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.

The seven men and women currently running to become the 45^th president of the United States are effectively trying to win a race that will end up in another race: the race to right our economy and get our national income statement and balance sheet back in order. It is a race against the slippery slope of time and competitive nations, a race against the erosion of consumer confidence and the declining capacity of our nation to create equity versus simply issue debt (and print money). It is a race against the daunting and growing complexity of every problem we have, from the crushing deficit to the skyrocketing costs of health care and the declining efficacy of our education system. Ugh.

So the question is not who is going to win the first race but how they and we can win the second? How can we unravel all these cans of worms? How can we break the paralyzing hold of partisanship, the limitations of myopic thinking, and the fundamental inability to forge policies and paths that actually make sense? While I am no economist I am a historian of sorts and I often find the answer to the future somewhere in the past. And the past reveals quite clearly that the success of virtually every new or reforming enterprise lies in the ability of its leadership and citizenry to do two things:  take risks and make sacrifices. Risk and sacrifice were the hallmark behaviors of America’s founding fathers and the put upon colonialists. Risk and sacrifice are at the core of every entrepreneurial enterprise.  And risk and sacrifice are the headlines that sit on top of every corporate turnaround story since the beginning of time.

The problem with risk and sacrifice is that it demands risk and sacrifice. And most of us, starting with our leaders don’t really want to take risk or make sacrifices. We prefer to seduce ourselves into believing that holding on to what is, maintaining the status quo, waiting it out, and not giving up much of anything, will somehow magically turn into a turnaround. It’s a mainstream societal and corporate approach that perfectly captures that classic definition of insanity: doing the exact same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.

The sad truth is that risk and sacrifice will most likely only come when it has to. When the state of the nation is so dire, so desperate that people come together to work together, to share together, and to give up together. It happened in 1776.  It happened again in 1941. It happened for three weeks in 2001. What’s different this time is that the enemy is us.

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

Job’s legacy while seeming to be about innovation really is about his ability to see a good idea and make it better, much better.  And for that he was supremely talented and supremely right.   Gladwell’s depiction of this is crystal clear as is his depiction of Jobs’ tweaking methods, which is where our 21st century mini-messiah went extremely wrong.  He tweaked by shoving, demanding, demonizing and humiliating people.  Getting it right, as he defined right, was worth any cost.  And perhaps the most alarming part is that our culture has come to celebrate and revere the consequences of that abuse while overlooking the abuse itself.

Imagine any other CEO, military leader or even college coach who belittled and brutalized all who worked for them?  How long would people stand for it?  Apparently as long as the perceived value of the right exceeds the actual value of the wrong.

Related articles

• In Praise of “Tweakers” (coordinationproblem.org)
• Steve Jobs More ‘Tweaker’ Than Inventor, Gladwell Says (inquisitr.com)
• Malcolm Gladwell On Steve Jobs’ Perfectionism: The Genius Is In The ‘Tweak’ (mediaite.com)
• Malcolm Gladwell Gets Steve Jobs Wrong (forbes.com)
• Getting Steve Jobs Wrong (daringfireball.net)

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

Tangential as it may seem, the point is to bring to light the importance of recognizing what delight means and then recognizing the people and things that deliver them. Affecting delight is a key driver of business satisfaction and brand loyalty; however it’s a state of existence for business that requires constant attention.

So enough of the delight soapbox. It’s story time.

I don’t want to have to wear fancy gym clothes, but the truth of my life (and likely self confidence) is that the days of grabbing a tshirt and gender neutral mesh shorts are over. There are too many mirrors. Too many people I know. (Lest we forget the occasion appearance by Ryan Reynolds or his mini-friend Mila Kunis.) Not to mention, all the people who should look terrible enough to motive me are clad in incredibly figure flattering outfits. Not gym clothes. Outfits. It’s a nightmare. An expensive nightmare. And just when you imagine it can’t get worse, you go to shop for these gym outfits and find out that the stores selling theses wares combining the lighting and mirrors of your gym with a confined space and Lycra.

And the stores, save the banner few like Lululemon and Lucy, don’t seem to acknowledge a problem. Despite selling to a female market, they are largely run like sporting goods stores. Expertise, but very little understanding of human psychology.

So imagine my surprise… no, delight, when I entered the CitySports on Boylston Street in Boston to discover that they had undergone a rather extensive remodel/reorganization to create a mini “boutique” within the clothing department. Rather than rack after rack of pants, they’d created a simple wall system (very similar to the kind Lululemon employs). You could look at the style, read about the fit and length, and then grab a size. Everything about it was so… reasonable. They installed two new fitting rooms exclusively for the new area– big fitting rooms. The lighting and colors didn’t highlight how ridiculous I looked, but rather made me feel like I could sit down on the handy bench and think about what other things I wanted to try on. It was elated. I emailed friends about it…from the fitting room.

After reflecting on it for sometime, I realized that even though I acknowledged it was a smart business move, it felt like it was made in the interest of the client. I genuinely felt that someone with good sense and a good head on their shoulders made a decision to do what was right for all of us ladies, and the result added a tremendous amount of value to my experience and perception of CitySports.

To come full circle, CitySports found a way to create delight. For five years I lived around the corner and while it’s a lovely store, there’s never been anything delightful about it. It’s a good place to buy the athletic and outdoorsy things I sometimes need. But that experiential tweak changed the game. I want to go back. It’s now part of my go-to inner circle for new apparel.

So many businesses turn to marketing to solve a problem based on a set experience, but today’s marketing is about so much more than that. It’s about understanding the critical importance of delivering value and affecting customer delight and then making that experience known and desired by others.

Marketing isn’t a thing, it’s a psychology of business interaction and outreach.

There is a constant conversation taking place between marketers, strategists, creatives, and brands about the differences between branding for B2B and branding for B2C. There is the debate about color palette. (When in doubt, go blue!) What colors feel safe? What tone feels “business-y”? Is it okay to be serious and be clever?

To us, the truth lies in answering a question different from whether you’re a B2B company or a B2C company, but rather one that focuses on the individuals comprising the Bs and the Cs. Chris has often been heard remarking about the “magic consumer transition” that we sometimes believe takes place while commuting from home to work. The underlying consideration there is whether we truly do think that a CEO thinks or responds differently to words and visuals whether he’s behind a mahogany desk or taking a call from his (or her) deck on a sunny Saturday.

Focus for a moment on social media and the effect it’s had on the formality of our communication. There are no longer ivory towers or hallowed halls, and the businesses who continue to subscribe to this method of engagement (or lack of) are quickly losing share. As people we value warmth and competency as much in our business interactions as we do in our more colloquial, consumer lives. You may be drawn to the stability of specific bank, insurance company, or institution, but your experience is determined by the individuals you encounter within that organization, whether it be a teller, mortgage broker, financial planner, teacher, professor, or administrator. Individually they may present as buttoned-up business people, but behind the pleats and tweeds they are human beings who have a significant impact on the image and engagement of a brand.

Increasingly, we find that consumer loyalty and advocacy is built upon the relationships to individuals within an organization. Restaurants provide good food and a charming ambiance, but it’s the chef who stops by or the bar tender who chats with you while you wait for your dinner date who create that experience. There is no aspect of big M marketing that isn’t influenced by the blurred line between B and C. The way you position, message, and iterate product should focus on the one thing we all share: being human. Creating value for customers– both in communication and product– hinges upon understanding human nature above the nature of business.

There is no debate as to whether the rules are more stringent when you cross into B2B, but it has less to do with how people make decisions and more to do with red tape and legal constraints. The brand emerges when you find the humanity within your audience and then craft a story that appeals to them and passes the “business appropriate” test. It’s then the job of the organization to empower employees to embrace this balance and create experiences that are at once true to the brand and relevant to the customer.

Anecdotally, I live around the corner from one of the finest hotel chains in the world, the Taj. The brand stands for luxury and unparalleled experience. And while for guests this manifests in exquisite amenities and superb customer service, it’s adapted to meet the needs of the friends and neighbors of the hotel, as well. There’s no caviar offered as I pass by, but on a rainy day the staff is always ready with an umbrella, or a bottle of water when I jog by after working out. And this morning, after trying fruitlessly to hail a cab, it was a ride to work in their car service. So while I may not have the opportunity to lay my head upon those delightful pillows, or experience the luxury of tubs the size of my apartment, the luxury is tailored for me by a staff who knows my life and does everything they can to make it that much more luxurious.

Related articles

• Which Is The Best Business Model For Your Startup – B2B Or B2C? (entrepreneurs-journey.com)
• Why does B2B customer experience get the short shrift? (customerthink.com)

It’s been a tough couple of months for me, probably tied up in some combination of my eldest daughter’s transition to eye-rolling teen-dom, an intense patch of client opportunities and scale challenges at the agency, and the marking of my 45th year on this mortal coil. Each of these milestones has provided a lens on the journey of Adulthood… on my own expectations at its outset, the challenges I face in its navigation, and the implications of its inevitable conclusion.

Understanding that people die, a defining realization of childhood, is very different from understanding that you will die, a defining realization of middle age. Coming to terms with the latter – essentially making friends with your own mortality – is hard. And it’s just the first step.

After that you need to process the implications of only so many summers. You need to accept there are experiences you will not have. That there are things you will not achieve. Even if your life is good – and to be clear, mine is – there are a thousand lives you will not live.

The way you deal with this realization defines your life’s third act. It can cast a shadow on your routine, or inspire you to bold change. It might open you to new experiences, or push you toward the kind of life-shrinking nostalgia that catches up with us all at some point. On a good day it can drive you to become a better man. On a bad one it will send you slinking into a Porsche dealership.

A level below the cliche’s here are some Big Hairy Questions about the life you will live in the life you have left. And – as if not enough were at stake – your answers to those questions will effectively pass judgement on the life you’ve lived to that point.

Jesus.

So I’ve been lost somewhere in that fog for a while, trying to find a way back to being The Invincible Iron Man I thought I was before I thought about it too much. And while I can’t say I made much progress over a week focused on Quality Time with The Family, I can say this coming back to my “regular” life with a fresh eye: My regular life is pretty fucking good.

It’s clear to me I need to make some changes at the margins of my life, to add a little more of what I need to stay interested, and to make room for those experiences among the obligations that will continue to overwhelm me at times. But the one life I have is the one I made. And so far, it suits me pretty well.

So here’s to what’s left of the Summer of 2011, and however many Summers remain after that. Let’s all make the most of what’s left, by making the absolute most we can of today.

Related articles

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Assuming an even split between the $4.99 and $9.99 subscription plans, that means Spotify has established a recurring, sticky, high-growth, ~$16 million annual business in just a few weeks. Pretty impressive, for a bunch of Euro-interlopers in the Land of Jobs.

Boston startup scenesters are everywhere on the service: David Cancel, Chris Selland, Doug Haslam, Gradon Tripp, Jennifer Lum, Jon Pierce, Lee Hower, Mike Langford, Mike Schneider,Michelle McCormack, Mark Watkins, Nathan Burke, Rob Go, Scott Kirsner, and Steve Garfield, just to name a few (my profile is here.)

So what’s the appeal?  Read the rest of my review in Bostinnovation.

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• Pandora vs. Spotify (testingtruechange.com)
• Spotify reported to have 175,000 paid-up Americans, valued at $1.1 beeellion (engadget.com)
• Spotify Already Has 1.4 Million U.S. Users, But Will That Growth Continue? (nytimes.com)
• What is Spotify? (contested.wordpress.com)