Archive for the ‘Brand Purpose’ Category

Impatience. Such a seemingly negative emotion. We recently looked at impatience and how it can creep up on us as we navigate our projects. It can often be made to work for us, but sometimes it’s not that easy. In these cases where impatience persists, frustration is a logical next step although not always the step we’d like to take. As usual, our intrepid group of bloggers will try to spin frustration on its head and make something positive out of the situation. If you’re finding yourself frustrated by a piece of work, we hope we can nudge you in the right direction.

Let’s say your company has essentially taken over the world of electronics, is a stock market darling and has legions of fans who hang on every mention of your products. That would be so awesome, right? Well, it would also create immense pressure to keep the production line going — the production line of ideas as much as devices. Enter the iPhone 5. Well, actually, don’t enter the iPhone 5. That’s kind of the problem: it’s not here yet. But it will be here soon. A quick online search of the phrase “iPhone 5″ yields 2,350,000,000 results at the time of writing. And the top 6 are individual sites created exclusively for following the rumor mill surrounding the product. That’s a lot of pent up anticipation. I believe I read the phrase, “The salivation is so palpable, you may need an umbrella.” One thing is for sure: the fanboys will certainly queue up when the 5 finally hits stores next month. But here’s another thought: could Apple actually be wearing out its welcome with some of the population? The rabid anticipation for this device is perhaps higher than it’s ever been for an Apple release. But it’s just taken SO long, that it seems people might’ve exploded if the confirmed introduction for October 4th had not recently appeared out of thin air. Pair this ongoing frustration with the rigid service contracts from carriers that we’re all subjected to and the window of i-adoption tightens for many. Every month that’s passed saw more people miss the boat. Or worse for Apple, pick another boat. It’s possible that the level of frustration with Apple over the iPhone 5′s release will create just as fervent a backlash as an adoration. Maybe it’s only a ripple, but it’s a ripple of consumers entertaining solutions other than one designed in Cupertino. And that’s never good for business.

Beware of keeping your customer waiting too long.

While a bout with impatience can spur forward movement on a project, it can incite frustration, leading to rash decisions and missed opportunities. Consider Randy “Super Freak” Moss, future Hall of Famer, recently retired, but still hoping, wide receiver of the NFL. He’s had to bounce a few times in recent years from the New England Patriots to the Minnesota Vikings and finally to the Tennessee Titans. The Titans? That was just wrong. The New England experiment was the closest tenure to something that worked but it obviously didn’t really work out in the end. After Randy’s final season with the Titans, the team publicly stated they weren’t re-signing the veteran receiver. The player and the player’s agent maintained Moss stayed in freakish physical shape during the off-season and lockout. moss was ready to play for an interested team. The first problem became that teams did not show interest, at least publicly. By the middle of summer, without any offers or attention from teams, Ross quickly became frustrated and retired. No Brett Favre antics here. Peace out. Fast-forward, and now it seems that a handful of teams might’ve actually been interested in Randy’s services. They just didn’t make a public spectacle or media blitz like some teams do from time to time to grab the headlines and/or a player’s attention. We’ll never really know, but there’s this nagging notion that Randy might’ve cut himself out of another championship run by allowing himself to become frustrated with the negotiating process.

So don’t take things too personally — allow yourself to step back and evaluate the total picture if you’re ever frustrated by a situation. Especially one that could influence an important decision — like ending your career.

I’d like to end with a closer look at Washington, D.C. But not a long one — I don’t think any of us can stomach an in-depth examination. But please consider the political gridlock we witness if we happen to tune into the news any day of the week. Zero is a fairly accurate account of what’s being accomplished by our elected officials. A few folks out there might even use the same term for the officials themselves. But I digress. I’d like to propose that perhaps the gridlock is actually the fault of the voters. How, you ask? Consider recent election cycles. It seems one party is put in a majority position, but never in a true position of power. Gridlock ensues because the so-called party of power isn’t able to truly enact any part of their agenda due to forceful opposition. And so government stalls in the face of political postures and bickering. Voters sour on the situation and when a ballot next appears, they vote the current party out in favor of the alternative. And so on. Instead of curbing our enthusiasm, maybe we should curb our frustration long enough to allow an accurate appraisal of policies that might actually work rather than playing into an always-on election cycle.

It’s sometimes very tough to do, but consider letting your ideas live long enough to rule themselves out before cutting off your support or belief.

So there really are ways to channel frustration into positive gains. But we have to do the channeling to get something out of it. If, out of frustration, we allow ourselves to be swept up in feelings of authority or importance or we just plain let things spin out of control, then we’ve not moved beyond the frustration. We’ve allowed it to take control. Here’s hoping we can keep our hands on the wheel.

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Every month, we give away a free desktop image inspired by the current virtue of #smallerthinking. The current version was inspired by an actual dispenser in our office which, by the way, has since been filled. Enjoy.

DOWNLOAD THE SET HERE.

Includes:
1024 x 768
1280 x 800
1280 x 1024
1440 x 900
1680 x 1050
1920 x 1080
1920 x 1200
2560 x 1440

DOWNLOAD THE SET HERE.

Includes:
640 x 960 (iPhone)
1024 x 1024 (iPad)

We didn’t forget. If you’ll excuse the analogy, we got impatient to move on before these were complete. Take a look and download below at your leisure. And don’t forget to take a look at the intro to this fourth Virtue of Small Thinking here.

DOWNLOAD THE SET HERE.

Includes:
1024 x 768
1280 x 800
1280 x 1024
1440 x 900
1680 x 1050
1920 x 1080
1920 x 1200
2560 x 1440

DOWNLOAD THE SET HERE.

Includes:
640 x 960 (iPhone)
1024 x 1024 (iPad)

DIY is everywhere. And while the basic notion of creative self-sufficiency holds great appeal in an age that can feel mass-produced and impersonal, there might come a moment when we (or at least I) will get turned off, saturated to the point of no return with talk of the most intriguing new way to make something. The problem is not that these ideas aren’t innovative; we constantly come across impressive ventures that offer a better way forward. What gets me is when the broader concept of DIY seems to generate more excitement than the actual project at hand, its goals, and how the people at the helm manage to make an impact.

Many different labors of love have contributed to the momentum behind DIY. Just look at the growing popularity of the Maker Faire series, which came in June to our own backyard; or ShopBot Tools, headquartered in Durham since 1996; or the tiny personal projects that will never make the news. There are real-world applications in all such ventures, but the buzz about DIY often seems to overshadow them. As for the permeation of the trend, consider the “How to Make Stuff” cover spread on Wired magazine’s DIY-centric April issue, or the fact that in just a two-week period of June, Fast Company issued four articles whose titles included the term “DIY.”

So in the face of a movement that has become pervasive, how do we make sure people focus on the nitty-gritty details, too? Lest DIY fall down the rabbit hole and be seen in hindsight as a fad, it’s time to recall how it can be both useful and extraordinarily powerful, all while still being fun and inspired. After all, if we can’t articulate exactly why an undertaking is so great, we risk becoming lazy makers, creating throwaway projects with no lasting value.

Of course, there is some intrinsic merit in learning by doing; as we’ve said before, making things with your own two hands is pretty vital to being human. But something can be both new and creative without changing the world. And that’s the best place to start discussing the merits of a DIY project — by asking whether a maker has figured out how to do something better.

Take d.light, a project that changes lives by distributing solar lanterns, increasing the capabilities of entire populations in developing areas (thanks, Martha Nussbaum).

“At d.light, we use the best design principles — usually reserved for the 10 percent wealthiest — and apply them to meet the needs of households without access to reliable electricity.”

Talk about turning the world on its head.

There are lots of DIY-related initiatives that break free of existing conventions in constructive ways, but this is a good example of a project that’s been presented to the public skillfully. Because d.light talks about specifics, we can wrap our heads around why it does something better.

The next time someone raves about a DIY idea they saw put into action, ask the same questions that the folks at d.light did: What is the root problem that’s being solved? Whom is being helped? Why is this solution better? Is it efficient? How will this product continue to improve people’s lives after they receive it?

Those aren’t the only questions to ask, but they get us thinking about the inner workings of DIY, not just the sexy surface.

We’re currently looking into ingenuity as part of our #smallthinking series. I got a firsthand experience of what ingenuity looks like yesterday, when I was privy to a tour of the Shopbot facility here in Durham, NC. I was excited to see what I thought was one machine, but what turned out to be several working units and some higher level concepts floating in the ether.

The folks at Shopbot, including Ted Hall, the founder, are obsessed with details. They make sure they have the best quality rails, motors and electronics to run their super-cool digital fabrication machines. Partly, because clients clamor for them, but partly because Ted wants to make sure the machine runs well enough for his own use if nothing else. He really believes in the Shopbot mission which seems to be placing digital fabrication capabilities in the hands of people who might not otherwise be able to enter the category. So while some of their competitors charge MUCH more for comparable machines, Shopbot keeps putting out hi-test units at a fraction of the cost. There are currently about 7,000 or 8,000 machines in use across the country.

It’s really cool to see these machines at work. They sound like Star Wars droids at work, but with much less sarcasm. Their movements are precise. I walked on the floor at the Durham facility with a notion of typical applications: wood, routers, furniture, signage, etc. Nothing too fancy. But Ted changed the trajectory of my thinking by placing these tools into the realm of digital fabrication. To him, digital fabrication is not about automating old ways of making things. It is really about finding completely new ways of making new products. Bringing ideas to life. For example, we saw a 5-axis machine that basically cuts out the tray you place your mini-pretzels on when you’re in an airplane. Somebody has to make these things, right? The Shopbot enables the designer to build in certain features that would otherwise require two or more machines. Anyhow, think of this machine hooked up to a Kinect, so that anyone could carve out human figures with a few mouse clicks. Woah! That’s a new way of getting something done.

So the inspiration I took away was to constantly look for news ways of doing things. Try them out. See what works. Keep asking ” What if?” There’s a lot of ingenuity going on in the Shopbot brain trust. A lot of “what if?” questions. And, it seems, a few answers to boot.

We Durhamites love our town. It’s undeniable. At the suggestion that the area still needs to grow into a better version of itself, we cast a sidelong glance, purse our lips, and feel sorry for the person who is blind to how fantastic Durham already is.

With such eager supporters, it might seem as if Durham were on a permanent path to greatness. Truth be told, we’ve come this far because of good old-fashioned moxie. We are where we are thanks to the very real ingenuity of the individuals, families, philanthropists, activists, bloggers, athletes, artists, huge technology companies, and tiny neighborhood businesses that have stuck their necks out for Durham over years and decades. Our countless small initiatives managed to come together in harmony and built something big — a wonderfully gritty, smart, and impassioned community.

Up to now, we’ve kept that trend going by being both creative and prolific in our efforts to kickstart and sustain budding projects, and by being willing to take the right risks at the right time. It can feel as if we’re on an unstoppable roll, with The Cookery opening its food business incubator last month, the Bull City Startup Stampede giving new downtown businesses a leg up through the end of May, and this summer’s scheduled renovation of the old Chesterfield Building on the corner of Duke and Main, which promises to add a fresh spot for mixed-use space to the downtown revitalization. And that’s just to name a few reasons why Durham is the envy of personality-deficient towns and entrepreneurial-wannabes everywhere.

With so much buzz in the air, it’s easy to assume we can ride the wave forever. But here’s the rub: Doing more of what’s worked in the past doesn’t guarantee success. For a new project to catch on, it should be conceived carefully. And to be innovative, it should offer something clearly better. Continuing to churn up tiny, effective waves of influence is how we will end up buttressing this vibrant city of ours. In other words, to make something great, we have to remember to think small.

I got to thinking about this a little while back when Chris Heivly, executive director of seed-stage investment program LaunchBox Digital, said that the “big picture” of Durham has to develop organically out of everything we do. As Heivly told Durham Magazine on 6 April: “I don’t want to be the next Boston, the next Austin, the next anything. I want to be Durham.”

The man makes a good point. So to help keep Durham a thriving, authentic place, take a closer look at your latest project idea. Is it small enough to work on its own merits, producing immediate results? Is it digestible enough? Those are the questions to ask, because the short-term is where it’s at. Being precise and timely, small ideas can be developed, tested, and implemented while they are still relevant and inspiring. Smaller thinking lets you act in real time and effect tangible change. Right now. Any long-term, lofty effects you want it to have on the character of Durham are just icing on the cake.

With that in mind, if your project needs a fresh start, try sketching out how you would begin to experiment with a small idea. Identify a current and pressing issue with local implications, and use these tips to help get the process started.

Don’t burden your idea with fluff.

Take the lines of your favorite car. Maybe an Aston Martin does it for you. What about that particular year makes it more beautiful than any other? I’d be willing to bet that the designer followed one small idea, and it paid off.

Translation: Start by articulating the problem you’re trying to solve. Dig deep and jot down a word or short phrase that sums up your purpose. Refer back to it whenever you feel yourself getting lost in decision-making.

Just go.

Before I left to spend a year of college in Freiburg, Germany, a favorite professor told me, “If anyone asks you to go anywhere with them, go. Just go.” That kernel of an idea was both simple and inspiring enough to put into action, and through a series of small moments, it led to a richer, more colorful experience.

Translation: Experiment. The beauty of small ideas is that you can test out new waters constantly. And if something isn’t working, you can let it fail without worrying about having wasted months on it. Go, and go often.

Over the course of the year, we’ll continue to share the virtues we feel are necessary to think small — for brands to be nimble, precise and action-oriented. While all twelve virtues are important, the virtue this month is a bit closer to our hearts.

Instinct is at the core of what we do, as it is with other companies like ours, even though they might not acknowledge or admit it. Sadly, our industry tends to paint instinct as a poor substitute for cold, hard research. We think the two are equals. So much so, that we named our company based on this belief. Some of you may not know that our official name is actually 141 words long. It’s an entire paragraph. More specifically, it’s a parable. It reveals our conviction about valuing instinct and intuition in the process of making… well, anything.

Although you hear us using the word “Paragraph” when referring to ourselves, “Paragraph” is really just shorthand for this:

I was having a conversation with a CEO and I asked him if he would ever let research override his intuition. He said he would. I asked him if he believed in genius — or if he believed in love. I asked him to describe his daughter’s smile or the way he felt on September 11th. I asked if he could comprehend how Beethoven could have composed his ninth symphony even though he was profoundly deaf at the time. He looked at me blankly. He told me that life wasn’t just artistry and poetry. He said that business required more than belief. He said that selling to people had become a science. “That all sounds rather tedious,” I said. “It’s business,” he replied. “It’s making money. It’s commerce.” I asked him if he found value in promoting things he didn’t believe in.

There isn’t a project we touch that doesn’t involve us conducting some sort of research so we understand how blasphemous this may all sound. But the way we see it, instincts are just another input into our process.

Instinct is actually a pretty sophisticated form of pattern recognition that can lead to faster and more accurate decisions.

Fans at football games who scream in unison to convince a coach to go for it on fourth down rather than kicking a field goal are actually exercising good instincts. Their years of watching football have helped them recognize patterns and understand when the odds might be in favor of going for the first down. A recent study by an economist at Berkeley actually revealed that teams improve their chances of winning if they acted in accord to these chants more often, despite a coaches desire to play things more conservatively.

We’re all for doing killer research. And it’s extremely invaluable to our process and our clients’ success. But it’s irresponsible to dismiss the important roll that instincts can play.

If you want to incorporate instinct into your process in a more deliberate and considered way, here are a few tips.

1. Instincts can be most valuable at the beginning of the process. It helps you get out of the starting blocks quickly. The key is to write down some initial hypotheses about the problem you’re trying to solve and thoughts on potential solutions. Use this as your North Star. As you start to bury yourself with research, these initial hypotheses can keep you focused and on track.

2. It is possible to hone your instincts. To do this, conduct a postmortem after each project. Which instincts were most constructive during the process? Which instincts were flat out wrong? Remember, there are different types of instincts. Check out our infographic and see where your instincts are strongest so you know which ones can be your best allies.

3. Don’t fall in love with your instincts. The only way to make instincts and intuition a valuable part of your process is to be completely comfortable divorcing yourself from them. If you are too emotionally attached, your instincts will quickly turn into biases and will close you off to discovering new things.

Marketers (and creative folks in general) are at their best when they are informed and inspired by their instincts without become slaves to them.

In the first installment of our 12 Virtues of Smaller Thinking, we got hungry. Or at least hungrier than we’d been before. Hunger is our starting point, the origination of our direction. But once we press this “start” button, where do we go? We have a few ideas of where not to go and a few that make more sense. Trust us.

We’ve seen it happen. There’s a spark, an idea or even just a gesture of an idea. We immediately want to go out and quantify or qualify (pick your poison, in this case) the merits of our concept. But wait — do we really need a measuring stick for a hunch? Can we even measure a hunch? This is a critical point, because this is the juncture between killing ideas and stoking them.

When our initial hunger leads us to action, there’s an internal shift of momentum. A hunch that something is good or bad. In other words, our instincts tell us if something is worth an investment of time, money or other assets. The beauty is that we can do this all on our own. We are pre-wired to detect the quality of our own ideas. Delphine de Girardin said, “Instinct is the nose of the mind.” This feels right to me — that our minds, not just our heads, would have noses.

This early in the game it would be a shame to get caught up in analytics and statistics. We’re still operating on the nebulous playing field of concepts. So a little (or a lot of) trust is needed in ourselves to allow our ideas to germinate a bit. Not always easy to do, but essential early in the life of a project. By hopping right into a swirling pool of research and analytics, we become focused on the vortex of information and not our idea. Before we know it, our concept is awash in reasons to live or die. Pretty heavy stuff for an infant.

So our point is to allow your instincts to guide you early on as you are working through a project. There’s a lot we can learn from ourselves. Plus, there’s plenty of time to measure and test a little further down the road.

For the next few weeks, we’ll be exploring our instincts here on the PARAGRAPH blog. Specifically, we’re pondering how trusting instincts early on can lead to quick victories that help establish momentum. We want to delve a little deeper into how our internal hunches can positively direct our productivity.

For every virtue of smaller thinking, we create a custom desktop and make it available to you, the people. This time is no exception. Check out the desktop below that captures a bit of the indescribable, yet potent nature of instinct and how trusting it can produce unexpected and beautiful results. Trusting my instincts, the author will eat a chocolate chip cookie for every download of the desktops. I’ll even tape the proceedings when they occur.

DOWNLOAD THE SET HERE.

Includes:
1024 x 768
1280 x 800
1280 x 1024
1440 x 900
1680 x 1050
1920 x 1080
1920 x 1200
2560 x 1440

DOWNLOAD THE SET HERE.

Includes:
640 x 960 (iPhone)
1024 x 1024 (iPad)

 When most people hear the name John Wooden, they think of the coach that led UCLA to 10 national championships in 12 years. Or the coach that won a record 88 consecutive games. Or the man that won coach of the year honors six times.

No one epitomized winning better than John Wooden. Which makes it all the more fascinating that he said this in his autobiography:

“In all my years of coaching I rarely, if ever, even uttered the word win … or exhorted a team to be number one. Instead, my words and actions always reflected my father’s advice to me and that is never cease trying to be the best you can become.”

It turns out Wooden was more concerned about improving than winning.

I wonder if we as marketers would be better served if we focused more on improving.

Traditional goal setting techniques have trained us to set and pursue achievement goals, like winning. Or losing 20 pounds, retiring by the age of 50, or increasing sales by 7%. Throw out a hard-to-reach number and see how far you get. So the theory goes.

Unfortunately, achievement goals — while better than having no goals at all — can set people up for failure down the road. The longer it takes to reach them, the more likely it is for frustration to set in. Either the goals are abandoned or the tactics to reaching those goals will be discarded and replaced before any real progress can take shape. Maybe that’s why most people are suckers for the latest fad diet or why CMOs switch ad agencies so frequently.

We like Wooden’s model better.

Rather than setting achievement goals, consider setting developmental goals. Instead of using words like “achieve,” “increase,” or “attain,” articulate goals with words like “learn,” “understand,” or “improve.” For instance, rather than stating a goal as “Increase market share by 3%” a developmental goal might be expressed as “Better understand how our advertising dollars can be used to increase market share.”

The beauty of a well crafted developmental goal is that while it establishes a direction, it activates an organization to focus on ways to improve rather than fixating on assigning blame for why a goal wasn’t reached.

Let’s make the journey, rather than the destination, our ultimate goal. That is if we really want to get to the destination.

“I don’t pay them for sex. I pay them to leave.” – Charlie Sheen

When asked by a judge why a man of Sheen’s stature would need to pay for sex, this was his reply.

While repugnant, it’s fascinating. In two short sentences, Sheen lays out what behavioral science identifies as the two basic motivations driving all human behavior: adding pleasure (in this case, sex) and removing pain (in this case, leaving). Too many brands think their role is to do one or the other. When in reality, they need to do both. But at different times. The key is knowing when.

Or, if you want to strip away the science, maybe the lesson from this quote is that brands need to understand that sometimes what customers want most is for them to go away. Even their favorite brands. At least once in a while.