A marketing lesson for consultancies from my plumber.

The way people buy things is complicated. Their likes and dislikes are built over time and the specific effects of different elements of marketing are hard to gauge. There is, however, usually one activity that prompts a sale. For consumer goods, it’s usually something simple like an in-store promotion. For consulting firms, such activity is much harder – it’s difficult to target marketing activity at the exact moment someone’s putting together a pitch list.

So how can firms make themselves top of mind when they can’t easily be present at the point of the critical decision?

The best example I’ve seen of staying top of mind at the crucial moment is from my plumber, Ash. He does it using a radiator key. He’s had his phone number etched into hundreds of radiator keys and gives one to every customer. It’s cheap and it’s useful.

Ash’s thinking is that the only time people really worry about their heating is when it isn’t working. And the only thing that most people really know about radiators is how to bleed them.

So if their heating is below par, they bleed their radiators. If that fixes it, great. They’ll hopefully remember Ash gave them that key. If bleeding the radiators doesn’t work, his phone number is in their hand the second they realised they need to call a plumber.

Ash understands his customers and he’s found a way to be top of mind when they need him.

It’s hard for consulting firms to copy Ash. Consultancy purchases are rarely driven by a pressing need and there isn’t a uniform point at which clients decide to write a pitch list. Yet, the fundamentals are the same: you need a useable insight and a creative execution that puts your firm in the room when you’re not physically in the room. That’s the key to being top of mind.

Twitterstorms. We’ve all seen firms deluged by them. Online petitions. We’ve all watched as clicktivists click up their numbers. Whether your data’s anecdotal or empirical, that the frequency and speed of campaigns (effective or otherwise) has increased is unarguable. The ease and low cost of publishing and organising means that companies can quickly find themselves facing a crisis.

Some crises are well deserved, while there are others which companies seem to walk into by accident. The trouble VW is mired in is clearly of its own making. However, Lego has faced a couple of crises in recent times either because of long-standing commercial arrangements or a policy of trying not to get drawn into an issue.

When Lego’s partnership with Shell came under scrutiny, at first the company said it would not bow to campaigners. Then, facing repeated high-profile videos of its famous figures drowning in oil, Lego said that it would not renew its licensing deal with the oil giant. More recently, when the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei approached Lego to secure bricks for a new art installation the company refused, saying it did not get involved in politics (although surely the not getting involved position would’ve been to sell him the bricks?).

No more hiding places

In both incidents, Lego did what most corporations do. It tried not to be drawn into an issue. It took an agnostic approach. Companies do this because they like to stay out of the fray. They prefer to focus on the business of doing business. It has been, until very recently, the sensible option.

There are, however, fewer issues on which agnosticism pays off for companies. As the online conversation becomes more shrill and as it moves more quickly from issue to issue, companies will find agnosticism is not always the route to a quiet life. They will have to take a view and state it.

Environmental campaigners have been at the forefront of forcing corporations to move away from the we-don’t-take-a-view attitude. Every company does something positive when it comes to sustainability. Companies have realised that environmental agnosticism is no longer an option. In Lego’s case, it has discovered this means not only what you do to reduce environmental impact, but also who you partner with.

Other campaigners, particularly those focused on social issues, are making headway too. Whether it be ethical supply chains, diversity or gay marriage, agnosticism isn’t the hiding place it once was. And it’s not just activists, either. David Cameron has called for companies to speak out about the benefits of being in the EU. So there’s political pressure to take a position on big issues.

Moving beyond agnosticism

Brand consultants have long had tools to help companies work out what they stand for. First came ‘values’. Often abstract (and, nowadays, normally dull and identical), developing a set of corporate values was a way to help companies really focus on what they stood for and make day-to-day decisions in a brand-consistent way.

Then along came ‘purpose’. Defining a purpose is a way for companies to formalise how they relate to the communities they serve and society in general. A company’s purpose is usually aspirational and talks about a role that’s wider than generating a profit or making widgets.

Purpose is popular for good reason: companies that know their purpose, whose staff understand and believe in it, have a much clearer understanding of why they do what they do and are more quickly able to make decisions.

These companies will also find it easier to take consistent positions on social and other issues, express those positions clearly and, importantly, defend them and themselves.

All you need to know about LinkedIn’s latest attempt to become a more social.

LinkedIn has rolled out a series of changes to its Groups. As with the introduction of LinkedIn posts (the professional social network’s blogging platform), the changes are a move to make LinkedIn much more social.

Groups were the original social element on LinkedIn, a place where people with shared interests could discuss them, but their success has been mixed. Some Groups contain vibrant discussion. Many, however, are ghost towns. Even in the most active groups, a tiny minority maintain the conversation, while the majority sit silently on the sidelines.

Mimicking networks

Many of the changes seek to mimic real world networks. Let’s look at what’s changed and what that means.

All groups are now private groups. You can only read the conversations within a Group if you’re a member. The idea is that members will feel more at ease, knowing what they say can’t be overhead.

Members can approve new members. Know someone in the club? Then you don’t need to wait for a moderator to approve your entry into a Group. This move helps to clear up an important bottleneck.

Pre-moderation is gone. Group members can post what they want and it’ll appear immediately. This clears another bottleneck to free flowing conversation. However, it does open the door to a flood of promotional posts. LinkedIn say any negative effects will be mitigated because they’ve introduced better content filtering. Only time will tell on that front. In the meantime, community managers will need to monitor their groups much more closely.

These changes are supported by a range of design tweaks to the look and feel of Groups, aligning their design to the wider redesign of other parts of LinkedIn. You can also add images to comments – a long overdue addition.

Group managers will have mixed feelings about these changes. In particular, those seeking to operate closed networks on LinkedIn have lost the ability to control Groups as tightly as they might like. Managers will also need to spend more time actively managing Groups. This is good news for LinkedIn, but not so much for time-constrained Group managers.

The cumulative effect of all these changes should make LinkedIn much more social. However, these are structural changes so don’t expect the ghost towns to suddenly come to life.