Author: Mark Di Somma

Which story will they tell? 9 possibilities for pitch stories

By Mark Di Somma

As I explained in this post, the purpose of a pitch is not to sell what you do. It’s to explain in the clearest terms why someone should look forward to doing business with you. And while you’re explaining your story, you can bet that every other participant in the pitch will be telling theirs. It’s well worth surmising where your story lies and what their story/stories might be: 1. The authority – the trusted source of knowledge. This is a brand and credentials story. It focuses on being the market leader and on the ability to take matters in hand and deal with problems efficiently and effectively. The emphasis is on de-risking and delegation. Works wonders with clients looking for someone to take charge. 2. The safe bet – the best pair of hands. This is a reassurance story. It focuses on the proven and time-tested partner, diligent, hard-working, who always hits targets. Not necessarily the most exciting answer or the most original, but a choice that most will be more than happy with. …

How do you prevent your corporate culture from stalling?

By Mark Di Somma

There is plenty of discussion, quite rightly, about the fact that people are overworked, that they are under ridiculous pressure, that they feel undervalued and unmotivated – but a couple of conversations this week have got me wondering whether the opposite, an unpressured culture, whilst not as destructive, may nevertheless be undesirable, albeit for different reasons. I’m always concerned for instance when people inside a culture tell me that the place they work at is comfortable or that it has a real family feel. In a corporate cultural setting, too often those terms are code for a work force that is happy to leave things as they are. The other word that always rings alarm bells is “busy”. When people tell me they work in a busy workplace, that too is often code – this time for a lot of activity, noise and meetings, but without focus and without measured and effective outcomes. So how much urgency do you need in a workplace? Is some degree of turbulence necessary to keep people on their toes? …

The future myth

By Mark Di Somma

Transformation isn’t about plotting a meeting point for your brand with the predicted future. It’s not about getting to where the puck will be, to paraphrase Wayne Gretsky. Because depending on the arrival of the next big thing or that breaking wave, that hot new trend, the long-awaited demographic or anything else for that matter is conjecture. Banking on it is simply speculation. To evolve successfully, brands must grow out of what they have into what they need to be. They cannot shape the future. They can only shape their future. That is what they have control of. That is what they are responsible for. The customers they take with them into the future. The actions they drive in the future. The products they will make. The culture they build for the future. All strategists and decision makers can and should read out of the macro-trends, and even the supposedly “specific” future trends for that matter, are the broad indicators of the change that’s coming and perhaps a sense of where it might be coming …

Thank you for your interest …

By Mark Di Somma

Has the temptation to template ever been greater? As the volume of conversations between organisations and stakeholders continues to rise, so does the urge to have “ready-to-go” responses. Our interactions with organisations are increasingly governed it seems by autoresponders that look to slow down or divert real contact. Granted, there is too much traffic today for every query to be answered personally – but I can’t help feeling that an opportunity is being missed here; that the lack of personality in the interactions we do have has made them trite and meaningless. People feel fobbed off, even if that wasn’t the intention. When was the last time you listened to the patter that precedes you waiting in a call centre queue? How closely did you read the last rejection letter you got from a publisher? What did the voice message say when you called after hours? You don’t remember – because it doesn’t matter. You’ve heard it all before. And you’ll hear it all again … and again … and again. Too often, organisations miss …

The global challenge of doing business openly

By Mark Di Somma

Congratulations to All Good Organics, the first New Zealand company to make the prestigious Ethisphere Institute’s World’s Most Ethical (WME) companies list. All Good may be tiny but this ranking puts them in some great company – one of just 145 companies, chosen from more than 5000 entries. Judge for yourself. In the light of this win, interesting to read Raz Godelnik’s take on the difference that CSR actually makes for companies in this post on TriplePundit: A MIT Sloan Management Review and BCG survey showed 40% of executives polled believed the greatest benefit to an organisation in addressing sustainability was “improved brand reputation”. Godelnik goes on to cite evidence that CSR initiatives help companies retain stock value when facing corporate governance scandals and product recalls, and that firms viewed as having weak CSR suffered stock declines twice the size of firms viewed as having strong CSR after riots surrounding 1999 WTO meetings in Seattle. While consumers might not be willing to pay higher prices for greener products, he says, they will more likely purchase …

Whose buying – and whose purchasing?

By Mark Di Somma

At first the question appears nonsensical. But only if you assume that buying and purchasing are synonyms. Most financial systems treat them as exactly that because, from their perspective, the result is the same. Income. But there is a difference – and being able to define and quantify that difference is important. Semantics doesn’t just split hairs. It splits customers. It isolates loyalties and behaviours. And in so doing, it potentially defines different actions. But it only does so for those prepared to look for the nuances. As big data hands marketers and decision makers more and more detail, the ability to read between the lines and find the nuances of behaviour in the numbers will be more important than ever. In this case, being able to tell the difference between your buyers (“the people who actively choose to buy from us”) and your purchasers (“the people who happen to have bought from us”) reveals two very different parties in terms of inclination. The first will be back. The second may not. Things become a …

Talking a culture through change

By Mark Di Somma

Change programs are so often about actions. So much so in fact that the dialogue that surrounds and informs those changes can be dismissed as “just talk”. Time and time again, in working on transformation projects, I have faced an uphill battle in trying to persuade decision makers to give their proposed changes the air-time that staff need to talk over and through what’s happening. But such talk is vital. Actions really do speak louder with words – and they do so because they allow people to come together and to work through what is happening. Change presented on a slidedeck is change imposed. Change discussed in forums over time, and with a built-up understanding of its implications and opportunities, is change absorbed and applied. Further than that though, language has a huge role to play in the bedding in of new ways of doing things. Language actually defines a culture because it is literally how people connect – changing it significantly shifts the parameters of, and the context for, what is defined, accepted and …

CSR has failed. Now what?

By Mark Di Somma

That’s the question being asked by Wayne Visser in this thoughtful and searching paper that raises significant concerns about how companies pursue responsible ideas. But, alongside those areas that he has identified as needing to be addressed, Visser proposes his vision of CSR 2.0. I was keen to explore what some of the ideas mooted here might mean for brand behaviours going forward. First – a brief recap of Visser’s argument. If you define CSR as “an integrated, systemic approach by business that builds, rather than erodes or destroys, economic, social, human and natural capital”, then we have no choice, says Visser, than to mark CSR as a fail because communities and ecosystems are getting worse. While at the micro level there have been improvements, at the macro level, social, environmental and ethical health is in decline. And that’s because most sustainability and corporate responsibility programs are really about being less bad in pockets than actively good across the board. CSR, he says, transits through five Ages: 1. Greed – limited corporate sustainability and responsibility …

9 things you should know about branded language

By Mark Di Somma

1. Language is one of the most important definers of any brand. The language you choose, the language you don’t choose and the language you choose to replace are a reflection, and in some senses a definition, of your priorities. 2. Language underpins perspective: it not only reveals how an organisation feels about a matter, it also signals how that organisation might be expected to approach and resolve that matter in the future. 3. Language defines relationships. Your tone reflects how at ease you feel in your own brand skin. Formal brands use formal language, and that formality rubs off into their dealings. Relaxed brands use more informal, chatty language and help their customers feel at ease. If your tone and manner don’t reflect your values and your personality, your communications will always feel awkward. 4. Language is instinctual. You may need rules to start with – but in time you should know whether a communication is “on brand” or not from how it feels. The best brands have language that goes without saying. It …