While writing this tutorial on memes I read The Cluetrain Manifesto. It prompted me write this ‘memo to CEOs’. The purpose of this memo is to take some thinking time to reflect on the following thoughts:
– Darwinian marketing is a battle of memes, not a battle of products.
– Owning a meme in the customer’s mind, over a longer period of time, is the #1 goal of darwinian marketing. – Its better to be first in the mind than first in the mass media. It’s better for a meme to be a WOM than an advertisement.
– A market is a memepool. A market is a meme exchange among human beings, receiving and transmitting their memes by WOM. – The internet is a wired memepool. Your company intranet is a wired memepool. – Wired memepools are faster and therefore smarter than traditional markets. – The balance of memes in the wired memepool is often the opposite of what appears in the mass media.
– No union can organise workers the way the memepool of a company’s intranet allows workers to organise themselves. – There are two memepools. One inside the company via the intranet. One with the market via the internet. These two memepools eventually spill into each other. Workers talk to customers in their own way.
– Via the internet and intranet customers and employees are using WOM to exchange memes in a powerful new way. – WOM is swapping jokes, opinions, gossip and arguments by human voice. WOM is compelling to other humans in a way which is not possible from vendors in the mass media.
– The memepool has all the memes of all the companies and whether the news is good or bad, they can infect anyone. – Companies who contribute poorly to the memepool find their markets are often ridiculing their memes. – Vendors who offer better memes will survive better in smart markets.
– The wired memepool, even at its worst, is more compelling than most business meetings or trade shows and certainly more intimate than corporate advertising campaigns.
– To oldsell corporations, the wired memepool may appear chaotic but it is organising much faster than they are with much better tools and more new ideas.
– In darwinian marketing, your reputation as an attractive meme-fountain is everything. It’s your survival advantage in the memepool. Protect it all costs. – Avoid infection from cheerless and narrow-minded meme-fountains.
– In darwinian marketing, attractive bait memes that bring people to you are useful and memes that gain attention are very powerful memes.
– Memes that show generosity are attractive to people and will keep them near to you.
– Memes that appeal to the patience or forbearance of humans do not survive as well as memes that appeal to people’s self-interest, to their fantasies.
DFQ TD12:
If you could tell your CEO one thing, what would it be?
Focus more on the overall growth of the business and relinquish many of the administration tasks to others – create new role to accomplish this if necessary.
The way that we are looking at money as a scarce resource must be retired. There is really no such thing as a shortage of cash. There are plenty of people with lots of money. These folks want to see their money growing and their investments increasing in value. When we can explicate the profits that can be gained by partnering with us and investing with our company they will be more than happy to spend their money with us.
Think about your and the company’s values.
Think about your market.
Think about your employees and leaders.
Think about growth.
Think about processes.
Then act.
Develop a strategy, find the right leaders and let them run it.
Spend your days sharing that strategy with everyone in the company. Talk to 5 new employees daily to help them understand and identify how they influence the strategy.
“Darwinian marketing is a battle of memes, not a battle of products”. A product contributes to the meme, yes, but there are many more aspects to the battle. Are the employees, marketing, sales collateral all aligned to the product you are selling and does this all contribute towards a memorable and powerful meme that will survive the next generate? If not, we have work to do. If you find yourself putting your efforts into multiple memes, then lets find the most memorable and powerful one and align all resources towards that.
– The memepool has all the memes of all the companies and whether the news is good or bad, they can infect anyone.
Focus more on the overall growth of the business and relinquish many of the administration tasks to others – create new role to accomplish this if necessary.
The way that we are looking at money as a scarce resource must be retired. There is really no such thing as a shortage of cash. There are plenty of people with lots of money. These folks want to see their money growing and their investments increasing in value. When we can explicate the profits that can be gained by partnering with us and investing with our company they will be more than happy to spend their money with us.
Think.
Think about your and the company’s values.
Think about your market.
Think about your employees and leaders.
Think about growth.
Think about processes.
Then act.
Develop a strategy, find the right leaders and let them run it.
Spend your days sharing that strategy with everyone in the company. Talk to 5 new employees daily to help them understand and identify how they influence the strategy.
Then adapt and think so more.
I would tell him that he can make a better decision about something , as a thinker than as a manager.
Your reputation in the meme pool is everything. Protect it at all costs.
“Darwinian marketing is a battle of memes, not a battle of products”. A product contributes to the meme, yes, but there are many more aspects to the battle. Are the employees, marketing, sales collateral all aligned to the product you are selling and does this all contribute towards a memorable and powerful meme that will survive the next generate? If not, we have work to do. If you find yourself putting your efforts into multiple memes, then lets find the most memorable and powerful one and align all resources towards that.
Remember the back bones that hold everything together and their contribution in holding up the business.
Continue to challenge the cvs and investigate the BVS with a team that is prepared to see through the journey.