Paul Isakson

An Impossible Ideal Worth Pursuing

Yesterday I wrote about a key question that every business should ask, inspired by a post on Medium discussing the approach Steve Jobs took to product development at Apple. When I was done with the post, my brain continued on that path for a while. As I thought about it more, Apple's latest ad campaign came to mind.

Despite the campaign being dinged a bit, I liked it. Particularly the opening video from WWDC 2013. I felt it gave us a look behind the curtain that we were blocked off from before. It shows us the ethos of Apple in plain terms. While this might not be doing much for viewers, I think it is important in that it states very clearly what Apple's intentions are for their products and through this statement, it holds them more accountable to these intentions.  Especially with having said them so publicly.

In the tv spot, Apple shares three questions they consider when designing a new product:

How will it make someone feel?

Will it make life better?

Does it deserve to exist?

The print version asks similar questions. 

As I considered these questions further, I couldn't help but wonder what the world would be like if every company more seriously asked these questions about their own products. Would the world look the same as it does today if we thought harder about what we're making and how it would effect people in both the immediate and long term?

Apple asks these questions because their solitary focus is on what the experience of the product is for the user and then honing that product experience until it enhances every life it touches. That's no small task, but it is absolutely one worth pursuing. Beyond their products, I hope they also ask these same questions and have this same intention for everything they do, from their production process to their employee policies to their marketing materials and beyond.

With that, I think Apple's intention is one more companies should pursue in earnest. What if every company sought to enhance every life they touched above and before any other goal of the business? What if when they couldn't answer yes to these questions, they went back to the drawing board until they could?

While this might seem like an impossible ideal, I think it's one worth all of us working towards more diligently. Let's work harder to start making things better. Let's start asking bigger questions.

The next time you get briefed on a new project for a client, instead of asking what the ad or the Facebook content should be, start by asking what actions the brand could take to make people's lives better. Then let the content produced by those actions become the ads. 

If you're lucky enough to be a part of new product and service design, let's start asking bigger, better, longer-thinking questions before the product gets produced. Let's stop thinking moment by moment and start thinking about the future and what kind of impact we're having on the world through what we create today for the generations that will come after us.

I know it's a lot to ask, but again, I think it's absolutely worth the effort. And while seemingly impossible, I don't think we should let that stand in our way. To a large degree, the standards and ideals that many of the world's major religions hold their followers accountable to are also pretty impossible, yet billions of people have chosen to purse them anyway.

If billions of people are willing to pursue impossible to achieve religious ideals, I say let's give this ideal for businesses our best shot. What do we have to lose?

If It Ain't Broke...

How did you complete that headline? "Don't fix it?" Or something more like, "Break it!"? How would your company's leadership answer it? I think this one simple statement can tell us a lot about an organization's prospects for success today and in the future.

This thought was sparked by a post I came across on Medium titled, "The Secret of Steve". The post shares a perspective on what made Steve Jobs tick and drove his decisions at Apple. It's main point is that Steve constantly asked, "Why doesn't it work?" In other words, what could be better about this product/marketing/etc.?

The section in particular that grabbed me was this:

“Why doesn’t it work?” deceives us with its simplicity. The first challenge is asking it. The Chief Engineer refused to consider this question. His logic: Sales are rising and customers are happy, therefore nothing is broken and there is nothing to fix.

Sales + Customers = Nothing Broken is the formula for corporate cyanide. Most big companies that die kill themselves drinking it. Complacency is an enemy. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” is an impossible idiom. No matter what the sales, no matter what the customer satisfaction, there is always something to fix. Asking, “Why doesn’t it work?” is creation’s inhalation. Answering is breathing out. Innovation becomes suffocation without it.

“Why doesn’t it work?” has the pull of a pole star. It sets creation’s direction. For Jobs and the iPhone the critical point of departure was not finding a solution but seeing a problem: the problem of permanent keyboards making smarter phones harder to use. Everything else followed.

Not changing a product because it's selling just fine is one form of corporate cyanide. But it's not just that so many companies take the, "If it ain't broke don't fix it," mentality. It also happens from the way a lot of companies do look to change their products. That view is the greedy view. Instead of looking to improve a product or service for the customer, they look to improve the profit margins for themselves.

Rather than asking, "Why doesn't it work?", they ask, "How can we make more money from this?" This often ends up in teams of really smart people looking for how to take costs out of the product while holding the price steady. It becomes a game of "how cheap can we make this yet still get people to pay the same price for it?" As a customer, that sounds great, doesn't it?

I've always believed that one of the keys behind Apple's success is that they work hard to make their own products irrelevant before a competitor does. Sure some of this has to do with them working in technology and the pace of innovation in that industry. But it also has to do with them constantly seeking to provide people with a better experience. They don't just upgrade the hardware and components. They're also constantly tweaking the software to improve usability and enjoyment.

I can't help but think that the world would be in a lot better place if more companies shared this approach. Thankfully, we're starting to see more companies pop up who do and are working to make things better.

Make The Best Of What You Have

Quite a while back I wrote about seeing opportunity everywhere, starting with a quote from one of my favorite books. I was reminded of this by a post on Storyline.  The story they shared is about professional pianist Nils Frahm. It says:

Recently, Nils broke his thumb. Which is really bad news for a professional pianist.

He had shows to do. Commitments to fulfill. Projects to complete. And now a much needed thumb was broken and in a cast.

So for a few days he felt pathetic. He spent a couple more days of feeling sorry for himself. He had the right to be down in the dumps about this whole situation.

But Nils decided to do something unexpected … he began to write some piano songs. Against his Doctors orders, Nils composed 9 beautiful piano solos with his 9 working fingers. Minus the broken thumb of course. (You can listen to what he created here. It’s awesome!)

The lesson for us all: Take what you got (even if it’s broke) and make something beautiful.

This same lesson applies in agency life. If you're banking on getting to do great work once you win that next piece of new business, you're going to be continually frustrated. You can't do work for clients you don't have. Not only that, but that new biz client you're hoping to win will take into account your most recent work on the clients you do have to predict what kind of work they'll get from you.

Does your current portfolio reflect the kind of work you're hoping to do?

If not, stop hoping for great work from clients you don't have and put that energy into getting your current clients to do better work. They're the best opportunity you have. Find a way to make something beautiful for them.

I know it can be hard, but if you fill your creative presentations with passion, optimism and a healthy amount of support for why the work will work, you'll get them there. Maybe not right away, but you will. Just keep fighting the good fight.

If culture eats strategy for breakfast, what does it have for lunch?

I'd argue that it eats the brand. Without a great culture, you're going to have a very hard time sustaining a great brand. I've written about the importance of company culture as it relates to building a strong brand before. Today two articles reminded me of this.

The first one was disheartening. According to recent research findings based on people self-reporting their happiness at various times during they day through an app, most people are miserable at work. So miserable that the only thing ranking lower than being at work is being home sick in bed. That just flat out sucks to hear. It's not surprising. But it still sucks. We spend far too many hours of our days working to be this miserable.

The second article was more on the postive side. For me at least. According to data provided by Glassdoor to Mashable, employee satisfaction at Yahoo is at a five year high. In addition to this, Marissa Mayer is enjoying an approval rating well above her predecessors, despite some of the moves she has made that drew much criticism.

Personally, I'm excited by this news for Yahoo. I'm pulling for them to turn things around and become a company people admire and respect instead of being what they have been these past few years. If Yahoo is to turn their brand around, it's going to have to come from the inside (the culture) first.

Why does culture matter so much to having a strong brand—especially when it comes to turning around a brand?

Culture matters so much because when people feel like what they're doing is meaningful, when they feel like it truly matters, they'll go above and beyond to do a great job. They'll look for problems to proactively solve. They'll find ways to improve the user's experience with the product or service. They'll take extra steps to ensure a great customer service experience. All of this will drive a great brand image more than any piece of marketing communications ever will.

And again, this attitude is even more critical when you're trying to turn a brand around. It's no different than trying to change personal behavior. If you want people to act differently towards you and/or think differently about you, you have to change how you behave. If you act the same, nothing changes. Sure, you can change your hairstyle or buy a new wardrobe. But these things are merely external and short-term gimmicks. It won't take long for people to see you haven't really changed at all.

It's the same with a brand. If all you do is change the logo, come up with a new look for the product, or come up with a creative new ad campaign, people will see right through it. Maybe not right away, but they will eventually. Not only that, but employees will see it as smoke and mirrors as well, which doesn't motivate them to change their attitudes at all.

To create true change, you have to change from within. By inspiring employees to care more about their work, the brand will reflect this new attitude. If they're miserable, well, how much effort do you want to put into something when you feel miserable? Right.

What I'm saying is, to incorporate another famous quote in this post, be the change you wish to see in the brand. Change your culture to change the brand.

More "And", Less "Or"

The first time I saw this spot a few years back (o.k., maybe more than a few), I instantly loved it. In coming across it again, it makes me think of the tension in ad land these days between those defending the "traditional" marketing and those pushing for "modern" marketing.

The truth is, it's not an either/or thing. It's an "and" thing. Brands need both approaches to work in harmony to be successful. We're not at a point in time where we can completely write-off traditional advertising. We may never be. I mean, we still see sandwich boards dotting sidewalks.

I can't help but feel we'd all be a lot better off if we stopped looking at the world as though it had to be only one way or the other and instead looked for how we make the "and" work better as a whole.