The Brand Strategy Musings of Steve Poppe » dachis group

Some of My Favorite Bloggers.

Steve Poppe — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:05:44 +0000

I follow lots of people but a couple of my favorites are Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang, Peter Kim and Noah Brier. Charlene is just smart. She has morphed from a tech analyst to a social media expert to a management consultant, all within 3 years. She’s a media darling who reinvents herself almost annually. Jeremiah Owyang, who works with Charlene at the Altimeter Group is also another schmarty pants. He loves grids and quadrants, he loves to write, share and listen – and he loves to use technology. Analytical with a capital A.

Peter Kim is cut from the same cloth as Charlene and Jeremiah (all three are Forrester Research alums) but landed at the Dachis Group – a company filled with doers. Dachis will crack the code on bringing Web 2.0 to the enterprise and make a banana boat of bucks doing so. Peter likes to mix it up a bit. A proud man. Then there’s Noah Brier — chief strategist at the Barbarian Group. Like a racehorse in the paddock who you know will win the Derby someday, he’s exciting to watch. The beauty about Noah is you just don’t know what’s next. He’s random, brilliant, a doer and he loves bounding about in that paddock.

I wish these four blogged every day. If they would just give me a 100-150 words (no more Jeremiah), I’d be satisfied and so, so nourished. Please hit those keys. Peace!

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Two Cs

Steve Poppe — Fri, 14 May 2010 12:26:00 +0000

Two business trends are happening today, both accelerated due to the web — one is good, one not so. They are collaboration and crowdsourcing. Their shared intention is the production of good, efficient work.

In the case of collaboration the work is done by more than one party and web tools are used which put more information at the fingertips of participants. Many minds work together toward a goal, feeding off of one another. Smart companies like the Dachis Group in Austin are playing here; they call their product Social Business Design. Collaborative software has been around since the 90s but it was more about cursor sharing and application sharing than a delve into the culture of collaboration. The new view is about changing the tools and the process.

Crowdsourcing, on the other hand, is a project jump ball where participants compete against one another for a cash prize. It is often the antithesis of collaboration. The pay is poor (but not always) and the work product quite variable. In the case of a crowdsourced logo design, for instance, a number of art directors are briefed and the winning logo designer is awarded some Benjamins. (A good professional logo goes for thousands.) The losers click home. Crowdsourcing is leading to crowdsouring, but it still is a growing practice. In defense of crowdsourcing, at the high-end, with really talented players and a fair remuneration, it can work effectively.

Two trends to watch. Peace!

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Predicktions[sic].

Steve Poppe — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 13:01:18 +0000

I came across a great 2010 predictions article this morning, though I had to find it by reading John Durham’s wall on Facebook (John is a principle of Catalyst:SF a haps dig. co.), which pointed me to a IAB SmarBriefs piece, that directed me to, of all places, Adweek. Can you say circuitous? Here’s the piece.

Anyway, it made me think about doing a couple of predictions of my own. (RIP William Safire…I loved your yearly predictions with the multiple choice answers.)

Here are my predicktions:

The Dachis Group will be purchased by a big consulting company. Capgemini perhaps.
Razorfish will snap out of its post-Microsoft “Where are my stock options?” malaise and see mad growth fueled by traditional brand business.
Iran will continue to revolt and the Iranian gov’t will buy Twitter.
Pete Doherty will clean up, become a father and get hit by a bus of tourists.
Gareth Kay’s name will make it to Goodby’s stationery.
BBH will lose the Cadillac pitch because of a dream someone at GM had.
The economy will show signs of real life by the time the leaves pop.
Brand strategy will make a comeback following tactics-palooza.
A teenage with a vowel in her name will emerge as the next Mark Zuckerberg.

Peace it up!

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Deloitte “2009 Tribalization of Business Study” Boil.

Steve Poppe — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:58:17 +0000

The just published Deloitte “2009 Tribalization of Business” study positions them as a leader in this very fertile space — certainly as a leader among the big consulting companies. Here’s a boildown on the findings.

Telling enterprises to build “communities” or “social networks” within the company is a hard sell. The words here matter and currently connote the wrong things.

The people most comfortable with current enterprise “worker nets” are the Millennials and mega nerds. Some successes in terms of efficiency improvements are being recorded by these companies but the clean-up batters aren’t really participating and that is the tipping point challenge.

American enterprise and individualism is keeping people from sharing, for fear that others will take credit and they will not benefit financially or career-wise. “Me first, company second.” This needs to change.

Social Business Design (coined by the Dachis Group) is the best definition I’ve heard so far for this technology and behavior pursuit – a pursuit that will alter business as we know it. It may not be long before Social Business Design becomes an acronym. (A shame said the junior high kid within.)

These are exciting times, and I’m glad Deloitte is doing good research work here, with this second study on the topic. Tomorrow, tune in for some ideas about how to get the clean-up hitters involved. Peace!

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Social Media Inside and Out.

Steve Poppe — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:10:14 +0000

The smartest, most progressive companies in America are using social media to demonstrate brand strategy and brand value. It helps them recruit new (young) employees, create affinity with prospects, and retain and maintain existing customers. Social media is currently too tactical and not well governed, but that’s a topic for another post. That is what’s up in social media outside the company.

Social media inside the company is intended to extend and make more robust information sharing and collaboration with an end-goal of creating shareholder value. Social media within the enterprise started in earnest at trade shows like Web 2.0 Expo and Enterprise 2.0. Lots of companies are doing it well, but collectively we’ve only scratched the surface. The 10 years leading up to social media inside the company were the domain of software and consulting companies selling business processes reengineering (BPR) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). They made gazillions, but their solutions were 80% machine, 20% people. I like to think today’s social media offerings will invert that mix, but it will certainly be a challenge.

America’s free enterprise system rewards big ideas and breakthrough findings; our business history is filled with the names of inventors, yet we don’t have a lot of collaborator stories to tell. Companies like The Dachis Group are dealing with this needed culture shift. (A shift that might, someday, cure cancer more quickly.) Consultants of this ilk are studying how companies, enterprises and associations work – defining the 1s and 0s or the ons and offs of the enterprise knowledge worker. Dachis call it the Hivemind mentality. It’s not going to be easy. In America the hive always has a queen bee and lots of wanna bees. Stay tuned.

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Curing Cancer on the Weekends.

Steve Poppe — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:18:26 +0000

I attended a free webinar sponsored by the Altimeter Group (thank you Charlene Li and crew) and Ray Wang said something that really stuck. He said all the innovation in technology over the last couple of years , certainly on the Web, has come on the consumer or user side – not from the enterprise. With the exception of Apple, this is pretty dead on. I’m no Faith Popcorn, but in my view this is due to something I call the webertarian ethos – the need for people and in this case developers, to be free of corporate chains when they create.

I’ve written before that I think the Dachis Corporation and its Social Business Design concept will accelerate the cure for cancer. When we get a world of scientists and physicians working together on a project we are likely to get some serious innovation, logic disruption, and progress. Even if they work together only on weekends. Social Business Design products and their free cousins will provide a webertarian-like platform over which meaningful global change will happen. And on that happy note, I bid you… Peace!

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Consulting Faceoff.

Steve Poppe — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:28:00 +0000

Here’s a faceoff. Holding one hockey stick is the Altimeter Group and holding the other the Dachis Group. Who wins?

Here are their Is-Does statements:

Dachis Group (Dachis Corporation, Inc.) was created to unlock the value of social technologies for large corporate enterprises through its Social Business Design global advisory practice, and technology implementation program.

Altimeter: A consulting firm focused on helping businesses integrate emerging technologies into their strategies.

Similar at first pass, but also different if you look deeper.

Altimeter is a consulting company and will make its money in fees. Dachis, also a consulting company, appears to want to sell technology which had mondo revenue upside if the software/service is replicable.

My guess is Alitmeter will win the faceoff. Their value prop and marketing seem pretty tight. Dachis Corp. on the other hand will skate around for a while, keep practicing, passing and tightening their game plan. When ready, they should score quickly and often.

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