I just saw his speech again and this time, I really understood his perspective on what harmony is about. He is talking in context of story telling but I believe it applies to the creative process for brand building, design and business in general.

He never says but rather assumes that harmony is what we need to look for in a creation , not perfection. (That is genius right there).

He explains that harmony is not about seeking resolution, it is more about the acceptance of contradiction. A good story is told at many different levels and it is OK if the elements of the story do not jive together perfectly. Every loophole does not have to be closed. Even in some of the great Hollywood movies, the creators compromise the intellectual quality just to provide a complete resolution at the end.

We, the agency folks, do the same thing only at a much stricter level. Because of the noise and competition out there, we have gone crazy with  ‘follow the brand guidelines’ thing. We are not being creative, we are just being the brand police. Sad. As Shekar says, “We prepare too much. We think too much. Knowledge becomes a weight upon wisdom.”

NIKE. Just do it.  — Think of all the levels this line plays at; emotional, political, mystical, good, bad, … who care? Let it be. That is the acceptance of contradiction. That is harmony. That is genius.

Here is Shekar’s speech. If you have not seen the movie Elizabeth and you do not have 21 minutes, you can skip the first few minutes:

As I try to apply it to discover unique value propositions of different businesses, I am realizing that the metaphor of “blue ocean” has a problem. It suggests that you have to set on a “long  journey into the unknown” in order to find non-competitive markets. Not always. Sometimes, blue ocean is right underneath you in the middle of the red ocean as the competition fights itself to death.

Conventional business school wisdom suggests offering value-cost trade-offs through product-line extension. That approach has created so much clutter and craziness in the marketplace. BOS approach suggests otherwise. It says: Break the value-cost trade-off. I feel that in some industries (like appliances) that is all you have to do: simplify the damn product line.

Apple is the obvious example (sorry, seems like we don’t have much else to talk about now-a-days). Motorola, Sony, Blackberry, even HTC are still looking at their versions of the consumer perception maps and treating it as a battle ground. They are too busy playing the game of positioning new product offerings to cover gaps in the market. You know what? That’s the deadly red ocean right there. Stop the craziness. Consumer is pissed off.

You know how hard it is to find a washer, or for that matter, a toothbrush. Now, I understand the problem that CPG brands  but for high-involvement products like appliances, I think someone just has to go for it. Eliminate all models. design one washer that does everything but has one button on it, like an iPod. I know, it only takes courage to break the fixed cost structure and convince people who would think you are crazy – a classic blue ocean hurdle.

Since I am on a war against that demographics-based targeting that media companies and advertising agencies have plagued us with, I was really excited to hear what she had to say. “The crazy thing” she says, “is that media companies think if you fall within a certain demographic category, you are predictable.”

YES!!! finally someone else said that this is CRAZY. I’ve been saying this ever since I took my first Marketing class and my common sense started having issues with my MBA professors. Seriously, I want my money back.

Anyway, the good old days of post-industrial revolution are over. The rise of middle class in the developed world is history. David Ogilvy’s ideas were great but his books are not even available for Kindle.

Wake up people. It’s over. Age, gender, marital status blah, blah, blah is a hoax. Internet is too measurable and you can’t hide it anymore. Break the spell. Move on to psychographics and behaviors and create new value for your business (or just manage to survive).

Here is her talk. Enjoy:

I find some bloggers to be somewhat introverted and that they use social media as a platform to express themselves. You probably want to avoid these guys on your brand. In general, I think some personality traits are more important than skills and experience.

In a community manager, I would look for conscientiousness, agreeableness and some level of extroversion as the desirable qualities. My most important question would be if their personality naturally fits my brand’s personality? Or even more importantly, do they talk the talk and walk the walk of my customers.

As far as experience and skills are concerned, they are really not as important. These things are extremely easy to learn and they will keep changing anyway. They probably have already changed since you started thinking about it.

When he mentioned the example of Cirque De Soleil, I instantly connected it to the Blue Ocean Strategy. We are kind of talking about the same thing. Just more creativity and intuition in decision making. I will read the book and post again. But I do think that people struggle with the idea of using too much intuition in business especially in public companies with stockholder pressure and a epitite for short-term gains.

At the same time, if wall street is OK with taking ridiculous risks with “mortgage backed securities” why not take a risk with some of these other “crazy” ideas.

1. If your online business has not established specific key performance indicators beyond the basics (visits / total revenue).

2. If the decision-makers in your online business receive an auto-generated dashboard report but no analysis is done.

3. If you do not define specific KPIs for each campaign in the marketing brief before the campaign starts and try to measure success afterwards.

4. If you reach conclusions and make marketing decisions based on aggregate data and don’t break it down to understand segment behaviors.

5. If you have unexplained phenomena in one report but you assume that other reports would be reliable.

6. If your offline metrics go against the online metrics and there is no clear explanation.

7. If you believe your analytic team has everything figured out to an exact science.