Unlearning 101

The Tale of the Junky Carrot

What do you do if you want to sell more carrots?

One thing, apparently, is to begin viewing the world from a different perspective.

Recently, Fast Company, published this insightful article describing how the creative team at Crispin (an advertising firm) helped BoltHouse Farms increase sales of its pre-cut baby carrots.

How did they do this? I'll let you read the whole article but they began by questioning assumptions. To wit, one executive said he wanted carrots "to be junk food."

This might sound ridiculous but his reasoning was sound: Baby carrots share many of the same characteristics as junk food -- they're "neon orange, crunchy, dippable, and kind of addictive." (The team at Crispin also argued that it was only slightly silly to spend money telling people that carrots were healthy.)

I would submit that Crispin's work is not only an excellent example of seeing the world differently and questioning assumptions, it is also a wonderful example of turning a problem into an opportunity.

Interested in other health-related unlearning madness?

How About Trying This Corny Idea

Unlearning on the Front Page

I don't regularly read the USA Today but whenever I'm traveling I usually pick up a copy in the hotel lobby. Today was just such a day and there were two articles of note on the front page of today's paper.

The first highlighted how Baby-boomers are changing the rules for marketing. Surprisingly, in spite of the fact that Boomers spend a great deal of money, many marketers are refusing to market products to them--instead choosing to focus on younger buyers. This is a mistake and many marketers need to unlearn this habit. (Here's a list of 10 other things marketers might want to unlearn.)

The second article addressed how hospital care is proving fatal to many patients. In fact, it has been estimated that one in seven patients will pick up a new illness or disease after they arrive in the hospital. I have long been a proponent of unlearning in the healthcare sector and this article explains why they need to unlearn.

Related Post

Does Your Business Need to Unlearn?

Start Treating Employees Like Customers

Here is a novel idea many employers might want to begin implementing: start treating your employees like customers. Why? Because it can save money.

I recently came across this article explaining how Genentech has begun developing apps to help make its sales force more productive. One problem area identified by the company was that sales personnel were often taking more than a week to record their sales call visits to doctors.

As someone who despises paperwork, I can relate to why it might take a salesperson so long to record this information. By making an intuitive, easy-to-use app, however, Genentech alleviated a major hassle for its sales force and, in the process, was able to increase its profits.

The bottomline doesn't always have to only be about the company's bottomline. If more companies would start treating their employees as customers and providing them better tools to do their job they are likely to find that their increased profits more than exceed the cost of developing and implementing many of these new tools.

I'll Drink to a New Approach to Underage Drinking

Like many people, I consumed my fair share of alcohol in college. Now that I'm a parent and my own kids are approaching high school age, I have a decidedly more conservative perspective on the consumption of "adult beverages." The one thing I am convinced won't work is relentless lecturing about the many risks associated with drinking. (Of course, this still won't stop me from emphasizing these risks to my own children.)

What I have more faith in is peer-based advertising. To this end, the University of Minnesota is now running ads that were created by students for students. Rather than approaching the topic of drinking from a moral or health perspective, the ads instead address how drinking can ruin a person's reputation. (See the two ads to the right). One addresses how young women's reputations can be harmed, and the other shows how even nice guys can become "creeps."

Will these ads work? I don't know. But my "unlearning" instincts tell me that they'll be more effective than a bunch of old-timers moralizing about the evils of drinking and lecturing kids about how alcohol will harm their livers.

Remember, often, the way we see the problem is the problem--which is why older people should consider getting reverse mentors. We might just end up finding more innovative solutions to age-old problems.

Unlearning is About Dropping Things

Compare and contrast the two pictures. The picture to the right is a real version of an Apple iPod box and below it is a spoof of the same box if Microsoft were to package the iPod.

Apple has mastered the idea of dropping things. If you and your organization haven't, I invite to watch the short video below and then seek to unlearn the idea that more features; more information; and more bells and whistles are always better. 

Unlearning is Uncomfortable

General Motors is, perhaps, not the most likely candidate for a company seeking to unlearn but I would like to applaud one area where the company is employing the right unlearning strategy.

In 2007, amidst skyrocketing fuel prices and a shaky economy, the company realized a smaller, eco-friendly cars designed for urban females might be worth developing.

To better understand these customers, the company put its male designers and engineers in the shoes of their female customers--literally. They were required to dress in drag in order to better understand what females were experiencing as they struggled with heels, dresses, morning coffees and young children.

The famed design firm, Ideo, has employing this tactic for years but it is an excellent unlearning tactic. In many cases, unlearning requires you to see and experience things from another person's perspective. One way to do this is to literally put yourself in their shoes.

Such tactics might be uncomfortable but I'd argue they are a lot less uncomfortable than losing out to a competitor which was able to design a new successful product because it was able to unlearn.

For a quick lesson in the power of becoming uncomfortable in your own skin, I invite to read this old post.

Does Your Business Need to Unlearn?

As a leader you must nurture an organization that can rapidly adapt. Unlearning can help.

Unlearning can also help you innovate. In fact, unlearning can even assure you and your organization survive.

After years of work, I am pleased to report that I have now developed both a half and a full-day seminar designed to help organizations unlearn—and thus adapt, innovate and survive.

Below is a short 9-minute video overview of the program. If you are interested in how “unlearning” can help your organization, please contact me atjack@unlearning101.com or 612.267.1212.

Every Employee is a Now Marketer

I'm in Hershey, PA today preparing to give a keynote presentation on the "future of social networking" to PANPHA -- the Pennsylvania association of non-profit senior services. One of the key takeaways for my audience will be that in this new era of social media every employee is now a marketer. That is every employee by his or her actions -- or inactions -- can either enhance or tarnish your organization's reputation.

In this new era, anyone with a cellphone and a social network has the ability to immediately comment on an organization's service by tweeting, blogging or sending a YouTube video to dozens, hundreds, thousands or, potentially even millions of people as United Airlines recently experienced at the hands of this clever YouTube video by a disgruntled passenger.

For a more concrete example of now every employee is now a marketer, I'd like to introduce you to Zach Fogel -- an employee at the Hershey Lodge where I am staying. As a "VIP" representative (every guest is a VIP, I think) Zach called to ask me if a I needed anything. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do," I said. "I left the charger to my iPhone at home and I called the concierge to see if the hotel had one but she said, "No." Zach then informed me he was an iPhone user and that I could use his cord for the evening. To make the situation even more impressive, Zach was on his way home for the evening but took the time to run the cord up to my room.

For this simple action, I am now not only singing Zach's praises but I am also giving the Hershey Lodge a little free publicity on my various social networks because I think their management understands how every employee is now a marketer.

Social Media and Unlearning

I just came across this wonderful article by Michael Troiano entitled It's Time to Tackle the Unlearning Challenge. (I strongly encourage you to read it.) Among other things, it discusses how the rapid advance of social media is challenging many marketers and branding experts long-held assumptions and confronting them with a radically new future where: 

1. The user is in control now;

2. Great marketing is distributed, not centralized;

3. Targeted engagement trumps message control;

4. The future belongs to free content; and (perhaps)

5. Advertising is dead.

But I especially enjoyed this line about social media: "[E]ven those who "get it" often seem not quite sure what to do with it." (I think much the same could be said of those of us who have embraced the concept on unlearning.)

For more information on unlearning and marketing, I encourage you to peruse these old posts as well as 10 Things Marketers Should Consider Unlearning.

What's Not On Your Agenda: Unlearning

I hate meetings. Most are a colossal waste of time. If you are going to have one, however, it helps to have an agenda. If you're interested in using the meeting to prepare for the future; identify unexpected problems or spark creativity, one item I'd encourage you to put on the agenda is unlearning.

Here are some questions you might consider asking as part of this agenda item:

What new questions do we need to be asking?

How can we change our routine?

Is there a problem we need to look at in an opposite way?

Is the way we see the problem the problem?

What is one item on your anti-resume that you'd like to rectify?

Are there customers or co-workers we need to view from a different perspective?

How do we make the familiar strange?

How can we screw the majority?

What has become unclear to you since we last met?