One of the great thinkers in advertising once wrote “Do This Or Die” in reference to the need for advertisers to listen more to consumers. A generation later, a seismic shift in marketing and advertising is occurring. In an increasingly noisy world, with attention becoming a rarer and rarer commodity, advertisers, marketers, network builders, businesses, competitors, world leaders and people in general need to collaborate, as a matter of survival. There is simply not enough attention to go around anymore!
Terry Matthews was the keynote speaker at a recent conference in Ottawa, on the eve of Nortel’s bankruptcy protection announcement. He was appropriately smug.
In the 1970′s, Sir Matthews (as he’s now known) approached Nortel with technology that revolutionized the worldwide telecom industry. It was a smart and simple move, familiar to many entrepreneurs: use a larger company’s scale and reach to aid in the commercialization of great technology and hunger-driven expertise. If he were successful, Nortel and Terry’s company (Mitel) would have both been tremendously successful.
As it turned out, Nortel brought Terry in to speak with him, but then the partnership opportunity was “killed by Nortel’s immune system” in Sir Matthew’s words. Happily, Mitel beat out dozens of competitors with its software solutions, and Terry eventually had the last laugh.
Many start-ups are familiar with this cycle. It’s liable to make one feel more like a pestilent virus than a human being, and it’s a major psychological reason behind start-up failure (part of the larger companies’ strategy). Until October of 2008, this non-collaborative approach seemingly worked. The economy was at a record high on the backs of individuals and corporations who had no eye on sustainability or unification. For instance, in many US jurisdictions, the car industry worked in concert with the banks in order to hold customers “under water” (i.e. when the value of an individual’s assets is less than what they owe), by encouraging people to write new car loans into their mortgages.
Then it all fell down. In October 2008, nature ran its course. The individualistic, “every man, woman, child for themselves” mentality became magnified under pressure. The market crash is a prisoner’s dilemma on steroids: it’s clear that if everyone keeps their money in, then no one gets hurt! However, it’s also true that if everyone takes their money out, then significant harm is entailed. So, what do people do? Rather than aim for the greatest good, everyone -at cost of the entire economy- aims for the minimization of the greatest harm. Sell!
We’re now left with companies, individuals, banks, and entire governments who are at the bottom of the barrel, wondering what happened. Suddenly, all that is left is a population of individuals and organization in the same sinking boat. Now, more than ever, the world needs people to work together. The individualistic model failed. Everyone is now serving the full 20 year sentence (in prisoner dilemma terms) by giving into their base instincts, panicking, selling, and therefore eroding the public markets that we apparently had built together.
For companies to swim back to the top of the barrel, a new collaborative Zeitgeist will need to be embraced. Cause marketing and social investment media are great ways for companies to show signs that they are in the new game. Furthermore, as our world becomes more socially and technologically advanced, it will be imperative for companies to work together, rather than become too vertically integrated aka: vertically challenged??? 
“Know thyself” as Socrates famously said. Understand your company’s strength and relative value, then determine where collaboration is b eneficial, or perhaps even required! It may even be possible that you have to collaborate with your competitors to give consumers what they want! A great example of a fully collaborative business model is CourseSmart. This is a reseller of online e-textbooks, that has somehow managed to get the world’s major academic publishers to sell under one umbrella. The benefits to students are obvious. Each of these publishers has a choice: remain in their defensive silos, or give students what they want. The willingness of these publishers (NB: publishing is one of the toughest and most competitive industries out there) to enter into such an agreement is not only historical, but also shows that they “get it” it in the new economy.
Now if only I could go to a car lot and test drive every brand new SUV on the market in one spot!
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