Right Side Up

Steve’s comments about return on attention are bang on the mark. The question is: how to deliver and recieve better return on attention. What are the mechanisms, tools and processes we need to do this.

The typical media-oriented answer to the challenge of return on attention is ‘better content’. This is a valid answer, but it is not 100% valid and its validity is declining. In a media-saturated world, the more media content there is, the more it consumes our attention, just as other pollutants consume other precious resources. For individuals, the challenge nowadays is to find ‘the content that I want’; that delivers return on attention for me.

That takes us to search. Search mechanisms enable us to edit out unwanted information and to choose what information we want to pay attention to. Search opens up a new evolutionary trajectory because the process starts with the input of information from the individual (what it is I am searching for) rather than information sent by a provider. This is a complete break from 100 years of media history. It is the beginning of ‘bottom up’ rather than ‘top down’ flows of information. Google is the poster child of the early stages of return on attention.

But the search mechanisms we currently have are still pretty crude. As individuals, what we really want to do is to be able to specify exactly what we are interested in. For specification to work, we need to input much more, richer information about what we want (which means we need to be clear about exactly what we want, and to know how to articulate these preferences).

Specification therefore takes us further down the ‘bottom up’ evolutionary trajectory opened up by search. It creates a need for a whole range of new tools, mechanisms and processes revolving around things like needs identification and articulation; how to match the language and categories users naturally use to describe what they want with how providers describe and categorise what they have to offer; and (of course) how to match the two so that the provider can actually deliver what the specifier has asked for, in a way that adds value for both sides.

This is a truly massive agenda. It requires new and different tools and technologies, skills and processes, operational infrastructures, habits and so on. So huge, in fact, that many people dismiss it as sheer fantasy.

The opposite is true. This particular evolutionary trajectory has enough potential for ongoing innovation and improvement for decades to come. For a parallel, consider Henry Ford’s first motor car. No starter motor. No suspension. No reverse. Hard wooden seats. No pneumatic tyres. No hood, windscreen or windscreen wiper – just open to the elements. Pretty awful in fact. But we are still innovating and improving on the basis of the model one hundred years later.

Some of the tools that will make better return on attention possible are already being developed. They include search mechanisms, personal knowledge banks (see buyercentric.com), scenario planning, and expert system-based needs clarification services (drawing on a combination of category experts and peer-user experiences), and so on.

These ‘bottom up’ tools and mechanisms are one of the fundamental building blocks buyer- or person-centric commerce. It would be interesting to build a comprehensive list of such fundamental building blocks, and to start exploring their potential.

Tweet This Post

AlanMitchell 'The Information Age', Buyer centric services

Despite the favourable evidence, many managers stay true to their belief that customers are incapable of contributing much of significant value to a firm’s innovation activities (how often have you heard the “but no customer ever invented the Sony Walkman!” retort). They contend that customers cannot envision new products and services because their eyes are permanently trained on the rear-view mirror. In other words, they are only able to define their needs and requirements in terms of what is currently available on the market. Companies who avidly “listen to the customer”, the argument runs, will limit themselves to bland, low-risk and incremental innovation.

Whilst slavishly listening and responding to every dissatisfaction and whim of the customer may indeed limit a firm’s innovation potential, the “Ignore the Customer” school of thought tends to miss the point. To “open your borders” to customer innovation requires seeing past their sometimes short-sighted and superficial inputs. It means asking them different questions, devising new assumptions and finding alternative ways to continuously learn about their problems and unmet needs. As George Day writes in Market-Driven Strategy (highly recommended), these critics often fail to recognise the difference between asking customers to identify problems and expecting them to come up with solutions. It is true that 15 years ago, most customers were not demanding books over the internet, downloadable music or in-car navigation systems. Yet there were ongoing problems and limitations to be solved, as well as deep-seated, latent needs to be uncovered and satisfied – otherwise these innovations would not be as successful as they are.

OK, not all customers are equally blessed with the brains (or even the motivation) in the innovation department. Yet every company will have at least some customers that possess a deep understanding of their products, and maybe even those of their competitors (the trick is to find them through advanced segmentation approaches). And nearly all customers will have some opinion on a recent experience they have had, whether good or bad. In fact, every day, customers (and "prospects" for that matter), are trying to tell businesses how to serve them better. Through the questions they raise and the problems they report, companies are already sitting on a potential goldmine of proprietary, useful, customer intelligence.

But if firms are not tapping into this rich resource, could it be that their CRM systems are holding them back? Perhaps they are not capable of sensing, interpreting and acting upon customer knowledge? Maybe managers do not see any value in investing in their customer interactions to source useful learning about the market? Rather, their emphasis is primarily centred on maximising efficiency and cost-limitation? Then again, maybe IT departments are not actively exploring, developing or deploying technologies that support real-time customer experimentation and innovation, multiple hypothesis generation and testing, open dialogue and advanced customer questioning? Perhaps the customer interface is more akin to a form of border control and is actually limiting the free and open passage of customer ideas and insights into and out of companies? If you’re a manager and the answer to all these questions is a resounding “yes”, I suggest that you are probably gazing at that rear-view mirror just a little too much as well….

Posted by Chris Lawer

Tweet This Post

Chris Uncategorized

Business as we know it today is run by sellers for sellers. Marketing as we know it is the product of this seller-centric system. Now, with the arrival of the information age, this familiar seller-centric world is being turned upside down. Get ready for a new era of buyer-centric business and marketing.: where the organized customer rests control from organized capital; where helping buyers to buy takes precedence over helping sellers to sell. Welcome to the era of Right Side Up …

No major market – including consumer goods, retailing, the media and financial services – will emerge unscathed from this Right Side Up revolution. No marketing platitude will remain unchallenged. No business will remain unaffected.

The implications for existing organisations are clear. Responding by tinkering with the "old pieces of the game" is no longer sufficient. The incremental stuff just isn’t going to cut it in the future. Rather, fresh perspectives, new thinking, clear concepts and strategies, practical techniques and most of all, the willingness to challenge long-held assumptions about markets and the role, capabilities and demands of customers are required if any organisation is to prosper…

For start-ups too, the new realities of business and marketing demand a focus on different types of customer problems and fast-emerging drivers of value. Togther, the rise of active and knowledgeable customers, the growth of online customer networks, the demand for more personalised and experience-based forms of value, and issues of declining trust are challenging the established concept of the market and the fundamental bases of competition…

The Right Side Up weblog

We – the founders of the UK Right Side Up forum (the RSU) – have set-up this weblog to provide a focal point for discussion and debate about these fundamental changes in modern business and marketing.

Through the blog, we hope to raise awareness and create a motivation for change amongst interested companies, entrepreneurs, public sector organisations – and of course, all of us in our role as "consumers"… We hope to provide a focal point for lively discussion and engaging analysis of the ongoing shift in customer value, competition and markets. We will provide pointers for interested organisations to help them find ways to adapt to a future of customer-specified and -controlled value as well as singposts for start-up companies to create the disruptive business models that connect with the principles of Right Side Up commerce and marketing.

We shall also use the blog as a means to promote the various events that the RSU forum is planning, including entrepreneur networking evenings and expert practitioner speaking events.

We hope you will find this useful. If you have any comments or questions, please add them using the comments links below.

Tweet This Post

Chris Miscellaneous