Rebalance inequalities to build the trust you need to win in ecosystems

 

The situation: Employees have been taken for granted for too long. Rampant and widening pay inequality between those at the top and those in the ranks is just one measure of an unequal world spiralling out of balance. CEO compensation rose 1,322% between 1978 and 2020. Typical worker pay? 18% (Source: The Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The pandemic – and the resulting Great Resignation - coupled with the rapidly emerging business paradigm of HFS OneEcosystem, is creating a perfect storm ready to sweep talent and partnerships away from those who focus only on shareholder value and towards those prepared to align themselves with a wider group of stakeholder needs; employees, partners, society, and our planet, among them.

Employees have become mercenary – moving from gig to gig for money and perks. The only weapon leaders have to resist with is more money and more perks. That’s a sticking plaster of a solution that lasts only until the next better offer.  It does not resolve the worst attrition rates many have seen in our lifetimes – and it never will while you make the cost to change so low.

Stand for something to believe in to earn loyalty beyond the paycheck

To prove worthy of loyalty beyond the paycheck, you must set out a purpose that partners and employees can believe in. Fail to deliver on that purpose and your rivals will scoop up your best talent with nothing more than a bag of gold and flexible working.

Nine in 10 leaders realize the need to reposition their organization to unleash people in the post-Covid world (with 50% boosting talent development spend, and 48% retraining managers and leaders (source, HFS Research, 2021, sample 400 Global 2000 enterprises). Just as critical is the realization that in OneEcosystem, the impact we make reaches way beyond the boundaries of our own organization. In 2021 HFS Research found that among 158 C-level executives in Global 2000 enterprises, 9 out of 10 predicted ecosystems would be even more critical in the post-COVID-19 world.

Establishing a purpose will prove the difference between success and failure in the emerging HFS OneEcosystem. Here success relies on businesses building long-term relationships of trust and mutual benefit in networks of stakeholders.

Purpose attracts customers and builds stakeholder networks of trust

Purpose is just as important in attracting and retaining customers. Accenture found 62% of consumers want companies to take a stand on issues that they are passionate about, (Source: Accenture).

Fortune found 64% of consumers say a company’s primary purpose should be to make the world a better place (Fortune, 2019). Not only does doing the right thing attract consumers, employees, and partners, it also convinces them to put their money where their hearts are. US consumers are more likely to be loyal (83%) to brands that lead with purpose. And 72% say they feel it is more important than ever to buy from companies that reflect their values. (Cone/Porter Novelli 2019)

Grow talent pools, and your market – by standing up to tackle inequality

Purpose isn't a mission statement on a wall, it is lived through actions. You must act now to demonstrate what matters to you. Because the pandemic has exposed the deepening ravine between rich and poor, taking action to tackle inequality has become a prime purpose target with which to attract employees, customers, and partners.

Of course, stakeholders want more than just your alignment with them on inequality.  Sustainability, inclusion, diversity, and philanthropy all matter just as much. So think of this as a start. And since Inequality limits access to education and therefore the size of the talent pool you can draw on – as well as constraining market size, it would seem a worthy win-win place from which to start.

Brutal inequality got worse during the pandemic

The pandemic has thrown the reality of brutal inequality into sharp relief. During the first two years of the pandemic, Charity Oxfam found (January 2022) that the world’s ten richest men (note, all men) more than doubled their nest eggs from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion. Between them, they have six times more than the poorest 3.1 billion people have between them (the global population is currently estimated at 7.9 billion).

In 2020, CEOs of the top 350 firms in the U.S. made $24.2 million, on average. They earn a ratio of 351:1 versus a typical worker. In 1965 that figure was 20:1. This isn’t just a problem of Jeff and Elon’s making. You get to own it, too.

Crazy, and rising pay gaps are not the only route to success

Does it have to be this way to build a successful company? U.S. credit card processing services company Gravity Payments shows there is another path. It raised the company minimum salary to $70k for all 120 employees in 2015 – including the CEO. It has almost doubled in size since, with 90% employee retention.

And when revenues fell 50% almost overnight in the early part of the Covid crisis, staff volunteered to take a pay cut to keep the business afloat. By July 2020 the company was back on an even keel. And boss Dan Price paid back everyone who had sacrificed part of their pay in the interim.

Inequality kills someone every four seconds – and locks out millions more from opportunity, and out of our demand-ravaged talent pools

Disposable income (or its obvious lack) makes a real difference when facing the ravages of inflation. UK average energy bills are going up 54% (BBC, February 3, 2022), food bills are soaring more than 10% (so far). Now food banks are an alarmingly normalized part of day-to-day life for many with 700,000 families using them in 2020 alone (source, The Trussell Trust).

Globally the impact of inequality is real, and it is harsh – particularly among the poorest 3.1 billion. Oxfam says (in its report, Inequality Kills) that while a new billionaire was created every 26 hours since the start of the pandemic, one person every four seconds dies as a result of inequality – lack of access to healthcare, hunger, gender-based violence, and climate breakdown. Many millions more are shut out of opportunities – limiting the talent pool just as the world’s economic recovery faces growth-crippling skills shortages.

Bottom Line: Start to set things right with measures and rewards that prove you care, to reap the benefit of the networks of trust your purpose attracts

Leaders must now make a stand, demonstrating what they and their company stand for, through their actions and through how their performance is both measured and rewarded.

We have to stop rewarding pure bottom-line outcomes as if they come guilt-free. Instead identify measures that better reflect our business’s role in creating a safe and just space for humanity. In doing so you will show the world the purpose you prioritize, attracting those customers, employees, and partners who will form the networks of trust your success in HFS OneEcosystem depends on.

Start with what you can control. To reduce basic wealth inequality within your organization take a lead from the UN Sustainable Development Goals. These suggest that by 2030 income growth of the bottom 40% of the population should be at a higher rate than the ‘national’ average. Substitute ‘company’ for national and make a start today.

Creating a new brand? Start with what it stands for

Open Business: File under business strategy...

Brands are what people say they are. The classic example here is Kelloggs CornFlakes; developed and conceived as a sexual suppresent, the way people used it (as a breakfast cereal) changed how they talked about it and, after that initial hic-cup, how it was branded.

If you want them to agree with what you think your brand is about you have to behave in a way consistent with that position - and that is driven by purpose. Know your purpose and the rest becomes easy. (Chapter One of The 10 Principles of Open Business is dedicated to exactly this).

This sometimes gets lost in the life of a brand. But when one is starting out it has to be the very start point. And that's what last night's broadcast of BBC1's The Apprentice entirely missed.

To create a brand from scratch FIRST you must decide what it is for; what is its purpose - what does it stand for?

Neither of the teams last night started there - and that's why they struggled to align a name, a label, a billboard and a TV ad in any kind of coherent way. This was something Lord Sugar didn't bother pointing out (banging on about product first as if had one of the teams  created something that tasted really nice it would have done its own branding and sold itself to the room of ad execs).

It's simple really:
1. Choose purpose: (eg Helps you tackle life's adventures head on)
2. Come up with a name to reflect that: (eg Red Bull)
3. Give it a taste and colour to reflect that (Caffeine boosted, natural zingy stuff, you get the idea)
4. Do things that reflect the message (jump from balloons in space)
5. Now story board that TV ad...

There are lessons in this for anyone tackling something new - whether it be products and services or developing a brand. I only wish 'business TV' like The Apprentice would do a better job of keeping up.

Beware the business bots

Image via: http://www.inspirefirst.com/

In the future every business will be digital.

For many that future has already arrived. You know you have arrived in that future when 50.1% or more of your revenue comes via digital. You can probably draw a line on your revenue growth and decline charts to identify the point at which that becomes true for you.

In the future every business will be a technology company. Being digitally, socially connected, always on via the cloud and mobile will be an essential of even the most mom & pop business.

Yes those businesses which require your corporeal presence (those that will congregate in High Streets) may feel this effect later than most, but feel it they will. If I can choose to book a haircut via my mobile vs turn-up and hope, over time even the strongest habits and relationships will be challenged. You can be sure new habits and relationships will more likely be established via the technology route. Old habits die hard - but time kills even the oldest in the end.

So it would be sensible to prepare for your digital and technological future.
But in doing so never lose sight of what will make all this technology work for you - the scalable human relationships it empowers.

Without the human heart of your business - its purpose, your belief, your demonstration of your values through what you do (not what you say) you'll end up with a business which acts like a bot.

In a dark, bleak future there is a world of business bots all following each other and trying to sell to each other based on the faked behaviours each is demonstrating to each other- rather like twitter would become if all the humans left over night.

It's easy to imagine organisations sleep walking into this future - focused on getting technology to do everything for you and for your customer. Bots see and bots do but there is no meaning for them or those they interact with in what they do. Transaction after transaction without meaning.

In the bright, belief-filled future, businesses are using technology to enable and enhance rather than to mechanically do. Here humans are connecting with humans building trust through relationships in which each has the other's best interests at heart. They are partners. They are working together to achieve a shared purpose. They generate meaning.

The role of technology is to reduce the friction in each transaction - whether that be purchasing goods, connecting people with shared purpose, or sharing ideas.  Reduce the transaction cost and you reduce the cost of action.

But we must always be careful to keep the meaning in. Industrialisation took it out. We have the opportunity to rediscover it through the human connectedness the web enables. We can take advantage - or we can build bots.

Edelman trust barometer results align with Open Business approach

Edelman's 2014 Trust barometer survey is out and with it vindication of a key trend we've been observing in Open Business.
The clear majority of respondents to the annual survey (84 percent) believe that business can pursue its self-interest while doing good work for society.

This very much aligns with what we explore in The 10 Principles of Open Business - particularly in the chapters on Purpose and Open Capital. Indeed - The 10 Principles argues that doing good for society offers a competitive advantage in our connected world.

More evidence that 2014 really could be the year of Open Business, perhaps?

From the chapter on Purpose:

There have never been greater drivers for businesses to become Purpose-led.

Apart from anything else, it will reconnect you with the world, re-tying those strands cut loose when CEOs first decided that shareholders mattered more than anyone or anything else.

“It’s a reversal back to the old days,” says Mark (Earls), “when corporations felt part of the world and felt a responsibility to it."

And from the chapter on Open Capital:

Peer-funded partnerships also offer the opportunity to create value beyond the back slap in the boardroom and the bottom line on the balance sheet; value creation which acknowledges resources are finite, that people, communities, societies and ecologies are connected and matter to each other.

And this in itself provides a genuine competitive advantage that the wisest global entrepreneurs are quick to identify. As Sir Richard Branson puts it: “…the boundaries between work and higher purpose are merging into one – where doing good really is good for business.”

In a connected world, where to win is to work together with ever greater numbers of people who care about the same things you do, few are going to sign up to support businesses which are damaging the ecosystem in which they exist – let alone support those organisations with their own money. Open Capital will therefore be a key driver of ‘doing good is good for business’.

• Pre-order The 10 Principles of Open Business now for delivery on launch day - January 28 UK/February 28 US.

The role of Open Business in emerging holacracies

How Holacracy works - image from http://holacracy.org/how-it-works

With Ev Williams’ Medium and now Zappos going the Holacracy route, it’s no surprise this ‘new’ management model is getting attention from the likes of mashable

Its Flattened/No job titles/Goal-rather-than-management-led approach is an enviable fit with the more open business philosophy companies of this kind are comfortable and familiar with.

In many ways it’s simply putting a name to and combining many of the learnings those pursuing the 10 Principles of Open Business have already acquired. - but it may also provide a useful additional toolkit for the internal development of some Open Businesses.

The following brief extracts from my new book (out on January 28) The 10 Principles of Open Business, illustrate the point:

South African entrepreneur Arthur Attwell – found similar effectiveness from following the principle of Transparency:

“... you get a productivity boost from people who properly understand their importance to the company and the role they play. So many people – even unconsciously – think that they are just a tiny cog in a big machine.”

 “They feel an alienation from the products of their work,” says Arthur.

Without transparency it’s difficult for people to find meaning in their work. And without meaning there is little ambition and even less joy.

The job descriptions he offers people are just three lines long. There is no task-by-task list of things to do every day.

Everyone must have the ambition to own their space in his company.

“That’s why we don’t have job descriptions in the conventional sense. We have a maximum three bullet-points of functional responsibility. Some people have just one or two,” says Arthur.

“What that means is the things in those bullet points are your problem. It means people have to engage with more than just a narrow task list defined by key performance indicators,” adds Arthur.

“Make your people the boss of what they do.”

This will sound familiar to those trialling holocracy.

As will the impact of Principle 4: Shareability:

Definition: Packaging knowledge for easy and open sharing both internally and externally

Sharing is the cultural key to collaboration. It is where the organisational design principles of collaboration reside.

It is a principle which has the powerful benefit of flattening hierarchies, distributing responsibility and making the organisation more strategy and goal-led than management and task directed.

Shareability provides the tools for a radical re-organisation of resource. Deployed effectively it means people gravitate to what they care most about and can do most about. It can allocate people to work with their passions – generating a giant leap in effectiveness and productivity – not to mention morale.

And from the chapter on Principle 1: Purpose...

“If every employee is clear about the Purpose of the org, if they express this in what they do and it is expressed in what they see of the behaviours of the business and of their colleagues, then they will be better able to make decisions which are truly aligned to the Purpose...

The decisions your people make are what drives the success of your business. Ensuring those decisions are made towards your shared goal (Purpose) is... more critical than ever.

Since we have seen that telling teams is not enough (and even less likely to succeed in distributed structures), ensuring they know the Purpose, through belief and behaviours, becomes even more essential.

Thatcher's legacy? Getting away with it is not a strategy

Had the Labour Government that preceded Margaret Thatcher’s first election win had access to accurate data they would never have needed to go cap in hand to the IMF, to devalue the pound and accept swingeing cuts demanded of them for getting the loan. They were operating on a false premise – that the economy was in a far more parlous state than it actually was. This miscalculation changed the way Britain was governed. 

Mrs Thatcher was lucky. She got away with it.

Had a few more Argentine bombs been correctly fused, a few more Exocet missiles supplied, a few less brave men acted a little less heroicly, The US been less generous with its clandestine support, Britain would have slumped to ignoble defeat in The Falklands. It was very touch and go.

Mrs Thatcher was lucky. She got away with it.

Had the technology and the will to access and surface Britain’s biggest ever bag of gold – black gold from the North Sea – not coincided with her Premiership  she would not have been able to tilt the electoral playing field with the massive privatisation share price give-away that the oil funded, or the cut-price transfer of council housing to private ownership that followed.

Many got lucky, cashed in, took the money and ran. And thought they’d got away with it.

But far from her dream of giving more people a stake in a capitalist economy, she’d succeeded only in creating a society ever more fixated on and dominated by consumerism. Mrs T thought we aspired to prudent stewardship through ownership - but what she actually created were the conditions for rampant consumerism.

Still she believed she was right – and kept ploughing on with unpopular cut after unpopular policy because..? She kept on getting away with it.

What did we learn? Belief is important. But in the end it won’t out run the truth.

Getting away with it is not a strategy. Lucky generals don’t always win.

Gather the evidence. Act on the data.

Make a better fit with reality.

I'm a big believer in belief - but never at the cost of reality.

The dash from convergence and how the web can save us if we choose

I wonder if the proliferation of devices we are experiencing give us a hint about what will happen to the web?

A few years back – when the first smart phones were making inroads, when the first all-you-can-eat mobile data deals were laid before a hungry audience, then it seemed to make perfect sense that convergence would arrive via the device.

Hell, I have a phone that can take picture, tell the time, calculate, run my diary... open documents, access my email, access the internet, play games and music, play video, show broadcast tv etc etc. Why wouldn’t we think one device could do it all?

And here I am packing a few items for some days away on business and finding it essential that I load up with a laptop, ipad, kindle fire AND iphone (4S)...

Little sign of convergence here. And I’ve never given up on wearing a watch either.

But platforms? Despite the vast variety of opportunity, there are only ever a handful of giants. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, for example

All start off with relatively focused aims. But over time they bloat – copying the ideas of others, assuming that the battle is on for the one social home we will become and remain loyal to.

But the more they bloat, the more we see the value in the specific, the more we spill out into those with greater focus on specific needs – the Pinterests, Instagrams, 4Squares of this world – and the thousands more behind them in the long tail.

I wonder if, given just a little more bloating from the big boys, we may rediscover the self-forming-group value of the web – that we need less direction and guidelines from those who would be our internet, and more purpose from ourselves to make our connectedness count.

The dash from convergence in devices may be yet another indicator that we are more comfortable with complexity than the reductionists would have us believe, that we value niche over lowest common denominator in a very powerful way.

And that’s a good thing – because it’s a much better match with the infinite variety of adhoc self-forming groups the web is built to enable.

The web is our salvation from the bland, from the mass, from the uniform. If we want it to be.

Open Business: Principle 1 - Purpose

I've just published the second in the series of blog posts on the Principles of Open Business over on 9010group.com.
Here's an excerpt:

Most organisations are good at ‘What’ they do and ‘How’ they do it. But ask them Why? And things get trickier...
Most when asked about Purpose will point to Mission Statements.  Unfortunately in the majority of cases a Mission Statement begs a further question: Why?
Many are written along the lines of “To be No1 in our chosen markets and sectors returning maximum value to shareholders”.
Why?
That Why is important. It is what brings people together, motivates them, inspires them to support your cause. In a connected world in which the organisation’s role is to act as a platform to help others achieve a collective shared Purpose, it is essential. It is how you succeed.

Read the full post on 9010group.com

Related articles

• The 10 Principles of Open Business and why they are demanded by the networked world

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It's time for a de-brand

Why rebrand when you can debrand?

Debrand? To remove/strip away/unlearn the accumulated clutter that has gathered around the purpose and meaning of an organisation. All the additions and paraphernalia of previous rounds of tinkering and 'rebranding'.

To unearth or reclaim its fundamental truths - the reasons it exists, the purpose, the why.

To see the wood for the trees.

And in this to rediscover what wrong it was trying to put right, what belief it holds that staff and customers could too.

And then to act in accordance.

If you think the bottom line is your bottom line... It's time for a debrand.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

5 ways to make better marketing, better companies

Five quick tips with which to assess your strategies in the light of the connected world: Tick the boxes and you won't go far wrong in making your marketing, innovation, engagement, and ulitmately your organisation, a better fit with the 21st Century.

1.    Have something to believe in. What else have you got?
2.    Don’t do stuff to people. Make stuff with people. That way it’ll be a better fit and matter more.
3.    We don’t connect to be marketed to. No one forms groups or resides in communities to be marketed to. Ask yourself why groups DO form.
4.    We do what the other monkeys around us do. Then post rationalise. This matters.
5.    There are powerful connections between circumstances and behaviour. Do not ignore them.

Video: Understanding media in the context of social

The Media Briefing was kind enough to conduct a video interview with me last week.

The questions (and answers, I hope) are aimed at helping media companies understand the impact of digital/social, the value of purpose in a platform-thinking world and the value of open vs closed (paywalls et al).
Here's the edited results. To see the video in the context of the original article follow this link.

Who gets my vote? We do

I have a first and easy step I'd like to suggest the UK Parliament takes in its pursuit of more open government.

It'll put its members in touch with the people who elect them - with the views of the nation. And it'll do that without requiring them to move out of their first class rail carriages. Can't expect too much all in one go, can we?
I recently asked David Cameron to tell us what he thought, rather than tell us what he thought he ought to tell us.
It seems politicians - with some rare exceptions - see this as a step too far.

Well, us lot, Joe Public, the electorate, this army of self-publishers, have no such qualms.
We are quite happy to say what we think. We don't even mind being proven wrong on occasion.

And, unlike the man who would be our Prime Minister, we do publish what we think. A lot. Particularly about things we care about. (image courtesy kberberi)

Things we care about include parliamentary bills. The Digital Economy Bill this week amply demonstrated how a community of purpose can discover one another and act rapidly around the social object of a piece of parliamenary legislation.

Similar communities of purpose exist around any issue - on or off the statute book.

So I wonder how the debate may have shaped had the pitiful number of MPs in the commons for the second reading of the #DEBill been able to see for themselves the thousands of comments that were being made, the excellent points raised by thousands of people on Twitter; the crowd-sourced brilliance of the nation our MPs are there to serve?

So let's see a big screen - the twitterfall (all the comments about a certain, usually hashtagged, subject - collated and shown in real-time) for each debate - installed in The Commons, The Lords and - where appropriate - committee rooms, too.

Listening is the first step to open government. And this could be a first small step to listening.
Note: this is already happening on a handful of MPs mobile phones - trust me on this - so please let's not get into arguments about 'distraction'.

Listening, open government, shouldn't be done for some kind of altruistic, touchy-feely reason (though none of that is bad). It should be done because it will improve MPs' decision making processes. It will improve our legislation.

How so? Because MPs are generalists. They have to be. And for whatever given subject there is a community of purpose ready to come together to offer expertise and real-world experience far in advance of anything the House can muster on its own.

We now have the social tools for communities of purpose to self-organise in rapid, adhoc ways. The #debill campaign, 20,000 letters to MPs in 7 days etc, shows it is happening and will continue to happen. Exponentially.

It is easier now than at any time in history for people to discover other people who care about the same issue they do and to organise to make change.

Government can join in if it wishes. If it doesn't, it just might find itself out of a job.

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Belief, rock'n'roll and the danger of fans

I went to see New Model Army last night - the result of sitting next to lead singer Justin at a restaurant at Luton airport in the summer.

Wasn't on the guest list or anything, it was just that the chance encounter inspired my wife and I to go.
NMA have been touring in varying line ups for 25+ years. Their latest album was released this year.

And I think the reason they have been able to continue is they give their fans something to believe in. They stand for something. Something anti-establishment; for the common man - against the city. They were even once denied visas to tour the States. A feather in the cap indeed.

NMA also believe. It's what motivates them to play on a Wednesday night in Cambridge - rolling out Poison Street one more time. It's what kept them going despite the death of a prominent founding member.
It's what keeps the same fans coming back - dressing the same ways - and spreading the good word to their friends.

Belief has - I hazard a guess - made them happy, made them fulfilled, made their lives meaningful.
But it hasn't made them millionnaires.

And I wondered about that.

Not everyone wants money. But certainly NMA would like more believers (more in The Family).

So here's The Message. Don't be defined by your fans.

David Bowie was a big UK glam rock icon. Then he made a disco album. And went global.

Bowie fans are defined by Bowie.

Apple fanboys are defined by Apple.

Not vice versa.

You can be very successful by all kinds of measures by following your beliefs. But to take success beyond the silo of your current followers you must be prepared to redefine yourself on your own terms.

If NMA could have brought the Stop The City message to a wider audience by getting a haircut and playing the samba music they secretly hanker after (I'm making that up) would/could they?

True belief gives you the tools to go beyond your current hardcore, often at the risk of disappointing your current hardcore (imagine the delight of long-haired Bowie rock fans when They got Young Americans home).

Bowie's hardcore was not in his glam rock musical genre or in the style of his hair or clothes. It was in the permission to be different, to experiment and innovate that he gave fans.

And that attracted more people than sticking with what he knew was succeeding, ever could.

The DNA is in the belief - not in its latest expression

NMA's DNA is not in the music or the dress code of the fans. Nor is the DNA of any belief-based business wrapped up in its latest trappings.

Cling on to the DNA at all costs, but lose the trappings whenever you feel right - no matter how many of your current fans look at you as if you are drowning kittens.

Oh, and for the record NMA were great last night. And so were their fans.

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The NHS: A case of viral love, belief and the enemy

Much time, effort and money is spent on 'making things go viral' - often without making much beyond a ripple on the web's vast ocean.
And that's ok. Really useful things - things that are a really good fit, are a fit for long-tail-like-low numbers by virtue of their true relevance to those who find them useful.

But many a marketing director still dreams of the kind of mass numbers of mass broadcast.
They want their mass cake and eat their niche one too.

The envious eyes hungrily watched the growth of #welovethenhs on Twitter.

They saw it grow so fast it crashed Twitter, attracted Prime Minister Gordon Brown to join in (and his PR savvy wife Sarah) and... finally the mainstream press ran another story about Twitter. Lots.

(By the way, how did the BBC arrive at the claim 'The Twitter campaign has attracted more than a million followers ' - that's not a stat that's publicly available as far as I know.)

An aside on that: This very regular transfer of twittered tales to mainstream media is all a little odd.

1. It seems wise enough of the press to report on how people are talking about stuff. Before social media journalists did vox pops or listened in pubs. We (us people, not them journos) always were the content. But back then we weren't publishers or distributors. Social media allows us to fulfill all three roles now. Which I guess is why the press reporting what we had already thought, published and distributed makes them seem a little like the proverbial spare apendage at a house of ill-repute...

2. Reporting that people are organising to show how much they are prepared to fight to defend the NHS is a huge story politically. Yet the press continues to report on the tools (Twitter) rather than the action. Like I keep saying, we're trying to change the world - not report on it.

Anyway. Back to the matter in hand. Why did #welovethenhs grow so fast and wide?

Here are my best guesses. Feel free to add your own to the comments.

1. It was NOT directed from the centre.
This is no Government-organised PR stunt. As far as I can work out some graduates in Edinburgh started the ball rolling (update: Dan at Twibbon, started the twibbon - which is going wildy well - comment from him below. He also tells me the instigator of the hashtag is Graham Linehan, best known as the writer of Father Ted.

2. It is a belief which people can share, rally to and advocate.

3. It is a belief that was there already. The #welovethenhs became a tool those who shared the belief could use to find one another.

4. It's emotional. So are we. One tweet I saw summed it up. 'everyone has someone in their family who owes their life to the NHS'.

5. Someone threatened the thing we all believe in. Hello Sarah Palin and the American right. Her description of the NHS as evil not only revealed how slippery her grasp on reality must be, it got our backs up - making us more ready to act.

6. The tools were easy to use and perfectly adapted for peer to peer transmission in the wonderfully viral conditions of Twitter. ie twitter's hashtags and trends.

7. Influencers got a simple way of wearing a badge to support the campaign in every conversation they had - the simple but effective twibbon.

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Something to talk about vs something to do together

This is brilliant. No, really. A fantastic bit of creative from the ad industry. I do urge you to watch it. You'll be entertained.

And if you watch it in the context of the Vimeo takeover I first saw it in, you may even rave that this is the 'future of internet advertising' or 'pure innovation' - judging from the 367 comments in the last 12 days.

It works on so many levels.

Trouble is, it doesn't work on the one that counts.


Honda Insight - Let It Shine from Honda on Vimeo.

ok. If you saw the sheep thing from Samsung (at least I think it was Samsung... and we'll come back to that) you might not think the content is that much of a breakthrough.

The point is it is really well executed and a neat idea and people are talking about it. But almost every one of the comments is about the wonder, impact and technical achievement of the advert (and a broadcast advert it most assuredly is, no matter how 'interactive' some may describe it. There ain't no two-way flow going on here).

Anyone mention Honda in all this? Honda Insight? Hybrid Prius rival? er... all quiet there.

Well... all quiet apart from a smattering of relatively negative stuff. For example:

‘honda, how about coming up with some real solutions for the obvious problems, instead of this feel good, lifestyle eco shit?’ … totally not impressed by the car.

‘it's baby steps in the right direction - research Honda's FCX for a real life-changing car’

'If your selling point is being environmentally-friendly, I don't think it's a good idea to have a commercial that drives a hundred cars out into the desert just to make a light show.

 Honda's ad agency has given people something to talk about. The ad is also used for TV (at least, it has been in the UK). So make your guess about the response to the TV ad too.

A big spend on a neat piece of entertainment. And?

And for many that's job done. But the connection between something memorable and the behaviour changing thing they'd like you to remember has not been made.

I wonder if they may have had more success in this regard by creating not something for people to talk about, but something for people to do together - something truly interactive.

For example: Perhaps a way of creating your own versions of the movie, spelling out your name, drawing pictures that matter to you, so that you might be willing to share your personalised versions with people you care about and who care about you. The result becomes yours to share - not theirs.

It would have been a start.

But greater impact comes when the creative is led by the purpose. And the purpose here is a greener world.

Instead of the broadcast entertainment experience, think of ways of bringing people together to make a greener world which the Honda Insight could make a valuable contribution to. Build from there.

Less shock and awe - more shared and sustained relationships.

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