An Einstein Rationale for Your Business Marketing

Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results - Albert Einstein -

Einstein is credited with many a smart quotation, but perhaps the most relevant one for business in the digital age than this one. With this brilliant sort of simplification in mind, marketing and PR today is insane, or worse. But however much we would enjoy criticizing the evangelists (good and bad) for such things as social media and affiliate programs, etc. the problem with YOUR business is not really their fault. Now is it? 

Courtesy Brian Solis photostream

Last week I was with a notable friend visiting Europe for speaking engagements, and for promoting his most recent book; “What’s the Future of Business”. Brian Solis is probably the best known of a group of technology analysts and theorists, not to mention iconic social media practitioners out there. I'll make no bones about enjoying promoting his efforts, besides being a friend, he’s just flat out right about this futuristic business business. But I won’t chide readers to nibble at my own assessments here on Generation C and how “experiences” will lead your hotel or hot tub wholesale business to the promised land - buy the book, it’s worth 50 times the price at Amazon. 

What I will attempt to do here is to truly help your business, big or small, floating or sinking, wake up to a reality you don’t believe in any more. That would be a profitable and fulfilling business (whatever it is) made more so by the digital innovation,  a business not only thriving in the years to come, but one which really does sell the value it professes. Fanciful, no? Well, a last note on Solis’ Generation C (truly connected people) is an undeniable “Einstien-ish” eventuality - numbers do not lie, and expectations must be met. 

Maritz Research and evolve 24 Twitter Study - courtesy Maritz Research

Now, is your business just paying lip service to social media? Other marketing and visibility channels? More precisely, if you do not fully understand all the elements of modern business, will you survive for long? Sorry, but religions needed to use Armageddon to scare the wits out of people, maybe you'll be scared into helping yourself now? You don’t want to believe, I know, I understand. Let me cement this concept of user experience for you. 

Another web famous friend of mine (forgive me for name dropping, it saves time) Chris Abraham (fully connected plus below) is one of the most brilliant PR and marketing experts I know of. In case you ventured across him on Twitter or Facebook, or a dozen other places online, that homespun demeanor and cowboy-like attitude is real. And really effective when it comes to influencing people too. A post just yesterday on Huff Po may help the five star hotel executive out there, or the auto parts chain owner even, for an “aha” moment (I can only pray), if I cannot. “Your Best Prospects Are Your Customers’ Online Friends’ Friends” is a meat and potatoes version of Brian Solis brand of so-called digital anthropology. VentureBeat to the Huffington Post, but cowboy marketing know how first! 

Abraham’s post exemplifies actually, everything any of us learned about influence, PR, and storytelling in the first place. While Mr. fancy pants luxury courtier may scoff at good ole' American Earthiness, just “who” Chris Abraham is, what he is impressed by, is poured like molten steel all over Highfalutin digital and social selling expertise. Excuse my entonation here, but some of you have been exceedingly hard headed. I quote a paragraph that says it all for your future in business: 

“In a world made egalitarian by the Internet, the competition for time and treasure has never been more cut-throat; and, shrouded in the fog of war that results from this level of global competition, and of limited time, attention, and cash, every bricks-and-mortar organization, hotel, and restaurant, and retail store needs something more than just the best prices (can’t compete with the Internet) or most deserved mission (you and everyone else). What is needed is a personal testimonial from a friend (or a friends of a friend) or someone whom a real person knows and respects, advocates to vouch for you and your endeavors.”

Great Expectations - Not by Charles Dickens

And what’s the expectation out there? What happens when everybody, everybody that matters that is, watches TV? Huh, oh sorry. What I meant was, “what happens when everybody is so entrenched, affected by, and utterly used to their tablet, smartphone, or Google glasses being part of their decision making process? Part of their ”experience", the moments we share because they are all we have. Uh hum.

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.” - Albert Einstein -

You are not convinced by guns blazing rhetorical style, or even proven social media clout? Hey, neither was that fancy pants (very refined and intelligent) hotelier I just got off the phone with. I said I wouldn’t mention any names, but I would have. You see as a storyteller who loves it, my best case scenario here is. 

1. Something in this post makes you investigate (Solid would call this a First Moment of Truth I guess)
2. Through supportive evidence I have provided, but more importantly the “proof” you discover leads you to complete the FMOT above
3. Then, through due dilligence you would enact for any proven strategy you discover just how effective these strategies are - your ROI comes into view, you have gone through your Second Moment of Truth (SMOT), and you’ve enter into Solis “WTF” territory, or Abraham’s “compelling nature of sharing experiences”. 
4. Then, having fully evolved into a 21st Century business entity, having mastered many of the marketing skills necessary, your organization evolves to discover the ZMOT, or the moment that matters even before the Proctor & Gamble FMOT. The online or digital operand of your sales and today - tomorrow. 
5. Finally, understanding technology and social psychology have impacted you massively (even while you have been clueless), a new concept appears before you shiny and starstruck eyeballs - The ULTIMATE MOMENT OF TRUTH - a dynamic customer journey, replete with endless interrupt points that can elevate or damn your business now and in the future. 

Shhhh! I hear it, can’t you? “What’s in it for this guy?” You may think being friends with people or even admiring them and their ideas is somehow shameful. But guess what? Not when one is not along, and particularly not when the theories and ideas are right. I just tried to help a brilliant luxury hotelier see the sense in all this, and over what these digital gurus would call a guest experience, and so on. Not only was the hotelier absolutely clueless as to anything but his own expertise, but nearly all the constituent business around that entity were either ignorant or could have cared less about a customer review. We came to the point, this expert hospitality guru and I, “perhaps some people just make too much money to care?” Perhaps. Finally, another friend, and not coincidentally another of the world’s leading experts on social media marketing, Chris Brogan (pictured below) and I exchanged mails just yesterday over some of this.

To wit, some of your reading this may be making way too much money to listen up here. That depends on your goals, I suppose. I know Chris won’t mind me making a point here with a brief quote. The reason for my writing this post, aside really being puzzled why super luxurious businesses cannot truly be super luxurious for every client, is to help business people do better. To that end, Chris has made it clear: 

“There are endless opportunities to talk with people who could use some help moving forward. However, it only works if the people want to move forward.”

Change - The Only Real Constant

You want technology, science, innovation? One of the only certain things in the universe is, constant change. Another sentiment that is not only from Brian Solis’ latest book on doing business, but many other pundits, it is an ideal that I have personally evangelized to every-single-solitary-contact-and-client-or-friend we have come into contact with over the last decade. Every one. Speaking about “expectations” as in the chart above, #WTF tells on how people feel when companies do not respond - in this sense, on Twitter. They feel there is no customer service, that YOU are on Twitter just to market or sell you wares, to take their money, and to offer as little value as your accounts people can justify. You don’t care. 

And the problem for you is not that that Twitter packing customer thinks you don’t care, it’s that each and every potential customer who comes into contact with that sentiment, will believe the same thing  on some level. For fancy pants hoteliers raking in the dough from the Hollywood set, as long as the caviar flows, they probably could care less (or are not paid to - yet). But along about the time another hotel springs up, with exactly the same offering, empowered by true excellence in business...

Courtesy Philippe's Facebook

This Tnooz interview by Sean O‘Neil with Brian Solis interjects a bit of negativity onto hospitality marketing. This industry really is, a good barometer for many others where fragmented strategies are concerned. In the piece O’Neil mentions another innovative and forward edge group, Elegancia Hotels, founded by yet another friend and visionary, Philippe Vaurs (pictured above in characteristic pose). And in this mention I personally express the tenants of marketing hitherto professed. You see I was on the phone this morning with a hotel “host” who instead of accepting me or anyone an authority on these subject, let alone one of Chris Abraham’s “vouching” parties, instead chose to classify lost expectations via excuses. Just become luxury hotels in London have an 82 percent or higher occupancy rate, you will have to accept being less “wowed” than otherwise. Meanwhile even if a certain group of hotels has no need of more clients (maybe some make too much off the upper crust), Vaurs manages to maintain an 88% or better occupancy in Paris. And guess what? His people will answer a tweet too.

I’m no Einstein folks but an Elegancia hotel popping up in the center of London boasting an 88% occupancy, and the strategies herein otherwise optimized applied, this simply means 82 percent becomes 76 percent. At 500 GBPs a pop, that deficit gets pretty expensive for somebody. Please forgive my lesson to fancy pants hoteliers here, I did it for them and you. Now your decision is; “Did I just waste my time reading this, or am I on the trail of something tangible that will really help my business?” Well? 

I leave you with a parting note from What’s the Future of Business, via Jeremy Collier. You see, what “experts” in one field do not know, they should at least train someone to know for them, their business (Mr Fancy Pants). 

“We must not let go manifest truths go because we cannot answer all questions about them.”

Additional image credit: Chris Brogan at the World Domination Summit - courtesy Chris Guillebeau