Jon DiPietro is Domesticating IT

Sirocco the Kakapo Parrot (courtesy of Department of Conservation on Flickr)

The Kakapo is a parrot native to New Zealand, which is critically endangered. For thousands of years, they lived a stress-free life due in large part to having no natural predators. In fact, life was so good for the Kakapo that it lost the ability (desire?) to fly.

The male Kakapo’s mating call is a very low base sound. If you have a home theater system with a subwoofer, you know that it doesn’t matter where you locate it in the room because low frequency sounds are non-directional. That makes things a bit frustrating for a potentially interested female trying to find the source of the mating call. But even if she can find him, they will only mate when trees are masting (fruiting heavily) and that only happens every three to five years. And even then, the female will lay just one egg.

Changes in Latitude

This seems absurd until you consider what the Kakapo’s biggest problem was for thousands of years – overpopulation. While some animals survived by developing camouflage or venom, the Kakapo evolved by mating more slowly. For most of its evolutionary life, their inefficient mating ritual was not only a non-problem, it was a survival mechanism. This changed quite drastically in the 1840′s when humans showed up and introduced predators like dogs, cats and rats. When faced with new predators and a falling population, you’d think that the Kakapo would start to change its behavior. It did, but probably not in the way you’d think: It actually started to slow down its already anemic reproduction cycles. Why on earth would it do that?

When faced with stress, it reacted the same way it had for thousands of years because it had always been a successful strategy. To do anything else would be against its nature.

Changes in Attitude

Which brings us to business death spirals. Many people watch dying industries from the outside much the same way we look at the Kakapo and think, “Why don’t they change their behavior?” It seems absurd when we watch them continue to follow the same strategies that aren’t working in the new environment. Worse, they tend to focus even more energy and resources on those failing strategies because it’s their evolutionary reaction to stress. To do anything else would be against their nature.

When a print publication (hypothetically) has to lower its advertising rates because budgets are shifting online, what do they do?
They (hypothetically) put a plan in place to sell more ads at the lower price in order to stay even.

When a membership organization (hypothetically) is losing members because they are finding the same value elsewhere, what do they do?
They (hypothetically) turn up the volume on the marketing message because people obviously aren’t hearing it.

When a brick and mortar retailer (hypothetically) is losing business to a digital or online equivalent, what does it do?
It (hypothetically) lowers its prices in order to lure in more shoppers.

When a Hollywood studio (hypothetically) is losing a portion of its sales to digital piracy, what does it do?
It (hypothetically) takes its own fans and customers to court and makes an example of them.

The point is that many of these organizations mistake changes in latitude (i.e. the environment) with changes in attitude (i.e. the customers). They think that if they keep doing what they’ve been doing – only a little better – they can change the customer’s attitude. They don’t realize that the environment has shifted and that they’re quite possibly doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing.

Parrots, the Universe and Everything

The story of the Kakapo was revealed to me in this Douglas Adams presentation. It’s quite long, but thoroughly entertaining (not to mention educational). If you don’t have time right now, then “don’t panic,” just bookmark it and come back later. How much later? Forty-two hours, obviously.

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from TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³'s photostream

The publishing industry has embarked on a quixotic journey.  A recent Adweek article announces that “Close to 100 titles are planning to sacrifice prominent placements in their issues for an industry campaign.”  Their tilted windmill is a sense that we have all simply forgotten how wonderful their product is, and that by running ads they can remind us.  I can’t help but picture a group of buggy whip salesmen on the side of the road laughing at a car with a flat tire, secure in the knowledge that a horse would never succumb to such embarassment.

From a pure strategic standpoint, this makes little sense.   It’s like a resort destination facing declining tourists putting up a billboard on their property saying, “We aren’t as bad as everything thinks we are!”   First, the only people who will read the billboard are the very people they don’t need to reach – they are already reading the publication.  Second, it’s a childish reaction that feels a bit like a spoiled brat throwing a tantrum in the middle of a store to protest the fact that reality is not aligned in the same direction they wish it to be.

Even more perplexing is the staggering self-delusion evident in their poor market perceptions.  I will demonstrate this using direct quotes from the article:

• “We are ferociously determined to correct the misconceptions that have been swirling around the advertising industry,” said Moore. (Ann Moore, chairman and CEO, Time Inc.)
  Rule #1 of marketing is that perception is reality.  The only way to change reality is to change perception, and telling your customers, shareholders, and advertisers that they have been duped into believing myths doesn’t seem like a particularly effective way to do that.
• “I believe magazines are the original mobile device,” she said.
  True, but immaterial.  One of the biggest mistakes the publishing industry is making right now is trying to force an old paradigm into a new technology.  What’s worse, this comment was directed at a supposed “myth” that kids aren’t reading magazines.  As the father of four daughters aged 4 through 15, I can see very clearly where the future of content consumption is going – and it will not involve paper.  These publishers are the modern day version of ice harvesters (see story from Guy Kawasaki below).
• “Magazines help us see beyond ourselves,” said Griffin. “They are voices of authority.”
  I have absolutely no idea what that means.  It smells a little bit like intellectual arrogance to me, but maybe that’s simply because I’m not smart enough for their sophisticated world.
• “These are not just magazines, they are brands,” Black said. “They deserve your renewed interest.”
  Deserve?  Deserve!?!?  As the American football coach Bill Pacells famously (well, famous in America at least) said, “You are what your record says you are.”  In this case, your brand is what your customers say it is.  To say that your own brand “deserves” anything is sad, pathetic, arrogant, and misguided – not to mention insulting to your customers.

Guy Kawasaki is Apple’s original brand evangelist and a renowned business strategist. He frequently uses the ice industry to talk about what he calls “curve jumping.”

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in life is to accept the known and resist the unknown. You should, in fact, do exactly the opposite: challenge the known and embrace the unknown.

Let me tell you a short story about ice. In the late 1800s there was a thriving ice industry in the Northeast. Companies would cut blocks of ice from frozen lakes and ponds and sell them around the world. The largest single shipment was 200 tons that was shipped to India. 100 tons got there unmelted, but this was enough to make a profit.

These ice harvesters, however, were put out of business by companies that invented mechanical ice makers. It was no longer necessary to cut and ship ice because companies could make it in any city during any season.

These ice makers, however, were put out of business by refrigerator companies. If it was convenient to make ice at a manufacturing plant, imagine how much better it was to make ice and create cold storage in everyone’s home.

You would think that the ice harvesters would see the advantages of ice making and adopt this technology. However, all they could think about was the known: better saws, better storage, better transportation.

Then you would think that the ice makers would see the advantages of refrigerators and adopt this technology. The truth is that the ice harvesters couldn’t embrace the unknown and jump their curve to the next curve.

Challenge the known and embrace the unknown, or you’ll be like the ice harvester and ice makers.

Then again, you could always just embark on a multi-million dollar advertising campaign to convince people about the myths of mechanically frozen ice and/or that lake ice deserves renewed interest.

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The human brain uses 20% of the body’s energy while accounting for just 2% of its mass – a whopping 900% premium.  It generates 25 watts of power each day and demands 15% of the heart’s output.  The average reader can comprehend 120 words per minute,  taking nearly fourteen hours to read a typical novel (100k words) at a cost of almost 1,000 calories (or 4.2 kJ), 164 gallons of blood (or 622 liters) and nearly $300 in lost wages (theoretically for average U.S. wage earner at $21/hour).

In terms of energy, blood flow, and time, reading is very slow, expensive, and inefficient.

I think this raises some interesting questions, such as:

• As an author,
  what is the return on brain-investment for reading my article, novel, or blog post?
• As a publisher,
  how do I convince the reader to invest in my product(s)?
• As a device manufacturer,
  how can I make the reading experience most brain-efficient and enjoyable?

Reading for Effect Versus Purpose

It seems to me that there are two reasons for reading; effect or purpose.  Reading for effect is essentially fulfilling some internal, emotional need like escapism, voyeurism, arousal, etc…  Put simply, it’s entertainment and entertainment plays by different rules than other products.  We are, generally speaking, much more willing to give up two hours of our lives to have a good cry or watch a bunch of explosions than to read chapter 12 of our favorite physics textbook.  Reading for enjoyment is an activity that not everyone enjoys, but those who do are willing to invest for the pleasure and emotional fulfillment it brings; they are not necessarily calculating an ROI.

Reading for purpose means doing so specifically for achieving some goal or outcome, or put another way, because one needs to and not necessarily because one wants to.  Reading for educational purposes, staying informed, or as part of one’s job are examples of reading for purpose.  This category is far more sensitive to the high cost of reading than the former.  For example, most people who read newspapers will skim the articles looking for interesting stories, and then skim the story to see if it is worth the investment.  One does not skim War and Peace, The Catcher in the Rye, or The Lord of the Rings.

Pacific Coast Highway (Creative Commons license via Frank Kehren's Flckr stream)

I would liken these to the difference between a pleasure ride down the Pacific Coast Highway and commuting to work.  You are performing the same task (driving), using the same tool (car), perhaps for the same amount of time, and maybe even with the same person(s).  Yet everything about the drive is different.  In the case of the former, it’s about enjoying the journey, whereas in the latter it is all about reaching your destination as quickly, efficiently, and painlessly as possible.

Implications

There are obvious implications to looking at reading in these two contexts.  Obviously, it behooves the content producers and consumers to understand whether their writing is intended to be a journey or a destination.  Once this is understood, certain strategies and tactics become clear.

For Authors

When writers intend to take their readers on a journey, the style and tempo must be a cognitive banquet.  The experience itself is the return on the reader’s investment.  Efficiency gives way to pace and style takes precedence over not burying the lead.  When writing for purpose, however, the author must understand that from the first word of the title onward, the reader is calculating the return on her investment and may cancel at any time it seems like the deal isn’t profitable enough.  As such, it is important to introduce the value proposition early on (i.e. don’t bury the lead) and get to the point quickly.  Of course, sprinkling in some color so that the reader enjoys the journey won’t hurt a bit either.

For Publishers

Nothing says "romance" like a black and white printout taped to a light pole (Creative Commons license via sixes & sevens Flickr stream)

Readers interested in going on a journey will evaluate content much like shopping for a vacation.  Cost is always a factor, but so is scenery, adventure, luxury, relaxation, romance, etc…  Therefore, packaging and marketing are going to mean a lot.  It must appeal to the prospective reader on an emotional level and promise to fulfill not only their needs, but desires as well.  Purpose readers, on the other hand, are hunters scrutinizing the landscape for prey.  They will be intent on getting to their destination as quickly and efficiently as possible; a pleasant journey is a fringe benefit and not a primary concern.

Newspapers are perched precariously between both of these paradigms, and so they have a tough job balancing them.  There are news reports, stock quotes, classified advertisements, and other assorted facts and items people want to quickly scan and read if they perceive some return on investment.  Other sections, like essays, travel, or editorials are much more about journey and need to be packaged and delivered differently.

Business to business publications are by and large firmly entrenched in the purpose-reading camp.  Their mission is to deliver industry-relevant information in a non-biased and convenient format.  They face issues of timeliness, relevancy, and ubiquity.  Timeliness is an issue in the age of real time search, self-publication, and social networking.  Answers are frequently a few mouse clicks and moments away, so a weekly or monthly publication is at a disadvantage.  Relevancy is an issue for similar reasons.  Readers are able to find very specific information on obscure subjects relatively easily, while publications are always trying to balance completeness against overload.  Ubiquity is a reference to the fact that publishers can’t always be in the right place at the right time.  Publish your information on your web site, and the reader may not have it available during that lunch meeting with a vendor.  Publish your information in print, and the reader no doubt will have thrown it out before realizing they needed it.  The challenge in B2B publishing is not as much marketing or style as it is timeliness, relevancy, and ubiquity.  They need to have the information the reader wants at the time he wants it, where he wants it.  But just as importantly, it must be in at an acceptable brain-cost.

For Device Manufacturers

I recently wrote that the iPad is heralding the age of content.  There has been much discussion about the impact it will have on print media and other existing content consumption devices.  If you accept the argument that reading for effect is much less sensitive to cost factors and substitute forms, then the likely conclusion is that the iPad (and subsequent tablet products) will have a different effect on different types of content.  If the key to reading for effect is the experience, then I submit that appliances like the iPad and other color readers deliver a superior experience to books.  Content of this type is also inoculated against infection from other forms of media like video.  When reading for purpose, however, it remains to be seen whether the efficiency and usability can be improved when compared to a computer.  But with the (assumed) increased availability of high quality video, which is a more efficient means for acquiring information, reading for purpose is going to be marginalized to some degree.  The key for the device manufacturers is to understand the features that will address each of these types of reading.

The Bottom Line

As Clay Shirky brilliantly observed, we don’t live in a world of information overload but a world with filter failure.  Part of the price of that failure is shorter attention spans and greater sensitivity to the expense of reading.  As more solutions evolve and improve our ability to filter, it would be easy to conclude that it will be more difficult for authors and publishers to get their content “through the walls” and to their audience.  But I rather believe that the filters won’t simply get stronger, they will get better.  This means that it will actually be easier for readers to find the content they are truly interested in and be more willing to pay the brain-price.  However, I think this also spells doom for purveyors of broad swaths of content like newspapers and magazines.  Once these filters get sophisticated enough, readers will be able to find the very best of the content they want with laser precision.  Rather than subscribing to a sports magazine like Sports Illustrated, readers can subscribe to “stories about the New England Patriots, Boston Red Sox, any player named Horatio, or cricket matches played in the southern hemisphere on a Monday.”  Publishers of “reading for purpose” content are going to have to find a way to deal with this paradigm.

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Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week.

This week’s High Five is about crowd power; for better or worse.

#5: Microsoft’s Creative Destruction

Categorizing this article as “crowd power” is a little bit of a stretch, but it had to be included in the High Five nonetheless.  In the wake of the iPad product announcement, this fascinating article describes in great detail how the mob-like corporate culture of Microsoft didn’t simple stifle innovation; it barbarically tore it limb from limb and left the pieces scattered across lobbies and conference rooms as a warning to the next group of would-be world changers.

Link: New York Times (Op-Ed)

#4: NFL.com aggregates Super Bowl tweets and pics

The National Football League has jumped into the social media gauntlet with both feet for Superbowl XLIV.  They’ve announced an “official” (doesn’t everything need to be the official “x” of event “y”?) Twitter hash tag (#SB44) and Flickr photo stream, both of which will be aggregated to a dedicated page on their site.

Link: Pro Football Talk on NBC Sports

#3: We’re turning comments off for a bit

This unfortunate announcement was made on the Engadget web site early this week because the environment “has become mean, ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening in some situations… and that’s just not acceptable.”  The situation illustrates one of the darker sides of social media and the tough decisions that must sometimes be made.  It’s a manageable task to moderate these forums unless and until they become a victim of their own success and simply grow too large.  I see this as the new job role for public relations professionals in the future – once they finally come to the realization that their current role of shaping messages is gone forever.

Link: Engadget

#2: Facebook COO: 175 Million People Log Into Facebook Every Day

While the total number of registered Facebook users (over 350 million) gets lots of press, this number is eye-popping for a couple of reasons.  First of all, the sheer size is obviously impressive.  That’s a lot of eyeballs.  Second, the adoption rate of 50% is astounding.  We heard just a few weeks ago that 70% of Twitter users are active more than once a week and 30% never post a single update.  This number is evidence that Facebook is not just growing at a break neck pace, it is retaining users and providing compelling reasons for them to log in every day.

Link: TechCrunch

#1: 20+ mind-blowing social media statistics revisited

Well, I’d certainly say “impressive” but can’t say that my mind was blown.  Notwithstanding the sensationalized and overstated title, this is a valuable page to bookmark for your next blog post or sales pitch for social media.

Link: Econsultancy

Feel free to provide your thoughts and/or contributions…

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In a recent discussion with ISA leaders regarding how to lessen the number of emails it sends members, the topic of Facebook fan pages came up.  The context of this discussion was focused on how ISA could be at least as effective at marketing its publications while reducing the number of emails it sends.  I was asked to explain specifically how a fan page compares with email marketing, and I came up with seven advantages:

1) “Opting In” vs. “Not Opting Out”
People must take an affirmative action to “become a fan,” which says a lot more than “I choose not to opt out.”  From a marketer’s perspective, these become your top shelf, number one, gold plated prospects.  And you treat them that way.

2)  Marketing Upside
When someone becomes a fan, all of their friends see it. This has tremendous marketing “up side.”  When someone doesn’t opt out of emails, nobody knows and there is zero additional up side.

3) Build a Community
Fans can interact with one another on the fan page, providing book reviews, answering questions, talking about their favorites, etc.  This is the very essence of Web 2.0.

4) Analytics
Facebook provides detailed statistics with regard to interactions that occur on fan pages.  This makes is very easy to quantify the value of the page over time.  Typical email marketing solutions provide counts of the number of times a message is read or a link is clicked.  However, Facebook has additional metrics that can measure interactivity and “buzz.”

5) Reach
Fan pages are open to everyone on Facebook (that’s 325 million users) – not just your email database.

6) Demographics
The fastest growing age demographic on Facebook is 35 to 45 year olds.  This is a critical demographic for many organizations.

7) Cost
Fan pages are FREE.  Enough said.

Let me know if I missed something.

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