Creating Powerful Products

Karen Dietz

"Once upon a time in a land not so far or near . . . "

. . . there was an organization called Conglomerated Entertainment Industries (CEI). CEI produces products that allow both children and adults to play, dream, be entertained and stimulated. CEI has enjoyed success, establishing a significant business reputation. Yet in the last several years, profits in several divisions have either remained flat or are in decline. To reverse this position, CEI is focused on curtailing its aggressive growth, streamlining operations, selling non-strategic assets, getting spending down, strengthening its core assets, and recapturing CEI's mystique

CEI has devoted several decades to fostering and maintaining its products and services. But with the recent financial disappointments elsewhere in CEI, a more thorough examination of their products' influence, their relationship to the business model and their overall effectiveness is appropriate. Questions arise:

1. What really fosters the potency of its products?
2. Are products as memorable today as they were yesterday?
3. Has CEI's influence declined over the years?
4. If so, how does this Company begin to recapture its influence?
5. Is the typical business model that CEI has been following sufficient to define and regain its strength?
6. What role do CEI's creative assets play in recovering the Company's effectiveness?

As a result, CEI hired the services of Dr. Karen Dietz to provide an outsider's view and a unique perspective to analyze the situation. Dr. Dietz provides cultural assessments, interventions and implementation strategies for strengthening corporate cultures to new ventures, medium sized firms and Fortune 500 companies. Her particular expertise is in the field of Folklore and its impact on corporate culture, branding, identity, performance effectiveness and customer relationships.

With this in mind, the purpose of this paper is to accomplish the following:

1. Bring an outsider's perspective to evaluate the overall strength of CEI in American culture.
2. Elaborate on CEI's unique position in American culture.
3. Set a foundation for continuing to examine CEI's product influence in an expanded context.
4. Discuss CEI's creative process, its relationship to Folklore, and their strategic position.
5. Discuss the cultural principles and values, which are imbedded in classic Company products.
6. Articulate additional Folklore elements that contribute to the Company's influence.
7. Suggest criteria for a structured knowledge management system for CEI's ongoing activities.
8. Discuss the breakdown of an Affecting Presence and the current effectiveness, potency and strength of CEI's products along with specific activities, which may have compromised product potency.
9. Discuss the implications of this information for CEI's future.
10. Suggest next steps for continuing to evaluate product potency in order to formulate specific and very focused recommendations.
11. Suggest an initial iconography to graphically illustrate elements contributing to, or detracting from, the products (deleted from this paper).

This paper presents the opportunity for CEI to examine their successes and recent declines through a different lens. The different views generated can be very illuminating, leading perhaps to some surprising but very significant strategies for CEI to remain vital.

"Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child . . . "

1. Bring an outsider's perspective to evaluate the overall strength of CEI in American culture.
2. Elaborate on CEI's unique position in American culture.
3. Set a foundation for continuing to examine CEI's products in an expanded context.

Conglomerated Entertainment Industries enjoys a unique position in American culture and society since CEI is both a user and producer of myths, archetypes, feelings, values and all that is deep within the human psyche. Its influence goes far beyond simple product branding that produces sales. CEI's power reaches deeply into people's unconscious to produce a variety of effects, many of which lead the Company to enjoy financial profits. But profits can be measured on other scales and are not only financial in nature. There are also intangible earnings in terms of influence, loyalty and power. And CEI, because it enjoys such a unique position in American culture as both a compelling user and producer of human and cultural artifacts, does not easily fit into the typical American business model.

The typical American business model relies on producing products and/or services for consumption. This includes developing brand identity, exploiting that identity, increasing growth through expanding sales along with eventual acquisitions and diversification. To remain at the top of the game, successes are repeated and/or innovation is promoted, as new opportunities are seized (see Chart 1). Measures of success are profits, reputation and very often, size. With CEI focused on curtailing its aggressive growth, streamlining operations, selling non-strategic assets, getting spending down, and strengthening its core assets, it is heavily addressing the business model.

But as stated earlier, CEI is much more than the typical business model allows for. CEI is also directly tied to the cultural model (Chart 1). In the cultural model, an artistic artifact or cultural expression (painting, song, sculpture, dance, story, house, film, etc.) is created to generate meaning. Meaning is composed by the interplay of a variety of cultural themes. Like the business model, that meaning is seized, but instead of the emphasis being on profits (the realm of the mundane), the emphasis is placed on magnifying significance and treating the artifact as special (the realm of specialness). Growth occurs through multiple iteration of these themes. For the message to remain significant people continually re-create or re-invent cultural expressions within or between artistic mediums. In the cultural model, the measure of success is a work's impact, influence and memorableness. For the organization to accomplish the creation and perpetuation of powerful works, the cultural model must also be addressed.

CEI is a confluence of both models. CEI generates both products and services for profits. But these products and services are also artistic expressions of culture that have tremendous significance for the general public because they capture powerful themes within the human psyche. As a result, CEI will never be simply another business like Intel, Proctor and Gamble, General Electric, Chevron, and the like. Operating within two models, when one side is sacrificed over the other, corporate profits fall. Perhaps the organization's decline in the 1970s was partially due to a tilt in the direction of the cultural model without enough attention being paid to the business side of the equation. Today, it appears the business model is holding dominance over the cultural model, with the result that decline eventually sets in. When both the business and cultural models are well served, CEI maximizes its strength, power and endurance.

To get an initial impression of the organization's strength, power and how the public perceives CEI, media were examined over a length of time. In addition, a limited number of informal interviews with business people outside of the organization were also conducted. Much of the information touched on some key disappointments for people with CEI and its products.

Over the last several years, it appears that people are experiencing, to some degree, the loss of uniqueness, mystique, values and meaning that has previously been attached to CEI's products. But what does this really suggest and how can we better understand what this feedback is trying to tell us? When discussing CEI's creation of powerful cultural expressions, and the ability to sustain them, a Folklorist's perspective is key.

"Rapunzel had beautiful hair, as fine as spun gold . . . "

4. Discuss CEI's creative process, its relationship to Folklore, and their strategic position.

Folklore, as an academic discipline, is older than Anthropology, and is the discipline out of which Anthropology grew. Early Folklorists include the brothers Grimm (Jakob and Wilhelm, Grimm's Fairy Tales, 1887), Andrew Lang (The Blue Fairy Book, the Red Fairy Book, etc., 1889-90), Hans Christian Anderson (Complete Fairy Tales and Stories, 1846), and Charles Perrault (Mother Goose Tales, 1696-97).

Essentially, Folklorists study the artistic expressions of an individual, group, community or culture and the transmission of values, myths, archetypes and cultural messages imbedded therein. Specific artistic expressions include story, music, song, dance, craft, architecture, sculpture and food, to name a few. We also examine the vehicles through which those artistic artifacts are transmitted: rituals, performances, galleries, gatherings, and electronic media including TV, radio and the Internet. In essence, Folklorists work with value-laden material and their expression as a way to understand an individual's, group's, organization's, community's or culture's identity, power and cohesion.

Folklore is used to transmit the values of an individual, group, organization, community or culture. The more potent the Folklore, the wider the appeal. In its most powerful forms, Folklore has the power to unify a culture (IBM's use of its own Folklore to create a strong corporate culture and identity in mainstream America) or divide it (Nazi Germany's use of Folklore to foster hatred toward Jews).

As mentioned earlier, CEI is both a user and producer of Folklore. As a user of Folklore, CEI captures the myths, archetypes and values that deeply reflect the core of American culture, and turns them into artistic expressions for public consumption. These products in turn, deeply affect people. So influential has CEI's use of Folklore been in the past, that CEI itself has also become a generator of Folklore in two ways:

1. Producing unique products that have become imbedded in American culture.
2. Being the object of Folklore produced by others (stories about the products).

It's the rare company that actually is significant enough in American culture that it warrants its own brand of Folklore. The Company has its own rich heritage of stories, both complimentary and gratifying, and some which are also disparaging. Discussing the qualities and varieties of CEI's Folklore and how the organization can capitalize on it is a thesis in and of itself. The point to underscore at this time, however, is that CEI is more than just a business -- it lives in both the business and cultural realms.

But what else can Folklore tell us? Folklore can help us understand the qualities that make an artistic expression potent, how and why an artistic expression creates continual meaning, and a work's possible influence. In other words, Folklore can help us understand in a more expanded way, the power of CEI and what makes its products special.

Newfolk :: NDiF :: Archive :: Issue 4.2 :: Page 1 :: Page 2 :: :: Rpt 1 :: Rpt 2 :: Rpt 3