Martin Kramer

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“Dark is beautiful” or the question what makes a campaign contagious

The widespread preference for lighter skin across many countries of the world has caused an USD 8.4 billion market for skin lightening products, which is estimated to grow to a size of USD 13.7 billion in 2025. What may be good news for producers of skin lightening products has actually come with significant adverse social consequences all along, reaching from systematic discrimination to outright social exclusion. To fight against the phenomenon of colourism and in favour of inclusion, belonging and equity for people of color, the non-profit organization Women of Worth started the campaign “Dark is Beautiful” in 2009. An international success since its inception, the campaign received global recognition and support. Many marketers sit in their cubicles day in day out in the hope of coming up with a campaign the will be remembered forever – a campaign like “Got milk”, or “Just do it”. But what is it that makes a product or campaign stick, go viral or make a lasting impression?

Jonah Berger tried to solve the riddle with his 2013 book “Contagious – Why things catch on”. In it, he identifies six drivers that make a topic travel. The first driver is “social currency”. It refers to making people feel influential and “in the know” when they discuss your topic - simply because your topic has something remarkable to it, because it is new, funny, practical etc. When people can shine by talking about your campaign, you made it social currency.

Moreover, cleverly placed environmental reminders about your product, also called triggers, help consumers remember your product better and foster conversation about it. Think back when you last received an email from someone who typed it on her Apple iPhone – can you remember the last sentence of the email? Exactly, it says: “Sent from my iPhone”. With that Apple constantly triggers its product when people receive an email and reminds them that “Oh, so this person has an iPhone too”. Also, research has shown that triggers work better when recipients had the chance to familiarize with them before.

Maybe it is not by chance that the word “emotion” encapsulates the word “motion”. All jokes aside, emotions can incite people to act, irrespective of whether they are of positive nature, e.g., amazement or awe, or have a negative connotation, e.g., anger and anxiety. People simply talk about what stirs their feelings and that often does not require large marketing budgets or deploying fancy agencies.

Another factor that causes contagion is “observability”. Apple realized early on that it makes sense to not turn the iconic Apple logo to the user of the MacBook, but to the observer of the user. Clever product managers understand that making the usage of their product an observable phenomenon can tremendously help with product adoption. Especially amidst the steadily growing amount of brands, your brand will have to be public and constantly observable by your target customers, if it wants to stay relevant in the coming decade.

But publicity is not enough, brands will have to continue to provide the good old practical value. As former Harvard professor Clayton Christensen pointed in this HBR landmark article “Marketing Malpractice”: People constantly watch to have something get a job done for them. That something should be your brand. Moreover, people love to help, but they need something simple and useful that allows them to be helpful. Again, let that something be your brand

Last but not least, stories. For centuries stories served as a way to memorize facts, pass on knowledge, ideas, values etc. from generation to generation and define the culture of a group. Stories are a central element to homo sapiens or as TEDx-speaker Lisa Cron says: Our brains are wired for story.

[emkay2020]

What capabilities does your company really need?

A company can only be as good as its people. That one is easy. However, opinions diverge when it comes to the question of which type of people are needed, with which knowledge, skills, experience, potential etc. This blogpost provides a simple perspective on how to approach this crucial question.

The key capabilities an organization needs should be derived from an organization’s mission. The mission explains an organization’s reason of existence and its desired impact in the world. Organizations then use goals to operationalize their mission, i.e., to channel resources and efforts towards it. Ideally, goals are specific in the way they are defined, measurable, achievable, relevant to achieving the mission, and time-bound. Achieving organizational goals then requires the successful execution of a specific set of activities. Those activities are usually grouped into job profiles, and those, in turn, into job categories. 

Once an organization has broken down its mission into goals and those into activities and job profiles, it must ask: what capabilities are required so people can execute their activities in a way that goals are achieved and thus the mission can be accomplished. There are many frameworks that categorize capabilities in various ways. It is less important which framework to deploy, but rather how thorough a framework is used to analyze required capabilities. One popular capability framework is the US-army’s “Be-Know-Do” model. 

“Be” refers to a person’s values and attributes. The values need to be congruent to the organization’s values and provide orientation on what is deemed right and wrong. “Know” implies the skills and competencies a person brings along. Those can be interpersonal skills, like communication or counseling, as well as conceptual skills, like quantitative, verbal reasoning or creative thinking. Moreover, competencies include technical and tactical skills, like the ability to deploy methods, tools and equipment, e.g., software. Lastly, “Do” points to how people use their values and skills to perform actions. Actions denote influencing (e.g, motivating or making decisions), operating (e.g., assessing, planning, executing) or improvement actions (e.g., learning, developing). Beyond analyzing the capability requirements of an organization, a capability framework as the one explained above can be used to analyze candidates’ fit to the requirements. Also, it can be deployed to create contents for training and development.

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Protecting SIA’s brand

In one of Gary Vaynerchuk’s most viewed talks, he notoriously stated that the costs of founding a startup, creating a product, promoting and marketing it have never been lower. Thus, it is fair to expect for the coming decade, that existing brands will have to compete with more new brands than ever. Due to to the tremendously increased competition for being seen and heard, brands that have been successful in the past, will likely feel the heat and ask themselves: How can we protect what we built and curated so carefully over such long time? How can we stay visible and relevant given all the noise?

Singapore Airlines (SIA) faced the same question in 2001. Known for their outstanding service to customers – embodied through the long-term “Singapore girl”-campaign - they had to confront improved competitor offerings, new competitors, an erosion of previous cost advantages and finally 9/11, with its accompanying demand uncertainties. Shortly, after the disaster and amidst cost pressures, the airline faced the difficult decision of whether continue its investment into upgrading its first class and reinforcing its brand image as a best-in-class service provider versus withdrawing from the plan in favor of consolidating finances against the backdrop of an uncertain industry outlook.

When trying protect your brand against competitors, two elements can make a difference. The first is to refocus your brand towards the core and what is essential – both in how it appears and what it stands for. To increase sales, many brands tend to make unfortunate moves that lead to confusing brand architectures. Deutsche Telekom serves as a suitable example in this respect. Since the advent of the internet their brand portfolio sprawled into a convoluted field of sub-brands that caused considerable confusion about what the brand actually delivered and what it was about (see image below). It was only in 2007 that the company realized the competitive disadvantage that had accumulated from it, and decided to rigorously move back to its iconic magenta T, which it has nurtured ever since. The bottom line is: Amid all the audiovisual noise, brands need more than ever to focus on their strengths if they want to be relevant in the consumers mind. Once a refocusing has taken place, brands need to remind their customers about their magic, why they should stay loyal and why leaving can pose a risk and uncertainty. Using brand ethos and pathos can be particularly effective when being challenged by newer up-and-coming brands.

Tieing it back to the case of SIA, the company should stay its course and follow through with their First Class upgrade. It was outstanding passenger service that made them stand out in the first place and thus the company should refocus on that. In terms of reminding customers of their brand core, the airline should conceive of a creative way of reviving their “Singapore Girl”-campaign.

[emkay2020]

Getting started with coaching for business leaders

Over the last decades, coaching has established itself as a vital domain in the overall business landscape. According to the 2016 industry report of the International Coaching Federation (ICF), the coaching industry grew by 19% between 2011 and 2015 to revenues of USD 2.4 billion and enjoys a continued positive outlook. The report also mentions the topic leader-as-coach as one of the key future trends in the industry. In this context, the question arises: Can a boss also be a coach? Or even more: Do people “have” to be good coaches today, if they want to be effective leaders?

Relevance – from commander to coach

The days in which one leader did the thinking and subordinates executed are long gone. Today, everyone in an organization needs to do the thinking. This is simply because organizational surroundings have become increasingly complex and constantly changing so that organizations need to constantly change as well in order to survive. To attain and maintain such agility, organizations need everyone’s analytical and creative capacity, constant learning and - to bring it all together - a new model of leadership. It is in this context that coaching – as the art of helping people realize their potential and increase performance - has become a core skill of aspiring leaders. As such, the leader’s role moves away from solely providing direction, devising and deciding to combine it with asking questions, facilitating, supporting and empowering. Consequently, the initial question shouldn’t be whether bosses “can” be good coaches, but “how” they can become good coaches.  

Perspectives to get started with coaching

This blogpost intends to present three different perspectives that help leaders get started in the field of coaching. Those perspectives do not claim to be either collectively exhaustive or mutually exclusive. Instead, they help to get a quick overview and shall serve as a basis for further engagement with the subject matter.

Four Styles of Coaching

The first perspective by researchers Herminia Ibarra and Anne Schoular, delivered via a simple two-by-two matrix, provides an overview of different coaching styles. The vertical axis denotes the information the coach enters into the relationship, i.e., the advice and expertise given to the coachee. By contrast, the horizontal axis denotes the energy the coach can elicit from the coachee, i.e., the insights and solutions the coachee can create as a response to the intervention.

The first style technically refers to not coaching at all – also known as Laissez-faire. Here, the leader gives little input, but there is also little energetic output from the coachee as a response. When all team members are working effectively and efficiently on their own, then bosses do not need to interfere. However, if teams do not perform well when unsupervised, this can be a risky approach.

The directive style in the top left of the graphic implies that the coach tends to supply comparatively much information but tends to evoke little motivational energy in the coachee. This is what many know as “their boss telling me what to do and how to do it”. While it can accelerate a process, it tends to neglect the much-needed individual and organizational learning.

Moving to the right-hand side of the graph, the non-directive style focuses on asking questions, listening, and facilitating a process so that the subordinate can develop herself. Consequently, it requires little directional input but can produce considerable momentum on the part of the coachee, if done well. This style is suitable to inspire engagement and promote individual and organizational learning. However, it requires a minimum level of coaching competence on the part of the coach as well as sufficient time for quality interventions.

Eventually, the situational style represents a combination of the directive and non-directive approach. It requires both a high level of coaching competence as well as sensitivity to understand whether a context could rather benefit from a directive or a non-directive approach. Moments for non-directive approaches can be, e.g., when an individual takes on a stretch assignment, faces a decision between multiple options, or find herself amid a conflict with another individual. By contrast, directive approaches are useful, for instance, when an individual needs detailed instruction, technical guidance or needs to change behavior in little time. All mentioned styles have their advantages and disadvantages. In the end, it is crucial to select the style that best fits the demands of the situation.

Three Action Fields of Excellent Coaches

The second perspective deals with three action fields of excellent coaches. The first is promoting learning agility. That means supporting people in staying flexible, growing from mistakes and responding to challenges. Also, it is crucial to help people in moving from a fixed mindset, that can cause fear of making mistakes, to a growth mindset that allows people to believe that they can grow and succeed, if they invest sufficient effort and obtain required support. Eventually, promoting learning agility entails to ensuring trust-based relationships so people feel comfortable to navigate limitations and make mistakes.

The next action field is holding coaching conversations. Here, it is one can follow a three-step approach. The first step is to check for coaching readiness, i.e., to identify whether it is a good time for both the coachee and the coach, and whether both are receptive to coaching. Should there be little time, competing commitments and thoughts, it might be better to reschedule. The second step is to have the coaching conversation. The base to start with curiosity and an open mind about what a coaching conversation will bring. The conversation shall serve the coachee to engage in deep reflection on a recent situation. Therefore, it is crucial to actively listen and be fully attentive, not only to verbal but also non-verbal expressions of the coachee. Another main tool of coaching is to ask questions that lead the coachee to reflect in various ways about her challenge. Open-ended questions prove particularly useful in this respect. Eventually, it is appropriate to offer your perspective as guidance and support (so long as it does not force a solution), and agree on next steps.

The third action field of coaches is giving constructive feedback. Like coaching, it is useful in enabling development. To begin with: not everyone likes giving or receiving feedback – being open about fears can help moving past them. Also, feedback should be given only with permission and without much delay after I particular incident. Additionally, from my own experience the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company stresses the importance of listening first, sharing feedback in small doses, and sharing concrete situation evidence when making points.

The GROW model of coaching

One specific model that can provide structure and orientation during one or several coaching conversations is John Whitmore’s classic GROW model as described in his book “Coaching for Performance”. GROW stands for goal, reality, options, and will. Goal does not refer to the coachee’s overall goals in life. Rather, it demands to establish with the coachee, what it is exactly that she wants to get out of the conversation. Whereas goal points to where the coachee wants to get to, Reality is about where the coachee is now in the process. Asking various types of open questions can help with obtaining a comprehensive view of the coachee’s reality. Caution is due with using “why”-questions as they can be perceived as judging or intimidating and thus limit the coachee’s development progress. Options refer to the fact that people often feel stuck in their progress. Coaching can help generate or uncover options that coachees had not conceived of yet. The question “and what else” combined with the readiness to endure breaks of silence, as simple as it may sound, can have a significant effect on the ability to come up with options. Once a broad range of options is on the table, the job of the coach is to help the coachee get into depth and explore different implications of pursuing an individual option. Finally, Will ties the individual parts of the conversation together and funnels them into two questions. Question one is “What will you do?” Should the coachee not have a clear idea about what she will do, coach and coachee will have to step back and go through the previous steps. The second question asks the coachee to assess the likelihood that the stated intention will be executed. Again, should the likelihood of the intention not exceed 80%, it is worth going back and work out an option that has a higher probability of realization.

And now what?

Every beginning is - well, not easy. However, if this made appetite for more, there are plenty of resources to continue your coaching journey. The books Coaching for Performance by John Whitmore, The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier, and Mindset by Carol Dweck proved especially influential in this respect. Should you feel exhaustion along the way, be reminded that becoming an excellent coach is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes continuous practice, resilience, and above all philanthropy (in the truest sense of the word). Thus, ration your energy and do less but regularly. Also, coaching does not always have to happen via dedicated conversations. Instead, leaders who want to coach can make use of daily interactions, e.g., regular briefings, project updates, milestone completions as well as encourage people to actively seek feedback and coaching. Last but not least, whenever there is little time and lots of to-dos, or whenever there are second thoughts about the payoffs of coaching - remember that coaching not only helps unlock the potential of the coachee, but fosters the overall organizational effectiveness, efficiency, and ability to learn, bounce back and adapt.

[emkay2020]

Mega Macht Marke

(that’s German for “brand as a mega power”)

In 2005, researchers of the Texas A&M University asked test subjects to taste three wines. They were communicated that one was French, one was Californian, and one was Texan. Almost all of them indicated they liked the French wine best, then the Californian, and then the Texan. What they did not know was: all of them were actually Texan.

In 1992, Chernatony and McDonald conducted an experiment in which they asked test subjects to taste Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola and voice which one they like better. When they were not told which beverage was from which brand, they slightly preferred Pepsi Cola over Coca Cola. However, when they were communicated which they brand they were consuming, they preferred Coca Cola.  

Given that: how can anyone argue against the value of branding and image? Brands actually make a difference in how consumers choose, perceive and buy. To achieve that, however, one cannot restrict branding to fancy pictures, ads and a sub department of marketing, but all company activities need to contribute to a desired brand image. Or as the former CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, says:  “Authentic brands don’t emerge from marketing cubicles or advertising agencies. They emanate from everything the company does.“

What is the Starbucks of the wine industry? Correct, there isn’t one. With its TOP3 producing firms commanding only 7% market share, the wine industry has yet to develop such a strong and market dominating brand like Starbucks. Maybe they should take a leaf out of Howard’s book?

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What shifts with the online shift

In their 2018 article Consumer Behavior Online – A Playbook Emerges, Soman, Kim, and An outline the effects of the digital domain on consumer behavior. They specifically point to five behavioral biases with relevance to the topic: Bounded rationality (limited mental capacity to deal with choice overload and complex analyses), heuristic decision making (deciding based on, e.g., peers, availability, or defaults), procrastination and impulsivity (delayed or premature task execution), context-dependent choice (the impact of framing on decision making) and peer influence (the tendency to conform with group behavior). Moreover, they present three research results: The Screen, Choice Engine, and Connectivity Effect. The first refers to how the advent of ubiquitous screens changes information availability and comparability, enables new ways of visual presentation and allows for anonymity before and after the purchase decision – and eventually how that impacts consumer behavior. The second denotes how companies can optimize purchase recommendations based on an individual’s behavior, her stated preferences or peer behavior and preferences. The last pertains to how digital enabled access to both aggregated and individual behaviors and preferences. So far, so good. But what can be derived from that with regard to branding? Among other things, three power shifts.

From Sales to Branding // Are you trying to convert or are you trying to create an experience, asks Gary Vaynerchuk. One pattern that is recognizable from what the authors describe is the power shift to consumers. Compared to the analogue days, consumers now can obtain all the information needed for a purchase anytime and anywhere, compare options better, purchase products and obtain service without ever having had contact to a salesperson. In other words, many functions that sales previously held were taken over by digital. Instead of pushing products, companies now need to create pull – and that is where branding comes into the picture. First, that means that products these days really need to be needed by consumers more than ever. Second, they need to be found in places that target consumers visit to inform, compare, discuss and, of course, buy. And in these places, they need to be visible and, via clever engagement with consumers, positively charged with few concise associations that match the customer need. Only then, a collective perception of the product emerges that clearly associates the product with the need and leads to significant financial results.

From Producers to Intermediaries and Peers // One way to define branding is, to shape consumers’ perception of a product towards a desired target perception. With regard to that, the shift to online significantly changed the degree to which companies can influence consumer perception of their offering. Today, they are only one of many sources that can influence consumer purchasing behavior. Next to, e.g., experts or media outlets, consumers can now influence each other in significant ways via the Internet. Consequently, companies need to take into account peer-to-peer dynamics and evolve from one-way promotion from the analogue days to continuous online conversation with consumers in order meet frequently changing needs. Moreover, the power of digital platforms has grown tremendously, as a recent McKinsey report shows. As such, the rise of Amazon, Instagram, Apple’s AppStore and the like has reduced companies’ control over how their offering is perceived. One consequence of that is: When designing their strategy, companies need to consider among other things the technical and cultural rules that those platforms represent.

From digitizing the analogue to fundamental redesign // It is one of the early misconceptions of the digital era that digital was about digitizing previously analogue processes and products. However, the digital era did not only change distribution and communication channels, but also fundamentally changed human behavior within and outside of companies. Thus, digitalization actually requires to step back and rethink one’s offering from scratch. Especially, changes in where, when, how and why customers buy need to be addressed by modifying what is offered and how.

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Strong brands are more relevant than ever - which does not mean they can’t limit growth

Today, many consumers in developed countries are faced with an ever-increasing amount of products and services offered. For a long time, the widespread notion was that more choice would mean more happiness. At the very latest since psychologist Barry Schwartz and his idea of the “paradox of choice” (see video below), we know that that is not necessarily true. Because it seems, the more options we face, the harder it gets to differentiate them from each other, and the more energy is required to consider and compare all of them. Not only with each other but also with our actual needs. Moreover, the more options we are offered, the less sure we tend to feel after our purchase about whether we really made the right choice. Instead, we often feel “Fear of missing out” on a better opportunity, a phenomenon first coined by Patrick McGinnis. The result: feelings of insecurity, disorientation or even exhaustion.

This is where strong brands come into the picture. Like lighthouses, brands provide orientation, security and identity to consumers via three functions (at least that’s what McKinsey Partners Tjark Freundt, Jesko Perrey, and Dennis Spillecke outline in their book “Power Brands”). First, with the information they communicate and the associations they evoke, strong brands stand out of a raft of others. In that way, they provide orientation and reduce search and evaluation costs. Second, they help reduce the risk of making the wrong purchase decision. When customers experience that a brand constantly delivers on its value proposition, they develop trust in them and give them priority – especially in complex purchase decisions with little prior knowledge, long-term implications, or many heterogeneous offers. Third, brands send signals to a consumer’s environment that can imply, e.g., belonging to a certain social group, which in turn can create identity and self-confidence. For companies, brands can boost customer acquisition, improve retention, or allow to charge significant price premiums. Not surprisingly, a study by Interbrand showed that a portfolio of 40 most valuable brands outperformed the MSCI World Index in every year since 2000. Given all that, what’s the drawback, we might think.

However, there can be cases, where a strong brand can be a limiting factor for a company’s product strategy. Let’s look at the example of a company with one of the best-known brands in the world, Black & Decker. They achieved that status mainly via offering top-notch household products like vacuum cleaners or irons, as well as power tools like drills or saws. When management came across significant growth and profitability challenges in one B2C subarea of the power tools division, they realized: although the product quality was above-average and brand awareness among target customers was almost at 100%, it turned out that the brand was associated so closely with the household category, that it kept away power tools target customers from purchasing. Interestingly enough, the adjacent category, that sold the very same products but B2B, did not face that problem. The resulting hypothesis: B2C customers cared for the image the brand signalled, while B2B buyers seemingly did not so much.