Black Belt Dojo

They said it

We're back at Cranfield for a Black Belt this week, and this morning we looked at audiences and messages. In between slots I've been checking out the latest issue of SCM and having a look around Cranfield's (very good) library. Two quotes I noticed that picked up on things we talked about earlier.

"To be able to yourself in someone else's shoes successfully, you have to take off your own shoes first"  (Malcolm MacDonald in his book Market Segmentation)

If you've done Black Belt, you'll know we ask people to put themselves in the place of being the Executive Team and also a Contact Centre audience.  The temptation is to keep slipping back into IC person mode, which really does put a different slant on things. This morning someone reflected on how much time they spent actually out there with their audience to really understand the people they were communicating with. "Not enough", was their conclusion.   

"We have to earn people's attention. We can't just assume that because we put out an e-mail or a video or put something on the web that people will be interested. That's very presumptious. We have to come up with unique ways to earn people's attention."

(Heidi Burgett of Yahoo!, talking about her guilding philosophy for internal comms in SCM)

I like this quote. It sums up perfectly our conversation this morning about how important it is to know what people's 'emotional hot buttons' are, and find the angle on a subject that's actually going to grab their attention and interest them, rather than assuming they'll be interested in the latest briefing about competition, the market and our strategy for the next 10 years if we bombard them with it enough.

Sue

Not so grim up north

I do love spending time in the north of England. Whenever I'm around that whole area from Newcastle to Durham and Sunderland, I walk around with a permanent smile on my face because everyone is SO friendly.

The groups I ran workshops for today were lively, interested and contributed loads. People I've never met stopped me in the office just to say 'hello, how are you?' And if I had £1 for every time I've been called 'darling' or 'pet', my Christmas shopping fund would be looking very healthy!

This morning's taxi driver probably went a bit overboard, mind. Within 2 minutes of me getting in the cab he'd asked if I was married, had a boyfriend, and whether I get lonely on my own.  Which moved swiftly onto asking how many hours I worked, followed by a friendly lecture about life being more than work and pointing out that I really need a man around to balance things out a bit. Then he asked how often I work up north and started telling me about all the new bars opening up ... at which point I suddenly remembered I had to make a very important (and very long!) phone call!

When I travel around the different companies I work for, the differences in the local cultures are striking and I find myself having to adapt my workshop style and sometimes my material quite a bit. We all know about audiences being different, but it's one of those things that gets brought home to you when you actually get out and spend time with them. One CEO I used to work with told me I couldn't be doing my job effectively if he saw me at my desk any more than two thirds of the time. The rest of the time he expected me to be away from head office.

The audience segmentation research I worked on with Melcrum earlier this year was one of the most thought-provoking things I've worked on in a good while. It convinced me how little we really know about our audiences, and what a difference it can make if we invest the time in finding out. 

How are you doing on that front?  Do you manage to get out and about, or are you permanently chained to your corporate head office desk?  One to think about for next year maybe? (Just watch out for any cabbies you meet in the process - I distinctly remember someone on our very first Black Belt being asked out for dinner by the one that took her to Henley!)

Sue

Segmentation

So, last week was 105 degrees in Phoenix, Arizona.  Tonight, Matthew, I'm in Finland (colder, but not bad), comfortably settled in a hotel in the middle of nowhere. I should be preparing for my presentation tomorrow morning, but sadly I find myself drawn to this blog. Is there such a thing as blog addiction??

Yesterday I presented the results of Melcrum's research on segmentation to the strategic research forum members in the US.  We found that lots of companies are segmenting by division, grade, location etc., but hardly any have yet attempted to use the more sophisticated techniques used by people in marketing.

The segmentation session always seems to get the highest ratings of module one on Black Belt, so I guess it's a subject people are interested in.  We often see people coming out of the syndicate exercise saying 'great - we'd really like to split people into these different segments ... but then what do we do?  What happens if you don't have channels that can target the different segments?'

Well, one option is to target segments with specific channels where you can. Your other alternative is to use a form of self-segmentation - i.e. make different options available, let people know they are there, and then let them choose the option they find interesting. This could mean something as simple as sending out an e-mail communication that's very short, with bullet point key facts, and including an intranet link for those that want more detail.  At a more sophisticated level it could involve using RSS (really simple segmentation) technology.  That's still on the 'we don't quite know how to use this yet' list, but fast forward 5 years or so and I suspect we'll see much more of an element of audience choice in our communication offerings.

Are any of you doing anything interesting on the segmentation front?  Black Belter Jane Williams did a fantastic piece of work on segmentation around flexible benefits for Lloyds TSB. So fantastic, in fact, that it won an IABC award. She has some great tips about working with marketing and interestingly ended up reducing her print costs despite producing multiple versions of the communication for different segments . Anyway, I won't steal her thunder - let's hope we can entice her to tell you herself.  No pressure, Jane ...!

Sue