Archive for the ‘Dialogue’ Category

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JetBlue Scene

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Jeremy Redleaf, one of the new physicists of the narrative form and the creator of this brilliant siteOJN1initated the scene when he sent me this emailJBJeremy1

about this JetBlue adJetBlue1

which is anchored by copy that saysJBJeremy2In my role of Commentor On All Things About Improvisation in Business, I responded to Jeremy’s email with this GameChangers postJBGameChangers1in which i point out that ‘the first rule of improv’ if there even is such a thing, which itself is debatable, is not to say ‘yes’ but to say ‘yes and.’   ‘Yes’ is a state of mind.  ‘Yes and’ is action.  The most fertile ground in the world is useless until it’s planted.  ‘Yes’ is the ground.  ‘And’ is the seed.  My blog post inspired Jeremy…JBJeremy2C

Posi-ffiti!  Yes!  I love threads like this.  As usual, I’d tweeted a link to my blog post. I decided to yes-and Jeremy by calling JetBlue’s attention to its error with a Tweet.  I was able to Google their CMO, Marty St. George and find his Twitter account.  JBTweet2To Marty’s credit, he tweeted back within 15 mins.  This already puts @martysg and JetBlue way ahead of most CMOs in brand narrative game.  It also tells me that this is one vigilant, sensitive cat.  Dude’s running it like Ochocincomartysg1

here @martysg commits the improvisation error of denying.  He does this by being vague–what does “if you said ‘no quotation marks’ I might be with you” mean, anyway?–and acting as if I’d accused him of misquoting ‘John’, and seems to be saying that the mistake is not theirs, but mine, for calling them out on the wrong thing.  I responded by suggesting the ‘Posi-ffiti’ gameJBTweet3

and further suggested how to initiate the game…JBTweet11

@martysg blocks the game… martysg2By acting as if I’d said something I hadn’t–that ‘The Posi-ffiti Game’ would have to be played without ‘John’s’ permission–Marty kills the scene.  This was probably his intention.  He also implies that quoting people without their permission is MY style.  In one statement, he refuses my gift and pimps my character.  Nice.  This is classic old school management style, a familiar corporate game I call, “Parry and Thrust.”  It’s played  by stalling, and staying non-committal (”Hm…if….I might…”) and then landing a knockout blow (”Do something unethical?  Not us.  YOU maybe.  Not us.”)

Look, everybody understands that a CMO like @martysg will not alter an ad campaign because some nitpicker tweets him about the word ‘and’ in an ad.  Like I said, he gets credit for being open enough to have the conversation in the first place.  This is more responsiveness from a tweet than you’d get from 90% of all the CMOs in the world.  It is, however, short of the kind of action a person would get from an improvisational brand like Southwest Airlines.  Furthermore, what happened when @martysg did respond is precisely the point of my blog post.  The conversation didn’t go anywhere because Marty St. George ‘yessed’ and he did not ‘and.’

How might Marty have yes-anded?  Anyone who’s gone through a GameChangers workshop can give you a dozen games that would be more productive than ‘Parry and Thrust.’

The good news coming out of this exchange is that all is not lost.  Jeremy Redleaf has a new job description for OddJobNation: “Posi-ffiti Artist.”

To an improviser, Lost is just the first step on the way to Found.

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Branding, Character, Communication, Dialogue, Games, Gifts, Initiations, Issues, Listening, Narrative, Scenes, story | No Comments »

Just Say Yes And

Friday, August 27th, 2010

Our friend, Jeremy Redleaf, founder and star of the brilliant website, OddJobNation, sent us a photo he took on what looks like a New York City subway train, with the question, “Has Jet Blue been GameChanged?”JetBlue1

Umm.  No.  It has not.  Here’s why:  There’s a mistake in the ad copy.  The first rule of improv is not saying ‘Yes’…it’s saying ‘Yes and.‘  ‘Yes’ is only half a conversation, an agreement without an addition.  The word ‘and’ holds the power, because it merges the realities of two players into a new reality that can be shared by both.

When two players ‘Yes and’ one another, they’re not expressing different versions of reality, competing viewpoints, or two different versions of the truth…they’re co-creating a new reality.  This is why ‘Yes and’ is such a powerful statement and ‘Yes’ gives away power without generating any of its own.

While we support any move in the direction of improvisation as a professional practice–as this Jet Blue ad seems to want to do–it’s maddening when some ad copywriter misstates the practice like this does.

‘Yes’ without ‘and’ ???

To an improviser, it’s like Macaroni without Cheese.

Like Woody without Buzz.

Like Yin without Yang.

And, unfortunately for the people who spent the money for this ad, it’s like a Jet without Blue.

Walt Disney used to call it ‘plussing.’  Don’t just agree with me.  Tell me something I don’t know.  Add useful information.  Give gifts.  Move the scene forward.

John S., are you listening?

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Posted in Agreement Principle, Branding, Dialogue, Fundamentals | 1 Comment »

GameChangers Glossary, H to N

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Adapted from GameChangers–Improvisation for Business in the Networked World, by Mike Bonifer:

Heighten–To build emotional involvement and energy in a scene

Improv–See ‘Improvisation‘

Improvisation–spontaneous communication designed to generate positive outcomes from unforeseen circumstances; interpersonal and group communication that is instinctive and informed by experience, knowledge, serendipity and respect for environment; improv, as performed in theaters, such as with improv comedy; a conversation with the community; the pedagogy, philosophy and process defined by Viola Spolin in her 1963 book, Improvisation for the Theater; a games-based methodology for generating communication, learning and transformation

Initiation–The first meaningful words or lines spoken during a scene; in this case, ‘meaningful’ refers to anything that directly involves the group’s progress toward achieving the scene’s objective(s).

Interrogation–A performance-related issue, often arising in interviews or employee reviews, that arises when one player only asks questions and never acts on the information revealed by the answers;

Invention–A performance-related issue that occurs when players work with speculative or subjective information instead of the reality of the scene.

Invocation–An exercise that lets players examine a subject from the third-person (”It is”), second-person (”You are”) and first-person (”I am”) perspectives in order to identify themes for a performance.

Issue–Any performance-related problem which can be remedied by better execution of GameChangers business communication techniques.

Judging–A performance-related problem that occurs when a player subjectively assesses a scene while the scene is taking place.

Justifying–A performance-related problem that occurs when a player self-consciously explains his or her (or their team’s) actions in a scene, especially when the behavior does not align with the GameChangers principles.

Liminal–relating to the threshold of perception that players break through by participating in a game; relates to perceptions of one’s own abilities and to what one’s perceptions of what is generally possible; transcending the status quo

Meta Communication/Meaning–A symbolic or allegorical representation of ideas and concerns that exist on a societal, cultural or archetypal scale; the symbolic representation of a macro trend, widely held belief, or aspect of the human condition; (See ‘Cosmetic Communication/Meaning‘ and ‘Emotional Communication/Meaning‘)

Monologue–A speech given by a single player in a scene; a speech shared amongst multiple players in the course of a scene or presentation.

Narrative–A flow of thematically-connected events that can be related after the fact as a story; organizational memory and vision of the future that inform scenes performed in the present; a purposeful alignment of ideas and events, such as for a brand.

Negativity–Traits, ideologies and behaviors that halt a scene’s progress through skepticism and a disagreeable inclination to oppose, deny and/or resist the ideas or involvement of other players; pessimism; the antithesis of the attitude required for productive collaborations.

Network–The communications matrix of an organization, brand or individual; those who are connected by a communications matrix or belong to an organization; defined by John Seely Brown, John Hagel et al as consisting of ‘core’ and ‘edge’

Networked World–The highly communicative, internet-supported global stage on which business gets conducted

Objective–The desired outcome of a scene; the stated purpose of playing a game; the business goal of a scene; one of the four elements that comprise a Game

Opening–An ‘overture’ prior to a scene or series of scenes in which a player or a group develops the themes for an upcoming performance; usually triggered by Suggestions From the Audience

Organization–The manifestation of a business or brand to its audience; the operational structure of a business or brand; a company or group with a shared mission and business objectives (see ‘Network‘)

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Posted in Branding, Communication, Dialogue, Emotion, Environment, Fundamentals, Initiations, Issues, Narrative, Objectives, Themes, Uncategorized, story | No Comments »

GameChangers Glossary, A to G

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Adapted from GameChangers–Improvisation for Business in the Networked World, by Mike Bonifer:

Addition–Entering a scene in progress for the purpose of contributing immediately to the team’s performance; contributing to a scene; giving a gift

Agreement, The Agreement Principle–A principle of improvisation, characterized by players’ openness towards each other and an organization or communications network’s openness at its edge; the group consensus around a game or theme that informs a scene

Audience–Those within and outside of an organization whose reactions and opinions will determine the success of a scene or performance

Audience, External–People outside an organization or network, including customers (and potential customers), competitors, bloggers, users, fans, viewers, etc. whose reactions ultimately determine the value of a performance or narrative

Audience, Internal–People inside an organization or network, whose judgment acts as a kind of filter on scenes and narratives before they reach the External Audience

Blocking–A performance-related problem that occurs when players impede the progress of a scene by refusing the gifts offered them by their teammates

Callback–The act of recalling information that was stated by a player earlier in a scene or in a previous scene.

Cast–Players who share the same business objective; also called a Group or Team; can also refer to the employees of an entire division or organization (Disney, for example, refers to all employees as ‘cast members’)

Casting–The process of selecting players who will comprise a business team

Character–Traits that make a player unique as an individual and consistently valuable to his or her team

Close, Del–Credited as one of the originators of longform improvisation, and one of its most influential teachers, Close (1934-1999) created ‘Harold,’ probably the most-performed structure for group improv theater performances; his proteges include Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, John Belushi, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey; legend has it that he willed his skull to the Goodman Theater in Chicago to be used in future productions of Hamlet, in which he was to be billed as playing the role of Yorick

Coach–A person who casts a team; an objective observer and critic of a team’s performance; one who establishes game-based strategies and standards of preparation and performance in directing a team toward its objectives; manager; director

Cosmetic Communication/Meaning–The surface level of communication within a scene, primarily through spoken dialogue; data; information. (See ‘Emotional Communication/Meaning‘ and ‘Meta Communication/Meaning‘)

Crazy Town–A performance-related problem that occurs when players indulge in fantasies, magical thinking, or egoistic behavior, until the scene becomes un-moored from any actionable reality.

Denying–A form of blocking in which a player repeatedly contradicts or ignores other players, confusing the audience and fellow players; refusing to recognize another player’s reality

Edit–The action of making an entrance for the purpose of shifting the scene’s focus, or to begin a new scene; edits usually occur in concert with other players exiting the scene

Emotional Communication/Meaning–The most dynamic and meaningful level of communication in a scene. conveying its players’ passions and desires, where reactions (both positive and negative), and reinforcements/alienation are strongest

Energy–The pitch at which a player or group performs (and modulates) its performance; an umbrella term for the level of activity and intensity the audience observes in the group, and that players in the group experience in one another

Entrance–A player’s first appearance in a scene

Environment–The setting in which members of team collaborate to achieve their objective; any place where players interact; more expansively, any place where an audience experiences a brand; the overall business climate in which an organization operates, shaped by factors such as regulatory agencies, competitors, geopolitical factors and the desires, attitudes and beliefs of customers

Exit–A player’s departure from a scene

Fantasizing–A performance-related issue that occurs when players build outlandish, or wildly fictitious scenarios that do not acknowledge or act on the real world environment or the businessa; magical thinking; (see ‘Crazy Town‘ and ‘Invention‘)

Flatlining–A performance-related problem that occurs when players show no energy or life, impeding or halting a scene’s progress

Game–Rules, roles, environment and objective(s) defined; an exploration of a theme; a strategy used to achieve a business-related objective; games fall into two broad categories – productive and unproductive

GameChanger–A player who has mastered the art and practical techniques of business improvisation; a manager/coach or player with the ability to identify and support productive games and quickly change or edit unproductive ones

Gift–A move that supports the scene and the players in it; ‘giving gifts’ is one of the most powerful and effective moves a player can make

Grandstanding–A performance-related issue that occurs when a player wastes time and effort trying to contribute something ‘heroic’ to a scene; holding back for effect instead of engaging in the moment; habitually swinging for the fences or reaching for the ‘Wow Factor’; going for a home run when a single would better serve the scene

Group Mind– The tangible web of connectivity between players that achieved through a shared focus on a game and the exploration of a theme; the collective unconscious; not the same as ‘Group Think‘

Group Think–Rubber-stamping; going along to get along; consensus for its own sake; agreement that does not involve a game or theme; behavior that is not intended to achieve the objective, but rather to reinforce status; uncritical or unquestioning support for a political agenda, ideology or hierarchy

TO BE CONTINUED….

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Branding, Casting, Character, Coaching, Communication, Dialogue, Emotion, Entrances, Environment, Fundamentals, Games, Gifts, Group Mind, Issues, Narrative, Objectives, Scenes, Themes | No Comments »

The Customer’s Dual Roles

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

SunMoon1It’s easy enough to see that in a selling scene, a Customer is your Audience.  You, in your role as Seller (and make no mistake about it, everyone in this world sells something) need the customer/audience to support you at the boxoffice, the gift shop, the showroom, the supermarket, the website, or anywhere else you can translate their ‘applause’ into revenue.  This has been true since studly village smithies were putting on a good show by hammering out horseshoes under the spreading chestnut tree.  A good performance gets rewarded by the audience. Selling doesn’t get any simpler than this.

It does, however, get a lot more complex, and in a hurry.  Here’s why:

In selling scenes, the customer plays two roles:  Audience and Scene Partner.  You, as a seller, co-create your selling scene with your customer as your scene partner.   He or she will then, stepping into the role of your audience, pass judgment on your performance.  Thumbs up or thumbs down?  Worth the price of admission or not?  Good collaboration or rocky relationship?  Will you generate positive word of mouth or negative reviews?  Your earnings depend on how your performance is received.

There’s no script for these scenes–at least not one your customer is going to be memorizing and reciting verbatim anytime soon.  You’re going to be improvising.  And this is a fact:  The best salespeople are the best improvisers.

Here are some ways in which good salespeople collaborate with customers on scenes that get a thumbs-up from those same customers:

They keep their scenes lively. They keep the dialogue moving along at a productive tempo.  They yes-and promptly.  They heighten by upping the tempo, the emotional pitch, or both.  They add useful information.  They perform with the awareness that a ‘dead spot’ in the scene now will be judged harshly by the customer-as-audience later.

They make their customer the hero of the scene. An improvisational salesperson is a Sherpa to the customer with some kind of allegorical mountain to climb.  The sales Sherpa has useful knowledge.  Charts a practical course to the summit.   Reads the weather.  Calculates the odds.  Comes well-equipped.  The sales Sherpa gives the gift of support, and in doing so, makes the customer look good.  The role of the sales Sherpa is not the same as playing a second-banana, a sidekick, a best friend, a wing man, a femme fatale or a fall guy.  These are Hollywood movie roles.   The sales Sherpa is exactly what the name defines: a Sherpa.  It’s a Himalayan thing.

They listen. Wow, do improvisers listen.  They hear things the casual listener doesn’t.  They remember the nuances, and use the throw-aways.  They know that the most important conversation of the day may happen on an elevator ride between the first and sixth floors before a sales presentation begins.  They listen with more than their ears.  They observe with all the senses.   And then, maybe then…they speak.   They understand that being silent and being mute are two completely different things, and that sometimes one sees more with one’s eyes closed than with them open.

They respect environment. In selling scenes, you, the seller, are usually a visiting performer in someone else’s theater.  In many ways, the ‘theater’ of a customer’s company is like any other theater.  Theaters have traditions and history that must be respected.  They are influenced by politics and patronage and star players with competing agendas.  They are invariably facing some kind of financial threat.  They are only as good as their last hit, and they have ridiculously high hopes for the next project.  They can be half-looney with romantic intrigue.  The improvisational salesperson sees and respects the arena in which the customer operates.  When performing at the Apollo, touch the Tree of Hope.  When visiting Ireland, kiss the Blarney Stone.

They build relationships. Relationships are the basis of all improvisation.  The relationships between players, between players and environment, and between players and audience, are all intertwined.  The best way to move toward a sale, to generate positive outcomes regardless of the circumstances, is to build and nurture these relationships.   Relationships will see you through the kinds of adversity, and capitalize on the opportunities, that no scripted sales program can predict or anticipate.

In selling scenes, the networked customer is a more potent player than ever.  He or she often knows as much about your product as you do.  Relationships with customers are frequently more sensitive, more fluid and more demanding than they were in the Industrial Age.  Customers use social media to converse frequently amongst themselves in scenes to which you, the seller, are not invited.  You can no longer impose your narrative on the customer, you’ve got to earn an invitation to participate in the customer’s narrative.

So be a Sherpa.  Know the mountain, and your customer will see that the climb is impossible without you.

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Dialogue, Emotion, Environment, Gifts, Listening, Narrative, Networked World, Relationships, Sales, Scenes, Speed | 2 Comments »

Fern and Betty

Friday, May 7th, 2010

I got my love of playing games from my mother, Fern.  When I was growing up, we watched all the TV game shows that our manually-adjusted outdoor antenna (with TV watchers inside the house shouting outside to the antenna-turner, “Too far!” or “Keep turning!” or “You had it!  Turn back!”) and our black-and-white Philco allowed.  One of our favorites was Password, and our favorite Password shows were those that featured Betty White as one of the guest celebrities.  We loved Betty.  She was smart, beautiful, funny, and Fern never failed to point out that she was married to the host of Password, Allen Ludden.  Having a husband who hosted a TV game show on which you were a celebrity guest was, I always figured, Fern’s dream marriage, not, as reality would have it, marriage to a farmer from Indiana who rehabilitated castoff horses by turning our farm into a riding stable open to a public that by and large did not know how to ride.  Fern’s game was much harder to play and, for her, not nearly as much fun as Betty’s was.

BettyWhite1A few years ago, I was asked by a network executive to videotape interviews with the alumnae of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, including Betty White.  The show had been off the air for many years but Mary clearly maintained her star status, and the rest of the cast deferred to her as such.  I, however, only had eyes for Betty.  Then, as now, she lit up the room with those smiling, sparkling eyes, and the sincere attention she gave to those around her.  Listening, I am more convinced all the time, is the secret to relating to the world, and Betty listens with the best.  Her ego does not get in the way of her reception, and as a result, her picture is always crystal clear.  What you experience is not the illusion of a human being, it is human.  It is not a portrayal, not a role.  It is true character.

After we had completed our interview, Betty and I had a chance to talk, and I got to tell her the one thing I really wanted to tell her, how my mom had been a big fan of hers since the Password days, and how she celebrated the relationship between Ms. White and her dream husband, Allen Ludden.  Then, on pure impulse, I asked Betty she’d mind calling Fern on my mobile phone and saying hello.  This was a no-no for someone doing my job, a line you did not cross, it was like kitchen help taking a seat at the dinner table.  But all I could think about was how happy Fern would be to get a phone call from Betty White.  “Of course I will”  Betty said.

Fern was not home.  The call went to voice mail.   Betty didn’t miss a beat.  “Fern, this is Betty White,” she said.  “I’m standing here with a handsome young man who claims to be your son, and he tells me you’re a Password fan.  That is so sweet of you.  We had so much fun on that show, didn’t we?…”  I don’t remember the rest of what she said, but I remember that the tone of her message was as if she and Fern were old high school classmates who hadn’t seen each other in ages.  Which, in a way, they were.

A couple of days later, the network executive called and the conversation eventually came around, as I figured it would, to the subject of the call I’d asked Betty to make to Fern.  “At first, I thought what you did was okay, and later I thought it wasn’t okay,”  said the exec.  She said she had no choice but to fire me.  I could not have cared less.  The happiness in my mother’s voice when she phoned to tell me about the voice mail from her BFF, Betty, was worth a thousand gigs.

I imagine that Betty White’s life has been a series of encounters just like this one, in which she has given the gift of herself, and treated her fans as her equals, her collaborators in a joyful conversation.  (”We had fun, didn’t we, Fern?”)  This is why she is still young and her world is still unfolding at the age of 88, and she’s hosting Saturday Night Live tomorrow night.

FernMeCasino1

3 AM, French Lick (Indiana) Casino

I see this same spirit in my mother, who, at the age of 82, still lives on the farm in Indiana, quilts, bowls, plays bingo, gambles in Vegas, sings in the choir, gardens, cooks amazing meals, mows the huge yard and can drink with the young folks at the Shamrock Pub until closing time.  When I talk to her on the phone, she’s usually the one who ends the conversation because, hey, she’s got things to do and has to get going.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mother!  Break a leg, Betty!  We love you both!

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Posted in Character, Communication, Dialogue, Gifts, Listening, Scenes | 3 Comments »

Digg the Toyota Scene

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

When Toyota hit the icy patch in their narrative this January, they did not do what most organizations their size would do, they didn’t do what the Tiger Woods brand did when the Escalade hit the fire hydrant:  huddle, confer, strategize, ponder, debate, script, re-write, close ranks, assume a defensive posture, call in damage control experts, and use all of it as an excuse for Not Doing Anything.

No, they improvised.  And by that, I don’t mean they flew by the seat of their pants, or made it up as they went along.  From the CEO on down, they jumped into the conversation with the audience and performed aggressively to build a narrative that countered the media hysteria around the recall and the ambulance-chasing members of the legal profession who fanned its flames.ToyotaLogos1

This is what improvisation is.  A conversation designed to connect the performers with their community.  Not a monologue, a strategy, a script or a campaign.  A dialogue. Observations and comments.  Listening and responding.  Action and reaction.

AdWeek this week highlights one component of Toyota’s conversation with the audience:  a Digg Dialogg with Toyota’s head of U.S. Sales, Jim Lentz.  One of the more telling beats in the article is how skeptical J.D. Power & Associates, the traditional arbiter of performance and quality in the automotive industry is about this tactic.  They don’t see ‘movement’ in their polls, they say.  The jury is still out, they say.  What the J.D. Power people fail to grasp is that the conversation itself is the movement.  The fact that it happened, along with untold other interactions between the brand and audience, constitute a flow of events that defy any one snapshot’s (i.e. poll’s) ability to capture its effectiveness.  Trying to measure one data point in a narrative with a million data points is foolish.  J. D. Powers is trying to apply old school metrics to a new school process.  It’s like taking a poll about how people feel about Rings and using it to gauge the audience’s perception of Lord of the Rings.

No doubt there’s a major problem with Toyota’s process, the company has admitted as much.  Its quantity got ahead of its quality.  It began thinking of its audience as consumers instead of customers.  It’s a big, big, issue, with immense implications for the brand.  What’s impressive is that they didn’t let the immensity overwhelm them.  They didn’t look for an epic solution to the epic problem.  Rather, they began a journey of epic proportions., and they are conducting it one conversation, one scene, at a time.  They are contrite, but they are not backpedaling, or wasting time deliberating.  That would cause the narrative to lose its momentum.  They didn’t script a narrative and then try to force it on the audience.  They improvised, with the conviction that their journey will eventually re-connect them with their community, and win back its confidence and its applause for their performance.

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Posted in Branding, Communication, Dialogue, Issues, Listening, Narrative, Problem Solving, Sales, Scenes, Themes | 1 Comment »

The Consumer is Dead, Long Live the Customer

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

This is an important distinction for brands to make:

No more Consumers.

Customers.

Every time you refer to your ‘paying audience’ as Consumers, subtract one point from your brand’s Adaptability Index (AI). Every time you refer to them as Customers, add one point.

Here’s why:

Consuming stuff is so last century. The piggery and gluttony that came with relating material goods and conspicuous services to one’s status is totally unsustainable. It is a zero sum game.

Customizing stuff (and oneself), on the other hand, the honoring of customs and customers, is the engine that drives the sustainable economy. It is a generative process designed to conserve and make more efficient use of increasingly scarce resources.

Consumers consume. Customers customize. That’s it in a nutshell.

Here are some of the implications:

Nathans1Brands who emphasize consumption contribute to obesity, both mental and physical. They represent an ever-larger drain on the planet’s resources. They introduce a lot of useless crap onto the world by manufacturing illusory needs. They associate levels of consumption with status. The biggest of this. The most of that. The hardest. The shiniest.  The latest and greatest. These brands pay for the audience’s attention. Most significantly, they define the relationship between the brand and the audience using numbers.

I, Consumer, am a number of numbers. This is my number of average waking hours per day. A percentage of those waking hours belongs to you, a brand. During the percentage that belongs to you, I consume a percentage of the yearly sales of your product in my demographic. You spend a number to hold my attention. If that number stays below a certain acquisition price relative to the yearly value of the percentage of my day that I devote to you, you will keep spending it. If it gets too high, you will let my attention drift elsewhere. A computer program will tell you what to and then cover your tracks so that you’ll be blameless.  No one will be able to lay a hot dog on you.

Brands who customize largely participate in customs that already exist, customs into which they’ve been invited by a customer.  (The attempt to manufacture a custom is costly, with very low ROI.)  The relationship between a brand and a customer is a conversation, a dialogue. These brands serve causes that cannot be defined by numbers (even as numerical values for what they contribute and receive as a result of their participation, can and must be assigned and evaluated continuously). Brands with customers understand that consumption of the brand’s product or service represents part of, but not the entirety of, their value to the customer.  Consumption is one an element of a narrative that has many elements, most of which are outside the brand’s control. These brands prefer earning attention from their audience to paying for it.

Wurstkuche2I, Customer, am an individual. One of a kind. All my friends are one of a kind. I got my thing, you know, just like you got yours, just like everybody’s got their own. I am basically awake 24 hours a day, because I got plates in the air, you know. My homies in Bulgaria are coding some tracks we’re going to run off a honeypot server for which we are getting paid by a new label in Atlanta call Tso-Tso that does B-Boy tracks for mall shows and competitions all over the Southern U.S., Australia and the Philippines. Shit is off the hook. We get a dollar per download, and already this month we’ve made five thousand dollars. First thing in the morning, I am catching a plane to Fort Meyers to work with some friends down there who have a band and play clubs at night, and weatherize houses during the day for twenty bucks an hour. I’m producing their next album and they are paying me by getting me a job weatherizing houses for the summer. And on the weekends we take out one guy’s girlfriend’s family’s boat and party like animals. Any brand that’s down for this scene is welcome to roll with me.

In a sustainable economy, how we roll is going to be much more important than how much we roll.  It used to be about the size your boat.  Now it’s about boating like only you (and your crazy friends) know how.

Wurstkuche1

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Posted in Branding, Dialogue, Narrative, Relationships, Sales | 4 Comments »

GameChangers for Sales

Monday, March 29th, 2010

WorldsGreatestSales1Every business conversation that’s unscripted–and that’s about 99% of them–is an improvised scene.  How ably we improvise usually determines the success of the scene.  In sales, the audience for the scene is the customer, and the ultimate ‘applause’ is a sale. Furthermore, in sales scenes, the customer is not just the audience, her or she is also a player in the scene.  This is important for salespeople to understand, because it means you are asking the customer to judge their own performance in your scene together.  If they they give their performance in your scene a thumbs-up, chances are you’ve got yourself a sale.

Big Note:  The customer judges his or her performance, not yours, in the context of the scene you co-create.

The implications of this are huge.  Here are a few:

1.  Learn the script, then throw it away. The single biggest mistake salespeople make is trying to follow a script.  The customer doesn’t know your script!  In trying to stick to a script known only to you, you’re putting your customer in the worst possible position–that of a performer who doesn’t know his or her lines.  The playwright Christopher Durang built an entire play, The Actor’s Nightmare, around this premise.  You following your script and trying to get your scene partner to play along with it is The Customer’s Nightmare.

1A.  Don’t show your script to the customer. If the customer does know your script, because, let’s say, you’ve sent them your PowerPoint deck in advance of your presentation, you cause a whole other set of problems.  For one, you’re not giving them anything new.  You are, in essence, asking them to play a role you have written for them, which fosters a kind of built-in resentment.  Another problem with showing your hand ahead of time is that it burdens the audience with expectations.  By knowing ahead of time where you’re going, they will be measuring the scene against what they imagine it will be–good or bad.  Thanks to the internet, the customer already has access to plenty of data about your product.  Save something for your sales scene!

2.  Your number-one concern is getting your customer to feel good about your scene. You do this by helping them look good.  You help them look good by ‘giving gifts,’ to use the parlance of improvisation. There are unlimited ways to give gifts in a sales scene, ranging from sharing a dinner at a great restaurant to enlightening a customer with knowledge, to conferring status on them by having them enlighten you with knowledge.  Whether they ‘applaud’ your scene by making a down-payment on a timeshare, driving off your lot in a new car, or by clicking to buy a better mousetrap, chances are they’ll be doing it because they felt good about the interaction with your and your brand.

3.  A scene is not a soliloquy. You are sharing the stage with the customer.  It’s a dialogue.  Give and take.  OgilvyOne recently announced a contest to find the World’s Greatest Salesperson.  They’re asking contestants to ’sell’ a commonplace item, a red brick, using YouTube.  The winning video will not be the best soliloquy, but the one that’s best at generating and sustaining a dialogue with its audience–via YouTube comments, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms.

4.  Begin by listening. As with longform improvisation, a good way to get things rolling is to take a ’suggestion from the audience.’  When you begin your scene by listening instead of speaking, you give your audience/customer the opportunity to invest themselves in the scene.  Their satisfaction at seeing an idea they’ve given you turn into action will earn their applause.

5.  Build and heighten.  A scene should be designed to expand, its energy elevate, its theme evolve.  Surpass where you started.  Never end up back where you began.  Don’t be afraid to start your scene with the seed of an idea and let it grow.  Be afraid of starting with a grand vision that diminishes during the course of the scene.

6.  Agree on the game. What you’re looking for in your scene is quick identification and agreement on what we call ‘the underlying game.’  We define a game as:  Roles, Rules, Environment and Objective.  The sooner you can define these, the sooner you can agree on them, and the sooner you agree on them, the more likely you are to close the sale.  ‘Yes-anding’ the customer is the single best sales technique there is.

6A. The customer’s objective is not a sale. The customer isn’t in the scene to help you hit your quota or earn a commission.  A sale may be your objective but it’s not theirs.  Theirs may be to prove their love, earn the respect of their peers, look good to a boss, save money, gain status with their neighbors, or ensure the birth of a healthy baby.  Your objective is to help them achieve their objective.

CONTACT US TODAY TO BOOK A ‘GAMECHANGERS FOR SALES’ SESSION FOR YOUR TEAM!

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Posted in Agreement Principle, Dialogue, Games, Gifts, Issues, Listening, Sales, Scenes, Themes | No Comments »

Are You a Narratologist or a Platformist?

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

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Narratologists, as the name implies, obsess over narrative.  What makes a good story (and a story good)?  What are the emotional stakes?  What’s the relationship between characters?  Between text and subtext?  Who are the players?  What roles to they play, and do these roles reveal or conceal their true natures?  What motivates them?  What needs to they seek to fulfill?   How does narrative create dialogue between players and audience?  These are the questions keeping Narratologists awake at night, and earning their keep during the day.

Platformists obsess over apps. How solid is an app?  How does it scale?  What languages is it written in (and how many does it speak)?  Who uses it and why?  What is the feature set?  What is the ROI on the investment in an app?   What is the social component?  How compatible is it with other apps?   What’s the relationship between reliability and flexibility?  What differentiates it from its competitors?  If you can answer these questions for more than five apps, you’re probably a Platformist.

AppsShot1One can collaborate with the other, but one cannot be both.  Not at the same time anyway.  We all have to choose.  To help with your decision-making, here are a few things to consider:

Narratives are designed to make sense of the world by distilling information down to its essence.  Most apps and platforms are, by contrast, designed to make information available to as many people as quickly as possible.  One is a  a micro-brewed beer that evokes new sensations you want to share with friends.  The other is beer that evokes images of Clydesdales on television.  Take your pick.

Narrative is, by design, more unique, and therefore scarcer and ultimately more valuable than any platform or app.  As information gets commoditized across platforms–33.5 billion tweets about brands in 2009 (Forrester),  120 million videos hosted on YouTube with an average of 200,000 more added every day (Yahoo Answers), and 400+ million profiles on Facebook (Business Week)–a use of story as the Ultimate Organizing Principle grows more valuable all the time.  Would you rather wrestle with one meaningful narrative, or 33.5 billion mostly meaningless tweets?   Call it while it’s in the air.

Narrative consists of raw, unmediated interaction.  It happens human to human.  Face to face.  Platforms, on the other hand, invite mediated experiences.  The humans you’re really interacting with are the ones who designed the platform you’re using.  Narratologists focus first on the connections and conversations between people.   That’s life.  A Platformist’s foremost concern is the relationship between people and technology.  And while it’s a cleaner, less risky, and more predictable proposition, it’s also not life.  The choice is always ours to make.

Maybe what matters most over the long haul is that narratives are a lot more fun.  They generate energy and emotion, manifest purpose, offer possibilities.  They move people, and liberate them from the humdrum of daily life.  Platforms, from the days of Gutenberg’s first printing press, have always been and will always be persnickety, finicky, tricky, sticky.  They break down.  They spawn frustration and induce headeaches.  We find ourselves chained to them.  It’s the nature of the beast.  Would you rather entertain the possibility of having fun, or guarantee yourself a a certain amount of frustration?   Are you a ‘glass-is-half-full-drink-up’ kind of person, or a ‘this-glass-will-automatically-notify-me-via-SMS-when-its-fill-factor-is-above-50%’ kind of person?  You cannot be both.

Narratives define what platforms cannot.  Narratives lasts longer than platforms.   Mean more.   Engage more deeply.  Evolve more quickly.  Earn more money over time.

Choose.

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Posted in Creativity, Dialogue, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Innovation, Leadership, Narrative, Relationships, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

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