The Communications Rainbow

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.

 

Planners and "changing behaviours"....

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.

API's - an engagement tool

API’s – or application programming interfaces – are a critical part of the digital world.

Without them, developers would be unable to use other people’s data in their own applications and widgets.

When you use a weather application on your iPhone – its getting its information through an API. When you see your pictures from flickr in a widget on facebook – the widget is pulling those images from your flickr account via its API. When you see a google map with information about the victims of an earthquake plotted on it – you get the idea….

From a planning and marketing perspective this technology is incredibly exciting. A brand with an API is automatically social, accessible, human. The implications of having one ripple through the business and affect all manner of systems and processes for the better. Information is set free. People inside and outside of the organisation suddenly have a reason to talk to each other. Users engage and communicate with the brand in amazing new ways. APIs are the best weapon a planner has in his / her armory to deepen engagement. And best of all, from the brands point of view. They mean everyone else does the heavy lifting of application development.

So it was with some excitement this morning that we got an email from a client to say the work we’ve been doing with them to introduce them to the delights of “pull” marketing has paid off – and they’re now thinking of building one. The client, apart from being one of our most forward thinking, is particularly interesting because the data they hold concerns stuff people really care about. On some level, everyone in the UK is interested in the data that this client holds and because of this – where its seeds will spread – is anyone’s guess.

a man after my own heart....