Think Humongous

We Might As Well Win

Every now and again, a book comes out whose chapter titles alone are a good read and serve as excellent reminders for situations we face in everyday life. Johan Bruyneel has done just that with his book, “We Might as Well Win.”

Bruyneel was Lance Armstrong’s team director through his record seven straight Tour de France victories. In his book, Bruyneel puts everything he’s learned about winning in a fast-paced, easy read with great behind-the-scenes views into the rise and domination of Armstrong’s cycling career.

In the first part of his book, Bruyneel writes about what he learned from winning:

1. Follow Your Heart – But Bring Along Your Head
2. It Starts with Belief
3. Leave some Dents 
4. Do Whatever It Takes to Communicate
5. To Earn Confidence, Confide
6. Bluff When You’re Weak – And When You’re Strong
7. Lose a Little to Win a Lot
8. Recruit Too Much Talent
9. Trust People – Not Products

In the second part of “We Might as Well Win” where Bruyneel talks about what he’s learned from losing, the chapter headlines continue to serve as the mantras for developing a winning psychology:

1. “Lucky to Stare So Boldy at Loss”
2. When Failure Is Inevitable, Limit the Damage
3. Find a Victory in Every Loss
4. If You’re Breathing, You Still Have a Chance to Win
5. Build the Foundation of Victory During Defeat

In the opening of his final chapter, "Winning Leads to Winning," Brunyeel writes, "From the smallest vistory at home to the most public triumph, every win of your life might be the one that really ends up meaning something."

"We Might As Well Win" is a great quick read whose chapters are the sign posts for plotting the road to success. Visit Bruyneel's website.

Scour - Social Search with Benefits

I’ve been using a new social search engine called Scour for my searches today.

Scour aggregates content from Google, Yahoo and MSN into one results page. It is considered a “social search engine” which means it integrates algorithm driven technology with the user community’s input to increase the relevancy of the results. In this case, Scour takes the user contributed ratings and comments and adds them to the search results. People who use Scour get points for each search, as well as for leaving comments and ratings.

Registration was quick and easy with only a few fields of information required to get started. I could have chosen to add a bunch of friends and get points from their usage in a sort of network marketing, be then ambassador way. I’ll leave that to a starving college student.

When you search, you can choose to see the Scour results or Google, Yahoo or MSN’s results. If you have preference for which search engine results to display, you’re only a click away.

The user interface is very simple and follows all the normal search conventions. I liked the way the comments and rating features were integrated onto the search results page. It made it easy to remember to leave a comment and rate the content. (Because, you know, those are worth more points!)

Speaking of points, here’s how you earn them:

• Search – 1 point
• Vote – 2 points          
• Comment – 3 points
• Friend Referral – 25% of each friend’s points

Beside the points, what are the benefits?

Because social search leverages human judgment to determine relevance and rankings, it should yield more current and more relevant results. However, I’ve got to believe that’s somewhat offset by the fact that there are so many unique searches conducted it would take a long time for comments and rating to really impact results. During the time I searched today, I didn’t run into anyone else’s comments. But then, it just launched.

Scour is an interesting concept – particularly for people who like watching points accrue. I guess if you’re getting the same results you’d get on Google, Yahoo or MSN, but potentially earning a Visa gift card, why not? It will be interesting to see if it gains wide-spread adoption and among what demographic. After a normal day of search engine use, I’ve earned about 90 points toward the 6,500 I need to get a $25 Visa gift card. Just 73 days of searching left!

You can check out how Scour works here:

Hello Moto

Welcome to the Twitterverse.

@MotoDeals (Motorola) joined @DellOutlet, @JetBlue and several other companies figuring out how social messaging fits into their integrated marketing, brand, commerce and customer relationship initiatives.

It’s been interesting watching different companies adopt social messaging. The best have:

• Honored that it is a conversation and that it is as important to listen as it is to promote
• Balanced promotional messaging with community oriented content by providing a peek into the human side of their company
• Kept it real – no corporate B.S.
• Regulated the number of their messages – not too many, and not too few
• Acknowledged their followers and found fun ways to engage them

Are you a company that’s used social messaging? Has it worked? Why or why not?

Connected Customer Experiences: Cirque du Soleil

When I think of outstanding, connected customer experiences, Cirque du Soleil comes to mind every time. From buying tickets on their website through their mind-blowingly spectacular productions, there is a consistent and connected brand experience.

Recently, I experienced one more brilliant brand interaction by the team at Cirque (and their street team agency).

Over 20,000 people (of which I am one) commute by large ferries into downtown Seattle during the week. Thousands of walk on and drive on passengers offload through designated areas every day, creating a narrow, focused stream of consumers.

An announcement is made by the captain on one dreary morning, “Make sure you pick up your free coffee and warm pretzel when you get off the ferry today.” …..Huh?

As heads down, serious, fast walking commuters and cars start streaming off the ferry, they are greeted by a large angel clad street team, handing out coffee and warm chewy pretzels while cavorting about playfully. During the interaction they encouragingly remind the commuters that Cirque du Soleil’s latest production, Corteo is showing in Redmond only a short drive away, and that it would make for a great evening for the family. And, “You’ll remember to reserve your tickets today, right?” Right.

I had seen Corteo a few weeks before in another city so I could immediately appreciate how the promotion created a connected customer experience:

• The angels are integral character to Corteo’s story
• The angels were delightful, fun and entertaining and pulled their audience into the promotion (much like what happens during a Cirque du Soleil show)
• The pretzels are analogous to Cirque’s performance style
• The sight of angels along the streets caused buzz, stopping power and curiosity not just among the ferry commuters, but anyone passing that area
• They located a place for the promotion that had a very high density of Cirque’s target audience
• The promotion was memorable

Which all reminds me, I've got to go find out when the next Cirque du Soleil show is in town.

Twitter? Why would I do that?

Because you’re worth it.

After explaining Twitter to numerous friends and colleagues, “You can get quick answers, get directed to great information, find like-minded people and generally stay in touch … blah, blah, blah” I finally discovered, that there is a large segment of people who don’t think they have anything interesting to say. And it couldn’t be further from the truth.

The best way to get your colleagues, friends or family onboard the Twitter train? Tell them because you’re interested in what they have to say. You want to stay in touch and know what they’re up to. You want to know what they think. That they do indeed do things that would be interesting and fun to follow. And it’s fun, easy, and quick.

I’m still in awe of the all the great information I get from all the “information DJs” spinning URLs to great blogs, vlogs and websites. But the thing I appreciate the most is the funny repartee between fomer colleagues a couple states away, getting basic insights into my client’s lives and comfort in realizing that we’re not all as different as we think.

Why Twitter? Because there are people who care about you, what you think, and what you’re doing.

Leadership Traits Versus Management Traits: Blue Sky to Black Ink

When I had my own  marketing agency some of our largest conflicts arose out of the chasm between leadership thinking and management thinking. I always find drawing distinctions between the two interesting and important. Interesting because these discussions inevitably lead to judgement about which are good traits and bad traits and important because organizations clearly need both to succeed.

In our case, the business development team was always “out there” selling blue sky thinking and then engagement opportunities came back into the company and had to turn into black ink – something we could deliver. Sales people couldn’t understand why the managers in the company weren’t excited about the business. Managers couldn’t understand why sales people disregarded process and were reluctant to bring more definition to engagements.

Drawing distinctions between management and leadership and being conscious of when you need to be the leader versus when you need to be the manager often helps reduce the tension that can exist between the two.

A few distinctions to get you started:

• Management gets things done within the existing context of an organization whereas leadership establishes and evolves the context.
• Leaders lead people and managers manage tasks. You have your leadership hat on when you’re asking people to follow. You have your manager hat on when you’re enforcing a process. In this vein, leaders speak to people’s hearts. Manager’s speak to people’s head.
• Leaders often use conflict to create change. Managers often avoid or minimize conflict because they are working within predefined systems and are focused on getting people to accomplish tasks.
• A leader’s planning horizon is longer term. A manager’s planning horizon is short term. Here, leaders look to seize opportunities and managers are typically averting risks or threats.

Look at the situations you face and determine which hat to put on. Organizations need both. The best leaders articulate a compelling vision and take people and organizations to new heights. The best managers are the glue that hold people and organization together to achieve results.

Summize - Bringing Insight to Social Networking

Twitter is great. Summize is awesome.

Summize takes all the posts from Twitter and makes them searchable. Try these searches and see what information you can glean:

• Enter the name of a company or product and see what the vocal minority are saying (for example, try Microsoft, Apple, Blackberry)
• Enter the name of people who Twitter (try some of my Twitter Peeps: @liamorgan, @guykawasaki, @marobella, or @e_winters) and see what you find.
• Enter the name of an event (for example, Microsoft Partner Conference, NECC) and find out the hot topics and where to find event blogs
• Search for topics that interest you, and you'll find like-minded people to follow on Twitter

To get a peek at the role that all this micro-blogging will play in the future of search, check out Summize Labs sentiment ratings. Check out the sentiment of a brand or product and see what the latest posts reveal. While this has a way to go, imagine a day when you search for company, product or service and can see the latest "consumer reports" and can immediately tap into people who can tell you their about their direct experience with a product.

Developing Retail Applications on the Microsoft Surface

I had the opportunity to spend time with several members of the Microsoft Surface team in preparation for developing retail applications on the Surface for a client that must go undisclosed at the moment.

The Microsoft Surface gives interaction designers four tenants to create the user experience:

1. Natural user interface: Imagine an interactive experience that can start anywhere (without predefined user navigation like kiosks or web navigation)
2. Multi-touch: Well beyond a “swipe,” the Surface incorporates multiple gestures and multiple touches at once
3. Multi-user: Multiple users can interact with the Surface at once, making collaboration and social networking a possible part of the experience
4. Object recognition: Lay an object on the Surface and make it part of the experience

Immediately the mind starts reeling with ideas for applications. In order to deliver a compelling customer experience and maximize the return on investment, ask the following questions to focus and evaluate your ideas:

How can you use the Surface to improve the in-store customer experience in a way that:

• Simplifies and/or accelerates the consumer's buying process
• Increases the value of each sale
• Surprises and delights the store guest
• Is additive to the current shopping experience
• Offers a deeper brand experience
• Makes the brand values palpable

How can you use the Surface to extend the customer experience beyond the store?

How can you use the Surface to increase store traffic and/or word of mouth?

How can you extend or expand current retail store marketing iniatitives with the Surface?

Is there any application you can deliver on the Surface using the client’s products that demonstrate how the product works that is not currently possible to demonstrate in the store?

Are there logical content partners that may want to pay for ‘space’ on the Surface that add value to the brand or experience?

When and where can the Surface be the store when a physical store doesn’t exist?

With all the ideas and issues on the table, you can look at how you blend the virtual and physical experience to affect your consumers’ behavior in the shopping experience and impact their beliefs about your brand.