Of Tribes, Leaders and Heretics

I just completed marketing maven Seth Godin's book on leadership titled "Tribes - We Need You to Lead Us".

As a long-time fan of "Sethology", I have always marvelled at his cutting edge ideas and thought provoking approaches to marketing, lapping up past works like "Purple Cow", "The Big Moo", "The Dip" and "Meatball Sundae". I am also an avid reader of his wonderfully written blog, which is a must-visit site on my list of must-visit sites.

Unlike other more academic authors, Godin embraces a more anecdotal story-telling approach as opposed to prescribing templates for others to follow. Tribes, a light 150-page volume, is written in Godin's simple and engaging narrative style. It offers useful nuggets of advice and inspiring stories aimed to move leaders and potential leaders in any commercial or non-profit field. However, it stops short at offering specific formulae, encouraging readers to search for their own holy grail of leadership success.

According to Godin, leaders should be like heretics who are "engaged, passionate, and more powerful and happier than everyone else." They should aspire to start movements, whose followers can number anywhere from "10 to thousands".

As initiators of tribes, leaders should never be satisfied with the status quo. They can create revolutions as huge as the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square or one as focused as a worldwide collection of tattoo lovers. Tips on doing so include publishing a manifesto, making it easy for your followers to connect with you (using largely social media tools), making it easy for your followers to connect with each other, and tracking your progress.

In Seth's book, the best time to start a movement is now. Risks are also a given in this game. Unlike rule-following, policy prescribing managers, leaders are seen as debonair entrepreneurs, cowboys who are willing to take off from the word "Go" with nary a concern about what others think about them.

Peppered by stories of "deviants" like Jerry Sternin who started a movement to save starving kids in Vietnam, and Nathan Winograd, who prevented the rampant killing of stray dogs and cats, Tribes isn't Leadership 101 in a nutshell. Readers hoping to learn the nuts and bolts of leadership will be sorely disappointed as the book steers clear of the systems, structures and skills needed to helm organisations.

Serving more to provoke than to instruct, the book is heavy on preaching but short on equipping. While it purports that people of any rank or organisation can be a leader, the finer points of leadership skills such as motivating and encouraging one's followers are missing.

Most of the sections also read like disparate blog posts. While they are fairly self-contained individually, they somehow fail to build upon each other to prove a point. I suppose this is intentional on the author's part as it makes it easier for the ideas contained within the book to be further built upon by social media communities and fan groups.

Overall, Tribes is a highly recommended book for anybody who needed that kick in the pants to get them going. If you nurse a burning desire to change the world (or maybe your neighbourhood or workplace), this book is for you. Readers who want a prescriptive "How To Do It" text however are probably better off looking elsewhere.

Irreverence Or Irrelevance?

An extreme example of sex selling in NYC (courtesy of lickyoats)

The unassailable growth of consumer clutter has led to two things for marketers to consider.

The first is the need to conceive increasingly innovative and creative ways to attract attention. Most of which are so "In Your Face" that your senses have to be incredibly inured to ignore them. Witness how the outdoor advertising environment has blossomed significantly in the past few years, as well as the rise of online ads that not only pop up or pop under, but also animate themselves, generate annoying noises, and just plain irritate the hell out of you.

Just so that you know of their existence. Whether you like it or not is another matter altogether.

The second phenomenon? The increasing propensity for marketers to embrace anything that is naughty, saucy, controversial and sensational. Sexual innuendos and double-takes have become so prevalent in advertising that one wonders if its possible to be a moral marketer in this day and age. Just witness the leading topics in this community oriented blog aggregator to see what I mean.

What does this mean for marketers? Should we simply go with the flow and pander to the lowest common denominator?

Here's what I'd do.

1) Be willing to push the envelope as much as possible, but be mindful of the cultural contexts in which you operate in. Humour is a funny thing - go one way and you'd end up pleasing one group but raising the ire of another. Certain jokes may be appreciated by a more liberal crowd but frowned upon in conservative societies. This really depends on who you are reaching out to and what their preferred moral positions are.

2) See if there is a way to approach a taboo topic with sensitivity and ingenuity. I like the way MCYS has done it with the Funerals advertisement by auteur Yasmin Ahmad. The ability to balance between generating attention yet being sensitive to age-old cultural traditions is an art that few could master.

3) Invest in forging strong and enduring relationships with your customers in every which way, paying special attention to their needs and desires. Build a community and let them be your mouthpieces and advocates, rather than attempting to out-sensationalise the next marketer in the street. Over the long-term, such an approach helps to endear your brand more strongly to both current and future customers.

4) Stretch the boundaries of your brand promise and corporate values, but don't overdo them beyond the point of believability. Trying to do a Richard Branson stunt when your CEO is just plain fuddy duddy wouldn't quite cut it (however, even nerdy billionaire Bill Gates can be cool when he tries). However, don't be surprised by how far a seemingly "boring" product can be repositioned. Just look at what the Public Utilities Board (PUB) in Singapore has achieved marketing plain old water from the tap!

Transforming Critical Failure to Box Office Success

Courtesy of wintan29

Like almost everyone else who doesn't don a skirt, I have watched Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen recently. The action was fast, furious and catered specifically for hot-blooded males of any age. After all, gigantic alien robots and Megan Fox is sure to draw the attention of the Y chromosome.

What's interesting though is that a movie which is panned and "demolished" by numerous critics both overseas and at home, has taken the box office by storm. It became the first movie in 2009 to breach the US$300 million mark globally, achieving a massive US$109 million taking in the first weekend alone.

How does a movie which is given an average of one to two out of five stars continue to trump record after record? Is there such a sea change in consumer behaviour such that what the critics have declared no longer matter?

I believe that there are three factors which lead to this phenomenon.

The first is related to the decreasing influence of media professionals in parlaying opinions that matter. Through chats (online and offline), emails, SMSes, blogs, facebook accounts, tweets, plurks and numerous other channels of influence, the man-in-the-street (yes, that's you) can exert more impact over his or her circle of friends and family members than ever before. Word Of Mouth is so prevalent and ubiquitous that its impact can no longer be discounted by any professional marketer.

This doesn't mean that the words of journalists no longer matter. They are still credible sources of information in most cases, and they have access to facts, figures and interviewees that is denied to the average citizen publisher. However, their views in less "life and death" matters like leisure, recreation and entertainment appear to wane compared to the voice of one's own circle of contacts.

The second factor is related to the whole business of creating hype and pre-publicity. Transformers 2 has cleverly leveraged on targeted marketing and advertising campaigns, release of "preview" snippets, insider scoops, and photographs of cast and sets to generate an extraordinary amount of hype and hoopla prior to its opening. It has also built a huge tribe and community of robot fans around the world, who have invested so much time, effort and energy into following the enterprise that they want it to succeed - despite what the experts say.

Its just like planting a flower. After investing so much time and effort in watering the seed, fertilising it, potting and repotting it, I want to believe that the flower which blooms after several months down the road is beautiful despite what a horticulturist may say.

The final factor for Transformers 2's overriding ticket success is probably linked to the business of holistic marketing. Through licensing, publishing, merchandising and a whole gamut of commercialisation tools, the Transformers franchise has managed to gain a tremendous foothold in the world of toy robots. Go to any Toys R Us store and the first thing which strikes you is a huge model of Optimus Prime staring at you in the face. With such a prevalent presence in numerous retail platforms, the movie appears impossible to fail.

Of course, one shouldn't be too hasty in concluding that the same applies for all products and services. In certain industries like the arts, a critics' view may sometimes become a life or death matter for a performance or exhibition. New products and services also depend heavily on the views of experts in determining its initial roll-out success.

However, it does appear that sometimes quantity may matter more than quality. By investing in building a huge legion of fans, one can become fairly impervious to the vagaries of media opinion no matter how devastating they are.