Holistic Social Media

Leave it to Area 224 to bring two diametrically opposed concepts – Blood Sausage and Marketing Plans – together. Yum!

Blood Sausage. Blood Pudding. Black Sausage.

No matter what you call it, well, it is what it is. Sausage, made from blood.

In fact, here, verbatim, is the recipe, taken from the 1978 edition of the “Belgian Cookbook,” compiled by the Center for Belgian Culture of Western Illinois.

“10 lb. pork back fat, ground.

1 gallon beef blood.

7 lb. onions, ground.

Three 1 lb. loaves of dried bread, ground.

Salt, pepper and cinnamon to taste.

Casings.

Mix the ingredients. Fill the casing and make into links. Boil slowly. Doneness is tested by piercing with a needle. If no blood escapes, sausage is done. Makes about 20 lb.”

Now that you know how the sausage is made – what are you supposed to do with this knowledge?

Plan to make your own sausage.

See, the Belgians were (and are) frugal folks. Frugality is something I inherited from my Dad (full-bred Flemish chap that he was). (NOTE: “Frugal” does not necessarily mean “cheap.”) (NOTE: this is running dangerously close to being a post about Flemish Stereotyping.)

Frugality means using what you’ve got to work with. Maximizing your effectiveness – not necessarily your efficiency, but your effectiveness. Maybe thinking less about “marketing” or “social media” and more about “business.”

Blood sausage is frugal food. It may not be for everyone. BUT…

What can you mix up in your organization’s lab that maximizes stuff that’s sitting around?

We have the benefit of thousands of years of food science – who would think of making something like “Blood Sausage?”

And, darnit, the French call it “Boudin Noir.” The Portuguese call it “Chuorico Muoro.” Both are, I bet, more marketable names. But I digress.

The point? What’s one department doing (the department that has, say, pork back fat) that another department can learn from (the folks with the beef blood).

Where’s your dried bread?

Are your departments actually talking to each other?

Is it time to sit down with someone from the other side of your company’s world? Is it possible you can make beautiful sausage together?

Ages ago, there was one guy with one department of a large conglomerate we worked for. His division was getting no love from the rest of the company. But he kept coming down to visit with our marketing team because, well, he had “the thing” that we needed. Or, less about being the thing “we” needed — it was the thing that our clients needed. (He was thinking about this rather, uh, holistically. We like holistic marketing.) In a specific subset of our client roster — this thing was, bar none, “the thing.”

But we had too many gosh darn silos to be able to make it happen.

He left the company frustrated – but, since he was not able to find an audience for “the thing,” he took it with him.

Thriving Business. Solution that actually ended up sorta rocking his industry.

And, because he was able to find the right audience elsewhere, a nice little business. That the conglomerate is still unaware was the one that got away.

Let me ask you: Where’s Your Company’s Blood Sausage?