A Realignment?

Back in the day, when I was a young and impressionable Political Science student, I learned about realigning elections. It's one of those events that come along every so often where the trends change more permanently, not just a "one-off".

Ronald Reagan's 1980 election was one of those. Some say Barack Obama's election is another. But you really can't tell if it's a realignment or not until several years (maybe a decade or two) after the fact.

Which brings me to a thought I had recently. Actually, I asked this question at the recent IMA Executive Summit and it was met with 10 seconds of the loudest silence I've ever heard. It went like this:

It's 9 months from now, or 12, or whatever number you like. Things are better for our market. We're sitting in front of End User X, and we hear "you know, we stopped rewarding and recognizing our stakeholders because of the economy. We're still in business. We're making money. Our employees are happy. Why should we start doing this again?"

I mean, this is some Scary Shit. I have a friend who teaches Economics at Stanford and he swears our business is built on a shaky foundation that has no validity. What happens if he's right? And this change in the way our clients incentivize employees and customers is in a realignment? Then what?

I know, I know--it's never gonna happen, certainly not to the Nth degree. But the question raises another one--how can we educate our clients to view us not as a cost, but as an investment? The culture of our end-users is that what we do is not a critical-path component. How much farther is it down the path to the point where clients don't see us as useful at all?

In this downturn we have some time to think about these sorts of things (since we aren't bogged down by pesky customers buying stuff). The market's leaders need to figure out how to make us more important and relevant. Because when it gets busy again we'll have to deal with customers...


Pete

It's all relative...

There's an old line about the guy who complained about not having shoes, until he met a man with no feet. Shoeless Guy learned a valuable lesson--Relativity applies to more than particle physics.

And so it is these days. Just when I'm ready to pronounce the Incentive Market "dead", or "terminal", I spend a few days with Promotional Products distributors. I get whacked upside the head with a Sam's Wholesale Club-sized can of Relativity.

I mean, every piece of news they hear--EVERY ONE--is bad. First, the Pharma companies decided giving out pens and notepads to doctors was a bad idea (never mind the decision was only a bargaining chip to keep consumer groups from insisting they stop giving out samples, but that's a story for another time).

Then, one of their major client groups, the Financial Services sector, went into Cardiac Arrest, revived only by a gazillion Federal dollars. Then, grandstanding members of Congress tried to create onerous new reporting requirements on companies giving out ANYTHING to clients.

If it's not one thing, it's another. But somehow through all of this there is a relatively positive vibe going through the community. Sorta like "well, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger". Amen to that--given the hits they've taken they ought to be REAL strong now.

So it's always relative--no matter where you think you are, somebody's above or below you. A little perspective, and assessment of relativity, will probably serve us well...


Pete

Who ARE these people?

Perhaps this is my "Luddite" arc, but it's time to again mine the depths of how we struggle with technology. By the way, after 40-odd years I was told last week it's pronounced "LUDE-ITE", instead of "LUDD-ITE"--tells you how much I know...

Anyway, I've been ruminating recently about technology marketing. You've seen them--the advertising on television that shows these highly-connected people being hyper-productive in all manner of locations.

They're whipping out their BlackBerries, their iPhones, and God-knows-what else and the next thing you know it's like some scene out of a sci-fi movie. They're moving information around like the stock boys at Wal-Mart, all in real-time and all with blazing speed and accuracy.

It's terribly impressive, but I have a simple question--who on Earth ARE these people? And what about their jobs is SO important that they need to be connected out the wazoo? Have you ever met any of these people? Have you ever met anyone who HAS met any of these people?

I consider myself reasonably "hip" with technology but seriously--do we really NEED all that? Perhaps it's a function of the "laggard" market in which I work but I've never, EVER, had a situation that called for Information Access on Steroids.

These people may be the same ones who grab their Palm or iPhone as soon as the airplane wheels hit the runway. And what is so important that they need to utilize a multi-billion dollar network of highly sophisticated electronics?

"We just landed. I'll be at Baggage Claim in 10 minutes."

Well, thank God for that News Flash--I know I'll sleep better tonight.

So the Luddite returns to an old topic--technology is essentially a pencil--a tool to be used to make us more productive and effective. Having access to everything all the time doesn't do that--it only allows us ACCESS. What you do with that access is the determinant of our productivity.

I would guess most of us have little need for all that whiz-bang, especially given the whiz-bang pricetag that's attached to it. Just because we CAN have a given amount of technology doesn't mean we SHOULD...


Pete