Jul 1, 2013 | Uncategorized
Hugh MacLeod. Gapingvoid art.
Bob Mankoff is the cartoon editor, or as they probably call it, “Editor of Idea Drawings” of the New Yorker magazine. His TED talk while being about the humour of the New Yorker, is more widely about what makes us laugh, and sometimes cringe at a cartoon, and more importantly, why. Indirectly he also touches on how the New Yorker has managed to increase circulation and profits in an environment where every other magazine I can think of is going to the wall in the face of digital competition.
The old adage, a picture tells a thousand words is right only when the picture captures in some way the essence of a subject, has a context that resonates, but also challenges us to see things differently, and often confronts beliefs in some way.
I am a strategy and marketing consultant, a wonderful part of my intellectual diet is the few cartoons, or” idea drawings” that I see regularly.
Tom Fishburne is a weekly treat, poking fun at marketing , marketers, and the silly things they do, always constructively, thoughtfully, and with a laugh.
Hugh Macleod’s Gapingvoid cartoons are a staple of my daily diet, just an idea about life, expressed in a business card sized drawing that is often profound.
Then there is XKCD, which comes with the warning “This comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)”. Often I do not get the humor, I am not a nerd, but when I do, it tickles something deep.
Then there is David Rowe, the cartoonist for the Financial Review in Australia, and his often disturbing take on politics, its characters and their foibles is a delight to an old cynic like me.
If being creative is seeing things from a different perspective, and being able to simplify the complex, then cartoonists are the Alpha of the creative species.
Jun 29, 2013 | Change, Innovation, Marketing, Small business
We have a Department of Innovation in Canberra, and similar departments or at least functions in every state jurisdiction, and piles of industry bodies and associations, all mouthing clichés about Innovation being the savior of the economy, and the way of the future. “Innovation leads to new industries, and more jobs” type of windbaggery. Whilst it is absolutely true as a headline, without the substance of an answer to the question: “How” it remains just a press release, and worse, a consumer of public resources with little real potential to add value, and ther promised jobs.
If innovation is step one, and jobs is step three, there must be something in the middle, a step two that enables the creation, growth and commercial sustainability of the enterprises that create the jobs.
This video of Steve Blank, one of the motivators of the Lean Start-up movement likens the efforts of government to innovate to the South Park episode where gnomes are collecting underpants in the expectation of profit.
I see this so often, a leap of faith which is really a failure of logic. To get to phase three, and profitability takes more than a good idea, available resources, and fast talking, you also have to have a process to deliver value to customers superior to their existing service or product.
Jun 26, 2013 | Change, Innovation, Leadership, Marketing
Across all my activities, I hear management talking about the “next big thing”, the importance of innovation, of being different, creating new product platforms, and striving to be disruptive, but settling for a change of colour, flavour or pack size.
After a long time at this, it seems there are a small number of very consistent reasons that show up, usually in multiples.
1. Incremental is easy. It is easy to be incremental, but true innovation is really, really hard. Not only do you have to come up with the ideas, but you have to sell them internally before you get a chance to take ideas to the market. Taking yourself, and the enterprise outside its comfort zone is a major exercise in leadership, and there simply is not enough of it. On top of that, it is hard to get a budget for stuff you have little idea about, the discounted cash flow analyses, even if they are at the push of a spreadsheet button, carry way more corporate weight.
2. Human beings are risk averse. We like the stable, familiar, and predictable, and shy away risk. Daniel Kahneman co-authored a 1979 article which won him the Nobel prize, that put numbers around the notion of risk reward. When offered the choice of $1000, or a 50% chance of $2,500, a majority take the money and run.
3. It really is so easy to say No. Finding reasons not to take a punt is really easy, there are usually many on offer. By contrast, it is difficult, risky, potentially personally expensive, to say yes, and you have to keep on saying it, confirming and reconfirming the project in the face of the naysayers. Corporations of any size larger than 7 people are hierarchies, and consequences of decision making are social as well as commercial. Few people are prepared to be seen to make a mistake, and most will avoid the possibility like the plague.
Every organization needs some sort of balance, a discipline of culture that regulates the manner in which they behave. It is in the way the balance is struck, and the behavior that is favored where the innovative enterprises have the edge. Everybody has the same(or similar) access to the market for ideas, good people, technology, and all the other inputs necessary apart from the fundamentally important one that is internal, the culture of the place.
Safe nowadays is the new risky, so get off the fence!
Jun 25, 2013 | Change, Governance, Management, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Governments and their regulation centric thought processes always lag the digital developments that are accelerating in our world. Typically, they are regulating to close the barn door well after the horse is across the paddock, and failing to consult those who understand the processes, so do a lousy job. Just look at the failed supermarket and petrol price “initiatives”, web site filtering, and utter failure to communicate the case supporting the NBN in anything other than clichés, amongst other failures.
Well, there is another revolution on our doorsteps, one that governments must be salivating about, if they recognise the opportunity to rope us in, as the Prism revelations in the US have demonstrated.
It is pretty obvious that recognition software is about to be a general reality, as it gets rolled out in various forms on mobile platforms. Voice, face, and biometric recognition are all technologies that are in existence, and when Apple, or Samsung stick it on a mobile platform, whooppee, off it will go, and with it, the opportunity to collect huge amounts of personal data beyond that which is collectable now. Facial recognition and digital trickery combined will enable every face (just double click anywhere in the linked photo) in a photo to be identified, by simply tying to a social media database.
Bingo!
What will be done with this capability?
The old “I have nothing to hide” argument is looking limp in the face of such absolute ability to identify the where, who, who with and when capabilities being delivered to just about anyone with a camera and computer. Where are the new barriers of “personal information”?
Clearly commercial uses abound, as do those for the administrative and legal tracking of individuals, but it is the nefarious uses this degree of identification can be put to that are scary.
Jun 24, 2013 | Uncategorized
The old adage of a picture replacing a thousand words is being writ large as the social media ecosystem mutates at astonishing speed to accommodate that old truism.
Millions of photos are uploaded every day, and marketers have recognised the value of visuals in posts, weather on personal blogs, platforms like facebook, and increasingly by corporates who are using social media to engage, like GE’s Tumblr blog.
The infographic, yesterdays hero, is becoming a bit tattered around the edges, even as they become commercialised by sites like Visual.ly, and services like slideshare and Pinterest continue to grow exponentially.
In January, there was a new kid on the block, when Twitters Vine app, a 6 second video bite was launched and is growing like a weed. Huge growth rates are compounding opening a new space in the social ecosystem. It will come as no surprise that Facebook responded, last week with the launch of an Instagram video app which has a 15 second duration.
Whoa, 15 seconds, suddenly the light dawns.
Facebook paid a billion for Instagram, and has not to date found a revenue model to justify that price, and Facebooks share price has reflected the problem. Now however, it seems likely to me that with a 15 second video capability they can start to charge for video ads, supported by the analytic capabilities they have.
SME’s who have hesitated in social media run both the risk of being left behind again by the big blokes who can afford the infrastructure to leverage this stuff. The flip side is facing the opportunity of mobile video marketing and engaging with it to leverage their competitive advantage, their agility, particularly in local and niche markets.
