Not coincidentally, Jaffe's previous consultancy was named Evol8tion and had the goal of leveraging an automated platform and innovating around "better, cheaper, faster." The former director of interactive media at TBWA\Chiat\Day and OMD USA is now the author of five books and a frequent press source on marketing.
In our conversation, Jaffe explains the full title of his latest work — with its subhead of The Inevitable Demise of The Corporation and How to Save It? — includes a question mark, saying, "I'm not sure the corporation can be saved. There's enough in this book to talk about how to save the corporation, but I'm neutral here."
We'll see. Listen to our full conversation here.
Jaffe also describes the four reasons for what he calls the corporate apocalypse: company size, age, culture, and being a public company. The following is a topline, edited for length and clarity. You'll want to listen to the full podcast to hear his specifics on all four issues and the suggested pillars for growth. Hear what he believes is the biggest fundamental, recent change in all of marketing, the Jaffe version of the "three Ps" for today's evolving environment, and why he has no tolerance for those "discovering" instead of re-discovering their brand purpose.
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Moss: I appreciate you being here on Insider InSites.
Jaffe: Well, in 2005, I was, I think, one of the first marketing podcasts. It's amazing watching this incredible resurgence of podcasting. It's such a powerful medium; strategically, if we think about how much time we spend commuting, gardening, running, etcetera — when we're a captive audience with these headphones in our ears — it's not a fluke that we're finally seeing podcasting getting its due.
Moss: Speaking of how content consumption boundaries are gone — being able to watch Netflix here orA+Ethere — is a nice transition to Built to Suck. It's all about transitions and ways we need to embrace a new kind of world.
Jaffe: Bill Duggan asked me in a recent MediaVillage interview about one of the growth pillars described in the book, which is digital disruption. But I had said in my keynote at the ANA [Masters of Marketing Conference] that maybe it's more about disrupting digital because digital has become so boring and predictable and just uninspiring.
Imagine if we went back in time, and I was telling you about this amazing new thing called e-commerce, where at three o'clock in the morning on a Sunday you could be ordering stuff online.... Or about the even more wondrous thing that lets you search for stuff that you wanted based on when you wanted it. I still believe that the most fundamental change in all of marketing in terms of actually reversing the entire direction of messaging, of transactions, and being truly customer-centric, is search. If at that time, someone was presenting this to us, we wouldn't have reacted with wonder. We wouldn't have said, "I'm quitting my day job. I'm all in." We would have resisted it. We would have told everyone what our concerns were.
I always say, it's easy to get to "no"; the challenge as marketing professionals is to find a way to get to and fight for that "yes." We're surrounded by change, but do you recognize it when you see it and are you prepared to do something about it? That's what separates the winners today from the losers.
When you think about corporations, recognizing that their entire business model — the fundamental revenue streams — are being disintermediated and disrupted, are they deaf to these signs? So, go back in time, to almost project yourself forward, and say, "I made the mistake before, but I won't make it again."