We even do it for political candidates.

If you’d asked people immediately after the last Presidential election why they voted for Barack Obama, few would have cited specific attributes, anecdotes, or policies. Most people would have said one word: “Change.” Change was what people wanted after 8 years of George W. Bush, with the economy in shambles, our civil liberties in peril, and our reputation in tatters around the world. You can of course argue with that characterization, but you can’t argue that Change is the single idea the Obama campaign spent every nickel and minute on from the time he announced to the time he won. It was who he was by that November – an almost perfect vessel for the Change “One Simple Thing” (“OST” for short) – and as a result he ran away with the election against a man with objectively superior qualifications, who’d lacked focus and communications discipline from the word go.

Now we find ourselves 4 years later, and as a sitting President, Change is off the table for Barack & Co. So where will they go, re-positioning brand Obama for a weary, divided, and universally troubled electorate? How will the opposition respond? What will each side choose as their OST, or – in the case of candidates who lack the insight and discipline to choose – what OST will we the people assign to them?

This will be the first in a series of posts trying to answer these questions, and perhaps more importantly, to use this archetypal and epic battle to explore the power of positioning, the role of emotion, and the power of brands in the way YOUR customers “vote” for you, or somebody else.

Round I: The Early Republican Primaries

Let’s start with the drop-outs:

• Michelle Bachman shot for Conservative, but ended up Crazy thanks to that Newsweek cover shot. Buh-bye.
• Rick Perry’s OST? I’d say Texas. The Texas Economic Miracle, Texas social policy, Texas accent, Texas lack of squeamishness over killin’ bad guys win they jus’ need killin.’ This was dumb on a few levels, not the least of which was Ol’ Dubya himself. More than that, the rest of the country is a little dubious on Texas, so soon after Rick’s media close-up… adios, amigo.
• Jon Huntsman’s failure was never getting to an OST, never focusing his message enough to break through the noise. As a result he left himself open to the OSTs his rivals painted on him, the most sticky and deadly of which was, sadly for Jon, Moderate. And how’d that turn out? Zai zian, Jon.

This last dynamic is common in a political fight, and we’ll see it repeated over and over in the race this year. The game is not only to paint the right OST on yourself, but to paint a deadly OST on your opponent. More on this in later posts.

Winnowing of the above got us to the current field, which I’d handicap as follows:

• Ron Paul. Tricky, but I’d say he’s shooting for True, and ending up in the neighborhood of Purist. True doesn’t stick because most people don’t understand what he’s talking about. But you know he believes it, that he always has, and that he’s in no mood for compromise. Ron believes, whether he’s right or not. Hence Purist, which I don’t think is going to serve him well. We’ll see.
• Rick Santorum - Conservative. Period. We’ll see how that goes down in the GOP, but it’s a guaranteed loser in the general election. You heard it here.
• Mitt Romney’s OST is the easiest of the bunch, and it’s CEO. Mitt’s kind of come to terms with it, and is trying to leverage it as a credential for getting us out of the mess we’re in. Trouble is, most Americans don’t like CEOs. And most Republicans, it seems, don’t like Mitt.
• Newt Gingrich is another easy one: Fight. Newt is just spoiling for a fight, always. And you know… so are a lot of Republicans these days. It’s the only explanation for the Newt phenomenon, which the mainstream media seems still trying to unpack.

Getting the flow here? Am I right? And either way… What’s your take?

Stay tuned for next week’s installment: Round II: The State of the Union

This post originally appeared on bostinno.com on January 26, 2012.

If your CEO is something short of Lauzon-esque in his or her mastery of the medium, here’s the best advice we have.

1. Start with empathy.

Business is tough on us middle-aged white guys these days. We’re just cavemen. We don’t understand your “retweet,” or what all this “Like” stuff is about. Facebook is something we worry about our kids using. Your ways are strange to us.

But we’re not about to admit that to your punk-ass. Remember that odds are you’re dealing with somebody who’s just a little embarrassed to be out of the loop at this point. Make them feel at ease. Take the edge off by breaking the ice in private, offering to sit down over coffee, and just help get them “set up.”

Be helpful, and be patient. Don’t judge.

2. Build a personal channel.

Social media starts with listening, and one key to getting a CEO rolling in it is to create a feed worth listening to. We start with and focus on Twitter, just because it’s easy and the behaviors are so universal once you adopt them.

So what’s your CEO interested in? What magazines does he/she read? What celebrities is he/she into? Which competitors is he/she worried about? Ask a bunch of questions like that, sit down together at a conference table, and after creating a basic profile just start following the best sources for that information. Make it easy, demystify the process. But really focus on creating a feed they see value in, and want access to.

3. Get the plumbing sorted out.

Next up is to provide that access… from their browser, and from their phone. Not “a” browser, and not “a” phone. Modify their browser home page to drop them in every day. Add a Shareaholic plug-in to it, and make sure the username and password are stored in it. Do the same with the phone, even if it takes some fumbling and effort.

Stupid little problems with the plumbing of social media end up derailing senior people from the medium, because they hit a roadblock – a forgotten password, an unknown function – and have no idea how to get around it. Anticipate and neutralize those problems, before they happen.

4. Help do it, do not just watch it.

Remember not to show him/her how to do things, but to let him/her struggle with the little details about how to tweet, reply, DM, RT, use hashtags, indicate location, and post a picture. These things seem easy because you’ve done them a thousand times, but you’ll need to coach your CEO through them patiently, and resist the temptation to take over the keyboard.

5. Reinforce the behavioral change.

If you take this approach, I promise you’ll have a great meeting, and that all will be unicorns and rainbows at the end of it. But as is so often the case… if you don’t follow up, the fragile sprout of social proficiency will perish in the stale manure of old habit.

Promote your CEO’s new Twitter address across the company, so he/she starts to see people following. @ and D him/her periodically, and check in if you don’t get a response. Ask for questions, ask how things are going. Suggest topics, and reinforce the idea that in the end it’s just about sharing whatever he/she finds interesting during her day, in a way that benefits the people interested in her.

It ain’t rocket science, people. But it is a change in behavior, and as any Biggest Loser contestant can tell you, changing your behavior takes some work.

If you need a little more help, check out the below, which we produced for our CEO Series a few months back. And if you’d like a printed copy, hit me up on Twitter.

7 Habits of Highly Effective CEO Tweeters

This post originally appeared on bostinno.com on January 24th, 2012.

We’ve been trying out a new approach lately, uncovered in close collaboration with our client Kibits.

The essence of it is to recognize positioning as a moving target, and adapt to that reality. Instead of periodic meetings and checkpoint, for example, we actually live on site with the client for a while, to get a sense of things as they unfold on the ground. Instead of engraving One Simple Thing™ candidates on a stone tablet, we focus on moving quickly and writing everything in pencil until we learn what works and what doesn’t in the real world. We ideate together, focus, test, learn, adopt, and lock things down before moving forward.

We’ve centered (for now) on a 5-step process that looks like this:

1.     Immersion – We start with a positioning workshop, then live on site for a week. We also assemble a quick-and-dirty Listening Station, to plug into the conversation about the brand, its competition, and the problem it solves online.

2.     Hypothesis – From there we brainstorm OST candidates with the client, and work our way down to one that meets the standard of being our best guess based on what we know now.

3.     Prototype – Next we use that OST and Message Model to drive a rapid cycle, tactical deliverable… maybe an ad, maybe a PowerPoint deck, perhaps even a 2 or 3 page web site. The operative word here is FAST, meaning we want something professional enough to meet the minimum standard, but not so elaborate it takes a lot of time (and money) to build and launch.

4.     Refinement – Next we release that deliverable into the wild, and listen hard to see how the world responds. We collect the data we can – quantitative and qualitative – and come back together to discuss and agree on what we’ve learned, and how our positioning might be refined to be more effective.

5.     Realization – Finally, with an OST and Message Model in hand that have already been field-proven, we turn to the development of a more elaborate and polished final deliverable.

It’s a different way of working, and the key is that everyone on the team (us and the client) have the right expectations and willingness to “open the kimono” and share. I’d be lying if I said it came naturally to everyone on our team, or that this process won’t continue to evolve as we learn what works and what doesn’t.

But that’s kind of the whole point. We’re all startups now… the winners will be the ones who learn to adapt to a world where change is the only constant. We think this is a step in the right direction.

Big Lou broke even on his investment in 12 hours, and had made a cool $200 grand after 3 days of launching the site. I know this because he shared intimate details of the project’s economics in a refreshingly plainspoken follow up statement, which you can giggle admiringly through here. Today I got an e-mail titled, “A statement from Louie CK.” It read exactly as follows:

Hi.  This is LOuie.  It seriously is me. Im even going to leave the O stuipdly capatalized because who would pay an intern to do that?? Okay so you bought the thing with my fat face on it and you clicked the button that said i could email you. And i know that now you are thinking “aw shit. Why’d i let this guy into my life this way?”. Well dont worry. Because i really swear it that i wont bug you. I will not abuse this privalage of having your email. You wont hear from me again… Probably, unless i have something new to offer you. The reason i’m writing now, in the back of a car taking me to the Tonight Show set, is to let you know that as of now there is some new and cool stuff on my site, related to Live at the Beacon Theater. Theres a thing where you can download and print a dvd box cover and label so you can burn and make your own dvd of the video. And theres a new option where you can gift the special to as many people as you want (for 5 bucks each) and they’ll get a nice gifty email from you with a link to the video.

Also, some of you may know, i recently made a statement (that sounds so dumb. Like i’m the president or something) about how the video has been doing online. Im pasting it in here below in case you missed it.

Lastly I’m planning to put some more outtakes of the show on youtube and i think i will put one on the site that is only available for free to you folks on this list, who bought the thing and opted in. But dont hold me to that because really i just thought of it and typed it.

Okay well please have a happy rest of the year and more happy years after that. And please even have been happy in your past. What?

Thanks again for giving me 5 dollars. I bought 3 cokes with it.

Regards. Sincerely, Actually,

Louis

There is much to be learned from this. First, dis-intermediation is awesome. Look for ways to go direct to your audience… not only to pull cost from the equation, but so you can maintain a direct relationship with your customer in ways that will benefit you both.

Second, sometimes your most important business asset is the balls to try something that sounds crazy to everyone else, and maybe even to you at first. Think it through, of course, in terms of downside, upside, and risk. But if you really think you can pull it off, the only way to know is to give it a shot.

Third, people give you what you expect of them. Treat them like pirates, and they become one. Show them some trust, and they feel bad about screwing you out of your due. So they don’t.

Fourth, its thrilling to be spoken to like a person, by a person. Brand managers, take heed. And finally… Newton’s own Louis CK is an an innovator worthy of some love and attention from the BostInno community. So as one divorced, balding, bearded Dad to another; between two guys just trying to make a few sheckles and get some love in the downtime, I say unto you…Well played, sir. Well played.

This content was originally posted on bostinno.com on December 16^th, 2011

Having just finished it, I don’t have a good answer to either question. In fact both seem foolishly simplistic given this rich, sweeping, detailed, and intimate depiction a truly remarkable man’s life experience.

What I learned about Steve Jobs is that he was very good at some things, and very bad at others. Among the things he was very good at, his true genius lay in his ability to develop products people love at the intersection of engineering and humanities. Later in life he shifted more of his energies toward building a company that institutionalized this genius, though it will be a while before we learn whether he succeeded.

What I learned about life – or about business, anyway – is that both our strengths and our weaknesses shape the things we create. What’s remarkable about the life of Steve Jobs is how the psychoses and eccentricities of his personality, when channeled through his defining product genius, created the world’s most valuable company. His story is not of a man overcoming the limitations of his worldview; it’s the story of a man who changed the world itself to accommodate it.

You are not Steve Jobs, as Allen Kelly pointed out in his insightful blog post a few weeks back. But maybe there’s a lesson for all of us in the story of a man who brought some beauty into the world not just because of the gifts that made him a genius, but because of the flaws and idiosyncrasies that made him a person.

This content was originally posted on bostinno.com on November 27^th, 2011

Back in the day you became an executive over time, carefully cultivated in the corporate hierarchy like a meat-eating houseplant. But that’s all changed now. Corporate hierarchy ain’t what it used to be, and if you go off and start a company, you get the title overnight.

But the title is all you get, and having the hat doesn’t make you a cowboy. When I was coming through the ranks executives who’d earned it the hard way taught me a few things about what it meant to be an Executive, and even as tastes and sensibilities have changed, I continue to find their lessons useful.

Boiling them down to a blog-size nugget, here’s what I’d offer up to those of you still listening.

At the start of your career, you rise through the ranks by recognizing three important ideas:

1.    Management – Which is developing the skill set to organize the work of others toward a common goal,

2.   Authority – Which is a tool provided by the organization to those who demonstrate the potential to manage effectively, and

3.   Working Hard – Which is what it takes to excel among a peer group of people who are just as smart, charming, and experienced as you are.

These three ideas frame the professional experience of most people, who think being an Executive is about attaining some kind of black-belt status of managerial competence, then being given a boat-load of authority by The Company, then working harder than everyone else until they retire, or drop dead on the golf course. I see people act in ways that indicate this worldview every day. They long for other people to teach them some management parlor trick they assume they need to succeed. They bemoan the lack of authority afforded them by their short-sighted and “political” organizations.  The best of them work very hard indeed, although that’s another rarity among the more entitled generation.

If you aspire to be the Junior Vice President of So-And-So, then you should continue to pursue Ninja status on all of the above. If you want to be an Executive, though, you need to focus elsewhere.
Being an Executive is about 3 very different ideas:

1.    Leadership – Which is a set of personal qualities which encourages others to follow you,

2.   Power – Which individuals create for themselves to better accomplish their objectives, and…

3.   Results – Which are – in the end – what being an Executive is all about.

Great entrepreneurs learn the importance of these qualities the hard way, but it’s worth highlighting them and their differences from their more common roots.

Management is a craft like carpentry or plumbing. It can be learned with a little effort, but while essential to well-functioning businesses, there is no Ninja status at the top of the curve.  The French poet Antoine de Saint-Exupery pointed out the distinction in my favorite quote about leadership (and marketing, for that matter): ”If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” That’s what leadership is about.

If you ever catch yourself saying you can’t do X because your company won’t give you Y, drive out to the nearest Home Depot, grab a 2×4, and hit yourself in the forehead with it. Seriously. Quit whining, and go make it happen. Or shut up. Not sure how to accumulate power? Watch the Godfather parts I and II, and pay close attention to how Vito goes from being a sickly kid on Ellis Island, to being Robert DeNiro, to being the most powerful man in New York. Hint: He does it by helping others, not by killing them.

Finally, when it comes to being an Executive, results are what count. The Great Jack Welch once said that if he couldn’t leave the office consistently at 6pm, he knew he’d made a bad personnel decision somewhere along the way. In the end his board didn’t care what time he went home, they cared about whether earnings-per-share had risen or fallen. If you want to be an Executive you should start by making sure you understand the result you’re responsible for, and doing whatever you need to do to exceed others expectations of what that result should be.

Being an Executive is important in an economy where jobs are important, a worthwhile aspiration for good people who want to make a difference in the world. It’s not a dirty word; not about vanity, privilege, or greed. Executives make the world go round, and it’s time we gave the designation its due respect.

This content was originally posted on bostinno.com on November 9^th, 2011

Mike

Dave Balter Tech Prom from Apolis Media on Vimeo.

She’s got a gig in a play up the street and had stopped by the restaurant for dinner. Afterward, she shared this from her Twitter account…

Guy Niel, Post390′s GM, picked up the thread on HootSuite, and the restaurant responded with this:

She said something nice in return, this time with a link to Post390′s Twitter account:

And the restaurant responded:

The whole thing took an hour. By morning, Post390′s banana cream pie was in the Boston Globe, and in New York Magazine popular food blog, Grub Street Boston.

There’s so much to be learned about how marketing has changed from this silly little exchange.

First, the spark that ignited this whole episode was banana cream pie worth talking about.  We say this all the time… but your product is your marketing. If it’s not good enough to inspire advocacy, measured by the creation of net promoters, you need to focus on that first. If it is, your marketing should flow organically from that.

Second, listening is no longer optional. There’s a conversation happening on the web that you care about. It might be about you. It’s probably about at least one of your competitors. It’s definitely about the problem your product solves, or you wouldn’t be selling enough of it to care.

Finally, the power of digital media lay in it’s potential to create scalable intimacy. A conversation between a local brand and a genuine celebrity took place in real-time last night, in front of the 90,000 people that followed both. That was inconceivable 10 years ago, but it’s how smart people do digital today.

Kudos to the good folks at Post390 for embracing this model so fully in such a short time. You guys earned what happened last night and this morning, and I’ll be stopping by for some banana cream pie myself a little later today.