Your American Journey, Part II

Coming Together to Face this Century's Challenges

Overview

As a fast follower to 'Your American Journey', this update offers you, the interested reader, and our CXOs, marketing gurus and product rockstars, high-level, salient thoughts on getting to our overall objective with 'Your American Journey'. These span viability in the ecosystem, problem-solving model, objectives & early strategic thinking, market sizing, key results and metrics, 'The Who' & related communities (including segmentation), product trade-offs and features, and feedback loops.

Importantly, these seek to highlight how the overall objective is an audacious challenge, worthy of the bright and intrepid among us. While getting to the objective is not rocket science (I can claim a passing acquaintance with rocket science :)), this challenge of our times impacts the country's governance as well as global governance.

You will have to press on from first principles to decide whether specific objectives are viable in the American ecosystem, and find creative ways to achieve the overall objective. By the very definition of the problem, you are, in some ways, solving for the effects of social media tactics captured via metrics, like those associated with engagement, that media and tech- big and small- often optimize for, today.

Caveat: This is not meant to be comprehensive, and is not a walk-through of Product Management 101 with a complex example. This is purely meant to call out salient decisions, challenges, questions and waypoints for you to consider to solve for the objectives.

I hope you find this post builds upon the themes copylefted in the original post, and intrigues you further. I look forward to hearing from you and being dazzled by your insights.

Note: Animated video generated with Runway.ai tools

Viability in the Ecosystem

Our hypothesis is that to meet our objectives, it is not simply enough to have Americans engage with each other, we must see a corresponding reduction in polarization and fragmentation on specific dimensions. Testing our hypothesis and refining the objectives would involve the following questions:

1. Have we framed the problem correctly?

2. Are we framing the pathways to get to our objectives correctly?

3. Are we better off with a portfolio of objectives and associated problem sets and roadmaps, that collectively feed the stated, overall objective?

4. Are we missing alternatives that offer shortest paths with pivots for sustainable scaling?

It’s easy to get to a nay across the board on this. Arriving at a yay or a nay with a well thought out rationale involves extensive work. Read on for salient items that will help you frame this fundamental decision on viability, followed by the iterative journey toward results. Please keep in mind- the approach below is only one, and not the only one, way to solve for the overall objective.

The Problem-Solving Model - A Virtuous Cycle

Let’s jump right into some questions.

As we pick a problem-solving model, can we leverage the current tools and models that media and tech- big and small- leverage today to drive engagement, and which have become very sharp tools?

Would it be useful to define the objective as reversing the effects of media & tech optimizing for engagement?

Do we identify, and venture into, whitespace, for models and tools that are not common practice?

Stop! While it's an interesting exercise to think in these terms, focus on the guiding principle- solve the simplest problem first, and then, gradually, take on the harder challenges.

The Problem-Solving Model, as a virtuous cycle, would simplistically iterate through this cycle:

Objectives & Strategic Thinking -> Key Results & Metrics -> ‘The Who' & Related Communities- Segmentation -> Product Trade-offs and Features -> Feedback Loops

Note: Graphic generated with Napkin.ai

Below is an early, first pass template to engage and guide your thinking.

Market Sizing

You could simply frame 'all who care about America and wish to engage with Americana' as the population of America for market sizing. Say, 350 million as a nice round number.

Since we would like to apply our guiding principle of keeping it simple, and solving the simplest problem first, would it be wiser to frame the objective of increasing the visitors to an American space by 20%?

If we pick the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island as a first pass American space, it had approximately 3.7 million visitors in 2023, who collectively spent over $100 MM. Yellowstone, excluding outlier years, has about 3 million to 4.5 million annually. Source linked here.

For The Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island, would we be able to bump up the visitors by 750,000?

Is this the start of a good roadmap of objectives to the stated greater objectives?

Back to a fundamental question- are we better off with a portfolio of objectives and associated problem sets and roadmaps, that collectively feed the stated, greater objectives?

What would provide the lift? It is worth noting that not all visitors to The Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island are Americans.

What kind of sustainable lift would we want?

What do you think?

Early Strategic Thinking

We've called out very specific objectives- minimize polarization and fragmentation, and maximize Americans engaging with each other. These objectives are not easily derivable from product, feature and capability focused approaches via engagement on Americana and American spaces, 'Your American Journey', 'Your American Pilgrimage', and 'Your American Contributions'.

To ensure products, features and capabilities impact complex objectives, requires approaches, down to marketing campaigns and events, that involve both in person and digital contexts. To make this less abstract, consider, for a moment, people getting onto a boat, to visit Ellis Island to watch Jason Aldean perform, or hear Sting sing 'Englishman In New York'. This event may impact the economic value of visits to American spaces, however, how would this event impact the complex objectives? If this event, or any event of this type would not, then what would?

Segueing into downstream sections briefly, this sustained dynamic of cause and effect, or correlation, would rely on actionably segmenting 'all who care about America and wish to engage with Americana' prioritizing the segments for regular, and eventually continuous, results and feedback loops, and implementing extensive test-and-learn.

What do you think?

Key Results & Metrics

Let's revisit our objectives. They can be described as:

1. Minimize polarization

2. Minimize fragmentation

3. Maximize engagement between Americans

Can we quantify these, possibly as composite measures or indexes?

Success criteria for products, features and associated capabilities and processes via metrics and KPIs are more easily understood and workable. Engagement on Americana and with American spaces, can be quantified as number of visitors, for one. Product features and capabilities like 'Your American Journey' and your American heritage via 'Your American Pilgrimage', can be quantified as number of trips to an American space, and as # of recorded content. Engagement with Americans can be quantified as number of connections and frequency of interactions.

These are direct metrics for actions and offers associated with products and capabilities. These may also involve qualitative and quantitative interviews and surveys. How do you link these to any quantified measures around the objectives as above?

By the very nature of the problem, there would also be external (to products, features and capabilities built) measures, which in turn may also be both qualitative and quantitative, and potentially involve proxy variables and composite indexes. Creating these requires careful thinking around minimizing polarization, minimizing fragmentation and maximizing engagement.

The Balanced Scorecard may serve as good heuristic, however, there are no easy shortcuts to analysis and synthesis. To make matters more fun, the measures, and elements of composite measures for objectives, may have to be swapped out over time for other, more relevant ones. You may even want to consider long terms trends like digitalization, and also sudden, semi-permanent changes associated with people you are engaging with. For example, looking back, would your composite measures for the objectives be different pre and post Covid-19?

How do you leverage statistical tools (e.g., regression tools) to simplify, and maintain transparency and continuity, over time? When, and how, do you have checkpoints on progress and on how the measures speak to the objectives?

Also, back to a fundamental question- are we better off with a portfolio of objectives and associated problem sets and roadmaps, that collectively feed the stated, greater objectives?

One way of breaking down and structuring metrics is below.

Note: Graphic created with Microsoft tools

What do you think?

'The Who' & Related Communities- Segmentation

Some salient questions on prioritization to get you thinking about segmentation, as part of segmentation, targeting and positioning, and prioritization of the large pool of people in the 'all who care about America and wish to engage with Americana' bucket:

1. Do you first target those that provide quick wins on your defined measures and key results?

2. Do you prioritize those with the highest expected Customer Lifetime Value as a direct economic benefit from this initiative?

3. How do you calculate Customer Lifetime Value?

4. Do you pursue actions and offers with groups that would not be expected to provide immediate payoffs?

5. How do you implement test and learn with segments and communities?

6. Which signals matter, and which don't?

7. Does building a community serve our stated objectives?

8. What kind of community is required to be built? What would be it's specific features and behaviors?

While IRL and online communities for specific niches have existed for a long time- Dungeons and Dragons (1974!) is one example; Unix would be another- Lady Gaga's pioneering Little Monsters, and Taylor Swift's Swifties are examples of communities that have achieved scale.

You may find more context on Lady Gaga pioneering online communities here. Some would call Swifties as a beacon of community and shared power- the source link is here.

Are there factors to be considered in the segmentation process to aid in building communities?

Let's make this less abstract. In a simplified context, you offer a discount coupon or code to someone traveling to somewhere near an American space, and they happen to use the discount coupon or code to visit the American space. As a specific example to spark your thinking further, someone traveling to Times Square in NYC, gets a discount code for a Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island on Facebook or Instagram, and then uses the discount code or coupon to visit. Beyond the commonly understood 'lift', did this work for your larger objectives?

How do you eventually scale this to the widest swathe of the 'all who care about America and wish to engage with Americana' bucket.

What do you think?

Product Trade-offs and Features

Here's an example to illuminate your trade-offs. When we think about visitors recording their 'American Journey' and talking about their American heritage via 'Your American Pilgrimage', most of us would naturally think about building sort of 'Ancestry.com, without the healthcare data, for families', allowing families to connect and share with each other, with loose groups, and with a wider public space. This would naturally involve thinking about content taxonomy and granularity, and structured and unstructured data, along with access controls.

Since trust is important, factor in security aspects early, starting with protection for Personally Identifiable Data (PII).

How do you get 'all who care about America and wish to engage with Americana', to engage with each other, in ways to move the needle on your objectives? That is the harder and more interesting problem to solve.

Would finding ways to build communities, and prioritize features and capabilities accordingly, help with your stated objectives?

How do you iteratively build this engagement, and prioritize these features?

Is the ideal solution to ignore broader objectives, and focus simply on 'Ancestry.com, without the healthcare data, for families'? If you focus on 'Ancestry.com, without the healthcare data, for families', would you pivot after?

What do you think?

Feedback Loops

A key goal for feedback loops is to prevent an echo chamber and ensure decisions are intentional and deliberate, especially for the scale of the objectives you have sized for, even if you are gradually road mapping toward the larger 'all who care about America and wish to engage with Americana' population. Guiding principle still holds- baby steps, with test and learn, before iteratively scaling.

Consider building a Customer Advisory Board to aid the feedback loop function.

What do you think?

What About AI? Bonus Topic!

Yes. Yes, to AI. Why? Just because. Founder mode.

Gentle jokes aside, this is a conversation too. You've made it this far- let's do this as a separate conversation.

What do you think?

Thank You

You made it so far with a lot of salient items coming your way for your consideration. Thank you. Can't wait for conversations around this, and for you to dazzle me with your insight plus ideas.

Once again, a thank you to members of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation team- especially Jesse Brackenbury- who were open to my ideas, and provided the spark that inspired me to quickly put this together.