This presentation, given at Planningness 2011 in Minneapolis, is about our realisation that our traditional strategy and production processes were holding us back as we tried to build more modern ...
This presentation, given at Planningness 2011 in Minneapolis, is about our realisation that our traditional strategy and production processes were holding us back as we tried to build more modern kinds of marketing programs. Through the course of some other projects we landed upon the idea of production as strategy or thinking as you make and making as you think. We've tried to lay out some of the things we've learned along the way - but we're definitely still learning.
Production as strategy. And other contradictions of making modern brands. May 20, 2011 2640 Lyndale Avenue South Minneapolis Minnesota 55408 T +1 612 279 1400 F +1 612 279 1401 www.zeusjones.comZeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Modern brands are defined by what they do.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Classic modelof a brand.Built for a mass-mediaworld.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Modern brandmodel. CORE BELIEFBuilt for a world driven byexperiences andinteractions.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Established 2007 to build modern brands. We combine strategy, design and digital expertise. Many of us came from the digital side.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Zeus Jones Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011. Zeus Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.A tale of two cities.Charles Dickens writing about London and Paris in 1775.
A good description of Zeus Jones in 2009.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Go to BP Peruse the department Closing a hole in the sales cycle. Choose items to try on Sales often delayed or lost in the dressing room due to need for approval. Try on clothesZeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Go to BP Do more research Peruse the department Closing a hole in Look at photos and consider outfits the sales cycle. Choose items to try on Purchase Sales often delayed or lost clothes in the dressing room due to Share photos need for approval. Try on clothes Take PB Photos Adjust outfitsZeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
It was our best project of 2009.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
It was our best project of 2009. It was our worst project of 2009.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
What consumed most of our attention.And what ultimately limited our success.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.Surface background alternativesWe spent 3 weeks arguing against yellow, and then we lost.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.What we should have focused onUsing the content, learning about our customers, learning about our clothes.
We invested all our effort in the least valuable part of the experience and none in the most valuable.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2010.Things we focused on Things we forgot aboutMaking it cool Making it cheaplyMaking it pretty Making it fastStability FlexibilityPerfecting an object Perfecting a processThe customer The dataThe experience The outputBuilding it Building upon it
Strategy is the process of making assumptions. As the world becomes more complex your chances of being wrong increases.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Products and experiences reveal new opportunities for usage after theyre built. That’s just one of the ways they differ from communications.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Image via RedDogFever Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
The services we love the most are always in beta Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
We needed a modern approach to production that: Allows more consistent opportunities for feedback, new ideas, innovation, and iterative progress Documents ideas, discussions and decisions and makes them available to everyone.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Traditional Project Management Based on Fredrick Taylors "Scientific Management" written in 1911 Used to scope out systematic projects that require up-front planning.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Traditional project management framework. Predictability and systematic, linear development Deterministic, reductionist approach that rely on task breakdown Stable requirements, analysis and stable design Compliance as a means of project control Individual resources as interchangeable cogs in the machine.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Problems with traditional project management methods. • Creates a false sense of security that projects are being managed by exhaustive planning, measuring, and controlling. • Adds unnecessary upfront cost and time for planning which in the end will be tested and changed throughout the project. • Requires detailed, rigid proposals that are developed at the beginning of a project are written at a point in the project with the most uncertainty. • Does not see participants as skilled and valuable stakeholders in the execution of the project. • Change is seen as a result of poor planning which leads to the perception that the project is failing.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Average percentage of developed functionality actually used when a traditional, linear approach Traditional project to requirements definition is taken on a "launched" information technology project: management creates inefficiencies. Always 7 Fixed price bids/contracts are bad ideas for both Often 13 Design/Development companies and the client. Clients think they are reducing their financial risk with a fixed bid, but the reality is that it forces them Sometimes 16 into a position where their money is almost always wasted (see figure below). For developers, it almost Rarely 19 always motivates them to reduce the delivered quality in order to make it within budget and/or time. Never 45 Source: Chaos Report v3. Standish Group. Copyright 2005-2006 Scott W. AmblerZeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
See, it was a production problem.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Agile project management. Evolved from the agile software development manifesto in 2001 and the fields of human interaction management and business process management.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Agile project management frameworks. Flexibility and dynamic, cyclical development - Launch with less, evaluate and revise Focus on Guiding Vision Change management and communication Collaboration as a means of project improvement Employees as skilled and valuable stakeholdersZeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Projects should and will change during execution. We manage the change to improve the project.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
A fundamental change in how we organize and work. • A view of organizations as fluid, adaptive systems composed of intelligent living beings • A recognition of the limits of external control in establishing order, and of the role of intelligent control that employs self- organization as a means of establishing order • An overall problem solving approach that is humanistic • It regards employees as skilled and valuable stakeholders in the management of a team instead of cogs in a machine • It relies on the collective ability of autonomous teams as the basic problem solving mechanism.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011. (2003-2008). Agile Project Management. Retrieved February 9, 2010 , from CC Pace Web site: http://www.ccpace.com/Resources/documents/AgileProjectManagement.pdf
It limits up-front planning to a minimum based on an assumption of unpredictability, and instead stresses adaptability to changing conditions.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011. Image via RedDogFever
Turns out it was a strategy problem after all.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
We needed a modern approach to strategy. One that limits the number of up-front assumptions made prior to developing a solution. One that marries strategic development with product development.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
One that reacts to new opportunities as they become available and uses them to solve business and marketing problems.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Google even more. “Help us re-think how we list our products.”Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
We started by asking ourselves what can be done? Rather than asking what could be done?Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.Design as strategy: audit of product pages.Many product pages have an API that show what people are doing with the product.
The things people do with products are more interesting and more descriptive than the products themselves. Strategy emerged from design.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2010.
A cultural dashboardNew opportunities emerged from production. Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Production as strategy. We made it in 3 weeks, so we only built the things that were quick and easy to build.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2010. Things we focused on Things we didn’t Making it cheaply Making it cool Making it fast Making it pretty Flexibility Stability The output The experience The data The customer Perfecting a process Perfecting an object Building upon it Building itZeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Execution became a strategic conversation which made it less subjective and less arbitrary.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Production as strategy frameworks. Turns client and agency into collaborators, outcomes are purposefully unclear therefore no side can claim to have the answer. No separation between “thinking teams” and “making teams,” thinking doesn’t end. Projects improve as they progress. Creates a situation where there are often too many opportunities rather than too few.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
A fundamental change in how strategists work. • Need to get your hands dirty, can’t remove yourself from the actual making of things. • Focus on behavioral pivot points rather than mental pivot points. • Build strategy from the ground up rather than from the top down. • Be more aware of what you don’t know that what you do know.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
A fundamental change in how producers work. • Think about change as an opportunity instead of something that derails the plan • Create more opportunities for check-ins and collaboration • Develop plans based on duration and resources vs. hoursZeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Develop strategic processes, not strategic plans, whose minimum outcomes will meet your objectives. But which also have the potential to deliver far more.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Strategic starting points. 1. What’s the desired outcome in order to solve the problem? 2. What needs to happen first in order to achieve our outcome? 3. What can be built quickly to enable that? 4. How can building it deliver enough business value that the problem becomes easier to solve?Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
GMI Connect Help to create a culture of cross-team and cross division collaboration at General MillsZeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Collaborative workspaces Identifying people to collaborate with Rich conversations Collaboration worksheet Collaboration activities Meeting spaces Case study library Q&A platform Virtual whiteboardsZeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Hard to Accomplish IRL Collaborative workspaces Identifying people to collaborate with Rich conversations Collaboration worksheet Hard to Build Easy to Build Collaboration activities relative to development Meeting spaces Case study library difficulty. Q&A platform Virtual whiteboards Easy to Accomplish IRLZeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Hard to Accomplish IRL Collaborative workspaces Identifying people to collaborate with Rich conversations Collaboration worksheet Hard to Build Easy to Build Collaboration activities relative to development Meeting spaces Case study library difficulty. Q&A platform Virtual whiteboards Easy to Accomplish IRLZeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.General Mills ConnectCreating a culture of collaboration in the company.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2010.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2010.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2010.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2010.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2010.
Connect strategy has been driven by user need and user observation.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Case Study: Senior Management Conference• Used like twitter to post questions / feedback before & during conference• Presented on displays around campus for “virtual attendance”• 1000+ attendance• Increased attendance, new interactions, new connections• Allowed people to search for conversations after the event
Traditional strategy Modern strategy Theoretical Practical Mental models Tangible products Prediction Observation Testing backwards Testing forwards Monolithic Iterative Results oriented Guided by a vision Reductionist ExpansionistZeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Traditionalstrategy buildstraditionalbrands.Strategy for a predictable,focused outcome.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Modernstrategy buildsmodern brands. CORE BELIEFStrategy guided by a visionand designed to createcomplex and surprisingexperiences.Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.Modern brands connect in a more human way.Production as strategy is a more human way to build brands.
Thank you! Questions and workshop. 2640 Lyndale Avenue South Minneapolis Minnesota 55408 T +1 612 279 1400 F +1 612 279 1401 www.zeusjones.comZeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Zach Pentel
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