Dead or Alive - or Dead on Arrival

Tom Clancy

Usually I write about books that I've liked.  So why am I writing about Dead or Alive, a book I hated?  Because it represents an interesting study in how you can build a business and a brand through writing.

It's ironic to write about brands and authors in the same breath.  But it's appropriate in talking about Tom Clancy whose name is clearly a brand.  I decided to explore this brand after reading his latest novel Dead or Alive (and I use the adjective his loosely).  Clancy may have started as an author but he is now a successful businessman providing a series of consumer products based on an established platform - his popular characters Jack Ryan and John Clark, international backdrops, lots or murder and mayhem and a hefty dollop of military hardware information.

A company can launch an initial successful product and follow it up with multiple variants or offshoots of the original, inducing past consumers to continue purchasing the product line and brand - think software upgrades.  A company can also license their brand for use on products made completely by some other company - think flashlights with Disney characters on them.

Clancy has used those business principles to leverage the success of The Hunt for Red October with a series of derivative novels.  Recycling characters and utilizing the same general style and structure increase productivity and reinforce the brand - think 'core competency' for a company.  Many of his works appear to be co-written with other authors, but he has since acknowledged that he puts his name on books and movie scripts ghost-written by others and on video games where he doesn't participate in the creation.  In other words, he licenses his brand promiscuously. 

This mass market consumer products company called Clancy has been a rousing financial success.   in 1997, his Wikipedia entry claims that he signed a book deal worth $50M for two new books, followed by a second agreement for $25M for a four-year book/multimedia deal.   And over a decade later, there's still a flood of new 'Clancy' novels.  Great business model with high revenue and low overhead.


I remember being totally engrossed in The Hunt for Red October when I read it years ago.  The suspense built to a great climax.  Although the novel was somewhat far-fetched, it was indeed based on a couple of incidents with Russian submarines that were conflated into one story line.  And I loved the movie too. 

The plot of this book was disjointed and less believable than most thrillers.  There are so many subplots going on, there was no sense of inevitability driving to a major climax.  Moreover, the plot is interspersed with rants about how the government is ruining the country through lack of support of intelligence agencies while they spend money and time on such misguided programs as health care.  In Clancy's right-wing opinion, support for intelligence agencies should be unequivocal, untainted by any concern about human rights.  In recruiting for the private clandestine organization where Jack Ryan Jr., John Clark and others work, a major hiring criterion is that you have committed murder of nasty people without feeling remorse.  Clancy doesn't advocate taking prisoners in any situation!

If you're looking for something to while away the time and can stick it to the end (as I did because I have a congenital disability - I can't stop reading a book until I get to the end), you get quantity if not quality from Dead or Alive.  Indeed price/page is about the only redeeming quality of this book.

Well, Ive just read Dead or Alive, Clancy's latest. $/page

Ai Weiwei at TED

It's been a while since I've written about talks at this year's TED conference, the main focus of this blog over the years.  I hope to correct that in the coming weeks.

Today, I got prompted to restart.  It was reported that Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist and activist, has been released from prison, essentially on the Chinese equivalent of bail. 

Weiwei had secretly put together a video specifically for TED.  Weiwei told us of the persecution he faced in China for speaking out against the government: you can't search his name on search engines in China, his blog is censored, his studio was bulldozed, and he is under constant surveillance.  The surveillance looked relatively benign, at least during the filming, when Weiwei chatted with some of his followers.  However, he had been beaten in a previous arrest. 

One of Weiwei's causes was the investigation of the student casualties in the 2009 earthquake, and this investigation has been heartily rebuffed by the government.  There have been rumours that the students who died because schools had been flimsily built.

Weiwei is impressive for his courage in standing up to Chinese authorities.  However, I have to say this wasn't one of the best talks at TED, as TED talks go.  Better to read more about Weiwei than to listen to his TED talk.

ING Direct Cafe: A Breath of Fresh Air

How often do you sit around with friends, lamenting ignorant, disinterested service reps, punitive service conditions, stranglehold contracts, confusing interfaces, or misleading entry prices with surprise surcharges?  If you're like me, it makes you appreciate those companies that deal with you competently, fairly and transparently.  I can get excited about companies as diverse as the company that so smoothly rents out our cottage or the arborists who took down our diseased tree so proficiently.

But one company consistently blows me away and that's ING Direct Bank*.  Their products are simple and work as advertised.  The web site is intuitive and easy to navigate.  Their communications are clear and understandable.  Their client reps know their stuff and are unfailingly pleasant.  (In fact, at the 2011 Contact Center World North American Finals in May, they won best mid-sized contact centre in North America).  As an innovation specialist, I respect their passion to change the way banking is done: without traditional branches, they deliver superb products over the Internet and the phone.

ING Direct has now found a new way to surprise and delight me as a customer - the new ING Direct cafe in downtown Toronto.  They've transformed a heritage building at 221 Yonge with heritage brick walls, and lots of natural wood and light, and there's only one word for the result: gorgeous.  It's a place where ING Direct wants to interact their customers in a new way, to be a vibrant part of the Toronto community, and to manifest their commitment to sustainability.

Main floor of the ING Direct Toronto Cafe

 As you can see, the main floor of the ING Direct Cafe really has a cafe, where you can make your own coffee from fair trade coffee from Haiti in a fancy machine, or, if like me you don't drink coffee, you can juice your own oranges in an equally fancy juicer or make some tea.  The coffee and juice, and organic pastries, are not free, and neither are the other 'orange' ING items; all the profits are donated to charity.  There's free WiFi (of course), and a bank of lovely iPads to try out ING's industry-leading mobile apps.  The ING staff are there to answer your questions, not to pitch ING products.  Or you can just gravitate to the comfortable seating to just hang out in this space and read some magazines, as I saw folks doing the day I was there.

On the main floor ING features companies whose principles coincide with ING's, dubbed Saver's Friends.  There was bike from Curbside Cycle on display the day I was there.  The $650 bike was being sold for $400 - again with all the money being used to build cycling education and mechanics facilities in St. Jamestown as well as purchsing bicycle helmets and locks for kids.  The bright orange bike embodied many messages - saving your money, saving the environment, community partnerships, and of course the link with the Netherlands famous for biking (ING's parent is Dutch and the bike was the Batavus brand from the Netherlands).

ING Direct Cafe's Green Wall

As you walk up to the second story, you pass by the gorgeous Green Wall as you enter the co-working space.  (See this article in Globe and Mail for an interesting perspective on the growing trend toward co-working). A modest working area, access to great meeting rooms and top-of-the-line technology - great big LED screens, facilities for webcasting, digital whiteboards - everything an independent entrepreneur would dream of, all available for a modest fee (also donated to charity).  The informal 40-person meeting room can be booked free by nonprofit or community groups and is already becoming a favourite venue for many.

The third floor is a satellite office for ING Direct staff - a place of experimentation and innovation.  It's a coveted place for ING employees to work.  Once you've experienced this fresh and friendly space, it might just become a coveted space for you too.

* full disclosure:  I am on the board of ING Direct Bank.  However I was a delighted customer long before I was a director, and this post is written form the point of view of a customer.

Nudging Public Policy

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, a book by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, argues that behavioural economics can help improve public policy. It's very persuasive about the value of 'nudging' people toward better decisions in their own interests, rather than trying to educate them or legislate them into those better decisions.   

In countries where you have to check off a box to be an organ donor, the overwhelming majority do not agree to donate their organs.  If you have to check off a box not to be an organ donor, the overwhelming majority agree to donate their organs.  You're taking a position on the question just by how you pose it.  So why not choose the way that will incline people to make the best choices for themselves and society?  In other words, make public policy that leverages on the natural behaviour of people rather than fighting against it.

Sunstein is working with the Obama administration to infuse their regulatory policy with these ideas.  A recent interview with Thaler in The McKinsey Quarterly publication described his contributions in the UK's so-called Nudge Unit.  This rather long quote comes in the preview of that article: 

Richard Thaler is the rare academic whose ideas are being translated directly into action. Since last year, the University of Chicago professor has been advising the “Nudge Unit,” established by the government of the United Kingdom to create policies that will enhance the public welfare by helping citizens make better choices. . . . Policy makers can nudge people to save more, invest better, consume more intelligently, use less energy, and live healthier lives, Thaler and Sunstein argue, through greater sensitivity to human tendencies such as “anchoring” on an initial value, using “mental accounting” to compartmentalize different categories of expenditures, and being biased toward the status quo.

It's worth reading the whole article.  Thaler says that policy makers in the UK have been very open to suggestions from the unit.

In their book, Thaler and Sunstein called this approach libertarian paternalism, and some people detest such paternalism (see  this article in The Telegraph.)  What do you think?