This entry was posted on Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 6:57 am and is filed under Advertising Factor, Business Factors, Change Factors, Choice Factors, Communications Factors, Disruptive Factors, Economic Factors, Education Factors, Future Factors, Human Factors, Industry factors, Influence Factors, Knowledge Factors, Learning Factor, Market Factors, Media Factors, Planning Factors, Political Factors, Relationship Capital, Relationship Economy, Strategic Factors, Systemic Factors, Technology Factors, Time Factors, VRM Factors, Value Factors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Every business desires profitable growth. The race to profitability and growth is always centric to methods, or how.
Businesses try different strategies and tactics. Many methods have been tried including slick marketing messages vying to get potential customers attention. Some “tricks of the trade” have been used to reach the masses through traditional media channels and word of mouth marketing.
The web brought in new channels of distribution, marketing and messaging. Initially it became a chase for eyeballs and impressions. Marketers operated on the theories of conversion or what has become known as “clickthroughs”. The premise was aimed at capturing people’s attention and tricking them into a transaction with incentives, promises for discounts or time limiting special offers. Then the web became conversational and the rules of the game changed.
Have You Changed Your Rules?
When a game rules changes every old method has to change. The thinking which created the old rules has to change if your team intends on “playing in a new game and on the new field”.
Rules dictate how we think and subsequently how we act or react. I once drove on the autobahn where there is no speed limit. I had purposely rented an expensive sports car and couldn’t wait to “get on the road”. When I started out my mind initially thought about the old paradigms of driving fast. The mental messages included “watch out for patrol cars, keep your eye on the speedometer” etc etc.
It took a while for me to release those old mental paradigms and realize I was driving on a road with new rules, no rules for speeding. The recommended speed of the German autobahn is 130 km/h (81 mph), but there is no speed limit. The paradox of the autobahn is that you can actually cause accidents if you drive to slow. The socially accepted rule was drive as fast as you want but don’t drive to slow
Is The Social Web Like the Autobahn?
In many ways yes. For businesses, marketers and individuals the first mental shift is recognizing that the old rules of the game will not enable you to play the new game. Here is a top ten list of how the game and subsequent unspoken rules have changed:
- Marketing and PR spin is considered anti-social
- Being wrong is accepted as long as you admit it
- Your revenue comes from “Free”
- If you don’t understand the dynamics don’t engage until you do
- Doing the wrong things can cost you more than you ever anticipated.
- Doing things right enables you to earn more than you can predict
- Empowering people (your customers, employees, suppliers and market) to win is how you win
- The mindset of the game players is win win
- The playing field has no boundaries
- The game time is web time which is never ending cycles of now
One last very important and critical rule. People don’t like playing your game.
Get it? What say you?
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
Related posts:
- Is Public Relations A Game? In an earlier post titled “Has the Rules of...
- Does Social Media Have Rules? If people, brands and institutions want to maximize the value...
- Communication Transforms Everything What is on the other side of transformation is change...
- Is Your Business Booming? Shrinking budgets, increased competition, slow consumer demand all add up...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Stumble it!
June 6th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
“Has The Game & Rules Changed? Author: Jay Deragon”
If the article didn’t start out with a blatant grammatical error, I would have felt more inclined to read it. Good luck to you. xoxo Scarlett
June 10th, 2008 at 8:02 am
[...] of The Relationship Economy, check out the blog of my partners, Jay Deragon (especially his recent post on the changing rules of the game) , and Scott Allen’s The Virtual Handshake Blog, and mine – [...]
August 17th, 2008 at 4:20 am
[...] an earlier post titled “Has the Rules of The Game Changed” we said “When a game rules changes every old method has to change. The thinking which created [...]