The Secrets of Teamwork

Thomas Edison's great grandniece has penned Midnight Lunch, a 300-page book that reveals the inventor's four-faceted approach to teamwork.

• Edison built teams from diverse disciplines. The team that invented the lightbulb included chemists, mathmeticians and glassblowers.
  
  
• The inventorlearned from his mistakes. After state and local governments rejected his electronic vote recorder, Edison decided to focus exclusively on consumer products.
  
  
• Edison's vision kept the teams on track. When team members floundered or disagreed, the boss quickly intervened, deciding the course.
  
  
• Edison changed direction with the market. Other inventors of the day ignored the fact that consumers wanted products powered by electricity—and they failed.

Want to Write Better Case Sudies? Ask Aristotle.

In Poetics, Aristotle wrote that every tragedy has three stages:

1. An inciting moment

2. A climactic struggle and

3. A resolution

Every case study, when you think about it, has the same structure as well:

1. The opening scene depicts a disturbing incident. Your customer suddenly finds her welfare threatened. Readers feel her pain.

2. A climactic struggle ensues. Your company helps the customer solve her problem. She emerges a hero.

3. A resolution is reached. Things resort to status quo. And readers are compelled to act. Because they, too, can be heroes.

How to Win Fans and Influence Equals

In his 2,300-year old book Rhetoric, Aristotle argued, "It is not enough to know what we ought to say; we must also know how to say it."

Aristotle was convinced that rhetoric (the art of persuasion) comprised three elements: facts, language and style.

Although most of us would insist that the only thing that matters in a serious discussion are the facts, Aristotle knew that style "affects the success of a speech greatly."

Or, as in the words of British novelist Joseph Conrad, "He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word."

To succeed in persuading others of your views, according to Aristotle, you should:

• Rely on plain, everyday language
• Include a few rhetorical flourishes, to give your message impact
• Avoid "strange words, compound words and invented words;" and
• Use metaphors

I wish more marketers would take a look at Aristotle's Rhetoric before attempting to persuade us of their views.

The business world would become a lot more gobbledygook-free.

Consider the following statement, for example, courtesy of Facebook. (The company plans to abolish users' right to vote for or against changes to its privacy policies.)

In the past, your substantive feedback has led to changes to the proposals we made. However, we found that the voting mechanism, which is triggered by a specific number of comments, actually resulted in a system that incentivized the quantity of comments over their quality. Therefore, we’re proposing to end the voting component of the process in favor of a system that leads to more meaningful feedback and engagement.

Just imagine, for example, if Facebook's vice president wrote this instead:

Before we change any privacy policy, we always consider your advice. But a handful of users, by repeatedly posting comments, have been gaming the system. We want to prevent that.
Want to learn more about the art of persuasion? Check out my white paper.

Marketing Lessons from the Three Stooges

For pure marketing genius, contemporary giants like Jeff Bezos, Howard Schultz and Tony Hsieh shrink in comparison to the three ur-marketers.

I'm talking about Moe, Larry and Curly.

Sure, attend all the marketing conferences you want. Follow all the blogs. Study all the books. Consume all the CDs.

You won't learn a tenth of what you'll learn by watching any one of The Stooges' shorts.

To save you time, I've boiled their innumerable brand-building insights down to three key lessons:

Make great products. The boys always innovated and never imitated! Want to make a great cupcake? Add pillow feathers. A great microbrew? Add a whole box of alum. A great soup? Add a live oyster.

Keep a laser-focus on your goals. The boys understood the paramount importance of attention to detail and keeping "on task." Which of their competitors would have spent as much time fixing a leaking pipe? Pitching a tent? Eating an artichoke?

Utilize short, snappy content. As content marketers, The Stooges were ahead of their time. They drew millions of fans by keeping their messages brief and on point. And they built a loyal following by perfecting a consistently edgy—and authentic—tone. While you don't want merely to copy the boys, it will help if you break rocks over your head, mistake a skunk for your hat, and rip out clumps of your own hair.

2013: The Year the Social Networks Make or Break Your Brand

Branding Strategy Insider offers 13 tasty predictions for 2013.

Among them is this morsel: brands wll become increasingly susceptible to the chatter on social networks next year.

"Watch for greater influences of engagement and purchase habits via friends and social networks," Insider says.

"Brands will have to factor in the reality that peer-to-peer communications come in three varieties: good, bad and bland. This makes companies more susceptible to consumer indifference, their conversations and social interactions."

Marketers who want to compete need to understand how social networks actually work, or risk  being marginalized.

"The brands that make it here will know the 'how' of this consumer-controlled space," Insider concludes.