From POWER to TRUTH

I was listening to a talk by Iqbal Quadir an inspiring entrepreneur who is changing the world through human empowerment. He said two phrases that made an impact.

“Connectivity is Productivity” and “Specialization is Productivity”.

Both of these make sense, but bringing them together is powerful.

Although I’m not a math major, I could not resist doing the logic.

If Connectivity = Productivity
and
If Specialization = Productivity

Then it follows that:
Connectivity = Specialization

As I thought about it, it didn’t take long for some of the challenges and opportunities in our markets to start making more sense.
One of these changes is the shifting marketing paradigm that is largely ignored.

For the last couple of hundred years, business has relied on raw POWER as the deciding factor of success. Although brilliant ideas and management are still necessary, the power to reach more people, to build more products, to move them faster, is the engine for success. We only need observe mass mailing, television, or the number of SKUs in Nike’s shoe lineup, to see that it’s about POWER more so than efficiency.

In the end, we are forced to homogenize our segments, compromise the essential value in our products and dilute our brands in order to widen our mass appeal. In essence, we destroy, destroy and destroy in order to deal with the inefficiency of the paradigm.

But maybe the equation: Connectivity = Specialization, presents new possibilities.

The drastic increase in Connectivity accelerates the normal rate at which we create “specialized” communities of like-minded people. These communities form faster and become larger and more powerful than would normally be possible. In essence, they become large networks of beacons searching for more resonant experiences, people, products and brands.
Suddenly, we find we may not need to look for them, they may be inadvertently looking for us.

The problem is that in order to be noticed we need to resonate, we need to have a point of view, a stand or clarity of purpose, what Simon Sinek might call a clarity of WHY?

This new paradigm has potentially meaningful characteristics:

1. It is personally meaningful
2. It is deliberate (not passive, like mass media)
3. It provides an opportunity for deeper connections.
4. But, it requires TRUST.

The old paradigm of PUSHING our value to the masses is giving way to the need for CLARITY and TRUTH that allows smaller more aligned groups to hear us. A clarity and truth about who we are, and what we stand for as companies. ?This clarity of purpose, turns the brand into a resonator that draws all that are tuned.

Only one problem . . .

Companies today are not good at CLARITY or TRUTH.

We find it difficult to be clear on what we stand for. (read your mission statement lately?).
And we find it difficult to be truthful because we want to maximize potential customers as we aim at the masses.

Are we sure of our WHY? Can we be true to it? Can we resonate?

I vote for investing some resources here, so we can stop sending junk mail.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to Profitable Loyalty – XCS