Things That Matter Most

Things That Matter Most

Stories Abound

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When I was a kid, I had a completely insane teacher try to convince the entire class that the world existed as but a figment of our imaginations. His argument was that nothing outside the door existed until we opened the door and went outside. Our story was the most important story in the world because it was the only one that was real.

He convinced some students they were above rules as, according to his theory, nothing existed that wasn’t recognized by the story teller. It was a bit of an existential nightmare, and for his hard work at confusing (and in some cases, corrupting) young minds he was fired at the end of the year.

Still, his points have had me thinking for years. Not that my story is the one, only, true story of the universe, but in the context of viewing others as storytellers in their own right.

My Story

I’m sitting in traffic, drumming with frustration on the steering wheel because I’m running late, I can easily envision the entire story that’s led me to that point. I remember buying my car. I remember signing up to volunteer that day. I remember getting distracted by a challenging code puzzle. I remember rushing out the door and almost slipping on a patch of ice in the driveway. I remember the drivers who’d cut me off, those who’d let me merge, and the little old lady who blocked my turn and left me stuck at yet another red light.

The story about what led me to that light – to that moment – is rich and could fill mountains of pages if anyone cared to tell it. It’s also my story, so it’s something dear to me when I look back on it.

But if I look to my left or my right I see other drivers. Other individuals with stories of their own – some similar to mine, some unfathomably different. The light turns green, and they’re gone. Stories as mountainous as my own that will never intersect again and forever remain a mystery.

I watch a bus pass by, carrying with it a score of frustrations, hopes, fears, ambitions, and stories. Each and every one precious in its uniqueness and untellable in its scale. Just pausing for a moment to appreciate the grandiose nature of the world around me is breathtaking.

A honk sounds behind me and I realize, like the old woman before me, my daydreaming has stranded yet another driver at yet another light. I hurry through as the light fades to yellow and watch a woman behind me begin to drum with frustration on her own steering wheel.

I wonder what story led her to that moment.

Tradition

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One of the many defining aspects of a brand is tradition. What kinds of things does your organization always do?  Many traditions seemingly have no reason, but they play a defining role in the customer experience.  When a traditional aspect of your brand’s customer interaction is missing, people notice.

The interesting thing about traditions, though, is how they are passed on from one ‘generation’ to another within your organization.  The original stories are gently twisted into legend, the key characters change to match a more current context, and the story is just as easily owned by the intern in sales as it was by the 10-year veteran in acquisitions.

This does create a problem in some organizations, though.  Particularly those where key tradition creators stay with the organization for a considerably longer period of time than the average employee.  When the stories begin to change to fit the newer generation, long-time employees might begin to feel disconnected.  As their names are eliminated from the stories entirely, they pass from the role of “learned mentor” and into the one of “crazy old guy who thinks he’s the center of the universe.”  This eventuality can kill a tradition and damage a brand considerably if brand managers don’t hunt it out proactively.

Sausage – an example

I grew up in the Boy Scouts.  My weekends were filled with senseless wandering through the woods and helping older Scouts play with fire.  We had a lot of little traditions; they were the main reason I joined my troop instead of the hoardes of others available in town.

As I got older, my friends and I built our own traditions into the unit’s lore.  On the first night of every camping trip (even 50-mile backpacking trips) we would have grilled steak and mashed potatoes for dinner.  The older scouts always got the cots at the Silver Falls camp out.  Whenever we go to the coast, we always stop at the Tillamook Cheese Factory … even if we don’t buy anything.

One particular tradition my friend, Rick, and I established was summer sausage.  Rather than freeze-dried food, cold-cut sandwiches, or fast-food carryout for lunch on hiking trips, we brought a box of Ritz crackers, a huge slab of cheddar cheese, and a hunk of summer sausage.  Lunch is easy: pull out knife, cut off food, eat, wipe knife on pants.

Without fail, we would stop for lunch on the trail and watch everyone else fumble with stoves, soggy bread, and cold Big Macs.  Rick and I would pick a rock, pull out our knifes, and pass chunks of food back and forth.  Clean-up took us maybe 30 seconds, and we were often back on the trail before everyone else was ready to sit down at all.

This past year, I went backpacking with my old Boy Scout troop again.  It’s been a few years, but I still hold up all of my traditions.  The steak was packed, the potatoes were ready, and my brother and I had a nice-sized block of cheese and a roll of summer sausage for lunch.  When we stopped about 2 miles in, I pulled everything out and started slicing with my knife.

Oh, I see you’ve adopted a ‘Zane’ tradition.

What?  Zane?

Zane was Rick’s younger brother, and about four years behind us in the troop.  Naturally, he picked up on our traditions and carried them further through the unit.  At this particular point in time, the troop remembers summer sausage and crackers as a tradition started by Zane.  Then again, both Rick and I have been out of the troop for several years and no one in the unit now even knows who he is.

In an organization that cycles completely through it’s membership every 7 years, I have become the “crazy old guy” who re-tells troop history wrong.  It took a long time to get used to, but I’ve accepted that I just have a different set of ‘legends’ to pass on to the Scouts.

Things could have gone differently, though.  I could have argued and stood up for my version of the story.  To me, the tradition was still a habit I started.  To the younger members of the group, it was a tradition instilled in the Troop 605 brand.  In reality, we’re both right.  Also, it doesn’t matter.

What traditions does your organization have?  Do you really know where they come from?  How much do these traditions shape your brand?

“Blog it out”

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A short while ago, I complained about a television advertisement that criticized blogging as an ineffective means to reach customers. I don’t want to leave it at that. Instead, I think I should outline reasons why you should blog.

MarketingProfs is a wonderful business blog; I subscribe to their daily newsletters and spend a lot of time reading their material. Back in 2004, they were ahead of the game and published an article explaining Seven Reasons Why Businesses Should Blog Now. These are great arguments for any business:

  1. They fan the flames of customer evangelism
  2. They function as an instant-feedback mechanism
  3. They compel you to “Napsterize” more of your knowledge more often
  4. They facilitate the spread of buzz
  5. They allow you to have more simultaneous conversations
  6. Most blog service providers offer good-looking templates
  7. They help position you as a knowledgeable expert

I’m not going to waste my time reinventing the wheel. If you want to know more about each of these points, check out the original article. Instead, I’m going to focus on why individuals should blog:

  1. Blogs help position you as an industry expert – Your resume can only say so much about your skills, abilities, and personal style. A blog, on the other hand, can list hundreds of details about your background and worldview.
  2. Blogs help you practice your skills – If you’re job searching or working somewhere that’s not your dream job, skills you’ll need to get that dream job might become rusty with time. By blogging about your field of expertise you can keep your mind focused and continue to hone those skills.
  3. Blogs solicit feedback – Most people feel empowered by the Internet to do and say things they wouldn’t in person. By posting your ideas in the free market, you will get more honest (and just more) feedback than if you asked your coworkers and friends point-blank.
  4. Most blogs are free – It takes maybe 20 minutes per day to write and publish a quality post. Combined with the FREE interfaces of Blogger and WordPress, there is absolutely no reason not to blog. Watch one less TV show in the evening or skip that third cup of coffee in the morning and blog.
  5. It makes you Google-able – In the information age, having a presence in Google search results is important. Most hiring officers will plug your name in a search engine before they call you for an interview – are the results actually talking about you? Having a blog throws you towards the top of the results page.

Blogging is easy, cheap, and brings a massive return on almost zero investment. We all know why businesses should blog – individuals should blog for the same reasons! An old DirecTV ad poked fun at blogging; in reality, they just didn’t understand the power of having your voice heard on the Internet.

Do you have a blog? Does your business? Why or why not?

Blogging and HR

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Sure, blogs were cool years ago when everyone and their 13-year old niece had one. Today they seem to be everywhere and cover topics from conquering global climate change to cleaning the soap ring off your bathtub. The question is: how can blogs improve my hiring process?

Many of your best undiscovered prospects are too nervous to give you a direct phone call. Instead, they will send electronic applications from your website, respond to Monster.com advertisements, or send a bland resume through snail mail. You are then tasked with picking through the mountains of hopefuls to find a handful of potential interview candidates. This is a waste of your time; frankly, it is a waste of your patience and skills as well.

Blogs have become more accessible to the masses in recent years, and job seekers are creating them frequently. A blog is a great way for those seeking employment to show off their expertise in either the industry they work or the one they’d like to move towards. Rather than waste your time trying to read over-inflated one-sided resumes, take a few seconds to Google your newest candidate. If they have a blog, their writing will give you greater insight into their personality and professional style than any one-page career description or 15 minute phone conversation.

If their blog is twelve months of sound sales strategy, they are probably qualified to be your new Senior Sales Trainer – take some time to give them a call and ask more questions. If, instead, their blog chronicles their live of under-age college bar diving, then you probably don’t want to offer them the vacant Alcohol Awareness Advocate position – but make sure you still take time to put them through the traditional resume screening and phone interview process. A blog can give you great insight into a candidate’s abilities, but its power should be used only for good – not to hurt the candidate’s chances.

Telling Your Own Story: Part II

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On Monday, I proposed we analyze a market entry situation.  We have three market segments to consider and must determine who our perfect customer (story teller) would be: Dock Dwellers, City Slickers, or Locals.

Considering that fishing is a seasonal activity, we need to focus on customers who will be around year-round: the Dock Dwellers and Locals.  These two segments live in the area and will be most likely to frequent our little corner of the world when not searching for bait.

At the same time, we can’t really target both segments.  The Dock Dwellers are outdoorsmen, shopping for fishing gear one season and stocking up on other sporting goods in the next.  The Locals are families in the area who would most likely come in for a loaf of bread or gallon of milk.  We can definitely provide for both needs, but we can only build our brand for one.

Both of these segments will be loyal, but we choose to target the one that will bring in additional customers.  Our third segment, the City Slickers, will be most effected by the Dock Dwellers during fishing season.  Remember, the Dock Dwellers spend “their days fishing and chatting with tourists” and the City Slickers “usually seek out the Dock Dwellersafter they get lost.”  This high level of segment interaction helps us identify the Dock Dwellers as the most appropriate segment to target when we enter the market.

Look back at the last time we used this scenario.  See how we arrived at the same conclusion?

Now we sign our lease and begin buying merchandise – always keeping the needs of our target customers in mind.  Our store layout will be catered specifically to the Dock Dwellers, although we will keep some basic home goods on stock for the Locals.

In order to create our brand and tell our own story, we need to thoroughly understand who we want our audience to be.  Our perfect customer is the one who will carry our story to others.  Knowing what kind of story they would want to tell is the first step to building our brand and successfully entering the market.

Telling Your Own Story

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We have discussed story tellers at length, but most of that discussion applies to established business and not to entering a new market.  The concept, however, applies to both.  To understand this, it is easiest to refer back to our tackle shop example from before.

Rather than already owning the tackle shop, assume we want to open one this spring.  We have found a location in a somewhat remote but popular fishing location just outside of town.  In any given day, 100 people pass through the area.  Of those one hundred, 15 are “Dock Dwellers,” 35 are “City Slickers,” and the remaining 50 are “Locals.”  We know nothing of their buying habits yet, but we can easily determine the kind of brand image each segment would favor.

The Dock Dwellers and Locals are very much the same, but the first group spends their days fishing and chatting with tourists while the Locals just live here and work nearby to run the local infrastructure (farmers, school teachers, boat shop mechanics, etc.).  The City Slickers show up wearing expensive clothing, driving large cars, and usually seek out the Dock Dwellers after they get lost.

A Dock Dwellers store would highlight fishing equipment, a Local store basic home goods, and a City Slicker store would be clean and have EVERYTHING they might have possibly left at home.  Without referring back to the outcome of our last scenario, who might we select to tell our story?  We have to design our store layout, product offering, and brand image to target this group.

Do we have enough information yet?  What else might we need to know or understand before moving forward?  If you have enough information to make a decision, which segment would you target and why?

Please leave your comments and we will discuss the outcome tomorrow.