Embracing 'Unformation': The Difference is Clear

Show of hands: who here remembers the old ad campaign for “7-Up: The Uncola”? Of those of you who do, how many can connect it to a critical piece of information management? Stay with me; I’ll explain.

A Delicious Lesson From the Past
I’m a big believer in not reinventing the wheel. So as I am wont to do, I turned to the past while helping a client figure out how best to “sell” the concept of infogov to senior executives who love to throw technology at problems. And that led me to one of the most effective bits of marketeering in history.

7-Up’s breakthrough program was crafted to breathe life into what was already a 40-year old brand, primarily by differentiating it from the market-dominating colas of the day. Strange though it may first sound, our client is seeking something quite similar: a means to revive the pursuit of information betterment, primarily by differentiating “good” content from “bad.” 

So …
Where 7-Up gave us the Uncola,
I bring you Unformation.

Information Good, Unformation Bad
Infogov is most powerful when it is used not just to protect and leverage the information that’s most needed, but also to scrap what’s not. You know: all the document drafts and copies that clutter your inboxes and shared drives, the emails to customers that may promise things your established policies prohibit, the boxes of old paper that block the fire exit in your basement, the old records than serve no purpose but to delight opposing counsel in a discovery process.

All this is what I mean by Unformation: not the “good” content we (think we) can so readily identify, but all the other stuff that needs to be culled, categorized, and either kept or ditched according to your business rules.

A Taste of Something New
And isn’t that really the point? Not just to use technology to care for and feed your daily data – something that’s getting to be fairly commodity – but to bring discipline to the way you deal with everything else.

7-Up changed people’s thinking by embracing its “un”-ness and reframing the conversation. Like my client, you now can do the same, by countering the typical fixation on technology with a refreshing new message of your own.

Just for fun ...

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Steve Weissman | 617-383-4655
- The Info Gov Guy™
- Member, AIIM Company of Fellows
- Co-Founder, Information Coalition 
- Follow me on Twitter! @steveweissman