Weblog Entries for February 2006
February 26, 2006
Some Gradgrindian hard facts on word-of-mouth..
I pointed to this discussion thread [corrected link, see comments below] about Word of Mouth the other day. I wanted to share Paul Marsden's contribution here.
Skeptic says - "'WOM' IS just a buzz phrase, just keeps consultants in employment. Clients like me need real facts and need to use proper, paid for communications."Hello Skeptic person - so you've obviously read the Deutsche Bank study that shows that only 14% of 'proper paid for communications' (mass marketing) show a positive return on investment.
And you've no doubt read that in the UK - word of mouth recommendation rates actually predict revenue growth (validated in the banking, supermarkets, phone network and car manufacturing sectors) - whereas the amount you spend on 'proper paid for communications' don't.
And you know, of course, that because positive WOM is the consequence of delivering an experience above expectations - it means its the ultimate acid test in marketing. You can't hype and spin your way out of mediocrity when it comes to WOM - you have to deliver a superior product or service experience.
Tough medicine for marketers who reduce their discipline to doing ads.
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1)
February 24, 2006
links for 2006-02-24
-
Tony reckons that charging for his next series of Podcasts will be an interesting experiment on the part of Ricky Gervais. So do I.
Thinking too much?
I don't subscribe to many email newsletters, but Steve Davis's is one of them. Here are a couple of paras from a recent one on the theme of listening.
Our modern society has a love affair with thoughts and thinking. And for good reason. For without them, there'd be some pretty big voids in our world. Where would education be? How about science, engineering, economics, and politics? So many pillars of our culture rest on the advances we've made in our thoughts about things that it's no wonder we value them so much.Steve goes on to talk about how thinking may actually get in the way of listening and argues for presence being more important. Something that resonates with me. I'm increasingly interested in the practice of silence in meetings as I think this begins to bring to the surface just how much noise many of us are semi-consciously making inside our heads. And when we start to attend to that, we might start to realise the extent to which we are so busy interpreting other people that we're not really experiencing them at all. And I say "we" because I hope I'm not the only person who does this!Any strength, if overused, can become a liability. I believe this is also true of this tool we call "thinking." I believe that many of the ailments that plague modern society come not only from an increase in environmental stressors, but also from our response to them. As the pace picks up and our thinking becomes more complex, it become that much more difficult to quiet our minds--a common complaint made by many people today.
Productivity threatened
Let me introduce you to the guy in this picture, who has become a serious threat to my productivity lately. He is my alter ego, a Mage in World of Warcraft. This is an example of a MMOG, that is a massively multiplayer online game. MMOG's are computer games played by massive (surprise) numbers of players who collaborate in the playing of the game over the net.
Of course, I decide to try WoW for strictly professional reasons. I felt I needed to understand the MMOG phenomenon from the inside, as I think it's an interesting indicator of what people want technology to do. Not, strangely to indulge in aimless geekdom, but to play together.
Anyway, that was the rationale. I have to say World of Warcraft is, so far, massively entertaining. I certainly have an addictive and compulsive personality and I have to admit several very profound posts are not being written here because of an urgent need to perform alchemy, learn about herbalism and slay numerous very colourful monsters.
If you fancy a somewhat more profound insight into the future of the Web, you could listen to this podcast in which Tom Coates narrates this presentation about Web 2.0. Fascinating. And I see Tom fits this stuff in around World of Warcraft too. I see he has two characters there. I'd quite like to run into one of them. Not sure about the Warlock though.
Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
The impact of technology
Hugh's fallen in love with his new tablet PC and it shows.
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Market Research Conference
James and I are giving a talk at the Market Research Society Conference later this month. This should be interesting as I've not been particularly appreciative of the MR industry in this blog. We're talking about Blogs and Podcasts.
The MRS have a discussion forum linked to the conference, and I noticed the following provocative comment in a thread about Word of Mouth (WOM).
'WOM' IS just a buzz phrase, just keeps consultants in employment. Clients like me need real facts and need to use proper, paid for communicationsI replied - including how the notions of "proper" and "paid for" relate to each other - and some of what follows is interesting too.
February 22, 2006
The value of the book in you
Periodically, people inform me that I should write a book about... well whatever it was I was talking about that they'd probably heard enough of. I dare say this happens to a lot of us.
I find this suggestion easy to resist because I know how hard it is to write just one chapter of a book. I rationalise that writing books is a waste of time, based on purely anecdotal evidence from one or two disillusioned authors I know.
But I have been given pause for thought by this survey: The Business Impact of Writing a Book. This is based on a survey of 200 authors of business books. Here are a few fab facts. I always take these sorts of percentages with a generous pinch (huh?) of salt, but looking at the whole report, a coherent picture emerges.
39% of authors reported a strong or very strong influence on improving relationship with current clientsAs for the discontent, I was not surprised that authors were underwhelmed by their publishers. Many find they invest their own money in promotion, and it's clear that there's a lot more to this than the writing and hoping for sales. A great deal more revenue comes indirectly to authors rather than in book sales.
84% of authors reported a strong or very strong influence on brand improvement
74% of authors reported a strong or very strong influence on publicity and PR
53% of authors reported a strong or very strong influence on their ability to charge higher fees
Some of the best parts are the verbatims from authors, which I think make fascinating and provocative reading. The full report is not cheap at $175 so most of you will find the highlights quite enough. But if you are giving serious thought to writing a book, it could be a very good investment, considering the vast amount of time you are about to devote to the project. There's a lot of experience there to draw upon.
Disclosure: Mike Schultz sent me a completely free preview copy of the report so be warned that this post is influenced by The Hawthorne Effect. (I've been reading about that in the book Connected Marketing, on which I'll post more another time.)
February 20, 2006
links for 2006-02-20
-
"Modern life itself with ever more extreme differences between rich and poor... is the driver of... our likelihood of developing diseases that are derived from a suppressed immune system."
-
Sullivan quotes a commenter: "Few things are more evanescent than good conversation, yet few things are as good for the soul."
-
Hugh's nice riff on the future of blog consultants
Ceaucescu moment
Jack Yan reports another example of marketing folks not seeming to get online media. He relates it to the recent Wall St Journal piece trashing blogs. I try to follow a self-denying ordinance so as not to get drawn into arguments about this. In the end, like Hugh, I find the debate feels a bit irrelevant.
Still I find myself provoked to dig out this online video of Nicolae Ceaucescu (one I've used before), as a reminder of the dangers of "misunderestimating" noisy crowds...
Waiting
Chris Corrigan has this great observation about waiting.
The second kind of waiting is the one that really fascinates me. This is waiting when we are fully engaged in the present. The most powerful experience I have ever had of this was when my children were born. Being with my partner through two long labours was a very interesting kind of waiting. Time starts to do funny things - it gets shifty and stretchy, and your awareness of it detaches and solely rests on the emergent moment. A child will soon be born, and the best you can do is to be fully alive to that possiblility. Distraction serves no purpose. In fact, with our second child, my partner commented that at one point it felt as if she was living in a ghost world. As we walked around with her living through this long and low grade labour (40 hours!) she noted that none of people we were walking past had any idea of what was going on between us and within her. She felt in the world but not at all a part of it - like a ghost. But she was deeply within the moment.I'd quite like to start a meeting with this story. So often we rush into meetings without allowing the possibility that something completely new and unexpected could happen. Often, folks try very hard to legislate against it.This is a deep presencing. It is waiting for something to emerge, something life changing, possibly life threatening, and yet with no way to know how it will all unfold. Radical trust into the moment, radical readiness to accept what will come.
Client sophistication
Ross Dawson kicks off a promised series of posts on megatrends in professional services with one on client sophistication. At first, I thought this was just going to be telling us about how tough clients are these days. Ross talks about pressures on costs, but also about collaboration. (I read this in the context of some his other posts, such as one on moving beyond zero-sum thinking.) He gives the example of ABN Amro:
The downside of increasing client sophistication is that you can't fleece your clients, and you can't survive your whole career on what you learned in college. The upside is that sophisticated clients help you to develop your own capabilities, they understand what rewards they need to provide to get the best, and they know how to work with you so you can do your best. Investment bank ABN Amro runs a training program for its fund manager clients that gets them to play the roles of banker and fund manager in order to teach them trading techniques, how to use their high-value research, and even how to use ABN Amros proprietary trading models. The advantage for ABN Amro is that their clients understand better how their bankers work, and in turn what it takes to get great service from them.On the one hand, information travels very freely these days, so pulling the wool over client eyes gets riskier and riskier. On the other hand, most of us experience some form of information overwhelm so it's potentially easy to get into relationships that resolve down to catching each other out - for what isn't known. Ross is arguing for something more facilitative... where both sides get to explore the unknown together - I expect ABN have as much to learn from their training as their clients do.
My second cent: maybe it would be less loaded to talk about sophisticated relationships rather than sophisticated clients?
February 17, 2006
links for 2006-02-17
-
"Owning a communications network is rather like being the in posession of Tolkien’s Ring. It slowly corrupts and drives mad the keeper."
-
VC David Hornick tells how his eight-year old became his latest client for what sounds like adventure capitalism. Via Declan Elliott
-
Stowe Boyd's advice for the bloglorn. Good advice for bloggers who want more traffic (my advice is not to get obsessed with traffic)
-
James calls a spade a spade. UK indentity cards scheme=gravytrain for vendors and probably futile as a security measure
Desperation?
Steve Yastrow reports a speech by John Stratton, CMO of Verizon. Here are the first 4 of the 8 points he made, according to AdAge.
1. Your clients are absolutely in trouble and they are looking for you to save them.I wasn't there and I may be taking this out of context... but he sounds like a desperate man. More so when you get to point 5:2. What you've been selling for the last fifty years no longer works.
3. Major marketing money is going to be in motion in the next decade and no one really yet understands exactly where it will land, if it even will land, or if it will just disappear altogether.
4. Before they figure out where to put their money, your marketer clients will hire and fire agency after agency, seeking someone, anyone, who can tell them where they might go next.
5. CMO average tenure, already famously brief, will get even shorter as CEOs begin to recognize how much money they are blowing on antiquated media plans.I can't help thinking this speech reveals what sucks about some agency-client relationships. The client's job is just to dish out the budget, and the agency's role is to provide the butt to kick when it doesn't work.
I'm sure Stratton is right about the need for radical thinking, but CMOs had better not wait for agencies to do it for them. What about something a little more collaborative and less blaming?
Controlling the jelly?
James has been talking about blog monitoring and nailing jelly, reflecting on our shared experience of helping organisations keep track of what's being said about them online. The essence: blog statistics are a bit unreliable and convey a very abstracted notion of the messy reality of conversations in the blogosphere. There's just no substitute for actually reading - and better still participating in - the conversations.
I think this is part of the shifting paradigm of what some are calling Marketing 2.0 (to go with Web 2.0). Forgive the self indulgence, but I'm going to quote myself from 18 months ago. What sort of dance are we taking the brand to?
For conventional branders, it's an 18th century ball. This is to be the introduction to society of a young lady. Her attendants fuss about each detail of her attire, her girdle is tightened, last-minute tips are whispered explaining exactly how to move. This is important, because upon her entrance to society, everyone will be watching. There is a certain way of doing things that will make the crowd at the ball behave in the desired way.Top-down "creativity" (eg Barclays' silly signage initiative) looks clumsy set against the less controlled but way more engaging approach of empowering individual employees to tell the brand story their way.But our debutante is in for a shock, when she discovers the real world is not an elegant ball, but a rave party in Ibiza. Her grand entrance goes quite unnoticed amid the uproar. Her elaborate and cumbersome costume is an encumbrance. As she looks around at the scantily clad crowd having fun, she realises she'd much rather have a lot fewer layers. And it would be more fun to drop the predetermined pose and stary gyrating with whichever body comes closer. She throws off her clothes, drops the posture, and gets sweaty.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
February 16, 2006
links for 2006-02-16
-
Skype does a deal with 3 to give users access to VOIP for a fixed monthly fee
-
Towards the end, an interesting report on Lego open sourcing its products (thanks to for spotting it.
-
Seth asks: Is "I accept responsibility" the new "Your call is very important to us"? Probably.
The pitfalls of craftsmanship
There's an nteresting - and somewhat depressing - article in the Guardian by Richard Sennett: Out with the old. It casts another light on the problem Douglas Rushkoff identified, mentioned in my recent post.
The consultant embodies the new ideal: flitting from company to company, getting a quick fix on problems, recommending changes, then departing, leaving the consequences for others to sort out, the consultant's skill is not based on doing one thing well, in one place, with sustained relations with other people.My outtake: something about recognising the value of craftsmanship and seeing a difference between the profoundly new and the merely novel.The person who, by contrast, has the work ethic of a craftsman will dig into problems, acting on the impulse to get something right; this is a psychological strength, but sends a negative social signal - the stubbornness and obsession that fuels craftsmanship slows you down. The craftsman is likely to seem dysfunctional in a culture of innovation and change.
Hat tip to Mark Lloyd.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
Two sorts of consultation
By accident, two British Government efforts at consultation have come my way today.
The first is contained in the Guardian News Blog, where this article, How should we fund an African NHS? appears. At the foot of the article is this intriguing paragraph:
Guardian Unlimited readers can post their thoughts below or direct to Hilary Benn at the DFID website. GU has agreed to be DFID's media partner to garner public comments ahead of the development white paper in the summer.Quite an interesting role for a newspaper blog to play. Maybe Hilary Benn needs to start his own blog... but at least this effort provides some open-ended ways for folks to comment.
An altogether more lamentable example fell into my hands this morning. It's a leaflet titled, "Help us decide the future of National Lottery support for the Arts and Film, Sport and Heritage ". This so-called consultation is, in fact, one of the most loaded pieces of market research I've ever seen. There are seven closed-ended questions about lottery funding and this one is entirely typical.
Lottery money has provided a fantastic legacy of sporting facilities from playground to podium including many swimming pools, playing fields, sports halls and athletics tracks. We believe it has also been key to improving signifcantly the performance of British athletes at the Olympic Games, helping our athletes compete to the best of their ability and win medals for Britain. Do you agree?After such an introduction, I was only suprised that they still managed to provide a checkbox for "disagree".
(There's a final open-ended section for further comments which looks fairly ridiculous following several pages of this breathless propaganda.)
David Wilcox and Lee Bryant recently posted a thoughtful essay on the problems of getting genuing public participation, the key thought being this (their words, my emphasis)
At the heart of these issues is the question of power and where it lies. Regardless of the quality of techniques employed or facilitation provided, if a participation exercise consists of a powerful body (e.g. a government department) inviting limited submissions on pre-determined questions from the disempowered, then the power imbalance built into the consultation will cast doubt on the results. Power is derived most obviously from being able to choose and frame the questions and the type of language used; but it is also important to consider who is asking the questions, when and how they are asked, and of course who can answer.This laughable effort from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is a shocking example of how not to do it.
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
In the box: revenge of the geeks?
Prompted by several friends, and finally by some excellent posts from Marc Babej, I've read Douglas Rushkoff's latest, Get Back in the Box. This is one of the best non-fiction books I've read in a long time. It's one of the few business books that I've read to the end.
If you don't have time to read the book, Marc's three posts above give some of the highlights of Rushkoff's thinking.
The idea that resonates most for me is Rushkoff's attack on the "business of business". This is the popular idea that what matters is not expertise in, or passion for, a particular product or service; instead what gets popularised is the notion of genius business leaders who can flit from one industry to another, without much real interest in what industry does. The result: organisations that get distracted with gimmicks instead of putting their energies into creating good products. (This ties in to Jim Collins' observation, in Good to Great, that truly great companies did not have superstar leaders imported from afar; they usually had humbler leaders steeped in the business.)
This particular malady is very prevalent in branding and marketing, where gimmicks so often triumph over substance. Ruskoff puts this rather eloquently talking to Marc here:
Most executives today are career managers. Managing is a specialization that is, almost by definition, divorced from the product, and branding is the only thing these folks come in contact with. If you lack the knowledge to measure your success in terms of the quality of your products, then the replication of your image in the media space becomes your standard for success. Managers who are disconnected from their products will necessarily care more about their own careers than the companies they are supposedly leading, too. Hell, theyre going to flip jobs, anyway. Its become a generic position.Branding also plays into managers notions of fame. Like everyone else, they experience the world through mass media, so they want the world to experience them through mass media. It boils down to a cult of celebrity. And that celebrity - more than competency in a particular industry - leads to big salaries in this upside-down business universe.
This gets to the heart of something that has long troubled me about the notion of being a branding or marketing consultant - it's all too easy to be another diletante*, purporting to have communication skills that are applicable to all sorts of businesses, whilst not really understanding any business well enough to know what one's talking about.
What Rushkoff argues will become even more significant as Web 2.0 applications gain ground. It's why we're seeing the debates about the future of Venture Capitalism when funding becomes less signficant a challenge for start ups, and passion and enthusiasm and the ability to sustain the idea become more important. It's also a big part of why big agencies are right to be panicking these days.
(This perspective may also change how we consider the kerfuffle over A listers vs the Long Tail. Those who seem over-distressed about the power of the As are probably putting too much emphasis on the ego and not enough on the expertise; worrying about charisma instead of conversation, with too much focus on the nodes and not enough on the links.)
James and I have been having interesting conversations with organisations that are getting into the idea of blogging and other ways of collaborating with customers. What they are beginning to realise is that to blog well, you really have to be knowledgeable and passionate about your business. This kind of expertise, whether inside business or among key customers, has long been derided as geeky or fanatical - but now it needs to be valued much more highly (see James' post on Why Hells Angels Know Best). It may be time for the revenge of the geeks.
* There's a baby I don't want to throw out with the bathwater here: let's not confuse the dilettante, defined here, as an amateur who engages in an activity without serious intentions and who pretends to have knowledge (my emphasis) with the bricoleur defined here as a person who creates things from scratch, is creative and resourceful: a person who collects information and things and then puts them together in a way that they were not originally designed to do
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (3)
February 15, 2006
links for 2006-02-15
-
Antony Mayfield ponts to some interesting research suggesting why online conversations often go awry
February 14, 2006
links for 2006-02-14
-
Chris points to this comment, (and explores further): "In my experience, when the issue seems to be free speech, the deeper issue usually has to do with responsible *listening*."
February 13, 2006
Podcast: Zopa Revisited
A few days ago, James and I revisited two of the founders of Zopa, James Alexander and Dave Nicholson. Zopa is the "eBay for money" who I first podcast about in April 2005. We've produced an edited version of our new conversation as another podcast.
We spoke to them in a noisy Italian cafe in London, so you'll hear a fair bit of background noise - but it's a very interesting discussion. I've done some reasonably detailed notes below giving the gist of what we talked about.
For me, what stood out most was the comment some of Zopa's customers used: the idea that Zopa is a way of lending/borrowing that is "more interesting than interest". What the first year of operation is showing is the value many users place on the human connections and stories behind the financial transactions. This social value is one of the keys to success in open source marketing: it's not just a story about better prices. It may remain a big challenge for Zopa to beat the banks but if it does so, this humanising is going to be very hard for traditional institutions to match. The social value is the reason many Zopa members are quite willing to put in the extra work needed to get to grips with an innovative way of lending and borrowing.
Download the Podcast - 18m 48s - MP3 (10.7MB)
Podcast RSS feed for iPodder etc.
Show notes
0 00 Introduction0 26 What's the business model for Zopa? Dave: Basically an online marketplace where people can borrow and lend, person-to-person. Because it's not a bank, both borrowers and lenders get a better rate. We take a small fee for matching lenders and borrowers and we manage the entire process. It's a very secure site, we take a lot of security precautions. We've over 50,000 registered members, millions of pounds transacted, and no bad debts. We've had missed payments but those are now back on track.
2 09 What are some of the lessons you've learnt in your first year? When we launched we got a lot of interest. One of the challenges has been turning that interest into transactions. We've been working on our process to convert that interest into transactions. There's been a translation of Zopa from a good idea, to a great idea that people act on.
3.35 James A: My biggest personal learning, probably common to all startup: there are some things that take time. We got a lot of Nos from partners that after six months turned into Yeses, though nothing fundamentally changed.
4 09 Dave: For me it's been how great our members are, how much the endorse/advocate us, how helpful they are, with lots of suggestions and advice.
4 40 Dave: Messaging has been important, so borrowers can leave a message for those who are lending to them. Some lenders love to get messages from borrowers, why they're borrowing and how they're using the money. Understanding the people behind the user name has been really interesting, a real talking point for our members.
5 47 Johnnie asks about the role of telephone sales people. Dave: Value of the role of talking to people on the phone, it's been reassuring to members, they've made a real difference. Hearing a voice on the end of the phone has made a difference to people.
6 55 James A: Having the telephone staff in the same room as the rest of the Zopa team has been deliberate.. reducing the barrier between us and our members.
7 15 Dave: Ever since launch, we've had a word-of-mouth recruitment channel.. We also do a lot of the online marketing you'd expect any business to do. James A: Having the best borrowing product in the country means you get a lot of traffic... high on the best buy tables...
8 16 Dave refers to Seth Godin's notion of flipping the funnel, using a blog, getting members to use tools like del.icio.us tagging to help Zopa succeed. It's very non-traditional marketing.
9 00 James C: Do you have more lenders of more borrowers? James A: We have slightly more borrowers Dave: It's surprisingly balanced, we expected a lot more borrowers than lenders.
9 50 Johnnie asks about imitators. Dave talks about Mogo, which looks like Zopa but is doing something quite different, and Prosper, a new competitor with a slightly different angle.
10 40 James A thinks it's fantastic that Prosper have launched... supports the idea that the model will work... it's good news we've got a competitor, we'll learn a lot from them
11 09 Dave talks about Prosper's group functionality, getting borrowers to form groups. Further discussion of the possible benefits of this for social trust. Pushes some of the recruitment work out to members, might be a viral way to build business, might also be a slow way to build busines... worth watching.
12.34 Zopa plans to open in the US in Q2.
12 45 James C asks what a Zopa customer looks like. There are some common elements - early adopters, a very high level of interest in online activities such as blogging, financially pretty savvy, but in many ways very diverse... not a stereotype.
14 40 James A: Customers challenge us to continue to simplify, to drive on simplicity to make it easier to use Zopa. Members to date have been extremely tolerant of having to do a lot of work themselves. Some members like the detail but others want a much easier, hands-off approach.
15 48 James C asks about the social element. James A quotes customers saying "it's more interesting than interest... interest is really boring" So the element of involvement is part of the attraction, not just the higher rates. Seeing what people are using their loans for. There are some really human stories in there. Story of a lady who recently got divorced, thanking Zopa members for allowing her to buy a caravan so she can continue to take her children on holiday.
17 45 Dave explains they're going to look at increasing the ways for members to say more about themselves, share photos etc. "People love the idea of expressing themselves online."
18 10 Drawing it a close, a question about ideas for expanding into other markets. Lots of enthusiasm for this but also a desire to focus on improving the Zopa product.
February 12, 2006
links for 2006-02-12
-
Jeff Jarvis says "Big advertisers and big agencies are chickenshit. They need to grow some balls or else they’ll find new competitors running circles around them"
-
Tom Guarriello summarises Malcolm Gladwell's latest, exploring the "dynamics of three disparate, but structurally-similar, problems: homelessness, police brutality and automobile emissions"
-
As companies proliferate produts for diverse customers, their gains may be outweighed by the complexity. Via cph127
-
More good stuff from Jarvis: "Too many people judge interactivity by the worst of it... This, I think, comes mostly from people who wish they could dismiss interactivity, and the internet and blogs with it."
-
Sonia Mikich: "I hereby refuse to feel badly for the chronically insulted. I refuse to argue politely why freedom of expression, reason and humour should be respected."
-
Euan asks 'So in the context of time consuming knowledge management practices.. what is all this knowledge that we get so much value from "capturing" "extracting" or even "harvesting"? And perhaps more pertinently - what's the point?'
-
Nick Cohen argues "this is not a clash of civilisations but a civil war within the Islamic world between theocratic reaction and the beleaguered forces of liberty and modernity."
-
Earl Mardle advocates a networked solution to Sydney's water shortages... one that empowers the mass of individuals, rather than chanelling fund to big companies
The folly of assumptions
Howard Mann's joke made me laugh.
Two beggars are sitting side by side on a street in Rome. One has a cross in front of him. The other one the Star of David.Many people go by and look at both beggars, but only put money into the hat of the beggar sitting behind the cross. A priest comes by, stops and watches throngs of people giving money to the beggar behind the cross, but none give to the beggar behind the Star of David.
Finally, the priest goes over to the beggar behind the Star of David and says: "My poor fellow, don't you understand? This is a Catholic country. People aren't going to give you money if you sit there with a 'Star of David' in front of you, especially when you're sitting beside a beggar who has a cross. In fact, they would probably give to him just out of spite."
The beggar behind the 'Star of David' listened to the priest, turned to the other beggar with the cross and said: "Sol, look who's trying to teach the Goldstein brothers about marketing."
The role of Jaffa Cakes in facilitation
As a facilitator, I pay attention to effective interventions in group discussions. Of late, I've found one of the most effective has been the introduction of a plateful of Jaffa Cakes to a meeting. I notice that this seems to generate an immediate rise in the sociability and general good humour of particpants. Ever the scientist, I have carefully introduced other stimuli such as a bowl of grapes or a selection of healthy cereal bars but found the impact, so far, nothing to compare with the Jaffas.
Ok, I'm being slightly facetious here. But it's worth noticing the impact of environment on meetings. It's especially interesting to note the impact of some very small changes in that environment.
It's often thought that in order to stimulate creative thinking, it's necessary to move to a very wacky, very stimulating venue, with lots of bright colours and interesting furniture. Actually, I think that sometimes leads to a kind of cognitive overload. That is part of a wider problem of confusing a creative atmosphere with a highly stimulated or adrenalised one, a problem I see in a lot of brainstorming. In reality, a very small intervention can often make a more useful difference.
I also know full well that this particular trick will not always work. In fact, now that I've identified it, it probably won't. So I'm not going to rely on Jaffa cakes as a standard solution to getting meetings more sociable. But I think I will persist in being delighted by noticing how tiny, often accidental incidents, shift the ways people relate to each other.
Coca Cola for Winston Smith?
Danny G of AdPulp has discovered the slightly creepy website of The Beverage Institute for Health and Wellness. It has a Ministry-of-Truth-like quality, and turns out to be an outpost of Coca Cola, complete with a logo that feels like a cross between Coke and some strange religious sect. Danny says
But this site, an ersatz hydration nutrition portal with a MD advisory board and all, is just weird. Sections entitled "Are You Thirsty?" and "Hydration and You" in particular crack me up.For me, it's fairly typical of the way corporates are struggling to deal with changing attitudes, splintering off these odd outposts whilst trying to carry on regardless with their mainstream activities.
It reminds me of the flailing efforts of sugar-laden Sunny Delight to get away from an avalanche of bad publicity, which I wrote about here. Their "Real World Kids" site since vanished. Bizarrely, if you click to realworldkids.com you now get a page about Bold 2in1 Liquitabs. (Some of the decayed remains are preserved in this google cache) P&G sold the company off, and I see that the new owners have created a new iteration of the fan dance.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
This blog: officially good
So it's official, at least according to The Gematriculator: this blog is 81% good... and 19% evil.
Apparently, this puts it on level pegging with Hillary Clinton and a reassuring 20% more good than the blog of Jack Yan, who pointed to this measurement system.
February 10, 2006
links for 2006-02-10
-
Jeff's blog is getting better and better since he decided to make it more personal
WSJ and blogger ethics
I enjoyed David Weinberger's response to the Wall Street Journal's flimsy attack on the integrity of certain bloggers, for presuming to write about projects where they are acting as advisers. In the examples reviewed, the bloggers made a disclosure of their interest.
David gets the nuances, so perhaps I can indulge in a little oversimplification. (It's all right, I'm just one of those dangerous bloggers who has the barefaced cheek to express his views without the sanction of a committee of licensed ethicisists).
Here's how blogging works, as beautifully expressed last year by Adriana Cronin-Lucas, reported here by Suw Charman.
bias + transparency = credibilityI wonder if for some mainstream journalists there's a risk that piety + pseudo-objectivity = same fate as dinosaurs?
Disclosure: I like David Weinberger but he's never bought me so much as a cup of coffee. He has had curry with a friend of mine and I must confess, I don't know who paid for that.
February 9, 2006
Performance appraisal
How's this for a bit of er... 360 degree appraisal? Staff at a Vancouver coffee house give their boss some useful feedback.
Spotted by AdPulp via Darren Barefoot via Beyond Robson's Vancouver Blog.
UPDATE: Phil Gerbyshak has a spot-on comment on this: Employees tend to quit their bosses, not their companies
Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (3)
UK food blogger sought
James is looking for a UK based blogger who's really into the subject of food and has some time on their hands. He may have some work for you...
February 8, 2006
Another ebay for money
Prosper is a new site that acts as a clearing house for borrowers and lenders. It's a variation on the theme established by Zopa, who I've blogged(and podcast) about before.
One aspect that interested me is that they encourage borrowers to join in social groups, in the hopes that this will create greater social trust and less likelihood of default. Here's how they explain it:
Responsible people tend to stick together. At Prosper, a group can be official, like a school's PTA, or informal, like the neighborhood dog-walking club. In either case, one person is the designated group leader who confirms that everyone in the group is real.I don't know how that will work in practice, but I like the idea.When you join a responsible group with a good payment history, you get a good reputation by association, and lenders are more likely to offer good interest rates. But, belonging to a good group puts some pressure on you, too. If you stop making your loan payments, you'll not only tarnish your own reputation, but the group's as well.
Side note: I found out about Prosper from Zopa, who are quite good-humoured about this competitor - even though they claim Prosper is trying to stop them visiting their site.
Side note2: Jimmy and I are off to see Zopa on Friday to do a follow up podcast. Should be fun.
February 6, 2006
February 5, 2006
links for 2006-02-05
-
David Weinberger reviews GetHuman... publishing the simple shortcuts to bypass automated phone systems and talk direct to a human being. Just the sort of market disruption I love.
Russell's thoughts from abroad
Russell Davies has been in California at eg2206 and has a great writeup of the highlights. (This is one of the things I love about blogging... that if I miss a great conference, I still get to enjoy some of the learning.) Sounds like there was some effort towards making it an unconference though it was based around keynote speakers.
I've picked out a few snippets of Russell's reflections that I enjoyed, but if you've got time, read the whole thing..
It's easy these days to be seduced by the delights of little, 'authentic' local brands, we like the the specialists and the mom and pop size. Brands like that have real appeal and emotional advantages. But a big brand that uses its scale effectively (ie not to bully or bewilder people, but to connect and delight them) has a rarer and more interesting opportunity. We shouldn't use communications to try and make big brands small (which is often the temptation) we should use them to help big brands connect and make their scale something positive for people...That's a nice insight; a way to "Yes, And" the mega-ness of brands that we might otherwise simply reject as too domineering or clumsy.
There was some inspiration from the music biz too.
Walt Mossberg talked about the impact of the ipod etc. He made the point that the unit of exchange for music is the song; the album ain't that important (mostly) and no one cares about the label or the store. And that similarly the unit of exchange for TV is the show - no one cares about the network. Which seems an interesting way to maybe think about other businesses - what is the important unit of exchange and what's irrelevant?That sounds like a good point too... though on Sunday morning my brain isn't doing well at thinking of other examples. All offers welcome.
..I guess music 'works' because it continually sets up little expectations with harmony and rhythm. Sufficient regularity means you unconsciously recognise all sorts of patterns in the music and your brain expects certain resolutions to those patterns. But a good piece of music is constantly messing with that regularity - not so much that it causes the patterns to break down, but enough that you're kept attentive and interested and emotionally/neurologically engaged.Yes, and I think the need for requisite variety is what gets excluded from too many brands with their overlong identity manuals and top-down management. What gives them life is a mixture of some consistency and some variation. To my mind, that variation comes from giving people some freedom - like Southwest's cabin announcements, I guess.Or something like that.
...Games manufacturers strive to get as much game play and content into the processor in the console - this is limited by cost and technology and that. But Wright made the too-obvious-to-realise point that there are two processors involved in game play; the one in the box and the one in your head. And that if you could get those working together effectively you'd get much better games play.Oh yes indeed.This is another thing those of us in communications would do well to remember. The content isn't in what we make. It's in our audience's heads. They've got processors in there.
Create your own South Park
Thanks to Jack Yan for spotting this site where you get to create your own South Park character. I'm not sure how this fan site relates to the brand but I assume they're pretty happy to support this sort of co-creation.
Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
February 4, 2006
Not getting it
I took this picture on Thursday here in Islington. A few hours earlier, Graeme Souness had been sacked as manager of Newcastle United.
London's Evening Standard has long reported news in the style shown here, a teaser. It has always irritated me, so blatantly designed to make me buy the paper to uncover the mystery of who it is. (Similar examples go "Test Cricket Result" or "Shock Court Verdict".) These days, as well as being irritating, it strikes me as plain stupid. Has the Standard failed to notice how hooked up and connected we are these days? Do they seriously think they can succeed by positioning their newspaper as the way to get the latest news on anything? Surely they should give up this silly teasing and try to offer me something more substantial.
February 3, 2006
Conversation index
An interesting perspective on metrics from Stowe Boyd.
While working at Corante, I had the opportunity to peer at the stats for all sorts of blogs that we had going. And one thing that became really obvious is that sucessful blogs -- ones that were currently viable and vibrant, and those that were on a growth trajectory from their start -- shared a common characteristic: The ratio between posts and comments+trackbacks (posts/comments+trackbacks) was less than one. Meaning that there was more conversation -- as indicated by the number of comments and track backs offered by readers -- than posting articles. I will call this the Converation Index, just to put a handle on itA low index suggests more conversations, a high index suggests more ranting, less discussion.
It's a fun metric, and I'm sure Stowe intends it to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Stowe reckons his conversation index is 80 posts divided by 102 (comments and trackbacks) = 0.784.
FWIW, mine is 1198 posts divided by 1706 comments and 472 trackbacks - 1198/2178 = 0.55. Not too bad.
(For the pedants, I actually have some static pages on this site which are not blog entries and they're excluded from this calculation).
Why tell people you've changed?
A side note to my last two posts.
A few years ago, in response to complete turmoil in my life, I subscribed to boatloads of therapy. This included going on some fairly intense 96 hour retreats which involved a great deal of introspection and challenge. Most people ended those workshops on a high, feeling they'd made some useful breakthroughs.
I remember the advice we were given by our hosts. Which was: don't go back to your families and loved ones yelling about the amazing time you've had or how much you've changed. Remember that they've been leading their own lives too for the last four days. Go back and find out what they've been doing... be interested in them.
If you have really changed, they will see that for themselves. There's no need to tell them.
It strikes me that this would be wise counsel for many corporations that get carried away with their rebrands. If you are really changing, why do you have to tell us about it? Why aren't you letting us work it out for ourselves?
The answer is usually that advertised change is not real and the announcement itelf is a high risk gamble to try and make something happen.
For me, change is an organic and ongoing process in healthy organisations. No need to brag about it.
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
So what would I do differently?
Ok, so I had my little rant about Barclays latest branding initiative. Having doled out the snarking and sarcasm, it might be fair for me to propose an alternative approach.
First, if I had the task of turning Barclays around, I would forget the idea of trying to come up with the big idea myself, and I would never, ever, brag about how much of my employer's (shareholders') money I was throwing at it. What a preposterous and vulgar way of establishing the value of an initiative.
Come to that, I would abandon the whole idea of a big idea. The notion that anyone at the top of the organisation can identify and implement a single right solution to drive change is grandiose and delusional.
I would give up the absurd notion of implementing, across hundreds of different branches, a single monolithic approach to dealing with customers. That silly sign about lovely people walking through the door might just have charm applied to one hippy-owned coffee shop. The very fact of rolling it out across a whole network is inherently absurd. It calls to mind my favourite Woody Allen quote about his desire to "forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. And then see if I can get them mass-produced in plastic."
Then I'd forget the idea of using focus groups to "test" my approaches. Focus groups belong to the past, they are expensive, contrived and create an unnecessary barrier to the conversations that need to happen between a business and its customers.
Instead, I'd invite the branches to innovate. I'd present them with the problem I'm trying to solve, and encourge them to spend time with their customers trying to work out a better approach. Not with questionnaires, but in open conversations. It's been done before (see here).
And I'd encourage them to try lots of different approaches to improving customer service and the banking environment.
Then I'd set up a forum, online or maybe in person, where people from each branch could share with each other what they were experiencing and what they were learning. I'd invite the customers to take part too. I'd choose to have faith that good ideas would probably spread, without needing to be imposed from on high.
You see, I think the days of top-down branding are numbered. The value of consistency has been confused with a Bolshevik style rigidity. I think organisations need to celebrate experimentation and diversity. If they basically want to treat their staff and customers like unruly children, well fine. It's not my view. I am, when you push me against a wall, an optimist. I'd trust people to exercise their freedom to create good stuff and learn from each other.
If it all went tits up, I'd take the blame. If it worked at all, I'd praise the people who tooks risks and innovated.
If I were the marketing director of Barclays, I'd try to make the innovators look good, and I'd try to make my customers look good. I'd expect Barclays to reward me with a good salary and scope to do what I believed; I would not seek to make myself famous at their expense. If I were Jim Hytner, in brief, I'd try to get over myself.
It's probably the antithesis of what most branding consultants would tell you. So sue me.