From FOMO to JOMO. The joy of missing out.
From FOMO to JOMO. Innovation strategy helps you to stay focused on the important things.
Being reactive to consumer demand is, by and large, still a tenet of customer service. Taking note of what your customers say is (nearly) always a good idea.
As technology develops, our customers will be ever more demanding for ‘new’. Innovation is designed to meet the need. What we mustn’t do is dilute the effort of doing one thing well into chasing every shiny opportunity.
Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a modern phenomenon. Culturally, we have educated our commercial departments (and our children) to be present on social media 24/7 and to manage their time to respond to customers immediately. We recently heard of a brand that responds to every one of the 20,000 Tweets it receives in a day within 180 seconds, in a bid to engage meaningfully with the customer. This is a technical achievement of some note, but meaningful?
Keeping up with trends can be like this. Being pressured into trying to consume everything that relates to your business, and all those things that might, is energy-sapping and time-consuming.
Similarly, mass B2B marketing is another area that creates stress and the sense of fighting a losing battle. Conversion rates from e-mail and social campaigns can’t help but drop over time, and so an endlessly increasing budget in creative execution becomes a management battleground when year-on-year increases in business performance are demanded.
Now, it’d be wrong to suggest that growth isn’t a natural business ambition. It’s also daft to try to be all things to all people.
A backlash is signalled. This quote says it nicely: “The internet has made it possible for people to communicate easily while slowly weakening personal connections. Technology has allowed companies to track productivity with monitoring software, at the same time weakening trust. Relationships have proven to be the way to increase sales and strengthen companies. Organizations will strive to build these relationships through face-to-face interactions that are personal, meaningful and fun.” What’s more, of 22 predictions made in the article in Inc., this one came in at #2.
As you’ll be aware by now, room44 believes that companies need an innovation strategy at the core of their being. A strategy that directs forward thinking and constantly reviews signals for the future, against which decisions can be made about product design and investment decisions can be made with some confidence that ROI will be returned into the future too.
The by-product of an innovation strategy is to know what is important and what can be put to one side. It’s also extraordinarily releasing.
A psychologist friend of ours recently presented something that burst a bubble for me. Apparently, it is actually impossible to focus on two things at once. Being busy doing lots of things isn’t the same at all. This is simply trying to keep lots of plates spinning. And we know how that goes eventually.
The joy of missing out deliberately is powerful. Know what to do, do it, don’t get sucked into hyperbole and diversions. Just get done what you know is the priority.
JOMO. The joy of missing out, deliberately.