The Convergence of Business and Design: Are you a Straddler?

Idris Mootee recently commented on the topic of business strategy and design convergence, what he called “Integrative Creativity”, over at his Innovation Playground blog. Tempted to comment on his post, I opted to weigh in here instead, given the natural soapbox (right brain/left brain) this blog affords.

Like two slow trains on two very long tracks, design and business strategy have been heading towards each other on intersecting paths for some time now. In the last 5-10 years they seem to be picking up speed and they are finally starting to get close. Some design schools are teaching how design can better integrate into business. Some B-Schools are teaching design and innovation. Few schools are thoroughly integrating the two, but it seems only a matter of (a little more) time.

But more importantly, individuals from one side of the fence (or brain) are clearly attempting to straddle it fairly often these days. Business executives are seeing design as more than lengthy processes and “shiny” deliverables. And designers, from all disciplines (graphic design, advertising, ID, interaction design etc) are realizing the need to integrate their thinking and environment with corporate and business strategy.

This group of “straddlers” is the most important in the short term. Show me an MBA or seasoned business executive who is newly interested in brand identity, sketching or experience design and I’ll show you a business organization that is going to soon change their perspective on any number of topics. Find creative and design professionals who go back to school to get an MBA, and you’ll have found individuals more suited to understand that which they create, and who can work better across functional units, bringing more iterative processes and methodologies to bear.

In the long term, schools will bring these disciplines together more and more. But school, especially undergraduate studies, is a place to discover who you are and where your passions and talents lie. As a college instructor for more than 10 years, what I clearly saw in my classrooms was a funneling of energies to an individual’s area of interest or skill. This funneling would eventually lead a student to declare a major. Although exposure to both right and left-brain subject matter is essential, it won’t significantly change an individual’s desire to do what they do best. However, it will provide them with the foundation to switch gears and straddle brain hemispheres more easily. In the future, these individuals won’t struggle nearly as much as those of us trying to do the same today.

Twitter Experiment Complete

I’m ending it.

I don’t think I conducted this experiment in the true spirit of an experiment (there wasn’t a hint of scientific rigor involved). But it seems that Twitter has brought some readers to my blog and reconnected me with a few folks. Though it hasn’t paid off in spades, it does seem like a viable digital channel for the dissemination of information.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a lot of nonsense over there; people shamelessly hawking their wares, porn being masked as “followers” and a bunch of other folks, who I named Twitter Twits in an earlier post, following people for no good reason at all. But don’t take it from me. If you haven’t seen HubSpot’s “State of the Twittersphere” report that came out last week, you should check it out. Basically it said that more than 55% of Twitter users are not following anyone and have never posted a single Tweet. More than 50% have no followers. 75% have never written a bio for themselves.

But…nevertheless, I came into this experiment seeing if I could last a month before giving up on it. If you remember, there was another scary statistic (for Twitter anyway) that said 60% of people who sign up for the service drop it within a month. Well, I survived that test, and think that I will keep it going a bit longer.

Look for me. @rightbrainleft

Mostly Tweetless

Still experimenting with Twitter as part of my ongoing experiment to discover whether its worth its weight in hype. I’ve posted some of my blog posts on Twitter and have generated a little traffic from it (not much). But again, though I am trying to try, I feel mostly apathetic about the thing.

In terms of following others, I’m still following very few people or organizations. The organizations or groups seem the most annoying to me, as they tend to fill up my screen every day–mostly with info I don’t need. I’ve tried doing searches for the things I need or am interested in, and that has been useful. Although, I am often shocked how many people or topics aren’t being talked about! But I guess this is to be expected. As with any conversation, I suppose Twitter focuses primarily on who and what is hot–and the news.

A few strangers have followed me. But it seems that a lot of people follow only so that you will then , in turn, follow them. When I don’t follow them, they quickly drop me. Have these people been named yet? If not, I’d like to suggest Twit Collectors (as anyone who would follow someone just because they followed you is clearly a twit).

So…still tweeting. Still twying it out.

@rightbrainleft

Fallowing Twitter

Nope, it’s not a typo. Fallow is a farming term. It’s when you plow the ground, but you don’t plant seeds. Apparently, it helps restore fertility.

It seems that this is what I am doing with my Twitter experiment. I’ve plowed the ground by creating an account, by following a couple people, and adding a Twitter widget to the bottom of this page. A few people are now even following me. But I haven’t really planted the seeds yet. I think my next step is to add TwitterFeed or some such other app that will help these blog posts go straight to Twitter. I think I also need to “follow” more or perhaps follow better. I am still having a hard time finding content that I consider useful and/or interesting.

If anyone out there has any tips please tweet me @rightbrainleft

B

Barely Twittering

Ok, so a word of warning to those who read this blog for interesting marketing news or insights: my Twitter experiment (see post below) may be neither. If that’s the case, I apologize.
Nevertheless, I signed up, but am still a bit clueless about how to get started. I see the Lavar Burton, John McCain, the CBOE and 50 Cent have Twitter accounts and that I can “follow” them. But as you might expect, I have absolutely no desire to do that. In fact, I went through the entire list of Twitter’s “suggest users” and I couldn’t find a single one I give a damn about. Celebrities, musicians, Kim Kardashian (not sure what she is) companies or organizations promoting themselves…it all just leaves me very nonplussed. However, I can guarantee you that if I were 16 and I had Twitter (though CDs weren’t even around when I was 16) I would have loved the site’s suggested users.

So I guess my next task is to try to find some friends who are already on Twitter.

If anyone has any other suggestions about how to get more from the service, please comment below.

Twitter. Tweet. Twy it out? Maybe tomowwow.

Why do so many people think that someone wants to read about what TV shows they watched last night or that their dog had diarrhea, or that they just got back from a trip to Kalamazoo? Nobody cared about this sort of inane minutia before. Why does a platform for dissemination of that material change anything?

I can’t deny the importance of Twitter as a potential corporate marketing tool for select clients or especially for media outlets. But really, aren’t the vast majority of Twitter posts meaningless dribble? Just another soapbox for mediocrity, self-absorption, and frankly, a bunch of twits? It makes me sick. Tweet this!

I was, pretty much, firmly in this camp until very recently when I started seeing some of the value of the Twitter. I also, just read this post on Yahoo Tech that helped confirm some of finer points about the tool and dissuade me from some of the nastier points above. I also learned in the article that Twitter has terrible retention, with 60% quitting the service within a month.

So, as one of the last of the Twitter holdouts (or so it sometimes seems) I’m going to give it a try tomorrow. I’m going to become a twit for at least one month. And see what use it might be to me as a marketing pro, as a blogger, as a networker, as a person that one day might visit Kalamazoo. Along the way, I’ll share my thoughts on the service. And, when the month is up I will decide whether to pool myself into the 60% or the 40%.

Wish me luck. And tweet me when you get a chance (I can’t believe i just wrote that.)

Viral Marketing: Easy to Catch, Harder to Transmit

Viral marketing is a holy grail for many marketers today. Get out a few good stories. Create some buzz with minimum media expenditure. Throw a video on You Tube that gets a million hits. Enlist SMEs, thought-leaders, devotees to be evangelists. A good viral marketing campaign can be more valuable than a :30 spot during the Super Bowl—and a heck of a lot cheaper. Unfortunately, all viruses are not created equal, and establishing a strong viral marketing campaign is not an exact science.

Dan and Chip Heath, authors of the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, try to put a lasso around it by outlining three key traits of strong viral messages in their Fast Company article titled “Three Secrets to Make a Message Go Viral”.

Their three traits for a good viral story are:

1. Make the viral message emotional. Positive or negative, the more emotional, the more the story will be shared. It needs to touch a nerve.
2. Make the message a public service. People want to help their friends, family and coworkers with useful or proprietary info. In other words, make the person who passes on the virus the hero.
3. Give the story triggers. Make sure there are occasions that remind consumers of the story, remind them to retell it.

Marketing and Trend Watching

Happy 2009!

There’s no better way to ring in the new year than to reacquaint yourself with the year that just passed. A great way for marketing folks to do that is to read the Most Contagious Report for 2008. This report was developed by Contagious Magazine’s London staff and gathers all the trends for that year. It’s a bit EU focused, but a good roundup nonetheless.

http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/pdf/MostContagious2008.pdf

Enjoy.