This is the challenge we issue to you.

And since this is a “marketing” blog, I ask you to apply it to questioning the marketing status quo. Yes, traditional advertising, but also Web 2.0. Social media. Word of mouth. Question it. Even better, question the advice that you find. Stir some things up. Don’t always accept what you’re being told. Be independent. Question. Challenge. Know that nobody has all the answers. Think for yourself instead of accepting what an “expert” says.

Declare your independence. No country was founded (or even discovered) by followers. They were founded on people striking out on their own in search of a better way of doing things.

Happy birthday, America.

It’s a great motto to live and work by: Don’t take yourself seriously. Stepping away from Twitter and SM for two weeks was refreshing. And to come back to it again has really opened my eyes that I need to revamp who I decide to follow. Because there are SO many marketers on there that take themselves far too seriously. The inflated egos are incredible in that make-believe world.

But I digress.

We met with some great folks yesterday who were curious about what makes Brains on Fire tick - especially our culture. And not taking ourselves seriously plays a pretty big role. Like one of the 12 Beliefs in our Tequila Shots Book says: If we aren’t havin’ fun, we must be doing something wrong. That doesn’t mean we won’t roll-up our sleeves and get our hands dirty. That doesn’t mean we won’t bend over backwards for clients, friends and kindred spirits. That doesn’t that we don’t think our work not only benefits our clients, but helps enhance and - dare I say - change their employees and customers lives for the better. That is serious stuff.

But the second we take ourselves too seriously, we’re done. We’re lumped into the prima donnas. The “better than yous.” The marketing circles in SM that only kiss each others butts. And we don’t wanna go there.

So don’t take yourself too seriously. After all, it’s marketing, people.

Want to learn more about the culture at Brains on Fire? Check out the recent “CODcast” with our friends at Catch Your Limit Consulting.

This ah-ha moment comes from Roger Dennis, a consultant in New Zealand and super-smart guy I met at the event and had lunch with one day. Among the great conversation, Roger revealed a tool that he uses to help encourage and activate advocates is a business card-sized tool that has one simple message on it: “You have permission to change the system.”

Wow.

By simply giving someone permission, you open up a world of possibilities. They don’t have to tread lightly or be afraid of repercussions. They don’t have to fear the hierarchy. They have been given permission. Because when you give permission to employees, customers and advocates you are giving them a hall pass. A permit. Official authorization. And it’s amazing the empowerment that comes along with that.  As the Fan Cycle states, Empowerment leads to Evangelism. Evangelism leads to Ownership. And Ownership means that your fans success is your success and your success is your fans success. That’s what we call a win-win.

Such a simple concept from Roger. And yet, so powerful. My favorite part? It’s not digital. It’s not a Twitter strategy. It’s not online social media. It’s tangible. It fits in the palm of your hand. And it taps into one of the most basic components of human DNA: appealing to a person’s sense of self-worth.

So grant permission. And watch what happens.

So please take a moment to click on this link and take our very brief, anonymous survey. If you received this link in the email, then you won’t need to take the survey via the blog… it’s all the same survey.

Thanks again to all of you who help keep the fire going. We love you all!

Rob is inspirational when he speaks to large crowds or when you have dinner one-on-one, but the note that caught my eye was this: “Will influencers give you sweat equity? No. But the PASSIONATE ones will.”

That’s gold, baby. And so freakin’ true.

It might seem like we’re hammering that issue home here at Brains on Fire. And you’re darn tootin’ we are.

Look, influencers are great. And often times we include them in the Participation and Insight portions of our movement-building projects. But how likely are they to bend over backwards to help, well, anyone except their immediate circle who keeps them influential? Not very. But the passionate folks, the ones that aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and be a part of something bigger than themselves - they are happy to contribute sweat equity. Because sweat equity goes far, far beyond you tweeting or blogging about something. Sweat equity is a personal sacrifice. When you give you sweat equity, you give your loyalty. Your time. Your effort.

And I’ll take 100 passionates who contribute that sweat equity just because they care as opposed to 1000 influentials who post a tweet and never think about it again.

It’s probably not a revelation to anybody that there’s a big mismatch between the “why” consumers will give you and what’s really going on in their brain that’s driving a certain decision. Neale does a nice job of introducing one of the culprits - our habits. Those automatic behaviors that we do without even thinking about them. Without understanding our “autographics”, if you will, can we really understand why consumers do things? Or - the marketer’s dream - how to help your brand become habitual?

Two points that Neale lays out that I found particularly important to take away:

1. Our habits often operate independent of intention, and absent of conscious goals. In other words, the habit system and the goal system can be like the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other. Unfortunately, all too often we don’t even know the devil is there. We can easily talk about what we intend to do. But habits lurk in the shadows. Never gone. But always (for many of us) dominant.

2. Habits are also not driven by attitudes. Sometimes they may align. But it’s also true that the best psychographics can still do a terrible job predicting actual behavior. People say they want to eat healthy, but don’t. Say we care about the environment, but buy disposable. Attitudes are conscious expressions of our beliefs. Habits are unconscious behaviors, rooted in the past - often going back a long long time.

These simple realities present particularly big challenges for marketing - not only because they inherently limit what can be learned from the vast majority of market research. But also because they spell out a truth all too often ignored - that information is not enough to change deep seeded behavior. Healthcare compliance is a perfect example - there’s no shortage of information and health education out there. But we still smoke, drink too many soft drinks, and eat carbohydrates like they’re going out of stock.

What fascinates me these days - is thinking about how to effectively recondition habits. If you can’t do it by throwing education at the problem, how do you do it? I also find the idea of changing the goal from developing preference for your brand to making it a habit intriguing. Albeit scary. This is one of those times where I have to say that I hope neuroscience and/or marketing never quite figures it out. While the idea of really making consumers healthier, or greener is inspiring - would marketing really use that knowledge responsibly?

I guess that would mean breaking our own bad habits!

This question came from a very nice woman I met at a cookout who was starting a company that specialized in home veterinary visits. It’s such an interesting question and there are a lot of different ways to answer it. You could focus on the tactics of word of mouth marketing, or talk about social media but I think what gets lost is what makes people talk about your product or service in the first place. For people to talk about you in an authentic way you have to give them a reason, and that reason should be how much they loved using your product or service.

Negative, positive and ambivalent word of mouth can happen for a lot of reasons but in general they fall into a few different categories. According to a study from Wilfrid Laurier University, which I think is right on point, people will engage in negative word of mouth for three reasons- anger, disappointment and regret. When people are angry, they’ll talk negatively about you to get revenge. If people are disappointed they’ll talk about you in a negative way to warn others and when people regret doing business with you they turn to their social circle to make themselves feel better. Then there are the customers who are merely satisfied- who won’t talk about you at all unless asked and even then their comments won’t exactly inspire anyone.

The people who will spread the word and preach to the streets how awesome you are, are the customers who are amazed by your product or service and also feel that they can trust you. These are the people that will stick by you when the economy sucks and these are the people that will help grow your roots and help you weather the storm so your tree isn’t the first to tumble. (Link to Tallest Trees Post)

Most examples of a company encouraging you to talk about them while simultaneously selling a sub par product are local, since most of those companies don’t make it long enough for others to find out about them. I’m sure you have your own but a great example in Greenville was a small shop that was so busy trying to convince people to talk about them, they forgot that people weren’t willing to pay eight dollars for a mediocre fried hot dog! Needless to say- they didn’t make it past a year.

Negative word of mouth is a killer for new businesses, it’s tough to overcome a loud critic of yours when there are only a few people talking about you. By the same token, having a loud a proud advocate of yours telling everyone about your service can be a huge boost to a new business. So before you focus the tactics of word of mouth, focus on having an amazing product or service that will blow customers minds without fail!

I can also count on my dad to talk (sometimes ad nauseam) about mythology. He’s an avid reader of myth and Jung. I’m convinced that he comes to visit me in Asheville as much for the book selection at Malaprops as to see his grandkids!

In any case we were talking the other day about the power of underlying mythology to drive behavior and I started to think about the mythology of marketing. I don’t mean necessarily falsehoods or mistruths - as we commonly use the word “myth”. I mean those core values so deep seeded that we may not even be conscious of how strongly our actions are influenced by them. Those stories and commonplace heroes that are such part of our cultural fabric that we don’t even question the belief system they exemplify.

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have any well researched answers to offer but I can think of at least 3 key elements that define marketing today. First, that more convenient is better. That people are busy - that they value getting quality time back - is not an insight. Today I would think it’s a starting point for any brand. Over the decades, our culture has become so dependent upon convenient solutions that it’s difficult to imagine what events or stories could possible arise to change that. But we can all certainly admit that in the big picture, convenience isn’t necessarily a good thing. It’s given us gas guzzling SUVs and disposable products galore, not to mention quick food options that unquestionably have made a significant contribution to our growing obesity epidemic.

Second is the idea that more choices is better. Wouldn’t it be interesting if for just one month, companies could only produce ONE version of a brand. Eliminate all the various packaging quantities, sizes, lite, no fat, with calcium, no sugar added, low salt, with or without licensed characters, organic, all natural, one ply, two ply, plain white or designed, smell like spring or Febreeze, and on and on. It would, at the least, make grocery shopping a lot more convenient and give me a lot of that quality time I want back! Do we really want more choices? We’ve grown so accustomed to having a plethora of options that cannibalizing your own market share has become a solid strategy.

And then there’s the idea that customers know best. That all you need to do is ask the customer - listen to the customer, in order to…. Well that is exactly the point, isn’t it? To what? To make more profit? To generate brand loyalty? To make sure that we’re meeting customer needs? Maybe the bigger underlying mythology is that companies exist to serve customer needs. Probably that seems so basic that you’re rolling your eyes at the fact I would dare to question that. But I do indeed question whether being led by your customers’ attitudes and needs is at the heart of what companies exist to do. Companies don’t just manufacture products or provide services. They employ people. They provide stability. They use community resources and generate community waste. They define trends in cultural behavior, condition new habits - for better or worse. Companies can change the world, or bring our global economic fabric to the brink of catastrophe.

What’s it going to take to change our marketing mythology? I don’t have the answers. But I believe it needs to be changed. I believe that we need new stories, new heroes…new ideals.

insert pithy closing here - I’m back to thinking about convenient, innovative ways to meet customer needs!

On a recent insight trip for a project I had a conversation with John Moore about digging deep into the experience of a particular organization. We both agreed digging into the experience is the part that we really found exciting and meaningful. But I’m sure your wondering what exactly do you mean “digging deep into the experience?”

Social Media monitoring tools like Radian6, Scout Labs, or even our frequent insight partner Umbria (J.D.Power) provide wonderful horizontal and vertical socialmedia digging. I love that stuff. But what I really like to do is view the social media landscape of the brand, talk to the stakeholders (employees and customer about what they do and what they want to do) pick a strategic spot and dig in.

I can’t speak for John but for me “experience” is getting under the hood of the brand firsthand. Exploring where conversations live daily as an employee and a customer. That’s where the magic comes in, when you show that you are truly interested in listening you get stories not just sound bites and verbatim.

This past weekend I did a little volunteer work at the Fiskars Orange Thumb Project in Atlanta’s Edgewood Community. Joe Lamp’l of Fiskar and his team head up a true community garden project. Before any shovel hits the dirt Joe and his team interview the community residents and develop a plan together for their garden. Months of planning are required to pull of a community garden like this and it comes to life in one day. Fiskars employees, Home Depot employees, community residents old and young all pitching in digging, planting, raking, watering to build an oasis for a once struggling community.

The part of the day I enjoyed was digging a big hole for a tree with a community resident. He told me the story of his home and what it meant to the community for this garden to be built. He was proud and hopeful that this garden would give this long forgotten community a different future. The Project Orange Thumb experience gave him a role, that he shared with his community neighbors and it gave over 20 employees of Fiskars and Home Depot a connection to a community that will last long after the last shrub was planted and the garden mulched.

As I reflected in the cool comfort of my hotel room I made a Digging Deep into the Experience List inspired from my weekend volunteering with Project Orange Thumb:

1. Determine the best digging site. Where is the most authentic place for the brand to start digging? Don’t be afraid of starting conversations, relying on a “hotdog stand(1)” to get people’s attention will get you an audience for the wrong reason.

2. Measure the root ball for what you want to learn. Use all that robust social media conversation mining to help determine how wide and deep you need to go to get the roots to spread. The richness and sentiment of the conversation text can help you better plan going out and getting first-hand experience.

3. Dig the Hole. You need the right tools. Grab your camera, a Flip cam, Sharpie and Moleskin and a bottle of water and start talking. Oh, by the way don’t forget your ears.

4. Set the tree in the hole. A tree usually takes more than one person to place in the hole. I prefer digging into the experience with a teammate; this makes me be a better listener, and another point of view when reflecting on the experience.

5. Tickle the Roots. I don’t know of many successful gardeners that just plant a tree in the ground without being hands-on with the roots. It doesn’t matter if they are an employee or a customer their roots travel wherever they go. (2)Trees have the ability to spread their seeds by many ways but humans have a distinct advantage, we have legs to carry ideas and stories everywhere we go.

6. Fill the hole. I wish it was as easy as just opening a bag of rich soil and covering the roots with mulch and it’s over. But the truth is its just beginning. Expanding on the theory that humans have a distinct marketing advantage over trees. We want to give these roots (connected to people) fertile soil but not cover them up. Help them develop fertile tools to tell their stories and come together in natural organic ways. I’ll admit it for me I fill the hole by testing thoughts and ideas that I’ve had from digging into experiences.

7. Water regularly. You can go by the book or you can walk the grounds daily and learn from what all that experience digging has planted. Of course this takes listening, that’s the price of entry nowadays. It takes moving beyond monitoring into engaging not just as a brand to its fans, but by applying friendship rules. A good friend tells you the truth when you need it, this means not covering up the mess sometimes.

The benefits of digging deep can nurture a healthy relationship for a brand, its employees and customers. I don’t see many easy fixes today, it could take months and even years for a customer to develop a relationship they can trust with a brand nowadays. There’s no way you and the brand won’t do a little of your sweating digging into the experience a brand shares with it’s employees and customers. But its worth it because that digging and nurturing can turn into relationships that bear fruit for years.

(1) Don’t build a Hotdog Stand ­ A Brains on Fire family term for being authentic to the conversation your having on the street with people. If your in a park talking to people about parks, don’t offer them a hot dog just to have a conversation. Make their day by giving something authentic to the specific experience in the environment like a locally grown flower and a thanks for caring about their parks.

(2) Anatomy of Buzz by Emanuel Rosen; Trees have an interesting marketing problem. They need to spread their seeds widely to avoid competing with their own offspring for sun, water, and food. Trees developed ways like seduction and hitchhiking to spread seeds. The strategy adopted by trees is too limited. Yet some companies adopt it by default. They develop beautiful fruit: and wait for customers to come and find it and carry it around to wherever they happen to go. They believe that having a good product or providing a good service is all that¹s needed. These companies are not utilizing a significant advantage that we, as humans, have over trees: We can walk to the other end of the forest and plant the seed ourselves.

Two words. It seems so simple and yet so under used these days. We are growing up in a society where social graces are being lost because human contact is being replaced by Twitter, Facebook, and more Social Media tools that I can recite. But yet, we are all seeking interaction with one another. I find this fascinating and scary at the same time. While I work for a company that helps build social media strategies for companies to help them connect their passionate customers to their brands, we still find that a majority of those conversations happen offline.

So why then are we losing our abilities to do the little things that matter? Have you noticed lately that when you stop to open the door for someone, they forget to say thank-you? How many of us remember to send thank-you cards after we’ve visited someone for a weekend? Or when a business associate in the industry has given you their time and allowed you to bounce ideas off them?

When was the last time you said “thank-you” to a client just for being your client?

This year has been challenging for many on so many levels. Not just in business, but in personal lives. People have struggled. President Obama reads personal letters everyday of people in this country to remind him to stay connected to the struggles and issues that we are facing day-to-day. Do you reach out to listen and read letters from your customers every day? We try really hard.

We recently had our FIRE sessions. We have this event as a way of giving thanks to our clients for their support, friendship and being part of our community. Before our FIRE session we sent out a survey to ask what they wanted the FIRE session to address as part of our theme of “sticking together” so they could help shape the day. When I think about it, our clients help shape every day. We would not exist if it was not for our clients and for that we say from the bottom of our hearts, “thank-you.” Two very simple words that can’t begin to measure the gratitude and privilege we feel for partnering with a wonderful group of people. Who wouldn’t want to get up every day to work on the clients that we have?