Brands, Red Gorillas, and Cold Rain

The new website Brandtoys has introduced what they are claiming is the world's first visualization engine to assess and compare consumer sentiment and the online buzz of brands. The visualization takes the shape of a whimsical character whose physical attributes, (color, shape, size of ears, size of legs, and even surrounding climate), are determined by Brandtoys using source data from consumer surveys and from mining mentions of the brand on the social web.

The idea being, for example, the more online chatter and buzz about a given brand, that brand's character will be portrayed with large ears; if the online sentiment surrounding a brand skews negative, (think BP), then it will be 'raining' on the brand's character.

To get a better idea of how this visualization works, take a look at the character for BP, pretty much a globally maligned brand stemming from 2010's Gulf Oil Spill and BP's subsequent handling of the crisis:

Sort of what you'd expect - BP is characterized as a petulant, angry figure with an aggressive stance, and in the end appears totally unsympathetic or approachable. Persistent (and deserved) negative sentiment about BP produces the rain clouds above our little friend's head.

Big deal, you may think, who needs a funny character to know that most people don't think all that highly of BP at the moment. But where the Brandtoys approach to the presentation of consumer and online sentiment data is more compelling is in the comparison of competing or adjacent brands (and their derived characters). Then the differences seem to be a bit more subtle and interesting.

Have a look at the comparison of three similar brands - Miller Lite, Budweiser, and Heineken:

 

While the character manifestations of each character are broadly similar, there are a few noticeable and striking differences, the Miller Lite character has much larger ears, signifying a high level of chatter and conversation about the brand; the Budweiser character's eyes are shut, indicating relatively low scores for brand 'charisma'. For a branding or marketing professional, 'seeing' these difference portrayed in this manner is got to be far more resonant than scanning a column of figures on a spreadsheet.

But beyond being a cool, quirky, and kind of fun site to play around on (I dare you to not spend 5 or 10 minutes creating your own characters), the Brandtoys team emphasizes that the characters are backed by solid and ample hard data and analysis. The larger point to me, and why I decided to write about this site today, is that it reinforces the potential that we have in presenting data in new and innovative ways, ways that can help tell a story, that can enlighten and engage an audience, and are simply a heck of a lot more interesting than another spreadsheet or Powerpoint presentation.

We have lots and lots of data. You business leaders are likely overwhelmed with the endless barrage of messages they receive each day. 

What can you do to make your message and the information you are trying to communicate stand out?

Maybe presenting your analysis with the assistance of a goofy red gorilla is not such a bad idea after all.

Mass Customization

Have you ever designed your own, personalized M&M's candies?

It's a pretty neat idea, choose the colors and combinations you like the best, have your own personalized message printed on the candy, have your creation shipped to your door.  Sure, it costs a bit more that simply heading over to the grocery store and buying 'standard' M&M's, but you end up with exactly what you want.  The end result, while sharing some essential commonality with all other M&M's candy, (they are not changing the recipe for you), has just enough personalization to be simultaneously distinctive and recognizable. The folks at M&M's are able to design for this ability to customize and personalize by carefully controlling just exactly what aspects of the product offering are personalizable, (color selections and messages), and what are not, (size and shape of the product, ingredients).

By offering this personalization service, M&M's can take some small steps towards making a commodity product into something more, and in so doing, forge closer connections with customers for which this ability to participate in the design of their M&M's is worth the price premium the company requires. At a transactional level, everyone wins.

Increasingly consumers appreciate, and in some markets and product segments, are coming to expect the ability to tailor and customize product offerings. A recent post on the Forrester Consumer Product Strategy blog argues that, 'Current and emerging digital technologies are turbo-charging mass customization, breathing new life into the product strategy', and that 'The time is now for product strategists in all industries to consider adding mass customization – including true build-to-order products – to their product portfolios.'

Forrester then offers a four-step framework that product designers and marketers should consider following in order to ensure that their personalization strategies are both meeting customer's needs, as well as being sustainable, supportable, and profitable for the organizations. You can read the Forrester piece for more details on the framework, but essentially it consists of:

1. Determining the context for personalization - what can and can't be defined or altered by the customer.
2. Creating a great user experience that allows customers to see and understand their options, and the consequences of selection from among their choices
3. Designing to solve a real need, not just the perception of a customer need
4. Remaining flexible to adapt to changing conditions, and to predict what customers will want for personalization options in the future

Whether or not Forrester is correct in predicting an increase in product personalization capability through more powerful web technology, and in their advice to organizations to consider pursuing personalization capability more broadly remains to be seen. But if they are right, or at least directionally correct, could there be implications more broadly for organizations, specifically in the design of work and in the value proposition employers make to employees and candidates.

Traditionally employers offer the 'job', the discrete unit of duties, responsibilities, etc. that they expect and require employees and candidates to meet and (mostly) fulfill. The components of the job tend not to vary too much over time, and are generally not particularly malleable or personalizable.  In recruiting, organizations tend to match the requirements of the job with the documented and demonstrated capability of the candidate, while considering whether or not the 'gaps' in experience or skills are significant enough to move on to the next candidate. Fail to have enough of the required traits, or even one of the most critical ones, and well, no match. Move on to the next candidate.

We tell candidates that we will keep their resume on file in case something more suited to their skills turns up, but in reality in the majority of circumstances that 'miss' represents their one and only chance. 

But what if the organization approached the recruiting and job design process more like our friends at M&M's, and if Forrester is correct, how more and more product marketers will address their markets? What if we could identify for a role, or really a role type, some essential and non-negotiable components or skills (size and shape of the candy), and then a more flexible and fluid set of variables (color, messages), that could be combined to create a more customized, personalized opportunity for the candidates? Might this be a step in addressing the 'skills gap' that might not actually solely a skills gap, but the results of a lack of institutional flexibility?

If a company could figure out a way to do this, they might get the benefit of discovering more committed and engaged candidates and employees (since they had some input into the design of the job), and also to lose less of their really talented candidates and employees because of really kind of slight and relatively unimportant mismatches between skills, interests, and job requirements.

Is it crazy to think organizations could be mature enough in their understanding of workforce capability needs to offer the ability for more personalization in the design of work?

Is it crazy that I can order twelve pounds of orange M&M's that say 'Steve is my hero?'

All these empty spaces

This morning’s drive from one suburb to the next, on a commute that I’d bet is quite similar to many of yours:

Signs are everywhere along this suburban two lane road, the kind of road that you’d see in the near and semi-near outskirts of every mid-size city.  Signs reading ‘112,500 Sq. Feet - Class ‘A’ space, will divide’. I pass four or five of these signs on my 10 minute drive each day. Not really from my drive, but you get the idea

These seemingly relatively new, perfectly adequate, likely inexpensive ‘Class A’ spaces going vacant, with buildings designed to hold dozens of tenants and hundreds of workers hanging on to the three or four anchor companies, while holding out the hope that as the economy and job market improve, so might the corporate real estate market.  And perhaps it will.

After I pass the last of these ghostly office parks I stop at the local coffee/bagel shop for a refill. The parking lot is always packed with cars.  The shop itself, (not a hip or trendy place at all), is buzzing with activity and energy. This morning, like most, nearly every table is populated with people talking, drinking coffee, and working.  Laptops are out, portfolios, resumes, project plans, blueprints - all to be found. This isn’t a ‘lone hipster hanging out all day in a coffee shop with a MacBook while looking 'pained' kind of deal’, these are the kinds of traditional, rudimentary, and entirely adult kinds of meetings that used to take place in some of that vacant Class ‘A’ space just up the road.

Heck, all the ‘work’ going on in the place makes it hard to even find some space to sit and hang out for a bit. Kind of reminds me of how it used to be impossible to score a conference room in the office. Which in is of itself one of the dysfunctional paradoxes in many traditional workplace environments - management and leadership insist that everyone congregate every day in a central location, for a fixed time period, but there is hardly any functional, effective, and even available space to actually work together. So most of us sit in our offices and cubes all day and email, IM, and occasionally call each other on the phone.

What should happen to all these empty office spaces?

Can communities and organizations re-configure, re-zone, re-deploy the spaces? Should we start by tearing down the inner walls, removing the acres of metal file cabinetry (the unfortunate by-product of the unfortunate excesses of paper creation), and put some old sofas and easy chairs? Set up a range of flexible and communal workspaces? Contract with the local coffee shop for a steady supply of caffeine that doesn’t taste like it was ordered from the same catalog as the industrial cleaning supplies?
 
Our attitudes about work are changing faster than our infrastructure. The designers and owners of places like the coffee shop can (and have) reacted more rapidly to these attitudinal changes and more expansive thinking about what the appropriate ‘place’ for work can be. They might have better and free wifi access than many offices, and they provide for many a conducive work environment without being restrictive, you can sit wherever you like, stay as long or as short as you care to, even, in the best ones, allow you to connect with people that may not have anything to do with your company or work, but just might provide the kind of inspiration and re-charge that most traditional office workers rarely get to experience.

In ‘Caddyshack’ the Al Czervik character, a real estate developer played by the great Rodney Dangerfield observes, ‘Country Clubs and cemeteries are the biggest wastes of real estate there are’. I think perhaps if Al observed all the ‘Class A Space Available’ signs and the coffee shops and bookstores packed with workers, he might add ‘Suburban office parks’ to the list.

Logo Outrage and Lack Thereof

Have you seen all the outrage and crazed, incensed, 'blow up the interwebs' freakout that has accompanied the JC Penney logo redesign?

What's that?  You missed it?

Of course you did, because unlike recent and much more high profile logo changes from the Gap and Starbucks, hardly anyone seemed to notice or care about the JC Penney logo changes.

No massive Facbook protests. No derisive Twitter hashtag like #JCPFAIL that suddenly turned into a trending topic. The only reason I even know enough about the new logo to post about it is that I am insane and need to turn away from the computer once in a while.

Accoding to the press release, the new logo offers, 'fresh, bold design', and 'signifies the Company’s great progress in creating a more exciting and relevant shopping experience'.

And that may be true, lowercase letters and a two-tone vibe seem fairly exciting. I guess.

The reason I bring this up, besides it being the end of a ridiculously long and tiring week, is to ask a simple question?

If you, or really your organization, announces a big change, a major initiative, restructuring, re-branding, re-imagining of your corporate mythology and no one (at least by today's social web measure), seems to notice, then did it really even happen?

And if no one notices, and after the big splash announcement your Google Alert only fills up with services that picked up your press release and that is about it, is that a signal or a sign of your irrelevance?

Should JC Penney care that you did not even know they changed their logo, and that you certainly didn't rush to Twitter and Facebook to get your opinion registered? How could JCP do this!?!

Is this the most tedious post you have ever read?

Have a great weekend!

Feel like the walls are closing in around you?

Have you ever gotten the feeling at the office that the walls were literally closing in around you?

That you barely have room to spin around in your chair without bashing into something - a file cabinet, a cubicle wall, or an office door?

That at the end of the day when you climb in to your hip, new, and uber-green Smart Car you think to yourself, 'Man, it feels good to stretch out a bit'.

Well, you are not alone in having that shrinking feeling.  According to a recent report from the International Facility Management Association, the office and cubicle walls are truly closing in on most American workers, with the average office worker seeing their allotment of space shrinking from 90 square feet in 1994, to 75 square feet in 2010.

By way of comparison, the average size of a prison cell in a supermax facility is about 100 square feet. But admittedly, you'd make some pretty serious tradeoffs swapping your tiny cube with bad flourescent lighting and no windows for the extra leg room in the supermax. Not to mention some potentially dodgy neighbors.

So why are offices and cubicles shrinking?

The International Facility Management Association offers some expected explanations; desire for organizations to control and reduce real estate costs, the rise of virtual and telework schemes making larger office spaces less important, and the technological progress that has made computers and monitors smaller, and reduced the amount of paper that is generated and stored in offices and cubes.

Those explanations certainly make sense, costs for real estate are a concern, at least some people have flexible schemes that render permanently assigned large office spaces at least a partial waste of space, and laptops and flat screen monitors take up a smaller footprint that even a few years ago.  

But by shrinking the size of offices, and more importantly cubicles, are organizations sacrificing their employee's comfort and well-being to in order to shave a precious few feet of floor space?  At some point one would think this trend would have to cease, as there does eventually become a minimum amount of space needed to hold even a small desk, chair, and workstation.

But I think the better question is, if organizations are finding it either necessary or prudent to continue to compress and shrink the space assigned to office workers, and technology continues to render the tradtional concepts and approaches of office design antiquated, then when will we see organizations start to eliminate the office altogether?

For back office functions like HR, accounting, communications, legal, etc. is there truly a compelling case for the people in these functions to congregate daily, in a central building, sitting in personal spaces of ever-decreasing size and comfort, while generating excess costs, using energy, and with workers in their cars contributing to traffic and pollution reliably each morning and afternoon. How many days to so many information workers make the commute only to hunker in their tiny cubes all day, headphones on, coats hanging from a hook on the wall not more than a foot away from the computer?

Costs, technology, changes in the attitudes and working preferences, particularly amongst the younger generations really should be changing more of how we work, and how our organizations design and coordinate this work.

Closing in the walls around workers seems to be about the weakest response possible to these trends.

Postscript - The Smart fortwo pure coupe model is 8.8 feet long, and 5.1 feet wide, for a footprint of about 45 square feet.  So at lease most of us can still park one in our cubes.