Social Context, part 3

In the last two posts, I illustrated two extremes of a person's social context within a work situation:

1. Complete dependence, as shown in the twelve disciples of Jesus, who preached in pairs throughout the land of Judea without any money or food, relying entirely on the people they met for survival.


2. Complete independence, as shown in Jesus' cousin John the baptist, who preached alone, in the wilderness, relying on nobody but himself, God, and nature for his survival.

In reality, neither of these parties operated within these extreme social contexts indefinitely. The disciples later regrouped and continued to follow Jesus; later, a few disciples used other employment (fishing, tent-making, sale of property) to provide income while they continued their Christian ministry. John the baptizer attracted disciples who lived and worked and served with him.

And in general, healthy individuals live and work in an equilibrium between these two extremes - in a state of interdependence. One might consider this to be a state of healthy teamwork.

For people to function in a team, two fundamental things must happen.

First, each team member must accept responsibility for his own actions. There are certain tasks which each individual can do better than anyone else on the team. The individual must complete those tasks with all of his heart, applying the full measure of his strength to successfully do his particular job within the team.

Second, each team member must rely on his teammates to complement his weaknesses and to fulfill the tasks that he himself cannot fulfill. He must trust his teammates to do their jobs to the best of their own strengths, just as he trusts his teammates to allow him to do his own job to the best of his own strengths. He must communicate with and collaborate with his teammates, and dedicate his efforts to the success of the team as a whole.

The way in which a healthy team works is the same way in which a healthy organization and a healthy society work - in a state of interdependence. Each of us accepts responsibility to fulfill her own role and vocation according to her own strengths on behalf of those around her. And in return, she trusts and relies on those around her to use their own strengths to fulfill those things which she herself cannot.

Interdependence, like most good things in life, is a balance. Beware of becoming too dependent or too independent. And when you sense yourself sliding toward one extreme or another, you might try a little mental experiment: imagine how you would act if you operated under the extreme opposite social context instead.

Social Context, part 2

Jesus of Nazareth had a cousin - John - whose work slightly preceded Jesus' own. John instructed the people of Israel to change their ways and to prepare for the coming Messiah.

John's modus operandi was quite different from the instructions that Jesus gave to his own disciples. Jesus told his disciples to travel in pairs, going from town to town, preaching and healing and relying on the people they met for their food, water, and shelter.

John went out to the desert, alone, dressed like a wild man, eating off the land, and the people traveled out to the wilderness to hear him speak.

If all of your work is done alone, if you are by yourself, if you are a one-man team, then who makes your decisions? You. Who plans your strategy? You. Who coordinates your communication? You. Who does all the work? You.

If, instead, you work in an office full of coworkers and superiors and subordinates, you can sometimes get caught up in soliciting everyone's opinion, or letting someone else make the decision, or leaving the work for another person to do. Sometimes these things unintentionally get out of hand; sometimes they become our excuse to procrastinate.

If your success and survival depended entirely on you and your decisions and your efforts, how would that change the way you approach your work and your life?

Social Context, part 1

In the first century A.D., a Jewish rabbi from the town of Nazareth in Galilee hand-picked twelve men to be his disciples. After a period of time, he sent these disciples out by twos to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick and afflicted among the people of Israel. And he gave them some interesting instructions for the task:

"Take nothing for your journey - no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra undergarments. And whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from that place." (Luke 9:3-4)

Strange requirements. If you travel extensively as part of your work - as a touring musician, or a motivational speaker, or a political candidate, or a sales representative - don't you usually take a suitcase? and a change of clothes? and, above all, a credit card?

So why would this Jesus of Nazareth instruct his disciples to leave these things behind as they traveled around the countryside to preach?

Likely there were multiple reasons. But consider this one:

If you're traveling from town to town for weeks (months? years?) on end, without having any money to buy food or a hotel room, you are forced to rely on the people you encounter in each town. You are forced to speak with people in each town - to meet them, to engage them in conversation, to tell a compelling story to them, to pique their interest, to build a relationship that benefits both yourself and them.

If, on the other hand, you have the ability within yourself to supply all of your own needs, you may find it easier to become an island. To be totally self-reliant. To avoid community and collaboration. To isolate yourself from others, never to connect with others (i.e. your clients, your potential clients, your coworkers) at all.

If your success and survival depended entirely upon your relationships with other people, how would that change the way you approach your work and your life?

Liberty, Leadership and Trust

In free societies, leadership is based on trust.

In other societies throughout history, leadership has been based on less worthy foundations: fear. greed. wealth. property. coercion. The men with the most money, or most land, or most slaves, or most socio-political power became the leaders. The rest of the people obeyed their bidding. Loss of job, loss of home, loss of family, loss of status, or loss of life came to the brave ones who refused to obey.

We have seen, however, that leadership based on this kind of tyranny is not sustainable. Dynasties built around these systems will eventually fall, usually by economic ruin or by the political uprising of good men fighting for their freedom (or of bad men fighting to attain their own positions of tyrannical power).

When people are free, however, leaders cannot be tyrants.

When people appoint or elect or hire or otherwise designate their own leaders, that leadership is based on trust. The followers choose a leader because they trust the leadership of that person. They trust that the leader will act in the best interests of the followers, and so they place their confidence and their individual power into the hands of this person. If the leader goes on to violate that trust, the people can impeach, or fire, or otherwise abandon that leader, and find another one.

During my undergraduate work I took an entrepreneurship class. In the class, we students were assigned to teams. Each team was to develop an idea for a start-up company, and to write a business plan for our start-up. Each member of the team was to be an executive officer of our "company."

In a team project like this one, in which all team members were equal, the socially comfortable strategy was to give equal power and an equal position to each member of the team. But as our professor (Dr. Phil Vardiman) wisely advised, this strategy was impractical. One person in the team was required to be the president and CEO, in order to give the final say-so if the other officers disagreed about some strategy.

So how did we, the team members, choose a president?

Among equal teammates, the rest of us had to choose the person whom we trusted with the best interests of the team. In choosing a president from among us, we voluntarily placed our power into the hands of one leader. We trusted that he would listen to our opinions and our counsel, and that he would represent our interests in his decision-making.

By entrusting him with our power, we also agreed to submit to his leadership even if a situation arose in which we disagreed with him on a particular point.

This kind of submission works because we the vice-presidents would have the power to fire our president if we ever determined that he was abusing his power.

When men are free, they are equals. When they are equals, they have equal power and an equal voice. In choosing a leader for themselves, they voluntarily place their own power and their own voice into the hands of someone who will represent them. Someone who will act in the best interests of all. Someone whom they can trust.

As a leader, you hold the trust of your followers. That trust is a precious thing, and is essential for a society - or an organization, or a team - to function. Violate that trust, and your leadership will be lost forever.

Freedom Stones: A Start-up with Good Marketing?

Last week, some friends of mine invited me to check out the website of their start-up non-profit organization, Freedom Stones.

I was blown away.

Oftentimes, when a non-profit organization is just beginning, its marketing and promotional efforts are rather primitive. Its web presence consists of a Facebook fan page, or perhaps a website that looks okay by 1995 standards. Its print materials are 8.5" x 11" flyers that were created and printed from the founder's home computer. Its advertising occurs at random through garage-sale-signs and word-of-mouth.

And we, the public, are okay with that. We realize that the people who found non-profit organizations are usually passionate and skilled in issues like social justice, and are rarely passionate and skilled in marketing. We are happy that they are investing their initial time and energy and precious start-up capital in the operations of helping people, even if it means that their marketing efforts lag behind for a while. All of this is par for the course with a new non-profit organization. If the cause is a worthy one, we will support the organization anyway.

So marketing efforts like those of Freedom Stones come as quite a surprise.

Freedom Stones was incorporated just last year, and the site went live just a few weeks before I first looked at it. When I visited the site, I was thoroughly impressed. The design is beautiful - great layout, great colors, great photos and texture, terrific overall aesthetics. The navigation and organization are tight and easy to follow. The site is full of thick, rich, helpful, purposeful information - about the organization, its work, its staff, the issues it fights, the people it helps, the products it sells, and the ways in which supporters can get involved. And the site has a functional shopping cart system - not just a Paypal setup - for purchasing items and making donations.

Plus, the Freedom Stones website links to social media - a Facebook cause, a Twitter account (@FreedomStones), and the Freedom Stones blog. One might expect these accounts to have been thrown together, and to contain only a handful of posts about Freedom Stones.

Instead, Freedom Stones seems to have strategically planned and implemented its use of social media. The Facebook cause already has 664 members, with regular posts over the past 10 months. The Twitter account seems to have begun in mid-January, but Freedom Stones has been faithful to tweet well and often since then. And the blog, while low on posts as of yet, seems to be off to a great start.

When I see marketing efforts that look like this, I feel more comfortable with and confident in the non-profit. It seems that the non-profit is already well-established; that the founders are serious about this cause; that they have been thoughtful and strategic, and that they understand the "business" of running a non-profit; that this non-profit is well-funded, well-supported, and well-stewarded - that the non-profit is not destined to fail in six months due to poor money management or poor operational decisions.

I certainly do not begrudge start-up non-profits whose marketing efforts have not yet reached this level of quality. However, it seems that the founders of Freedom Stones realize the importance of having supporters to bring the work and mission of Freedom Stones to fruition. They have given some thought to how they will reach, attract, and communicate with supporters, in order to provide the financial and emotional legs for their ministry to stand.

And I fully expect that stand it shall.

One Small Step...but no giant leap

This week, Target unveiled a new way for customers to redeem their Target gift cards in-store: by scanning a bar code on their mobile phones.

To avoid the my-wallet-is-stuffed-with-50-bajillion-gift-cards syndrome, or the oh-no-I'm-at-the-store-but-left-my-gift-card-at-home problem, Target GiftCard recipients can enter the information from their GiftCard into a secure account on the Target.com mobile site. Then, when the recipient visits one of Target's 1740 store locations, she can retrieve her GiftCard information on her phone, which displays a digital bar code to be scanned at checkout.

Customers can access the Target.com mobile site at any time to check their GiftCard balance(s), and can reload their mobile GiftCards at any Target store register.

This seems like a good step for Target, a company that aims to "surprise and delight [its] guests with innovative and highly relevant mobile capabilities," in the words of Steve Eastman, President of Target.com.

But Target could do much more to make their GiftCard program convenient, accessible, and truly mobile for its customers.

For one thing, it seems that customers must still receive physical, plastic Target GiftCards before they can use those cards on their mobile devices. They must manually input the data from their plastic GiftCards into their mobile phones.

Sure, this is great, reducing wallet clutter and nearly ensuring that the customer will have his GiftCard information with him when he visits the store. But why require a physical, plastic GiftCard at all? Why can't customers exchange mobile GiftCards electronically, eliminating the need for the physical plastic by simply sending the GiftCard information to their friends via email or text message? Then the intended recipient could simply follow a link to retrieve his GiftCard on his mobile phone - saving plastic and saving the time required for a manual input.

At the very least, why can't the purchaser choose to instantly email the GiftCard information to the recipient as soon as the GiftCard is purchased?

Mobile technology can be a great way to create easy access and reduce physical waste. But Target hasn't quite made that leap yet.

Super Bowl XLIV and the Web

The Super Bowl is known to be an event that features not only the year's best in professional football, but also the year's best in television advertising.

Many football fans and non-football-fans alike watch the Super Bowl for the sake of seeing the commercials just as much as - or more than - for the sake of watching the actual football game. And this year, I don't think those viewers were disappointed. Most of the commercials were very well done; many were funny; a few were slightly disturbing. And the football game was exciting, too.

But what impressed me most about Super Bowl XLIV was the number of brands that integrated their television commercials with free bonus content on the Web.

Several companies allowed web users to see "sneak peeks" of their Super Bowl spots during the week before the game. Many of these offers tied into a reciprocity technique - after watching the short clip, users were encouraged to follow the brand on Twitter, or to use a promotional code to receive a discount at the brand's online store. And after the game, some brands then emailed links for the full versions of their ads to users who opted in to their mailing list.

Also this year, all of the Super Bowl commercials were made publicly available to users after the spots aired during the game. Viewers can watch all 71 commercials at www.youtube.com/adblitz, and between now and February 14, can vote for their favorite.

Of these Web-integrated Super Bowl campaigns, my personal favorite is the HomeAway ad:



This ad is actually a trailer for a new short film, available for viewing pleasure at HomeAway.com. Clark and Ellen Griswold return in "Hotel Hell Vacation," much to the delight of this particular National Lampoon fan. Visitors to the site can also watch other short videos, play the Griswold Getaway game, read (and vote for their favorite) user-submitted hotel horror stories, and enter to win a dream vacation.

With these and the other web-integrated Super Bowl advertisements, it seems that brands are beginning to understand how offering free, fun, accessible content to audiences can help to build customer relationships. As companies provide content like this, they associate their names with enjoyable experiences, and create opportunities to delight customers and to form positive impressions and reputations in the minds of consumers.

And after a customer spends 15 minutes exploring this fun content, he might also explore the actual product information on the rest of the brand website. Or at least remember HomeAway.com, for example, the next time he plans a family vacation.

Great job, HomeAway.com and others. I hope that next year, your Super Bowl ads will go one step further, by integrating with mobile content as well (as blogger Steve Smith points out).

Why Do We Do What We Do?

Gary Chapman would say that my love language is words of affirmation.

As such, few things brighten my day more than when someone pays me a sincere compliment or gives me a word of encouragement. In my work, I seldom feel more satisfied and useful and fulfilled than when a boss or a client or a coworker tells me that I've done an excellent job.

But sometimes, I find myself beginning to do things solely for the prospect of receiving praise for my work. Instead of giving 110% to a task simply because giving 110% is the right thing to do, I begin to give 110% because I want to impress my client, or because I hope that one of my dearest mentors will notice.

As marketers, do we act the same way?

Do we begin to strategize ways that our organization can be amazing, just so that our organization can achieve recognition and media coverage and positive word-of-mouth?

Recognition and media coverage and positive word-of-mouth are wonderful and worthy things, no doubt, but they should not be the reason why we do what we do.

Instead, we should strategize ways to be amazing, just because being amazing is the right thing to do. Because having radical customer service is the right thing to do. Because being dedicated to good stewardship of natural resources is the right thing to do. Because improving the lives of people is the right thing to do. Because designing innovative, aesthetically-pleasing, useful products is the right thing to do. Because creating a wonderful place to work and shop and do business and live is the right thing to do.

When we do amazing things out of a sincere conviction that those are the things we should do, then the recognition and awards and good press and outstanding brand reputation will follow.

When we do amazing things simply because we are pursuing those accolades, then our heart isn't right. And when our heart isn't right toward the things we are doing, sooner or later the facade will break down. Sooner or later customers will realize that our customer service doesn't really care about them the way it is reputed to. Sooner or later our brand experience won't match up to the stunts we pulled, and our customers will become disillusioned - and leave. Sooner or later we will cut a corner or two, and the media will find out, and the bad press will more than destroy the good reputation we had built.

Be exceptional in what your organization does, simply because being exceptional is the right thing to do. When you choose to be exceptional for the right reasons, the real praise and the real devoted customers will follow.

Empty Restaurants and Dying Malls

Recently, some friends and I decided to have dinner together at an Italian restaurant in our town. This particular restaurant was a local favorite; however, I had never eaten there before, and my friends had not eaten there since it moved to its current location one year previous. So all of us were quite excited about our dinner plans.

Until we got to the restaurant.

We walked into the restaurant shortly after 6:00 on a Thursday evening; the place was empty. As is, zero customers. None. Zilch. The lights were on, the tables were set, the servers and chefs were there and ready to go. But my two friends and I were the only non-employees in the place.

That seemed rather odd, since it was already an hour into dinnertime, on a not-quite-weekend night. And at a well-known local restaurant. There was no explanation for it - the room had not been reserved for a large party. It was simply a regular evening. With no customers.

After consulting for a moment or two, my friends and I bade a polite goodbye to the hostess and decided to patronize another restaurant for the evening.

Why? Why did we decide to leave?

Robert Cialdini would explain it as a principle that he calls "social proof."

Social proof is the idea that we as human beings - and especially as consumers - infer truths about a situation based upon how others act in that situation.

You attend a get-together at the home of some new acquaintances, and notice that all of the other guests have removed their shoes as they entered the front door; you presume that removing shoes is the policy in this house, and so you remove yours, too.

You walk down the street and notice numbers of people gathering at one particular location and staring up into the sky. You assume there must be something unusual to see in the sky, so you stop and look up, too.

Social proof tends to be especially strong in unfamiliar situations in which the proper behavior is unknown. When we are not sure how to act, we take our cues from the actions of people around us.

In the case of my friends and me at the restaurant, we took our cues from the absence of people around us. We thought it unusual to find a restaurant empty at 6pm on a Thursday; and while we didn't know of anything specifically wrong with the restaurant, we presumed that there must be some reason for customers to be staying away. For lack of better answers, we felt it safer to stay away as well.

Social proof can be a powerful force, for good or ill. If you are a new business, and you give free t-shirts and hats to your all of your customers for the first six months, others who begin to see your logo everywhere will likely infer that you must be a good brand (everyone is going there, after all), and be prompted to investigate and learn more about your company. If you have an excellent product or service and all of your customers continually rave about your brand to their friends, those friends will likely try your product the next time they have a need which your product might solve.

Conversely, if you are a restaurant with zero customers in the middle of a given night, then those potential customers who arrive may likely decide to leave. If you are a shopping mall with 20% of your storefronts empty, then mall shoppers (and potential tenants) may likely infer that something about the mall prevents it from attracting enough customers to make the retailers profitable, and may likely stay away themselves.

How can your organization noticeably provide excellent experiences to all of your customers, such that others will be positively affected by their social proof?