Marketing as System Thinking

In the October issue of Fast Company magazine, Linda Tishler profiles David Butler, who she describes as the man with a nearly uncontainable design challenge. Among other projects, Butler is behind the new Coca-Cola Freestyle fountain, which can serve up more than 100 varieties and brands of coke products - and style to boot.

System thinking is what led him down that path - as in system that stimulates behavior that produces results. A chain of interdependencies and a a more expansive way of looking at problems, and to deal with complexity.

In our conversation about being connected, Ryan talks about the perceived diminished value of a single connection with social media. Point well taken. There's the point that I hammer home all the time about how social media and relationships are a contact sport. A connection is a valuable thing, and here's why:

• as people, we are social
• organizations are organisms
• we're modular in that we think, talk and do

Therefore, we scale through relationships so not any one of us can become the point of single failure in the system. And this is a lesson that marketers have learned only as it relates to *them*, not to you, just yet. And yet, with system thinking, marketing has a tremendous opportunity to lead again.

One of my favorite ways of expressing integration, especially as it relates to social, looks like this:

• marketing team
• service delivery team
• customer touch points
• product development

That is a system which changes behaviors for all participants - internal and external - and can yield higher results, one connection at a time. Systems thinking is defined as a framework that is based on the belief that the component parts of a system can best be understood in the context of relationships with each other and with other systems, rather than in isolation.

For example, a community is a system for creating, sustaining and evolving relationships between people. It starts with a common ground, requires help to get off the ground, then a set of guidelines (put them in too early and you lower the level of energy and visibility), and that is where you get to the point where you can measure business impact over time.

A question and an assignment

The question is - how can you use the tools at hand in your organization to apply system thinking? You don't actually need to talk about or even use social media at the onset. All you need to do is find a way to integrate, elevate and expand at the service of the business. 

The assignment is - for this community to thrive, it's important that you visit the about you page and/or fan page on Facebook, find one or two or more people you resonate with and think you want to help and make the connection.

We'll be back here on Sunday to talk about how the relationship between PR and media needs to evolve.

Next week, we'll dive in the parts of being connected.

[image courtesy of surinamensis2000]

© 2006-2009 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.

Comments

[Yolanda Facio]

An interesting way at looking at marketing. Excellent observations about social media and how it is itself a system.

Good stuff!

[Joseph T. Dager]

I enjoyed your post, excellent insight. I have always used Influence diagrams as part of my discovery sessions with a marketing client. This way we can just tape pictures of ads, articles, blogs, Facebook pages, events and direct mail pieces to a whiteboard. At that time we draw lines of influence to each. Amazing how so many have only an arrow on one end and how little cross pollination occurs.

[Joshua Kahn]

Valeria, spot on stuff from my experience.

I think that encouraging people to think in this manner will help solve the paradigm problem that so many people have when trying to strategize about social media and its importance to their brand, product, company, employees, etc.

The paradigm problem as i'd define it is applying a marketing lens to a social space, or applying a linear frame of reference to something decidedly unlinear. You end up with weird applications in social places. Its what causes people to only use twitter for pimping their wares, while ignoring the other hundreds of applications for it.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Yolanda - thank you for stopping by. Intriguing concept of marketing unhinged.

@Joseph - you're correct, most marketers tend not to be system thinkers, they think more in terms of campaigns and with each piece often being added by a different person or group, depending on their inclination, they will "see" the value of only that piece or the final click, without taking a look at all of the actions and connections that prompted that last consideration.

@Joshua - people rarely fit a linear model. Instead, there are so many signals we pick up and connect that shape and change our behavior at any one time. While marketers have gotten fairly good at channeling the individual, social media calls for engaging the group or community around and with the individual.

[Jeff Hurt]

Valeria:

Fantastic insight and thought here.

I apply this to the context of the event or meeting. (Since I'm a meetings, event and education professional.) So often, we see the face-to-face event as a onetime experience where we try to connect with as many people (tradeshow & networking) and as much content (workshops) as possible in a short period. Most conferences and events take us out of our daily life and put us within a compressed fishbowl where we try to devour as much we can as quick we can. This is not the best way to learn or experience things. It’s not normal.

When an event professional sees the face-to-face event (which has great marketing potential) within the larger context of a eco-system of community, he/she plans differently. Then every experience with that attendee becomes a touch point, a place to engage the attendee in a new experience. The face-to-face conference is just one experience within a larger evergreen community experience.

Make sense?

Taking your social integration to the events model, it might look like this:

• community planning and building team (includes content, marketing, membership (when thinking about nonprofits and associations), meetings and technology members)
• meetings/events experience delivery team (these are the folks that would design online and face2face experiences including av, education, entertainment, logistics, speakers, tradeshow, etc.)
• attendee touch points (webinars, conference eCommunity, eMarketing, online chats, virtual experiences)
• content and experience development

Just sayin....

[Valeria Maltoni]

The real connections usually happen outside the organized part of the event for the reasons you list. I was speaking at an event on a panel today. The best conversation was at lunch with one of the panelists afterward.

If this is how you organize, they must be superior events. Good thoughts here.

[Taylor Davidson]

Valeria, I checked out the About You page to take the assignment seriously. I was curious to dip into it and the Facebook fan page to learn about the people here and how and who I could connect with.

I also quickly realized how hard it is to dig in here and figure that out; the introductions here in the About You page are great, full of details, but it also takes a lot of time to read and think about each person. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad.

Facebook is kind of the same: unless I'm already friends with someone, I can't access much information about the person to really figure that out.

More information would help create more surface area for connections and relationships to form.

But that's a problem with the tools, not the community; you have tons of great people that read and connect here, and I love reading the comments as much as the posts. The community is ready, but the tool is lacking, in my opinion.

Perhaps in the absence of tools, the path is specificity, to bring the community's focus around particular events, causes, etc, to aggregate and direct people's attention and energy. I'm sure you're familiar with the "blog star" concept that Fred Wilson (avc.com) has written about: the comment stream there is full of ideas about how blogs (specifically, niche blogs) and their communities can have an impact.

Interested in your thoughts.