And this:

Of course, there was much more than that.  And each of these items is AT LEAST a blog post. But hey, I’m workin’ it!

Happy New Year.

Fiberon Decking.  http://www.fiberondecking.com/   I am responsible for (the already pretty good) web site, seo, sem, and social, content creation…etc. etc.  You know… marketing.  So far… it’s a ball.  Great people.  Great products.  Great potential.

But it does mean I neglect my own blog (while blogging and tweeting as Fiberon Composite Decking)

One of these days I’ll get around to linking the accounts in some appropriate way.  In the meantime, if you want to check out what I am up to…..?  I have quietly become the online voice of Fiberon Decking.  Buy our products… really.

First, hire people who know the arts and crafts of marketing. They can be found.

Second, make sure they are “design thinkers”. They are not so easy to find.

Design thinkers are “creatives” who think in a disciplined manner. Design thinking combines empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context.

One size does not fit all.

By contrast, a “scientific method” of thinking, defines all the parameters of the problem in order to define a solution. That can work, but it tends to force outcomes that follow the recipe exactly. And it produces the same dish everyone else has.

Design thinkers know the standard recipes very well. But they don’t follow them (exactly). They cook something deliciously unique, with the ingredients available. And it’s the right dish, for the right appetite, right here and right now.

Design thinkers have enormous empathy for context (they demand context!), and they are rational about solutions. But between context and rationality is a planned and slightly rebellious freedom, joy and sense of what’s possible. That is where all the delight, serendipity, and appropriate situational quality usually originates.

Design thinkers will make your marketing work, for your business model, and your bottom line. They care about unique context, unique customers, and unique success.

It’s not the recipe. It’s the cook.

Moneyball, by Michael Lewis (2003) is about what happened when some unknown computer  geeks managed to put a century’s worth of major league baseball statistics into a coherent data base.

These nerd-geek-baseball lovers, armed with huge amounts of statistically relevant data, started to tell people that some of baseball’s long held wisdom was… well… uh…statistically wrong.

Now remember, we are talking about the ritual and teachings of a century of the American pastime.  Adults taught kids these things as a matter of faith.  Major League Dogma.

Of course, in the traditional hide bound culture of baseball, they were seen as heretics.

Eventually, Billy Beane, the GM of the Oakland Athletics decided to systematically use the “new ideas” in the data, to run a major league team.    To make a long and really interesting story short, the result was that the Oakland A’s won as many games as the Yankees did, while spending half the payroll money.

Moneyball is really a great business book.

It’s about finding new meaning in hard data.

It’s about working smarter than the competition.

It’s about trying to do more with less.

It’s about knowing what your key performance indicators really are, and hiring employees who seem ordinary, but are really stars at playing their role.

And the book is ultimately about the risks you have to take to introduce new ideas into old cultures.  (…uh…PPC, SEM, SEO, and social media data in internet marketing comes to mind!)

In September the movie opens.  It stars Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Robin Wright.

I guess Hollywood thought it was a pretty good story too.

We’ll see about the movie.

But if you like business, baseball, and the bottom line, you’ll love the book.

The Moxie Exchange Movement:

Founder Maureen Berkner Boyt says the Moxie Exchange Movement satisfies these questions:

You want to be around businesswomen with Moxie? Great.

You want to trade business ideas, inspiration and resources with those women? Better.

You want to pay your Moxie forward to the girls who make up the future generation of business leaders? Best.

Started less than a year ago, The Moxie Exchange Movement already has groups in 8 states.  Mary Coombs is the “marketing moxie”, working to expand the brand with social media, traditional marketing, business strategies and best practices.

Full disclosure: I share the office with Mary, and while I am more comfortable designing for multi-media, she does occasionally ask me to design for print.  I designed the sticker for the “shot of moxie” tin.

A Shot of Moxie