Posts Tagged ‘Dialogue Marketing’
Schwarzenegger, Total Recall and the Offspring of Error
How does sharing mistakes affect our relationships?
Sharing can be painful
Today’s shocking revelation takes the form of a ten year old child as part of the reason for Arnold’s impending divorce. It seems the Governator worked a bit too closely with the hired help. Not that the child is at fault—and I fear for the child’s unwanted celebrity status. And this: divorce and broken relationships are not good and no child should be hidden. But there are lessons to learn.
Recently in our Social Media Marketing class we discussed how sharing failure draws readers toward us. Failing at preparing a particular facial mask, for instance helps us sympathize with the beauty enthusiast. Negative reviews at a website help offset glowing reviews and hint that the positive reviews might not just be cherry-picked. Poised to buy some spendy item, we look closely at the negatives to balance the positives. On a personal level, sharing our failures has a way of redeeming our relationships and drawing others toward us, though who knows what that might look like for Mr. Schwarzenegger and Ms. Shriver.
One of the underlying themes as we move toward this social sharing world is that companies no longer control the monologue because the monologue is now a dialogue, whether they like it or not. Letting go of control will mean less pleasant communication about our product or service will certainly surface. The question becomes how we deal with those negatives. We won’t be able to play Terminator. Instead we’ll need to share our true lies.
###
How Could this Book be More Interesting?
I’m about to go fishing with my Listentalk book proposal (via www.ChristianManuscriptSubmissions.com). How could I make the summary (below) more interesting? Be honest. People respond to these posts by email, on Facebook and occasionally right here at “Engage.” Vent your spleen. I’m listening.
Listentalk: How Simple Conversation Changes Your Life Every Day
Why does one conversation make you scan the room for escape while the next sends you breathless to register to run a marathon—though you hate exercise? Listentalk: How Simple Conversation Changes Your Life Every Day shows how humble, mundane conversations have the power to turn our life direction every single day, by:
- Reminding us of the pivotal conversations that have shaped and sculpted our own lives. Like the chance comment to your 18-year-old-self from an acquaintance about a “school you should check out,” which sent you a direction that ended in law school, marriage and being appointed as a judge (true story).
- Showing how God purposefully composed the human condition so that while we are limited, we are limited together. Conversation has a way of bumping out our human limitations in extraordinary ways, so that my lack of understanding leads to a discussion that sheds light on a key topic but also opens an opportunity to pursue the work I love.
- Exposing the component parts of listening and talking so we can better understand how God speaks to and through us
- Providing practical insights into how we can listen and speak for powerful good every single day—including wise use of social media
Today’s incendiary and vitriolic talk leaves people feeling weary and soiled. Listentalk refreshes Christian adults, Sunday School classes, small groups and college students by reminding them of the wonder, curiosity and serendipity that have been part of the deep verbal connections that have shaped their lives. These deep connections have often sprung from the unlikeliest of mundane conversations.
Listentalk tells stories of conversations that both suggest and model an extraordinary set of expectations and outcomes for ordinary talk. Listentalk helps people see verbal, visual and other-sensory conversational episodes as the powerful shaping tools they are—and provides suggestions for making them even more powerful. Unlike possibility-thinking, self-help books, Listentalk is grounded in the nature and actions of the conversing God of the Bible who expected and realized world-changing outcomes from each conversational episode. Listentalk frees readers to see daily conversation in a very different light by inviting readers to reach out in trust to each day’s conversational partners—an ever-expanding set of partners due to changing attitudes (about communication, authority and the loss of gatekeepers) and developing technologies.
Listentalk offers a primer on navigating the growing social media space as redeemed conversational partners. Creating communities of target audiences is the new marketing strategy. Leading public conversations by reaching out with dialogue that gifts and blesses is not only supremely Christian, but supremely strategic.
###
Who Cares What You Think?
Hearing from your non-target audience is critical to moving forward
I look forward to chatting with a friend and HR executive about how or if her organization encourages dialogue internally. It’s going to be a tricky conversation and I’m not at all sure I can verbally explain what I mean.
What's out there?
Dodgy Questions
I’m working backward from the notion that target audiences and publics are no longer willing to suffer monologues, sermons and sales pitches from companies trying to get their dollars. As I talk with clients and friends, I realize the unwillingness to engage in dialogue with their target audiences actually comes from a deep place of control that leaders want to maintain. Dialogue looks like brazen and reckless openness that offers little or no payback: sort of a personal, self-inflicted Wikileak that will most certainly sink the ship.
In a sense they are right: telling what we know and offering it in exchange for discussion and relationship does seem like giving away the store. But it isn’t exactly that and it will become less like that over time. Dialogue today is more a recognition that the audience that once packed your lecture hall is now making its way to the stage, each with their own microphone and their own index card of questions.
The willingness to engage in dialogue is much, much more than turning on another marketing channel or sprucing up a communication strategy. It is a deep-seated willingness that runs counter to the way many of our businesses are organized.
Talking to the Other
I’ve been tracing the notion of the Other back through Derrida to Levinas and Hegel. I’m trying to understand exactly what is at stake when we open ourselves to true engagement with another person. In particular, engagement with people outside my demographic, outside my target audience, outside my belief set. What are they talking about and how have I excluded them and what have I missed through my exclusions?
I’m eager to know what a company that opens itself in this way looks like: who are they internally? How do they talk with each other in a way that allows them to be open to talking with others?
So—this conversation. Are you interested ?
###
Tale of a Communication Fail that Lost a Sale
We stood looking at the broken window. I wanted an estimate. But the window salesman was unspooling a monologue about the wood in windows these days: something about 80-year old trees, then 50-year old trees and 35-year old trees. Then came sealant rates, the attributes of vinyl, why his company of craftsman were utterly dependable and more than just sales guys, and then another round of features so precise and minute I would need to plot them on a spreadsheet to begin to understand them. Most of what he said was entirely unverifiable—especially at the rate he was spewing it out.
The sales pitch is dead. Long live dialogue!
I suddenly realized it’s been some time since I’ve heard one of these old-school sales pitches. And I remembered why: I hate listening to sales pitches. I’ve been writing about the switch from monologue to dialogue so much that perhaps I had convinced myself the sales pitch was dead.
Not so.
For all the reasons I’ve been writing about, from lack of curiosity to the absence of questions to simple lack of insight into his audience, his sales pitch did not address my central question: Will you give me an estimate on replacing this window and, even more, can I trust you to do the job effectively?
It’s too bad, really. I used body language to say “I’m not interested” and “I don’t believe a word you are saying.” And two or three times directed him to the question of the estimate, even so, the pitch soon came tumbling out again at full speed. I despaired of getting back to work. He seemed to not get that the pitch was not working, nor that it was affecting me negatively. Maybe he didn’t care. He clearly seemed to not care that I didn’t care.
Even Mrs. Kirkistan, in later conversations with the window pitchman, found herself attempting to cut through the monologue to force an estimate. In fact, long before the actual estimate came, we decided we could not trust this guy or his company.
Two things about the pitchman and his monologue:
- Dialogue is a way of establishing trust. It proves someone is listening. By way of contrast, monologue proves someone is not listening. Do I really want to work with someone who is not listening?
- Feature-laden promises delivered at a rate that makes them unverifiable (even if we cared, which we didn’t) have “scam” written all over them. Maybe the pitchman and his company were legit. His monologue led me directly away from that conclusion.
Dialogue helps disperse skepticism.
###
Medtech Using Social Media #4: The Power of the Question
Yes--what is your question?
A question changes everything. A question mark sets a thought on a pedestal in the street and invites comment. It says, “I don’t know the answer—do you?” When I teach, a question is one of my most powerful tools. With a question I ask for input while simultaneously implying “You’ve got something valuable to say and I want to hear it.” The best, most fruitful discussions happen when I present what I know and then invite students to contribute from their experience and thinking. Something alive often happens, something I could not plan for or even predict. Something that moves us all forward.
For marketers, the question is equally powerful. If we’re lucky, we’re in a team where we can ask questions openly rather than pretending to own all the answers. Our usual path to outward communication is to ask our questions in the (relatively) protected environs of conference rooms and among colleagues. Then we polish and hone the messages into one-way barbs to shoot out through our media channels. But what if the questions themselves were our communication points? What if we started with questions to our growing community of similarly-interested people, long before we ever started polishing messages for public consumption?
Once upon a time my team worked on promoting a new heart failure device. We identified a single main message that incorporated three strong benefits (based on market research) which became the core of our campaign. We tested our messages informally, received anecdotal feedback and pushed forward. Today, with the help of social media, that scenario might look like this: take the received market research, our questions and immediately begin dialogue. Proceed with message polishing and honing even as the community dialogue continues. At some point the internal and external dialogues blend and the end result is something beyond what we could conceive on our own. Best of all, this new something already his mind-share in a community of interested people. And if you have a sales force, you know that mindshare is a key gear for turning sales.
Next Up: What would dialogue success look like?
###
Photo credit: Colt Elementary PTO & JustHost.com
conversation is an engine 