As we enter 2012, here is a perspective on the five key arenas that marketers will grapple with:

Marketing as Mobilization: In a world of Twitter, Facebook, Google + and other social platforms, marketing will increasingly resemble political campaigns with Brands mobilizing and incentivizing their advocates to market to their friends and communities. They will also staff up to quickly address and limit the impact of negative streams of publicity such as complaints before they hurt the brand. The emphasis will be on marketing in real time, providing clear value and recognizing that what people say about a brand is more important than what a brand says about itself. Engaging the “peoples network” will be as, if not more critical than leveraging television, retail and other media networks. To do this many companies will recognize that the key challenge is not to develop a Facebook presence but update the corporate communications, legal and marketing infrastructure of their organizations and those of their partners.

Marketing to a New Mindset: Today, all around the world, people are not just more empowered and informed but they also are far less trusting of business and political organizations, leaders of all sorts and flatulence filled, florid, fancy marketing. They are looking for authenticity, community, value, relevance and simplicity. There is a gaping divide between the rulers and the ruled, between marketers, and customers and between the senior leaders and the rank and file.  It is going to be critical to get real and stop repeating old shibboleths or behaving in ways that make so many leaders caricatures of themselves. Get real. Get great. Or you may be forced to get out. Personal re-invention critical.

Marketing’s future will be increasingly determined outside the confines of the “marketing industry”:  In addition to empowered customers, the biggest challenges to the status quo will continue to come from outside the marketing industry. Remember the day that meetings of industry groups were quite incestuous and closed? Those days changed as digital media eroded the differences between video, print and audio. Today, magazines and newspapers and television are all multi-media organizations broadening their competitive and opportunity set. Not so long ago “outsiders” like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and Facebook became the future of the industry.  We expect this trend will continue with a vengeance with Adobe, IBM and many others from the tech industry bringing forth one front while names we have never heard of from both global markets and garages will continue to press us to stop thinking narrowly and becoming more open in both mindset and partnering.  It is no surprise that the International Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas next week will be as important as Cannes to the Advertising industry.

Significant Restructuring of Marketing Organizations of All Types: Todays marketing organizations at Clients, Agencies and Suppliers are struggling to cope because they lack the right talent, organizational and service/product mix that they need to compete in an age of marketing as mobilization and to an highly empowered customer with a changing mindset. Marketing will have to be world class within organizations since it will be a critical part of the future of all companies. We will begin in 2012 to see significant restructuring and blowing up of existing marketing hierarchies and leaders. It will be messy, bloody and chaotic but the future does not fit in the mindsets or containers of the past and what will need to be done will be done.

Marketing basics will grow more important: In a fragmenting and fast moving world Brands will matter more since Brands are the ultimate search engines and navigation lighthouses. The great ones are trust marks. Storytelling will continue to be critical and there will be new ways to not just tell stories but have others participate in the stories. Joan Didion wrote “we tell ourselves stories in order to live” and in many ways brands that are alive and vital are stories. Finally the science of marketing particularly finding the right audience in the right mindset and right context to engage in story and brand building will be even more important and fortunately we will have amazing new technologies to make it happen.

The future of marketing is very bright since it is about identifying and meeting customer requirements and in an age of empowered consumers this skill will be increasingly critical. But, for both marketing and marketers to get to the next level we will have to work hard, learn a lot and change our approaches and mindsets in ways that will truly test our mettle.

So lets get going! ’

Strategy, according to the definition in Wikipedia is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.  Merriam-Webster has five definitions of “strategy” of which three use the word “strategem” as part of the explanation !

My definition of strategy is three simple words. Future Competitive Advantage.

It is what an individual or a firm needs to do to ensure they have an advantage versus their competition in the future.

This definition breaks down strategy development into three simple steps.

1. Future: Paint future landscape or scenarios deciding on time horizon and key variables.

a) Time: The first decision is how much in the future should we plan for? My recommendation is no less than three years (next year  or two are usually already decided in most businesses) and no more than five years out (the world is changing too fast to project any further).

b) Key variables :  These often include people (demographic changes, expectations of consumers etc.), technology ( for instance cloud based computing, the rise of big data), macro economic shifts (indebted government, the rise of Asia), and customer/client changes ( new needs, new customers, new metrics)

2. Competition: Who will be your competitors in the future ? It is here that most firms make mistakes because they fixate on current competitor or current customer/consumer  needs. In a world of digital leakage competitors come from anywhere. For instance, the iPhone not only devastated Nokia but also impacted Nintendo hand held games, Garmin (with Google maps on an iPhone does one need separate navigation), Nikon (the new iPhones have 8 megapixels) and even Apple’s own iPod whose sales declined as the new phones had a built in music player.

In addition to digital leakage, a key variable are the new needs of existing customers or those of customers that may be in adjoining categories or to small for you to bother about today. Often these “fringe” players  will change your industry. Remember Google began by focussing on small businesses that either did not advertise or  used yellow pages and direct mail ! This idea of being disrupted by new competitors or new  needs is pointed out in the seminal work by Christensen called the Innovators Dilemma. 

3. Advantage: After a company has a picture of potential future customers, and possible competitors, comes the hardest step. What does a firm have to do to ensure an advantage in such a landscape?

The difficulty arises  here because a firm must  decide which customer needs it will deliver and which competitors it plans to battle with. The power of a strategy is what a firm decides to focus on  (and therefore what deliverables and capabilities it will  give up to a partner or exit from ). This focus is key for strategy because

a) core competency is critical for both speed, scale and expertise advantage

b) no single company can do it all as client needs and competitors fragment

c) collaboration is key in a networked and fast moving age  but collaborating cannot happen between firms that are a melange of mediocrity spread across lots of skills, but rather linkages between well honed world class firms.

From Strategy to Implementation

Strategy by itself is pretty useless. It is an idea, an outline, an approach,  but only the beginning. TS Eliot, the poet,  wrote between the “idea and the reality falls the shadow”.

For a strategy to really deliver future competitive advantage it will have to be implemented . The two biggest challenges for firms as they seek to deliver on a strategy are to a)  address their organizational design (usually successful companies have processes and products optimized for existing clients and businesses) and talent ( critical to attract new types, training existing players in new skills and build out new incentives ) .

Strategy has a better chance of becoming reality if we keep in mind that the future does not fit in the containers or the mindsets of the past.  ’

This post was first published on October 2nd 2011 in The Huffington Post.

1.Advertising is entering a golden age. Despite all the hand-wringing about advertising, it is and will continue to be a booming industry. The advertising market is larger than it has ever been and it will continue to explode for a combination of reasons.

First, as the Internet empowers people, companies will truly have to embrace marketing, which according to Philip Kotler is “understanding and meeting people’s requirements.” Second, technology is allowing for not only better ways of targeting and measuring advertising but also new ways of telling stories or allowing people to tell stories. Third, Brands are growing more important in a fast-moving and cluttered world rather than less important. All of us are becoming brands ourselves. Finally, globalization is bringing hundreds of millions of people with desires and needs into the marketplace.

Advertising and Marketing are growth industries much more than Finance or Legal or so many other fields where the machines are automating high value work versus in our industry where machines are replacing low level work and allowing for far more opportunities for talented people.

We need to stop being pessimistic and embrace the amazing future that is being made available.

2. Think People, Think Mongrel, do not only Think Digital. Technology and digital platforms will play a critical role in the future of advertising. However successful people and agencies will not be “digital at the core” or “leading with digital” as the current slogans claim. Because so many agencies, clients and content companies were not paying attention to digital as it rose, they are now overcompensating by brandishing the digital lipstick aggressively.

The future will be about people and we should put people at the core. Because people are analog and we have feelings, hopes and desires, successful marketing will combine art and science, media and message, paid, owned and earned and a lot of combinations of the analog and digital world.

We are using social networks to connect with people. Mobility makes locations and real places more important since we now can go where we want and bring our technology assistants with us. In addition we are living in a world of networks, where connections and collaboration is increasingly important. The world is too complex and moving too fast for any one company or team to do it all. We need to train people who are cross-bred and hybrid and who are willing to work together.

The future of advertising will belong to mongrels and will be about people at the core.

3. The future of advertising will not fit in the containers of the past. Most market leaders in the Advertising Agency, Media Company and Marketer fields have been designed for the past. Our systems, incentive plans, organizational structures have been designed for the past.

We all embrace technology, push forth “digital announcements” but do not re-organize our companies in new ways, bring in new talent and actually incentivize the new behaviors that we all know are very important.

This allows new platforms, new companies and start-ups with fresh approaches to run circles around us.

Fortunately, many of us have woken up to see the importance of organizational re-design and approaches and are working to establish new partners, new ways of working across brands and attracting new talent.

Not all the leaders will make it through to the other side but those that do will run schizophrenic or hybrid models that deliver today and lead tomorrow.

Is your company addressing the hard changes or just believing embracing technology and digital talk will do the trick?

4. Change begins with us. There are only two ways to really change a company to get it ready for the future. Management can change people’s mindsets or they can change the people (though often its management itself that needs to be changed!)

To be successful stop complaining about change, or how other people or your company are not changing and address the real issue. Yourself.

Are you updating yourself? Are you investing in learning new skills and challenging your own legacy mindset?

In the end, the future of advertising and marketing is much less about technology and platforms and much more about the talent and the mindset in the industry.

It is about us.

We will re-invent our industry and truly embrace its amazing potential by re-inventing ourselves! ‘

(This post was originally published on Sept 23, 2011 by Paid Content)

In the past two weeks…

Facebook has revamped its layout and then announced a “timeline” where your living history will be displayed. Just as you are adjusting to the new interface, another is coming.

Google+ became available to the masses. Huddle, a part of Google+, is now a new way to broadcast and just to make things fun Zagat was acquired by Google.

Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) was simple and easy. One Brand. One Site. A few easy decisions one had to make on price. Now you have two brands, two sites, and multiple prices all conflated into a process built to enrage.

HP’s future was its tablet and new operating system and its core was personal computers. Sorry, never mind. And they just dumped the CEO.

The founder of a company it acquired took AOL (NYSE: AOL) hostage; Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) fired its CEO without a plan as if its board was in competition with HP’s for which board would win worst board of the year. Blackberry suddenly seems to be in free fall, Windows 8 was announced long before many of us have even got a look at Windows 7.

And a large portion of your smart phone’s applications need weekly updating but do remember that your phone itself will be outdated on October 4…

Just following and discussing all the changes takes more time than using any of the products and services that are announced.

And it’s going to get more hectic than ever as the half life of products, services and ideas seem to contract to a few weeks from a few months.

There are several reasons for this—from the acceleration that comes from a silicon based world, increased competition that is a result of digitization burning through the barriers between industries (Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) competes with Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Dell, Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Nintendo, Nikon…), network effects that scale first mover advantages, and the reality that continuous iteration is the best way to build products in a digital and connected world.

While this relentless, Darwinian and hasty path to the future is unstoppable and one we will have to get used to, there are some underlying realities that we will have to navigate around.

—The world might be digital but people are analog: Silicon based technologies continuously improve and are emotion free.  Carbon-based life form’s (ie humans) ability to process and adjust is not scaling at the rate of digital change. This divide will be one that will be addressed by successful companies.

—The fast rate of change may slow the pace of adoption:  Most organizations including content companies and consumer marketing companies tend to be conservative since they need to manage brands, profitability and long standing relationships. When things change so fast that it is like the weather in Chicago (“If you don’t like it, just wait an hour”), it gives people a reason not to make a decision.

So what is one to do since the world will not slow down?

—Build plans around people and not technology: Human needs and insights are the key. The world is not digital at its core but its people at its core. People among other things crave simplicity, value, connection and relevance. Do not build strategies around a particular device, platform or shiny toy. They will all end up in a musty attic somewhere.

Be as flexible, open and collaborative a firm or person that you can be: Since the only thing that will not change is change, try to ensure that you do not put all your eggs in one basket regardless of how solid that basket looks. Some years ago nobody went wrong betting on IBM. Then came Microsoft. They were a monopoly and out of nowhere there was Google. Now it is Facebook that is seen as unstoppable. This too shall pass—but your strategy, your firm and you will still be around if you are flexible in a twisting world.

Now, better check your timeline/feed, for while you were reading this piece Amazon may have bought Netflix Streaming, while Samsung bought Yahoo and …’

While one may not agree with Hamlets’ statement that “there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so”, it is clear that our mindsets matter a lot in how we perceive life, how we are perceived and the degree of success we may have in our varied endeavors.

In rapidly changing and chaotic times an agile mindset can be critical to success. While there are many personal trainers to help sculpt our bodies into somewhat supple forms, there are few folks who show us how to exercise our minds to be as flexible as they need to be.

Here is some of what I have learnt over the years:

1. Align with Reality:  Yoda (a.k.a George Lucas) wishes that the force be with us. But what is this force that we need to align with? Tangible Reality would be a great place to start. Besides human reality that we will all die (but others will be born), there will be loss (but there will also be gains) and life cares about the species and not the individual (sorry but that is how evolution works), there are some business realities.

Three in particular: Globalization. Digitization. Markets.

One can fantasize as much as one wants but these three forces are unstoppable and now the Internet (“Connection Engine”) acts like Viagra on them, where each force connects to and rejuvenates the other.

If you wish to thrive and make a living accept and prepare yourself for increased digitization, globalization and market forces (markets are why China and India have risen more than anything else over the past two decades) . They will be impacting every single industry and crevice of life.

All the fretting, complaining  and hoping that these three realities go away is a complete and total waste of time. They just are and they will be. Let us use our energy to learn new digital skills, find ways to expose ourselves to different global experiences and learn a little economics (the non Marxian versions please).

2. Optimism Matters: In the novel “Gravity’s Rainbow” by Thomas Pynchon a character is described as one whose “mood collapsed the room”.

While misery may love company,nobody likes being in the company of miserable people. Optimism is not just an essential component of innovators but a trait that you must have if you wish to inspire folks to follow you. “Woe is me, doomed are us” works for a few drinks in a bar but at the workplace it saps energy, hurts culture and is just a plain downer. Pessimism is a lazy persons way out. If you cannot get yourself positive about what you do or where you do it for a majority of your working days (there will always be days from hell where you feel crushed and beaten), then do yourself and your company a favor. Quit!

A way to get optimistic is to forget all the legacy nonsense you may have to grapple with and ask  that if you had a fresh sheet of paper, a subset of the talent in your firm and its assets (brands, network, money), what would you do? You likely will find you actually are looking forward to what you and your company can do. Every day is a new career beginning. Tomorrow is where you will spend the rest of your life. So buck up!

3. Recognize The Opposite Is Also True :  To sell a point of view or a recommendation it is critical to know its weaknesses and the information that you may not know. Often I first build a case for the very opposite of what I believe a Client or Company should do. (Yes, I can launch a very interesting anti-global, anti-market, techno-averse screed if you would like!). By completely understanding the other side not only can you make a stronger argument but you are sensitive to a) how to sell the point of view to non-believers since you understand their position, b) recognize how much you should compromise and most importantly c) you can be sensitive to when the recommendation and point of view may need revisiting since you are aware of the variables that went into your recommendation.

I suspect folks who only see one side of a story or position. Their minds and postions are not subtle but brittle. Brittle cracks at first true opposition.

Look at the world through a different lens. We can have blind corners in the areas where we are most competent since we often stop needing to look out in those areas.  Practice building the strongest opposing case. The stronger you can build it the more likely your recommendation may be correct if you still choose to make it.

4. Constant Iteration & Improvement: Inside our hard skulls is the most beautiful software. But like all software if it is not constantly updated and enhanced it will be irrelevant to the applications and tasks that the modern world requires.

We all need to be students again. Apprentices this time since only by doing can we enhance our craft. Iteration happens by doing, testing, incorporating, rejecting, and being active! Do do not over think.  Every day try to learn one new thing or one new feature or try one new experiment of some sort. Incorporate what works, learn from what does not.

This way your software keeps improving and you signal that you are willing to learn new things and see things in new ways and are not some ossified, stuck in the mud slug of a carbon life form. Computers that cannot run new software are junked regardless of how pioneering, famous and awesome they once were.

Put aside 30 minutes a day or 3 hours on weekends to learn and improve by doing.

5. Expose Your Mind To New and Different Stimuli : Innovation and change is often about connecting the dots in new ways. To do so, one must be aware and familiar with a lot of dots and not just the dots at work.

Try to expose yourself  a little every few weeks to developments in the world of Arts, Business, Science, Travel, Sports, History, etc. For instance I  give myself a goal of reading at least three non business books, seeing three movies, visiting a museum etc every month among other things. This not only makes you better at work but most importantly better at life!   (Here is a post from my “right-side” blog on how Art can teach a lot...http://rishadt.posterous.com/ )

6. Take care of the hardware (a.k.a your body): Oddly having the right mindset requires care and feeding of the machine that the mind is contained in. Exercise, sleep and get away even if it is for a few minutes during the work day from your office and your desk. Research has proved that all these three things are proven to make us happier and more productive and therefore improve our minds.

In the end as Sheryl Sandberg said at a recent convocation it is important to understand the difference between internal barriers and external barriers. Most of us complain about external barriers that are often impossible to change but we shirk from attacking our internal barriers which we have much greater control of.

Improve your mindset.

After all as the famous public service announcement says..” a mind is a terrible thing to waste”…

‘

We live in a world of digital leakage.

Digital technology is like hydrochloric acid. It does not recognize borders.It burns through everything. Geographies, business models, industry definitions.

It refuses to be contained or fit in containers of the past or the containers of our mindsets.

1. Borders Fall: Today, with the internet one can connect all over the world seamlessly. The barriers to distribution of data, information and entertainment blur. India’s Bollywood leverages the web to export Hindi movies into China and the Indian Premier League of Cricket distributes worldwide on You Tube. Want a great lesson in math or english or chemistry? Fire up your browser and go to the Khan Academy and learn in ten languages. Future universities are global.

2. Industry Definitions Dissolve: When Apple introduced the iPhone it did not just enter the”phone category”  to compete with Nokia but was soon competing with Nikon due to its camera, Nintendo due to the popularity of games, Garmin because the mobile phone was a great navigation device, Timex since who needs a watch or alarm clock. The list goes on.

3. Competition Comes From Surprising Places: Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple a few years ago were highly complimentary businesses. Today they overlap each other as platforms and network effects create a blur.  Digital leakage causes companies to leak into businesses that were those of their suppliers and service providers.

4. Privacy Leakage: Today our digital data leaks and merges and melds with other forms of data. Our public information from Four Square Check Ins, Tweets, Facebook Posts and the like allow us to not only project ourselves all over but also provide a digital record to all who may wish to lurk, snoop or follow. Privacy leaks.

5. Mobility Merges Analog and Digital Worlds: Increasingly phones and other mobile devices allow us to connect place and people to digital networks. Check in at a restaurant and get not just offers but tips from folks and maybe catch up with a friend. Take a picture and broadcast to the web. All places are becoming digital points.

6.Digital/Analog Blends: Digital platforms are double edged swords. They let us project our lives into other peoples minds but often leak stuff from their lives into ours whether we would like or not. For example,  sometimes great angst occurs as our “friends” curated and manicured lives on Facebook filter into the messiness of our own lives and make us wonder what we are missing. Often digital technology not only allows us to bridge great distances but creates often a gap  between who we are and whom we perceive we want to be.

The digital tsunami is unstoppable. Our cars, our home, and soon our very selves will be embedded with little chips all connected to a network. All of us just a drop in a world of digital leakage.

There will be much art and science, strategy and drama as all of us who are still analog (in that we feel more than we compute ) try to remain intact and functional in a digital world that leaks into our beings and our business.

‘

Yahoo asked me to participate in their “Futurist” series of videos.

The discussion covered everything from the “People’s Network”,  to how no single agency or holding company can “do it all” . We discussed why benchmarking against the competition makes you “only less pathetic than the competition but still pathetic!” since the real gap is not between what a company does and its competitors do, but what its customers want and what it delivers.

Was also asked for five quick pieces of advice on how Marketers can succeed in these fast changing and challenging times.

Here they are:

1. Marketing to Gods: People have God like power due to enabling technologies. Don’t talk about how your company or your product will empower them  since they are already empowered ! How will you change your marketing to align with this new reality?. Stop fixating on the competition, the real gap is between what your customers expect and want and what you are delivering.

2. Reduce Fear: Innovation is difficult in frightened cultures. Management must watch their own behavior and the environment they foster. Leaders who are intimidating, inaccesible, or puffed up with their own importance  will not get risk taking, rapid iteration or open thinking.

3. Bias For Action: Stop asking for position papers, decks and reams of data before you move. Do first, and think later about what you have learned. To much thinking is a prelude to sinking.

4. Technology Matters: Understanding the implications of technology on your business is critical. Move tech savvy people onto your Board and as advisors. Try to get folks technology at work that is as good as they have at home.

5. Question Yourself: Build a case for why you are wrong. If you cannot do so then maybe you have not really thought through an issue at all!

The  10 minute conversation is available at….http://advertising.yahoo.com/creative-showcase/creative-thinkers?video=Rishad  

‘

I was very skeptical as I watched my own (big magazine fan) and others usage of content on the tablet.

We now hear of Conde Nast slowing down on ipad development and with circulation piddly everywhere ( Wired made their most recent edition free) the writing is on the wall.

Tablets will hasten the demise of magazines and not save them because…

1)Competition for Attention: When a magazine appears on an ipad it happens to be one of many icons in a sea of icons that I can select from including Angry Birds and Books on Kindle (when offline) or Facebook and Twitter when online.

2) New definition of Content: Professional content creators have always thought that it was their content that was cool. Taking nothing away from their skills I believe they made their money through a) a tight chokehold on distribution, b)the ability to bundle many articles into a magazine and charge for the bundle and c) limited content creation options for others.

But now a) we do not have to buy a magazine to get an article, b) postings by friends or passonistas are as valid as those edited by experts and c) the only chokehold is what the future has around the throat of legacy publishing.

It is time to recognize that there is a new mindset for digital magazines as shown by Flipboard and others and it is not just porting over printed content with some multi media add-ons and the ability to retweet and share.

The future does not fit the containers of the past.

The magazine is a great way to bundle things in print but a magazine on a tablet is just not going to make it.

Update: So what should Magazine Companies do?

1. Double down on print by making the magazine a truly tactile artifact (like Monocole) which people are willing to pay for or pay more for (subscription/advertising split will skew more to subscription)

2. License their content particularly evergreen content to marketers who are working to buttress their “owned” media properties. (If you think your content is so cool why is it that only you are allowed to distribute it?)

3. Recognize that their circulation data is just a tip of the iceberg and there are many other forms of data that can be linked to home address which can be monetized. Advertisers want audiences not spaces.

4. Revisit culture. Stop being scared of founders, ceo’s and some ghost of the past. Magazine companies think they are some temple where one has to be believers. No. Hire iconoclasts and challenge the dogma.

5. Partner with technology companies by doing either joint ventures or riding along with them. They have the tools, the talent, the speed that magazine companies do not. On the other hand magazine companies have some complimentary skills such as a different set of talent, ability to promote and scale (old media still can scale very well and its not just network effects that scale)

6. Go to schools in Journalism and Communication and pay them and their students to invent the future with a clean sheet of paper. If they had magazine company assets what would they do in digital media? Not how would they put a magazine online! Don’t bet only on the McKinsey’s and Bains who smart as they are often in this space are of questionable expertise.

7. If you do not change the mindset of the people or the people you will not manage to change….More on change in my previous post.
‘

For the past 15 years I have helped my own companies as well as Clients address change. Here are some tips I have picked up along the way.

1. Change Sucks: While many folks prattle on how “change is good” and should be embraced, the reality is that change means doing new and different things and trading in the comfortable, the tried and true and what one knows for months or years of stumbling, inventing things on the fly and looking quite incompetent. Lets be honest with folks who we would like to help change and acknowledge that it is difficult.

2. People are analog: As much as the world is going digital, people remain analog. We have emotion and we make decisions that are not entirely rational. We care about how we are perceived, we love our turf and we fear uncertainty. Unless one can understand the human needs and concerns when one is looking to deliver change it can get very difficult.

3. Incentives are critical: As Stephen Levy the author of Freakonomics makes clear, to understand someones behavior it is critical to understand their incentives. We behave like we are paid to behave. So whenever anybody asks me for how to drive change I start with reminding them to change incentives. So many industries continue to reward and provide incentives for the status quo while churning out press releases about change. Change only happens if it makes economic and career sense.

4. Fear must be reduced. Because change is associated with fresh and new things it is also associated with a higher degree of failure. Cultures that penalize failure find themselves ossified to the past. The big difference between Silicon Valley and Japan is their perspectives on failure. In Silicon Valley failure is a badge worn proudly while in Japan it often leads to suicide due to loss of face. There are no second chances in Japan and multiple chances in Silicon Valley. If a company had a high fear level (do people whisper?, are folks afraid of the boss?) than the change I recommend to folks is to quit and find a better place.

5. Culture must be paid attention to. Every company has its culture. Some are strong and some weak but often successful companies have very strong cultures. This culture has often been the reason for the companies success but sometimes may be its weakness in the future. Changing or attacking a company’s culture is very intricate and requires both the patience and the precision of a surgeon. Eliminating some key parts of a Company’s culture without understanding its importance or role it serves can not only be detrimental to change but also cause the change agent to be tossed out. The best change agents are experts at understanding company cultures.

6. Tell all the Truth but tell it Slant. This advice is from the poet Emily Dickinson. She goes on to say ” the truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind…”. Full frontal attacks, hysterical statements about “dead business models” and other melodrama may make good blog copy or conference panel grist but rarely is effective in getting large successful firms to navigate change. The facts must be stated without personal attacks or offering choices that must be made at gunpoint or under fear. Let the facts speak for themselves. Let the reality dawn and rise versus going from darkness to high noon.

7. Bring Data, Facts and Examples. Once a company gets emotionally ready to change, it still needs a lot of facts and examples and here one must be ready to interrogate the company’s legacy metrics of success. For instance, most content companies are under the mistaken belief that their content is valuable and can be monetized when the truth is that access to content and new ways of monetizing content is really the future. Data and examples that illustrate this gets the attention of the money folks and the strategic leadership of a firm whose support is key to drive change.

8 Inspirational Leadership is key: At some stage the numbers can be supportive, fear can be reduced, peoples incentives aligned and the cultural issues addressed but that alone is not enough. At some stage there is a jump into a void that must take place. It is here that the leadership of a company must stand up and inspire. People follow people and not power point slides and excel spreadsheets.
‘

On a large global canvas it was Revolution and Egypt.
On a technology front it was Nokia partnering with Microsoft.
On a smaller American and content front it was AOL buying Huffington Post.

Three underlying themes connect these events

1.The Power of Networks

The use of Twitter and Facebook to inform and organize between opposition groups and to feed and build on news (Al Jazeera did this particularly well) were further indication of the strength of social networks to truly be revolutionary.

Nokia and increasingly Microsoft are finding themselves on the wrong side of network effects (an irony since with Windows and Office, Microsoft was great at leveraging networks) as Apple and Android are what developers and consumers are thronging to.

Huffington Post understands that it is not content but how you integrate the content into discovery networks (search and social) is where the real value is added.

2.Software over Hardware

Guns and Tanks lost in Egypt against people soft power. Nokia’s hardware focus and manufacturing lost ground against the software of Apple and Android. Huffington Post is much more a software company that optimizes discovery networks to distribute content (search and social networks) rather than a company hardwired in the content business.

We have moved increasingly into a software age where even hardware of every type will be made by software as in the incredible new world of 3 D printing. It is a world where a persons reputation, authenticity and soft people skills will grow to matter as much as their title, clout and position.

3.The Importance of Culture

Nokia and Microsoft appear to have cultural issues in a time of change. Nokia’s focus on hardware and manufacturing efficiencies left a management team unable to grasp the implications of software and design. The focus on Europe and Asia far away from the amazing innovation and speed of change of Silicon Valley came to haunt them. In many ways Microsoft management bleeds Windows and Corporation (that is where the profits have been and where the management came from) in a world where Windows matters less and consumers matter more. Oddly, the biggest recent Microsoft success, XBox, is where they dropped Windows and focussed on the consumer. From afar it appears both companies are filled with amazingly smart people but maybe not early enough powerful dissenting opinions when the winds of change blew.

Mubarak ran a government culture which suppressed dissenting opinions and therefore they were completely overwhelmed when change came. The people of Egypt are proud and they have an amazing historical culture. When their shame and anger at the plight of their country overcame the control and command culture of the government, it was game over.

Finally, Huffington Post started from a culture built on the internet while Aol culture was built on a closed dial up world. Tim Armstrong recognizes this and has been trying hard to upgrade and change the Aol culture in many ways. This latest move where they hope the Huffington Post culture will permeate the Aol culture, is a sign of why culture of a place matters so much.

Implications: All of these trends have important implications for management of marketing companies, whether they be on the agency or media or client side.

First, it is critical that organizations reduce fear and create cultures that allow dissent and feed change. As I visit companies I pay a great deal of attention to the culture of a firm, particularly if the employees are made to feel scared or whisper sweet nothings in the presence of management. The harsher the boss, the more diffident the employees, the more I am convinced that regardless of the other metrics, I am visiting a business on the precipice of decline.

Second, we need to emphasize talent and training which are the software skills of the marketing industry, as much as we focus on platforms, technologies and devices. Without underlying technologies or the plumbing we will not succeed. But if we do not have the water in ideas and innovation to pump into this plumbing we will fail.

Finally, we need to recognize that many of our businesses have been built on old historic networks of clout, global reach, infrastructure of licenses, presses, contracts and other important but maybe legacy and declining assets. How would we start again if we had a fresh sheet of paper?

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