CopyWrite

Marketing: Why giving it away can be more profitable

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:27:10 +1000

Recently, I've become fascinated with the possibilities of giving free content away as a legitimate - and highly successful - marketing strategy. Some of you reading this may already be nodding in a "tell me something I don't know" kind of way. After all, blogging is a free content marketing model. But the fact remains that most businesses still look to monetise the wrong end of their business model by charging up front and providing free 'value-adds' after sale.

Jeff Jarvis - in his new book What would Google do? - discusses how providing free, flexible and open tools and content with as few restrictions as possible allowed businesses such as Google, Flickr, Twitter and more to amass astronomical audiences that can then be monetised by a secondary method, such as advertising or selling related products or services.

Charging customers stops some unknown number of them from getting your product or using your service, which stops you from having a relationship with them. Money costs money.

The value of the audience

This ability to monetise through secondary channels while amassing followers through free distribution is still not perfect. Twitter has yet to monetise their enormous audience. Facebook has struggled with various advertising programs. YouTube was predicted to post a $470 million loss by Credit Suisse back in April. Yet no one would criticise these businesses or assume they have failed. We know they have achieved the impossible by attracting a massive, highly active audience and we know that has incalculable value. What we are seeing now is the experimentation and innovation in extracting that value.

Yet most businesses have the reverse problem. They have a monetisation mechanism - selling a product or service, most commonly - without the mass active audience commanded by these online behemoths. For them, the problem isn't monetisation, it is in finding the free and open mechanism that builds the audience that they can then monetise.

Obviously, you can't give the product away for free, as that's your monetisation. Therefore, the key needs to be to find a complimentary free service or content strategy that would attract the right audience in their droves.

Giving content or services away for free may seem counter-intuitive. After all, where's the ROI? It will cost your business to produce the content or staff the service. But no business ever questions the ROI of their customer service or IT support departments. Businesses see those as legitimate expenses that increase the value of their sales proposition and thereby build ROI through more indirect routes of customer retention and loyalty.

Building an audience - consumer engagement - should now be seen as the third core business activity, sitting between sales and customer service. You may argue that the third activity is always marketing, but increasingly for many businesses, particularly SMEs, marketing is no more than an adjunct to sales, pumping out advertising with a clear measurable goal of direct response sales conversions.

Customer engagement is genuine marketing, not advertising, and is measured by completely different metrics to counting conversions or totting up dollar values in and out within a week of campaign launch.

If you really need to explain it to a CEO or manager in terms they are comfortable with, it is all about better lead generation over time. The goal is to amass a previously unimaginable number of focused leads that can then be converted by the sales team or through other traditional methods, thereby monetising the audience. After all, they've demonstrated their interest by downloading your free ebook or availing themselves of your free seminars, or using your free web tools. Planned correctly your free marketing strategy can in fact produce highly qualified - and therefore highly convertible - leads in amounts you've never experienced before.

But before you start building massive lists of leads from free content and then hammering them into submission with your sales team, remember that even a free offer becomes unattractive if it results in spam or heavy sales pressure. Be smart about maintaining this relationship and understanding when they may be ready to buy and when they are content to just stay in your audience for now.

Free - the future of a radical price

Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired Magazine and the best selling writer of The Long Tail recently released his new book Free - The future of a radical price. Ironically, Anderson invited controversy by lifting some of his material without attribution from Wikipedia - thereby plagiarising the authors whose work had been cited. (Hat tip to @likeomg for tweeting this.)

It would also be ironic for a book about free content to come with a price tag, so the complete manuscript is available on Scribd.com as an ebook. Thanks to Gavin Heaton - Servant of Chaos - for pointing this out on his blog as I already had the book in my basket at Amazon ready for my next bulk order. Like Gavin, I need to find some time to sit down and plough through these 288 pages

FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson

Profiting from 'Free'!

Guess what? I've just given you some free content that is hopefully of value to you. Then again, this entire blog is produced at no charge to the reader. What is my ROI on this blog? At the moment, negligible. Yet the reputation I create, the authority I build and the subscribers and audience I cultivate can develop career opportunities and increase the value of my professional work. Pay rises, extra freelance contracts, magazine articles. The ROI is an indirect result of using a free content marketing strategy.

What are you prepared to give away for free?

How to use Twitter for business - director's cut

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:56:38 +1000

Yesterday's Lunch N Learn webinar entitled "Using Twitter to gain a competitive advantage" was a huge success, attracting what may be an Australian record for webinar attendees. A little under 1000 people logged in at midday to hear Brien Giesen and myself debate and witter on with our advice and tips for businesses looking to use Twitter.

Thanks to the great efforts of the guys and gals over at GoToMeeting and Ogilvy PR.

With only an hour to share between us, we crammed in as much information as humanly possible without overloading the audience. As a result, my presentation had to shed some slides and skip over a couple of points. But fret not - below is the directors cut, unedited and original version of my presentation. For those of you who attended the webinar, it may reinforce some of the points I made but for those who missed it, here's your chance to grab the slideshow (sadly minus my voice adding an additional layer of waffle).

Nett / LunchnLearn webinar "Twitter for Business" Director's Cut

View more documents from Jonathan_Crossfield.

For further advice and thoughts about Twitter, you may want to check out some of my previous articles.

The main point I want to make though, is that there is no right and wrong, no firm rules and no sacred laws when it comes to marketing with Twitter. Everything is still so new that we're all still learning how to do things better and merely report back our experiences of what works or what doesn't work. If you disagree with any of my comments, feel free to say so below.

Joseph Jaffe Juices up ADMA in Sydney

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:04:05 +1000

It seems a month can't go by without another major conference. This time, it's the turn of the annual ADMA Forum, the expo of the Australian Direct Marketing Association, taking place this week from Wednesday July 8th to Friday July 10th.

The ADMA Forum has become one of the most engaging and informative marketing conferences in the calendar, and certainly goes much further than traditional direct marketing. These days, as much attention is given to online marketing, social media and email as it is to the ingenious ways some companies get advertising into your mailbox.

For me, this year's highlight is the keynote on Day One from Joseph Jaffe, President and Chief Interruptor of Crayon (US). He truly understands marketing as a conversation and has spearheaded much of the discussion on the new marketing world we find ourselves in.

I'll be there for most of the three days - only disappearing for a few hours on Wednesday to deliver my part of the webinar presented by Nett Magazine in conjunction with GoToMeeting Corporate - "Using Twitter to Gain a Competitive Advantage". You can still register for both the webinar and the ADMA Forum. If you spot me hanging around between sessions, come over and say hi.

Don't tell me what to think! Social media vs heritage news

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:30:50 +1000

Heritage media in the UK took another punch to the stomach recently as social media refused to allow The Daily Mail to set a racist right wing agenda. A couple of weeks later, John Hartigan decided to strike a blow on behalf of the heritage newspaper industry to the blogging community in his speech to the National Press Club. In it, he held up establishment journalism as the bastion of truth and the blogging community as inaccurate, unoriginal and shallow. Both The Daily Mail and Hartigan have demonstrated that heritage news insists on being a one way street - "We're right - you just listen". Like many traditional businesses, newspapers have shown that they just don't trust the judgment of their own audience - and a lack of trust is fatal in business.

Telling you what to think

The newspaper opinion poll has been a popular form of newsmaking for decades, and has increased since the real-time benefits of the internet became apparent. There aren't many newspaper websites that don't include reader polls designed to create a story out of the results - supposedly tapping into the readership's psyche and reporting on it. The benefits of this kind of reporting are obvious - the audience identifies with the findings, the newspaper gets an easy story. Many of us in marketing would normally applaud attempts to crowdsource information and include audience opinion at the very heart of content - after all, that is what social media is all about. Yet The Daily Mail's attempts to push a right wing agenda with such a poll backfired massively once Twitter was on the case.

To briefly recap a story reported on many UK blogs; In June, the British Government announced guidance that would mean GPs would need to see 'travellers' (as gypsies are more politely called these days) whenever they attend a clinic without an appointment. This guidance was given to recognise the cultural differences inherent in this ethnic group that could be negatively impacted should travellers be forced into an appointment system. The Department of Health had become concerned that travellers had been experiencing difficulty in accessing primary care, particularly as they move from place to place.

This issue, predictably, drew a strong reaction from the right wing press - notably The Daily Mail which placed a poll on their website, asking the question;

"Should the NHS allow gypsies to jump the queue?"

Phrasing the question this way was clearly designed to provoke a negative response, invoking the passive racism and moral outrage The Mail believes lives inside their readers. The Mail - among other papers - has thrived on whipping up reader anger over immigration, multiculturalism and "loony" left wing policy.

Only a few years ago, such a poll would probably have worked exactly as intended, resulting in a follow-up story detailing the "public outrage at NHS bias - gypsy scroungers more important than you" or something similar.

But now we have Twitter.

The audience strikes back!

The poll hadn't been live for long before Twitter users started calling for a strong "Yes" vote to the poll. The tweets were retweeted across the web, with more and more adding their voices to the cause.

The result? The poll showed a stunning 96% "Yes" vote before it was suddenly and without explanation pulled from the website - replaced with an out of date old survey.

Certainly this is a great example of Twitter spreading the word, but it also demonstrates something else. Heritage newspapers have enjoyed dictating the agenda for well over a century. By staking a claim over a particular segment of the audience - right wing, left wing, middle class, working class, etc - the newspapers then preach and manipulate that audience to align sentiment and thereby virtually control readership loyalty. Newspapers have happily had a one-way conversation with their readers, banishing contrary views to the letters page where they can safely be printed to show their openess before quietly forgetting them. Even the polls - which as I mentioned before should be a perfect example of crowdsourcing - are almost always skewed towards a particular result that forwards the newspaper's agenda.

We have always known newspapers have political bias and particular viewpoints and have accepted this for the most part. But the audience is increasingly wanting to have the right of reply in this conversation, just as we have begun to in other areas of our digital lives. We no longer want to passively receive the biased views of a heritage news media that considers its readership nothing more than numbers on a circulation chart. We want to help inform those opinions, debate them openly and report genuinely on what the community really wants, feels and believes.

Bloggers have opinions too!

Hartigan, in his speech last week, argued that heritage news organisations had a higher authority in reportage that should not be challenged by 'citizen journalists'.

In return for their free content, we pretty much get what we’ve paid for – something of such limited intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance.

Citizen journalists ... simply don’t have the resources to bring us reliable news. They lack not only expertise and training but access to decision makers and reliable sources.

No one is arguing that professional journalists shouldn't continue to bring insightful and well-researched and impeccably resourced news content. For opinions to happen, the real facts and news still needs to be reported and newsrooms are still best equipped to do so. But, once the facts are out there, does that negate the opinions of the readers in their own blogs or on Twitter or elsewhere? After all, not all news journalism is fact-finding and sources. Blogging is more akin to editorialising and who is to say that - having followed the same news stories, my - or your - perspective is any less valid than Piers ($%#@&^) Ackerman. Just like anywhere in our society, there are bloggers of all levels of intellectual skill or analytic ability, capable of shaping all kinds of opinions good or bad. If democracy allows us all the same single vote under the belief that everyone's opinion is valuable and equal, why is a blogger's opinion less valuable than Miranda ($%#@&^) Divine's because one appears in print and another in Wordpress? (Yes, I'm deliberately picking on the columnists that hang on my mental dartboard).

Twitter users kicked The Daily Mail in the teeth to remind them they can't take their audience for granted any more. Bloggers continually push back with counter arguments to the self-serving and subtextual agendas of the mainstream press editorials. We now have the power to genuinely crowdsource public opinions and beliefs and debate them in blogs, on forums and social networks. Heritage media can either start listening to our agendas - all of them - and actually engage with us instead of preaching to us, or they can get the hell out of the way.

"My script is crap! - A weekend with Robert McKee

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:42:21 +1000

Anticipation was huge for this three day seminar series so it was no surprise the queue snaked around the block and competition for the best seats was strong.

For anyone who has seen Brian Cox's portrayal of Robert McKee in the film Adaptation, you could have been mistaken for expecting anger, bile and histrionics. In reality, McKee is hugely entertaining, as well as informative and inspiring. Who knew that watching a guy walk up and down the stage - only rarely resorting to scribblings on an overhead projector - could maintain attention, amuse and engage as McKee does. No word is wasted, no idea unexplored. For any serious writer and/or lover of film, it was incredibly easy to be completely engrossed for three long, cramped twelve hour days. (Sitting in a cinema seat for that long is not recommended, by the way. I think McKee needs to catch up with the times and start a Gold Class version with reclining armchairs and waiter service.)

McKee is certainly opinionated, offer those opinions strongly and without room for argument. He is witheringly honest about the current state of writing; whether novels, plays or films. He is even more devastating when describing the hallmarks of amateur writing. Never patronising or vague, McKee strokes no egos and provides no false hope to those 'writers' looking for the easy formula or justification for their amateurish beliefs. Instead, he shoots down those dreams with well-aimed candour. Some people will never succeed as a writer - better to be told now rather than waste years bugging Hollywood readers with abysmal scripts.

McKee characterises the major difference between professional and amateurs quite simply. Amateurs love everything they've written and find writing a joy. Professionals hate everything they've written and find the process painful and uncomfortable. But that is how it should be - excellence is hard. If writing were so easy to be a joy, there would be nothing remarkable in it. We'd all be turning in Oscar-worthy scripts by the truckload. No - a true writer has to force themselves to the desk to keep going, rewjecting 90% of the pages they produce and still carrying a niggling unsatisfied hatred for the small 10% that forms the final manuscript.

If his intention was to scare off the feint-hearted, he may well have succeeded. After three days of intense analysis and detailed deconstruction, there could be no one left in the auditorium who still harboured beliefs that writing was a fun hobby. Each and every scene, every beat of dialogue, every nuance and plot twist and subtext was shown to be a specific and calculated choice out of hundreds of possible permutations examined and discarded by the writer. There were many in the audience grimmacing as they saw their lovingly-typed scripts mentally disappear in a smoke of realisation.

"Oh my god - my script is crap!" was a common reaction after each two hour session revealed ever more ways a budding writer's story may be, in reality, a mess. I'm certainly not alone here. My scripts were continually turning over in my mind with each new nugget of analysis from McKee. Scenes I once hung onto as my favourite moments suddenly were revealed as painfully inadequate and almost embarrassing.

Fantastically, the weekend was rounded off with a six hour screening of Casablanca - allowing us to stop after each scene and deconstruct the story in minute detail. Although not advisable on a first viewing, most of the audience were already huge fans of the film like myself, and therefore were ready to appreciate how this story is constructed from carefully woven threads of plot and character.

Certainly, the key to developing as a writer is to try, fail, learn and try again. For that reason, we all left on Sunday evening exhausted and cramped, yet better skilled and inspired to work even harder and longer to produce excellence in story.

Marketing: Answering the wrong question

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:16:26 +1000

As my profile in the marketing and digital scene in Australia has increased, I get asked for advice by businesses more often. Sometimes this is as part of the panel discussions for Nett Magazine where we troubleshoot the online strategies for a small business, sometimes just other business owners looking for advice on Twitter.

What is interesting is that often the question I am asked is the wrong one. For example; "How can I use Twitter and Facebook to increase sales and brand awareness?" or "How can I generate an income through social media?"

The truth of social media is that if the question refers to your own goals, the answer is doomed to failure. Social media relies on the other people in the conversation and not what you want to make them do.

It's not about you!

If you create a strategy focussed on your own benefits, ironically, you'll find you benefit very little. Creating link after optimised link, and tracking clicks and conversions to determine an ROIto justify the failure or success of a campaign, may work in search engine marketing, but is an absolute disaster if you transfer that theory to Twitter or forums or any other social media platform. Social media is an engagement medium, not an advertising one, and this fundamental difference is what separates the savvy online marketers from those who insist on making decisions based solely on zeroes and ones tracked on a balance sheet. Guess who has the stronger long term model.

Instead, if you turn the question on its head, you can potentially make a lot of money.

By asking "How can I use social media to help my target audience achieve their goals better?", you may end up developing a strategy where the happy side-product is more and more of that target audience flocking to your brand, increasing awareness and thereby increasing sales. Sure, this is much harder to track and can take a lot longer to achieve, but the rewards can be huge and long-lasting. Relationship marketing means building a large customer base that not only buys from you again and again but also advocates your brand, snowballing your business.

Putting customers in control

The problem is that most businesses are just not that used to giving away control like this. Traditional marketing has revolved around telling consumers how to behave, what to buy, blasting messages to the masses in the hope that the percentages get you over the line and make a profit. But social media is changing all this.

Why is this so? Because no brand has control over the message in these spaces. The users do. Your customers do. Telling them to behave the way you want them to in order to achieve your goals is tantamount to herding cats. But, conversely, provide your target audience with tools or content that is genuinely useful to them in achieving their goals and you won't need to preach to them, they'll start spreading your message for you.

Jeff Jarvis, in his recent book What Would Google Do?, tells how Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook explained this concept to some of the world's greatest business leaders and media magnates. Zuckerberg's point - you can't create communities. Communities already exist, doing whatever it is they want to do. Facebook didn't create a community any more than the local pub created the village it sits in. What Facebook - and the pub - do is provide the venue and the tools/facilities to enable people to organise their own social lives better. Zuckerberg calls this "elegant organisation" - helping the communities that already exist to organise their activities and achieve their goals better.

So, when considering how your business or brand could use social media to increase sales or brand awareness or whatever, think instead about the customer's goals and provide them with elegant solutions to achieve those goals through simple engagement and clever design.

To paraphrase Spock from Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan; on the web...

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Your goals are irrelevant. Serve the goals of the many with elegant organisaton, stand back and watch your goals happen by accident.

Countdown to Robert McKee in Australia

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:30:37 +1000

This week sees Robert McKee deliver his brilliant Story seminar series in Melbourne before bringing the three day screenwriting-fest to Sydney for what is apparently his last visit to Australia. If you are a screenwriter - amateur or otherwise - you will most likely have come across McKee in your readings. Yet the chance to participate in the fuill three day seminar is a chance not to be missed.

The Australian recently interviewed McKee in the build up to his visit and Time Out talked with the Hollywood script 'fixer' on his opinion of recent films like Slumdog Millionaire and Australia.

If you don't know why so many writers swear by McKee and his book Story, watch the following short interview he did with George Stroumboulopoulos.

The Melbourne sessions are now completely sold out. I'm going to be at the Sydney sessions from June 26th to 28th, at the Chauvel Cinema in Paddington, and there are a few tickets left. If you come along, look out for me and say hi in the break and share your thoughts, as I'll be blogging my observations and revelations afterwards.

See you there!

The Top Fifty Aussie Blogs on Writing - June 2009

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 11:52:10 +1000

It's here! And now with added arrows! The June edition of the Top Fifty Aussie Blogs on Writing is live and ready for you to enjoy, argue with, marvel at and link to.

There are a few new blogs on the list. Some are very new with only a couple of posts - great to see some fresh bloggers taking a hand so give them encouragement. Some are only new to the list and had I discovered them would have been included before. If there are any blogs on writing or by published writers that you are aware of that aren't included, please drop me a line.

Welcome to:

Observations and changes

I've also added in some handy up/down arrows signifying how much a blog's position has changed since the last chart. Now you can see who's on the way up and who's in need of a boost to turn them around. There has been some huge movement for some blogs - the biggest jump being William Kostakis leaping 55 places to come in at 51 (sadly, just outside the Top Fifty).

Others, such as Australian Romantic Suspense and Stories are Light have leapt up the chart into the Top Fifty, which is fantastic. And, let's not forget, there's movement at the top of the chart too with a new number one! The Top Ten is home to some pretty strong blogs jostling for position, so it's exciting to see a few shifts in the order.

Some of the big leaps up the chart are down to the blog owner registering their blog with Technorati, enabling an accurate Technorati score. Technorati is free and is one of the biggest central blog directories on the web. By registering, you allow it to track how many other blogs are linking to your articles - a strong indicator of how successful your blog is becoming. If your blog is yet to be registered with Technorati and you are still languishing towards the bottom of the list, I can suggest this may be the best chance you have to see a similar leap in future lists.

What goes up, must come down

Of course, if a lot of blogs move up, an equal number have to move down. Some may only have slipped a place or two, but some slid quite dramatically. This may be due to a slow down in posting activity. Certainly, there are a handful of blogs on the list that were eliminated for not posting within three months and a handful more very close to that benchmark. A three month window is more than long enough to establish that a blog is 'dead' or not active enough to warrant inclusion. If your blog has languished unloved for a few weeks, maybe now is the time to pay it some attention and add some wonderful gems on writing.

Add the badge

You may want to promote the list or show off your achievement. If so, you can add this badge to your website with the following code.

The link within the badge stays constant as each new update will happen on the same page. If you have a badge linking to an older version of the list, you may want to update it so that it always stays current.

Congratulations and start reading

Of course, the focus of this list is to encourage networking and a greater interaction between Aussie writer/bloggers. I have personally found blogging to be a valuable tool in my writing career and hope more amateur and professional writers will increasingly discover the benefits of marketing themselves in this way.,/p>

If you have any questions about how the list is put together, what all the numbers mean or how you can get your blog added in the next update (due in September), check out the FAQ.

Congratulations to the bloggers who make the Top Fifty, but let's not forget all those rapidly rising up the runner-up list. Maybe we'll see some more radical changes in the next update!

B&T announces Top 50 Marketing Blogs 2009

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:29:29 +1000

The latest issue of B&T came out today, proudly announcing the Top 50 Marketing Blogs 09 (for Australia, of course). Six months ago, they ran the first of these lists where I appeared in a staggeringly surprising 6th place. This time, I've slipped a bit - down to 15 - partly due to some exceptional competition coming through.

The list is compiled by Julian Cole of The Population. The full list of 170 marketing blogs will appear on his AdSpace Pioneers blog on Monday, providing a fantastic reading list for anyone keen to tap into current Aussie marketing thinking.

For the record, the top ten blogs are:

Bannerblog from Ashley Ringrose and Ashadi Hopper (@bannerblog)
Acid Labs from Stephen Collins (@Trib)
Servant of Chaos from Gavin Heaton (@servantofchaos)
The Inspiration Room Daily from Duncan Macleod (@Postkiwi)
Mumbrella from Tim Burrowes (@mumbrella)
Marketing Magazine (@marketingmag)
Laurel Papworth (@silkcharm)
Young PR
Adspace Pioneers from Julian Cole (@JulianCole)
London Calling from Andrew Grill (@AndrewGrill)

Brad Howarth compliments the list with an excellent article on the growth of social media marketing in Australia and the challenges we still face.

Congrats to those who are doing fantastic things with a bit of patience, a blogging platform and a lot of ideas.

Writing: The power of three

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:27:42 +1000

An Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman go into a bar
Ready, steady, go
The three act structure
The popularity of trilogies in fiction

The number three recurs again and again throughout writing. Whether it is in the choice of words to create a pleasing sentence or the wider structure beneath a script, the number three seems inescapable as a stylistic and structural choice.

How often, when writing, have you found yourself desperately tying to find another word or phrase to create a triumvirate of ideas? There are a number of reasons why three is so stylistically satisfying when creating stories or putting words together. Here are, naturally, three of them.

1. Rhythm.

Rhythm is important in good writing. Shakespeare wrote every line with a strong rhythmic beat and most writers have a sense of the rhythm of their words. Rhythm can turn a dull phrase into one that lilts and sings.

Three is the smallest number that can have a rhythm. Think about it. Tap the table twice - that's not a rhythm. Tap it three times. Bingo. Rhythm isn't just the beats but also the spaces in between - you need at least two spaces, and therefore three beats, to create a distinct rhythm. How many different rhythms can you create with three taps of the table?

This rhythm can help bind concepts and words together and add an additional element - timing. Think about the example I gave you in the opening paragraph: 'ready, steady, go'. There are a number of reasons why this phrasing works and therefore became so widely used. One of those reasons is rhythm. The goal of the phrase is not just to impart information, but to do so with pinpoint timing and synchronise multiple listeners to the same moment. To do so, the listener needs to be able to anticipate and be ready for the word 'go'. The way the listener does this is by assuming the length of time between the first two words - 'ready' and 'steady' - will be the same between the second two words - 'steady' and 'go'. They are listening for the rhythm.

This is the same reason why we sometimes, playfully, stretch out that second space or change the expected rhythm, to throw them off. "Reeeeeady... steeeeady... ... ... ... ... GO!" Even if you choose the other more formal "On your marks... Get set... Go!" form, you are still using a group of three to indicate a set rhythm and help the listener prepare for the split second timing of the start of the race.

The speaking clock phone service works in exactly the same way with three beats. "On the third stroke, the time will be..." We can synchronise our clocks and watches because we can anticipate the third beat within the rhythm.

But rhythm isn't just about functionality and precision in sports. It is also about aesthetics and style. 'Ready, steady, go' is a popular recurring phrase because it also creates a pleasing rhythm within the syllables and the rhyming of 'ready' and 'steady'. You most likely choose words and phrases over others all the time based on rhythm without even realising it. They just sound better to you. And they are - because of the power of three.

2. Beginning, middle and end

Whether talking about the three act structure or the three books in a trilogy, three instinctively feels like the right number when plotting a story. Each of the three pieces - acts or books/films - contribute to the whole by providing that beginning, middle or end. The third Bourne film is quite clearly a final end to a story, wrapping up the last threads that were set in motion in the first film and were explored and aggravated in the second. Although each film can stand alone reasonably well, they are inextricably linked in that structure of three, forming a bigger, more impressive story overall.

Bourne, The Matrix, The two Star Wars Trilogies, the Godfather movies, the X-Men trilogy and many more - all seem to fall naturally into three. No one ever suggested making The Godfather a quartet of films. In fact, such things are extremely rare. The recent fourth Indiana Jones film was in development hell for twenty years and when it came, didn't really fit stylistically or narratively with the other three in the eyes of many viewers. The fourth Alien film, Alien Resurrection, felt superfluous after the third film had taken the series full circle and ended with Ripley's death. The fourth film therefore had to find an (unconvincing) way to bring Ripley back in a story that fails to resonate with anything that had gone before. It feels out of place and is easily the weakest of all the Alien films.

You can't break the rule of three.

The recent Terminator: Salvation film isn't really the fourth film in the series, but the first of a second trilogy, quite distinct from the first three films. This is, of course, deliberate.

When plotting out a story, you wouldn't put two middles into it, would you? The second, or middle, act of a film is where the runaround happens, the overcoming of obstacles, the exploration of the problems and possible solutions. Once this is done, you can't then add in another act of obstacles and runaround because the audience is now primed for the climax and resolution. Another middle act would be surplus to requirements and would merely delay the story from reaching its destination. This is why the three act structure works - beginning, middle and end. It is also why the trilogy works. Once the second is done, the audience has read two books or seen two films creating and tangling the various plot threads. Patience would begin to wear thin should a third film or book not tie up those threads and provide a sense of completeness.

3. The pattern of three

Just as three is the smallest number needed to create a rhythm, it's also the smallest number needed for a pattern to emerge. To determine a pattern or sequence between different concepts or words, the relationship between the first and second needs to be reflected a second time between the second and third. They don't need to be the same relationship, but that variation is what creates the specific pattern.

For example; in a sequence of numbers - eg; 2,4,8 - the difference between the numbers is not the same. Yet, a similarity is that each is double the previous number. That is the pattern in the sequence. You would not be able to determine a specific pattern from only seeing two of those numbers.

Let's apply that to writing.

In copywriting, a popular and persuasive technique is the Socratic method, named after Socrates. This method uses three - and always three - questions that are related to each other.

Do you feel tired, even after a good night's sleep?
Are you not eating as well as maybe you should?
Do you need more energy to achieve the things you need to do each day?

You need CopyWrite Multi vitamins!

Why three? Because that is the minimum required to create a list and therefore a pattern of agreement in the reader if they belong to the target audience. When he or she reads your conclusion - that you should buy my multivitamins - they are more likely to agree, having been preconditioned to do so by the previous pattern.

The pattern of three works in other ways too - particularly when the third statement or response differs from the previous two, as it needs to in creating a joke. The Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman jokes that were so common when I was growing up work because of the power of three. Yet so many joke forms revolve around three protagonists or three concepts.Typically, the first protagonist will do or say something, usually quite normal or expected. The second will also do something - not necessarily the same but equally normal or expected. The third - and this used to be the Irishman, so I apologise to any Irish reading this - would break the pattern by doing something unexpected or ridiculous - thereby creating a laugh.

The following joke is reproduced from Wikipedia's page exploring the origins of the "Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman" form.

An Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman are all builders working on a bridge. The Englishman opens his lunch-box and says, "If I get one more tuna sandwich, I'm going to jump off this bridge." The Scotsman opens his lunch box and says, "If I get one more ham sandwich, I'm going to jump off this bridge." The Irishman then says, "If I get one more egg sandwich, I'm going to jump off this bridge." The next day, all three get the same lunch, all three jump off the bridge, and all three die. At their funeral, the Englishman's wife says, "If only I'd known he didn't like tuna." The Scotsman's wife says, "If only I'd known he didn't like ham." The Irishman's wife says, "I don't understand it. He made his own sandwiches."

The joke creates the expectation of a pattern with the first two elements (the first two wives say the same thing about their husband's sandwiches) but then surprisingly overturns that pattern in the last element (the third wife reveals the Irishman made his own). The power of three.

Four breaks the spell

So if three is the minimum number required for rhythm and for pattern, why not four, or five? Brevity. Additional elements, just like additional acts, or 'middles', are unnecessary. Your writing is out to achieve a goal. If three is the minimum number required to achieve that goal, then any other numbers aren't even worth contemplating.

We instinctively know much of the above without ever thinking about it. We know a sentence feels right or a story flows well or a joke will make people laugh. Yet, I bet, when you revise your work, you'll find groups and patterns of three. I am sure there are many other examples of three in writing as well as many more reasons why three is so powerfully wired into our brains. Got any to add?

Writing exposition: conflict in The West Wing

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:28:34 +1000

If you're telling a story, there comes a time when you have to explain to the audience what's going on. Exposition is unavoidable, but if your characters merely start telling the story to each other, the script will feel false. People just don't talk like that.

One technique frequently used to cover exposition and make the scene interesting is to use conflict. Every scene should have some form of conflict, but by placing conflict at the heart of the scene, the exposition can seem a natural resolution instead of a hokey intrusion. For example; rather than have the characters discussing the story directly and explaining it to each other, place them into conflict with the information, forcing the discussion into more dynamic areas. It is almost a form of redirection as the scene ends up about whatever the conflict is and not the exposition, which becomes incidental to the thrust of the scene.

In my mind, Aaron Sorkin is a television god and The West Wing a writer's masterclass. In the following opening scene from the first episode of Season Three, Sorkin needed to get across two pieces of vital plot exposition; One - that Josh will be looking after a group of students on a visit to the White House, and two - that the White House has suffered a series of security lockdowns over the last few days.

Watch how Sorkin gets this information across without boring us to tears.

Sorkin places Josh in direct conflict with the plot. The visiting students and the security crashes become obstacles to Josh by giving him the simple goal of going home at 5pm. Donna voices that obstacle, explaining why Josh has to stay by telling him, and us, what we need to know.

What is even better is that once Sorkin created this device, it was easy to feed that back and tie it to one of the obstacles. Why does Josh want to get out of the office quickly at 5pm? Because the security crashes make it hard for him to work in the office.

All this makes Josh's situation seem plausible and the need for explanation entirely justified, as well as a lot more interesting to watch. The scene is no longer about the exposition - it's about Josh trying to get out of the office.

Character goals and obstacles aren't only necessary when creating the central plot. They can be invaluable to give life to a single scene, allowing a change of focus and turning them into complete stories with a beginning (Josh tries to leave), middle (Donna uses exposition to make him stay) and end (the crash happens - forcing Josh into lockdown with the students). This scene does just that, ending with all the pieces in place for the main story to unfold.

In approaching scenes in this way, focus is taken off exposition in a beautifully entertaining piece of slight-of-hand.

All your Twitter are belong to us

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:28:00 +1000

No one can predict a hit, online even more so. For every internet startup that catches the wave of user-behaviour, there are hundreds that smash against the rocks of indifference. Success or failure is often beyond the control of the developers behind the original vision. How their idea is used and adapted by the masses may surprise and baffle them once it is released to the world.

When Twitter originally launched - with its question "what are you doing?" - no one, and certainly not the developers, understood how it would eventually be used by millions of people around the world. Twitter's evolution from trivial micro-blogging platform to powerful communication and content-sharing tool goes far beyond the original concepts dreamed up in San Francisco. The mob took Twitter and moulded it into something they wanted to use, pooling ideas and creating new ways of working within the limitations of 140 characters, to build a flexible tool with huge implications.That isn't to say the developers weren't exceptionally clever in understanding how simple concepts are more valuable than complex ones, but that the potential was greater than the idea.

Giving control away

How many other supposedly hot online services slowly faded away, unloved and failing to capture that user imagination? Plurk failed to make a dent in Twitter's market share purely because it wasn't as adaptable to the desires of the users. Plurk was too rigid, preventing users from moulding and shaping their own behaviours. By straightjacketing users into a rigid timeline and forcing certain behaviours in order to get value from the service, Plurk pushed users away. Twitter ceded control to the user and won, Plurk was inflexible and lost.

Yet, there are still those trying to interpret the immense success of Twitter within the confines of that original vision, insisting that the value is in telling the world when you have a cup of coffee. The following video, circulated on YouTube, attempts to explain why Twitter is a useful tool for business without understanding how successful businesses have adapted that tool to achieve success.

It is a wonderfully constructed animation, but the script spectacularly misses the point. If a business decided the way to generate higher sales from customers was to know when they catch a taxi or are feeling under the weather, the business would be dead before long. The conversations that add value to a brand and generate growth and sales go a little deeper than what you are having for lunch. They offer value - whether by using links to great content, news and useful information or crowdsourcing opinion and generating feedback. Twitter is no longer about the question "What are you doing", because the mob has turned it into something else.

Users worked out how to use hashtags to categorise tweets into an easily searchable form, enabling detailed conversation and an archive of discussion. Users developed retweeting behaviours that allowed influence and word of mouth to have a massive impact in reaching a wide audience. Users have shaped Twitter behaviour into a tool they can use, unencumbered by Twitter's initial micro-blogging vision.

The plethora of Twitter applications and related web services demonstrates how users are bolting their own ideas onto Twitter. If Twitter doesn't currently contain a feature, another developer will create a website or application that somehow creates that interaction - whether a link shortening service like tinyURL or highly flexible applications like Tweetdeck.

I am puzzled why Twitter inists on doggedly keeping the "What are you doing" question. If anything, it misrepresents the way most people use Twitter, encouraging a far more trivial idea of the potential within the service. Certainly, we all do sometimes tweet what we are watching or eating or where we are going - and that adds colour - but if that were all we did, would anyone really be interested? Tweets involving hashtags, @ replies, links and genuine information are far more influential - and therefore valuable - than any tweet about the average bus journey from Glebe to Balmain.

If that bus was hijacked or became the scene of a hilarious anecdote or prompted an insightful observation, then things might be different, but "On the bus - going to see Mum" is not going to change the world.

The mob has spoken. Twitter belongs to the masses, who took the concept further than could ever have been foreseen. The entire web belongs to the user - not corporations, businesses, developers or entrepreneurs. The web is a true democracy, where the users will collaborate and share to create the online environment they want to use. If your business model attempts to force behaviour and control content rather than ceding control to the user, expect to be another online has-been.

Can you read this post?

Wed, 27 May 2009 13:43:05 +1000

How easy is this blog to read? Apparently, yesterday's blog post, A lick of paint, is comfortable reading for 13 year old students - or grade 7. The previous post, Don't blame marketing for a sexist society, is seemingly much harder for some readers, requiring a year 12 or college level education to decipher.

How do I know this? A little-known tool hidden within Microsoft Word that assesses readability according to the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test (Wikipedia). By assessing a number of factors - including sentence length and the average amount of syllables per word - a complex calculation converts this into a score, interpreted as a US education grade level. I'm not going to deconstruct the formula here as it is covered in depth on the Wikipedia page, but it is a highly useful tool for writers who are serious about being read - and, more importantly, understood.

You might sound clever but what does it mean?

It niggles me that there is still a trend for 'professional' writing to be more complex and densely constructed. How many business letters do you receive that contain ridiculously long and convoluted sentences, with words that are unnecessarily long or archaic? It is almost as if some business writers - and lawyers are the worst offenders - actually prefer to hide their true meaning behind verbosity.

Then there are the aspiring authors, determined to prove their credentials by using an elitist vocabulary and impenetrable prose style in the mistaken belief that this reveals greater skill. But who will read it?

If a sentence has to be read twice to be understood, the problem is with the writer, not the reader - always. (Cue comments pointing out sentences within this post - yeah, yeah, very funny.)

Smarter writers understand that readability is the most important aspect of writing. Avoiding readability issues is like shouting, without any interest in being heard. A writer writes to be understood, not to show off linguistic dexterity. Consider your audience: if you are writing an academic piece, more detailed and dense language may be required to provide greater precision. If writing for a general readership - most of whom do not have a college education - a much lower readability level is needed.

Thankfully, as this blog is aimed at writers and marketers, I can assume you are not put off by certain words and grammatical constructions. But if I were a political speechwriter, aiming for a reading age of ten to thirteen may be more appropriate.

That doesn't mean the speaker will sound dumb - far from it. Intelligence is contained within the message being conveyed, not the words used to convey it.

Switching on the readability report

To switch on the Flesch-Kincaid Readability feature in MS Word, follow these steps.

1. Go to 'Tools' and select 'Options'.

2. Click the 'Spelling & Grammar' tab.

3. Check the box 'Show readability statistics'.

4. Click 'OK'.

Once enabled, whenever you use the Spelling and Grammar feature, on completion it will generate a short report on readability.

How smart are your readers?

It is easy to make assumptions about reading age, only to be surprised. I have always been exceptionally good with words, with a reading age consistently higher than my physical years or education level. Yet, I do have to remind myself that not everyone is as comfortable with reading as me, and there are certainly books, articles and documents available that still test even my comprehension skills.

Newspapers continue to report a decline in literacy standards, with more students graduating with extremely poor reading skills. We should not be creating further barriers to communication but instead providing access to more people, regardless of their education level. Time Magazine - certainly a respectable journal - has a reported readability score of around 52, equivalent to a normal high school education, but less than a college education. Readers Digest can easily be read by 13 year-olds. Newspapers, ideally, should be written at an eighth grade level according to Philip Meyer's analysis of typical readership, but more often risk confusion by writing at a much higher level. This inability to write to suit their readers may have severe implications for the future, as newspaper sales decline.

Understanding readability is not about 'dumbing down'. It isn't even about lowering literacy levels or impeding creativity. It is merely about creating language that works. After all, would you buy a car that looked impressive but couldn't get you home?

Incidentally, if you have read this post with ease, you have an equivalent reading standard to a Year 11 student. Just so you know.

A lick of paint

Tue, 26 May 2009 21:04:17 +1000

The older I've become, the more resigned I am to the uncomfortable truth that I - apparently - have terrible taste in some things. I'm not allowed to pick sofa covers. My daughter insists on going with me when I buy jeans. My favourite old bits of furniture are now with the Salvos. Don't misunderstand - I know how to turn on the style when I need to. I have a good line in suits and no one questions my taste in silk ties and well-cut shirts. But there are certain things that, although I can't see what the problem is, cause others to screw up their faces and start pitying me.

I've never claimed to be a designer, but this site you are currently enjoying was built by my own two hands. Building a house is one thing - choosing the drapes is another. And so it was that I was politely told this week that the marble background just had to go. Some of you may only now be prompted to realise the background to my website has changed, in a repeat of those awkward moments when the wife mentions she's just had her hair cut. Yes, I have those moments too.

I'm not sure whether they were screwing up their faces, but the chaps over at RPBrown - a Sydney-based online design and advertising agency - took pity on me anyway and took it upon themselves to create a new background for me. I like it. It's sort of tweedy in a comfortable-writer's-jacket sort of way, while adding to the warm colours already on the site. (Why do so many websites seem to be built using only cold, clinical colours? Blues and whites and pastels? Or is that just me not understanding tasteful design again?)

So a huge thanks to Mr_RPBrown (follow him on Twitter) for stepping in where others were probably too embarrassed to say anything. Hopefully, this isn't going to incite everyone else to suddenly start picking fault and pointing out the bits of my site they hate.

Don't blame marketing for reflecting a sexist society!

Mon, 25 May 2009 12:07:00 +1000

Is marketing unavoidably sexist? I've been motivated to think a great deal about the question of sexism in marketing and advertising this last week following the amount of press Netregistry gained for using two female nurses at this year's CeBIT expo. Were Netregistry perpetuating a sexist image unnecessarily or are stereotypical gender roles unavoidable within marketing when trying to reach a target audience?

There are two issues involved that require separate analysis. Firstly, the concept of 'sex sells', which I will dissect in a future post. Secondly, whether marketing and advertising are to blame for allegedly perpetuating gender stereotyping, which is the subject of this post.

Reaching the target audience

Contrary to what some critics have suggested to me in the past few days, marketing does not have a responsibility for improving societal attitudes or breaking down gender stereotypes. Marketing is responsible to - and paid for - the brand that is attempting to persuade a specific target market with a particular message. Certainly there are ethical guidelines and rules that apply in how this is achieved, but there are also certain realities that dictate how marketing campaigns represent certain groups.

The most obvious example is in the use of housewife advertising. For most household products, gender roles are still quite clearly split along old fashioned lines. The housewife is at home, deals with the kids, cooks, does laundry and cleans; while the husband works, drives cars, watches sport, buys tools and drinks beer. Certainly, some campaigns blur those lines a little, but for every woman in a suit we see, there's another career woman portrayed picking up the kids on the way home and juggling work with the cooking.

Is marketing therefore undeniably sexist? Are all these agencies populated by misogynistic dinosaurs deliberately perpetuating a sexist view of the world in an attempt to keep women in the kitchen?

Well, no actually.

Blaming the Mirror

Marketing agencies are exceptionally careful in how they target and represent people within campaigns. They are certainly not out to deliberately misrepresent gender roles - in fact, to do so would seriously undermine the effectiveness of a campaign. The goal is to reach and achieve cut through with a specific audience - the key demographic most receptive to the message. When advertising snacks for school lunchboxes, marketers know that - even today - the majority of food purchasing decisions are made by the woman in the house. That's not sexist - just statistical fact. Whether that fact is unfortunate, disappointing or lamentable, I leave up to you. But that doesn't change the truth that more women than men look after the household groceries and determine what their children will eat.

Therefore, an advertisement attempts to reach identification with this group. Placing a man in the role of lunchbox preparer would fail to resonate with the majority of people at whom the message is aimed. It would appear artificial to the very people the brand wanted to reach.

The same observation can be applied across all advertising. The vast majority of power tool purchases are by men, so even though it is a gender stereotype to only portray male carpenters, tradesmen and DIY enthusiasts, it is because that stereotype is still the vast majority. Placing a woman in the carpenter role would only allow a tiny proportion of the audience to identify and relate with the character's actions - thereby sending the marketing message to the wrong people.

This is why Lowes Menswear is advertised by footy players, why perfumes are advertised by female celebrities, why Brand Power adverts are fronted by a female presenter.

Although marketing is designed as an influential medium, it is also forced into the role of society's mirror. The influential power is concentrated in the specific marketing message. Everything that backs up the message - the scenario, characters, actions, etc - are designed to create maximum identification with the largest amount of the target demographic. Therefore, these elements need to mirror society and often exaggerate those trends to achieve instant recognition within the few seconds the advertisement, billboard or poster has to make an instant impression. A marketing campaign can not, and should not, muddy the message by mixing in idealistic agendas, unless this is the campaign brief.

Ideology

The theory of cultural ideology is that media reflects the ideas and beliefs of society. To take some broad examples, there were many films focussed on nuclear war during the 1980's due to the extreme nature of the Cold War at that time. Once the Berlin Wall came down, the Russian's were no longer portrayed as the bad guys and nuclear plots decreased. After 9/11, more villains were portrayed as coming from the Middle East. In recent years, there is a growth in corporate villains in popular culture, reflecting society's growing distrust in big business.

Ideology is about far more than where the villains come from in James Bond thrillers. Every aspect of our society represented in our media, stories, art and advertising is influenced by the state of the world at the time of it's creation. This is where we come to the chicken and egg situation.

As media can - supposedly - influence society (as the critics insist) and society cannot help but influence media, there is a complex and continual looping of ideology. Deciding that a new television drama will featurea 50/50 split across gender roles - male nurses and female carpenters - may seem novel and striking a blow for gender equality, but it would most likely have very little effect on society as a whole and may find that it fails to find an audience willing to buy into the fiction. The world doesn't feel like ours.

Ideology, therefore, shifts very slowly - as does society. It doesn't like being shoved in a particular direction, because artificiality stands out and is often rejected by the audience as false - even if it represents a higher ideal.

Marketing will continue to represent the genders in the same way it always has and will only gradually shift to equality if genuine statistics show the same is happening to society.