If our experimentation becomes permanent, that’s not an experiment, but a decision.

Problem is we sometimes forget to make the distinction.

And we end up either being afraid to experiment because we think it will become permanent, or we end up making decisions which are permanent, when we think we are experimenting.

From Jack Uldrich’ blog:

“Consider the case of Abraham Wald. During World War Two, he and a team of researchers were charged with protecting Allied bombers from German guns. As part of their work the researchers diligently recorded where on the body of the plane each returning bomber was struck by gunfire. The most common areas were the wings and the tails.

“In response, the researchers advised the military command to reinforce those bullet-struck areas. Everyone, that is, except Wald who suggested that those areas of the plane not struck by gunfire – largely the fuselage – be reinforced. His recommendation was initially met with incredulity by his peers and superiors.

“Eventually, Wald convinced them of the wisdom of his logic. The mistake his peers made was that they were only observing those planes which safely returned. What they were not seeing were those planes that didn’t return. Wald reasoned correctly that if a plane could safely return with bullet-ridden wings and tailfins then those areas didn’t need reinforcement and, counter-intuitively, the parts of the plane without bullet holes were the areas requiring additional armor.”

Read more

The survey covered 1068 marketing professionals, 98% in North America and Europe and 2% in Asia/Pacific and other regions.

Some notable quotes:

“We’ve hinted before that agencies that can’t transition from pushing out messages to nurturing customer connections aren’t long for this world. Agency readers, heed our warning. Services firms that lack data management, analytics, listening, social media execution, and strategy expertise will dry up.”
– ”US Interactive Forecast”, Forrester Research, Inc., July 2009

“Company marketers will never get the data from digital marketing without testing, so I would encourage those who have
not historically leveraged search, social media, mo- bile and other interactive advertising channels to do their homework to establish a digital marketing roadmap and start testing and capturing data.”
– www.toprankblog.com

What do the marketers have to do to prepare themselves for change today? What training is needed to prepare them? What do the marketers need to do to make sure that the CEO values them? There are two aspects the marketer must address. One is to understand how customers are changing. The other is to understand the new tools and techniques that are available that must be considered and integrated into the overall marketing plan.”
– David Friedman, streetsavvymarketing.com

“Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around. I hope a new ebook I’ve organized will get you started on that path. It took months, but I think you’ll find it worth the effort.

“Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O’Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Fred Wilson, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.”

Download and share.

“As a Director of Marketing, what’s the #1 thing you need to figure out about the web?”

This is a question that was recently posted at the Marketing Executives Group at LinkedIn, and the participants’ responses to that question were very revealing.

Most of the answers were of tactical nature, such as “use web analytics”, “get your site in Google”, “have a great UI and excellent SEO & SEM”, “leverage the unique capabilities of the channel” (i.e. “the-web-as-a-channel”), and so on.

But was it the right question to ask in the first place?

Framing a question correctly is 80% of the solution and sometimes even more

When we frame the question about “hot to figure out the web”, we are implying that “the web” is another thing that marketers need to “figure out” as if this “web” is a one-dimensional “thing” that lends itself to be “figured out”.

But the reality is that “the web” has changed the game in such profound manner that only these companies that embrace the disruption and the massive societal change it represents, will succeed. In fact, “the web” demands that an entire organization re-invents itself, not only its marketing.

Maybe what is needed is a finer distinction, and much, much better questions:

What is “the web”, in your opinion? Your website? A channel for communication about our company’s products or services? A channel for talking to your customers or a channel for talking with your customers? A platform for engaging with your customers in rich conversations? A platform for engaging your customers in the definition and fine-tunning of your products or services? A place to do market research or the place where a market is being defined?

Who controls the message in “the web”. You or your customers?

What is scarce in “the web” and what is abundant?

This may be obvious, but often disregarded: It is only by asking the right questions that we will get useful answers.

Consider also this: when we ask questions, how conscious are we of the possibility that we are applying confirmation bias?

From Wikipedia:

In studies of hypothesis-testing, people reject tests that are guaranteed to give a positive answer, in favor of more informative tests. However, many experiments have found that people tend to test in a one-sided way, by searching for evidence consistent with their currently held hypothesis. Rather than searching through all the relevant evidence, they frame questions in such a way that a “yes” answer supports their hypothesis and stop as soon as they find supporting information.[…] Even a small change in the wording of a question can affect how someone searches through the available information, and hence, the conclusion they come to.

The WOMMA has published a very insightful guidebook (60 pages, free download) on the different metrics related to word of mouth marketing campaigns and initiatives.

The guidebook can be downloaded from the WOMMA site.

The promise of word of mouth (WOM) marketing initiatives has practically saturated the consciousness of every brand marketer: relevant, more targeted reach leading to more efficient use of marketing dollars, a virutal focus group providing commentary about a company’s products and services, and opportunities for engaging customers in greater dialogue, just to name a few.

But one important barrier to adopting WOM marketing more broadly has been a lack of understanding about what, and how, to measure the impact of WOM marketing. Without this understanding, we lack the ability as marketers to build our business cases, demonstrate the impact of our programs, and have the security and support from upper management to make huge leaps forward.

Forresters’s Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler have announced their new book “”Harnessing the Groundswell” — Not really a sequel to “Groundswell“, it focuses on individuals empowered by technology and how businesses can tap into that force for a better business performance.

From the Groundswell Blog

TOC

ART 1. Why Empowered People Are Driving Your Management Crazy
Individuals will always get the latest and best technology and services first. Why? Because that’s the simplest path to market for device makers, publishers, social entrepreneurs, and other individuals. Because many of these technologies are mobile, they get into the enterprise regardless of corporate policies. This changes the dynamics of technology-led innovation forever.

Chapter 1. The forces that created empowered individuals
Chapter 2. How to act empowered (and how to manage people like that)

PART 2. Harnessing Empowered Employees
Individuals in the workforce bring their personal devices and experiences to work. The result? Innovation erupts in a thousand incremental, and sometimes disruptive, ways. With computing power available so cheaply in the Internet “cloud,” employees can often create solutions with a budget they can charge on a credit card. Managers can either erect ever-higher walls in a fruitless effort to contain this disruptive energy or identify and harness the power of these improvements.

Chapter 3. A framework for managing empowered employees
Chapter 4. Empowered innovation [Leadership]
Chapter 5. Selecting and scaling solutions [IT]
Chapter 6. Socializing the enabled employees and solutions [Management/Collaboration]
Chapter 7. Hiring and retaining an empowered workforce [HR]

PART 3. Harnessing Empowered Customers
Your customers are using technology to gather any information they want. They have every Web site in the world to draw on, as well as their peers in social environments from Facebook to Twitter to blogs to customer ratings. And it’s all coming to the mobile devices they take with them everywhere. A business that depends on the ignorance of its consumers is doomed. And in this environment, any service flaw is magnified and repeated endlessly. As a marketer, your best alternative is to become one of them – provide them with the very tools, information, and peer support they crave – and generate positive word of mouth through this enablement.

Chapter 8. A framework for managing empowered customers.
Chapter 9. Empowering customer service problem solvers [Customer Service]
Chapter 10. Empowering the mobile customer experience
Chapter 11. Selecting and scaling fans
Chapter 12. Socializing empowered customers: collaborating on innovation (10 pages)

PART 4. Leading the Empowered
Empowered people challenge management. The hierarchical management of large companies gets its power from standardization, rewards, and scale. But leadership in this new era does not mean being out of control. It means creating an environment where everyone knows the end goal and feels empowered to contribute, where attempts are lauded along with successes, and where scaling innovation is the true advantage.

Chapter 13. Leadership among the empowered
Chapter 14: The future

Clay Shirky continues to provide insightful comments about the changes permeating our society in the context of the fundamental changes brought forward by social media.

Algorithmic authority is the decision to regard as authoritative an unmanaged process of extracting value from diverse, untrustworthy sources, without any human standing beside the result saying “Trust this because you trust me.” This model of authority differs from personal or institutional authority, and has, I think, three critical characteristics.

Clay Shirky: A Speculative Post on the Idea of Algorithmic Authority

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Thank you, Life, for you gave me so much.

You gave me two stars for eyes and when I open them

I can perfectly distinguish black from white

And up above in the skies the constelations

And in the crowds the man I love.

Thank you, Life, for you gave me so much.
You gave me two stars for eyes and when I open them
I can perfectly distinguish black from white
And up above in the skies the constelations
And in the crowds the man I love.

Thank you, Life, for you gave me so much.
You gave me ears so that I can hear
And record the sounds day and night of
Crickets, canaries, factories, dogs barking,
The rain falling, and the sweet voice of my loved one.

Thank you, Life, for you gave me so much.
You gave me the sounds and the alphabet
And with them the words I think of and declare
Mother, friend, brother and light shining
Over the route of my loved one’s soul.

Thank you, Life, for you gave me so much.
You gave my tired feet the strenght to walk
On them I have visited cities and potholes
Beaches and deserts, mountains and valleys
And your house, your street, your backyard.

Thank you, Life, for you gave me so much.
You gave me my heart that beats like a drum
When I see the fruits of the human brain
When I see good so far away from evil
When I look in the depth of your beautiful eyes.

Thank you, Life, for you gave me so much.
You gave me laughter and tears
So I can express happiness and sorrow
The two elements my songs are made of
And your songs, which are like my songs,
And everybody’s songs, which are also mine.

Thank you Life.

GRACIAS A LA VIDA

Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto.
Me dio dos luceros, y cuando los abro,
Perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco,
Y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado,
Y en las multitudes al hombre que yo amo.

Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto.
Me ha dado el oído que, en todo su ancho,
Graba noche y día grillos y canarios
Martillos, turbinas, ladridos, chubascos,
Y la voz tan tierna de mi bien amado.

Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto,
Me ha dado el sonido y abecedario.
Con él las palabras que pienso y declaro,
“madre, amigo hermano” y luz alumbrando
la ruta del alma del que estoy amando

Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto.
Me ha dado la marcha de mis pies cansados.
Con ellos anduve ciudades y charcos,
Playas y desiertos, montañas y llanos,
Y la casa tuya, tu calle y tu patio.

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto
Me dio el corazón, que agita su marco.
Cuando miro el fruto del cerebro humano,
Cuando miro al bueno tan lejos del malo.
Cuando miro el fondo de tus ojos claros.

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto.
Me ha dado la risa, me ha dado el llanto.
Así yo distingo dicha de quebranto,
Todos materiales que forman mi canto,
Y el canto de ustedes que es es mismo canto

Gracias a la vida….