The first step toward gaining control over the triggers is to become aware of how you are using them. Everyone has two primary and one dormant trigger. To assist us in identifying our “F” factor, Sally developed a short survey, which I, of course, took immediately. It turns out my primary triggers are vice and lust, in that order—something that should surprise no one who knows me—but not for the reasons they (or you) might think.

The devil sitting on your shoulder whispering in your ear? Vice. Fascinated with something, after having been told you can’t have it? Tempted to push a boundary or deviate from the norm?  Vice. It’s everything you want to do and know you shouldn’t do (but still might do, anyway). Admittedly, this could easily describe most of my early college career. But as a PR professional, my ability to trigger vice is what allows me to convince my clients to take risks in the way they communicate about themselves, in exchange for a significant uptick in ability to fascinate and influence their audiences

As for lust, it fascinates through our experience—our appetites and passions of sight, sound, taste, touch and scent. The lust trigger is particularly hard to ignore because it does not stem from wise and responsible decision-making. Lust is triggered by feelings, not the intellect. One of the most effective uses I’ve found for the lust trigger is in closing new business. If I make it to that final meeting, I know the client has done his or her homework and already thinks I’m the right person for the engagement. So rather than resell the client on things we’ve already discussed, I use that time to reassure them, answering every little question until I can tell they also feel they made the right decision.

A trigger that didn’t come up as major for me, but that I will consciously invoke here, is mystique. To find out more about the five remaining triggers, get the book. That said, don’t expect a super structured business book full of sub heads and bullet points. Sally practices what she preaches. The book, by design, masterfully invokes all the triggers, both alone and in combination. Relax and allow yourself to be made curious—and fascinated. You’ll be glad you did.

If your organization has chosen to use social media as a method of communicating with your customers, prospects, vendors, fans, friends, followers, etc. you need to ask yourself the following questions: 

• Are we social with our marketing and/or communications team? What about customer service, HR, product development, etc?
• If we have industry or corporate policies to adhere to, are we doing so consistently?
• How are we training are employees on social media? Are we consistent with training all employees, all the time? Do they know that one action could potentially set off a social media firestorm?
• What are the policies for addressing everyone who complains or makes a snide remark about the organization or its brands? Do address or ignore? If addressed them, how does that strengthen (or weaken) our position and/or use of social media?
• How do our disintegrated (i.e. non-integrated marketing communications) messages backfire on us? Especially in today’s world of real-time customer voices?
• What makes a crisis situation for us? Is it one bad tweet, blog post, podcast? Or is it when it hits the national media? 
• Do we have brand evangelists? If not, why? If so, how can we harness their affinity better? Do we know they’ll be in our corner?

There are more questions than answers for some organizations. What would you add? And, more importantly, what advice would you offer to social organizations or those looking to jump into the social media waters?

It’s been said the phrase, “this time is different” is one of the most dangerous sentences in business. That’s because executives keep making the same mistakes again and again say economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff; “We gullible humans (believe) that the laws of financial physics have been repealed for us.”

Why do humans keep making the same mistakes? Perhaps it’s because over optimism—and resulting speculation—is very much a part of the human psyche. We like to believe those who have previously failed just didn’t have the right information, or that a new paradigm has emerged. And sometimes changes are so fundamental and drastic that they do create new markets. But more often than not, we’ve exchanged our money, time and hope for worthless swamp land.

Now what does any of this have to do with marketing?

An important role for marketing executives is to provide direction to our business leaders regarding trends, white space, and best areas in which to compete or avoid. We do this via a thorough understanding of competitive, social, governmental, and economic forces within a market.

In adding a potential new product or service to our portfolios, we need to ask ourselves, is this market sustainable —or does it depend on unstable factors? How long will this market exist? At what stage of the lifecycle is the market? Does my company have the capabilities to compete? Can my company make a profitable impact?

And this is where diagnosis of a market bubble comes into place.

Now let’s be clear. Not everyone believes in economic market bubbles. Some economists are convinced that people have all the information they need and therefore always make rational decisions. Efficient and rational market theorists from the Chicago School of Business, in particular Eugene Fama, don’t believe in unstable and wild market inflations. “I don’t know what a bubble means,” Fama recently declared to writer John Cassidy.

However, since there’s an abundance of evidence for market euphoria, let’s assume economic bubbles do in fact exist. The next step is identifying whether the market in which you plan to participate is in fact prone to speculative behavior (even mania), and if so, should your company compete or walk away from the opportunity?

These are a few questions that could have been asked by senior management at Lehman Brothers as they jumped headfirst into frenzied markets.

In the book, “A Colossal Failure of Common Sense; the Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers,” former Lehman Brothers vice president, Larry McDonald cites how then CEO Dick Fuld and his second in command Joe Gregory made bet after bet, first in derivatives such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and credit default swaps (CDS) and then grandiose real estate purchases.

These purchases—with borrowed money—were made with the following inherent assumptions:

1. the market would keep rising indefinitely,
2. there would always be a market for securitized debt, and
3. what’s profitable for competitors must also be the same for Lehman Brothers.

Sadly, we know how the story ends. McDonald relates, “When a high rolling market goes wrong, history tells us that it happens with lightning speed, as everyone stampedes for the door at the same time.”

Indeed, as the market for derivatives self destructed, Lehman was stuck with a bag full of product than nobody wanted, to the tune of sixty billion dollars. Senior management failed to ask themselves, “how long can this market sustain itself?” or even “what’s our current position and what happens if this bubble pops?”

It seems that it’s quite easy to get caught up in the euphoria of a new market, especially when everyone appears to be making boatloads of money. An ebullient market looks like it will never end.

However, it’s very possible to enter at the very top of the market and not know it, effectively joining the party just as the host removes the punchbowl. And this is where very careful analysis from the marketing function can come into play.

While a frothy market may be pretty easy to identify, it’s difficult to know when it’s going to end. Participating in a market bubble is a risky proposition and timing (getting in and out) is everything. And for those analytical types, even if deep market analysis is performed, it’s possible your timing may be off by just a bit, leaving you short or long. After all, as John Maynard Keynes once said, “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”

One thing is for certain, history repeats, or as others have said, it rhymes. Lehman Brothers stood for 158 years but participation in one of the largest asset bubbles in history brought this noteworthy firm to the steps of bankruptcy court. Lehman rode the bubble and didn’t “get out”. The musical chairs stopped with nary a seat.

It really wasn’t different this time.

________________________________________________________

Marketers, do bubbles exist? Is it possible to discern a bubble? How can one discern when to “get out” of a frothy market before it implodes?

Specifically, in was North Face—their logo emblazoned on four jackets, all within 3 rows of me and all in my line of sight. I even sneaked out my iPhone and tried to capture a picture of these four very different style/color jackets (alas, it didn’t come out very well).

Apart from the distraction factor, I found myself grinning a bit – not only because of the coincidence of it all, but because that particular logo evokes positive feelings in me.

Why?

1. It’s a very nice, simple, meaningful design. Some logos simply don’t need to be changed. North Face has one of those (brand image).
2. In my earlier years, when I had the leisure to hike a good bit more, North Face always represented quality outdoors “stuff” (earned brand position)
3. The products I’ve purchased in the past from North Face have always been solid (personal brand experience).

Now, I hadn’t spent much time recently thinking about The North Face. Honestly, I have far more pressing concerns each day than considering clothing labels. But a company with a long-term track record of quality, and a long-term brand identity, can indeed move the awareness needle just by logo visibility. If I needed a new winter jacket right now, guess what brand I’d look at first? And the main reason why is because North Face was in my face. In a nice way.

Ironically, if a brand identity is negative, then the repetition effect is just the opposite. I’m sure that the clothing at Jos. A Bank is probably just fine, but I actively CHANGE THE DIAL whenever their radio ads come on, because I cannot stand the voice and ad format they use. Which means they end up low on my list of brands to consider.

Which brand identities make you secretly smile when you spot them? And which turn you off when they’re in your face?

Suppose you are a marketer at a wireless telecommunications company in Europe. Your company has a deep historical record of customer transactions, products purchased and billing history. Three months ago, your company also finished an implementation of an activity based costing project complemented with a profitability management application that now shows customer spend, margins and life-time value.

Deciding it’s high time to determine which of your customers are creating and potentially destroying value, you start analyzing a key segment of customers.

On one particular day, while finishing the last sip of your Monster energy drink, you’ve zeroed in on customer “Thomas Smith”.
The analysis shows that Mr. Smith is chronically late on his bills. He does pay but often late, and while you appreciate the incremental revenues associated with late charges, you also examine that he constantly uses your call center to ask mundane questions (bypassing the automated systems). You also see from your product analysis that he likes to switch phones frequently, bringing back product just before the thirty day exchange policy expires.

In the initial analysis, it appears Mr. Smith is costing your company a lot of money. Now, as a marketer, should you keep Mr. Smith as a customer, or gently pass him onto the competition?

What might be obvious is in fact a very complex decision, especially when you include social network analysis.

Leading edge companies are using Social Network Analysis to detect and interpret the patterns of social ties within a customer base. Authors Stanley Wasserman and Katherine Faust in their book “Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications“, mention that SNA is “based on an assumption of the importance of relationships among interacting units. The social network encompasses theories, models, and applications that are expressed in terms of relational concepts or processes.”

In this particular marketing example, social network analysis can be used to determine the “importance” of Mr. Smith, especially in relation to other paying customers.

So let’s get back to the analysis on Thomas Smith. By adding call detail records to your data warehouse, and using social network analysis techniques, you now see that Mr. Smith is a “node” in a pretty complex network of customers. In fact, through a “Fab Five” campaign you concocted a year ago (where customers can call five friends for free in-network), you also see that Thomas is linked to five very profitable customers.

Since Mr. Smith is well connected to five very profitable customers, treating him poorly on his next customer visit, or jettisoning Mr. Smith altogether could lead to the defection of his five closest friends … customers on your network, and customers that pay their bills and produce positive cash flow.

Let us suppose you also had the divine prescience to add net promoter scoring to the mix. Now you notice that while Mr. Smith has trouble paying his bills, he is in fact a “promoter” of your company. He likes your friendly customer service representatives, and also is very generous in telling his friends about your willingness to “bend over backwards for him” to meet his changing needs.

With this analysis in hand, you determine that Mr. Smith isn’t a customer to jettison, and in fact, is probably one that deserves a closer look.

Before we get too caught up in the hype, social network analysis isn’t a savior to marketing decision making.

Social network analysis–done right–requires a lot of data from myriad sources. In the hypothetical marketing example above, simple call detail records are used, but to say–find a terrorist–the National Security Agency of the United States (NSA) would require call detail records, credit card transactions, car rental receipts, and many other digital markers. Even then, the output of the analysis isn’t always accurate.

Accurate data is a key factor in reliable results, but so too are the assumptions used in the model. Is Mr. Smith really that “important”? Should we assume that “associations” are actual close relationships? Should we also assume that if Mr. Smith leaves our company, his “Fab Five” connections will follow?

Social network analysis–hype or help? It’s up to you to decide.

Questions:
* It is well documented that Social Network Analysis (SNA) can be the source of “false positives”. Would you trust the output of SNA to make marketing decisions in your organization?
* Call detail records show Mr. Smith calls five contacts quite often. Does “activity” … in this instance a phone call–denote a “close relationship”?
* SNA can also be used to model employee connections in an organization–in effect to determine the “importance” of an employee? Good or bad idea?
* If you were the marketer in the situation above, what other tools might you use to determine if you should keep Mr. Smith as a customer?

A. Heckle, “Get real actors!” or “I could do that myself!”

B. Get up and politely walk out

C. Endure and then talk about it afterward

If you’re like most people, you probably would have chosen B and/or C. If you attended the Mark Zuckerberg keynote at SXSW, then A could very well have been your reaction.
Here’s my take: what happened at SXSW was despicable, and downright rude. Enough is enough.
Let’s get the disclaimer out of the way. I wasn’t at the keynote. I wasn’t even at SXSW. My info comes second-hand from talking with colleagues who were there, reading all the tweets and blog posts that followed, and watching all the video clips that are now starting to trickle out. Go ahead and move on if you feel that disqualifies me from being able to comment.
Here’s my take: what happened at SXSW was despicable, and downright rude. Many in the crowd didn’t get the kind of conversation or answers they wanted, so instead of doing the normal thing — walking out or talking about it afterward — they decided to treat the venue like it was their living room and heckle. Instead of calling out this behavior as rude, many well-respected A-list bloggers are praising it and identifying it as a new kind of model for moderated panel discussions.
What makes it worse is that this was not the only “revolt” of its kind to take place at SXSW. A panel on measurement also got the same “inmates taking over the asylum” treatment. You can read about it here.
Just to be clear, I’m not painting the brush wide enough to include *everyone* who attended with this behavior. It’s evident that these were isolated incidents. I’m also not rushing to defend Sarah Lacy’s poor interview. I don’t even like Sarah Lacy (for private personal reasons that stem from my time while working for a different employer). I also happen to think that side-conversations and Twitter back-chat is fun and adds a refreshing side-angle to public events. But this wasn’t about fun or interesting side-conversation. It crossed the line into boorishness and unacceptable public behavior.
Here’s my question: when did this kind of idiocy become acceptable public behavior? It’s not cute, it’s not cool, and it’s not fun. If you don’t like the content of a panel or keynote, here are your options:
* Walk up and leave
* Blog about it
* Tweet about it
Notice the option that is missing? This isn’t your living room and it’s not MST3K. Don’t sit there and yell at the stage!
I make my living in part by putting on these kind of events, and as a moderator, I know that you ought to be able to carry on a public event like this without fearing it’s going to be overrun by a horde. Not because I’m some anti-free speech Herbert looking for sanitized discussion, but because boorish heckling doesn’t contribute to what everyone is (theoretically) there for in the first place: having a good, interesting conversation.
Enough is enough. It’s time that we as a community — especially the A-listers who get quoted everywhere as so-called “experts” — stand up and call it like it actually was: rude and unacceptable.