As most of Mortar’s work is in activities defined by group decision making (tourism, technology, education and healthcare) a call to develop individual target personas can leave us scratching our heads. Understanding the fabric that connects teams can be more useful.

Consider the rise of the DevOps movement in IT. DevOps teams boost productivity by eliminating the gap between creator and executor. To ignore the conversation between these two as they move through their day is to fail to grasp what they agree—and what they need to succeed. (Hence Slack “the messaging app for teams” and Atlassian’s Jira “the software development tool for agile teams” positioning as group-based collaboration tools).

And it’s not just tech that is rediscovering the importance of targeting teams. As the Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. James Young sees it, “health care’s no longer a gladiatorial sport with one person — no matter how smart — going up against the challenges. Instead, it’s a team effort, and today’s medical education has begun to reflect that trend”.

In some categories, persona development can be too blunt a tool for exploiting motivation. If you need to target team decisions, look hard at riding the wave of group dynamics. Here are five ways understanding connective tissue can bring your marketing back from the dead:

1. Teams are groups of individuals united by a common purpose.

Even if the reason people work together is the same, how they see their work will vary substantially. Simple one-on-one interviews (by phone) with team members is a good way to map the contours of a committee. For another perspective, see Deloitte’s Kim Christfort on their (fresh) approach to personality profiling here.

2. Groups talk. So connect to what they say to one another. 

What is the nature of the conversation on the team? Who talks to who and about what? Ask them. Gather them together in groups of two and three and listen to what they say to one another. Pay special attention to the words they use. The roles they assume. And be especially conscious to of the topics they avoid.

3. Groups decide. So figure out how they make a call.

Miller & Heiman write convincingly about the buying roles of complex teams, counseling Sales to pay attention to “buying influences” and identify a coach who can help pluck signals from the noise. Despite apparent similarities, different groups will draw radically alternative conclusions from the same data. Charting the path they might follow is a useful marketing strategy especially in big ticket sales.

4. Groups analyze. Winning is as much a team sport as an individual mark of accomplishment. Goals are the primary connective tissue.

Give some time to considering shared goals. Goals always have three dimensions: quantity (amount, numbers, clicks), quality (feelings, perceptions, vision) and time (you want it when?).  How many digital marketing teams are so focused on the clickstream that they ignore the other two dimensions? Addressing goals can be an effective way to cement disparate people and bring them closer to buying your product. Make sure you address all three categories.

5. Groups feel: how does the group change when they use your product or service? Every group can be unified by insight about their customer. 

What happens to their customers—and how does that impact the team?  Teams that succeed feel different than those that don’t. Pride and accomplishment are attractive and viral because success has many fathers but failure is an orphan. Demonstrating how your product can help everyone on the team win, can work to motivate individuals and groups.

We chose the name Mortar because we are obsessed with the importance of connective tissue. Our business is differentiation–yours and ours. Applying the same tools to the same problems rarely yields fresh answers. If you are having trouble convincing the world what you are doing is indeed special, take time to dig under the cushions for the connections that spur action.

It’s been months since we announced we would live without the storied Big Reveal (BR)—the final, much anticipated unveiling of a creative solution after weeks of frenzied (and secret) hibernation. (A presentation that is supposed to leave clients in awe and the agency bursting with pride).

The Big Reveal is the essential Mad Man moment. And it has been a staple of agency presentations for as long as there have been agencies. And, I suspect (well, actually, I know from experience) it is no more effective now than it was then.

So yes, that’s the process we stood up last summer—choosing instead to forgo a little magic for some back-to-basics communication and partnering. So what happened? Without further ado, here’s what you need to know about life after the Big Reveal:

1. You can significantly accelerate creative development, but it hurts. Greater velocity can be achieved if you have the right team, are willing to say yes at the worst possible times, and are comfortable being the agency clients turn to when no one else will touch the job because they’re not ready, willing or able to move at that kind of speed. Mind you these types of jobs have a lot of attractive qualities:  they are almost always high priority, interesting and can be wonderfully challenging.
2. You need willing clients if you intend to scale at speed: no surprise there. Service businesses like ours rely on vague notions of process and the ability to provide concrete assurances that the solution will be in your inbox tomorrow—even though we know full well that the idea might be hard to come by and we could still be playing peek-a-boo well beyond the delivery deadline. Still, scaling the process so it works across multiple jobs and teams at the same time is undeniably tough. At speed,uncertainty multiplies, pressure builds much more quickly, and the danger of a miss pops-up overnight. On the brighter side, failure after a few days of work is rarely fatal. And clients are much more open to rolling up their sleeves and mucking-in when they feel the agency is as committed as they are to finding a solution quickly.
3. It’s a rare client who does not like to look at ideas early and often. But they do exist. And those who prefer the Big Reveal won’t give you their business because life without the Big Reveal is scary. Unpredictable. And unproven. Plus considering ideas “early and often” can sound like hard work. Not every marketing leader is comfortable judging creative or throwing their own ideas into the mix. Seriously, a big prospect recently told me that he didn’t “care for the Mortar process” because it did not resemble the way he had learned to develop and judge marketing. But that’s his prerogative. Mortar-ready clients leap at the chance to review ideas in a rough form, to dig into it with us, put on their creative hats and embrace the chance to fully participate in the riffing of new possibiltles.
4. If creative development speeds up, everything else has to too. I never quite appreciated the breather that the Big Reveal gives the entire agency value chain: account, strategy, media, partner and client are much more comfortable delivering quality work over time. BR work can be resourced and scheduled. Changes are easy to accommodate. Projects can move forward in sequence. Life is more predictable. Kick the legs out from under the Big Reveal and everyone has to pick up the pace. Early ideas flare and die quickly. And a positive response is followed by a demand for more details: how will this work? What is your POV on media? How about activation ideas? What are the implications for brand and measurement and the longer term? Just because you have trashed the Big Reveal doesn’t mean you can get away with not knowing.  And let’s not forget that saying “yes, we’ll have that for you tomorrow” will often be followed by another, similar fresh request that very same day. Speed can be very addictive, especially when combined with quality. But it can contribute to burn-out.
5. Meeting clients’ need for speedy solutions builds confidence quickly and leads to a lot more work. Our clients are at war with one another. A few days saved here quickly translates into competitive advantage there. Good solutions delivered fast are often executed just as promptly. Many of us wish it was otherwise—but it isn’t. The future belongs to the swift. And the swift are onto the next thing by the time the Big Reveal rolls around.
6. Expect to change everything else too. Nine months in and we whiteboard more than we ever have. We have developed so many different flavors of brainstorm that we now non-ironically regularly refer to “MortarStorming.” We have ditched the pursuit of a single Big Idea in favor of a combination of identifying a “Strategic Decision” and one, compelling, “A-Ha Moment” (more on those two soon I promise). Oh and we have built a team of fierce collaborators with thick skins and a growing disdain for big agency thinking and process.

So, after all this time, would we go back and snuggle up with the Big Reveal? Not a chance. Won’t you join us?

We have spent many an hour mulling over how to exploit Moore’s  Chasm theory.

But many, many more hours cursing the dynamics of the early market.

In particular, we wrestle with early adopters’ infatuation with all things new and their inability to stay loyal to ideas over time.

You see, the first buyers are often visionary in character, attracted by revolutionary change, comfortable with half-baked features and totally cool with the untested, unfinished.

They’re also needy, goal obsessed, and keen to brag. Especially about being the first on the block to grab innovation by the horns and wrestle it into submission.

They will always be among the first to quit. 

Visionaries like to jump onto the next big thing. And that can be a problem. The early market is a dynamic, fickle force which can be hard to tame and even harder to keep caged.

Here are five things about the early market most overlook:

• The early market is always in the minority. If you talk to 100 people about your new product, only 10 will say it’s awesome. 90 will tell you it sucks. Or worse, they won’t even know it’s there. 90% rejection is hardly compelling evidence that you’re onto something.

• People who sell to the early market are rarely comfortable selling to the early market. Your team, those stalwarts who have chosen to join you on the front line of change, they too are surrounded by doubters and skeptics. So is your Board. And your investors. They want guarantees. Or at least promises. They will all push you to go for the money. Now. And the money lies in the fattest part of the Bell Curve with the elusive majority. So why aren’t you selling there now? Moore urges caution and the need to establish a beachhead first. But to do that is to sit back while someone else exploits the fat found in the middle of the herd!

• The early market is way different from the late market. To find where you are on the curve, it’s important to understand the differences between the two groups. Somewhere in your product’s journey to success is a gap. It lies between the radicalized, crazy, fanatical first-customers and their more prudent, careful, and risk-averse brethren. Pragmatists don’t trust visionaries. They think visionaries are crazy. And pragmatists bore visionaries with their endless prattling about avoiding risk and loading up your product with check-box features. Yet, significant numbers of pragmatists have to be swayed by visionaries for an idea to root and blossom.

• The traffic moves in one direction: from left to right, early to late. Ideas move from new to old. They are birthed. They grow. Mature. And eventually pass into the mainstream. And after a while they wither and die. The point here is that they rarely pass from mature to death and back to sexy again. Which means it can be hard for a new idea to retrace its steps, especially when the gloss has worn off.

• Your industry is not any different. Don’t fight the theory, embrace it. We have been teaching diffusion theory since Rogers first published Diffusion of Innovations in 1962 (check this out). It’s hardly a new idea or a novel expression of market development. The principles are tried and tested. Sure you can break into a market by penetrating the middle: but it takes a lot of money. That’s why so many Super Bowl advertisers are major, established brands — Coke, Pepsi, Jeep, Bud — and why so few companies trust debuting a novel idea in a $3 million commercial. So if you are outside the mainstream, you can gain a significant advantage by embracing the lessons of market adoption theory and watching your own customers for the telling signs of quivering, flighty pioneerdom. And even find ways to cross the chasm to that big, fat majority market. But more on that in another piece.

That’s how we see it. Join the conversation. #whatifmortar

(SPOILER ALERT: business buyers are human too)

Prick a business buyer, do they not bleed? Tickle them, do they not laugh? Poison them, do they not die? To further bastardize the Bard, if we are like them in the rest, we resemble them in this too.

B2B marketers take note: if you too want to make billions, a great place to start is by framing your messaging as an appeal to human nature. 

It helped us shape the creation of some $16 billion in value since 2003. It will work for you too.

Here’s a three-step approach to more human-factored business communication:

1. Decide who: Your target is of flesh and blood. Emotion, gut and desire drive purchasing decisions, not job titles. So remember to understand your audience’s Psychographic profile.

Consider how well you know your target audience? What keeps them up at night. What gets them going? Are they early adopters, or of the more pragmatic mindset?

[Tip: there is no better way to profile customers than to talk to them -Ed].

2. Decide your value: Now that you know who is in your sights, you can decide what you can offer them.

Your Value Proposition should speak to what they truly want (and wants always trump needs).

An effective value proposition explains how only your product solves their problem and promises added value.

Ask yourself: What do customers get from you that others can’t provide? How you define your audience will give you clues for crafting your value proposition. But you will still need to decide what to emphasize. Even though your value proposition will likely change as the market matures and the product becomes more widely understood, maintaining differentiation requires choices and focus.

And the dirty little secret about focus is it means that only some people are in the tent while most are not. 

3. Give them three Careabouts. We like our things in threes. Threes are easy to remember. Easy to use. And necessarily focused.

So give your target three things to expect of your offering—three powerful whys. And back up each of the whys with compelling and clear Reasons to Believe.

Boil them down like this: Many squeamish and concerned homeowners (the psychographic and demographic profile) turn to “Mouse Killing Machines” (MKM) to kill vermin infesting their homes so they can have a mouse-free and safe home with no harmful chemicals needed (value proposition). 

So MKM wants to point out how lethal their solution is to all pests (careabout #1), compared to say cats, which often deliver prey that is still, well, twitching (a compelling Reason to Believe).  Others MKM customers want a smart and easy way to keep mice and other vermin from entering their home–and that can be adjusted based on conditions. So MKM says it can be optimized too (careabout #2). And MKM customers indicate some level of concern that mice-killing poison could harm their pets or children.  So MKM points out that ridding your home of pests means it is more actually safe  (careabout #3). That MKM does not use harmful chemicals (I know right, oh the wonderful power of logic-free analogies) and includes a child-safety latch to protect it against prying fingers (more Reasons to Believe). The three things the MKM customers thus careabout are Killing, Optimized and Safe. 

These simple, but effective steps can be brought together in a messaging house. Ready to be blessed and put into action by marketing, sales and partners.

Sometimes it can be more fun to think inside a box (house). Here’s an example for MKM that includes a value proposition, customer psychographic and demographic profile along with three careabouts–and the supporting Reasons to Believe:

That’s how we see it. Let us know your thoughts. Join the conversation #whatifmortar.