CrapHammer

Do individuals matter anymore?

The other day I received a survey and it made me wonder.

When was the last time a survey made me feel engaged and listened to?

Surveys are now part of our cultural narrative.

Some come with a dollar bill in the envelope.

A few are even "mandatory", or so we are informed by the census.

As youth, we quickly learn that surveys are about an aggregate understanding.

A survey is a sign that a brand is disconnected from their audience.

Which is not to say surveys are bad.

But they send a signal that a brand is struggling to understand something.

At best.

At their worst, they scream to us that the customer doesn't really matter unless he or she happens to answer the same as a significant number of the rest of the disillusioned masses.

We know that some faceless manager in an office somewhere needs to make a "business decision" and likely doesn't have a lot of time for a little old outlier like us.

And even knowing all this, we still fill them out from time to time in a vain attempt to be heard or to feel like we were consulted.

There must be a better way. A way to truly listen to another. I'm not referring to when we monitor conversations, hold focus groups or perform stakeholder consultations.

I'm speaking of when we are open to someone else.

When we are putting them first.

In a world increasingly fascinated with "optimizing service delivery" and "experience design", I have to wonder if we've lost sight of the individual as an individual.

What if there is something beyond "customer first" or "customer centred"?

I heard Bob Young, of Red Hat and Lulu fame, speak last night at the Baycrest and MaRS scientist and entrepreneur event.

At the end, someone asked him, "If you could do it all again, what would you do differently with your first company?"

Bob had an answer ready.

He would create Hewlett Packard.

His reason was quite straight forward in that he envied and respected their culture.

A culture built around giving to the community.

A culture that was unstoppable and able to overcome just about any obstacle placed before or inside the company.

Bob spoke about a key aspect of this culture - how they would pay to educate the brightest young minds with no payback or expectations attached.

These youth then wanted to work for Hewlett Packard later in their life or they wanted to become customers of HP.

There was a relationship built around more than anything that can be captured on a spreadsheet.

Hewlett Packard cared.

About individuals.

Maybe it's a leap, but once again I see another example of how an evangelist employee strategy can truly transform brands and organizations.

Some of the most successful evangelist programs move beyond monitoring and empower employees to to listen and to care.

A strategy with non-linear returns that enables an organization to invest in and develop relationships with its communities and individual customers.

I really need to track down the book Bob was speaking of about Hewlett and Packard and the culture they worked so hard to build.

 

[Photo credit: gadl]

Passion and Content Creation (Red Nation)

 

I talk a lot about passion and "the most passionate."

I do so because I believe it is a critical component to building vibrant and healthy communities, brands and movements.

And by studying the most passionate, we can learn things about our products, our organizations and our communities that we never considered possible.

But it requires us to rethink how we define our audience.

It's no longer about demographics, no matter what the research company says or how many technographic reports we run.

Which is not to say demographics don't matter.

Demographics tell us not to be surprised that a bunch of middle aged guys love sports.

What it doesn't tell us is who is likely to become a passionate producer of unique content.

It doesn't give us any insight into who is developing authority or a growing audience of their own.

A couple of weekends back, I spent a few hours with 3 guys who spend their free time railing against the Toronto Football Club.  

It's hard to spend more than 5 minutes with them and not think they are anti-Toronto FC.

But I'd say that these guys are actually just really passionate about great soccer.  

And they are frustrated that their local team is not being setup to win.

So they started recording their drunken rants post game.

And something happened.

Other people shared their views and started subscribing.

They recently broke the 2,000 subscribers mark and have over 20,000 listens to date.

I was given a free seat for the game.  The seat they reserve for the writers they get to do the blog post writeup for each episode of their show (in trade for a seat to the game.)

These guys are no longer just a bunch of guys venting about the game - they are now trusted personalities on this subject.

I'd go so far as to say they have blurred the line between consumer and professional.

When I arrived at their "house of operations" post game for a beer and for the podcast recording, I could only gawk as they set into well-rehearsed motion.

A spare bedroom was quickly transformed into a full blown recording studio with giant folding baffles they made themselves, wall art that upon closer inspection is actually a set of hanging sound reducers and two Audio-technica mics hacked into Garage Band.

Here's a link to the podcast.  If you are into the content and stick around, you'll hear me around the 8 minute mark and then yelling in from time to time as I get drunk in the background.

Dark Clouds over Toronto

Stephe Perry, Ian Clark (Sparky), Tim Vickery (and on this episode, moi).

 

[Image credit: wvs (note that wvs is my FAVORITE Toronto photography.  Bar none.]

 

 

Planningness 2010 Recap: Made By Many on Making Things

I'm kicking off my recap of PlanningNess 2010 with a deck by the Made by Many folks.

I've seen a lot of talk about agile and scrum.  And frankly, it's usually just someone spouting a lot of buzz words and urging agencies need to adapt.  But its generally someone from the outside without a lot of credibility on how to improve what we do.

But I've clearly never seen Made by Many talk about it.  And there are few agencies on this planet I hold in higher esteem.  And true to form, I found their presentation deck insightful, inspiring and dead on as to where we need to get to.

So many gems in here!  How about a dozen user testing and engagement tools we could be all be using in our project development processes?  God I love these guys.  I think I want to have their baby.  Shit.

How to really make something

View more presentations from Made by Many.