Starting a movement

Grant Leboff: Thomas, one of the things that you talked about in the book, which I really liked, really resonated, was this idea of starting a movement. Can you explain that a bit more, what you mean by that?

Thomas Barta: As a marketer, you got to be the change you want to see. All right, you can’t talk about changing, you can’t tell your colleagues to do things, you can’t tell your boss what to do, you can’t even tell your team what to do. You don’t have those form of powers in many cases, but what you can do is actually start a movement.

The way you think about is it’s exactly the same way you would think about it, when you have a party. You want the dance floor to fill, so what do you do? You can tell everybody to dance, but that may not do anything. Or what you can actually do, is just get up on the dance floor and do it yourself. In marketing, we call this doing a small pilot. Showing results, showing that things work. Once you have some evidence, once you’re on the dance floor demonstrating how it works, your next important challenge or roll is to get the first followers. Get the first people who will join in, and join your dance.

In marketing that means looking for the people in your company who have energy for your idea. Who want to run the pilot in their country, or want to run a pilot in their call center, or want to run a pilot in their department. When those little pilots take off, that’s when everybody starts to look at these things and say “Hey that’s success”. You will be amazed how quickly everybody joins in when there is success somewhere, everybody wants to join the action if there is success.

Grant Leboff: That’s interesting, what I think is really vital about what you’re saying is, because in the book when you talk about this ‘V-Zone’, this overlap between the customer needs and the company needs, is one of the things that you made the point in the book is that’s a malleable thing, that isn’t a fixed thing, because you can expand that V-Zone, which obviously means expanding your influence as a marketer as well. You talk about that and starting that movement, that’s part of the way starting to expand that V-Zone. Is that how you see it?

Thomas Barta: Exactly, Dee Dutta was a young marketer at, now the company is called T-Mobile. One-to-One was the old name. He had the idea of pre-paid telephoning, because he wanted to give phones to people who didn’t have all the money and there was a time when this was really expensive. He ran very small pilots, everybody was against this, but the pilot, and the success he has shown, that’s how the entire company has started to launch a product, which is now more than half off the market.

He started a movement, and he expanded as you said it’s what the company wants and customer wants, that V-Zone, just by showing people how it works by starting the dance by getting up on the dance floor first.

Grant Leboff: What I think is really interesting about changing perhaps a reference of thinking for a marketer, is a marketer that wants to make a difference, that wants to have an impact and of course every marketing leader does really. Rather than think about what else I can do for my customer, which is one of the things they think about, but if they think about how can they expand the V-Zone, is that a more effective way of thinking as a marketer in terms of having an impact?

Thomas Barta: Well absolutely, because if you’re only doing things for your customer and your company doesn’t care, you normally get fired in reality, right. If you’re only doing things for your company, and nothing for your customer you will have no success in the market, yeah absolutely that’s why every marketer needs to think about, how can I combine what the company wants and the customer wants and how can I make that zone larger, and this is when you have power as a marketer. This zone describes your zone of power.

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