As anyone working in a medium to large organisation will be aware, culture has taken on a cult-like reverence since organisations switched from people managing people, to ‘people managing software to manage people.’

No longer do managers walk the floor to understand their staff and the office environment/mood. Instead, they let their fingers do the walking on keyboards linked to culture software. And culture software has become big business. Just search ‘culture software’ and at least seven advertisements appear on the first page of results.

There are even culture software conferences which, according to a mate who attended one in San Francisco, are large gatherings akin to a cross between an Anthony Robbins event and a Pentecostal service.

But first a little history – in prehistoric days before the internet, I worked with TNT. We were planning some professional development and team building programmes to improve the workplace culture. We did some informal research of staff. Curiously the results were split down the middle. Either the staff were all for being involved, or completely against it. Spoiler alert: Not every employee wants to play a part in the company culture.

One group of administrative staff – all aged over 40 – had no interest in professional development. They worked 9-to-5 and banked their salary to fund a family holiday, or new fridge, or help pay the mortgage. Their reason for working was simply a means to an end. Their family needed money to live and their job provided it. As one clerk said “I wouldn’t have anyone I work with in my home for dinner, so why would I want to have a group hug at some motivational session?”

Free food at work isn’t new

They were very shrewd too. The company provided free lunch for all staff. Yes, it’s true folks. Free food at work wasn’t invented by the internet age – it’s just another digital fallacy. Each morning we’d place our order at the cafe downstairs and at lunchtime a cafe employee brought huge trays of lunch orders to reception. Each order was labeled with the employee’s name.

But the administration clerks didn’t order a sandwich or salad. No, they each ordered a whole BBQ chook and roasted vegetables, then took them home for dinner. They brought in their own lunch each day and fed their families on the free food provided by the company. Consequently, a cap was put on the value of lunch orders.

That’s what I call a cultural insight!

But let’s return to present-day. Lots of research is currently being conducted about work from home and the intention of workers to return to the office. It even has its own TLA: WFH. Apparently research by Deloitte suggested 90% of its staff don’t want to return to full-time work at the office and want to work from home more often than not. This week Deloitte announced “staff can decide where and when they work.“

So how will culture-cultists manage culture in a world of remote working? Particularly given so many employees prefer a non-invasive culture that let’s them work on their terms from home? Could the future of culture be low-touch? How will the software measure this new culture?

Will this new way of working mean, that when given the opportunity, more employees prefer less company culture in their work life than pre-COVID?

Regardless, the culture software is like so many other computerised tools – garbage in equals garbage out. And so it is with culture measurement. I’ve worked with a digital agency of less than 30 staff. The management use culture software to monitor the happiness level of the team. All staff work in one large warehouse space, each within touching distance of the people either side of them. You could throw a tarpaulin over the lot.

Over drinks one night, some of the staff shared with me how much they play the system by turning the happiness dial up or down, just to screw with the heads of management. One account manager said, if they can’t be bothered reading the room by talking to us, then we’ll have fun fiddling with their heads via the software.

During lockdown I was discussing covid-culture with my bank manager. He’s with one of the big four banks. He explained his bonus is linked to the happiness dial on the culture software. The stronger the happiness level between senior and middle management, the bigger the bonus pool.

So dear reader, guess what all the staff have done? The middle and senior managers have agreed to scam the software to maximise the bonus pool for all concerned. Nothing they enter into the software is correct. Everything is designed to maximise their salary, not provide feedback on the culture. The Minister for Culture at the bank must think she is doing a fabulous job, given the software’s happiness ratings. Maybe the Minister is part of the bonus pool too?

I’m from the culture is caught, not taught school. Culture is a living, briefing thing that continually evolves as new people join and others depart an organisation. You provide staff with the right leadership, responsibilities, boundaries and feedback mechanisms and let the culture happen. And as Peter Drucker is alleged to have said “culture kills strategy for breakfast“. Great workplace cultures make an enormous difference to the wellbeing of staff as well as to productivity, loyalty and general organisational performance.

But this doesn’t mean you hire people to fit a specific culture criteria. Cloning employees to suit a culture creates inbreeding problems. You may as well get the banjos out and roll the Deliverance tape. Diversity is the key to a healthy culture.

Maybe it’s the rise in weird job titles for Human Resources Managers that has caused the culture cult? The fancier the title, the more the HR Managers need to use culture software to appear as flash as the title? Here are just a few I’ve found:

• Culture Operations Manager
• Champion of Office Happiness
• Chief Happiness Officer 
• Chief Heart Officer 
• Chief People Pleaser 
• Culture & Geek Resource Manager
• Director of Attracting Talent
• Employee Experience Designer
• People Champion
• Senior VP of People Operations 
• Vibe Manager & Head of all things Awesome
• Chief People Officer
• Chief Talent Officer

Change is inevitable, but not always an improvement. I’m curious to see how COVID will change company culture and how culture software will evolve, given the way it is currently being scammed. And of course there is the problem of how companies deal with public liability insurance for staff working from home. Who covers a ‘workplace injury’ when the injury occurs while on-the-job walking down the front steps?

Although of more immediate concern, is the quality of future leaders who don’t know how to manage people, because they’ve only ever managed software to manage people. Frightening really.

Gotta go – some marketing automation software is asking me to rate my satisfaction level of how a parcel was handed to me by a delivery driver. Can you imagine that workplace culture?

In my first book on email marketing published in 1998, titled “They laughed when I sat down at the keyboard, but when I began to email…” I made a couple of predictions.

One was that manufacturers would use their packaging to direct customers to the manufacturer’s website to build a database of customer data. These manufacturers would then use email to take their websites directly to the customers and use embedded e-commerce to sell directly to them. The second prediction was that the manufacturers would redirect their advertising funds from mass media to email marketing and database management.

Unfortunately, the technology we were pioneering – streaming video emails with embedded e-commerce links – became vulnerable as vehicles for introducing viruses, and only lasted a short time before being eliminated forever. But manufacturers have developed databases and now use email to sell directly to consumers. Wisely though, they continue to use mass media to build and maintain brand value.

This leads me to the recent rise in ubiquity of QR Codes that I wrote about in my previous article. It seems my last-century prediction has come true but with a sinister twist – at least in the cosmetics category. I’ve yet to research other categories and welcome any examples you may have dear reader.

Here is how manufacturers are using QR codes to steal customers from a retailer distributing their product, and push the sale to a competitor or to the manufacturer’s own online store.

This case in point is a highly successful Australian retail pharmacy that stocks brands such as Revlon, L’Oreal and nudebynature, yet is having sales stolen directly at Point Of Sale.

The brands have introduced QR codes at the counter to promote virtual mirrors or look-books so retail customers can inspect the products in use, or learn more. But here’s what’s really happening:

Here is Revlon’s QR Code to try the virtual mirror:

Here is the landing page:

And here is where you can link to from the landing page – directly to an offer from a competitor:

Her is the L’Oreal QR Code at Point Of Sale:

It links to a tool to trial the lipstick shades. Here is the landing page:

Here is the page after the ‘Tap & Try” link disappears:

And here is where the ‘Buy Online” link takes you – again directly to a competitor:

This is obviously good business if you’re Chemist Warehouse, but not if you’re the incumbent pharmacy paying to stock and promote the cosmetics in your retail store.

Here is the nudebynature QR code:

This opens a look-book:

Click on the logo and you link to the nudebynature website:

Clicking on the “Shop Sale” button links to the e-commerce page where the customer can buy direct at a special sale price:

I have no idea if this is planned surreptitiously, but it certainly smells on the nose. Using QR codes to stealthily switch customers from the retail store in which they are standing, to buy online at a competitor, or directly from the manufacturer, does not pass the pub test.

It feels dishonest and certainly not in the spirit of a good partnership between manufacturer and retailer. If this continues I suspect retailers will simply refuse to allow QR codes at POS, unless the codes link to the website of the retailer in which the customer is physically shopping. This is a shame as QR codes can add value to the shopping experience.

If you have any thoughts or examples please share them. I’m curious to learn if this practice is widespread or just getting started.

I’m off to sort out another service hassle at the Telstra store and consider buying a new phone – I wonder if there are QR codes on their displays???

This ridiculous email arrived in my inbox this morning from Dropbox – the highly successful digital equivalent of the storage sheds you rent to store your excess junk.

The sender is <no-reply@dropbox.com> – this is a cardinal sin when sending emails for marketing purposes. If you are communicating personally and directly to an individual, then you need to identify yourself and give the recipient an option to reply. It also creates distrust for the sender’s brand.

In email marketing the rule of thumb is simple: The “From Line” gets your email opened, while the “Subject Line” gets your email deleted.

Your recipients ask themselves “do I know the sender?” If they do they look to the Subject Line to see if the message is relevant and worth opening. If the Subject Line is relevant and persuasive, they will open the message. If they don’t know who is sending the message, or if the Subject Line is irrelevant, they delete without a second thought.

The Subject Line from <no-reply@dropbox.com> reads “are you ready to pivot?“. This message is wrong in so many ways.

Firstly, a headline should never ask a question where the answer can be yes/no – because so many of the recipients will answer “no” and delete your message without further thought. If you are going to ask a question, ask a rhetorical question – just as any good salesperson would when selling face-to-face.

Secondly, I’m not a ballerina. Why do I want to pivot? This is one of those buzzwords created by the cyber-hustlers who use a jargoniser to create fake words/meanings to try and position themselves as having some special secret sauce for marketing success.

Here is the Websters Dictionary definition of pivot:

When someone uses the word “pivot” in a business context, what they mean is you should continue to do what businesses have done since the invention of business. Adjust and refine your business according to market conditions. This is not new – it is common sense. Businesses have always created new products/services to grow their businesses, otherwise they don’t stay in business.

There is no need for a jargoniser to create a new word for an existing business practice. Here is an example of an extraordinary business response by a pie purveyor to the current pandemic. He didn’t need a buzzword to act.

But back to the email from <no-reply@dropbox.com>. I opened it to see what to do if I was ready to pivot.

The headline is a glib generalisation about the bleeding obvious: “The best teams know how to work together, does yours?” What business continues in business if its staff don’t cooperate? Why assume my team may not be working together?

Then this gem is offered: “With the right mindset — and the right tools — any team can thrive in this new digital world“

Am not sure how a team has a mindset, but I thought in any world, individuals with the right mindset and right tools would thrive. After all, who would try to thrive with the wrong mindset and wrong tools?

Now I’ve only been working in digital marketing since 1995 (it’s 26 years this year since I ran my first online marketing seminar). At what stage does this “new digital world” stop becoming new?

And why would I believe a digital storage shed could help me? By the way, the response button “Explore Dropbox Plans” is a link to the fees charged by Dropbox to store stuff. There is no “reason why” I should use Dropbox – What’s In It For Me?

Given I am already a customer, there is nothing to explain why I should consider upgrading or changing my contract with Dropbox.

Sadly, these types of emails invade inboxes daily – usually written by a digital or content marketer who has typing skills, not copywriting skills, because hey “everyone can write” right?

In case you’re wondering, there was no signature file in the message, but given the email came from <no-reply@dropbox.com> that’s not really surprising.

Even more frustrating is the fact that email marketing has been around for more than two decades, yet these fundamental errors continue to be made. There really is no excuse for such amateurism, particularly from a successful organisation like Dropbox.

Gotta go now. I have to see my chiropractor after I injured myself practicing my office pivots…

Like many of you in 2020, I attended virtual versions of events originally designed for conference venues. The worst part of this forced process was enduring the events on conference call technology that was not designed for running events online – Zoom, Teams, Skype et al.

I also had to teach university classes using Zoom and Teams – these are definitely not media designed for teaching, let alone learning. Talking to screens with cameras switched off is painfully difficult.

These stop-gap measures were forced upon us due to the pandemic. Companies scrambled to keep scheduled events going (and not lose revenue) by migrating them to conference call technology – known affectionately as a phone call with pictures. It became immediately obvious the video conference technologies were no substitute for the real thing – a conference centre with staging, speakers, catering, exhibitors and delegates you could mingle with face-to-face over a drink.

But if you’re considering a repeat performance for your annual event in 2020, using a phone call with pictures, you’d better rethink your plans. The forced 2020 solution will not cut it in 2021.

Organisations have no excuse to force delegates to attend an online event using conference call technology. They’ve had 12 months to move on from the emergency option and must now invest in professional event platforms designed for engaging your audience, speakers, exhibitors and sponsors.

I’ve trialed a couple of technologies, there are many and varied suppliers. e:volve by Synergy Effect offers all sorts of options for fully online virtual events or hybrid ones simultaneously combining delegates at a venue and with those attending online.

The immediate benefits will make you reconsider what’s possible with online events:

• Unlimited options for virtual stages and backgrounds
• Whatever you can imagine can be created
• Stream speakers live from anywhere in the world
• Integrate face-to-face audience with virtual audience
• Conduct live Q&A between delegates and speakers wherever they are located
• Checkout the demonstration video below

You can even run a live online Awards Event linking presenters and award winners in real time:

I’ve also attended a webinar using the ON24 platform, which is a much better webinar experience than the standard technologies.

So, if you want to do the right thing by your delegates, guests, speakers, sponsors and other stakeholders, invest in a decent online event service. You might just surprise yourself at the results.

And you’ll be pleased to note I didn’t use the jargoniser and mention “the new normal“.

But I have to go now – I have a Zoom meeting to attend…

Today, I conducted a small experiment on two social media channels – Facebook and Instagram. I simply scrolled for a couple of minutes on each, capturing screen shots of the advertisements posted in my feed.

I work in and teach marketing, do research on marketing stuff and speak about marketing near my smartphone, so the advertisements in my feed are mostly about marketing services or similar – sad but true. As you know dear reader, both these social channels are owned by the same organisation, so a number of advertisements appeared in both channels.

If ever there was irrefutable evidence of the destruction of marketing industry’s credibility, you need look no further than what appears in my feed. The advertisements are brought to me by those who come from the digital school that preaches “How to get rich online, by telling others how to get rich online“. There were so many, this story could be a three-part series.

Here is but a small sample:

This fake marketer is using a paid advertisement (excuse my tautology) to con suckers that they don’t need to pay for advertising to land clients. I suppose he is also a fisherman, hence the use of ‘land’, instead of ‘acquire’ or “get new”? It seems he’s out of his mind – and it definitely needs changing. Please leave the industry now.

Here’s another one. An advertisement on Instagram claiming you can sell products on Instagram without ads. And not only do you not need ads, you don’t need an audience to sell to or any marketing experience. Making money requires no skills apart from, well, nothing but replying to this ad. Mind you, this ad costs the advertiser money to advertise their message about how to make money without spending money. Bloody hell.

Do they really believe people are completely stupid? Or maybe they are happy with stupid customers, or random monkeys tapping keyboards, given their criteria for customers? Please leave the industry.

Jeff Bezos once famously said “Advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service.” and yet Amazon is now the world’s largest advertiser ($11Billion PA) shunting P&G into second place.

A brand automation tool – amazing stuff. Just press a button and brands are automatically created? Does Coca Cola just hit the Brand Automation Button and go to lunch because the brand is now somehow automated and generating a profitable ROI? What does this headline mean? At least the subheading says “Join the Brand Automation revolution” not “Join the Brand Automation conversation”. But seriously folks – they want marketers to believe their brands can be automated – this defies all logic and demonstrates it was written by a digital typist not a copywriter. Leave the industry now.

Read this headline aloud – “The 2.0 100 viral content templates“. And they trademarked them!

I suppose if you’re selling templates you want those template messages to go viral, as by definition, you’ll sell more. But selling templates is a limited market and as most marketers know, there is very little linkage between “going viral” and sales. Most of what “goes viral” is simply chewing gum for the brain, with very little engagement or commerce involved in the process.

And usually it’s the content within the message that is the reason the message “goes viral” – if the template was the reason for virality, then every social media advertisement would “go viral”. That’s because all social media advertising is produced in a template – including this one. Advertisers are restricted to the same size image space, same character count and same location for the text and images.

This has created the unconscious habit known as banner blocking as the design of the advertisement signals to the viewer “this is an ad” so viewers unconsciously ignore them.

If I believe this “advertisement in a template” all I need to do is put content in one of the templates and it will “go viral” – whatever that means. So just dump a bunch of lorum ipsum into a template and sit back to witness the virality and the money appearing in my bank account?

Personally I’d rather know what type of content to put into a template to make it go viral – and I suspect this “advertisement in a template” has yet to reach pandemic-spread levels. Leave the industry now.

I have no idea why you would post such a distorted image, let alone lead with an irrelevant headline that doesn’t relate to the image. Readers expect headlines and images to relate to each other. The reason is simple – it’s how we’re taught to read.

For example, a picture of a dog, with the word ‘dog’ underneath it. A picture of a cat with the word ‘cat’ underneath it. It’s in our DNA to look at an image and link the caption or headline. But this advertisement does nothing of the sort.

Then the dead giveaways appear confirming this was written by a cyber-hustler. The first giveaway is the Use Of Capitals To Start Every Word In The Headline. The next is the use of the jargoniser to add buzzwords for alleged credibility – in this case it’s the buzzword hack – as if a hack is something special, for no other reason than it’s called a hack.

The other is the zero cost to do do something ‘secret’ that those who make $Billions don’t want you to know. It’s always $0 and only available through this special member of the “priesthood of marketing secrets” who out of sheer generosity wants to share it with you.

But there is a catch – you have to pay for the new $0 marketing hack if you want to use it. Please, please leave the industry now.

Once again, the first giveaway (Use Of Capitals To Start Every Word In The Headline) shows itself immediately. The ‘&’ is also a giveaway. I find this fascinating. How come no legitimate expert in the world of B2B sales and marketing has every written or run a training course on how to do what you are paid to do as a B2B salesperson – get some sales?

The sales training category must be bereft of education materials, so thank goodness for Hubspot – which I believe has one of the largest outbound telemarketing departments in the world of software marketing. Sorry, I meant to say “martech” – forgot to use the jargoniser. The company uses telemarketing to sell software that is supposed to automate the selling process, so you don’t need telemarketing – go figure.

For those who don’t know, Hubspot was made famous in Dan Lyon’s hilarious book Disrupted – Ludicrous misadventures in the tech start-up bubble. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “the best book about Silicon Valley,” takes readers inside the maddening world of fad-chasing venture capitalists, sales bros, social climbers, and sociopaths at today’s tech startups. It’s a great read by the way.

And the hilarity is real. This advertisement uses the jargoniser to create a TLA for ABM. That’s a Three-Letter Acronym for Account-Based Marketing. Back in the dark ages of mid-last century, the term Account-Based Marketing or Account-Based Selling was invented. It was used to sell mainframe computers and other office and industrial equipment to major organisations and government. The sales teams were divided by market segment, or account type. For example, government or education.

So why use a jargoniser or TLAs to allege special skills are required for a business process that is about 70 years old? If you believe you need to reinvent the name of a process that has hardly ever changed – people selling to companies, assisted in some way by technology – then please leave the industry now.

Analogue tactics rule

The really interesting thing about the cyber-hustlers is how so many of them want you to buy or download a book to discover their secrets. That’s right folks – that old-fashioned analogue thing called a book. You can buy one and have it printed by a publisher and mailed to you, or you can download it and print it yourself.

Curiously, most downloaded books never get read online and even less are printed and read. The sheer act of downloading the book satisfies the respondent they are doing the right thing, then life gets in the way. Because the book isn’t physically sitting in front of them waiting to be read, the downloaded version gets ignored. But some SaaS expert will attribute value to your download and tick-off an achieved task on their KPIs.

The first 20 years of the 21st century are sadly being remembered as the decades that the cyber-hustlers and fake marketers destroyed any semblance of respect for the marketing industry. Even sadder is the glib acceptance of them by the industry. Why are we so intellectually and morally lazy?

After all, if Twitter will put fact-checking messages on Trump’s Tweets and Facecrook will remove fake content, why don’t these platforms protect us from fake marketers?

Have to go now, I’ve been asked by a young digital marketer for advice on how to become a thought leader without any expertise – now there’s an idea for a book…

In 2004 I ran a series of one-day seminars about online marketing with Drayton Bird, in Oz and NZ. Before the NZ leg of the tour, we were interviewed along with that doyen of marketing, Philip Kotler, by NZ Marketing magazine. Phil’s textbook was compulsory reading when I did my first marketing degree.

If only we’d realised then, what we were really doing in the new-age digital world, imagine how successful we could have become?

According to the cyber-hustlers, by being interviewed in a marketing magazine, we were practicing influencer marketing, by delivering thought leadership as part of our content marketing strategy. If only we’d known – we could have become Linkfluencers! The cyber-hustlers have so much to teach us.

Here’s a PDF of the interviews.