Splat, Twoplanket et al:

[DJSapp]

I just received an email from one Scott Webber. Just wanted to make sure he's legit before I spend some real time writing a reply.

I'm sure some other maggots will see some mail from him soon.

[splat]

I just received an email from one Scott Webber. Just wanted to make sure he's legit before I spend some real time writing a reply.

I'm sure some other maggots will see some mail from him soon.

Totally legit, Uber. Scott's a Journalism Ph. D. doing research for the guy who's writing about PM Gear in his new book on business models of the future.

(the last couple days have been a chapter unto themselves)

[DJSapp]

Splat, thanks. Just wanted to make sure he's not some sleezeball or something

Totally legit, Uber.

And get some sleep dude, I look nothing like that overweight sack of shit

[Twoplanker]

Scott, the guy who interviewed Pat and I, is working with an author that wrote a book called "Beyond the Brand". Read this excerpt below to see why he is interested in PMGEAR:

Preface: Brands and Branding
Branding is a wonderful tool that has gone a long way to help companies engage in a conversation with their customers, but the time has come to evolve beyond the brand. The word brand has become such an integral part of the modern business lexicon that everyone seems to know intuitively what it means, yet if you asked ten people, you would get ten slightly different answers.

The word brand has evolved to mean everything that personifies a company or product. It means much more than a logo or a great advertising campaign. It is further defined by every new product created, every press release that the company issues, and every customer service person's voice.

Chapter Four: Getting Beyond the Brand
Many companies focus their strategic thinking around current market needs by getting into a conference room and divining the future (or attempting to). It's a very inside-out or top-down approach. In a reversal of this traditional process, exceptional companies use an outside-in approach, or bottom-up strategy, to focus their thinking on engaging in a dialogue with the other members of their community, allowing them to co-create innovations with their customers. This holistic, organic strategy allows companies to recontextualize and reframe their brand continually, making necessary adjustments as the community and customers evolve.

I heard an interesting story when I was in New York recently, talking with an account planner at a prestigious global advertising agency. He said that, throughout the advertising industry, clients are often nervous about relying solely on the intuition of the creative teams at the agencies they use. Thus, many of them direct their agencies to "be creative" and propose a few new concepts; then clients test these ideas on their "customers" - using focus groups. Because most clients strive for an efficient process, their agency's creative concepts are sent off to the same focus group facilities and moderators, using the same respondents from the same databases, as everyone else in the industry. It's no surprise that clients get nearly identical answers.

While companies recognize the value of intuition and creativity in their planning processes, most are unprepared to jump all the way into a radical new way of thinking. However, asking for a "second opinion" in a completely different context - like the focus group - does as much damage as not being creative at the front end of the process.

Chapter Seven - Step Three: Listen
One of Radar's clients, an automobile company, recently needed help in resolving an internal conflict. Their Japanese design team was convinced that SUVs were no longer popular, and that their next utility vehicle should be a 'station wagon on steroids' much like the Audi Allroad and the Volvo Cross Country. The U.S. team, on the other hand, was convinced that the true SUV still had a place in people's lives. To get an inside perspective on the issue, we hired fifteen SUV owners to help us understand SUVs in the specific context of their lives - all made over $250,000, owned a vacation home and were willing to take two days out of the middle of the week to drive to those vacation homes to meet with us.

A large team from the car company joined us as we spent time with these people, rode with them in their SUVs, hung out in their vacation homes, and shared new design concepts with them. Watching the designers, many of whom didn't speak English, interact with the people was an amazing process. For instance, to observe how they dealt with space needs, people were asked to unpack and repack their SUV. And the designers watched carefully how each different person sought to customize their SUV driving experience - by adjusting their seat and mirror or allocating a specific place for their cell phone. Instead of gaining intelligence using traditional focus groups strategy, assembling drivers around a table and asking them hypothetical questions like, "How might you adjust your mirror?" the team actually experienced the drivers moving the mirror and making adjustments in the context of their actual driving experience.

After spending a couple of days having substantive conversations with real SUV drivers, executives at the company were able to formulate a new consensus regarding the strategic directions the company ought to take. The company used this knowledge to design a line of new SUVs, which are significantly better at addressing their customers' needs.

Of course, it's great to have one cathartic experience getting out of the office and participating in the market conversation, especially when it leads to insightful, positive changes in your operation systems. But this process needs to happen consistently in the context of an existing bottom-up strategy, and needs to be an ongoing priority. It's all too easy to get caught up in the day-to-day activity of work demands and lose sight of the real world that exists outside company headquarters.

Here's the website for the book: http://www.beyond-the-brand.com/


Nice to get out of the office? Shiiiiit, we were never in the office! Now the author is writing another book about innovation in business and PMGEAR is going to be in that book.

When he send us the transcripts from the interviews, I'll post them here, if anyone is interested...

(assuming that's ok with him, which it very well may not be.)

[freshie247]

Branding,what's livestock got to do with skiing?

[Twoplanker]

Branding,what's livestock got to do with skiing?

[edg]

edg

[Ubersheist]

Splat, thanks. Just wanted to make sure he's not some sleezeball or something



And get some sleep dude, I look nothing like that overweight sack of shit

... DJ ain't nearly as handsome as I am! And I'm not fat, I'm big-boned. (And it's "phat," not "fat.")

[Twoplanker]

edg

Mad Cow d'Steeze