To create new norms, you have to understand people’s existing norms and barriers to change. You have to understand what’s getting in their way.
—Atul Gawande in his July 29 New Yorker magazine article on innovation
Last week I spoke with Joe May, the marketing director for SIPA member Pro Farmer. They are currently in the middle of their biggest week of the year: Crop Tour. The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Reuters all cover it. He told me that more and more farmers are using mobile devices, and that tablets are “exploding” for his audience. “The commercials you see probably don’t show that,” he said. iPads on a tractor? Who knew?
Pro Farmer does. They are helping to create new norms for farmers by talking to them, meeting with them and understanding their situations. Out of that understanding comes:
• Pro Farmer Text Quotes sent three times daily to cell phones;
• voice alerts with market advice and breaking news;
• Pro Farmer Today, seven profit-building reports, easy to read on any device; and
• an audio Monday Morning wake up call.
In the first webinar of SIIA’s new Mobile Essentials series held last week, Andy Swindler, president of Astek Consulting, presented a case study they did for SIPA member EB Medicine. (If you are a member and missed this, let us know and we will send you the link. It was an amazing session.) The goals were to get in touch with EB Medicine’s readers, understand what the true value proposition of mobile would be for them, and finally separate the mobile buzz from reader reality.
“Overall, they showed good growth in mobile traffic,” Swindler said. But he questioned if that was enough to justify a huge financial outlay. “Don’t let fear guide a critical decision. Anecdotes, buzz, a couple survey responses, is that enough to say this is a direction? They had done quantitative research.” But Swindler decided that they needed some qualitative research as well.
Astek spoke in-depth with five emergency room physicians—the EB Medicine audience—to truly understand what they needed, “rather than just get answers to survey questions.” They wanted to know “how they think, how they are using this technology. How are they using their iPhone in the emergency room? Would they look up some medical fact? Would a quick reference guide help them do their jobs better?”
The findings were critical in guiding EB Medicine’s next steps. It made them think about their content differently. It helped them understand that they had more than one kind of reader. “It’s not enough to just say this is our readers,” Swindler said. “We needed a deeper understanding of that core value of EB Medicine.”
In the article that Gawande wrote for The New Yorker, he tried to figure out why certain worthwhile innovations don’t spread, and how they can be spread. He quotes the scholar Everett Rogers: “Diffusion is essentially a social process through which people talking to people spread an innovation.” And his “talking” does not mean through social media.
The Pro Farmer Crop Tour is basically about touching the people with information. More than 100 volunteer crop scouts are going out every day this week to take corn and soybean measurements with reports given each night in meetings across the Midwest. Can you imagine how much Pro Farmer gains from a week like this? They are gathering key information and meeting many of their members—their word, not mine. “This is followed closely by the farmers we serve,” May said. “…There’s a video crew embedded in the tour and it blew up on Twitter.” (Pro Farmer actually has a video studio in their Cedar Falls, Iowa, offices.)
Gawande tells a story that he says “salespeople understand well.” He asked a pharmaceutical rep how he persuaded typically stubborn doctors to “adopt a new medicine. Evidence is not remotely enough, [the rep] said, however strong a case you may have. You must also apply ‘the seven rules of touches.’ Personally ‘touch’ the doctors seven times, and they will come to know you; if they know you, they might trust you; and, if they trust you, they will change.”
It’s hard for publishers to touch all of their customers in the way that this pharmaceutical rep started stocking doctors’ closets with free samples and then asking how their daughter’s soccer game went. But you can duplicate that human interaction in other meaningful ways, either through live events, in-depth interviews or maybe some kind of Twitter Chat or webinar Q&A.
Regardless, publishers, like any other business, need to reach out to their own markets in a meaningful way before making the big decisions that affect the bottom line.
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Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline