Never get out of the boat

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

the miles davis heuristic

While working in an indie record shop back in the day I picked up a quick rule-of-thumb that had been developed by the owners of the shop and the chain.

In evaluating the credentials and potential threat of any rival shops or even other shops in other towns we would head straight for the Miles Davis section.

Most rivals would stock Kind Of Blue and a few compilations, possibly Sketches of Spain and some of his 80s ouvre.

These shops would not be marked as a significant threat.

However those who stocked an extensive catalogue of Prestige era goodies and stuff like Bitches Brew and the Jack Johnson album were considered to be more serious competitors.

Turns out that one could make a decent stab at evaluating the competition from one data point, and be right more often than not.

Indeed, scientists Peter J. Rentfrow and Samuel D. Gosling from University of Cambridge, UK, and University of Texas at Austin, in their paper The Role of Music Preferences in Interpersonal Perception back this up.

Their findings confirm that 'individuals use their music preferences to communicate information about their personalities to observers, and that observers can use such information to form impressions of others:

'[The study] revealed that music was the most common topic in conversations among strangers given the task of getting acquainted...

...observers were able to form consensual and accurate impressions on the basis of targets’ music preferences.

...music preferences were related to targets’ personalities,

...the speciﬁc cues that observers used tended to be the ones that were valid,

...music preferences reveal information that is different from that obtained in other zero-acquaintance contexts.

In addition we are reminded of this nugget from his book, Life, in which Keith Richards describes how he and Mick Jagger initially clicked, in the early days before the Stones even existed as a thing.

He notes that they had almost identical tastes in music (blues, r'n'b) and an almost telepathic understanding, and agreement on which music was right and wrong.

He recalls..

'... It was either that's the shit or that isn't the shit.

No matter what kind of music you were talking about. I really liked some pop music if it was the shit. But there was a definite line of what the shit was and what wasn't the shit. Very strict.'

On occasion we've employed the Miles Davis Heuristic in hiring situations.

When it's hard to choose between two candidates, equal on every level, then asking them to provide a list of their top five albums of all time can work as a tiebreaker.

On one such occasion a candidate blew it by offering up a Sting album in their list.

Sting?

It was game over from that point.

Clearly, that isn't the shit.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

reports of Facebook's death greatly exaggerated

So, The Guardian reports on a study from Princeton University that claims Facebook is set to lose 80% of its users by 2017.

Indeed, according to the study, Facebooks's impending doom (sic) comes from 'comparing its growth curve to that of an infectious disease'.

While the twittersphere has erupted there's a couple of things to note about the article that might temper any death notions for the moment.

Firstly consider this quote 'John Cannarella and Joshua Spechler, from the US university's mechanical and aerospace engineering department, have based their prediction on the number of times Facebook is typed into Google as a search term.'

So things are already starting to smell a bit bogus.

Particularly when the report admits that 'The 870 million people using Facebook via their smartphones each month could explain the drop in Google searches – those looking to log on are no longer doing so by typing the word Facebook into Google.'

So that's 870 million from what Facebook report as a 1.2 billion monthly active user base, ie roughly 75%ish of users discounted from the off.

Secondly, read into the body of the article the claim is slightly less sensational 'Princeton forecast says it will lose 80% of its peak user base within the next three years'.

So, even if that prediction were to be true, dropping science on it a few rules come into play…

Retention double jeopardy:
All brands drop some users and the loss is proportionate to their market share (so big brands (i.e. Facebook) will certainly lose more but it’s a smaller proportion of their base.

Pareto law redux 60/20:
A bit more than half of Facebook's usage will come from the top 20% of users (peak user base) – the rest come from the bottom 80% therefore a drop of 80% peak user base is not a massive number, and will be balanced by….

Natural monopoly law:
Brands with more market share will continue to attract a greater proportion of light users.

And finally…

The law of buyer moderation:
Heavy users use less in the period after they were classified as heavy users and thus the flip may also probably be true of light users, they will use a bit more (i.e. regression to the mean) and some will become heavy users.

So, will Facebook be over in 2017?

Based on the data we have today, and barring any unexpected or random events in the near future that we can't possibly predict.

No.

**UPDATE**

Facebook's own data scientists have published their own humorous rebuttal which includes this observation:

'In keeping with the scientific principle "correlation equals causation," our research unequivocally demonstrated that Princeton may be in danger of disappearing entirely.'

thanks Phil Sheard and Ciarán Norris for the heads up.

ok, let's get your system 2 on for a minute

We've been describing the importance of recognising the extraordinary power of system one type mental processes in 'how-advertising-actually-works' as part of our planning process for a long time.

To make it fun and easy for clients to 'get it' there are many system one exercises that can be wheeled out to illustrate intuitive decision making, the many ways we fool ourselves and how we respond emotionally even though we might imagine we are thinking rationally.

I've used the famous bat-and-ball example, various card tricks and faux-hypnotism amongst others.

While this is great, there is perhaps a danger that it can sometimes feel a bit like smarty pants, parlour-trickery, so needs to be contrasted with some demonstration of the other side of the coin, the effortful system two thinking.

Here's a quick one that does the job, yet again it's from Thinking Fast and Slow.

So, if you've shown your client that they don't think as much as they think they think by flummoxing them with some system one self delusion then want them to turn on the system two juice, the following exercise* is handy.

[*As a short aside it's not advisable to do this excercise if you want to sell them anything immediately afterwards.

The amount of ego depletion post-task is likely to kick-in some heavy duty system one default-to-no risk aversion.]

To start, get them to make up several sequences of 4 numbers each, make them all different, and write each string on post-it note or something.

Place a blank piece of paper on top to cover your deck of numbers.

This excercise is called add-1.

Next start tapping a steady rhythm with something, about 122 bpm should suffice (if in doubt, imagine a bit of vintage house 88/89 style pumping) or ask the subjects to do it.

Ask them to remove the cover then read the four digits out loud.

Then after two beats, say a sequence in which each of the original digits is incremented by 1.

For example, if the numbers on the first post-it are 1-9-0-3, the +1 increment will be 2-0-1-4.

Got it? Geep them going with the rest of the sequences, keep feeling the rhythm.

After about 5 seconds or so it will start to get pretty hard.

Most people can just about cope with four digits in the +1 task, but if you want to make it harder, then wind it up to +3.

The amount of cognitive effort being used will be reflected physiologically in the dilating of the pupils of your subject, so it can also be useful to film them up close with your phone or something then play it back.

That's your classic system two demo.

Watch the knackered faces of your subjects after just a few seconds.

Then refer them back to their brief to you which contains a long list of things that they expect 'the consumer' to 'think'.

Then propose that, perhaps, a better approach is to simply do our best to get the advertising noticed and remembered by more people in more buying situations by making them feel something, make implicit associations and by appealing to the intuitive system one, who really runs 'tings.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

my hunch is that this probably qualifies as an anti #nudge

Firstly a recap on behaviour change 101.

For a behaviour to be changed or otherwise shaped then there are two principle conditions that need to be taken into account.

Condition number one concerns the motivating factors for the person or persons from whom the change is required.

More often than not the motivator will take the form of some sort of reward.

Condition two requires the new or modified behaviour to be easy for said persons to adopt.

According to nudge theory, the ease in which a behaviour is adopted can be influenced by how the choices are presented.

For instance, arranging the choice architecture in a way that people can be gently nudged in a certain direction without taking away their 'freedom of choice'.

Looking at the situation on this platform in a western Sydney railway station, one is inclined (and there's not necessarily any expert intuition involved) to surmise that this qualifies as an anti-nudge.

From a behavioural economics stand point we should be mindful of that human cognitive bias that always seems to come and trip us up when designing reward mechanisms, namely loss aversion - and its ability to make subjects feel losses (or the prospect of losses) about twice as badly as how one would feel about the equivalent gains.

To that note one has to admit that the possibly dangerous behaviour - standing too close to the platform - does seem to have a certain level of reward attached, meaning that any mechanism designed to combat the behaviour would need a fairly substantial reward upgrade in order to motivate.

And finally, we are reminded of the story of 70s footballer and enfant terrible Stan Bowles, essentially yer English George Best.

Bowles was making a rare appearnce for the English national team and before the match was informed by boss, Sir Alf Ramsey that he would be pulled off at half-time.

To which Bowles replied 'That's great, all we get is an orange at QPR'.

representativeness

'I thought that if you had an acoustic guitar

Then it meant that you were a protest singer

Oh I can smile about it now but at the time it was terrible'

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

positional authenticity

Holding my hands up, I've been guilty in the past of wheeling out skunk words like 'authentic' in the past.

Luckily one has sobered up somewhat now.

Giddy on social media and 'prosocial' kool-aid is my only excuse m'lud.

There seems to be plenty of others still caning it, however.

Try this one for size.

"The Human Era is about a fundamental societal shift in relationships," explains Simon Glynn, Lippincott EMEA director in Warc. "As people lose confidence in institutions, and put greater trust even in total strangers, companies need to rethink how they connect with people,"

Full marks to Glynn for 'labelling' his 'thing' from the off.

But when have people ever had confidence in institutions?

Do we really place great trust in total strangers?

Have companies ever connected with people?

Glynn then goes on to describe the six characteristics of trusted brands in this Human Era, namely: customer empathy, behaving like real people, being open and real to the point of being flawed, not being boring, caring about the little things and empowering individuals 'to be the brand'.

[Yes you did read that correctly - 'empowering individuals to be the brand'.]

"Many brands talk about the importance of customers, but few actually deliver on their promise and make an authentic connection," he continues.

Putting the general babble to one side and turning down the volume on the kumbaya soundtrack for a second, just notice the liberal sprinkling of authentic and real.

We should always be mindful of the fact that any notions of authenticity in a market economy are by nature inauthentic.

They are purely positional.

In pretending that a goal of 'authentic connection with our customers' comes before shifting product this faux-pursuit of the authentic simply makes the output even more phony.

So what Glynn is talking about in the Human Era is really urging brands to demonstrate 'conspicuous authenticity'.

Because the market truth is that all consumption is about status. Sorry hipsters.

Authentic, flawed and real are pure positioning, and just as inauthentic as any other marketing.

And that's fine but let's not start trying to claim any higher ground.

And as Andrew Potter says in - his splendid tome on this kind of stuff The Authenticity Hoax - 'That’s all fine and good except for one thing: we don’t have a clue what we mean by authenticity, and even if we did, we wouldn’t know how to find it.'

Monday, January 20, 2014

what you see is all there is

We all have bias towards the information that's available to us versus the information we don't have.

We don't know what we don't know and will make our decisions without taking the information we don't have into account.

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls this phenomenon what you see is all there is.

With that in mind it's interesting to contrast a couple of points of view that we noticed this week.

Firstly, here's a snapshot from a statement by R/GA supremo Bob Greenberg, as reported in Campaign Brief, around the challenges for advertising in the coming year.

Greenberg made five points, read the whole thing if you like here, we've summarised a couple of the more pointy bits.

On a need for new business models he claims ... '[in these new business models] the purchase is just the beginning that connects consumers to an "ecosystem of value" and spurs further purchases, as Apple, Google and Amazon have all done with their ecosystems: get the same consumer to buy more things from the same brand.'

'Many of these new business models for clients will be based upon the integration of physical products with digital services. The marketing of them will be "built in" to the device itself, as was the case with Nike+ Fuelband.'

'They will "earn" the data from their consumers by providing digital services that deliver tremendous value by becoming personalised partners to consumers in everything from their finances to their health/fitness to what they cook for dinner at night to where they go on vacation to what clothes they wear, what make-up they use.'

Meanwhile in Campaign mag Chris Arnold, former Saatchi & Saatchi Creative Director reports on how the biggest FMCG brands are seeing more success than ever with so-called traditional marketing activities, ie TV, and are reducing spend on on-line activities.

'Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, Nestle, Unilever and Tesco – have dramatically slashed on-line marketing spend.

Tesco currently spends over £34m on TV advertising (that excludes outdoor and press) but now only budgets 1.4m on digital advertising, less than 5% of TV spend.

When it comes to social media, well it seems TV ads are probably the number one reason to talk about a brand, just look at John Lewis. The second is PR.

And for all the on-line chat, 80-90% of chat actually happens off-line. That too may surprise you, but in fact it’s been researched and again the media has hyped up the opposite.'

So who is right?

My sense is that Greenberg's argument cuts the least amount of mustard.

For example, even for tech brands like Apple, their heaviest users are likely to buy as much Apple product as they can reasonably expect to to buy, and - like just about everyone else in every other category - their growth depends on bigger penetration, getting more people who haven't bought much Apple product historically to buy for the first time, or a bit more.

Similarly his argument for brands becoming 'personalised partners to consumers' may somewhat apply in the realms of Nike Fuelband or FitBit but in the world of the 99% of other purchases people make on a daily basis it's a tad on the wishful thinking side.

And, lest we forget (and to avoid straying into Texas Sharpshooter territory, Nike's brand has been consistently built over a long time with tendrils that wrap themselves themselves around all sorts of media - to quote John Grant 'a cluster of strategic cultural ideas' - including everything from the product itself to the communication.

For the majority of brands it's hard enough to just get noticed and remembered, never mind being a personalised partner. And you will know this by the trail of the dead in branded app world - upwards of 90 percent of all downloaded apps are used once and then binned.

As renowned game developer and theorist Kathy Sierra famously noted 'no-one lies on their deathbed saying I wish I'd spent more time engaging with brands'.

In regard to what you see is all there is, we're inclined to say that pronouncements about the death of advertising and such like that mostly emanate from the digerati bubble and seem to be backed up with the same tech examples all the time, highly visible to the digerati, mostly invisible everyone else.

That's not to say that tactics that delivered rapid growth for some tech companies in early development haven't worked a treat.

Indeed, in Inc this week 'marketing guru' (their description) Ryan Holiday tells us 'traditional marketing tactics are dead...the smartest companies think beyond the traditional marketing and promotion boundaries.

For example, Dropbox found it cost a few hundred dollars per new customer to build its customer base through Google AdWords...until they began offering added storage as an incentive for getting a friend to sign up...the storage-for-referral program generated 40 percent of the company's growth'.

Sure, but for a start someone should inform Holiday that Google adwords do a decent job of fulfilling demand but expecting them to create demand is a bit of a stretch. That's the job of advertising.

Before we get into a this v that channel scrap, Sturgeons revelation applies to all forms of marketing. Mass reach media included. Upwards of 90% is shit.

But, let's be mindful that what may be applicable to something like growth hacking (yuk) for DropBox - and, of course, discounting the fact that for most of its users they are not required to part with a cent to use - does not apply to toothpaste or soap powder and the other 90% on consumer spending that happens off-line, out in the world and for which the predominant factors affecting that spend are convenience, habit, what seems to be popular and simple availability.

Imagining that a Dropbox model applies to everything else in every other category is pretty dubious.

My fear for these ideas of 'new business model(s) in which the purchase is just the beginning that connects consumers to an ecosystem of value' is that it just sounds like too much hard work when we all have busy lives that we just want to get on with.

Horses for courses.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

tell me now 'n' show me how. to understand what makes a good ad?

While I have no desire to repeat the 'make the logo bigger' kerfuffle that followed my comments on the lack of branding in the John Lewis Christmas ad being best understood as an exception rather than a rule - there's another example in this area that has cropped up.

And while my JL comments were actually misinterpreted by most of the detractors I stand by them.

The purpose of branding is, for the most part, creating mental availability - making the brand easy to remember and salient in buying situations.

Creativity is, obviously, the vehicle by which this happens.

But it is still advisable to introduce distinctive brand assets into the content quicker and sometimes more frequently.

So I was interested to view Doddsy's comments on the fantastic new Guinness spot, and will then humbly suggest perhaps a middle way.

John says:

'Guinness's new advertisement featuring the elegant gentlemen of Brazzaville ties in well with their theme of individuality and is unquestionably interesting and visually arresting. But, oh how they shoe-horn in the product shots towards the end and emphasise that this is indeed an advertisement and not a slice of culture.

Personally, I'd have settled for a single mention at the end of the piece and the assumption that the viewer was intelligent enough to make the connection. This way, I fear the reaction is much more likely to be along the lines of "What's this got to do with Guinness?"

If we agree that effective advertising needs to do two things.

1. Be well branded
2. Get noticed.

Then the spot definitely does point 2 but perhaps, to John's point, doesn't do point 1 so well as the product and branding seems somewhat clumsily placed.

So here's my first question.

What's so funny 'bout getting the branding in from the get-go right up front?

'Guinness presents...' then on with the show?

Creatives hate this idea when I suggest it, though I've never had a decent explanation of why.

Second question is around the obvious lack of paid promotion.

The clip is currently sitting at a paltry 165k views despite having all the hallmarks of multi-million viral smash.

There's solid data from Karen Nelson-Field's research at Ehrenberg-Bass that suggests the creative device used (essentially 'personal triumph') tends to be shared the most, and it has the high arousal positive emotional response element (inspiration, probably) plus a kick arse swamp rockin' soundtrack by The Heavy.

Again, according to the data the single biggest predictor (assuming it does the tricks as mentioned above) of online video sharing is it's initial distribution.

For the best performing videos it's about 8 views to 1 share.

24 to 1 is the average.

So to get sharing, initial seeding/paid support is key.

The social media myth is that we need to reach a few influentials in order to reach millions, in actual fact the opposite is true.

You need to reach millions to infect the rest.

Also, to that point, and in an apples for apples situation (i.e. Compelling content that evokes high arousal emotional response) brand videos that are on TV + online are likely get shared more than online only.

But in summary.

If a video evokes a high arousal positive response then the amount of branding present will not inhibit shares and views so, don't be shy, get it in there, right up front.

Even the greatest, most creative most exciting video if only seen by a few people, wont get many shares. Get it in front of as many as possible.

fight to win or you die

In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz famously notes:

'As the number of choices we face increases, freedom of choice eventually becomes a tyranny of choice. Routine decisions take so much time and attention it becomes difficult to get though the day. In circumstances like these, we should learn to view limits on the possibilities we face as liberating not constraining.'

In a small agency and often with increasingly small budgets it's easy to get the hump with imposed constraints.

Then a bigger project comes along and there can be too many options. Too many possibilities.

In both of these situations the role of strategy is the same.

Discovering which are the critical factors and designing actions to deal with them.
In both big and small challenges there's still decisions to be made about what NOT to do as much what to do.

To that note I always remember the story of General Xiang Yu, who sent his army across the Yangtze River to take on the Qin Dynasty in the 3rd Century BC.

On the night before the big battle, as his troops slept, the General ordered all of the ships to be set on fire.

The next day he told his perplexed army:

‘You now have a choice: Either you fight to win or you die.’

That's a fairly extreme strategy but it does display a degree of confidence. Never a bad thing.

In recent times we've gone into pitches that, as a small agency, we had no right to win (on paper) but came out with the business.

The appearance of supreme confidence in your presentation is often a critical factor.

So by removing the option of retreat, he switched his troops focus to the the most important thing. The battle.

If they were going to get out of there then it was only going to be in somebody else's boats.

I mention this as I read a splendid post on Adliterate this week entitled In Defence of War.

An excerpt:

'One of the ideas that has most fallen out of fashion in the face of new age marketing has been the metaphor of war. Its use is still reasonably endemic – we talk about penetration, campaigns, winning share, positioning, and the like but its all terribly unfashionable.

The dogma of new age marketing...has created a culture in which we are supposed to stroke people into having ‘relationships’ with brands on an on going basis not launch a full frontal assault on them until they buy our products.

While this nicey-nicey approach feels altogether more comfortable it does rather avoid the reality of business and marketing in which most brands and most categories involve zero sum games where any success is utterly dependent on another businesses’ failure.'

Possibly another slightly extreme view bearing in mind the Duplication of Purchases law that applies in most categories however spot on in the assessment that the fluff around 'relationships' with brands that prevails in just that, and stripping down strategy to the critical factors - fight to win or die - is perhaps not a bad approach to liberating via self imposed constrains.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

someone left a baby in the car park

Somewhat more slapstick than the Carrie thing from last year, which we described as something of a masterclass in the construction of situations, but this one, for horror schlock-flick Devil's Due, gains entry to the archive due to our current obsession with public interventions and the splendid application of technology to enhance what is essentially a simple activation.

Quick recap on situations for those who have not been paying attention.

According to Debord et al a constructed situation is a ‘moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and game of events.’

A situation is designed to be lived by its participants.

It’s not just ambience, it’s an integrated ensemble of behaviour.

Situations require:

1. A temporary director or orchestrator.
The orchestrator is responsible for coordinating the basic elements necessary in the construction of the situation, and for conducting certain interventions.

2. Direct agents
The direct agents living the situation, who have taken part in creating the collective project and worked on the practical composition of the ambience.

3. Passive spectators
Passive spectators who have not participated in the constructive work, BUT whom can/should be forced into action.

That's the theory, and whack in some high arousal emotional response (ie physiological) and you are building those memory structures and associations nicely.

Extreme terror is obviously a tactic that should only be employed for certain categories. But when it works it works.

emergent strategy or just good strategy?

Presumably we're all familiar with the notion of agile, or emergent, strategy. The key idea being around limiting up-front planning to a minimum viability based on the assumption of impermanence and unpredictability in any given situation.

Emergent strategy is structured in order to be able to quickly adapt to new conditions as they arise.

Perhaps a close cousin of lean principles, much emergent planning theory is loosely based around the Google 70-20-10* formula for product development.

A formula by which 70% of resources are devoted to Google’s core group of revenue generating activities eg search and advertising. The fabled 'googletime' 20% was supposedly allocated to self directed innovation projects that Google staff were encouraged to pursue, while the final 10% was allegedly allocated to scaling up the bits and pieces that showed promise from the 20% time.

*Turns out that the 70-20-10 Google rule is more myth and legend than anything that actually happened in practice but it's nice in theory.

So in the advertising sense, applying 70% of budget and effort towards proven activities, 20% riffing on innovations based on what is known to work and 10% on wild card experiments also sounds good in theory but one would have a hard shift explicitly pushing that idea through with most of our clients, though of course that's not to say that things can't be framed to be palatable while still being somewhat true to the theory.

[So, this is perhaps where the most value can be gained out of so-called brand 'communities'.

By that I mean the tiny fraction of a brands customer base who seem to demonstrate some degree of loyalty.

This requires reframing these customers as an 'asset' rather than an audience.

This is perhaps the hardest thing for the social media marketing fraternity to swallow.]

For instance continually generating a broad range of small-scale low cost experiments, and then scaling up the ones that gain traction in order to innovate.

Again this is nothing new. Make small bets, light small fires etc.

But my question here is really this.

Is this emergent strategy? Is this agile planning?

Or is it just good strategy?

Reading Rumelt again over the holidays I became obsessed with this nugget.

The best strategists don’t choose or decide on a strategy; they design novel responses to challenges.

Given that challenges will always appear because of the inherent unpredictability in any given situation the emergent strategy is simply good strategy.

In fact Rumelt's kernel of good strategy seems to describe emergent strategy better than a appropriation of the Google rule.

The kernel of good strategy being made up of three components:

1. A diagnosis:
The more knowledge you can glean about the problems and the implications of your strategic options, the better equipped you are to tackle a diagnosis.

2. A guiding policy:
A guiding policy is not a set of hard goals. It does not say where the brand wants to go; it's some some general rules or guidelines for helping meet the challenges from the diagnosis.

3. A set of coherent actions:
So, once we have a diagnosis and a guiding policy established, a set of coherent actions is designed to implement the guiding policy.

Rumelt reckons that too many strategists, mistake the guiding policy for the strategy and forget the action element. And I've been guilty of this myself in the past, handballing what I falsely believed to be 'strategies' (ie guiding policies) over to comms planners to map and action.

So emergent strategy is really just good strategy.

And, in fact, strategy is not a thing in itself but is only realised when the three components of the kernel are present.

Monday, January 13, 2014

okay, okay, dont push us when we're hot!

I've always found it peculiar to have reviews of creative work and suchlike at the end of the working day.

While I have no data to back this up, one often finds that decisions made at these reviews will subsequently get reversed, modified or even thrown out the following day with the benefit of fresh eyes and ears.

In previous incarnations (and when it was my responsibility) I've set processes in place to allow for big decisions to be made in the early part of the day to allow for the rest of the day to be spent implementing and iterating. By the end of the day tired brains are in more of a state of flow rather than requiring big cognitive effort.

So when, at the tail end of last year, Stirling University's Behavioural Science Centre published a post on their blog highlighting their top 15 Best Behavioural Science Graphs of 2010-13 I was not surprised to see included the famous Danziger, Levav & Avnaim-Pesso (2011), Extraneous Factors in Judicial Decisions chart.

I've used this example in many presentations over the last couple of years to demonstrate the idea of ego depletion.

Ego depletion being the term used to describe the idea that things like self-control, willpower and the ability to perform tasks that require hard cognitive effort draw upon a limited supply of mental resources that can be used up. In essence a typical situation where system two type processes get too whacked out to function and therefore system one will take full control.

In the study the researchers examined over 1000 judicial rulings over a 10 month period by parole judges. The judges reviewed up to 35 parole cases per day and they took two daily food/coffee breaks (ie elevenses and lunch), and dividing the judging day into three sessions.

These break periods were pretty vital for those in the dock as the probability of the judges granting parole falls steadily from a high probability at the start of the day and just after breaks to nearly zero just before the breaks.

So the lesson being that if you find yourself in court - and presumably hope to get let off - then you want to be in front of the judge first thing in the morning or just after lunch or coffee breaks. Otherwise you'll be looking at a stretch.

Likewise, if we want to get the work right rather than just done and save on time wasted doing things over, a simple self-nudge may be to only schedule creative reviews in the mornings or right after lunchbreaks, to get the thinking bit done when there's brainjuice and get the doing done when there's flow.

Monday, December 23, 2013

if you kissed me now I know you'd fool me again

Seasons greetings and that to everyone who's read and shared this blog throughout the year and also to everyone who's ideas and thinking has shaped the stuff written here.

As is traditional we finish off for Christmas with a tune.

Here's James from the Manics injecting some angst into Wham's Last Christmas.

Thanks again, and see you after the break.

Eaon

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

if you can think of it, it must be important

It's sobering to note that at the end of 2013 there are still people, clients, agencies and organisations out there who are in varying degrees of confabulation - driven by emotions ranging from blind terror to rapture - around the impact (both apparent and potential) of the social media for their businesses and communications.

This, of course, only contributes to further uncertainty and, as we know, under uncertainty, biases in judgement - most often created by too much (or indeed too little) information - will lead to errors of thinking (and doing).

While we could joke that this situation would be easier to navigate if only there were some experts out there to offer guidance?

Or some information websites on how to successfully leverage social media?

Perhaps even a webinar or two or a set of ebooks one could buy?

Ha, but the problem is clearly the former. Too much information.

And in this situation two cognitive biases exert disproportionate influence.

Firstly, the availability heuristic is a mental shortcut by which decisions are made based on how easily similar examples that come to mind.

As a result, we tend judge that those events or examples that are easier to think of are more frequent and possible than others. We routinely overestimate the likelihood of similar things happening in the future, and likewise we overestimate the importance of stories that seem to be everywhere (ie easily mentally available).

From a brand marketing point of view, this bias is one that can be extremely useful.

Brands that appear to be popular, that are easily noticed and remembered (mental availability) and with the best distribution (physical/virtual availability) tend to benefit from larger market share. For a small brand looking to grow then getting to grips with availability is crucial.

[Interestingly, and statistically, one is more likely to be killed by a refrigerator falling on one's head than in any act of terrorism, but incidents of terrorism come to mind much more easily and are believed to be far more common.]

On the downside, the idea that 'social media is the answer to all branding and marketing problems' is a hugely available idea, initially propagated within the social media itself by 'experts' and - not only but also - repeated, received-wisdom-style by all and sundry, so that it comes so easily to mind that surely it must be true.

The reality being that there are very very few examples of brands that have been built or grown substantially through social media alone. Go to a few social media conferences and you will very shortly collect the set as the same examples are trotted out at every event.

The idea that 'consumers' want to have deep emotional connections and engage with brands is also a hugely available idea, while statistically on any given week, less than 0.5% of Facebook fans will engage with any brand they are fans of.

Given that a brand's Facebook following will mostly represent but a tiny proportion of its customer base, and for the most part follow for (let's be honest) customer service and/or freebie purposes then it's not a great case for growth through 'engagement'.

A season spent on the conference trail will further compound as one notices the constant presence of availability's close cousin, the projection bias, in which we tend to assume that others feel exactly the same as we do.

Secondly, another close cousin of availability (and projection) and perhaps the most dangerous and widely visible of biases in the social media space is the confirmation bias.

Until recently this was perhaps best described as the social media bubble, fishbowl or echo chamber, in which members display tendencies to read material that confirms existing beliefs, pay more attention to information and people who confirm existing beliefs, and search for corroborative evidence to confirm existing beliefs.

Chuck in a dash of sunk-cost fallacy and it's easy to see why, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, there is now a whole industry of social media gurus who want the 'death of this or that' to be true, will cherry pick and spotlight anything that supports it, and then congratulate themselves on their accuracy.

The word guru has it's origins in Sanskrit, the primary liturgical language of Hinduism.

Much can be learned from ancient eastern wisdom, of course.
Not least a healthy skepticism of the self-annointed thought-leader or guru.

The Kularnava Tantra is an important and authoritative text of the Shakta Agamic tantra tradition and a major statement of Hindu spiritual thought, including this nugget.

‘…there are many gurus who may rob the disciple's wealth but few who can remove the disciple's afflictions…’

Humans are probably the only species with the ability to think about the future, yet that hasn't helped our ability to predict. In fact the only accurate prediction one can confidently make is that the majority of our predictions will be wrong.

My closing hope, as opposed to prediction, is that as an ad industry we can overcome our confabulation in the year ahead, understand properly the role that digital and social has in an overall communications piece (for a role they undoubtably have, but not the be-all and end-all) and focus on what's really important.

To be better at understanding the behaviour of people in buying situations and developing the kind of things and communications that have the best chance of influencing those behaviours.

And finally, to perhaps best illustrate that heady brew of availability and confirmation bias I leave you with this splendid cartoon, shared by Doddsy some time ago in an unrelated tweet, and one that has featured in a number of my presentations this year to illustrate some of the points contained in this note.

Friday, December 13, 2013

magic piano

Here's another nice little situational thing, a public intervention enhancing the mundane by use of 'invisible' digital technology.

Or possibly a man inside the piano.

Drawing in bystanders and spectators at Chicago Union Station.

The Magic Piano, allegedly responds to changes in the environment in real time.

Some of the participants in the clip are clearly actors (or direct agents, as we prefer to call them) but we still smiled.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

what is there to be seen and what we actually notice

The snippet below from Consumer.ology by Philip Graves - a tome who's place on the plannery types bookshelf should be taken as a given - gives further power to the argument that getting advertising and branding noticed in the first place and subsequently remembered in buying situations is our imperative.

And furthermore should raise alarm at how often and easily the lofty goals such as consumer engagement and deep emotional connections are trotted out as likely and achievable.

The reality being that people don't think about brands very much, nor do they know much about them or particularly care. While this sounds grim, what it really describes is the opportunity for creativity.

I think it was Dave Trott who said that the most important question on any creative brief, yet the one that rarely appears is 'how does this piece of advertising get noticed?'.

Anyway, I digress.

Here's the science bit.

"According to researchers from Penn University, the human eye can transmit approximately 10 million pieces of information per second. Regardless of the mind-boggling quantities of data involved, anyone who has ever spent any amount of time looking for something, and then found it in one of the places they had already checked, will know that there is a big difference between what is there to be seen and what we actually notice.

The highest estimates suggest that the most we’re able to process is around 40 pieces of information per second (from all our senses, not just visually), so you can forgive yourself for not finding those keys first time around!"

There is a big difference between what is there to be seen and what we actually notice.

In psychology one description of this phenomenon is 'inattentional blindness'.

Which leads me to this 'card-trick' from Richard Wiseman, kindly shared with us by Wiemer Snijders.

We are into card ticks this week, I played a simple one on the audience at AIMIA last week, as a faux-mass hypnosis memory experiment.

I subsequently recieved several messages asking how it was done.

As my magic-circle application is pending, unfortunately I can't reveal.

may I ask what you expected to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window?

In an episode of Fawlty Towers, Basil entertains a hard of hearing and somewhat curmudgeonly guest - Mrs Richards - who complains about some of the features of her room.

Mrs. Richards: And another thing. I booked a room with a view.

Basil: [Goes to the window] Yes, this is the view as I remember it, yes, yes, this is it.

Mrs. Richards: When I pay for a room with a view, I expect something more interesting than that.

Basil: That is Torquay madam.

Mrs. Richards: Well it's not good enough.

Basil: Well, may I ask what you expected to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window? Sydney Opera House, perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the...?

Mrs. Richards: Don't be silly. I expect to be able to see the sea.

Basil: You can see the sea. It's over there between the land and the sky.

Mrs. Richards: I'd need a telescope to see that.

Perhaps the good people at Google Creative Labs had this in mind as they developed this splendid installation (not sure what to describe it as) as part of Sydney Opera House's 40th birthday celebrations last month.

The project, entitled Binoculars, entailed a special set of those vintage panoramic view binoculars (the ones that look like a face), installed on the footsteps of the Opera house.

Viewers who participated were then able to do what Mrs Richards was unable to in Torquay and view 40 other iconic locations around the world - including the Colorado River, the Palace of Versailles, and Shackleton's hut in Antarctica - using imagery from, and to demonstrate, Google Street View.

Thanks to Ciarán Norris, who kindly pointed me to this in recognition of my current infatuation with outdoor media enhanced with digital technologies.

The beauty being the ability deliver indiscriminate shared experiences for broad audiences without the baggage of tight targeting, faux-relevance and hyper-personalisation that the adtech world has misguidedly embraced.

The audience for this intervention is anyone with eyes and a sense of curiosity.

The future of digital advertising is out-door :). Here's the Fawlty Towers clip too.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

when saturday comes

I was speaking for the Australian interactive media industry body, AIMIA, this week and last week.

The events were their annual 'Future of Digital' seminars in Sydney and also Melbourne.

I did my usual controversy, which seemed to go down reasonably well.

One of the other speakers was Laurie Patton, the Media and Entertainment Exec Director from Telstra.
We chatted before and after and he was a very nice and smart fella.

He nonchalantly dropped this anecdote in his talk but it struck me as being something of an insight that I had not considered before.

Amongst his duties at Telstra Laurie is working with a number of sports stadia in Australia to integrate digital technology into live sporting events, to enhance them in situ.

The remarkable point Laurie made was that stadia owners and operators are cognisant of the sports viewing experience at home becoming more of an 'experience' than attending in real-life.

In an unexpected flip (to these ears at least) viewing at home on TV with connected devices etc offering in running stats, multiple camera angles and replays (and close proximity to the fridge) is potentially more attractive than the schlep to the stadium and is therefore increasingly a challenge to both the stadia and sporting associations.

Good luck to Laurie and his people in solving this conundrum.

On the one hand it's further fuel to the 'TV is not dead and nor is it likely to be dead anytime soon' lobby and also my own pet thought that the media channel that stands to benefit more from the introduction of digital-ness is the humble out-of-home.

feel good hit of the summer? (or winter - choose your hemisphere)

A textbook case of how how to have a viral hit and maximising brand effect.

Using branding and market-based assets throughout (purple Santa and Elves was a nice touch) – tick

Evoking high arousal emotional response (i.e. reason to share) INSPIRATION, EXHILARATION, ASTONISHMENT – tick

Presented in the context of brand use and occasion - tick

Creative device? - 'personal triumph (sort of)' - tick

Probably backed with significant paid promotion and seeding upfront to maximise initial reach - (assumed) tick

Also worth noting: another example of doing something first - a situational or cultural intervention - then advertising what you have done.

Congratulations, WestJet.

Friday, December 06, 2013

a friday note on distribution and sharing a coke

This short World Cup 2014 film for Coca-Cola by Ogilvy in Shanghai has almost everything required to be be a viral hit, yet it isn't (yet).

Why should that be?

Here's some clues, from the appliance of science.

In Chapter 4 of 'Viral Marketing: The Science of Sharing' by Karen Nelson-Field from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute (the chapter is entitled, 'Not all Fart jokes are Funny') Karen imparts the following.

In the course of her team's extensive research they find no correlations between sharing and the particular creative device used in a film, neither were there links between specific emotions and creative device, but there are relationships between the degree of emotional arousal felt and likelyhood of sharing activity.

They describe this as high arousal emotional response.

The one exception to the rule is when the creative device employed is 'personal triumph' - this shares significantly more even with low arousal emotions.

To get shared, the general lesson is to focus less on which creative device is applied and more on how arousing the creative is. So far so good for Coke and Ogilvy Shanghai, the film has all the ingredients

But that's not the whole story.

Karen and her team challenge the common belief that the key to spreading is in infecting a few adopters in order to reach millions over time.

This is the most available idea of how the diffusion of content occurs.

The evidence however says that this is the opposite of what actually happens.

Apart from a few cherry picked exceptions (the ones that appear in the social media case studies) the diffusion curve is, in fact, negative - after launch the degree of penetration for a video drops after a short period of time.

And, assuming it's compelling content, evokes high arousal emotional response, the single biggest other predictor of online video sharing is it's initial distribution.

According to Karen's research, for the best performing videos the ratio about 8 views to 1 share.

For others that perform reasonably well 24 to 1 is the average.

So to get mass sharing, initial seeding/paid support is key. Assuming the video is good and pulls the tricks above, then it needs to be put in front of as many people as possible in order to spread.

A few 'influencers' will not cut the mustard, most of the time.

One can only assume that little paid promotion has been put behind this terrific little film - a story of personal triumph - or else it would be a viral smash.

Likewise the many other Coca-Cola World Cup films in the series, from around the world, all of which are languishing with very few views and shares in YouTube.

Don't tell me Coca-Cola don't have a few bob to stick behind this great content.