the art of conversation

Choice is toxic

2012-01-23T03:38:00.000-08:00

Choice isn't something that the primal parts of our simple human brains understand very well.

Imagine its July 8th, 7:03am, 13,654 BC

You're cold, filthy and hungry. You’re being chased by a lion. You stumble across a juniper berry tree. You desperately need food to sustain your flight but your favourite fruit is raspberries….

Do you have an existential issue about the "choice" on offer?

When I hear second rate NHS managers and socially awkward politicians talk about "choice" in the NHS I get very nervous. "Choice" for most technocrats more often than not equals wiggle room. “Choice” allows many of those who choose to govern to muddy the clear waters around the inadequacy of specific, individual services, by allowing them to use the best of what is on offer, to obscure the worst.

As a for instance, lets take my nearest A&E department. As a consumer of government services, I need that one to be good. It is of no use to me to be told I have a “choice” of 3 in my area - that the one 5 miles further away is better than my nearest. The provision of “choice” might help a politician answer awkward questions on radio 4. It rarely helps individuals in specific circumstances faced with an alarming range in the quality of basic services.

There isn't much of a choice with Apple. Apple don't make the iPhone 4D and the iPhone 5TXd and iPhone 8PS14 extreme.

They make the iPhone 4 - that's it - that's the standard – there is only 1 new model at any one time and as a consequence anything else looks rather second rate and flabby - precisely because of the lack of choice .

Blackberry - lots of choice..

And their respective shareprice....

oh......

The service of a tailor makes the critical assumption that customers without the looks and figure of a supermodel are prepared to pay more, specifically not to be given a choice. To be free from its tyranny.

No... Loren. You look like a monstrous, overweight, lipid whale in that cropped top.

Yes I know [insert the name of whichever demented, dumbo D lister was doing the rounds on Richard and Judy last week] was wearing one.....but Loren - she's a size 6, and eats the calorific equivalent of an Atkins Ant diet every day.

Where as you love.....You consume a truckers diet every 6 hours. Which means the ripples of fat pouring from between the little number weaved by 3rd world ophans you picked up in New Look and the jeggings you bought 4 years ago, which (to be fair) didn't fit you that well then (and that was 4 stone ago) - all mean your gut looks like its requesting triglyceride independence.

The antidote to the toxicity of choice is simplicity, curation and trust.

A tailor is a simple proposition. She makes better fitting clothes by making them to the exact body measurement of an individual.

Through years of dedicated learning she is expert in understanding what I should, and should not wear given my specific age, height, weight, hair and skin colour.

Because she has consistently delivered for me and others I know, I trust her.

That is why I'm so excited about one of the MVPs we released last week from Fluxx labs called www.ijustwantawhiteboard.com

It is, to be fair, "only" a whiteboard ordering service (although try building an end to end whiteboard ordering service in 3 days - not easy - especially when you commit to only working 8 hrs a day and having a work life balance.) It is the principles which underpin it which make it so interesting. Google "buy large whiteboard" and you will begin to understand why, for whiteboards and many, many other commoditised products in life, a service that eliminates choice is so badly needed.

Ultimately "ijustwant" stands for a new economic age. A new Victorian era of trial and error. Where the niche interests of amorphous groups of users, are served by highly flexible organisation who cater to a groups evolving needs by mining behavioural and psychocultural insights of user on a day by day.

The end of CRM: how I learned to stop worrying and love networks

2012-01-09T01:18:00.000-08:00

Which big brand CRM progammes are genuinely noteworthy? (the acronym alone speaks of a monosyllabic, begrudging acknowledgement of the people who pay our salaries).

Very few.....lets be honest, most of them, most of the time, are at best ok - many are horribly lame.

Any brand with a CRM progamme (as in 99% of the brands any of us tolerate on a day to day basis) are almost certainly already suck in the "relationship department". CRM is the equivalent of a bunch of service station flowers. The moment you hand over your debit card, you may as well hand in the towel.

The only good CRM is invisible - always on and which almost certainly isn't the subject of a corporate memo.You cannot socialise CRM, you cannot magic it, you cannot implement a CRM system in the same way as you deploy an ecommerce platform. CRM is either there in the DNA of a business and the psychological makeup of staff or it's not.

It is a peculiarly modern conundrum. We have been able to put a man on the moon, prove Einstein wrong and can slow the progress of some of the most vicious forms of cancer and yet, the vast majority of big brand customer relationship management programmes are toe curlingly clumsy.

The problem isn't of course a conundrum. It is not unsolvable. It has though, up until relatively recently, been am issue most organisations could ignore. The marketing managers of large corporates are, as it turns out, one of finances' few rational actors. Managing a relationship with customers in any sort of functional, meaningful way hasn't impacted profits as much as creating and maintain needs within them, so the problem has attracted (relatively speaking) little interest.

What we need to do, in this connected, new customer centric world of ours, is to step away from the expensive piece of new CRM software and all just take a deep breath and look at the problem afresh.

Lets take a for instance.

I've just bought a Canon DSLR (the user interface of which is truly abysmal btw - but that's for another post).

Anyways....I'm staring at form I've had to print twice (first time the embedded PDF didn't work) to claim £40 cash back.

It's 2012 and I'm printing a souless, cold, form that looks like a tax return - having to write my email address in BLOCK caps and black pen???

I am still hoping this is some sort of post modern ironic comment on the souless corporate world by Canon and that, having taken the pain of filling in this form, finding the serial number of my new camera and posting it back (freepost no less) I am going to get a link to some sort of secret, amazing online network which is going to make me an instant billionaire.

Of course what is much more likely to happen is I'll get a link to some eye sweatingly terrible corporate microsite (even though I've expressly asked not to be spammed), churned out by some above the line digital numpty who has precisely 0 understanding of customer, which will be proceeded by an email to a load of spammy brochure-ware for a product I've already bought.

Best case, whichever middle manager's Freudian nightmare I (and presumably 1,000s of other innocent victims have just stepped into - when all we wanted was our money back), will have been fired and my email will sit dormant, in some CRM silo, until its "mined" by the next poor bugger who picks up the recently departeds' job.

This is the extreme of course - but it broadly captures the day to day of CRM as we all know it in 2012. And it is depressing. I mean like properly, why do I bother to get up in the morning depressing. Who actually sanctions and orchestrates these things? Do you not love yourselves enough?

More importantly - is there an alternative?

Well, yes, the alternative, dear Canon, is don't try.

Don't try. Stop spending money.

I actually think your product is quite good despite the terrible UI. I was buying anyway.

I'll find you if I need you.

I'm a busy man. I don't want to fill in your poxy forms or join your crappy Facebook group.

Stop this mindless, awful excuse for trying to develop a relationship with me - and wait till I'm ready.

Instead invest in that moment. What we might call the "next moment of truth" to borrow a Googlism. But when you do, deploy the content without regard for platform or technology. Get it into the networks I might find it, and don't just horde it on your own media.

The moment I need you post product purchase. The moment when all I'll want is a really good, genuine, detailed, understandable, useful answer to my (almost certainly) very specific question (and not some crap corporate micro-site with a load of spammy brochure-ware about a product I've already bought) why not think about being there then.

As a little for instance, lets say that query is about how modern sensor technology evolved and how it now relates to old skool ISO film speeds. What could you give me that would really help my understanding?

A little video clip of your chief engineer talking about sensor capacity in a human way, some 5 minute visual tutorials of how to relate old film speeds to the new world, some picture of examples maybe of how the technology has improved the world and what is now possible post physical film, maybe an IM chat with an expert?

Nothing excessive, nothing flash, nothing too expensive. But something visual, simple and findable.

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This is customer relationship management. Customer relationship management isn't an email programme. Its not a Facebook page, its not a piece of Lithium software - its all of this (maybe) - but most of all its understanding me. Doing your best to anticipate my needs. Taking your own brand ego out of the equation and putting my needs before your own.

That's a proper relationship.

Great companies...

2011-12-15T05:45:00.000-08:00

Are either small or dictatorships.

They are therefore, by definition, temporary affairs....

Apple's share price will halve in the next 2 years.

I've been obsessed with Sherlock Holmes for years....

2011-12-13T09:52:00.000-08:00

(although its probably not something one should admit) - I love the Guy Richie films....

One of my favourite Sherlock quotes "It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize out of a number of facts which are incidental and which vital. Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated." There is much the world of brand and technology can learn from a data driven approach combined with a healthy dose of humanity, intuition and joie de vie...

Interesting post - a "moral" lens on social business

2011-12-09T06:43:00.001-08:00

Thriving in the Collaborative Economy from Nick Jankel & wecreate on Vimeo.

As part of a larger group, Nick and I went to African together in the early 1990s. Probably fair to say we were all, profoundly changed by the experience - and I'm not sure some of the learning from that year isn't in this talk...

A very erudite, succinct and persuasive "take" on social business...

Do we really need our friends to help us discover things?

2011-12-08T05:32:00.001-08:00

So much social network activity appears to be a desperate curation towards a more palatable version of an existence. Is Facebook's proposition of discovering things through your friends really so convincing?

Don't we have a biological need to go beyond our own borders?

We don't buy airbrushed existences offline - not sure we ever will on.

Nando's enters the social media hall of fame...

2011-12-02T05:13:00.001-08:00

If Facebook is the internet - then count me out

2011-11-28T13:59:00.001-08:00

What dreadful, stale silos most mass social networks have become. A fad of the early 21st century?

What marketing could learn from baseball

2011-11-03T06:35:00.000-07:00

I've written and posted about Moneyball quite a bit over the years - this is the text from something we've recently done for M&C's blog.

Theforthcoming release of Moneyball – the screen adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book bearingthe same name – is significant, not just for fans of Brad Pitt and baseball,but for marketing and communications professionals too.

Moneyball tells the story of the coach of the perennial under performing OaklandAthletic baseball team, Billy Beane, who transformed Baseball by using WallStreet style statistical modelling to buy better players for less money.

Ina world where the aesthetic quality of a player (and his girlfriend) were deemedthe best indicators of prowess on the field, Billy Beane understood that objectivelyanalysing the data about a players’ performance (and not worrying too much about whether hewas packing a few extra pounds) was a far more reliable guide to finding players who won matches.His winning streak was the ultimate demonstration of ROI.

Themarketing industry, like baseball before Billy Beane, still uses aestheticquality as its yardstick of success, and yet we have access to far more datathan Billy Beane could have ever dreamed of. Data with which the industry could – and will eventually - transformitself.

Changeis in the air. IBM’s CMOsurvey, also out this week, shows 63%of CMOs believe demonstrating ROI from their marketing activity will be themost important measure of their personal success by 2015.

Latestfigures from a leading Search and Selection firm servicing the marketingindustry report an unprecedented rise in demand for roles with the words,"Data" and "Analyst" in them. Evidently some like BillyBeane, have already started to import data mining and statistical analysistechniques into their way of working

“Correlationscoefficient” “Monte Carlo output”, “statistical noise” - strange words from aworld many have yet to discover – but which for a growing number of us over thenext 5 years will enter our lexicon and revolutionise the way we conduct andmeasure marketing activity.

In the meantime, here’s the Moneyballtrailer. See you in the queue.

(orginal text by Christian - with my edits)

A great presentation on social, brand, business - everything really...

2011-10-06T04:44:00.001-07:00

Agile planning

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working long hours makes you biologically more likely to shag your secretary

2011-09-14T06:26:00.000-07:00

Fascinating research on men's biological predisposition towards child rearing.

In short - the more you work and are away from your family - the less, biologically, you are plugged into your family.

A strong argument against a long hours work culture....

A correlation between the price of oil and the financial crisis

2011-09-09T01:29:00.000-07:00

There is now talk of how world food prices are causing revolution - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2011/aug/25/food-price-arab-middle-east-protests - which given food products reliance on petrochemicals - isn't massively surprising.....

Moneyball - one of the books that changed my life....

2011-09-09T01:28:00.000-07:00

<p>&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;i was recommended the &amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;</p>

The objective analysis of subjective data - probably the most important thing in my life outside my kids and girlfriend....

We did the same thing for music.....

Musimetric - Labels

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When everyone sells everything...

2011-08-30T01:23:00.001-07:00

Where is the passion in a business? Where is the commodity club?

A data driven business

2011-08-17T03:20:00.001-07:00

The tyranny of choice

2011-07-26T04:04:00.000-07:00

So it turns out that choice actually keeps us afraid....whoever would have guessed....

The Niche Fulcrum

2011-07-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

Country by country social behaviours....

2011-06-27T02:53:00.000-07:00

Often we have quite a time explaining to clients user behaviours differ between countries. This infographic captures the point nicely. To be clear - the data on which this is based is "declared behaviour" - data from people filling in surveys as opposed to our approach, which is pure listening - actual.

The point being - people use the web very differently around the globe - the idea of a global propositon for a brand, that speaks to everyone in the same way (unless your'e a utility / platform - Google / Facebook) doesn't make much sense.

The 3 Routes to Social Media ROI

2011-06-23T02:57:00.001-07:00

3 Routes to Social Media ROI

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The Social Business Value Map

2011-06-12T14:15:00.000-07:00

Social business value map

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There is a lot of talk about social business and how each department within a brand can harness social media.

To clarify some of the issues, I took front line social business units within an organisatiuon and described a single, basic objective for each department. I then mapped those onto some of the most widely understood startegies being used by different brands, to see which strategies supported which goals

Finally I mapped measures against each strategy.

Biggest take away?

Look how (relatively) balanced it is.

Social media really is impacting across the business. No wonder brands struggle when they leave it to the marketing department!

Human Digital - what we do....

2011-06-10T02:00:00.000-07:00

Human digital new business deck

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Reflections on the agency model

2011-05-09T09:16:00.000-07:00

The world is changing for agencies. Revenues from traditional offline products and services are declining. Digital per se is not the answer. Much of what would be considered traditional digital work (website development, search, SEO etc) is now a highly commoditised offering wafer thin margins.

From the client perspective, the world is fragmenting. Meaning brands are finding it increasingly difficult to engage and retain customers.

A successful agency model would reconcile these 2 positions. Finding products and services that offer sufficiently high barriers to entry that margins won’t be eroded in the medium term, whilst offering brands a solution to their differentiation and customer engagement issues.

In a world where the “work” is a commodity, but understanding what that work is, is increasingly hard. An agency must then logically sell understanding.

That understanding is, at its core, the understanding of customer.

Some social experience principles....

2011-05-09T01:27:00.000-07:00

“Brand as publisher" - content is the catalyst around which engagement occurs. Stands to reason, that content and content strategy become incredibly important. Good link here

Fish where the fish are - accept users often prefer to use 3rd party platforms and not necessarily a brands' own website - engage them on these platforms where they have indicated they’re comfortable here

brand authority - the sensitivity we must acquire in understanding our brands’ authority is often limited - in other words - our right to a voice is presimsed on our participation, often for extended periods of time, building credibility and trust here

Iterative / fail fast - embracing the notion that in a connected, engaged world, we must constantly iterate - push new thinking, content, applications etc into those networks where our users exist – growing tactics which resonate (and as importantly) quickly decommission those that don’t work. In other words, strategy is often a drip feeding of a larger number of smaller ideas, as opposed to less frequent, larger ones here

“Architectures of participation” (networks not destinations) - building a brands’ authority through the visibility it has within different networks – thinking of our primary marketing tools as our most engaged networks, not necessarily the websites or destinations we own here

Always on - as is often the case, when something is so intrinsic to a concept - it is often forgotten - social business / media / whatever is always on - you can't have a social campaign - if you invite people to a house party you can't send everyone home just because someone plays a song you don't like

The end of brand and the last fan......

2011-05-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

The cheapest pair of glasses in specsavers where the best design.....

As resources become more scarce and consumers poorer, the value option will be increasingly the option the majority of the market chooses.

If that's the case, then logic dictates that every brand needs to make its value product the best product, whilst making the rest of their range, less attractive.

Ergo....the concept of brand value is dead. Value has won again. The last 250 years were a blip.

I loved The End of History and the Last Man- it was so brilliantly, arrogant, short sighted and stupid. So 1992.....

There is perhaps a book to write, which riffs on the title of Fukuyama's inverted masterpiece (like Stiglitz did with Freuds' Civilization) and makes the same argument about brands instead.

Social experience design....

2011-05-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

No brand marketing can exist in silos – however sophisticated and well designed those silos might be.

As a customer – a user – a consumer, the interactions I have with a brand, (most of which can be measured in seconds; barely fleeting thoughts passing through my mind) are triggered by activity in all “channels”, at all times of the day, in all locations.

For any brand to focus their marketing – their conversation with their customer – in any single channel and say “that is how someone will experience my brand” simply doesn’t speak to the reality of how we interact with the brands we live with…..

The fleeting conversation in the pub about the new mortgage, the tiny snippet of information gleaned from a friend, which leads to the ad-hoc search for the product on the bus, which happens to resonates with a 48 sheet about a competitors' product, which fits with the piece of content stumbled over whilst doing more formal research, which ties in with the debate at the supper party, which might eventually lead to a half completed application form, which leads to the argument with the partner, with leads to the form completed – and a product or service sold.......

Messy, disparate - and spread over every conceivable channel and platform – that is more often than not a “brand experience”. Being honest with ourselves about this, means we are more likely to be successful.

Social experience design – to place a clear understanding of different types of customers' actual behaviour at the heart of a planning process - to let ourselves off the leash - to be honest and brave - to let the stories we tell about how users will interact with our brand be real........

That is the genius of social experience design. It is militantly honest – utterly engaging to develop – bloody hard to realise correctly.

3 chords and the truth....

2011-04-18T02:32:00.000-07:00

TGI, 3rd party research, basket data, online sentiment and influencer analysis, site surveys, focus groups......all routes into the understanding of a brand's issues and challenges

Do you need all of them to develop strategy?

No, the more we have - the more complete the picture - but can we get 70% of the way with just one of them......course we can.

90% of what they're buying......

2011-04-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

has got nothing to do with what they're buying....

why does anyone think selling "the cloud" is a good idea?

2011-04-15T10:02:00.000-07:00

no one outside of the technology community has a bastard clue what the cloud is?

marketing is about selling benefits

the cloud isn't a benefit, its an enabling technology

countries as personas

2011-04-15T09:52:00.000-07:00

we have limited resources with which to process information

we default to short cuts, bequeathed to us by evolutionary advantage

this we know

one of these short cuts is our common tendency to distil entire countries into single personas

what does this do to our behaviours?

the brand story platform

2011-04-15T08:51:00.001-07:00

fCRM - Facebook customer relationship management

2011-03-24T07:15:00.000-07:00

Why is any large scale corporation bothering to maintain the illusion of control over its data and customer relationship management?

Every client I encounter at the moment has a story about how....one day.....once they've spent x amount of cash they'll have 360 degree, clean customer data.

Its never going to happen!

In ecommerce we've accepted fCommerce because our ATG / SAP implemenations are clunky and Accenture take us to the cleaners us every time they change a page.

Lets now accept fCRM "Facebook customer relationship management".

Ditch your local customer databases and access customer data that is actively.....willingly maintained by all of us.

blackberry and its appeal to young women

2011-01-26T00:32:00.000-08:00

The meme of young people using Blackberry's is not success – it is the ultimate sign of failure...

Blackberry was a device designed for the high spending business market which has been so eclipsed by its competition, that it has been forced to eek out an existence on the margins of a market, appealing only to a poor, barely literate underclass who use it out of necessity rather than design.

An abject business failure borne out in the hard data of their shareprice ...

Arresting Julian Assange is an absolute disgrace...

2010-12-08T14:27:00.000-08:00

http://www.interpol.int/public/icpo/pressreleases/pr2010/PR101Notice.html

Compulsory viewing...

2010-11-16T06:02:00.001-08:00

".....properly measuring performance is the cure for bullshit."

2010-11-04T01:03:00.000-07:00

Interesting post from oliver Blanchard here on failure. here

Razorfish - on share finance data.....

2010-11-02T06:57:00.000-07:00

Some thoughts on data web marketing...

2010-11-01T05:12:00.001-07:00

Data web marketing

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VPRO "Quants", the alchemists of wallstreet - Onesize Motion Direction Design

2010-10-20T00:50:00.000-07:00

VPRO "Quants", the alchemists of wallstreet - Onesize Motion Direction Design

Stephen Fry on language....

2010-10-20T00:24:00.001-07:00

interactive design thoughts....

2010-10-19T00:42:00.001-07:00

First impression marketing brand and participants 2010 update

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Little bit of interactive design, little bit of social - don't agree with it all - Krug is a genius - but interesting perspective....

an overview of data web marketing...

2010-10-07T01:28:00.000-07:00

sent this as as an email - then realised it might be useful to share....

Publishing data…

Heavily related to the idea of the semantic web (linked data / the web of data / web 3.0) – something Tim Berners lee has been banging on about for 10 years now – but which is starting to become a reality, good overview here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeUrEh-nqtU

And then him at TED last year on the state of it http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_the_year_open_data_went_worldwide.html

In a nutshell (just as we were doing in music 5 years ago, just like Billy beane was doing in baseball (brad pitt is now playing him in the movie), and just like the doctors were doing @ Chicago hope analysing heart attack victims in “blink”) – you can make better decisions, once you start putting data sets together

So everyone publishes their data – and then everyone gets the chance to generate vastly more powerful insights…that’s the overarching theory

from a marketing / brand perspective…

once people start using your data – in applications, in data modelling etc – your brand is disseminated with it – good overview http://www.slideshare.net/samramji/darwins-finches-20th-century-business-and-apis

and more practical approach here http://www.slideshare.net/sjbrinker/web-30-data-marketing and here http://www.slideshare.net/sjbrinker/marketing-with-linked-data-mit and here http://www.slideshare.net/jmusser/pw-glue-conmay2010

kiva, tesco, guardian, mastercard, new york times, BBC – all getting into it in a big way….

The real early adopter win here – being the brand, in your sector, which defines the ontology, which everyone else uses – so river island, should be defining an ontology of fashion, we as an interactive agency – should be defining our ontology, B&Q should be defining an ontology of hardware / DIY / retail – more here http://www.slideshare.net/Sheldrake/pr-and-web-30

some more links here

for background http://www.delicious.com/savioursofpop/data+web+marketing

and here http://www.delicious.com/savioursofpop/api

Publishing in RDFa format…

Once you are publishing data (or preferably before) – you then mark up your data semantically (a layer of data describing the data). Most common language of this layer is RDF (and RDFa). It’s the basis of the guardian’s business model, google snippets is based on RDFa data – and most interesting recently –the 3^r strand to facebook’s open graph announcement earlier this year – the fact that facebook now understands (and prioritises) content if it is in RDFa format (they have their own slightly different format – but the principle is there)

The Communications Rainbow

2010-09-16T08:45:00.000-07:00

What is it?

The Victorians were obsession with classification. Our modern industrial world was built on a simple, pragmatic thought - that to classify, was to understand. Darwin, Edison, Livingstone - all took journeys armed with this simple belief.

The "Communications Rainbow" is homage to that era. A simple, visual, classification of marketing.

What does it do?

The rainbow tries to put tactics (2nd ring in) into perspective - I've often frustrated by the small amount of time, money and effort allocated to digital thinking. To online planning. To making sure, money spent, is spent wisely. By demonstrating the layers of thinking on which the outer, tactical rings should be based, I wanted a tool to illustrate to clients, just how important having a business, marketing and brand strategy was - before they started to think about "marketing" as an ongoing task within an organisation.

In visually describing the huge variety and choice we have when trying to engage users, the rainbow also aims to be a tool to expand client horizons at the tactical stage. Listening and engagement, data web marketing, sCRM, content strategy - these areas of new marketing are all too often still nice to haves - in an always on world - they need to be placed at the heart of a marketing mix. Conversely, the ring of "products" acts as a mind map of the kinds of products and services, marketing agencies might think of offering in the new world.

To my mind, many digital agencies need to move out of their "lick and stick", "design it, built it" mentality - and understand that they need to offer (and clients are crying out for) a more consultancy style approach. One which offers a broader suite of training and consultancy products -as well as the "practical web" stuff.

Away from tactics, I wanted a tool to help place digital marketing in a wider marketing and business context. Marketing is the interface between the business and the user. Done right, it must have the opportunity to inform product design, IT, PR and HR. This can't be just a nice to have - it is essential in a conversational, always on world - where users expect their feedback and interaction to mean something.

Next steps....

The Communication Rainbow is a starter for 10. A personal take on the world, full of my own prejudices and blind spots. I would love others to contribute to it. I hope to have an interactive version of it soon, which will allow other planners, and marketeers, to add to it. There is much that needs to be improved. It nevertheless represents a start, something to which I hope, others will want to contribute.

On that note - I need to thank Joe Crump, at Razorfish, who has kindly allowed me to use a part of his excellent Digital Darwinism slides here in the filters section.

Digital planning...

2010-09-07T04:16:00.000-07:00

Fallon Brainfood x VCU Brandcenter: The Engagement Opportunity

View more presentations from Aki Spicer.

As some work I've set myself before taking on a new role, I've been sifting my blog posts and tags - this was particularly interesting - ostensibly its about digital planning - but it speaks to the new agency model as well

Measure everything that makes life worthwhile...

2010-09-07T03:15:00.000-07:00

Social acknowledgement and delayed gratification

2010-09-07T03:06:00.000-07:00

Knowledge compression

2010-09-07T02:33:00.000-07:00

Great data visualization talk - covering linked data - but particularly interesting on "knowledge compression"

This rocks.....

2010-09-06T03:03:00.000-07:00

the mainstream discovers buddhism...

Old spice takes a brilliantly subtle dig at Gillette...

2010-08-13T06:20:00.000-07:00

The Internet of things....

2010-08-12T01:00:00.003-07:00

Think I might have posted this before - explains the internet of things very well...

Good round up of crowdsourced tactics...

2010-07-22T00:06:00.001-07:00

Media Owner Co-creation Solutions

View more presentations from david cushman.

Brilliant explanation of the semantic web...

2010-07-20T01:57:00.000-07:00

Starbucks and social business strategy...very interesting clip

2010-07-20T01:32:00.000-07:00

Too long, nothing massively original (and not as good as the first one) - but still worth flicking through...

2010-07-20T01:26:00.001-07:00

What the F**k is Social Media NOW?

View more presentations from Marta Kagan.

Being too attractive for the job.....

2010-07-20T00:41:00.000-07:00

Interesting piece from Mind hacks about being too attractive for the job..here

Not something that's likely to be troubling me anytime soon...

Excellent slides on proving case for user reviews....

2010-07-16T08:12:00.000-07:00

Great talk from head of Pepsi social media....

2010-07-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

Long but good....

Individualism and the web...

2010-07-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

If accept the web is based on - collaboration, the collective, mutual support, communities and ultimately - sharing

Where does individualism fit in? When you come to think of it - the web is fundamentally at odds with a core tenant of the American psyche....

Its like the web is a way for the American mind to become more European - without having to admit it!

I don't know whether this is on brand - but its bloody funny...

2010-07-14T03:28:00.000-07:00

60 second - social business - to do...

2010-07-13T02:18:00.000-07:00

1. Organisational change - start the journey towards a hive...

2. IT - ask your head of IT to migrate all services to the cloud and to ditch old technologies - if he refuses, fire him, if he doesn't start calling him a marketing technologist

3. sCRM - ask your new marketing technologist

4. Data - start collecting, organising and tagging business data sets - develop semantic mark up plans and release an API in beta

5. Training / awareness - invest in a range of educational initiatives to get staff up to speed with the new world (modify office spaces, increase access to flexible working, implement a Fedex day etc)

6. Marketing - (earned / owned / bought) - stop bought, start earned - demote owned

7. Product - open it up to the crowd

the social world hampers endings...

2010-07-11T14:58:00.000-07:00

Endings, of all kinds, are important. They push our minds to acknowledge reality. They enable us to move on. At an ending, we mentally archive sections of our lives, so we can experience new things. So we can grow.

Without endings, without honoring them and acknowledging them, we are left weaker as individuals. We simply end up carrying too much baggage.

And yet...the digital world isn't good at endings. Relationships, work, feelings - they live on in cyberspace. We are constantly asked to reconnect to our past.

Can't be good for us....

Clever chap Nietzsche....

2010-07-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

"From the start Christianity was, essentially and fundamentally, the embodiment of disgust and antipathy for life, merely disguised, concealed, got up as the belief in an 'other' or a 'better life'. Hatred of the 'world', the condemnation of the emotions, the fear of beauty and sensuality, a transcendental world invented the better to slander this one, basically a yearning for non-existence, for repose until the 'sabbath of sabbaths' - all of this, along with Christianity's unconditional resolve to acknowledge only moral values, struck me as the most dangerous and sinister of all possible manifestations of a 'will to decline', at the very least a sign of the most profound affliction, fatigue, sullenness, exhaustion, impoverishment of life."

Friedrich Nietzsche, Attempt at a Self-Criticism, 1886, 5

Interesting overview from Lithium on sCRM

2010-07-05T05:57:00.001-07:00

because its monday....because I run my own business again.....and because I can

2010-07-05T03:43:00.000-07:00

The root of middle class joblessness...brilliant Hugh MacLeod

2010-07-05T03:41:00.001-07:00

CBT is King...Freud is dead - wots that got to do with brand?

2010-07-05T00:27:00.000-07:00

Why is this graph interesting for brand & marketing people?

Because the "science" of brand (as created in the 50s and 60s), is based in Freudian psychology. It is, at its core, a top down endeavor. The old world of brand marketing saw doctors, (agencies) deliver diagnoses, (insights) to patients (the brand) about their issues (customers).

Now, everyone who knows what they're doing in the business of psychotherapy (marketing), knows that Freud (advertising) is a load of old misogynistic bollocks (the big idea / insight), based on the sexually repressed society of late 19c Vienna.

Instead, forward thinking agencies (therapists) are delivering earned media strategies (relational therapies) to clients (brands) that are rooted, not in abstract insights (diagnosis), but in the relationship between the brand and their customers (clients' issues)

This could be a book....

A marxist analysis of the financial crisis - quite brilliant

2010-07-02T01:37:00.000-07:00

To argue wages have fallen in real terms over the last 20 years....bit silly.

Safer ground (for me) in modern Marxism is alienation - no better idea to describe a range of modern societal ills.

Social capital.....brilliant explanation

2010-07-01T10:12:00.001-07:00

The power of the brand...

2010-07-01T01:47:00.001-07:00

Slightly NSFW...

Collaborative consumption - great clip...

2010-06-30T04:03:00.001-07:00

All I do these days is repost video clips - there are 5 unfinished articles in my blogger account - anyone up for finishing the research and thining for me?

Probably only for geeks this one....

2010-06-27T06:23:00.000-07:00

I spent 5 years building a java based platform. We learned to hate .net

Brand social strategy...excellent slides..

2010-06-27T06:19:00.000-07:00

KickApps SF Summit - "Your brand is not my friend" by Alan Wolk

View more presentations from KickApps.

A great presentation - although I think the limits of brand friendship are set by the nature and qaulity of the brand more organically than My Wolk might like to admit.

Get religion...

2010-06-22T09:02:00.001-07:00

Planners and "changing behaviours"....

2010-06-22T06:31:00.000-07:00

Whenever I come across "planners" trying to "get inside the mind of the consumer" or "change behaviour" I wince. Exhibit A above - an ice cream brand trying to make us smile...

Closed off, over educated egos, all with the same bizarrely aggrandized sense of self worth pulling "insights" out of thin air, whilst claiming to have some sort of god like insight into the minds of other men - horrible.

Childish, ignorant, stupid.

The whole of concept of planning when taken to this level - where 60 second ads are elevated to works of science, in the dark science of human manipulation - is truly pathetic.

It shows a colossal ignorance of the human mind - and amongst other thing - no awareness whatsoever of the last 100 years of human psychology and behavioral investigation. I suspect even Freud - the least human of all the mind men - would look with some disdain at the pompous, nonsense that passes for "thinking" from most planning departments.

Students of humanistic psychotherapy learn very quickly that to predict or preempt another persons feelings of behaviours is a cataclysmic mistake. The very basis of psychological distress. Thinking we know someone else better than they, and articulating this, in however a subtle, or round about way, is the surest way to alienate and ruin people

Exhibit b - our current insane western culture which places value at the polar opposite of what is likely to make us humans happy.

In psychotheraputic terms, every time a planner has an "insight" is imposing a "condition of worth" - their own standards, their own outlook, their own view (which if it were perfectly alighted to all the people on whom we are imposing them - would be fine) - but which of course, more often than not, simply jars with the majority of the people who come into contact with that communication and makes them less happy - less likely to engage with the brand.

Making me smile into an upside down Microsoft surface doesn't make me happier. If that smile isn't genuine - then all you've done is take another small chunk out of my sense of self.

Most human beings, in their core, simply can't believe 99% of what passes for a marketing message. That car / razor blade / smart phone / perfume can't make us more attractive to the opposite (/ same sex). At a fundamental level we know this. We've stood at the bar alone - we know the reality of our sexual attractiveness.

When an advertiser tells us differently we are being pushed to accept something we don't believe.

Its wrong. Wrong because it makes the world a less happy place - but also wrong because when you analyse the truly great brands - you realise that they've very rarely participated in this form of abuse.

Forget "getting inside the mind of the consumer" - forget being "the voice of the consumer" - focus instead on true marketing - making your product brilliant - and then openly and honestly talking about that product with the people who care about it.

That is the way you build great, big, f**k off brands - brands which truly mean something to people. Brands which contribute.

applegirl002 makes the dumbest decision of her life...

2010-06-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

She creates a global meme - has millions of loyal fans begging her to let them give her their cash directly to see her live and....

She signs a record deal

DOH!!!!

What a chump here

I don't think this is theatre - I think he means it...

2010-06-21T06:49:00.001-07:00

PSFK - the future of retail report

2010-06-21T06:34:00.000-07:00

PSFK presents Future of Retail report

I confess I haven't read it in detail yet - but on a quick glance - this looked very interesting - PSFK is becoming a must have resouce....

PSFK on planning and intuitive problem solving....

2010-06-15T00:12:00.000-07:00

Nice little clip...interesting the weight everyone in the clip puts on what I would call emotional intelligence

Active brand immunity

2010-06-14T08:55:00.000-07:00

I was sitting having some nice Sushi in a St Petersburg restaurant on Wednesday – and a good friend and business colleague mentioned a time with his young daughter on the Berlin underground.

He said she had sat down, looked at the ads facing her in the carriage and pointed out to her father “they’re only smiling at us to make us buy things”.

His daughter has acquired what we might call “active brand immunity”. Until the early 1960s, brand immunity simply didn’t exist. 3 TV ads a week gave the typical US brand 90% market penetration. Resistance was futile. Without an alternative narrative – the consumer bought, pretty much, what they were told.

Slowly over the course of the next 20 years, some consumers developed a degree of what we might call “passive brand immunity”, usually off the back of a high profile failure - Nestles’ child baby milk scandal, Exxon’s Spill, The “tooth in a coke can” meme, literature (Silent Spring) etc. They learned to shop selectively. Weeding out the most obviously exploitative, dumb brands but only on an ad hoc basis.

Now it seems, it might be possible that children as young as 8 can acquire ABI – “active brand immunity”. An innate, unconscious rejection of brand messaging as a default - driven by widely available counter information on digital networks about brands, rising social and environmental concerns surrounding their activity and a more general cynicism about the motives of the corporate world (bought on by a seemingly unending supply of disasters and scandals). Bottom line - kids are so informed of the real nature and true activity of brands, that taken as a whole, their potency is reduced.

My strong sense at the coal face of marketing is the idea of brand - certainly the way we understood the concept at the end of the 20th century at any rate - appears to be fading. The concept of commodity clubs – those institutions who are adding something of real value to a customers world is beginning to take root. If brands are morphing into institutions which more accurately reflect the desires and demands of their consumer, then that certainly on balance, can only be a good thing.

BP Oil Spill.....

2010-06-10T09:03:00.001-07:00

Germany wins Eurovision.....

2010-06-01T01:11:00.000-07:00

Quelle surprise!

The only net exporter in the Union. The only country able to bail the rest of us out.

And they win Eurovision.

Who would have thought it. What a coincidence.

How come we came last though? Are we being punished for being able to devalue?

A weekly round up...

2010-06-01T00:33:00.000-07:00

I bookmark a lot - for clients, tracking memes and to develop my strategy process - makes wading through my delicious tags pretty painful - so from now on, on a regular basis, I thought I'd pull out the highlights from my wanderings around the web...

The modern business plan by Seth (Godin) – here

Mastercard getting into data web marketing, API’s and the semantic web - here

Facebook’s approach to the semantic web - here

The cost of being rich - here

An alternative metro – has had lots of press this – quite amazing - here

A great round up of 3d printing - here

Cos in our new house – I want to make sure our new woodburner heats the house as well - here

Site dedicated to the need for brands to become publishers - here

My own take on developing a content strategy - here

I tell my clients they should never simply repost stuff....

2010-05-28T03:50:00.000-07:00

but with TED....I just can't help it...this talk on education is genuinely inspiring

Can't watch iPlayer via the WiFi on Virgin trains...

2010-05-27T06:19:00.000-07:00

The T-mobile WiFi service on Virgin trains is routed through Germany - it means access to the iPlayer and other content is blocked (also means you see google in German - which is pretty annoying for us, parochial, mono-language luddites...)

£10 for a days' access?

For a service which barely works, is in German when it does, and doesn't give me access to content I should be able to enjoy

Come on Virgin - sort it out...

The inflation game....

2010-05-27T01:30:00.000-07:00

To solve the problem of soverign, corporate and personal debt - either the US or Europe must take the pain of inflating the west’s way out of the crisis. For several months now I’ve been wondering when the game of macro economic inflation chicken would begin. Finally. With increasing evidence of sustained growth - it seems to have started. We can now see political leaders manoeuvring on both sides of the Atlantic (but seemingly more aggressively in Europe) to manipulate the markets into forcing the other side into the firing line.

Although the rules of the game are relatively straightforward, their practical application is an incredibly dangerous political tightrope on which to walk. Nevertheless, both sides of the Atlantic will participate. The size of the prize (running your economy with lower inflation and higher growth compared to your nearest competitors) is simply too great not to have a go.

For the losers – the economic zone left holding the “higher currency bomb” - once growth kicks they get to import even more inflation via more expensive imports, with their export sectors simultaneously hit by the same high currency.

So how do you play?

Well, first of all you need spineless, dithering, self serving politicians who have little or no sense of decency or shame, who are prepared to roll their sleeves up and really get stuck in.

Frankly, on this basis alone, the US may as well go and grab a shower now. “err….Mr President….we need to add a few things into today congressional speech about the economy……” The US were foolish enough to elect someone with a partially working moral compass and a desire to bring decently and humanity to politics…how naive….

We on the other hand we in Europe have been much more sensible. We’ve put people like David Cameron in charge and even had the good sense to weaken his position, by placing him in a coalition with people who detest him, giving both parties the chance to blame lack of economic good governance on the other…...genius - who knew the electorate could be so clever?

Next, you need the aforementioned self-serving, partially educated PR team, to gently, but persistently work to undermine your own currency to the point where the markets devalue you against the other side, without precipitating a full on run. This was done very competently throughout the election by the Conservatives, particular by that odious little turd, George Osborne (someone who exudes lazy, ignorant, mis-placed self confidence with remarkable ease). George was able to point out on a daily basis throughout the campaign, the fragile nature of our economy and the massive cuts he’d need to instigate to bring us back form the brink.

Nice one Georgie…we’re nearly home and dry!

Even the Germans are getting in on the act. Angela Merkels’ brilliantly clumsy talking up of Grecian and Euro zones woes a couple of weeks ago, although seemingly a horribly amateur turn in a field of pros, suddenly was put into context as the French waded in hours later to contradict her – a work of political genius – not only knocking the currency but cleverly adding a “we’re f**ked and we also can’t agree” garnish – bravo!

The game of course is long and hard – and we are only seeing the opening salvos. None of us should underestimate the stakes however. Forget short term volatility, medium term growth or longer term fiscal issues. Whoever loses the game of macro-economic-inflation-chicken, bequeathes their country a generation of lacklustre growth, high unemployment andasset value erosion.

Who said getting the Tories was a bad thing?

Developing a content strategy....

2010-05-26T09:56:00.001-07:00

Many of my clients struggle with content. Content drives the conversations we're trying to create in an earned media strategy. Together with data web marketing and a listening and engagement plan - content forms the basis of any brands usage of the social web. Without it we are mute. And yet the development of a plan can leave the most forward thinking and courageous of clients running for the door.

As Mitch Joel points out here - most brands are now publishers, and great publishers devote a serious amount of time and resource to the creation of their content. The days of hoping a few blog posts from PR every now and again would cover it are long gone. Now listening and engagement strategies (as much as insight driven from planning and research) should drive an hourly news cycle for brands. See the Gatorade "mission control" clip below.

There is absolutely no doubt now that for most brands to be effective in a connected world – the quality, frequency and variety of the content they generate, needs to be on a par with anything that a conventional media organisation might publish. CMO's might differentiate - users don't.

This from a McKinsey Quarterly Report...

"Traditional marketers spend about 60 percent of their budgets on “working media” (or paid placement), 20 percent on creating content, and the balance on employees and agencies. Digital channels, with their social nature, reverse these economics, focusing on a smaller core of engaged people who can spread positive impressions, or simply share information, with a broader audience. Active digital marketers tend to devote about 30 percent of their marketing budgets to paid media and 50 percent to content. Customers do more of the heavy lifting as they decide what to look at, play with content, and forward it to their online communities. We have found that by making the right investments, active digital marketers can spend significantly less on marketing as a percentage of sales, with little to no deterioration in performance." full report is here

At a practical level, the most common error is to start with the tools – don't get distracted by whether you should be "writing a blog" or "posting on youtube" or "getting a facebook account". Tools will change - the need to engage your users will not.

Instead - go back to your research, your segmentation models, your personas, need state analysis, customer journeys, techno graphic profiles and KPI’s. Figure out what content your users want – what will inform, delight, entertain and engage them – what will make them talk (and say the right things) about your brand…then be as imaginative as you can with the different media options you have at your disposal.

Once you have a grip on user need - you are then in a far better position to know how to re-engineer internal systems, reallocate marketing budgets, source new suppliers to generate the content, recruit the right people, upgrade your IT systems and re imagine your marketing to become a publisher.

As a starter for 10, I've jotted down potential sources for your content below - to try give you a sense of the wide range of places you can search for content gold

nter;">

Once you have a grip on type, manner and approach - some sort of systemised approach is critical initially to make sure processes and systems become embedded. The neat summary above, from an excellent presentation here covers the basics. Notice the dynamic integration with SEO and the related disciplines of correct metadata and tagging. Without giving users the chance to find stuff, any work will be in vain.

Happy publishing....

The intangible value game....

2010-05-25T03:57:00.000-07:00

This TED is brilliant. Insightful, witty and amusing. But somehow I felt I was being entertained in a burning Rome.

My issue isn’t so much with the morality of advertising (although I have strong personal objections to much of what goes on in our business). Where the argument for intrinsic value creation falls down for me is in the numbers. Most of us know the advertising game has always been fun, dynamic, high risk and (relatively) well paid - working in strategy is as close to being paid to gamble in a Casino as anyone with half a brain is likely to get - my concern is the game has changed. That technology has rendered it unwinnable.

When the wisdom of the crowds can lay waste to any carefully constructed brand essence in seconds, where is the economic rationale behind capital being committed to build brands?

The business case for branding is simply no longer convincing. As users become more connected, more self aware and cynical - cold economic logic suggests that investing in (what I call) commodity clubs, simply represents a better economic bet.

Put another way. If an organisation

-    provides a great product or service people still need when money is tight, at a reasonable price
-    ensures if they source raw materials from poor countries, that they make the lives of the poor people they work with better
-    treats its staff and shareholders with respect
-    endeavours to minimise the environmental impact of its operations (and has a plan to reduce them to 0 or better still, actually improve the environment)
-    contributes in other ways to the wider (and local) community
-    accepts blame willingly when things go wrong

Why does that organisation need a brand?

I'm trying to not enjoy being an ad man....this isn't helping...

2010-05-25T03:02:00.000-07:00

Vimeo makes it into my shortcuts toolbar....

2010-05-24T02:39:00.000-07:00

They must be so proud...

Cognitive bias...

2010-05-18T05:04:00.000-07:00

Cognitive Biases - A Visual Study Guide by the Royal Society of Account Planning

Excellent document - but slightly depressing - given the number of different types of bias I could recognise in my own behaviour!

Google job offers...

2010-05-17T01:05:00.000-07:00

(Inter)nationalise facebook...

2010-05-12T05:10:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Daily/Colbert - Internationalize

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

For a while facebook has been the de facto platform on which we have been building the social world. Recent announcements suggest it might become the platform where we build the semantic world of the future - a world of data.

Given this and the fact that these services are so fundemental to society, so key to the way in which we now (and will) function as human beings, it can't possibly stay in private hands.

It must be (inter)nationalised.

It is simply too dangerous to leave that much data - that much insight - in the hands of a private company. We in the UK should know - we have Experian - a business which by a quirk of fate, has access to private data in the UK which authorities in Europe and elsewhere would never begin to countenance (that access I would argue was one of the primary (and as yet undiscussed and undisclosed) reasons for such a severe financial meltdown in this country. Leverage was built on top of Experien data - and their faulty analysis of it).

If the general population was as aware of the power and sensitivy of the data they were sharing on facebook (as they are of their tax or health records) - there would be a mass migration away from the platform. In fact I would go further and suggest it is in facebook's interests to be at least part privatised, to legitimise the key aspects of its business model, and insulate it from more vocal calls for (inter)nationalisation.

Dawkin....API's......Data.......I'm in heavan......

2010-05-10T05:36:00.000-07:00

Darwin's Finches, 20th Century Business, and APIs

View more presentations from Sam Ramji.

Key takeaway..."the API is successful if the application that carries it is successful..."

BP....most certainly a brand, not a commodity club...

2010-05-07T01:25:00.000-07:00

Read a post on Boing boing and it struck me that in my original post here I missed perhaps the biggest "brand" of all....

Riz is a genius....(again)

2010-05-06T05:54:00.001-07:00

As usual - everything that Riz touches - turns to gold....

Brand and earned media...where you build a marketing strategy from....

2010-05-06T05:35:00.000-07:00

The saying goes....

If you're a builder, you solve every problem with a hammer.

If you're an academic - its a document.

If you're me - you see everything as overly complex to be made simple....

So when it comes to marketing and brand - I only really have 2 models. 2 simple ways of thinking about what I consider are the critically important aspects of marketing. The ones you really can't do without.

brand
earned media

I don't mean everything else (offline, bought, advertising - all the other concepts, channels and categories one could throw up around marketing) aren't useful at a practical level - they're just not as important as brand and earned media.

brand - my model based on "primal branding" - 7 areas - creation story, creed, icons, rituals, pagans, sacred words, leader

earned media - 5 stages to think about - listening, content, applications, support, data

The rest is subdordinate to this. Subjective. Someone else point of view.

Brand and earned media...where you build a marketing strategy from....

A good day trawling the deep web - downfall remade - brilliant...

2010-05-06T01:38:00.000-07:00

Design genius...

2010-05-06T01:26:00.001-07:00

Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh)....can we vote on the music for the next one please?

2010-05-06T01:10:00.000-07:00

V. interesting update on the hugley popular clip.

And the clip which takes the piss out of ad execs using fat boy slim in their pitches (skip to 3:35 if its too painful..)

No one is going to read your blog...

2010-05-06T00:57:00.000-07:00

Roughly 30-50 people read this blog every day. It is very unlikely this number will ever rise. The reasons (lack of original thought, style etc) aren't important. I actually write another blog for my psychotherapy studies which only my tutor has access to. Its only for me. Only for personal reflection. A diary.

The reason I blog, and I think millions of others do to, is because somehow we know the process of refining and distilling our thoughts is useful to us. Not for our careers - hate that f**king word and concept (why in god's name would anyone chose a "career" over living, loving, hanging out with their children?) Baffles me...But for us. For us as people. To make our own worlds richer, more interesting.

Seth Godin calls it meta cognition. He's usually right....

The public sector cash pipe.....

2010-05-06T00:21:00.000-07:00

A friend who heads up the marketing for a decent sized organic food retailer, was detailing some of the shocking headline figures her business was trying to cope with. Double digit declines in sales, massive staff redundancies, huge cut backs. Businesses shrinking to their bones - and many not surviving.

Her expereience seems to be in sharp contrast to that of other friends in the private - and public sector. But then organic food is alone - "fully private" if you like. A sector which receives virtually no government support, and is fully dependent on discretianary spending. They've not been shielded from the reality of our continent's fiscal position. Other sectors, whose bottom line is, in part, helped by direct or indirect government cash have been luckier. The ad agency with the juicy NHS trust PR gig, the printers who have the council contract, the garage which maintains the fleet of police vehicles.....

Once the government cash pipe stops pumping - probably at around the same time as a relief well is dug in the Gulf - it is these "part private" enterprises which will be tested.

How much of these businesses are built on easy, poorly accounted for government cash? How much of our economy is built on an embedded, 35 year old psychology that governments (since the decoupling of the dollar from the price of gold in 1973) could keep printing cash

10%? 30% 50%.....70%?

From experience, I suspect many part private businesses are bloated and inflexible - in as poor state as their public sector counterparts - and the loss of government contracts will be the end for them. How much of what we now consider to be fully private businesses - the pizza chain in the Mall, the high end clothes retailer, the garden planning service......how much of their trade is based on a generation's assumption that the life they were living was "real" - when in actual fact, all of us have been being subsidised by virtual money for nearly 40 years.

How many people do they employ? How much virtual money were they contributing to the exchequer? What happens to a country when 30% of us are out of work? What do we do?

We're just about to find out.

Its election day

The last bottle of wine at the money printing party has been quaffed. The sun is coming up. The party is over.

The unavoidable consequences of 30 years of printing money are just about to kick in....