BAM! Reality hits – think back a year – would any of us have really predicted today’s economic and business environments?

“The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry….” So said (in Scottish) Robert Burns – and I have to thank Daniel Morel for sharing this quote and the next as inspiration for my Ramble this week.

So what does this mean – we don’t plan? We don’t think long-term? We just muddle along – go with the flow – leave it all to Karma and Kismet?

When I was in the Army (as was Daniel, with the same experience), we were taught in our strategy planning course – that all plans were merely a platform for change. But let me tell you that platform was solid.

And there you are…

The idea is to marshal resources; know yourself and your environment; build confidence; compile data and open communications channels and links. The idea is also not to get locked into anything – remain fluid, nimble, think on your feet and be confident.

And here is where it gets interesting – if you have built all that up – you still have a plan – just a different one than you began with, and no doubt a different one than you will end up with.

And, as experience has taught all of us – it’s when it all hits the fan that it all goes awry…

Listen:

“Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth.”
~Mike Tyson

If you follow Mike – and if you have followed the story of his new movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ9-rCyakME,

then you know he had no platform – when he got punched – really punched, he fell apart – it all went awry…

Build that platform; think big; don’t be afraid to change and change again, and when you get punched – and you will get punched – nothing will ever stop you.

What’s your take?

Make sense?

At one time, I was a believer in thinking out of sight of the box. Like the fish in our story, I believed that the only way to really effect changed thinking was to get so far from comfort that you would, literally, be gasping for air – to follow the metaphor.

But then I had a moment of truth and realized that sometimes it’s that moment of true awareness of who, what, and where you are that is key. So it’s not about getting out of or away from the box that is the real lever – first it’s knowing what’s in the box and what to do with it.

And in case you missed it:

http://weeklyramble.wunderman.com/index.php/weblog/more/damned_box/

And I think that is the key to overcoming our own sense of inertia – however induced – listen:

The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.
– Nathaniel Branden

Think on it.

Awareness lets us know that we are in water. Accepting that allows us to invent ways to live on land. See where I’m going?
Your views?

In truth…the “Happy Birthday” was meant for Charles Darwin who, had we – the human race – evolved socially and medically more than belligerently and bellicosely, might have celebrated his 200th birthday last Tuesday and been the subject of interviews, specials, news reports and endless parties.
Now – I have written about Darwin before – (http://weeklyramble.wunderman.com/index.php/weblog/more/monkeys_and_the_fruit_fly/ and http://weeklyramble.wunderman.com/index.php/weblog/more/more_revoevo2/) – and no doubt will again – because 150 years after he published “On the Origin of the Species,” after years of being ignored by many in the scientific world and reviled by many in the religious world, it seems clear that his insight was extraordinary and only now are we actually able to catch up with his deep and thoughtful views on where our world is going.

Not that he was always right – for example, he didn’t know about DNA, nor did he know about plate tectonics and, therefore, his views on inheritance and population dispersion – for example – are not relevant.

Yet his knowledge and pursuit of understanding were as broad as they were deep, which according to Robert J. Richards of the University of Chicago, “allowed him to see things that others perhaps didn’t”:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/science/10evolution.html?_r=1

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” I have quoted this Darwinism before and its meaning is clear to me as we face the economic and technological challenges of our era. And, if you had a chance to read the article I referenced above, it would seem that Darwin’s intellectual process in solving problems worked along those lines.

I have also stumbled upon another Darwinism that is consistent with his body of work that I find to be worth sharing as well: “A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.” Frankly, I find this to be near religious thought.

Yet, for today’s Ramble, I was struck by another thought that Darwin expressed and, if I may be allowed to project a bit, it seems to me that he must’ve begun by speaking to himself with this one and we can learn by extension.

Listen to this:
We must, however, acknowledge as it seems to me, that a man with all his noble qualities…still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
~Charles Darwin

Humility. Modesty. Lack of arrogance. But note – “noble qualities” – Darwin is not postulating meekness or Uriah Heep-like –http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uriah_Heep_(David_Copperfield) obsequiousness – on the contrary!

It seems to me that he is simply admonishing us to remember from “whence we came….”
My sense is that if we remember our origins (religious, biological, other…) our ability to change intensifies and the rest, as they say, is evolution….

Your view?

And some more reading on Darwin – I found it fascinating that every digital magazine (online and print) featured old Charles…

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2009/02/dayintech_0212
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/02/appreciating-evolution-on-darwins-birthday.ars

I am going to break a rule that I set for this ramble many years ago — that is to avoid geo centricity – in other words, not to take a view based on my North American background or biased by events in the US. However I am going to bend that rule slightly.

Tuesday is Election Day in the USA. And, based on my reading and talking with friends, the world over, there are many, in many places, waiting eagerly for the outcome of the current Presidential race.

No, I am not endorsing a candidate or even hinting at my own views – I will over a beer though….what I want to do is to talk about change…

Change? Could there be anything more boring, or basic, or banal about change in relationship to a political battle?

And, yet – in the US race we have two candidates and their running mates talking about change; the need for change; the price of change; the look of change – you get the picture.

So how do you judge? How do you know who is the “change agent” (cliché); who is the real radical transformer of the status quo; the true revolutionary of replacement?

More – how do we judge ourselves as amenders of what is; embracers of what will be; converts to the new – yet respectful of what was.
I haven’t a clue.

But I do have a fear. And that fear has driven my choice of candidate and drives my thinking on a daily basis:

We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.
~R. D. Laing

I do not want to wake up Wednesday morning – or any morning for that matter to discover that what I had passively wished for is already gone – because that implies that I have had little or no impact on what is coming.

Don’t let change just happen – the historical precedent is what is truly frightening.

What’s your view?

Lest you think I am on a downer or a negative nay sayer (my regular readers know better), let me be clear: I am merely stating reality as I see it. And, reality as I see it is that we haven’t seen the end or bottom of anything.

My crystal ball is cloudy and the visionaries and prophets of our world economies clearly don’t have a clue! Talk about cloudy…

So what are we to do?

Here is a clue – waiting for the phone to ring with good news – isn’t the answer.
Another clue – wringing your hands and bemoaning your fate – won’t cut it either.

Truth?

I don’t have the answer. No, I am not weaseling!

But I do have the key…

Embrace the situation; own it; make it yours and ours; don’t run from it or pretend not to see it. Get on its back and ride it. Hard.

Look at what you do; what you say; what you think. Feel the world and let it wash over you; influence you; inspire you.

Add your own spin; be positive; look for ways to make a difference.

Don’t get locked into anything; the rules have changed and are changing even as I write.

And listen to this:
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Charles Darwin

Now imagine that not only are you strong but that you have strength behind you. And imagine that you are not only smart but that you have heritage, legacy and experience behind you.

And now imagine that you can take all of that and use it as an engine for change – constant change quick change, focused change – you get the picture.

Many people believe that Darwin is about the Lion eating the gazelle – not true – because in that scenario both the lion and the gazelle evolve to the better – both need to be responsive to change.

I have no doubt that the fittest will survive….the only question is who –

What’s next?
I mean – what’s really next – different; revolutionary – something we never thought about.

I find that as time goes on what seemed a revolution really only works if you apply best practices and learning from what preceded it – raising the question – revolution or evolution?

Look at retail – do we shop more because we can do so digitally or have we merely created a one to one – at best – migration from brick and mortar to on-line? And by the way, guess where the average basket price is higher….

All in all, we need to be constantly learning; applying what we know; trend watching; open and inquisitive; curious and yes a little bit cynical and world wise.

Love the following quote:

The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Tom Stoppard

If you don’t get this – do some research – worth the time and learning.

When I was a teen – digital watches were expensive; cool and very aspirational. The Swiss began to worry about the demise of their business – an industry that they worked hard to perfect and own.

So where are we today? Pick up any high end magazine; go to any watch web site; walk by any watch store and tell me: what kind of watches do you see?
And which are the most aspirational – the high tech digital or the low tech mechanical ones…?

The days are numbered……

Clearly, we can’t lie down and declare defeat! No way can we just give up and walk away! Nor can we lose focus and motivation because then, we will never win.

So what is one to do?

Obviously, there is no single answer (I hope to hear many from you). But, here is some food for thought:

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
- (Ike) Dwight D. Eisenhower

Ike’s answer?

Flexibility, depth of understanding and knowledge, ability to move on, learn on the fly and most important, no holding on to one way of doing anything.

Plan like hell. But, be ready to move “on a dime.” I once heard an Army General lecturing to a business audience say “all plans are merely the platform for change.” What was his point? The best change management—the most successful change environments—were created by planning and not just random acts of revolution; adjustment or modification.

What’s your view?

Much like my other heroes, Franklin was a renaissance man. A poor boy, the youngest son of a youngest son (he was number 10) he arrived in the city of Philadelphia poor, and died an icon. Much has been written about Franklin. He left a rich body of writings. Interestingly enough, he is now being studied for his management techniques and radical ideas. Check out Amazon for a list of books on the subject, the FT article reprinted below, and this website celebrating his 300th.

The truth is that I was looking for an excuse to write about him. When working on our latest strategic plan, only one obstacle came to mind. The only barrier to our success is us – you and me – and no one else. Not Y&R, not WPP. Not our competition and not our detractors. Just us, full stop. And the barrier is really simple: it is our inability to change, morph, and move on. It is the wrongly based belief that there is an end to change and that it is a well defined activity like changing your wallpaper.

So if we have met the enemy, and he is us, what can we learn? What can make us more competitive, more successful? What insight into ourselves do we need?

Old Ben laid it out very succinctly and powerfully:

“When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.”
- Ben Franklin

Not a lot more to say. The lesson is clear. Never finish changing. It gives you tenure, it keeps you young (ask Lester), it keeps you sharp and interesting, and it keeps us in clients.

JANUARY 17th ARTICLE FROM FT:

Ben Franklin’s way of business
By Jonathan Guthrie

The US is a mother lode of entrepreneurial role models: from steel baron Andrew Carnegie in the 19th century, to hamburger magnate Ray Kroc in the 20th and webmasters Larry Page and Sergey Brin in the 21st. But you might not immediately think of Benjamin Franklin, the tercentenary of whose birth was on Tuesday.

Americans have Franklin’s significance as a revolutionary forefather drummed into them at school. Britons have a smattering of this knowledge. But it is overshadowed by images of an amiable old buffer in a frock coat flying a kite in a thunderstorm. Did not Franklin invent electricity? Or kites? Or frock coats?

My own ignorance was similarly extensive until The Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary (“a non-profit consortium of five Philadelphia cultural institutions”) began a picaresque public relations campaign for me to promote Franklin as an entrepreneur worth imitating. Maybe, being in Philadelphia, they were unaware of the delight I generally take in writing the opposite of what PR campaigns suggest. Intrigued, I read Franklin’s Autobiography. Unwillingly, I was convinced.

Franklin’s threadbare beginnings make him a perfect subject for one of those Secrets of My Success self-help books sold at airports. The tenth son of poor parents he turned up in Philadelphia in 1723 aged 17 with the proverbial single dollar in his pocket. He then set about making his fortune – through low cunning as well as high principles.

Franklin followed the prudent path of learning about his chosen business at someone else’s risk, as an employee rather than an owner. A printer called Keimer provided this cuckoo with a nest. Franklin was soon plotting to set up in competition.

The way he achieved this would today still increase the flexibility of a fledgling business, and its chances of survival. Franklin started up in partnership with a friend, Hugh Meredith, instead of as a one-man band. They used capital borrowed from family – Meredith’s father – rather than a commercial lender. Franklin was not only hard working, but realised this had a PR value if flaunted. He pushed paper stocks through the streets in a wheelbarrow “to show that I was not above my business” and “took care not only to be in reality industrious… but to avoid all appearances to the contrary”.

He was also a demon networker, a characteristic that served him well in his later political career, which included such coups as persuading the French to bankroll the American Revolution.

Franklin made shrewd use of the mass media, in the form of his printing press. There was a shortage of coinage in Philadelphia, with money flowing back to England to pay for imports. High local interest rates encouraged the wealthy to lend money rather than to invest it in developing land for agriculture. Franklin wrote an anonymous pamphlet that spurred the adoption of paper currency. Enough influential people knew the author’s identity for Franklin – whose face now adorns $100 bills – to win the print contract. It was, he wrote, “very profitable”.

Many Americans see the sociable, pleasure-loving Franklin as a Santa figure, according to Rosalind Remer, executive director of The Benjamin Franklin Trust. He had strong humane principles, always striving to balance past misdeeds with present generosity. But he also had a merciless streak. His success drove Keimer to the wall. Franklin observed with relish that his erstwhile employer “was forced to sell his printing house to satisfy his creditors. He went to Barbados, and there lived… in very poor circumstances.”

Indeed, Franklin, having bought out Meredith, ended up with a near monopoly on printing in Philadelphia, which he extended vertically into newspaper publishing. It probably helped that he diverted his brightest employees from competition by pioneering a form of franchising. He set them up with print shops in growing colonies, such as Carolina, sharing their income until he had recouped his outlay.

Franklin did not expect royalties on his many inventions, being as Ms Remer puts it,“an early open-source kind of guy”. He turned down a patent on a fuel-efficient stove, saying: “As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours.”

The pamphlet Franklin wrote to promote the stove shows that he could have taught modern direct marketeers about hype, if not brevity. It was called: An account of the new-invented Pennsylvania fireplaces; wherein their construction and manner of operation is particularly explained; their advantages above every other method of warming rooms demonstrated; and all objections that have been raised against the use of them answered and obviated.

Franklin retired from business at 42, having achieved wealth he referred to as a “competence”. He had not accumulated the huge assets of such English friends as the industrialists Matthew Boulton and Josiah Wedgwood. But he had enough to live on comfortably.

Franklin was exemplary even in demonstrating that some things are more important than business. For him, these included kicking the British out of America and flirting with young Frenchwomen. Oh, and the thing with the kite and the lightning. That is one activity of Franklin’s no one should try copying.

That tug is strong, really strong, and those Sirens? If we weren’t tied to the mast, who knows what we’d do? The allure of getting on the “it’s all changed” bandwagon is strong, but here is the rub – if our thinking doesn’t change and change radically, then all the technology in the world makes no real difference anyway.

Then I saw the quote, and it put it all in perspective:

“Things don’t change. You change your way of looking, that’s all.”

Carlos Castaneda

And there you are. That is our business model. For our clients, we need to be the new eyes – both the microscope and the telescope, the fun house mirrors, the filters and the sunglasses, – you get the point. We need to tilt the globe, check the viewfinder and let our imagines go wild. Only then will we really make change work for ourselves and our clients.

Think about all the examples we have looked at, from music to books to food shopping to transportation to you name it. Open your eyes, pretend that you are seeing it for the first time and then compare notes with yourself. See where you go…

Remember to win. We don’t have to worry if things change or not. We just have to make sure to look at their impact in new ways.

Bottom line, take off those lens caps, polish those mirrors and don’t be afraid to wear glasses. Whatever works…

Correct shots at my request for the David Ogilvy quote were from Peter Law-Gisiko, Joel Barad, Lionel Gomez, Joaquin Santos-Suarez, and Mary Ellen Maloney. And the quote, from “Confessions of an Advertising Man”, in its non sexist and fully gender sensitive self, is: “The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.” Don’t insult her intelligence.

Another comment comes from Keren Perry-Shamir from New York, who says, ” This brings to mind the thought that if TV is opium for the masses, will it ever go away? It might change and morph and become many different things, but hasn’t it become as essential as religion (the original opium for the masses)? Has the internet become the new opium? Is it just another adjustment of our habits to the advancements of technology?”

Try this one on for size. We obsess over the idea of change. We pay homage to its presence, make the necessary cosmetic adjustments, “talk the talk”, and declare the victory of change – maybe because it’s easier than actually walking the walk…

Now before you howl, there are no doubt some obvious exceptions and many good examples of change. But here’s the rub. If we “change”, and yet keep on doing the same old thing – walking the old walk as it were – well, what have we really accomplished?

Let me bring it home… Search again, this time within our own industry, and see how far back the notion of “integration” goes. Synergy was the word used in the 70’s for example. In the 60’s multi-media took off. And do you think that linking channels is a new concept? That someone only recently thought it up? Think again… Take a look at the Soap Operas of radio fame and later TV. See if you can find when event marketing first took off. At the Roman coliseum perhaps? How about the idea of linking lifestyle to product? Remember what Dunhill did for smoking pipes in the UK a century ago? What about in-store marketing? Come on!

Bottom line, the industry has been pursuing the notion of “integration” one way or another forever, and in fact long ago we just went ahead and walked the walk. We just did it. To be fair, the world was less complex then – it was long before we specialized, siloed, ring fenced, and segmented not only our products, but ourselves.

And today? We still talk the talk, promoting integration, but our focus is on ourselves and not on the consumer/end-user/buyer. You see, the target knows nothing of integration. They couldn’t care less about “Above the Line”, “Below the Line”, or “Through the Line”. They just read, watch, listen, and search, buy or not buy without a single thought about our industry’s deep debates and emotional discussions.

Yet, even as we preach change, as we sing the song of integration and talk the talk of consumer focus, we still use the terms ATL and BTL and assume that the there is a hierarchy of engagement, or at least some seem to…

So everything has changed? How about this thought:

“Everything has changed except our way of thinking.”
Albert Einstein

And there you are. If we as an industry want to walk the walk, our thinking must change, our basic go to market strategies must change, and as Albert said, our way of thinking must change.

To that end, I never want to hear the term “Below the Line” again. It’s a negative term, inwardly focus on the industry, and I strongly believe that it has negative connotations that go way, way back. We should not use it in any presentations, in any client material, in any discussion about our capabilities or resources, and certainly never as a description of our engagement.

My sense is that we need to take the lead on the change of thinking. We must demand it, in fact. Don’t allow yourself to become an afterthought or a “BTL” (everything forbid) add on. Represent the consumer. Represent Life Time Value. Represent Branded Acquisition and Retention. Represent the client and ROI, value and strategic thinking. Do all that, and we will have helped not only to change thinking, but also helped the industry at least start crawling the crawl…

Talk gets stale pretty fast. Maybe that’s why we always talk about change – in the mistaken belief that it keeps us fresh.

For those who noticed a used the same quote twice in the month, well done! I just couldn’t resist an idea so powerful! Thanks to all for your comments. My trusty correspondent Larry Barnhart of Chicago nails the Bill Gates comment on consumer behavior, and points out that our business is “about concentrating on understanding behavior to capitalize on it”. We can’t make someone buy a car if they are not in the market for one, but if they are looking, we can be very compelling!

Tom Osborn from Australia offers the following comments. “A re-think on Evans and cars from two weeks back: It’s not that ‘cars’ equals ‘basic ideas’ which were either re-interpreted or not. ‘Cars’ equals the implementation of the basic need for “personal transportation”, and/or ‘face to face’. Face to face has had many re-interpretations, while personal transportation has suffered the way of incremental innovation. An old, recurrent argument from my university days was started this way: if you want incremental refinement, hire an engineer, but if you want fundamental progress, get a bunch of curious people to work out what they are really dealing with, don’t let them stop till they disagree passionately, and then start to agree again.” Look up Tom’s recommended author, Gary Lilien, a well respected marketing academic who wrote ‘Marketing Engineering’.

Tom goes on to write, “a question from a major bank a few years back that required going back to the basic ideas was: at what age should you acquire a customer? By the time the question made proper sense it was unrecognisable to the bank (so they didn’t really want to know). It was all about relationship dynamics and customer management. i.e., you could acquire at any age, but it’s what you did after that that counted!” Thanks again!