Dark Matter Matters
Chris Grams
Red Hat Nation
I was emailing back and forth with my friend Todd Barr the other day. Catching up with him reminded me of an idea we used to talk about quite a bit that I still think is the best idea that we haven’t made good on: Red Hat Nation.
The basic idea is that a company like Red Hat, based on open source, has an opportunity to completely redefine what a business looks like in the 21st century. The traditional 20th century business is often very black and white: either you work for the company or you don’t. You are inside it’s walls, or you are not. There are clear distinctions between employees, partners, and customers. The most common way of depicting a company in this 20th century model is by showing its building.
In the traditional model, if I was to say I work for Red Hat, you would assume it means I am a Red Hat employee, and that they give me a paycheck, benefits, a desk, all the normal stuff.
But imagine for a second that the image used to illustrate the 21st century company is not a building, but instead a flag.
A flag is often a rallying point for nations, a symbol that represents a common set of beliefs. You see flags at the front lines of troops in battle. You see flags hanging outside the door of homes. You see flags on clothing, at sporting events, in many places where people who share common traits gather.
Communicating a message through design
Earlier this week, Red Hat announced an agreement with Microsoft. I’m not planning on commenting on that agreement, as that’s not the point of this blog. Plus there are lots of smart Red Hat people who can do stuff like that.
But I did find this article from InformationWeek interesting. It points out the design work that went into the homepage promo we put on redhat.com, and shows how important design can be to the communication of an important message. From the article:
“A banner graphic atop the page detailing the reciprocal agreements announces in bold, all capital letters that “customer demand has spoken.” The banner also features a prominent road sign with a double-headed arrow pointed in opposite directions that sometimes signifies interoperability. Translation: You made us do it.”
So I am a “no comment” on this interpretation:) But I am excited that the work of Josh Gajownik from the Red Hat Brand Communications + Design team was noticed.
Markepoetry Part 2: It Turns Out I Have Needs
My friend Jonathan Opp once pointed out to me that his most hated marketing speak is the phrase “Meet your needs,” as in:
This Extra Giganto Super Widget is designed to meet your needs.
or
Wowzit Consulting and Sparky McSuccess & Sons have come together with a service offering sure to meet your needs.
Now that I’ve pointed it out, you will see this phrase everywhere. And it will start bugging you as much as it does Jonathan (and now me). Today’s Markepoem is dedicated to Jonathan Opp, and is constructed entirely of the fodder that came up in Google when I entered the term “Meet your needs.”
People who get it #1: Gary Hamel
My friends Jeff Mackanic and David Burney both recommended that I read Gary Hamel’s latest book, The Future of Management, which was named the best business book of the year by Amazon in 2007. I was absolutely blown away. The whole way through, I was like, “tell it, brother!”
The basic thesis of the book? The management model developed in the late 19th and early 20th century and integral to the success of the industrial revolution is starting to show signs of wear. It is being replaced by a new model, embodied by companies like Whole Foods, Google, and W.L. Gore (the makers of Gore-Tex); all three are highlighted in the book.
Red Hat, and the open source movement in general, are another perfect case study of this new management model. Concepts like the meritocracy of ideas, transparency & openness, collaboration, authenticity, and a whole host of other ideas that have made Red Hat successful appear over and over in the book.
Markepoetry Part 1: Tell me, o ROI Calculator
In all likelihood, your budget is shrinking.
Based on your unique situation,
Based on your costs and your estimated results,
Depending on your desired outcomes,
Backed by extensive research,
Do you know how much your organization can save???
Pinpoint where your business can immediately
save money and maximize profits.
Determine the optimal spending level,
Calculate the increased profit potential,
drag the sliders below,
analyze and validate the effectiveness,
see if you are still on budget.
Pepsi ads blur the line
Was watching Saturday Night Live last night and saw some Pepsi ads that were based off of what was previously an SNL skit starring Will Forte. There were three ads, all based on the “MacGruber” parody of MacGyver SNL has been running for a while.
The first one had product placement for Pepsi in a small way, by the third one, every word that came out of Will Forte’s mouth was Pepsi. It was totally over the top, completely transparent product placement. And pretty damn funny by the end. I loved it.
My view? A huge win for Pepsi, breaking new product placement ground by co-opting an existing (and funny) Saturday Night Live skit, and being extremely self-aware about product placement and people’s feelings about it. Blew it wide open. Freakin’ hilarious.
For Saturday Night Live? I’m pretty sure the SNL folks woke up on Sunday morning with a bad hangover. Wondering what exactly they’d done, and hoping that no one else remembered either. Maybe Robert Redford was right. Make an indecent proposal with enough money attached, and someone will do anything.
Coke Classic goes bye bye… finally!
After almost 25 years, Coca-Cola has decided to drop the “Classic” label from its Coke cans. See the Wall Street Journal article here.
This is a perfect example of one of my favorite quotes about building brands, from Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos:
“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well. People notice that over time. I don’t think there are any shortcuts.” – BusinessWeek, August, 2004
In 1985, Coca-Cola made one of the most famous brand “mistakes” of all time, introducing New Coke to replace their classic formula. It took them 25 years to make the conversion back to where they started.
Now I’m not saying you need this much time to make any brand transition, but it does make you think. Are you moving too quickly with a branding change? Do you risk throwing some of your existing brand equity away? Or could you harvest that equity and move it with you if you just took some more time?
After all, there are no short cuts. Might as well take the time to do it right.
Metrics that matter
Have you ever been zooming in on a Google map, and eventually you zoom so far in that Google apologizes and tells you that it doesn’t have an image showing stuff that close? What do you do? You zoom back out so that you can see again.
When it comes to running campaigns, I tend to take metrics with a few grains of salt. How many times have you seen someone report metrics on how their campaign did, and they show that it drove zillions of leads and that converted to zillions of $$ in sales and was a huge success… but then you look around and can’t find anyone who saw the campaign, or heard of it. And the sales guys couldn’t ever even tell it happened.
In command and out of control as marketing strategy
In my last post, I talked about the idea that General Paul Van Riper called being “in command and out of control” as a corporate leadership strategy. But can you also apply the same principle as a marketing strategy?
A traditional marketing campaign usually looks something like this:
1. Build a campaign plan
2. Create campaign messages
3. Execute campaign
4. Track ROI, leads, sales directly driven by campaign
But what might an out of control marketing campaign look like? Continue reading
Build a leadership culture
When we are at our best at Red Hat, we have a leadership culture instead of a management culture.
What’s the difference? My favorite example of understanding the difference is from Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink.
The story is about US General Paul Van Riper, who is trying out some military strategies to see how they will work in the field. In the book he says:
“The first thing I told my staff is that we would be in command and out of control.”
Most companies have a culture of management. The people in charge are in command and in control of everything. Managers give the orders, decide the strategy, and the workers follow the orders, implement the strategies. This is the way 90+% of businesses work and have worked for a very long time. It’s a good model for lots of businesses. Keeps things running efficiently, keeps chaos in check.
This model does not work very well in an open source world. Why? A couple of key reasons: Continue reading
Hey, I Wrote a Book!
Available now in print and electronic versions.
Dark Matter Matters 