Never get out of the boat

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

the remarkable dispen pak (or how I learned to stop worrying and re-invent the wheel)

This is a guest post from Gil Fewster, Technology head at Sputnik and co-founder of Lab116 our Behaviour, Technology and Experience division.

The post originally appeared at Lab116.com.

Whenever somebody trots out that tired cliché about not wanting to re-invent the wheel, I think about that marvel of understated yet brilliant design, the Dispen Pak.

The Dispen Pak is a refinement of disposable single-serve sauce packets. You may not know the name, but I guarantee you've used them countless times.

They are those twin-chambered packets of sauce or marmalade that let you squeeze just the right amount of condiment over your meal of choice using (and here's the miracle) just one hand to crack open the seal and dispense that tasty goodness.

Just one hand? Hell, all it really takes is two fingers.

The thing is, people who talk about wheel re-invention are implicitly talking about redundancy; they're inferring it's a wasteful expenditure of thought and energy to make a thing that has already been made.

They do this to champion the new, to falsely align innovation with novelty. But what of refinement?

Improvement? Assessing something with a critical eye, identifying its limitations or problems, and then fixing them? Genuine newness is a rare thing. Perhaps the only thing rarer is perfection; an object, tool or process which cannot be improved.

The old sauce packs with their single chamber and foil lids you tear off were fine, but Dispen Pak adds two of key improvements.

Functional convenience
You can use it one-handed while you hold your meat pie in the other.

Precision
Squeeze a little, get a few dribbles of sauce. Squeeze a lot, get a big blob.

These are not trivial enhancements, they are answers to specific problems. One-handed operation may seem unimportant until you consider the context, namely that these packets are often used by people eating takeaway food on the go.

The functional requirements for dispensing sauce at the dinner table are considerably altered when one hand is busy holding your pie of choice and you're walking along a crowded footpath.

The Dispen pak is a design enhancement which can only be arrived at by thinking, really deeply, about not just the object's main function but the context in which that function is used.

It is an answer to a question so subtle that most people never thought to ask it, and yet now that the answer is in front of our eyes it seems impossible to imagine we didn't always squeeze out our sauce that way.

Never be afraid to look around, see what sits right in front of you, and challenge yourself to make it better. And beware of people who tell you they don't want to re-invent the wheel.

Most likely, they just lack the critical vision the see how much better our wheels could be.

now I wanna sniff some glue

The Crayola blue glue sticks are a splendid little piece of soft innovation that really solves a user problem.

The glue is blue when active but dries clear.

Genius.

So, when constructing your collage or picture (as my son demonstrates in this in progress Jurassic Park expression) it's easy to see which areas have glue coverage, thus avoiding the inconvenience of unstuck elements after the fact.

Innovation.

Identify a real user problem.

Iterate the product so that it doesn't require a new behaviour but simply makes the existing behaviour easier and gets the user to where they need to be, better.

Friday, August 23, 2013

to hell with mediocrity (again)

What comes to mind on Nike's fantastic latest film 'Possibilities', from an advertising point of view, is that the message is as applicable to this industry as it is for sports.

Good enough isn't good enough.

Worth also noting being that sight, sound and motion afforded by film is still pretty much the unbeatable storytelling medium when coupled with fresh insight and extraordinary creativity.

To hell with mediocrity and the peddlers thereof, I say.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

like trousers, like brain

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistance.
Talent will not.
There is nothing more common then unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not.
Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not.
The world if full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

Belated recognition that yesterday would have been Joe Strummer's 61st birthday.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

work or opportunity?

There is something that the ECD at one of my previous agencies used to say to me on occasion that I didn't fully appreciate at the time.

I understood but didn't 'get it' fully.

At the time I was working in a peculiar space, which I likened to being in-the-hole, like an attacking midfielder, or a deep lying striker.

Linking the play in between planning and creative departments, in the manner of an ad douche Eric Cantona or perhaps Pelé. (that's plenty - Editor)

In occupying that number 10 shirt I would looking for opportunities for the agency to impact other areas of the clients business other than the straight up advertising or promotional route.

The idea being that we could grow revenues from clients by nicking budgets that would have gone elsewhere. As a result we developed proposals for digital tools and utility, customer service initiatives, making things out of data and suchlike.

That’s the backstory.

The problem was that some of this output, while hugely useful and practical, was a tad on the un-sexy side.

By unsexy I mean stuff that wasn't going to be global advertising award contender material.

That's not to say that they weren't great ideas but their practical nature meant that just not those kind of ideas.

So the ECD would ask me 'this is good but what will this do for the agency?'.

This would irk me at the time as I was still a bit giddy on the whole social media branded utility blah kool-aid.

However I understand what he meant much better now.

Jump to earlier this morning in the car and I was listening to a old episode of the gapingvoid podcast, in which Hugh MacLeod and Jason Korman talked with Seth Godin.

I’ve read Seth’s blog for many years and just about all of the books, and he must have dropped the following nugget a number of times but for some reason I was most receptive to it this morning.

Akin to the old adage that 'when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change', one Seth comment reminded me of the difference between doing jobs and creating opportunity.

Seth alluded that when we look at things simply as work then the task is to make as much money as possible for doing the least amount of said work. When we look at things as an opportunity then it’s a different game.

‘What does this do for the agency?’ is not ad people vanity, it’s asking ‘what’s the opportunity to do something where the outcome is great for the client and also for us.’

As a case in point then look to this splendid behavioural and emotional activation for Dutch funeral insurance company Dela which scooped a Grand Prix at Cannes and propelled Dela into the top ten of most famous brands in the Netherlands.

.

Funeral insurance is one of those categories which might easily have been filed into ‘work’ however some people at Ogilvy viewed this as an opportunity, et voilà (or en hier to be correct).

Monday, August 19, 2013

everybody's doin' the dog

Not sure how this little behavioural nugget slipped through the net, but even though we are over a year late in acknowledgement it's worth a repost here.

So how do you encourage dog owners to do the right thing and dispose of their dogs' poo in the correct manner?

Traditionally, of course, dog owners falling foul would be fined.

Another approach is rewarding the positive behaviour instead.

Use the poo to power free wi-fi in the park so that everyone benefits.

The more poo in the designated receptacles, the more free wi-fi for park-goers.

But this wasn't a civic clean-up initiative (though it would have still been great) but a promotional campaign for Mexican Internet provider Terra.

Bringing people together, giving them something to do, to create their own value.

Thanks to Mark @ SputnikLabs for the prompt.

golly baby, I'm a lucky......

In simple terms there are two kinds of happiness. The moment-to-moment happiness of what Daniel Kahneman calls the 'experiencing' self. This is how you feel as the real-time self goes about its daily business.

The second kind of happiness is the one that we feel when we look back on life in general or on specific events. This is the 'remembering' self. This is a reflective process.

I'm generally of the point of view that regardless of product or category when we create advertising or brand experience then evoking some kind of strong feeling of happiness in the moment and leaving the viewer/participant with a strong happy memory is just about always going to be effective.

Positive associations of happiness which can be triggered by subsequent exposure with the brand.

In fact, what the Captain says in the video is true.

They should use this in ad school as the definitive 'how to do advertising' text.

'If you don't talk happy, and you never have a dream
Then you'll never have a dream come true'

Plus Cap get's bonus points for getting away with singing 'golly baby I'm a lucky c*nt' on Top of the Pops.

Friday, August 16, 2013

punk floyd

'If punk is a style, then punk is absolutely and irrevocably dead and buried. If, on the other hand, punk is an ethos, then our perception of this moment in history changes'.

So says Brent Ables in his mostly splendid article 'A House Full of Pain: How the Greatest Punk Album of the '70s Was Made by Pink Floyd' in cokemachineglow.

Ables goes on to argue (citing Johnny Rotten's famous I HATE Pink Floyd t-shirt):

'The punks didn’t look deeply enough. If they had, they would have realized that for the space of an album, Pink Floyd had already done everything they wanted to do and had done it better. Animals was already the greatest punk rock album of the decade, and punk hadn’t even been christened yet.'

Animals is, by some distance, the most venomous, bleak, cutting, ruthless lyrical document released by a major rock band in the 1970s... ...Waters pens some of the most memorable lines of his career, over the album’s three core tracks, Waters unleashes a furious condemnation of you, your family, your boss, your lover, and the depths of your corrupted festering soul. No one is safe....and the point is that you and everyone you know is totally fucked. What is this but the punk ethos in its purest form?

Ables has an entertaining and decent argument but my sense is that he misses the point a bit.

The point of the Sex Pistols and punk as a thing was to inspire a thousand other bands and create a movement of which the Pistols could be the leaders. Of course it was all about ethos.

Because there had to be more than just the Pistols.

Because people' don't see just the leaders, they mostly see the the followers, new recruits follow the followers.

Which takes us back to this story from Bernie Rhodes (I think it was him).

Rhodes managed The Clash back in the day and was in cahoots with Malcolm Mclaren (Sex Pistols) and Jake Riviera (the unsung 3rd man of the original emergent UK punk scene, and erstwhile manager of The Damned).

Between the three of them they realised that to create a movement no one band could not do it on their own, but 3 bands...

Do the arithmetic.

3 bands (Pistols, Clash, Damned) each with four members.
Say each band member has five 'friends', thats 60 people minimum.

So a triple header gig in a small strip joint in Soho has an instant crowd of 60 or so likeminded bods, to any waif or stray thats wandered in off the street it immediately looks like 'something' is happening.

As more people decide to join in it's no longer a risk, if they 'get it' no reason not to join in now, and the codes, language, style is all there for them.

It's very easy to participate.

So while the Floyd may have had the message, they didn't have the movement.

There were not a thousand bands formed overnight and instantly performin 27minute prog rock epics in the garage to a dozen friends.

There was a huge audience but it was not participatory.

It's well documented that many older original punks were former hippies.

Tony Parsons famously noted (re: the Pistols Jubilee boat party):

'There were a lot of hippies on the boat, all these sweet people from Virgin. There wasn't actually a huge divide between hippies and punks back then that we made out there was. We shared so much that you can only really discern with hindsight. Both groups were determined that they were going to change the way society was ordered, but both wanted to do it while getting absolutely shitfaced'

Pink Floyd's achievement with Animals was to make a prog rock album straight out of the previous counterculture that was (in part) in tune with the current counterculture without cutting their hair or taking in their flares.

Ables takes a final swipe at J Rotten '...thirty-five years later, while Roger Waters goes before the United Nations in defense of Palestinian rights, Johnny Rotten is growing fat from VH1 reality shows and butter commercials'

This is essentially the Bill Hicks point of view that 'any performer who ever sells a product on television is for now and all eternity removed from the artistic world'.

The lesser quoted other part of that Hicks quote is that if the IRS or some other body is on the back of the performer for money then it's passable.

Rotten has gone on record as saying that the butter ad and 'I'm a Celebrity...' fees essentially paid for the Public Image Ltd tour of 2009 so that goes down a pass in my book.

Thanks to Mr Dodds for finding the original Floyd article.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

police and thieves in the street. oh yeah!

Inexpensive and disproportionately effective behavioural and mere-exposure type nudgey things of the week are; firstly, the cardboard cutout of MBTA officer David Silen that has helped cut bike thefts by 67 percent in Boston’s Alewife subway station.

While the MBTA also added a couple of video cameras and a new lock on the bike cage, the point is deterent not catching bike thieves.

For the potential bike thief do-I-don't-I is a split-second decision, so the merest hint a of cop is enough for the opportunist to look elsewhere for something to nick.

Similarly from India, Bangalore police commissioner MA Saleem has introduced cardboard police as a way of reducing speeding and preventing accidents.

"Drivers in Indian cities violate traffic rules when there are no cops around - they jump traffic lights and go the wrong way on one-way streets," Saleem said, "These cut-out cops are very effective and they can be on the job seven days a week."

Déformation professionnelle

A phrase the French came up with that describes the tendency to look at problems just from the point of view of one's own profession or area of expertise rather than looking for the real problem.

Déformation professionnelle.

Common example.

The answer is 'social media', now what's the problem?

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

two rules to live by

According to Andrew Potter, author of The Authenticity Hoax, it's simply the quest for authenticity itself, that causes the world to seem so unreal and phoney and therefore the quest is ultimately futile.

People can’t help themselves from competing for status (if the modern age was about the search for status via 'cool' the current paradigm is the search for status via 'authenticity'- organic, local, artisan etc) so when one removes oneself from the competition for status in the mainstream one just joins the competition for status in the counterculture.

Having said that, we haven't had a Malcolm quote in here for a while - and my sense is that if there can possibly be a difference between the authentic authentic and the commoditised authentic then it can be found here.

'There are two rules I've always tried to live by: turn left, if you're supposed to turn right; go through any door that you're not supposed to enter. It's the only way to fight your way through to any kind of authentic feeling in a world beset by fakery.'

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

problems

On my to-read list is The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berklun.

He's summarised the ten key thoughts in the book in this post on his blog.

Myth number nine caught my eye.

One of the things humans are pretty good at is jumping to conclusions based on little information.

Most of the time this instinct serves us well, however in communications planning we should be advised to check this urge.

9. The myth than problems are less interesting than solutions.

Eintsein said “If I had 20 days to solve a problem I would take 19 to define it.”

There are many creative ways to think about a problem, and different ways to look at a situation.

The impatient run at full speed into solving things, speeding right past the insights needed to find a great solution.

If you listen to how successful creators talk about their daily work, they spend more time thinking about the problem than epiphany obsessed media would have us believe.

Thursday, August 08, 2013

emergent strategy

This nugget from a long lost post by Guy Kawasaki resonated from down a rabbit hole into 2006.

He his offering some advice for entrepreneurial types in the development of business plans however it's appropriate for the conundrum facing communications planning.

While we would love to present agile strategies as default this is often hard for clients to buy into.

Test and learn talk makes us feel fuzzy in the agency but the average CMO doesn't entertain fail-fast.

Perhaps there's a middle way, as GK describes.

'Write deliberate, act emergent.

When you write your plan, you act as if you know exactly what you're going to do.

You are deliberate.

You're probably wrong, but you take your best shot.

However, writing deliberate doesn't mean that you adhere to the plan in the face of new information and new opportunities.

As you execute the plan, you act emergent - that is, you are flexible and fast moving: changing as you learn more and more about the market.

The plan, after all, should not take on a life of its own.'

never mess with the distinctive brand assets

Apparently this funny and insightful ad for Marmite has caused something of a minor kerfuffle in the UK as some feel that it's humour trivialises the work of animal protection services.

As a result more people will have noticed it so it's all gravy for Marmite.

The real scandal however, as Doddsy correctly points out, is the gratuitous and completely unnecessary display of the Unilever logo on the end frame instead of the Marmite logo.

Rule number one is never mess with the distinctive brand assets, and certainly never replace them in the key moments (remember the peak-end rule) with meaningless ones.

Schoolboy error.

they thought he was off his trolley

The story of the invention of the common or garden shopping trolley can probably be archived as an early commercial behavioural nudge.

One evening, in 1936, Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Piggly Wiggly supermarket chain in Oklahoma City sat in his office crunching the numbers on the days sales and pondered on how he might shift more product.

Legend has it that Piggly wiggly were early pioneers of special offers, twofers and suchlike but none of these on the shelf activations were significantly moving any needles.

As Goldman shuffled his papers and prepared to head for home he had an epiphany as he placed one of his standard hand-held shopping baskets onto a wooden folding chair to clear his way out of the cash office.

With a swift application of gaffer tape the basket was melded to the chair and then a set of wheels screwed to the legs and the idea was born.

The next day Goldman shoed the makeshift trolley to one of his staff, a former mechanic, and the pair set about prototyping a metal framed cart with a two-basket capacity.

Their simple insight became manifest. Simply increasing the size of the the shopper basket would be enough of a nudge to make customers buy more groceries.

The first behavioural conundrum solved, the inventors were then surprised to face a second conundrum.

The device did not catch on immediately, prevailing social norms meant that men found the carts to be effeminate, and women apparently made an association with a baby buggy and resisted.

Not to be deterred Goldman’s next master stroke involved employing a number of male and female stooges to push his new carts around his store to demonstrate their usefulness and manufacture the social proof required to remove the barriers to adoption from his status quo biased customers.

The rest, as they say, is history and after patenting the cart in 1938 Goldman became a multimillionaire.

Monday, July 29, 2013

the last-click attribution fallacy [ #roi ]

‘When an apple ripens and falls – what makes it fall?
Is it that it is attracted to the ground, is it that the stem withers?
Is it that the sun has dried it up, that is has grown heavier?
That the wind shakes it, that the boy standing underneath it wants to eat it?
No one thing is the cause.’

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace. First published in 1869

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

lost in the supermarket - heuristics remix with thankyou water

Thankyou Water, the bottled water company that generates funding for social projects in the developing world are launching a number of extensions into other product categories, ordinary things that you would normally find in a supermarket.

So far the two big Australian supermarkets have never stocked the Thankyou Water and so this campaign seeks to encourage supporters to lobby the big two supermarkets in order to change their policy and offer distribution of the Thankyou products.

From a communications and behavioural point of view it has all the ingredients of something that just might work on both counts - getting the products into the supermarket and raising more funds.

Watch the video, then let's unpack it a bit.

Availability
For a start, Thankyou water have understood that, particularly in fmcg situations, the drivers of purchasing behaviour are much more about the availability of the brand (both mental and physical) than any ideas of loyalty.

Marketers routinely confuse loyalty with habit.

The availability heuristic describes the tendency we have to believe what comes most easily to mind.

To the same token we buy what comes most easily to hand.

Therfore. in developing a habit, the simple mental and physical availability of the product is vital.

Reward substitution.
The kind of projects that Thankyou water support suffer from many of the same problems that things like climate change and sustainability efforts do.

As Dan Ariely famously coined around climate change 'the effects are not visible in our daily lives, the effects will happen to other people a long time in the future and anything we can do now seems like a drop in the ocean'. All of these factors combine to mean that although people care about the issue they tend to do nothing about it.

Ariely points to how eco-friendly cars such as the Toyota Prius have become popular because it allows people to signal to others that they are the kind of person who 'cares about the environment' without any significant behavioural costs. The Prius is a car, it looks pretty distinctive and cool and it's more economical.

So a trolley loaded with Thankyou products does the same job.

Commitment and consistency.
Anyone who has ever made a small commitment by buying the water will now be automatically predisposed to make future behaviours fall into line with what they have previously done.

Thankyou water say that the prices of their new products will be no more expensive that typical supermarket prices, which will also make this easy behaviour to adopt.

Attribute substitution.
Simple question.
Do i like Thankyou Water?

What's not to like?
Rather than talking about the problem they talk in a bright optimistic way about the bright optimism of a better future that YOU are part of.

Social proof and the bandwagon effect.
Goes almost without saying. The participatory element of the campaign may seem like 101 but again, take an existing behaviour that's easy and natural for people to do. And let them see each other in order that they can copy each other.

And finally, also perhaps one of the under-exploited yet often the most effective, tactics in advertising the underdog effect.

Goliath (in the form of the big two supermarkets) being taken on by littkle David (Thankyou Water).

It's a universal insight that everyone loves and self-identifies with the underdog. The little guy sticking to the man.

Suffice to say we are loving this campaign, not least in a nerdy behavioural economics way, we wish it every success and will have our eyes peeled in Coles.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

one greek one cup

'Everything in moderation', as Oscar Wilde famously noted, 'including moderation'.

And he later built on that idea by adding 'Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.'

Pythagoras would not necessarily agree, as evident by this, which Adam Alter , author of the splendid Drunk Tank Pink, has described as possibly the worlds first recorded nudge. In this case towards a sense of moderation.

The Pythagorean cup is a form of drinking cup - the invention of which is credited to Pythagoras of Samos - which, firstly, allows the drinker to fill the cup with wine up only to a certain level.

Then, secondly, as the user enjoys a drink the mechanic only allows for small sips. If the drinker attempts any down-in-one style acrobatics, however, the cup will spill the entire contents out of the bottom and therefore all over the hapless aspiring jakie.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

that sinking feeling

Another toilet related snippet caught our attention this week.

NPR reports that a Latvian designer named Kaspars Jursons is trying to help solve European water shortages by redesigning the traditional mens urinal. His design includes a tap and sink right over it.

"It's not just a fancy piece of art," he says. "The idea is about function and consumption. You are washing your hands in the sink on top of the urinal, and the same water that's running is also used to flush. You don't have to use water twice, like when you use the urinal and wash your hands in separate sink."

This is of course a behavioural nudge in the form of bundling.

We should all be familiar with this from checking in baggage when going on a flight.

Most airlines will now provide the facility to pay for your extra baggage at the same point that the flight itself is purchased.

Thereby bundling all the pain of paying, into one perceived transaction and removing the unpleasantness and inconvenience of making another payment at the check-in.

For the loss averse human, paying just once feels better than paying twice despite the financial cost being identical.

In the toilet situation there are also costs involved with a two-step.

In most cases these are behavioural costs rather than financial.

Post-pee we are faced with a situation of potentially walking out without washing when a sink is not available due to other handwashers hogging the facility.

This probably accounts for a chunk of the alleged 40% of pee-ers who dont wash afterwards.

So, by bundling the pee and the wash, in theory, the majority of the behavioural cost of handwashing is removed.

Just to add, I'm a confirmed washer, despite the cost, and will never eat the peanuts on the bar.

Saturday, July 13, 2013

hey hey we're (not) the monkeys - the coda

I half expected to get some grief about the 'Monkeys can do this' post from last week.

And indeed it came.

[If this is news to you, go back and check the original post for context, and also the edit which appeared on mumbrella +comments]

But complaints were of a different sort from what I expected.

For some the Mad Men reference was unacceptable.

Mad Men being the symbol of everything that is old and out of date in advertising.

I'm not so sure.

Let's go again at the problem, but this time from an economics stand point.

And for a start, and for the sake of argument, let's accept the Lionel Robbins definition of modern economics:

"Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses."

Scarce.

People want more of what there is less of, therefore that resource which is in scarce supply can command more value.
Good news for the supplier of a scarce resource.

The democratisation of the production and distribution of media afforded by social technologies is not in doubt.

The fact that any form of media one can imagine is being produced in huge volumes by millions of people is also a given.

But something that used to be scarce is no longer scarce therefore while there may be millions of people able to produce media in any given format for any platform the sheer ubiquitousness means that in economic terms it has little value.

So agencies need to be mindful of this.
The clients pay for the value they perceive themselves to be getting.

So when Don Draper says 'people think monkeys can do this...they can't do what we do, and they hate us for that', I believe we should heed that.

Because monkeys get paid in peanuts.

And that's why the whole anyone-can-do-it idea, this idea perpetuated principally by those of the social media confirmation bias, is generally bad for the whole communications industry.

And it isn't true.

Friday, July 12, 2013

the empowered c*nsumer

'These data belong to me, and this media belongs to me, i am the c*nsumer who is in control'

With such thoughts a fool is tormented.

He himself does not even belong to himself; how much less the data and media experience?'

The fool who knows his foolishness, is wise at least so far.

But a fool who thinks himself wise? He is called a fool indeed.

(Adapted from the Dhammapada)

a piss-easy nudge

Another interesting behavioural campaign out of Brazil.

If you recall we've also liked the Immortal Fans organ-donation appeal and the Beer Tunstile in recent weeks.

This one is titled Xixi Elétrico – or Electric Pee – and features electricity-generating urinals on a truck at the Rio Carnival.

According to creators JWT Brasil:

'Every year, at Carnival, Rio de Janeiro must deal with the same problem: Carnival enthusiasts end up using the streets as a bathroom, and the stench is impregnated through the city for days.
The situation is so serious that, since last year, authorities have detained people found peeing out of place.'

In an almost classic reward substitution nudge, patrons are required to 'use' the urinals in order to generate the leccy to keep the tunes going, rather than the previous default - and somewhat anti-social behaviour - which involved 'going' in doorways and suchlike, in the street.

As an added bonus the electricity is, of course, generated in an eco-friendly manner.

Police time is not wasted in booking bladder-challenged revellers.

And, a smashing promotion of the hosts, Brazilian grass roots music non-profit Afroreggae.

hat-tip Springwise

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

monkeys can do this

There was a minor story this week that is probably of no interest to anyone outside of the Australian communications business, but is worthy of a brief bit of commentary here.

The Sydney arm of PR agency Porter Novelli ran a 'job ad' via Twitter, they were looking to hire an account director.

Applicants had to tweet their 'application' as a cute one-liner and tag it #socialcv.

Predictably the hashtag got hijacked and turned into a joke.

Mumbrella (Aussie comms industry news site) have captured the story as it unfolded.

Here's a link.

While recognising the relative unimportance of this in the grand scheme of things I'm compelled to comment that, while it was not the smartest thing Porter Novelli will ever do, that's not the main story.

The comms industry as a whole seems to be infatuated with youth, and a result the assumption that 'youth' are best placed to manage social media comms simply because they know how to operate the tools and are 'digital native' or whatever is rife.

The cliche of 'social media strategy' being the domain of the hapless intern is a cliche for the simple reason that it is still very common.

As you will notice if you follow the story, finally towards the end of the day some grown-ups at Porter Novelli seem to have intervened and have been able to flip it and save some face.

But.

Theres a quote from Don Draper in season 2 of Mad Men that came immediately to mind.

In this scene the young (and still aspiring) copywriter Peggy Olsen glibly described one of her ad concepts to Don with the clarification that 'Sex sells'.

Don retorts 'Who says that?

Just so you know, the people who talk that way think that monkeys can do this...

...they can’t do what we do, and they hate us for it.

Stunts such as this one really mean that the joke is on us, as a whole communications industry.

To the outside looking in,we all look like those monkeys that Don Draper describes. If social media PR and and digitally driven comms in general is going to continue to have any credibility in business then we need to do much better than this.

Leaving children in charge of the shop is bad strategy.

And, in general, the idea that an industry publicly communicates that a candidate able to manage a clients business is likely to reveal themselves by their ability to tweet something funny doesn't say much about the likely quality of the thinking that clients are paying for.

In psychology they call this the 'effort reduction framework' and attribute substitution - a human cognitive bias which enables us to answer difficult questions by substituting the original question with an easier one.

This process is useful when choosing one kind of baked beans over another but choosing candidates to guide a clients business seems to me to be something that requires a bit more critical thinking, or else it's true.

Monkeys can do this.

Tuesday, July 09, 2013

choice architecture

I've been contemplating the below screen capture from the Guardian mobile app for a few weeks but i'm none the wiser.

Is it a behavioural economist in the subs department having a laugh?

Or is there something in the fundamental arithmetic that I'm not getting?

Saturday, July 06, 2013

heuristics and biases. watch and learn with Katie Hopkins.

If you have even the most cursory of interest in behavioural stuff, human psychology and decision making then this clip from UK daytime TV, which has gone YouTube gangbusters in just a couple of days and features posh mouth and former reality TV 'star' Katie Hopkins, is for you.

Hopkins incurs the wrath of the presenters, guests and viewers for declaring that she uses certain mental shortcuts in order to decide which children she allows her own to play with.

She does this simply by answering the initial 'difficult' question about which she has little information to base her decision...

'Should I allow my child to go over to unknown child x's house to play?'

By instead substituting with a different, easier question...

'What does the name of child x and the location of child x's house tell me about the 'kind' of family that the child comes from, and therefore what are the most salient ideas I have about the socio-econimic circumstances and behaviours of these type of people'.

These shortcuts - and there are a few - that she predominantly relies upon are pretty much universal heuristics and cognitive biases.

The most immediately evident are:

Firstly, the affect heuristic.

In all of us this heuristic is typically useful while quickly judging the risks and benefits of anything.
The end decision depends on the previously stored positive or negative feelings and associations that the person associate with the given situation.

Your 'gut feeling' in other words.

At the same time, she's mapping in another couple of biases - representativeness and availability.

'...Potential playmate Child X -'Tyler'- lives in the 'bad' estate round the corner...'

Hopkins then very quickly fills in the gaps to create a plausible story about Tyler based on his name and where he lives using stereotypical attributes easily associated (ie available, meaning that they come most easily to mind) with working class, council estate kids with 'common' names.
Names who's origins can be traced to pop signers or celebrities from a particular recent time frame.

Therefore Tyler from the bad estate equates to; lazy kid who does not do his homework, has irresponsible parents who are probably unemployed, or work in manual or service industries - drink, smoke and swear, generally let their kids get away with murder - and before you know it her child will be round the back of the shops sniffing glue.

For the bourgeoise Hopkins, these are extremely salient images.

Hopkins gets panned by the other guests and presenters on the show but it's worth noting that these type of processes are in fact the way that most of our decisions are made.

Very fast and done with remarkably little information.

One or two pieces of data are enough for us to make up a story and move on.

Most of the time it's a pretty useful way to operate.

(Making decisions in the Supermarket, for instance, benefit greatly from this kind of thinking.
If we didn't use shortcuts, and rationally deliberated over the ingredients, packaging and cost-benefit analysis of Tomato vs Cream of Mushroom we would never make it out of the soup aisle and likely starve to death.)

From an actual cognitive processes point of view what we can ascertain is what Hopkins real decision was to deliberately give voice to instinctive, emotional System One (the unconscious automatic process) responses - that, for the most part, people suppress when they occur for fear of upsetting social norms - and allowing these suggestions to be fully endorsed by System Two (the rational, analytical process) and therefore Katie says what was actually on her mind without System Two putting the block on it.

But that's her schtick. A kind of posh touerretes.

In a sense our own representativeness bias makes it somehow socially unacceptable for an upper middle-class, minor celebrity, woman to be controversial in this sense, however if the same story had been delivered by a Frankie Boyle 'type' it might be regarded as satire.

Having said that, Hopkins is pretty hard to like, and in a moment of pure comedic cognitive dissonance, venomously berates parents who name children after geographical locations (Brooklyn etc) despite the fact that one of here own children is named India.

Must-see tv for planners.

Thursday, July 04, 2013

yesterday never comes

I wondered why most of the music I listen to nowadays seems to be stuff that I was deep into as a teenager and a lot of the beliefs around politics and culture and my position on things in general have their roots in those years.

There are are at least a couple of explanations. One I like is the idea of the reminiscence bump.

The bump can be explained in a cognitive sense - things experienced during a period of rapid change, ie ones teens, are better encoded as memories due to their novel and distinct nature. Once you're out of that period things become more stable, and more routines develop so the number of new experiences reduces.

Another theory is around personal narrative and identity. Essentially our sense of identity develops significantly during these years and then retrospectively we organise these memories - or, more accurately, 'sets' of associations - into the story of oneself.

And it is a story. Actual distinct memories will be relatively few, so we make up the rest - a kind of cryptomnesia - in order to make it coherent. Essentially our deeply felt sense of our own self and identity is - pretty much - a great work of fiction.

Or if you prefer, a more fun alternative, as reported in PsyBlog, is to consider nostalgia as a medical affliction.

A disease that we have, in fact, been infected with principally by the people of Switzerland.

"Nostalgia was regarded as a medical disease confined to the Swiss, a view that persisted through most of the 19th century. Symptoms—including bouts of weeping, irregular heartbeat, and anorexia—were attributed variously to demons inhabiting the middle brain, sharp differentiation in atmospheric pressure wreaking havoc in the brain, or the unremitting clanging of cowbells in the Swiss Alps which damaged the eardrum and brain cells."

Wednesday, July 03, 2013

i like big butts and I cannot lie

The City of Sydney has unveiled a large cigarette-filled 'Yuk' sculpture/installation in Hyde Park that aims to get draw some attention to the issue of fag ends littering the park and other areas of the street.

So reports Campaign Brief.

The conventional approach is enforcement through bans and fines but this activation uses emotional triggers; firstly the installation is novel and surprising enough that you may want to have a closer look and then, of course you have another gut reaction (disgust) upon closer inspection.

How long before a hedonic adaptation kicks in (ie the novelty wears off) remains to be seen, but an interesting tactic none the less.

Thursday, June 27, 2013

on small innovations

We've discussed the Chindogu effect here before.

Pseudo-innovations that only solve a problem of their own creation.

True innovation solves a real human problem.

Sometimes in a quiet way, but giving you a profound sense of '...of course'.

Curbtxt in it's simplicity does exactly so.

Helping San Francisco neighbours avoid parking problems, and still be nice to each other.

Another thanks to Marketing Futures.

last train to nudgecentral

This one is a nice little behavioural win-win-win triple nudge whammy, rewarding both recycling and a responsible behaviour around drinking at the same time, while also promoting Antarctica beer.

Festival goers in Rio de Janeiro were able to exchange their empty beer cans - rather than leave them in the street - for a free train ticket home via a modified turnstile - The Beer Turnstile - that doubled as a recycling point.

So, for the punters the desired new behaviour is all upside, theres no risk or sense of loss, it doesn't require any thinking and everyone is doing it so it feels like a good idea.

And for Antarctica beer, they become literally the beer of the festival.

HT Springwise via Marketing Futures

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

minimum viable idea

There is a kind of brilliant simplicity in this idea.

It's pared down to the minimum.

You get it almost instantly, and completely in a second.

The budget to help London homeless charity The Passage was $0, so it had to work.

So, would people give more to 'people-like-me'?

Yes. Donations went up 25%.

While necessity was the mother of invention in this example it asks us; how much we can take out and the idea still works rather than how much more complexity do we need to create.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

it's tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time. it's tricky.

For mash get Smash.
Do the Shake'n'Vac, and put the freshness back.
Beans meanz Heinz.
Once you pop you can't stop.
A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play.

Funny how easy it is to remember these lines from the 70's and 80's.

Perhaps it's becoming something of a lost art.

The debate about the future of advertising is often about technology, targeting, cookies and data.

Sadly, snappy rhymes hardly ever comes up.

That's five for starters. Add yours?

Video clip via Dan Pink's blog.

Monday, June 24, 2013

flowers of romance

When designing incentives to encourage a particular action or behaviour it's worth considering that often the most effective incentives show that the company offering the incentive has gone through some extra effort to provide it.

For instance offering a $25 gift voucher for completing a survey requires little effort or thought, but coming round to clean your windows requires the giver to go out of their way a bit, even though the actual monetary value of the incentive may be less.

There's a clip somewhere online where Rory Sutherland gave the following as an example.

Apparently there's been some research indicating that one of the reasons women like to receive flowers from men is precisely because men feel a little bit uncomfortable buying flowers, therefore the act involved some sacrifice on the part of the giver.

Thanks to Rob, who posted this pic earlier, and which seems to tap into that insight nicely.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

football's not a matter of life or death. It's much more important than that.

Whatever the view from outside the ad industry is on the Cannes festival - an overblown self-congratulatory extravagance is a popular take - for those of us within the industry it's a chance to get a broad look at what has been happening in other parts of the world in one big chunk, and evaluate what we do in our respective markets against the best of others.

This year's Promo Grand Prix was awarded to Ogilvy Brazil, Sao Paolo, for their organ donation campaign using football team Sport Club Recife.

As a behavioural economics geek this one obviously appealed as it capitalises on a simple human psychology insight.

Making arrangements to donate one's organs is not at the top of most people's to-do list so by attaching the desired behaviour - carrying a donor card - to something that is at the top of the list; ie supporting your football team (Brazilian football fans are among the most passionate and partizan in the world) then the new behaviour can be achieved more easily, as a nudge, and without all that effortful thinking that we like to avoid.

And, at the same time, it removes one of the biggest barriers to organ donation - getting after the fact next of kin authorisation for the deceased's organs to be used.

Or like Bill Shankly famously observed - 'Football is not a matter of life or death. It's much more important than that.

separation and spillage

At a digital advertising seminar i spoke at last week there was, in my view an unhealthy and disproportionate amount of time spent discussing this notion of last-click attribution.

This is the obsession many marketers have with crediting the 'last click' to the sale in an attempt to quantify channel ROI and such like.

What about all the other habits, touchpoints, encounters and interactions that a customer had prior making a purchase?

The problem (for those who want to measure) is that most of this is unmeasurable in a linear way.

Principally because if there are interactions most of them happen between people.

There's too much spillage.

This idea of spillage came from listening to Wilko Johnson talk about the making of Dr Feelgood's debut album on the BBC 'Mastertapes' podcast.

Wilko describes throwing a tantrum with the studio engineers who wanted to record the band doing their parts separately then mix it together afterwards with multiple guitar overdubs - as is the norm.

But Wilko wanted the band to play together in the same room, as if it were 'live'.

The engineers were worried about separation and spillage.
Spillage being when the sounds of drums, bass and guitars 'spill' into each other.
They wanted it neater and cleaner.

But Wilko recalls having none of it.

“Take me somewhere in this wonderful world of ours where you get separation.

It doesn’t happen.

You walk down the street… you get a lot of spillage. That’s the real universe, man”

Last-click attribution or any other form of single channel ROI measurement strikes me as an attempt at separation - such is the wont of marketers who are purely data driven - when we should be more happy with the spillage that comes from prioritising for creativity.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

the last three feet is the whole nine yards?

This shopper promotion example from Meat Pack, a trainer/shoe store in Guatamala is quite interesting.

The notion of using mobile alerts to deliver coupons or discounts in store has always been riddled with flaws.

Why give real time discounts in store when your customers are already there and possibly ready to buy?

Sure you can potentially increase basket size but it's hard to know whether they might have bought anyway and it's equally hard to contextualise intent.

However delivering a contextual offer when a customer is close to buying with one of your competitors is possibly more interesting.

Meat Pack's 'Hijack' does exactly this.

Hijack tracks a users path round the shopping mall and pings the alert when the customer is in a competitor store that stocks similar products and brands, It starts to get interesting as the app effectively turns on a 'game layer' - the discount offer starts at 100% off and reduces by a percentage point per second as the customers' scarcity bias kicks in and has to leg it to the Meat Pack store to redeem their offer.

While one could argue that in order for the customer to have installed the app they would already be a 'customer' therefore would be inclined to shop with Meat Pack anyway, we should note that even 'loyal' customers are promiscuous - they will be 'loyal' to several brands in any given category - and will still require another prod. While the real point of the intervention is to create a situation which will capture momentary attention of other 'spectators'.

We're almost always more interested in what we see others to be doing.

As more and more of the key challenges for FMCG type brands are taking place in what some commentators describe as the 'zero' moment of truth, we'll see more of these promotions that join-up the physical and the digital and look to activate those system one type responses.

In effect, turning the last three feet into (almost) the whole nine yards.

HT Econsultancy

Thursday, June 06, 2013

touristification

'But the worse touristification is the life we moderns have to lead in captivity, during our leisure hours: Friday night opera, scheduled parties, scheduled laughs. Again, golden jail..'

Word of the week, again from Anti-Fragile, with it's roots in 1979.

Wednesday, June 05, 2013

consumption-determinism

This ad for NZ jobsite Trade Me Jobs caught our eye.
There's a little play on the idea of nominative determinism.

A running psychology gag of sorts, early identification is often attributed to Carl Jung who said to have noted the 'quite gross coincidence between a man's name and his peculiarities or profession.'

And Jung kept the gag going by noting the phenomenon among psychologists, including himself:
"Herr Freud (Joy) champions the pleasure principle, Herr Adler (Eagle) the will to power, Herr Jung (Young) the idea of rebirth…"

The spot takes the other tack, a non-determinism vs determinism point of view.
According to Daniel Dennett, this perception detail is somewhat unimportant as the 'outcome' happens either way.

But here's the thought.
What is beyond argument is that in pre-industrial times people were often defined by the work they did rather than the things they possessed. Therefore one's name had a certain social status attached to it.

In simpler times people made their own things, or made things to trade.
A sense of skin in the game perhaps (to evoke a theme from Taleb's Ant-Fragile).

Today however we are all consumers.
We require systems - the mechanics or which are completely outside our own hapless capacity to influence - to be in place in order to meet basic needs like feeding ourselves.

And, in a sense we're defined by how ironic, clever, exotic or otherwise our selection from the available set products to consume tells our story.

So anyway, to clebrate my delight at finding a certain product from home at the local produce store, and in an effort to establish consumption-determinism, I'm changing my name to Yorkshire Tea.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

out of reach and beyond dispute

While we are on the subject of the spectacular this keynote by Robert Scoble from the recent TNW Europe conference felt like sychronicity.

If ever there was an instance of the spectacle manifesting itself as an enormous positivity, out of reach and beyond dispute this is it.

Scoble, with his umpteen Android devices, ipad, lapel camera taking photos every ten seconds, Google Glass (natch) and....wait for it....techno waistcoat!, has morphed into some kind of singularity-caricature techno-celebrity cartoon, a spectacular representations of a living human being projected into life in 3D.

An image of self-commodification, alienation and of social life taken over by the accumulated products of the tech economy.

Hilarious.

As I'm re-reading Debord this week this excerpt seems appropriate'For the spectacle, as the perfect image of the economic order, ends are nothing and development is all although the only thing into which the spectacle plans to develop is itself'.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

the spectacular moments of commodity society

The Hungarian Postmodernist-Marxist philosopher György Lukács is credited as the author of the idea of reification.

For Lukács reification literally translates as the 'objectification' - of social life or social relationships and their subsequently re-expression as relationships between objects rather than people - as characterised by many aspects of what we would describe as 'consumer' culture.

'Objectification' has become a bit of a skunk word, the gobbledygook end of postmodernism have ran with it.

But, in simple terms, Lukács is describing a process by which the previously 'authentic' experience is transformed and then rendered 'inauthentic' by its incorporation into the totality (the all-pervasive supremacy of the whole over the parts) resulting in alienation.

One of the most quoted descriptions of contemporary consumer-culture alienation is in this passage from Don Delillo’s 1985 novel White Noise.

White Noise* is widely regarded as a case-in-point post-modern work, however we shall not hold that against it.

*In a detournement footnote, apparently DeLillo originally wanted to title the book Panasonic, but the Panasonic Corporation injuncted. Fact fans.

The characters, Jack and Babette Gladney return home from a trip to the supermarket:

'It seemed to me that Babette and I, in the mass and variety of our purchases, in the sheer plenitude those crowded bags suggested, the weight and size and number, the familiar designs and vivid lettering, the giant sizes, the family bargain packs with Day-Glo sale stickers, in the sense of replenishment we felt, the sense of well-being, the security and contentment these products brought to some snug home in our souls – it seemed we had achieved a fullness of being that is not known to people who need less, expect less, who plan their lives around lonely walks in the evening.'

The most striking contemporary example of this kind of reification is, of course, Facebook.
And in particular the the notion of Facebook 'friends'.

In which the idea of 'friendship' - an aspect of authentic social life and social relationships - that has, in effect, been 'objectified' and indeed commodified by Facebook.

Indeed, within Facebook we even refer of ourselves in the third person. Eaon shared person x's photo and so on.

The 'friend' product is, of course, core to Facebook's business model and monetisation strategy.

We will all be familiar by now with the point that, in the Facebook environment it is the user (or 'friend') that is the product for sale.

Facebook sells the product (and its data by-products) to advertisers, and then re-packages it up and then sells it back to us as the social experience.

The cycle is complete - and gets completely spectacular - when we understand that this idea of the Facebook friend is not only reduced to reified commodity but is also now increasingly becoming the way we understand the nature of authentic friendship, to a degree.

Where that fact might have been spectacular enough in 2011, today we can see other 'possibilities' around further objectification afforded by the next wave of mass media technologies.

In particular the likes of virtual and augmented reality technologies.

I've semi-referenced Debord's Society of The Spectacle in this note.

Among the many descriptions of the Spectacle the following is perhaps the most key to this discussion.

'The spectacle appears at once as society itself, as a part of society and as a means of unification.
As a part of society, it is that sector where all attention, all consciousness, converges.
Being isolated and precisely for that reason this sector is the locus of illusion and false consciousness; the unity it imposes is merely the official language of generalized separation'

The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.'

Obviously my novelty pseudo-academic intellectualism finds the synonym connecting The Spec-tacle and then Google Glass, the almost uber-mediator of social relationship by images, ironic and funny.

Let's read that again.

'The spectacle appears at once as society itself, as a part of society and as a means of unification'.'

That Facebook/Spectacle analogy is developed further by journalist John Harris who also notes:

'[Debord] is talking about alienation, the commodification of almost every aspect of life and the profound social sea-change whereby any notion of the authentic becomes almost impossible'.

To end this note, perhaps the inevitability of Virtual and Augmented reality technologies as a mass media proposition (ie spectacle) - is one in which it usurps (or indeed incorporates) Facebook as 'the invasive force of the 'spectacle'.

There is the possibility that Google Glass actually takes the idea of the Spectacle as 'social relation between people mediated by images' to new levels of alienation in the guise of authentic social life.

Both Lukács and Debord would possibly note that these new social technologies that are presented and accepted as a social innovations that allow the users to better participate in the world, are just as easily described as reification mechanisms designed to reinforce the spectacle of pseudo-communication producing not connection but only further alienation.

Wednesday, May 08, 2013

you are are a unique individual. just like everybody else

Look into my eyes for 5 seconds then review the analysis below the picture.

You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself.

While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them.

You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage.

Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worried and insecure on the inside.

At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.

You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.

You also pride yourself on being an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof.

But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others.

At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved.

Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.

Does that sound about right?

Actually the above quotation comes an experiment conducted by psychologist Bertram R. Forer in 1948.

He gave some students a personality test based on tabloid horoscope material, gave each of them the same report and explained it was their personal assessment.

On average, the subjects marked their personal analysis as about 85 percent correct.

This tendency to believe general vaguaries as specific is called the Forer effect, and part of a larger cognitive bias known as subjective validation - our tendency to be more persuaded by statements that seem to be about 'us'.

After all you are are a unique individual. Just like everybody else.

So when we advertising types are looking for insight and developing propositions we should be advised that a fruitful avenue of pursuit is not the road that seeks to find those things that make people different but finding those things that make us the same.

ht and thanks NotSoSmartBlog. Buy his book.

Thursday, May 02, 2013

the power of people

David Hepworth talking about the power of Twitter.

What he's really talking about is the power of people.

Remember kids, it's not just about the tools but about the behaviours.

People adopt the tools when the tools solve a problem.

Twitter is still around while others have failed because it still solves a problem.

Thx Brand DNA

the truth about ROI....

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a Latin phrase from which the logical fallacy that states 'Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one' is drawn.

The post hoc fallacy can be most simply expressed as follows:

A happened, then B happened.
Therefore, A caused B.

This fallacy occurs most frequently in the area of socialis media vendo (social media marketing).

Socialis media Vendo being an outpost of la la land in which 1200% ROI on electronics goods can be solely attributed to Facebook advertising.

Now that I mention it, nothing seems to have gone right for me since I started writing this blog.

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

'like' if you love cheese

There's been some speculation and debate among the chattering classes about the implications of the new Facebook feed set up for brands on the platform and brand pages in particular.

There's plenty of material out there from the social media experts on the how-and-what so no need for me to add a lay view here.

What I will say is that the - let's face it - impending death of edgerank is no bad thing.

I received a report the other day from the community managers who run and monitor the Facebook presence of several fmcg type brands.

Included in the report - and I kid you not - was a statement to this effect.

Our best performing post this week with x-hundred 'likes' was...

'Like if you love cheese'

Aside from how the norm is to calculate best performing content in this manner when in reality 'likes' are a pure vanity metric - feels good but offers no value in terms of anything actionable as a consequence - one can't help but ponder the following fact.

Here we have (and have had for some time) mass social media platforms - perhaps the most potentially powerful set of tools ever available to the human race in its history, with the potential to connect billions people world wide, and inspire them to do just about anything - yet for marketers we are stuck in this mediocre space - 'like if you love cheese'.

Because over time brands on Facebook gradually figured out how to ‘game’ edgerank – you may have seen the sharp rise in inane like-baiting drivel from brands clogging up your feed. Tactics such us ‘like if you prefer pies, share if you prefer sausage rolls’ are deliberately designed to game Edgerank. They get the likes, for sure.

So i applaud Facebook for now effectively killing edge rank (that's not what they say but it's my interpretation) in a play to make it harder for this kind of branded cack to appear into the users feeds in an organic way.

Facebook want brands to pay for their reach. And they are entitled to want this.

The good news, however, is that in all likelyhood the fact that brands will now have to pay for reach means that the quality of brand content will have to improve.

Because it is no longer 'free' then Facebook content will have to come under the same strategic and creative consideration as any other paid-for advertising, therefore reaching beyond brand fans to touch as many potential buyers as possible is the imperative.

The perceived 'value' will now be greater, simply because there is a cost connected to distribution. On the downside it’s a straight-up ad platform now. More like tv or any other web based publishing platform like Yahoo or msn.

Brand content is the now in effect pre-roll to your friends updates.

And it is a boat that appears to be leaving the harbour as the next generation of potential Facebook users appear to be - perhaps not splitting from the program - but certainly spending more time with less 'public' verticals like Whatsapp, SnapChat and Instagram (albeit a Facebook owned property)for their instant gratification and dipping in and out of Facebook for their broadcast fix.

It's a bitter-sweet situation. Better brand content (advertising), designed to get shared and grow reach, for sure, but I sense that we may now look back say that Facebook was the great missed and misunderstood opportunity for advertising as an industry.

but then a strange fear gripped me and I just couldn't ask.

'What happens with fear is that probability doesn't matter very much. That is, once I have raised the possibility that something terrible can happen....even though the possibility is remote, you may find it very difficult to think of anything else. Emotion becomes dominant.'

The above quote is Daniel Kahneman explaning how human emotional reactions routinely over-ride the rational in conditions of uncertainty.

Under most conditions to be fair.

DK also famously notes that all heuristics are equal, but 'availability' is more equal than others.

This is the simple explanation of why reach and frequency are still so important to advertisers messages.

So, reach + frequency + fear therefore is about as powerful a combination motivator as one can get.

A typical strategy to exploit this would be thus.

- Invoke a sense of fear.

- Then present a solution – invariably a path back into a known comfort zone (status quo bais) – and usually one that promotes using a particular product or service to maintain said status quo.

The famous product example is around halitosis.

Halitosis was a 'medical' condition invented by the manufacturers of Listerine mouthwash in order to create a problem for which they had already premade solution.

This is also interesting through the lens of non-behaviour change strategies, where a status quo is required.

Or a non-action.

The fear factor is naturally multiplied by at least a factor of two due to a natural human bias for loss aversion.

We feel losses (or potential losses) about twice as badly as we would feel equivalent gains.

For example.
On the way to work/school/uni this morning you find that you have lost $100 somewhere on the journey.

Imagine how bad that feels. Pretty annoying and likely to be on your mind all day.

However if you had found $100 in the street then you would feel happy for a short while but far less happy than the equivalent unhappiness you would have felt about the loss of the money.

When discussing behaviour change strategies with clients this is a key point we raise.
The new behaviour needs to be presented as significantly better, more fun and easy to adopt.

At least twice as 'good' as the status quo behaviour to even have a chance. Apples for apples doesn't cut it.

In this sense fear can be a powerful motivator for inaction because it can also paralyse.
Again, in any given situation or market there is the option to do nothing.
And most often that's the easy one to adopt.

This has been a long-winded intro to presenting this article - brought to our attention by Charles - from the blog of Craig Murray the author, broadcaster and human rights activist and former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan.

In his piece Murray points out the repeated use of the words 'warning” and “Scottish independence” in the same sentence by the BBC in repoting associated with the forthcoming referendum vote on Scottish Independence.

Below are a few of the links, there are many more.

“Scottish independence: Pension shortfall warning”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22314646

“UK Treasury warning that an SNP plan for a currency union after independence”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-22246176

“Scottish independence: Warning over ‘weakened military’”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-21776602

“Scottish independence: ‘Havoc’ warning from pensions firm”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-20562203

My own view on Scottish independence or otherwise aside theres a few of points worth noting.

The first being around the availability heuristic.
Availability is our natural human bias towards believing things that come most easily to mind.

To that end the 'Better Together' (anti) side of the independence debate have clearly grasped that key to their ends is ensuring that the fear motivator is the frame - and the resultant in-action or status quo bias is the desired outcome.

To the power of two, the key to the success of their campaign is not simply persuading those who are against independence to take action, but also to ensure that those who have no clear preference do nothing and stick with what they know.

What is somewhat disturbing is that the BBC appear to be giving disproportionate and significant airtime to this framing of the debate.
Albeit in a somewhat covert way.

The second point is understanding another point about human behaviour.
Again in situations of uncertainty or risk we will tend to look around and see what other people feel before deciding how we feel.
So for the side of the debate that can mmanipulate the 'mass' media to the best extent. ie using these supposed independent sources to perpetuate the idea that this is indeed the popular idea this is a winning frame.

Reach and frequency (social diffusion + availability heuristic) + fear frame (loss aversion + status quo bias) looks like the equation for a no vote.

And as final psychology gag (and something of a killing joke) one has to doubt the resolve of the yes lobby when one understands that the Nationalists card up it's sleeve is a radical middle way - and their own unfortunate slip towards the do nothing option.

Apparently an independent Scotland would keep the monarchy, the currency (pounds), join NATO and the European union. In other words Scotland becomes independent but everything stays exactly the same. A pitch towards a subset of the inert and the system justification bias vote.

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

lean period

'All those words that I have wasted in haste
Have left such a bitter aftertaste

The reason being I'm going through a lean period
A decidedly mean period'

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

this is the best bad idea we have

Whether or not you subscribe to the notion that movies such as Argo are a propaganda trojan horse - the irony of the line at the start of this clip will not be lost if you are among those who do (You're telling me there is a movie company in Hollywood right now that is funded by the CIA?) there are a couple of splendid bits of dialogue.

This particular scene came to mind while in an agency discussion about how to evaluate creative work.

Tony Mendez: "And we think everyone knows Hollywood people. And everybody knows they'd shoot in Stalingrad with Pol Pot directing if it would sell tickets. There are only bad options. It's about finding the best one."

Official: "You don't have a better bad idea than this?"

Jack O'Donnell: "This is the best bad idea we have, sir, by far."

Official: "The United States Government has just sanctioned your science-fiction movie."

Tony Mendez: "Thank you, sir"

Puzzling over why a particular piece of work was deeply unsatisfying, yet unable to pinpoint exactly what it was at the root, it became clear that the piece actually contained no 'idea' as such.

There was merely a fact disguised as a 'line'.

Our conclusion was that a bad idea is at least an idea and can therefore recieve criticism.

No idea is far harder to evaluate, as time is wasted trying to work out if it's an idea or not.

Let's also be mindful that no idea is very adept at appearing to be an idea.

Good idea is best. But a bad idea is still an idea and so is at all times preferrable to no idea.

To paraphrase the Dhammapada...

The bad idea that knows it's a bad idea, in this much at least is an idea.
But the no idea that thinks it's an idea - that's the real bad idea.

Argo f*ck yourself.

science plus creativity

I'm probably the last person in the world to catch on to the latest Dove activity, Real Beauty Sketches.

Real Beauty Sketches from John X. Carey on Vimeo.

Aside from being splendidly executed content as advertising and another iteration of the long running real beauty purpose idea, the difference between projects of this nature that succeed (ie signal) versus those which fail (noise) is where the idea is based on a solid human insight.

In this case, of course this is a highly creative demonstration of the worse-than-average effect.

The human cognitive bias in which we routinely underestimate one's achievements and capabilities and attractiveness in relation to others.

And may I be as bold as to suggest that this piece is a blow to those hold the belief science and creativity are opponents.

When, in fact, the application of science and creativity together will always produce the the most compelling work.

Atychiphobia

Some Wednesday inspiration from Malcolm Tucker.

"People hate me? Good!

You know what people say about you? FUCK ALL!"

Or you can have the highbrow version

“And I — my head oppressed by horror — said: "Master, what is it that I hear? Who are those people so defeated by their pain?"
And he to me: "This miserable way is taken by the sorry souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise.
They now commingle with the coward angels, the company of those who were not rebels nor faithful to their God, but stood apart.
The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened, have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them — even the wicked cannot glory in them.”

Dante Alighieri Inferno

Friday, April 12, 2013

knife fighting for the ego-friendly

Dan Ariely has famously commented on why people don't care about climate change, and how harnessing the power of the ego could be one way to move our behaviours to be more environmentally responsible.

Ego-friendly as opposed to eco-friendly.

Dan argues that if we were to invent something no-one would care about it would be climate change.

Because its real impact will be at some point far in the future, it's effects will be felt mostly by other people other than us and even if I did do something it would be a drop in the ocean such is the scale of the issue.

All of these are recipes for not caring.

Plus we only start acting when we feel something emotionally about the problem, logic isn't in it.

So Dan points to observing Prius drivers as a possible answer.

Driving a Prius promotes one's self image as a good person who is doing their bit, and is a signal to others that they are someone who cares about the environment.

The joke goes that you can spot a Prius driver by their permanent smug expression.

Anyway, the clip is from ABC's The Elegant Gentleman's Guide to Knife Fightingand is a splendid bit of insight, a smart as anything from any ad planning department and an extremis riff on Ariely's hypothesis.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

rated for constipated peak viewing time

While the news filtering in that 'Ding Dong the Witch is Dead' is set to top the various music charts by the end of this week is fairly amusing, I can't help getting somewhat misty eyed for the old days of the Radio 1 Top 40 and Top of the Pops.

Although being principally Facebook driven, an event such as this just felt a tad more salient in a mass media context.

At the time of writing 'Ding Dong' is sitting at number one on amazon and number two on the UK itunes chart.

As a cultural 'event' however the top 40 has long ago lost any significance with the broader public, what was formerly a social object of sorts is now a minor data point.

The problem is the lack of availability of those charts to the casual viewer and therefore the sense that 'something is happening'.

It requires a proper dig around to find them.

I guess the proof of the pudding will be on Sunday when the 'official' UK top forty is announced on BBC radio.

We wait with interest to see if the BBC will decide to give Ding Dong it's due chart placing.

If your old enough to have experienced the Thatcher years then you are equally likely to remember the conspiracy between the BBC and the mainstream high street retailers who participated in the chart-return process to provide the nations top 40 back in the day.

Between themselves they acted to keep the Sex Pistols 'God Save The Queen' off the number one spot in Jubilee year 1977. The BBC engineered things to ensure insipid-period Rod Stewart topped the charts despite being out-sold 2-1 by the Pistols.

WH Smith found it too much to even acknowledge the existence of the record, leaving the number two slot blank in their chart.

A nice one-two-three would be Ding Dong at number one followed by Elvis Costello's 'Tramp the Dirt Down' (which has also seen a spike in sales this week and is apparently bothering the top 40) followed by the mighty Pete's 'The Day That Margaret Thatcher Dies' or maybe the less poetic but direct 'How Does It Feel to Be The Mother of a Thousand Dead' by those naughty public school anarchists (in effect Thatcher's badly behaved disruptive children) Crass.

Friday, April 05, 2013

blessed are the cheesemakers

Not meant to be taken literally. It, of course, refers to any manufacturer of dairy products.

Except perhaps not all cheesemakers are equal.

I've read and re-read this recent article from the New York Times regarding the artisan cheese boutiques of New York.

The writer observes that 'some of the most amusing and captivating writing in the city is being produced in the service of cheese.'

For instance see the labels below scribed by Martin Johnson, manager of Gastronomie 491, a market and cafe on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

His rock'n'roll description of Calcagno, an Italian sheep cheese is particularly fetching.

“Big and floral in the very best way possible, this firm Sardinian sheep has the cool unaffected strut of Mick in his prime, Lou in middle age or Polly Jean today.”

From the marketers point of view we should note that in a commoditised market with many similar choices then a simple way to differentiate is to simply have a better story.

Particularly if the story allows the buyer to tell themselves they have made a better choice, and gives them a reason to tell other people how smart/cool/in-the-know they are.

So the cheese buying journey is certainly another one whereby standard economic theory of the c*nsumer, armed with full information, doing cost-benefit analysis and making rational decisions in their own self-interest goes right out the window.

The psychologist Barry Schwartz, a professor of social theory and social action at Swarthmore College and author of (essential reading) 'The Paradox of Choice', calls this outsourcing connoisseurship.

“Many people want the patina of connoisseurship on the cheap, so they contract out the decision-making process. [this way] you get the benefits of discernment without paying the psychological price of having to make difficult choices and distinctions. You’re happy because you’ve been told what to get and don’t know any better.”

Indeed Steve Jenkins, the cheese 'expert' at Fairway Market remarks...

'The customer has no idea what he or she wants, the customer is dying to be told what they want.”.

Perhaps that's a slightly skewed view - as with social media 'experts', cheese experts display symptoms of a somewhat subjective validation - but there can no doubt that in this instance the cheese buying process is a highly social one, and one which falls into both the copying of 'experts' bucket and also the peer-copying category.

Those who are prone to outsourcing their connoisseurship of cheese will without doubt outsource their connoisseurship in many other categories.

Schwartz also notes that '...people become paragons of taste simply by taking someone else’s advice'.

Indeed, in my record shop days we routinely employed a similar tactic, and wrote detailed descriptions of the latest US or Italian imports on stickers attached to the sleeves.

('116bpm funk guitar led balearic chunky chugger peppered with JB horns, Chas'n'Dave keys and Doobie Brothers riffs - massive Pelican Club tune! - there will be a prize for the reader who can identify that one)

As the title of the post is from Life of Brian it's seems apt to finish with another much quoted excerpt.

Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!

Crowd: [in unison] Yes! We're all individuals!

Brian: You're all different!

Crowd: [in unison] Yes, we are all different!

Man in crowd: I'm not...

Crowd: Shhh!