Challenges and Opportunities - Bitly

0 downloads 376 Views 977KB Size Report
Could the “Great Recession” be just the opportunity the industry needs to ... the crucible of the early 1980s, espec
Branding CI Challenges and Opportunities By Jason Voiovich, Ecra Creative Group

Could the “Great Recession” be just the opportunity the industry needs to solidify its brand position? As professionals in competitive intelligence (CI) work to build or reposition their own brand identity, they often find that they have little direct control in shaping their collective destiny. The brand for any industry – CI included – is a sum of the individual actions of its professionals, each with individual motivations, in a sort of micro-society. With that in mind, we can use social psychology models to help us understand the dynamics at play, why it is so difficult to change an industry brand, and how to spot those rare transformational opportunities when they present themselves. By understanding those mechanics, it opens the door for CI professionals to take control of their collective brand, and put the principle of disruptive innovation to work to their advantage.

Introduction

Competitive intelligence is a discipline in transition. (Certainly, this reality shouldn’t surprise experienced professionals.) As disciplines go, modern CI is a relative newcomer. Double entry bookkeeping started during the Renaissance. The legal profession has been around even longer. Process management has been evolving since Henry Ford. Marketing and advertising came into its own as a unique specialty with the advent of television and the genius of David Ogilvy. CI, on the other hand, still struggles Volume 13 • Number 1 • January/March 2010

within executive circles to define itself, to sell its value to the organization, and to communicate its brand. A respected and integral part of many organizational hierarchies, competitive intelligence still does not have the structural legitimacy of finance, accounting, information systems, marketing, or human resources. As the discipline continues to shape its image, many professionals ask the pointed question: What is the brand of CI, and how do we shape it to best move our industry forward? Rigidly defining any brand is a difficult task. Even with the popularization (and supercharging) of social media dynamics over the last five years, traditional brand mechanics still apply when analyzing a corporate brand. The environment exerts force on brand perception, but the brand’s organizational owner exerts (ideally) a unidirectional force of its own. But applying those analysis tools to an entire industry – especially one as young as CI – is daunting. The environment still exerts pressure, but instead of one centralized brand “owner” making decisions regarding brand direction, an industry functions with literally hundreds of individual “brand owners,” each with their own motivations. This chaotic mix of competing interests can be viewed much like any small micro-society. Answering questions regarding the brand of competitive intelligence (or any industry, for that matter) requires a different model than traditional brand mechanics. The intersection of advertising and social science research provides an understanding of group dynamics under diverse www.scip.org

7

branding CI

environmental conditions. The brand of CI is more an emergent creation rather than a defined construct, so efforts during normal industry circumstances to shift that brand perception will have limited success. Opportunities to make significant change lie within brief episodes of strong upheaval – but the industry must be ready to seize those opportunities, lest they result in a counterproductive shift away from a collective brand perception.

Background: The cold winter of 1981

and dynamic environment. But in most cases they didn’t and, in a sense, they couldn’t. Those same executives who so desperately needed help could not always appreciate what competitive intelligence brought to the table. For them, the collective brand of the CI professional remained stuck in time warp from its beginnings in the Reagan era. And that brings us to today. CI practitioners all over the world have voiced their frustration at the lack of a useful collective brand – some common set of principles that can be clearly articulated and easily understood. This brand would function as it does for other business disciplines. For example, finance professionals control costs and build tangible value. Marketing professionals drive revenue and build intangible value. Operations professionals maximize efficiency in order to produce more for less. But what do CI professionals bring to the table? More importantly, ask the executives who purchase the service to answer that question. Ask ten of them. You’ll likely get eleven answers. The visual concept map in Figure 1 illustrates the chaotic nature of the CI brand as it currently exists. Using content analysis software to collect and map data from dozens of online sources, we can see a bit of an identity crisis – competitive information and intelligence, yes, but also close ties to marketing and new media. This graph shows us the variety of broad interconnections that begin to define the collective CI brand identity. If we zoom in and explore the linked concepts inside this graph, Figure 2 shows concept nodes very close in proximity to the core of the “competitive intelligence” theme. The variety here too is striking: Supplier/channel relationships, strategic advantage, corporate research, market reporting, management and marketing, organizational opportunity, competitive scanning. Not that any of these, individually, would be wrong as a description of the value of the CI function, but the collection of concepts does not paint the

“Intelligence” functions existed before 1981 in both the public and private sector, but CI came into its own in the crucible of the early 1980s, especially in the business community. And what a different world it was. Early CI practitioners were undoubtedly influenced by the bi-polar world in which they operated where geopolitics was largely defined by the United States and the Soviet Union and the global economy was struggling to escape the grip of stagflation, malaise, and the misery index. Corporations applied that world view to create an “us versus them” intelligence environment. In those days, it was (relatively) easy to identify a competitive set: A competitor was anyone selling a similar product, to similar customers, who wasn’t you. Ten years later, the geopolitical environment had markedly changed, and so had the notion of competitive intelligence. When the Berlin Wall fell and financial markets unraveled in the first part of the1990s, the business community found itself transported into a strange new unipolar world. Many executives didn’t quite understand how competitive intelligence fit into the corporate structure. Was it a marketing function? Was it a political or lobbying function? Was it an R&D expense? Their perception of CI professionals hadn’t changed, but the same logic didn’t seem to apply. Executives were confused. And when executives are confused, the profession in question doesn’t get the respect (read: resources) it deserves. Fast forward another ten years to the early fall of 2001, when the world radically changed again. With the rise of the internet and a series of global terror attacks, we quickly realized the importance of small players. Small groups, small companies, and even individuals could affect major change – both geopolitically and in the business environment. The competitive landscape became mathematically chaotic. Predictability went out the window and insight was in short supply. In a business era which provides more options at greater speed than at any other time in business history, executives had the least guidance. CI professionals should have been providing this service. No one group was better equipped to make sense of an interconnected Figure 1: Overall CI Industry Content Analysis

8

www.scip.org

Competitive Intelligence

branding CI

perspective would perceive a larger interconnection of people, and although there is no direct individual payback, society as a whole benefits. Second, let’s continue on the “Activation” y-axis. This axis represents the circumstances under which an action takes place. To continue with the charitable donation example, a “low activation” period represents “normal” day-to-day circumstances. A “high activation” period might include a holiday season, but regular cyclical events typically do not play a large role. A true high activation event might be a devastating natural disaster, as we saw in the 2004 Indian Figure 2: In-Depth Content Analysis: Competitive Intelligence Node Ocean Tsunami. Those events are certainly (hopefully) out of the ordinary to a degree that can change the contextual interpretation of individual actions. same easy-to-read picture as the more venerable business Cultural norms play a role in determining the baseline disciplines mentioned earlier. When you consider the amount conditions on both axis, but the overall visual framework of overlap these concepts have with other more established remains largely intact cross-culturally not just geographically, disciplines, it’s easy to see why CI practitioners often struggle but also within industries. with separating themselves as distinct professionals. Now let’s explore the behavioral patterns. Near the That is the crux of the problem. About to enter its bottom of the “umlaut” shape, we see the range of normal fourth decade as a recognized business discipline, the CI behavior. Individual actions may span from slightly individual industry struggles with a collective identity crisis. If it to slightly collective in nature as a response to everyday cannot collectively agree on its value, and if it cannot clearly circumstances. At the upper edge of normal behavior, a set communicate that value, it cannot leverage that brand asset of “boundary conditions” block the linear progression to for the benefit of all practitioners. extreme collective or extreme individual behavior. To extend To help understand the dynamics of this situation, we the charitable donations example, a limit on individual need an instructive model for social behavior that can help us see the challenges in creating that unified “Umlaut” Model of Collective Social/Industry Action brand position. Before we can chart a new course, we must understand the forces at work. Let’s begin our exploration by using the umlaut model of collective Perception of Perception of societal action. Individual Threat Collective Goal High

Free-for-all

A new model of societal behavior: The umlaut.

Phase Shift

Collective unification

Phase Shift

Low

Activation

Boundary conditions Building on work by John Eighmey at the University of Minnesota (2009) and drawing on the social psychology work of Jaap van Ginneken and others (2003), the umlaut model provides a visual framework Range of normal behavior for understanding collective action in the presence of (”Center of gravity”) environmental stimuli. First, let’s explore the “Orientation” x-axis on Figure 3 which defines a range of individualistic to collectivist Individual Collective behaviors. In a simplistic example to illustrate the concept, let’s use a small charitable donation. From a Orientation purely individual perspective, the donation represents a transfer of income from one person to another, with no Figure 3: “Umlaut” Model of Collective Social/Industry direct, tangible financial benefit to the giver. A collective Action Volume 13 • Number 1 • January/March 2010



www.scip.org

9

branding CI

Low

Activation

High

behavior might be a societal sense of decency and basic Implications for Changes in Industry Behavioral Norms human compassion. But there are limits on our sense of collective good as well, such as macro and microeconomic conditions. For all but a few of us, financial constraints keep our collective orientation in check. But here is where the model shows us its potential for the redefinition of an entire thought process. (It is also why we use the umlaut metaphor versus the more common “U”.) The progression into extreme individualistic or extreme collectivist behavior is a nonPhase shift to high activation state Return to low activation state (Free-for-all) (Shifted baseline) linear phase shift. A high activation level can rapidly and dramatically transform the context of behavior and the appropriate societal actions within that context. Some events are easy to predict using this model. To complete our charitable giving example, the 2004 Tsunami created a higher activation state in behavior, causing many people to forego the inherent boundary condition (economics) and give money, goods, and time Individual Collective in unheard of quantities. Similarly, the 2008 financial crisis (the “Great Recession”) created a similar phase Orientation shift in actions relating to giving, but in this case caused charitable activity to contract sharply. In each case, an Figure 4: Implications for Changes in Industry external event raised the activation level, causing a non- Behavioral Norms linear shift in societal norms. Unfortunately, non-linear shifts are fundamentally unpredictable. While we can take some educated guesses that over time balance each other. In the free marketplace of regarding how the higher activation state would affect ideas, CI professionals will feel a tug in both directions. individual versus collective orientation of actions, we can Moving towards the left (individualistic) side, one CI never be certain. professional will attempt to differentiate her products or A final feature of the model relates to the temporal services in order to separate herself from the competitive nature of period of high activation. Put simply, high set. However, the farther she moves to the left of the range activation periods are not sustainable. In the absence of of normal behavior, the riskier it becomes – go too far, heightened stimuli, the boundaries of societal behavioral drop and she loses the collective benefit of the “CI brand.” Her back into the range of normal behavior. As we’ll see when customers may no longer be able to understand what she does we explore the history of the CI “brand” using this model, in terms of “competitive intelligence,” forcing her into an periods of heightened activation can shift that baseline of expensive and time-consuming client/stakeholder education normal behavior in one direction or another along the x-axis process. Professional organizations (SCIP included) as well (individual versus collective orientation) with significant as internal organizational controls also place limits on purely ramifications. individualistic behavior. Now consider another CI professional, moving towards the right (collective) orientation side of the range of normal Applying the umlaut model to the search behavior. He sees benefits in building the CI brand as a for a unified CI brand whole; the better the industry, the better his business. But the When applying this model to understand the industry boundary conditions are as powerful here as they are on the social action involved in creating a new “brand” for opposing side. Moving too far to the right prevents him from competitive intelligence, we can begin to understand the adequately differentiating his services, harming his ability to complexity inherent in the process and also see how a unified secure new clients (in the case of a consultant) or show value change would be difficult at best. to his superiors and stakeholders (in the case of an internal Consider first the implications of the range of normal professional). behavior. In an industry environment of “low activation” In both cases – the individualist professional and the (which is, by definition, most of the time), the model collectivist professional – behavior will tend to oscillate in suggests a center of gravity near a balance between the two a narrow band of behavior near the center-bottom of the extremes. In a brand development sense, there exists a natural normal behavioral range. Think of the boundary conditions push and pull from individualistic to collectivist tendencies as at least three standard deviations from the mean behavior. 10

www.scip.org

Competitive Intelligence

branding CI

You are unlikely to find many professionals operating consistently at either extreme. But what happens in those rare, unexpected, environmental circumstances? Aren’t there some instances when the baseline shifts to a new reality? In this sense, the model provides three interesting interpretations. Much like the Indian Ocean Tsunami or Hurricane Katrina events, massive socio-business changes can have a profound affect on a market. The 2008 global financial crisis was a phase-shifting event in the marketplace for all manner of financial institutions. But let’s return to possibilities for CI practitioners. What could happen to change the activation state? In the CI profession specifically, one could argue that intense new international competition and a business revival following the “malaise” of the late 1970s provided a strong sense of collective purpose within the competitive intelligence community. This was the opportunity to launch an entirely new industry. Professionals self-organized around the far top right of the umlaut model with a powerful sense of collective unification. During this time the groundwork was laid for a new business value proposition. When the activation level receded (as it always does), the landscape (the range of normal behavior) had been fundamentally altered and redefined to create the conditions under which the new industry would operate. Contrast that to the industry response after two major phase-shifting events identified that followed – the early 1990s economic turmoil and the dot-com boom and bust at the end of that decade. In both of those cases, one could argue the same high activation period led to extreme individual orientation (the upper left side of the umlaut model). Firms and professionals used the opportunity to sharply separate themselves from their competition. Without a strong sense of “us versus them” to unify the construct of social behavior, CI professionals took the opportunity to stretch their wings in the early 1990s, branching CI into several sub-disciplines. As Figure 3 shows, when the activation level receded, the net affect was another redefinition of the normal range; CI professionals may have had a weaker unified “brand,” but they had more options. Ten years later in the steep run-up to the dot-com boom and bust, a similar heightened activation level prompted another individualistic free-for-all. Again temporary, but again important. Many executives felt their organizations simply “rode the wave” of the boom/bust cycle; in their mind competitive intelligence became either irrelevant due to a “new business reality” or unable to predict what might happen next. Intelligence professionals faced a crisis of confidence from senior management. And instead of a redefinition of the positive role competitive intelligence can play within the organization to anticipate and position the organization for success, practitioners largely fought amongst themselves for how to define their role. Moving back to the Volume 13 • Number 1 • January/March 2010



baseline, those same professionals saw the range of normal behavior shifted again, to an even weaker collective brand identity. That moves us to today. CI professionals operate in an environment of new social norms where the baseline inclination to compete amongst themselves has led to a deterioration of a sense of unified purpose. Executives tend to have a difficult time explaining what CI functions are, not to mention their value to the organizations. And when they do, they are their reasons, individually, not the reasons the industry as a whole would want to project. To put it simply, competitive intelligence missed the last two (best) chances it had to redefine and advance the industry as a whole. One could argue, of course, that the process of individual orientation is a Darwinian process, weeding out those people who are not strong enough to stand on their own. Why rely on a brand perception of the industry as a whole? A good firm (or professional) wouldn’t need the benefit of a collective industry brand, would they? I would argue the industry is seeing the limits of that philosophy. A strong collective brand – in the case of CI – defines what competitive intelligence professionals do (specifically), what they do not do (specifically), and what value (specifically) they bring to their organization. Professionals can separate themselves around the margins, but the hard work of communicating “who we are” and “what we do” already is done. Professionals can get on with the business of providing value without the tedious process of explaining (selling!) why executives should pay attention. The weaker the CI brand becomes, the more time professionals can expect to spend on the latter and the less time on the former. That’s bad news for everyone involved.

The way out: Options for creating a new brand for CI.

If it is agreed (or at least agreed for the sake of argument) that the brand for competitive intelligence – represented by the range of normal behavior in the umlaut model – has shifted too far to the left and into the individualistic side of the continuum, what can be done to move it back? Again, the model provides a possible set of answers.

Scenario 1: Be prepared to take collective action during the next major phase-shifting event. In order to make major shifts in the base conditions in a short time, an event must occur which moves the industry into a “high activation” state. During this hypothetical future event, CI professionals must be ready as a group to take advantage of the opportunity to forge a new sense of brand identity. When the activation level returns to normal, a new range of behavior will emerge – not at the same zealous unification of the time during the event itself, but a shift to the right nonetheless, to the benefit of all. www.scip.org

11

branding CI

One could argue we are in the midst of that event right now. The “Great Recession” has struck to the heart of the business consciousness, creating a high activation state, and the opportunity for the CI industry (in fact, many other industries as well) to take decisive action. Think of it almost as a disruptive innovation by the whole group. The risk, of course, is that this arch event will not shift into a sense of collective unification, but instead towards a further sense of free-for-all individualism. In that case, the CI industry may wake up to discover it has fractured its brand position to such an extent as to be completely unrecognizable. In that possible future, competitive intelligence as a discipline would largely cease to exist, only to be absorbed within management consulting, market research, and forensic accounting.

Scenario 2: Be prepared to take collective action during an event of your own creation. In this hypothetical scenario, the industry decides it has had enough. Groups of professionals from around the world (using social media, most likely) begin to hash out the need for a mass collective discussion. Certainly, this could happen virtually, but ideally during a major summit of professional leaders from all corners of the industry. During these talks, CI professionals would define a treaty of sorts that spells out the acceptable range of normal behavior. It would take the further step (remember, trust, but verify) of embarking on an executive education plan, likely targeted at the major business schools and MBA factories, to teach students what competitive intelligence means and what value it brings. This selfpolicing mechanism would, over time, help future executives understand how to “purchase” CI services and what they should expect. Rouge firms (if they moved too far off course) would face the uphill battle of convincing those executives otherwise and would likely retreat back to the center. Frankly, I do not believe scenario 2 is likely. Without some sort of external stimuli, that same sense of energy to change the activation state would need to be generated internally within the industry itself. Not only has the industry drifted (in my mind) too far away from a collective orientation to accomplish that, but let’s face it: CI professionals understand the meaning of the word “competition.” Joining hands with your competition to forge a unified brand may be advised, but without a clear and present danger, I do not see it happening. So where does that leave the CI brand? My take: On life support. Fortunately, the umlaut model implies the range of normal behavior is reasonably stable during periods of low activation. In other words, to use hospital lingo, the CI brand is “critical, but stable.” If there is hope, it will come from a latent sense that the brand is not working for individual professional. Those professionals will be ready to act – as a group – when the moment comes. 12

www.scip.org

Conclusion

Every industry struggles to define, refine, and leverage its brand perception for the betterment of the discipline and the profitability of its practitioners. Competitive intelligence is no different. As a new industry – still with significant overlap with more-established business disciplines – CI faces unique challenges. Over its four-decade modern history, through a series of major industry-moving events, its brand perception has shifted progressively toward a more “individualistic” orientation. From its early days as chiefly an anti-competitive shock force, the CI brand has evolved into more of a management function. However, that progression has diluted its ability to clearly articulate a consistent value proposition that executives easily and quickly understand. Using social psychology models (rather than traditional brand mechanics), we can understand these transition points, and what it will take to move competitive intelligence into the future. However, if ever there were an industry prepared to recognize and take advantage of opportunities to realign a simple brand promise, it would be CI. And the Great Recession might be just the opportunity it is looking for. Good luck.

References

Eighmey, John (2009). Lecture notes and slides, University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts, School of Mass Communication and Journalism, JOUR8200-001. van Ginneken, Jaap (2003). Collective Behavior and Public Opinion: Rapid Shifts in Opinion and Communication, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Jason Voiovich is a principal and co-founder of Ecra Creative Group, a marketing intelligence and brand development agency based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He brings specific experience in product management, new product introductions, content analysis, research, data mining, brand strategy, and brand community development. Jason is an instructor, business case writer, advisor, and academic collaborator with the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire Entrepreneurship Program. Most regularly, he is the author of The State of the Brand (stateofthebrand.com), a syndicated weekly column reviewing and analyzing current branding topics. Jason holds a Bachelor of Science degree as well as post-graduate research in applied communication, entrepreneurship, and mathematics. He is in the process of pursuing his Masters and Doctorate degrees in Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. Jason can be reached at 651-209-2778 or [email protected].

Competitive Intelligence