The Six P’s of Data Driven Marketing.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his famous poem “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner” has a stanza describing what it is like to be stuck in a salty ocean under a withering sun:

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

Today we live in a data driven, data infested, data diarrhea world where we may plaintively wail:

Data, data every where

So much data that we will sink

Data, Data every where

Pray who will help us think?

It is clear that data itself is being created in such piles that data itself is close to meaningless and information from it is often not too meaningful. What we really need is to be able to make this torrential flow yield a waterfall of actionable insights and maybe even wisdom.

This is unlikely to come from yelling “big data”. ” we need to own the data”, “data is critical” and other data shibboleths that the most data challenged companies and individuals brandish like some magic sword.

A better way is consider the six P’s of Data.

1. Perspective: What perspective do you expect to get from the data ? What connections are you hoping to see ? How do you plan to use this data? Asking the questions before you collect or cull through the data can be very helpful. There are times that the data itself may yield the answers but to do so you will need the next P which is people.

2. People: The shortage in data driven marketing is clearly not the data or the storage capacity or even the computing capacity but of this rare bird called the “data scientist”. John Rauser of Amazon in this fine talk explains how this species combines applied math and engineering with a layer of curiosity, skepticism and good writing skills.

3. Punctuality: The half life of a tweet is probably 8 minutes and of any piece of data probably less. Collecting data is like building a museum to the past in a real time world. What is critical is to have data arrive where you need it, and when you need, both from some past archive and some just in time magic. As the world gets more mobile and place and time based relevance increases in importance so will the punctuality of data.

4. Privacy: As data scientists glean insights such as the likelihood of you being a valuable pet food buyer is if you celebrate/promote your pets birthday on Facebook , and combine it with the amazing technology of just in time, things may get all creepy and icky. And to ensure that this privacy issue will become a critical factor one can look to the Government. Not just the Europeans but of every country whose political structures are being disrupted by technology armed citizens. To make an example of things the Government  will come after the big companies and so data policies and transparency will be key going forward to keep things all nice and elegant.

5. Pooling: We are living in a connected world. The Internet is a connection engine. Data API’s and access to databases from all over will be critical to make data driven marketing a reality. Here is a simple example of how Google Trends data and retail location allowed for some superb marketing. Its not the data you have but the data you can access. Access to rather than ownership of data is key and therefore the ability to partner and leverage platforms and portholes into data clusters will be key.

6. Partnering: As large companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Experian, IBM and several others around the world build data stacks, warehouses and tools,  the key will be to partner with these platforms that allow companies to process, pool and pull their own information. There are huge economies of scale that come with data collection and processing and therefore it will be key to decide what platforms to partner with rather than build a complete vertical stack.

The age of data driven marketing arrived some time ago. Now companies and people have to catch up with how best to thrive in such an age and collecting data and running algorithms are unlikely to yield much without the six P’s.’

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Good Meetings

We spend our time in meetings.

Meetings at work. Meeting friends. Meetings where you present and meetings where you are presented to. Meetings with all sorts of people. Meetings over meals and meetings over coffee.

In fact if you are in business at a management level you likely the spend the majority of your time in meetings. Thus how you spend your time in meetings is how you spend a great deal of your career.

In business there are many who find meetings a waste of time and try to make them as short, small and few as possible.Many try to avoid meeting people and have gate keepers and delay tactics ready to brandish. Some leaders use meetings as ways to ensure discipline and instill fear.

But in a collaborative, fast moving, networked society even with all the social networks and collaborative tools in the world, it is hard to be a manager or a leader by hiding behind a screen dressed in your pyjamas.

Instead of circumventing what cannot usually be avoided why not think about how to get the most from the meetings you will be spending your time in ?

There are a lot of books and articles on meeting management and how to get the most out of gatherings.I think most of them are utter and complete BS because they all focus on how you can get the most out of a meeting, while I have learnt that the focus should be how can you give the most in a meeting.

Despite my travel around the world, I try to meet every single person who wants to meet me. Many times I do not know who the person is or what their agenda is or if I do many meetings are when I am meeting folks for the first time. Often these unsolicited meetings from the edge end up being the most full filling because they bring in new news, perspectives or just make one feel blessed for what one does.

Regardless of the size of a meeting from a lunch meeting with a person to a presentation to a room of hundreds or a huddle in between I keep the following three questions in mind.

a) Generous:  How can I give the person or the people whom I am meeting or presenting to with a gift. A gift of knowledge or insight or a way to see things that they did not have before. Something that makes them believe that it was a good use of their time to be in the meeting.

b) Empathetic: How can I truly understand the other persons perspective and point of view because in doing so I will grow even if I disagree with the perspective or view. If I am presenting how can I make sure that my talk is relevant to the audience and the issues they have in mind and not some boiler plate boiled anew. I find it ironic when speakers talk of relevance and customization and customer or content is king but do not customize or make relevant their content to their audience. Basically they are saying that their time is more valuable than the audience!

c) Energetic: How can I leave the folks in the meeting more energized and feeling better about themselves ? So much of success is attitude, belief and hope. So many meetings leave folks dispirited, brow beaten, scared and worried. One does not have to be all bouncing beans unrealistic but lets be pragmatically enthusiastic if you want progress.

By focussing on giving versus getting you are almost guaranteeing a great meeting because at minimum the other folks leave the room better off  and respected. And in feeling that way they become an ally, a supporter and an advocate for you, so you get something out of it.

But actually what happens is much much more. In the course of the meeting once they understand that you are giving without asking, they give in return. Knowledge, Insight, Help, Lots of stuff. Often in themeeting or as a follow up.

Finally because you have treated their time as precious they treat your time as precious.

Don’t think of how to put barriers to meeting people. Don’t think about what you can get. Don’t think through yourself as a filter.

Think about the other person or people.

Give yourself and your time first.

And you will find meetings are valuable, fun, educational and energizing.

Its not about you.

Its about something bigger.’

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The Five Keys To Marketing

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! ’

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What is Strategy ?

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.  ’

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Four Thoughts About the Future of Advertising

 

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! ‘

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Dazed and Confused? Welcome to the Club.

(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 …’

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Mindset Architecture

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”…

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