SXSW 2013 Sampler

SXSW ® 2013 Sampler
Foreword by Jeff Dachis
Founder & CEO, Dachis Group
SOCIAL
BUSINESS
BY DESIGN
transformative
social media
strategies for
the connected
company
THE
OF
MARKETING
when to tweet, what to post,
how to blog, and other
proven strategies
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER
Foreword by MEG WHITMAN
Rebooting
W RK
Transform How You Work in the
AGE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Maynard Webb
AND CARLYE ADLER
BETH KANTER
KATIE DELAHAYE PAINE
FOREWORD BY LAURA ARRILLAGA-ANDREESSEN
MEASURING
THE
NETWORKED
NONPROFIT
DION HINCHCLIFFE
PETER KIM
USING DATA
TO CHANGE
THE WORLD
Edited by
WILLIAM T.
PAARLBERG
*This sampler is not sponsored by SXSW ®
Efficiency
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
JASON LANKOW JOSH RITCHIE ROSS CROOKS
Currency $
Founders of Column Five
¥
y
£
€
x
12
ATTRACT
The design and visual
representation of information,
6
including the visualization
INFORM
of data, processes, hierarchy,
3
anatomy, chronology, and other
facts. The use of such graphics
INSPIRE
Response
can aid in the detection of trends
fig. 01
and patterns, expediting
comprehension and improving
INFOGRAPHICS CS C
Response
Market
AUDIENCE
How Engaging Your Customers
and Employees Can Make
Your Business Thrive
The Book of
Business Awesome
Scott Stratten
Author of UnMarketing
The Book of
Business UnAwesome
THE
The CCost
of Not Listening,
Engaging, or Being
Gr Great at What You Do
ULTIMATE
ONLINE
CUSTOMER
SERVICE
GUIDE
How to Connect With Your Customers to
MARSHA COLLIER
Bestselling Author of Starting an eBay Business for Dummies
foreword by David Meerman Scott
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
THE NEW RULES OF SOCIAL MEDIA SERIES

THE
OF
MARKETING
when to tweet, what to post,
how to blog, and other
proven strategies

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
Part I Content 7
Chapter 1 E-Books 9
Chapter 2 Webinars 25
Part II Channels 35
Chapter 3 SEO 37
Chapter 4 Twitter 53
Chapter 5 Facebook 75
Chapter 6 Pinterest 101
Chapter 7 Blogging 109
vii

viii Contents
Part III Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) 127
Chapter 8 E-Mail Marketing 129
Chapter 9 Lead Generation 153
Part IV Analytics 171
Chapter 10 Analytics 173
Index 185

4
Twitter
53

Twitter is my favorite social site. I love the simplicity, the fl exibility,
and the vast audience. I remember a time before the word
retweet existed, when it took only 30 or so tweets from about as
many people for a phrase to become a trending topic worldwide.
It is the perfect platform for the distribution of marketing content.
Describe a link, paste it in the box, and hit Tweet. Your followers
can then click and read, and if they ’re so motivated, they can share
that link with their followers. It ’s the most elegant viral mechanism
yet invented.
I hold some controversial points of view about Twitter, but
none without data backing them up. And that ’s what this chapter
is—my most important Twitter data (and the best collection of it
anywhere).
I ’ve long been interested in the idea that “engaging in the conversation”
is the single most important function of social media
marketing, so I ’ve applied my analysis to test that statement in a
variety of places. One of those places has been Twitter.
I looked at millions of Twitter accounts and separated them into
two groups: those with more than 1,000 followers (the fi rst orange
bar in Figure 4.1 ) and those with fewer than 1,000 followers (the
fi rst black bar in Figure 4.1 ). I then compared those two groups by
the percentage of their tweets that started with an “@” sign to arrive
at a reply percentage. I repeated this analysis with accounts having
more than 1 million followers (the second orange bar in Figure 4.1 )
and accounts with fewer than 1 million followers (the second black
bar in Figure 4.1 ) and found similar results.
55

56 Channels
Percentage of Tweets That Start with “ @ ”
18%
16%
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
>1,000 1 million 1,000

Twitter 57
I found that highly followed accounts tweet more links
than their lesser followed counterparts. These accounts did not
build their reach by being in conversations; they built it by sharing
interesting content in a broadcast fashion. In fact, there are not
many examples of well-known Twitter accounts that are built on
lots of replies, whereas there are countless accounts with more than
1 million followers that do nothing more than share interesting
facts, quotes, links, and news.
Do not think of “engaging in the conversation” on Twitter as a
way of building your reach. Instead, focus on gathering and sharing
as much interesting, relevant content as you can.
If you should tweet lots of links to get followers, how many links
is too much? Is it possible to overtweet?
Using data from HubSpot ’s free Twitter Grader tool, I analyzed
just over 5 million Twitter accounts and compared the number of
times per day they tweeted on average and their number of followers
(Figure 4.3 ). I found that followers peaked with accounts that
1,200 1,000,000
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
1
7
13
19
25
31
37
43
49
55
61
67
73
79
85
91
97
Tweets per Day
103
Figure 4.3 Tweets-per-Day versus Followers
R 2 =0.6627
109
115
121
127
133
139
145
100,000
10,000
1,000
100
www.Hubspot.com

58 Channels
tweeted around 22 times per day and there was no steep drop off
beyond that.
Twenty-two tweets per day, on average, is a pretty breakneck
pace for most accounts to keep up, especially if they ’re tweeting
interesting content and not just anything they fi nd. The takeaway
of this graph is not that 22 times a day is a magical number, just that
it ’s pretty hard to overtweet. And if you ’re wondering how often you
should tweet, the answer is generally “more than you currently are.”
During my research into Twitter, I translated two linguistic analysis
systems to the microblogging platform: Linguistic Inquiry and
Word Count (LIWC) and Regressive Imagery Dictionary (RID). I
did not invent these two systems; they were created by academics at
universities. I simply applied them to social media.
One of the traits that these systems allowed me to analyze was
self-referential language—how often accounts refer to themselves,
either as individuals or as an organization. This includes use of
words such as I, me, us, and we.
When I compared the percentage of tweets that used selfreferential
language to the number of followers those accounts
had—looking at millions of accounts—I found a striking pattern
(Figure 4.4 ). As self-reference increases, follower count decreases.
Self-Reference
1.3%
1.2%
1.1%
1.0%
0.9%
0.8%
0.7%
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
Followers
Figure 4.4 Effect of Self-Reference on Followers
5,000
6,000
7,000

Twitter 59
For most noncelebrity individuals and brands, Twitter users do not
follow them to hear them talk about themselves constantly.
Those same linguistic analysis systems also allowed me to look
into the relationship between negative sentiment and followers.
Here also, I found a similar, striking pattern. As negative remarks
increase, follower counts decrease (Figure 4.5 ).
People don ’t go to social media to get bummed out about the
world around them; they can just turn on the TV news if that ’s
what they want. They go to social media to talk to their friends and
generally feel good.
This sounds like unicorns-and-rainbows superstition, but in this
case, the data support it. Negativity doesn ’t sell on social media as
well as positivity does.
When you sign up to Twitter, you ’re given the ability to provide
three bits of personal information: a profi le picture, a 160-character
bio, and a link to your home page. Over the years I ’ve tracked the
number of accounts that fail to fi ll these fi elds out, and although
the numbers have gotten better with time, I ’m still surprised by how
many accounts don ’t take the few moments required to do this.
When I analyze the relationship between providing this information
and follower counts, the results are unsurprising. In all
three cases, accounts that provide a picture, bio, and home page
Negative Remarks
1.0%
0.9%
0.8%
0.7%
0.6%
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
Followers
Figure 4.5 Effect of Negative Remarks on Followers
5,000
6,000
7,000

60 Channels
Average # of Followers
300
200
100
0
Picture
Figure 4.6 Effect of Profi le Picture on Followers
No picture
link all have more followers than accounts that do not. Figure
4.6 shows the number of followers versus having or not having a
profi le picture, but the effect is the same with the other two fi elds
as well.
Take the time to fi ll out your Twitter bio. Users want to know
who you are before they ’ll follow you.
Going a step further, I dug into actual language used by Twitter
account holders in their bios. One common unicorns-and-rainbows
myth is that you should not call yourself a guru or use any other
word to label yourself an expert.
But the data contradict this superstition. I found that Twitter
accounts that used the word guru in their bios had about 100 more
followers than the average account (Figure 4.7 ). These data do not
mean that if you go over onto Twitter right now and add that word
to your profi le that you ’ll instantly get more followers. But if you
look at the rest of the graph, it does indicate that you should not
be afraid to identify yourself authoritatively. Tell potential followers
why they should listen to you. If you ’ve written a book, founded a
company, or are an expert on something, tell us.
But remember the data about self-reference in tweets. The bio is
the only place you should be talking about yourself.

Followers above Average
200
150
100
50
0
Official
Founder
Speaker
Twitter 61
So far, I ’ve presented data only about follower counts, but
I ’ve also spent a great deal of time analyzing retweets as well. In
Figure 4.8 , I compared the percentage of accounts’ tweets that contain
a link and their average number of retweets per tweet.
I found that here is a sweet spot of linking for maximum retweets.
Accounts that posted 60 to 80 percent links tended to get the most
retweets. Ninety percent or more links can look spammy, so retweet
performance tends to drop off there.
Expert
Figure 4.7 Effect of Bio Words on Followers
Percentage of Tweets Retweeted
16%
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
Sweet spot
Guru
Percentage of Tweets Containing a Link
50%
Figure 4.8 Sweet Spot for Retweets: Links
60%
70%
80%
Author
90%
100%

62 Channels
Percentage of Tweets Retweeted
16%
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
0%
10%
Sweet Spot
Percentage of Tweets Beginning with @
20%
30%
40%
Then I looked at a similar comparison of reply percentage
and retweets and found a much different sweet spot (Figure 4.9 ).
Basically, the more replying done by the Twitter accounts in my
data set, the lower their average retweets per tweet.
As these data and the data about follower counts show, constantly
replying and being chatty on Twitter does not benefi t a marketer
in terms of reach or content spread. If you ’re using Twitter
as a marketing channel, with the goal of building a large audience
of engaged followers who often share your content, you ’ll be best
served by focusing on sharing a lot of interesting content, rather
than replying to every message you get.
When I fi rst began my retweet research, the easiest way I found
to get more retweets was to simply ask for them (Figure 4.10 ). In
fact I conducted an experiment before the word retweet had been
invented where I simply asked people to tweet a certain link, and
the title of the experiment ended up trending worldwide.
Over the years since then, I ’ve had many discussions and debates
about the power of asking for retweets. More recently, I decided to
update and solidify my data about it to put an end to the doubt.
I looked at 20,000 randomly selected tweets and broke them
into three groups: those that contained the phrase please retweet,
those that contained please RT, and those that contained neither
call to action. I found that whereas only 12 percent of the “neither”
50%
60%
Figure 4.9 Sweet Spot for Retweets: Replies
70%
80%
90%
100%

Please Retweet 51% RT’ed
Please RT 39% RT’ed
Neither 12% RT’ed
0% 10%
20% 30% 40% 50%
± 0.67%
Confidence interval: 90%
± 1.43%
± 1.69%
Twitter 63
Figure 4.10 Phrase Please Retweet Gets Four Times More Retweets
group ’s tweets were retweeted, more than 50 percent of the “please
retweet” group ’s tweets were.
Calls to action work in all forms of marketing, and social media
is no different. If you want more retweets, ask for them.
Thanks to the great people over at Buffer (an awesome app you
should check out), I was able to study millions of tweets and their
retweet performance. First, I looked at the relationship between the
time of day the tweets were sent and how many retweets they got
(Figure 4.11 ). The data confi rmed my earlier analysis on a different
data set and showed that retweets were highest for tweets posted
between 3 pm and 5 pm Eastern time.
I know from personal experience that as the business day wears
on, I often lose the motivation and wit to come up with worthwhile
original tweets. It ’s around 4 pm that my retweeting activity
increases because of this.
Experiment with tweeting those updates you want to spread
during this time period and see if it works for you.
The fi rst large-scale retweet data set I compiled was more than
100 million retweets gathered over the course of more than a year.
It was this database that formed the basis of much of my earliest
work on Twitter.
Using this data set, I was able to analyze the volume of retweeting
activity that occurred on the different days of the week. I found
that although overall Twitter activity tends to be highest early in
the business week, retweeting peaks on Fridays (Figure 4.12 ).

64 Channels
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
12:00 am
1:00 am
2:00 am
3:00 am
4:00 am
5:00 am
6:00 am
7:00 am
8:00 am
9:00 am
10:00 am
11:00 am
12:00 pm
1:00 pm
2:00 pm
3:00 pm
4:00 pm
5:00 pm
6:00 pm
7:00 pm
8:00 pm
9:00 pm
10:00 pm
11:00 pm
Figure 4.11 Time of Day versus Retweets
I think the reasons for this might be similar to the reasons that
the end of the business day is the best for getting retweets. And
the tactical takeaway is much the same as well. On Friday afternoons,
look over the content you ’ve posted during the week and
share the best stuff again. After a few weeks, you ’ll learn if Friday
afternoon as a highly retweetable time works for your business and
your audience.
Earlier in this chapter, I included data that showed that selfreference
was correlated with lowered follower counts. I also analyzed
the relationship between self-reference and retweets and
found a similar pattern (Figure 4.13 ).
Looking at millions of retweets and millions of non-retweeted
“normal” tweets, I found that non-retweets tended to contain more
self-referential language than retweets. Not only does self-reference
not lead to more followers, it also doesn ’t lead to more retweets.
When I share one of your tweets with my audience through a
retweet, I need to believe that it will be relevant and interesting to
my followers. The minutia of your life—what you had for lunch and
how many times your cat farted—is very unlikely to make that cut.
If you ’re on Twitter to communicate with friends you know in real

Retweet Volume
19%
17%
15%
13%
11%
Sun
Figure 4.12 Retweet Activity by Day
3%
2%
1%
0%
Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat
Retweets
Non-retweets
Figure 4.13 Amount of Self-Reference in Tweets and Retweets
Word Occurrence
100
80
60
40
20
0
Retweets
Figure 4.14 Word Novelty in Retweets
Random tweets
Twitter 65

66 Channels
life, feel free to talk about yourself all day long, but if you ’re there
for marketing and business reasons, stop talking about yourself.
Whenever I ’ve asked people, in surveys or focus groups, why
they retweet some tweets but not others, the idea of novelty comes
up frequently. People tell me that they want to retweet new information.
They want to be the fi rst, not the last, to inform their
followers of some breaking news. Scarce and new information is
valuable information. Things that everyone else knows aren ’t particularly
worthwhile.
In an effort to quantify this idea, I looked at word occurrence in
retweets and non-retweeted normal tweets. I measured how common
the words in each tweet were ( the is a very common word and
thus had a high word occurrence score, whereas sesquipedalian is
much less common and has a very low word occurrence score).
I found that retweets tended to contain rarer words than nonretweeted
tweets. Nobody wants to retweet you if you ’re simply saying
the same things everyone else is saying. If you want me to share
your content, you need to say something new, something I (and my
followers) haven ’t heard—or read—before.
Perhaps the simplest bit of retweet analysis I ’ve conducted is
about the occurrence of links in tweets and the likelihood that
those tweets are retweeted. In my data set, I found that only 18.96
percent of tweets contained a link, but 56.69 percent of retweeted
tweets contained a link. People are more likely to retweet a link
rather than just a simple tweet (Figure 4.15 ).
These data should serve to reinforce the importance of sharing
as many interesting, relevant links on Twitter as you can. Share
your content—and don ’t be afraid to share it a few times—and fi nd
content from other sources that will also interest your audience and
share those links. Establishing yourself as a source of useful, novel
content is the most data-supported strategy to more followers and
retweets.
I then analyzed the most common words and phrases that
occurred in retweets more than they ’re expected to, based on how
often they occur in non-retweeted normal tweets (Figure 4.16 ). I
found a number of interesting things, but we should remember to

Non-retweets
Links
Figure 4.15 Effect of Links on Retweets
1. you
2. twitter
3. please
4. retweet
5. post
6. blog
7. social
8. free
9. media
10. help
Retweets
Links
11. please retweet
12. great
13. social media
14. 10
15. follow
16. how to
17. top
18. blog post
19. check out
20. new blog post
Figure 4.16 Most Retweetable Words and Phrases
Twitter 67
think about the reasons why these words are on this list, rather than
blindly using them and expecting more retweets.
The most retweetable word in my data set was the word you.
Twitter users want to hear you talk about them, not yourself. The
words twitter and social indicate that talking about social media in
general and Twitter in specifi c works on Twitter. Also on the list
are please retweet and new blog post, which corroborate earlier points
about asking for retweets and the importance of novelty. Free is
always a powerful word in marketing, and on Twitter it is no different.
And we fi nd how to, top, and 10 on this list, showing that utility
content and chunked, list-based content performs well on Twitter,
as it does on other forms of social media.
On the fl ip side of the coin, we fi nd the least retweetable words,
those words that occur far less in retweets than their commonality

68 Channels
1. game
2. going
3. haha
4. lol
5. but
6. watching
7. work
8. home
9. night
10. bed
Figure 4.17 Least Retweetable Words
11. well
12. sleep
13. gonna
14. hey
15. tomorrow
16. tired
17. some
18. back
19. bored
20. listening
in normal tweets would seem to predict (Figure 4.17 ). This list of
words is far less interesting than the list of most retweetable words,
and that ’s the point: they ’re boring.
Most of these words indicate that the person using them is talking
about himself or herself and personal activities, such as watching
the game, listening to something, or going to bed. Even worse is the
occurrence of the word bored here. If you ’re tweeting that you ’re bored,
don ’t expect it to get retweets, as you ’re being quite boring yourself.
An analysis I did of 2.7 million link-containing tweets revealed
an interesting pattern that has implications for all kinds of communications
professionals working with Twitter. I looked at each tweet
in my data set and identifi ed those that were clicked on 0 times but
were retweeted at least once. I also identifi ed those tweets that were
clicked on but were retweeted more times than they were clicked.
I found that 14.64 percent of the tweets in my study were never
clicked on but were retweeted and 16.12 percent of the tweets in
my database had more retweets than clicks (Figure 4.18 ). This tells
me that many people who will retweet an article will do so without
reading it fi rst.
Although the sociological implications of these data could certainly
be quite interesting, I ’m mostly interested in what this means
for marketers. And what it means for marketers is that your headline
is the most important piece of your content when it comes to

Figure 4.18 Retweets versus Clicks
14.64% of the retweeted
tweets had 0 clicks.
16.12% had more
retweets than clicks.
Twitter 69
Twitter success. If your headline doesn ’t entice and motivate the
retweet, the body of your content might not ever get the chance
to succeed.
Even if much retweeting happens in the absence of clicks,
I ’m still interested in getting people to click on the links I post to
Twitter. When it comes time to leverage the huge reach and retweet
counts we ’ve built on Twitter into actual dollars-and-cents return
on investment, it ’s all about how much traffi c we can send to our
website and then convert into leads or customers.
When analyzing clicks on Twitter, I use a metric called clickthrough
rate (CTR). Marketers will be familiar with this from e-mail
marketing or pay per click (PPC), but it functions a little differently
on Twitter. I divide the number of clicks on a link by the number of
followers the user had when they sent the tweet in question.
The fi rst thing I looked at when I began to study Twitter CTRs
was the length of the tweet, in characters. I found that longer tweets
(up to about 130 characters) tend to get more clicks than shorter
tweets (Figure 4.19 ).
Then I looked at the actual position within the tweets occupied
by links and its relationship to CTR. Most Twitter users, myself
included, typically put the link at the end of the tweet. The format
is generally: “Title of the content: http://linktothecontent.com .”

70 Channels
CTR
18%
16%
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
55
60
65
70
75
80
85
90
95
100
105
Tweet Length
Figure 4.19 Longer Tweets Get More Clicks
To visualize this data, I created the heat map you see in
Figure 4.20 . Each vertical bar represents a position of a link inside
of a tweet. Bars to the left represent links placed at the beginning of
the tweet; bars to the right indicate links placed at the end. The
darkness of the bar represents the average CTR of the links at each
position: the darker the bar, the higher the CTR.
My fi ndings were surprising. Although there is a single dark bar
at the end of the heat map, there is a much larger sweet spot of clicks
about a quarter of the way into the tweet. After I fi rst published
110
200,000 Link-Containing Tweets Analyzed
115
120
125
130
135
140
Beginning Middle End
Figure 4.20 Twitter CTR Heat Map

Twitter 71
these data, several people have told me that they ’ve experimented
with a format like “new post: http://linktopost.com title of the post”
and it ’s worked for them.
I ’m not sure why this format works so well; perhaps it ’s because
most Twitter accounts are still putting links at the end of tweets,
so tweets like this stand out. Experiment with it and see if it works
with your audience.
I also analyzed the CTRs of 20 highly followed Twitter
accounts, including mainstream news sources, such as the
Washington Post and the New York Times; geekier sources, such
as Mashable and Gizmodo; and celebrity accounts, such as the
Kardashians and Alyssa Milano. I found that there is no standard
CTR, as they vary widely across these accounts. The New York
Times has a very low CTR, whereas Alyssa Milano has a very
high CTR.
However, I did fi nd one pattern that held true across all of
the accounts I looked at. When one of them tweet a link and
didn ’t tweet another link for an hour, they had a certain CTR
(Figure 4.21 ). When they tweeted two links in an hour, the
CTR dropped. When it was three links in an hour, the CTR was
even lower. As the pace of link-tweeting increased, the CTR for
each link decreased.
CTR
300%
200%
100%
0%
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Links Tweeted per Hour
Figure 4.21 CTR by Links Tweeted per Hour

72 Channels
If you ’re sharing content you ’ve found from other sources across
the Web, tweet it as fast as you want. But when you ’re tweeting your
own content to send traffi c to your site, slow down and tweet it at a
more deliberate pace.
Another CTR analysis I did was on parts of speech. I analyzed
the four major parts of speech (adverbs, adjectives, nouns, and
verbs) and their relationship to the CTR of the tweets they were
found in. I compared the CTR of the individual tweets to the
average for the Twitter user to account for the wild differences
in CTRs.
I found that tweets heavy with adverbs and verbs performed
better than tweets with more nouns and adjectives (Figure 4.22 ).
Action-based words got more clicks than entity-based words. Actionbased
words include calls to action, which is likely the cause of some
of this effect.
Don ’t forget to experiment with action-based calls to action on
Twitter. If you want more clicks, ask for them. But be creative; don ’t
just try “Click here,” but instead try “Check this out” or “Tell me
what you think.”
Effect on CTR
Use action words:
more verbs, fewer nouns.
After analyzing 200,000 link containing tweets, I found taht
tweets that contained more adverbs and verbs had
higher CTRs than noun- and adjective-heavy tweets.
3%
2%
1%
0%
–1%
–2%
–3%
–4%
–5%
Adverbs
Verbs
Figure 4.22 Relationship between Various Parts of Speech and CTR
Nouns
Adjectives

Effect on CTR
Tweet later in the day.
I found that tweets posted in the afternoon hours
had higher CTRs than twees posted in the morning.
1.5%
1.0%
0.5%
0%
–0.5%
–1.0%
–1.5%
–2.0%
–2.5%
Twitter 73
12 am
1 am
2 am
3 am
4 am
5 am
6 am
7 am
8 am
9 am
10 am
11 am
12 pm
1 pm
2 pm
3 pm
4 pm
5 pm
6 pm
7 pm
8 pm
9 pm
10 pm
11 pm
Figure 4.23 Relationship between Time of Tweet and CTR
I also looked at the hour of data and its relationship to CTRs and
found a pattern familiar if you think back to my data on retweeting
and time of day.
Tweets posted later in the day—afternoon Eastern time—
tended to have higher CTRs than tweets posted early in the morning
(Figure 4.23 ). As with all timing data, be careful to test and
experiment with these fi ndings, as your audience may behave differently
than the average of a very large data set.
And when I looked at day of the week and its relationship to
CTR, I found something surprising. Tweets that were posted toward
the end of the week got more clicks than those posted on Monday
through Wednesday (Figure 4.24 ). But it wasn ’t just Thursday and
Friday that performed well; Saturday and Sunday also both have
high CTRs.
I follow thousands of accounts on Twitter. My Twitter stream
is very active during the business day Monday through Friday. On
the weekends, it moves much slower, and what content does come

74 Channels
0.2%
0%
–0.2%
–0.4%
–0.6%
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
Figure 4.24 Effect of Day of the Week on CTR
through is often about sports and other non-work-related topics.
The few times something interesting about marketing does show up
on a Saturday or Sunday, it gets more of my attention because there
are fewer other things fi ghting for it. I call this contra-competitive
timing, and we ’ll see examples of it throughout this book.
Don ’t take these data to mean that you should tweet links only
on the weekends. Instead, take it as an invitation to experiment
with the weekends if you hadn ’t already been using them.

Contents
Introduction: The Athena Doctrine 1
1 Great Britain 27
2 Iceland 55
3 Israel 77
4 Japan 103
5 Colombia and Peru 127
6 Kenya 149
7 India 169
8 China 189
9 Sweden, Germany, and Belgium 213
10 Bhutan 237
Conclusion: The Age of Athena 255
More Information 269
Notes 273
Acknowledgments 283
About the Authors 287
Index 291
vii

Chapter 1
Great Britain
‘‘In a world with less money, close personal
relationships are more important’’
(82.1% agree)
Fixed to trees and streetlights, the handmade posters were
decorated with arrows and the words ‘‘Sea of Rage This Way.’’
They pointed toward the student union building at the University
of London. There, on the morning of November 9, 2011, a crowd
grew larger by the minute beneath a sky of unbroken clouds. At
noon, the scene resembled a street fair. An elderly man in an orange
kilt danced a jig to music from a boom box that he had placed on
the street. A few yards away, hip-hop beats poured out of a portable
loudspeaker strapped to the back of a bicycle. These sounds echoed
off the brick and stone walls of city buildings, mingling with chants
of ‘‘No education cuts!’’
At about 12:40 pm,more than two thousand men and women,
a number equal to three brigades of the British Army, stepped off
toward Trafalgar Square. They walked behind a banner—Occupy
Everything, Take London—that stretched from sidewalk to sidewalk.
They were accompanied by hundreds of London police
officers dressed in florescent yellow jackets and helmets with clear
27

28 THE ATHENA DOCTRINE
plastic face shields. Drummers pounded on instruments strapped
around their necks. Overhead, a police helicopter pounded the air
with its whirling blades and provided observers the best possible
view of unfolding events.
Motivated by a sense that the economic system no longer
works for them, the protesters vented their frustration with chants
and by jeering at the helmeted riot police. Some covered their
faces to avoid being identified by surveillance cameras. The scene
illustrated the loss of trust between the younger generation and
society’s leaders, and it echoed similar protests occurring around
the world. It seemed as if people everywhere were struggling to
find hope and a sense of agency. In the personal realm, they
sought new definitions of happiness and new ways to achieve it. As
political actors, they voiced their dissatisfaction with gridlocked
politics and stale policies. In 2011, no social development was
more significant than the rise of this ‘‘Occupy’’ protest movement,
which was a loosely organized effort that allowed people to express
their thoughts and feelings in a time of great uncertainty.
Beginning with the ‘‘indignados’’ who marched in Spain, people
in dozens of countries took to the streets to show their anger over
banking scandals, unemployment, political stalemate, and the
growing disparity between rich and poor. In America, the anger
became focused on the wealthy and powerful—referred to as the
‘‘1 percent’’—and on the plight of the ‘‘99 percent’’ who feared
the decline of the middle class. Parks and city squares became
encampments as thousands of people tried to show their distress
by literally occupying public spaces. These demonstrations were
the largest and most widespread since the antinuclear protests of
the 1980s, but they targeted problems so complex that no simple
No Nukes–type of slogan quite hit the target. Solving the global
economic crisis couldn’t be as simple as banning the bomb.
In London, the Occupy activists built tent cities in the districts
of Islington and Hackney and at St. Paul’s Cathedral. They
intended to focus public attention on their opposition to bailouts
for banks and cuts to government spending on education and social

Great Britain 29
programs. This austerity agenda, adopted by Britain and the Eurozone
countries, differed from the American response to the Great
Recession, which had included a large federal spending program
to stimulate economic activity. In the United States, the mixed
approach had been followed by improvements in employment and
growth that were painfully slow but nevertheless real. In the United
Kingdom and Europe, the pain of austerity had not brought consistent
gain. Instead, unemployment bounced back up, and growth
sputtered and then stalled.
With politicians failing to deliver progress, and austerity making
daily life tougher, ordinary citizens became impatient and then
angry. But while they forcefully declared the current system ‘‘unsustainable,’’
the London protesters did not offer a considered second
step toward reform or improvements in ‘‘the system.’’ With no
further outlet for the energy of the movement, it became mainly
a matter of outcry, rather than action. Everyone in London knew
what was upsetting the young occupiers—but structural solutions
were no closer at hand.
However, at scattered location around the city, inspired individuals
and groups were quietly working on their own alternatives.
Although we happened to arrive just in time for the noisy protest,
we had come to London to meet a number of revolutionaries who
were both quieter and more deliberate. Here we would find women
and men who were practicing business, community activism, and
crafts with a true Athena spirit. In every case, they stressed the
power of connection—to individual customers, colleagues, and
communities—to multiply the effect of their efforts and produce
innovative solutions to common problems.
•••
A quarter mile from the route of the November 9 march, Vinay
Gupta and Tom Wright sat in a small office and tapped away
at computer keyboards. When they paused, the two young men
heard the thwacking helicopter, but they felt no urge to go watch

30 THE ATHENA DOCTRINE
the scene on the street, let alone join it. Not that they weren’t
sympathetic. Young enough to fit right in with the protesters, they
understood that millions of their countrymen felt aggrieved by the
Great Recession and the austerity program their government had
adopted in response. Traditional pathways to work and security
were disappearing, and it was easy to feel unsteady. Unless you
were blazing a new path.
As they worked their computers, Tom and Vinay were in fact
acting as pioneers of the new economy, turning an idea into an
asset. Their small company, WhipCar, allowed anyone with a safe
and reliable automobile to rent it by the hour, day, or week to a
neighbor who needed one. In a flash, their service could turn a ton
of metal at rest by the curb into handy transport for the renter and
a clutch of cash for the owner. The car, and the transaction, would
be secured by WhipCar and its insurers. The service would take a
small slice of the transaction, but charge no membership fees.
When we caught up with the founders of WhipCar, they were
adding more than a hundred vehicles to their listings every day,
and each week saw an uptick in the number of rentals they had
facilitated. Soon to exceed fifteen thousand vehicles, the fleet of
cars available through WhipCar was worth in excess of $20 million
and would rank the service among the largest rental outfits in the
market. This resource was marshaled not with a bank loan or stock
offering but on the basis of a simple but courageous idea: people are
essentially honest.
‘‘The basic service we provide is building trust between the
owners and the drivers,’’ explained Vinay as he sipped tea in a
quiet corner of the Hospital Club on Endell Street in Covent
Garden. 1 (Occupying an old hospital building, the club caters to
young entrepreneurs who use it as a social and business hub.) ‘‘We
provide both the insurance for the car and the assurance that a
driver has been vetted and the car is in good condition,’’ said
Vinay. ‘‘After that, the parties are in control of their own destiny.’’
A slimly built thirty-four year-old from New York, Vinay flashes
a smile when he hears a question about the breakthrough thoughts

Great Britain 31
that made WhipCar work. Perhaps the most important, he recalls,
wastherealizationthatmostprivatecarsspendfarmoretimeresting
at curbside than they do working at transporting people. All this
idle time—roughly twenty-three hours every day—represents lost
value for owners who spend, on average, $10,000 per year per car
on insurance, repairs, and lease or loan payments. ‘‘It’s the second
most expensive thing most people ever buy, after a home, and
it just sits there, losing value. We thought that if we could help
people turn that value into cash, they would take the chance.’’
Previous efforts at car-sharing projects had foundered because
owners were wary of how renters might abuse their vehicles, and
the services lacked the technology to quickly pair owners with
renters. The spread of broadband Internet services and a wellengineered
website solved the technology problems. WhipCar’s
site is so powerful that it can track thousands of vehicles and
provide renters with instant maps showing the locations of many
cars that fit their needs. (Most will be within a ten-minute walk
of the renter’s location.) The rules allow for drivers to bid for the
car of their choice and require owners to accept or reject an offer
within one hour.
With effective technology and rules in place, Vinay and Tom
turned to the question of trust. According to one study, more
than half the owners in the United Kingdom give names to their
four-wheeled babies. How would they relate to perfect strangers
arriving at their doorsteps and asking for the keys? More important,
how would renters treat the vehicles they pick up on the street?
As it turned out, drivers who actually met the individuals who
owned the cars they rented drove more carefully than Vinay or
Tom expected. ‘‘We think that the human element actually reduced
risk,’’ noted Tom. With WhipCar, ‘‘you are in someone’s car. It’s
not a faceless car owned by some corporation. Everyone is acutely
aware that they have to bring the car back to someone who owns
it. It’s not like you say, ‘I’m renting a car and driving to Scotland,
and I don’t care how I drive.’ This is a human marketplace, and
that human aspect brings out the best in people.’’ 2

32 THE ATHENA DOCTRINE
Among car owners, the human aspect leads them to accept
lower bids from frequent renters, who become like friends. Among
renters, it leads to a sense of duty and even attachment. In almost
two years of operation, WhipCar’s founders had yet to see a
serious dispute over the condition of a car that had been hired,
and disputes over gasoline—drivers are expected to replace what
they burn—could be counted on one hand. In the meantime,
the service’s most devoted car owners earned as much as $800
per month letting other people use their vehicles. Some actually
consulted Vinay and Tom for advice before replacing their cars
because they wanted to get one that renters preferred.
Beyond the benefits to WhipCar members, the founders count
the financial and ecological payoffs that come with the more
efficient use of thousands of cars. By various estimates, the manufacture
of a single, medium-size car results in the production of
more carbon dioxide that it will emit in a lifetime of operation. A
WhipCar regular who chooses not to buy a car actually saves the
planet the burden of roughly fifteen tons of manufacturing emissions.
Driver payments to owners also convert the wealth frozen
inside parked cars into cash that circulates in the economy. This
resource is especially valuable, noted Tom, to ‘‘retirees who are
on a fixed budget and hardly drive their cars at all[. They] really
benefit from the extra income.’’
By keeping costs low, Vinay and Tom managed to steer Whip-
Car toward profitability at a faster pace than their business plan
predicted. They are being helped by a change in the way people
relate to cars as status symbols. In the United States, ‘‘the percentage
of sixteen-year-olds with a license declined from 44 percent in
1988 to 30 percent in 2008,’’ explained Vinay. ‘‘A similar thing is
happening all over Europe. And owning a car just doesn’t represent
the same status that it once had.’’ In fact, in recent years the
United States has seen a decline in car ownership for the first time
ever. This trend, and a drop in the number of miles logged by

Great Britain 33
younger drivers, suggests that cars are losing their magic as a status
symbol.
In a time of economic stress, owning a car when it’s obviously
cheaper to rent might be seen as a sign of bad judgment, if not a
character flaw. Considering their peers—adults in their twenties
and thirties—Tom and Vinay argue that flexibility, creativity, and
independence are the new markers of a kind of success that is
less ostentatious and more sustainable. ‘‘If you look at technology
and the economy, you can see that we are going through a great
disruption,’’ added Vinay, who worked in telecommunications
before becoming an entrepreneur. ‘‘I didn’t own a mobile phone
until I was twenty-two. Now five-year-olds carry them, and twoyear-olds
know how to use an iPad. It’s completely understandable
that people are upset by all the changes.’’
The shifts in employment and the popping of the real estate
bubble have left many people with a sense of dislocation and
anxiety, added Vinay. The antidote, he argues, can be found
in new definitions of what makes a good life and in a creative
response to the economy. He believes that the world holds endless
possibilities for those who can improve a business or a service to
give more people access to something of value.
‘‘Houses are a good example,’’ he said. ‘‘Home ownership used
to be the definition of success. It doesn’t mean the same thing
anymore. Now we know that the housing boom was artificial and
it’s far more economical not to own a property. I don’t own a house.
I don’t have a car. And I’m not sure I ever will. But I can buy access
to a place to live and a car to use, and I have loads of experiences
that make life richer.’’
A good example of this ‘‘access’’ approach to living is the
Hospital Club, where we met. Set in a beautiful and expensive
neighborhood, the club provides graceful spaces that many members
could not otherwise afford to enjoy. Like WhipCar, the club allows
those who need something expensive, but only on a short-term
basis, to add it to their life. ‘‘Today, the thing people need is access to

34 THE ATHENA DOCTRINE
an experience, not necessarily ownership,’’ observed Vinay. ‘‘And
we can arrange that by relating to each other more personally.’’
•••
The personal quality of the WhipCar formula prompts many
people to add a little handwritten promise—‘‘I’ll be careful’’—to
themoreformalcommitmenttheymakeastheysignarental
agreement. The words are stronger than ink on paper because
they help bind the buyer and seller in a relationship. In this, the
WhipCar model stands out against the global trend toward an
impersonal marketplace. Commerce conducted online and at scanit-yourself
checkout counters may be efficient, but it comes without
the sense of security and connection we get when we can see, hear,
and come to know the person on the other side of the transaction.
Much studied and much lamented, the alienation of modern life
flows, at least in part, from the feeling that we don’t know enough
about how our world works. As technologies become more dazzling
and our jobs become more specialized, we know less and less about
how objects are imagined, designed, produced, and delivered. The
feeling that we are isolated from the origins of things is relieved
when we see a cook toss dough into the air at our local pizzeria or
meet the owner of an orchard at the farmers market.
The basic human desire for connection inspired Katie Mowat
to found a service that pairs consumers with knitters who make
bespoke hats, scarves, and other winter woolens that they can
design themselves online. The twist is that the knitters are actual
grandmothers—and you get to pick your own granny! More than
a dozen ‘‘grans’’ are featured on Katie’s website, and customers are
encouraged to communicate directly with the knitter they pick,
working through preferences on shape, colors, and stitching. The
finished goods are shipped with labels, stitched inside, that are
addressed to the buyer and signed by the granny.

Great Britain 35
On the night we met her for dinner on the South Bank of
the Thames, twenty-eight-year-old Katie arrived wearing a long
fuchsia scarf, happy to report that a cold front was finally bringing a
chill to the season. Autumn was arriving late to London, not good
for a business that depends on people shivering when the wind cuts
through their clothes. Grannies Inc. might be a playfully creative
enterprise, Katie noted, but it is also a real business that provides
income for knitters and needs revenues to keep humming.
‘‘In my first year I made a mistake by pricing everything too
low,’’ recalls Katie. ‘‘I had to learn that for premium products you
charge a premium price. Our knitters are really extraordinary, and
the quality of what they make is so high you could wear it for years
and years.’’ 3
The emotional premium in a Grannies Inc. purchase is delivered
first as a buyer reads biographies of the grannies. ‘‘I didn’t have
grandparents on either side of my family when I was a child,’’
recalled Katie. ‘‘The grannies we have are surrogates for me, and I
think it works that way for a lot of people who use the site. But then
you get invested in the design of the item and the collaboration.
Finally, when you get that package with something in it that has
been handmade specifically for you, it’s a wonderful experience. A
lot of people have never received a package like that in their lives.’’
Of course the thrill of receiving a granny-made hat, vest, or
scarf would fade quickly if it were poorly made. Here, Katie’s own
experience as an avid knitter comes into play. As a college student
studying in America during a knitting craze that began in 2001,
Katie took up the craft and became extremely proficient. Knitting
and the community of women who did it gave Katie both a creative
outlet and a deep appreciation for social networks. Knitters, it turns
out, are happy to share their secrets and encourage each other with
great enthusiasm.
With Grannies Inc., Katie recreated her college knitting circle
on a scale so grand that it reaches across the English countryside to
include hundreds of highly skilled older women. The day after we

36 THE ATHENA DOCTRINE
met Katie, we hopped a Chiltern Railways train to the Oxfordshire
town of Banbury. There, Holly , a tall, straight-backed woman with
gray hair piled on her head, met us at the end of a long gravel
driveway and walked us to the door of her house. Inside, she kicked
off her shoes and led us to a cozy room warmed by a potbellied
stove. A basket filled with wool and knitting needles rested beside
the chair she sank into. The view from her window included a few
dozen sheep grazing on a grassy hillside. In the distance, the sun
met the horizon.
‘‘I had a very, very good marriage, but when my husband died in
2006, I learned that the world isn’t going to come up your drive and
say, ‘Please, can Holly come out to play,’’’ said Holly. ‘‘I realized
that I had to make life work for myself.’’ 4
As she made her life, Holly pursued sailing and wound up in
the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and the choppy waters off the
Orkney Islands. She became a devoted volunteer at the hospice
center that helped her husband. This work reinforced her Buddhist
sensibilities. ‘‘I appreciate how transient and fragile life is,’’ she
explained. In the quiet hours, needlework and knitting aid her in
meditation and reflection.
‘‘I learned to knit a long, long time ago,’’ recalled Holly. With
the rationing of World War II, skill with a needle made it possible
for sweaters and hats to be repaired and remain in service. Knitting
and sewing circles brought women together when their husbands
were at war. The craft also made a young girl proud that she could
do her part.
When Holly read a newspaper article about Grannies Inc., she
emailed Katie to wish her well. Katie answered with a question:
‘‘Would you like to knit a sample beanie?’’ After Holly said yes, she
received a package containing the yarn, needles, and pattern she
was to use. The beanie was almost perfect, and Holly became an
official Grannies Inc. knitter. A faster and more ambitious knitter
than most, Holly has accepted big jobs, including an order for dozens
of beanies placed by a European TV network. ‘‘I was really chuffed,’’

Great Britain 37
she recalled, ‘‘when my children were watching TV and they called
me because the commentators were wearing beanies I had knitted.’’
In a busy month, Holly might receive a check that will pay
for an outing or two with her actual grandchildren or for some
luxuries she might otherwise forgo. For other women who live
on much more modest budgets, the payments make it possible
for them to pay their monthly bills without the worry they once
felt. The money and sense of accomplishment all flow from Katie
Mowat’s desire to make a small business and do something positive
for others out of the craft she loves. A practical woman, Holly
recognized the financial benefit she received by joining Grannies
Inc., but harbored some skepticism about any social rewards that
might come from Katie’s idea.
In her lifetime, Holly had seen the coming together of the war
years and then the loosening of social ties that occurred as women
left the home to work, family size shrank, and the population
shifted toward big cities. She appreciated the way Grannies Inc.
established small connections between knitters and buyers, whose
hearts were warmed by the notes she tucked into each item she
completed and shipped. But she had trouble imagining how this
little enterprise might do more for her—until she hit upon the
notion of mixing the old and the new.
‘‘Women have always done handicrafts in groups as a way of
coming together and sharing,’’ she told us. These gatherings allowed
participants not only to share what they knew about technique
but also, more important, to exchange information and ideas about
anything and everything that mattered to them, from child rearing
to the great public issues of the day. With Grannies Inc. providing
projects to complete and a small profit motive, Holly began to
recruit participants for a knitting circle that would engage village
women for a few hours per week.
Reviving a tradition that pays dividends in so many ways clearly
delighted the woman who was challenged to remake her life after
her husband died. ‘‘We grannies are full of wisdom,’’ she remarked.

38 THE ATHENA DOCTRINE
Her wisdom is evident in her plan to expand on Katie’s concept
and make it pay more dividends to more people, echoing the
community spirit of the England she knew as a girl.
•••
The energy behind Grannies Inc. came from two basic human
drives: creativity and the need for connection. In times of financial
crisis, the value people attach to these pursuits seems to increase
as people who are troubled by financial insecurity seek ways to feel
happy and successful. Creative outlets, such as the production of
handmade crafts, can be seen as opportunities for sharing oneself
with the wider world. But what about people who lack a specific,
in-demand skill or talent like the ability to turn a skein of wool
into a cap? They can still connect by sharing their time through
volunteer work.
It is a fact that volunteering increases with unemployment
and recessions. Although some research suggests that people turn
to help others because they have idle time on their hands, the
volunteering impulse also arises in the hearts of busy people who
simply want to pitch in. The trouble, for most of these folks, is to
find a workable outlet for their volunteering desires.
Enter Anna Pearson and Spots of Time.
In her years of working as an advocate for charities in Britain
and abroad, Pearson recognized a pattern: many people want to
volunteer, but cannot find ways to do it. In some cases, organizations
that claimed to need help attached onerous conditions
to service, requiring people to make long-term commitments,
undergo extensive training, or perform work that didn’t suit
them. In other cases, volunteers were thrown into big projects
with mighty ambitions—feeding the hungry, ending violence in a
neighborhood—that could never be achieved. Frustration would
lead to disillusionment, and projects would be abandoned.
To bridge the gap between what volunteers can give and what
people need, Anna reimagined volunteering—on a very small
scale. As she explained to us over tea, ‘‘I thought, ‘People need

Great Britain 39
things as basic as a little happiness or joy in their day,’ and I realized
that with a humble idea, we could make that happen.’’ 5
The humble idea was a service—Spots of Time—that
connects people with organizations that can use volunteers who
can commit an hour or more to do something for someone else,
and often at a moment’s notice. Nursing homes (known as care
homes in the United Kingdom) were among the first to sign up
for the network, and soon Spots of Time was sending volunteers
to spend time with the elderly and disabled residents of facilities
in London and Essex. As Anna discovered, an hour or two was
usually more than enough time for a volunteer to do some good,
and his or her service could be something as small as reading aloud
or accompanying someone on a walk.
The notion that someone might volunteer sporadically fits with
what thirty-one-year-old Anna called the ‘‘freelance culture’’ of
her generation. Accustomed to projects that last for a limited time,
many young adults look for service opportunities ‘‘that are more like
a gig than a job.’’ In some cases, the volunteers are actual performers
who are happy to find an audience, even if they offer a show for free.
Early feedback on her program, just months old when we met
her, showed that volunteers are so sincere about doing something
positive that they worry that a spot of time is not enough. ‘‘We have
to convince people to just trust in the fact that doing something
good, even though it’s really small, is worth it.’’ She counsels
volunteers to stop worrying and just go and sit for tea with someone
who would appreciate the company. Anna offers similar counsel
to leaders of organizations who are accustomed to old ways of
accepting help, which too often meant they received no help at all.
‘‘I understand if people are worried that we are all fur coat and
no knickers,’’ said Anna, using a British expression for someone
who is all flash and no substance. ‘‘I’m keenly aware of what we
haven’t done yet, but I also know there’s a big resource here and
a big need, and I think it should be possible to break down the
barriers that keep them apart.’’
•••

40 THE ATHENA DOCTRINE
The obstacles that separate the financial center called the
City of London and the nearby neighborhood of Hackney are
scaled, every day, by the honeybees that occupy a hive atop the
Nomura Bank building. The bees produce honey for a small outfit
called Golden Company, which partners with the young people of
Hackney to teach bankers and other high-flying Londoners about
the environment, sustainability, and the delicate balance of nature.
Vital to food supplies, the work that bees accomplish as pollinators
of British crops is estimated to be worth more than $700 million
per year, according to the United Kingdom’s National Ecosystem
Assessment. 6 Bees help produce one out of three mouthfuls of food
in the British diet. 7 However, in the United Kingdom, as elsewhere,
bee populations began to decline in the 1990s. 8 As the bee problem
became evident, the British government funded several investigations
into solutions. In the meantime, bee enthusiasts across the
country went about the practical business of starting new hives.
In 2007, a pair of entrepreneurs started Golden Company to raise
bees, produce honey, employ local youth, and bring attention to
the crisis in the garden. They located it in the poor neighborhood
of Hackney, where staff at a community center called Hackney
City Farm help manage the work.
Golden Company is a distinctly British type of organization—called
a social enterprise—that blends business with a
social agenda to accomplish several goals. The bees that live in
the many hives it maintains pollinate plants and produce honey
that sells briskly at public markets. At the Nomura building,
Golden’s young employees outfit their elders in bee-proof gear and
then teach them to work with the hives unafraid. In this role,
the youth discover confidence and competence. The professionals
at Nomura Bank learn about bees and the capabilities of young
people they would otherwise never encounter.
The connection between bankers and Hackney youth is the
most important product of Golden Company. ‘‘The young people
we work with are most at risk of being excluded from the economic

Great Britain 41
system and from society,’’ explains Zoe Palmer , one of the founders
of the honey company. 9 Born and raised in Hackney, Zoe attended
University College London with the idea that she would return
to her community to do something to make it better. ‘‘I studied
human ecology, and it teaches you to balance the head, the heart,
and the hands,’’ she recalled for us. ‘‘I started thinking about a
business that would use all three in a self-sustaining way.’’
Zoe obtained seed money for the business, acquired bees from
Shropshire, and found sites for the hives with corporate partners at
places like Nomura Bank, the London Stock Exchange, and at the
big Chancery Lane law firm Lewis Silkin, LLP, where a queen bee
named Lucy arrived in September 2011. Young beekeepers (called
guardians by Golden) assumed responsibility at each hive and
became mentors for employees of their host corporations. Other
hives were installed in various parks and at Hackney City Farm.
There, enterprise manager Gustavo Montes de Oca saw Golden as a
perfect way to establish ties with the professionals in the city’s banking
sector and get local youth involved. ‘‘Beekeeping has everything
that might attract kids,’’ he said. ‘‘Honey, danger, funny outfits.’’ 10
Moreover, as Gustavo explained to us when we visited him at
Hackney Farms, London’s powerful financial district ‘‘has always
been on our doorstep, but we never had a way to connect with
the people there—it was like there were two different worlds that
never connected, and both were losing out because of it.’’
Indeed, as the income gap between the wealthy of the City and
places like Hackney grew, people in both communities began to
worry about the effects of their mutual isolation. Gustavo imagined
that Hackney City Farm could be a place where that isolation
might be broken and mutual empathy might be encouraged.
Golden Company’s values, posted on its website, include
discipline, self-reliance, and a commitment to learning—and all of
its activities revolve around building respect for nature and humanity’s
role in the environment. As founder Zoe Palmer envisioned,
the bees teach their keepers something about the ‘‘wildness of

42 THE ATHENA DOCTRINE
nature.’’ In a radio documentary about the program, a bee guardian
named Devente said, ‘‘Once you understand the bee, once you
know what it’s doing, your perspective changes from swatting
to staying still.’’ 11 Another beekeeper named King marveled at
the industry of the insects. With a kind of awe in his voice, he
explained, ‘‘They love work.’’ 12
Experience with bees helped King and Devente develop
patience and recognize the parts of an extremely complex system.
In the bee colonies, they saw finely tuned teams without leaders
survive and thrive on the basis of communication, cooperation,
responsibility, and selflessness. These talents and traits, which
people in our global surveys consider traditionally feminine, can be
applied directly to school, work, and family life. They also match
many of the values promoted at Hackney City Farm. Set on a
former industrial property where manufacturers have made everything
from beer to buttons, the farm was established by Hackney
residents who used public and private funds to renovate buildings
and clear land. The property now supports a demonstration farm,
small businesses, social programs, and hybrids like Golden.
On the morning when we visited Hackney City Farm, half a
dozen people lingered over breakfast in the farm’s Frizzante (Italian
for ‘‘fizzy’’) Café while workers at an outbuilding devoted to a shop
called Bike Yard East took wrenches to a lineup of bicycles left
for repair. At about ten, women began arriving for a yoga class
taught inside a building made of straw bales where the floor had
been cleared to make space available for mats. Referred by the Red
Cross and other agencies, the women were all refugees and asylum
seekers. Besides the practice of yoga, participants share a meal and
receive English language instruction.
All the activity we saw at Hackney City Farm was sustained by
a combination of grants and earned income designed to generate
enough cash flow to meet its social service goals. Golden’s workers
are educated in business management as well as beekeeping, and
they have been responsible for managing payroll and inventory as
well as for developing new products. Required to present detailed

Great Britain 43
proposals to support their ideas, the young workers are often
surprised to discover that questions raised by their colleagues force
them to improve their concepts. The most successful ancillary
product to come out of this process, a honey-based lip balm, was so
well formulated and marketed that it sells out whenever it is offered.
The creativity and persistence of the people who participate
in Hackney programs match the kind of effort that might be seen
at an exciting business start-up. When the farm opened a public
garden in a nearby park, Gustavo was startled to discover that the
only people who violated the rules of the garden were the ones
who sought to install extra trees and plants.
One evening, Gustavo was startled to see a man using a
screwdriver to loosen hard-packed earth and create a hole for a
seedling of an apricot tree that his daughter had sprouted on a
windowsill. The man returned to tend the tree and also pitched in
to care for trees that others had planted.
‘‘We had no expert horticulturalist, and as far as I know, this
fellow, who was an immigrant, taught himself everything he tried,’’
Gustavo told us. The trees grew to bear fruit, which is shared by
the entire community.
For Gustavo, the fruit tree experience revealed that much
expertise and wisdom lie hidden in the community. He has learned
a great deal from talking with locals who lived through the hard
times of World War II and its aftermath, when rationing and
a tough employment market forced great numbers of people to
economize. ‘‘People would find many uses for something as basic
as a jam jar, which became a sugar bowl or a container for pence.
They remembered selling rags to be recycled and growing their
own vegetables and herbs for cooking.’’
The example set by the older generation inspired Hackney
managers to open resale markets for children’s clothing and toys
and to maximize use of the space at the farm by renting it to
groups and corporations that are planning events. Farm officials are
also working on a large-scale program to collect, separate, and sell
waste and cast-off items that retain significant value. Each week,

44 THE ATHENA DOCTRINE
area homes and businesses produce tons of recyclables, from used
cooking oils to paper, which could yield more than $600,000 per
year in revenues. Gustavo describes this activity as ‘‘harvesting
the city’’ and imagines it growing to employ dozens of locals in
an activity that is profitable, self-sustaining, and good for the
environment.
In harvesting the city, Gustavo intends to advance a complex
mix of ideals: masculine and feminine, profit driven and socially
aware, generous and conservationist. He explores the issues his
generation faces in a new and changing world on a blog titled
‘‘GoldenGus,’’ where he admonishes his fellow ‘‘greens’’ with a
warning—‘‘thou shalt not moralise’’—but also considers Britain’s
chief rabbi’s call for ‘‘remoralising’’ the world with new organizations
to push for happier communities and a healthier planet. He
quotes Rabbi Jonathan Sacks recalling how people in the United
States and the United Kingdom organized themselves to confront
the disruption of the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century:
‘‘People did not leave it to government or the market. They
did it themselves in communities, congregations, groups of every
shape and size. They understood the connection between morality
and morale.’’ 13
In the midst of the current technological and economic revolution,
when workers are displaced and insecurity seems rampant,
solutions may come from modern formulations of nineteenthcentury
associations like the YMCA, temperance unions, orphans
societies, guilds, and community trusts. The new versions will
undoubtedly be based, at least in part, in the online world. But
in localities, they may also look much like Hackney City Farm
and Golden Company, where hard work and imagination support
innovation on a human-to-human (or human-to-bee) scale.
•••
The local efforts made by Gustavo, Zoe, and others yield results
that Londoners can see and even taste, but their efforts also

Great Britain 45
motivate others to pursue solutions that can be seen nationally
and even internationally. Because it deals in products that are
readily transferred over the Internet, finance is an attractive corner
of the economy for those seeking modern versions of mutual aid.
Operating out of a second-floor suite of offices in a Victorian
commercial building on Newman Street, Giles Andrews offers this
of kind of help to borrowers and lenders with a start-up finance
company called Zopa, named for the concept known as Zone of
Possible Agreement.
Zopa pulls together information on large numbers of individuals
who want personal loans on better terms than they would get from
a traditional lender. Together, these borrowers present less risk
than a single applicant; protected by the strength in the collective
credit history of the borrowers, investors provide the cash that
Zopa lends. For all its trouble, the firm takes fees from lenders and
borrowers that amount to less than 2.5 percent of a loan.
The modest fees are explained in plain English on the Zopa
website, where both sides of the lending business can also learn
the basics of its peer-to-peer process. As the site explains, Zopa
evaluates borrowers and assigns them to groups labeled A*, A,
B, C, or ‘‘Young Market.’’ The best borrowing rates are available
to the A* borrowers. The highest return for lenders comes when
they offer money to the lower-grade pools, such as C and Young
Market. They are protected from big losses by a system that restricts
the amount any one investor can commit to any one borrower to
roughly $15. A default by someone who has taken $15 from a
hundred lenders causes much less pain than a default by a borrower
who fails to repay $1,500 put up by a single person.
‘‘The idea is to treat everyone fairly—lenders and
borrowers—and be very open about how we do business,’’
Andrews told us on the day we arrived at Zopa’s offices just off
the Goodge Street tube. 14 The big, open, white-walled space was
quiet, save for the clicking of people working at computers and
muffled phone conversations taking place on the other side of the
room. Before Zopa, Giles was a consultant for big companies like

46 THE ATHENA DOCTRINE
the Tesco supermarkets and Internet start-ups. He and a partner
named Richard Duvall began Zopa in 2005 with about $10 million
from venture capitalists who agreed that banks served consumers
poorly, leaving a huge opening for a start-up alternative.
Richard, who had founded one of the first and most successful
online banks— —hosted the brainstorming for Zopa at the barn
on his country estate, where some of the best ideas emerged at the
Ping-Pong table. Regarded by Microsoft founder Bill Gates as ‘‘one
of the most dynamic people I have ever met,’’ 15 Duvall preached
the value of businesses based on trusting relationships with a
growing population of consumers who feel comfortable with online
transactions. He dubbed these potential customers ‘‘freeformers’’
and estimated that more than six million British citizens fit into
the category. Sadly, Duvall was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer
and died the year after Zopa’s launch. He wasn’t around for the
start of the global bank crisis in 2007. Zopa, however, was poised
to profit.
Because nations support banks with guarantees, the collapse
of banks around the world, including Britain’s Northern Rock
Bank, saddled taxpayers with the responsibility to make depositors
whole. But even as they rescued these huge financial institutions,
everyday citizens found that banks would no longer lend to them,
and interest rates paid for savings dropped well below the rate of
inflation. ‘‘The public got this feeling that whenever they were
dealing with these big institutions, the bankers were telling them,
‘We’re going to get you in the end,’’’ recalled Giles. Zopa presented
an alternative ‘‘that says, ‘We’re going to talk to you respectfully,
and you are going to know exactly how we do business. There will
be no surprises in the end.’’’
With other lenders turning off the flow of loans, Zopa’s portfolio
exploded. The raw numbers—from $10 million to more than $250
million—are small when compared with banks that carry billions
of dollars in outstanding loans. However, by the end of 2011, more
than half a million people had signed up as investors or borrowers.

Great Britain 47
The average return paid to investors was just over 7 percent, and
defaults across Zopa’s range of loans were less than 2 percent.
Meanwhile, the rates charged to borrowers averaged 20 percent
below the average for banks.
Playing off the Zopa model, peer-to-peer lenders have cropped
up around the world. All operate as information managers, using
the data about their pool of borrowers to estimate risk and assign
rates. The numbers are made public, which reduces the mystery
around lending and gives peer-to-peer finance a trustworthy image.
Members, who know that traditional banks are regulated and
backstopped by the government, prefer the higher returns they
earn to the security of state-issued guarantees. Similar to oldfashioned
credit unions, Zopa and its imitators ‘‘are a way for
people participate in building their own institutions,’’ said Giles.
Zopa itself is a new kind of financial center where an extremely
lean staff of twenty-three manage an ever-growing army of lenders
and borrowers. The pace is hectic, but employees work with the
intensity of people on a mission. Determined that the company
serve its employees as well as it serves its customers, Giles experiments
with ways to track how his team is faring. On the day we
visited, he had set out a bin full of colored balls and two wastebaskets
labeled Good and Bad. Staffers were advised to toss a ball into
the basket that indicated how they felt about things in the office.
In a testament to the spirit of trust that is the hallmark of Zopa’s
business model, the bins were almost at the same level.
•••
By aggregating borrowers and lenders, Zopa creates efficiencies
in the Zone of Possible Agreement. The operators of exploit a
similar process, using the power of community to disrupt the
furniture business.
Two entrepreneurs in their thirties, Ning Li and Julien Callede,
targeted the furniture business after studying the cost of retail space

48 THE ATHENA DOCTRINE
and warehousing built into the price of every sofa or ottoman sold
the old-fashioned way. Even giant companies like IKEA, which
revolutionized the business with build-it-yourself kits, spend enormous
amounts of money constructing, maintaining, and running
facilities that are mainly way stations between the manufacturer
and your living room. The real value in the product rests in great
design and solid construction, Ning and Julien reasoned. Why not
find a way to deliver that value without all the markups required
to pay for all that storage?
Breaking the business down to its essence, Julien and Ning
looked for ways to connect consumers who needed furnishings to
the source. They settled on a system that allows people to ‘‘vote’’
with orders for a small number of designs that are offered on’s website
every Thursday. When the number of orders reaches a point
where an item can be manufactured efficiently and shipped at a
reasonable cost, the design ‘‘wins,’’ and a factory swings into production.
‘‘It’s the opposite of the very masculine way, which is to buy a
lot of stuff, put it on display, and say take it or leave it,’’ explained
Julien when we met him. ‘‘We take the relationship with customers
seriously, ask them what they want, and respond in real time.’’ 16
On the day that debuted, the site offered one table and two
chairs. The company’s first big hit was a playful desk by Stuart
Padwick, one of London’s most successful designers. At roughly
$500, the sleek desk was sold by at roughly one-third the price it
would fetch in a shop window. As visitors voted for more items, the
offerings swelled to include plush chairs, sofa beds, and leather club
chairs for the same price. A dozen more designers were gradually
added to the team, and the site was upgraded to give customers
daily reports on the path their purchases followed from door to
delivery, including maps that chart the progress of ships loaded
with ’s wares.
Ning, who travels to China to scout suppliers, delights in the
shared interests of every participant in the equation. ‘‘The factories
are looking for new export markets and to use their excess capacity.

Great Britain 49
The consumers are happy because they get a $1,500 item from
High Street for $500, and the designers are happy because instead
of selling one item per month, they may sell hundreds.’’ 17 They
also get the reward of knowing that their work is finding its way
into the lives of thousands of people.
At the office in Notting Hill Gate, a few dozen people can
manage thousands of relationships that produce millions of dollars’
worth of sales each quarter. Remarkably, none of the workers are
employed as salespeople. Instead they work as listeners who try
to tune in to the desires of their community of customers. ‘‘How
do you sell?’’ asked Julien, rhetorically. ‘‘You sell by listening to
people. If you listen, they will tell you exactly what they want. If
you listen, you can change the system and do it better.’’
•••
Most of the innovators we met in Britain had established new
business models that engaged consumers and citizens directly and
made things better, one person at a time. Borrowers who turned
to Zopa were able to buy cars or renovate kitchens (the two most
common reasons for people to apply), and Golden Company bee
guardians earned paychecks as they acquired skills. But these kinds
of direct efforts were not the only signs of innovation we discovered.
Though no longer the seat of an empire, London remains a place
where people with a broad vision for changing the world cultivate
new ideas.
A few blocks from Regent’s Park, in the center of London, we
met two of the directors of Social Finance, an organization that
has found a way to tap private wealth to solve public problems.
Turning an old paradigm on its head, the firm is working on deals
with different levels of government, promising social programs that
produce measurably better results than existing agencies . Investors
are being courted to supply the up-front cash, while government is

50 THE ATHENA DOCTRINE
being asked to repay them, with interest, and give them a return if
the projects are deemed a success after a certain period of years.
Called social impact bonds, the experimental funding scheme
is being used in the small city of Peterborough, which is east of
Birmingham, to pay for services to help inmates make the transition
from prison to life in society. Investors who front the money for
mentoring, housing support, mental health interventions, and more
stand to make a profit of as much as 13 percent. Their net will
be determined by the rate at which former inmates reoffend and
return to the criminal justice system. The risk for those who put up
the money is that the project might fall short of the goal of a 7.5
percent reduction in recidivism. For the government, it’s a no-lose
proposition because the premium it might pay will come from the
savings realized as fewer men return to lockup.
‘‘The idea is to use money as an incentive for creativity and
improved outcomes,’’ explained Emily Bolton , a director at Social
Finance. ‘‘Money tends to make people focus.’’ 18
By adding investors to the process of delivering social services
to prisoners, Emily and her colleagues are establishing a new layer
of accountability. The outcome of the efforts made by advisers,
community members, counselors, and others who work with clients
will be monitored by people who want the program to succeed
because they want their money back, plus interest.
In the United Kingdom, where transition services were all but
nonexistent, 60 percent of those released are convicted of an offense
within a year. The new program, which includes counselors who
literally greet prisoners at the gate when they are released, will be
offered to three thousand men over six years. These counselors serve
as a point of contact for every kind of help a released prisoner might
need. This early intervention and streamlined access to services are
expected to produce the reduction in recidivism that would meet
the 7.5 percent threshold. Early reports from Peterborough police
suggested that they had seen a positive change in the behavior of

Great Britain 51
well-known local offenders, but as of 2011, the project was still too
new to assess.
The social impact bond scheme has been supported by all the
major political parties in Britain and has received wide publicity,
which does put a bit of pressure on the directors at Social Finance.
‘‘We are hoping for a good outcome and that the investors will
get their return,’’ said Emily. The first wave of funders came from
the ranks of people who see their investment as both a play for
profit and a way to do some good in the world. But if the idea
works, said Emily, mainstream investors could conceivably make
social impact bonds just another component of their portfolios.
‘‘The concept isn’t a silver bullet for solving social problems,’’ she
concluded, ‘‘but it can be one answer among many.’’ Next on
the investment agenda, if the prison project works, will be bonds
to fund services for the homeless, the unemployed, and drug and
alcohol rehabilitation centers.
•••
Emily Bolton was optimistic about the future of what she called
‘‘impact investment’’ and sees it as a way for people of all political
stripes to work together for the common good. She also regarded
the nascent field of social finance as the ultimate expression of the
Athena Doctrine. In her work, she can use all her masculine and
feminine values as well as the skills that she acquired working at
both KPMG (one of the world’s ‘‘big four’’ auditing companies) and
a settlement camp for Tibetan refugees. ‘‘We’re at the early stages,’’
she says of the effort to combine hardheaded business practices
with compassion, ‘‘but I can see a world where these things all
connect.’’
Cherie Blair can imagine a future like the one Emily Bolton
pursues, but in her effort to promote women entrepreneurs in the
less-developed world, she has learned to beware the persistence
of prejudice and the obstacles women still face. We met her at

52 THE ATHENA DOCTRINE
the Cherie Blair Foundation, which is less than a block from the
famous Marble Arch of Hyde Park. Outside, the street bustled
with tourists and shoppers. Inside, a small team of staffers quietly
tended to the work of overseeing roughly $1.5 million in annual
investments in small businesses led by women around the world.
The foundation had just issued its annual report for 2011, which
highlighted enterprise development projects in India, Lebanon,
Israel, the Palestinian territories, and several African nations.
‘‘To survive and thrive, everyone needs the wherewithal to be
productive,’’ says Cherie, a barrister and part-time judge who is also
married to former prime minister Tony Blair. ‘‘You need the feeling
of belonging and of being entitled to support.’’ 19 Cherie began
the foundation to provide women in developing and emerging
markets support and a sense of belonging by training them in
business practices and financing start-ups. In Kenya and Malawi,
for example, the foundation helps entrepreneurs sell solar lighting
products. In India, it teaches craftswomen how to turn their goods
into profits.
In visiting projects around the world, Cherie has seen that
‘‘both the economic and social spheres have been dislocated’’ by
the financial crisis. ‘‘People are struggling to find the work and
family balance in their lives.’’ She has felt personally challenged
in this regard, first when she was a younger working mother and
later, after she left 10 Downing Street for private life. ‘‘I was in
the position many women find themselves in at key moments of
their lives,’’ she recalled. ‘‘I had to find my way again, find the right
balance. It isn’t a women’s issue; it’s a human issue, but women are
in the lead.’’
Cherie said that she has found, in women entrepreneurs, affirmation
of the strength and values she saw in her own mother
and grandmother, reflective of a traditionally feminine style of
leadership. ‘‘Mothers think long term,’’ she noted to us. ‘‘That
kind of thinking is a very good balance for the risk-taking and
assertiveness’’ that is required to make a new enterprise succeed.

Great Britain 53
Remarkably, Cherie noted, some corners of the developing
world are friendlier to strong women than certain precincts of the
West. ‘‘Look at boards of directors at major corporations,’’ she
explained. ‘‘It’s disheartening that there’s been so little progress
in bringing women on to them.’’ The presence of more women,
she speculated, ‘‘might have led to more cautious risk assessments’’
at the big banks that faltered in the past decade. ‘‘Look at those
boards that are all male and ask yourself, ‘Who’s providing the
countervailing views to keep things balanced?’’’

CONTENTS
IV
[ CONTENTS ]
BUSINESS . . . MEET DESIGN vi
0 TOTAL RECALL 2
The Voice of the Empowered Customer 6
Are You Experienced? 8
1 SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED: HOW TO SURVIVE
DIGITAL DARWINISM 10
Disruptive Technology Is a Catalyst for
Change, Not the Reason 15
2 THE JOURNEY OF BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION 18
There’s a Hero in Every One of Us 23
The Great Myth of Technology 24
3 MEET THE NEW GENERATION OF CUSTOMERS . . .
GENERATION C 26
Widening the View from Generation Y to
Generation C 31
Different Times Call for Different Measures 33
4 THE NEW CUSTOMER HIERARCHY 36
A New Era of Social Service: Promoting the
Experiences of Customers 40
The Broken Link of Social Media Customer
Service 44
Connecting the Dots in Social Media
to Improve Experiences 47
5 THE DIM LIGHT AT THE END OF THE FUNNEL 50
Funnel Vision: Without Awareness
There Can Be No Consideration 54
The Cluster Funnel 55
6 THE ZERO MOMENT OF TRUTH 58
7 THE ULTIMATE MOMENT OF TRUTH 66
The Ultimate Moment of Truth 74
8 OPENING A WINDOW INTO NEW
CONSUMERISM 78
Discovery Disrupted
Opening the Door to a New Generation of
82
Connected Consumerism 83
Opening the Windows to Digital Infl uence 85
9 THE DYNAMIC CUSTOMER JOURNEY 89
10 INSIDE THE ELLIPSE: EMBARKING ON THE
DYNAMIC CUSTOMER JOURNEY 98
Formulation (Stimulus) 104
Precommerce (Zero Moment of Truth) 106
Commerce (First Moment of Truth) 109
Postcommerce (Ultimate Moment of Truth) 112

11 IMPROVING THE UMOT TO
OPTIMIZE THE ZMOT 118
12 THE SIX PILLARS OF SOCIAL COMMERCE:
UNDERSTANDING THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
ENGAGEMENT 124
Hear No Evil. See No Evil. Speak No Evil. 128
The A.R.T. of Engagement 129
The Psychology of Social Commerce
Heuristic Number 1: Social Proof—
130
Follow the Crowd
Heuristic Number 2: Authority—
131
The Guiding Light 132
Heuristic Number 3: Scarcity—Less Is More
Heuristic Number 4: Liking—Builds
133
Bonds and Trust 134
Heuristic Number 5: Consistency
Heuristic Number 6: Reciprocity—Pay
135
It Forward 136
13 THE IMPORTANCE OF BRAND IN AN ERA OF
DIGITAL DARWINISM 138
Branding Is More Important
Than Ever Before 144
Brand Empathy: Always Improve
Experiences 146
14 WHY USER EXPERIENCE IS CRITICAL TO
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS 148
The CrUX of Engagement Is Intention and
Purpose 153
The Experience RedUX
User Experience Becomes the Customer
156
Experience: Principles and Pillars of UX 158
Medium-alism Equals FaUX Engagement 159
The JUXtaposition of Empathy
and Experience 161
15 INNOVATE OR DIE 162
CMOs Are at the Crossroads of Customer
Transactions and Engagement 167
Through a Telescope, We Bring the World
Closer—Through a Microscope, We See What
Was Previously Invisible to the Naked Eye 168
Customer Engagement Is Not the Same as
Conversations 172
Ten Priorities for Meaningful Business
Transformation 176
Disruptive Technology and How to
Compete for the Future 180
16 THE DILEMMA’S INNOVATOR 184
Innovation Is Blindness: Why Innovation Is
Fundamental to the Survival of Tomorrow’s
Business . . . Today 188
In the Battle against Relevance versus
Irrelevance: It’s Survival of the Fitting 191
17 THE HERO’S JOURNEY 196
The Task Force, AKA Steering Committee 202
The Stages of Change 208
The Hero’s Journey 209
Stage 1: Inception 210
Stage 2: Tribulation 211
Stage 3: Transformation 212
Stage 4: Realization 213
Thank You 214
NOTES 215
CONTENTS
V

TOTAL RECALL
SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED
THE JOURNEY OF BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION
MEET THE NEW GENERATION OF
CUSTOMERS . . . GENERATION C
THE NEW CUSTOMER HIERARCHY
THE DIM LIGHT AT THE END OF THE FUNNEL
THE ZERO MOMENT OF TRUTH
THE ULTIMATE MOMENT OF TRUTH
OPENING A WINDOW INTO NEW
CONSUMERISM
THE DYNAMIC CUSTOMER JOURNEY
INSIDE THE ELLIPSE: EMBARKING ON THE DCJ
IMPROVING THE UMOT TO OPTIMIZE THE ZMOT
THE SIX PILLARS OF SOCIAL COMMERCE
THE IMPORTANCE OF BRAND IN AN ERA OF
DIGITAL DARWINISM
WHY USER EXPERIENCE IS CRITICAL TO
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
INNOVATE OR DIE
THE DILEMMA’S INNOVATOR
THE HERO’S JOURNEY
CHAPTER

TOTAL RECALL

Happiness is not
something you
experience, it’s
something you
remember.
—Oscar Levant

How do we ensure that our customers have an amazing customer experience? An intriguing
question.
In the 1990 movie Total Recall, Douglas Quaid’s character visits “Rekall,” a company that helps
people have experiences they wish they could have by implanting memories. For his vacation
Quaid selects his dream experience, a trip to Mars with an added espionage package.
During his experience, Quaid is jolted awake carrying the experience back into the real world.
It is later discovered that he really is the character he was hoping to become temporarily. Like
Quaid, every customer desires a remarkable experience.
Why make customers cope with the ordinary?
Total Recall echoes the focus of this book and my day-to-day work. While implanting desirable
experiences is not necessarily a metaphor for this book, creating real-world “customer
experiences” is a critical role businesses must create in a new era of consumerism.
The Total Recall moment is waking consumers up to expect more from the businesses they
support and the products they purchase. They not only expect better experiences, they
believe they are entitled to them. This is an opportunity for your business to create positive
experiences. For it is the experience that will become that measure of satisfaction and success.
TOTAL RECALL
5

CHAPTER 0
6
[ THE VOICE OF THE ]
EMPOWERED CUSTOMER
Through technology, consumers are experiencing a validating and infl uential form of
empowerment.
Businesses must recognize that the voice of the customer is now more powerful than ever
before. Whether Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp, review sites, product forums, blogs, or
Pinterest, your customers are sharing their experiences on platforms where audiences can fi nd
what others are saying about you.
So what?
Your customers and prospects will inevitably fi nd the negative experiences others have had.
Customers will uncover the one horrendous review rather than the incredible experiences that
others have had.
As customers tweet negative experiences, businesses try to respond or address the complaint.
The more a company engages, and the more people gain access to social and mobile platforms,
interactions accelerate and amplify. Knowing this, companies are spending more money and
resources managing their online reputations. Increasingly, businesses are shifting resources until
the traditional call center is replicated at social scale. Although that’s inherently a good thing,
the downside is that the call center becomes a notable cost center.
Perhaps this is just the new cost of doing business. In an era of connected consumerism, to earn
customer attention, trust, and loyalty is a cost and an investment in relevance and relationships.

Yet even with the pervasiveness of technology, and increased customer expectations, businesses
are making the same mistakes. We are not designing and implementing incredible experiences;
rather, we’re marketing, selling, and serving customers.
What are customers to align with if we
don’t fi rst defi ne it? What do we want them
to be a part of?
Now’s the time for an investment in something more than price, performance, or value. The
future of business is about creating experiences, products, programs, and processes that evoke
splendor and rekindle meaningful and sincere interaction and growth.
At the center of this evolution—or (r)evolution—is the experience. And, the experience is
everything now.
TOTAL RECALL
7

CHAPTER 0
8
[ ]
ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?
Yes, it’s time to invest in proactive experiences. If we do not, we will be forever tethered to the
unproductive dance that is reacting, responding to, and solving negative experiences in real
time, over time.
What if I told you that the cost of reacting to experiences is far greater than the cost of
proactively defi ning experiences from the onset? Indeed, companies are investing in reactive
engagement. And, for the most part, they can succeed in shifting negative experiences toward
positive territory. However, any favorable outcome is weighed against the cost of the initial
negative experience—or more importantly, the cost of how that negative experience was shared
and how it ultimately impacted others. What’s most startling is that businesses do not measure
these numbers today. But that’s about to change.
Businesses must invest in defi ning not only a positive experience, but also a wonderfully
shareable experience. Doing so infl uences others to join the fray while offsetting negative
inquiries and the damaging viral effects of shared negative experiences.
This is the time to reframe those negative experiences. Pushing a change from responding to
negative experiences to proactively creating positive ones is everything. Why? The cost of
reacting to negative experiences is completely eclipsed by the upside of creating and nurturing
positive experiences at the inception.
To better understand the importance of experience requires that you fi rst acknowledge that you
are the very consumer you’re trying to reach. You’re not looking for just any experience, you’re

looking for the experience. Businesses that recognize and adapt to you and people like you will
quickly learn how to entice you through shared values and meaningful affi nity hooks . . . while
never stopping to compete for relevance.
Experience is everything. And, businesses must create experiences that mean something. If
necessity is the mother of invention, then vision is the father of innovation.
#InnovateorDie
TOTAL RECALL
9

TOTAL RECALL
SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED
THE JOURNEY OF BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION
MEET THE NEW GENERATION OF
CUSTOMERS . . . GENERATION C
THE NEW CUSTOMER HIERARCHY
THE DIM LIGHT AT THE END OF THE FUNNEL
THE ZERO MOMENT OF TRUTH
THE ULTIMATE MOMENT OF TRUTH
OPENING A WINDOW INTO NEW
CONSUMERISM
THE DYNAMIC CUSTOMER JOURNEY
INSIDE THE ELLIPSE: EMBARKING ON THE DCJ
IMPROVING THE UMOT TO OPTIMIZE THE ZMOT
THE SIX PILLARS OF SOCIAL COMMERCE
THE IMPORTANCE OF BRAND IN AN ERA OF
DIGITAL DARWINISM
WHY USER EXPERIENCE IS CRITICAL TO
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
INNOVATE OR DIE
THE DILEMMA’S INNOVATOR
THE HERO’S JOURNEY
CHAPTER

SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED
How to Survive Digital Darwinism

People never learn
anything by being
told, they have to
fi nd out for
themselves.
—Paulo Coelho,
Veronika Decides to Die

The customer journey is still evolving. How businesses react and ultimately lead the
enhancement of relationships is not solely determined by technology. 1 To truly get closer to
customers takes a culture of customer-centricity, empowerment, and innovation.
Saying that we need to get closer to the customer is hardly enough to convince business
leaders that the customer revolution they hear about is literally steps away from their offi ce
door. I know I’m not saying anything here you don’t already know. The difference is, however,
that what started as a groundswell for business transformation from the bottom up has hit a
ceiling. To break through it requires that someone (read: you) has to make the case to bring
change from the top down.
Most executives don’t use social networks or smart phones. Many don’t even read their own
email. Many won’t ever read this book. So, trying to convince decision makers that this is a war
fought on the battleground of technology is in and of itself fi ghting a losing battle.
SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED 13

CHAPTER 1
14
The future of business isn’t tied to the permeation of Facebook, Twitter, iPhones, and Droids,
pins on Pinterest, tablets, or real-time geolocation check-ins. The future of business comes
down to relevance and the ability to understand how technology affects decision making and
behavior to the point where the recognition of new opportunities and the ability to strategically
adapt to them becomes a competitive advantage.
But make no mistake: This is as much a technology revolution as it is a series of real-world
revolutions that will eventually seize organizations, governments, and businesses.
Change boils down to three things:
1. Listening
2. Learning
3. Adapting

[ ]
DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY IS A
CATALYST FOR CHANGE, NOT
THE REASON
Look, I get it. Change is all anyone talks about today and we all know that talk is cheap.
We also know that change is inevitable and that it is rarely easy. Among the greatest diffi culties
associated with change is the ability to recognize that change is needed at a time when we
can actually do something about it. All too often, by the time we realize that change is needed
and that we must shift to a new way of thinking, it is already too late. Or worse, competitors
recognize the need for change before us, and we are by default pushed into a position where
our next steps are impulsive or reactive rather than strategic.
The volume of emerging technology is both awe-inspiring and overwhelming. As new
technology makes its way into everyday life and work fl ow, devices, applications, and networks,
it disrupts the norm and begins to impact behavior. It is this disruptive technology that over
time infl uences how people work, communicate, share, and make decisions.
The question is at what point does
emerging technology or new behavior
become disruptive?
And, more importantly, what systems, processes, and protocols are in place that recognize
disruption, assess opportunity, and facilitate the testing of new ideas?
The time to answer these questions is now.
SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED 15

CHAPTER 1
16
In my last book, The End of Business as Usual, 2 I introduced the notion of Digital Darwinism, the
evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than our ability to
adapt. And the reality is that because of the role technology now plays in our lives, we forever
compete for survival to effectively fi ght off Digital Darwinism.
Humility is a gift and it’s needed in business now more than ever. Disruption not only faces every
business, its effects are already spreading through customer markets and the channels that
infl uence decisions and behavior.
A recent advertisement produced by Babson College cited a rather humbling statistic:
“ ”
Over 40 percent of the companies that were at the top of the Fortune 500 in 2000 were
no longer there in 2010.
As we’re often painfully reminded, history has a way of repeating itself. Forbes published an
article in early 2011 that served as a harbinger for the turbulent and transformative times that lie
ahead. 3 The opening line read,
The End is Near: Why 70% of the Fortune 1000 Will Be Replaced in a Few Years.
“ ”
The author cited a study published in the book Built to Change by Edward E. Lawler and
Christopher G. Worley. The study found that between 1973 and 1983, 35 percent of the
top companies in the Fortune 1000 companies were new to the list. Over the next decade
from 1983 to 1993, churn jumped to 45 percent, and then soared again to an astounding
60 percent between 1993 and 2003. If the current trend continues, more than 70 percent of
Fortune 1000 companies will turn over from 2003 to 2013. As the author observes, “In other
words, over three-fourths of the existing captains of industry will fall from their throne.”

They include:
Blockbuster
Borders
Compaq
CompUSA
E.F. Hutton
Hostess
KB Toys
Kodak
LIFE
Merry-Go-Round
Mervyns
Pontiac
Tower Records
Woolworths
This is about the survival of both the fi ttest and the fi tting. It takes more than a presence in
new channels to improve customer experiences and relationships. It takes courage. It takes
persistence to break through resistance. But, in the end, it’s how you work with your leaders, or
how you lead, to move toward an empowered and customer-centric culture that sets in motion
real transformation.
You have a special path you must follow to set in motion the c hange that opens the door to
improve experiences inside and outside the organization.
SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED
17

Contents
Special Thanks ix
Foreword xv
Introduction xvii
Chapter 1: Startup Revolution 1
The Myth of the Visionary (Take 1) 1
The Myth of the Visionary (Take 2) 4
Case Study: Disrupting Venture Capital 6
Which Is to Say, Disruption Hurts 12
Case Study: Customized Value Creation 21
And Cue the Lean Startup 23
Lean Startup, Please Meet the Lean Entrepreneur 25
Chapter 2: Vision, Values, and Culture 31
Vision and Values 31
Case Study: Is the Problem Really Solvable? 36
Lean into It: The Lean Startup Culture 38
Case Study: Experience-Driven Jumpstart 41
Case Study: KISSmetrics 45
Case Study: Root-Cause Analysis on Sales 50
Over the Horizon: A Framework 56
Case Study: Lean Startup Horizons 57
Chapter 3: All the Fish in the Sea 61
Case Study: The Ethology of the Fish
Know Your Audience: Why
64
Segmentation Matters 66
Market Segment 70
Personas: Create a Fake Customer 71
Case Study: Salim’s Fish Inventory 72
Choosing a Market Segment 74
Case Study: Carla’s Dream Jobs 75
Case Study: It’s in the Name 78
Chapter 4: Wading in the Value Stream 83
Articulating the Value Stream 83
Case Study: Seeing from Customer’s View 85
Value-Stream Discovery 91
Case Study: AppFog’s High Hurdle 102
Chapter 5: Diving In 109
Listen to Your Customers—or Not 110
Customer Interaction
Case Study: Don’t Just Get Out of the
113
Building, Get Out of the Country 115
vii

Case Study: What’s the Worst That Can Happen? 121
Case Study: A Nonprofi t Lean Startup 123
Chapter 6: Viability Experiments 131
The Infamous Landing Page 132
Concierge Test 134
Case Study: Curating User Experience 135
Wizard of Oz Test 139
Case Study: Idea to Wizard of Oz in under 90 Days 140
Crowd-Funding Test 141
Case Study: Two-Sided Market Lean Startup 143
Prototyping 146
Case Study: MVP: Motor Vehicle Prototype 148
Chapter 7: Data’s Double-Edged Sword 151
Case Study: Disrupting the Undisruptable 155
New Products 158
Existing Products 163
Case Study: Instrumenting Growth 165
Chapter 8: The Valley of Death 169
Minimum Viable Product 171
Case Study: The Minimum Viable Audience 176
viii CONTENTS
Case Study: Social Impact Lean Startup 180
Case Study: But My Marinara Is to Die For!
Case Study: O2, Telecom at the
183
Speed of the Internet 189
Chapter 9: Real Visionaries Have
Funnel Vision 193
Innovate the Funnel 195
Growth Waves
Case Study: Ten Lean Startup Buzzword
209
Questions with Rob Fan 215
Chapter 10: The Final Word 225
Case Study: Drinking Kool-Aid and
Eating Dog Food 229
Notes 237
Acknowledgments 241
About the Authors 244
Index 249

Foreword
When I fi rst started blogging in August
of 2008, I had no idea what to expect. Startup
blogging was hardly “cool” back then.
Plenty of venture capitalists advised me
against it.
My personal background was as an
engineer and my companies had been
web-based startups, so that is what I wrote
about. Struggling to explain the successes
and failures of those companies, I discussed
principles like continuous deployment, customer
development, and a hyper-accelerated
form of agile. When I delved into lean manufacturing,
I discovered the concepts and
terminology dovetailed. Th e result: a new
idea I called Th e Lean Startup.
I started with some basic theory: that a
startup is an institution designed to thrive
in the soil of extreme uncertainty; that
traditional management techniques rooted
in forecasting and planning would not work
well in the face of that uncertainty. Th erefore,
we needed a new management toolkit
designed explicitly for iteration, scientifi c
learning, and rapid experimentation.
At the time, I viewed it as incidental that
the theory might be tied to a particular
industry, such as high-tech startups or
web-based environments. Lean, after all,
emerged from Toyota, a huge automobile
manufacturing company. I simply stated my
belief that Lean Startup principles would
work in other types of startups and in
other areas of business where uncertainty
reigned.
Boy, was I unprepared for what happened
next. I was hopeful that we would change
the way startups are built—but I didn’t know.
Fast-forward more than four years and
I’m astounded by what has emerged.
A nascent community has blossomed into
a full-fl edged movement. Entrepreneurs,
both new and experienced, proudly share
their Lean Startup learning in case studies,
conferences, and many, many blogs. Books,
workshops, and courses authored by passionate
practitioners relate experience, share
insight, and create tools to teach students
ways to make Lean Startup principles their
own. Many investors, advisors, mentors, and
even celebrity entrepreneur icons speak the
Lean Startup language.
It’s a big tent. We stand on the shoulders
of giants: customer development, the theory
of disruptive innovation, the technology
life-cycle adoption theory, and agile development.
Complementary lines of thinking,
such as that of user experience professionals,
design thinking practitioners, and the functional
disciplines of sales, marketing, operations,
and even accounting, come together
to share practices that lift us all.
Lean Startup has gone mainstream.
I wish I could say that this was all part of
some master plan, that I knew all along
that companies of all sizes—even those far
outside the high-technology world—would
embrace Lean Startup. I wish I had foreseen
that within a year of publishing Th e Lean
Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use
Continuous Innovation to Achieve Radically
Successful Businesses, many large organizations,
including such monsters as the
United States Federal government (!) would
have recognized that to cope with today’s
xv

world—faster, more competitive, and inundated
with data—new methods are needed
to keep up. Th e truth is that all of this change
has happened faster and more thoroughly
than any of us imagined. And—as you’re
about to see—we’re just getting started.
Th at’s why I am so excited by this book
you hold in your hands. Th e Lean Entrepreneur
is about these new methods. Brant
Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits are among
the earliest adopters of new ideas such as
Lean Startup and customer development.
Th eir new work turns their lens on three primary
focal points: how to interact with customers,
run experiments, and use actionable
data to move the needle of any uncertain
business endeavor.
As with all of their work, theirs is not just
a book of theory. Brant and Patrick provide
great tactical depth in each of these areas.
Th ey endeavor to answer the question:
No matter where you are as an organization,
how do you know where to focus
your Lean Startup activities? Th e Lean
Entrepreneur off ers new thinking, tools, and
activities that help organizations identify
and act upon business model challenges in
xvi FOREWORD
a waste-eliminating manner. Following the
precepts of traditional lean thinking, Brant
and Patrick introduce the value stream discovery
process, which helps organizations
hypothesize what they must do, including
product development, marketing, and sales
in order to create value. Th ese business
model assumptions are then ripe for testing,
measuring, and iterating upon.
Further, the value you create is meaningless
without a customer who needs, wants,
desires, and, ultimately, determines the fi nal
value of your creation. Brant and Patrick
spend considerable time helping you think
through your customer segments. Cleverly,
and in the spirit of the scientifi c method,
they even help you discover where your
customer theory is wrong.
Everyone likes a good story; Brant and
Patrick interviewed dozens of entrepreneurs
and documented numerous case studies
both inside and outside of high-tech, in both
startups and large enterprises. Th ere’s even
a classic Wizard of Oz minimum viable product
that dates back to 1998!
Make no mistake: Brant and Patrick
have been here since the beginning. Th ey
self-published Th e Entrepreneur’s Guide to
Customer Development in April of 2010.
From the outset, they were both practitioners
and mentors, urging entrepreneurs
not to follow a paint-by-numbers approach,
but rather to think lean: fast, agile, and continuously
learning. Over the last two years
they’ve traveled around the world speaking,
advising, and teaching Lean Startup.
Th e Lean Entrepreneur is an important
addition to the growing library of principles
and practices designed to improve how we
tackle innovation and uncertainty, be it in
high-tech startups, Fortune 100 companies,
non-profi ts, or government offi ces.
I consider myself lucky to count Brant
and Patrick as friends and colleagues. It is
my hope that from this book you will gain
valuable insights, make Lean Startup your
own, and—much more importantly—that
you are successful in changing the world for
the better.
Eric Ries
San Francisco
January 2013

Introduction
What Is The Lean Entrepreneur?
It’s hard to know where you live on the
curve. As far as we can tell, the arrow of time
moves in one direction. You can never step
in the same river twice (Heraclitus) and all
that.
Change isn’t constant. We change constantly,
but at diff erent rates, depending
where we are on the curve. Fast change
comes in times of cheap experimentation.
Massive new life emerged on Earth during
time periods in which a convergence of foundational
platforms, like the diff erent aspects
of Earth’s biosphere, favored the emergence
of diverse species, most of which failed.
Massive new technologies emerge when
the discovery and extraction of massive
amounts of resources (water, minerals, fuel)
provides low-cost industrial experiments,
most of which fail.
Although our narratives of the past reveal
eras of big change, those who lived during
those times likely didn’t see it that way:
“Hey bro, pretty cool, we’re living in the
Age of Renaissance, yeah?”
“Beats the Middle Ages, dude.”
“Word.”
Th e life you live defi nes normalcy.
Is change big or little? Dramatic or incremental?
Permanent or cyclical? Disruptive
or sustaining?
xvii

No one can pinpoint where we exist on
the curve. Is change over or just beginning?
Are we at an infl ection point? Up or down?
Is the end nigh, or is the Age of Aquarius
approaching?
A broken clock is right twice a day.
How can we know when we are amid big
change? Listen to experts and incumbents. If
you hear a lot of this, then be forewarned—
“Th e times they are a-changin’ ”:
• “Don’t worry, it’s just the business cycle;
or, in other words, the next bus to pick us
up will be by in fi ve minutes.”
• “Will x be ubiquitous? Oh that’s ridiculous;
x is exactly what is already consuming
your market. ‘It’s just a normal cycle,
we’ll be back.’ ”
• “Piracy is killing us!”
Th e Lean Entrepreneur is about navigating
big change.
Whether what’s emerging is considered
the postindustrial age, an information society,
or an experience economy, Th e Lean
Entrepreneur aims to help you create
products people want, innovate with new
ventures, and disrupt markets. With big
change comes big opportunity. We’ll provide
you with grounded ways to market test
your ideas with the right market segment;
we’ll give you real, tangible examples of how
xviii INTRODUCTION
successful entrepreneurs are doing so; and
we’ll get you started right now and get you
up to speed quickly.
We think of Th e Lean Entrepreneur as
a fi eld guide because it is designed to be
brought into the fi eld, whether that is your
offi ce, the local co-working space, your client’s
place of business, or the local coff ee
shop as you surf cyberspace, planning your
conquest. Whereas a traditional naturalist
fi eld guide helps outdoorsmen identify the
plants and animals of a certain geography, our
fi eld guide will help you identify concepts and
ideas in the geography of innovation. At fi rst
blush, some of these ideas may not appear to
be applicable to your business, but with an
open mind and a spirit of creativity, we will
demonstrate how these concepts can and will
radically reshape how you bring products to
market and, ultimately, to your business.
Th e Lean Entrepreneur is a book of synthesis,
of recombination, and, we hope, of
inspiration. It is a synthesis in that we will
show where several pre-existing ideas about
how to innovate, which initially appear to be
virtual islands strewn across a sea, actually
share connections and complement each
other. And if we have done this well, a larger,
more complete, and more comprehensive
map of the changes coming and how to
innovate now will have emerged for you.
As Henry Ford recombined existing
technologies from diff erent domains
(interchangeable parts, the assembly line,
the electric motor) into a wholly novel and
disruptive set of innovations resulting in
the manufacture and distribution of the
fi rst durable, mass-market automobile,
we hope to inspire vis-à-vis our interpretations
of several big ideas, which will result in
a new approach that scales well for disruptive
innovators and entrepreneurs, from
small, value-producing businesses to the
Fortune 500.
Th e product development methodologies
and innovation frameworks espoused by Th e
Lean Entrepreneur are heavily infl uenced by
truly big thinkers, such as Steve Blank and
Eric Ries, creators of Customer Development
and Th e Lean Startup, respectively. However,
other, rather similar, innovation methodologies
such as design thinking and discoverydriven
planning also exist.
All the aforementioned frameworks tend
to be driven by principle, rather than by a set
of cut-and-dried tactics, and are typifi ed by
iterative, customer-centric, data-informed
approaches resembling the scientifi c
method; and we, as natural-born bricoleurs,
happily borrow from ideas that we deem
appropriate as well as discard or ignore what
we deem unhelpful.

We urge you, the reader, to do the same
with ideas and approaches presented in
this book.
Why Read (Be) The
Lean Entrepreneur?
Our mission in writing Th e Lean Entrepreneur
is threefold:
1. To describe why our economy is primed
for a new wave of entrepreneurship
using new methods of disruptive
innovation.
2. To provide you real-world examples of
how entrepreneurs are creating new
markets and disrupting others.
3. To show you how you can get started
creating value.
Th e context of Th e Lean Entrepreneur
is an iterative, customer-centric, datainformed
business development approach
in the face of market uncertainty. Although,
to some degree, all businesses operate in
conditions of market uncertainty, all such
conditions are not created equal. Market
uncertainty can be described by an innovation
spectrum stretching from lesser market
uncertainty when undertaking sustaining
innovation to greater market uncertainty
when pursuing truly disruptive innovation.
Uncertainty and innovation are a duality.
Without the former, there is no opportunity
for the latter. True disruptive innovation
can only happen in environments in which
the fi nal product, and its value proposition,
price, marketing, sales channels, and, most
importantly, its customer are, at best, educated
guesses but, more than likely, almost
completely unknown.
Th e inverse is also true: If one is developing
products for which the value proposition,
price, marketing, sales channels, and
market segments are known or very likely to
be known; then iterative, customer-centric,
data-driven approaches as espoused by Th e
Lean Entrepreneur may be suboptimal.
Suffi ce it to say, when the value proposition
is known and successfully delivered by a
business to a known customer, the methods
of execution used by its owners and
employees are good enough, at least for now.
Perhaps they could become more effi cient
or less wasteful, but to instruct successful
businesses on how to be more effi cient is not
our ambition.
As you read Th e Lean Entrepreneur, we’ll
make the case that innovating in uncertainty
requires a highly iterative approach. We’ll
also make the case that a disproportionate
part of your business model is ultimately
determined not by command-and-control
diktats from the executive offi ces of your
company or even your own personal desires
but implicitly by the market segment you
hope to provide value for. Th e sooner you
grok that your customers have signifi cant
de facto control over the destiny of your
business, the better for you, your customers,
your employees, your colleagues, your
shareholders, and other stakeholders in your
business.
To belabor the point, it is your market
segment, not you, that determines how you
distribute your product, how much they are
willing to pay, what sort of messaging they
respond to, and for what job they are in need
of hiring a product. In other words, other
than the fact that you can choose whether
to serve a particular segment, it is up to the
segment to decide whether you should be
given a shot.
Since iterative, customer-centric, datainformed
product development approaches
to creating value predate this book, is this
simply a gussied-up rehash of previous
thinking?
Short answer: No.
We hear time and time again that the
greatest contribution made by Eric Ries and
the Lean Startup is the lexicon. It provides
a language for anyone practicing entrepreneurship
to talk about how to do meaningful
Introduction xix

xx INTRODUCTION

innovation. Th e point has never been about
who came up with what, but, rather, how
can we learn from past successes to make
future endeavors more predictable.
We feel that we are now witnessing a
phase marked by radical disequilibrium and
fundamental changes in innovation and
entrepreneurship enabled by a juggernaut of
technological and cultural trends.
Th e best way to navigate the near future
is to hyperfocus on creating value for
customers and moving at the speed of the
Internet. We’ll show you how.
Who Is the Lean
Entrepreneur?
We’d like to answer that question like most
entrepreneurs who are asked to defi ne their
market: Everyone! However, in order to demonstrate
that we drink our own Kool-Aid,
we have spoken to and worked with many
diff erent individuals as we wrote this book.
Here are our market segments:
• Scalable startup founders—If you are
hoping to build “the next big thing.”
• Lifestyle business founders—We don’t
think the term is derogatory in the least.
If you’re trying to build a real business
that provides value to customers, we’re
talking to you.
• Intrapreneurs—If you are trying to
change your business, whatever size, to
move at the speed of the Internet read on.
• Educators—You recognize that entrepreneurship
needs to be taught diff erently.
• Government Change Agents—If, like
entrepreneurs trying to drive change
inside big businesses, you are trying
to drive change in how governments
operate, we’re here to help.
• Investors—If you could use help fi nding
and providing assistance to the right
startups.
Although we’d like to think this book will
benefi t everyone to some degree, this book
is likely less than optimal for these market
segments:
• Small-business founders who are starting
companies for which there is already a
known model—Typically these are the
types of businesses found in malls: dry
cleaners, retailers, franchises, and so
forth.
• Lifestyle business owners—If you’ve already
built your business and are generally satisfi
ed with what you’ve achieved, congratulations!
You probably don’t need us.
• Solo practitioners—If you’re trying to generate
a personal or family income stream
via “projects” or small-scale products or
services we think that’s great! Th ere are
probably better books for that.
Generally speaking, if you’ve read Eric
Ries’s Th e Lean Startup and are looking for
more tactical application of the principles
espoused there, this is the right book for you.
If you haven’t read it and need convincing
that a lean startup is the right thing for you
and your organization, we will make the
case—but you really should read Eric’s book.
If you’ve read Th e Four Steps to the
Epiphany, our Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer
Development, or Blank’s Th e Startup
Owner’s Manual, you will fi nd new tools and
methodologies for applying the principles
you already believe in. Th ere is not a lot of
duplication here.
If you are well into the lean startup movement,
a heavy reader of Ash Maurya, Cindy
Alvarez, Sean Murphy, and others, we fi rmly
believe we have exciting new material you
can use to grow your business.
How to Use The Lean
Entrepreneur
Th is book hopes to not only teach you and
inspire you, but also to show you some fun
along the way.
Introduction xxi

To that end, we’ve engaged a talented
entrepreneur and artist who goes by the
name of Fake Grimlock. Fake Grimlock has
created an expressive set of illustrations just
for Th e Lean Entrepreneur. Th e illustrations
tell a story and serve to amplify concepts
from the book.
You’ll fi nd them a bit whimsical at times,
but be prepared to think deep thoughts as
you take them in.
We’ve made them available for you for
reuse and remix, subject to the Creative
Commons license.
If you want to download the illustrations
to use them in your presentations or blog
posts or in other interesting ways, please
do.* You can access them at http://Lean
Entrepreneur.co/illustrations or e-mail us
at pics@leanentrepreneur.co.
Our writing style aims to get to the heart
of the matter quickly. Experts in specifi c
domains will notice, probably much to their
irritation, that we will intentionally gloss
over some of the fi ner points we discuss.
Th is is not because we don’t think the details
xxii INTRODUCTION
matter; they do, but they don’t matter for the
context of this book.
Th e Lean Entrepreneur is divided into 10
chapters:
1. Startup Revolution—A brief redux on
what’s going on now that makes lean
startup the right methodology to apply
to your business, regardless of size or
sector.
2. Vision, Values, and Culture—We describe
what a lean startup looks like in
the startup world and in the enterprise.
3. All the Fish in the Sea—We help you
fi gure out what customers to fi sh for.
4. Wading in the Value Stream—We
explain how to posit the value you are
creating.
5. Diving In—We introduce various
methods of customer interaction to
learn.
6. Viability Experiments—We talk about
various methods of running experiments
to de-risk your market.
7. Data’s Double-Edged Sword—We help
you not drown in data, while fi nding
the information necessary to move the
needle.
8. Th e Valley of Death—We guide you
through the requisite ups and downs of
traversing uncertainty.
9. Real Visionaries have Funnel Vision—
We break down marketing and sales.
10. Th e Final Word—We end with a call to
action.
Th roughout, we include examples of real
companies applying lean startup principles
and succeeding. We hope you gain learning
and inspiration from these companies, many
of whom don’t use the term lean to describe
themselves.
Each chapter also includes exercises and
templates you can use to help you think
through your business model. Although we
don’t believe a step-by-step approach to
success exists, we think many will fi nd our
exercises benefi cial.
Learn the craft, then make it your own.
* We’ve licensed the illustrations with http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. We’d love for you to use and share them, just remember to attribute “Th e Lean Entrepreneur by Brant Cooper and
Patrick Vlaskovits with illustrations by Fake Grimlock” with a link to http://LeanEntrepreneur.co. Th anks!

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER
Foreword by MEG WHITMAN
Rebooting
W RK
Transform How You Work in the
AGE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Maynard Webb
A N D C A R L Y E A D L E R

Contents
Foreword: The Benchmark of Success
by Meg Whitman
ix
Preface xiii
Introduction xxv
Part 1 Why Work Isn’t Working
1 Changing Work 3
2 Technology: Powering the Future of Work 11
Part 2 Reframing How We Think About Work
3 The Framework 27
4 Frame 1: The Company Man or Woman 41
5 Frame 2: CEO of Your Own Destiny 61
6 Frame 3: The Disenchanted Employee 79
7 Frame 4: The Aspiring Entrepreneur 105
8 The Age of Entrepreneurship 123
Conclusion: Break New Snow 133
vii

viii Contents
Part 3 Getting Started
Appendix A The Worksheet 141
Appendix B Worksheet Examples 147
Appendix C Services You Should Know About 157
Notes 161
Acknowledgments 171
About the Author 175
Index 177

Introduction
In my last corporate job, as the CEO of cloud-based call center
LiveOps, I was hired to scale a start-up company to become a
mature, fast-growing, operationally excellent technology company,
but something else unexpected happened. I began to see
how big of a problem work has become for most of us, and how
much we could change to make it better. I learned about how many
people were unhappy and unfulfilled and eager for an alternative
way that would give them more control over their lives.
This dissatisfaction was widespread—and alarming. One
survey found that less than half of Americans (just 47 percent) are
satisfied with their work. 1 (When the Conference Board’s first
survey was conducted in 1987, most workers—61 percent—said
they were happy in their job.)
As an employer, I know that this decline in job satisfaction is
unacceptable and dangerous. Another survey by consulting firm
Mercer found that the most discontented are young employees,
with 44 percent of those ages sixteen to twenty-four and 40
percent of the twenty-five- to thirty-four-year-olds saying they
‘‘seriously are considering leaving’’ their jobs. 2
xxv

xxvi Introduction
That too is a big problem. Working adults spend more of
their waking hours at work than anywhere else. Work should be a
place of inspiration and innovation; it should not—it cannot—be
unfulfilling. But for all too many, it is. It’s disconcerting the
degree to which work adversely affects our lives and how much
we come to regret it later. Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative
care nurse, who tended to patients in the last twelve weeks of
their lives, shared their thoughts in a blog called Inspiration and
Chai, which she turned into a book called The Top Five Regrets of
the Dying. She found common themes in what people regretted
and what we could learn from them. The top two lessons: ‘‘I
wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life
others expected of me,’’ and ‘‘I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.’’ 3
When people realize that their life is almost over and look back
clearly on it, they see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled.
Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams due to
choices they had made or not made.
That’s upsetting, but what gets me most agitated is that it does
not have to be this way. The things that people don’t like about
work—toiling away so many hours in office buildings, spending
too much time in cars commuting to work, and ceding control to
a company—no longer have to be facts of work life. Technology
has evolved to the point that many of our practices and methods
around work could change radically. Advances in cloud services,
Internet telephony, wireless technology, and mobile computing
can be applied to change work and make it better pretty quickly,
and pretty easily. Social technologies, which enable us to know
exactly what our long-lost friends are doing in their spare time,
can help us better understand what is happening in our businesses.
As an investor in start-up companies and someone who meets
young, gifted entrepreneurs who dream about the future every

Introduction xxvii
day, I gain insight and access into other new technologies that
can help us revolutionize work even further. There are so many
new services and apps and ideas that make work easier and more
engaging and more rewarding. There are so many ways to take
out the pain points and allow the soul food to be put back in.
Although technology is a path to a better and brighter future,
it is only an enabler. After all, technology is a word that describes
the concepts, techniques, and methods having to do with how
to accomplish a task. Before we implement methods and plans
and action items, though, we need to take a step back. We need
to change the way we think about work. If we want to change it,
we need to look back and study how we got here, then determine
how we could forge ahead.
I wrote this book to investigate how the current work crisis
came about and to help individuals understand that it is within
their power to end it and move on to careers that can provide
both fulfillment and financial security. In addition to advocating
for the personal joy that comes with being fulfilled, I also come
at this with the perspective of an executive and manager and
strongly believe that companies achieve far more with motivated
and happy people.
Rebooting Work explores the emerging technologies and
techniques that can enable every individual to make this shift
to take charge of his or her own career. It’s not just a better
way—it’s essential for the new era we live in, which is defined
by an entrepreneurial spirit. The old ways of working, which
were previous generations’ paths to success, no longer guarantee
the same results. We are seeing new trends increasingly change
work. Online freelance job postings have skyrocketed over the
last few years, and companies increasingly outsource work. The
shift under way to an information economy is as important as

xxviii Introduction
the last shift, when we transitioned from an agricultural to an
industrial economy nearly one hundred years ago. 4
MERITOCRACY VERSUS ENTITLEMENT
AND THE AGE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Each year more than 1.1 million American high school students
play football. The best of them, the star quarterbacks, running
backs, linebackers, and linemen, dream of scoring scholarships to
play college ball, but only twenty thousand—just 6 percent of
seniors on the team—will play their freshman year of college.
By their final year, that number dwindles to fifteen thousand
athletes. Only 255 of those elite players are drafted to the NFL.
The chance of making it to the pros if you play in high school? A
very small number: a mere 0.08 percent. 5
Andifyouthinkthatonceplayersmakeittotheprosthey
can take a rest, think again. Every player in the NFL must get
revoted on to the team every year. No one can buy his way on
to the team. It’s a model of ruthless efficiency which ensures that
every player brings his A-game every time he steps onto the field.
It’s a system that makes football an incredible game to watch.
I’ve always been inspired by sports, and throughout my career
have taken the lessons I learned playing football and baseball
growing up, as well as what I’ve witnessed through following
professional sports, into the work world. Team dynamics and
the importance of learning to win—and lose—gracefully were
invaluable lessons to me in building my career. Further, the need
to get voted on to the team every day inspired me to demand
the most from myself and my teams. I have found that being
transparent about an individual’s performance—a tactic learned

Introduction xxix
from studying baseball stats—let him know where he stood and
inspired a continuous quest for improvement.
Meritocracy: a system that rewards individuals based on performance
and results. It’s an idea that carries weight for employees
in the workplace. There also are benefits for companies that operate
on this principle by committing to being open and transparent
about their performance. (For example, a website should publish
real-time information about its availability and performance
time, as eBay does with its system announcement board or as
salesforce.com does with its Trust Site.)
But what I’ve also found is that although we have some
great examples of companies that are open about their performance,
overall, most corporations don’t follow these tenets
when it comes to how they evaluate or treat their employees.
In fact, traditional company culture is quite the opposite of a
performance-based meritocracy. Historically—meaning in the
past fifty or so years—loyalty has been given higher priority
than achievements and results. Outside of sales organizations,
goals, and ways to measure goals, were not always clear. How an
individual was performing and how she stacked up against others
were not often transparent.
Although one would expect the rules of the ball park to
be different from the rules of the office park, I found that in
ignoring what made sports so great—essentially its functioning
as a meritocracy—we were missing out on an opportunity to
make work work better. The desire for security trumped the
drive to be spectacular. Everyone played it too safe. And this has
stymied employees and employers.
How come as a society we support a model that embraces
meritocracy—in which the best athletes, those with the best

xxx Introduction
skills, are known and rise to the top—but we don’t demand a
similar model at work? Generally speaking, we accept this system
in school, where grades are based on performance against one’s
peers,notjustonshowinguptoclass.Howisitthatatworkwe
fear systems that allow us to see how we are doing compared to
others, that motivate us to do better work every day, and that
reward us for our meaningful contributions instead of our blind
commitment? How come both employees and employers are so
afraid of operating in a meritocracy, which rewards them for how
well they perform, not for how long they’ve been performing?
At work, both employees and employers often fall into an
entitlement mentality. For example, some employers do everything
they can to keep the talent inside their walls hidden from
everyone else, lest they be ‘‘poached.’’ They feel as though they
know what is best for the employee and must make sure that the
employee knows how to be successful in their company. Employees
who leave are often shunned as being disloyal. For employees,
there’s an expectation that they will be given a job, and as long as
they are doing okay, they expect to keep it. By keeping their head
down, doing an okay job, and not being a problem, they believe
they will be rewarded.
I have always been amazed by how managers seldom actually
want to have truthful discussions about how someone is performing,
even when that individual is doing great. As a manager, I
have often implemented informal weekly and formal quarterly
check-ins in an effort to force a dialogue and prevent a big disconnect
at the end of the year for many employees, when they
find out they were not doing as well as their perception led them
to believe. Think of all the wasted time and productivity when
we give performance feedback only on a yearly basis. The world
doesn’t operate on this type of clock anymore. When everything

Introduction xxxi
is happening in real time, even my formal quarterly meetings
seem grossly inadequate. As a board member of a well-known
technology company, I witnessed a once well-respected CEO
lose the trust of his board and employees in less than ten days. In
the current business environment, the idea of an annual review is
so antiquated, it’s comical. We live in a world in which countries
have been toppled in months, or even days, but certainly not
years. It’s a world in which much is decided instantaneously, and
the workplace must adapt.
Yet we are very far from this kind of culture. How can work
be so out of touch with the way the rest of the world is headed?
I’m a strong proponent of meritocracy, of the value
of hard work over entitlement, of talent over tenure, and of
transparency over closed systems, probably because of where
I came from—and because of where I am today. I believe that
many executives hold these beliefs, I have gained significant
freedom by embracing a mind-set of meritocracy. I’ve seen
what it can inspire, unlock, and unleash, and I’ve also seen how
the opposite—an organization that supports entitlement over
results—limits growth and opportunity.
Unlike the old days when you got news and information from
only one or two sources and a couple of times a day, today you
get information in real time and from multiple sources. There is
no place to hide. You can hope to keep problems in-house, but
you’re unlikely to succeed. Problems do not get better with age;
they get far worse. They spin out of control faster today than
ever before. The only way to deal with this is to be open and
transparent. If you have a problem, admit it, apologize, and fix
it. No one expects perfection, but they do expect honesty. Now,
meritocracy over entitlement is the only way. We are in a new
age—one that is more transparent thanks to the Internet and one

xxxii Introduction
that is being defined by a new generation of workers who grew
up with more technology and a more entrepreneurial mind-set.
My background is really in operations. I see systems not working,
I am called in when they are failing, and I must determine
how to fix them. Whether it’s an e-commerce start-up with an
unreliable website, a public company trying to implement a new
systems architecture, or a legacy company trying to carve a path
for the future with new leadership, I find that by asking the right
questions, you can get to the root of the problem and come up
with a solution. With work it’s no different, and I have created
a model, a framework, to impart everything you need to know
about how to operate in a new world of work. This model, which
we’ll explore in detail in Part Two, is designed to help individuals
become accountable for their own success. With that accountability
comes a new and refreshing freedom—it puts you back in
charge of your life, shifting control from your boss to yourself.
Essentially, it allows you to become the CEO of your own destiny
and to be the one in charge of your career—and your life.
The framework in this book is the culmination of years of
experience in managing and mentoring, and, I hope, will serve
as a template for you as you begin to rework how you think
about work. It identifies four different philosophies around work:
Company Man or Woman, CEO of Your Own Destiny, Disenchanted
Employee, and the Aspiring Entrepreneur. It distinguishes
between those who are self-motivated and those who are
waiting to be discovered, those who are happy and those who are
unfulfilled. It aims to give you the tools to become more self-aware
and happier and to find more meaning in your career. Ultimately,
it is my hope that it inspires you to aggressively chase your dreams.

Introduction xxxiii
Part Three allows you to take the ideas of this book and make
them your own. There is a worksheet to get you started (1) assessing
where you are in your career and (2) understanding the actions
you need to take to make a change. I’ve also included my personal
worksheets, which I have filled out for different stages of my life
and career, to show how goals and objectives can change over
time. These completed worksheets are included in Appendix C.

CONTENTS
Introduction v
Chapter 1 First, Some Context 1
Chapter 2 Intellectual Property, Confidentiality,
and Brands 21
Chapter 3 Ask the Right Question 41
Chapter 4 Fair Incentives to Motivate 59
Chapter 5 Build the Coalition 81
Chapter 6 Recruit the Best Participants 103
Chapter 7 Manage Communities to
Facilitate Great Outcomes 121
Chapter 8 Understand Participant Contributions 145
Chapter 9 Reign in the Tyranny of Ideas 161
Chapter 10 Choose the Right Online Space 181
Chapter 11 Meta 199
Acknowledgments 209
Notes 211
Index 221
iii

INTRODUCTION
Properly organized and run, a group
can be a gold-mine of ideas.
—Alex Osborn
Alex Osborn loved ideas. His ideas helped to propel his advertising
agency, BBDO, to become one of the most innovative
advertising firms in the United States. In 1948, he revealed the secret
to a process for coming up with new ideas and innovations in his
book, Your Creative Power: How to Use Your Imagination. 1
One of the chapters, “How to Organize a Squad to Create Ideas,”
introduced a process for soliciting many ideas from groups of people.
Osborn called the process brainstorming. He described how BBDO
used the process to generate more and better ideas. These ideas were at
the heart of the advertising agencies’ success. Many decades later,
brainstorming is as popular as ever. Need new marketing ideas?
Engineering problem not solved? Wondering how to win that new
deal? No matter the industry or domain, you have likely participated in
brainstorming sessions.
Since its introduction, the brainstorming process has been the
subject of various studies and critiques, and the process has evolved.
For example, Osborn believed that people should delay feedback—
people were encouraged to accept all ideas. However, research suggests
that debating ideas can yield better quality ideas. Similarly, while
Osborn focused on everyone generating ideas together, research suggests
that we are better off producing ideas independently, before
getting together. 2
While Osborn made brainstorming famous, he also introduced
another idea that was much less practical at the time. Following his
v

vi INTRODUCTION
discussion of brainstorming, he talked about idea-thinking on a larger
scale. He described processes that were enabling organizations to
accept ideas from all of their employees. Building on the highly
acclaimed suggestion systems developed at US production plants during
World War II, Osborn showed how his firm was taking brainstorming
to the next level. He showed how hundreds of his employees
were using suggestion systems to get the best ideas from anywhere in
his firm.
Half a century after Osborn introduced us to brainstorming, the
Internet transformed our ability to gather ideas on a large scale. First,
e-mail replaced the paper and wooden suggestions boxes. And now,
applications are speeding the collection and evaluation of ideas on a
scale that lets us take Osborn’s ideas to a new level. Organizations in
countless industries have successfully turned to very large groups for
their ideas. These online crowds might work within large organizations,
but more often participants are not employees. To date, these crowds
have worked together to design new products, improve services, create
new marketing campaigns, and bring to market low-carbon-footprint
housing—to name just a few of the many areas. This is brainstorming
on a much larger scale.
We call this crowdstorming.
Like brainstorming before it, crowdstorming requires that we
understand how best to organize the process for gathering and evaluating
ideas. There are many parts of the process under investigation.
This book is intended to explore and highlight the best ways we know
to make crowdstorms work. Our approach builds on our combined
experience with more than 200 projects and working with over 100,000
individual participants from around the globe in domains spanning
marketing, strategy, design, engineering, and architecture. We have
also studied hundreds of projects from other domains and talked with
some of their organizers. And we have consulted a rapidly growing
body of research across a wide array of disciplines—from social science
to human computer interaction—that cover the many different
dimensions of crowdstorm processes.
We have seen the many ways that organizations can innovate by
working with external talent:

● Fortune 500 companies that are reinventing their product lines
or bringing new offerings to market can benefit from the steps
we outline.
● Small and mid-size companies can use crowdstorming processes
to greatly increase their access to global talent in a number of
domains.
● Nonprofits and governmental agencies can leverage the processes
and tools we discuss to tackle broad social change initiatives
and create awareness around these issues.
● Professional organizations, such as consultancies and advertising
agencies, can benefit from many of the ideas to enhance their
current capabilities—and connect their global talent pools in
more effective ways.
● Universities looking to create new virtual studio environments
can also apply the material in the book—recapturing the
studio environment in an online world where individuals
regularly share and review work.
To highlight the potential value of the processes, we have included
examples spanning industries and business functions, from startups creating
consumer products to a Fortune 500 company’s global energy business.
HOW TO READ THIS BOOK
INTRODUCTION vii
For the reader who is beginning to explore the potential of working
with talent outside his or her organization, we recommend reading
Chapter 1: First, Some Context. We offer an overview of what organizations
are doing with outside talent—from crowdsourcing to
collaborative consumption. We focus on the benefits of outside talent,
crowds, and communities and we explain where crowdstorming fits in a
quickly expanding universe of crowd-enabled business processes.
For those who have worked with crowdsourcing, open innovation,
cocreation, or mass collaboration, the benefits are likely already
familiar. For you, we’ve broken the crowdstorming lifecycle down to
highlight the best approaches to planning, organizing, and executing
crowdstorming projects.

viii INTRODUCTION
Reign in the
Tyranny of Ideas
Understanding
Participant
Contributions
Manage
Communities to
Facilitate Great
Outcomes
meta
Figure I.1 The Crowdstorming Lifecycle
execute
Figure I.1 shows how a crowdstorm project might be organized
from planning and organizing through execution and review (or meta).
There is one notable exception. We have moved the discussion about
online spaces (which covers the role of technologies and platforms) to
the end. We think it’s important to understand everything that makes
crowdstorming work, before considering the right enabling technologies.
Broadly, the chapters try to answer the following questions:
● How to weigh the business benefit of crowdstorming with an
organization’s legal, confidentiality, and brand needs
● What kinds of questions to ask crowdstorm participants
● How to compel a community to participate and reward them
when they do
● How to recruit the best people to join your crowdstorm
● How a coalition of partners can enhance crowdstorming
● How to organize participants for the best results
organize
● How to monitor a community in support of community
management
plan
Intellectual
Property, Confidentiality,
and Brands
Ask the Right
Questions
Recruit the
Participants
Choose the Right Online Space
Fair Incentives to
Motivate the Crowd
Build the
Coalition

● How to evaluate results
● The technology alternatives to enable crowdstorming
● Moving beyond what we have shared in this book
We love the possibilities of crowdstorming, but we are much
more excited about ensuring that you can get results from the process.
So each chapter includes references to academic research and interviews,
as well as our own observations. And the concepts are made
tangible with stories in each chapter.
LET’S BEGIN
INTRODUCTION ix
We cannot promise that we have cracked the code on all the ways
organizations will use crowdstorming. What we can help you recognize—
and utilize—are clear, actionable steps to begin realizing innovative
outcomes by leveraging external talent. Exploring the art of the possible
with a structure to harness this power can help you with idea creation,
innovation, and problem solving.
We love ideas. But we love putting ideas into action even more.
So let’s get started.

CHAPTER 1
First, Some Context
No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work
for somebody else.
—Bill Joy
1

In 2000, Goldcorp CEO Rob McEwen was frustrated with the
relatively poor performance of Goldcorp’s Red Lake Mine in
Ontario, Canada. Goldcorp’s geologists had experienced limited success
in pinpointing the gold’s underground location. McEwen knew he
was literally sitting on a gold mine but unable to realize its potential.
Then McEwen found himself at an executive education session at
MIT. In a session where open source software was being discussed, it
dawned on him what needed to be done. Open source software
benefitted from the ongoing analysis, review, testing, and contributions
of a large diverse group of people working for multiple different
organizations. Could he employ similar principles to help his team
improve their understanding of his mine’s potential?
McEwen took an unprecedented step in his industry. He
assembled digital representations of Goldcorp’s proprietary geological
data and made it available to people outside the company. He challenged
them to prospect, using the digital representations of the mine.
The challenge was launched on Goldcorp’s website. Everything related
to the Red Lake Mine—400 megabytes worth of data about the
55,000-acre site—went online and was transparent to the world. Participants
were offered prize money of $575,000 for the best ideas.
The response was astonishing—especially for an industry that had
always believed the key to success lay in making its proprietary
knowledge accessible only to its own employees. Over 1,400 scientists,
mathematicians, geologists, engineers, military officers, students, and
consultants from 50 countries downloaded the company’s data for
virtual exploration. In all, participants identified 110 sites that might
yield gold. Fifty percent of these sites were previously unknown to the
company. Of these new targets, more than 80 percent yielded significant
gold reserves. The group with the winning entry was from Australia
2

FIRST, SOME CONTEXT 3
and had never even visited Canada. McEwen estimates that the collaborative
process shaved two to three years off their exploration time.
The value of the gold found: $6 billion. 1
Another remarkable story of a company looking to external talent
comes from the world of toys. LEGO is one of the fastest growing and
most profitable companies in toy industry today, but back in 2003, the
company was on the verge of bankruptcy. LEGO’s story is revealing
not only for the way it tapped into external talent to get creative ideas
but also for how it used creative collaboration to vet and find ideas that
had the greatest potential to become profitable. 2
From the mid-1990s to 2003, LEGO’s business stopped growing.
After decades of doubling its revenue every five years, changes in the
market slowed LEGO’s growth to a standstill. The impact of video and
other technologies were shifting its core customer base’sbuyingpatterns.
Distribution channel changes—from mom-and-pop toy stores to retail
giants like Carrefour, Walmart, and Target—impacted how LEGO
interacted with its end customers. And changes in supply chains, from
domestic manufacturing to offshore sources, altered the cost structure of
toy production and negatively impacted the bottom line.
By 2003, the company was almost broke and a new CEO was
appointed, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp. Under Knudstorp, LEGO made the
transition into being an innovative company that was (and still is)
highly profitable. That transition had many facets, but one that has
significance for this discussion concerns the impact one single new
product experience had on the way LEGO now manages innovation.
The product was called LEGO Mindstorms. Mindstorms is a
configurable robotics product that LEGO successfully launched in
1998. However, during the trying times at LEGO, much of the original
team had moved on. But LEGO knew there was an enthusiastic group of
people who were very familiar with Mindstorms—Mindstorms customers.
So they reached out to this group—first on an individual basis and
then through a consumer products show. They had hoped to get support
from 100 of these fans; they were inundated with responses from
10,000. The new development team was flooded with new ideas for
the product.

4 CROWDSTORM
What LEGO discovered was an external pool of design talent
that was smart, enthusiastic, and motivated by their love of the
Mindstorms product. LEGO quickly recognized that this group could
not only provide them with product ideas but, more importantly, they
could help evaluate which ideas were best, and thus help ensure that the
new product would be profitable.
By the time Mindstorms was launched in 2006, the company had
handed over incrementally more control for idea creation, refinement,
and selection to the external community of Mindstorms enthusiasts.
The launch was a huge success. LEGO even turned over part of the
marketing—interviews with the press—to the community. This
external community turned out to be not only more knowledgeable
about the product, but more believable in extolling the virtues of
LEGO’s newest offering.
Almost a decade after they began, LEGO has not slowed in its
pursuit of new and better ways to work with outside talent. In 2011,
LEGO launched a process called Cuusoo (which means wish in Japanese)
to find and evaluate new ideas for LEGO products. Anyone can
submit ideas to the Cuusoo site. Idea owners are encouraged to promote
their ideas. If 10,000 people vote for an idea, LEGO will review
the idea. If the idea meets certain guidelines related to considerations
like design, brand, pricing, availability of a license, LEGO will put
the idea into production and share royalties with the idea owner. In the
case of LEGO Minecraft, the product was already a smash hit game.
Cuusoo made it easy for this already engaged and excited community
to begin creating brand extensions on their own for the benefit of both
LEGO and MineCraft. And, while LEGO is certainly well known for
deals with brands from Disney to Starwars, this time the new partnership
idea and validation came from a different place—the smart,
insightful, and engaged people outside LEGO.
ABUNDANT TALENT OUTSIDE
Goldcorp and LEGO could not be more different businesses. But both
tapped into abundant external talent to help them succeed in the face of
some of their greatest challenges. They discovered people who had the
background, interest, or enthusiasm to engage with their organization

FIRST, SOME CONTEXT 5
and innovate. They found ways to organize interactions with people
outside their internal structure, in part out of a confluence of necessity
and design—but, more tellingly, because they could. And, while their
approach to innovation might seem to be new, it is in fact a very old idea.
In his 1937 essay on the “Theory of the Firm,” 4 Nobel Prize winning
economist Ronald Coase asked this question: Given that “production
could be carried on without any organization [that is, firms] at all,”
why and under what conditions should we expect firms to emerge?
Coase’s essay looks at two competing sets of costs. On the one hand,
Coase finds that organizations tend to become less successful at allocating
resources as they grow; more specifically, they tend to misallocate
resources. On the other hand, Coase looks at the hidden costs of transacting
with the market—such as searching for talent, evaluating skills or
bargaining, securing trade secrets, and enforcing contracts.
In 1937, Coase’s costs were determined in part by the business
processes of the time, and also by the communication options. Today,
online platforms and social networks are reducing some of the transaction
costs and the increasingly competitive global market is escalating the costs
of misallocated resources inside the firm. In other words, it’s a perfect
time to revisit the balance between when to use internal resources versus
when to go out to the market. We also see that, with these lower costs,
there is a third type of relationship—people who are not employees and
who are not accessed via the market. Like LEGO’s communityof
Mindstorms fans, their relationships to the organization are different as
are their motivations.
In his 2008 book Here Comes Everybody, 5 author Clay Shirky hints at
the shifting role of the organization in his subtitle: The Power of Organizing
Without Organizations. He examines how new forms of social
interaction enabled by technology are changing the way people are
forming groups and working—from political movements that topple
dictators, to consumer cooperation that causes corporations to change
behavior. And, in Imagine: How Creativity Works, 6 Jonah Lehrer suggests
that most innovation and creative ideas do not occur when we are alone,
but instead emerge from social interactions that “inspire novel thoughts.”
Lehrer explains, “It doesn’t matter if this sharing takes place on Hudson
Streetoratabarfullofengineers...theexchangeisallthatmatters.”

6 CROWDSTORM
While Coase is focused on the pure economics of the organization
versus the market, author and law professor Yochai Benkler introduces
additional forms of cooperation. In The Penguin and the Leviathan, 7
Benkler tracks the broad expansion of cooperative systems while making
a case for the reduced impact of pure self-interest—and the rise of more
cooperative alternatives. He points to the “disruptions wrought by the
internet” that are “accelerating the rate of globalization and scientific
growth, all of which are forcing an increased number of businesses to
examine how they can emphasize learning and innovation rather than
mere efficiency.” Benkler makes the case for balancing social and selfish
incentives. He notes how organizations are seeing the best talent drawn
to work that is either inherently rewarding or widely associated in the
society with respect and value. And, he concludes, “As our world continues
to flatten and the boundaries of communication continue to
disappear, more and more companies are adopting . . . collaborative
strategies. . . . In a global economy, you never know who, somewhere
in the world, will be willing and able to help you or who will come up
with a new and better way to do what you are doing. . . . The most
successful know that innovation happens everywhere. Not just in
executive boardrooms, or R&D labs, but everywhere.”
One of the first to explore the shifting balances between transaction
costs and resource allocation was Henry Chesbrough. In his
book Open Innovation, 8 he proposes that there are a much greater
number of smart, creative, and innovative people and ideas outside an
organization than within it. Chesbrough says that innovative solutions
to challenges exist somewhere in the world and an organization’s
“innovative” process is no longer problem solving but “solution finding.”
Thus, the innovative process needs to focus on the methods
needed to do the outreach to talent and then manage the process. He
indicates that bringing resources together to collectively work on
challenges creates a much broader network to address problems. To be
successful, the innovative process needs to focus on ways to motivate
and manage this truly diverse and often global resource.
Organizations such as Goldcorp and LEGO—along with many
others that we will discuss in this book—have been exploring how to

FIRST, SOME CONTEXT 7
leverage external talent to address all kinds of creative and innovative
challenges: from new product design to making sense of massive
data sets, from architectural challenges to reframing social issues. As
the projects above highlight, companies adopt crowdstorming for
varying reasons. These organizations are finding new ways to live
with Joy’s Law, that most of the best people work for somebody else.
But this no longer needs to mean that you cannot work with them in
new ways.
In The Power of the Pull, 9 John Hagel III and John Sealy Brown
lay the groundwork for organizations to access external talent by
pointing out what is happening in today’s business environment.
Organizations that were used to planning their operations with
long-term horizons and focusing on operational efficiency must now
respond rapidly to a business environment characterized by fluidity.
They must become learning organizations and figure out how to
achieve extreme performance by learning to scale their organization’s
talent base quickly. Hagel and Brown state that the twentyfirst-century
organization will still use tools within the firm but will
need to access a much broader ecosystem. Their takeaway: learning
and innovation will come from collaboration with talent outside the
organization.
Leading business consulting organizations like McKinsey are
helping clients evaluate when and how to use collaborative planning
to set strategic direction for their companies. In a 2012 McKinsey
Quarterly article entitled “The Social Side of Strategy,” 10 Anna Gast
and Michael Zanini argue that, while it’s certainly not a replacement
for the strategic planning edifice, engaging larger groups in strategy
discussions is valuable for generating ideas, prioritizing them, and
challenging operational plans. McKinsey continues to explain that
this represents a shift in how an organization should think about its
leadership roles and structure: the “C” suite moves from their traditional
roles of all-knowing decision makers to “‘social architects’
who spend a lot of time thinking about how to create the processes
and incentives that unearth the best thinking and unleash the full
potential of all who work at a company.”

8 CROWDSTORM
Finally, in business academic circles, reviews like the MIT Sloan
Management Review have been providing research and analysis for years
on how to engage in what they call collective intelligence. In a seminal
article from 2010 entitled “The Collective Intelligence Genome,” 11 a
team led by Thomas Malone starts with the premise that collective
intelligence has already proved that it works. It suggests that there are
four building blocks, or genes—what is being done, who is doing it,
why are they doing it, and how it is being done—that help organizations
create their own systems for setting up and managing open
innovation projects effectively.
WORKING WITH CROWDS
Crowdsourcing is the term most often used to describe how organizations
work with large groups to achieve any number of ends. When Jeff Howe
first presented examples of the concept in his 2006 Wired article, 12
he covered a broad range of activities. Tasks differed by the level of
expertise required, as well as by the amount of time required to participate.
Figure 1.1 offers a perspective of what is being sought from crowds.
Jeff Howe’s original examples were mainly focused on labor. This
was an extension of an older concept of outsourcing. But rather than have
one organization outsource from another, organizations can work
directly with the crowds—as Shirky observed, people are organizing (and
being organized) without organizations. Now crowdsourcing has taken
on a much bigger definition, covering much more than labor resources.
Assets: When we use Skype, we effectively borrow bandwidth and
computing resources from our peers. It is invisible to us. In
What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, 13
Botsman and Rogers highlight a range of more explicit resource
sharing arrangements. Car2Go or ZipCar enables sharing of cars
and ride sharing services like Zimride or Lyft fall into this category.
Another example is Airbnb, which provides an alternative
to hotels—only the rooms are made available by individuals.
Capital: One of the first very large-scale examples of soliciting
funds from the crowd (that was not a tax system) came in 2008
during the presidential election in the United States, when

9
traditionally enabled
via relationships with firms
employees
partner firms (suppliers, distributors)
professional service firms
broadcast media
in person social + professional networks
expert reviews + recommendations
data samples
research firms
purpose built data collection
financial institutions
loans or equity via financial institutions
donations via high net worth individuals
credit via credit card companies
individual ownership
finance asset via financial institution
lease via rental or leasing firm
labor
communication
data
capital
assets
Figure 1.1 The Ways Crowds Deliver Value
$€¥
crowd-enabled
via relationships with people
“cocreation, microtasks, open innovation”
freelance and micro-work marketplaces
expert communities
customer communities
“social media”
content distributed via social networks
peer reviews + recommendations
“big data”
continuous data collection
data as a by-product
“crowdfunding”
micro loans or equity via large crowds
micro donations via large crowds
pre-purchase via prospective customers
“collaborative consumption”
asset sharing
peer-to-peer lending

10 CROWDSTORM
then-candidate Barack Obama made use of a whole array of
crowd funding sources. This approach tends to focus on different
models for sourcing and allocating capital, usually in
return for products, services, or equity. Examples of this
approach include IndieGoGo, Kickstarter, and LendingClub.
Networks: A good deal of social media is concerned with how
organizations can get people to influence their social networks,
very often via content that is likely to be shared for a
variety of reasons, including humor or utility. Having the
crowd distribute content in this way is not just cheaper than
paying for distribution (often called paid media), but it often
has the benefit of being more believable because it comes via
people we know.
Data: As we have shifted more of our business and social
interaction online, we are creating “Big Data”—that is, massive
amounts of data that organizations are trying to understand
to use for many purposes. For example, the data is
used to determine what ads we see online and what we might
prefer to purchase or rent. The data can be used to monitor
our driving, qualify us for better insurance, or compute traffic
flow and propose better routing. The main challenge is
understanding all of this data. Of course you can connect with
a crowd to help with this now. Kaggle will let you connect
with data scientists who are expert in the processes of teasing
insights and models from these large data sets.
Each of these are fascinating, fast-moving shifts in how we (and
our organizations) access resources. But our primary concern is the
Labor category. Within this category are a number of models for
connecting organizations and crowds. There are labor marketplaces
(e.g. oDesk, Task Rabbit, eLance, Workmarket, Mechanical Turk) to
connect organizations with independent professionals in areas ranging
from administrative tasks to software testing, from graphic design
to assembling Ikea furniture. These are classic jobs made more
accessible because of lower transaction costs, which is what Coase was
concerned with. Then there are microtasks—small pieces of work that

FIRST, SOME CONTEXT 11
may not require domain expertise, but require human judgment—like
determining whether content is pornographic or what words appear in
an image. Neither of these models is our main concern, though.
We are interested in a particular type of work—the generation and
evaluation of ideas. In the cases we will explore, ideas take many forms—
from short text descriptions like the ones you might find in a suggestion
box, to complex prototypes (from prediction algorithms to robot cars).
Ideas can be business plans or proposals for new business strategies.
They can be beautifully rendered homes barely distinguishable from real
photos or flowcharts illustrating how a proposed software application
might work. And, just as important, we are interested in the reactions to
these ideas. We want to understand the conversations that are inspired
by the ideas that can help to improve and evaluate the ideas. In the end,
all the ideas require some level of investment, and we want to know
which ideas we should expend time and effort to develop.
STARBUCKS BETACUP CHALLENGE—NEW SOURCES
OF SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION
When Starbucks decided to sponsor the complex problem of reducing
waste generated by coffee cups in 2010, it was already well on its way to
finding solutions to the problem. 14 But they recognized that they could
use additional help. Director of Environmental Impact Jim Hanna put it
this way: “Given the complexity of the disposable cup waste issue, we
need a broad range of stakeholders to become involved in finding
solutions. In addition to working with local municipal governments,
materials suppliers, and cup manufacturers to improve recycling infrastructures,
we believe in harnessing the creativity of environmentally
conscious individuals to identify new alternatives.” To do this, Starbucks
sponsored an outside group of partners who had initiated the Betacup
Project to address the global problem of disposable cups.
While Starbucks sponsored the contest initiative, the Betacup
team managed the challenge. It was led by Toby Daniels, social
crowdsourcing agency Mutopo, and run as an online contest on jovoto,
a platform designed to cultivate creators and innovators to work

12 CROWDSTORM
together collaboratively on challenges and which had its own creative
community. Notably, Starbucks, along with the Betacup team, reached
out to include additional partners including Core77, Denuo, Good
Day Monsters, Instructables, and Threadless—all of whom brought
their own community of professional designers, design students, and
enthusiasts, as well as media outreach and ongoing exposure for the
contest.
The contest provided a brief that outlined the problem, as well as
a cash incentive of $20,000 for the winners, which would be divided
among those whom the creative community—as well as an expert
panel—judged to have the best solution. The challenge was open to all
and encouraged public discussion and feedback that allowed for
ongoing refinement and updates on submissions. Evaluation and
curatorial input by the creative community encouraged networking and
teaming. The low barrier of entry—along with the collaborationenabling
infrastructure—allowed the Betacup organizers to tap into a
new audience of creators: a community that not only provided new
ideas, but could also validate ideas that were submitted, as well as
validating Starbucks’ three-pronged approach to addressing the paper
cup waste issue.
We can measure the results of the Betacup challenge in two ways that
shed light on important aspects of crowdstorming. First, Starbucks
received a lot of good ideas. The Betacup contest ran for two
months, received 430 idea submissions, and 1,500 idea revisions from all
over the world. The contest logged over 5,000 comments and 13,000
ratings. The winning idea was not even a product. It was a low-tech
solution called the Karma Cup whoseeleganceisinitssimplicity.Every
Starbucks store captures reusable cup usage and posts it on a chalkboard;
when the tenth beverage is sold to a person using a reusable cup, that
beverage is free. The solution resulted not only in a cool new initiative, but
in a behavioral change among customers as well. It was designed to change
the global conversation that had begun the platform into a local conversation
in each Starbucks and bring customer awareness to the local level,
stimulating conversation as customers discussed reusable cup activity in
their local store. The idea was eventually prototyped and in-store trials
showed that it worked as proposed—it was possible to inspire more reuse.

The second element of the project’s success was that, by working
with partners, Starbucks expanded outreach beyond its own fan base.
This opened up the possibility of generating ideas from around the
world and dramatically increased awareness of the problem—and in so
doing cast Starbucks as an environmentally conscious company. The
creative collaboration contest not only produced a huge number of
innovative ideas for Starbucks and provided it with insight about its
product strategy, it raised awareness of an important issue that Starbucks
was addressing and thus earned Starbucks valuable media.
TRIPLE EIGHT HELMET DESIGN—BENEFITS FOR
SMALLER FIRMS, TOO
FIRST, SOME CONTEXT 13
We have talked about large organizations using external talent to tackle
creative challenges. But crowdstorming is not only for large companies.
Imagine you are standing on a street corner in LA, San Francisco,
São Paulo, or Cape Town waiting for the light to change. A skateboarder
rolls by on a long board and you are instantly taken by the
design on his helmet: an image of a robot clutching a balloon as it floats
over the city. While the helmet’s unique design may not be an unusual
sight on city streets these days, the story behind the helmet artwork is
the result of a creative collaboration challenge run by the helmet maker
Triple Eight.
Triple Eight is a small, privately held company that has been
making professional and amateur protective gear for a wide variety of
action sports since 1995—from skateboarding and bicycle riding to
snowboarding and skiing. Throughout its history, Triple Eight has
worked closely both with its customers and with athletes in designing
its products. As Triple Eight president Bobby Oppenheim says,
“Community has always been a key ingredient in Triple Eight’s success.
We’re inspired by the industry we work in; in the action sports
community, competitors use collaboration to continually improve and
develop new ideas. This spirit is pervasive at Triple Eight: We work
with our team, distributors, and customers throughout our product
development process.” 15

14 CROWDSTORM
In 2010, what was unique for Triple Eight was handing over the
artwork design for its Brainsaver skate helmet to creative talent with
which it had no relationship. When Bobby first discussed the project he
asked: “Why would I work with people I don’t know?” It’s an understandable
reaction and we expect some of you might be contemplating
the same question. But the answer makes a compelling case for the
power of crowdstorming—bringing together a diverse, unknown
community of design talent to join Triple Eight’s known skateboard
community resulted in the delivery of unexpected, creative ideas vetted
by the combined community.
The first step in the process was inviting creative design communities
as well as skaters. Triple Eight’s goal was to look to a variety
of different groups to gather feedback about the designs—to explore
the art of the possible. In a coordinated effort, Triple Eight, Mutopo,
and jovoto spread the news of the contest to different parts of the
skateboarding community and to existing design communities (such as
jovoto itself, which consisted of over 15,000 product and package
designers, branding professionals, and graphic artists). Secondly, Triple
Eight decided on a revenue-sharing compensation option to
motivate participation. For work such as this, designers are typically
compensated by the hour or perhaps by the project. Triple Eight was
running this particular challenge as a contest, and was asking people to
propose designs in return for the possibility of winning a prize and
receiving a contract. The contract then would be tied to a shared risk/
reward structure—in this case, sales numbers.
Finally, Triple Eight elected to run the challenge in an open
contest format. Submitted ideas would be publicly available; open to
comments and evaluation. Like Starbucks, the approach was designed
to get a lot of great ideas and also to enable Triple Eight to gather
insights from comments, understand the community’s choice by
tracking voting, and encourage a broader conversation with its
customers.
The results were impressive: 170 submissions, over 900 comments,
and 3,300 ratings. The top three submissions selected by the community
were then presented to 20 members of Triple Eight’s professionalteam
as well as retail partners and Balloon Robot design was selected.

OUTCOMES BEYOND IDEAS
Starbucks, LEGO, Goldcorp, and Triple Eight were working on
diverse issues—but they all had one thing in common: all tapped into
abundant talent outside their organizations to help them achieve the
desired outcomes to their challenges.
Despite the similarities of their processes, the desired outcomes
and measures of success varied for each of these challenges. While
the focus of crowdstorming is generation and evaluation of ideas, the
process can generate other valuable by-products too. Most notably,
the discovery of the people behind the ideas or the feedback about the
ideas, can be as valuable as the resulting ideas. And the conversations
resulting from the process can have important communication value in
an increasingly social business landscape. Table 1.1 outlines the range
of outcomes.
Table 1.1 Five Crowdstorming Outcomes
Outcomes Descriptions
Getting Ideas Obtaining a large number of ideas beyond the scope
of what is possible with internal team or
traditional partners.
Evaluating Ideas Efficiently receiving feedback and interpretations
from a wide range of stakeholders to determine
where to make future investments.
Finding Talent Through the proposals, identifying new individuals,
teams, and organizations to work with.
Causing Conversation Generating content and often provocative ideas that
in turn lead to conversations and media coverage.
Transforming
Relationships
FIRST, SOME CONTEXT 15
Enabling stakeholders to participate in generating
and selecting ideas can positively change the
relationship between the organization and
stakeholders.

16 CROWDSTORM
We have focused so far on organizations working to improve
existing products and services. But our last example shows how an
organization uses a crowdstorm process to identify new partners and
investment opportunities, finding not just new ideas, but also the teams
capable of making the ideas real.
GE ECOMAGINATION CHALLENGE—A NEW PATH TO
CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT
In 2010, corporate giant General Electric launched a $200 million global
challenge called “The Ecomagination Challenge: Power the Grid.” 16
GE’s starting point: “Since good ideas can come from almost anywhere,
GE has opened its digital doors to inventors all around the world.”
In 2005, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt launched Ecomagination to
develop new power grid technologies—a market that the company
estimated could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming
years. GE committed to investing $10 billion in Ecomagination between
2010 and 2015, but realized that it would have to look beyond the
corporation’s four walls for ideas—and determine how to collaborate
with small companies to accelerate innovation and production in order
to meet its ambitious goals. It made three important decisions: to
partner with venture capital firms Emerald Technology Ventures,
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Rockport Capital; to commit
(along with its partners) $200 million to entrepreneurs to develop new
ideas and bring them to market, in addition to offering $100,000 in prize
money to the top winners; and to choose a technology partner,
Brightideas, to run an open contest on its platform. GE coordinated
outreach and media support with its partners and ran a 10-week challenge
that generated over 3,800 ideas, 80,000 comments, and 120,000
votes. The community voted for its winners and the ideas were routed to
subject matter experts at both GE and the venture capital firms for
evaluation and further development. The evaluation committee considered
ideas for the following: (1) an equity investment by GE or
others; (2) a cooperative agreement to develop a product or technology;
and (3) a review of the product or service for possible qualification to be
a part of the GE Ecomagination program.

The results of this open crowdstorming project were again
impressive: GE partners committed over $134 million for cleantech
startups that showed promise. A company press release called the
Ecomagination Challenge an “efficient magnet, attracting so many
good ideas that GE has been able to enter into commercial partnerships
with 22 startups representing a broad spectrum of technologies,
including wireless power transmission, thermoelectric materials that
transform heat into electricity, grid-scale energy storage, self-tinting
energy saving windows, software energy management systems and
much more. . . . GE has even acquired one company. . . . As an
innovative approach to finding and funding the next generation of
energy technology, GE’s Ecomagination Challenge has been an outstanding
success.”
In a further show of commitment to the practice of open innovation,
GE has since expanded its efforts using external talent. In
September 2011, GE created the healthymagination challenge to identify
and accelerate ideas to advance breast cancer early detection and
diagnosis in order to help save lives affected by breast cancer.
THE BUSINESS MODEL IMPACT
FIRST, SOME CONTEXT 17
Crowdstorming has the potential to help transform businesses. Each
example provided had different outcomes and the impact on their
business has been different. To help us see how organizations have
used crowdstorming (and to get you thinking about how you might), it
is useful to see how they have considered using it in the context of their
business models. To help with this, we can use the Business Model
Canvas from Alex Osterwalder’s book Business Model Generation, 17
shown in Figure 1.2.
What tools such as the “Canvas” help us do is to see how organizations
have used crowdstorming to improve their business.
As we work through the stories we have covered so far, we can see
the different ways the crowdstorm process has impacted each organization.
For Goldcorp, their Key Resources were simply not able to
determine where they might find gold. When they engaged an outside
crowd, they transformed their Value Proposition—they were able to

18
Key Partners Key Activities Value Propositions Customer Relationships Customer Segments
+ GE identified new
potential partners and
investment opportunities
+ Triple Eight found new
disign partners
+ Goldcorp was able to greatly
augment its ability to identify
the best locations for gold
Key Resources Channels
+ LEGO found new key
resources to support new
product development
Cost Structure Revenue Streams
+ GE, LEGO, Starbucks Betacup, and Triple Eight found efficient ways
to earn media and generate awareness for their brands and offerings.
+ Starbucks Betacup found
solutions that asked
customers to play a role in
reduce paper cup waste.
+ GE, LEGO, Starbucks
Betacup, and Triple Eight
benefitted from increased
awareness by crowdstorming
in public.
+ LEGO was able to identify
ideas to serve new
customers segments (like
adult fans of LEGO or
Minecraft fans).
+ Goldcorp, GE, Triple Eight, and LEGO all found new revenue
streams
Figure 1.2 The Business Model Canvas—Showing How Crowdstorming Impacts Business Models for GE,
LEGO, Goldcorp, Triple Eight, and Starbucks
Source: Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers
(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010).

FIRST, SOME CONTEXT 19
more efficiently locate gold. Understanding where to expend effort to
look for gold is at the heart of their business, and this is where
crowdstorming helped. For LEGO, they did not lack innovation, but
they lacked the ability to understand where they might invest. Like
Goldcorp, they did not know where to focus and their crowd helped
them ignore the less promising new products and focus on areas they
knew LEGO customers would love. In the process, they also transformed
their Customer Relationships, bringing them closer and giving
them a stake in shaping the products they love.
For Starbucks, the impact is less clear. The crowd did not save the
business, and it is not clear how the crowdstorming will impact how
they deliver value. However, in the short term, the discussion around
the ideas had a positive impact on communication about the company.
It impacted their communication “Channels,” generating awareness of
Starbucks’ commitment and efforts to operate a more sustainable
business. Finally, for GE Ecomagination, the crowdstorm process
provided access to new Partners, which in turn offered GE a new Value
Proposition and Channels.
As exciting as these stories are, they are just the start. These
organizations are tapping into crowdstorm processes selectively, as a
complement to existing business processes. But what happens when we
create organizations that place crowdstorm processes at the core of
their business model? We’re going to introduce you to a few organizations
that are doing just that—like Giffgaff, Quirky, LocalMotors,
and Threadlesss. The oldest is just over a decade, while the youngest
have been around for only a few years. And yet they reveal what might
be possible when we engineer organizations around outside talent, to
take advantage of the massively reduced transaction costs that defined
the shape of organizations created before the Internet.
We’re excited about the potential. But we are even more excited
that we are starting to understand how you can make crowdstorming
work. We know from experience that when you have the capacity to
transform organizations at this scale, you are going to meet resistance.
You will encounter resistance simply because of the scale of the proposed
changes. And you will encounter resistance because of the risks
associated with change. For all the insights we will share, we know that

20 CROWDSTORM
few of the success stories could have happened without substantial
support from the most senior people in the organization—and the
combined efforts across multiple groups within each organization from
IT and legal to marketing and R&D.
To address this issue head on, the next chapter lays out a
framework for thinking through ways to balance the business benefit of
using crowdstorming while assessing and managing the risks related to
intellectual property, confidentiality, and the brand.

Contents
Acknowledgments xi
You Choose the Path to Follow xiii
Preface xv
Short On Time, But
Still Crave Amazing Things? 1
Why a Guidebook? 4
Introduction: My Journey
So Far 8
Chapter 1 How to Be a Passion Hit 32
Chapter 2 Trust Your Gut 36
vii

viii CONTENTS
Chapter 3 Take Stock 39
Chapter 4 Knowing When to Move On 41
Chapter 5 The Power of Writing
It Down 44
Chapter 6 The Three-Word Exercise 48
Chapter 7 The Magic of Turkey Pot Pie 57
Chapter 8 Don’t Let the Seagulls Get
You Down 61
Chapter 9 Simplify, Focus, and Attack 65
Chapter 10 Everyone Has Excuses 70
Chapter 11 No More Saying, “I Can’t” 72
Chapter 12 Stop Talking; Start Doing 77
Chapter 13 Risk Can Be Scary; Embrace
It and Move Forward 82
Chapter 14 Quitting Is Always an Option 85
Chapter 15 Know What You Hate and
Then Don’t DoIt 88

Contents ix
Chapter 16 With a Little Help from
Our Friends 91
Chapter 17 Life Is Too Short for
Bad Wine 95
Chapter 18 Be a Duck 99
Chapter 19 To Each Their Own . . . 105
Chapter 20 Forget Skipping Pebbles;
Throw a Boulder! 108
Chapter 21 Living the Road Less
Traveled 112
Chapter 22 Focus on the Flame 115
Chapter 23 Learning to Say No 118
Chapter 24 Have a Small-Town Mentality 124
Chapter 25 Workshifting 134
Chapter 26 Rules Are Like Rubber Bands 140
Chapter 27 Beer and Coffee 144
Chapter 28 Hallway Magic 148

x CONTENTS
Chapter 29 Celebrate Success of All Sizes 151
Chapter 30 Learn from Failure, But
Don’t Seek It Out 155
Chapter 31 Don’t Let the Asshats and
Ankle Biters Get You Down 158
Chapter 32 Can You Idle Well? 163
Chapter 33 Giving Back and Gratitude 167
Chapter 34 Play in the Rain 171
Chapter 35 The End and the Beginning 173
Appendix Dangerous Books 177

You Choose the Path
to Follow
Welcome to Amazing Things Will Happen.
The following pages are filled with advice,
thoughts, and experiences that you need to take to
heart if you want to live a happier and more fulfilling
life. They are a collection of lessons I’ve
learned from my experiences and that have been
given to me from a variety of people I’ve met
throughout my life. They’ve served me well and
will assist you to move forward in your life.
The smartest people are lifelong students—
always learning from those around them and never
believing that they know enough. Although our
education system may believe that we can learn
xiii

xiv YOU CHOOSE THE PATH TO FOLLOW
only from books and in classrooms, the truth is
that everything around us is a classroom. To be a
better person, you should never stop experiencing
and learning new things.
How you get from where you are now to
where the amazing things begin to happen is up
to you. This is a guide to get you jump-started,
push you forward, and motivate you to find your
own path.

Preface
You need to know up front what this book is and,
more important, what it is not.
People say that the way I live my life inspires
them. I had always just sort of shrugged this off
with a giggle or a gracious nod and moved on
to other things. But as more people told me this,
I became inspired to share my approach with the
world in the hopes that it helps change others’
lives as well.
For years, my podcast Managing the Gray has
been an outlet to share my diverse knowledge about
everything from online marketing to advice on how
to have a more successful career. The more listeners
commented and reacted to what was said, the clearer
xv

xvi PREFACE
it became that focusing on self-improvement,
achieving your goals, and living a happier life was
what they were most interested in. This book grew
out of that show.
This book takes the knowledge I’ve accumulated
over the years and shares it with you. It
isn’t a life guide, a coaching playbook, or a behappy-quick
manual. It is my personal approach
and thoughts on life straight from the heart.
Although many people get lucky, most people
who have found a successful balance of life and
work have done so through lots of hard work. Life
rarely will hand you something without requiring
you to put in the time to earn it. You have to do
the work!
The words of encouragement and inspirations
shared are meant to push you in the direction
of which you’ve always dreamed. Perhaps you
will decide to pursue your dreams, change career,
make a difference in the world, or follow your
passions wherever they lead. A large part of success
also calls for taking risks that don’t always pay

Preface xvii
off. You don’t get to walk on the path of amazing
if you are too scared to risk a bit.
I don’t promise the world, but I do promise
that if you work hard, stay true to yourself, be a
good person, help others, and listen to those
around you, amazing things will happen.

Short On Time, But
Still Crave Amazing
Things?
The reality of reading is that most don’t make
enough time for it.
For those of you who are short on time but
still want to learn from this book, I’ve made it easy
for you. Sure, it is cheating a bit, but I’d rather you
think of this condensed overview as a little lifehack
instead. Hopefully when you have time, you’ll
come back and read the full thing.
The ideas for this book began forming as
my children grew older and began asking lots of
questions about their future. Combine that with
1

2 SHORT ON TIME
the constant stream of questions from others
asking how to live a happy and fulfilling life and
I knew I had to get this book out into the world.
Many people want more money, a new job, or
a happier relationship, but they are not willing to
put in the time and work to make any of it happen.
Those people drive me nuts. There are so many
get-rich-quick schemes out there that I wanted to
create a road map that people could actually use
to achieve their dreams successfully.
Amazing things happen only if you work
hard—really hard. And they happen only if you
are good to others. No one can do it alone, and it
is the people around you who are going to help
make your success happen. When you are kind
toward others, they will return the kindness to
you. Listening and kindness are two skills that
don’t get taught in school, yet they are crucial for
you to succeed in any capacity.
Life is short. You never know if you’ll be given
tomorrow, so get out there and make the most
of it. At its heart, that is what this book is about.

Short On Time 3
If all these pages were summed up into a
single paragraph, they would say:
Amazing Things Will Happen makes it clear
that once you figure out what you want out
of life, if you work very hard, day in and day
out, you can make it happen. But you have
to be a good human in addition to doing the
work. As you achieve success, never forget to
be kind to others. Help those who need it
and share everything you’ve learned with all
who ask. Follow these principles in your life,
and amazing things will happen.
Still not condensed or short enough for your
busy life? I can condense it even further:
Amazing Things Will Happen is a guide to
living a good life.

Why a Guide?
Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual.
Humans are too much of a mixed bag for it to be
that easy.
Each of us must find the stories, books, inspirations,
and people who inspire us. Those who give
you a kick in the right direction or guidance on big
decisions.
As such, I’m sharing the words of wisdom
that have been shared with me over the years
from various intelligent individuals, as well as
some words of wisdom I’ve discovered on my own.
Hopefully, these words will speak to you and in
turn inspire you as they have me.
4

Why a Guide? 5
If it were as simple as X þ Y ¼ A Happy
Life, then the world would be a much happier
place. And although these words are meant to help
each of you, this book can only guide you forward;
it cannot give you specific directions.
The path for each of us is unique, and it’s up
to you to find the way.
How you use this book is up to you.
I’ve divided the book into rough sections,
with the hopes that you can pick and choose
what is most impactful to you. The sections are as
follows:
1. Telling the Tale
This is where we are right now. Every
house needs to be built upon a solid foundation.
Once we’ve established a few essential things,
the real fun begins and we can take steps toward
making your life more enjoyable.
2. Taking Stock
If you are going to make changes, you
first need to identify where you are now and
where you want to be. Many people are able

6 WHY A GUIDE?
to recognize that they must make changes, but
they are not sure what to do next. Looking
over the edge of a cliff into the unknown
below never comes without fear. Some choose
to enjoy the view and never take the plunge.
But the wise will minimize any dangers they
might encounter before jumping in with
anticipation.
Taking risks can be immensely rewarding,
as long as you are informed of and prepared
for the outcomes. And this section is
going to ensure that you are.
3. Time for Change
Once you’ve prepared for the big change,
it is time to do it. Often, this is when the most
obstacles and challenges will arise. It is easy to
question if you’ve made the right decision, but
the tips in this section will give you plenty to
think about to keep pushing forward.
No one enjoys change, but it is a crucial
part of finding and doing what you love in
life, so it’s important to face it and push
through your fears.

Why a Guide? 7
4. Taking the Road Less Traveled
There isn’t a single path that everyone
can use to reach the goals they seek. We each
make our own success, and that can come
only after a lot of trial and error. But the
sooner you realize that the journey is part of
the enjoyment, the more fun your adventure
will be.
There have been plenty of books written
about making the decision to do what you
love, but not enough has been written about
fully enjoying the time once you get there. Be
sure to come back to this section for inspiration
if you get stuck along the way.
Are you ready? Let’s go!

CHAPTER
1
How to Be a
Passion Hit
Passion Hits are people who are able to make a
living doing what they love.
You want to do what you love, or you
wouldn’t be reading this book. You want to find a
way to spend every day working on that single
thing that fills you with glee thinking about it.
32

How to Be a Passion Hit 33
Those who decide to make their passion their
work and keep pushing forward no matter what
are Passion Hits, a play on the word passionate.
My official definition for my made-up word:
Passion Hit—(noun) A person who has discovered
his or her true passion in life and found
a way to make it his or her livelihood.
Most entrepreneurs are also Passion Hits.
If you dedicate that many hours of a day to your
business, you’ve got to be at least a little bit passionate
about it. Sure, some do it only for the
money or to solve a problem, but the successful
ones are also the passionate ones.
They include people such as Jason McCarthy,
who after bravely serving our country as a Green
Beret wanted to start an American manufacturing
company that could live up to military standards as
well as the everyday traveler. He focused his
energy on starting the GORUCK brand.
Ellen McGirt always had a love for finding,
capturing, and sharing the stories of others. She

34 AMAZING THINGS WILL HAPPEN
has interviewed chief executive officers, U.S. presidents,
celebrities, and regular people across the
country. She is currently a senior writer for Fast
Company magazine.
AJ and Melissa Leon wanted to work and
travel together. They formed Misfit Inc. to make
both a reality. They now live on the road and help
make the world a better place with each new
project their team takes on.
Zack Arias is a poster child for the fact that
hard, constant work can make dreams come true.
He is now one of the best professional photographers
in Atlanta and beyond. His style of using
only one light when shooting has grown into a
series of courses that he sells himself and teaches
around the world.
Chris Penn and Chris Brogan were not finding
the level of interaction and teaching that they had
hoped for at other conferences so they began Pod-
Camp to create a forum for the interaction they
wanted. Since that first event in Boston, people have
hosted PodCamps around the globe that have educated
and networked tens of thousands of people.

How to Be a Passion Hit 35
Each of these people has a unique story to
tell, but every one of them exemplifies the values
that a Passion Hit believes in.
I wanted as many people as possible to be
inspired by these stories, so I started my Web
series Passion Hit TV (http://www.passionhit.tv).
I’ll be adding new stories there all the time, so be
sure to subscribe, and if you have ideas of new
Passion Hits that I should interview, you can
e-mail me.
The hope and goal is that by the time you
finish reading these pages, you’ll be inspired
enough to set off on your own journey to be a
Passion Hit doing what you love. Be sure to let me
know how it goes!

CONTENTS
Preface xi
Author Note xv
Introduction xvii
PART 1 Plan 1
Chapter 1 Learning to Run 3
Chapter 2 What Is an Explanation? 7
What Is Not An Explanation 8
Defining Explanation 9
Explanations Require Empathy 10
Act and Art 11
Look at Your Fish 12
Explanation Lowers the Cost of Understanding 13
An Explanation Is a Way to Package Ideas 14
Explanations Answer the Question ‘‘Why?’’ 16
Explanations Make People Care 16
Chapter 3 Why Explanations Fail 23
All About Confidence 24
Assumptions Cause Failure 24
Words Can Hurt 26
We Lack Understanding 27
We Want to Appear Smart 28
vii

viii Contents
The Direct Approach—No Context 30
Summary 32
Chapter 4 Planning Your Explanations 33
Identifying Explanation Problems 34
PART 2 Package 43
Chapter 5 Packaging Ideas 45
Stepping Outside the Bubble 46
What Goes into the Packaging? 48
Chapter 6 Context 51
Forest then Trees 53
Solving the Context Problem 56
Context in Explanation—We Can All Agree 61
Context and Pain 63
Example: Google Docs 63
On the Explanation Scale 65
Summary 66
Chapter 7 Story 67
Stories Versus Facts 68
But I’m Not a Storyteller 69
Common Craft and Stories 71
The Simple Ingredient: People 73
Using Stories in Explanation 74
Basic Story Format 75
When Does Storytelling Not Work? 77
Personification and Story 79
On the Explanation Scale 81
Summary 81
Chapter 8 Connections 83
Connecting Your Long Lost Uncle—Old Versus New 84
Building-on Versus Establishing 87

Contents ix
Analogy 89
Common Craft Videos 90
On the Explanation Scale 92
Summary 92
Chapter 9 Description 93
Explaining Web Browsers 95
Explanation Is Not a Recipe 97
On The Explanation Scale 99
Summary 99
Chapter 10 Simplification 103
Chapter 11 Constraints 113
Common Craft and Constraints 115
Constraints and Your Explanations 117
Summary 119
Chapter 12 Preparing for and Writing an Explanation 121
The Common Craft Writing Process 122
Big Ideas 123
Research and Discovery 123
Script Writing 125
The Real Thing 128
Chapter 13 Bringing an Explanation Together 131
PART 3 Present 147
Chapter 14 Common Craft’s Lessons Learned 149
Common Craft Gets Started 149
Ten Lessons Learned from Common Craft Explanations 151
Chapter 15 Right Medium for the Message 157
A Transformation 158
Media Options 159
Presentation Modes 161

x Contents
Recording and Distribution Options 164
Constraints Come to the Rescue 165
Summary 171
Chapter 16 Visuals 173
You Can Use Visuals 178
Dan Roam’s 6 × 6 Rule 178
Common Craft Visual Metaphors 186
Noise and Simplicity in Visuals 188
Infographics 191
Creating Digital Visuals 193
Summary 193
Chapter 17 Emma and Carlos 195
Epilogue 202
Chapter 18 Explanation Culture and Your Life as an Explainer 203
Your Life as An Explainer 206
Acknowledgments 209
Links to Common Craft Videos 211
About the Author 215
Bibliography 217
Index 219

INTRODUCTION
For most of my life (especially in school), I struggled to grasp some of the subjects I
was supposed to be learning. Although I grasped subjects such as science and history
fairly easily, topics such as math and accounting consistently proved to be challenging.
In my mind, these subjects were made up of thousands of rules that I had to memorize
to solve the associated problems. The ideas seemed to float around in my head without
any foundation or place.
As so many students who struggle do, I felt inadequate at the time, as if my brain
was not wired for solving these problems. I became a person who said ‘‘I’m not good at
math’’ and avoided anything related to it. The notion of trying to memorize rule after
rule frustrated me, and I wondered how others did it with such apparent ease. Were
they simply more skilled at memorization? What was I missing?
At the same time, however, I knew I was a capable student. Along with science and
history, writing came easily to me. But as much as I wanted math and subjects like it to
work for me, it seemed like the light bulb never went on.
However, I learned to work with this apparent limitation throughout my years of
education. I eventually earned a graduate degree in health administration and moved to
Seattle, where I currently live. It was during this phase of my career that I identified
the underlying cause of my struggle with subjects like math and started to see how the
same problem affected others. When I looked back, it seemed like there were some
people in my classes who could look at a set of rules or details and naturally see the
big picture—in other words, the why. They seemed to be able to understand math and
accounting at a higher level, whereas students like me were getting so mired in trying
to memorize the how that the why faded into the background. We could still pass tests
xvii

xviii Introduction
and make good grades, but we did it by memorizing facts, not by developing a true
understanding of the material.
The more I thought about this, the clearer the solution became. My learning style
meant that I needed a way to approach new ideas in a unique way. I needed to see the
big picture first, the foundation of the details. Therefore, to understand accounting, I
needed to understand business basics first. To understand math, I needed to understand
the reasoning behind it first. I needed to see the forest before the trees.
Soon enough I realized what was missing: I needed better explanations. My learning
style demanded that I see the why before the how. This revelation became a part
of my communication style. I became a student of communication and watched my
friends and peers explain ideas. I began to recognize how people got confused or lost
confidence in their ability to understand something completely. This experience made
a deep impression on me.
But it was not until I got involved in the technology industry in 1998 that this
realization became a part of my work. I was hired as a data analyst at a healthcare
software company in Bellevue, Washington. Within two years I met my wife and
business partner, Sachi, and I developed a strong passion for the idea that customers
should be able to communicate and get support using message boards on the company
website. What is now known as social media was called online communities in 1999, and
I wanted to be the online community manager.
As you might imagine, this was not an easy sell inside the company. Most of
my colleagues had never considered the potential of an online community and were
naturally risk-averse. But I had a plan: I would explain my way into creating this
program. So I set up meetings with product managers and created materials that
supported my ideas. I educated my colleagues in the way I hadwantedtobeeducated
throughout my life.
I provided a foundation by building context and discussing big ideas—the forest.
I helped them feel confident that they fully understood what I wanted to do before
talking about any details—the trees. I planned my explanations and told stories that
highlighted how this online community had the potential to be a rich source of customer
information. It could even become an early warning system for product teams.
I asked them to imagine a world in which customers could solve each other’s
problems. I explained the idea to executives and connected it to the company’s

Introduction xix
strategy and goals. Slowly but surely, the stakeholders saw the potential, and most
became advocates.
Soon enough I was the online community manager—a job I held until 2003,
when I left to found Common Craft. I launched it as an online community consulting
company aimed at helping organizations understand and implement their own online
communities. My job as an explainer was just beginning.
My role as a consultant was to influence my clients and help them see and understand
new opportunities. I soon realized my clients were experiencing difficulties very similar
to those I experienced when attempting to understand certain subjects in school. Their
view of social media was like my view of accounting: they knew the words and had
memorized the features of various tools, but they had no foundation. They were stuck
with countless trees, but no forest, and like me, they could not fully apply what they
were learning.
This gave me an idea.
I decided to take subjects such as wikis and RSS feeds—topics that had proved
challenging for my clients to grasp—and write my own explanations using the tagline
‘‘in plain English.’’ The idea was to help solve a problem for my clients and to create
something interesting for the Common Craft blog. This was the first time I realized that
my unique perspective on explanation could be a useful business tool. I had developed
the ability to put myself in other people’s shoes and create media that helped them feel
confident. They loved reading the blog posts and I enjoyed writing them, but it would
be a few years before they would be called into action.
At around the same time, I put my explanation skills to the test. A few companies
sponsored what they called ‘‘The Perfect Corporate Weblog Pitch Contest.’’ The idea
was to explain the value of corporate weblogs in the time it takes to ride an elevator
(under 160 words). When I saw this contest, I thought to myself, ‘‘Man, I am all over
this!’’ It was true. My award-winning pitch read as follows:
First, think about the value of the Wall Street Journal to business leaders. The value
it provides is context—the Journal allows readers to see themselves in the context of the
financial world each day, which enables more informed decision making.
With this in mind, think about your company as a microcosm of the financial
world. Can your employees see themselves in the context of the whole company? Would

xx Introduction
more informed decisions be made if employees and leaders had access to internal news
sources? Weblogs serve this need. By making internal websites simple to update, weblogs
allow individuals and teams to maintain online journals that chronicle projects inside the
company. These professional journals make it easy to produce and access internal news,
providing context to the company—context that can profoundly affect decision making. In
this way, weblogs allow employees and leaders to make more informed decisions through
increasing their awareness of internal news and events.
My goal was to convey the value of weblogs in a way that would appeal to the
judges; however, I learned something else from this experience. For the first time, I felt
that explanation was not simply a tactic or way of approaching communication. It was
something that excited and motivated me. I specifically remember my heart beating
rapidly when I drafted the corporate weblog pitch. It made me feel like I had found
my calling, like I was born to make ideas easier for others to understand in the form of
explanations.
I came to realize over the next few years that the consulting clients with whom I
worked were not unique in their thoughts about technology. The general public also
struggled to see the value of these new online products and tools. Most people were
constantly caught up in the features and details. They wanted to stay ahead of the curve
but were cautious about wasting time on a product they did not fully understand.
The tragedy from my perspective was that the tools were often free, easy to use,
and could have a positive impact on people’s lives. However, people weren’t adopting
them because of how they were explained. The technologists were doing the explaining,
and doing it poorly.
We came to call this an explanation problem, which is when the biggest barrier to
adoption is not design, features, or benefits but communication. And the problem was
epidemic. Thousands of life changing tools and ideas were not being used because they
lacked clear explanations of their value.
When Sachi joined me at Common Craft in 2006, we set out to solve this problem.
It was the year YouTube went mainstream; suddenly, anyone could easily publish
videos to the Web. We started to experiment and looked for ways to make video part
of Common Craft. After feeling awkward trying to be the guy standing in front of a

Introduction xxi
whiteboard, Sachi had the idea to point a camera straight down onto a whiteboard and
use hands, markers, and paper cut-outs to tell a story.
Common Craft videos were born in 2007, and we created our first video based
on a blog post for my clients from years before, entitled ‘‘RSS in Plain English’’
(www.commoncraft.com/video/rss). We shot the video in our basement with no
expectations or video production skills, and it showed. We lit the whiteboard with the
strongest portable lights we had: bedroom lamps. And for the narration, I spoke directly
into the microphone on the camera. As it turned out, this three-minute video changed
our lives.
Sachi with our second generation studio setup, summer 2007.
We posted it on YouTube in April, and it became a viral hit. It was viewed tens
of thousands of times the first day and we received a torrent of e-mails, comments,
and blog posts about our work. People contacted us and encouraged us to make more
videos. It was one of the most exciting days of my life. Our explanation was a hit
because it solved the RSS explanation problem and invited people to use it by helping
them see it from a new, more understandable perspective.

xxii Introduction
The next question became: can we do it again? We published our second video
about a month later, which was also based on a previous blog post. This one was called
‘‘Wikis in Plain English’’ (www.commoncraft.com/video/wikis), and was received in
a similar way. People seemed to love our videos and want more.
By the end of the summer of 2007, we had published four more videos and
started making custom videos for products and services. In August of 2007, we decided
that Common Craft would become a video production company that specialized
in video explanations. We redesigned our website, and our tagline became ‘‘Our
Product Is Explanation.’’ One of our first custom videos, called ‘‘Google Docs in Plain
English,’’ hit the web that fall (www.commoncraft.com/google-docs-plain-english).
We were on our way.
Since that time, people around the world have come to know Common Craft for
our explanation skills. We have made more than 100 video explanations in the same
format as the first video on RSS—what is now known as Common Craft Style. Our
videos have been viewed more than 50 million times online and we have worked
with companies such as LEGO, Intel, Google, Dropbox, and Microsoft to explain their
products and services. Further, teachers and students are now creating their own video
explanations in classrooms and calling them ‘‘Common Craft Style Videos.’’ Perhaps no
company is better known for video explanations than Common Craft.
Now more than ever, I am a believer in the power of explanation, and not just for
product and service videos. I believe it is a skill that everyone can learn and improve
upon, and one that is needed to help people grasp ideas in a useful and productive
way. This book is designed to give everyone an opportunity to rethink how he or she
explains ideas, and learn to package them into explanations that work.

CHAPTER 1
Learning to Run
Trevor limped through the front door, sore again. These past
few months had been tough on his joints. Six months ago he
picked up running again after his doctor said he needed to get
more exercise. To help keep himself motivated, he set a goal of
completing a half-marathon within a year. But it didn’t seem like
this was going to happen—not the way things were looking now.
Trevor was beginning to realize that his body just couldn’t take a
beating these days, and he joked with friends that he felt like an
old man at 45.
It wasn’t always this way. Trevor had always been a runner in one way or another.
He played soccer in high school, and started to run as a way to stay in shape in college.
He took to it naturally. But as he moved onto a career, his time became limited and he
ran less and less frequently.
Trevor knew that something needed to change if he was going to complete the
half-marathon. He tried a variety of tactics—buying new running shoes, wearing knee
braces, and concentrating on stretching. However, nothing seemed to work, and the
date for the half-marathon was drawing closer.
3

4 The Art of Explanation
Trevor had recently been enjoying a drink with a friend and mentioned that he was
having a difficult time preparing for the race. After some probing, his friend asked a
simple question that he wasn’t sure how to answer: ‘‘Have you tried changing how you
run?’’ Perplexed, Trevor replied, ‘‘I’m not sure what you mean ... I run how I run.
It’s always been the same—one foot in front of the other!’’ After a chuckle, his friend
asked again ‘‘Seriously, have you ever thought about how you run—and what you could
do to run better?’’
The thought had never occurred to Trevor. He had always taken his running style
for granted. After all, it had usually come easily to him, and he achieved the results
he wanted. He assumed that his running style was as good as it ever could be, so he
responded ‘‘Nah, the way I run is fine. And anyway, aren’t we born with the ability
to run?’’
His friend replied, ‘‘Of course we can all run. But like anything, there is an art and
skill to running, and part of getting what you want out of it is knowing how to run
correctly.’’
Trevor had never considered that there might be a right or wrong way to run, and
questioned incredulously, ‘‘What could possibly make my running better?’’
His friend smiled and answered, ‘‘Look it up.’’ And that is just what he did.
Trevor’s perspective started to change within a few days. The more he researched,
the more he saw running as a skill that he could improve. He learned about proper
posture, stride, and how a foot strikes the surface, and discovered tactics that professional
runners use to stay healthy. For the first time, he could see that his joint problems were
likely due to how he was running. A feeling of relief came over him. Unlike his age, this
was something he could change!
As he trained for the race, he began paying attention to his form and movements.
Within a few weeks, his knee and back pain began to fade, and his endurance seemed
to jump, which gave him the energy to run longer than ever. The half-marathon now
seemed like a reality and it felt good.
If you ask Trevor about running today, he will tell you that his only regret is not
discovering how he could improve his running earlier. But now that he has this new
perspective, a full marathon doesn’t seem too far away.
Like Trevor and his running, we all take explanation for granted. Because it is
a natural part of how we communicate, the thought may never occur to us that

Learning to Run 5
explanation is a skill we can improve and put to work in achieving our goals. In this
way, running and explanation have much in common:
We have the ability to do it
We may do it so frequently that we never think about it
We think the way in which we do it is normal
We never consider that we could improve the way we do it, but,
Improvement is possible, and creates positive results
Because explanation is a skill that we can improve and apply to nearly every part of
our lives, let’s get started in doing so. In Chapter 2 we’ll define explanation and consider
the characteristics that make it useful and powerful.

BETH KANTER
KATIE DELAHAYE PAINE
FOREWORD BY LAURA ARRILLAGA-ANDREESSEN
MEASURING
THE
NETWORKED
NONPROFIT
USING DATA
TO CHANGE
THE WORLD
Edited by
WILLIAM T.
PAARLBERG

CONTENTS
Figures and Tables xi
Foreword by Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen xiii
Preface: Th e Queen of Nonprofi ts Meets the Goddess of Measurement xvii
Acknowledgments xxiii
Th e Authors xxvii
PART ONE: Introduction of Concepts 1
ONE The Secret Sauce for Nonprofi ts: Networked
Strategies + Measurement = Amazing Success 3
TWO The Rise of the Networked Nonprofi t: A New
Paradigm for Nonprofi t Success 13
PART TWO: Basic Measurement Principles, How-Tos,
and Best Practices 27
THREE Creating a Data-Informed Culture: How Your Organization
Can Embrace the Data and Use What It Can Teach You 29
FOUR Measurement Is Power: How to Take Control
of Your Programs and Progress with the Art and
Science of Measurement 41
FIVE Don’t Confuse Activity with Results: The Value of
Expressing Your Results in Terms of Organizational Goals 59
ix

x
SIX The Ladder of Engagement: How to Measure Engagement
and Use It to Improve Relationships with Your Stakeholders 77
SEVEN How to Turn Your Stakeholders into Fundraisers: Social
Fundraising and How Measurement Can Make It More Effective 99
EIGHT Measurement Tools: How to Choose and Use
the Right Tool for the Job 119
NINE Measurement and the Aha! Moment: Using Your
Data to Tell Stories, Make Decisions, and Change the World 151
PART THREE: Advanced Measurement Concepts
and Practices for Networked Nonprofi ts 171
TEN Measuring What Really Matters: The Importance
and Measurement of Relationships 173
ELEVEN Understanding, Visualizing, and Improving Networks 187
TWELVE Infl uence Measurement: How to Determine
Your Infl uence and That of Your Organization, Free Agents,
and Nonprofi t Champions 203
THIRTEEN How to Be Naked and Measure It:
Transparency Is a Networked Nonprofi t’s Best Friend 221
FOURTEEN Measuring the Impact of the Crowd 235
Epilogue: With Measurement and Learning, Networked
Nonprofi ts Can Change the World 245
Appendix A: Measuring Relationships and Relationship Research 247
Appendix B: Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly Assessment Tool for
Networked Nonprofi ts 251
Appendix C: Social Media Measurement Checklist 255
Appendix D: A Checklist for Monitoring Services 261
Notes 269
Glossary 281
Resources for Tools, Tutorials, and Assistance 287
Index 289
Contents

PART ONE Introduction of
Concepts

The Secret Sauce for
Nonprofi ts
Networked Strategies 1
Measurement 5 Amazing Success
chapter
ONE
3

4
C
arie Lewis positioned the party hat on her dog Bella ’s head,
leaned down from her desk, and said, “Say cheeseburger!”
Carie ’s boss snapped a photo with a mobile phone and shared it on
1
the nonprofi t organization ’s Facebook page (Figure 1.1 ).
You may be wondering why Carie ’s dog was in her offi ce wearing a party hat.
Perhaps you ’re even more curious as to why the photo was posted on Facebook.
Carie Lewis is the director of emerging media for Th e Humane Society of the
Measuring the Networked Nonprofi t
Figure 1.1
Carie Lewis and Bella Celebrate

United States (HSUS), the nation ’s largest animal protection organization, where
she has been responsible for social media for more than fi ve years. Th e HSUS
has a pet-friendly offi ce policy because its staff , like its constituents, are animal
lovers. Th e party hats? Th ey were celebrating because Th e HSUS Facebook page
had just broken the 1 million fan mark.
Says Lewis, “Although we prefer not to focus on numbers of fans as a measure
of ultimate success, 1 million fans is a huge landmark that we celebrated with
our online community of animal lovers.” According to a 2011 nonprofi t social
media benchmark study sponsored by Craig Newmark, animal charities are
among the most active on social networks, perhaps because people love photos
of cute animals. 2 But there was more to it than that.
Th e HSUS fans are more than just fans; they love to talk about how much
they love their pets and care for animals. Th ey share photos online, donate to
Th e HSUS (and tell their friends to do so), and take action on animal rights
issues when they receive a call to action. In answer to the question of how Th e
HSUS built a fan base on Facebook that is not only large but is always ready
get involved in supporting animals, Lewis responds, “We would not be successful
if we were not using measurement to track and learn and constantly
improve.” 3
Lewis is a curator of social media metrics. She and her colleagues in other
departments build their integrated advocacy or fundraising campaigns around
outcomes, key performance indicators, and associated metrics. “We look at three
things,” Lewis noted: “actions taken, donations made, and customer service
wins. Th at ’s also how our department has been able to obtain more resources to
handle the volume we have.” Th ey use measurable objectives for specifi c campaigns,
and Lewis tracks everything they do on social networks in order to
improve and get better results.
For its campaign to reach 1 million fans, depicted in the screen capture in
Figure 1.2 , Th e HSUS wanted to create a celebration so that fans could engage
and participate in the fun. Th ey wanted to create a personalized experience that
makes the fans feel that they are a part of something really great. Carie noted,
“Because we ’ve been using measurement to improve our social media use for
years, we know that we need to make these participatory campaigns as easy and
simple as possible for stakeholders.”
Lewis found that getting everyone in her organization on the same page
about evaluating results is crucial: “Before launching any campaign, I present
The Secret Sauce for Nonprofi ts 5

6
Figure 1.2
The HSUS ’s Million Fan Campaign Facebook Page
the measurable objectives and strategies at a cross-department meeting. We
spend a lot of time clarifying what success looks like and what metrics we will
collect to measure it.” Th ese sessions also generate many great ideas for strategy,
including the idea to create an infographic describing the organization ’s fans on
Facebook.
Lewis is oft en called in to consult with diff erent departments or affi liates:
“We ’ve codifi ed our best practices on measurement and off er a menu of social
media tactics that we review with them, letting them know the options, and
use cases for each. Most important is a report template that helps them collect
the right metrics and to do a content analysis. We even have a section that asks,
‘What did you learn?’”
Carie writes out “the objectives and metrics and measurement plan before we
launch. Th at way we know what it will take to reach the goals, but also we get
an opportunity to continuously improve what we ’re doing. In the long run, we
know it is helping the animals we all love. Working as a networked nonprofi t
Measuring the Networked Nonprofi t

without a measurement plan is a waste of resources and does a disservice to
our mission.”
THE KEYS TO NONPROFIT SUCCESS: NETWORKING
AND MEASUREMENT
Two key processes lead to tremendous success for nonprofi ts: becoming networked
and using measurement. Th is book, through numerous examples and
practical techniques, explores the many ways in which these two concepts
dramatically improve the effi ciency and success of nonprofi ts.
A networked nonprofi t is an organization that uses social networks and the
technology of social media to greatly extend its reach, capabilities, and eff ectiveness.
Measurement is the process of collecting data on your communications
results and using the data to learn and improve your programs. An organization
with a data-informed culture uses data to help make decisions and uses
measurement to continuously improve and refi ne its systems. Each chapter of
this book provides examples of organizations that are using these techniques to
achieve success.
Most nonprofi t organizations use at least some sort of informal measurement
and some form of social media–enabled networking. Many nonprofi ts
are striving to build a data-informed culture and networked mind-set. But few
organizations use these powerful techniques to their greatest potential. One of
these is MomsRising.org, a poster child for networked nonprofi ts and nonprofi t
measurement mavens.
MOMSRISING: A SUPERSTAR OF NETWORKED NONPROFITS
KNOWS THE JOYS OF MEASUREMENT
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner and Joan Blades founded MomsRising in 2006. To
design this nonprofi t, they combined their experience in grassroots organizing
and social media with successful ideas from organizations like MoveOn,
ColorOfChange, League of Conservation Voters, and others. Th e result was an
organization that embraces constant learning from experience and embeds this
powerful concept in its organizational culture and processes. It has fueled the
organization ’s growth from zero members in May 2006 to over a million active
members—moms, dads, grandparents, aunts, and uncles—today.
The Secret Sauce for Nonprofi ts 7

8
MomsRising uses measurement to achieve tremendous success. As you read
this book, you will fi nd several themes concerning the value of measurement
and many examples of how it is used. Here are nine of them.
Theme 1: “Likes” on Facebook Is Not a Victory—Social Change Is
Proper measurement keeps organizations focused on results rather than
the tools they use, a theme we explore in greater detail in Chapter Four.
MomsRising, for instance, does not simply count “likes” on Facebook. Instead,
it uses social change to defi ne its successes and develops metrics accordingly. Its
most important goals generally include these:
• Getting policies passed on family-related issues
• Increasing capacity
• Increasing the movement size by increasing membership
• Working with aligned partner organizations
• Garnering attention from all media through creative engagement
For MomsRising, the holy grail of results is getting legislatures to pass familyfriendly
policies. Th is requires grabbing the attention of policymakers. As one
indicator of progress toward that goal, it counted an invitation to bring mothers
to the White House to talk with policymakers about their experience with
Medicaid. Th e White House blogged about the power of people ’s stories, and
MomsRising members blogged about their White House experience, resulting in
even greater exposure for their messages. Says Rowe-Finkbeiner, “Th e aft er-story
is just as important because it will oft en get picked up by mainstream media outlets
like NPR or the Huffi ngton Post. ”
Theme 2: Measurement Helps Nonprofi ts
Understand and Improve Their Social Networks
Another theme of this book is that measurement helps nonprofi ts listen to and
engage with their constituents. Measurement enables organizations to assess
and improve their relationships with their members and stakeholders. Th is powerful
technique will help you understand how your stakeholders perceive you,
what they do with the information you send to them, and how it bears on their
behavior. Th is theme is explored in more detail in Chapter Five.
Measuring the Networked Nonprofi t

An important part of MomsRising ’s decision making is the use of member
feedback in the form of stories or comments on social channels or e-mail and in
more structured ways such as surveys. Says Rowe-Finkbeiner, “We are in constant
dialogue with our members to fi gure out what works and what doesn ’t. Th e
data keeps us focused on our mission of building a movement for family economic
security, while listening and engaging with our members breathes life into
our movement.”
Theme 3: Measurement Means Data for Decisions,
Not for Data ’s Sake
Unfortunately, many organizations see measurement as collecting data to dump
on the boardroom table or the executive director ’s desk. But measurement isn ’t
about justifying one ’s existence or budget, and it isn’t about it fi lling spreadsheets
with lots of “just-in-case” data to throw over the fence.
Measurement is about using data to learn to become more eff ective and more
effi cient. It’s about doing your job better, and helping your organization achieve
its mission with fewer resources. It’s about reaching more people, and becoming
better at saving the world.
Theme 4: Measurement Makes You Plan for Success
More and more nonprofi ts are making larger investments in social media: hiring
dedicated staff , upgrading Web sites to incorporate social features, and using
more powerful professional tools to do the work. Measurement helps you make
smarter investments and helps you use those investments in a smarter way.
Having a social media measurement plan and approach is no longer an aft erthought.
It ’s the smart way to run an organization.
Theme 5: Good Measurement Is Good Governance
As networked nonprofi ts become more skilled in their social media practice,
their boards and senior management are becoming more knowledgeable about
this area. Th ey expect reports showing social media results, and they expect
results expressed in the kind of language that measurement provides. In addition,
foundations and other funders want credible evaluation reports and demonstrations
of impact. Today boards and foundations increasingly include
executives from the for-profi t world who have come to expect actionable data
and standardized measurement systems.
The Secret Sauce for Nonprofi ts 9

10
Theme 6: Data Without Insight Is Just Trivia
Th e key to MomsRising ’s success is that it uses data to refi ne its strategies and
tactics. It has achieved its success not by luck or gut instinct but by using measurement
to make decisions.
MomsRising holds a weekly staff meeting, nicknamed “Metrics Monday.”
Prior to this meeting each program and campaign staff person reviews his or
her results as part of an explicit process of preparation. Th e meeting is actually a
group conversation about what actions to reinforce, how to refi ne messages, and
what other improvements need to be made. Says Rowe-Finkbeiner, “Our dashboards
have multiple views: a high-level view and the ability to drill down into
specifi c campaigns. Th is informs our discussion.”
Theme 7: Measuring Failure Is Part of the Path to Success
Some experiments bomb. Some projects or ideas seem brilliant at fi rst, but when
the results come in the data shows that they simply didn ’t work. Th e staff at
MomsRising give themselves permission to kill these. To remove the stigma of
failure, they do this with humor, calling it a “joyful funeral.” To learn from the
experience, they refl ect on why it didn ’t work.
Theme 8: Incremental Success Is Not Failure
Many organizations experiment with social media. Networked nonprofi ts are
expert at setting up and measuring low-risk experiments and pilots. What sets
MomsRising apart is that the staff don ’t do aimless experiments; they set realistic
expectations for success and measure along the way. What they have learned
is that many times victories happen in baby steps. Th ey know from experience
that many of their campaigns that incorporate social media lead to incremental
successes.
Yet some experiments, actions, or issues provide dramatic results. For example,
a MomsRising interactive educational video garnered over 12 million views,
hundreds of comments, and thousands of new members who signed up or took
action. Rowe-Finkbeiner says, “Th at type of success does not happen every day,
but we need to try for that kind of success every day. We can do it only if we
decide not to pursue things that don ’t work.” Th ey analyze these game- changing
successes to understand how they can be replicated and to make sure they
weren ’t accidents.
Measuring the Networked Nonprofi t

Theme 9: Measurement Is Valuable at Every Level of Functioning
Any nonprofi t can learn to use measurement to make its social media more
eff ective. It is not hard to get started and doesn ’t require expensive soft ware, a
graduate degree, or even an aptitude for mathematics. Th e trick is to start simple
and grow from there. Th is book shows you how to do that.
Networked nonprofi ts and measurement programs exist at all levels of functioning,
from just beginning to fully functioning. Th ese are not one-time addon
upgrades. Th ey are journeys—step-by-step processes of learning by doing.
You can ’t measure any nonprofi t just by clicking a button, or hiring someone, or
doing a single project. You can ’t become a networked nonprofi t that way either.
But you can take the fi rst step to get started.
CONCLUSION
Th is book is fi lled with remarkable social media and nonprofi t success stories,
stories of organizations that have embraced the core principles of being a networked
nonprofi t and measurement. Measurement is the key to improving
social media practice and how to work in a networked way, and this book shows
you how to do just that.
Any nonprofi t can become a networked nonprofi t and learn how to apply the
measurement techniques in this book. From improving your networks, to planning
strategy, to communicating with your membership and boardroom alike,
measurement is the tool that will help you become more effi cient, more eff ective,
and better at saving the world.
The Secret Sauce for Nonprofi ts 11

JASON LANKOW JOSH RITCHIE
Founders of Column Five
fig. 01
12
6
ROSS CROOKS
3
Response
Efficiency
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
ATTRACT
INFORM
INSPIRE
and patterns, expediting
INFOGRAPHICS CS C
AUDIENCE
x
Response
y
Market
Currency
$
¥
£
€
The design and visual
representation of information,
including the visualization
of data, processes, hierarchy,
anatomy, chronology, and other
facts. The use of such graphics
can aid in the detection of trends
comprehension and improving

I N T R O
I
INTRODUCTION
A BRIEF HISTORY OF INFOGRAPHICS
THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK
WHAT THIS BOOK IS NOT
A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
C O N T E N T S
010
014
018
018
019
024
C H A P T E R
01
IMPORTANCE AND EFFICACY:
WHY OUR BRAINS LOVE INFOGRAPHICS
VARIED PERSPECTIVES ON INFORMATION DESIGN:
A BRIEF HISTORY
OBJECTIVES OF VISUALIZATION
APPEAL
COMPREHENSION
RETENTION
028
031
038
040
044
050

C H A P T E R
02
INFOGRAPHIC FORMATS: CHOOSING THE RIGHT
VEHICLE FOR YOUR MESSAGE
STATIC INFOGRAPHICS
MOTION GRAPHICS
INTERACTIVE INFOGRAPHICS
056
060
074
082
C H A P T E R
03
THE VISUAL STORYTELLING SPECTRUM:
AN OBJECTIVE APPROACH
UNDERSTANDING THE VISUAL STORYTELLING
SPECTRUM
088
090

C H A P T E R
04
EDITORIAL INFOGRAPHICS
WHAT ARE EDITORIAL INFOGRAPHICS?
ORIGINS OF EDITORIAL INFOGRAPHICS
EDITORIAL INFOGRAPHIC PRODUCTION
112
114
122
128
C H A P T E R
05
CONTENT DISTRIBUTION:
SHARING YOUR STORY
POSTING ON YOUR SITE
DISTRIBUTING YOUR CONTENT
PATIENCE PAYS DIVIDENDS
146
149
152
159

C H A P T E R
06
BRAND-CENTRIC INFOGRAPHICS
“ABOUT US” PAGES
PRODUCT INSTRUCTIONS
VISUAL PRESS RELEASES
PRESENTATION DESIGN
ANNUAL REPORTS
160
162
166
167
175
178
C H A P T E R
07
DATA VISUALIZATION INTERFACES
A CASE FOR VISUALIZATION
IN USER INTERFACES
DASHBOARDS
VISUAL DATA HUBS
182
185
186
189

C H A P T E R
08
WHAT MAKES A GOOD INFOGRAPHIC?
UTILITY
SOUNDNESS
BEAUTY
196
199
200
201
C H A P T E R
09
INFORMATION DESIGN BEST PRACTICES
ILLUSTRATION
DATA
VISUALIZATION
202
204
206
210

C H A P T E R
10
THE FUTURE OF INFOGRAPHICS
DEMOCRATIZED ACCESS TO CREATION TOOLS
SOCIALLY GENERATIVE VISUALIZATIONS
PROBLEM SOLVING
BECOMING A VISUAL COMPANY
220
236
237
247
248
FURTHER INFOGRAPHIC GOODNESS
THANK YOU
INDEX
250
252
254

fig. 1.1-1.17
01 02 03 08 09 10
IMPORTANCE AND EFFICACY:
WHY OUR BRAINS LOVE INFOGRAPHICS
VARIED PERSPECTIVES ON INFORMATION DESIGN:
A BRIEF HISTORY
OBJECTIVES OF VISUALIZATION
APPEAL
COMPREHENSION
RETENTION
ESSENTIAL READING CHAPTERS
028
055
C H A P T E R
031
038
040
044
050
01
29

30 I N F O G R A P H I C S
In De Architectura, Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius
states that there exist three standards to which all structures
should adhere: soundness, utility, and beauty. In their paper, On
the Role of Design in Information Visualization, authors Andrew
Vande Moere and Helen Purchase point out that these standards
can and should also be applied to information design and the
various applications that serve this purpose. They state that a
good visualization should be sound; that is, the design’s form
should be suitable for the information it depicts. It should be
useful, enabling the viewer to derive meaning from it. And of
course, as with all design, it should have aesthetic appeal that
attracts the viewer’s attention and provides a pleasing visual
experience.
This framework provides a solid basis that anyone can
use to judge the value of visualization. However, we will use a
slightly different categorization for the purpose of discussing the
positive effects of infographics. We will refer to beauty as appeal,
and divide utility into the areas of comprehension and retention—
as these are the three basic provisions of all effective verbal or
visual communication methods:
1. Appeal
Communication should engage a voluntary audience.
2. Comprehension
Communication should effectively provide knowledge that
enables a clear understanding of the information.
3. Retention
Communication should impart memorable knowledge.
We will address the need to have a sound design on a
more practical level in Chapter 9 (Information Design Best
Practices) when we discuss principles for the practice of information
design.
Images and graphics should always look appealing and encourage
viewers to engage in the content. It is important that we
examine why this is the case and identify the primary elements
that lead to this appeal. This is certainly the first and potentially
most challenging step in conveying a message: getting the recipient
to commit to hearing what you have to say.
People have long accepted the notion that a picture can
replace a thousand words, and similarly, that a simple graph can
replace a table full of numbers. Basic visualization allows us to
immediately comprehend a message by detecting notable patterns,
trends, and outliers in the data. This chapter will look at
how visualization achieves this feat so easily while other forms
of communication fall short.
Further, we’ll determine how we can make those visualizations
more memorable. The democratization of media, especially
online, has given us a great variety of options that we can use to
consume our news, videos, and funny pictures—and generally
educate ourselves on myriad topics. However, the downside to
this exponential increase in stimuli is that we tend to lose much
of this knowledge shortly after we gain it. While no one should
lament forgetting a mediocre LOLcat, it pays to be memorable—
especially in the business world. Fortunately, connections have
been made recently between the illustrative elements of graphics
and the retention rates of the information displayed—and
these connections can help us all figure out how to have people
remember our material.
This chapter will also discuss the fact that information
design lends itself to achieving these objectives, and will seek
to understand exactly how and why it does this, based on the
way our brains process information. We will not be getting into
too much heavy science; rather, our main goal is to understand
which elements of design help us reach our specific communication
goals, and to leave behind those that do not. For this we will
lean heavily on several key works that have covered the science

I M P O R TA N C E A N D E F F I C A C Y
of visualization exhaustively, most notably Colin Ware’s thought-
fully written Information Visualization: Perception for Design.
Finally, we will identify several of the divergent schools
of thought. We’ve concluded that the differences in these ap-
proaches are largely rooted in the failure to recognize that varied
objectives necessitate varied approaches to the practice. That is,
a design whose primary objective is to give the viewer information
for analysis cannot be considered, designed, or judged in
the same way as one whose primary goal is to be appealing and
entertaining while informing. We will discuss these varied approaches
to each unique objective and elaborate on the practice
in the applications chapters (3, 4, 6, and 7). We will then discuss
how we can use these different methods to serve our three basic
communication provisions: appeal, comprehension, and retention.
VARIED PERSPECTIVES ON INFORMATION
DESIGN: A BRIEF HISTORY
Many a heated debate over the proper approach to information
design is raging online nowadays, which seems to raise the question:
Why all the conflict in the friendly field of pretty picture
creation? The debate surrounds just that: The role of aesthetics
and decoration in the design of infographics. To understand the
underlying tension, a bit of background is necessary.
Science and publishing have used information design and
visualization as a communication tool for centuries. However,
study and development in the field has mostly been dominated
by academics and scientists, who are concerned primarily with
understanding the most effective way to process and present
information to aid viewers’ analyses. These efforts are driven by
loads of research, with highly theoretical consideration; when
practical, the focus is on using software to process and visualize
data sets. For years, only a select few—an educated, knowledge-
able, and skilled group of individuals—have discussed and practiced
visualization in this sense. Then the Internet caught on.
Around 2007, interest in infographics (mostly editorial in nature)
began to grow on the web, as people shared old infographics
like Napoleon’s march on Moscow (Figure 1.1) and newer
creations such as those published by GOOD Magazine (Figure
1.2). Suddenly, a whole new group of “experts” was praising,
sharing, and critiquing (mostly critiquing) any infographic they
could find.
Since then, an impressive number of new infographics have
been created as various industries and areas identified different
applications for their use. One of the most common was to use
editorial infographics for commercial marketing purposes. This
new breed of visual took a bit of a different path, both in format
and content. The long, skinny graphic, designed to fit within a
blog’s width, became ubiquitous and almost instantly synonymous
with the term infographic. These pieces used illustration
and decoration much more than their traditional counterparts.
And as with most marketing efforts, their goal was to use their
content and design to attract attention, interest, and adoration
for the company that produced them—making each brand
a “thought leader” in its industry. This was quite a divergence
from the traditionally stated purposes of the field, which was
purely to use visual representation to aid in the processing and
comprehension of data.
As you can imagine, the new field of infographic designers
often lacked knowledge of best practices for information
design. In other words, people were winging it. As with any field
experiencing this kind of growth, overall quality of designs vary
drastically—which has attracted criticism (read: utter disdain)
from the academic and scientific visualization community.
The Internet had usurped infographics.
31

32 I N F O G R A P H I C S
Figure 1.1
Flow map of Napoleon’s Russian Campaign of 1812.
Charles Minard.

I M P O R TA N C E A N D E F F I C A C Y
Figure 1.2
You Should Vote Because.
Open, NY for GOOD.
33

34 I N F O G R A P H I C S
Figure 1.3
E X P L O R A T I V E N A R R A T I V E
ACADEMIC RESEARCH
C H A R A C T E R I S T I C S
A P P L I C A T I O N S
ILLUSTRATIVE
ONLY INCLUDES ELEMENTS THAT REPRESENT DATA DESIGN-FOCUSED
Approaches to infographic design.
MINIMALIST
SEEKS TO COMMUNICATE INFORMATION
IN THE MOST CLEAR, CONCISE MANNER
SCIENCE
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
DATA ANALYSIS
SEEKS TO APPEAL TO VIEWER WITH ENGAGING VISUALS
INFORMS AND ENTERTAINS
PUBLICATIONS
BLOGS
CONTENT MARKETING
SALES AND MARKETING MATERIALS

I M P O R TA N C E A N D E F F I C A C Y
The debate over what should be considered an infographic
continues to this day, as people seek to find concrete definitions
in an area that’s constantly becoming more nebulous. Among
the most known and quoted voices in this area is Yale University
statistics professor Edward Tufte, who has written some of
the most acclaimed and comprehensive works on the topic of
information design. Tufte has contributed much to its popular
terminology by coining terms such as chartjunk (unnecessary
graphic elements that do not communicate information) and
developing the data-ink ratio—a measurement of the amount of
information communicated in a graphic as it relates to the total
number of visual elements in it. Tufte’s thoughts on the topic
represent a conservative lean on the spectrum of approaches to
infographic design (Figure 1.3), which is typical of those who
have an academic or scientific background. He argues that any
graphic elements of a design that do not communicate specific
information are superfluous and should be omitted. He believes
that chartjunk such as unnecessary lines, labels, or decorative
elements only distract the viewer and distort the data, thus
detracting from the graphic’s integrity and decreasing its value
(Figure 1.4). Although Tufte does concede that decorative elements
can help editorialize a topic in some instances, his teachings
typically discourage their use.
Figure 1.4
Example of explorative graphic approach using
minimalist design.
35

36 I N F O G R A P H I C S
The work and writing of British graphic designer Nigel
Holmes characterizes the opposite end of the spectrum, which
supports the heavy use of illustration and decoration to embellish
information design (Figure 1.5). Holmes is best known for
his illustration of editorial “explanation graphics” in Time from
1978 to 1994. The perspective that Holmes’ work supports the
notion that using illustration and visual metaphor to support
and reinforce the topic makes the graphic appealing to viewers.
Recent studies show that these decorative elements can also
aid in the retention of the information presented, which we will
examine later in the chapter.
So which is the correct approach? Both are. What people
often overlook in these debates is the most central issue to any
design: the objective. While Tufte and Holmes might want to
represent the exact same data set, they likely would be doing it
for very different reasons. Tufte would aim to show the information
in the most neutral way possible, to encourage his audience
to analyze it without bias. Conversely, Holmes’s job is to
editorialize the message in order to appeal to the viewer while
communicating the value judgment he wants readers to take
away. Tufte’s communication is explorative; that is, it encourages
the viewer to explore and extract his or her own insights.
Holmes’s, on the other hand, is narrative, and prescribes the
intended conclusion to the viewer. The difference is inherent in
their areas of work, as the objectives of science and research are
much different than those of the publishing world. There’s no
need to establish a universal approach to govern all objectives;
rather, different individuals and industries should develop best
practices unique to each application’s specific goal.

I M P O R TA N C E A N D E F F I C A C Y
Figure 1.5
The Tipsy Turvy Republic of Alcohol.
Nigel Holmes.
37

38 I N F O G R A P H I C S
COMPREHENSION
APPEAL
1
Figure 1.6
Infographic priorities by application.
2
3
Key
Academic/Scientific
Marketing
Editorial
RETENTION
OBJECTIVES OF VISUALIZATION
Of course, we must first look at what each infographic is try-
ing to achieve before we can establish the best practices for its
application. By definition, all information graphics are aimed
at communicating information. What varies is the purpose for
doing so—and understanding this purpose is what determines a
graphic’s priorities. These priorities account for a necessary difference
in approach to each design.
For example, if an infographic is intended to communicate
information in the most clear and unbiased manner possible,
then the first priority for the designer is comprehension, then
retention, followed by appeal (Figure 1.6). This is common in
academic, scientific, and business intelligence applications, as
these areas typically lack any agenda aside from conveying and
having viewers comprehend knowledge. Appeal is less necessary
in this setting, as the viewer most typically needs the information
and seeks it out as a result. Appeal is only useful when it
keeps the viewers’ attention to enable further comprehension.
Such a graphic typically would be used as a resource for information—which
is why retention is also a secondary priority. If
the viewer needs the information and it is a readily accessible
resource, then he or she can revisit it as needed to retrieve it
again. There’s no need for it to take up any more valuable brain
space than necessary.

I M P O R TA N C E A N D E F F I C A C Y
However, a graphic created with a commercial interest
in mind will have much different priorities. Brands primarily
seek to get viewers’ attention and eventually (hopefully) convert
those users into paying customers. As evidenced by Super Bowl
commercials, companies will go to almost any length to get this
attention. The order of priorities of a commercial marketing
graphic would be appeal, retention, and then comprehension.
Brands are looking to catch viewers’ attention and make a lasting
impression—which usually means that viewers’ comprehension
of content is frequently the brands’ last priority. The exception
to this would be infographics that are more focused on the
description of a product or service, such as a visual press release,
since designers in these cases would want the viewer to clearly
understand the material as it relates to the company’s value
proposition. However, being appealing enough to prospective
customers to get them to listen is always goal number one.
Publishers that create editorial infographics have a slightly
different mix: appeal, comprehension, and retention. Since the
appeal of a magazine’s content is what will make it fly off the
newsstand, it shares this top priority—improving sales—with
companies in other industries. A publisher’s survival is based
solely upon its ability to spark readers’ interest. The quality of
content or graphics produced on a consistent basis helps drive
this interest by making a strong impression on readers—and this
is where comprehension comes into play. A publication’s quality
is based on the content it produces, which is intended to help
readers understand a given topic. However, whether or not the
reader can recall that topic with the same level of understanding
one week later is of little importance to a publisher’s bottom line.
The common denominator between commercial and editorial
interests is that they both desire to compel the consumer to take
a specific action.
39

40 I N F O G R A P H I C S
APPEAL
In 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously stated that we now
create more information in two days than we created from the
dawn of man up until 2003. This staggering statistic obviously
necessitates clarification of what constitutes information and
its creation. Regardless, the message is clear and uncontested:
humanity is creating and consuming far more information than
it ever has before. As a result, it is increasingly difficult to get
people’s attention, since they’re constantly bombarded with
various stimuli throughout the day—material that ranges from
breaking news to funny photos to Facebook updates. Marketers,
salespeople, brand evangelists, and publishers must all figure
out how to grab a slice of this attention—a task that is becoming
more challenging by the day. How do you get people’s attention,
and keep it long enough to share your message with them? Due
to the sheer volume of “stuff ” out there, it’s a formidable task to
make yours stand out.
How do you appeal to an audience in a world of information
overload in which people constantly face new inputs,
options, and decisions? Ask the world’s biggest company, Apple.
With a cash reserve larger than the total valuation of all but fifty
companies worldwide (as of early 2012), this organization surely
must have some insight into what people like. In the battle for
MP3 player dominance, the iPod came in early and overshadowed
the competition. What was, and still is, the key differentiator
between this and other products? The simple answer is
design. While features such as OS compatibility, memory, and
screen size certainly factor into the decision, the most outstanding
difference between the iPod and its competitors is its
impressive design. As Steve Jobs preached, good design not only
garners additional appeal for an item, it can also actually incite
an emotional reaction. Few can deny the good feeling of pulling
a new Apple product out of the box.
So how does this translate to best practices for information
design? Our consumer culture is becoming increasingly design
focused in areas that extend beyond graphics and consumer
electronics, and that play a role in many other industries. Home
products company IKEA, for example, has made clever furniture
design mainstream. British mega-brand Virgin brought sexiness
to the airline industry, with an interior design that looks
more like a chic lounge than a mode of mass transit. Regardless
of whether they can articulate it—or if they even know it—consumers
connect with these brands because of designs that continues
to attract new fans and followers. The ever-growing media
landscape makes it increasingly important to use great design to
differentiate your brand from the crowd.
Even if your goal is to present information for a purely
analytical objective—that is, without any desired action from the
reader—it is still beneficial to have aesthetic appeal.
DESIGN IS TO DATA AS CHEESE SAUCE IS TO BROCCOLI.
(That analogy is on the SAT, if you don’t remember.) In other
words, people need an added incentive to eat their vegetables—
especially when those vegetables are as cold and dry as research
studies and analytics reports. Presenting information by way of
engaging visuals immediately attracts readers and entices them
to dig deeper into the content.
Possessing this appeal to your audience is not a “nice to
have” for businesses; it is a “must have.” You can’t sell magazines
if no one picks them up, and you can’t sell products if you can’t
get potential customers’ attention.

I M P O R TA N C E A N D E F F I C A C Y
The modern marketer can learn a lot from Horace’s quote
in the introduction, and the notion that delighting people with
your content is a must. It has become a necessity in order to
build trust with your audience and capture their attention often.
We will discuss how to do this further in Chapter 3 (The Visual
Storytelling Spectrum) and Chapter 4 (Editorial Infographics),
in the sections pertaining to Editorial Infographics. For now, it
is important for us to focus on the first step: How to get their
attention in the first place.
Just what appeals to us when we become interested in
consuming information? We are drawn to formats that we see
as efficient, engaging, and entertaining (Figure 1.7). It’s highly
unlikely that someone would prefer to read a lengthy article than
view a multimedia display presenting the same information. A
diversity of media keeps our brains engaged in the material, and
the visualization can enable us to digest it more efficiently and
facilitate understanding.
Figure 1.7
Source: Reprinted with permission of THE ONION.
Copyright 2012, by ONION, INC.
www.theonion.com.
41

42 I N F O G R A P H I C S
Further, a recent study from the University of Saskatch-
ewan suggests that viewers prefer a greater use of illustration in
visual representations. When presented with both a simple chart
and one that contained an illustration by the aforementioned
Nigel Holmes (Figure 1.8), participants consistently opted for
the Holmes version in a number of different areas (Figure 1.9).
While this conclusion—that a more dynamic and stimulating
visual is preferable to a plain one—seems somewhat obvious,
it’s important to consider in design approach. It’s not enough to
make your content visual; you must also make it visually interesting.
You can do this by using representative iconography,
illustrative metaphor, or relevant decorative framing mechanisms—all
powerful tools for communicating your message.
However, you always want to remember your objective. The
appropriateness of decorative and illustrative elements will vary
based on an infographic’s application and use. For example, an
editorial graphic in the Sunday newspaper on the topic of corporate
profits could find great use in the illustration of a rotund
executive sitting atop a throne of gold bullion. Shareholders, on
the other hand, might not share the same appreciation for such
a work of art if it adorned the pages of an annual report containing
similar data.
If used incorrectly, decorative elements have the potential
to distract the viewer from the actual information, which
detracts from the graphic’s total value. Mastering this execution
and finding the balance between appeal and clarity can be a nuanced
process. We will discuss the proper use of illustration and
decorative elements further in Chapter 9 (Information Design
Best Practices), where we’ll cover the principles and best
practices of information design.
MONSTROUS COSTS
Total House and Senate campaign expenditures, in millions
1972 ‘74 ‘76 ‘78 ‘80 ‘82 est
Figure 1.8
Illustrative Nigel Holmes graphic with simplified equivalent.
$300
250
200
150
100
50
0

I M P O R TA N C E A N D E F F I C A C Y
KEY
COUNT OF RESPONSES
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
HOLMES PLAIN
MOST PREFERRED
MOST ENJOYED
MOST ATTRACTIVE
EASIEST TO DESCRIBE
EASIEST TO REMEMBER
EASIEST TO REMEMBER DETAILS
MOST ACCURATE TO DESCRIBE
Figure 1.9
University of Saskatchewan study results.
FASTEST TO DESCRIBE
MOST ACCURATE TO REMEMBER
43
FASTEST TO REMEMBER

44 I N F O G R A P H I C S
COMPREHENSION
You often hear someone claim to be a “visual learner,” which
simply means that they need to see something in order to understand
it. Researchers have studied and modeled learning styles in
a number of different ways over the past several decades, and the
origins of this specific visual style of thinking can be traced to
Neil Fleming’s VAK model. One of the most commonly known
and quoted models of thinking, it states that when comprehending
information, people learn best with one of three types of
stimuli:
V I S U A L
A U D I T O R Y
K I N E S T H E T I C O R T A C T I L E
Visual learners best comprehend information that is presented
in pictures, diagrams, charts, and the like; auditory learners do
best when hearing this information spoken; and tactile learners
need to touch and learn by doing. While this theory is commonly
accepted, it has been highly scrutinized in the scientific
community, which posits that there is little to no evidence that
any one preferred method of learning is actually more beneficial
for comprehending and retaining information.
Regardless of this ongoing debate, it is important to consider
the media structure and channels through which people
obtain information. It is less important to identify how people
prefer to learn, and instead figure out how they are actually
learning—and these experiences are occurring increasingly online
today, a channel based primarily on visual display. The use
of audio-only content on the web is relatively minimal outside of
music sites—and until virtual reality is able to provide interactive,
tactile experiences, the majority of information on the
Internet will be communicated visually.
Given that people are more likely to consume information
visually, the value of using visuals in our communication—instead
of just words—is truly significant. As Colin Ware states in
Information Visualization: Perception for Design,
“The human visual system is a pattern seeker of enormous
power and subtlety. The eye and the visual cortex of the brain
form a massive parallel processor that provides the highestbandwidth
channel into human cognitive centers. At higher
levels of processing, perception and cognition are closely
interrelated, which is why the words understanding and seeing
are synonymous (p. xxi).”

I M P O R TA N C E A N D E F F I C A C Y
Ware goes on to state that we are able to acquire more
information through our visual system than we do through all
our other senses combined (p. 2). This is largely because visualizations
contain certain characteristics called preattentive
attributes, which our eyes perceive very quickly (within 250
milliseconds) and our brains process with impressive accuracy—
without any active attention on our part. Force-feeding for the
mind—how convenient! To use a common illustration of this
concept, refer to Figure 1.10. Try to count the number of 7s in
the number set. How long did that take?
Now, try the same exercise with Figure 1.11. A color change
makes recognition almost instant, since color is one of several
preattentive attributes, displayed in Figure 1.12. All visualizations
contain such attributes, and using them properly to convey
information is the key to visual communication. Our brains are
able to recognize and process many of these visual cues simultaneously
through a course of action called preattentive processing.
All this action precedes any cognitive attempts to focus on
any specific area; rather, it is purely involuntary and will simply
proceed wherever our eyes are pointed.
These natural functions that result from the connection
between the eyes and brain can be quite handy when we want to
communicate to people who don’t have a lot of time—or a long
attention span. We know that we can use these visuals to attract
people by appealing to them aesthetically, but we can also
decrease the amount of time it takes them to comprehend the
message by using these same tools.
That said, you can’t tell a story through color alone, or craft
compelling messaging using only shapes and symbols. So how
do words factor into information design? Within the context of
a society that speaks the same language, words—as compared to
symbols—have a distinct advantage in terms of familiarity. No
set of symbols has universal ubiquity; rather, most are isolated
to specific social or cultural settings. This necessitates a costversus-benefit
analysis of using visualization instead of verbal
communication. Symbols can take longer to interpret than language
when conveying a concept to someone who is unfamiliar
with the symbols. In this case, communication should favor text
descriptions. To someone who knows the symbols, however, this
comprehension process is far easier; in this case, communication
should rely more upon visualization methods.
Ware provides a sound breakdown of the general value of
each medium by explaining that “images are better for spatial
structures, location, and detail, whereas words are better for
representing procedural information, logical conditions, and
abstract verbal concepts” (p. 304). The practical reality is that we
don’t need to choose between the two. The strongest visualizations
are those that are supported by descriptions as well as narratives,
especially in editorial applications. Using words in this
way helps to bring both personality and clarity to an infographic.
45

46 I N F O G R A P H I C S
Figure 1.10
Preattentive Processing Test 1.

I M P O R TA N C E A N D E F F I C A C Y
Figure 1.11
Preattentive Processing Test 2.
47

48 I N F O G R A P H I C S
F O R M
S I Z E
F O R M
E N C L O S U R E
Figure 1.12
Preattentive attributes.
F O R M
O R I E N TAT I O N
F O R M
S H A P E
C O L O R
I N T E N S I T Y

I M P O R TA N C E A N D E F F I C A C Y
F O R M
L I N E L E N G T H
F O R M
C U R V AT U R E
F O R M
L I N E W I D T H
F O R M
A D D E D M A R K S
C O L O R S P AT I A L P O S I T I O N
H U E
2 - D P O S I T I O N
49

50 I N F O G R A P H I C S
RETENTION
The third main benefit of using infographics in communication
is their ability to help people retain information, as the graphics
are able to extend the reach of our memory systems. Visualizations
do this by instantly and constantly drawing upon nonvisual
information that’s stored in our long-term memory (Ware,
p. 352). The human brain can recall familiar symbols, scenes,
and patterns, allowing us to make rapid connections to already
stored information and to quickly comprehend what we’re seeing.
This prompts the question: Which visualization methods
best serve recall for various different types of memory?
There are three main types of memory that relate to viewing
images. The iconic memory is the snapshot of a scene that
you retain for a brief instant after looking at something. It is
stored for less than a second, unless it is analyzed and connected
to something that is already stored in your brain (Sperling via
Ware, p. 352). Long-term memory stores information from our
experiences that we will retain for long periods of time, and
from which we draw upon in order to process new information.
Long-term memory is further divided into three areas:
episodic memory, semantic memory, and procedural memory.
Episodic memory is the primary device for recalling images and
scenes that we’ve experienced, and the feelings associated with
those experiences. Semantic memory enables us to recall knowledge
that has no specific context or experience associated with
it, and could generally be considered the storage of “common
knowledge.” Procedural memories are those that recall processes
of doing—such as typing or tying a tie—that we access involuntarily
without conscious thought. These memories often build on
themselves, which is why you are able to recall that the “M” arm
position comes after the “Y” when the Village People are played
at a wedding reception.
Visual working memory is what lies in between iconic and
long-term memory, and is most essential to processing visual
information. When we see an object that requires further attention,
we move it from iconic to visual working memory. Visual
working memory then calls upon semantic memory (long term,
nonvisual) to understand its meaning. All this happens in about
100 milliseconds (Ware, p. 353). With our vision transmitting
massive amounts of information into the brain, and the brain
accessing its stored knowledge to provide context, we are able to
understand much more quickly than with any other combination
of sensory perception and processing.
So what visual elements should be used to best ensure
that individuals store this understanding for long-term recall?
While academics have typically argued against using decorative
elements in information design—claiming that they only serve
to distract the viewer—this isn’t always the case. A very interesting
finding from a University of Saskatchewan study conducted
by Scott Bateman and his colleagues from the Department of
Computer Science uncovered that a more illustrative approach
to design actually benefits information recall significantly. All
participants were shown a set of alternating graphics, some plain
and some in Holmes’s illustrative style, such as that depicted
in Figure 1.8. The researchers split the participants into two
groups: half were part of an immediate recall group, and the
other half were in the long-term recall group. After seeing all
the graphics, the immediate recall group played a five-minute
game to clear their visual and linguistic memory. They were then
questioned regarding the information in each graphic. The longterm
recall group was scheduled to come back for their recall
session two to three weeks following the initial observation.
Each participant had to answer questions about the
graphic’s subject, the categories displayed within it, and the general
trend of the chart. They also had to describe whether there
was a value judgment presented in the chart; that is, a perceived

I M P O R TA N C E A N D E F F I C A C Y
opinion that the graphic’s creator had presented.
The immediate recall group showed no significant differ-
ences between Holmes’s graphics and their plain counterparts in
terms of how well they’d retained information about the subject,
categories, or trends (Figure 1.13). Yet there was a significant
difference in their identification of whether a value judgment
had been presented. However, the long-term recall group experienced
notable differences in their ability to recall information
in all areas (Figure 1.14). The subjects, categories, trends, and
value messages within Holmes’s graphics stuck with users more
prominently after two to three weeks.
KEY
SUM OF SCORES
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
HOLMES PLAIN
SUBJECT CATEGORIES TREND VALUE MESSAGE
I M M E D I A T E R E C A L L
Figure 1.13: Results of immediate recall group.
Bateman et al. offer up three possible explanations for the
findings in this experiment:
1. Additional imagery enabled people to encode informationmore
deeply, as there were more visual items to recall and use
memory to draw upon.
2. The variety of Holmes’s style gave it a unique advantage in
being memorable over the style of the plain graphics, which
all had a similar look.
3. The user preference (as described earlier in the Appeal section)
provided a hidden factor: The participants’ emotional
responses to the graphic, combined with the imagery used,
helped to solidify the image in their memories.
SUM OF SCORES
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
SUBJECT CATEGORIES TREND VALUE MESSAGE
L O N G - T E R M R E C A L L
Figure 1.14: Results of long-term recall group.
51

52 I N F O G R A P H I C S
So what does all of this tell us about using infographics,
particularly for commercial objectives? Graphics that contain
visual embellishment beyond the information being displayed
may be superior not only in terms of appeal, but also in their
ability to ensure that viewers understand and retain your message—which
is likely value-based. Appealing to someone not
only aesthetically but also emotionally prompts a deeper connection
with the information, which makes them more likely to
remember it.
While design style is something that varies greatly and
often cannot be categorized neatly, there are certain devices that
we can use to facilitate understanding and retention. We refer to
these collectively as illustrative design:
1. Visual Metaphor
We use this often at Column Five and it works incredibly well
when implemented effectively. You can do this by containing
information within a framing mechanism that is indicative of
your subject matter (Figure 1.15).
2. Symbols and Iconography
The success that these achieve depends largely on cultural
context. Your audience must universally understand your
icons and symbols for them to be effective. When this is the
case, they can provide a great communication shortcut by using
visual elements in the place of verbal explanation (Figure
1.16).
3. Decorative Framing
Using design elements that appeal to your target audience
lets them connect with infographics on an emotional level,
thereby deepening their interest in and retention of the information
(Figure 1.17).
Illustrative design can also have its negative effects, so it is
important to determine when it might potentially detract from
rather than support your message. The main pitfall here is the
designer’s accidental or intentional distortion of the display of
data. Illustrations should complement visualization elements,
but never at the expense of misleading the viewer. Whether
intentional or not, you always want to avoid altering accurate
information representation.

I M P O R TA N C E A N D E F F I C A C Y
Figure 1.15
Example of visual metaphor.
Column Five for GOOD.
53

54 I N F O G R A P H I C S
Figure 1.16
Example of use of symbols and iconography. Column Five
for Microsoft.

I M P O R TA N C E A N D E F F I C A C Y
Figure 1.17
Example of decorative framing.
Column Five for GOOD.
55

Contents
1 How One Man Changed a Billion-Dollar Brand 1
2 Marketing Is a Verb 4
3 Companies Aren’t Awesome; People Are 7
4 Remarry Your Current Customers 11
5 The Sun Rises Online 14
6 Sporting Event Awesome 17
7 I Think Geeks Rule 20
8 DKNY 4 U 2 24
9 PR Stands for People React 27
10 The Red Cross Is Getting Slizzard 30
11 Grand Rapids Serves Up Some Humble Pie 34
12 The One Thing More Delicious Than Ice Cream 36
v

vi Contents
13 How to Apologize to a Woman 40
14 How to Ship Out Your Reputation, and Then Return It 42
15 You Can’t Ignore What You Hate 44
16 The Only Good Use for QR Codes 46
17 Benefit of the Brand Doubt 48
18 How to Spice Up an Old Brand 51
19 How Manya Made Vegas Awesome 53
20 Fractional Reaction 56
21 Third Circle 58
22 Reflecting on Awesome 62
23 Part Man, Part Machine, All Crowdfunded 65
24 The Social Media ROI Conversation 68
25 Before Social ROI 71
26 Connect Outside Your Field of Vision 74
27 Peripheral Referrals 76
28 Seven Dollars and an iROI, Lessons in Social Return on
Investment 78
29 Thirty Tips for Speakers 81
30 Rocking a Panel 87
31 Shedding Some Social Pounds 90

Contents vii
32 You Don’t Need the Man If You Are the Man 92
33 The Hall of Fame 95
34 Mr. Happy Crack 97
35 Pimp My Lift 100
36 Nightmares 102
37 An Awesome Sweatband 111
38 Moncton Snow blower 114
39 Calgary Philharmonic 118
40 A Unicorn Fighting a Bear 120
41 Awesome End 122
Awesome Acknowledgements 124

1
How One Man Changed a
Billion-Dollar Brand
Every employee is your brand ambassador, your marketer, and the face
of your company.
I was in Hartford at the Hilton Garden Inn, on stop number eight
of my 30-city UnBook Tour to promote UnMarketing, Stop Marketing,
Start Engaging. The tour was amazing, but it also meant that I was
living on airplanes and in hotels.
I rolled out of bed and headed downstairs for breakfast around
9:45 am. Did I mention I’m not a morning person? It’s actually one
of the great problems I have in life: I love breakfast, and I hate
mornings. The lobby had a breakfast buffet, and I’m not talking about
the ‘‘continental’’ breakfast that most hotels throw in as a bonus with
some Danish and something that resembles juice. This was a full spread
of eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, cereal, bagels, you name it. I
was pretty impressed with myself for being up in time for this feast,
especially after crossing the continent the day before.
1

2 The Book of Business Awesome
I told the chef that I’d like eggs, bacon, sausage, and hash browns
(shut it, foodies); grabbed a juice; and took a seat. As soon as I sat
down, I noticed they turned off the lights around the buffet. Score! I
got there just in time.
Apparently not.
I dug in to my food, and it was bad. Old and cold. A bad
combination for anything in life, let alone breakfast meats. I forced
down some bacon, and after testing each of the other items, I couldn’t
continue. The waitress walked over with my bill and placed it on the
table, without saying a word.
Most of the time in situations like these, what do we do? We take
out our phones and share our bad experiences with the world, all the
while quietly accepting them in real life. Most people would just allow
this to happen and walk away, but I called her over. If I owned this
business, I would want to know if something was up.
‘‘Hi, the food was really bad. It was cold and old.’’
She just looked at me, not knowing what to do, and mentally took
out the customer service playbook and said the ‘‘right’’ thing.
‘‘I’ll go get the manager.’’
And she walked away. I never asked for the manager or to have the
bill taken care of. The manager came over and was nice and offered to
have the chef make an omelet or something special for me. I declined,
letting him know I really wasn’t hungry anymore. I explained to him
that I wasn’t looking for a freebie but thought he needed to know. He
picked up the bill and said they’d take care of it and apologized again.
This is where the customer service ‘‘apology’’ usually ends for 99.9
percent of businesses in the hospitality industry. Really, to be great at
customer service, you need to be only mediocre, because everyone else
sucks.
But not here.
The sous-chef, Forbes, ran out, stopped me from walking out, and
looked shaken. Not in a shaken way like he’d been chewed out by
anyone, but a sincere look of being upset. Did I mention he was about
6 foot 4 inches and 220 pounds? And that he ran at me? I have to
admit, for a moment there, I regretted giving my feedback at all ...
He caught up to me and said, ‘‘Sir, I’m terribly sorry about your
food this morning. A few things, although not excuses, we didn’t know
until we were cleaning up that the water underneath the food trays

How One Man Changed a Billion-Dollar Brand 3
that keep everything warm was gone, hence why it was cold. And I
also should have never given you the food that was sitting out that
long; I could have made you something fresh right there, but I thought
you looked like you were in a hurry. Regardless, I’m terribly sorry; this
is not how we operate, and we’d like another chance to make it up
to you.’’
Wow.
This guy gave a damn that a guest had a subpar experience and he
needed to make it right. We can’t stop screw-ups, only how we remedy
them. And the solution usually isn’t hard. Most people who complain
just want to feel validated, able to walk away feeling that someone has
heard and understood them.
I didn’t threaten to ‘‘tweet about it’’ or use ‘‘Do you know who I
think I am?’’ I was just another person staying at the hotel. He could
have simply talked about how much of a moron I was to his coworkers
or brushed it off by saying, ‘‘You can’t please everyone.’’ He truly cared
that they screwed up. He owned it. He changed my view of the Hilton
Garden Inn and the Hilton overall. And he didn’t have to.
To me, Forbes is the Hilton. Not their mission statement or logo.
Every employee is your brand ambassador, your marketer, and the
face of your company. Employees make a difference. Forbes made a
difference for a billion dollar hotel brand to me.
As I walked away and headed back up to my room he said, ‘‘I’d like
to make this right.’’
And my reply was, ‘‘You already did.’’

2
Marketing Is a Verb
We need to hand off the branding baton to everyone in our company;
everyone is a marketer.
Welcome to the Awesome side, fine reader. If you’ve chosen to start
reading from this side of the book it’s for one of three reasons:
1. You are the optimist, who sees the glass full because you just filled
up the second half. You may or may not own a shirt with a unicorn
on it.
2. You are the pessimist, so jaded by years in business that you
are just hoping this side will give you hope and save your soul.
You will last about three chapters before you switch over to the
UnAwesome side, laughing diabolically ...until you realize there
is a part written about you in there. (By the way, the author fits
here with you into Choice 2.)
3. You fall into the group thinking, ‘‘Wait! There’s another side to
this book!?!?’’ Or you bought this purely for the Awesome. Or
you’re my mom. Or you’re reading this in the bookstore, and you
4

Marketing Is a Verb 5
haven’t even noticed the other side yet. You’re waiting for the
stock clerk to get you the latest Twilight novel, aren’t you? Spoiler,
he dies at the end. 1
Whatever the reason, I’m glad you’re here. To be awesome at
business, you first have to realize that it can’t be a policy. You can’t
mandate being awesome; you can’t demand it. You have to hire
awesome. You have to inspire awesome in others, and you have to be
your awesome self. Awesome has to go through every level and every
step of your company. Just like creating a great poster for a crappy
movie doesn’t make the movie any better, fantastic advertising for a
horrible product won’t change how people react once they use it. A
known product name with a horrible return policy will hurt the original
product. Every point of contact with your market is an opportunity to
show them just how great your business really is.
Marketing is a verb. Awesome is a verb. You have to do it. People
may come in because of great marketing, but they come back because
of the experience. Loyalty isn’t built through plastic cards; it’s built
through amazing experiences. No one ever said, ‘‘This restaurant was
horrible, but did you see those ads in the paper!? We have to come
back!!’’ It’s our front lines that engage the market, and without them,
our marketing means nothing. And sadly, although it is our front line’’
who have the first and most important contact with customers, they are
often the lowest paid and least appreciated. We need to hand off the
branding baton to everyone in our company; everyone is a marketer.
According to some really brilliant research about customer service
by Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman, as companies we should
be focusing on the ‘‘Peak End Rule.’’ 2 We judge our experiences with
companies on the peak experience—either the worst or the best—and
the end result. When people think about your business, they’re going
to focus on how good or how bad things got and on how everything
worked out in the end. A really great salesperson who helps with an
exchange can erase negative experiences along the way. The long wait
in line and the bad music in your changing room are both forgotten.
1 #TeamWesleySnipes, http://bit.ly/UnTwilight.
2 http://onforb.es/PeakEndRule

6 The Book of Business Awesome
As long as you can out-awesome mistakes and resolve issues, customers
will have a positive brand experience. Think about that.
We spend a great deal of time and energy focusing on what our
competitors are doing when we should be working on improving
ourselves, especially our front lines. We pour money into designing
logos and brochures while we allow poor customer service to be the
norm. We listen to statistics about when we should schedule our
newsletter and ignore feedback from our employees. Did you know
that, on average, a company saves more than $7,000 for each employee
suggestion that is put into practice? These are the employees we value
least, with the highest turn over. We brush them off, when we need to
be handing them the brand baton.
In The Book of Business Awesome, we are going to look at how we
can ensure we hand off the brand baton to every part of our business.
We will look at how marketing, human resources, and public relations
are all really under the same roof in business.
Some people will ask if this is another social media book. The
way I see it, social media is simply another term for communication.
Everything about business is communication. Whether you’re trying
to build brand awareness, improve customer service, or fill a vacancy,
it’s about people and their impact, good or bad, on our bottom line. So
yes, this book is about people—what they say and what they do.
As you are reading, I want you to be thinking about how we can
get better. Everyone is always jumping ahead to what’s new, but I want
us to make this the year of getting better at what we’re already doing.
We need to shed a few social pounds and stop trying to add more social
media networks to our repertoire. Instead, let’s get better where we
already exist. Social media isn’t about how many places you can be.
It’s about being amazing where you are.

3
Companies Aren’t Awesome;
People Are
We can’t all be Zappos.com or work somewhere supercool like Google.
And I’m glad that we can’t, because if we were all the same, we’d all be
perfectly ordinary.
When we see awesome companies at work around us, a few things can
happen. As customers, we love them for it. They make the day-to-day
chore of being a consumer so much more fun. We’ve all seen enough
boring commercials. We actually spend time and money on ways to
avoid being sold to, so the last thing we’re looking for is another boring
sales pitch. Let’s be honest, we get excited as customers when we’re just
not treated badly. We can’t help but lose our minds when something
great happens.
As business owners, the effects are a little more complicated.
For me, seeing and reading about the great things people do in
business makes me feel like I can do great things too. That’s why I love
to share them. But sometimes, these examples can be intimidating and
7

8 The Book of Business Awesome
even limiting. It’s very easy to see a company in action and think that
you’ll never be able to do the things it can do. Whether it’s because
you’re just getting started, you don’t have the same budget or resources,
your industry isn’t cool enough, or you’re sure your customers wouldn’t
like it, other people’s awesomeness can sometimes make us feel a
little small.
Too often, feeling intimidated becomes our excuse not to be
awesome.
I want to make sure that as you read this book you put yourself in
the picture. Don’t be overwhelmed or think that you need to mimic
the stories I’m going to share. Instead, be inspired to find your own
brand of awesome, that only you can bring to the table.
I know what you’re thinking, and I want you to know you’re
absolutely right. We can’t all be Zappos.com or work somewhere super
cool like Google. And I’m glad that we can’t, because if we were all the
same, we’d all be perfectly ordinary. We spend too much time trying to
be like others in business, when we should be focusing on finding our
own story. I promise you, we all can find our window of awesome in
our job and our companies and great things can happen. That’s what
this book is all about.
So how do we keep ourselves from being intimidated or overwhelmed?Business
is built on relationships—on the simple act of
people interacting and engaging with others. And that all starts with
the individual, with you. In every great business story there is an individual
who started it all. Every great marketing campaign started with
someone deciding to take a chance and step outside the norm. The
outstanding customer service a company is known for was executed
one contact at a time and started with one voice deciding to care.
They may not have always executed it on their own. But at the start
there was one.
I call this situational awesome, and we can all do it. We have access
to it every day—in our attitudes and in our interactions. It starts with
the passion we have for our work and our product. It can be as simple
as just giving a damn about our customers. Sometimes it’s the smile
we give across a store counter to someone looking for a little help. It
might sound simple, but this is the start of every great story I share in

Companies Aren’t Awesome; People Are 9
this book. Someone decided to care or to try. This can be a cashier at
a pet store, a janitor, or a volunteer.
Next we have occupational awesome, which although similar to
situational awesome, comes with a little more definition.
Occupational awesome is about our roles and how they define
windows of awesome for us. For example, customer service agents
have a special opportunity to make amazing things happen in their
companies every day. As we will speak about often in the chapters
ahead, frontline workers, especially, are capable of making a huge
impact on brand perception, because their jobs give them so many
opportunities to engage with customers.
Other positions in a company come with their own opportunities.
Although it might be easy to assume that more senior positions would
have an easier time finding opportunities for awesome, this isn’t always
true. Every single job in a company is important, and every single
person a part of your branding and marketing.
Next up, we have divisional awesome. This is all about groups and
the amazing things that can happen when people come together and
the results are truly greater than the sum of their parts. Here we also
start to see the opportunity for situational or occupational awesome
to start spreading throughout a company. This is where one person’s
passion can start to shape an entire company. And when one division
of a company starts to shine, it’s hard for the others to ignore.
And last, but certainly not least, is institutional awesome. This is
where you find companies that, through the work of individuals and
groups, have created brand-wide amazingness. These are the companies
known for their outstanding customer service, products, services, and
campaigns.
This level has an especially powerful role to play, through hiring
and human resources. Here, a company can create opportunities for
awesome at every level, from the individual up. At the institutional
level we also see what public relations (PR) can do for a brand and
how awesome PR will not only do damage control but will make the
company come out looking even better than it did before the mistake.
Together, all these levels become your brand voice, the message,
and the image people think of when they think about your company. No

10 The Book of Business Awesome
matter whether your business is a one-person show just getting started
or a multinational corporation, whether you are a frontline worker
or a top-level executive, you can create awesome. The individual is
the start.
How are you going to be awesome today? 1
1Scratch that. You’re reading this book, which makes you already awesome by default.
High-five.

Contents
1 Usually High Call Volume 1
2 Marketing Is a Verb 3
3 Customers Don’t See Silos 6
4 How to Flip Off Your Customers 8
5 Bright Shiny Objects 11
6 QR Codes 15
7 Groupon, Social Commerce Psychology, and Too Many
Cupcakes 17
8 What Is the ROI of a Pin? 21
9 Skippy the Social Scaler 23
10 Mobile Madness 25
11 Data Is Dangerous 31
12 Toyota Punk’d 34
v

vi Contents
13 Kids Don’t Play in Crappy Playgrounds 36
14 The UnSilent Minority 38
15 Respect the Inbox 40
16 Lies Internet Marketers Tell 44
17 Warm Spam 49
18 Social Is Human 53
19 Human Is Social 56
20 Lehigh Valley 61
21 Outrage Is Contagious 63
22 Check Your Facts 66
23 Manning the Wall 71
24 Franklin Goose 74
25 Boners BBQ 76
26 Cooks Source 83
27 Social Extortion 85
28 ConAgra 88
29 800 Million Not Listening 90
30 5 Percent of Companies Are Awesome 93
31 Win a Chance to Ruin Your Brand 95
32 How We’re Killing Facebook 100

Contents vii
33 Hall of Shame 103
34 Kenneth Cole 105
35 Newt Gingrich 108
36 Airline UnAwesome 114
37 Political UnAwesome 118
38 Chrysler 122
39 Dilbert 124
40 The UnAwesome End 126
UnAwesome Acknowledgments 128

1
Usually High Call Volume
What we do trumps what we say every time.
I have to call my bank a lot. Because of all the travelling I do, they
like me to keep in touch about where I am. You know, to make sure
those withdrawals in Vegas one day, lunch out at home a few days
later, and then a taxi in Chicago the next week are all on the up and
up. I would check up on me too.
Now they always say their mission is customer satisfaction. In
fact, my bank’s number one core value, as listed on their website,
is to ‘‘Deliver Legendary Customer Experiences.’’ Legendary. You see
that and you know that you are important to them. The customer is
the bank.
The problem is, when I call, I get this message while I wait
for my legendary customer service experience: ‘‘We are experiencing
unusually high call volumes.’’ You expect this sometimes, right? I get
it; we’re all busy. The thing is, for the past five years, every single
time I call, I hear this message. And I got to wondering, when exactly
1

2 The Book of Business UnAwesome
do unusually high call volumes become the usual high call volumes?
There is no such thing as a 24-hour-long peak time for calls.
Theysaythatthecustomerismostimportant,thatserviceis
number one, but they act differently. You are treated as though you
aren’t important at all. If I were really number one, they would staff
their phone line properly. They would make it easier for me to use
their services around the world. There would be no hoops, or at least
very few, for me to jump through.
It usually costs a pretty penny for someone to write a company’s
mission statement, find a frame that’s just right, and hang it on the
wall. But if your actions contradict those values hanging on your wall
or posted on your website, I suggest not investing in a nice frame,
because the statement is worthless. In fact, you are no longer going to
be writing your mission statement—because your customer is going to
rewrite it for you. What we do trumps what we say every time.
Welcome to The Book of Business UnAwesome, wherewelook
at the ways businesses are letting us down, messing things up, and
of course, causing the brand train wrecks we can’t take our eyes off
of. We’re going to look at UnAwesome in all areas of business, from
marketing and public relations (PR) to human resources (HR) and
customer service.
Put on your seat belt, hold on tight, and get ready for a bumpy ride.

2
Marketing Is a Verb
It’s what we do that affects our brand perception more than any brochure
ever could.
Welcome to the UnAwesome side.
You are the person who cheered on Darth Vader. You have Boba
Fett statues in your office and Predator ones too (just like I do). Don’t
be shy, UnAwesome reader; this is the side of the book I would read
first too.
It’s not so much that we hate people. It’s just that we’ve found,
through experience and extensive research, that they’re morons about
85 percent of the time.
You are the person who has been so abused as a customer for so
long that even mediocre customer service feels extraordinary. You’ve
had every kind of bad boss and horrible employee. And if one more
of your friends invites you to vote for them, asks you to like their
Facebook page, or reminds you about their LinkedIn request, you may
just throw this book at them. You aren’t expecting the awesome to
happen, so you find yourself here, with me, on the UnAwesome side.
3

4 The Book of Business UnAwesome
If you are in business yourself, here are the steps for creating the
ultimate UnAwesome business.
The first step to spend all of your money on brochures, billboards,
and car wraps.
Place that order for Frisbees with your logo on them and a giant
Yellow Pages Ad. Be sure to have nothing left over to properly hire
any talent whatsoever: no money for customer service, quality control,
or the person who cleans up the lunchroom once a week.
Make sure your website is a non-mobile-friendly copy of your
brochure. Flash is always good. Animations and music that force play
automatically are critical.
Don’t forget to include a pop up, pop in, and pop under—all great
ways to increase your chances of beating that prospect who landed on
your page over the head a few more times. Why not? They were just
leaving anyway.
Ignore your customers. Pretend the conversations they are having
about you, online and offline, aren’t happening at all. Really, wouldn’t
business be so much better if we didn’t have to deal with pesky
customers at all? The only time we should be reaching out to our
market is with promotions and new product launches.
With these simple steps you are ready to go. Let the UnAwesome
begin!
Serious Scott: I hope you can see how insanely ludicrous this all
sounds, yet sadly this is exactly what you are doing when you think
marketing is all about branding, brochures, and billboards. Marketing
is a verb; it’s what we do that affects our brand perception more than
any brochure ever could. In the upcoming sections you are going to
see how companies’ actions speak louder than any printed word.
I cannot even begin to estimate how much money and time have
been spent by companies crafting, redrafting, and editing their mission
statements. They work long and hard on creating these statements and
hang them up on their walls. So fancy.
The problem is, when you go to any employee (okay, except
maybe the ones on the mission statement committee)—or even more
important, when you go to customers—and ask them if they know
your mission statement, they won’t. You will end up with tons of
different answers—more than to any other question you could ask
about a company.

Marketing Is a Verb 5
That’s because your mission statement, no matter how nicely it sits
on your desk, actually doesn’t matter at all. Your mission statement is
your actions, and each person who comes in contact with your brand
can have a different experience. The statement you make to the world
about your goals and what you truly value as a business is not found on
a piece of paper. It’s found in what you do.
When your wall says that ‘‘customers are number one’’ and yet
you make them jump through hoops every time they want to return
something, ask a question, or reach a customer service agent, then they
are not number one to you. Efficiency, overhead, and not hiring enough
customer service representatives are your number one concerns.
It is simply not good enough to spend more energy deciding what
our mission statements are than we do listening to our customers. It’s
not good enough to talk about what our brand is once a year, when
we have our yearly business retreat at an overpriced destination. Our
mission statements are being written every single day by our customers.
Our values are being dictated by the actions of our employees—every
day and with every interaction people have with our brand, company,
product, or service.
If you want to be UnAwesome, consider these companies as
examples, follow their lead, and we’ll see you in the next book. 1
1Seriously, if you really fark up, shoot me an e-mail and we’ll fit you in. This guy needs
content. unawesome@un-marketing.com.

3
Customers Don’t See Silos
Being great in social media needs to carry through the resolution chain.
Have you ever waited in line at a store to return something? Always
seems to happen to me on the busiest shopping days, like Black Friday
or Boxing Day. And then, once you’ve waited a very long time, trying
to be patient, you get up to the front of the line and somebody tells
you, ‘‘This isn’t the right line.’’
You have to go line up somewhere else, starting the process all over
and giving up even more of your time, effort, and energy. And the whole
time you’re thinking, ‘‘Hey, I’m the customer here. This shouldn’t be so
hard.’’ If you’re returning something, you may already have a negative
issue with the store. Or maybe you just want to exchange what you
have and turn around and spend even more money. Either way, you
don’t want spend more time in another line. I know I never do.
This is what a lot of companies are doing online in social media.
Time and time again, I see examples of people tweeting or saying
something on Facebook to a brand, looking for resolution, just to be
6

Customers Don’t See Silos 7
told they are in the wrong line. Sometimes the brand replies directly
to let them know that this place (Twitter or their Facebook page)
is not the right spot for talking about whatever issue they’re having.
More often, and worse, no one is manning the account at all, and the
customers and their issues are simply ignored and left sitting there.
One of the worst things you can do online as a brand is write
in your profile, company description, or even hidden in your notes
that your page is ‘‘not the place for customer service complaints or
inquiries.’’ People don’t usually read everything about you on your
page before commenting. They just won’t see it, and that’s why it is
such a big problem.
We run our businesses through silos. There’s human resources,
marketing, and public relations, and then there’s customer service.
We use these to keep us organized and make sure everything gets
done. The thing is, customers don’t see silos. They see your brand
as a whole. And every time they don’t get a response or are told that
they’re waiting in the wrong line, it hurts your brand. If you have a
Twitter account, that is your company. Your Facebook wall is your
company—it isn’t HR or customer service or PR; it’s you. We have
to realize that this online place needs to be more of a social traffic
control tower, automatically putting customers into the right line,
versus one that puts up walls and acts as a gatekeeper.
If you open up the social media doors and people start flooding in,
be prepared for them to flood in and say anything, not just what you
want them to say or ask. Set up something within your organization
so that whoever sees comments will automatically assign them to
the right department and reply to the customer. Be sure someone is
responsible for letting customers know your brand is listening, cares
about their feedback, is taking care of whatever issues may have arisen,
and has passed it along to the right people. There is nothing wrong
with asking a customer to e-mail you or phone you because you need
specific or private information that shouldn’t be shared online, but
make sure you tell them publicly in your reply.
All of these interactions with customers are changing your brand’s
impression every single day.
Right now, when people are driving down the road, they don’t see
the separate silos listed with your department names. All they see is you.
And we are changing that brand impression with every interaction.
Being great in social media needs to carry through the resolution chain.

4
How to Flip Off Your Customers
It should never take 10 business days to reply to a customer.
A couple of close-to-home examples for me when it comes to
silos have to do with the connection, or lack there of, between a
company’s social presence and offline presence. Last year, while riding
judgmentally in the VIA Rail business class cabin, I happened upon
a very unpleasant train attendant. I had apparently wronged her in a
past life, and her snarky attitude was something I didn’t care for. I felt
like she was thinking, ‘‘If it wasn’t for these passengers, working on
this train would be so much better.’’
While racing down the tracks, I tweeted about my impression
and the VIA Rail Twitter account tweeted back almost immediately,
wanting to help. They provided me with a customer service e-mail
address, where I was asked to better explain what had occurred.
All the while, the same train attendant was still dishing out the
attitude. 1
1 Talk about real-time customer service!
8

How to Flip Off Your Customers 9
After sending the e-mail, I immediately got a reply back and
thought, ‘‘Wow, being a big deal on Twitter rules!’’ but it turned out to
be an autoresponder, thanking me for my e-mail and warning me that
it would be about 10 business days before I would hear back from them.
Ten. Business. Days. Not even 10 days. They needed to take weekends
into account. So it would take about two weeks to reply back to me. I
understand managing expectations, but unless you are writing out each
e-mail in chalk and running the slate to somebody up a mountain,
it should never take 10 business days to reply to a customer. I then
decided to phone in my complaint, and let’s just say I would have had
a better chance running my complaint up said mountain than talking
to anybody with a reasonable amount of intelligence or concern.
This is the problem when we get excited about social media but
then drop the brand ball in other departments. Being great in social
media and only mediocre or terrible in the rest of your customer
service channels is a bad move. Every part of the machine needs to be
running at the same level. This is why I don’t think social media is
the immediate answer for many large companies; first they need to fix
their existing customer service issues.
It gets even worse when brands outsource social platforms to
a powerless PR agency. I have no problem delegating social media
to another company that handles your current communications, but
when they have no knowledge, say, or influence over anything outside
of a press release, they’re a virtual talking head—and one that can’t
say much.
An example of this is what happened online with the now discontinued
Flip video camera. The awesome Chris Farias, who is the
Yoda of design, unicorn influencer, 2 and partner at Kitestring Creative
Branding Studio, 3 the ones who are responsible for unmarketing.com,
decided to tweet the Flip video Canada account about an issue with his
camera. You should know that Chris and the entire agency staff were
huge fans of the product, but they had a problem with an apparent
common fault and decided to tweet about it, because Twitter is their
preferred method of communication.
2 Seriously, go check him out on Klout.com.
3 http://www.kitestring.ca.

10 The Book of Business UnAwesome
The Flip account replied and basically told Chris he was in the
wrong line, that his question was a customer service issue, and that he
would have to call them. Well, I got wind of this and decided to let
them know my thoughts, specifically that they were representing the
entire company. The least Flip could do was throw Chris a bone and
connect him with someone who could help.
Next thing you know, Chris’s phone rings and the guy who runs
the Flip account is on the other end. You might think he called to
apologize and get Chris a new camera, but no. He actually called
and reamed him out, asking why Chris was causing trouble. The Flip
account manager explained that he provided only PR for Flip and
wasn’t responsible for their customer service.
Listen to me very carefully, PR people, social media consultants,
divas, and gurus: you are not an extension of your clients’ brands; you
are their brands. You are more their brand than most of the people
who work at the company, because you represent the company in the
public eye. Anybody running a social media account for a brand should
have access to answers and resources within the company, or at least
a game plan, for when common issues arise. Otherwise, you might as
well not have the account at all.

CONTENTS
Warning: Unexpected Honesty... xv
Prologue: How a Lard Salesman, an NFL Agent,
and a YouTube Star Explain Likeonomics xvii
Introduction: Likeability, Rogue Economists, and the Lovable Fool xxvii
Author’s Note: Why I Don’t Write about Synergy
And Paradigm Shifts xli
PART I The Crisis and the Solution 1
Chapter 1 Inside the Modern Believability Crisis:
How Rockefeller’s Dimes, War Propaganda,
and the Marlboro Man Ruined the World 3
The Birth of Modern PR 5
#occupywallstreet 6
The Propaganda of Revolutions 7
When Advertising Ruled the World 9
The Mass Perception Principle 10
Marketing as the Bad Guy 12
Living in the Society of Distrust 14
What Is The Believability Crisis? 15
Solving the Believability Crisis 16
Chapter 2 Navigating the Likeability Gap: What Rwanda,
Golf Courses, and Ocean’s Eleven Can Teach Us
about the Decisions We Make 19
The Movie Man 21
What Business Are You In? 23
The Engagement Problem 24
The Reinvention of Rwanda 26
Humility Wanted 27
The Likeability Gap 29
xi

xii Contents
The Toilet Business 31
Understanding Weak Ties 32
Golf & The Likeability Gap 33
Why Relationships Are Not about Networking 35
Getting Julia Roberts 36
The Age of Equivalence 37
How Originality Died—and How We Can
GetItBack 39
The Differentiation Ideal 40
The Likeability Gap and the World 42
Chapter 3 The ROI of Likeability: Why Spreadsheets Need
to Die, Websites Stink, and Likeable Politicians
Always Win 45
The New Stupid 46
The Sexiness Of Analytics 47
Data Overload, Insight Underload 48
Four Ways Data Becomes Meaningless 49
Rethinking ROI 50
The Flip Side of Data 51
Why Context Matters (and Your ‘‘Sticky’’ Website
Actually Stinks) 52
The Real Reason Likeable Politicians Always Win 53
Why Results Matter More than Data 54
The Five Principles of Likeonomics 55
PART II The Principles 57
Chapter 4 Truth 59
Oprah’s Secret 60
Are You Building on a Sinkhole? 61
The Lie Doctor and the Dalai Lama 61
Empowerment versus the Anti-Truth Policy 63
Embracing Your Inconvenient Truth 64
Selling Cardboard 66
Why Being Truthful Is So Hard 68
The Three Elements of Truth 69
Chapter Summary: Three Things to Remember
about Truth 71

Contents xiii
Chapter 5 Relevance 73
The Relevance Challenge 75
Canada’s Favorite Storyteller 76
Handshakes in Kazakhstan 78
The Renaissance Banker 80
Making the Bank Relevant Again 81
Everyone Who Matters Knows You 81
Why Is Relevance So Hard? 83
The Three Elements of Relevance 84
Chapter Summary: Three Things to Remember
about Relevance 86
Chapter 6 Unselfishness 89
Creating an Ideal World 90
The Ethical Warehouse 93
What about the Selfish Gene? 94
Wikinomics and the Rise of Collaboration 95
Finding the Altruism Gene 96
Do Doctors Need to Be Competent and Kind? 97
Why People Don’t Sue Likeable Doctors 99
How the Unselfish and Compassionate Will Rule
the World 101
How Japanese Citizens Responded to Disaster
with Unselfishness 102
The Customer Service Revolution Will Be Twitterized 105
Why We Are Selfish 106
The Three Elements of Unselfishness 108
Chapter Summary: Three Things to Remember
about Unselfishness 110
Chapter 7 Simplicity 111
Desperately Seeking Simplicity 113
The Plain Language Movement 114
The Myth of Good Complexity 115
Gadget Confusion 116
Flipping the Video Camera Market 118
Winning on Simplicity 119
How Simplicity Inspires Trust 121
How Orange Got People Saving Again 122

xiv Contents
Hypnotizing Chickens 123
How Napkins Can Explain Health Care 124
Why Simplicity Gets So Complicated 126
The Three Elements of Simplicity
Chapter Summary: Three Things to Remember
127
about Simplicity 129
Chapter 8 Timing 131
The Most Creative Lunch in History 133
Timing Is Everything 135
How Sweetening Changed Television History 136
Our Time-Shifted Culture 136
Gilt and Luxury with an Expiration 137
The Rise of Shopper Marketing 138
Google ZMOT 139
Why Timing Is So Tough 141
The Three Elements of Timing
Chapter Summary: Three Things to Remember
142
about Timing 144
Conclusion 145
Living in the Era of Likeonomics 146
Likenomics on Mulberry Street 147
PART III The StoryBook 149
Introduction: How the StoryBook Works 151
Bhutan: The Real Happiest Place on Earth 153
Packers: Why Cheeseheads Rule the NFL 155
Khan Academy: Flipping the Rules of Education 157
Maverick Adventures: Kitesurfing with Richard Branson 159
Anoopy Singla: The Fast Rise of Slow Cooking 161
The Backstory: The Making of Likeonomics 165
Special Thanks 167
Notes: Further Reading and Research 169
About the Author 173
Index 175

INTRODUCTION: LIKEABILITY, ROGUE
ECONOMISTS, AND THE LOVABLE FOOL
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his
head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
—Nelson Mandela
The first time I experienced the powerful influence of Nelson Mandela
was from the front seat of a taxi cab riding down the streets of Jo’burg
(as the locals call Johannesburg). Mandela’s picture was on billboards
along the highway to the city even though he was no longer president
of South Africa, and my driver was speaking about his influence and
how he had inspired the nation. That story started nearly 20 years ago.
In 1993, tens of thousands of Afrikaners (white South Africans) were
preparing for war. Three years earlier, a man named Nelson Mandela
had been released after 27 years in prison. He was no hero to this group.
They saw him as the founder of a terrorist organization who threatened
their way of life and belonged in jail. They were ready to fight.
As reporter and biographer John Carlin wrote, that was the moment
where Mandela began ‘‘the most unlikely exercise in political seduction
ever undertaken.’’ 1Heinvited the Afrikaners leaders over for tea and
listened to their concerns. Then, he persuaded them to abandon their
guns and violence. The battle never happened.
A year later, he was sworn in as president of South Africa and vowed
to make reconciling the racial tension between whites and blacks his
number-one priority. Somehow he had to overcome decades of hate
and convince people ready to die for their causes to see one another as
brothers.
In one of his first acts as president, Mandela invited Francois Pienaar,
the captain of the South African Rugby (Springbok) team, to have tea
with him. That afternoon he struck an alliance, asking Pienaar to help
him turn rugby into a force for uniting all South Africans.
xxvii

xxviii Introduction: Likeability, Rogue Economists, and the Lovable Fool
During the Rugby World Cup in 1995, Pienaars led the mostly
white players of the Springbok team in singing an old song of black
resistance, which was now the new national anthem, ‘‘Nkosi Sikelele
Afrika’’ (‘‘God Bless Africa’’). It was a powerful demonstration that the
players believed in having a united South Africa. Inspired, the team
fought the odds and made it to the final against Australia.
On June 24, 1995, minutes before the final match would start,
Mandela went on the field in the middle of the stadium wearing his
Springbok green shirt to wish Pienaar and the team good luck. The
crowd, made up of 95 percent white South Africans, was stunned. For
many years, that green shirt had been seen as a symbol of only white
South Africa. For a black man to wear it was unheard of.
The crowd erupted in cheers of ‘‘Nel-son, Nel-son’’ and everyone
across South Africa celebrated. Mandela would go on to lead the
racial reconciliation both during his presidency, and then after as an
ambassador to the world for South Africa. In 2004, the country was
awarded the world’s largest stage to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It
is now seen as a likely future Olympic destination, as well.
This story of South Africa’s triumph was chronicled by Carlin in
his book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made
aNation. It was so powerful, it inspired the Academy Award-winning
film Invictus by director Clint Eastwood.
Why People Believe in Likeability
(and Why They Don’t)
The fate of South Africa is linked to the story of one man’s personal
charm and likeability. This may seem like an extreme example. After
all, not many people have the gift that Mandela has. Yet, his experience
does explain the very fundamental role that likeability can take in
inspiring belief and changing our world around us. People didn’t follow
Mandela because of the ideas; they followed because of him. Whenhe
invited you over for tea and listened to your concerns, and then spoke,
you couldn’t help trusting his vision.
Likeability itself can be a difficult idea to believe in, because it
feels soft. In doing the research and writing for this book over the past

Introduction: Likeability, Rogue Economists, and the Lovable Fool xxix
two years, I have had hundreds of conversations with people about the
concept of likeability. When I started conducting interviews, I assumed
that almost everyone would be a skeptic.
What I learned rapidly was that most people actually fall into two
different groups. Both can be critical about the idea of likeability and
its role in success, but for different reasons. Here are their paraphrased
arguments:
Reaction #1: ‘‘That’s so obvious.’’
Here’s what ‘‘Obvious Guy’’ says:
Everyone knows that likeability and the power of networking
will get you everything from your new job to the next contract.
I once won a new project just because I play hockey with
the procurement manager for a big firm and they needed a
contractor quickly. We won the job without an RFP. Anyone
in sales knows that no one will buy from you if they don’t
like you.
Reaction #2: ‘‘That’s not true—the product
matters more.’’
Here’s what ‘‘Features Guy’’ says:
Sure, I enjoy being around likeable people—but at the end of
the day people will only buy something or believe an idea if
it really has merit. I’m not going to buy a crap product just
because I like you, and I’m not going to believe an idea just
because I find the person delivering it to be more likeable.
I understand both of these guys. In fact, at various times in the
writing process for this book, I have been both of these guys. In a
sense, it is why I spent a significant part of my research time looking
at all the reasons why likeability wasn’t really that important. I studied
examples of unlikeable leaders and brands that still succeeded on some
level despite being unlikeable. I read books about the impact of luck

xxx Introduction: Likeability, Rogue Economists, and the Lovable Fool
and the importance of making great products that market themselves.
I dug backward through history, looking at whether the importance of
likeability was different during the Great Depression or the golden age
of Sweden.
What I learned is that success has much less to do with what we
create and much more to do with who believes in it.
This is not about creating an awful product and trying to use
likeability to sell it. It is also not about trying to fake likeability to
support some sort of sinister ulterior motive. I will speak about how to
handle both of these situations later in the book.
Instead, my aim is to look at the intersection of likeability and the
global economy and offer a vision of how any one of us can build the
kinds of relationships that lead to all kinds of personal success—from
launching a business to getting a new job.
The Nonboring Economics of Likeonomics
The unlikeliest place to start a discussion about the impact of likeability
on the economy would be in the field of economics itself. One of the
first things I did in my research, in fact, was to look at what leading
economists might have already published about the main idea of this
book. An economist, as writer Laurence J. Peter once wrote, ‘‘is an
expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday
didn’t happen today.’’
Luckily, this is not really an economics book and Likeonomics is
not an economic theory in a strict sense. Rather, it is an attempt to
describe the world that we live in today and what people and business
professionals alike need to do in order to survive and thrive in it. Unlike
many traditional economists, I tend to avoid academic thinking and
language, preferring instead to think about the world in terms of human
interactions rather than numbers in a spreadsheet. It turns out these are
not the opposing factors that they once were, as the world of economics
would learn the day the surprising results of the voting for the winners
of the 2002 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences were announced.

Introduction: Likeability, Rogue Economists, and the Lovable Fool xxxi
The Psychology of Likeonomics
Dr. Daniel Kahneman was once described by Harvard psychologist
Daniel Gilbert as ‘‘the most distinguished living psychologist in the
world, bar none.’’ Along with partner Amos Tversky, his lifetime of
work in applying psychological principles of how people behave to
economic theory essentially led directly to what we today call the
field of behavioral economics. When they were awarded the Nobel
Prize in 2002, the awarding committee credited Kahneman for ‘‘for
having integrated insights from psychological research into economic
science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making
under uncertainty.’’
The idea that people are not logical robots, but rather that they
respond to incentives and are led by emotions is still a relatively recent
idea.
For a field once called the ‘‘dismal science’’ by the Victorian
historian Thomas Carlyle in the nineteenth century, one of its strongest
mainstream boosts for the importance of economics would come in
2005 with the publication of Freakonomics, which also inspired the title
for this book.
The authors of Freakonomics like to use the description ‘‘rogue
economist’’ to describe their take on the world. Part economics and
part social psychology, they merged these worlds together successfully
in a groundbreaking book that explains why we behave the way we
do, why seemingly unrelated phenomena from across the world may
be linked, and how our understanding of what motivates our behaviors
may not be as simple and rational as we like to think.
Since Freakonomics, this theme of the irrationality of behavior is one
that has become extremely popular in multiple best-selling books.
Each book reaches a related conclusion—that people act in emotional,
human, and unexpected ways, and respond to incentives.
We are not logical robots.
Just because we respond to emotional appeals and tend to act in
human ways, however, doesn’t necessarily prove that likeability is all
that important. After all, there seem to be plenty of examples of leaders

xxxii Introduction: Likeability, Rogue Economists, and the Lovable Fool
who are successful despite being frequently described as unlikeable. Like
Steve Jobs, for instance.
The Jobs Paradox
The late Steve Jobs was clearly visionary and had a brilliant mind,
but was also often described as egomaniacal and hard to work with.
A Boston Globe review of the biography of Jobs by veteran journalist
Walter Isaacson, released just a few weeks after Jobs’ death begins with
this pronouncement about him: ‘‘Life often reduced Steve Jobs to tears.
But he rarely suffered alone. The cofounder of Apple, Inc., spread
his unhappiness like a virus, abusing his friends, neglecting his family,
insulting and reviling his colleagues. And almost to a person, they loved
Jobs to the end.’’ 2
This what we might call the Jobs Paradox—that some people can
seem to be completely unlikeable, and yet succeed and inspire those
close to them regardless.
Jobs was hardly the only unlikeable leader in Silicon Valley.
Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, has developed a reputation for
being an unlikeable character, as well. He has made fun of rivals on
stage at the Oracle annual OpenWorld conference and attacked former
Sun rival and CEO Jonathan Schwartz for ‘‘spending too much time on
his blog.’’ When asked about Bill Gates, he famously said, ‘‘Referring
to Gates as the smartest man in America isn’t right. Wealth isn’t the
same thing as intelligence.’’
When Bloomberg television decided to do a feature on Ellison
for their Game Changers series, co-founder of Oracle Bruce Scott was
interviewed and shared, ‘‘I remember [Ellison] very distinctly telling me
one time: Bruce, we can’t be successful unless we lie to customers. All
the things that you would read in books of somebody being a leader,
he wasn’t.’’
When asked about his personal philosophy, Ellison once said:
‘‘I don’t believe in being nice to my enemies. My enemies are trying to
deprive me of the success that led to my happiness. I want to beat my
enemies, and it’s hard to be nice to them at the same time.’’ 3

Introduction: Likeability, Rogue Economists, and the Lovable Fool xxxiii
There are probably dozens of other examples of this paradox. So
what does it mean? Are the business clichés like ‘‘nice guys finish last’’ or
‘‘nice girls don’t get the corner office’’ actually right? And if likeability
matters so much, how can we explain the success of these two men
who seemed to make arrogance and competition their priorities? The
answer comes down to understanding the difference between likeability
and being nice because of the human need to be liked.
Do We Need to Be Liked?
People who care too much about being liked are often described as
weak or insecure. As a result, few people and even fewer business leaders
are ready to admit that they care about it or even factor likeability into
any of their everyday decisions. So if likeability is such a hard quality
to admit to caring about, why is the need to be liked such a powerful
motivational force? If anyone has the answer, it is Dr. Roger Corvin,
a clinical psychologist practicing in Montrealwho has spent his career
trying to help patients with a variety of mental or emotional issues.
His average afternoon might include seeing a depressed teen, an
executive with anxiety, and a mother with post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD). Despite the variety of genders, life situations, ages, and
ethnicities, Dr. Corvin started to realize that there was a common trait
among all the people who came to see him : They all had a need to be
liked by other people.
In his book, The Need to Be Liked, he describes this as a fundamental
human need in psychological terms because:
1. The brain and body are designed to acquire it.
2. Not fulfilling the need has negative effects on the person.
The primary function of this need, he argues, is to ‘‘ensure that
we form relationships with other people.’’ There is a clear evolutionary
reason why this would have mattered for our ancestors: Those who
were able to form relationships and work together were more likely to
survive.
So what about the curious cases of Jobs and Ellison? Were they
simply immune to this need to be liked and therefore able to behave
more harshly?

xxxiv Introduction: Likeability, Rogue Economists, and the Lovable Fool
The answer to the Jobs Paradox lies in Dr. Colvin’s point about the
many qualities of likeability. Likeability is about being able to personally
connect with people on a different level. Jobs, despite his well-known
ego and arrogance, had a talent for telling the truth, which people
loved.
A few months before he passed away, Nike CEO Mark Parker was
asked by an interviewer about the best piece of advice he had ever been
given. He recalled calling Jobs shortly after becoming CEO and asking
him for any advice. ‘‘Well, just one thing,’’ said Jobs. ‘‘Nike makes
some of the best products in the world. Products that you lust after. But
you also make a lot of crap. Just get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on
the good stuff.’’
He wasn’t joking. It was that type of honesty and clarity of vision
that attracted people to Jobs. It made him likeable, in his own way. It
also illustrates an important point of difference.
Being likeable is not the same thing as being nice.
Ellison also seemed to have a different standard for how he would
behave depending on who he was dealing with. In an interview for
Softwar, Ellison noted that ‘‘[B]eing insensitive, rude or mean to someone
close to you, or a perfect stranger for that matter, is self-destructive and
self-degrading behavior. You’ll think less of yourself for doing it.’’
Understanding that likeability doesn’t mean the same thing to
everyone may seem like a confusing contradiction. As we will soon see,
however, likeability is enough to compensate for some very real human
failings. In Jobs’ case, it may be extreme arrogance. In other cases, as
two behavior and decision sciences professors learned, it may be simply
a lack of competence.
The Hidden Appeal of the Likeable Fool
In 2005, Tiziana Casciaro, a Harvard Business School professor and
Miguel Sousa Lobo, a professor of decision sciences at Duke University,
decided to find out just how important likeability was in a business context.
Together, they conducted a series of surveys at four organizations:

Introduction: Likeability, Rogue Economists, and the Lovable Fool xxxv
a Silicon Valley tech company, a division of an IT corporation, a U.S.
university, and the Spanish country office of a global luxury goods
corporation. Combining this with results from surveys filled out by
a large group of MBA students, they ultimately studied collected and
studied data from over 10,000 work relationships.
Everyone they spoke to was plotted against two characteristics based
on how they answered questions and how their peers rated them:
their likeability and their competence. They then asked participants to
imagine they had a job to do at work. Which of their colleagues would
they choose to work with? On one level, the results were completely
predictable.
Everyone wanted to work with the highly likeable and highly
competent individuals (who the study dubbed the ‘‘Lovable Stars’’), and
no one wanted to work with the low competence and low likeability
individuals (the ‘‘Incompetent Jerk’’). The unexpected results came
when looking at the other two categories.
high
Competence
low
low
Competent Jerk
mostly avoided
Incompetent jerk
desperately avoided
Likability
Lovable Star
deperately wanted
Lovable Fool
mildly wanted
The study demonstrated that when faced with a choice between a
more likeable person who workers had a stronger personal relationship
with, or someone who had better job performance, but was less
likeable—most people chose to work with the ‘‘Lovable Fool’’ (low
competence, high likeability) rather than the ‘‘Competent Jerk’’ (high
competence, low likeability).
The conclusion of the study was clear: ‘‘When faced with a choice
between a ‘competent jerk’ and a ‘lovable fool’ as a work partner,
people usually opt for likeability over ability.’’ This is not an isolated
high

xxxvi Introduction: Likeability, Rogue Economists, and the Lovable Fool
finding, either. Consider these results from research conducted around
the world over the past few decades:
In a communications study from 2003, researchers at the University of
Michigan uncovered that ‘‘friendly and positive employees are more
productive.’’
A 1984 study by the University of California showed that doctors
unconsciously spend more time and offer better quality care to patients
they like.
In his book Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote of the importance of
being likeable and how it leads to trust. ‘‘Some people,’’ he noted
‘‘are inherently likeable. If you’re not, work on it.’’
A study in 2001 from Columbia University found that the more
popular and likeable workers were seen as trustworthy, motivated,
decisive, and hard-working, and as such were recommended for
fast-track promotions and pay raises.
Across the business world and beyond, likeability has a fundamental
power in most of our interactions with people and organizations.
Likeability makes the difference.
Inside Part I: The Crisis and the Solution
Of course, likeability on some level has always mattered, so why write
this book now—and why does it matter so much to understanding our
world, behavior, and global economy?
Part I of the book will tackle these important questions by looking
at the very real believability crisis that we are in, how we got here, and
why the idea behind Likeonomics offers a vision for where we need to
go next.
In Chapter 1—Inside the Modern Believability Crisis, we look
backward at the rise of propaganda and how trust in business and
organizations has reached an all-time low. You will read how an
unexpected public relations campaign for an oil tycoon in the early 1900s
jumpstarted our ‘‘modern believability crisis,’’ And why marketing is the

Introduction: Likeability, Rogue Economists, and the Lovable Fool xxxvii
source of all manipulation. Moving quickly through the past hundred
years, we will see how this growth in manipulation on every level has
created an unprecedented challenge for each of us (and the organizations
we work with) to inspire or motivate people to do or believe in
anything.
Moving to Chapter 2—Navigating the Likeability Gap, the concept
of the ‘‘likeability gap’’ will help to explain the nature of how we decide
and why we choose to work with and help people and organizations
that we like. Through the story of the rise of Rwanda and the real
reason why so many million-dollar deals start on the golf course, this
chapter will look at why relationships matter so much and how being
more likeable is the key to creating more success.
Finally, in Chapter 3—The ROI of Likeonomics, we will look
at what the real business and personal value is behind the concept
of Likeonomics. This chapter will move from analyzing decades of
research into education reform, to the story of why ROI was originally
invented (it’s not what you think). Ultimately, we will tackle several
flawed assumptions about measurement and look at some new ideas for
how to really measure success and why it is not about creating a better
spreadsheet.
Inside Part II: The Principles
After the focus of Part I on demonstrating all the ways that Likeonomics
explains the world we live in today, Part II will go deeper to offer
a practical and useful look at why people trust some organizations or
people and not others—and how you can be more trusted and more
believable in any situation or role.
In looking at all the research about how people and organizations
become more believable, as well as the impact that social media has
had on how we interact with one another and companies, I wanted to
uncover some key principles for what really matters when it comes to
being more believable. My aim was to find these principles and then
create some sort of acronym to describe them. As readers of my blog
already know, using acronyms is a method I often use to make new
ideas more memorable.

xxxviii Introduction: Likeability, Rogue Economists, and the Lovable Fool
So one day more than a year ago, I gathered all of my research
together and started to define what I felt were the most important
principles. The starting point was research that had addressed a similar
challenge:
1. The Likeability Factor—I looked at Tim Sanders’ award-winning
work in writing The Likeability Factor about how to be more likeable
as a person. His four ‘‘elements of likeability’’ came down to
friendliness, relevance, empathy, and realness. In his mind, these
were in ‘‘green light order,’’ which meant you had to be friendly
before you could be relevant, and so on.
2. The Netherlands Study—Twenty years ago, the Advertising
Research Foundation set their research agenda for 1991 and proposed
that studying the impact of likeability on advertising research
should be a key topic. That year, several research studies on the topic
were conducted and three authors in the Netherlands decided to
launch a 10-year study on the effects of advertising likeability. Their
results, published in 2006, proposed that there were four components
to advertising likeability: entertainment, relevance, clearness,
and pleasantness.
As I sat down one afternoon in February to put some of the research
down on paper, five core principles seemed to leap out from all the
work I had done. In fact, it was so clear that I assumed they must be
wrong or too simple. Since that afternoon in February, I revisited my
initial acronym almost every week for months with the intention of
changing it.
I did more research, consumed more reports, and read more books.
I spoke with colleagues and clients to try and poke holes in the idea.
I even presented the acronym during a speech in Miami to get a public
reaction and have others criticize it. It still worked.
What was even better, the principles I had landed on spelled a
powerful acronym that would fit perfectly into what I wanted to say in
the book:
TRUST = TRUTH + RELEVANCE + UNSELFISHNESS
+ SIMPLICITY + TIMING

Introduction: Likeability, Rogue Economists, and the Lovable Fool xxxix
So in Part II of the book, we will dig into each of these five
principles of Likeonomics to look at why it matters, who does it well,
and most importantly, a practical guidebook on how you can achieve it.
Principle 1: Truth—There is no truth like the real truth, and we
live in a time where people are more able to demand it than ever. This
is not, however, the same thing as honesty. In this chapter, we will learn
from the meteoric rise of the most famous talk show host in history, to
the story of a struggling brand that took an unheard of risk in telling
the truth about why they would always fail to be number one in their
industry.
Principle 2: Relevant—The challenge to be relevant requires that
you center yourself on the world that someone else already cares about.
Using global stories of how to shake hands in Kazakhstan and why
Canada’s favorite storyteller became so beloved, this chapter will define
exactly what makes something or someone powerfully relevant, and
how you can do it for yourself or your business.
Principle 3: Unselfish— If there is one principle that seems dramatically
hard to consistently do, it is behaving in an unselfish way.
Combining the story of how a small yet powerful networking group
is taking their region by storm and what one of the largest global
studies of unselfish corporate behavior has proven about the role of
idealism in branding, this section will prove that being unselfish pays
off in many ways, and is a necessity for success in our new global
economy.
Principle 4: Simple—Of all the principles, this one has near universal
agreement from leading thinkers in the world about its importance.
Simplicity is the force that has powered the Apple brand to success
and also driven politicians to win elections and world-changing social
movements to build a following. In this chapter, we will not only
learn how much simplicity can help to achieve, but also some new and
completely different methods for making everything from messaging to
how you spend your time more simplified.
Principle 5: Timely—Some of the greatest ideas in human history
have succeeded or failed based entirely on timing. More than just
suggesting that good timing matters, we will look at the examples of
how people are always at the heart of timing and understanding when
to push your idea is the crucial X-factor that can help ensure success.

xl Introduction: Likeability, Rogue Economists, and the Lovable Fool
Inside Part III: The StoryBook
(Likeonomics in Action)
If you are the sort of reader who likes to skip the theory and go straight
to the stories and case studies that bring each idea to life, you will
appreciate this section. In many ways, you are my favorite audience to
write for—because I share your impatience.
In addition to the dozens of stories I share throughout this book, this
final section spotlights a collection of examples of the principles behind
Likeonomics at work. It includes everything from the little known story
ofwhat might be the happiest country on Earth, to the website that has
turned the world of education upside down.
Stories are what inspire each of us, but they also have to feel
relevant (remember, that’s one of the principles!). So each story will also
be indexed by geographic region and industry so you can browse them
to identify the ones that feel closest to your own personal situation.
In addition, this StoryBook will be a living part of Likeonomics
online, with new stories getting consistently added to the website. You
can always visit www.likeonomics.com/storybook to read additional
stories, and even add your own story in the online community.
(Read the secret introduction: www.likeonomics.com/secretintro)

Foreword by Jeff Dachis
SOCIAL
BUSINESS
BY DESIGN
transformative
social media
strategies for
the connected
company
DION HINCHCLIFFE
PETER KIM
DACHIS GROUP

CONTENTS
Foreword vii
by Jeff Dachis
Introduction 1
PART ONE Adapting Organizations to the Twenty-First
Century 5
1 Social Media: Drivers of Global Business
Opportunity 7
2 Social Media: A Way of Life, a Way of Business 17
3 Who’s Winning in Social Business, and Why 25
4 The Global Business Transition to Social
Media 45
5 How Business Will Make the Transition 53
PART TWO The Techniques of Social Business 63
6 Social Media Marketing 65
7 Social Product Development 87
v

vi Contents
8 Crowdsourcing: Community-Powered
Workforces 93
9 Social Customer Relationship Management
and Customer Communities: Social Customer
Care 99
10 Social Business Ecosystems: Engaging with
Business Partners 107
11 Workforce Engagement: Creating a Connected
Company Using Social Business 127
12 Social Business Supporting Capabilities 143
PART THREE Social Business Design and Strategy 157
13 Identifying Priorities and Planning 159
14 Building Blocks: The Elements of Social
Business 169
15 Business Cases, Pilots, Return on Investment,
and Value: Tying Them Together 185
16 Building a Social Business Strategy: The
Outputs 191
17 Getting Started with Social Business 195
18 Maturity: The Social Business Unit 205
Epilogue 211
Appendix: The Ten Tenets of Social Business 215
Notes 217
Acknowledgments 229
About the Authors 231
Index 233

FOREWORD
Everything that can be social will be.
I firmly believe that’s the mantra of twenty-first-century business
and the key concept that we must all internalize to achieve our
best possible futures. Operating our businesses through a social lens
presents a profound new way of thinking. Some of you will know
that this trend is something now called social business. Most companies
are taking steps toward social business, some slowly and some more
rapidly. Yet virtually all organizations today need a way to make the
changes on their own terms, in a way that gives them a safe path
forward that ensures success. Social Business by Design offers you that
guided route forward, step by step.
When I cofounded Razorfish as the first major digital agency
back in the 1990s, it quickly became clear to me that dramatic change
was difficult for large companies; it’s never easy taking the first move
toward a fundamentally new, better way of working, thinking, and
living. Fortunately, the case for why and how to effectively adopt
social business is definitively and compellingly explored in these
pages by my industry colleagues, as well as friends and coworkers,
Dion Hinchcliffe and Peter Kim. I’ve seen both of them grapple with
the enormity of the task that lies ahead of virtually all organizations
vii

viii Foreword
today: to connect business clients with the whole of the developed
world using social media, engage deeply with customers and partners
in potent new—yet unfamiliar—ways, and innovate and cocreate
a more effective way of working that’s not just novel but more
satisfying, richer, and, yes, profitable for all concerned.
Uncertain economic times can have a chilling effect on innovation
and the readiness for the bold moves required to lead an industry in
this century. Many companies also have a hard time making the leap
to new digital business models. For every SAP, IBM, or Amazon, a
hundred companies are struggling in the shadows. But the writing
is on the wall. I can read it clearly as a CEO, as can most of my
peers in organizations large and small around the world: as you read
this, the way we run our organizations is in the midst of changing
dramatically.
The implications for social business transformation are writ large.
Customer engagement is moving from relatively isolated market
transactions to deeply connected and sustained social relationships.
This basic change in how we do business will make an impact on
just about everything we do. It affects where sustainable creativity
and ingenuity are sourced. It defines how productive and rewarding
results are created in the form of break-out new products, services,
and operational constructs. And for the CxO in all of us, it also
means that we now possess major new ways of driving growth,
revenue, and margin. Distributed technologies operating in an open
ecosystem and placed in the hands of constituents can be leveraged
to create and capitalize on emergent outcomes.
It’s clear to me that social media have moved far beyond a means
of staying in touch with old friends and colleagues. They have become
how business gets done. They have also created a highly competitive
weapon in the arsenal of those who want to achieve dramatically
better marketing, sales, customer service, product development, and
worker productivity. The comprehensive vision that Dion and Pete
lay out in this book explains exactly why organizations need to

Foreword ix
commit to the path of social business in order to survive and thrive
in the very different conditions of this new millennium.
In these pages, you’ll see how successful companies go outside
their comfort zones to embrace new consumer methods of social
media and social networking, enabling them to accomplish business
objectives in revolutionary new ways that are much more scalable,
efficient, and robust than in the past. Some of these featured companies
are the most respected names in their industry, and others are
disrupting industries and starting their own rise. Yet these stories will
also be your stories, and it’s how you’ll get there too: by a process of
deliberate, intentional transformation.
For our part, Dachis Group believes strongly in the full-strength
vision of social business as the way that organizations will work now
and in the future. I invite you, after reading Social Business by Design,
to continue your explorations of this topic in our Social Business
Council and track your organization’s progress as it makes the
transformation to the twenty-first century using our Social Business
Index, our strategic online service that helps companies measure
how effective their business is at being social. It can be found
at http://socialbusinessindex.com. These are very exciting times
indeed, for organizations that are prepared to build the road ahead.
Austin, Texas
February 2012
Jeff Dachis

INTRODUCTION
Ask just about anyone today about social media, and they will
probably acknowledge using Facebook, knowing something
about Twitter, and admit that social media are a widespread, perhaps
even global, trend. Push them a bit further, and they will affirm that
social media are genuinely significant somehow, but they might have
a hard time pinning down exactly how or why. If you probe deeper yet
and ask them if or how social media will transform the way businesses
work, most people won’t have a clear answer at all. This is entirely
understandable, given that the digital world has virtually remade the
means and tools of digital communication in just a few years.
Keeping track of changes and catching up to the pace of change
has been hard for even the most dogged marketing manager, product
engineer, customer care lead, information technology manager, or
C-level executive. As a recipe for making operations rather difficult
for businesses to effectively engage their customers, workers, and
the broader market in the new digital landscape, it’s almost perfect.
Fortunately, it no longer has to be this way. As the understanding
of the changes in our pervasively networked, digital world grows, we
believe that organizations can, by design, make their way into the
1

2 SOCIAL BUSINESS BY DESIGN
future by incorporating the powerful new ways of working that social
media represent deeply into the primary functions of their business.
The shift to social media is happening all around us every day. A
broad demographic change in the way that people connect and communicate,
as well as work and live together, began in the mid-2000s.
The change has been labeled with many names: social networking, Enterprise
2.0, crowdsourcing, customer community, social marketing, and any of
the other catchphrases that we explore in this book. Because of social
media’s different way of getting results, the exact nature of changes
that they cause in businesses, organizations, government, and even
our personal lives has sometimes been hard to pin down. However,
they can be much more precisely and elegantly defined than even
a couple of years ago. What’s more, the key operating principles of
social media can be synthesized into simple, easy-to-understand tenets
to apply to work. These tenets are presented here for the first time.
In this book, we show exactly why and how organizations must
change to survive. Among the many reasons are better financial
performance, improved competitive positioning, and long-term sustainability.
But accepting the importance of social media is no longer
an act of faith: we lay out clear evidence in the chapters that follow that
social media are not only transformational to most aspects of enterprises,
but also truly better, higher-performing new ways of doing
business. In Parts One and Two, we present cutting-edge data
matched with eye-opening examples that show how social media,
when applied to the way we work, are becoming something known
as ‘‘social business.’’
There is occasionally concern in some quarters that social media
are technology-driven phenomena and that primarily technologyoriented
companies are best at adopting the new digital ways of
working. The evidence here shows that this worry is overblown:
virtually all organizations can access the benefits of social business,
and although some of the early examples we present here are from
technology companies that blazed trails, many of the best examples
come from those that are as far from the technology industry as can

Introduction 3
be imagined such as consumer packaged goods company Procter &
Gamble and MillerCoors, the well-known beverage conglomerate.
What then do organizations need to understand in order to
begin the process of becoming a social business by design? We
think it’s a clear understanding of the basic ideas, distilled in a
way that’s eminently understandable. Distributed across the first
ten chapters are the clearest declaration yet of what social business
fundamentally consists of, collected and organized here as ten core
tenets of social business. Studying, understanding, and absorbing
these ideas, designed to be approachable by anyone in the business
world, free from tools, technologies, or situation, must be the objective
of anyone who intends to deeply understand the subject and drive
social business transformation in their organization.
GETTING TO SOCIAL BUSINESS
We have been fortunate enough to have seen and helped many
organizations start down the road of social business, and the journey
certainly can be long and arduous. Yet it’s also often highly rewarding.
The biggest obstacle is the encouragement and realization of
real change. The hard-won lesson is that becoming a social business
requires cultural, operational, and technology changes. Of the three,
the first two are by far the most time-consuming and challenging
to realize, although all three require sustained, conscientious effort.
Yet the examples in this book make clear that the same set of
strategic changes needs to be made by all companies, even as organizations
often discover they already have dozens—and sometimes
hundreds—of individual social media efforts, large and small, each
trying to drive the same type of transformation.
Many organizations have begun centralizing their efforts, organizing
at a high level around many of the thorniest and most difficult
aspects, while allowing everyone in the organization to become a
social businessperson. Parts One and Two of this book lay out the
strongest possible case that organizations must begin the process of

4 SOCIAL BUSINESS BY DESIGN
moving to social business; Part Three then explores how to make it
happen functionally and throughout the enterprise. Getting to social
business is a deliberate, conscious process—at least for now. It’s also
the core idea behind this book. More and more businesses want to
get there, but encouraging and enabling is really all they can do. The
rest is up to the universe of participants, and that’s where the story
gets most interesting.
Organizations that want to take the shortest route to becoming
social businesses can arm themselves with the data, examples,
and approaches we present in this book, which are distilled in an
actionable way as never before. We hope that your social business
will become a highly successful organization that you codesign with
the world.

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
About the Authors xv
Introduction 1
1 The Backchannel: Bringing the Social
Conversation to the Forefront 7
2 Social TV Guides: Curating Social Media
for Content Discovery 33
3 TV Check-In Services: Creating Vertical Social
Networks around Television 57
4 The Second Screen: Enhancing TV with
Synched Content Experiences 81
5 Social TV Ratings: Adding a New Dimension
to Television Audience Measurement 109
6 Bridge Content: Driving Engagement
In-Between Episode Airings 133
7 Audience Addressability: Using Online and
Direct Mail Targeting Practices on TV 157
8 TV Everywhere: Watching TV Content
Whenever and Wherever 177
vii

viii
Contents
9 Connected TVs: Blending Online Content
with Television Content 203
10 Conclusion (for Now): Connecting the Dots 227
11 To Be Continued . . .: Filling in the Gaps 241
Notes 245
Index 259

Preface
What Is in a Name?
Television has always been social. It would seem, then, that the
name of our book, Social TV, implies that there is nothing new to
say about the beloved entertainment medium. Yet that could not be
further from the truth. Television nowadays is a very different experience
than it was in 1941, when TV advertisements fi rst began airing
in the United States. 1
According to its strictest defi nition, the phrase “social TV” was
coined to depict the convergence of television and social media.
However, social TV has often been used in recent years as a catchall
expression when referring to the modern era of television. While
we tend to prefer the former defi nition, we painted using broad
brush strokes throughout the book.
Television’s love affair with social media comprises a sizable chunk
of our narrative. We also tackle the effect that mobile and tablet
devices have had on the medium (Chapters 4 and 8) and examine the
growing impact of Internet-connected TVs (Chapter 9). Recognizing
that the blending of media also gives TV audiences a much more
personalized experience, we even included a section dedicated to
addressable advertising (Chapter 7).
We wrote this book as a guide for marketers. Each chapter illustrates
a slice of the television landscape, fraught with examples and
case studies, followed by a deep dive into the advertising implications
that result. Mobile QR codes conclude each chapter. By simply
scanning these with your smartphone, you will access “second
ix

x
Preface
screen” companion content that brings to life many of the examples
we illustrate within the book.
We intend Social TV to appeal not only to brands but also agencies,
television networks, content creators, educators, and even
TV viewers. In order to keep the book manageable in size and
scope, we focus primarily on broadcast television series and events.
While we have included some content on news and sports, each of
those verticals could be a book in and of themselves.
Though we interviewed nearly fi fty companies and featured
many additional ones throughout Social TV, it simply was not possible
to include a description of or story about every player within
the space. New companies with interesting solutions seem to crop
up every week. So instead, we attempted to provide enough of a
representative cross-section to help illustrate the most important
trends that are impacting television today. You will also notice
that—because things are changing at breakneck speed—Chapter 11
can only be accessed online. We purposefully waited to write the
last chapter just as Social TV was released in order to bring you
the most up-to-date information.
That is why one need not go back over seven decades to witness
the profound shift in the media landscape. Television is changing
before our very eyes. It is a perpetual work in progress; a living
medium infl uenced by advances in technology and evolutions
in human culture. Yet as TV continues to change in both form
and function, it will forever remain social at its core. Welcome to
Social TV.
—Mike and Stacey

Introduction
The World of Tomorrow
On Thursday, April 20, 1939, Radio Corporation of America
President David Sarnoff announced the dawn of commercial television
in the United States. Sarnoff’s remarks described the medium
as “a new art, so important in its implications, that it is bound to
affect all society.” 1
His address strategically took place 10 days before the opening
ceremony of the New York World’s Fair. Themed as “The World of
Tomorrow,” the RCA-owned National Broadcasting Company fi ttingly
transmitted US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s keynote
address over the airwaves, marking the offi cial birth of regularly
scheduled television broadcasts in the United States. 2
With much public allure surrounding this new medium, Popular
Mechanics featured an article by Mr. Sarnoff in its September 1939
issue, simply titled, “The Future of Television.” Underscoring the
importance of content in the pioneering world of TV, Sarnoff wrote,
“Let us consider next what sort of programming material tele vision
may present to its audience.” 3 Throughout the many decades to
come, writers and producers rose to the challenge to create programming
that entertained and touched television audiences by
providing them with a temporary escape from the often stark realities
of the world outside of their living rooms.
Many remember watching Lucy and Ethel try to wrap chocolate
candies off of a speedy conveyor belt on September 15, 1952 in
what is today a classic I Love Lucy moment. 4 Forty-four percent of
households tuned in to The Beverly Hillbillies on January 8, 1964 to
1

2
Introduction
see Granny chase a kangaroo around the Clampetts’ home in “The
Giant Jackrabbit” episode. 5
Audiences were in tears by the dramatic story told in Roots, an
eight-part miniseries that made its debut on January 23, 1977. 6
The Cosby Show’s young Rudy Huxtable endeared us when she lipsynched
Margie Hendricks on October 10, 1984. 7 “Yadda Yadda
Yadda” is forever ingrained in our common lexicon thanks to the
hilarious April 24, 1997 episode of Seinfeld. 8 And millions of viewers
watched a star be born on September 4, 2002, as Kelly Clarkson
was named the very fi rst American Idol. 9
Television has produced countless resonant moments throughout
its history. Even those who have not been moved or affected
by a TV series have most certainly been impacted by watching
events, news, or sports unfold across their screens. As Sarnoff wrote
in 1939, “With the advent of television, the combined emotional
results of both seeing and hearing an event or a performance at the
instant of its occurrence become new forces to be reckoned with.”
But TV shows, events, news, and sports are not the only content
on television.
TV Advertising Can Resonate Too
A television commercial is also content that has the potential to
evoke resonance. The phrase, “I cry at Hallmark commercials” is a
common and familiar one. It is hard to forget the 1979 Coca-Cola
ad featuring a disgruntled Mean Joe Greene limping his way down
a football stadium ramp. After being given a bottle of Coke from a
young boy, the Pittsburgh Steelers defensive player gently tosses his
football jersey to him saying, “Hey kid. Catch.” 10
We were similarly heartened in 2011 by a young “Darth Vader”
trying to exert his telekinetic powers on a series of objects in and
around his house: the exercise bike, the family dog, the washer
and dryer, a baby doll, and even his sandwich. To his extreme disappointment,
“the Force” did not seem to be strong within him. But

Introduction 3
then his dad, arriving home from work, pulls up his Volkswagen
Passat into the driveway. A reinvigorated “Vader” seizes the opportunity
to give his powers a go just one more time. As he channels
all of his concentration and might while extending and pointing
his arms toward the front of the car, the ignition suddenly fi res
(thanks to Dad using the remote starter). Our adorable Darth Vader
is visibly shocked that, from his point of view, the Force came
through for him after all.
The resonance of this particular Volkswagen TV commercial
drove people online to experience it again and to share it with others.
The offi cial VW YouTube upload has generated over 45 million
views 11 and is a great example of how the Web and television are
complementing versus competing with one another.
The Internet Did Not Kill Television
While many people have proclaimed the death of television, the
over-70-year-old medium is as healthy and alive as it has ever
been. In fact, we are watching more television than ever before.
According to research company Nielsen, the average American
watches just over 35 hours of television per week, 12 in spite of the
rise in online and mobile video viewing. The Internet has not killed
TV; it has actually become its best friend. It is a companion for the
growing masses of television viewers who are simultaneously going
online while tuning in to their favorite shows.
The Web, social media, and mobile are rapidly converging with
television and affecting the way in which we experience programming.
David Sarnoff wrote a prophetic statement in 1939:
“Television will fi nally bring to people in their homes, for the fi rst
time in history, a complete means of instantaneous participation in
the sights and sounds of the entire outer world.”
Over seven decades later, we are facing a period of déjà vu. Social
media has created a new and powerful “backchannel” that is fueling
the renaissance of live broadcasts. Mobile and tablet devices allow

4
Introduction
us to watch and experience both on-demand and live television
whenever and wherever we want. And “connected TVs” blend Web
and television content into a unifi ed big screen experience—once
again, at the center of our living rooms.
Although the television industry is undergoing a grandiose state
of fl ux, it is also in the midst of one of its most exciting time periods;
the outcome of which will only make TV more compelling, more
interactive, and more accessible. And while the way in which we
experience television continues to evolve, the medium is here to stay.
The rise of a new medium does not always mean the end of another.
What Does This Mean
for Television Advertising?
Just as television is changing, so is its advertising. The blending
of media channels has created new opportunities for marketers to
reach and engage with their target audiences. And this shifting television
landscape is not just affecting advertising creative, but also
how agencies plan and buy media.
Brands can no longer simply consider the program that is being
broadcast on the television set; to do so is myopic and frankly,
shortsighted. They must instead look at the larger cross-channel
media experience that occurs nowadays with TV audiences in order
to maximize their brand’s impact within an ever-increasing distracted
world.
The core of social TV starts with the backchannel, which is why
we begin the book here. This is comprised of the millions of public
conversations happening online while television programming airs.
Brands who fi nd ways to align themselves with or be a part of the
backchannel unlock an entire audience with whom to engage.
Following Chapter 1, the next chapters are sequenced in the
order in which audiences tend to experience television. Chapter 2
tackles the quickly evolving social TV guide landscape and examines
how individuals discover what to watch in the modern era of

Introduction 5
television. Once one knows what he or she is going to watch, they
may use any myriad of TV check-in apps that are growing in numbers
and features, as illustrated in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 builds from
our backchannel chapter and dives more deeply into the second
screen experiences that television viewers have while watching TV.
We discuss the concept of “synchronized applications” here, which
provide opportunities for synched advertising.
Starting with Chapter 5, we examine what happens after a TV
episode concludes to investigate the correlation between social
media engagement and television ratings. We look not just at the
TV shows themselves but also how to measure “social ratings”
for TV commercials. Chapter 6 addresses the engagement with
television shows that happens in between their episode airings—
something we call “bridge content.” When executed well, this can
be a welcomed and ripe territory for branded entertainment.
Chapter 7 begins to take a turn in the television landscape with
addressable advertising. The ability to target television commercials
to eliminate any wasted impressions is the Holy Grail for brands.
Chapter 8 gets us outside of the living room and illustrates the portability
and accessibility of television that exists thanks in large part
to mobile and tablet devices. Chapter 9 tackles the notion of Web
plus television convergence head-on to bring to light the opportunities
for brands within the connected TV world.
Our book concludes with a case study that ties all of the previous
chapters together. We also illustrate how the blending of media
is only going to continue making it that much more complex
for brands to navigate. Given this, we highlight specifi c advice to
advertisers from several of the industry leaders we interviewed
to round out the chapter and the book.
Cutting to the Chase
The punch line of the book is a simple one—and it all points back
to content. As it relates to television, people want to talk about and

6
Introduction
share the programming (including advertising) that resonates the
most with them. Social media cannot and will not save a bad show
or make poor products and services “look good.” But social media
absolutely has a powerful amplifi cation effect in the presence of resonant
content. And the evidence of this exists right before our very
eyes in the millions of social impressions that comprise television’s
backchannel.
Scan for More
Scan this QR code using your mobile device for videos and visuals
of the examples referenced throughout this section.
Don’t have a smartphone with a QR reader app? No problem.
You can access companion content directly by going to http://www
.socialtvbook.net/tagged/introduction.

THE
ULTIMATE
ONLINE
CUSTOMER
SERVICE
GUIDE
How to Connect With Your Customers to
MARSHA COLLIER
Bestselling Author of Starting an eBay Business for Dummies

Contents
Introduction 1
1 The Art of Customer Service 13
2 Quality Real-World, Small-Business Customer Service 29
3 Using Your Web Site to Connect with Your Customer 47
4 Developing a Blog to Engage Customers 61
5 Connecting with Your Customers Where They Play 71
6 Microblogging for Service, Fun, and Profi t 85
7 Checking Out Where Customers Review
Your Business 109
8 Knowing Your Customers’ Expectations:
How to Connect 119
iii

iv Contents
9 Platforms to Enhance the Experience 145
10 Engaging Your Employees as Brand Ambassadors 169
11 Pioneers of Online Community: How They Did It 187
12 Small-Business Examples: How They Did It Right 205
13 Lessons from Big Business: Leaders in
Customer Service 221
Index 245

Introduction
Though I’ve run a small business for much of my life, I’m a consumer,
as well.
It’s human nature to desire choice. We want to be able to
choose one item over another or one vendor over another, based
on a variety of reasons. When we exchange our hard-earned money
for an item or a service, we ask for something else in return: to be
treated with respect and honesty. We prefer to do business with
people “like us,” because we want to believe that those we trust
to have our best interests at heart. Think about it: Have you ever
asked a sales clerk in a clothing store how a particular outfi t looked
on you? How handsome you looked in that fl ashy sports car?
I’ve been writing about eBay for e-commerce vendors for over
12 years, and in that time I’ve seen thousands of homespun businesses
fail in their attempts to become work-from-home moguls.
Why? Because many felt—due to the fact that they were selling
online—they could omit the personal touch. It made selling so
much easier (or so they thought) to never have to actually deal
with their customers. They thought they could ignore the small
1

2 The Ultimate Online Customer Service Guide
niceties that made customers happy to be doing business with
them. Time—and a lot of unsuccessful companies—have shown
that these assumptions were wrong.
If merchants or service providers put their bottom line before
the customer, they will doom their businesses to ultimate failure.
They may fl ourish for a while, maybe even long enough to
sell their business to another company and walk away with a
healthy profi t. But to create a long-term, stable business, you need
to have long-term, loyal customers. The best companies grow as a
result of positive word of mouth—both in the real world and on
the Internet.
Online customer service is an important part of marketing
your business. Brilliant, spot-on marketing not only generates
revenue for your bottom line; it’s also a way to make your customer’s
life easier. When you give someone quality service, you’re a
step ahead of your competition.
Most customer service experts fi ll the books they write and
their conference presentations with instructions for growing
larger businesses. Though they can charge thousands of dollars
for their advice, it’s often not completely translatable to a smallstaffed
enterprise.
I enjoy working with small businesses; they’re the bread
and butter of our economy. There are a lot more mom-and-pops
out there than there are big businesses. As you’ll learn in The
Ultimate Online Customer Service Guide, mom-and-pop businesses
can employ more than a hundred people, and without losing
their personal attachment to their business. Whether we choose
to work in a large or small business environment differs from
one person to another, of course; some people are more geared
to the detachment inherent in running a big business. However,
there are plenty of us who enjoy being part of the daily excitement
of running our own companies.

Introduction 3
Small businesspeople have the benefi t of putting their hearts
into what they do, every single day. They truly care about whether
their customers enjoy the food, clothing, or the service they pro -
vide. It’s personal to them; it should be personal to their customers.
I’ve been working with small and medium businesses for
most of my career. I’ve aided companies that work out of garages,
spare rooms, and even barns. I’ve helped these individuals fi gure
out where they should spend their money to grow, and spoken
with them on even the deepest, most personal levels. I’ve heard
from students, newlyweds, career changers, and retirees, and I’ve
found that pretty much everyone has the same goal: They want
to make more money. Sadly, however, I’ve also learned that only
a small percentage really wants to work for it.
Those who understand that nothing comes easy, and that the
traditional work ethic pays off, become thriving entrepreneurs.
Such people become the heart and soul of small business; and
it is these small companies that often can reach their customers
online much more adeptly than large corporations.
Just how important is small business to our overall economy?
As defi ned by the Small Business Administration (SBA), “small
businesses” are those with fewer than 500 employees—a risktaking,
“crazy” group of entrepreneurs who create more than
half of the nonfarm, private gross domestic product (GDP) in
the United States—yes, more than half. Need more proof as to
how important small businesses are to the economic health of our
country? These organizations:
Represent 99.7 percent of all employer fi rms.
Employ just over half of all private-sector employees.
Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
Have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15
years.

4 The Ultimate Online Customer Service Guide
Hire 40 percent of high-tech workers—like scientists, engineers,
and computer programmers.
Are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises.
Comprised 97.3 percent of all identifi ed exporters, and produced
30.2 percent of the known export value in 2007.
Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting
fi rms—patents that are twice as likely as large-fi rm
patents to be among the 1 percent most cited. 1
An earlier study found that of the 5,369,068 employer fi rms
in the United States, 99.7 percent had fewer than 500 employees,
and 78.8 percent had fewer than 10 employees in 1997. More
recent data also suggests that very small fi rms—those with fewer
than 10 employees—hire part-time employees at a rate almost
twice that of very large fi rms (1,000 or more employees). If small
fi rms did not hire these part-time employees, they might otherwise
be unemployed.
I worked with brick-and-mortar retailers for over a decade,
managing advertising and marketing for several super-regional
malls (shopping centers with more than 800,000 square feet of
leasable area) during their heyday in the 1990s. But just because
they were big didn’t mean that they always took their customers’
needs into consideration.
One Los Angeles center I handled was part of a national
chain. The corporate offi ce expected the mall to run the standard
advertising program (designed for suburban white neighborhoods)
in this center’s highly Hispanic market. My proposed
idea of running a bilingual campaign, which featured models in
1 U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census and International Trade
Administration; SBA Advocacy-funded research by Kathryn Kobe and CHI
Research, Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007.

Introduction 5
the ads that refl ected members of the community, was seen as
heresy—initially. But since sales were falling, they were ready to
try my “wacky idea,” to respect the predominant customer culture.
In retrospect, it seems shocking that my theory was once
considered ground-breaking.
Perhaps that’s why I felt I had to write this book. Much that I
see and hear nowadays—including the advice of well- intentioned
experts—ignores the human element of business. A good product
is paramount, yes, but if there’s no personal connection in the
way you relate to your customers, you will not succeed. It may
take time to fail, but the fall will come. Marketing with the goal
of making your customer feel included and part of your community
is in your—and your customers’—best interest. It places your
business within their trusted circle. Communication is the best
way to strengthen your customer’s loyalty.
Another of my clients, an e-commerce company, needed me
to help them expedite their product photography by automating
their storage and shipping. After we implemented changes, the
company was running like a Swiss clock. Its profi ts went from
tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands . . . and then I got a
call. The company was about to be thrown off of eBay (its largest
market at the time). Why, I asked incredulously. Its business
model was near-perfect.
Upon arriving at headquarters, I interviewed the people in
the customer service department. I learned that their computers
were clogged with complaint e-mails, and reps were sending
out automated responses without following up with customers.
Eventually, the staff began deleting e-mails en masse due to their
frustration. I told them they had to make customer service a top
priority, that they had to make things right. They had to learn
how to “take it in the shorts” when they were at fault.
Unfortunately, they didn’t take me seriously, and this
company ended up spending thousands of dollars on highly

6 The Ultimate Online Customer Service Guide
billing consultants, to no avail. Customers fi led Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) complaints, and you can probably guess
the outcome. A brilliant business model was ruined due to one
organization’s lack of concern for its customers. Though it had
spent thousands on consultants and fancy marketing tools, without
the primary ingredient—respect for the customer—it was
doomed.
Perhaps it was the advent of technology that has caused us
to stray from the personalization of our businesses. Technology
has enabled more people to run successful businesses for a lot less
money, a lot of them remotely. Sadly, there’s no humanity involved
in the kind of technologies that have been sold to businesses.
Since the beginning of civilization, wealth and businesses
were built on a simple tenet: Someone sold something to someone
else. This is nothing new; it’s been this way since biblical
times. Whether we’re trading, interacting, or selling, we are all
customers and vendors in one form or another. Most would argue
that this “oldest profession” relies on the exchange of favors for
money; but, indeed, the oldest profession is merely a form of
entrepreneurship.
At the turn of the century, my great-grandmother supported
her three sons by standing on the docks at Ellis Island and buying
the long tresses of immigrant women as they came off the
ships. (There was an entire community of settlers who made a
living from one another. Money for an immigrant in a new country
was a huge factor in starting out right, and they all helped
each other.) My great-grandmother would then sell the hair to
wig makers, whose creations festooned the heads of New York’s
elite. Though I suppose it was considered a cottage industry back
then, my great-grandmother would likely be called an entrepreneur
today. Whatever the label, it was a win-win situation for
all involved. She worked on trust and reputation. Those weren’t
easy days for anyone.

Introduction 7
Consider any job or occupation nowadays. Everything
involves selling—taking the risk, developing a business—all for
the sake of profi t in the end.
But what about employees? Yes, there are ranks of workers
who perhaps do not even come in contact with your clients.
However, their effort is refl ected in your company’s bottom line.
Your goal for your business is to turn a profi t, but you can’t do this
without customers, and your employees are your conduit to gaining
more customers.
Customer service, community, and trust aren’t just terms for the
big guys like the phone company, your credit card provider, or your
Internet service provider. It’s something we all come to expect
from everyone with whom we do business, in one form or another.
As a businessperson, you’ve got to make customer service more than
a buzzword or phrase. It cannot simply be lip service; rather, it has
to be the underlying tenet, the foundation for your business.
In my attempt to become a retail marketing “expert” (though
I really don’t like that term), I attended seminar after seminar,
designed to teach merchants how to “manage” their customers—
because customers are the lifeblood of commerce. I sat in big rooms
with groups of small businesspeople like myself. I listened to the
speakers (because I was told they were experts) and absorbed as
much as I could. I admit that I sat there like the rest of the audience,
nodding my head in agreement with the presenters, even
when I really wasn’t sure what they were talking about. In fact, we
looked like a sea of bobble-head dolls. Looking back, I wonder if
anyone else besides me felt that only a small percentage of what
the speakers were saying really applied to my business situation.
When we attend such conferences, we often get wrapped up
in the plethora of acronyms: VRM, CRM, ACES . . . (they do
go on). We learn; we listen to the experts; we nod our heads in
agreement and vow to follow the latest and greatest customer
acquisition and satisfaction methods.

8 The Ultimate Online Customer Service Guide
A note here on the use of acronyms: I will not use acronyms in
this book; instead, I will use the actual words, and defi ne the
more popular ones. Too many of us often fall into the habit
of using this kind of techno-jargon because the terms fl y off
the tongue so easily, making our conversation seem so much
more effi cient. But using acronyms can make communication
less meaningful and more unintelligible for those who do not
use or hear them regularly. It’s too easy to forget, for example,
that the “C” in CRM stands for customer. Our customers are
not just a “C,” and we must never lose sight of that.
We read blogs and books, attend these conferences, and listen
to the experts, all the while trying to make a complicated
science out of a basic human need: the desire to be treated with
respect. We are all clients, customers, patients, consumers, shoppers;
we all exchange money for services and merchandise. As
consumers with choices, we can go anywhere we want to spend
our money. The one thing we all have in common is that we are
human beings. As human beings, we hope to maintain a little
dignity in our everyday lives—including when we make buying
decisions. We hope that manufacturers and providers will have a
little respect for us and our family.
Respect for your customer—and the hard-earned money they
pay for your service or merchandise—is the key to giving superior
customer service.
Our society used to care whether we got value for our dollars.
But lately, we just seem to be looking for the cheapest, quickest,
easiest way to acquire products and services. In this process, we
don’t always respect the seller or supplier, do we? Yet when we get
lousy, disrespectful treatment, it makes us angry and annoyed.

Introduction 9
You might say that, in many instances, human respect—both
toward and from our vendors—has diminished signifi cantly in
recent years. We need to turn this around and begin to provide
a good customer experience for all customers, without charging
ridiculously high prices.
Where do you go to complain when you feel that you’ve been
wronged by a business? What happens when something goes
awry? Who do you turn to? That’s when we pay the high cost for
our low expectations.
We have lots of new tools on the Internet—specifi cally,
within social media—that are meant to help us engage and interact
with our customers. And, again, there are a lot of experts out
there who are making fortunes showing us how to use these tools.
Blogs and Web sites like Facebook and Twitter are the shiny
new things. In fact, many claim to be the panacea that will make
all our customer service woes disappear—and bring millions to
our doors.
I’ve always put my e-mail address in the introduction of all my
books, and tried to make myself accessible to anyone who writes to
me. Considering the number of books I’ve sold over the past few
years—well, you can just imagine how many people have contacted
me. And though it’s taken a lot of my time, I want to hear stories of
businesses that thrive, and I enjoy seeing people overcome their problems
on the way to success—because I really do care when someone
reads my words and acts on them. I want to know what worked—
and what didn’t—in order to better serve my future readers.
I also get e-mails every day from readers of my Google profi
le, blog, or the feedback on my Web site, www.coolebaytools
.com. While there is a disclaimer on my Web site that states that
I can’t always respond to every e-mail I get, I guarantee that I read
them all—and I do. I receive questions that run the gamut from
basic to advanced, and it can be overwhelming at times. I often

10 The Ultimate Online Customer Service Guide
fi nd myself resisting the urge to say, “You can fi nd that information
on page 126 of Title XYZ.” I answer as often as I can, and try
to be helpful—because I know that in order to keep an online
community alive, both my supporters and I must remain active
within it.
Social media can do all that and more. In The Ultimate Online
Customer Service Guide, I will use everyday examples to show you
how businesses are doing it right, as well as discuss those that are
doing it wrong.
You can build a community with your customers. That’s
another term we hear a lot of these days. But community has
always been the backbone of trust. Great-grandma had her community
of immigrants, who supported each other and kept in contact.
In the early days of our country, communities were formed to
help people develop a feeling of worth. In the 1950s, they met at
Floyd’s barber shop and shared their daily news and gossip. In the
1990s, our communities took the form of malls, where everyone
shopped, met for lunch, and attended events.
We have always embraced communities for introducing us to
people with whom we have things in common. Nowadays, these
communities are centered not only around schools and churches,
sports and hobbies, but we can also fi nd them on the Internet.
Community has likewise become part of corporate culture—
and when it’s done right, it becomes the basis of how we do
business. Remember: Your customer is a human being. You are a
human being. We thrive on respect and being part of a community.
I hate to throw out a cliché like, “Do unto others . . .” but
it’s appropriate here.
Years ago, when someone had a lousy experience with a business,
he or she passed on those negative feelings to perhaps 20 of
his or her friends. Today, via the use of social media, a single one

Introduction 11
of your customers can broadcast a message to a million of his or
her “closest acquaintances.”
Whether you have a retail location or a business practice—
whether you even ever physically interact with your customer—
you can ensure that you have happy customers. Your customers
should always walk away from an interaction with you with a
feeling of wonder—the feeling of “wow.”
Joseph Jaffe, a noted thought leader on new marketing and
president of crayon, described as “a strategic consultancy that
helps its clients achieve positive change and impact by joining
the conversation,” has always been a fan of following the customer’s
humanity. I met him several years ago and have continually
enjoyed his vocal, honest perspectives. In his recent “Customer
Service Manifesto” he echoed the philosophy of this book when
he wrote, “Loving thy neighbor has always made good sense.
Having a customer who loves you back in return makes for good
business sense.”
So hang in there with me and read on. I promise, no jargon or
absolutes; just real-world examples and truths—that you already
know. All you have to do is follow your instincts, while you pick
up some additional tips on how to connect with your customers
online.

foreword by David Meerman Scott
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
THE NEW RULES OF SOCIAL MEDIA SERIES

Contents
Foreword by David Meerman Scott xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction xxi
PART ONE: INBOUND MARKETING 1
Chapter 1. Shopping Has Changed ...Has Your
Marketing? 3
Who Moved My Customers? 6
Inbound in Action: Barack
Obama for President 7
Chapter 2. Is Your Web Site a Marketing Hub? 11
Megaphone Versus Hub
It’s Not What You Say—It’s What Others
11
Say About You 12
Does Your Web Site Have a Pulse? 13
Your Mother’s Impressed, But ... 14
Tracking Your Progress 17
Inbound in Action: 37Signals 18
Chapter 3. Are You Worthy? 21
Creating a Remarkable Strategy 22
Tracking Your Progress 24
Inbound in Action: The Grateful Dead 24
vii

viii
Contents
PART TWO: GET FOUND BY PROSPECTS 27
Chapter 4. Create Remarkable Content 29
Building a Content Factory 30
Variety Is the Spice of Life 30
You Gotta Give to Get 31
Moving Beyond the Width of Your Wallet 31
Tracking Your Progress 32
Inbound in Action: Wikipedia 33
Chapter 5. Get Found in the Blogosphere 35
Getting Your Blog Started Right 36
Authoring Effective Articles 37
Help Google Help You 39
Making Your Articles Infectious 40
Give Your Articles a Push 42
Starting Conversations with Comments 43
Why Blogs Sometimes Fail 44
The Gift That Keeps on Giving 44
Consuming Content with RSS 45
Subscribe to Relevant Industry Blogs 46
Contribute to the Conversation 46
Tracking Your Progress 48
Inbound in Action: Whole Foods 50
Chapter 6. Getting Found in Google 55
Paid Versus Free
A (Brief) Introduction to How Google
56
Works 59
Picking the Perfect Keywords 62
On-Page SEO: Doing the Easy Stuff First 65

Contents ix
Off-Page SEO: The Power of Inbound
Links 73
Black Hat SEO: How to Get Your Site
Banned by Google 76
The Dangers of PPC 80
Tracking Your Progress 81
Inbound Marketing at Work:
DIY Shutters 82
Chapter 7. Get Found in Social Media 85
Creating an Effective Online Profile 86
Getting Fans on Facebook 88
Creating Connections on LinkedIn 93
Gathering Followers on Twitter 103
Driving Traffic with Digg 108
Being Discovered with StumbleUpon 113
Getting Found in YouTube 116
Tracking Your Progress 120
Inbound in Action: FreshBooks 120
PART THREE: CONVERTING CUSTOMERS 127
Chapter 8. Convert Visitors into Leads 129
Compelling Calls to Action 130
Mistakes to Avoid 134
Optimizing Through Experimentation 134
Tracking Your Progress 135
Inbound in Action: Google 135
Chapter 9. Convert Prospects into Leads 137
Landing Page Best Practices 138
Creating Functional Forms 142

x
Contents
Going Beyond the Form 145
A Word of Caution 146
Tracking Your Progress 146
Inbound in Action: Zappos 146
Chapter 10. Convert Leads to Customers 149
Grading Your Leads 149
Nurturing Your Leads 153
Broadening Your Reach 155
Tracking Your Progress 156
Inbound in Action: Kiva 157
PART FOUR: MAKE BETTER DECISIONS 161
Chapter 11. Make Better Marketing Decisions 163
Levels and Definitions 164
Campaign Yield 165
Tracking Your Progress 167
Inbound in Action: Constant Contact 167
Chapter 12. Picking and Measuring Your
People 169
Hire Digital Citizens 170
Hire Analytical Chops 171
Hire for Their Web Reach 172
Hire Content Creators 174
Developing Existing Marketers 175
Tracking Your Progress 175
Inbound in Action: Jack Welch
and GE 178

Contents xi
Chapter 13. Picking and Measuring a PR
Agency 181
Picking a PR Agency 182
Tracking Your Progress 184
Inbound in Action: Solis, Weber,
Defren, & Roetzer 185
Chapter 14. Watching Your Competition 189
Tools to Keep Tabs on Competitors 190
Tracking Your Progress 191
Inbound in Action: TechTarget 192
Chapter 15. On Commitment, Patience and
Learning 195
Tracking Your Progress 196
Inbound in Action: Tom Brady 197
Chapter 16. Why Now? 199
Tools and Resources 203
Tips from the Trenches for Startups 209
Index 217

CHAPTER 1
Shopping Has Changed ...Has
Your Marketing?
The fundamental task of marketers is to spread the word
about their products and services in order to get people to
buy them. To accomplish this task, marketers use a combination
of outbound techniques including e-mail blasts, telemarketing,
direct mail, TV, radio, and print advertising, and trade
shows (or expos) in order to reach their potential buyers.
The problem with these traditional marketing techniques is
that they have become less effective at spreading the word
as people get better at blocking out these interruptions.
Ten years ago, buying a large e-mail list of “targeted
names” and sending newsletters and offers to addresses on
this list worked well. Internet users now routinely employ
spam filters, and the National Canned Spam Act limits a marketer’s
ability to send “unsolicited messages” to people with
whom the company does not have a relationship. According
to the research firm MarketingSherpa, the average open
rate for an e-mail blast has gone down from 39 percent in
2004 to 22 percent in 2008.
Ten years ago, hiring your own internal sales force or
contracting with an external telemarketing firm worked
3

4
Inbound Marketing
well. More recently, Caller ID has become a standard feature
on home, work, and cell phones, and increasing numbers of
people are signing up for the national Do Not Call Registry.
A well-trained telesales rep can go a full day without having
a decent conversation with a prospect.
Ten years ago, sending a piece of direct mail to a large list
of people was an effective way to get business—just ask the
credit card companies—because people looked forward to
opening their mail. Mailboxes are full of junk mixed in with
a few bills, so people pay less attention to them.
Ten years ago, spending tens or hundreds of thousands
of dollars on a TV advertisement was a guaranteed way to
reach a large audience. More recently, people use TiVo/DVRs
to skip advertisements, and in addition the plethora of available
TV channels and the rise of great video content online,
make choice the advertiser’s enemy.
Ten years ago, radio ads were heard by people in their
cars, homes, and workplaces. Today, the emergence of XM/
Sirius radio has dramatically lowered advertising’s reach, and

Shopping Has Changed ...Has Your Marketing? 5
the emergence of the iPod and iTunes has dramatically lowered
the amount of radio people listen to at home and at
work.
Ten years ago, a trade show was a surefire way for businesses
to reach a business audience. Today, many trade
shows have either gone out of business or have seen a significant
decline in attendees due to people preferring to not
spend money on flights, hotel costs, etc. Many people visiting
trade shows now are job seekers and other vendors.

6
Inbound Marketing
Ten years ago, the trade publication was subscribed to
and carefully read by most of your marketplace. Today, trade
publications have been losing subscribers and laying off
staff. These highly-qualified people are now starting blogs—
some of which have become more popular than the trade
publication.
The bottom line is that people are sick and tired of being
interrupted with traditional outbound marketing messages
and have become quite adept at blocking marketers out!
Who Moved My Customers?
People shop and learn in a whole new way compared to
just a few years ago, so marketers need to adapt or risk
extinction. People now use the Internet to shop and gather
information, but where on the Internet do they go—and
how do they use the Internet for these activities? We can
break the Internet down into three main areas.
People primarily shop and gather information through
search engines, such as Google. The average information
seeker conducts dozens of searches per day—and, rather
than listen to a sales rep, read a spam message, watch a TV
ad, or fly to a trade show, most people find it easier to sit at
their desks and find the information online through Google.
In order to take advantage of this new reality, marketers
need to change the way they think about marketing—from
the ground up.
Another place people use to gather information is the
blogosphere and its over 100 million blogs (as of this writing).
Virtually every industry and consumer niche you can
think of has a cadre of online pontificators, many of whom
are quite good. Your target audience is no longer reading
the trade publication, and instead is searching Google and

Shopping Has Changed ...Has Your Marketing? 7
subscribing to blogs written by the folks who used to write
for the trade rag.
The third place people learn/shop is in the social
mediasphere—the name for the collection of social “media”
sites such as Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn,
Digg, Reddit, YouTube and others. These sites started as
niche techie sites, but are becoming mainstream.
To be successful and grow your business and revenues,
you must match the way you market your products with
the way your prospects learn about and shop for your products.
And you do that by generating leads through inbound
marketing.
Inbound in Action: Barack Obama
for President
Regardless of your political views, you can apply the marketing
principles Barack Obama used in his 2008 presidential
campaign—a brilliant example of how to effectively use
inbound marketing to beat bigger, better-funded rivals.
In the run up to 2008, Barack Obama was a little-known
first-term senator from Illinois up against a well-known, wellfunded
Hillary Clinton machine. Early in the race, Obama
realized that using the same outbound marketing rules that
Hillary would likely use would put him on the same playing
field—but the field would be slanted her way.
Because he initially had less funding, Obama couldn’t
compete with Hillary and her e-mail blasts, telemarketing,
direct mail campaigns, and TV and radio advertising.
Instead of playing by the old rules, he made different rules
altogether—many of which relied heavily on inbound marketing.
“The aim of our online campaign,” says Chris Hughes,

8
Inbound Marketing
co-founder of Facebook and Obama’s Internet Strategist,
“was to help individuals understand the values of Barack
Obama and of our campaign and then to make it as easy as
possible for them to actively engage with the campaign’s
work. We tried to open as many direct channels of communication
as possible—using e-mail, text messages, online
networks—and then equip them with the tools to spread
the campaign’s message using networking technology such
as My.BarackObama.com and Facebook.”
The strategy worked. Americans were able to connect
with Obama via his blog, Facebook page (5,800,000
supporters and counting), Twitter (450,000 followers and
counting), LinkedIn (13,000 members and counting), and
YouTube (21,000,000 views and counting), among other
social networks and web sites. The rest, as they say, is
history.
Eric Frenchman, John McCain’s online consultant and
Chief Internet Strategist for the online political agency Connell
Donatelli, Inc., commented on the candidates’ use of
social media throughout the presidential campaign. (His
comments were compiled by Jon Clements who writes
the PR Media Blog found at http://pr-media-blog.co.uk.)
Keynoting the Future of Digital Marketing event in London,
June 2009, Frenchman called search marketing “the
great equalizer” and the “one place where you can compete
or even beat your competition with less money.” He
also noted Obama’s ability to use Facebook effectively: creating
“register to vote” widgets helped him amass over
three millions Facebook followers versus McCain’s 610,000.
Frenchman also made a point that to us is a key to
using social media effectively—rather than use Twitter to
engage in conversations with people, McCain used it as
a “one-way communication vehicle.” In other words, he

Shopping Has Changed ...Has Your Marketing? 9
wasn’t listening to his constituents but instead was talking
“at” them.
Whether you agree or disagree with the candidates is
now moot. The moral of the Obama campaign is this:
inbound marketing, if done right, is a very effective way
to reach your prospective customers. How to do inbound
marketing right is what you’ll learn in this book.
To Do
1. Keep reading this book for “how to” advice.
2. Visit www.barackobama.com and look around.
3. Get fired up to take your market by storm.
4.
5.
6.
( We left these blank for you to write in other “to do’s”
that come to mind.)