Greatest Hits Blog

In addition to my weekly book summaries, I am now posting regular Greatest Hits podcasts.  This week it is The Pirate Inside by Adam Morgan.

Download The Pirate Inside by Adam Morgan

The one-sentence summary

To make corporations change effectively, the people who work in them have to behave differently, or be told how to do so.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• Powerful brands are built by people, not by proprietary methodologies
• The real issue is not the strategy, but how we need to behave when an organisation’s systems seem more geared to slowing and diluting, than spurring and galvanising
• To achieve this you need to be a Constructive Pirate. This is not the same as anarchy where there are ‘no rules’, but it requires a different set of rules
• It shows how to write your own “Articles” in your organisation
• Even in big organisations, you need challenger sub-cultures

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

It explains nine ways of behaving that stimulate challenger brand cultures:

1. Outlooking: looking for different kinds of insights by:

• Emotional Insertion – Putting a new kind of emotion into the category
• Overlay – Overlaying the rules of a different category onto your own
• Brand Neighbourhoods – Radically re-framing your competitive set
• Grip – Finding a place for the brand to gain traction in contempory culture

2. Pushing – Pushing ideas well beyond the norm

3. Projecting – Being consistent across far more media than the usual

4. Wrapping – Communicating less conventionally with customers

5. Denting – Respecting colleagues whilst making a real difference

6. Binding – Having a contract that ensures everyone comes with the idea

7. Leaning – Pushing harder for sustained commitment

8. Refusing – Having the passion to say no

9.Taking It Personally – A different professionalism that transcends corporate man

Biting the Other Generals is a good concept based on an anecdote from the Seven Years War. A brilliantly unconventional General, James Wolfe, proved himself one of the most talented military leaders King George III had. When some of Wolfe’s detractors tried to undermine him by complaining that he was mad, the king replied: ‘Oh, he is mad, is he? Then I would he would bite some other of my generals’.

The Three Buckets is a good exercise whereby clients have to categorise all their existing projects into Brilliant Basics, Compelling Differences and Changing the Game – usually with poignant results

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

Not much. This is an excellent book and you can use the exercises with pretty much any business

The one-sentence summary

Ignore what you have done before, decide on something distinctive to do, and do that one thing with full commitment.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• Most marketing books are written about brand leaders, but most marketing people don’t work on brand leaders
• These challenger brands need to behave differently if they are to compete with brand leaders – effectively doing more with less
• There are eight credos:

1. Break with your immediate past (forget everything you know and think again)

2. Build a lighthouse identity (state what you are – don’t reflect consumers)

3. Assume thought leadership of category (the one everyone talks about)

4. Create symbols of re-evaluation (do the unexpected)

5. Sacrifice (work out what you are not going to do)

6. Overcommitment (Karate experts aim two feet below the brick to break it)

7. Use advertising/publicity to enter popular culture

8. Become ideas-centred, not consumer-centred (constantly re-invent)

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• It concentrates on practical things that most brands can do
• It tells you how to run a workshop and apply the thinking with a client
• Most of the credos can be used to overcome client inertia
• It can help small, under-resourced marketing teams to mobilise big ideas
• Brand leaders can benefit from thinking like a challenger to stay number one

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• It is easy to go round talking about “creating a lighthouse identity” (and other phrases) without actually saying anything
• Some of the ideas are easier said than done
• Credo number 7 is easy to criticise because you would expect a communications expert to recommend activity – it might help if you point this out first and raise the idea of discounting it before the client