"Swing for hits, not home runs." Michael Dell

"The secret isn't counting the beans, it's growing more beans." Roberto Goizueta

"To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success." Henry John Heinz

Today's image: Skull Creek by pearson251. Incredible capture. Thank you for sharing.

What we can learn from a ketchup bottle

The Heinz folks are very successful. They've been in business since 1869. So why did it take them so long, over one hundred years, to reach the most obvious ketchup "delivery" solution? We can all relate to that moment of being in the position of having to shake, then tap the bottle side or bottom, to get the ketchup flowing. Let's come back to that.

What about the label? What image has been on the Heinz Ketchup label since the 1890s? Not a tomato. A pickle, the gherkin pickle. It's been retired, replaced, after over 100 years, by the image of a "vine-ripened" tomato on the new label design introduced earlier this year.

Back to the bottle. For decades Heinz invested significant marketing resources in efforts to turn a weakness, their product delivery problem, into a strength, a key positive attribute. From acquiring the rights to the Carly Simon hit song Anticipation to casting popular sitcom celeb Matt Le Blanc to star in the TV creative featured here above, Heinz demonstrated exceptional message discipline. Their economic success in the market bought them the time and luxury to finance these marketing initiatives focused on changing consumer perceptions, attitudes and values. One can imagine the argument supporting this creative approach..."the best gimmick here is to introduce the truth in a fresh, new way." Bottom line, the Heinz team went to work to make the best of what they had. Accepting the "delivery problem" they sought to reframe the issue and sell "slow is best" or in the least slow is better.

Tony, a NNJ/NYC chef, posted this pic and wrote on his blog "...awesomely innovative upside-down bottle. all of the annoying things about ketchup: the crust around the lid, that nasty juice you get before the ketchup actually comes out and of course, the wait... all deleted like a bad term paper thanks to heinz. frankly, i don't know how we ever lived without it."


As we compare the original and new bottles, the most effective delivery solution, the new upside-down bottle, seems obvious. As Hersh Shefrin said "Reality looks much more obvious in hindsight than in foresight. People who experience hindsight bias misapply current hindsight to past foresight. They perceive events that occurred to have been more predictable before the fact than was actually the case." How difficult is it to see the obvious? Let me suggest it is very difficult. "It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious," so said Alfred North Whitehead. Too often teams are not focused on the forest or the trees, rather they are preoccupied with the bark of a single tree, they become lost in the detail. Unable to grasp the obvious they fail to grok the fundamental issues at play and burn precious bandwidth and resources in construction of the most logical, elaborate "work-around."

"Table-ready lettuce. $1.4 billion. If someone can do this with a vegetable, what the hell is our excuse?" Gary Hamel

One of the most important responsibilities of leadership is to ensure that the team sees "reality" sees things as they are, not as they once were or as the team wishes things to be. In sum, discovering the obvious solution set demands that one first gain perspective, my notion is this requires the hard work of thinking for which there is no substitute.

There is great benefit, advantage and power in being open to the ideas of others. Listening deserves to be among the most prized skill sets in every organization. Doris Willens writes in her wonderful new book, Nobody's Perfect. Bill Bernbach and the Golden Age of Advertising (Amzn) "From Helmut Krone's wastepaper basket, Bernbach fished wads of crumpled papers and beamed upon spreading open a sheet with the words, "We're only Number Two. So we try harder."

Opportunity abounds for those willing to do their homework; for those serious about listening, observing, thinking and acting the possible is practically without limits. A bias for action rewards all.

"Money doesn't talk, it swears." Bob Dylan

"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese." Steven Wright

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong." H.L. Mencken

Today's image: Cable Car in the Rain by Thomas Hawk. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

Welcome to July. How's your summer so far? By asking that question I revealed my "north of the equator" bias, after all, it is winter in Australia and all countries in the southern hemisphere. With apologies to my readers south of the equator, how's your winter so far?

A bunch of really good books out this season. Here are a few of my suggested reads. Fiction: the English translation by Lucia Graves of Carlos Ruiz Zafon The Angel's Game (Amzn), China Mieville The City & The City (Amzn). Non-Fiction: Stan Greenberg Dispatches from the War Room (Amzn), Sir Ken Robinson The Element (Amzn), Jonah Lehrer How We Decide (Amzn) and the long awaited first dead tree writing of popular blogger, and official N=1 cartoonist, Hugh MacLeod Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity (Amzn). A new stack in the making, stay tuned. Should you be interested in keeping up with my latest reads they may be found in the left column. This list does tend to lag a wee bit.

Upcoming - alot of buzz about the latest Chris Anderson - Free: The Future of a Radical Price (Amzn), it drops this week. Certainly a must read. In fact, I've pre-ordered the dead tree version in appreciation and tribute of an earlier promise made by Chris - the online version will be released FREE. Malcolm Gladwell advance reviewed it for The New Yorker, here. Be sure to also read Seth Godin Malcolm is wrong as Seth weighs in on Gladwell's review and the Anderson thesis here. Got a great summer read to share? Want to bring attention to your best book so far of 2009? Would love to have you leave a comment, please do.

My time away from the blog has been spent on the day job involved a variety of cool projects. The first six months of this year a good deal of my bandwidth was spent developing, writing and presenting a brief on the social media phenomenon. As many of you know our team took the first deep dive years ago researching and advising our clients on the emerging trends in hyper-connective social tools. As part of that "research" our team began learning by actually doing. While it has taken time away from this blog my thought is it has been and continues to be time well spent. Twitter (the little app that could which we tipped here in 2007) recently made the cover of TIME magazine. Clearly, these social media toys have gone mainstream. Our suggestion is your team should gain competitive advantage by using these toys as nascent tools. If you or your team are not yet waist deep in all of this social media stuff, no worries. It's early - only the beginning. My notion is MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, digg, et al, are crude tools on our way to a much more robust and effective portfolio of amazing apps and solution sets. My counsel to you is to mind that old adage still employed in the education process of modern medicine "Learn one, do one, teach one." As of today, the social media brief has been presented twenty-three times with more scheduled in the weeks ahead thanks to all the kind words, good reviews and WOM. Each talk has been a challenge, a pleasure and a privilege. I've met some exceptionally bright folks and learned much that can be shared. If you are on Twitter please let me invite you to follow me so that I may follow you. Not on yet? Sign up today, get into the conversation.

Bonus: Getting Ahead of Change by Tom Webster via Edison's The Infinite Dial, here. The cool kids have The Infinite Dial in their readers along with Tom's personal blog, brandsavant, the A students also follow him on the Twitter where he tweets under Webby2001.

Bonus 2: Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, 2009 Results, here. Related back story and interview with winner: Bad Writing Leads to Literary Award - courtesy ATC/NPR, here.

Don't miss it, if you can. A killer app > Posterous

Congrats & cheers: CBS Radio programming ace Kurt Johnson and his Dallas team blowing out five candles on their Jack's birthday cake today. Quoting PJ seems apt here, "In all of art it's the singer not the song." (Hint: as said here previously, formats don't get stations into success or trouble, managers do.) Penny Baldwin and Landor Associates each hiring on to play a role in the coming makeover of Yahoo!

My sincere thanks to all of you who have been in touch about this blog. Your nudges and continuing support are much appreciated. One person interrupted me during a phone conversation last week to say "You're wasting this on me, one person, why aren't you blogging about this?" Indeed. Back tomorrow with a brand new show. Thank you for stopping by.

"Entrepreneurship is throwing yourself off a cliff, and building a plane on the way down." Reid Hoffman

"One of the greatest gifts the Internet gives us is the ability to learn to be wrong quickly." - Avinash Kaushik

"A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point." Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Today's image: My Finest Hour by [ lee ]. Great storytelling; wonderful! Thank you for sharing.

On the road. World Tour 2009 continues. Giving three talks this week, presenting my brief on social media.

Congrats and cheers: Another outstanding presentation by Clay Shirky. Thanks, as always, to TED. Bravos to Clay. [Hint to readers: Please do share this one with the A students on your team. Highly recommended.]





Bonus: Q&A with Clay Shirky on Twitter and Iran via TEDBlog.

"Do what they love, with what you love, and the money is sure to follow." Tom Asacker

"Scarcely anyone would have become a great actor if the public had been born without hands." Karl Kraus

"Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be." Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Today's image: Southern Alps around Milford Sound and Queenstown, the South Island of New Zealand by Ron Fell. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

Google is your home page
The new reality. Like it or not.

Above, text from the first slide of my brief at NAB this year.

Three points from Martinizing: The Nine for 09 brief:

1. Your home page is Google. A significant game-changing strategy that needs to be deeply understood by your team. They need to stop obsessing about your home page as it's becoming increasingly irrelevant. Your assets must be digital and discoverable. Google is your home page, practically everything else related to your online strategy is subordinate to this single issue. When you can Google the name of your firm and/or the products, services, attributes you think you "own" and using I'm Feeling Lucky returns one of your pages, you win (but only in that moment - remember, it's not a static but dynamic environment). Try it. Then Google Search and carefully study the first page of results. That's the real you as the world sees it. Think landing page optimization. [Time to revisit Peter Morville - Ambient Findability - What We Find Changes Who We Become]

4. Mobile is the new black. Back to the future. Broadband wired still counts but now, it's back to wireless (again) and this time around it's the third tribe of wireless that rules. The battlefield is the third screen, the handset. The only limiting step of what's possible with mobile remains energy related, that damn battery. The first person to deliver a cost-effective solution set solving this power issue will, no doubt, get Bill Gates rich. Video becomes ubiquitous. [FD: During Q&A I was called on pushing WAP in my 1999 NAB brief. Guilty as charged, too early. My 2009 response is the iPhone represents more breakthrough OS than simple, sexy user-centric form factor innovation. Sidebar: My thought is a second or third order effect of the Jeff Bezos Kindle is a cool new form factor between the second and third screen. I want my iPhone to be the size of my Kindle.]

7. Local being redefined. Defined not by DMA or any US census def, but by exactly where the customer is NOW, in the moment, within three meters or less. Think GPS.

The obvious is often the hardest to see: The past, and the apparent present, does not equal the future. Exhibit A - thirty something months from a cold start to POTUS. Exhibit B - An international star is born via YouTube in less than two weeks. She's Susan Boyle, 47, and unemployed (still looking). Of course, you'll agree with exhibit B having watched the YouTube video I recommended to you last week.

Closed circuit to Google: Please share the analytics related to the record breaking Susan Boyle video. What were the drivers, the sources of significant traffic? What traffic did MS, FB, Twitter, blogs and other social media produce? What did the links by news organizations, entertainment shows and other MSM contribute to the record views? What country, what metro ranked highest in views, second highest, lowest? How about a timeline track of traffic? What about repeat views by uniques against the norm? There's a simply great case study in the making here.

Congrats & cheers: Kurt Hanson, Paul Maloney and team RAIN. Not only did they stage another killer RAIN Internet Radio Summit but they took the lead in making the first NAB Show Tweetup happen. Kudos to digital evangelist Kipper McGee who worked behind the scenes and helped to make the Tweetup a success.

Bonus: Tom Asacker, the best-selling author, renowned speaker and provocateur known for bold, fresh thinking, has written a wonderful piece that you should read and share. Do What They Love is now available via PDF here. Bravos, Tom.

P.S. The cool kids have Tom Asacker's blog in their reader. It's a must-read.

"The block of granite which is an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping stone in the pathway of the strong." Thomas Carlyle

"Hurry is the weakness of fools." Baltasar Gracian

"Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game." Goethe

Today's image: The Atomic Explosion and Mushroom Fallout at Sunset by Stuck in Customs. Amazing. Thank you for sharing.

"...the essential skill of the next fifty years: crisis management." Joshua Cooper Ramo has written a thought-provoking book that deserves your attention. The Age of the Unthinkable. Why the new world disorder constantly surprises us and what we can do about it. Good read. Amazon info, here.

Bonus: Connect the dots and you'll enjoy reading The Pretence of Knowledge, the Nobel Prize lecture by Friedrich August von Hayek here.

Have a wonderful weekend. See you next week in a brand new show.