Search results matching tag 'communication'

Advertising Beauty and the Data Beast

1840893 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:55:00 GMT

Thanks Wieden & Kennedy for pimping up ugly old data with this beautiful jewellery range based on fluctuations in major financial data.

Their brochure describes the moment of inspiration which gave rise to the jewellery idea: data can actually be beautiful but only when you squint at it.

In my experience, the more you squint the greater the chance of getting to the fundamental understanding behind the data. Human beings have a limited capacity for active processing of information, and as research debriefs are typically packed full of information, most of it fails to communicate.

One or two nice pieces of jewellery, figuratively speaking, should be about right for the average research project. Quantity in market research should not be mistaken for value.

Surfing the Google Wave

1713999 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:09:00 GMT

Yes, sorry - I did just do that.

So this week we have been playing with that over-hyped new toy from Google, Wave. If you aren't familiar with it (and at the moment invites are like gold dust!) then it is basically a combination between email, IM and a wiki. You setup a 'Wave' and pick who is part of the Wave (from just yourself, up to everyone who uses the system) and then just typing... Content is updated in real time so if multiple users are looking at the same wave at the same time you can see the content being changed in front of your eyes - it's a little unnerving knowing all those typos could be being watched! Text and gadgets can be added, meaning you could add videos etc, but the overall flow of Waves, at the moment at least, is fairly basic.

Innevitably people are already asking what, exactly, is the point of all this?

And I'm not going to pretend I have the answer... What I can say however is that whilst it doesn't necessarily do anything wholely new, it does a unique combination of common things. By allowing users to edit text and documents together it provides a neat platform for collaboration, although in reality most businesses would be better off using Google Docs - and quite why more businesses don't is beyond me (it's free and very easy to share and collaborate over documents). But it also provides and easy way to keep a threaded conversation that remains persistent - useful for keeping track of projects for example.

Ultimately it's still early days - it took years for people to stop looking down at Twitter (and many still do) so I wouldn't expect everyone to jump on Wave just yet but it is encouraging to see Google finally bring something potentially revolutionary to the table, rather than simply gently evolving what others have done (see search, paid search, email and even the failed Knol.

So what do people think? Has anyone got on board yet?

Pimp My Research

1840893 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:20:00 GMT

Artists, advertising creatives and the crew at West Coast Customs have always known it: our senses are drawn to things we find beautiful. The downside is that this is a emotive reaction, hard to predict and control. Take Sarah Jessica Parker for example. No thanks. But beauty is a tool that market research needs to take more seriously.

People’s brains are brutally efficient at filtering messages, using their subconscious processing power to judge the relevance of information coming our way, and then file or dodge the vast majority without having to use up precious thinking resource on it. But a thing of beauty can open up the door to the conscious brain.

In a business context, anyone trying to make an information-based argument needs people to think, or their intended communication will probably fail. But we’re dealing with human beings, and data-heavy reports or presentations are hard to pay attention to.

Our business seems to have conditioned itself to expect lumbering presentations packed with data charts and hundreds of words to a slide. We know it feels wrong, but somehow researchers feel safer doing it, and clients feel they’re getting value when they see it.

But data doesn’t have to be ugly. I first read “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” by Edward R Tufte ten years ago. It includes examples of data visualisation over a century old, but if every market researcher followed its guidance, research would be a much more stimulating place. Go buy it now.

Pimping up research has even got the attention of TED, the now legendary series of technology lectures. Here’s Hans Rosling demonstrating some great software that packs hundreds of years of data into a single animation.

And finally, a video I’m particularly pleased with, because I created it myself for MediaTel’s recent Future of Radio conference :)

Making Sure Your Presentations Are Winners, Not Losers

2638569 — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 05:54:02 GMT

Being able to communicate with various audiences via presentations, speeches and webinars is a key element for success. As Shakespeare said, “No man is lord of anything ‘til he communicate his parts to others.” Examples abound where speaking ability has helped open doors (think Barack Obama), won important contracts, inspired colleagues, and led to leadership positions.

With current presentations technology, executives and other team members are able to prepare and deliver presentations of much better quality than back in the color slide and overhead projector days. Unfortunately too many of today’s presentations are famous for overwhelming audiences with boring, unfathomable material and imparting a high urge for audience members to flee the conference room. This session will explore key factors that make the difference between interesting, useful presentations and those that hinder, rather than aid, communication.

What You Will Learn
We’ll examine keys to success in four primary areas
- Planning - being clear about your audiences, your objectives, and strategy
- Preparing – organizing your material, developing reinforcing materials, creating visual support that truly helps, not hinders communication
- Proofing – getting ready so your presentation goes smoothly
- Performing – delivering to keep audiences onboard, not put them to sleep.

Who Should Participate
These techniques apply to team members who give presentations to customers, upper management, colleagues, public groups, industry and association conferences: executives, program managers, sales teams, techies and more.

Thanks

John Mathew

PowerPoint - 25 years of decline in business communication skills.

1840893 — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:58:00 GMT

So PowerPoint is 25 years old. A clinical dissection of its shortcomings was most read item on the BBC News website today.

It quotes Microsoft stats: the average presentation is 250 minutes long, from startup to shutdown, eclipsing the Guinness Book of Records entry for continuous human concentration many times over. The average PowerPoint slide contains 40 words. Snappy.

Our business is as guilty as any of PowerPoint Abuse, especially my own dear research discipline. It is used as a catch-all communication, covering presentation, speaker’s notes, research report and data tables in a brutal assault on the left brain.

And this despite the fact that we work in the heart of the communications business. How long would a planner last if her response to all communications challenges was a poster with a hundred words on it?

Given how easy it is to produce targeted messages in a multitude of media, why don’t we find many 30-second research videos, animated dashboards, podcasts or e-bulletins?

In part because companies invest a lot in generating research, but very little in its activation. Memo to boss: unused research loses you money.

If you haven’t read the article, check it out

Is social media here to stay?

902609 — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:20:00 GMT

Someone asked me the interesting question recently "Do you think social media is just a passing phase?", which made me think. Why is it that this new social behaviour online has taken off so overwhelmingly that it is now estimated that by 2010, 70 percent of all online content will be user-generated?

Until now, communication can be seen as two broadly distinct streams - conversation and communication. Conversation being an interaction between a few people, and communication allowing a message to be broadcast to many people yet with little or no interaction.

1. Conversation has evolved to allow increasing distances to be incorporated into conversation, from talking, through the invention of the telegraph, the telephone and of course email.

2. Communication can be seen as evolving from the town crier, rapidly increasing the speed, complexity and reach of the communication. First up was the revolution created by Johannes Gutenberg as the printing press was developed, then radio, then television and finally web.

Social media is the first time in history that the two streams have come together, allowing mass conversations to happen. I think we are only just beginning to see the real impact of this revolution in behaviours, now we can evolve a conversation, our thinking and our perspectives not just in conversation with one or two others, but with thousands of people simultaneously. Google Wave looks like a possible contender for the next phase in this development, but it is now just taking the principles of simultaneous massive conversations forward in more innovative ways.

So yes, I do think social media is here to stay.

The attraction of The Internet and Social Media like Twitter ...

1792681 — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:13:29 GMT

is that it is a return to the prehistoric human fascination with telling tales!
Since the beginnings of any civilised society the market place was the hub of civilisation, a place to which traders returned from remote lands with exotic spices, silks, monkeys, parrots, jewels - and fabulous stories. Interactive Communication, properly executed, more resembles an ancient bazaar than fits the business models companies try and impose upon it.

People respond to interactive opportunities like Twitter because it seems to offer some intangible quality long 'missing in action' from modern life. In sharp contrast to the alienation wrought by homogenised broadcast media, interactive opportunities provide a space in which the human voice would be rapidly rediscovered. Unlike the lockstep conformity imposed by television, advertising, and corporate propaganda, interactive communication gives new legitimacy - and free rein - to play.

People long for more connection between what we do for a living and what we genuinely care about. We long for release from anonymity, to be seen as who we feel ourselves to be rather than the sum of abstract metrics and parameters. We long to be part of a world that makes sense rather than accept the accidental alienation imposed by market forces too large to grasp; to even contemplate.

Remember the market place, of old. Caravans arrived across burning deserts bringing dates and figs, snakes and parrots, monkeys, strange music and stranger tales.

The market place was the heart of the city, the kernel, the hub.
Like the past and the future it stood at the crossroads. People worked early and went there for coffee and vegetables, eggs and wine, for pots and carpets. They went there to look and listen and to marvel, to buy and to be amused. But mostly they went to meet each other...to talk and interact! Markets are conversations...as is Twitter and the Internet!
It is all there in my book “Television Killed Advertising” detailing where we have gone wrong in the past and where we could still go wrong in the future. Would you like to discuss the further? paul.ashby@yahoo.com

Task no 1. For business: Reinvent Advertising & Marketing!

1792681 — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:29:30 GMT

Hopefully lessons will been learnt from the financial crisis, do not try to rebuild business on the principle that Marketing & Advertising are always right!
The words "60% of all advertising, globally is wasted" were splashed yesterday across the marketing papers. This kind of unanimity in the trade press is not coincidental. And if the likes of Unilever persist in praising “Social Media” similar losses will still be shown in the years to come!
To have any hope of repairing the damage left behind by the highly dishonest and incompetent banks, big business must first convince the majority of the population that they are really capable of fixing the problems. Not only are we trapped in the worst recession in living memory. But behind all this lurks a horror even more shocking; the entire marketing/advertising-economic model of free enterprise, rugged individualism, creative advertising and marketing is broken beyond all hope of repair.
Marketing/Advertising on which the Western world built its seeming success seems to have completely broken down. How else can one describes a situation in which all of the country's main financial institutions and many of its biggest industrial companies are effectively bankrupt and on government life-support?
The crisis triggered by September's Credit Crisis appears to have discredited many of the assumptions on which our prosperity and democracy was founded. In 1989 the world, from China and Russia to South Africa, India and Brazil, concluded that there was no serious alternative to market forces as a means of organizing productive activity. In 2009 the whole world seems to have reached the opposite conclusion — that free markets and financial incentives together with marketing & advertising, lead even the richest and most sophisticated societies to disaster.
The question we must ask today is not whether Marketing & Advertising is too big or too small, but whether it works at all.
Undoubtedly the crisis could well be the cause of an idea whose time has come, for the new model of Marketing & Advertising that we must now invent. More generally, financial regulation and macroeconomic management will surely now recognize that naive theories about "efficient" advertising/ marketing and the highly dubious claim they spawned "advertising works" were a major cause of the entire financial disaster. It will still be capitalism, but Marketing/Advertising will not try to rebuild business on the principle that "marketing and advertising are always right".
Already it appears that the Advertising industry, ably supported by Marketing, is already placing their faith on so called “Social Media”. The Internet is NOT a medium conducive to effective, accountable, advertising.
This hysteria about Social Media again reflects the problems faced by Old Advertising & Old Media, a total lack of understanding as to the real meaning of the word “Communication”.
As to Unilever we have already offered Simon Clifts a free copy of our book “Television Killed Advertising” for there he will discover ways of saving a fortune in Marketing monies as well as to how he could advertising on the Internet and elsewhere most effectively! And by the way Simon the offer still stands!
Our TAG program with $10m of research behind it is the way forward, TAG creates a “Social Media for Business” where your customers willingly become the very center of your business with stunning ROI! Interested? Contact me on paul.ashby@yahoo.com

What’s in a name? A rose smells just as sweet under another name!

1792681 — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:44:29 GMT

What is the perverse attraction of the Internet? Why do advertising and marketing people insist in discussing aspects of the Internet endlessly?
Because it is all totally meaningless!
Not only are we trapped in the worst recession in living memory. But behind all this lurks a horror even more shocking; the entire marketing/advertising-economic model of free enterprise, rugged individualism, creative advertising and marketing is broken beyond all hope of repair.
In 1989 the world, from China and Russia to South Africa, India and Brazil, concluded that there was no serious alternative to market forces as a means of organizing productive activity. In 2009 the whole world seems to have reached the opposite conclusion — that free markets and financial incentives together with marketing & advertising, lead even the richest and most sophisticated societies to disaster.
The question we must ask today is not whether Marketing & Advertising is too big or too small, but whether it works at all.
And that most certainly includes the Internet, which is most definitely NOT an advertising medium.
To reinvent advertising and marketing the first thing we have to do is to fully understand the word "communication". From there comes all else.
Read my book "Television Killed Advertising" and you will discover where we went wrong in the past and we are going wrong now. Already I am drafting my next book titled "Advertising Killed Advertising"!
Certainly the next possible title is “The Internet finally put Advertising to Death”!
Want to discuss this further? paul.ashby@yahoo.com

Brands are looking more and more at Live Brand Experiences as it is the leading platform to connect directly with consumers

1914250 — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 21:54:50 GMT

Over the next few years brands will up their marketing spend on experiential marketing due to the mass audiences declining to respond to TV advertising. Digital is always on the rise due to new technology, digital plays a significant role in the live brand experience as it amplifies further channels which will gain maximum reach for campaigns. What are your thoughts about the above integration and what the future holds? Marvin