How I Decided to Write a Book

The concept of Always On was something that came to me on a plane ride home from a consulting gig somewhere in Europe. I don’t remember from where. It gets hard to distinguish one trip from another because cities don’t get a personality when you travel like that. The hotels become generic. You email while in the taxi or squeeze in a few calls. Have long restaurant dinners with clients and longer meetings the day after. I don’t mean to complain. I’m lucky to have met many interesting people from all over the world. I have learned a lot, heard some wonderful stories and some sad ones too. I truly love what I do and enjoy sitting with client teams and listening to them talk about their outlook on the world, their industry, competitors, their business, where they are going, what will get them there and what they think might be stopping or slowing them down. I’m rarely invited if there’s not a problem or an opportunity somewhere. Still, I’m always anxious for that last meeting to end. Collapse in the back seat of a taxi and send a text home that I’m on my way. The early evening security line is very different from the morning line. The ties are off. The unlucky ones have tell tale signs of the day’s lunch on their shirt. The business traveller is tired and starting to relax. The smiles, sneers and comments sit a little looser — specially if Fast Track is moving slower than the regular line, which happens at some airports. With our belts and jackets back on we hurry to get out of the noise from travellers moving about in the large halls of the airport and seek refuge in lounges. We flash our frequent flier badges to get access to wine, a plate of nuts and most importantly a quiet place to sit.

In the lounge I use my last energy to get this day finalized and the next day sorted out. My phone is as worn out as me and appreciates the charge from the outlet next to my seat as much as I appreciate the sip of wine. I send more texts home. What did I miss and what’s on the agenda for tomorrow? I email clients to thank them for good sessions and plan next steps. Get colleagues in the loop and set-up debrief meetings and catch up with the news from my Twitter and LinkedIn feeds. Finally, I check up on the most important least important thing — football — the English Premier League and Tottenham Hot Spurs — #COYS.

Plane rides for me, specially returning at night, is for reading or watching some TV series on the iPad or just shutting down and relaxing with music through noise cancelling headphones and letting my thoughts wander. And wander they did. On the flight in question I had a ‘Jerry McGuire’ moment — sort of. I didn’t write it as a manifesto out of frustration for the company I work for. It wasn’t for a client. As I sat there half dreaming and half thinking it just made perfect sense to me, and I had to write it down.

Brands live in an ’always on’ world. Dare to stand out and drive traffic to your brand. You must gather a crowd to deliver a message. Speak with one identity, but be different. Hold out your hand, encourage engagement and start relationships. Optimize and scale. Listen and analyze big data to protect, amplify and communicate your brand. Align everything in relation to your vision, mission and values. Loyalty is trust. If you don’t position your brand someone else will do it for you. Your brand is a company asset. Protect its value, but embrace change. To lead you must be different. Brands live or die in the minds of stakeholders. Inspire and start trends. Get results. Revolutionize your industry.

Always on brand. Always on strategy. Always on.

I read through it a couple of times. It sounded pretty good. I put away the laptop and went back into doze mode. Over the next days I kept coming back to it and reading the short text again and again. Not because it was brilliant, but because it contained a lot of the things I have been talking to clients about for years. That brands live in an ‘always on’ world is nothing new and others have said similar things. The same can be said about encouraging engagement and starting relationships with your customers. Every social media expert and CRM marketer talks about those things. That brands live and die in the minds of stakeholders goes all the way back to the brilliant book on positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout. And so I could go on and break it down word by word. The thing is I still like it. This is how I want my clients to think and be. Why don’t I write about how to accomplish it? Brilliant? Self punishment is more like it. Writing a book is a lot more work than hammering down a paragraph as I did on the plane, but I’m glad I did it. It made me think about every thing I do and discover new things. I hope it will be valuable to you too.