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Several years ago, Mike Rowe was hired as a pitchman by Ford. Rowe was well known for his show, “Dirty Jobs,” in which he highlighted some of the more interesting ways people earn a living. Crawling through feces-caked sewers and castrating sheep, Rowe was candid, smart, funny, and authentic. Ford hired him for just such reasons.
During the filming of a Super Bowl commercial, Rowe was not dirty on the job. Swapping his trademark ball cap for hair gel, he hardly looked like himself. The half-minute commercial took a day-and-a-half to shoot.
Frustrated by this, Rowe approached Ford and their ad agency. He recommended leveraging the DNA of “Dirty Jobs”—choosing authenticity over imitation, productivity over perfection, and people over pitches.
“If you want to shoot quickly, and if you want to make your customers the hero of your brand, let’s experiment,” he said.
Ford agreed. A year after filming the ad that required 36 hours, Ford and Mike Rowe filmed 22 ads in one day.
“There were all these different campaigns that relied not upon storyboards, but real people. All I did was get out of the way and just have conversations with people…go figure.”
What percentage of your Expertise, Insights, and Solutions do you own? This is the fundamental question at hand—do you own the expertise, insights, and solutions that make your brand successful? When I say own, I mean physically (documented on paper) or digitally (recorded as audio, video or text)?
If you don’t own it, that means that when your founder gets hit by a bus or your top salesperson is lured away by a competitor, that corporate IQ leaves as well.
In Part I of “The Future of Training” last month, we talked about the importance of starting your own digital library. Red Angle’s C.O.S.T. model (Capture, Organize, Share, Track) provides a step-by-step approach to using tools you already have (smartphones and email) to build and deploy your own digital library.
You can start with the things that are already taking place at your company. For example, when your president speaks at the all-company meeting about the importance of your unique culture, record it for your digital library. That iPhone 6S in your pocket will work fine. Don’t overthink it.
Another example; that sales guru you hired for a workshop in October? Tell her you’ll pay her another thousand bucks and you want to record it for internal training purposes. Now it’s not a one-time event—it’s part of your digital library.
The Significance of Small Chunks: What to Capture
A theme running through this article is start small. Too often new ideas that involve technology get shot down early. “I heard a local GC just paid $50K for a new video. We can’t afford that! Let’s table the digital library discussion until 2019.”
Start small. To get started, your smartphone will do just fine. The key is to be B.R.I.E.F.—create content that is Bitesize, Relevant, Insightful, Entertaining, and Frequent.