I could have taken umbrage, but I didn’t. What she was really getting at is that her mind functions very differently to mine. Her spelling is often patchy, but she has a wonderful sense of colour and shape. She’s hopeless with foreign languages, but has a keen ear for English accents.
Her comment came after I’d mentioned that for me, days had colours. Monday is green, Tuesday is blue, Wednesday is orange, and so on.
Before you get worried, I don’t taste numbers or smell words or feel images. I just do the day/colour thing. That’s all.
I know what you’re thinking (maybe)
I thought about that episode again just recently when I watched Temple Grandin’s talk called The world needs all kinds of minds at TED 2010.
Grandin herself thinks in pictures, and says it took her a long time before she realised that others perceived the world in a very different way.
She identifies three groups, and gives examples of what professions they’re best suited to:
Visual thinkers, who make good graphic designers, photographers and creators.
Pattern thinkers, who often go on to become programmers and mathematicians.
Verbal thinkers, who want to know everything about everything, and make good journalists or actors.
Minds, audiences, messages
So how does all of this relate to your sales and marketing messages? The mailshots you send, the websites you put up, the brochures you write?
Well, it means that you need to really think about your audience.
And often, we don’t. We assume they’re visual, when actually they’re verbal. Or that they see patterns, when in fact, they see the whole picture. Or that they’re details people, like we are – but really, they’re not.
So what can you do to get around it? Well why not:
Use pictures and words. Combine strong graphics that send out a clear, positive message, backed up by enough detail to satisfy the curious.
Summarise and give detail. If you use headings and bullets, skimmers can skim. And details-focused people can read the bits in between.
Offer them a choice.Looking for technical details? Step this way, sir. Want a marketing overview? Second on the left, madam. If you structure your copy so people can branch off, you’ll keep all the minds happy.
And always remember, that what you think is obvious may not be that obvious. As sure as night follows day.
And as sure as Saturday is red (but then, you knew that, didn’t you?).
“I don’t want to insult their intelligence,” said a client to me recently. “Do you really think we need to tell them what to do again?”
Yes you do, I thought.
“Yes you do,” I said.
Why?
Because buying is stressful (cast your mind back to Christmas). You want reassurance. You want to be told that you’ve made the right choice. You need reasons to go ahead and not just turn on your heel and flee the store. Or close that web page.
You want to know what to do next. So why are your customers, readers or prospects any different?
They’re not.
So make it easy, make it clear and say it again. And again.
Just this week, I realised once more the power of signs when I was working out at my gym.
First, I saw this one:
And then this one:
Button number 1 is a polite, well-behaved button. Sensible, low-key and probably not very effective. Button number 2 screams Emergency!
Which is exactly what it should do.
More is less
Good signs are clear, obvious and easily noticed. It could be a button on your site, a big bright heading in a letter, a bold underline instruction on what to do next in a brochure.
But be careful.
Where it comes to signs, there’s a fine line – and if you cross it, you get diminishing returns. If you have too many signs, they overwhelm people, so they blank them all out.
Let’s go back to the gym. Not the one above, but another I used to go to. It did signs – lots of them.
Please put your towel in the bin provided. Please replace weights carefully. Please dry off before entering the changing area. Please shower before entering the pool. No running or jumping in pool. Male and female changing rooms swapped today only. Goggles must be worn. Training tops are obligatory. Sign up a friend and get 20% off.
See how easy it is to miss an important sign?
Before you know it, you’re a man, in the men’s changing room, but it’s full of naked women (read it again – slowly this time).
When it comes to signs, less really is more. And a few simple rules will make your signs stand out:
Be focused: work out your key messages and stick to them. Don’t give people too many choices or they won’t make any choice.
Repeat yourself. You should include your call to action regularly in your copy – at the bottom of every web page, in your headers and footers, in call-out boxes and headlines. Make it crystal-clear what you want people to do, and say it as often as possible.
Make it easy. How often have you been on a site and got caught in a loop or trapped in a dead end? It happened to me just the other day. I was ordering a USB drive, but wanted to double-check the spec before I completed the order. But I couldn’t go back to check, like I do when I’m ordering a book on Amazon. All I could do was click Pay now. So I didn’t. I simply found a more user-friendly site and bought there instead.
Give them more. People are often looking for reasons to use you. Why wouldn’t they be? If you’re the company, the brain-frying, mind-boggling, toe-curling, buttock-clenching search is over. Give them lots of reasons why they should look no further – and make them as prominent as possible.
Pretend you’re them. Or put another way, take the ‘tourist test’ (walk around your own town/city, slavishly follow the signs, ask for directions and follow them to the letter). When you’re inside the mind of the reader, customer or prospect, things look very different indeed. So go with the flow, and anticipate their questions, problems and needs.
Waving, not drowning
I did press one of the emergency buttons – the smaller one. I didn’t mean to, but my hand caught it as I prised myself out of the leg-extension machine.
I froze, and waited for the flashing lights, alarm bells and solicitous staff running to my assistance, first-aid box in hand.
It didn’t happen. In fact, nothing happened. Which goes to prove another truth when it comes to signs.
I’ve lost track of the number of people I’ve spoken to recently who don’t have a marketing plan.
It’s all up here, they tell me on the phone, and I picture them tapping their head.
I know what I want to do, they say. Why would I take the time to write it down?
Because writing it down makes it real. It forces you to focus. Writing it down exposes the flaws, shows the holes, and makes you look reality in the face.
But here’s the great thing: it also reveals opportunities you never thought existed, and things you hadn’t even thought of. It takes you in unexpected directions and gets you thinking about alternative strategies.
But where do you start? How do you get over BPS (blank-page syndrome, that is)?
With a template, of course. It’ll give the process structure, order and a purpose.
Microsoft has some great ready-made templates for Word (here) and PowerPoint (here). The PPT is in Office 2007 format, so if you have an earlier version, you’ll need the Microsoft Office compatibility pack (here).
Personally, I’d choose PowerPoint. It forces you to keep it brief, concise and bullet-pointed.
Which is what the best marketing plans are.
Words (don’t come easy)
All bulleted out? Plump up the cushions, grab a glass of port and a mince pie, and take 15 minutes out to watch lexicographer Erin McKean on TED.com.
Erin McKean redefines the dictionary is a witty look at words from somebody who spends her every day swimming in a sea of them.
One of the biggest drawbacks of using online dictionaries is, she says, that it eliminates serendipity.
“Serendipity is when you find things you weren’t looking for because finding what you were looking for is so damn difficult,” she says.
If, like me, you love words and can spend hours on end discovering new ones, this talk is for you. And even if you don’t, this talk is for you.
If nothing else, you’ll find out the meaning of double dactyls, as well as polysemy and synecdochically.
Enjoy.
(If you’re reading in email and can’t see the embedded video, click here instead.)
Free lunch? Walk this way…
If all that talk of words leaves you hungry for more, here’s a great way to access some of the leading reference works for free.
Yes, I said free. Not free* or free++ or even free^. Just free.
There is one catch, though.
You have to be in the UK and have a library card. If you are, and you have, you’re in luck, as your library website will provide a gateway.
Researching a company? Try Marketline. Need to find out more about the Big Cheese? Try Who’s Who. Plus the OED, Oxford Reference Online, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the Encyclopaedia Britannica – and a whole lot more.
Even if you don’t read (you dont?) it’s worth joining your local library just for the freebies.
With all that reference material, there’s more than enough room for a little serendipity. Not to mention synedoche and polysemy.
Merry Christmas (and don’t leave crumbs on the cushion).
The all-singing, all-dancing, everything’s-connected National Health Service IT system is to be ‘dramatically scaled back’ (i.e. quietly scrapped).
Mind you, I could have told you that. For two reasons.
First, I got a bad feeling about three years ago, when I did some copywriting on the subject. The background reading (all 500 pages of PDFs) was grimly compelling.
A bit like watching a road accident that’s about to happen but not being able to do anything about it.
Front-line staff weren’t behind it. It was ambitious, fiendishly complicated and promised the earth.
Mind you, it also cost the earth. Back then, my bedtime reading suggested anything between £6bn (€6.6bn/$9.8bn) and £30bn (€33bn/$48.9bn).
To date, it’s come in at £12bn (€13.2bn/$19.6bn).
My second inkling came when my doctor tried to use the system. She didn’t want to do anything complicated – just to book an appointment.
But it was complicated, as I’ve written about previously (High tech or hype tech?). And in the end, I bypassed the system and used the telephone to make the hospital appointment myself.
Not good.
Easy peasy lemon ketchup
The trouble with big projects is that they’re big. No one person can get their head around all the individual pieces, so they project is compartmentalised. And that means it very quickly becomes fragmented, complicated and disconnected.
A couple of years ago, I boarded a train at London’s King’s Cross station in the rush hour. I took an outside seat in a group of four. In the two seats opposite were a hassled-looking middle manager and her shiny-suited sidekick.
As the train pulled out, she flipped open her folder and peered at a spreadsheet printout.
“You know that consultant, the one with the gold-rimmed glasses, in Peter’s section – you know, whatshisname?” she said hopefully.
“Oh Graham, you mean,” he said. “What about him?”
“Well,” she said, “he’s paid £900 a day and he’s been with us six months. Do we know exactly what he does?”
I did a quick mental calculation, and came up with a figure of close on £100,000 (€110,000/$163,000).
“Hmm, ” said the shiny suit. “Not really. I mean, not exactly. Erm, no.”
“We should find out,” she said, lazily snapping the folder shut, “one of these days.”
Or tomorrow, I thought. Or right now. Because that’s my tax money (yes, they were civil servants – couldn’t you tell?).
Easy does it
Difficult is easy: you do one thing, then another thing, and yet another. Each without reference to what came before. You add a bit here, and there. You spread responsibility among different groups, and patch holes as they appear.
Issues are dealt with as they come in, not according to how important they are. And before you know it, you don’t know where you are. And neither does anybody else. And the result is organised, project-managed chaos. At £900 a day.
So what’s the answer? If difficult is easy, what’s easy – difficult?
Actually no. It’s easy – when you know how.
Here are my top tips for keeping it simple, staying on top of things, and never losing sight of what’s important.
And for leaving the office early (that’s the clincher, isn’t it?):
Keep a log of your day: and see how you really use your time. Important things should take priority, with urgent ones trumping them only if they’re also important.
Review your tasks, and update and re-prioritise each one every day. Or better still, at the beginning and end of every day.
Take stock: check where you are with a project regularly, and make course adjustments if you’re off-track.
Be realistic & honest: if you know you can’t achieve it, don’t say you can. If it’s too big to tackle, break it down into smaller, manageable chunks.
Peel off. Adding another layer to an already-complicated process just makes it more complicated. Instead, strip away the unnecessary layers and get back to basics.
Communicate. Tell people what you’re doing. Ask them what they’re doing. And if you’re the only one doing anything (like me) sit down and have a serious talk with yourself now and then.
De-junk. Recently, I threw out old clothes, LPs, clever-but-useless kitchen gizmos and anything I hadn’t used in a year. It felt so good (better than skinny, to paraphrase Kate Moss). Take the same ruthless approach to your work and you’ll feel supermodel-light in less than no time. Need it? No? Junk it. Move on.
There was a minor revolution in central London last week.
On 2 November, after a two-year, £5m ($8.35m/€5.6m) makeover, the all-new Oxford Circus opened.
(Note: If you’re thinking big top, clowns and bearded ladies, think again. Oxford Circus is just a junction, much like Piccadilly Circus. Not a performing elephant or dancing bear in sight.)
The new Oxford Circus layout is based on the famous Shibuya crossing in Tokyo. Not only can you cross horizontally (Regent Street) and vertically (Oxford Street), you can now cross diagonally too.
For 30 whole seconds, traffic is stopped in all directions. That’s when you make a dash for it, and hope you reach H&M before you’re taken out by a bendy bus.
With 40,000 people an hour using the crossing at peak time, something had to be done. But it’s a revolutionary concept for Londoners and tourists alike, and it takes some getting used to.
On the first day, most people crossed the old way – vertically and horizontally. It’ll take time for people to learn how it works, and to feel comfortable with the idea.
Why?
Because new is different. New is scary. New is…well, new.
Double-edged
If you’ve come up with an idea for a product or service that’s new, innovative and revolutionary, well done.
The good news is that you’ve got something nobody else has.
That’s also the bad news.
Nobody’s ever heard of it. Nobody knows how it works. Or even if it works at all.
Some people will dive right in: the early adopters. They’re the ones that simply must have it precisely because it’s new. They like to be on the cutting edge, even if they get cut.
But others – the vast majority, in fact – will wait. And if the early adopters aren’t enough to sustain you, you have to work hard to get the rest to buy in to your idea.
How? By explaining it. Then explaining it again. And again.
When the Barclaycard credit card was launched in the UK in the 1960s, the very idea of credit was alien to most people.
It’s hard to believe now, but back then, buying things ‘on tick’ or ‘on the never-never’ – on credit, that is – carried a social stigma that most people wanted to avoid.
So Barclays launched a major advertising campaign to explain to people that credit cards were the way of the future.
And people listened. All too well, as it turned out: the UK now has the highest rate of credit-card debit per household of any country in Europe.
Box clever
New ideas have a lot going for them. But as you prepare your launch, your opening or your marketing campaign, don’t ever underestimate the shock of the new.
Take cardboard furniture. Cardboard what?
Yes, you heard right – cardboard furniture. It’s cheap, easy to assemble, environmentally friendly and funky. And it’s here right now.
How about bacon-and-eggs ice-cream? Snail porridge? Cauliflower with chocolate?
Welcome to the wonderful world of Heston Blumenthal.
You see where I’m going with this.
When you’ve got a great idea, you quickly get used to the concept. Of course you do. You’ve been living with it 24 hours a day since it was an embryonic idea, zinging around in your hyperactive brain.
But they don’t know the first thing about it.
So make it easy for them:
Simplify. Explain your great new idea in small, easily understandable chunks. Don’t over-complicate.
Convince. Find the benefits of your great new idea (lower costs, cleaner environment, less hassle, easier to use, scalability) and hammer them home.
Summarise. Use bullet points, headings, boxes and anything else that reduces the information you need to convey to bite-sized chunks.
Repeat. New is daunting and unfamiliar. So make it undaunting and familiar. Repeat your key messages, say the same thing in several different ways, and hold the reader’s hand throughout the process.
Demonstrate.Draw a diagram – by hand, if you can. It’s more informal and user-friendly. Include photos, illustrations and anything else that demystifies and explains.
Think ahead. If you were a potential customer, what questions would you want answers to? What reasons can you come up with not to use your great new idea? Find them, answer them, neutralise them.
On your marks
Meanwhile, back on London’s bright and shiny new crossing, people were taking their first tentative steps. Boris Johnson, the unstoppable Mayor of London, was convinced it was a great idea:
“We are very confident that this will work well – once people have got the hang of it.”
If they get the hang of it.
A community police officer, who didn’t want to be named, was less sanguine:
“It’s based on the assumption that everyone’s going to act intelligently, which is quite an assumption to make.”
