Getting creative, sending out signals and finding the perfect name
Three unrelated themes this time.
Except they’re not.
They all take something that’s ‘obvious’ and turn it on its head. They’re about coming at something from a different angle, and solving a problem creatively.
1. Brick in the wall
It’s three whole years since I highlighted a funny, compassionate and intelligent presentation by Sir Ken Robinson at TED entitled Do schools kill creativity?
It appealed to my inner rebel – and my outer one too.
And I wasn’t alone. His landmark talk was downloaded over 4 million times, striking a chord with a global audience.
And now he’s back.
His 2010 talk – Bring on the learning revolution! – will make you stop and think about how best to find your niche. His central idea, that ‘education dislocates people from their natural talents’, is a powerful and persuasive one.
He also talks about the ‘tyranny of common sense’, something we hear every day in the business world (‘we’ve always done it that way!’). And why education shouldn’t be linear (because life isn’t).
It’s all there – from Eric Clapton to fast food, from dreaming about being a fireman to why nobody under 25 wears a wristwatch (do you?).
Enjoy.
[If you're reading in email, click here to see the talk on TED.com]
2. Tomayto, tomahto
What’s your company’s tone of voice?
And before you say business-like or professional, think about who you like to do business with. Businesses or people? Faceless and anonymous, or personal and friendly?
Would you like to do business with your company?
I thought about tone of voice again this week when I re-read a blog post from the Wise Old Man of Marketing, Seth Godin.
Writing, he says, has an accent. And actions have grammar.
He’s right. Everything we say, everything we do, every interaction we have with people sends out a subtle message.
Don’t know the difference between principle and principal? (Find out.) Think you are sounds more professional than you’re? (Think again.) Don’t have an address on your website? (Include one.) Don’t make it obvious what your prospect should do next? (Change that.) Like to include ‘takes up to 28 days’ to make sure you’re covered on delivery lead times? (Nothing takes a month.)
Everything sends out a signal, whether we like it or not.
So what signals are you sending out?
3. It’s all in a name
Can’t think of a name for your business? Tell me about it.
Actually, don’t. Instead, jump on over to Wordoid.com. And you’ll have a new business name in next to no time.
The idea is simple – you suggest a word to use as the basis (e.g. tech, shop, idea, high, first, micro) and it’ll create a new word for you.
You can choose to put your word at the beginning, middle or end of the new word. And you can choose to make it sound natural, almost natural or (bizarre, but actually kind of funky) hardly natural.
It even checks whether the .com and .net domains are available for the new word. And best of all, it’s free.
Living in the slow lane on the information superhighway
My broadband was restored last week, after being down for three weeks.
Yes, that’s right. Three whole weeks.
But there’s nothing more tedious than a rant about bad customer service, is there? So I’ll spare you the ins and outs of the sorry saga.
Instead, I’ll turn it on its head, and tell you what it taught me about service – and about myself.
Service (without a smile)
Good service – whatever it is you do, whatever you sell – really isn’t all that difficult.
But it’s not one big thing – instead, it’s all the little things. And getting those right means having a plan, setting goals and making sure you meet them.
So if I were sharing a skinny latte with the Big Boss of my ISP, what would I tell him (or her)?
Train your staff. Is there anything more trust-busting than being told by a second support person that the first person you spoke to was ‘new, and may have got it wrong’? Learning on the job is part of the job; learning at the customer’s expense is dangerous and damaging. So train them first, then release them into the wild.
Tell the truth (even when you’d really rather not). The truth is your secret weapon – even when it’s bad. Hiding an embarrassing truth is worse than telling it with openness and honesty. An open-kimono approach works every time (metaphorically, you understand).
Get your story straight (and stick to it). Do BT engineers work on Saturday and Sunday? Search me. I was told yes, then no, then maybe. Can support people talk to BT? Yes, then no. Would I get SMS updates? Yes, maybe. But not always. Not really. A simple story has a unique and winning quality – its simplicity.
Organise your company around the customer. Yes, OK, they work shifts, and they’re sometimes off sick. And what if they get run over by a bus? Or they leave? All these things could happen, but it doesn’t mean teams can’t be organised into cells of 2-3 people who are instantly familiar with specific problems. It means that customers don’t have to endlessly explain their problems to a new person.
Use technology. Especially if you’re a technology company. If I can see that my friend Sally is calling on my landline, why can’t they? Better still, why can’t my incoming number fire up their database and bring up my record? And why is the database so slow (I’m just waiting for the record to come up, sir)?
Don’t pass the buck (even internally). No, it’s not support, it’s accounts. It’s our faults department. It’s BT Wholesale. It’s BT Openreach. It’s the exchange people. It’s the call centre, you see. Your company is a blob, Mr ISP – one big blob that I see as a brand. So make sure that Blob Inc. does its stuff seamlessly.
Be pleasant, open and helpful – even when the shells are coming in and you want to hunker down in the bunker. Smile even though you’re on the phone. And here’s a thought: listen. Pick up on the signals and ‘mirror’ the language and tone of the speaker (yes, it’s an NLP thing – and it works).
Communicate. OK, you’re doing stuff, and the problem’s in hand. But does the customer know? If not, why not? Send a quick email, update the support ticket, let them know about that stuff. Manage their expectations, and they’ll never be disappointed.
Don’t forget the value of existing customers. New customers are expensive and difficult to find. So why alienate existing customers needlessly? Treat them well and they’ll stay forever.
Don’t wait until people shout – because when they’re shouting, they tend not to listen. And other people hear. Shouting is what I did in the end, when I posted a damning message in my ISP’s discussion forum (it worked).
Warts and all
So what did I learn about myself? Well quite a lot, actually. Living in the slow lane of the information superhighway wasn’t all bad.
My three weeks of subsonic internet access taught me:
You can’t do two things at once – though super-fast broadband makes you think you can. Multi-tasking is multi-stressing, and being forced to do one thing at a time made me calmer, more focused and more organised.
Having a backup plan, like a nuclear deterrent, gives you a warm fuzzy feeling. You know it’s there if you need it. In my case, my nuke was my Nokia, which give me reliable, if slow-ish, access to the internet, used as a modem for my PC.
Don’t get angry at bad service. If you do, you lose twice over. And no, I’m not going to say get even instead. Just accept it for what it is, and if you’ve got a problem, focus on the resolution, not the obstacles along the way.
Think laterally. When I was dealing with the support team, I was working in a walled garden. Worse, a soundproofed (think Truman Show) walled garden where nobody could hear my screams. When I changed tactics and shouted from the rooftops in a public forum, help materialised as if by magic, and the problem was quickly resolved. Think laterally and you beat the system.
Take a break – from the online world, that is. Offline really isn’t that bad. You learn to slow down, read more carefully, not flit from one thing to another. You concentrate better, feel more centred and don’t feel as frazzled at the end of the day. Since my broadband came back, my browsing habits have changed. I spend less time online, and get more out of my day.
So bad service wasn’t all bad. Even forcing myself to see the positive in a very negative situation (which goes against the grain in a serial moaner, I can tell you) changed how I see things.
I even discovered that with a Starbucks card, you get free wifi. So now I’ve got another reason to go for a grande skinny decaf extra-hot wet latte.
In an age of too much information, be careful what you ask for (you might just not get it).
I just sent a PDF by email to a client. It’s password-protected – not by me, but by the person who sent it to me – and I told her so.
It’s password-protected, I wrote. Here’s the password, I wrote. It’s case-sensitive, I wrote.
A couple of minutes later, back came the reply.
It looks like it’s password-protected, she wrote. Could you let me have the password?
Sound familiar?
I’ll bet it does. In our always-on, 24×7, welcome-to-the-machine world, it’s easy to feel swamped by the deluge of data.
So we find ways around it.
I’m no exception. I’m just as guilty as anybody of skimming, scanning and hopping from one headline to the next.
But how else can you cope with the onslaught of information?
More importantly, how can you help your prospects and customers cope? Because it’s not just about helping them deal with information overload.
It’s about helping you make the sale, get the call, find a lead or receive an enquiry.
Here’s looking at you
OK, time to get our priorities right. You first.
And for a very good reason – because if you can’t see the wood for the trees, the message you get out to your target audience will be muddled, confusing and frustrating.
So how do you focus on what’s important?
Easy – cut down the distractions.
Do one thing at a time. What happens to you when you’re overloaded? Personally, my pulse increases, I feel like I’ve had too much caffeine, and I get a strange tingling feeling in my arms and legs. If I start dumping the ballast (Skype, reading the news online, checking social networking sites) and do just one thing, I can feel my mojo returning and my karma heave a sigh of relief. You will too.
Go offline. This is a really scary one, I know. And if you’re anything like me, you can’t trust yourself to really, really go offline. Luckily, help is at hand. Freedom is a devilishly clever little program that disables your internet connection for up to eight hours at a time. The only way you can close the program is by rebooting – which is enough of a disincentive to all except the most recalcitrant.
Speed read. No, no, I’m not suggesting you plough through a Buzan book or fork out a fortune on a course. Just adopt one simple technique. It’s something I learned a few years back when I wrote copy for a speed-reading guru. Everything else I’ve forgotten, but this one simple tip has stuck: read the first sentence of every paragraph. Nothing else, just the first sentence. You’ll pick up the gist without reading the bits in between. It’s simple but smile-crackingly effective.
And that’s it? I hear you say.
Well yes, it is.
Because if I listed my 50 Top Tips for increasing productivity and getting more done, you’d work out a 51st one – skip them.
So there.
Now what about your customers and prospects?
Slowly, slowly, catchy…
You’re overwhelmed. They’re overwhelmed. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t get through to them.
You simply have to think ahead – and more importantly, think like them.
Make it easy. I skim, you skim, he skims, she skims. Face it – we all skim, so make it easy for people to do it. Break up your copy with bold, bullets, headings and colours. Vary the font size, but don’t go too wild (here’s a tip: use three point sizes maximum, and multiples of two e.g. 10pt, 12pt, 14pt).
One (idea) at a time. Divide your ideas up into paragraphs. Cut down the paragraphs, so they don’t look so daunting. Make sure each paragraph passes the ‘read only the first line’ test (yes, it’s a game two can play).
Summarise before, summarise after. Don’t launch into the detail straightaway. First, give a summary – but not an executive summary, or at least, don’t call it that (nothing sends a shiver up the spine quite like those two fatal words). So it’s an overview. Then, follow with the detail, and at the end, wrap up with the main points. So your prospects have three opportunities to pick up your message.
Don’t give too many choices. I’ve just been looking at broadband offerings. I’m having trouble with my current ISP (more about that sorry saga in another post) and I’m thinking of switching, after seven years of loyalty. But is the competition making it easy? No chance. Especially BT – there’s Anytime This, Total That, the Everything Package, the Almost-But-Not-Quite-Everything Package. Evenings and Weekends, free this, unlimited that. So which one did I go for? None of them, of course. I decided simply to cut and run.
Make it obvious. How often have you read through copy and thought, yes, yes, all very well, but what do I do next? If your time is short, so is theirs – so don’t waste it. Get to the point fast, and show them what to do next. Allow for impatient readers, and impulse buyers. Have a clear, simple, easy call to action.
Communicate often enough, but not too often. It’s a delicate balancing act, and it’s important to get it right. Let them know you’re out there, but don’t be a corporate stalker.
Meanwhile, back at the copy ranch, I got an embarrassed email from my client.
I must stop skim-reading, she wrote.
No, I thought, you mustn’t.
You’ve just got to start doing it properly.
Find out more:
Nothing left to lose. Freedom’s more than just another word – it’s a way of life. And it’s available for Mac & Windows here. As used by Dave Eggers (and Rachel).
Oh you thought were were witnessing a general election campaign?
No, no. I made the same mistake to begin with. What we’re seeing now is something entirely different.
A general perception campaign.
Every since the leaders’ debates kicked off two weeks ago, only one thing has mattered.
Appearances.
How they look. How they sound. Whether they’re convincing. Who comes across as honest. Do they look shifty? Who’s making eye contact? (Nick Clegg cracked that one way before the others, and became Mr Stary Man.)
“I thought Gordon Brown came across as human,” I heard one woman say on Radio 4.
As opposed to what? An animal? A machine? A Cyberman?
Well yes, come to think of it, he does sometimes come across as the last one.
After the Lib Dem bounce following the first debate, Brown quickly realised that presentation wasn’t his strong suit. And he said so in the second debate:
“This may have the feel of a TV popularity contest. But in truth, this election is a fight for Britain’s future. Your future and your jobs. If it’s all about style and PR, count me out. But if you want someone to make decisions…”
(I’ll spare you the rest, as he then reverted to Cyberman mode.)
You see what he’s doing, don’t you?
Facing reality, turning his weakness into a strength, taking the moral high ground and cutting his rivals off at the pass.
That said, it’s only so effective.
He’s right when he says that presentation isn’t his strong suit.
But then neither are his suits, which look baggy and shapeless. Worse, he looks older because he is older, but also because he’s taken the decision not to hide his grey hair – unlike Nick Clegg, whose hair seems to change colour day by day.
So sharp suit or baggy suit? Grey hair or raven’s wing? Son of the manse or public schoolboy?
It’s all so difficult, isn’t it? But maybe help is at hand.
Manifest destiny
A key element of the parties’ communication strategy is their election manifesto.
Have you read them? I have.
Well, to be completely honest, I’ve skimmed them. But then, that’s all we seem to do with anything these days. Even schoolchildren don’t read classics all the way through now. Why bother, when you can download a bullet-pointed synopsis online?
As communication has speeded up, so our attention span has become shorter. Not for us the turgid prose of those dense documents that littered the political landscape 20 years ago.
Remember Labour’s 1983 manifesto? I thought not. It was famously called ‘the longest suicide note in history’ by Gerald Kaufman.
So how do the manifestos shape up in the digital age when our attention span rarely exceeds 140 characters?
Not too badly, all things considered.
The Tories have seven versions of the manifesto, aimed at different audiences and attention spans – from the 250K ‘easy read’ to the high-res 77MB version (good). But the manifesto page is swimming in a sea of tiny text (bad).
Labour have just one version, but it’s 77 pages long (bad) and not summarised (bad x2). They also have little cartoon video clips which could amuse or irritate and look a little… laboured (bad). But they have a ‘Share the manifesto’ button so you can upload to Twitter and Facebook (good).
The Lib Dems have a roll-your-own approach, so you can pick the topics (family, job, life, money etc.) that most matter to you. You can do the same with video clips, and they even let you embed the manifesto video player in your site (er, no thanks). Add BlackBerry updates and an Obama-esque iPhone app, and you’ve got a manifesto that wins hands down – on presentation, that is. Whether it translates into reality is another question entirely.
The business of politics
So what does all this have to do with real life? With positioning your products, services and company?
Everything.
Here are just some of the lessons we can learn from the General Perception campaign 2010:
Appearances count, which means that often, perception is reality.
You have to be where the people are – and that means Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, blogs and anywhere else they hang out.
The unexpected happens, so you need to remain flexible. A Clegg Bounce can come from anywhere, so be prepared.
Language is powerful. The words you choose matter – so choose them carefully.
Tailor your message to your audience, because one size never fits all.
So who gets my vote?
Well I think I’ll just float for a little while longer, and check out the ties, the suits and the haircuts.
I’ll look into their eyes – because they’re bound to look into mine, now that it’s the done thing – and I’ll see who looks dodgy. Or not.
Unintended consequences and unexpected opportunities.
Many years ago, I rented a room in a house owned by an Italian woman.
Well, not really an Italian woman – at least, not on the outside. She had a perfect, cut-glass accent, and lived in one of the posher parts of London.
But on the inside, she was Italian. She’d spent her formative years with her English parents in Rome, and had later moved to Milan. And then to England.
What amazed me about her was that nothing ever got in her way. And I’m not just talking about her driving, which was fast, dangerous and highly illegal. It was exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure, especially in sedate West London.
No, it was the way she got around life’s little irritations that impressed me. Whenever a problem cropped up, she found a solution. Rules and regulations didn’t faze her: she simply found a way to circumvent them.
One day, after a particularly cunning solution, she smiled broadly at me, and came out with a delightful Italian expression: Fatta la legge, trovato l’inganno!
Which means that as soon as a law is made, the workaround is found.
More regulation doesn’t mean more compliance, or a more orderly society. The unintended consequence of laws is that people quickly find ways to bypass them. Make more laws, and people simply find more ways.
And the Italians are good at finding ways: it’s estimated that the black market would add another 30% to their GDP. In the UK, by comparison, it’s a mere 5-10%.
Penny dreadful
Unintended consequences are one of life’s unavoidable problems (or opportunities – you decide).
Whenever you take a decision – to change your pricing, launch a marketing campaign, target a sector of the market, expand your product range – there are unintended consequences.
When the Net Book Agreement, which had set fixed prices for books in the UK for almost 100 years, was scrapped in mid-90s, it was hailed as a good thing. Henceforth, the market would prevail as these old, outdated restrictive practices were swept away.
The result?
Big chains got bigger. Small bookshops couldn’t compete. Supermarkets started selling books, and set their selling price below the cost price of many bookshops. In some cases, supermarkets simply used books as loss leaders to draw people into the store to buy food.
Publishing houses took fewer chances, as blockbusters ruled the day. Large book chains demanded funds for marketing, and supermarkets vetoed book covers which they claimed wouldn’t work for their customers.
A good thing indeed.
The French – as they mostly do – took a different approach. Culture was an exception, they said. Books weren’t a commodity, to be sold like so many bottles of mineral water or tins of cassoulet.
And so in France, to this day, the maximum a book can be discounted is 5%, whether you’re a mega-supermarket, an online retailer or a tiny independent bookseller.
The result? More books, more bookshops, more choice.
Vive la différence.
Text maniac
You can’t stand still. And you can’t predict the future – so don’t try to. Unintended consequences are everywhere, unpredictable and mostly unstoppable.
And sometimes, the consequences cause a chain reaction:
Text messages, thought to be a nice-to-have-but-essentially-useless add-on to the mobile phone, took off in a way nobody could have foreseen. Today, they’re worth billions of pounds a year to mobile operators.
Twitter, building on SMS success, has come from nowhere to be everywhere. It makes no sense and defies analysis. But it is what it is, and it’s here to stay.
Burglaries have suddenly became easier, thanks to people’s constant tweeting about their movements. I’m just popping out to the gym, they tell the world. Leaving the house empty, of course – a problem that the daring website Please Rob Me highlighted to startling effect. (It’s since suspended its operations, having made its point.)
Stuff happens. It’s how you deal with it that makes the difference.
Think ahead, identify the most likely problems, and work out your strategy. Don’t let yourself get stuck in Indecision Alley – it’s dead end.
And when the unexpected happens – and it will – go with the flow and react fast. See if there’s an opportunity lurking in the midst of it all, seize it with both hands, and run with it.
Much as a software company I know did. They launched what they thought was a niche solution, aimed at a gap in the market. But they weren’t sure, as the saying goes, whether there was a market in the gap.
There was.
Such a big market, in fact, that they completely re-engineered their company around that one solution, which has since become a runaway success.
So you see? Good stuff happens too.
Ciao bella
When my landlady’s parents went to live in Italy, they thought it would give their daughter a second language, an appreciation of art, culture and fine wine, as well as a broader world outlook.
It did. But it also gave her a lifelong disrespect for rules, a fiery temper and a quirky method of getting out of a tight parking spot.
One morning, I stood at my bedroom window, gaping in disbelief as she drove her car a little forwards, then a little backwards, in the impossibly small space. She nudged the car in front, and the car behind, and in front, and behind.
Well I say nudged, but I did hear a pretty loud bump each time she made contact. Bump, bump, bump, bump.
And then, with just enough space to swing out, she was off. Hurtling down a suburban London road with reckless abandon, singing along to the sound of Claudio Baglioni on her car stereo.
Unintended. But pretty damned impressive.
Find out more:
Open House. The controversial website Please Rob Me highlights over-sharing information online. Next time, think before you tweet.
