Paradigm shifts in marketing
In the comments about overused marketing words in my post about synergy the other day, Christopher Morris said,
I thought it was “paradigm”. Or is that overused word old and busted now?
Paradigm and paradigm shifts were definitely broken by overuse in the 1990s. Eventually the term became meaningless because it was used to describe virtually any change in business models.
Let’s tackle quickly what a paradigm shift is. To paraphrase the scientific definition, a paradigm shift occurs when you encounter anomalies that cannot be explained by any existing scientific knowledge. The understanding of how germs work would be a paradigm shift because disease is’t caused by humors or evil spirits, but by microbial organisms. New science needed to be developed to explain the mechanics of disease.
Looking at it through that lens, there have been relatively few paradigm shifts in marketing over centuries of human history because there are very few anomalies in human communications that don’t fit how we work as human beings. The Gutenberg press was one, allowing companies and organizations outside the clergy to print things. Broadcast media began with Gutenberg. The channels for delivery of content – radio, television, Internet – changed over time, but the model of communicating information to people en masse was a paradigm shift.
Taken from that perspective, social media not only isn’t a paradigm shift, it’s not even remotely close to new. The idea that businesses could and should communicate with customers and have conversations with them stretch back to prehistoric times when merchants in local bazaars first figured out that telling a customer to tell a friend about their apple stand was a good way to build business. The channels have changed throughout the millennia and the scale with which you can do so has dramatically increased, but the method of two-way communication via Twitter is exactly the same as the apple merchant from 50,000 years ago.
In that light, the last paradigm shift of marketing communications really was the age of broadcast which began in 1436 CE. This also explains why we have a tendency even in social media to manage our communications channels as a broadcast channel; it’s the most recent innovation to the theory of communications and the only one that scales well.
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#the5 for the week ending December 10, 2010
I tweet out #the5 regularly on weekday mornings. It's a list of the 5 things in my various channels that I think are worth paying attention to, usually culled from thousands of blogs and tweets in my Google Reader. Folks have asked in the past if they could somehow get these tweets in another fashion, but every Twitter/Wordpress plugin I've seen makes a mangled, annoying mess of processing the Twitterstream, so until there's a better option, I'll just throw out this digest. If you'd like to get these before the summary, just follow me on Twitter.- #the5: @seomoz on steps to improve your content’s shareability: http://ar.gy/5TH
- #the5: @djwaldow on The More You Like, The More You Save campaign and results: http://ar.gy/5TF
- #the5: One of mine, who do you blame? http://ar.gy/5TE
- #the5: See the first Chrome OS notebook unboxed from @blogoscoped: http://ar.gy/5TD
- #the5: How to time your pitches and upsells on @copyblogger: http://ar.gy/5TC
- #the5: Should you use Google Adwords sitelinks ads? @seomoz shares the results: http://ar.gy/5O7
- #the5: @webby2001 gives you the state of podcasting, from blogworld: http://ar.gy/5O2
- #the5: Non-profits: do you know when 22% of all online donations happen? @katyan4g tells you: http://ar.gy/5O1
- #the5: Food stamp usage is up 16.2% year over year: http://ar.gy/5O0
- #the5: Understanding what synergy actually means and how it applies to marketing: http://ar.gy/5Nz
- #the5: One of mine, Metcalfe’s Law and Social Media: Size does matter. http://ar.gy/5LY
- #the5: Watch @djwaldow on @msnbc about Twitter and job search: http://ar.gy/5LX
- #the5: My favorite Mac tool Skitch goes 1.0: http://ar.gy/5LW
- #the5: @copyblogger on 8 simple ways to get more people to read your stuff: http://ar.gy/5LR
- #the5: @seomoz shows you what’s working in local SEO, Google Places, and search rankings: http://ar.gy/5LN
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Blame
One of the easiest ways to judge whether someone has the qualities of a leader is through a very basic metric: how often do they assign blame to someone else, and how often do they take responsibility themselves?
It has been my experience that the people who are true leaders in my life, the sorts of folks who I want to follow, typically avoid assigning blame whenever practical, even if it’s called for. They shoulder full responsibility for their own actions and spend the majority of their time focused on fixing what’s broken.
It has been my experience that the people who are the least productive, least inspiring folks in my life are the ones who assign blame as quickly as possible to someone else to cover for their shortcomings. They abdicate responsibility for their own actions and spend the majority of their time deflecting attention away from themselves towards other people.
Here’s the actionable piece: in the social world, everyone can see these two personalities in action very easily. All you need to do is pull up someone’s Twitterstream or Facebook wall and within a few minutes of reading, you have a very good idea of which camp someone falls in. Do they spend the majority of their time being helpful? Do they spend the majority of their time talking positively or negatively about others? Most important, how often do they complain and spend their time blaming others, and what ratio of talking about others is complaints versus praise?
Unquestionably, we all have bad days. Unquestionably, we all have experiences with other people that leave something to be desired. But to be someone that others want to have around and have in roles of responsibility, as someone that others would want to hire, you absolutely must demonstrate this core quality of a leader.
Take a few moments to audit your social history right now. Look over your Twitterstream, look at your wall, and ask yourself if you’re conveying a sense of leadership or are flinging blame as quickly as possible. Ask yourself if your social history conveys the person you want to be or not.
If you’re not the sort of person you want to be, there’s a relatively simple fix for that, too. Your view of the world is set by the questions you ask. If you truly want to view the world differently, if you truly want to see what’s good in it instead of what’s not meeting your expectations, ask different questions of the world. If someone lets you down, ask yourself how you could have set things up differently so that the person you’re working with had no choice but to succeed. If someone outperforms you, ask yourself what methods they’re using to get the performance you want.
Above all else, ask yourself to look for evidence of the kind of world you want to live in. If you want to live in hell, there are plenty of examples of people being truly awful to each other every day. If you want to live in paradise, there are plenty of examples of people being truly wonderful to each other every day. Change who you follow and read in social media from the people who bring out the worst in you to the people who bring out the best in you. It’s not hard – just a few clicks and you’re putting different programming into your brain via your blog reader or podcast listener.
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Synergy and marketing
Synergy is probably one of the top most overused words in the entire business world. It’s been bandied about so recklessly that it’s pretty much lost all meaning. Every company in the world has leveraged synergy so much that it’s been on the annual bad buzzword list for nearly 13 years.
What does it actually mean, and could understanding it provide actual value?
Synergy’s short definition is the combination of two or more things to produce something that neither component could produce alone. Combining sodium gas and chlorine gas, both deadly, creates ordinary table salt. Combining graphic design and copywriting can produce a top selling website that neither talent could produce alone. Combining smart people with a common goal often leads to team achievements that are impossible for individuals to produce.
The problem with synergy is that because it’s so overused, no one quite understands how it works or how to use it. It’s not just a matter of combining things; it’s a matter of understanding how things work and which things you should put together. Randomly combining marketing ideas is about as effective as randomly combining chemicals in a chemistry lab. Occasionally you’ll get something useful, and occasionally you’ll lose a limb from an explosion (metaphorically with regard to marketing) or accidentally poison everyone in the building with mustard gas.
In order to make use of the idea of synergy in marketing, start understanding human behavior first. Combining pay per click search ads with search engine optimization is a nearly perfect synergy (if you can afford it) because both marketing methods are taking advantage of the human behavior of searching. Having both reinforces your presence of mind to a searcher. Combining pay per click search ads with television ads doesn’t make nearly as much sense because people are in two different mindsets. One is searching, the other is passively consuming or expecting to be entertained. Both methods may be effective, but you won’t create actual synergy – you’ll have the sum total of each method operating independently rather than creating a self-reinforcing harmony and a sum greater than the parts.
Examine your marketing methods and see what human behaviors and activities are occurring in the context of each method. What are people doing when they’re reading an email, interacting on Facebook, driving down the road, going out to eat, etc. and ask yourself what other forms of marketing work together with those activities and mindsets. Only then will you understand true synergy and which marketing methods to deploy for maximum effect.
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Metcalfe’s Law and Social Media: Size does matter
Metcalfe’s Law and Social Media: Size does matter
This will be an unpleasant post for some to read. If you are in the school of thought that says numbers don’t matter with regard to things like Twitter followers, blog subscribers, etc. this post will make you angry. I would kindly urge you to close this window or tab and skip to the next blog post in your reader. You’ll be happier for it, I promise you.
Consider yourself warned.
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