CHANGE, BROUGHT TO YOU BY ...

New to the business world-at-large is something many of us have been doing for quite some time:  Sponsoring.

In the new parlance, a sponsor is a few steps up from a mentor, or someone who actively promotes you in the workplace, helping you get to the top.  It’s not a role to be solicited.  Nor is it conferred upon the meek.  Rather, says a recent Fortune magazine article, a sponsor-executive bets on your career and your track record, expecting the same loyalty in return. 

How is sponsorship all that different than our search for executive support for a large corporate initiative?  In the latter case, the naming of a sponsor is also a critical nuance for success:  She, he, or they need to have internal credibility, external presence, and a reputation for removing barriers and getting projects done. 

Or when we as marketers identify a sports or arts event, entertainment or cause that we want to own, er, sponsor?  Similar criteria rule:    Both parties must be credible, work together on a deal or deals of mutual benefit, and provide assurance of success, all along the way.

Easy to find?  Not really.  There’s no sure thing in sponsorships, whether of the change or the collaborative or the personal variety.    Validating what an executive has done (or not) in the past will help.  Has s/he managed the situation in good and not-so-great times, with grace under a lot of pressure?  Will they stand up for the outcomes, given that the cause is the right one?  Is it possible for the sponsor to act with not only integrity, but also with a touch of humor and humility?

Acquisitions and mergers, transitions and big lumpy strategy changes (to mention just a few) tend to reveal all sorts of behaviors in managers and employees that might not have been witnessed before.  Some good, some not.  So when thinking about the specific upcoming change and about the right kind of sponsor, prepare well.   Find that star manager.  And make sure you’ve got his/her back.

THERE'S A NEW WORD IN TOWN

Curious.

A few months ago, a software company, one not necessarily heralded for its innovation (or, at least, not like Apple), released a global study on creativity.  Or rather, on how individual humans perceive themselves and their countries as creative.

[Our curiosity was somewhat appeased by the fact that Adobe, the study’s sponsor, is launching a new suite of cloud touch applications.]  

What piqued our interest even more were the results:  Only a quarter of us are living up to our creative potential, with even fewer countries noted as creative.  [Japan, by the way, was ranked number one,

and Toyko lauded as the most creative city.]

Blame, of course, was duly assigned.  To the workplace, because of environments that emphasize productivity and its consequence, time pressures.  To the educational system and its teachers, called out as not-so-great judges of talent.

Yet, dear readers, fingers could easily be pointed at the very folks who practice creativity.  Why?  Those in the business of creative – architects and graphic designers, communicators and ad mavens, among others – oh-so-often emphasize the creative of the business.   [Emphasis ours.]  Pitches stress the proposed campaign’s linkage to the increasing of awareness, not to the changing of behaviors.  Copy points linger on, yes, benefits, but not those so inclined to move the needle.  Gorgeous and evocative Web sites extol the greatness of brands and of companies, but don’t get us to the information we need when we need it.  And how many news releases contain the facts and the impact on the product/division/business, rather than spokesperson quotes that are rarely if ever used by the media?

We have a Webster-ian proposition/solution.  Obviously, the word “creativity” has its own definitional baggage.  How about “strag-ivity,” a one-word combination of strategy and creativity that accomplishes what all clients and companies, consultancies and creatives desire? 

Or what David Ogilvy said almost 40 years ago:  “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.”

MALCONTENT ABOUT CONTENT

Pardon us while we giggle.  Discreetly.  With our hands placed over our mouths.

              About a year or so ago, the advertising and marketing world discovered the power of content, or, as an AdAge journalist defines it:  “… straightforward, practical, even non-promotional information that plays well on social networks.”  It’s trendy, newly fledged experts explain, because it’s everything that advertising usually isn’t, driven by quality and accountability.

              Examples of content include white papers, e-books, podcasts, Webinars, bylined articles, documentaries, photographs, among others.  Examples of content’s pull impact:  Blogs that increased the number of customer contacts by 600 percent.  Online guides which indirectly resulted in $2 million in sales.  There’s even a Content Marketing Institute (shades of PR, anyone?) measuring who’s playing in this space and interpreting what it all means.

              Today, journalists are in high demand as content strategists, since they understand how to infuse a goodly amount of information and stories into all different channels.   So are former magazine editors and contributors.  Public relations and ad colleagues are now squaring off about ownership – and, more important, revenues in this era of Big Content. 

              You can almost anticipate our next series of questions:  What happened to the corporate communicators, inside and out, who have, for many years, recommended the publication of thought papers, infographics, documentaries that entertain and inform?  Or top-flight designers, so accustomed to counseling clients about toning down the obvious “corporate sell job” in words and pictures?   Name any individual who works in the business of change and leadership; chances are they, too, advise that honesty is truly the best policy, and that content, not fluff, reigns.

              To us, all this content marketing is hype about non-hype.  Content, by itself, is a very welcome direction towards the real, the authentic, and the candid.  We applaud that wholeheartedly.  [And you’re right, our discontent is showing.]

POPULAR PHRASES WE'D LIKE TO CHANGE #4

Suddenly, it’s everywhere. 

Used in one of last year’s episodes of ABC-TV’s Modern Family and, now, as the title of an HBO-created movie.

Screaming at us via The Wall Street Journal’s headlines, and other media.

Front and center in book titles and, yes, in score-keeping apps.

Yup, you guessed it:  “Game-changer.”

The original meaning, we understand, was simple, indicating a visionary person or institution who/which achieved breakthroughs with ideas and innovations that shifted the nature of business or the world.   The late Steve Jobs was certainly a game-changer.  Like him or not, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook qualifies.  Other non-tech examples range from FedEx to the anonymous founders of Wikipedia.  [Announcing our game-changer challenge:  Everyone’s invited to identify lesser-known examples of GCs.]

Yet, after a while, the repeated use of any popular phrase wears thin.  Especially when it’s applied to items and people who do not qualify, even with the broadest credentials, as innovative or insightful.   John Cain and Sarah Palin in their 2008 U.S. Presidential race?  A well-known oil company that angles for ideas submitted by engineers, designers, and other professionals?  And, the latest game changer:  Former professional athletes competing against amateurs in intramural games of all kinds?

Really. 

Then come our next series of questions:  If an individual or establishment is designated a game-changer, does the title ever need to be re-earned?  And how would that be judged … and by whom?  Here’s one very recent example:  The current CEO of a well-respected Global 500 just admitted that the company had lost its innovative edge.  So is there a Hall of Fame for the once and former game changers? 

Okay, this is all purely silly conjecture.  Yet ask yourself when the cursor continues to blink in your document:  Is it easier to pick up a well-worn contemporary phrase – and hope your audiences will get it?  Or, instead, examine the words that would be worthy of your meaning?

THE ART OF THE COMEBACK

Diane von Furstenberg’s little wrap dress.

Telephone booths.

U.S. denim mills now manufacturing high-end jeans.

What’s old, so the saying goes, is new again. 

Thank the media, in part, for paying homage to stuff that, quite frankly, doesn’t seem so ancient to us.  Like PBS’ “Antiques Roadshow,” credited with a resurgence of interest in all things with years of patina.  A few months ago, The (august) New York Times, as part of the re-design of its Sunday magazine, launched a series called “Who Made That?” - using as its subjects such everyday objects as Kraft’s Velveeta and clothespins.  Recent culinary op-eds noted the revival of cast-iron cookware, yet mistakenly called it “marginal in the age we live in.”

Sometimes, baby boomer and other generations either re-acquaint themselves with or stumble on artifacts that might possess new lives, giving them new marketing twists.  Von Furstenberg’s eagle eye noticed that significant-for-flea-market prices were being asked (and paid for) her ‘70s-status dress.  High-end demand for authentic blue-jeans enticed an old North Carolina mill out of hibernation, and its workers, into better-paying livelihoods.  Today, telephone booths, no longer dressing rooms for Super-people or hang-outs for serial conversationalists, maintain a proud position in offices and creative firms. 

On the other hand, we fervently wish that some items in our portfolios (and our financial one, too) would experience a comeback.  Like good grammar, the craft of pairing the right nouns with the right verbs and avoiding dangling modifiers.  Like simple easy-to-understand design embedded in social media and Web sites and print media.  Like straightforward conversation, where understanding was the overriding, single, number-one objective of dialogue. 

What else deserves a comeback?  We’ll continue this list … with your help (at cbyd.co).