The Ideal
“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of thing” – Machiavelli, The Prince
In 1999, Levine, Locke, Searls and Weinberger released a book called “The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual”.
One of the very first sections of this was the following:
“If you only have time for one clue this year, this is the one to get…
We are not seats nor eyeballs nor end users nor consumers, we are human beings and our reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it.”
To me, the entire content of Cluetrain was a rally cry. In part a voice from the street and in part a stern warning from within industry.
I opened a musical instrument retail business the very same year Cluetrain was published; the principles of my customer relationships were aligned as closely as possible to the Cluetrain theses.
I quickly created a community driven website where interaction was the primary element. It was less about my business selling and more about the customers and my staff having in-depth conversations – coming up with solutions together about how to fit-out a school hall with music equipment or how to ensure the Army bands had the gear they needed when travelling abroad.
When people considered purchasing a guitar, the discussion was less about price and more about how it would fit into the rest of their lives.
Customers reported that they didn’t feel ‘sold’ to. Loyalty was incredible. We grew from nothing to one of the largest southern retailers in 24 months.
The shop was very full, as were our email inboxes and forums. We had thousands of customers who literally would never shop elsewhere.
Our net profit was higher than almost every other UK retailer – largely because we didn’t need to compete on price – we competed on service. Extreme service.
The online aspect was something virtually unheard of in the music industry around then. I set about learning how to code websites and built a resource that allowed people to access and purchase millions of items at the click of a button.
Competitors had absolutely no idea what the secret sauce was because they were not able to see the hundreds of thousands of micro-interactions and conversations happening between staff, customers and suppliers.
Other retailers wrote vitriolic letters to the trade magazines claiming that the ‘internet’ was ‘the enemy’ and hundreds of them got into debate about ‘how to stop this online threat’.
I was centrally placed as one of these ‘new media rebels’ and even fuelled the fire by extolling the virtues of online in all trade publications whenever possible. Right in their faces.
Brilliant.
We were able to be completely disruptive and for a while we pretty much had the online market to ourselves.
After I had won the ‘Best UK Salesperson’ award in 2002 I was voted to be the Chairman of the entire UK Retail Industry Committee.
I wrote a short book called ‘Survival Guide for the 21st Century Retailer’.
It was a set of insights for other shop owners – a lightweight guide for retailers who wanted a peak into the future of the industry. Actually, it was the first Communication Ideal volume in many ways. I analogised that the train was leaving the station and companies had a chance to jump on or watch it go by (with all their customers on board).
Even though it was published (by the Music Industries Association) and retailed (at a whopping £4.99), the main engagement came unsurprisingly when it was released as an e-book and had 15,000 downloads over 6 months of the website. I received confidential letters from a number of companies who said although they agreed with my observations and wanted to progress, they really had no idea of how to go about executing these theories.
I helped dozens of them and a number are now amongst the most successful retailers in the world. Not just because of me but due to having the balls to make a change.
The first draft was heavy on the disruptive Cluetrain-y stuff but after many versions I edited it down to a more palatable piece so it could be digested more easily. I have a feeling that the Association thought even that was risqué enough.
The publishers called it ‘thought-provoking and challenging’. Just imagine if they had read what the full-blown version…
The Cluetrain Manifesto by the way, is absolutely not edited to easily digest. In fact, it makes for one of the most challenging reads of all time.
By applying the principles found within the copy of the Cluetrain, especially the 95 theses (quoted from time to time in this volume), I was able to establish an almost un-beatable business. It was a business of the people. They guided the progress and determined the way they wanted it to be.
To compete, one had to not just take on our brilliant team of paid experts but the 100k+ customers who were constantly advocating our services. To hundreds and thousands of others.
We were on a path toward some form of Communication Ideal that allowed business to self-perpetuate by itself.
Our ‘marketing’ was the environment customers co-created and our ‘advertising’ was conversation.
Other retailers took out full-page adverts. We fired up a coffee machine, created forum boards and sparked up discussion.
Other retailers invested heavily to fight the trend of computers. We let customers create their own websites on our servers.
Purchases happened when purchasers wanted them to. We didn’t ask for it – people didn’t ask for it – we mutually agreed to transactions.
Clue 57 from Cluetrain states: “Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner”.
From the way people walked through the shop (on or offline) to the way they wanted to order goods – we were not solely in control. We shared control with the customers and the customers allowed us to share control with them.
Then, I foolishly invested heavily into a business with a ‘trusted’ partner who turned out not to be trustworthy and I lost absolutely every single penny in my life. What an idiot.
Really.
Yeah…I know.
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The hardest conversation I ever had, after my wife (worst conversation ever) and parents (second worst), was with my staff. They had done nothing wrong but were out of a job.
The references I gave them ensured they instantly strolled into any job they wanted – and rightly so. I have never in my life met more excellent staff than those. They defined customer service. I have rarely seen it since but when I do I write letters to the management about it.
Then there were the final conversations with customers.
As we were closing down the business, one of the regulars sent me a note. It said: “I am devastated you are closing. There will never be another shop like yours. I would come in and say goodbye but I am too sad.”
It was an absolute nightmare.
The suppliers were gutted too. Aside from the hundreds of thousands of pounds of product we regularly ordered, we paid every invoice before due date and ordered using the systems that were most compatible with them.
I stepped down from my Chairmanship and to this day, the quote on my resume by the (then) President of the Music Industry is one of my proudest references.
We had nailed the music industry. We had it sorted. The customers and the staff were a gang. A gang in which everyone played an equal part. We were connected by voice, text, email, post and handshake.
It was my application of much of what you find within Cluetrain.
And then it ended.
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But it didn’t really end for me. In fact, it started a high speed, global mission to implement best practice and agenda-pushing strategy into as many companies as possible. I had seen a microcosm of communication that was on an ideal trajectory and I wasn’t going to stop there.
No way.
I’d had a glimpse of the way things could be when everything works out.
I’d also been £12.67 away from bankruptcy with 2 children, 1 car and no house so all in all I found I was fairly well versed in the realities of business.
I got busy. Really busy. I hit the road and worked my network. To those who were there through that time for me, I can only hope I have proven to be as reliable and loyal a friend as you were back then.
I took pretty much whatever two-bit job I could get, just get the pennies in. I kept a lid on the more ‘out-there’ stuff but gave up some serious insight into the way things could be that (luckily for me), mostly paid-off.
I gradually side stepped my way to some heavy-hitting roles and all the while seeded in the secret sauce I have seen, read, executed and learned.
It was all about communication and the ideals that drive us forward.
Thousands of distributed business cards later I found myself on the top table at Blyk, which was the most disruptive, imaginative, Cluetrain-esque opportunity of my life. Finally some fellow futurists who wanted to change the world. I was right at home.
They based their thought around a central communication ideal – the open and honest discussion between two parties in a relationship of trust. In this case: brand and consumer.
Some 18 months later I felt I had contributed as much as I could and I it was time to widen my affect to more and more companies.
Logic told me that meant agencies as they represent numerous brands. Then it was a case of finding the largest digital network in the world and plugging myself in near the points of influence.
At the time of writing I am still in this area of business but who knows what happens next? The mission remains the same and velocity remains the key.
My principles have matured but are on the same path as ever before. This path is what I term as The Communication Ideal.
The Communication Ideal is not a destination. It’s not something you can attain or achieve. You cannot ‘get there’ but you can try to get there.
This volume cannot be the last is there is no end. The concept of linking an organic digital resource is because of this.
In ‘Join The Conversation’ by Joseph Jaffe, communication is trashed to pieces. Jaffe says that the central hypothesis of his entire book “is that conversation trumps communication every time”.
I believe this statement is only true if we base communication on his description of one-way transit.
The future of communication must re-define his suggestion.
We see the same semantic issue with mobile advertising, which is mostly thought of as spam, or actually as advertising itself, which is mostly thought of as irrelevant. All this must change.
Luckily we are not alone in this thought, Shel Holtz (http://blog.holtz.com) believes that true communication is two-way. Jaffe actually states that him and Holtz challenge each other on this.
Within this first volume of work we discuss the relationships and connections between people and brands and also look at what it means to make a change.
Changes are often seen as hard to implement – although (with reference to a graphic by blogger David Armano) – we innovate or die.
Seth Godin says (on how large established brands can make themselves remarkable): “If they want to grow, they must figure out how to invent something that’s on a different trajectory than their existing brand. The problem is that organizations rarely if ever have the guts to promote and reward people who will champion remarkableness and permission marketing. That’s because both strategies start with the (correct) assumption that the marketer is not omnipotent. most brands with power insist they can control conversation and sell average stuff to average people.”
We discuss the future of advertising in this volume, a subject which we all have an opinion about. In the advent of the 7th Mass Media (a term which Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore write excellently about), the methods with which we market must surely be fitting to the communication devices we currently call ‘mobile’ (but let’s not limit ourselves to the thought that simply means a ‘phone’)
Personally, I believe we should put permission as a centric piece in this. As Seth says: “Opt-out = spam.” Why then do we suspect that those who have not opted-out have opted-in? This is dangerous territory.
The irony is that there are probably markets for all types of commercial content – information that people would grant permission and attention to – if only they would be asked their preference. this is too often seen as a step too far which I can only interpret as being too much like hard and costly work. I am not so sure that is a valid enough reason not to aim for this ideal.
We will discuss brand building. Not in the known way but by methods we are not in control of. The power of peer advocacy will be explored and underlined as a predominant force in communication.
Much will challenge the traditional advertising models – but lets not be too hasty to abolish them. Everything has a place but we must embrace the move from broadcast to word of mouse.
In this volume we will go to the far reaches of thought-leadership and peek over the edge with comments and conversation with numerous people from various industries – all of which, it must be remembers, are also members of the public. Or consumers as some like to call us.
Randall Rothenburg states that entire media companies are in serious trouble because advertisers are just now, decades on, realizing that almost all advertising money is wasted – but now they can tell which parts work
It certainly is a challenge to consider whether you want to bet your future on a process that is getting less effective every day.
All is not lost and here we will find out more paths upon which we can follow. I believe things have never been more positive – there has never been a moment in media with so much potential to improve things.
As Jaffe challenges: “How many of you genuinely believe that you understand your brand better than your consumers? If you genuinely believe your consumers understand and can define and articulate your brand better than you can, why on earth are you not deploying programs and solutions as such?”
If you like, you can discuss this material and help create the next volume online at www.thecommunicationideal.com after all, it’s not my content; it’s ours. If part of these conversations helps one extra person I would deem it a success.
Even the name itself is not important. If you want to call this ongoing project something else, then do. You are all administrators. You are all editors.
This is something that we can aim toward with good intent and strive toward progress and positive change.
It is truly amazing when you have peeked over the cliff edge and seen what is possible when some of the principles are applied. Then, you want it again and again. It’s like a drug.
When engagement happens beautifully and the rules we discuss here are implemented, the mutual benefit of communication to all involved is awesome.
When we see instances of a re-definition of advertising to essential and useful content or information, that is on the path to the ideal.
When you look at competitors of yours whose customers seem loyal beyond belief, they are on the path too.
I know that we can improve what we do collectively. I am certain that what we settle for out of ease or comfort is not our ultimate capability.
The Communication Ideal is something that will always be there – in glimpses, chances, moments and interactions. We need to maximise those as much as possible and eventually, they can become easier to spot and easier to apply more.
I ask you all to never give up searching for how things can be done better. Settle for nothing – keep moving – stay positive.
Even if we make a tiny difference, it will be joined to the other tiny differences and the compound effect will be enormous.
I wish you all the best in your adventures in The Communication Ideal.
“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Walk beside me, that we may be as one” – Native American Proverb
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Discuss
