Manhattan Marketing Maven

Gary Vaynerchuk's Gospel

I always thought Gary Vaynerchuck, the video wine guy, was a media hot dog who graduated from doing goofy low-rent videos on wine to become an Internet business guru. Then I saw him the other night work a crowd of 100+ at Powell's Books in Portland, OR and changed my mind.

Gary Vee is a hot dog. Glib, funny and focused he is relentless in selling himself and his brand. He took his family's mom and pop wine store in New Jersey and turned it into an online eComerce powerhouse using homemade social and new media. So it's not too surprising that he's become an advocate, a champion and an evangelist for others to follow his path. This is the thrust of his new 150-page book Crush It.

Seeing Gary live reminded me that he is a modern day Horatio Alger; an immigrant kid who worked his ass off to succeed and who keeps doing it. Part techie, part smooth talking Internet guru, part Tony Robbins, Gary believes that the Internet changes everything, destroys the 200+ year old media model, sweeps away gatekeepers at every level and empowers anyone with passion and elbow grease to have a genuine shot at happiness and/or wealth. Pointing to the fact that the Internet eliminates cost barriers for the creation, distribution and promotion of content, his message of universal hope is ... "go for it." 

Here's the gospel according to Gary Vee synthesized and distilled as I understand it.

Focus and work hard. If you work day and night and focus on the prize you'll be much happier and maybe much richer than working for the man. Gary is grateful for what he has been able to achieve but worried that Americans have become fat, happy and divorced from the fundamental energy that built this country.

Content is King. Millions of people have strong interests and an insatiable appetite for content about the stuff they love. If you know something and care about it you can create and monetize this content. You don't necessarily have to be original, you can aggregate information or display it differently.

Follow Your Star. Life is too short to do things you hate. Find your passion and follow it. Your gut will be your guide.

Social Media multiplies promotion and distribution. YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter let you get the word out quickly and cheaply to targeted groups of people who might share your passion. If you can get something viral going you can build relationships sufficient to launch and grow a decent sized business.

The Internet Levels the Playing Field. Everybody gets an "at bat" because everyone can put up a site, a blog or build a community of interest. Big media has fragmented and will continue to do so. No longer will editors and producers decide what gets seen, heard, read or talked about. You'd be surprised at the kind of critical mass you can achieve with an audience much smaller than a local newspaper or a middling TV show. 

Be Direct. Don't be afraid to talk to anyone and everyone. You never know what opportunities you'll turn up. Invite people to do business with you. Don't be bashful. Share your enthusiasm and your energy. Thank your customers and prospects early and often. The Internet widens your circle and offers you the potential to build a powerful network. Grab onto it.

The FTC's Firestorm over Blogging

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revisited its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising , the rules on truth in advertising, for the first time since 1980  and applied it to bloggers. A firestorm of criticism erupted. 

But I don’t get it on several levels. 

For years people pretending to be consumers have been posting blog comments, reviews, criticisms, endorsements, features, benefits, images, schematics  and other content pretending to independent advocates of  brands and causes. Whole firms of these fakeroo posters peddle this service to brands desperate from buzz and new customers. A few years ago Wal*Mart’s PR agency Edelman got busted for this kind of abuse. 

Bloggers, me included, are always looking for freebies and swag. I’m still jealous that when Jeff Jarvis said he was in “Dell hell” he got a laptop. When I posted my “Dell hell” story I got a snotty call from a Dell flack. 

Over the years, I got a few books to review, a few t-shirts and a mountain of white papers and reports that the authors’ often charge for. I haven’t shilled for anybody and I’ve tried to be equally critical of everyone; sometimes ranting and sometimes praising. My goal is to disclose everything, take nothing and hold on dearly to my digital bully pulpit. 

It’s only sensible that bloggers should be transparent and ethical in revealing who is schmearing whom. Payola poisoned broadcasting and print media and has probably played an unfair role in the growth of blogging and other forms of social media. 

The FTC mandates that disclosure must be “clear and conspicuous” whatever that means.Commercial and endorsement relationships must be disclosed. Wild ass claims are out of bounds as is masquerading as someone or something you are not. The rules kick in on December 1^st and penalties include $11,000 in fines per violation. 

This seems right to me. Bloggers, like journalists, should strive for integrity and transparency by disclosing their allegiances, alignments and paid endorsements. Bloggers also should be subject to libel and slander laws and should adhere to the same code of conduct as journalists and corporate officers. 

So why did the editors of Ad Age work themselves into a lather calling  the FTC blog rules “excessive, ridiculous, hypocritical and likely unconstitutional?’? 

Because the rules are vague, difficult to understand or enforce, policed by bureaucrats subject to political influences and Obama’s direction and they come down harder on new media than old media. Who knew that Ad Age was such a digital defender?

They’re not. They are just anti-regulation across the board for advertising.

Today the New York Times weighed-in arguing that the regulations are not onerous and will probably protect the public. I agree. 

In this case, the shot across the bow is warranted. In cyberspace all kinds’ of shenanigans have gone on for more than 10 years. It is time to rattle the regulatory saber and close down the crooks, charlatans and cheaters. Even if it takes some ham-fisted FTC action, we can find the equilibrium, as needed, through the courts. 

Improving Client Service: 5 Client Archtypes

Personality determines client behavior which is then magnified or minimized at any given moment by the individual’s status in the food chain, political clout, savvy, management air cover, P&L responsibility, intelligence, coping behaviors, industry insight, competitive pressures and stress from any number of sources. Baseline personality is to client behavior what gravity is to earth – a fundamental organizing principle. 

A smart, strong and confident client will treat an agency similarly. An anxious, scared, weak or worried client will drive an agency crazy. An ambivalent, chair-warming bureaucratic lifer will stall, misdirect and baffle an agency. A flighty, tentative, ADHD client will spin an agency in circles.

In working effectively with clients it’s critical to identify and to understand each individual’s personality. And while its fun to play amateur psychiatrist and speculate about how and why they are they way they are; its much more important to zero-in on how they operate. Focus your powers of observation and your energy on interacting with them in productive and mutually beneficial ways. The myth of the “client from Hell” arises because agencies don’t identify and respond to the personality factors, which drive the agency-client relationship.

Across industries and functional verticals several species of clients occur time and again. They might represent the dominant evolutionary mutations of personality types in organizational settings. They might also be standard behavioral pathways acted out over time and geography. In any case there is a very high probability that agencies will encounter these archetypical client types; each of which has unique operating and handling characteristics.

 

The Mandarin. A senior client, usually a CMO or someone at or near the top of the food chain earning big bucks and big esteem. Mandarins can be fundamentally malevolent or benign based primarily on their sense of job security. In an environment where the average CMO lasts 23 months, there’s much less grace and much less psycho-demographic homogeneity at the top than there used to be. 

Mandarins manage upward. Their primary audience is C-level players who generally undervalue their contribution to both the organization and the bottom line. They live and die by serving the CEO, even though most are the designated fall guys for CEO-initiatives that fall flat or implode. And they frequently battle with the CFO and the head of sales, technically a counterpart, but frequently a rival.

These clients focus on big stuff -- big ideas, big concepts, big scale and big rewards. They frequently operate in lavish environs and casually mention their perks, the number of corporate jet flights they’ve taken, their hectic luxury travel schedule, the tedium of gourmet dining with corporate leaders and their interaction with big names or boldface individuals. They rarely talk about marketing stuff and almost never discuss their own campaigns or plans choosing instead to sprinkle their conversation with stock price quotes, PE ratios and other financial slang, which they often barely understand. In many cases they are trying to convince themselves that they are bigger than marketing and play a broader role on a bigger stage, one more integral to the overall functioning of the organization, even if they just joined the organization last week. 

They depend on the senior agency people to know everything that’s going on within their organization and within the agency’s world. Many will ask for details about people in their organizations and programs in their pipelines with the expectation of complete candor. In the same breath, they’ll inquire about IPG’s balance sheet, John Wren’s latest acquisition tactics or Sir Martin’s personal foibles and expect their agency counterpart to dish on-demand. 

Mandarins rarely rock the boat. That’s both the reason they stay and the reason they go. But, they frequently want to know about and talk about best practices, big ideas, trends and campaigns garnering broad-based buzz. They see themselves as messengers and advocates of big ideas and they react viscerally and negatively when they get blind-sided or upstaged in this arena. They know and have the big ideas. You support them, feed them and remain unseen and unheard by the people they seek to impress. Agencies load the rabbits into the hat. Mandarins make the magic.

 

The Know-it-All. Usually a mid-level executive, know-it-alls come in friendly and hostile flavors. Both demand massive amounts of attention and acknowledgment. A know-it-all without an audience is a potential serial killer.

Agency people understand that like Wikipedia, what a know-it-all knows isn’t necessarily accurate, true or current. But that’s much less important than understanding this client’s need to control the conversation, surface critical data points and remain on top of everything going on. Validation, security and productivity are a direct function of knowing (and frequently reciting) for this personality type. You cannot win a KIA competition with a KIA. Agencies with KIA clients give them the forum and the attention they need and find ways to direct their energy productively. 

Friendly KIAs want to share what they know and bring you into their circle. They see themselves as feeding the strategic and creative process. They figure if they didn’t bring a fountain of knowledge to the table the campaign, the program, maybe even the company would be lost and rudder-less. But they are eager to teach you and invite you to be in-the-know. 

Nasty KIAs get off on busting agencies. They find errors and mistakes, expose exaggerations and overblown claims and seek out opportunities to embarrass and humiliate the people who are supposed to be helping them. They see themselves as fastidious keepers of the truth; mullahs charged with defending the faith and punishing infidels. These guys turn tidbits of data into “critical” variables whether they really are or not. These KIAs are angry, often loners, who can’t get out of their own way or let go of their own pathology. Agency people know to cut a wide swath around them and to work overtime to avoid their harassing behavior.

 

The Up-and-Comer. Ambitious, energized, focused on the prize, these clients are out to win the corporate game by climbing the ladder of success and reaping the riches at the top of the tree. Many have MBAs and all kinds of experience that they see as investments toward obtaining a goal they intend to achieve either with your help or over your dead body. 

Contemporary literature and business magazines are filled with these personality types from Horatio Alger to Bill Gates or from Michael Dell to Sammy Glick all convinced that they can realize the American dream. U&Cers can be divided by sensibilities and  the ethical lines they’ll cross to get what they want. Most are cautious and appropriately respectful of laws, ethics, customers and SOPs. Some are willing to do whatever it takes, cut corners and/or undertake a scorched earth policy of death and destruction to reach the top.

Understanding what an U&Cer genuinely wants, their risk appetite and how they define success is key to working with them successfully. Some are playing the short game. They want to survive the next re-org and get the next level promotion. Others have found a tribe or a rabbi and are looking to game the system or to jump multiple steps in one move. And still others are looking for greatness and global domination; seeking to be plucked from the middle of the pack, their success rewarded with much greater authority, responsibility and hard cold cash. Working with these clients requires assessing what they want and their likelihood of getting it and then calibrating agency behavior accordingly. 

In many cases, one hand washes the other. The agency helps them and they return the favor. In some cases the agency provides the insights, the intelligence or the springboard for these guys to succeed. In other cases, the agency is a threat since agency performance can retard their trajectory or risky agency recommendations can potentially backfire to their detriment. Up and comers spend a lot of time reading the board, identifying likely allies or antagonists, calculating their moves and evaluating scenario 

Agency partners need to be in this head game and do the same, usually with a 90-degree difference in perspective. This type of client can cement an agency relationship and drive endless new business opportunities throughout a long career across business units or geographies. Or with equal ease, a U&Cer client will throw an agency fatally under the bus without warning or apology. If someone’s got to take a bullet – it will always be the agency.

 

The Lifer. The polar opposite of the Up-and-Comer is the lifer; once a robust and healthy species now smaller in the age of outsourcing and downsizing. The Lifer lives outside of work and warms a chair in an organization to fund his or her real life. They are entirely focused on staying around. Completely risk adverse, they do as little as possible, hide, avoid any situation that could draw either attention or blame and are generally happy for an agency to do their job completely. It’s all about the paycheck, the benefits and a pension. Nothing else matters to them. They will torpedo anything that threatens this holy trinity.

Lifers are the human and corporate equivalent of those small creatures living in coral reefs that have amazing camouflage and who spend their whole lives hiding from predators. They have no expectations for creativity or productivity, though they know that self-preservation is often a function of meeting timetables and budgets. They will default to process compliance in every situation. They have zero interest in innovation, in new tactics or in making any perceptible noise. 

Lifers can be great clients because they are genial and are masters at not giving offense to anyone over anything. They don’t want to be too bored and are more than happy to work with you, have countless meetings and work sessions, dine out frequently and give you access to others so long as you (and they) leave no traceable tracks in the sand. They are masters at creating motion, which gives the illusion of forward movement. 

Agencies can’t be faked out by the form and must focus on the function. Lifers will get you whatever you need but cannot be counted on as allies. They are generally nice people who are used to pleasing those around them. They are pleasant companions, good traveling partners and really try to connect with individuals on a personal basis. They will happily cue you about internal personalities and politics as long as you don’t disclose the source. Just don’t ask them to stick their necks out or put them in any posture where they can be exposed or judged.

 

The Nerd. This client is buried deep in the details. Rather than get something done, they want to dissect and understand all the working parts. Entirely focused on process at the expense of creativity or productivity, Nerds want to go to school on your time and on your dime. Grasping every detail is their ultimate pleasure. They will slow you down, tie you up and make you crazy, if you let them. 

Nerds have a need to know. The impact or import of knowing doesn’t matter to them. They want to master the process and will insist you tell them and show them everything on their terms and on their timetable. Unlike the KIA who might question the answer, for Nerds the answer itself is enough. They are the company fact-checkers, the last line of defense against randomness and chaos.

They live in an ethereal world of sketchy concepts and half-baked ideas secretly thinking of themselves as philosophers and prescient observers of the human condition who have unique perspectives and deep mystical understandings of the fundamental forces in the universe. More likely they are nudniks and outcasts who use their leverage as clients to monopolize your time and attention and to focus on things that don’t, won’t or can’t matter. They never got over the brutalization they endured in high school and are just as likely to be locked into the same dated behavior, aesthetics and vocabulary.  

Nerds won’t help you until you pay the information toll. Working with them requires that you acknowledge their needs and feed their appetitive for trivial details, the inner workings of each campaign asset or data set and as much gossip as you can serve up. Successful agencies pair a Nerd with a Nerd to run interference and to establish relationships, which can be surprisingly productive.

Working with advertising clients means being in a co-dependent relationship where goods, services, ideas, insights, and emotions are exchanged. A client relationship is different from a customer who purchases a discrete product or service because a client has to participate directly in shaping the outcome or the deliverables.

Being a client means taking on a role representing, protecting and advocating a brand. Individuals taking on client responsibility infuse the role with their personalities, which are shaped by rank, experience, skills, beliefs and stimuli. These environmental and attitudinal factors are often subject to and affected by timing, stress, competition, resources and corporate politics. So personalities operating in corporate contexts determine how clients engage, interact, direct and treat agency partners. 

These archetypes are gently exaggerated for emphasis but they illustrate actual personalities frequently encountered in agency life. They are the clients that you will have to work with and through to achieve your personal or agency objectives. Understanding the underlying personality type and making agile adjustments will help you be more productive and have more fun.

 

 

9 Change Management Tactics from Chairman Mao

If you are charged with changing an organization’s culture, you can not ignore the biggest sustained case study in change management over the last 60 years – the transformation of the Peoples’ Republic of China under the guidance of Mao Zedong.

 

And while Chairman Mao and his successors’ philosophy, approach and policies might be abhorrent politically and while no one can ever condone or minimize the butchery or the massive scale of human suffering brought on by successive campaigns, decisions or regimes, the actions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) offer the greatest number of lessons in how to transform a country from abject poverty to modernity and from political chaos and internecine warfare to stability and participation in the world political system.

 

Facing a smaller task – changing how a company can change its culture and act differently internally and externally – there seem to be several clear change management concepts that can be extracted from Chairman Mao.

 

Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating any of the CCP methods. But I am suggesting that the CCP understood underlying and possibly universal motivational and communications principles which can be extracted, humanized, tempered, democratized and applied in organizational settings to achieve scalable change.

 

Involve Top Leadership. From Mao thru Wen Jiaboa every Chinese leader has been an active front man and spokesperson for change. Routine and regular appearances to underscore the effort and tout the party line are key expectations of top leaders.

 

Create a Party Line. The CCP plans their work and works their plan. They articulate a clear, concise policy line and demand active adherence from all cadres. They use party discipline to enforce every zig and zag in the party line. But the existence of a clear point of view and articulated short and long term goals direct and orient the organization. Just don’t expect consistency or historical continuity.

 

Use Simple Slogans Frequently. While the CCP will never win any creative awards, they understood early on that communicating big concepts to the masses required shorthand that is universally and instantly understood and frequently repeated. Like Mad Men they crated short punchy slogans and bombarded the masses with them until they were unavoidable, unforgettable and firmly drilled into everyone’s consciousness.

 

Influence Every Unit. By identifying early adopters, purging dissenters and designating change leaders at each level of society, the CCP mobilized and motivated millions of “change agents” to accomplish their mission. Every house, block, factory, military unit and sector of society had party member and trained cadres tasked with instigating and sustaining change. Change requires worker bees at every important level of the organization.

 

Model Behavior. People need to understand what is expected of them. By calling out model citizens, model work brigades and model collective farms, the CCP held up the desired behavior and then dissected and disseminated the operative elements of the behavior they sought to encourage. By showing the end result, often entirely fabricated, they were able to drive behavioral change by showing the path forward and illuminating the desired end result.

 

Celebrate Every Victory. The corollary to modeling behavior is celebrating every win. In the case of the CCP many were entirely bogus, nonetheless they understood that change is an incremental process where success builds upon itself and small victories can be compounded, packaged and merchandized to yield increasingly bigger victories. They also understood the need for people to join a winning team and the attractiveness of perceived momentum as a recruiting and validating device.

 

Marshall Peer Pressure. People do what others are doing and often comply with widely held expectations. We and they are monkey-see; monkey-do cultures. The CCP set the bar and used every form of peer pressure and coercion to attain conformity. Their methods, while odious and brutal, built a culture where the cadre reinforced and policed its own behavior. This was further reinforced by the use of tangible experiences, music, operas and common symbols (e.g. The Little Red Book, Mao pins) to consistently reinforce the message. Accepting and implementing change is a viral process that builds on itself and needs to reach a critical mass.

 

Manage Self-Interest. It was always more important and better to be “red” rather than “expert”. Toeing the line determined everything from housing and work assignments to personal freedom. The CCP aggressively used the “performance review process” backed by secret police and Gestapo tactics to help people act in their own best interests. Baking expected behavior into key performance indicators and into personal objectives yields uptake and traction.

 

Provide a Feedback

Loop

.  Genuine attitudinal change is incremental and evolutionary and without admitting it the CCP was realistic in changing the tactics necessary to achieve its objectives. By creating ways to solicit ideas, participation and express dissent or frustration, the party kept the effort on track, adapted the plan to changing circumstances, accounted for anomalies and absorbed the best ideas for moving forward, unfortunately often over the dead bodies of dissenters.

 

Historians and political philosophers will debate the legacy of Chairman Mao for centuries. Arguably the greatest cynical tyrant and mass murderer of all time, the average Chinese today enjoys a quality of life unimaginable just 60 years ago. Within this massive sustained transformation, with all its flaws, evil and inconsistencies are lessons in change management worthy of observing and extracting for more benign and productive uses.

Google's Sidewiki : A Revolution Worthy of Chairman Mao

On the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Google has unleashed a revolution wrapped in a velvet glove that could upend all social media competitors and radically change the game in Google's favor. 

Google Sidewiki is a persistent social media space adjacent to every web site. Embedded in the Google Toolbar it pops us with each site you visit. So far its compatible with IE and Firefox. Chrome access is exected soon.

Assessing the new offering Josh Bernoff in his Groundswell blog called it "a land grab." But this is way too mild a caution. Sidewiki is as ingenious  as it is insidious. It's as if the masses in Mountain View set out to launch a revolutionary disruptor that would roll up the best aspects of their competitors' functionality into a tool that not only would grow virally but would force site owners to further connect and kow-tow to Google. It's a not-so-naked play for social media and maybe even Web domination. 

How and why can they do it? As Chairman Mao said, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

Allow me to illuminate the plan as I understand it.

I. SideWiki splits the browser screen and sets up a running commentary field on the left side of your screen. That's right, the primary side you look to for navigation and the key junction in the "F" scanning pattern we all use when viewing Web sites. They set up shop on your most desirable real estate.

II. It's embedded in the Google Toolbar which makes it easy to download and gives Google a launch pad by using their installed base of users. Think of them as a network in waiting of "fellow travelers" ready to embrace and advocate the revolution.

The pitch is not only benign but helpful. "What if everyone, from a local expert to a renowned doctor had an easy way of sharing their insights with you about any page on the web? What if you could add your own insights for others who are passing through, " write VP Product Management Sundar Pichai and Engineering Lead Michal Cierniak on the Google Blog. Couched in social media-friendly language, its something consumers are doing and expect. It feels like the natural evolution of things; the onward march of civilization gently goosed by Google.

But consider the implications. 

III. Google sets up shop next to your web site with the intention of participating in the content and conversation. You don't get a vote.  In fact, they probably already have more viewers and advocates than you'll ever have. Your new partner offers your visitors the opportunity to post comments on a wall-like device (Facebook) or instantly and viscerally react (Twitter) and these comments or reactions are broadcast in real time to other sites featuring similar or relevant content (RSS). The comments could include additions, amplifications and corrections (Wikipedia), rankings or ratings (Zagat, Judy's List), references or bookmarks (Digg, StumbleUpon) or denunciations, attacks and the ever popular "you suck" messages.

Ideally this a free gift without purchase which benefits you greatly. Its an all-in-one social media tool that vaults you from worst to first in the social media competition because in one swoop it can be a listening device, a customer service tool, and customer relationship management tool, a community or a common and searchable storage tool for your content and related content. The built-in inference is --- Google gives you their best stuff for free to help your business.

Not only will Google give you these goodies, it will use "an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high quality entries" to insure relevance and viewer interest. They are applying a variation on the page rank algorithm to the comments on or about your site. So now you are being ranked by your participating customers and prospects and by Google. 

You have to do macro and micro SEO to manage or impact the conversation about you on your site. Google has inserted itself strongly and seamlessly into your business overnight. God help you if you are deemed a "capitalist roader" or an "unrepentant bourgeoisie."

IV. But put away that paranoia. You can claim back your own Sidewiki space, if you validate your site ownership using Google's Webmaster Tools, download the Google Toolbar and then publish the first listing to address your site visitors on their new turf. It sounds benign. As if Sundar and Michal are saying, "No biggie. All you have to do is get our stuff and you can play with us too." 

But the deeper you go into Google's technology, the greater the chance you can influence or blunt the impact of their technology on your site and your business. You're in their clutches whether you've opted in or not. In this spiraling scenario, either you're red or dead.

The next step in a year or two, I predict, will be be sell you space, rankings and the option to intervene in the content of the Sidewiki accompanying your site. As Lenin wrote, "ultimately we'll sell the capitalists the rope that we'll hang them with." So the circle will be complete. Google will rule.

As a plan for social media revolution and domination it is technically inspired, competitively targeted, ultimately scary that requires immediate attention.