#ChangeMarketing: Shift Perspectives #2 Is Out

Changing  the face of marketing is something that takes vision and persistence.  With the publication of Shift Perspectives #2, Bogdan Meica & Stefan Moghina are proving once again to have both.

This time focusing on the topic of innovation, our two Romanian friends have brought together the likes of Seth Godin, Mitch Joel, Gerald Nanninga and many of the people you find on this blog in one publication that is sure to make you think.

But there’s more.  On www.shiftperspectives.net they have provided their own answer to the Battlecry to #ChangeMarketing and have created an online think-tank where all those who want to make marketing work for society can unite.

So once again we’re proud to be the first of inviting you to read this publication, and encourage you to join the Shift Perspectives community.  Because making marketing work is something we all need to do together.

The original Battlecry.

Change Marketing v01

Shift Perspectives. A Publication “Endorsed by Futurelab”.

These are exciting times.  Sure, we have a recession, and there is the looming threat of inflation, unemployment and further value destruction.  But all these clouds are also lined with opportunity.  The opportunity to change the way we work.  To set things right.

After all, people only change when they “have to”.  And from a business perspective, this is the case.  In many companies, doing more of the same is not an option any more.  While this poses challenges, it also allows shedding the bad practices that have accumulated over the past two decades.  The mindless shout and sell communication efforts.  The customer-toxic practices.  The often uninspiring types of innovation which shun breakthrough risk to the benefit of play-it-safe-incrementalism.

So for me, and for Futurelab, these are great times.  After all, beyond helping our clients, we are on a mission to change the nature of marketing itself.  We want to bring the profession back to its roots by focusing on the customer, the bottom line and breakthrough innovations that truly differentiate company.  We want to make marketing an all-company sport.  Get finance, logistics, sales, production, HR and yes even the marketing department to do what is right for the business and for the customer, rather than what their silos dictate. 

But we cannot do this alone.  In fact, no one can.  For marketing to regain its position as a truly meaningful profession, it needs to step away from the centralist knowledge paradigm.  Here, a number of smart people hold all knowledge and disseminate this to those less literate.  They often call themselves professors, thought leaders, strategists or even gurus.

Yet if there is one thing we've learned from this recession, is that no one holds all the wisdom.  The world as we know it has become unpredictable, and anyone claiming to have all the answers is simply not being truthful.

That is why we have started to look for initiatives from people that get it.  Individuals whose thinking and actions we can help amplify with the means we have available.  You are currently looking at one of them.

Shift Perspectives # 1

Launched by Bogdan Meica & Stefan Moghina, Shift Perspectives  is a digital publication that transfers on to 30 pages what we attempt to do on the Futurelab blog.  Bring together the thinking of some of the sharpest minds in marketing, strategy and innovation into one thought-provoking piece.

I have to say, they did it quite well.  From Seth Godin to Tom Anderson they brought together global thinkers who understand that a project by two young people in Romania can have the same value than the journal of a prestigious business school.

To ensure it also has the same reach, I am proud that they asked Futurelab to endorse their initiative and help launch it to world.  This we gladly do.  Because it is people like Bogdan and Stefan that are the real change agents of the marketing revolution.

Have the Penguins Got It Right?

Do you know the penguin dilemma?  Hundreds of penguins standing on the edge of a cliff looking at the water full of fish.  So why don’t they jump in?  Well, among the fish there may also be an orca, and he quite literally has penguins for breakfast.  

So the only way for the penguins to know whether it’s safe to jump in, is to wait until one of them is impatient enough to take the first plunge.  And when he does, all the others watch.  If a massacre follows, they all turn and go home.  If the little daredevil comes up for air again, they all jump in.

This behavior reminds me of the way many businesses behave when confronted with a new development in the market place.  Whether it is a new medium, a new technology, a new market or an alternative business model, they wait.  They wait until there is one company brave enough to jump in and then they wait again to see how it fares.  If it fails, they walk away.  If it succeeds, everyone jumps in.

The result has been dot-com bubbles, the green movement and the propagation of the SUV.  Yet what is interesting to me is that as a survival strategy, the approach does seem to work.  Both for the penguins as for the corporate world.

The businesses who jump in first do seem to fare worse than those who observe and act later.  After all, Amazon wasn’t the first online bookshop and no one even remembers those that went before.  The same goes for eBay, Google or many others.

So I wonder … have the penguins got it right?

8 Thoughts for 2008

At Futurelab we've decided not to do any New Year Cards or gifts, yet instead put the money into Kiva loans. Still, as we did want to convey you our best wishes, we put together this short presentation with eight things we ponder as the new year is upon us (and you might want to give some thought as well).

Have a great 2008!

8 Thoughts For 2008

View more presentations from Alain Thys.

Marketing Challenge: Can We Profit From Poverty?

Every day thousands of people die from bad marketing.  Neither Google nor I remember where I read these words.  Perhaps I never read them at all. But as I was flying from Zurich to Amsterdam I couldn't get them out of my mind.

I had just read about Sir Bob Geldof badgering a number of CEO's on their moral obligation to get involved in poverty.  And while - bless him - he probably saved quite a few lives by guilting them into a donation, I doubt whether anything beyond "token money" will change hands.

Poverty - I thought - needed to get itself a marketing department which could think of better angles than guilt to make people, governments and brands part with their money.  It should pick the minds of the Godin's, the Lafley's and the thousands of other commercial pros which know how to move people beyond charity.

But then we get to the real problem

At the risk of losing your respect, brutal honesty requires me to say that this boy isn't willing to give up his six digit income to go and help the poor.  Do I feel guilty about this?  Of course.  Do I buy off this guilt with the occasional donation?  Sure.  Do I admire those who make a difference?  Greatly.  Will I change my ways to head off to Africa or India on something else than a holiday?  No.

And from conversations I've had, many executives I know feel the same.  Something could and should be done, yet it's always someone else who needs to do the doing. No money means no time.

And that's when I had an idea

What if we could turn the problem into an opportunity?  What if we would stop looking at solving poverty as a cost or a moral obligation.  Learn from today's green movement and see it as a way to make money?

Only a few years ago, "being green" was something for world-weary activists.  Mentioning the G word in a boardroom would have gotten you some pretty weird looks.  Today, we have reached the point where people declare being green as an inevitability.

What happened in the middle is that entrepreneurs, VC's and the finance community started seeing the money in being green.  Money because consumers would like you better, money because you could have a positive ROI on green investments, money because the government gave a hand in creating an ever bigger market.

And while some could argue that the Silicon Valley bubble merchants are going into overdrive again, the net result is that the last 3 years more has been achieved on the eco-front than the decades before.

So what if …

… we'd assume that Al Gore and his friends will take care of the environment (http://www.climatecrisis.net/)

and focused our efforts on doing the same for poverty?  What if we could find and promote business models which allowed entrepreneurs and financiers to actually get rich from helping the poor. 

There is plenty of room for this. That consumers want companies to play it straight has been proven once again with Starbucks 180° on Ethiopian coffee.  But on the positive side, think of the opportunity presented in Prahalad's seminal work about the bottom of the pyramid.  Think of the Digital Provide.  Think about the opportunities in micro-financing.  Think about the fact that the Peruvian economist De Soto identified that Peru's poor own assets of ca. $ 60-70 billion, yet can't leverage these because of insufficient property legislation preventing them to get mortgages or other forms of debt to build their business.

But even on a smaller scale, there is room.  Just imagine that:

• www.kiva.org would provide financiers with a market interest rate.  Would they be able to unleash real savings rather than the typical € 50 donation?  Would major banks like Credit Agricole or CitiGroup start offering the product at retail (note that I realise that Citi is already contributing, yet the point is about thinking commercially about it).
• Alchemy world in Ethopia started a fund offering unsecured debt or even convertibles to sophisticated financial investors seeking to spread their portfolio.  Would the esotheric investment players in the London City or on Wall Street play ball?  If hedge funds already diversify into venture capital because they're too flush with cash, a few percent can go a long way.

I voiced these thoughts to a banker who basically told me he found it morally repulsive to make money from people who survived on only a few euro's per day.  I also know of a number of major corporations who are doing great things, yet avoid publicity for fear of being condemned.  But if the alternative to profiting from poverty is not helping the poor at all … I don't know.

I believe that as long as poverty stays in the corner of Corporate Social Responsibility, "real money" won't hit the streets of Bahar Dar.  And be honest, would you like it if the companies where you invested your pension fund would suddenly started donating billions to developing nations?  Of course you wouldn't.  Yet if they could demonstrate this move was actually a shrewd investment, would you mind making money and doing some good in the process?

So here's my marketing challenge...

There is great work being done by NGO's in the area of profit alleviation, and we should all give them our continued support.  Yet as long as there isn't a serious movement to change the dialogue to unleash some "real money", I have the feeling things are going too slow.

So, if all of us are so damn' good at marketing and finding new opportunities for making money, can't we prove the case for poverty?  In the presentation below I've put my call to action.

Marketing Challenge: Can We Profit From Povery?

If you think I'm on to something, ...

… join the conversation.  Look at the data, write a blogpost, speak, think, communicate.  Go tag bloggers who's opinion you value and respect.  Contribute your 2 cents on a how business models for poverty could work.  Establish the ethical boundaries of what is and just isn't done.  Propose ways for money flows to be organised.  

This type of thing is too big for any one individual and it either goes viral to become a meme or it dies.

And if you think I'm mad or - to quote Guy - full of Bull-Shitake …

... you can simply let this post drown in Technorati's blogpool.  At least I know I gave it a try.