A SAHARA BY ANY OTHER NAME

With the frenzy for eating all things fresh, green, and local, it’s hard to remember that only a few years ago, researchers had located way too many urban food deserts here in the U.S. as well as Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.

Coined in the mid-2000s, “food desert” is a concentrated area short on access to fresh meat and produce, long on convenience stores and quick-serve chains.  Metro-dwellers in those areas don’t eat well, get sick often, and are at higher risks for life-shortening diseases.  The solutions?  Safe places to shop, for one.  The rest follow logically:  Educating populations about good nutrition, ensuring these communities have the financial wherewithal to buy healthy food (usually higher in price than the fast-food outlets), and training residents on adopting such alternatives as victory gardens and urban agriculture.

The good news?  With community activism, widespread awareness, and retailer cooperation, food deserts are shrinking, bit by bit by bit.

Yeah, we know what you’re thinking:  “What the heck does this trend have to do with design and change and communications and branding?”

Here was our Eureka:  The same kind of sere-ness a food desert connotes can apply to communications.  We’ll elaborate, of course, through questions:

• ·       Is business writing clear, concise, sparkling … or dry as our proverbial Sahara?
• ·       Are there functions and divisions within the company that, quite simply, don’t communicate well or often enough?
• ·       How parched are your stakeholders – inside and out – for real information and intelligence?
• ·       Do constituents need to travel far to get to that communications oasis?  Or is it as close as their laptop or Internet connection?

Analogy’s over, with one last question:  How long will it take us to build safe places to communicate, and to congregate in communities of genuine conversation?

ONCE UPON A TIME

Much has been written of late about stories and storytelling.

Mel and Pat Ziegler, founders of Banana Republic and serial entrepreneurs, narrate their concept’s early days (BGB, before The Gap buy-out) in Wild Company.

Kentuckian (and former Pittsburgh Pirates player) J.Peterman, no newbie to the art of romance, re-started his eponymous catalog in the early 2000s and is, fingers crossed, succeeding this second time around.  In fact, his newest wrinkle is an online travel adventure bulletin board, building a community for sharing off-beat customer experiences.

Forward-thinking marketers are declaring that do-good promotions are passé, trumped by experiential marketing … and, you got it, stories.

But who’s telling stories?  More, who’s telling them well … and authentically?

Other than actors, of course – and anyone who’s been schooled in presentations (sometimes) and improvisation (occasionally). 

Those of us whose professions rely on tugging hearts and plying emotion – with the whole truth and nothing but  – are, quite frankly, not always so adept at spinning tales.  We forget about protagonists and antagonists.  Rush through the narrative because time is limited.  Ignore the intake of breaths around the plot and the climax and denouement.   And don’t rehearse the actual delivery.

It’s as important inside a business as it is in talking products or services with real-life buyers.  Entertainment for a reason (not for frivolity’s sake) tells our rapt audiences as much as possible, gets them to experience the event through different lenses, underscores a point without preaching, and, in short, screams “genuineness” with a purpose, memorably.  Storytelling’s an art … and an important element of persuasion. 

Which MBA or higher-ed institution will be the first to pioneer that idea in its curricula?

MR. BELL SEZ ...

Futurists, from Al Gore to Google’s Larry Page, see a world filled with multiple robots and complex automated “things,” ready to do our bidding at the touch of an app.

Many are here right now:  Kitchens that talk.  Fitness monitors limiting TV time if wearers don’t meet fitness goals.  Driverless cars and un-peopled fulfillment warehouses.   Robotic surgery and microprocessor plants.

Soon after IBM’s Watson won Jeopardy in 2011, words started flying.  Will “they” replace “us”?  How many will be unemployed after the automatons take over?  Need we fear for our long-term livelihoods?

Truth?  A few of these worries might be valid. 

Remember, though, what these technological innovations are intended to do:  Replace simple and repetitive activities.  They can’t make decisions (Watson, to the contrary).  Nor can they perform complex and dynamic projects (though technology greatly aids us in analysis and scenario building).

Which brings us to our point:  Yes, there is a slight risk for communicators, marketers, designers, change agents, and brand gurus.  The risk:  Not keeping up with the Gores of this world.  Sure, computers can’t write … yet.  [One did act as the late Roger Ebert’s voice when he lost his speaking function.   But couldn’t substitute for his elegant prose and generous mind.]  But if we can’t understand the latest and greatest of trends, automated and otherwise, if we don’t commit to always-on continual learning, yeah, Watson could put us out of business.  No matter what we might think, personally, of all the technology wars or social media or networking or sustainability or [you fill in the blank], it’s our responsibility to be more than aware of what’s going on around us.  To practice and get even better at our profession.  And to share what we know about machines and their impact with our clients, our bosses, our companies, and our customers.

Watson, I want to see you.  Now.

THE MICRO-, MINI-, MACRO, AND MEGA VERSIONS OF US

A long time ago, in marketing lands far away (nearby too), we took great delight in classifying our customers, past, present, and future, by groups.  That effort, a/k/a segmentation, could take any number of forms – demographic, geo-demographic, behavioral, lifetime value, occasional, or by the products developed by research firms. 

For a while, that type of identification worked fairly well, leading those of us who specialize in change and behavioral matters to adopt those methods for our messages.  Our thinking:  If we could segment into measurable subsets of colleagues who were a) easy to reach and b) would respond consistently to our messaging, we could ensure awareness, at least, if not action.  [Of course, the premise worked best if your colleagues numbered in the thousands.]  With social media, listservs morphed into social communities, formed on dozens of specifications.  Ergo, those employees fascinated by CSR would rsvp to specific community activities, whereas those intent on becoming cross-functional team “volunteers” to study/solve a business problem would raise their hands.

It don’t work so good these days.  First, many fit into a variety of groups:  Like a hyper-involved philanthropist (a single dad) who also leads an R&D team and travels like a banshee.  Or a work-life balance advocate who works virtually as a sales professional, yet wants to contribute her two-cents’ worth to corporate affinity groups.  Even a marketing assistant (and women’s rights fan) who helps with team-building and conferences, yet has a passion for values-driven causes.

Second is the question:  What am I missing if I sign up for X but not Y?  There’s an innate something in us curious beings that always wonders if we might miss a community notice for, say, Habitat for Humanity volunteers – if we’re not in that forum.  Those working on a business metrics project might lose out when, for instance, an accounting forum mentions some of the latest and greatest.

Finally, consider today’s commandment to change and reinvent ourselves – continually, inside and outside the corporation.  We won’t always be categorized as a procurement analyst.  As an MBA-LLD in the pharma world.  As a sustainability guru in animal health and welfare.  What happens, then, to the already classified mega- and mini-mes? 

STORMING AND FORMING, JAMMING AND SLAMMING

It started, innocuously, with an ad exec detailing his brainstorming process in 1953.

Thanks to Alex Osborn and his Applied Imagination, millions have faithfully followed his prescription for ideation.  Simply put, the greater the number of ideas generated, the more likely a winner or two will emerge.

Today, that’s so outdated.  Pundits and scholars alike poo-poo that methodology, each group creating their own version of the ‘storm. 

Some contend the fault lies in the admonition to “withhold all criticism until later.”  Others chime in, asserting that a constructive conflict is necessary to create healthy (or unhealthy) discussions.   What will matter most is the composition of the group, say psychologists, since great output is heavily reliant on different perspectives.  After all, they emphasize, discussions in a familiar setting with comfortable work colleagues do not lead to innovative solutions.

The extreme perspective:    Groupthink doesn’t work well.

How do we get inspired, anyway?  Many count on innovation communities, where conversation flows and participants are free to join (or not).  The pinnacle of that is jamming, a process first popularized by IBM in 2003 when figuring out its values.  Rules of the road, of course, accompany the jam: small teams, clear definitions, opt-in attendees help unearth new ideas.

In our opinion (and you just knew we had one!), more than the architecture and lists are the freedom and space to create.  We’ve held solving sessions in all formats, from traditional to online discussions.  What drives us to the right solutions, in most cases, is our focus on different industries, different experiences, and, yes, the unusual associations between the two.  Sometimes, it happens in one meeting.  Sometimes, outside that venue – in a shower, on a morning run, reading at night.  It’s not something that can be mandated within a certain period.  It just, er, happens.

As easily as peanut butter and jelly- jam.