The deeds of the few, outweigh the needs of the many

For those who wanted, or needed to use the trains in Belgium today, you’ve noticed that they’re not running. Again.

This country is once again held captive by a minority of people as not all unions joined in the industrial action. But apparently only a minority of people is needed to cripple traffic by rail. By their own admission, it’s only to make a preemptive point.

Just the same with the government. The majority of people in this country want a government, but a minority is preventing this. When Bart De Wever published his report yesterday, scant hours later the French-speaking politicians rejected it in unison. Probably also to make a preemptive point, as Bart De Wever had stressed, this was not a take it or leave it proposal.

The Politics of Silence

Or should that be the silence of politics?

How can we still feel connected and informed if we only get the scraps of information that happened to fall of the table?

We are following the preformation based on vague, generalized or broad statements or at best semi-blacked out opinions of people close to someone in the negotiations. I understand the fact that having the negotiations out in the open is simply impossible, but I for one am getting hungry to know what these people have been trying to come up with as compromises for the past two and a half months.

The secrecy also creates 2 completely opposite streams of perception of the process, one followed by those involved in the negotiations, starting out tense and broadly speaking leading step by step to a more predictable outcome as the negotiations progress. The other is the stream we’re bobbing about in. Going from more or less certainty because you know the positions on which the parties were elected, but gradually as the negotiations go on, you hear rumors and start fearing or assuming that those elected based on a party manifesto will for the sake of power or compromise abandon those certainties, and so we head further and further towards uncertainty. So when the process is finally declared over by those around the table, the explosion of public opinion must still occur.

It’s a long race and it takes a special type of person to still be there at the end rooting for your team, instead of growing bleakly suspicious of how much of their soul they will have sold for the privilige of finishing the game.

Hey politicians, listen up – 6 rules for better government

1. Never accept the status quo.  Every day should be better than the previous one.

2. No new taxes during the recession.  People have been hit hard enough already.

3. Do better. Every 99 euro cents spent should buy you at least 1€ of value. Cut the waste out of your spending.

4. No secrets. Transparent government without small print.

5. Alternatives not just opposition. People already experience enough opposition in their personal lives, we want parties to offer alternatives not just a put down of others.

6. The people don’t work for the government, the government works for the people.

Today we did our job, hopefully you finally start doing yours tomorrow…

Politics for Lizards…

Honesty surprises us, even puts us in an immediate state of suspicion.  When someone says what they are going to do and when held up to scrutiny appears to be doing or sticking to what they’re saying, we get the reflex that they must be hiding something else.  “Surely this is all a smokescreen for something else they’re hiding,” our lizard conditioned brains automatically think.

Lots of people already wrote about the “lizard brain” reaction we have in ourselves comparable to the programmed behavior in lizards, namely if a lizard is cornered he’ll fight to death, but would always much rather run away.  That is in itself maybe not surprising, but the fact that they get angry, hold grudges and put importance into status is.

We, as humans, also exhibit this behavior and according to Seth Godin this is what keeps us from being truly successful.  We sabotage ourselves as it were.  As he put it in his blog, “We say we want one thing, and then we do another. We say we want to be successful but we sabotage the job interview. We say we want a product to come to market, but we sandbag the shipping schedule. We say we want to be thin but we eat too much. We say we want to be smart but we skip class or don’t read that book the boss lent us.”

This lizard brain behavior also automatically pushes us towards the safe zone, the place where we rather just compromise or conform rather that dare and stand out, fight for our believes and realize them.

The current elections in Belgium are a perfect illustration of this behavior.  Why is there so much reaction against the NVA? Because they refuse to conform to peer pressure from their fellow politician who are already seeking the compromise before the elections? Because up to now it seems that they’ll do what it is they’re saying they’ll do…?  Don’t get me wrong, showing honesty is not the same as showcasing your extremist, xenophobe or derogatory ideas like certain other parties do, that’s called poo flinging, behavior of an entirely different animal.

Regardless, people who know me also know my inherent reluctance regarding compromises as the motor for improvement and innovation.  This is generally a formula to turn a great idea into, often at best, a mediocre result.  Don’t get me wrong, being able to compromise is a necessary trait for every human being, but if you want to be successful you must also know when not to do it.

I’m very curious where our lizard brain will take us on the 13th of June.

How sexy is Belgium?

The luxury industry sells dreams and aspirations.  Virtually everyone knows brands such as Dior, Chanel, Louis Vuitton and their industry companions.  Lots of people aspire to own pieces in their wardrobe adorned with these logos, but as is the point of the luxury industry, many are called but relatively few belong to the chosen.

What makes luxury products luxurious is of course the technical quality and the creative aspect of their design, but from a utility and basic economic point of view these qualities never justify their existence.  We need marketing to add to it the promise of exclusivity, the creation of emotion and the perfect customer experience related to buying and owning and showcasing the products in order to sell these items.

As a marketer you can control many factors related to the customer experience, you can even help the emotions felt related to the product, but there is a large part of the customer experience you can’t control.  One of these things you can’t control as marketer at a luxury brand is the appeal of the cities or the countries where you have your shops.  A case very eloquently made by Christian Salez, CEO of Delvaux, the world’s oldest fine leather luxury good company in a recent appearance on business TV channel Kanaal-Z.  Delvaux is a successful Belgian company with a solid brand appeal, but with a limited international presence.  The cost of opening shops abroad is very large and even for luxury companies with small margins hard to justify simply for image building purposes.

So what’s the problem?  Their target audience often arranges international city trips to go shopping; this is as much part of their customer experience as the actual purchasing experience in the individual shops.  And the sex appeal of cities such as Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent pales in comparison with other cities such as New York, Milan, Paris, London, Rome, Barcelona and many more…  In the end it comes down to simple numbers, if you want 100.000 visitors per year to your shop, you need either a large local population who can afford your products, or you somehow need 10 million tourists to come to your city, some of them on deliberate shopping sprees.

The real question of course is then, why?  Is it that we don’t have enough on offer for tourists? Not enough museums, expositions and happenings?  Not enough shops of this type in the same city? A bad reputation with security, infrastructure and the like?

I guess the answer is all of it and none of it.

It’s not that we’re really devoid of appeal; it’s just that for every museum or exposition with international appeal we have, London or Paris have 10. Likewise for every shop we have Rome or Milan have 10. Bad reputation? Surely the fact that we have contributed the alleged most boring person in the world as president of the European Union hasn’t given us a sexy image.  Fries and mussels are still promoted as our national food, and on the website for the current world expo this is the list of noteworthy Belgians.  Maybe we really don’t have anyone better, but again, not sexy.  Also, the political schizoid behavior of the past 3 years surely hasn’t helped promote our country as a fun and stable place.  If I hear the reports in international press it often almost sounds as if Flemish and French speaking people are a hair width removed from civil war.

So, as marketers for luxury brands need to worry about the emotion and the brand experience associated with their brands, Belgium needs to start thinking about the same thing in relation to the tourist appeal our country has, because for the moment if you ask me we’re the plain girl in the run up to the high school prom.  The good-looking ones are asked to the prom, the ugly ones are made fun of, but the plain ones are mostly ignored…