The volatile chemistry of trust

My friend in Portland, Stanley Moss, linked me to this interesting research from Stanford: Highly Trusted Brands Run More Risk of Offending Customers.

Researchers invented a new brand and presented it to two separate groups of consumers. One set got a version with a "sincere" brand personality; the others got an "exciting personality". The former started emails with "Hello" and the latter with "Hey". These personalities were carried through all the marketing material.

After a while, the researchers introduced a deliberate mistake in the service, corrected after a couple of days. After which reported "trust" in the sincere brand fell - but actually went up in the exciting brand.

You could look at this and try to form all sorts of explanations of the whys and wherefores. And try to calculate some kind of optimum brand personality and implement it.

My feeling is that could be a mistake. The chemistry of relationships is not easily predicted. I think the best thing is not to try to calculate a personality in the hopes of impressing customers; too difficult. Far better to find out what you really believe and care about as an organisation and present that, authentically. At least then you'll stand a chance of feeling good. Second-guessing the customer can sometimes be a waste of energy.

Inauthentic marketing: case study

I just managed to stop myself tossing a letter straight in the bin. It certainly deserves to go there.

But I just wanted to deconstruct it as an example of marketing that offends me.

I also think it's the kind of marketing that's going to work less and less effectively in future.

It opens with:

"We at Lincoln Financial Group are always looking for ways to help our customers ensure that their insurance protection is up-to-date with today's needs."

A bad way to start a letter. With a self-glorifying claim that immediately puts me on my guard. Are they always looking to help me? Or just looking for new things to sell me? Let's see what the rest of the letter says to help us answer this question.

It continues:

"based on the number of accidents that sadly happen in our fast-paced world, we are offering you the opportunity to increase your financial protection against accidental death."

Hmmm, suspicious. Are they claiming that there are more accidents these days? Not exactly, so what lies behind the ambiguity? It seems like another fear-based approach to selling.

Now, however, Lincoln Financial start to get into real sincerity overdrive:

"Because you are among a select group of valued Lincoln customers..."

Select is one of those favourite marketing adjectives that tries to flatter... but give me a break. Select probably means that Lincoln have done some data processing and identified a group of people they think they can sell to. There is no privilege here.

More importantly, are they saying "hey, actually, there are some customers who can die in an accident and we don't care!"?

Let's skip a couple of paras

"Of course, your existing cover... will provide a cash benefit whether death results from natural causes or from accidental means."

Now that is the first really useful bit of information in the letter. I wonder if they included it under compulsion.

"However, many people in the UK are looking carefully at increasing their protection against accidents."

Interesting assertion, not backed up by any evidence... I wonder if it's true. Of course even if it is true it's utterly irrelevant. More and more people in Britain are flying from Manchester Airport; but that's no reason for me to do so! The effect on me is to raise my suspicions further.

And hang on, they are trying to say I might want my family to get more money if I die from an accident than if I succumb to a sudden heart attack. Why exactly? If I'm dead, I'm dead.

"... before the day is over, accidents will have claimed the lives of 42 people"

Ah so now we do get a statistic (and it's sourced from the Office for National Statistics). Funny how they are happy to back up fear with numbers. Of course it also shows that when the day is over, around 55 million of my fellow countrymen will NOT have died in an accident... I wonder how many will have contributed money to an accidental death policy in vain?

"... in many cases creating severe financial hardship for loved ones left behind"

Yeah, but again why are they only offering cover against ACCIDENTAL death? I bet a lot of people will die today some other way! What happens to THEIR loved ones?

So the credibility and trustworthiness of the senders of this letter is now heading south at a rate of knots.

From this shaky platform they invite me to believe that:

"After a careful review of several independent companies we selected Avon Insurance plc - part of one of the UK's leading insurance groups - to provide this important protection to you."

Ahh... a careful review of what exactly? Of how much commission Lincoln will get ? And there is another of those copywriter's standby phrases "one of the UK's leading" which means nothing at all. "Leading" is a word often used to desribe a company that has no distinctive quality worth mentioning. Probably not the biggest (if that mattered), probably not the best... just one of the leading. And why don't Lincoln just name them anyway? They're very precise about the number of people dying in accidents, and very vague about who exactly they wish me to do business with.

But wait, the best is yet to come. The final sentence reads:

"But please note: if for some reason you decide not to activate the enclosed policy, please destroy it, as it is a valuable legal document and not transferable."

Eh? This smacks of a line crafted by some peddler of hypnotic language. What exactly do Lincoln imagine would happen if this "valuable legal document" fell into the wrong hands? They've just admitted it's not transferable so why the laughable cloak and dagger nonsense?

Of course from a moral point of view the entire communication is valueless. Or rather it is value-destroying. It is destructive of the trust and credibility of this company to me. And let's face it, the trustworthiness of most financial services companies here in Britain is not exactly at an all time high to start with!

What sort of organisational culture exists in a company that does this to its customers? Would really bright, enthusiastic people want to work there? If they treat their customers this way, how do they treat each other? What reasons are they giving me to trust them?

Now I guess that the marketing department at Lincoln will produce, for internal consumption, some metrics to show how effective this letter is. But what it won't measure is the subtle but long term damage it does to the credibility and repuation of the organisation.

Dubious "Metrics" of Emotional Intelligence

I've read and greatly enjoyed Daniel Goleman's stuff on Emotional Intelligence.

But I feel unhappy about his involvement with Hay Consulting where he endorses their impressively titled "Emotional Competence Inventory Accreditation" by saying:

"The ECI is the only instrument that incorporates the full depth of my research and that of my colleagues. Other instruments use the words "Emotional Intelligence" but the ECI is the genuine article."

Basically what we are offered here are a set of "tools" purporting to measure the Emotional Intelligence of people in organisations.

The language used raises red flags for me. Let's start with "instruments"... reminds me of the Spanish Inquisition's delightful instruction to its market researchers:"show them the instruments".

Instruments are great for showing what's going on inside engines. I really like to know how fast my car is going. But instruments for helping people manage relationships?

Then "tools". I use tools to fix machines.. the idea of a "tool" for use on living, breathing people does not appeal. This all smacks of the mechanistic model of the world which is so pervasive in business these days.

Hay continue:

Executive coaches can use the ECI to provide clients precise and focused feedback on their strengths and limits. Based on the feedback from a variety of rater groups (i.e. self, manager, direct reports, peers, others), the ECI indicates the specific emotional competencies where development is needed to enhance the individual's emotional intelligence.

Theres a nice list of all the things that Hay's little micrometer can measure for you.

So this company doesn't just measure Emotional Intelligence. It does it with precision. To me that is deeply implausible. These guys want us to believe they can say precisely how empathetic you are; they can identify precisely your level of trustworthiness and precisely the extent of your optimism.

Of course, some businesses are lapping this stuff up. They will love a device that tells them - let me guess - that one manager is 12.3% more empathetic/optimistic/charismatic/sociable than another. As if a human's qualities are some fixed thing.

For one thing, human attitudes and behaviour are contextual... a rating for any quality will give no idea of how a person will behave in different contexts. And a corporate culture can have a huge impact; it's not simply reducible to an adding up of individuals' test results.

For another, I deeply question the value of averaging feedback from a diverse group of people to form a picture of one person's character. (and I see here that the value of the research behind it is being questioned in many circles)

And what really concerns me is that these "instruments" provide beguiling numbers so that the users don't actually have to consult the evidence of their senses in assessing and relating to people. And they bypass what - in my personal experience - can be the most helpful thing for developing emotional intelligence in a group, which is direct and honest feedback from one person to another. Not some empty "average" but specific information about specific behaviours and their impact, good or bad.

Businesses need to develop the sensitivity and self-awareness to actually engage in the mysteries of human relationships in a spirit of spontaneity rather than one of measurement and control. It's not about giving out points for personality.

It's about getting over the fear of honesty and authenticity in communication. That fear will - I think - be made worse not better by running popularity contests and handing out school reports on what people "must do better".

I don't dismiss psychographic tests of various kinds out of hand; but I think this material presents such work in a very bad light. I think it's a sell out to the mindset that says "You can only sell things to businesses by giving them hard numbers".

But perhaps there is one thing that the Hay Group will identify with some of their remarkable "precision": the sort of people who actually buy this may be precisely the managers who need to learn about what real emotional intelligence is. Cos this set of instruments is not it.

Oh and here is my friend Julian Burton's image satirising such "instruments" for managing human beings. I think it speaks volumes.

Medinge Moments

Just back from another extraordinary gathering at Medinge, where the community that has produced Beyond Branding meets each summer. I was planning to keep this blog updated from there but I'm afraid I was distracted from the continuous stimluation of the debate. And where else could one sample the multi-culutural exprience of hearing Benny Hill sketches about an Indian interviewing a chinaman presented by a Hong Kong-born New Zealander in response to questions from an Englishman living in Norway?

The power of community

Earlier today I was writing about passion brands and the unacknowledged value of community.

I got a small but interesting example of this principle in action when I visited Ton Zijlstra's blog to find that he's opened a separate blog on his planned abandonment of Microsoft.

"Do I want to get rid of Microsoft on my system that functions as a server? Yes, it's high time. I'm tired of patching security holes that should not have been there to begin with.

Tired of error messages that offer no explanation nor a route to solve it yourself, only the possibility to send a report to the vendor. Tired of dozens of errors and entries in the registry that should not be there, and are only there because the system makes them and then reports them back to me (if I'm lucky)."

Within a few hours, Ton gets 7 comments from around the net offering encouragement and practical help with the trials of converting.

If I put to one side the pros and cons of Microsoft, I think it's very interesting how quickly the Open Source community rallies to help Ton make the change.

And as I blogged earlier, the real value being created in these exchanges does not show up at the stock market.

The Power of Acknowledgement

I met Tony Quinlan this afternoon. Tony's a big believer in the power of storytelling and needless to say this made for a long and very satisfying conversation in which we discovered a number of shared prejudices.

We got on to the topic of Acknowledgement. A big favourite of mine.

I think acknowledging other people's experience can be remarkably powerful, especially in situations of conflict. Yet it's something we as a race are incredibly bad at doing.

What we like to do is offer our interpretation of what someone tells us, or rush to suggestions on how to avoid having certain feelings, rather than simply acknowledge them.

Time and again, I find that when I stop and simply let someone know I've heard what they said, and the way they said it, the quality of conversation improves for both of us. And when others do it to me, the impact is similarly strong.

Of course, marketing folk are particularly anxious to move customers along. God forbid we should truly acknowledge their experience, other than fleetingly and in an effort to sell them something.

Feeling a bit old? Never mind, buy this cream.

Feeling left behind? Never mind, drive this car.

Feeling tired? Never mind drink this beer.

I remember on September 12 2001 I was talking to an old friend who had invited me over for lunch. I actually felt unable to leave the flat, sufferering like many other people from the shock of the day before. And then I just said to him, "Oh, I realise I feel too afraid to go out of the door, just give me a minute or two to feel that." And after a few moments of acknowledging this fear, I quite rapidly felt quite happy to go on the visit.

Perhaps this all sounds very New Age but I think it's important.

Tony was in a playful mood so we did a round of "Gestalt Feedback". This is one of those very simple exercises that might seem trivial but often has a deep impact.

Tony told me a true and story of a somewhat stressful event. At the end, my feedback was guided by the principle: Simply say "I heard you say..." and then repeat some of the exact phrases heard in the telling of the tale. That's it, no comment, no interpretation and no sympathising.

Sounds a bit daft? Try it and see. The effects are different each time, but in Tony's case he said he noticed that he felt saw the events of his tale quite differently.. felt better about what had been an unpleasant experience.

Weird and wonderful. And another one for the case files on the power of acknowledgement.

And, true to this spirit, thanks to the team at Spectrum in North London for sharing this (and many other such exercises) with me.

Passion branding

Earlier today I posted to the Beyond Branding blog reflecting on how the book has become a kind of Passion Brand.

I first came across this idea in Alan Mitchell's excellent book, Right Side Up.
Martin Lindstrom has written here about passion branding from the producer perspective, and counts Lego, Harley Davidson among examples.

But what I'm intrigued by are brands that are driven not by a producer's desire to make money (however well disguised) but by a community's shared interests and excitements.

The net has made it possible for these sorts of communities to form and organise themselves. These communities have potential to create great value for members, often without money changing hands. They create real human value but economists won't pick it up. So I think they are often less well recognised than more conventional, more vulgar brands.

My recent entries have focussed on Movable Type which is a good example. The charge for the package is low (nil to personal users) and the value is high, in large part because support is offered by users in a forum.

The world of marketing gets fixated with the noisy brands - but over time I think we'll come to see them as inefficient and be suitably unimpressed. The real learning, and real value, is going to come from networks of people collaborating.

Keeping up with Tony Goodson

There's no use denying it, I have a deep competitive streak at times. As well as severe tendencies to obsessive-compulsive behaviour.

Both of these are showing themselves vis a vis this new blog.

I see that Tony Goodson is really getting the hang of Typepad blogging. He's fixed his categories so you can view his blog by category. Now I've been wanting to do that here... and now he's done it, I feel I absolutely have to keep up.

Because I've gone for Movable Type I'll have to go wrestle in the support forum for an hour or two. Of course I make things worse for myself by trying to decode answers to other related questions because I'm too impatient to go in there and ask for exactly what I want, and wait an hour or two for some nice person to help. And the obsessive-compulsive in me has some programme running about having to do this for myself... god forbid I ask anyone to help!

But now I've blogged these thoughts, which until now were just rattling in my brain, maybe I can think again. Ah, the benefits of blogging... building my relationship with myself!

Anyow, at least I have set up a category for this entry even if it's not visible to the outside world yet. So the category is "Blogs and networks" which should cover a multitude of sins. And then anyone who is sick of the self-referential blogging on blogging will be able (once I've learnt how to fix this) to avoid it.

But has Tony learnt how to embed pictures in his entries? Or how to do extended entries? And what new tricks is he going to come up with to impress me?

Leaving aside my competitive streak, Tony's blog has come on leaps and bounds. He has always had really great content, partly because he seems to surf to interesting places and mostly because he lets rip with what he really thinks and feels. This is the opposite of conventional marketing which seems mostly about putting on a reassuring face for the customer... but I think having attitude is a big plus in the emerging conversation economy.

But now Tony's hooked up with a really good blog package, all his material is presented so much better than in his pioneering version. Fantastic stuff.

My friendship with Tony has largely reversed the internet paradigm. It started incredibly human and real and is now mostly virtual. We met in London a few years' back (and thereby hangs a tale for another day) but he emigrated to Australia a couple of years ago. And thanks to the net, I think our friendship has remained incredibly strong. His blog has played a part in that, always keeping up to speed with what's going on in his life.

We've talked about doing a joint blog somewhere, just to see what happens. I certainly want to create an excuse to work with Tony... we just need a client who needs stuff done in the UK and Oz.

Even as I write, I see I need to create a friends category too. Or should that be mates? Or cobbers?

Blogging for Ourhouse

Welcome to the Ourhouse Weblog.

Blogging is something I've become increasingly interested in. Earlier this month, I set up the Beyond Branding Blog which is written with several of my co-authors. (The book is due out around October).

This site is in the early stages of development. I've chosen Movable Type as the engine... it seems to have come highly recommended and has a big community of users.

I like MT for its functionality, but also I like it as model for doing business. It was founded by a husband-and-wife team, is free to non-profits and inexpensive to businesses. It grows and is supported by an extended network of users... a very different way of doing business from companies that try - and so often fail - to control everything.

The learning curve is pretty steep and sometimes I wish I'd gone for their Typepad variation... but anyhow, I decided to go this way and now I'm going to try to make it work.

Over the next few days, I'll be playing around with the various elements of the design - and hopefully getting some help from friends with a bit more expertise than I have on my own!