The Golden Circle

Netflix is a wonderful thing.  As well as providing hours of distraction and enabling a deadly snack food habit that's going to have me looking like Jabba the Hut in 20 years, it’s got a good line in documentaries and lectures, and recently added a chunk of the TED back catalogue.  For those people who are unaware of TED, it’s a global set of conferences run by a non-profit organisation which are in some way inspirational, extraordinary or significant either because of the speaker or the topic. 

One of the talks I've watched recently is Simon Sinek’s “How great leaders inspire action”.  Sinek is very charismatic and watchable, but once you boil it down, his key premise is simple.  He believes that you have to have a core proposition, whether as a person, business or brand that you understand and believe in, and all messaging that works flows from that core belief.  Without that understanding, your messaging will fail.  He encapsulates this in the idea of the ‘Golden Circle’.

The Golden Circle

• Why: Why are you here?  What makes you get out of bed in the morning?  What drives you?  Or, what is the core of your brand/product/company?
•  How: How are you going to do what you do?  What enables you to be that person or deliver that service?
•  What: What is it that you are?  What do you provide?  What product/service do you offer?

His supposition is that most people go about this backwards, talking about the easiest first, which is the 'what'.  Most people know what the do in an operational sense.  "We provide [X] product",  They sometimes get the how, but generally miss a lot or all of the ‘why’.  This fails because he believes we make decisions with our limbic brains which controls our decision making but not language and rational thought which sits in the neocortex.   

The idea is not completely new.  It’s in the core theory of branding when you need both a vision and a mission statement for your brand to understand what you are and why you are there.  It’s also in marketing 101 looking at ‘Features, Attributes and Benefits’ or F/A/Bs, where you look at each tangible feature of a product/service or company, and list out what that can mean and what the more intangible benefits are for the recipient, whether it’s saving time, money, increasing prestige, aiding self-validation etc.  For example, if talking about a new medical device to a procurement department: "Our new device has a simple menu system that is 20% faster to set up,/ which will allow your staff to see more patients in a day / so reduce waiting lists and save you money in staff time" And in certain companies, they do encourage your external messaging to be B/A/Fs where possible, rather than F/A/Bs.  i.e. “Save money by reducing your waiting lists/by using staff time more efficiently and enabling them to have more appointments per day/ made possible because our devices have a simple menu system that is 20% faster to set up”.  

But it’s the simplicity of his model that works.  If you can articulate the golden circle in one or two sentences for your core products/brands, you’re probably a lot further along the curve than many of your competitors.  Even well known and loved brands probably lack a chunk of ‘why’ inside the businesses they serve.  Then you need to check the consistency of that message; you might be able to layout the proposition but can your colleagues in Customer Services?  Operations?  Because if they can’t, something’s not been carried forwards.  And that's not even looking at your customers and how they perceive what they receive (hint: it's often not what you think).     

The talk also struck a chord when thinking much more in the context of leadership: until watching that talk, I’d never really considered the repercussions of leaders/managers personal F/A/Bs on the team around them.  You can do a really good job managing a team and it's performance even if you don't believe in the company; but you're managing rather than leading or inspiring and that is different.  And you'll have lesser outputs from your team.  It’s having some core beliefs that shape your actions and that will cause  other people to follow, in internal and external roles, such as: “I believe we can be main influencers in the global company/through excellence in strategy, planning, implementation and innovation/ whilst providing marketing and commercial services”.   

It’s a simple but effective method of ensuring that teams remain focused and dedicated even if changes are going around them, be it changes in structure, personnel or direction.  If you have an influencer in your company, then they have to believe in what they and their team are doing, or everyone loses focus.  I feel that this is part of a manager's role and responsibility: to define the core 'why' of their team or department and be that role model.  

It's not about being falsely positive, it's about being genuine and finding something within what you are doing that you believe in.  It doesn't even have to reflect the currently reality because aspirational visions can pull a team towards that goal.  Believe that your team are at the core of commercial strategy, and your requests to them, the questions you ask, the projects you all work on will be in line with that goal, and cause your team to become those strategic leaders, even if they weren't before.   

At worst, it’s worth bearing in mind that if you understand the importance of belief, and recognise your lack of belief, you can change it.  The slightly clichéd affirmations in front of a mirror have a basis in clinical trials: Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) studies on forced compliance demonstrated that if you act in a way contrary to your beliefs, you will change your beliefs to match, and numerous other studies have replicated that.  Act like you believe in what you are doing long enough, and you’ll start to believe it yourself, although I would question why you're working in for a company you really don't believe in! 

So the core is, know why you’re doing what you’re doing (with conviction!), understand how you are going to do it, and then do it, and people will follow.    

Guess I'll be off to do a bit of Why/What/How then!

Kittens to your Desk (or Not)

Recently, someone on my FaceBook got extremely excited over this post.

Please note: the kittens are not
delivered in boxes.  I hope.

For those of you who can't be bothered to click on the link, a rather disreputable taxi company called in Australia is doing a 'dial a kitten service' via Uber.  According to the article: "Uber customers in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Geelong, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney can now order the kitten delivery service, which costs approximately £20 and a cab will bring an actual fluffy piece of tiny joy to your desk, for you to play with, smother in kisses and enjoy for 15 minutes." There were also assurances that "Uber has teamed up with animal shelters... who will benefit from the money raised and will also be on hand during the cuddle time, to keep an eye on the fluff-balls and to answer any questions you might have about adoption."

My friend thought this was brilliant and wanted all taxi companies to get in on the action to enable him to have a kitten delivery at need.  My immediate knee jerk reaction was horror and not just at the cutesy prose: this is pretty much a cat's idea of hell.  I was seriously unimpressed with the charities for agreeing.  I mean, how could they agree?

"Hey Director Bob, you know that really dodgy taxi company that was in the papers last month?"
"Yep, Marketing Maverick."
"They'd like to try and improve their reputation."
"Yeah?"
"Yep, by delivering out already off-kilter and possibly traumatised kittens to people they've never met before, completely out the blue, in an unfamiliar place, with no control, for 15 minutes of enforced petting the kitten can't escape from.  And they want to use ours!  What do you think?"
"YOUWHATNOW?!?!?"

However, when I starting thinking in a little more depth, I saw something completely different: a not very successful PR stunt, and a very successful piece of hijack marketing, and not from a source you'd expect.

There are two things going on here:

1. The Unconvincing PR Campaign - This is a PR campaign by the taxi company trying to change their reputation by delivering kittens to workers.  The likelihood is that this isn't going to work.  A company with a notoriety for sexual harassment and unfair surcharges isn't likely to manage to change that by delivering kittens. There are multiple reasons, but one of the main ones is that issues with taxis generally involve late nights, darkness and alcohol.  This is a very different demographic to the kitten-ordering office workers.  This campaign isn't solving or tackling the core issues of safety and trust with their customers, which at this point has been materially damaged.  We're not talking about a shirt where the thread keeps coming off, we're talking about situations that involve compromised physical safety, potential assault (depending on the severity of the sexual harrassment) and intimidation.  A customer is just not going to risk using that company (especially when there are so many easy identical substitutes without the danger) unless they do something dramatic about it.  The company might get some kitten orders, but those same office workers who are happy for the taxis to transport animals are not going to use it themselves because there's no real mental link between kittens and safety, even if they manage to establish the former.  At best, I'll give them points for innovation if not for efficacy, but I'm not convinced.

2. The Hijack - This is the cunning hijack by the local animal charities which is likely to be very successful.   The involvement of animal behaviour charities seems to be geared towards the adoption of the kittens and are using the taxi company's initiative (and money) to do it. For example, it's mentioned in the article that charity workers would be there to talk about adoption to any interested parties.  My suspicion is that there are too many kittens in the shelters at the moment and consequently are at risk of destruction.  The choice has been made that kittens are more adaptable than cats to difficult situations, and it's a lesser evil to put them through a stressful experience which will end up in their getting rehomed, than to leave them to the mercies of the system.  After all, it's hard to turn down kittens, so they probably don't go out to offices more than a few times before getting adopted.

Not only that, but it's excellent targeting.  Anyone using this service will be:

• Affluent enough to afford a cat as they can throw £20 away on a whim (it works out as £80 per/hour!) 
• A cat lover - enough to want to use the service
• Likely to not have a cat at home (in that they are willing to pay for time with a cat)
• In gainful employment so generally stable with fixed accommodation 

Basically, ideal potential owners.   It's less to do with 'kitten delivery' as the article phrases it, and everything to do with manipulating your targets with a stealth 'try before you buy' strategy, full with a dedicated sales person (the charity worker), a level of helpful guilt as the kittens are all homeless and ownerless, and use of the very basic biological urge that we are drawn to young mammals because it mimics cues in human babies (large eyes, large heads, short limbs etc.) right in your lap.  I would love to see the adoption statistics in 6 months of these charities because I reckon there will be a massive spike in rehomed kittens.

I like this: I like the fact that charities have managed to use what appears to be a slightly unsavoury company to further their aims and aid in the rescue of abandoned animals, and done it in a clever enough way that it's been picked up on social media half way across the world.

Bravo!

Just don't, y'know, expect kitten delivery to be a viable business model.  

Sky/Game of Thrones: How to do an Social Media Enhanced Exhibit in Three Easy Steps

Last week, I went to the Game of Thrones exhibition in London at the O2.  

Put on by Sky for fans of the show, it contained props and costumes from the series, as well as interactive exhibits, such as a VR experience to climb the Wall.  Ostensibly, it was a reward for subscribers to Sky and to create a positive ‘buzz’ around the new series.  As someone who went, it was great: we got to geek out over banners from the show, heft a giant great sword , play with some interactive exhibits and have an interesting evening. 

I overheard people in the crowd asking why Sky had done it.  Now the O2 isn’t cheap to hire, advertising the exhibition would not have been low cost, there were a large number of staff involved, and Sky didn’t even charge for the tickets. 

So why did they do it?   

Well, much as I’m sure Sky would like to be seen as philanthropic and value driven, it was less to do with creating a reward for loyal customers, and everything to do with some very clever social and viral marketing. 

The key things they did were:

1. Create high level of prestige for visits
2. Encourage loyalty and participation in visitors
3. Massively encourage viral/social media sharing of the exhibition.

So how did they do this?

1.  High Prestige for Visits

First off, they offered limited numbers of tickets.  Restriction in supply often leads to a higher perceived value on your basic supply and demand.  This came with a specific and publicised date for booking in the same way as high demand/high cost events such as concerts, creating a mental association of high cost.  And the process of having to struggle to get a ticket automatically makes it more valuable – the endorphins of competition definitely play a role!   

Timed visits also meant that the exhibition was never empty, and there were always queues outside as you waited for a time slot, again re-emphasising the value of the visit and seeming wanted.  You never had quiet patches.

Venue-wise, the exhibition was staged in the O2, a high reputation venue which hosts expensive shows, again priming that perception.  It didn’t need to be there as the exhibition was actually fairly small comparatively and in a side suite of rooms rather than in one of the halls, but the expectation was impressive.

2.  Encourage loyalty and participation in visitors

When you arrived at the venue, you needed to queue.  Our slot was at 8pm, but we didn’t go in for a while.  Whilst queuing, a staff member came up and got you to register on a website on their iPad.  This gave you a unique code to use in the exhibition, and a login to a unique page just for you that had audio guides and information on some of the exhibits.   

Now it's worth noting that not only did you have to register your details, but you had to choose a faction from the story during the process, automatically creating an involvement in the exhibition.  The feeling of being special was enhanced further by having an 'in character' message from the head of your faction on your personalised page, thanking you for your loyalty.  

Each time you accessed your page during the exhibition, your name was shown with a welcome message, as well as your faction allegiance. 

3.       Massively encourage viral/social media sharing of the exhibition.

The set-up of the exhibition very much encouraged sharing.  To start with, visitors were all carrying their smartphones already to look at the information on the exhibits as per the registration mentioned above.  So they were looking at something they find interesting, with a smartphone in their hand, with the camera pointed in the right direction.  Pretty cunning!

There were deliberate set up photo opportunities as well – for example there was a statue of one of the antagonists with a sign/call to action “have a selfie with a White Walker”: less people would have done it without instruction, but I bet it was one of the most shared sets of photos on social media once the idea was planted.  

Additionally, Sky must have done a lot of market research to work out what the key ‘triggers’ were for their customers that would make them want to post about their experience, and then designed interactive experiences that could be shared in different formats. 

There were three main ones that stuck out:

• Video: Get flamed by dragon fire – this was a 4 second video against green screen where you could be ‘flamed’ by a dragon with directions and taken by the staff there on professional cameras. 
• Images: Get made into a ‘white walker’ – they took a couple of professional photos of you in front of a green screen, and then transformed them into one of the series antagonists using basic photoshop.
• Own photo share: Photo on the key prop (‘The Iron Throne’) – there was a replica of the Iron Throne by the exit with good lighting available for own photos, and you had to queue past it to get out.  This was guaranteed to work as a lot of the print advertising was various actors from the series sitting on the throne with a caption on who would own it: pretty much anyone who went would have wanted a photo on it.

Options 1 and 2 were not simple: they needed trained staff to run the cameras and sets, and they had a number of audio-visual professionals behind the scenes doing the editing work in near real time, as the output appeared within 5 minutes.  However, these were some of the most popular exhibits with a minimum of a 10 minute wait on all of them.

This meant you saw the videos/images whilst you were still in the exhibition surrounded by the excitement and positive vibes created by the high prestige feelings.  Not only that, but they were uploaded onto your personal page from the registration with ‘share’ options.  This means the organisers could (and will) monitor social media, so can track exactly how many shares were put forward and on what format.   Remember there was a chunk of queuing at a number of places (which must have been calculated as they had time slots), so a lot of people had their phones in hand from earlier, and therefore shared the videos and photos whilst waiting out of partial boredom. 

Did it work?

My photo on the Iron Throne.

Had to be done, and yes,

it was shared on Facebook

So we have an exhibition which created feelings of being special within the audience, gave feelings of belonging to an select group, and offered high value social media content (which they could track), whilst making people wait around with their phones in hand. 

I'd say an unequivocal yes.  Despite the costs involved in the exhibition, their return on investment in terms of social advertising must have been enormous.  

Someone should definitely buy their marketing department a box of doughnuts!

A New Blog

Welcome to my new blog!

My aim for creating a blog is pretty simple.  I used to keep an online journal a long time ago, and would quite like to get back into the habit of writing more regularly for my own entertainment.  However, since the internet has become a little more sophisticated since then, somehow talking about 'what I had for breakfast' just isn't going to cut any more!  And so, I decided to inflict a little more talk about marketing on an unsuspecting world, and inflict a little less on my immediate social circle.

I have been in marketing for over ten years.  I have an Oxford history degree, am CIM qualified, and work primarily in human and animal medical marketing although I also have experience in technological and environmental marketing.  

I love travel, and one of my aims in life is to have always been to more unique countries than my age at any given point.  Depending on if you count principalities, I am either a few countries ahead or behind.  I spent four months in 2013 working for charity, which involved living in a jungle in Borneo whilst managing a group of 17-24 year olds on community and environmental projects.  I also gained a karate blackbelt in my mid-20s, and still do martial arts now, although more for fun and exercise than serious advancement.  If I hadn't ended up in marketing, I suspect I would have ended up as Lara Croft. 

I hope you find something interesting on here.  Please feel free to stick around!