The PASSION DIAL

My favorite scene from the mock rockumentary This is Spinal Tap is when Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) is talking to Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner) about his special Marshall amp head…an amp on which all dials go to eleven. My favorite line is when DiBergi asks, “Why don’t you just use 10 as the loudest and make that the highest one?” Tufnel replies, “This one goes to 11!” It makes me laugh just to think about it. Maybe you’ll think it’s odd, but I also find it to be an inspiration when thinking about a brand’s relationship with its most passionate customers. Companies should aspire to ratchet-up their relationships with customers to be ONE LOUDER.

I think Tufnel’s special amp is a tribute to his passion for being the loudest band in the world. To get there, he needs one more click. Passion is not logical. And what if we used the AMP as a metaphor? As in what’s the AMP equivalent within a company? Or more to the point, how does Passion relate to a company, or an organization’s customers?

Passion is from the Latin word “patior,” meaning to suffer or to endure. To some I’m sure they felt this way listening to Tufnel playing at 11. A more contemporary definition: passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire for anything and often requiring action.

According to Thomas Friedman, curiosity and passion are key prerequisites for education in a “flat world,” where information is readily available and where global markets reward those who have learned how to learn and are self-motivated to learn. In today’s world, he argues, it is more important to be passionate and curious than to be merely smart. Friedman has reduced this principle to a formula: CQ + PQ > IQ, meaning Curiosity Quotient plus Passion Quotient is greater than Intelligence Quotient. Friedman says that he lives by this formula: “Give me the kid with a passion to learn and a curiosity to discover and I will take him or her over the less passionate kid with a huge IQ every day of the week.” IQ “still matters, but CQ and PQ . . . matter even more.”

At Brains On Fire we’ve come to learn this formula has a value for companies and organizations – specifically ones that want to create long-term, sustainable movements. Passion should be the main driver for choosing a company’s customer ambassadors. Most traditional marketing treats customers like on/off switches. It’s the campaign mentality of turning the marketing switch to ON with the start of a campaign. And when the campaign runs its multi-week course, the marketing goes dark … and the switch is turned to OFF.

Wouldn’t it be better to treat customers as volume dials rather than on/off switches? Companies should embrace conversations that have a more sustainable long-term effect. Treat customers as volume dials. The volume levels never go to zero. The conversation always continues. Sometimes the conversation gets louder and sometimes softer, but never does the conversation end or go mute. There are no off times or dark times with movements because there is always a constant hum of activity.

Today we are in a new model for building fans. Musicians of today can control their own destiny, not having to rely on the old-school record label model. But still the key to any musician’s or band’s success is the fan - just like a company or brand’s success is determined by its customers, and sustainable success by its fans.

Creating a real passion dial requires commitment by a company to put itself out there. And I’m not talking anonymously putting itself out there. I’m talking about allowing the internal workings and people to be visible and transparent. Engaging in building relationships with fans. Then recognizing the opportunities to find authentic transportation to where the fans are. Bands start with vans, then buses, then airplanes. Traveling from their neighborhood, to cities and then continents.

A band’s fan growth is usually tied to performance - the same can be said with a company. Many bands have been successful by using social media, but that’s just a small part. It’s being available to their communities of fans, large and small. This also requires a balance of benefiting the community – less money for the band/brand but more fans that lead to fame and fortune all the while maintaining loyal fans as opposed to the “sell-out,” which means more money in the short term and a lot of exposure, but a fanbase that is always looking for the next best thing – which won’t be you.

Thinking this way can keep your company’s efforts honest and thinking long-term. From a fan’s perspective that’s what we want, and from the brand’s perspective that’s what they want. Marketers and brands lose focus on PASSION, or maybe just plain and simple de-value it.

So how does a brand reach an 11 on the PASSION dial? You can say that Tufnel’s Marshall Amp really didn’t reach past 10 and go to 11. But if Tufnel believes it plays at 11, does it really matter whether or not it’s actually louder? Maybe he play his chords tighter, sustains his notes longer, and ‘what if’ he reaches 11 by feeding off the energy of his fans? That’s where a brand can reach 11. It’s fanatical fans infecting their fanaticism into the brand’s internal band members. It’s easy to stop believing and just go through the motions until you start to see that you are providing a real value to your brand fans. Moving the dial from 10 to 11 cannot be done by the fans alone.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 8:55 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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