04/04
How to Use Planned Confusion as a Tool for Creating Meaningful Change
Break free from the fear of stagnation and discover three simple tricks to implement 'Planned Confusion,' ensuring your business thrives in the ever-evolving landscape of brand management.
Let’s face it. Being a marketer today is one of the most stressful jobs in the world of brand management.
CMOs are often the first on the chopping block when an organization is suffering from underwhelming growth results or not hitting sales targets. In fact, a HBR survey showed that 57% of CMOs have been in their position less than 3 years.
With the fear of short-term failure always looming, it’s perhaps understandable that we often fall into the trap of repeating successful formulas of the past rather than constantly disrupting ourselves to stay dynamic as businesses.
The Deadliest Word in Business
But to look only at what has been done and to rest your business growth on previous assumptions is to also risk the deadliest word for any company or marketer wanting to stay at the top of their game: Atrophy.
Toys ‘R’ Us. Kodak. Blockbusters. These are the known and expected casualties.
And yet atrophy is not just present in those failed companies. Disney’s Marvel Studios recent implosion was partly caused by their resting on their laurels for the last decade and churning out the same storyline across multiple franchises creating audience fatigue and fanboy desertion.
It is an everyday fact in all of our business lives, as the inevitable company instinct is to look inside itself or at best to look across at its competitors and measure transformation only by that yardstick. It is easy not to change when your competition isn’t, or only to the extent they do.
So how do you break the cycle and stay vital?
How “Planned Confusion” Can Help Stimulate Business Growth
“Planned confusion” is a new term rooted in an old concept from the world of bodybuilding.
The famous fitness guru, Joe Weider, was a longtime proponent of employing “muscle confusion” to achieve a higher level of athleticism. This training method uses shock and growth as the core tenet for preventing muscle atrophy while also generating perpetual gains.
Its premise is this:
When you do the same exercises, using the same sets and reps week after week, the muscles adapt to the predictable stimulus and cease to grow stronger. With changing training variables — creating muscle confusion — your body is challenged to keep up with the new demands placed upon it, and has no choice but to change. Cross-fit training is based on the same idea but adds functional movement and intensity to shock the system.
Now, if professional athletes can train themselves in cycles to keep their bodies in top form, why can’t we do the same as marketers with our businesses? A planned series of “whacks to the brain” that “shock and grow” our thinking.
Here are three simple tricks I’ve found incredibly useful to break away from stagnant thinking — starting with the easiest:
1. Change the Reference Point
Simply put: change the reference point on everyone in your company.
Look outside your category and learn from other adjacent or completely different categories instead. It’s meant to be intentionally disorienting because all your traditional bearings, prejudices and leanings get thrown out the window and you have the freedom to create something new.
Want to see how you change a two-horse competitive race? Need to launch a product and hit your goals within a month? Limited by budget but still have to build a business and a brand?
Study the world of political marketing (Obama 2008), movie marketing (DeadPool) and fashion/e-commerce marketing (Mr. Porter), respectively, to get to a completely different marketing playbook.
Jolt your thinking by asking how someone else in a completely different field has achieved a success and find the parallels and similarities to bring over and use in your discipline.
It’s not only fun. It works.
2. Ask Yourself What Business You Are Really In?
Is Coke in the refreshment business or in the business of celebrating special moments?
One answer makes you compete against Pepsi and Red Bull; the other places you in a broader usage of occasions from the everyday birthday parties and ballgames to big, special events like the Super Bowl and Xmas.
Is AirBnb in the online booking business or a portal to the new way to experience the world like a local?
Is Uber in the transportation business or in the data business so it can market ancillary services to you?
One answer can get you blocked in by shifting consumer trends. The other can open up new ways to grow a business.
3. Slay Some Sacred Cows
The beliefs that create one empire can also topple it.
The taxicab business believed they held their customers hostage. You were at their mercy: when/if they were available, when/if they stopped to pick you up, and all at the price and experience they dictated.
Uber simply asked, “what if transportation were On Demand like movies were, and gave you the option to choose what type of ride experience you wanted?”
And pffft! There crumbled a monopoly.
"If you want your brand to prosper in today’s environment, you have to be ready to continuously evaluate the marketing playbook from a completely different viewpoint."
Plan for Confusion; and Don’t Just Make It a “One-Time” Exercise
Today’s innovation inevitably becomes tomorrow’s normal.
As a marketer, if you want your business to prosper in today’s environment, you have to be ready to continuously evaluate the marketing playbook from a completely different viewpoint.
Planned confusion is not just about getting to a fresh perspective, but also about incorporating it as a disciplined part of your planning practice. Ideally, it should be as regular a part of your business check-in as your annual budget or marketing plan reviews.
After all, a little disorientation on a regular basis may be just the thing needed for you to shake up your long-term thinking.
