I went to 30 Rock to check out the NBC studio. One thing that struck me was the involvement they create for customers in the studio. Here’s a picture of me as Al Pacino:
It’s an old trick, but the point is simple:
We now demand to be part of the experience, to create the stuff we buy. Especially in new media and web forums.
Face to face chat with single perosn who can make decision
Live internet video chat (skype / ustream et al)
Phone call
Internet chat (IM style)
Direct tweet
Text message
Email
(Pic by Christian Gates)
So is this for Customers, Suppliers, Investors or Media?
All of them – they are all people.
People are very time poor, or maybe just a little impatient. Regardless of which it is we have to be able to tell our story quickly.
Vanguard Investments do it in 2 seconds. Click here to see how they do it. (Watch the animation)
Even this chart below tells the story on long term ‘index’ investing. Of which Vanguard are the founding forefathers.
The recent downturn is a best a ‘blip’.
How long does your startup story take to tell? Here’s a tip – we’ve got a few seconds at most.
If you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve never been ‘people watching’, then start up blog strongly recommends a session. For a lot of reasons it’s a cool thing all entrepreneurs should do. For one, all our revered entrepreneurs are champion trend spotters. And they spot these trends a long time before they are reported in the Sunday newspaper lift outs.
What’s next?
Go some where busy, go somewhere where there are zillions of transactions, go somewhere sans commerce, go where families hang out, go somewhere singles hangout, look for the subgroups, watch people looking at shelves in stores – guess their decision process, see if this process is the same for all or different for all, see what they wear, see how they move, how did they get there, where are they from, bring a notepad with you and write down ideas, go places you’ve never been before…. Watch people, guess their motivations, view their life in action and then we’ll be the ones gaining life experience…. Just go and watch.
The funny thing about our world is that we are all in it every day, but very few of us are actually paying any attention to it. Step off the stage and become the director. Make it a habit to pay attention to what is going on in our world.
As entrepreneurs and marketers we are lucky. We can do our homework everywhere we go, and our start ups are the key beneficiaries.
