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.

The CEO as Brand: 7 Principles and Platitudes to Elevate You and Yours

For CEOs interested in attending the next CEO Series event, “Innovate or Else,” please contact Heather Ward, the CEO Series program coordinator, at hward@holland-mark.com.

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.

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.

In the early stages of my career I had the privilege of working on a piece of Bank of America business. I thought I had it made. I’m not even 21 and I have BOA in my portfolio. I’m awesome. Thirty seconds later I knew why I was working on BOA: that brand is guarded like Mike Troiano’s daughters. Everything is dictated—down to the millimeter—so that anyone with a computer and basic competency can execute without fail. The brand is the brand. There are no exceptions or deviations. And it didn’t become that way overnight. It took years. And cost many branding folks their sanity.

The lesson I took from that experience is this. Branding isn’t always about scoring a goal, especially at the beginning. It’s about getting the ball down the field, doing a little something that makes the fans cheer and gets the players motivated.

When we partnered with CLOVR Media last year, there was plenty of vision and attention to detail, but none was allocated to branding or messaging. Like most young companies, they were outgrowing the ability to ignore branding and entering into a phase where playing with the big kids meant needing to look like one. The timing coincided with an opportunity to change the company name, and so it was decided that we’d go for it. We’d change the name, craft the message, and see where those things took us in terms of the branding.

The first challenge was just trying to write down–in basic English–what they do. The story is not simple, but it became even more complicated as different people began telling it in different ways. This inconsistency was at the heart of the lack of clarity. In addition to the fundamental messaging work, we developed a Language Map to serve as a bible of phraseology. It comprised various sound bytes that we felt needed to be consistent across all communications.

Linkable Networks (or Linkables), the new name, shortens the distance between consumers, brands, and savings by linking offers directly to their existing credit or debit cards. Customers register their card(s) one time and any time they see the Linkables symbol, they can click it (online), scan it (QR), or text a short code (TV/radio) and it’s automatically linked to that card. Next time they swipe that card at the retailer, the savings will automatically be applied.

Simplicity does a lot to set the tone for a brand. Clear communication is by nature more approachable and it’s allowed us to spend more time exploring the other brand elements.

We’re not looking to score a goal, though. Linkables is young and there is a lot to be gained by listening to feedback, exploring possibilities, and iterating to a place that feels right to not only the company, but also each of the unique audiences. The visual brand is coming into it’s own as we learn more about consumer behavior and expectations. Tonally we’re testing the waters, while keeping an eye on the business and where it is moving. In the technology space, the brand is just the body the technology is living in for the moment. It can iterate or even change, and the brand should follow suit.

There’s something more to be taken from our partnership with Linkables. It’s an understanding that our business, that of branding and marketing, must be as iterative and flexible as the brands we serve. Process is quickly being replaced by constant communication and collaboration and creative is now a transparent flow of ideas, rather than a magic moment in a presentation. The expectation that a client will let us into their world must be met with a promise that we’ll let them into ours. Even though it might reveal more blood, sweat, and tears than perfect processes and magic potions.

Building a brand is like raising a child. I’m pretty sure you’re never done.

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