Nonlinear Thinking

White Paper - "Content is King, Context is Queen - Together They Rule!

One of the core themes of this blog over the years has been the impact of technology on the marketing art and science.  With the advent of digital, social, and mobile media, the strategy and execution of marketing has embraced and leveraged many new channels as avenues to influencing the target customer.  I have long viewed the development and management of quality content as critical to this new process, perhaps even more than during the decades of analog-only marketing.  With the "always-on" nature of digital/social/mobile communications today and the ability to gather real-time data on prospects, context is becoming increasingly critical to ensuring that valuable content is delivered at the most optimal point in the customer's decision process.

I thought this new model was important enough to author a white paper on it and you can access it by clicking on the image or link below.  Comments and critiques are welcome.

Download Content is King

Recognizing Strategic Dissonance

Operating in a world where the competitive landscape is ever more ephemeral, challenges to the status quo ever more profound, and the life of a successful business model ever shorter, aligning a corporation’s strategic intent and strategic action becomes ever more critical.  The more dynamic the industry, the shorter the duration such alignment is likely to be.  As intent and action become misaligned, that divergence creates what Andy Grove termed “strategic dissonance” in a California Management Review article he co-authored as well as his 1996 book Only the Paranoid Survive.

Arriving at a point of strategic dissonance suggests that the incumbent strategy no longer works as the underlying market and competitive dynamics have shifted enough to require a new strategy.  Grove termed these “strategic inflection points” to describe the giving way of one type of industry dynamics for another.  Strategic inflection points signal fundamental change in a business and require a new strategy, a modified business model, and a change in the way business is conducted.  The driver might be new technology, new regulations, emergent competition, or any structural dynamic that obviates the current environment.

The challenge for anyone, management or otherwise, is to recognize the strategic dissonance and, more importantly, to perceive the opportunity being created by the strategic inflection point and requisite new strategy.

 

Recognition that the changing nature of the enterprise’s operating environment is a true strategic inflection point occurs in stages:

• Initially, identifying and articulating the existence of strategic dissonance – the growing divergence between what the company views as its strategy and the actual actions of its management team.
• Then, confirming and accepting that the new set of circumstances is indeed a strategic inflection point that will require changes to the old way of business.
• Finally, understanding the new strategic priorities, creating a framework for overcoming the strategic dissonance, and formulating a new strategic intent.

To manage through the envelope of strategic dissonance that is driven by the emergence of a true strategic inflection point requires the management insight and discipline to see that during this period of transformation, both the old and new basis of competition, distinctive competencies, strategies, and strategic actions will need to coexist.

That is a distinctive competency in and of itself.

The Complexity of Digital Marketing

This "transit map" from Gartner visually represents how hard it is to be a marketer today.

M2M and the Internet of Things

A dozen years ago in a white paper on emerging technologies I included a section on machine-to-machine (M2M) technology, though at the time that nomenclature wasn’t generally accepted.  My simple example of the power of M2M featured communications among a population of Coke machines in a large downtown area sharing real-time inventory data to allow any individual machine to direct a customer to the next closest machine should they be out of the carbonated beverage that customer desired at that particular time.

That example was fanciful at the time, but M2M has now gained traction as one of the “next big things” as hundreds of companies are combining wireless, Wi-Fi, mobile, web, and context technologies to offer information and convenience in innovative new ways.  The escalating pace of adoption for smart devices – phones, tablets, home appliances, industrial equipment - is creating new demands on enterprises and consumers around the globe which requires new thinking about the connected environment.

M2M technologies allow wireless and wired systems to communicate with other devices possessing the same capability.  M2M uses sensors, meters or like devices to capture event data (electricity usage, temperature, inventory) and share it via network with an application that translates the data into information that can be used by other devices, networks, applications and enterprises.

M2M is a critical platform for the enablement and maturation of the concept of the “internet of things” which includes everything from smartphone apps that control a home's living environment remotely to real-time analytics that help ease traffic congestion and city parking challenges.

The notion of an “internet of things” has been around for a while now.  Kevin Ashton coined the term in 1999.  Of course, a concept is never truly viable until it has its own consortium hence, the Internet of Things Consortium

The Internet of Things (IoT) represents the connection of all machines, devices, sensors, automobiles, cameras, and other "things" to help customers improve operations and save valuable time, money and even lives. The IoT connects places such as manufacturing floors, energy grids, healthcare facilities, and transportation systems.

With cloud infrastructure becoming more prominent, M2M applications have expanded beyond a one-to-one connection to become a system of networks that transmits data to personal appliances. This has made it far easier to effect M2M communication and lessened the amount of power and time necessary for information to be communicated between machines.

The critical dynamic here, and one that has been growing for at least 15 years, is that smart devices connected to the internet would eventually far outnumber the people that would be connected to the internet.  Voila! We are there.  Per Cisco, over 12.5 billion devices were connected in 2010 and Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) predicts some 25 billion devices will be connected by 2015, and 50 billion by 2020.

ERP solution provider SAP has begun to explore M2M and recently conducted a survey among IT decision makers on the impact, current and forecasted, of M2M.  Some interesting data points that emerged from that survey included:

• 85 percent of IT decision makers (ITDMs) think that M2M is a natural technological evolution and will advance the "consumerization of IT" trend
• 82 percent think that M2M interaction enables businesses to respond to real-world events
• Sixty-five percent of ITDMs think increased workforce mobility is the biggest opportunity for M2M
• 65 percent think the major challenge in M2M is managing and analyzing the real-time data.
• By year's end:
  • Mobile devices will outnumber the human population
  • Data volume will reach 4 billion terabytes
  • 90 percent of consumer-connected devices will have access to some personal cloud.
  • SAP estimated that by the end of 2020, there will be 24 billion connected devices and by 2015, 35 percent of mid-to-large organizations will adopt in-memory computing

The possibilities for machine-to-machine in concert with other emerging technologies are extraordinary. Almost every machine or device has the potential to become connected, creating interactions with other technologies and services and bringing significant impacts to processes in and across all industries.

As the notion of an “Internet of things” becomes increasingly mainstream, businesses will incorporate machine-to-machine technology to gather and use information towards both strategic and tactical ends. The end result will be new products and services that will drive new revenue streams and reduce costs for businesses.

Smart Grid Spending Explodes

A new report by ABI Research on utilities and smart grids spotlights the rapidly increasing capital investment in the component technologies that form the backbone of smart grid infrastructure. We have discussed aspects of the smart grid in the past here and here but the pace of investment is becoming parabolic as the benefit and value of the technology is becoming more profound.

A smart grid is an electrical grid that uses information and communications technology to gather and act on information, such as information about the behaviors of suppliers and consumers, in an automated fashion to improve the efficiency, reliability, economics, and sustainability of the production and distribution of electricity.

According to the ABI Report,

Spending by utilities transitioning their networks to Smart Grid capabilities reached $23.68 billion in 2012. Highlighting the growing momentum behind the spending, 2012’s total alone represents 48% of Smart Grid spending to date. During the year, spending on transmission and distribution capabilities surpassed smart meter investments as utilities increasingly looked to improve their core networks and maximize the benefits of their growing Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) deployments.

Smart grid spending in 2012 was up 47.1% from $16.10 billion in 2011 as remaining government stimulus funds were spent in the United States and utilities around the world increased their own investments. Even so, these remain the early years of Smart Grid investments and spending will continue to grow over the next five years to reach $80.8 billion during 2018.

Key areas for strategic investment in the smart grid build out remain the same as they have been for the past decade, including:

• AMI
• Demand Response
• Grid Optimization
• Distribution Automation
• Software and Application provision
• System Integration
• Connectivity

You can read more of ABI’s research on smart grid here.

Inbound Marketing the Hubspot Way

We don’t really endorse products/solutions/services per se here at Nonlinear Thinking but we were to make that leap, we couldn’t find a better company to endorse than Hubspot.  They have done nothing short of inventing and then reinventing the concept, process and practice of inbound marketing.

Having used Hubspot almost since its inception, the endorsement comes from practical experience.  It just makes your marketing better.

The key components in their definition of inbound marketing include:

• Content Creation - You create targeted content that answers your customer's basic questions and needs, and you share that content far and wide.
• Lifecycle Marketing - You recognize that people go through stages as they interact with your company, and that each stage requires different marketing actions.
• Personalization - As you learn more about your leads over time, you can better personalize your messages to their specific needs.
• Multi-channel - Inbound marketing is multi-channel by nature because it approaches people where they are, in the channel where they want to interact with you.
• Integration - Your publishing and analytics tools all work together like a well-oiled machine, allowing you to focus on publishing the right content in the right place at the right time.

Addendum: Social Business Gains Traction

As an addendum to an earlier post on social business, this chart from the second annual MIT and Deloitte Social Business Global Executive Study and Research Project survey on how businesses use social media suggests that the concept of social business is being adopted aggressively across all industries.  How well and how strategically it is being adopted is still an open question.

 In all 12 of the major industry sectors covered by the survey, the percentage of respondents who said social software or social business was “important to their organization today” increased from the previous year’s survey. No industry sector declined and none remained flat.

Interestingly, the industry sector with the strongest year over year increase in the survey was energy and utilities, moving from 7% of respondents ranking social business as “important” in 2011 to 29.1% in 2012.  That exponential increase may be linked with the increasing adoption of smart grid technologies that allow utilities to more easily interact with their customers.  A 2012 research report by Navigant Research predicted that by the end of 2017, the number of utility customers using social media to engage with the utility companies would rise from 57 million in 2011 to 624 million.

Unsurprisingly, for the second year in a row, the technology/media/telecommunications sector respondents were most likely to rate social business as important to their organization with 87% saying that social business was important or somewhat important to their organizations in 2012.  A bit more surprising was that the education (82%) and professional services sectors (76%) followed closely behind.

Another finding from the survey was that while companies in most industries are generating social data from their initiatives, few businesses were analyzing the data or integrating it into their organization’s systems and processes.

The new study from MIT and Deloitte will be released in July.

On Becoming a Social Business

Call it the tipping point, the moment of truth, a watershed event or any other synonym for when things have arrived at a point of irreversible, no-going-back, change.  Is 2013 going to be the year when social media truly becomes social business and social business morphs into business as usual?

Probably not.  Reams of data suggest that most companies are using social media.  Most of those are still really just dabbling.  Truly embracing social media as a core element of business going forward requires a belief and commitment that is still difficult to find in companies with more traditional business models and a bias towards the tried-and-true.  But with proof points on the efficacy of the practice/process/technology/culture of social media becoming more and more plentiful, it would seem that the more programmatic embrace of social media is coming closer to a need-to-have more than a nice-to-have.

The concept of a “social business” is still probably nascent enough that there remain a number of definitions running around.  In a recent report from Altimeter Group, Charlene Li and Brian Solis outlined the difference between a social media strategy and a social business strategy:

A social media strategy lays out the channels, platforms, and tactics to support publishing, listening, and engagement. A social business strategy is the integration of social technologies and processes into business values, processes, and practices to build relationships and spark conversations inside and outside the organization, creating value and optimizing impact for customers and the business alike. The most important criteria for a successful social business strategy are twofold: clear alignment with the strategic business goals of an organization AND organizational alignment and support that enables execution of that strategy.

Social media broadly permeates society (perhaps too much!) and that means it permeates business operations on all levels.  Ad hoc social activity runs rampant across the enterprise so it stands to reason that sooner or later, every company will want to formalize and harmonize these activities into a coherent strategy and plan.  Social business technologies help people connect, communicate, and share information and, whether informal or formal, use of those technologies allow companies to respond more quickly, take advantage more easily, and create competitive advantage.

Companies have historically tended to demonize those things that impact their business but remain beyond their control.  Though it may be stating the obvious, social media is one big, fat dynamic that is altering the playbook for business and not just in the marketing discipline.  De facto, every business today is a social business; they may just not have internalized it yet.  Possessing a strategy is merely the first step in the formal embrace of social.  That way, all those “Likes”, “Friends”, “Links”, and “Follows” can mean something more than a distraction.

Along those lines, here is a video from GE on their progression towards becoming a social business.

 

 

 

The Inevitability of Digital Marketing and the Digital CMO

A favorite debate focuses on the ascension of digital marketing over traditional marketing in today’s marketing model. Too many companies, even in the technology sector, still seem unable to grasp that such a transformation is taking place.

Perhaps the issue is that, even now, spending on analog/traditional marketing continues to exceed spending on digital marketing by a significant ratio according to Gartner Group’s 2013 U.S. Digital Marketing Spending Survey.  Based on the survey, average marketing spend as a percent of annual revenue, across all industries, is 10.4% while digital marketing spend is 2.5%. 

It should be noted that analog marketing tactics continue to be more expensive than digital options – media advertising being just the most obvious example.  Had the survey been broken down between B2C and B2B companies/industries, my guess is that analog and digital spending would be on a more even spending arc.

A related trend - how the advent of the digital marketing technologies that are reinventing much of the marketing model have altered the dynamic between CMO and CIO – is also highlighted by the results of the survey.  The CIOs of those same companies have seen their budget decline to 3.5% of annual revenue and with digital marketing spend at that 2.5% level, parity in technology-related spend seems not too far away.

In fact, in a 2012 report, Gartner predicted that by 2017, the CMO's technology budget will exceed the CIO's.  Pretty much every business should broadly consider itself a digital business but, right or wrong, marketing has emerged as the de facto owner of digital.  That makes the CMO responsible for driving the organization’s digital transformation, which clearly is built on many of the emerging technologies that are changing the conduct of business – mobile, social, cloud, SaaS/PaaS/IaaS.

SaaS and cloud technologies have had much to do with the changing balance of power between the two functions.  The ability to bypass the CIO organization to access key marketing technology platforms/solutions with ease in the new environment allows marketing leadership, or any other functional leadership, to avoid the traditional IT development/procurement queue and execute much more quickly on critical initiatives.

This would all seem to set the stage for the emergence and confirmation of the digital CMO, a marketing leader that not only recognizes the inevitability of this transition in the marketing model, but embraces and builds an organization to take greatest advantage of the new digital/social/mobile media.  Marketing strategy is still marketing strategy.  It is the tools, technologies, and channels that have been disrupted.  If there is a crossing of the Rubicon occurring in marketing today it is probably better to start thinking and acting digitally now than learn in some harder, and perhaps more final, way.

Demand Response and Learning Thermostats

In the electricity distribution world, demand response (DR) represents a dynamic demand mechanism for managing customer consumption of electricity during traditional heavy load or other critical times via incentives based on price. Solution, software and hardware providers have been attacking this space for over a decade in North America.  That includes incumbent providers (meter companies), electric utilities themselves, and a newer generation of startups building on increasingly sophisticated connectivity platforms (cloud, Wi-Fi).  One of those startups is a company in Palo Alto that has been generating some significant “buzz”.

Nest Labs designs and manufactures a sensor-driven, Wi-Fi-enabled, learning, programmable thermostat that is now in its second generation.  Nest is led by Tony Fadell, a former Apple executive with a stellar pedigree, having helped bring the iPod and iPhone into the world. He and co-founder Matt Rogers recruited an A-list team from Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Logitech, to drop but a few names.

With some solid market success selling the thermostat under their belt, Nest announced this week an expansion of their solution to incorporate DR as part of the overall value proposition, using the Nest thermostat as a platform for managing energy during peak times.

 

Whether the DR solution from Nest (called Rush Hour Rewards, BTW) is materially different than some of the other offerings already in existence is not yet clear.  However, the announcement included the creation of  new residential demand-response programs with Austin Energy, Green Mountain Energy and Southern California Edison, along with an existing one with Reliant Energy.  Combine that with the founders Apple heritage and the current Nest buzz could begin to make DR more top-of-mind with consumers.