Fun, Risk And Reward

We all have new opportunities to market ourselves, and the rewards can be tremendous, if we can live with the risks.

Lew Grade was the archetypal show business impresario, larger than life with cigars to match. In the sixties, he had a franchise on Britain's independent television network about which he was famously (and erroneously) quoted as saying was "...a licence to print money."

Nowadays, of course, the franchises struggle to make money because the business model has changed - but if you can produce content, then there is still money to be made in television. And even though they might argue about it, TV production is like any other business - make the most attractive product you can at the lowest cost, and sell it effectively.

So I should not have been surprised when, at a business networking event this afternoon, the person sitting next me was Deborah, a very professional assistant TV producer. Turns out, of course, she was there not to scope out sales opportunities but to get referrals. Her company has a new series in the works.

In each episode, their cameras will follow the daily work of a senior manager in a mid-sized company, observing how s/he works with their people, and getting responses from the people afterwards about the managers' performance. The idea is to highlight areas - behaviour, assumptions, thinking - where the manager needs to improve. Think of it as our old friend 360-degree feedback, but watched by a couple of million people.

S/he then gets some advice and coaching from an expert off-camera to address the problems, and the cameras follow the manager again, to see how / if the manager's performance has improved. An interesting premise for a programme, but strongly dependent on two things - the character of the people selected for each show, and the calibre of the experts providing advice.

Deborah was at the event to ask us if we knew of people who might be good candidates for the show. The ideal candidate is quirky, with a strong personality and is likeable - because for the show to succeed, the audience must be able to identify with the protagonist.

Why on Earth would someone volunteer for this role?

Publicity.

Publicity for the company, and publicity for the person themselves. If they are lucky, this could be a fantastic breakthrough opportunity for the person and their company.

And this crystallised something that I had been suspecting for a while - as the TV companies have found out, traditional marketing models as taught in business schools are seriously in trouble.

Nowadays, for most of us, quality of service is a critical part of how we compete. But service is always personal - at bottom line, we trust a service because we trust the people behind it. So marketing increasingly needs to reveal the people behind the service. In the old days, this used to be almost always by word of mouth. But now we have many more channels to do so: blogs, social websites - and now reality TV.

The cool thing about each of these ways of reaching a potential market is not only do they give potential customers an insight to the values and thinking of their potential supplier of services, but these methods also scale - it takes the same effort to reach one person as it does to reach a million.

I am sure that you, however, have also worked out the downside to these (relatively) new forms of publicity. Because these reflect reality - albeit in a distorted mirror - they also can quickly reveal the character flaws of the individual concerned - and do so to millions of people.

On TV, of course, these risks are magnified. Good reality TV depicts people under pressure in situations with which the audience can identify. We watch because we want to see how these people respond - will they buckle, or will they triumph? For a medium -sized business, the potential rewards are phenomenal - do a good job, and potentially the world could be ringing you up, placing orders. Do a bad job, however, and the only sound on your phone line could be that of drifting tumbleweed...

And no-one wants to be ratnered.

But this is what business is about, isn't it? Big risks for big rewards - and, if you're lucky, have some fun on the way.

And if I have to choose between something safe or something secure, or risky, rewarding and fun, then fun wins, every time.

Not because I'm a hedonist (although I am) but because fun begets enthusiasm, and enthusiasm begets passion - and passion is the most contagious, most saleable, most profitable thing that any business can have.

So we scratched our heads, and came up with some names and I think Deborah got what she came for. I look forward to seeing what she produces - I'm sure her enthusiasm will make it something great.

And why are we in business, if not to do things with passion, to make something great?

- Mike