Jan 23, 2014 | Communication, Governance, Management
Peoples reaction to a question, choice, or situation is always coloured by their experience, education, background, and a myriad of other qualitative factors. Where there is a divergence of views, it can become heated, as people invest emotionally in an outcome consistent with their existing mental frameworks. This step from a simple divergence of views to an emotional disagreement can be very small, and quick to make.
Mediating many disagreements over the years ,I have found that arriving at a sensible conclusion rather than just a compromise, is usually achieved in a three stage process:
- Recognise and agree on what is data, supposition, and opinion.
- Understand what the data tells you, and what you can agree on
- Ask what would have to be true for the parties to the conversation to alter their position on an issue.
This simple device of separating what we think from what we know, identifying the gaps, then filling them with data that is agreed serves as a useful tool to both diffuse volatile discussions, and usefully identify information gaps needed to be filled for a sustainable decision to be made, rathe than a compromise reached that falls apart under pressure.
Try it, next time ask “what would have to be true” when faced by a decision, emotion, and a lack of objectivity.
Jan 22, 2014 | Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Analytics is perhaps the buzzword of the moment, it seems to be attracting some of the same purveyors of snake-oil previously touting SEO as the saviour of all sins.
Amongst the detritus, however, there are some gems. Avinash Kaushik’s “Occum’s Razor” blog is one such gem, as is Scott Brinkers” Chief marketing technologist” blog. I am sure there are others, but the weight of numbers is with the snakes.
A mate of mine has a small business specialising in collecting data from HR environments, applying analytics and offering advice on areas of improvement. Tasks like board performance assessment are his bread and butter.
A few weeks ago in a casual conversation, he was down cast, as he had been beaten in a tender by a competitor, for the third time recently, when he knows from long experience the algorithms in his analytics are way more robust than those of his competitor. The difference in the tenders was made not by the analytics, but by the visual representations of the analytics. His competitor has invested in visuals, whereas he has continued to invest in the data integrity.
Visuals sell, as they offer simplistic answers to complex questions, but the question remains, how good are the answers.
Jan 17, 2014 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business
Every day I get stuff by email that purports to make me some sort of compelling offer, something that some dill out there kids himself (herself?) that I need.
It often starts:
Dear Alan (wrong spelling)
I am the CEO of Buttstuffers & Co, we are experts at something that we know will add 50% to your bottom line. Hopefully you are the right person for us to talk to. (I do not care who is the CEO of Buttstuffers, I do not know who they are, what they do, all I care about is how in hell they got my name, and yes, I am the right person, because I can ignore you, or more satisfyingly, tell you to piss off)
I would like to offer you a free ???????????, guaranteed to work for you, just to demonstrate our goodwill. (too late, my quotient of goodwill disappeared when you misspelt my name, and since then you have just managed to annoy me)
Download our free whitepaper now for more information. (Why would I do that, all it does is confirm an email address, and give you more information to throw more crap at me that demonstrates you are simply full of it)
We are experts at:
Marketing automation
Marketing ROI
SEO
Creating client relationships
Etc,etc.etc.
(If you were expert in any of this, which I seriously doubt, you would not have sent me this. In former times, you would be selling snake oil)
It gets really tiresome, marketing flatulence like this just gives those of us who genuinely care about what you think, and how your business can improve, and how our expertise and experience may assist, a bad name.
I tell my clients it is part of the price we pay for the tools that the web delivers, but nevertheless, flatulence smells bad irrespective of the cause.
Jan 15, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Customers, Marketing
Low interest and confronting categories present problems for marketers.
It is relatively easy to generate interest in a new beer, a car, fashion item, but what about insurance, toilet cleaner, and petrol?
Typically we frame communications in the context of a problem to be solved, a tried and true method, but it means always coming at the product from a negative perspective, “you have a problem, here is the solution”. The marketing focus is on the happy smiling person who has solved their cleaning problem, the financially saved flood survivor, and the cleaner injectors in your car from “Factor X” in their petrol. The approach works well, but it often seems that the ad we end up with is a compromise, the best of a modest lot.
The marketing challenge is that the fake happy consumer depicted in the advertising always comes at the product from the point of view of the problem, and whilst it is nice to solve the problem, the context is still one of a problem, and the smile is still fake.
The better way is to concentrate on the person, rather than the problem, make the owner of the problem feel better, even happy. Change the context from the problem to the person who owns the problem, and be human in the way the problem is discussed. This great post by Barry Feldman, one of the great contemporary copywriters, demonstrates how with a collection of poop campaigns, a confronting topic we all face. Make sure you watch the video.
It takes some magic to make a boring or confronting product sufficiently fun, engaging, informative and interesting to enable a piece of communication to work, but it can be done with imagination and some marketing courage. The age of social media offers a new array of tools, but there is no substitute for being brave, and stepping beyond the boundaries of the norm.
Nov 25, 2013 | Communication, Marketing, Social Media
In these times of abundance of marketing “stuff”, bloggs, video content, on line advice and templates, what we are missing is a deep intellectual understanding of the marketing process.
The tools have changed, but at its core, human behavior has not. We are still motivated by the same things our parents, and their parents were motivated by, it is just that the frills are a different color, and are in different places.
The first modern advertising man was the dodgy monk who first used Guttenberg‘s new fangled printing device to print church Indulgences, effectively forgiveness for sale, around 1439, leading to Martins Luther‘s 1517 nailing of the “95 Thesis” on the local, Beta version of facebook, the church door.
400 yeas later, enterprising newssheet vendors realised that their readers were a market that sellers of a range of products were prepared to pay to reach, and modern advertising was born, and honed by the Madmen, so beautifully exemplified by Don Draper.
Now we have all this internet stuff bombarding us day and night, and we seem to have forgotten the basic rule of communication:
The receiver has to do something with the message you send before it is communication.
The tools have changed, the drivers of behavior have not.
Nov 19, 2013 | Branding, Communication, Marketing
Advertising gets a lot of bad press, TV, radio, magazines, the backbone of advertising all last century have been supplanted by various digital platforms that accepts and places advertising, supposedly direct to a highly targeted audience, when they are looking for something.
Or do they?
Digital advertising has largely failed to live up to the hype, even while advertisers throw up to 50% of their budgets at it, and are often being at best gamed, at worst, ripped off.
Over a long period, I have found that whilst the tools of marketing have changed radically, the behaviour that drives those who use the tools, consumers, has not. This is a true now post digital, as it was when TV was the new bloke on the block.
A letter written by Bill Bernback in 1952 to the owners of Grey advertising worrying that the technicians were taking over from the “creatives” .
Great stuff.
Bill Bernbach’s contemporary David Ogilvy had a lot to say, his book “Confessions of an Advertising Man” first published in 1963 has a prominent place on my shelf. Even as the nature and mediums of advertising have changed completely, the foundations remain the same. Five of Davids “Ogilvayisms” have been put into Don Drapers mouth, and they all still hold true.
Great advertising still needs to tell a story that gets into your head somehow.
In a world bombarded by messages of all types, our visual and audio senses are grossly overworked, so how good it is on the very rare occasions when you see an ad that also engages our emotions to tell a story? This Guiness advertisement is such a piece of communication, an ad that tells a story, engages, brings a smile, and says something memorable, important about us and the brand.
As good as the Guiness ad is, I still think this Union Carbide ad for insulation is the best ad I have ever seen, and it comes from the 60’s by a company that did not survive its own stupidity.
