Lesson Eleven: The First Post – It’s About People, Stupid

Posted on August 31st, 2010 by Eric Dodds and currently 7 commenting.

It’s good to be back on the blog. You know, I really miss being here when things get busy – but you’re looking good, as always, and we’ve got some exciting stuff happening around here. And with that, we’re off:

If you’ve been following the Firephere over the last few months you might have heard that Brains on Fire has been furiously thinking, typing, editing, sketching and publishing a love story. And that story happens to be inked on the pages of a book we’ve named after the state of mind we seek for ourselves, our clients and our kindred spirits: Brains on Fire.

You can learn plenty about the read (and where to get your hands on one) over at the Brains on Fire book website (1), but today I want to talk about how the love story is going to live beyond words and letters on a page.

When Robbin talks about writing the book, she is adamant about saying that ‘we’ wrote it – not her and the other people with last names printed on the binding – but all of us:

When I say “we,” I don’t just mean the four authors you see listed on the cover. “We” represents an army of believers. It’s the people who comment on our blog. It’s the courageous clients we serve. It’s their customers. It’s everyone who sends us a resume or a love note. It’s our employees and extended tribe. It’s people who catch a vision and inquire about our services. It is all of us who are learning and changing the way we think about the work we do in the world. (Phillips, Cordell, Church, Jones ix)

- Robbin Phillips, Courageous President

And because so many people inspired the book, we want to continue to re-write the way we do marketing, together. From page 169:

Igniting movements is hard work. It’s building with people, not tools. Our belief is simple…we’re all in marketing grad school. We’re not experts. Frankly, there are no experts yet. And that’s why we’re all in this together. There are more lessons to learn, more stories to share and more movements to ignite…So join the Brains on Fire movement at www.brainsonfire.com/lessoneleven. Let’s write the next chapters together. This is the beginning, not the end. (Phillips, Cordell, Church, Jones 169)

So what is Lesson Eleven? It is a collection of real life stories – a movement-maker’s journal. Real stories from you, real stories from other marketing do-ers, real stories that we discover, share and hope will change the way we think about marketing.

So here it is – the first story of Lesson Eleven. And it is based on the opening line of our love story:

It’s about people, stupid.

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While the medical issues that define our age are many, leading physicians say that childhood obesity poses a gigantic threat. (2) This isn’t the place to discuss the many causes or many proposed solutions, but I ran across a story the other day that serves as a wonderful example of why people are so important. (3)

Dr. Maureen Black and her associates at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have studied childhood obesity and the ways that people are targeting the problem. They discovered that group health education for inner city Baltimore kids is easily found in school and church settings, but noticed that learning in the place where a majority of health knowledge should come from, the home, is rare.

Their solution? Pretty simple. Build one-on-one relationships between healthy college students and overweight children, facilitating life learning and mentorship that takes place in the child’s own home. Says Dr. Black,

These were very active sessions. The mentors were not just talking to them. In every session they had food, and they often made the food together in the child’s home. The mentors took the children to the corner store or to a nearby fast-food restaurant to learn about healthy choices. They visited the skating rink or went hiking in a state park to learn the importance of being physically active. (3)

The results are pretty remarkable. After only 12 mentorship sessions, the children in the study who were paired with a mentor (there was a control group) experienced a 5% decline in rate of obesity, while those who weren’t experienced an 11% increase. After two years. That’s right – the lessons that the children learned in a personal relationship of only 12 meetings produced changes that lasted two years.

People are so important, so central, because they are the main ingredient of what makes a movement long-lasting. How?

It comes down to trust. And people don’t trust your company; people trust people. People they know. People who’s recommendations they seek out and have faith in. People don’t buy your company, product, or service first, they buy people first. (Phillips, Cordell, Church, Jones xiv)

The childhood obesity example shows that while lots of factors can help (group education, removing soft-drinks from schools, etc.), the hard work of actually getting involved in someone’s life can produce extremely compelling results. Relationships are the lifeblood of any marketing effort that is going to last. And they make the work you do in the world truly meaningful.

——————–

Stay tuned – we’ll have another edition of Lesson Eleven next Tuesday and some great stuff coming up on the blog.

• (1) You can learn more about the Brains on Fire book and where to get your hands on one at www.brainsonfirebook.com.
• Phillips, Robbin, Greg Cordell, Geno Church and Spike Jones. Brains on Fire: Igniting Powerful, Sustainable, Word of Mouth Movements. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010. Print.
• (2) You can read CDC coverage of stats and consequences of childhood obesity here.
• (3) You can read about Dr. Black and the mentorship study here.

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