Busy doing nothing

The two most over-used words in emails have to be "sorry" and "busy". Here's a typical example from an email I received the other day:

I hope you  are well. sorry for the delay in getting back to you we are extremly busy at the moment. (sic)


On the face of it - OK. I suppose an apology of sorts and an answer are somewhat better than the wall of silence I've been experiencing lately. When exactly did "no response" become the new "no", anyway?

But let me scratch below the surface of those copy-and-pasted words. And all I can see is a lack of respect. You assume you and your colleagues en masse have got far, far more on your plates than I could possibly ever dream of, silly me, and that throwing in a quick "sorry" will make it all OK. You can't even be bothered to check your spelling or punctuation.

Things are frantic
I'm rushed off my feet.
We're inundated.
I just can't spare the time.

What the heck are all these people doing with their time? Everyone has exactly the same amount of seconds, minutes and hours as the next person.

My suspicion is that they are composing this sort of gobbledegook:

Just a quick reminder - we'd love to know more about the experience you recently had with us during your payment experience.

I am sorely tempted to ask them about their "feelings" during the questionnaire-composing experience. This was all about paying a bill (a necessary evil that takes a few seconds) for goodness' sakes, not a round-the-world cruise!

I read an excellent blog post by Richard Huntington yesterday, about deep thought vs. all this headless chicken-style busyness, presumably prompted by the requirement to be "agile."It's about "getting to the bottom of things rather than staying on top of things."

I know I've been guilty in the past of using the "b-word" but I think I'll make it taboo from now on.

Along with "just", "quick" and "sorry" - when it's not meant wholeheartedly.

Pity the Postmaster

In days gone by, the postman's main fear was being bitten by an aggressive dog. These days, the email postmaster is probably more at risk of being attacked by angry customers, but more of that later.

A new study by consultants Globeone shows that only 18% of German companies communicate a purpose (the benefit to society at large) in their claims. But, as Globeone point out, having a claim with what appears to be a higher purpose expressed in it is not enough:

"However, the use of a strong purpose goes far beyond the development of a brand claim – it must be lived by the entire organization, because otherwise the credibility of such a positioning is not given. "

Quite often, even if the management are behind the purpose, it doesn't filter down to those who are actually communicating with customers.

Take an example: Deutsche Telekom. To cut a long story short, I seem to be unable to send emails to BTinternet users. You'd think that 2 of the largest providers in Europe might actually be able to work out that their users want to communicate with each other, but it seems not.

Here are just some statements from my email conversation with the Postmaster:

"unfortunately, there is no way for us to force other providers or
administrators to accept messages from our servers. We think that BT's
policy is not wrarranted and that "SPF" really does more harm than good.
Thus we do not have an solution for you at this time."

"we are afraid that it will take some time until our customers can send
e-mail to customers of BT again."

"We are familiar with the behaviour of the servers from btinternet.com
and we stay in contact with btinternet. But we can't promise you a fast
solution."

These emails were inevitably signed off with the claim "Life is for Sharing", which I would like to amend to "Life is For Sharing. Except with BT customers."

I don't blame the Postmaster. He/she/they have a fairly thankless job, dealing with problems and customers that make a rabid Rottweiler look like a poodle puppy.

But I do think that people on the customer interface should have training on the implications of what the purpose means for them in their customer-facing role. Of course, there will be problems and hitches.

But it's how these are dealt with that makes the difference.

The Cluetrain comes of age

The Cluetrain Manifesto first surfed onto the internet (as you did then) in 1999, meaning that this famous piece of business literature has now come of age. A somewhat Lutherean piece, with its 95 theses, the manifesto explored the impact of the internet on marketing and corporate communications. The idea running through is that online conversations - the new 'markets' - would make traditional marketing tools and techniques obsolete.

The manifesto has a 'Brave New World'  (in the original Shakespearian sense) feel about it, in its celebration of the human voice. This tonality is a far cry from the cute cats, grotesque gifs, saccharine  motivational quotes, Trump memes and rants that made up my Facebook stream this morning. But let me think back to 1999. It was probably four or five years since I'd first gone online, my Homepage was Yahoo! and my social media activity consisted of something called the Wedding Forum (later Baby Forum) which was a kind of forerunner of Mumsnet. The internet was not for everyone in those days - we were surfing and stumbling, certainly not being fed.

So how is the Cluetrain Manifesto looking on its 18th birthday? I had a re-read, and was inspired all over again by many of the 95 theses. Some of these are basic truths that have nothing to do with the internet, and are just as relevant today as they were in 1999, and probably 1899 too:

2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
21. Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.
22. Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view. 
23. Companies attempting to "position" themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually cares about.
24. Bombastic boasts—"We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ"—do not constitute a position. 
86. When we're not busy being your "target market," many of us are your people. We'd rather be talking to friends online than watching the clock. That would get your name around better than your entire million dollar website. But you tell us speaking to the market is Marketing's job. 

But I do think the authors over-emphasised the potential 'smartness' of the majority. 'Informed' covers a multitude of sins. Informed by whom? With truth or alternative facts? With what you choose to listen to? 

10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally. 

And more worryingly, it is the 'new' internet corporations that are taking the mantle of the 20th century bad boys, speaking in contrived voices (the chummy dude Californian tone Facebook adopts is just as contrived as the old-style corporate pomposity) , gathering data, invading privacy, controlling newsfeeds, bullying and manipulating.

15. Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman. 

Another example, perhaps, of where Huxley got it right?

So, Happy Birthday, Cluetrain Manifesto - and let's see how things look in another 18 years. I do wonder what effect bots, Alexa and AI will have on the belief in the 'human voice.'

Take your time

One criticism that was levelled at me in early school reports is that I was always rushing to get things finished - and sometimes spoiling my work. This tendency nevertheless saw me through numerous exams and even my driving test ("you take the corners too quickly, but you're under control so I'm passing you").The past few years, I did like to think that this ability stood me in good stead to cope with the deluge, tsunami, eruption, call it what you will, of stuff I had to read on or via the internet.

All those 125-page reports that colleagues send round as pdfs with "I thought you'd be interested in this". All those books that GoodReads is challenging me to read to put my reading tally from last year in the shade. All those links on LinkedIn and other linky sites that contacts urge me I "must read."

But sometime in the last little while, my fast-reading really has turned into superficial skimming. None of this stuff actually enters my long-term memory. And I don't feel bad about it because the more I think about it, the chances that any of the senders of those 125-page pdfs have actually read or understood the thing are pretty minimal.

I've taken a decision to cut down on the amount I attempt to read. I'm either going to read stuff properly and thoroughly or not bother.

Reading is not the same as understanding.

Having a reaction is not the same as having an opinion.

There's a good blog post (which I have read all the way through, although I haven't followed all the links) from Farnam Street on this topic - the brain needs time to make associations, draw connections, form opinions. Maybe even as much time as advocated by The Long Now, with their 5-digit dates.

One thing I left behind when I left the UK was buying drinks in rounds. More often than not, you tried to keep up with the fastest drinker and ended up with memory loss and a stinking headache the next day.

 

Are tracking studies still a waste of time?

More years ago than I care to remember I wrote a paper entitled Do Ads need to be recalled to be effective? My conclusion back then was a resounding NO. I wonder why, nearly a quarter of a century later, advertising awareness is still being tracked and used as a measure of effectiveness. The research agencies doing the tracking may call it "brand communication awareness" these days, but it's the same old measure, collected in the same old way.

I know this, because I'm often rung up or grabbed via a pop-up on my computer to take part in surveys. Very few of these surveys bother to ask any more whether I work in marketing or advertising, so of course I take part. The questions are exactly as they were decades ago: "which brands in Category X have you seen or heard advertising or communications for recently?". And "you said you saw or heard advertising for Y recently. Where did you see or hear that..."

It's as meaningless now as it was then. In fact, it would be more meaningless, if there were such a thing. These days, the boundary between where a brand stops and its communication begins is even more blurred than it was. We've gone from units like a poster, or a 30" TV spot, or a 15" radio ad to far more complex and integrated stories and branded content and earned media and experiential whatsits and all the rest. 

I've nothing against tracking the brand in its entirety. How famous is it? What does it mean to people? What do people associate with it? That's all fine. I'm also OK with real-time monitoring via mobile devices of people coming in contact with a brand, touchpoints if you like.

But this persistence of a memory test on an epic scale, expecting people to regurgitate ads and other assorted titbits of brand communication in an unprocessed form, complete with the accompanying media schedule - no.

Now, as then, people are measuring advertising awareness and recall because they can, or they think they can. Now, as then, I conclude that in determining advertising effectiveness, we should spend more time on measuring effect and less on 'measuring' the detail of the advertising input. 

An element of surprise

"A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless." - Charles de Gaulle

Who doesn't love surprises? From Christmas Crackers to Crackerjack boxes, our childhoods are packed with little surprises. There are whole brands, such as Kinder Überraschungsei that are built on the idea of surprise.

I think we are surprised less and less as we grow older, which is a shame. And many brands these days are so intent on the pursuit of consistency and transparency that they forget surprise. The media we look at suggests the possibility of surprise through its sheer quantity, but the reality is different. All those headlines from Buzzfeed, now mimicked by what used to be quality dailies which claim "You Will Be Amazed" are tempting, but I find myself increasingly unamazed. Algorithms aren't terribly good at surprising, either. And reading this fascinating article by Tara Hunt, you'll see how so many YouTube videos use identical tropes (to use the hip word of the moment) /are formulaic (to be truthful.) And here are my thoughts about surprise from a couple of years back.

Trendwatching have picked up on this in their latest Trend Report: "Accustomed to now long-entrenched control, transparency and endless choice, in 2015 millions of consumers will find light relief in pursuing just the opposite."

I'm not sure about "light relief". I think that surprise - delivered through novelty and innovation in product, communication, service, pricing and all the rest of the marketing mix is key to keeping customers and potential customers "excited and breathless." 

Pseudo Choice

I'm reading a dystopian/speculative/sci-fi whatever-it's-called-these-days novel at the moment: Future Perfect by Katrina Mountfort. 150 years into the future, the human race live in CitiDomes rather reminiscent of Center Parcs, subscribe to a set of MindValues that wouldn't be out of place on a boardroom wall and have given up worshipping anything remotely spiritual. Instead, the idols are those that have BodyPerfect status and are the media darlings of the non-stop diet of reality shows. Needless to say, the BodyPerfect guys and girls look as if they have swooshed out of advertising stock photos.

It's fiction but it doesn't feel so far from the truth that we're seeing now. Chris Anderson's book The Long Tail is now 8 years old and while it's true that we do have endless choice, not only does Google make it difficult for us to find the end of the tail (or even the beginning of the end of the tail) - did you mean X? Show results for etc. etc. etc - but when it comes to it, most people are more comfortable not having to bother. Who goes beyond the first page of search engine results on a regular basis?

I wrote about conformity in my last post and I sometimes wonder in branding and advertising if we are seeing a mass-homogenisation, a group tending towards the mean. Although globalisation does have its benefits, it does mean that everyone is using those same corporate values, chasing the same perfect customer experience, latching onto the same cultural insights while believing they're creating something unique. It's not just the stock shots that we're all dipping into, but the strategic part, too.

I read a brilliant article in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago, which mentioned Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School regarding "Pop Culture as an instrument of economic and political control, enforcing conformity behind a permissive screen."

Are we offering genuine choice with our brands and communication? Or, to quote Adorno, "Freedom to choose what is always the same?"

Beware! Engaged can be vacant.

The pursuit of engagement has become the Holy Grail for marketers, as I blogged here a few years back, and the enthusiasm for the creation of Engaging Experiences has certainly not abated. Engagement is an objective written loud and clear on many a marketing plan. Even the humble owner of a Facebook page with a couple of hundred likes is informed continually about how many people are engaged with the page that week.

But the problem arises when it comes to measurement. Engagement is a slippery fish to pin down and fit into a nice KPI pigeon hole, if you'll excuse all the mixed metaphors.

Perhaps that's because engagement has become one of these words that people use without really thinking what it means.

I looked up engagement in one dictionary and found "The act of engaging or being engaged."

The Advertising Research Foundation defined it, in March 2006 as "Turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context." And Wikipedia offers the following for engagement when used in a marketing context: "The extent to which a consumer has a meaningful brand experience when exposed to commercial advertising, sponsorship, television contact or other experience." This last mouthful brings to mind rats in cages having full-strength carcinogens painted on their raw flesh by sadistic scientists.

To get away from these tortuous and tautologous definitions, maybe it's easier to look at the verb rather than the noun. To engage is to occupy or attract someone's attention, from one perspective, or to participate or become in involved in, from another.

Interesting that the words attention and involved appear in this definition. Do desire and action follow? Has a wheel been reinvented somewhere?

Engagement is here to stay but it's worth questioning what is behind the word for our particular case. First of all, the question is "engaged with what?" - a piece of communication, be it a TV spot or an app,  some aspect of the brand, or the brand as a whole? And what are the terms of that "engagement"? Is it something longterm, or is it something specific to a discrete period of time. Is it short and intense, or more of a longterm undercurrent of commitment? Once you know the nature of the engagement, then you can work out how you might measure it.

Engaged can change rapidly to vacant, devoid of meaning.

Graven Images

Most retail or service brands that I worked on in the past sooner or later came up against the dilemma:

How much of my communications budget do I put behind my brand image?

And how much should go on directly driving traffic?

With British Airways, for example, most of the money as well as the blood, sweat and tears went on building the image, with rather less outgoings on advertising special prices and offers, especially in those early days of CRM. However, my colleagues down the corridor who worked on Currys and Dixons spent very little time worrying about anything as lofty and pretentious as image. It was roll-your-sleeves-up-and-get-stuck-in time.

I'm rather pleased that the huge changes in media in the last few years have put paid to this kind of compartmentalised thinking. The point is, that no car, motor-bike, pony-trap or any other kind of traffic (can you tell I hate that word in that context?) is going to drive itself to your store or your website if your brand is a grey nonentity. And conversely, if you spend your whole time pontificating about your Vision to 2030 without letting anyone know what's new this season or when your sale is, people aren't going to turn up in droves, either.

All advertising should be an invitation to your store or website, if you are a retailer - communications that convey some mysterious, ethereal image that is detached from who you are and what you sell are money wasted.

Communications work in three ways - through the mind, through the emotions, through the senses (or persuasion, involvement and salience as laid out originally by Hall & Partners in 1991.)

And modern brands are tangible and substantial, not just a collection of images in "the consumer's" mind.

Bright sparks

Brand models have their uses. It's good for everyone working with a brand to know what it stands for, long-term. But I have always felt that most models lack dynamism and energy. They are usually something two-dimensional on a piece of paper, with lots of words that have been carefully honed and slaved-over. When I worked on the agency side, it was difficult to take a client model and develop creative work from it that was stunning, brilliant, breath-taking - and relevant.

Quite often the breath-takingness would come from somewhere external - a clever film technique, an audacious topical joke, some cute furry creatures. Mainly because the agency wouldn't know where to start. Yes, this is your brand positioning for the next five decades, but what is it that we want to focus on right now?

I recently dug out a paper I wrote twenty years ago at Saatchis which proposed a way of thinking about people and brands and the energy that connects them. I found that I still go back to this again and again:

* a brand has many properties
* a group of consumers may have a variety of human motivations or desired end benefits
* one brand detonator can deliver the energy from the brand to consumers to achieve the desired end benefits - this energy is produced when the the brand and user come into contact and, once experienced, it acts like a magnet to draw the two together.

This "spark" should be the basis of the communications proposition.

So, it comes back to overlap and connection. What are all the properties of the brand? Everything from character to physical attributes? What is the user focused on? Wants, needs, desires, motivations?

And what's the connection? Find it and push to detonate.

Build me a Bridge

It seems to be OK, even admirable these days to say you were useless at maths at school. Well, I wasn't. I was good at maths, although I couldn't add up without counting on my fingers or scribbling on paper so maybe my mental arithmetic wasn't so hot. But when it came to algebra and that sort of thing, my strategy was always to go back to first principles - what are we trying to do here?

It's worth doing the same these days in my job, as marketing communications becomes an ever more complex field. I do sometimes need to remind myself about what strategy is all about. It's about being in one place, and wanting to get to another place, then building the bridge (the strategy) to get you there.

With brand communications, those places involve people. What are people thinking, feeling and doing in relation to your brand and the market it's in at the moment? What would you like them to think, feel and do in your future - that your brand communication could potentially influence?

I sometimes get myself in a tangle, still, when thinking about objectives. "Communicate that our brand delivers XYZ benefit better than any other" isn't a communication objective, it's a message or bit of content. But what change in people's perceptions or behaviour do we want to see? That is a communication objective. Whether we can measure it such that it becomes a numerical goal is another question.

Business objectives are usually couched in the language of profit or growth. Marketing Objectives may include brand/market share, or % penetration. And these objectives need all elements of the marketing mix (4, 5, or 6 Ps depending on how you see it).

But communications objectives must relate back to something people will think, feel or do. Make the brand more famous than Victoria Beckham. Sign up a friend for the customer club. Give them a sense of self-esteem. Cry. Say yes. Say no. Dig their hand in their pocket and contribute.

And the more it's about doing, the better.