The Service Pivot

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads” – Jeff Hammerbacher a 28 year old Harvard mathematician who was one of Facebook's first 100 employees.

I saw this quote in a Bloomberg Businessweek article talking about the technology energy focused on “getting shoppers to buy” and the “life dream of Silicon Valley” of ad-based business models and marketing-driven culture. Folks point to Groupon, Zynga, and Facebook as examples.

The fascinating part of this focus on monetizing ads is how many of the entrepreneurs loathe marketing itself. Larry Page has openly critiqued marketing, saying at one point "if we have to use marketing then we have failed". Yet Google made $36 Billion on advertising revenues in 2011. They are reliant on a business model that they don't wholly buy into themselves. Larry Page is not alone. Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad, stated that "marketing is a tax you pay for being unremarkable.” It has taken on almost a mythic notion in the technology sphere. Facebook is sincerely trying to create more personalized recommendations based on social connections to make ads and deals more relevant. But it is still all about ads as a revenue model for Facebook as far as the eye can see.

And the fact is, even as a marketer, I believe their issues with ads aren’t necessarily misguided (or at least the way a lot of advertising goes to market). I get their point. Many consumers loathe “disruption” and the amount of marketing in today’s world, too. And many businesses are struggling to find the return since marketers need scale and ROI. The struggle between consumer experience and advertising results has been messy, and it's getting messier.

Service instead of advertising business models?
So here's the rub: technology companies need to make money to fund the amazing tools and fascinating products people crave – let alone rationalize their very high valuations to shareholders. But is advertising the only place to fish? I don't think so.

If the ultimate goal is to create a profitable, scaled business model that benefits both businesses and consumers, why not pivot to focus on service rather than advertising? What are the yet undiscovered business models in service? 

Revival Post: Your Marketing Career

So many fantastic marketers have come to me lately looking for career advice. I find myself referencing the insights I captured here time and again. Felt like it was worth reposting....

"65% of children entering grade school this year will end up working in careers that haven't even been invented yet." Cathy N. Davidson, Duke University, The Atlantic. New technology, business models, processes, company cultures and many other factors are making this true.

At the same time, young people are getting incredible power and opportunity. You can create influence through the quality and quantity of your connections socially, academically, and professionally--and how you can activate those relationships for the things that are meaningful to you.

When you combine these two facts, new marketers face unprecedented opportunity. But it will require a level of awareness of this context, industriousness, and charting your own path in order for you to realize your potential and achieve what you can't even imagine yet.

It's exciting, but an important change. Those before you, the senior marketing leaders, can't necessarily help you plan your course based on their paths. (Respectfully, they may not fully realize this change yet themselves...) So knowing when to make a traditional decision vs. forge your own choice will be important. Knowing when humbly to eat your oatmeal and when to skip breakfast will be a critical skill. Be aware and be intentional.

Think about what you love, think about what you hate and think about what transferable skills you want to learn. This can be an amazing filter for jobs. Think about roles in terms of industry skills and not company-specific titles. Once you find the job(s) that fit your filter criteria, start working your connections and industriousness to get an introduction. You might just surprise yourself what will happen. Stop guessing or resume building what you think you need and directly apply for the job you want. They'll tell you what you need if there are skill gaps and otherwise, you may just get it. This is non-traditional MBA thinking. Stop worrying about your job 5 years out. At most, think about the job you want after the next one and if this next job keeps you on that path.

Finally, industriousness. You may find the curiosity and ambition that got you into school are more important for crafting your career than many of the lessons you will learn in it. Be an autonomous life learner. Don't wait for your company to offer training or a class. Log on and start doing yourself. Tinker and try. Knowing the core marketing and branding skill sets will be more important than ever. Such as: listening and anticipating on behalf of customers for the development of new products, distribution to make it easy to learn about about and access them, the experience you create in their delivery and service, plus how you communicate about them. Marketing (aka branding) can be the meaning that flows through it all. Respect these skills and learn them faster. Find people who can teach you sooner. Ask them now.


There is an emerging battery of writing on the changing role of marketing. As my own role merges social media, marketing, product and service--the old labels seem too limiting. I focus a lot on this, including the post Marketing is a Tax. For a really thoughtful look about how this ambiguity applies to the marketing function, please read: Building a New Agency OS by Mel Exon the Managing Partner and Founder of BBH Labs (@melex). I discovered the original quote from Cathy Davidson from Mel, one of my on-going must reads. In addition, I recommend Rishad Tobaccowala's piece on The Five Keys to Marketing in 2012.
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Added January 20, 2012
Fantastic article by Seth Godin on this topic:

"Now that the industrial economy is over, you should forget about doing things just because it's assigned to you, or "never mind the race to the top, you'll be racing to the bottom."

However, if you're different somehow and have made yourself unique, people will find you and pay you more, Godin says.

Instead of waiting around for someone to tell you that you matter, take your career into your own hands. In other words, don't wait for someone else to pick you and pick yourself! If you have a book, you don't need a publisher to approve you, you can publish it yourself. It's no longer about waiting for some big corporation to choose you. We've arrived at an age where you choose yourself."

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Added April 10, 2012
Interesting article today on Ben Casnocha and Reid Hoffman's new book "The Start Up of You." I haven't read the book yet. But it appears to cover many of these same concepts. The book has actions and next steps to help rather than just diagnosing the changes. Here is a link to the article.


"The world has changed. The world of work has changed. Many of the assumptions that have guided how we think about careers in America are no longer true" -- Ben Casnocha.