Chapter 11
How to Run Your Own Show: The Three P's and the IBM Opera

When a company puts on a show for customers (as in the cases that we saw in Part I), it usually manages the project in conjunction with an outside creative agency. By contrast, show business for internal audiences is often produced by internal departments alone.

In this chapter, we provide guidelines for those readers who plan to develop a show business project on their own. We will begin with what we call the Three P's of Show Business. Managers need to address these three issues when they begin the process of creative implementation:

1. The Players— because every show needs people to fill specific roles
2. The Plot— because every show needs a story
3. The Place— because every show needs a stage

After some guidelines for handling the Three P's, we will present a detailed behind-the-scenes case of how the Three P's were used in the development of a creative show business production for an internal corporate audience at IBM.

The Players

The first P of show business is the players. A manager needs a variety of players in order to mount a successful show business production. The main roles will include financiers (who handle the budget and expenses), organizers (project managers for a show), creative directors (scriptwriters, art directors, copywriters), performers (actors, stunt men, guides, and ring leaders), and roadies (logistical support).

If you are producing a show internally, you should try to fill these positions with your own managers and company employees as much as possible because they best understand your company's business strategy and how it relates to the production. Getting them involved in putting on a show can also be a great way to inspire and engage some of the best employees in your company.

You may need to look outside to fill some of your creative positions (musicians, actors, designers), although you should first make a thorough inventory of what hidden resources your company may possess. If it has a trade show production unit, set and lighting designers will be available internally. Show business also has a way of bringing the secret talents of company employees out into the light of day. Perhaps your finance officer is also a jazz singer. Maybe your IT department includes a scriptwriter.

Of course, job descriptions may need to go through some stretching if you are going to mount a show business production with your own staff. In-house show business requires a nontraditional view of employee roles. For the purpose of staging a show, a marketing manager may need to view their job as a producer, a finance officer may need to become a show financier, and performers will need to be chosen from all levels of management. Finally, your front-line employees may be recruited to handle the more mundane grunt work, but they should also feel that they are part of the show—viewing themselves as show business roadies who perform cool tasks. Gaffer, anyone?

The Plot

The second P of show business is the plot. Your plot is the concept that will bring your strategy to life by giving it a dramatic embodiment. It is central to any show business production because the plot's job is to deliver your corporate message and to do so in an unusual and memorable way.

There can be various levels of plot, depending on your type of show. Some shows have a narrative plot, with characters, story, climax, and conclusion. Think of the fictional scenario of the viral epidemic and its Costa Rican antidote that drives the drama of J.D. Edwards's Corridors of Chaos show. For other shows, the plot is more of a guiding concept or theme, such as the use of bondage and sado-masochism in the G-Shock launch party, or the world of fantasy, indulgence, and glamor evoked by Victoria's Secret's shows. In other cases, the plot may simply be the experience or impression in which the show immerses its audience, like the elegant hospitality and gracious consultation of the Shiseido Studio experience.

The plot for your show will come out of the first five steps in our framework for keeping a show on-brand (see Chapter 6). These steps will ensure that your plot is aligned with your brand, suits your audience, and focuses on the strategic communication objectives for your show.

But in addition to that, the plot needs a creative element to focus the experience. We see three stages that you should go through in developing a plot: picking a recognizable genre, finding your underlying dramatic themes, and developing possibilities for humor.

Picking a Genre

A genre should give you a framework that your audience will immediately recognize. We have seen shows that were built around the genres of song-and-dance musicals (think of The Story of Saturn with dance, music, and video telling its story), fashion shows (Victoria's Secret's events), and aerial acrobatics (the opening of VW's Phaeton launch). Other possible genres to exploit could include detective stories, late-night talk shows, pulp romances, action hero movies, Saturday-Night-Live-style sketch comedy, science fiction, epic histories, or even a night at the opera.

A genre will always bring with it lots of stock characters, themes, and story elements on which to draw. The talk show has its host, the sidekick, and the chatty bandleader. The fashion show has its models and the eccentric designer. A detective story always has to begin with a late night appearance at the detective's office by a distraught and good-looking client of the opposite sex.

A good show business plot always incorporates these genres to its advantage (as the saying goes, great writers don't borrow, they steal). If you're telling a story, don't reinvent the wheel. Using elements from pre-existing texts (but not copyrighted ones!) makes any show more familiar and readily digestible, even if the audience doesn't recognize your sources. Saturn's musical show borrowed elements from successful Broadway shows like Tap Dogs and Stomp in its use of percussion music created by playing on car parts, for example. The characters in your show business plot should likewise be familiar or recognizable faces (you aren't writing a literary novel here).

Likewise, your plot should include references or topics that your audience recognizes such as insider perspectives and current events from your own company, the industry, or your audience's lifestyle.

Plot Themes: Sex, Money, and Power

The next part of developing your plot will be identifying its themes. These themes are the simple dramatic ploys used to keep your audience's attention (as opposed to the specific strategic message you are trying to convey about your business or brand).

Literary theorists and high school English teachers have enumerated countless themes for art such as man against nature, individual versus society, or oedipal conflict. We suggest you consider the universal appeal of three great themes behind almost every great play, opera, or poem from the ages: sex, money, and power (and in that order of universal appeal). Briefly,

• Sex. The oldest theme in the book for marketing. Yes, sex sells, but it does best if you keep it fresh and find a new angle. The Victoria's Secret show is built around fantasies of beauty and desire. Pushing it further, Abercrombie & Fitch has made a successful show out of pictures of naked and strapping young men and women in its clothing catalogs (who ever thought a clothing catalog should show people with clothes on?). Look for a possible theme of sex in your show, of course.
• Money. Why do we love gambling? The lottery? The rags-to-riches-to-rags story? Because of the universal allure of wealth. Think of Mary Kay's fabulous diamond-studded pins, or the top-rated TV game shows about who wants to be a millionaire, or marry one, or knock one on the head and steal their identity.
• Power. For another great theme, think of Julius Caesar, The Godfather, or The West Wing. Some of the most attractive shows are dramas about power and who gets to have it. To see a great example of how American Express has made a show out of status and prestige, see Centurion: The AmEx Snob Show on page 182.

Make 'Em Laugh

One last point on developing a good plot: don't forget a sense of humor. Good show business is often amusing and never takes itself too seriously, so humor is an essential part of your plot. Irony, parody, slapstick—each has a place in different shows for different audiences. Humor needs to grow out of an understanding of your audience; it must be in tune with them. Different audiences will have different senses of humor. If your show is for IT programmers, for young sales associates, or for senior finance managers, you ought to know what they find funny.

Don't think that humor can only work in shows selling frivolous products or whose message is light-hearted. It is often a serious message that most needs humor to win its audience.

One example is Polyp Man, who was invented for a public health show after serious communications had failed. Polyp Man is the villain and central character in a series of public service announcements created for TV by the American Cancer Society and the Advertising Council.

Polyp Man is a low-budget and tacky sort of villain, dressed in an enormous bulging red spandex body suit. In the ads, he runs from doctors in chase scenes that are parodies of reality police shows like Cops. The noble doctors inevitably catch him and bring him to justice. In one silly sequence Polyp Man is caught in a kitchen stuffing his face in front of an open refrigerator; in others he is apprehended at a school, or in a chase down an alleyway.

This silly piece of show business was created to meet a sobering public health challenge: half of all colon cancer deaths in the U.S. could be prevented by screening, but only 44 percent of Americans over 50 get screened. The point of the comical TV campaign is to raise the subject of polyp testing in a way that reduces embarrassment, gets people talking about it, brings it out of the realm of denial, and motivates people by letting them view doctors as able to help them tackle the problem.

Previous public service announcements about the issue had taken a serious tone (shots of graveyards and so on), but the American Cancer Society found that their somber message was ineffective at motivating people. By contrast, the new Polyp Man ads have tested well for motivating the audience while getting the message across.

Our message: don't be afraid to try to be funny, whatever your message! A sense of humor is often just the thing to get your audience engaged and motivated.

Figure 11-1. Humor in the unlikeliest of places: Polyp Man. Photo courtesy of Campbell-Ewald.

The Place

Once you have the players for your show and you've started fashioning your plot (including its genre, theme, and humor), the last piece of your production is the place where your show will be held. This is the third P of show business.

As we've seen by now, an internal show can happen in all kinds of places: on the Internet, at a factory, a dealership, a headquarters rotunda, a conference room, or a giant sales conference.

In selecting the right place for your production, we advise that you look at three key considerations:

• Available audience. Where can you best reach your target audience—sales staff, middle managers, sales channel partners, or senior executives? Who will see your show if you stage it in a given location, or at a given event?
• Image impact. How will the location affect the impact of your message? Will it enhance it? Detract from it? Overshadow it? In some cases a well-chosen place may have scenery or an environment that actually plays up and reinforces the strategic message of your show.
• Cost considerations. How expensive is a location? Is it a good value for the audience you will be able to reach? What quality of production will be demanded by your location and what costs will this incur for your show to make the best of its location?

Once you have selected the place for your show, you need to be sure to tailor the production to the facility. This will involve several questions: What expectations does your stage create in an audience? Does it demand a particular caliber of production? (This requirement will differ between a boardroom, a small amphitheater, or a huge convention space.) What special facilities or technologies are available in this place that you could incorporate in your show? What other associations will your audience have with the place that you might make use of in your plot? What other experience may your audience have just had (arriving on a train, hearing a previous speaker at an event, etc.)?

In planning your show, don't forget to scope out its place very carefully beforehand for any details that will affect your show (Where are the sources of electricity? What kinds of projections or technology are available? What kinds of lighting can be used or brought in? Where are the entrances and exits off stage?). With careful consideration, you will be able to make the best use of whatever place you have selected to maximize your own show.

Now that we've discussed some of the more practical issues involved in turning a show business strategy into an internal show, let's look at one case in detail to see how the Three P's may be applied. Here we will take a look behind the scenes of a project we did with IBM, where we created a show to help the company address a pressing internal communication need. The goals were typical of internal show business: to educate managers and motivate them to implement a change in business process.

The Challenge: Brand Confusion at IBM

In early 2001, IBM approached us to help them address the issue of brand confusion at their company.

IBM is one of the leading, most recognized brands in the world. Indeed, the IBM corporate brand had been well managed for many years. In the public perception, IBM was considered to be in a much stronger position than in the early 1990s when the company had a record loss of $5 billion in one year. Due to the focused and disciplined approach that Lou Gerstner, IBM's CEO, had taken throughout the 1990s, IBM had experienced an amazing turn-around. As Gerstner writes in Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?, the corporate brand played a key role in this turnaround.

The problem now was the more than 900 additional brands that existed within the organization—brands such as Lotus, Intellistation, Websphere, Workpad, Storewatch, and many others. Consumers often either had not heard of them, confused them with other IBM brands, or did not even associate them with IBM. These lesser-known brands had unclear and confusing identities in the marketplace. A corporate identity manager had been hired by IBM as a change agent to alter this situation, and she called us to help.

Up until now the company lacked a systematic process for evaluating new names. Whenever a strategic business unit or division decided to take a product to the market, it made up a new name and designed a new visual identity. There was little central control. Numerous acquisitions further contributed to the brand confusion. What IBM needed was a systematic approach to brand naming and to building a brand architecture that would organize all the brands into a coherent whole. The brand architecture would lay out which names would carry the IBM umbrella, which ones would be endorsed by IBM, and which ones (if any) should be presented to customers as stand-alone brands.

To help develop such an approach, IBM hired the naming and corporate identity agency Interbrand. The company was also interested in using a creative experience to convey the key issues to its own employees and get their buy-in for making changes to the branding process. That's where we came in—to put on a show.

IBM's Audience and Objectives

IBM identified their key audience as top management within the company across all product divisions; these were the personnel who would need to buy into the new naming process they were devising in order for it to succeed. The challenge of our show was to build support for a new branding system among this group by convincing them that change was necessary and in their own best interest.

Because these managers would be giving up some turf and authority as part of this new change, we wanted to counteract any possible tensions by using humor and a live show that would dramatize the issues in a funny and disarming manner.

Our objective was to use a story to convey three points to motivate leaders in the company to change the status quo:

• IBM's current approach to naming had spun out of control.
• The lack of a systematic process for branding within IBM was confusing to customers, and this had negative consequences for IBM products and services.
• Input, valuable contribution, and compliance to new processes are required from everybody within the company to create a more consistent approach to branding.

Because this was an internal issue that affected the audience's own work processes, we felt the show should take place at the company's headquarters as part of an overall educational event for upper middle and senior management so that in-depth discussion of the management issues involved could take place before and after the performance.

IBM's Choice of Genre

We decided that the genre of opera would be most appropriate for addressing the naming issues. The opera that we produced was called Der Turm von Babble, Inc. (The Tower of Babble, Incorporated): A tragic opera about brand strategy and naming.

We chose opera as a genre because it provides a highly dramatic form in which we could address the issues in an engaging and entertaining format. Many people do not easily relate to opera (they think it is a strange and outdated art form), and we thought that this attitude would be ideal for getting the audience to step back a bit. They might then be more susceptible to a message that could be surprising and perhaps even threatening to them.

The many languages of opera made the genre a natural choice for addressing naming and language issues. Our opera was performed in German and Italian, which allowed us to rattle off names of IBM products in multiple languages and address the importance of language as one of the essential issues of branding. Of course, as is customary in modern opera houses, English supertitles (translations of the text that appear above the stage) were provided as well—which added to the joke: mock 19^th-century opera lyrics about servers and software solutions.

IBM's Players

In producing the opera, we had to make decisions about the Three P's of Show Business: players, plot, and place.

There were numerous players involved in bringing the show to life: the financier (the IBM corporate identity manager), the organizers (project manager and stage director), the creative directors (script writer, music director, lighting designer, and set designer), the various performers (a pianist, a mezzo-soprano, an African drum ensemble, and dancers), and the roadies (stage manager, driver, and video crew).

The main character in the opera was the customer—Brünnhilde, the CEO of a small business looking for software solutions provided by IBM. The other characters in the main part of the opera were all IBM employees and despite their excitement, they did not speak a word. Instead, they were represented by dancers who acted on stage in pantomime and stylized movements that expressed their inability to communicate with the customer.

In addition to these roles, there was also the unusual speaking role of "The Business Professor," a character who appeared between acts. This character served two functions: first, he provided an outside perspective and interpretation of the corporate spectacle, and, by doing so, The Business Professor, in complicity with the audience, represented the audience on stage. Being a one-man version of the Greek chorus, he brought the corporate audience into the production, allowing them to watch and participate in the operatic staging of themselves.

IBM's Plot

Our next step was to translate our strategic goals into an entertaining plot for the show. (An act-by-act narrative of the opera can be found in Synopsis of the Plot of Der Turm von Babble, Inc. on page 192.)

Our first decision was to use a familiar reference point for our story about name confusion. We chose the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel, the original skyscraper, built by a prideful people who were then struck down and cursed with a confusion of languages. To update this, we imagined a company called Babble, Inc., and decided that it, too, was building a tower and was pridefully ignorant of its customers' needs for clear language. (A corporate tower had resonance because it can be seen as a symbol of strength, but also of lack of external perspective.)

Since we were playing to an internal audience, we also wanted to use elements from IBM themselves. We used actual IBM product names under discussion at the management event that day, and we chose to integrate one of IBM's current television ads into the opera.

Before writing the script (libretto) for the opera and deciding what music to use or commission, we identified three key themes that the plot needed to dramatize:

• Internal and external aspects of branding
• Interactions in which the brand matters and comes to life
• Name proliferation and the danger of confusion

The theme of internal versus external aspects of branding was included in the opera's structure: Act 1 played within IBM, Act 2 played outside IBM in the world of the customer, and then in Act 3 the two worlds were juxtaposed. Each act was also associated with a particular attitude or feeling (joy and hubris, expectation and disappointment, despair and revengeful triumph)—illustrating the emotional, and not just the rational, side of branding.

Interactions focused around the brand occurred at critical points. In Act 1, the Tower of Babble, Inc. is erected upon the shaky foundation of brand proliferation. In Act 2, we witness the monolith's brand representatives in their chilling interactions with the customer. In Act 3, the brand experience has turned inward, with the customer contemplating suicide but ultimately turning aggression outward.

Name proliferation was visually displayed in Act 1 by having the "employees" stick the numerous names of IBM product divisions on the erected tower. In Act 2, the distraught customer is faced with a confusing profusion of product brochures. In Act 3, we encounter again the stark image of the name-encrusted tower, now in darker lighting.

IBM's Place

IBM wanted us to perform the opera at their headquarters in Armonk, New York, which is located in the middle of a forest. To allude to the venue, we wrote a plot that featured the erection of a massive tower by the different divisions of the company in the middle of a forest—a symbol of the energy and drive of a large organization and the positive outcomes that are likely to happen if these energies are channeled in the right direction.

To plan the staging for the production, we examined the space, opportunities for sets and lighting, amplification and places for musicians. It turned out that we were dealing with a small theater with only limited lighting resources. Moreover, the theater did not allow for extensive set designs. We turned this constraint to our advantage by using striking visual design and computer imagery on backdrops as well as colorful props that got the audience to focus on the key story elements. We felt, however, that we needed an impressive image at the end of the opera, and our lighting designer created it in the form of a rainbow—a powerful and memorable symbol for the transition point in IBM's branding strategy.

Conclusion

The IBM opera and the management conference of which it was a part were a success. Since then, IBM has made significant progress in branding issues and received the buy-in from employees. The project was especially well received by the key executives involved in the naming initiative. The corporate identity manager said that the naming opera was "absolutely fabulous" and the perfect way to get the point across that IBM wanted to do things more creatively and more strategically. The president of Interbrand called the production creative and innovative. Yet, the highest compliment to us came from one of the audience members who said, "This is the first opera I saw that didn't put me to sleep."

We've seen now how show business can play an important role within an organization for engaging and communicating with a wide variety of internal audiences. We have also looked at how a company that is focusing on show business can put on its own shows for internal audiences. But show business inside an organization can also be an important part of leadership. More than any other member of an organization, a corporate leader needs to communicate effectively in order to engage a wide variety of audiences: employees, business partners, investors, and customers of all kinds. In the next chapter we will learn how show business can be used to link leadership to the ethos of a company and communicate it to every audience.

Table 11-1. Lyrics to Ich weiss nicht, wo ich bin, was ich tue ^a

^a Set to the music of Mozart's Non so piu cosa son cosa faccio, from The Marriage of Figaro.