Denuo - denuology.com

Recently, Jim Cuene, one of our General Mills clients asked me over dinner what the “campaign of the future” looked like. The point was just interesting discussion (I should clarify that I make terrible small talk generally limited to reality TV and more recently, a review of my newly acquired Kindle), but it got me thinking. The below is what immediately sprung to mind while talking to Jim, but given the discussion that stemmed from it, I thought I’d share those thoughts on Denuology. And no, I didn’t just say “there’s no such thing.”

I’m in the 5th of 6 modules of the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. As you can imagine, we spend lots of time on management processes and models in tumultuous environments. My friend and classmate Rikke Grundtvig (Communications Director, Omnicom, Copenhagen) regularly makes demands for guidelines and recently asked for a set any business can apply to ensure they’re perpetually in beta. She did so a couple times yesterday, so I thought I’d get the ball rolling on her behalf. I do so knowing full well there isn’t an answer, but some trends do emerge when you start looking the most flexible of companies.

The executive summary:

[1] Listen.
[2] Know your company’s purpose and don’t change it.
[3] Empower employees to co-pilot the mother ship.
[4] Assume everyone is a potential collaborator.
[5] Place lots of bets and be ready to double down.

This is tough to say, but here goes…

I got scammed on Craigslist.

I know. I was blown away. Me? I was born well before yesterday and make (generally disregarded) claims to be the mayor of the interwebs. But, I’ve decided to take this lemon and make some digital-activation-case-study lemonade. Click below to have a taste (not as gross as it sounds).

We work in an industry of buzz words. As long as Malcolm Gladwell is writing books and insecure mad men are driven to speak in meetings, buzz words will be a way of life.

And that’s OK. It gives us something new to talk about / make fun of / learn from. But there are at least 3 words that are bad for brands. Not because of the words themselves, but because of what we’ve come to let them mean.

During my last module of the Berlin School, some classmates and I decided it didn’t make an ounce of sense that as a race, humankind had not upgraded the written word. Words will inevitably be written more often in digital environments than in paper environments, and this is undoubtedly already the case for interpersonal communication. Why wouldn’t we capitalize on these advancements and create Written Word 2.0, specifically intended to improve communication clarity?

We started with a few basic principles….