I read this post by Chris Saad the other morning in response to Robert Scoble 's mention in a recent post and I keep thinking about the applicability of its concepts not just for Silicon Valley and the tech community.
It applies to marketers and communicators as well. [Posted originally on Google+]
<rant>
1. lead not just cheerlead – how many times do we copy the same concept over and over, or look at short term payoffs when the opportunities are on the making better promises side of the conversation?
2. add to the business DNA – nothing dies, not media companies, not blogging, not marketing, not PR… they just need to change based upon changing habits, taste and evolving culture. It's all good, there are plenty of very smart people who can and should collaborate across agencies and corporate departments (see #4).
3. don't just iterate, innovate – seriously, let's take a hard look at what kinds of great challenges we can help solve with creativity and ingenuity and, most of all, listening to customers. I've written about finding creative new ways to go to the movies and we're talking about reinventing a venerable brand like Sears two days ago.
4. B2C, not Ego2C – and I like his point about B2B as well. There is so much untapped opportunity there. Buyers are people, groups are people. Let's get beyond the 'not invented here' stuff and make some cool s*it.
5. users don't care – people care. People on content care. We see it here and elsewhere every day. One reason I LOVE SwissMiss et all Creative Mornings is that they are an open community for people who want to do better, more, and share what they do.
6. death is just a stage of life – amen. See #2. Learning is good. Now let's get over it and get creative with the executions. Note: creative doesn't mean it's not connected to business goals and to making better promises.
7. the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward open – anyone figured out that building a community layer with editorial imprint and marketing is the way to go? It's a cheesy title (they tell me) that is what I've been proposing for years.
8. acknowledge reality – don't bend to hype. Hype makes expectations hard to live up to. Keep your promises so you can deliver better ones. Start where you can/want to and build from there. Cathedrals, not (ivory) towers.
9. don't kill [insert archenemy] – partner with opposites and with industries that are having a changing time. You are as well, whether you admit it or not.
10. data portability – we have the looming encounter with Big Data, and it's already becoming a new fashion. Are we using the data we already have? Is it garbage? For example, do we spend time getting leads by the shovelful and none at all qualifying them, or nurturing prospects? How do we get better data in? How do we craft better queries?
</rant>
The late Italian composer/singer Fabrizio de Andre' put this in a song: si sa che la gente dà buoni consigli se non può più dare cattivo esempio. Is that the case?
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The image you see up top is the new opening slide of my 200-slide deck to guide the conversation around reThinking Business in the age of the social customer tomorrow. Yeah, you could say it means we're thinking out of the box from the image.
I wrote an ode to work, I call it the Conversation Agent Meaningful Actions manifesto. I'm planning to make that available as an on-demand print foam board or roll up poster because people tell me they usually print out my inspirational posts and hang them on the wall at work. Which is something I'm really grateful about.
I will share both the content and the ordering information. This is something I spent a lot of time thinking about and comes directly from how we feel when we do great work.
I'd actually love to open the design up to the community here, both for designs and then for choosing the three best versions to make available on demand to anyone to purchase with credit at the bottom. I know we have a few graphic designers among readers.
(I am looking for a graphic designer with strong multimedia skills for future client engagements and it would be a great way to get to know each other.)
What do you think?