Sometimes simple ideas help keep us focused. A psychologist friend reminds her clients to think of their feet when they begin to feel overwhelmed or stressed. For Marketing 2.0, the reminder may be “market with vs. at.”

Social media is about marketing with customers, from co-innovation for product/service development to word of mouth marketing for marketing communications.

During a conversation this week with some smart marketing people they concurred that social media is just another channel. When I offered the “with vs. at” idea, they paused, and started thinking differently.

The “with” mindset is at the heart of marketing 2.0. Simple idea, but also difficult to bake into business processes.

This is a new map of what the emerging news ecology looks like, based on a Value Network Mapping and Analysis tool developed by Verna Allee for the recent NewsTools2008 conference among 150 journalists, technologists and educators. Talk about change!

According to journalists and bloggers Chris Peck, Peggy Holman and Stephen Silha over at Journalism That Matters, here’s what’s emerging:

• Some reporters become “beat bloggers” tapping into networks of bloggers to bring complex stories into focus.
• “Community weavers” create a sense of community among the former audience and with formal news entities.
• “Information architects” make intelligible the vast amounts of data and images now available.
• While editors continue to be sense makers, connecting facts and making story lines visible, ultimately who filters news from noise, how it happens, and who pays for it is still unfolding.
• Even the definition of “news” is up for grabs as memes — cultural units of information equivalent to genes in the body — replace an event orientation to story.

Fascinating model that can be applied to traditional media, online communities and social networks, or company communities for customers or employees.

Last week I had lunch with an editor of a major daily newspaper who is trying to innovate his paper. The question his execs keep asking: “How do we make money on a different kind of model?” As with this news ecology model, no one has figured out a magic money-making model.

What is clear is that if newspapers do nothing as they wait for the magic model, they will continue to lose their customers, many of whom are no longer just “readers” but active participants. Ditto for marketers and corporate communications execs.

Jerry Yang of Yahoo yesterday blogged (“OK, so now what?” ) about Microsoft’s decision to withdraw its offer. I give Yang credit for writing something and allowing comments, which is more than most CEOs do.

But Yang’s post doesn’t sound genuine; it sounds like something the corporate PR folks wrote in a committee. Too bad. In today’s world, people want the real language of the person behind the ideas. After reading the post my reaction was, “Does Yang really care — or is this just a PR move?”

A better approach would be to give the CEO a few of the major points that communications thinks should be conveyed — and then let him express it in his own words and style. Who cares if the words and grammar aren’t perfect. Neither are real people.

What do you think about his post? A good example of Marketing 2.0 — or misguided?

What’s stopping many organizations from innovating their marketing? I don’t think it’s the “there’s no way to measure it yet” argument that is often used as a reason not to change.

In discussions about Marketing 2.0  most of we early adopters  tend to talk about the value of doing things differently, point to successful company examples, and maybe even get into conversations about how easy it is to get started.

Yet there’s an elephant in most conference rooms easy to overlook. Fear.

I was in a meeting this week with an organization that has seen its product sales decline 40 percent since 2001. The marketing team thought that maybe they should change their media mix, fine tune  messages, and then get creative and do a few viral videos, maybe hire some buzz agents.

Politely hijacking the meeting, I refocused the group on their customers’ value expectations and service experiences,  and then opened up a conversation about how to connect with customers in new Marketing 2.0 ways. The conversation got very animated in a positive way, with people clearly seeing how to link new approaches with a more focused strategy. Fantastic.

Wrapping up I suggested we list next steps to begin the 2.0 makeover. The room got kind of quiet. No one was saying much. The marketing director finally said, “Maybe we need more time to think about this. These would be very big changes to what we’ve been doing for many years. ”

Later that day I called the marketing director and asked what was getting in the way.

“I’m afraid that our board might not buy into this,” he confessed. “What if we stopped the TV advertising and sales went down even more than they already are? I really need to get consensus.”

Similarly after a Marketing 2.0 workshop with a major intellectual property law firm, one of the partners said while he liked the program, he wished we had spent 3/4 of the time talking about how to overcome obstacles.

What I’m learning (the hard way): spend as much time figuring out how to burn down the obstacles (aka fears) as on discussing the value of Marketing 2.0.

Sen. Harry Reid, the U.S. House Majority Leader, sent me an email today about his new site:

“I believe it is important for you to stay updated on the work I am doing on your behalf in Washington. As part of this effort, my website has been completely redesigned with the latest online tools available to help keep you informed about the issues I am addressing and the services my office can provide for you. “

I checked out the site, but it misses something very, very big: there’s no way for me to talk back. No way to post comments. No way to see what other folks have to say and connect with them. If I want to send Sen. Reid an email I have to fill out a long form.

Social media and marketing 2.0 has fundamentally changed our expectations. We don’t want to be communicated to; we want to be able to connect with.

Sorry, Harry. Hope you didn’t spend a lot of our money on just prettying up a Web site and adding a couple of videos.

PS — When I have sent Reid emails with questions and concerns, he sends back form emails saying he can’t respond to me as I’m not a Nevada citizen. If you’re the Majority Leader shouldn’t you be willing to listen to more of us? In a Marketing 2.0 era listening and making people feel heard is a fundamental strategy.

Maybe it’s time to retire the war metaphor from business and marketing. “Winners” no longer defeat the competition by battling them, capturing customer share, locking customers in or making them loyal. (Sounds like some sort of waterboarding torture done to customers.) The new metaphor may be tribalism.

Widipedia’s definition of tribalism: “Due to the small size of tribes, it is always a relatively simple structure, with few (if any) significant social distinctions between individuals… it is a precondition for members of a tribe to possess a strong feeling of identity for a true tribal society to form.”

In the book Consumer Tribes editors and university professors Bernard Cova, Rob Kozinets and Avi Shankar take a deep dive to examine how tribes work and possible implications to business and marketing. Here are a few highlights I found particularly interesting:

“The allure of the primitive, of the tribal, lies in its ability to arouse our desires and passions.”

The concept of a tribe is at the same level as that of entrepreneur and craftsperson. A craftsperson is a creative person who believes in a passion and transforms this into a business idea. This passion pushes the craftsperson to share ideas and emotions with other individuals sharing the same interest, thus forming a tribe.”

Takeaway: tribes need to be built around passions. If you’re considering a business community the first question to ask: how passionate are people on this particular topic/issue? If the passion exists, in what ways do people want to tap into the issue - learning from “experts,” sharing their experiences, helping others, simply being identified with the issue in some way? What business value might there be for us to be associated with this issue?

“The most potent tribes are built in the interstices, in the margins, on the fringes.”

Takeaway: some of the most thriving business communities are likely to be around issues that aren’t “core” to your value proposition or business strategy, but tap into passions on issues that are on the edges. If a goal is to engage customers or employees, we need to open up to those fringe issues that matter to them - vs. just the messages we want to convey. There may be more value sitting on the margins than anyone inside the company realizes. Also, creating “a” community may be a flawed strategy; perhaps a better approach is facilitating many tribes or communities around many issues.

“One of the most important ways in which members of a cool tribe distinguish themselves from mass culture is through an emphasis on authenticity….Authenticity is in any case a deeply ideological discourse that denigrates popular culture and privileges the exclusive.”

Takeaway: To really connect with cool people companies have to be willing to hear people talk about why the old ways and products are lacking (or worse.) Even if we’re hosting a community, people are likely to bash beliefs and products that we hold true. If we’re going after cool and innovative, we have to be prepared to hear the negative. Second, cool people want to be insiders and have exclusive access to information, ideas, and people. For companies, this may mean embracing smaller communities, where access and inside information is granted to the cool few. Once a community gets big and accepted by the mainstream, it may no longer be a community.

“Companies do not need to send totally coherent messages to the marketplace. Consumers fill in the blanks, and they often do a better job of colouring in the picture than marketers would do.”

Takeaway: Do we spend much too much time and resources trying to perfect messages? Perhaps it’s better to get our products and services out in the market and take a more iterative approach to branding and messaging, tuning in to what our tribe members have to say. This idea is similar to what Harvard Business School marketing professor John Deighton has said for many years, “Marketers offer brand ideas to the market, but those ideas don’t truly become brands until they are accepted, adopted and made over afresh as part of the lives of those who use them.”

Tribes, influence and persuasion

In thinking about tribalism, it’s interesting to go back to a Harvard Business Review article Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Science of Psychology, wrote in 2001, titled “Harnessing the Science of Persuasion.” Many of his fundamental principles of persuasion are also principles of effective tribes, social networks, online communities, and groups.

1. The principle of liking: people like those who like them. (Uncover similarities and offer praise.)
2. The principle of reciprocity: people repay in kind. (Give what you want to receive)
3. The principle of social proof: people follow the lead of similar others. (Use peer whenever it’s available.)
4. The principle of consistency: people align with clear commitments. (Make the commitment active, public and voluntary.)
5. The principle of scarcity: people want more of what they can have less of. (Highlight unique benefits and exclusive information.)

Cialidini had one other principle, which may not be relevant in a tribal culture: The principle of authority: people defer to experts.

Perhaps we do defer to experts. But who are the experts we defer to today? Aside from those we respect and trust in our various tribes, who do we listen to? And what are the implications to marketing?

War metaphors stunt problem solving

For starters, let’s stop using the war metaphor in marketing and think in new ways. Linguists have found that people who frame problems in a militaristic manner tend to have a limited perception of the problem and how to tackle it. As noted Berkeley cognitive linguist George Lakoff has said, “This is not language, this is the way people think.”

I’m thinking tribes. And you?