How making your business’s blog into a testing ground for new ideas can drive innovation, and provide proof of concept for radical changes.

My blogging record includes hundreds of thought experiments, proposals and ideas. Many failed, such as a weekly prediction game powered by twitter (about a half-dozen people took part for five weeks). A few succeeded; the crowdsourced design competition took off, for example (not in the comments, but in an offsite forum and email responses).

Given a base audience to the blog, I could quickly determine which ideas had room to run, and which were best left alone. Several of the ideas that had room to run were later spun off on behalf of paying clients.

I argue: Apply the same logic to your business and its communications. Use your company blog as a skunkworks (a testing or proving ground) where you can air radically new ideas about your business or product, or even your branding. Then let the traffic, dialogue or spin-offs from this original idea determine the plausibility of piloting the idea offline, or in your operations.

Three rudimentary examples I’d like to see:

1) Openly discuss your company’s business model on the blog. Propose other business models and weigh the pro’s and con’s. “If our testing software firm did business like a gourmet restaurant, it would look like this,” for example.

2) Propose a handful of major changes to your product range. An energy supplier could, for example, present a series of radically different pricing plans for energy, describing how these could work for consumers.

3) Invite readers to share linkages that they see between your company/product and others. Get the ball rolling by floating some relatively far-out connections yourself. “Why our infrastructure company would fit with a logistics outfit like Federal Express”, for example.

There’s something about a blog that rewards experimentation and dodges responsibility. You’re not likely to be held hostage by a proposal from a speculative blog post like you are many other forms of company communication.

And companies frankly struggle with research around business innovation. They enter it like monks to a holy high temple instead of monkeys to a pooh-flinging contest. There’s room for both in innovation, but more volume of the latter usually leads to higher quality of the former. That is, throw a lot against the blog and see what sticks.

True to the “taking your own medicine” spirit at Velocity, I’d like to introduce a concept/community/what-have-you that I call B2B skunkworks. Basically, B2B skunkworks is all about pushing the B2B marketing game forward, in terms of creative, platforms, thinking, etc.

Follow this series for ideas that aim to radically rethink the B2B marketing game, even if some (many) may not survive outside the hothouse of experimentation.

© Ryan Skinner for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, experimentation, Innovation, proof of concept

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We’re big infographics fans so when LinkedIn launched their new LinkedIn Maps tool, we were first in the virtual queue to have a play. The tool generates a colourful, dynamic map showing all your connections and how they’re related to each other. It colour codes the clusters it identifies and lets you assign your own labels to the colours. You can zoom in on specific individuals and see where they fit in your world.

My network was pretty accurately clustered in these groups:

It would be nice if you could embed your map in a web page or blog post. In any case, the share-able version doesn’t let others see the names of the individuals in your cloud. Which is probably a good thing.

Go have a play.

inmaps.linkedinlabs.com

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B social media, Content Marketing, design, Innovation, LinkedIn, Social Media, Web Design

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I’ve never seen ‘visual persoanlization’ in an out-bound email before but it’s pretty compelling to see the faces of so many friends and contacts looking back at me.  I also like the little scribbled comments like ‘See Simon’s new job’.

The only question is whether the call to action is a bit weak. I wonder if they could have used this technique to get me to do something a bit more valuable to them — like upgrade to a Premium account (“If you were on Premium, you’d be able to ask Jason to introduce you to Richard Branson…”).

Thoughts?

Recognise your face?  Leave a comment.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, Innovation, Social Media, Web Marketing

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As part of our B2B Marketing Manifesto campaign, we asked a single, simple question in the download form. Tucked under the boxes for name, email and company name is the optional question: “The hardest part of B2B marketing is____”.

To be honest, we threw this question in as an afterthought but it’s proven to be one of the most interesting things we’ve done in the Manifesto campaign, so we’d like to share it here in our ‘living case study’, Project Open Kimono.

Let’s admit right out front that this ‘micro-survey’ isn’t particularly scientific. It’s not a random sample of B2B marketers (just the kind who download things like B2B manifestos) and the question itself is open to many different interpretations (like what do we mean by ‘hardest’ anyway?).

But the results are even better than rigorous: they’re interesting. And they really do make me think a bit differently about B2B. Because what it shows is a kind of snapshot of the state of mind of B2B marketers today. Not a detailed analysis of our priorities but a peek into how we think about our work.  The fact that this was a top-of-the-head question rather than a ‘sit down and take a survey’ kind of experience might even make it more valuable as a mindset indicator. The Wordle of all the responses (above) reads like a CAT scan of any B2B marketer’s brain.

Here are the top five answers, shown as a percent of total answers (clients and agency/suppliers are all lumped together in this one):

A Bombshell: the enemy within
One rather shocking result jumped out of this little exercise: the number one obstacle B2B marketers identify has nothing to do with actually getting through to prospective buyers, winning their attention, convincing them to engage or getting them to buy. The number one obstacle isn’t about creating great content, generating high-quality leads or proving ROI (though all of these showed up in the top five).

The hardest part of B2B marketing turns out to be convincing other people within the company to do the right things. It’s worth saying it again in the boldest face WordPress will allow:

The hardest part of B2B marketing is fighting internal battles.

Think about this. Of all the incredibly challenging things we all have to struggle with, we’re most daunted by getting our bosses or boards or other departments to value us, listen to us and take our advice (these are the kinds of words people used — they’re masked by our aggregated term “Convincing internal people”).

I don’t know about you but seeing this in the cold light of Excel kind of gave me a kick in the head.

But when I thought about it a bit, it not only makes sense, it explains a lot of what I’ve experienced in my 25 years in the business. Here’s what I think this curious little crumb of data actually means:

B2B marketers are not very powerful
We’re not highly valued inside our companies
Our expertise is suspect

Why would this be so? I hate to say it but it’s probably because the doubters are absolutely right: B2B marketers have not earned the respect of our peers and our bosses because we have not delivered clear, undeniable value to our businesses.

Ouch.

Part of this may be that B2B businesses are less likely to be ‘marketing driven’ than consumer marketing companies are (I could be wrong but I’d be amazed if B2C marketers were as concerned by internal obstacles). In Nike and Coca-Cola, marketing is the most powerful department not one of the least. Rightly or wrongly, B2B companies are often more sales-driven or engineering-driven. You don’t find many consumer brands that aren’t all about the marketing.

A client-side issue
Our first reaction to the topline data was to ask, “Was the focus on internal obstacles skewed by agency-side whingers?”  We thought it must be but the data says quite the opposite. Here’s how client-side marketers differ from agency/supplier side:

As you can see, the agency side didn’t really rate the internal problems highly at all. They did, however consider things like “Proving value to prospects” and “getting C-level buy-in” as the hardest part of their jobs — far higher than their client-side peers.

So it seems safe to say that many B2B marketers within companies are struggling in their efforts to be heard, valued, respected and left alone to do what they know is right for the business.

What can we do about it?
The B2B Marketing Manifesto is really all about this challenge: how marketers can thrive in The Land of Accountability” — and prove our value as we do it.

So the first action is to read the damn thing and see if it inspires a new way of thinking about your job.

Then, it feels like it’s time for some soul-searching: How much value are you really adding to your business? Can you prove it? Have you shown the evidence to the important stakeholders?

If the answer is ‘no’ to any of these questions, here’s a follow-up: Why not?

B2B marketers of the world: rise up! We have nothing to lose but the poor opinion of our peers…

What do you think? We’d love to hear your views on this.

——

Want the full Open Kimono picture?

Project Open Kimono Part 1 – the one where we commit ourselves in public (Planning)

Project Open Kimono Part 2 – the one where it all kicks off (Thinking)

Project Open Kimono Part 3 – the one where confidence starts to rise (First results)

Project Open Kimono Part 4 – the one where the trick shots start (Cross-promotion)

Project Open Kimono Part 5 – the one where we share the first month’s results (Reviewing)

Project Open Kimono Part 6 – the one where we toughen up (Soul Searching)

Project Open Kimono Part 7 – the one where we find the world’s best marketers (Segmenting)

Project Open Kimono Part 8 – the one where we show that design isn’t everything (Style v Substance)

Project Open Kimono Part 9 – the one where lead nurturing proves its worth (Marketo)

Project Open Kimono Part 10 – the one where the form fights back (Form v No Form)

A kind of Quasi–Methodology
The data above represents the first 254 responses to the open-ended question, “The hardest part of B2B marketing is___”. Of these, 189 were client-side and 65 were agency or supplier-side (including marketing tools vendors).

There was a wide variety of answers, which we grouped into 35 different buckets. If someone gave two or three answers, we counted them all. Someone else looking at the raw data might put a few responses into different buckets than we did, but the numbers are big enough to feel our results are worth noting.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B analytics, B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, B2B research, B2B survey, Innovation, Open Kimono

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Image credit: Deborah Leigh

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Ultimo, the lingerie maker, has launched a new line of evening dresses. Interesting bit of diversification there – I suppose it makes sense for company that makes bras to also make outer garments. Hopefully the dresses will be designed with the logistics of bra-wearing in mind, because there’s nothing more annoying than finding a beautiful dress and then discovering that you can’t wear a bra with it and have to spend the evening wobbling to and fro with reckless abandon.

Anyway, this isn’t the main point. The point is the advertising campaign. Ultimo are shouting from the rooftops that they’re using REAL WOMEN. Apparently this is somebody’s idea of a fresh and innovative campaign, never mind that Dove has done that already, followed by Wonderbra.

The fact is that pouring some ordinary pretty women into some ball dresses doesn’t make me think “Hey, she looks like me. Ultimo are totally on my wavelength, and what’s more, they’re a fine, morally upright company that doesn’t peddle a soul-destroyingly perfect image of beauty”. I see “real woman” every day in the mirror, and frankly, she doesn’t get me excited. The problem with Real Woman is that she’s ordinary, and I want to imagine that I’ll look extraordinary in that dress. I’m buying into an idea.

Ultimo is not giving me a revelation by saying that real women don’t look like models. I know that already. I know they’re airbrushed. I find them no more eroding to my self-esteem than a Barbie doll. It’s gob-smackingly patronizing to suggest that by putting Christine the medical secretary from Croydon in a ball dress you’re relating to me as an ordinary woman, or that we all have terrible body image problems, or that if we do, using ordinary women as models will be the cure.

For an advertising campaign you need traffic-stopping images. And ordinary pretty women don’t make the kind of visually arresting image that you need to stand out in a world chock-full of advertising. The thing about supermodels is that they’re, quite honestly, really weird looking. If you saw one in the street you’d think the aliens had landed. But up on a billboard, they look amazing. That’s why they’re models. If real women had the same effect the world would stop functioning.

What people are really saying when they say “We must have Real Women! No more of these Slavic teenage Amazons with pipe-cleaner arms and legs! Bring me Jo the size 16 nurse from Bolton!” is that they wish models ate a bit more. If there were some kind of feeding programme to make models eat pork pies and Mars bars, there would be no need for this sanctimonious, cynical kind of campaign. Because that’s what this is, a worthy platitude dressed up as advertising. It’s as manipulative as airbrushed Glamazons – even more so in fact because it’s hiding what it is. Give me Naomi Campbell any day: at least she doesn’t pretend to be normal.

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What does all this have to do with B2B marketing? Well, arguably nothing, except that there are lessons to be learnt from this that are golden rules of B2B marketing:

Don’t assume you know your audience – they’re dying to prove you don’t, so don’t give them the opportunity.

Don’t try to be down-with-the-kids – it’s like your dad dancing. Please just try and sound normal.

Don’t innovate for the sake of it – sometimes diversifying is good, but innovating for the sake of it can dilute your message.

Don’t use clichés – unless you’re really good at parodying, if it’s been done to death then don’t resurrect it.

Don’t forget a good argument wins – manipulation is always a little sneaky part of marketing, but ultimately it doesn’t beat a copper-bottomed argument.

© lucy for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Advertising, B2B marketing, Branding, Innovation, Marketing

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ShipServ is the shipping industry’s #1 e-marketplace, and, as of today it’s also winner of the Red Herring 100 Award for European innovation.

It’s a very cool company.

Eight years ago the shipping industry was awash with e-marketplaces making bold promises of new beans for the ‘new economy.’ Today, only ShipServ flourishes (the others are toast). They got in touch with us towards the end of last year to see how we could help revamp their brand and their online presence.

Here’s what we did.

We took them from this:

…to this:

Along the way we’ve worked hand in glove with ShipServ’s VP of Marketing John Watton, and CEO Paul Østergaard to redefine their core positioning and messages, turbo-charge their corporate pitches and plan their next brave moves into the world of web 4.7.

So, we’re thrilled that the new site is now up and sailing.

Thanks to John and Paul for giving us the space and direction to do work that we’re really proud of.

Big thanks also to the extremely talented Ben at Jackfruit for his superior web development skills (Ben’s the guy who did the physical build); and thanks to Rob and the team at RMA for their work on another top drawer piece of design (they’re the guys who created the site templates).

…And watch this space – because there’s more to come.

© Roger for Velocity Partners, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B, Branding, Clients, Identity, Innovation, Marketing, Petri Dish, Sites We Like, Web Design, Web Marketing

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Co-incidently, it’s also time for English F.A. to make a similar, but – we hope – longer lasting plan by way of selecting a new manager for the national football team.

If you’ve been on planet England for the past x2 weeks this won’t have passed you by. The race to succeed second-choice-Steve is reaching fever pitch.

Now, we at Velocity are keen students of soccer-ati. Each Monday morning we devote at least 15 mins to dissecting the latest Arsenal result (sorry Doug, but they’ll never keep it up). As such, we see an eerie parallel between life at Lancaster Gate and you.

You both have some big choices to make, and – judging by recent form – we’re only moderately optimistic.

Because – like the F.A. – you’ve enjoyed reasonable success on limited resources, but we know your ambitions are loftier.

So here’s your choices for 2008 – like Brian Barwick (F.A. Chief Exec) you have three:

Play safe: be a Sven Goran Ericsson (again)

Go maverick: be a Juergen Klinsmann

Just win: like Jose Morinho

Let me explain with (another) handy diagram:

To the left: you can do what you normally do. You know exactly what’s tried and tested (Gerrard, Lampard, Beckham), and you know they’ll buy you. A few ads in a trade magazine, an email campaign or five and a solid trade show will certainly not get you the sack. Used the way they were used last time, they’ll probably secure you a quarter final place in your market.

To the right: you tear up the rule book. You’ve been a student of ‘black hat’ tactics for some time (Ballack roams free, a left back that scores great goals and has zero defensive responsibilities, and a goalkeeper who scares everyone with his big mouth). You’re inexperienced in this domain but you have a hunch. You can’t prove it, but if you’re given the freedom, you may well exceed all expectations and secure a quarter final spot with that new Facebook application and a slew of desktop widgets.

In the middle: GENIUS (go with me here). You’ve been to the cutting edge. You hired x2 translation experts whilst you were there. You have a army of full of rough diamond, hand-picked talent (Joe Cole, Didier Drogba) to sprinkle carefully across your forward line. You’ve done your research and you know that SEO, blogs, and PPC campaigns can work wonders when mixed with a rock solid quartet of white papers, webinars, product demos and John Terry.

So, who you gonna be?

We don’t expect you to be a maverick – that way lies terrors unknown.

But you need to avoid being totally safe – that way lies many competitive threats.

Best bet: be a winner. Learn from this year. Mix what you know with what you know will make a real difference.

(Note: we love Jose. So do our wives.)

© Roger for Velocity Partners, 2007. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B, Branding, Content, Innovation, Marketing, PPC, SEO, Social Media, Web Marketing, Widgets

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Organised by the good folk at Snipperoo (the widget platform people), it cleared a lot of excess fluff from my head. Top of the agenda was a BIG question…. what are widgets and what are they good for?

Well, I have a good handle on this now, so if you need to know, then read on…

From a practical perspective, Alex Bard of youminis, gave the best explanation of widgets that I’ve heard to date.

According to Alex (and I’d agree strongly), widgets are used by people EITHER as:

‘Stickers’

or

‘Utilities’

A ‘sticker’ is the kind of thing that you slap on your Facebook or MySpace profile in order to look cool – like a widget for your fave band. It sits there for everyone to see and says ‘Hey look! I reeeeally dig this thing!’

A ‘utility’ is more useful. It’s something you use in order to get something of value. For example, a widget for iGoogle or Netvibes that gives you feeds on the news or sports stories that you care about. Or, another example that we’re all probably more familar with might be a plug-in for the Firefox browser that enables you to control your iTunes.

To make a broad, reductive statement, sticker widgets tend to be used a lot by teenagers and dumped quickly when the next big thing comes along… whilst utility widgets tend to be used by folks who have a specific need or interest. Utility widgets also tend to have a longer shelf life (because they’re more useful).

Further, sticker widgets tend to live on social networking platforms (ie, my Facebook profile page), whilst utility widgets tend to be embedded in the applications we use day-to-day (eg, my Mac operating system interface, Windows, my browser, etc – in other words in places where I live / work).

Interestingly, as social networking platforms begin to take a stronger hold of our lives, we see utility widgets popping up here too. As people spend more and more time ‘living’ in Facebook (that’ll be me then), they also see value in embedding helpful things in it – so that they don’t have to leave one app to get a piece of info from another.

I’m paraphrasing Alex on all this, but I think this definition is useful. (Thanks Alex, great speech!)

As I’m a consultant, I thought I’d turn it into a special on-the-fly Velocity ‘Stan-o- Gram’ (Stan, my business partner sees the world in these types of charts, and we know they really help everyone to ‘get it’ quicker ).

Here it is:

So, what’s the point of all this stuff and why should we care as marketers?

Well, if you’re selling sugar water or Spice Girl lunchboxes, then you really ought to get in on the action with ‘Sticker’ widgets. This side of the chart is very viral. So, find a 14 year old influential sneezer-user, encourage them to attach your widget to his/her social network profile and just stand back. If your brand and your widget rocks, then their friends will probably be bowled over by how cool they are and go copy them. Bingo – a new meme is born. The impressive Ori Soen from Musestorm had some interesting case studies on how his tech platform has helped brands do this kind of thing.

If you’re not selling sugar water, and are in the more sober business of B2B, then think about how you can use all this widgety stuff to become a utility.

To my mind, this is a big big opportunity for smart companies to pick apart the value of their products and services and get them to people in new ways. For example, if you’re a firm that needs to relay time sensitive, high value info to business customers, then build a Facebook or iGoogle widget and go give it to your most important users…. they’ll then pass it on to their friends, and hey presto, you have a new outlet for your brand/services/information. On the other hand, don’t even try to build a sticker style widget because the chances are your customers don’t think you’re THAT cool. (Think about it, if you hand out free badges at trade shows do you think people wear them when they get home!?).

So…

‘Sticker’ widgets are fab in B2C where the budgets and the bets are big, the trends fast, and the payoffs large.

‘Utility’ widgets are great in B2B (and B2C) where the value of your content is high and your users are (probably) niche but extremely engaged and energized… because your stuff helps them do their jobs/live their life better and they’ll be grateful to get their hands on it and pass it on.

In other words, sticker widgets may work for you if you can establish a ‘cool’ factor. Utility widgets will only work for you if you can establish a real value in your content.

Either way, lazy marketers need not apply because it takes some figuring out. Whatever you do, IBM will never be cool, and I’ll never expect to get ‘utility’ style content from Coca-Cola.

Anyways, that’s my view (thanks to Alex). What do you think?

(Meantime, next up will be a post on what we as marketers need to do in order to make this stuff work effectively… inspired by another slam-dunk pitch from our friend Will McInnes of NixonMcInnes. Watch this space…)

© Roger for Velocity Partners, 2007. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Advertising, B2B, Innovation, Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing, Widgets

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A crutch to help you through an uncomfortable challenge (public speaking)?

A useful visual aid to convey stories?

A pain in the butt, killed to death, hackneyed, eyesore, head-f**k for boring people to death?

…Most votes are probably in the last camp, which is why we at Velocity are fascinated by attempts to cure the ills of Powerpoint….like Pecha Kucha – an approach to ppts that, as described by Wired, combines business meeting and poetry to transform corporate cliché into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art.

Powerpoint as performance art?  What’s the point?

Well, something needs to be done.  Too many 30 minute stand up sessions are drivel, fuelled by bullets and dodgy clip art.  Doug’s already writtern about PK here.  It’s a worthy pursuit.  Think about it.  You’re presenting at a conference / meeting / social thang.  You have a few minutes to take people on your journey – get buy in, that sort of thing.

Now, how you gonna do it?  More bullets!?

No way!!

Perhaps ppt is a necessary evil.  After all, ranting in front of an audience isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

The key to being good at it is, however, in doing it differently.  So, if nothing else, make sure they remember just a bit of you.  Say or do something different – focus on the message that REALLY matters and do a great job of delivering it….. and just forget all the other conventional crap.

The other thought is how you put it all together.  Here’s a great post from the folks at 37signals (one of our fave development firms, the guys behind Basecamp).  Check it out – their advice is to ‘talk first, write second.’  It’s simple, but powerful.  Rather than focusing on the tool (the app, the bullets, the clip art), why not first think about what needs to be said…. then say it and write it all down later?  Bet your slide content would look a little different if you took this path.

Anyways, the best advice we can offer on the subject is a good old cliche:  less is more.  20 seconds a slide and a spot of Pecha Kucha is a good discipline.

We’re actively doing this for our clients now.  So talk to us if you’d like some help with that troublesome Corporate or Sales presentation.

© Roger for Velocity Partners, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Branding, Content, Copywriting, Innovation, Marketing, Thought Leadership

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People who need stuff done post tasks. Other people do them for micro-payments using Amazon.com accounts.

I’d love to hear from anyone who has used this to get something done.

A good use: build a database of prospect names. Give people a list of companies, ask them to track down the key job titles and their contact details…

Also: Zubka. Get paid to refer friends & acquaintances to posted jobs.

The power of Network Effects.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Innovation

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