Should we always embrace the groundswell?

If you want to grow your brand, you want to engage the groundswell as much as possible, right? Usually. Of all the sports leagues in the world, perhaps none are better at engaging the groundswell than the NBA. Sorry, NFL.

The NBA is projected to become the most popular sports league in America. They already have the best outreach worldwide. The NBA has long been considered to be very good at reaching out to new markets. In other words, they're the best at engaging the groundswell.

One of the ways the NBA has aimed to engage the groundswell is through the all-star game. The all-star game is a match where all the best players in the league assemble to play each other on two teams during the middle of the season. Every major American sports league has an all-star game. Unfortunately, the ratings for these events have been on the decline for all leagues in recent years. As a result, the NBA sought out the groundswell. 

The NBA allows fans to vote for the starters in the all-star game (10 total). The rest of the players are voted in by coaches. Naturally, the process was meant to engage us fans more in the process. A couple years ago, they even introduced a feature where you can vote via a hashtag. It's as easy as typing myfavorite player #NBAballot on social media. They wanted to keep our attention.You would expect the best ten players to be voted in, wouldn't you?

Well, that's not what's happened. The NBA failed to anticipate that a voting process would land the most popular players in the game, not necessarily the best. Throughout the early 2000s, Yao Ming dominated all-star voting. He was pretty good. The general consensus though, is that he wasn't nearly as good as his vote totals would suggest. Many thought he was taking an all-star spot from better players.

Things got even testier when Jeremy Lin started to dominate all-star voting. Yao was, at least, among the top players in the league. Jeremy Lin just had a couple of good games. 

What gives? Well, the NBA has been trying to engage the groundswell abroad. One place where the league has really taken off: China. What country has the largest population in the world? China. The NBA is in a bind all of the sudden. What should they do? On the one hand, your base, the American fans, are upset that the best talent isn't represented. On the other hand, your new market has spoken. They want to see representation in the game. So how do you please both at once? 

The NBA stood its ground for a long time. Until Zaza. Last year, Zaza Pachulia (now playing for my hometown Warriors), this guy, was almost voted in to the all star game. 

The issue, is that he beat this guy (Kawhi Leonard) in voting:

That was when the NBA had enough. Zaza was getting incredible support from his home country Georgia (no, not the state in the south). Some people also just thought it would be funny to vote in a guy with a silly name that wasn't even that good. In response, the NBA took away power from the fans, and in turn, the groundswell. Now, fan votes account for 50% of the final tally, with the media and players sharing the other 50% of the voting power. A lot of people loved the move, as you can see below:

Is the NBA doing the right thing though? Isn't the all-star game for the fans? Sure, the best ten players may not start the game, but in theory, the ten most popular players will. To be fair, the NBA was dealing with a different kind of groundswell criticizing it for a flawed voting process. 

But if we want to build a brand, as we've learned, one of the best ways to do that is to hand power over to the groundswell. Couldn't the NBA argue to the groundswell criticizing it that if they are unhappy with the participants in the game, they should exercise their voting power more? Ultimately, the all-star game has no bearing on anything else in the season. It's an exhibition game. So if the NBA wants to grow its brand, which of course it does, shouldn't it listen to the groundswell?

Politicians Have a Lot to Learn from Business

If Li and Bernoff make one thing clear, it's that you HAVE to pay attention to the groundswell. There's just too much to gain, and too much to lose. You need to listen to the groundswell as much as you need to participate in, and engage with it. For the most part, it seems companies have caught on to this. As Li and Bernoff point out, TiVo is a perfect example of engaging with the groundswell. TiVo supported an independent forum about their service, listened to it and changed accordingly.  

Naturally, companies are better off once they listen to the groundswell. What is there to lose when stakeholders are telling you exactly what they want?

There is a deeper way to think about the groundswell though. There are so many ways social media has changed our world. Almost every company is actively involved in it now. But maybe the groundswell's biggest impact is yet to come, or maybe it's just started. In 2007, we saw the first example of a politician truly using social media in an effective way. Remember this?

There even used to be a feature where you could color a picture of your own in the same way as the picture above. Then people started to make it their Facebook profile picture. Talk about free publicity. To be fair, politicians learned some lessons from Obama's groundbreaking campaign. 

The two most successful campaigns of the last presidential campaign (if you consider the expectations going into the campaign), were, by far, Bernie Sanders' and Donald Trump's. There's a lot of different reasons for the success of those campaigns, but one obvious common thread between them is how they totally dominated social media. Have a look at Bernie Sanders' Facebook page, or Trump's Twitter. The number of likes or retweets on either's page is astounding. They've clearly struck a chord with their supporters on social media. 

More importantly though, they listened. While all their opponents went on to all the conventional TV shows, Trump and Sanders recognized the demand for them to appear on Youtube shows, to engage with online platforms. Li and Bernoff argue that you need to find your base (your most loyal and enthusiastic stakeholders) and empower as well as reward them. That is exactly what the two politicians did when they granted popular right and left wing shows interviews that other candidates didn't. Trump went on Infowars (a popular right-wing Youtube channel) whereas Bernie went on The Young Turks (a popular left-wing channel). Both interviews are very long, but you can check them out below if you're curious.

Many people ridiculed Clinton's and Cruz's attempts to attract millennial voters, and with good reason. They didn't listen. They didn't take the groundswell's advice either. It would be bold to argue that this social media savvy didn't play an enormous role in Sanders' and Trump's campaign success. It almost certainly did. 

So will all politicians learn from these lessons? It's never been easier to know what your constituents want, nor has it been easier to communicate with them. It's possible Trump was even better than Sanders on social media because he responded to others posts (though the caused a lot of backlash, but also a lot of publicity) whereas Sanders simply provided a lot of content. It would be wise for politicians to respond to people on social media the same way corporations do. 

Engaging with and understanding the groundswell has worked incredibly well for companies across the world. So why haven't politicians caught on yet? In this age, with all the data available to us, no politician should ever be criticized for being out of touch with the people. The tools to stay in touch are just too easy to access. It's only a matter of time before we see more dramatic changes in how campaigns of all sorts, all around the world, fundamentally transform. Though the groundswell has already been affecting politics, politicians have not yet engaged with it in a nearly effective enough way.

Groundswell vs. Groundswell?

Groundswell vs. Groundswell? What? Sorry for this, but this post, seemingly like everything else lately, is about the Trump administration. Sure, there is a lot going on in the world, but how can we not talk about this? The travel/Muslim ban. The wall. The "so-called judge". Hanging up on the Prime Minister of Australia. It doesn't even stop there. We have never had this many crazy things happen in the first few weeks of a Presidential administration in modern history. Are you not asking yourself "is this guy trying to get impeached?" "Is he that dumb"?

Maybe this administration is up to something a little different. An article from a couple weeks ago shares a different take on the situation. Maybe this administration is trying to consolidate power. Have a look below:

Holy shit! The powers of the President will not be questioned??? That guy (Stephen Miller), is one of Trump's top advisers. What is going on? Hold up, this reminds me of someone else.

You might be thinking "well the courts just shut down the Muslim ban, so how could he be consolidating power?" That's a fair point. And maybe this is just rhetoric or being bad in front of camera. But maybe there is something more sinister going on.

We all remember the way Trump ran his campaign: like a reality TV show. It was intuitive for everyone, at first, to think that scandal after scandal would bring Trump down, like it has with every politician. This brings us to the main point. Traditional scandals, like Clinton's sex scandal, or Watergate used to start a groundswell. It was an older groundswell, but still a groundswell. Just one scandal (each) led to the (unsuccessful) impeachment of both Clinton and Nixon. No President, or even Presidential candidate used to be safe from this groundswell. So why hasn't grab 'em by the pussy brought Trump down (or take your pick of any of the dozens of scandals he's been a part of in just the last year)?

That old groundswell still exists. We see it in all the protests across the country. But there is also a different, newer kind of groundswell. It is the same groundswell Trump used to ascend to the presidency. Trump was (and obviously still is) in the news ALL THE TIME. He was, and is, all people could talk about. The new groundswell is born from the 24-hour news cycle we live in (a cycle in which the news is constantly updated). Because he was all people could talk about, he grew the largest platform of any candidate, and as a result, reached the most people. He used his constant media presence to get his message across to the people who eventually voted him into office.

The question we should ask now is whether or not Donald Trump (or at least his inner circle) is using one groundswell against the other in a strategic way. Are they incompetent, or do they actually know exactly what they're doing? For example, Trump, in an unprecedented move, appointed Steve Bannon, a personal political adviser, to the National Security Council days after he announced the Muslim ban. Now an ultra-nationalist and deliberate spreader of fake news will have a huge say in our foreign policy and military operations. Another example of an under-covered story is that the administration is trying to roll back Dodd-Frank. Or how about the old CEO of Exxon being appointed as Secretary of State, the job where you represent the U.S. in climate change agreements? Is the Trump administration covering up huge news stories with other ones. Is Trump using a groundswell against himself to benefit himself? 

As much of a mouthful as that sentence is, it could be true. In older administrations, the strategy would have been to slowly roll things out in order to avoid push-back or, a groundswell. The Trump administration, on the other hand, has seemingly done everything at once. The media has no idea what to focus on, or how long to focus on it. They're over saturating an already over saturated news cycle. Of course, it's almost impossible to know whether or not this is true. If it is though, it could pave the way for a brand new understanding of how to handle and manipulate a groundswell. Almost everyone is terrified of an angry groundswell at their expense, but could it be that it might be helping this administration achieve its ends? Only time will tell.

Making the Groundswell Work For You

It's one thing to understand the groundswell. It's another thing entirely to use it to your advantage. The groundswell can be scary. One misstep, and all of the sudden, everybody and their grandma is talking about you online. Once a groundswell starts, it's pretty damn hard to stop.

Just ask Justin Timberlake... About a year ago, Justin Timberlake posted "JesseWilliams, tho #Inspired" to Twitter. The tweet came in response to a speech actor Jesse Williams made at the BET awards about the continued oppression of black Americans. The speech was widely lauded as insightful and powerful. When Timberlake posted his tweet, I doubt he thought a three word post would get him in any trouble. Queue the groundswell.  

The end of Willliams' speech was a scathing critique of cultural appropriation. A lot of people found Timberlake's tweet to be ironic, given that he used to dress like this:

To be sure, Timberlake had no intention of being ironic. Unfortunately for him, he was now the center of a social media firestorm, a groundswell. Regardless of how you feel about the speech, or Timberlake's response to it, the point remains the same. You can get caught in a groundswell for almost ANYTHING.

That's why you want to learn jiu jitsu. Ok, well not actually. Jiu jitsu is a martial art that has a fighter use his/her opponents own attacks against him/her. In other words, though the groundswell can be scary, you can still use it to your advantage.  

In Justin's case, there probably isn't much you can do to weather the storm. He tried apologizing, but it just seemed to keep drawing attention to the controversy. He had unwittingly accessed the least forgiving aspect of the groundswell.

Companies and other types of organizations are terrified of what happened to Justin Timberlake. The smallest mistake can drag your brand through the dirt for weeks. What many of them don't understand is that the groundswell is often a weapon, of sorts. Though the weapon can be used against them, they can also wield it themselves.

Yeah, really. The days of Mad Men are gone. Sorry, Don Draper.

 

You don't have to guess what your customers are thinking anymore, designing marketing campaigns for strategies you think might work. That information is readily available for you.  The POST strategy is one way you can try to use the groundswell in your favor. POST stands for People, Objectives, Strategy and Technology. What do your customers (People) want? Are you trying to get market data or promote your product (Objective)? How do you want to achieve your goals (Strategy)? And what medium are you going to use to get your message across (Technology)?

Following POST, or even having an understanding of the groundswell, and how to "jiu jitsu" it (yeah, I'm using it as a verb), can take you far. The groundswell is a reality. You can lament its existence, constantly fearing how it will bring about your downfall, or you can begin to understand it and use it to your advantage. To be successful in today's media climate, you need to use the groundswell to your advantage. Like a wave at the beach, it can be dangerous if you just stand there and let it wash over you. But also like a wave, an understanding of how it works can lead you to a good time. You can either be crushed by the wave, or learn how to surf on it.