“Consumers are not robots. They don’t simply buy products, they buy attitudes as well. When confronted with proliferation and diversity, choice becomes increasingly informed by belief. It is belief and instinct about a brand’s excellence that matters. Consumers do not get this belief out of thin air.

They want to know who is behind the products that they buy. They want to know the company. They want to know what you think. And the better your company communicates its attitudes, the stronger you will become.”

“Different brands have different strengths. The stronger and more relevant the values connected to a brand, the more involved consumers become. And great involvement means a stronger brand and greater value for the manufacturer.”

Jesper Kunde, Corporate Religion

“We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.”

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media

"Humans did not originate the use of rocks and sticks as weapons, hammers, probes, or levers. But over the last tens of thousands of years human toolmaking has taken a very different path from that of the most advanced living primates, including our most recent ancestors. What exactly have we done that is so different? We have made technology the centerpiece of our survival strategy."

Frank R. Wilson, The Hand

"When we don't see systems, we fall out of the possibility of partnership with one another; we misunderstand one another; we make up stories about one another; we have our myths and prejudices about one another; we hurt and destroy one another; we become antagonists when we could be collaborators; we separate when we could remain together happily; we become strangers when we could be friends; we oppress one another when we could live in peace. All of this happens without awareness or choice."

Barry Oshry, Seeing Systems

"… your body image, despite all its appearance of durability, is an entirely transitory internal construct that can be profoundly modified with just a few simple tricks."

V. S. Ramachandran, Phantoms in the Brain

What is Metalife?
Metalife is an exploration of the ways in which communication tools affect us and our businesses by unwittingly altering our lives. Having adopted these tools, we (often unconsciously) change and revalue our time, our focus, our bodies, our self-image, our health, our relationships, our social interactions, among other things

The Essentials
There are three basic elements that comprise an explanation of Metalife:

• Communication tools
• Stories
• Embodiment

 

Whenever we engage with communication tools—and this engagement is as old as the invention of the alphabet—we start telling stories with these new tools. Furthermore, our stories take on the nature or logic of the tools. We embody them in our stories, and very quickly in our lives and in our social structures. The mechanism of Metalife is one of interaction and then adaptation whenever we create and then use communication tools.

 

The basic premise of Metalife is this: our engagement with communication tools creates another life—a "metalife"—for us and for our organizations. The purpose and value of the Metalife Project is to provide a way of seeing how this process operates and to provide a new way of thinking about our interaction with that unrecognized dimension. 

 

Just as metadata accompanies a digital photo, metalife is the discovery of another layer of thinking and behavior that accompanies our tools of perception. Each new tool such as an alphabet, an image, or an iPhone changes how we think, feel, and act—each new tool creates and then changes our metalives. Our communication tools function as windows that determine, in large part, our view of reality. When we change the window we change the world. 

 

How does Metalife apply to business?
Every business today is in the business of communication. In the last 50 years, new tools have changed the nature of communication more than in all of human history. Communication is now enlivening—it is no longer static words on pages but comes to us in human form via YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and others; it is mobilizing—we send and receive messages on a myriad of handheld devices and even in our eyeglasses; it is democratizing—“Everyone is a media outlet,” Clay Shirky says, which means inherited broadcast models are evolving faster than our strategies; and content is surrounding us—we now have so much of it our attention is crashing before we can deal with it all. In short, communication tools are changing what we focus on, how we focus, how we interact with each other, the speed and duration of that interaction, what we value, and how we value it. Business is not isolated from these rapid and wrenching changes.

A practical and very useful way to understand and process these changes is to see that each new change in communication tools brings a change in who we are—a change in how we think and act. Each new tool gives us a new dimension, a new way of seeing ourselves, a new life. A “Metalife.” This Metalife emerges from our interaction with (and often unconscious adapting to) communication tools. The good news is we can capitalize on this emergence. Properly understood, like the metadata that accompanies a digital photo, we see that this Metalife can inform, shape, reveal and calibrate various aspects of the content of our communications.

Business can use this “meta” view to build or enhance a brand, increase sales, reduce costs, enhance employee loyalty and retention, or restructure and revitalize an entire organization.

 

What is the Metalife Project?
The Metalife Project is an exploration of the wide-ranging ramifications of our use of communications tools.

 

Metalife Consulting has pioneered a multidimensional approach to seeing and thinking about organizations thriving amidst a complex media environment.

There has been an explosion of new communication tools over the last few decades, led by the Internet and the myriad of ways to access it. However, there has been little corresponding innovation in the basic strategies of marketing or communications to help us take better advantage of these new tools. The mission of Metalife Consulting and The Metalife Project is to focus on the new and emerging realities created by the explosion of new communication tools and explore ways to capitalize on them.

The Metalife process is a means by which we examine an organization from many different angles to observe how a company is functioning or dysfunctioning. By adopting a “macro” viewpoint we can identify unseen patterns that contribute to lost productivity and growth. This view may include documentation of the physical layout of a plant or operations center, signs and signals that create understanding or generate confusion about who you are and what you do, perceptions of customers, suppliers and other constituents, attitudes of employees and other factors, all of which comprise the Metalife of an organization.  

 

How can Metalife Consulting improve business performance?
The life of an organization is what it does day to day in Purchasing or HR, Supply Management or Accounting, Marketing or Corporate Communications. Right along side that life, like the metadata which accompanies a digital photo, is another layer of information—the Metalife of the organization. This layer includes all of the signs and signals, collective truths, myths, stories, histories, cultural artifacts, conflicts and strategies, missed opportunities, successes and failures, human values and inspired leadership that comprises the unspoken, unseen and unrecognized qualities of an organization. It is the life the organization lives "when it is busy doing something else." To a photographer the metadata of an image can be as vital to the final result as its inspiration. So too the Metalife of an organization can, in large measure, determine its performance and contribute to its success. 

 

In effect, Metalife applies systems logic to communications. This is an uncommon approach, as most corporate organization is functional and hierarchical, with individuals and teams organized around a tactical delivery. For example, one person or group might focus on communications to broker dealers; another might focus on internal communications; another might target customer engineering and sales divisions. The older the corporation, the more these functional divisions become a dynamic not only for communications but for organizing teams to deliver those communications. The result? No one is, in Barry Oshry’s words, seeing systems. No one is looking at the larger picture. Effectively, there is no larger picture; there are only tactical delivery modules.

 

Metalife incorporates a variety of survey processes and analytical techniques. We will observe and listen and ask questions from many perspectives. Our approach is to acquire a macro-view of the entire operation. Each of these processes and techniques is a “meta tool” and the data they provide will enable us to arrive at a picture of the corporation or division which heretofore has eluded understanding or accurate evaluation. We call that picture a “metalife” of the corporation or division. And once we have that picture and all stakeholders can see and understand it—then we are in a position to improve it.

 

Brands today are living in a very complicated media and marketing environment. Customers and investors have revalued brands downward. Employee loyalty has declined. There is a massive attention crash with customers, investors and employees because of the overwhelming availability of media. There has been little significant innovation in marketing processes in more than 30 years even though there has been an avalanche of new communications tools. Metalife is a new and innovative communication and branding process designed to strengthen brands and bring them alive in this new environment. The procedures and technologies implemented by Metalife have helped Fortune 500 companies grow sales, improve employee loyalty, and improve performance on Wall Street. In short, the Metalife process reveals the entire picture of a business operation.  
 
How has Metalife moved the metrics?

• $2 billion a year sales increase of a Fortune 500 company
• 78% employee favorability score, highest in this Fortune 500 company
• 22% cost reduction of a Fortune 50 company 
• $300-400 million brand valuation for privately held real estate investment and development company
• 99% integrity (reputation/brand) rating with financial advisors for regional investment firm (‘I don’t look for the best cap rate – my decision making process is strongly influenced by the reputation of the company’)
• 34% of broker dealer purchase decision attributable to brand for REIT
• 39% of small business owners’ decision-making influenced by brand of national hotel holding company

 

 

 

Photo Credits and Links:

1. New York Public Library #5 —Courtesy of Tom Waterhouse (an untrained eye) at flickr.com

2. Recursive phone in hand — Courtesy of Hrvoje Tomić at flickr.com

3. GPS — Regmedia.co.uk

4. Not Without My Cellphone — Courtesy of Marialuisa Wittlin (Marlis1) at Flickr.com

 

On Home Page:

Cave drawing — Unknown

Gutenberg Press — Courtesy of Wally Gobetz at flickr.com

Voitlānder Daguerrotype — Flickr.com

1850's Sixth Plate Daguerrotype — Courtesy of Nelson Anderson (Inferno55) at flickr.com

Young woman with iPhone — Courtesy of John Cowley, Dublin, Ireland at flickr.com.

NASA Mars Rover — Courtesy Flickr.com