Orange Envelopes | Small Business Optimized Marketing > By Design

Living in Cleveland, as I do, I have frequent conversations with executives who run prototypical rust-belt businesses. Heavy manufacturing, industrial distribution and professional services that support these core businesses that are decidedly unsexy and unremarkable.

What’s surprising about these discussions is how many of these executives view their own companies as unexceptional and nondescript. Which begs the question: If you don’t think your company is remarkable and unique, why would anyone else?

As the former owner of a manufacturing company that produced labeling machines (it doesn’t get less sexy than labeling) I can attest to the dysfunctional industrial mindset that dominates entire industry sectors. Manufacturers are obsessed with their physical equipment, not what it is capable of providing. Distributors are the sum of their products, not the value they add in knowledge, responsiveness and expertise. And service companies have absolutely no idea how to separate themselves from nearly identical competitors.

When I hear these executives describe their own company in these terms, I see boundless opportunity. In most cases, their competitors behave in exactly the same way, enabling a savvy, thoughtful  and creative marketer to create a distinctive and memorable presence in their industry sector. And with the proliferation of penetrating social media tools, the ability to create an impression and reach your targets with precision and frequency has never been greater.

So if I can see the opportunity, why can’t they? I hear the same excuses over and over, including:

1. My customers aren’t on the internet. I was wondering who it was that wasn’t on the internet at all. Turns out it’s always the clients and prospects of every industrial executive I speak with. Theirs are the ones who don’t use e-mail, never watch anything on YouTube, get their news exclusively from newspapers, still use film cameras, listen only to CD’s and still deliver presentations from a stack of transparencies. I don’t believe it. What’s more believable is that these companies have never provided any reason for any of their clients to use the internet to gather information, gain knowledge or, heaven forbid, entertain.
2. My customers buy on price, so what’s the point? The point is that you’ve never given your clients any reason to base their buying decision on anything other than price. That’s the fundamental problem. You need to become more valuable, and a thoughtful social media program can communicate your distinctive abilities, and reinforce the true value you deliver.
3. What would I say? At first, it’s not about what you say, but how you contribute. How can you help? What do you know that you can share? It’s about them, not about you. Link to articles that you think they would find helpful and interesting. Link to videos that are instructive and entertaining. Link to research that will help their strategic business decisions. And write about the successes that you’ve contributed to and the problems that you’ve helped overcome. Nobody’s expecting brilliance. Insight will do.
4. I don’t have the time. What priorities do you have that are greater than developing your business? Building close relationships with your prospects and clients is not something you can outsource to a marketing firm. Your web developer cannot substitute Flash for real conversations. Want to demonstrate your commitment? Spend some time each day participating. If you don’t commit and engage, neither will your staff.
5. I would lose control. For many old school executives, the concept of social media participation is downright scary. What do you mean people can leave comments? What if they say bad things about us? How can I control what my employees say online? For the command and control executive, the openness of the social media channels strikes fear in their heart. For these executives, I can only commiserate and offer the limited consolation that the new world of social media marketing won’t be that bad if you’re authentic, open, truthful and helpful. Now is that too hard?

The blogosphere and Twittersphere have been buzzing this past week over a series of blog posts by Oliver Blanchard on his blog, The BrandBuilder, discussing how to communicate social media ROI to skeptical executives.

The posts sparked dozens of comments and hundreds of Tweets from social media aficionados that split between those who castigated Olivier for daring to introduce crass mercantile interests into the pristine world of social media and those who recognize the business realities involved with securing investment and executive support and need practical guidance to pitch their social media plans.

Olivier was precisely correct when he wrote that executives need to hear how any social media plan will generate a tangible and measurable return on their investment. These executives are responsible for dispensing a finite amount of corporate resources among departments. It is practical, desirable and reasonable that they dispense investment dollars to those projects that will advance the company’s financial position the farthest. That’s reality. Now how do you deal with it?

Once you understand their agenda – maximizing the return on their finite investment dollars – you can frame your social media plans effectively, in language that is compelling and convincing.

Rule #1: do not talk about Twitter followers, the number of retweets last month or the number of times a Fan Page was shared on Facebook. They don’t understand and they don’t care. Zip it until next month’s local SMC meeting.

Rule #2: Speak in language that they understand: Process, Plan, Cost and Return. CEO’s will want to understand the SM process and know that you have a precise plan to execute. By the way, it must be written, or it’s not really a plan.

Rule #3: Do not tell the CEO that the cost of your social media plan is zero or you’ll lose all credibility. Although Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and WordPress do not charge their users, their cost is not zero. Their actual cost must include the human costs of participation, engagement, content development and management. How many employees will be involved? At what level? How many hours per day? Per week? Although the company doesn’t write a separate check for social media costs, they are paying for participation, and the total cost may be significant.

Rule #4: Focus on Quantitative, not Qualitative returns. Qualitative returns include the impact of your participation on your company’s reputation and the value of extended online conversations in relationship building. The CEO doesn’t care. I know you do, and I know your CEO should, but that’s not how he measures success. He wants Quantitative metrics. How many new customers did your efforts generate? How many new sales? How much did the average sale increase? What impact did your efforts have on gross margin?

Rule #5: Understand how the F.R.Y. metrics explain and support your social media goals. As Olivier described in his blog post, a compelling social media strategy should improve:

Frequency Increasing sales revenue by shortening the interval between transactions.

Reach (breadth) Increasing sales revenue by increasing net new customer count.

Reach (Depth) Increasing sales revenue by helping customers buy deeper into the product line.

Yield Increasing sales revenue by driving customers to want to increase their average per transaction spending.

Rule #6: Be prepared to detail how you intend to track sales that emerge from the social media channels. You must be able to track results to prove that your SM participation justified the company’s investment.

There. That wasn’t so hard. Now head up to the CEO’s office and tell him how you’re going to improve the company’s bottom line. And you can blog about it later.

Sat at the bar at Champps this week where a shark fin shaped coaster caught my eye. It was the coaster for a beer named Landshark, and I thought it was a creative use of design to grab attention and notice.

The coaster sparked a conversation with the bartender about the beer. It was obviously intended to appear to be a microbrew targeted at the Corona drinker, and I was curious how a microbrew could land in a major restaurant chain and have their coasters placed under every drink at the bar. That’s an expensive proposition, and one that’s not entered into lightly from the chain’s perspective.

Something didn’t make sense, so I pulled out my handy iPhone and fired up the Google.

A quick search revealed that the Landshark beer wasn’t a microbrew after all, but was brewed by Anheuser Busch for Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville Brewing Company and launched as a direct competitor to Corona.

The Landshark bottle design is virtually identical to Corona’s, it is served with a wedge of lime to be squeezed into the bottle, just like Corona, and it is described on its label as Island Style Lager (though the specific island, or islands, is never specifically identified, though we can be reasonably certain that the island isn’t Manhattan).

The connection to Corona is even more apparent when you take a look at the Landshark lager web page on the Margaritaville corporate website, where the images of Landshark postcards appear to be a direct rip-off of Corona’s marketing efforts.

Seriously, Landshark’s materials are a direct lift of Corona’s look and feel images incorporating sandy beach, dazzling blue ocean and palm tree fronds dangling from the upper corners. Gentlemen, start your depositions.

Faithful to my inquisitive marketing nature, I ordered a Landshark to gauge it’s similarity in taste to its intended rival. The beer was similar in flavor to Corona, delicious with a wedge of lime, and immeasurably better than the major brewers’ other Corona rivals Miller Chill or Bud Light Lime. Which left me conflicted.

The product itself is fine, but I have qualms about how the beer’s marketing strategy is being designed and executed. Both the bartender and another Landshark beer drinker that I spoke with thought that the beer was a microbrew. In fact, that was one of Landshark’s primary appeals: it wasn’t a big corporate brew. Except it was.

Want to know how big and corporate Landshark is? They just acquired naming rights to the Miami Dolphins Stadium for one year. That’s seriously corporate.

At its core, my unease with the brand lies in its lack of any genuine authenticity. It pretends to be something it’s not. It has no island style, no island roots, in fact no legend or backstory at all.

Ultimately, that’s where Landshark, and their ad agency, fail. They obviously want to position themselves as the beer of choice for Corona lovers. But what’s the reason to order the imitation instead of the real thing?  With all the social media and web-based marketing tools available, it’s never been easier to create a legend and product persona. But Landshark has no social media presence at all, has intentionally avoided creating their own legend and appears intent on leveraging a glossy image and their substantial marketing dollars to gain mindshare and bar space.

Given a choice between the two, I’ll take the original Corona. With a wedge of lime, please.

Some of the worst advertising in the world is printed in industry trade journals. Those glossy magazines devoted to mobile home production or coal mining that are paid for with industry specific advertising from the titans of their industry sector.

Reading the ads in these magazines illustrates everything that’s wrong with most marketing efforts. They try to incorporate too many messages, they make outrageous claims of industry leadership or market domination, they are insufferably self-aggrandizing and they focus almost exclusively on the product, not the buyer.

As a followup to yesterday’s post detailing the 5 Essential Rules of Business Design, I now offer these 5 Essential Rules of Message Design:

1. Your message should consist of one thing. That’s it. One. Ideally, it should be one thing that appeals to your customers. The ad that you ran that declared your engineering prowess, commitment to service, ease of use, instant availability and unparalleled quality was so crowded and disjointed that it actually conveyed none of these messages. If you don’t know what sets your company apart, how will your prospects or customers know? Distill your capabilities down to the one essential thing your customers can’t live without. Then stick with it.
2. Your product/machine/service is not your message. Industrial companies are frequently run by the person who originally founded the company – who is often the person who designed and engineered their original products. You can tell from their advertising that they love their machines. Their full page ads are dominated by a picture of their latest beauty, which is nearly indistinguishable from their earlier machines, or from any of their competitor’s machines. But the difference, you see, is that the new Model 3550DX can run at 1700″/minute, not 1600″/minute. Get it? Actually, I understand if you don’t. What these company owners fail to grasp is that the buyer isn’t buying the machine, they’re buying the functionality of the machine. They actually don’t care a whit about the machine. Only you do. If you want to create an indelible message, focus on the benefits you deliver: ease of use, reliability, uptime, throughput – and leave the machine out of it.
3. Tell the truth. Your customers know who you really are. Your prospects who convert to customers soon will. If you fabricate an identity that has no connection to reality, you’ll alienate your customers, lose their trust and may never regain it. I worked with an industrial company that was # 7 in their industry sector, with annual sales of about $25 million. They competed with companies with sales exceeding $2 billion, yet made the claim that they led the industry in R&D, service and quality. It was an unbelievable boast. In reality, their strength was regional distribution, but they didn’t think that regional distribution was significant enough, so they puffed themselves up to appear larger and more important than they are. Their sales are down over 25%. Good luck regaining that trust, guys.
4. Commercial buyers are no different than any other consumer. Industrial producers frequently claim that their buyers are different from other buyers. And they’re wrong. The emotional appeals to industrial buyers are virtually identical to every other buyer. Compare the buying process of  a consumer preparing to buy a new car and an industrial buyer preparing to buy a new labeling machine. Both will investigate several buying options. When evaluating these options, both will likely consider the manufacturer’s reputation, reliability, ease of use, total cost of ownership, service requirements, warranties and performance characteristics. Although the total purchase amount may be many factors higher, the buying process isn’t far removed from any standard consumer purchase. This makes the design of your marketing message that much more critical.
5. Repetition works. Just because you tire of your message doesn’t mean that your buyer is tired of it. You see your message every day, in every e-mail that you send and in every view of your company’s web page. But your customers don’t see your message nearly as often. You may send them e-mails every week, but it’s likely that they delete over 70% of your messages before they’re even read. Stay on message. Over and over and over. Across all media, including social media. If your message is important, it’s worth repeating.

The only thing worse than being exposed to bad design is being forced to work with bad designers.

During each of the past two years, I guest lectured at the Kent State design school, discussing with students how to integrate their design aesthetics with business exigencies. I told them that design had to support a specific business purpose, reinforce the corporate brand and communicate specific qualities. If their design failed to support these business imperatives, then it was bad design, no matter how pretty it was.

Over the course of a semester-long design project, the students learned how to apply their design skills to create a memorable impression, generate interest, communicate product information effectively and generate revenue. Just what they’ll need in the real world.

If college students can understand the purpose of design, why can’t professional designers?

I stopped working today with a designer who simply doesn’t understand how to design effectively for business. Despite detailed feedback, this designer could not grasp the five essential rules of business design:

1. Reinforce my corporate brand. My company has a brand. Specific colors, images, fonts, styles and visual elements that are repeated across multiple media to convey specific qualities and attributes of my company. Your job is to incorporate those design elements to reinforce my brand, not to create a new look that ignores established visual cues and design rules that define my brand.
2. Understand my strategic goals. What is my market? Who are my clients? What are my sales goals? How does this project fit into my corporate mission? If you don’t understand where I’m going, and why, how can you design components to support my efforts?
3. Look at your work from the end-user’s perspective. What does the user want from the product or service? Does your design communicate the core purpose effectively? Is it compelling, distinctive and memorable? The end-user is the one who determines the effectiveness of your design, not your design committee or the marketing director.
4. Design with a purpose. Know what you want to accomplish and what specific message you want to convey. Then design with that purpose in mind. Focus, focus, focus.
5. Pretty ≠ Effective. I’ve yet to meet a designer incapable of creating pretty output. Virtually all are able to generate gorgeous brochures, beautiful ads and splendid identity programs. But just because your work is pretty, doesn’t mean that it’s effective. Great design communicates function, pleasure and meaning to the customer, and supports the specific business purpose of your client.

Remember, you’re a businessperson, too. Pretty isn’t enough. Design with purpose.

I simply can’t be the first to notice Microsoft’s repeated, laughable and impotent attempts to produce consumer electronics that appeal to anyone outside of the Bill Gates compound.

Quick, do you know anyone who has a Zune? Have you ever even seen one outside of a Best Buy? When was the last time you overheard someone bragging that they waited in line four hours to nab the latest Windows Mobile phone? Hell, even Melinda Gates admitted that she privately coveted the iPhone.

The list of Microsoft failures is long and illustrious. Walk with me down the memory lane of Microsoft product tragedies, which include the Microsoft Origami (their lame and ultimately aborted attempt at an UltraMobilePC), a five year headstart in developing a mobile phone platform that has generated viral buzz and consumer anticipation for…. well, none that I can recall, and, of course, the aforementioned Zune, whose sales are rumored to  approach triple digits. Total. Worldwide. Way to go, iPod killer.

Given this unrivaled history of corporate ineptitude, what’s to explain the huge headline in today’s WSJ, spanning nearly the entire page – Microsoft and Verizon Plot an iPhone Rival?

Are the loud guffaws and giggles from Cupertino disturbing your reading?

It’s not difficult to guess what will emerge from these high-powered strategic confabs between Microsoft and Verizon. Both have watched as each company’s nemesis rode the cresting wave of popularity and iconic status of the iPhone to unimagined commercial success.

Verizon is still wallowing in the regret of turning down Apple’s initial offer of exclusivity. And Microsoft remains stubbornly, and almost endearingly, steadfast in their commitment to Windows Mobile as the preeminent mobile platform. Which makes them the perfect partners to develop an imaginary mobile device that will do everything the iPhone does… and more!

They will combine forces to produce a brilliant, almost legendary, product spec that includes an unheard of, amazing feature set for a touchscreen phone, including everything that the current iPhone lacks. Video? Check. Cut and paste? Check. 5 MP camera? Check. Stereo Bluetooth? Check.

Excited yet? It’s the phone that does it all. That has every feature that any user could ever want. On the nation’s most reliable network. What could possibly go wrong?

It will suck. It will perform 486 functions in ways that drive the user crazy and simply reinforce Apple’s dominion in the mobile world.

How do I know this? Because neither Microsoft nor Verizon has ever delivered a consumer electronic product that incorporates thoughtful and creative design in ways that delight and amaze their customers. It’s not how they think or how they work. While they focus on the current iPhone as their target, Apple is focusing on remaking the iPhone entirely, on designing user experiences and handheld capabilities that emerge from their fecund imaginations, not from a strategic planning session that will likely produce Verizon’s own mobile Vista. Now that’s something to look forward to.

Finance website 24/7 Wall St. ran an article this week detailing twelve national brands that they predicted would disappear this year. The predictions aren’t especially brave or surprising, considering the economic turmoil that each company is dealing with. What’s most surprising about the listing and analysis is what’s missing. The author never asks the simple question: why this brand?

The twelve brands – all household names – share common corporate design and branding foibles that have accelerated their recent acceleration into the abyss of irrelevance and anonymity.

The most striking failure of each company is its inability to deliver on a consistent brand promise or user experience.

Fast Track to Failure
Let’s take the two auto companies on the list: Saturn and Chrysler. Saturn emerged from GM with a distinctive promise: no-hassle sales and a commitment to fostering a Saturn community of owners sharing their appreciation of an affordable, well built automobile.

Although Saturn generated an intensely loyal cult of auto owners, they failed to fulfill their brand promise with new and updated products. Like Chrysler, Saturn had no ingrained design ethos and started churning out models that were bland, unexciting and ultimately forgettable.

Then Saturn dropped their singular shopping experience. Want to bargain for a Saturn? Go ahead. They’ll haggle. And when was the last Saturn Homecoming? 1999.

Although Chrysler had a modest design hit with their 300, which complemented Chrysler’s historical brand legacy of beauty and elegance, the rest of their vehicle lineup carries no consistent design cues and obscures any brand message.

Both auto companies are now simply producers of four-wheeled transportation. And when competing with companies like BMW, Mini, Honda, Toyota and every other manufacturer who know what they stand for and deliver the product and user experience commensurate with their brand promise, simple transportation isn’t enough.

Fickle Fates of Fashion
Fashion retail is a brutal, unforgiving sector, and Old Navy and Eddie Bauer are learning that the fickle fates of fashion can doom an uninspiring brand. Neither retailer has developed a particularly distinctive look or shopping experience for their customers. Both stock a rather uninspiring collection of t-shirts, shorts, polos and khakis that are nearly indistinguishable from their brethren at Abercrombie, American Eagle or the Gap. Be different or be gone.

Common Elements of the Rest of the Crowd
The rest of the doomed brands share the same lack of timely innovation, distinctive difference and memorable user experiences that protect cherished brands during a downturn.

Now, take a quick check of your business. Does your brand deliver on amazing promises or should you be fitted for your funeral shroud?

The Masters golf tournament is unique in many ways – one of them being their restriction on advertising during their televised event. While most golf tournaments show 16 minutes of commercials per hour, The Masters limits the amount of commercials to four minutes per hour.

This imposed limitation makes each minute of available commercial time more valuable, and actually makes the viewer notice the commercials more because of their rarity.

As a Masters junkie, I kept the tournament on my tv during the entire event, even while working. I just muted the sound so each cheer wasn’t a distraction, and glanced at the screen intermittently to monitor the leaderboard.

Because I watched much of the tournament with the sound off, I was struck by the effectiveness of IBM’s visual design cues that they integrate into every one of their commercials. Even with the sound off, I knew instantly when an IBM commercial was on simply by the consistency of their design cues.

A visit to Youtube confirms that every IBM commercial is bounded by an IBM blue letterbox border above and below the displayed video. This simple visual cue immediately conveys to the viewer that the commercial was created by IBM.

Even if the viewer is not actively paying attention to the commercial, IBM gains another imprint, another touchpoint, that reinforces their presence, increases awareness and strengthens their brand.

This video repetition is a simple design device that should be emulated by small business and by individuals trying to strengthen their own personal brand. What visual cues can you employ that differentiate your message and reinforce your brand image? It can be color, logo, wardrobe choice, tagline, message – as long as it’s authentic, it’s memorable, and it’s all yours.

Then start integrating those visual cues in everything you do online: email signatures, Twitter avatar, blog and website design, personal and corporate letterhead, business cards, social media profile pages – every visual touchpoint that allow you to make and reinforce your brand image.

Golfers recognize the true start of the golf season begins with April’s Masters tournament in Augusta, Georgia. Played on a course designed by golf legend Bobby Jones, and reverentially referred to as a golfing cathedral, the Masters is the only major golf tournament that never changes venue, and is recognized as the preeminent tournament in the sport.

In recent years, the tournament has attracted media scrutiny for its refusal to accept female members, and the club is perceived by many to be a southern-fried, racist and misogynistic old boys club.

However, contrary to the preconceived notion of many that the tournament is too backwards and buttoned-down, The Masters has executed a thorough and brilliant online marketing strategy that reinforces their position as the most highly regarded event in golf.

Identity
Their branding effort begins with the single most recognizable logo in golf.  The brilliant yellow map of the USA with a single red flag waving from a stick, sitting atop a deep green background is immediately recognizable, and the tournament owns those colors and that distinctive design. Quick… try to think of another golf tournament’s logo. Other than the image of the British Open’s claret jug, few have any significant recognition factor, and none approach the instant identification of The Masters’.

The Masters brands everything they do with their distinctive logo. Their website resonates with deep green and yellow and their logo is incorporated throughout the site. Land on any page, and there’s no question that you’re visting The Masters.

Maintain Exclusivity
It’s estimated that The Masters sells more golf paraphernalia during their tournament than any other pro event. Hats, shirts, jackets, umbrellas and golf balls, all emblazoned with The Masters’ logo are grabbed up by eager fans who know that the on-course shop is the only place these items are sold. Ever. There is no online shop. There is no Masters outlet store. You want a Masters baseball cap? Get a ticket and get in line.

Their exclusivity is enhanced also by their refusal to allow more than four minutes of advertising during each hour of their telecasts. Most tournaments allow 16 minutes of commercials. This restriction makes each minute of advertising even more valuable and precious for the advertiser that wants to reach this exclusive audience.

Leverage Technology
Few people would believe that The Masters is the most technologically advanced golf tournament in the world. They have provided live webcasts for years. They have a Live Scoreboard to keep on your desktop for instant scoring updates. This year they released an iPhone app to provide live scoring and live video of select holes, including the famous Amen Corner. Don’t have an iPhone? They designed a mobile device enabled site just for you.

On Twitter? Follow @The_Masters for tournament and scoring updates. Not Twitterfied yet? The Masters will send text messages to your phone with scoring and player updates that you select.

Want to chat with other rabid fans? Join the online Masters Community.

Sitting at your desk in front of your PC? Fire up the Live video feeds of Amen Corner and Holes 15 and 16. Follow the action with high definition full screen video.

Surprise and Delight
The Masters displays a phenomenal aptitude for anticipating the desires of their rabid fans for tournament updates, information and involvement. Few would expect this southern golf institution to be technologically proficient, so when they deliver half a dozen ways to leverage technology to deliver tournament news to fans, they cement their status as the leading golf tournament in the world.

And they’ve raised the bar for golf’s other majors to deliver similar levels of fan satisfaction.

I carry a newspaper in my pocket at virtually all times. Actually I carry hundreds of them. All resident as flowing electrons on the screen of my iPhone. This scares the hell out of the major newspaper companies. And it should.

News stories abound detailing the assorted turmoils afflicting the newspaper industry. Major city papers have already ceased operations, and even the most revered journalistic icons, the New York Times and the Boston Globe, are hemorrhaging cash and are trying desperately to execute a corporate strategy that reverses their current death spiral.

Redefining The News
The major newspapers are in serious trouble because they are not really in the news business, they are in the printed news delivery business. Everything they do, every corporate strategy they envision, revolves around newsprint and its physical distribution.

They have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in huge physical plants, enormous high-speed printing presses, fleets of delivery trucks and an enormous, largely unionized, labor force all devoted to delivering a mass of newsprint to an audience whose demand for printed news has declined precipitously.

News As Advertising Vehicle
It’s not just the demand for printed news that has diminished. It’s the demand for printed advertising, the source of all the newspaper’s revenue.

Craigslist, the free online ad service, single handedly destroyed the newspaper’s classified advertising, which provided about 40% of their total revenue. In the Bay Area alone, area newspapers lost more than $50-65 million a year in help wanted advertising and untold millions more in merchandise and real estate advertising.

Local businesses have discovered that most consumers now rely primarily on the web when searching for a new product or service. These businesses are shifting their marketing expenditures to search engine optimization, pay per click advertising and website development and away from traditional newspaper advertising. And these dollars will never return.

Lack of Design Thinking
The newspaper’s response to this critical strategic shift in demand for their product reflects an absence of design thinking. The typical management response has been to reduce staff, demand concessions from their remaining employees, reduce the size of their paper and threaten online bloggers and news aggregators who dare link to the newspaper’s articles.

Design thinking is about creating a better, different alternative to newsprint for news (and advertising) delivery. The current news executives are focused on analytic choices between producing newsprint for a large audience or a smaller audience, not on envisioning a different news delivery vehicle altogether.

These executives appear to lack the essential components for creative design thinking. Rather than empathize with our desire to receive the news on our terms and on our schedule, they continue to focus on printing and delivering the news on their terms. They need to take a “people first” approach and design a solution that revolves around our desires, not theirs. And I have no desire for a stack of newsprint in my driveway each morning.

They should also read Roger Martin’s brilliant book, The Opposable Mind: How Successful leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking. Martin, the dean of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, details through case studies how managers can synthesize opposing ideas and create bold and dynamic solutions to seemingly insoluble problems.

Experiment and Collaborate
One thing is clear: the newspaper industry won’t solve its problems by doing more of the same, but at a smaller scale. They need to accept that their industry has changed and will never revert to their former glory days. They will need to experiment with new solutions and collaborate with creative geniuses in online disciplines to create a news experience that people will clamor for.

Collaborate with Google, Twitter, Facebook and other social media leaders. Partner with Amazon to deliver your news to reader’s Kindles. Provide subsidized netbooks that receive your news and advertising feeds directly.

I’m not sure what strategy will work or what the future of news delivery will look like precisely. Only one thing is certain: it won’t look like their current model. And they need to start now.