Dazzle Ships

Seth's 3 boxes

Some of you will remember me posting about the 3 Boxes after the Vegas jaunt earlier this year.  We liked this way of looking at things for its simplicity and flexibility.

So when I read Seth Godin's post about Reacting, Responsing and Initiating, I couldn't help but be reminded of it.

The post divides our time into, wait for it, 3 boxes, labelled as above.  His contention, with which I would agree, is that we spend most of our work time reacting and responding (he defines the difference in the post - you'll have to read it).  Actually, we should be spending more time initiating, but this is the easiest thing to push down the list.

The other advantage, of course, is that the more time we spend initiating, the more we force our competitors to react, giving us even more time to initiate.  And so on.

Think about this.  And think about what you do all day.  Then think about what your clients do all day.  Are you initating or reacting?

Remember to focus on the important stuff, not just the urgent stuff.  They're not always the same thing.

-- Toby

Viva Las Vegas Pt.5 : The Final Key Note Speech

At some point during the construction of the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas (where we were staying), someone, probably Steve Wynn himself, said

"It's a great place but there's something missing.  We've got a lake.  And a massive waterfall that runs into it.  I know!  At 11.30 every night why don't we dim the lights in the bar that overlooks it, and then a 50ft frog can come out from behind the waterfall and sing 'Lowrider' by War.

Can we do that?  How cool would that be?"

Very, very cool, as it turns out...

-- Toby

Viva Las Vegas Pt. 4 : The Best Kept Secret on the Internet

On to the Didge Round Table discussion, from Day 3 (I think).

Anyway, various luminaries from the world of US Didge were walking us through this exciting new media opportunity, when an interesting question came from the floor.  The basic gist was 'Are banners dead, given all the exciting, whizzy new stuff that you can do?'

Many of the answers were equivocal, at best.  But one really stood out from the Microsoft representative on the panel.

His answer was different.  The challenge, as he saw it, was how to leverage the scale of the medium, as well as capitalising on the more often discussed qulaities of 'stickiness' or 'interaction'. 

'We're a reach medium', he pointed out.

In this respect, banners aren't dead.  Or least the function and purpose of banners isn't dead, though the format may change.  They're about directing consumers.  Leading them to new stuff. 

This is something we've talked about before in relation to 'transmedia planning' - the idea that you can just leave stuff out there and let communities form around it.  It's a beguiling theory, but very difficult to achieve in practice.  Faris has some great examples, but I'd suggest it's hugely difficult to get to work for bigger brands. Nike probably do it best, yet for all the 23 million views of Ronaldinho on YouTube, there was a pretty significant traditional spend to establish the campaign and drive people there in the first place.

When we talk about, for example, sponsorship, we tend to divide investment into 'rights' and 'activation', based on the logic that there's very little point sponsoring something if no one knows that you have.  The same logic needs to be applied here.

Building 'the best kept secret on the internet' may be fun, but I'll guarantee it doesn't meet the brief.

-- Toby

Viva Las Vegas Pt.3 : Man On The Moon

I'm sure you'd agree that the last thing we need in our business is more 'marketing-speak'.  We've already got visions, missions, brand onions, brand pyramids and a nasty habit of just making up new words.  ('Co-opetition' is the latest one I've heard, which I think is what 'Frenemies' do to each other).

But this is a good one, so hear me out.

It's a Strategic Intent.  Probably something you've heard of before, but let's be clear about what we mean. A strategic intent is a cross between a mission statement ('Delight Our Customers' - vague, woolly, worthy and boring) and an objective (drive value share by 5% - dull and uninspiring, though necessary, to be fair).

A strategic intent is something that inspires and galvanises an organisation, whilst setting it on a course to do something.

Here's an example.

In 1961, John F Kennedy put the following to Congress :

"This nation will commit itself to the achievement, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish"

Now that is a Strategic Intent.  It's not a vague 'mission statement' about being 'leaders in aeronautical exploration', it's not a narrow objective about keeping ahead of the Soviet Union in the space race.  It has 3 elements that set it apart from these things:

First, it's directional.  It states, quite clearly, what you're going to do, and by when.  It organises effort.

Second, it's motivating.  It generates passion, energy and enthusiasm.  It's about 'the nation'.  Not 'me', or 'this congress'.

Third, it's challenging.  It's going to be difficult.

And, as you all know, they did it.  Nice one.

So, what's your Strategic Intent?

--  Toby

Viva Las Vegas Pt.2 : The 3 Boxes

As promised, more from Vegas and Vijay.  Fosbury Flops are all very well in theory, but how does one come up with them in practice?

This is where Vijay introduced his 3 Boxes Thinking Model, which runs, more or less, as follows :

Good businesses do all three simultaneously.  Sure, the focus is often Box 1, and rightly so, but boxes 2&3 are about coming up with, and then perfecting, your Fosbury Flop (if you're now lost, you need to read the first Vegas post here)

There's a nice summary and explanation of the thinking here on Vijay's blog.

Of course, all this got me thinking about how we can apply this to the work we do for our clients day in day out.  I'm sure you're already thinking about your plans and which boxes various bits of activity fit into.  I think using this model for planning would be really useful for a number of reasons.

First, it's not revolutionary, and is really simple to grasp.  In business terms, we should think about the boxes as current territories being in Box 1, adjacent territories in Box 2, completely new territories in Box 3.  We should think of channels in the same way. 

Second, and this is going to sound a bit silly but stay with me, putting things into 'boxes' helps protect them.  They stop being interchangable, provided you've established the context and objectives for each box upfront.  This then makes it harder for us or our clients to remove, say, the social networks test (Box 3), to buy more ratings (Box 1), because the two bits of activity have been established separately.

Third, it's a great way of contextualising all your activity.  It's inevitable in what we do that we spend more time discussing with clients the Box 2&3 stuff, because it's where they (and we) need a bit more convincing.  In this respect, it's easy to see how this activity starts to feel 'larger' than it actually is.  By setting out at the start of the planning process what your investment split between the boxes is (say, 70/20/10), it's easier for everyone to keep things in perspective.

Finally, despite splitting things into boxes, it actually becomes easier to link all these things together, which makes for an easier 'sell'.

Vijay explained it like this:

Box 1 is based on knowledge.  What's happened before and what's working in the market right now.  Everyone feels comfortable with this, because knowledge is absolute and empirical (I'm exaggerating a bit here, I know, but you get the point).  As you start to move into Boxes 2&3, increasingly your basing your planning on assumption rather than knowledge.  This is more uncomfortable, but no less important, because, ultimately, by testing an assumption it turns into knowledge.

And as we know, knowledge is power.  And competitive advantage.

So turn those assumptions into knowledge now.

-- Toby

Viva Las Vegas Pt.1 : What's your Fosbury Flop?

It was westward ho! last week as Omnicom Media Group descended on Las Vegas, Nevada, for a 5 day conference.

Now I've recovered (from the jet-lag) I'll be posting some of the interesting stuff we learned from the great array of speakers that were bussed in to talk to us.  Starting with my favourite, Vijay Govindarajan, of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, a top ten professor of strategy according to Forbes, Business Week and The 'London' Times and author of 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators, an (as yet unread) copy of which is now in our library (I'll get to it this summer, I promise).

He did a fantastic hour and a half slot on the first morning, talking about how to set strategy and how to prioritise resource to make sure you're fit for the future.  The rather helpful model for this was the 3 Boxes, which I'll cover in another post this week.

But, just as a little taster, I thought I'd share this rather splendid definition of the role of strategy (we're always keen on that).  He put up this chart of the Men's World High Jump record :   

You would expect the world record to have progressed gradually and incrementally.  As you can see, that's not the case.  What actually happens is that, as new jumping techniques are introduced, there is a truncated period of growth followed by a flattening out of the curve until the next new technique comes along.  It is the devlopment of these new techniques that Vijay was interested in - in our world these are market or strategic shifts which, once made, cause a rapid growth spurt, then tail off as everyone else catches up.

The take out obviously being that just beacuse you've always done something in a certain way, doesn't mean it's the best way.  A point he rammed home rather more bluntly with the excellent Dead Horse Strategy, which I thankfully found here.

Please send in your examples of Fosbury Flops.

And make sure you're planning them for your clients.

-- Toby