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.
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).
So here we are. 2009. A bright, shiny new year to play with. Kick the tyres, walk around, get on in.
Let’s take it for a ride.
And on the way, we can chat about New Year’s resolutions. Oh you haven’t made any?
Well how about this? Tell it like it is. Write like you talk. Say what you mean. And mean what you say.
In a year that’s likely to see credit crunched even harder, more businesses going to the wall, and belts tightened even tighter, telling it like it is might give you the edge over the competition.
It’s not that hard. Really.
Froth to go
Doublespeak is everywhere. And even the coolest, funkiest, hippest companies are not exempt.
A while back, I talked about Starbucks wasting 23m litres of water every day. And their response was as insubstantial as their cappuccinos:
“We recognise the opportunity exists to reduce our total water usage. Starbucks’ challenge is to balance water conservation with the need for customer safety.”
Well they’ve done it again. The story was simple: in 2009, they said, their sales would fall.
Add an extra shot of gobbledygook to that, and some sugar-free spin, and you’ve got:
“Any resulting decreases in customer traffic or average value per transaction will negatively impact the company’s financial performance as reduced revenues result in sales de-leveraging which creates downward pressure on margins.”
So let’s précis that. Sales. Will. Fall.
Never mind the quality – feel the width
Why do we do it? And yes, at times, we all do it – hide behind grand-sounding phrases, and double-decker words.
The credit crunch is a perfect example. ‘Collateralised debt’ is simply debt that nobody understands or can track back to the source. ‘Highly leveraged’ means in debt – lots of it. And ‘highly geared’ doesn’t mean you have a BlackBerry and an iPhone.
It just means that you’re in debt. Lots of it.
Often, we use doublespeak to hide mistakes. In June 2000, the Millennium Bridge opened in London. The futuristic metal footbridge linked Tate Modern, on the south side, with St Paul’s, on the north.
Within hours, it was closed. It wobbled – badly.
Eight years later, a study carried out by Bristol University showed that the problem was caused by:
“the presence of lateral bridge motion without changing the pedestrian walking frequency and applying the same foot placement strategy to maintain balance”.
Translation: it wobbled.
The designers got it wrong. They made a mistake – but they’re passing it off on the pedestrians whose ‘foot placement strategy’ was at fault. Well that’s all right, then.
Doublespeak makes a bad problem worse. You get something wrong, then you try to talk your way out of it. And your customer, your friend, your wife, your husband, the person whose car you’ve just pranged – all of them will think less of you because of it.
Next time you make a mistake, try this approach:
I made a mistake. I’m sorry. I’ll try better next time.
(It works, really. I should know.)
Plain talking – and that means plain writing, too – sends an immediate signal to the person you’re talking to: you can trust me.
OK, more than four things, but since you haven’t got all day, I’ll give you the short version.
Extra strong – with wings
First, I hung out at Starbucks, which is better than any serviced office I’ve ever seen. You can stretch one cup out all afternoon, as you huddle over your laptop.
But this time, I decided to leave my comfort zone. No, not my favourite armchair by the window. But my coffee.
You see, I normally opt for a grande, skinny, decaf, sugar-free hazelnut, extra-hot latte - enough to give any barista RSI as they scramble to tick all the boxes.
But this time, I decided to change. A regular coffee seemed an appropriate departure, so I consulted the board. Americano, I thought. That’ll do the trick.
But wait…what about Freshly Brewed Coffee? It was much cheaper, and that was enough to tip the balance.
So that’s what I ordered. And instantly regretted it.
Americano is basically a diluted espresso, made on the spot from achingly fresh coffee beans. Whereas Freshly Brewed Coffee is, well, not really fresh.
The barista pivoted round, flipped the tap on a big silver urn, and filled the cup with tired old dregs.
So that would be Freshly Stewed Coffee.
Lesson 1: don’t stretch language beyond its limits.
Next stop Paris
From there, where else could the week go? Upwards was the only way, and yesterday, Eurostar put a smile on my face.
I live in Cambridge, and every week, like it or not, the local freesheet newspaper lands on my mat. Usually, it goes straight in to the recycle bin.
But not this time.
Paris – An all hours guide, the cover (which wasn’t really the cover, but a advert wrap) said. Pull out. Fold up. Pocket it.
The inside is crammed full of useful listings – places to eat, relax, and boogie on down. The back has a handy map. There are even Cambridge-Paris train times (via King’s Cross/St Pancras).
And coolest of all, a handy origami-style diagram showing you how to fold it all into a pocket map.
Brilliant. Just brilliant. Why?
It’s targeted, it’s personal and it’s useful. Even if I don’t want to go to Paris tomorrow, I’ll keep it for when I do.
And so Eurostar has achieved the Holy Grail – an advert I’ll never throw away.
Lesson 2: think smart, think targeted, think like a reader.
Bag for life (not)
Tesco delivered my internet shopping this week, all neatly packed in carrier bags. Re-use this carrier bag and collect Green Clubcard Points, each bag cried out at me.
If only I could.
At least half of the bags had the handles knotted – double-knotted. And they’d been lifted into the crate at the store, then out of the crate on to my doorstep, then again to my kitchen.
Each time the knot got a little tighter. In the end, the only way I could open them was with scissors.
You see the green problem.
When I pointed it out to Tesco customer service, they said they’d put a note on my account.
But what about all the other shopping packed at that store? In fact, at every store countrywide? How many bags were being wasted, I wondered. Surely they could feed it back to somebody who could change things?
Silence. Then they said they’d put a note on my account.
So I dropped it. Some battles you can’t win.
Lesson 3: make sure everybody in your company shares your values.
Game over
This week I ordered a DVD – La Vie en Rose (it’s known as La Môme in France).
It’s the fourth French film I’ve ordered in as many weeks, so play.com have a pretty good idea of my tastes. Perfect for marketing purposes.
Or so you’d think.
On the invoice that came with the DVD, they’d conveniently printed a list of other bestselling and upcoming titles.
Clever. But also not so clever.
For their titles included Knocked Up: Extended and Unprotected Special Edition, along with Hellboy and Superbad. Oh, and Death Note: Limited Edition.
It would have been a simple bit of database programming to pull out the upcoming French titles.
Lesson 4: try selling what your customers are buying. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Want people to read what you write? Of course you do.
Then talk to them directly. You may not know their name, but they all have one thing in common: they’re all called ‘you’.
Recently, I saw this sign at a local supermarket. It stopped me in my tracks. I’ve probably seen thousands of fire-exit signs in my life, but I’ve never given them much attention.
Until now.
This one made me pull out my phone-that’s-really-a-camera and take a picture.
One day, I thought, it might be me trapped inside that burning building, scrambling to get past a woman with a trolley filled with Coke and thick-crust pizzas, and a man arguing about money-off coupons while thick, acrid smoke billowed around us.
You. It’s such an obvious tactic to use, that we often overlook it.
At my gym, there’s a list of 10 ‘rules and regulations’ (what’s the difference, exactly?).
One says: the male members shall wear a training top.
Quite apart from the unintended innuendo, there’s the imperious use of ‘shall’. I’m tempted to strip off just to see what happens.
The notice is signed (inevitably) ‘The Management’.
And here’s the thing: never once does it say you. So the tone is cold, distant, and bossy. I’m likely to make a note of the rules simply to remember to break them as often as possible.
If you want people to take notice, try these three things:
