

Lessons:

1- Competing is not always the best choice, no matter how much it feels like the right thing to do.
2- Doing one thing really well is easier and more effective than trying to do ten things only moderately well.

Perhaps not the smartest thing to do if there are, say, no vegetarians in the city, but the mindset - the paradigm shift - is worth thinking about.

Self-selection

Are you attracting the right kind of people to your company?

What if there was a method to discourage the wrong kind from applying? What if you no longer had to go through hundreds of resumes, interview tens of applicants, and try to pick the right one, because they picked themselves?

Job postings are a kind of marketing, and just with any marketing, your audience matters. Offering the right kind of conditions and benefits, and the premise of working with the right kind of people, will keep away the wrong kind.

If you want to attract health-conscious employees, perhaps you can offer free memberships to the local healthclub.

Young college grads? How about free, catered lunches everyday? It may seem like a small thing but it makes an impression.

Older people? Offer them discounts in life insurance.

You want formal and serious-minded people? Have your recruiters wear conservative suits at recruiting events. It will send the wrong kind, the kind you don't want, packing. They will not want to apply, which is the most cost-effective method of weeding out ineligible workers in the job market.

Few companies realize that the image they project acts as a self-selection mechanism for applicants.

Marketing your services, your products, your content, and your jobs to the right audience -- instead of to the masses -- can save you significant amounts of time and money.

Improving the retail experience

Every time I go to Bestbuy -- or any other electronics retailer -- I find myself spending more time chasing salespeople to get my questions answered than actually looking at the products.

Their system seems very inefficient; sales personnel are walking around the store on a seemingly random pattern (or from one desk to another) and ask customers they come across if they have any questions.

But if you're like me, you regularly run into three problems:

1- There are no sales personnel anywhere near what you're looking at
2- There are sales personnel but they are busy with other customers
3- There are sales personnel but they can't help you, so they go fetch someone who can, while you wait a little more

The problem is that customers are impatient and they feel entitled to quick service.

So how about this: install buttons on every shelf. When customers are looking at a product and they have a question, they press the button, and the system sends over the next available and capable salesperson to the customer.

I think it would be fairly easy to implement and install, and it would improve customer experience and efficiency of employees.

How to design timeless products

I went to Barnes & Noble the other day with my friend Dave. We were walking around aimlessly, checking out random books, when we came across the calendar section. He picked two and asked me which one he should get.

"But you already use Google Calendar," I said. "Why do you need a paper version?"

"Oh, I don't need it," he replied. "I just want it."

Here is a guy who is an early adopter of every technology out there, who tries the beta version of every new service he finds and then integrates it into his life. And he still wanted a paper calendar.

Lesson: Some products are timeless. They stick around long after technology has seemingly made them obsolete.

But why?

First, paper calendars have more than one use. They don't just show the date. They also take space on your wall with pictures that change every month. The first can be replaced by Google Calendar, but the second can't (at least not yet!).

Second, the paper calendar is there to complete or complement an existing timeless and static thing*: a wall. As long as there are walls, there will be posters and paper calendars to decorate them with.

Similarly, as long as cars have bumpers, there will be bumper stickers. But just like paper calendars, they don't just take space on the bumper. They are also a channel of self-expression.

As long as there are tables, there will be table clothes. But they don't just decorate a table. They also protect it from foodstuff and the elements.

Formula: As long as there exists static thing X, there will be <your product>. But <your product> doesn't only <verb> X. It also has <alternate use>.

If your product fits this formula, you can be sure that it will be around for a very long time.

--

Note: by "static", I mean "doesn't become more advanced or change in functionality". Computers for example don't fit this formula, so your piece of software will probably not be timeless no matter how you design it.