5am at Mango Media Caribbean

When technology becomes a distraction

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 08:22:00 -0400

On Sundays I love having breakfast with my husband, (something we never do during the week) before heading off with him for a day of fun typically at the beach. By 5:00 p.m. we are back at home and I begin to work either in my inspiration book or on my computer. I get this practice from my father. A journalist all his life, my dad used the hours between our church going and the serving of Sunday lunch, to write columns, get quotes, calls leads for a story and plan for the week ahead. My friend Kathleen, a baker, is just the same when it comes to making meaningful use of her time. Take the lazy month of August. Typically business is slower and the month is punctuated with no rush mornings, slower sales and loads of downtime. But even in August Kathleen, who has two children off from school, gives herself a challenge. This 'summer' she intends to complete her bakery's new website and revisit her manuscript about Caribbean breads. What do you do with the time on your hands? More and more, we're finding it easy to get engaged with activities that feel like work, but aren't. And the reason may be that we are attached to too many gadgets; our screens are no longer in solely in our living rooms, they've become smaller and they're in our pockets, on our desk and in our hands. We are tethered to the instant flow of information and it allows us to confuse busyness with creating and doing work that counts in the long run. We may get a rush playing Farmville, talking constantly to people we don't know, giving our location updates and visiting 40 websites a day but I think if we stepped back for a moment we have to honestly understand when we go from receiving information that nourishes, to getting engrossed in the kind of information that distracts. At least that was what was going through my head last evening when one of my best friends told me that she hadn't had time to read a book I loaned her on the topic of self discovery and finding a career path that was fulfilling. "Too many distractions. Too many other things to do," she said. Yet when I mentioned the hours she spent on facebook she blushed sheepishly. "Imagine" I told her, "spending two of those hours soaking in knowledge that could impact your life. Author Seth Goodin makes the point that one reason for the lack of focus is that we're often using precisely the same device to do our work as we are to distract ourselves from our work. He advises that we get two devices. "Only use your computer for work. Real work. The work of making something and the second device, perhaps an iPad, and use it for games, web commenting, online shopping, networking... anything that doesn't directly create valued output," he writes For some that may be an expensive proposition and I think the better way may be to reprogramme our mind to just stop to turn off the BlackBerry and the iPhone, to check e-mail two or three times a day rather than every three minutes, to spend a few hours reading a novel or immersed in a hobby or having a real conversation. The end result is we will find ourselves with more time on our hands. Time we could spend giving our brain the opportunity to relax, think, recharge and maybe if we are lucky like Kathleen, to create something of value that matters, in the long run, to others.

Changes Set to Rock the Publishing World.

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 09:41:00 -0400

Digital tablets are now a major game changer in publishing. And I know this after obsessing over my husband's new shiny e-reader which arrived 2 weeks ago. One of the things I am impressed by (yes, I think I am getting more view time than him) is how much it has revolutionised my own reading. Among my friends I am known as a magazine freak ,from fitness to fashion and news, my living room is littered with 12 different kinds of subscriptions, all dog eared and well used. So the new e-reader was a kind of eye opener for me. My favourite magazines seemed to be more up-to-the-minute, more interactive, and more eye-catching. Holding the tablet and getting such rich colour and interactivity was really an engaging way to look at my favourite publication but it also got me thinking about what it means for the future of publishing. For the past 5 years there has been a lot of debate about the future of print and the economic crisis in 2008 hit the magazine world right where it hurt the most, in the pocket with falling subscriptions and very low advertising spend. Then In came the Ipad and the more than 50 versions of consumer tablets and now the masters of ink and glossy photo see in them a way to rejuvenate an entire industry. Is such hope misplaced? Well not if you read the statistics. 100 million tablets and e-readers will be hands of US residents by 2013 according to The Monitor. Last year, digital content brought in about 10 percent of magazine revenues, according to mediaIDEAS, a global research and advisory firm with offices in New York and London. By 2020, digital content will account for 58 percent. What is interesting is how much the quantity of reading is changing. Digital Tablets it seems can boost reading. Users of e-readers are 11 percent more likely than the average adult to have read a print or online newspaper and of 1,600 iPad owners interviewed by the Reynolds Journalism Institute last October, 79 percent reported using it at least 30 minutes a day to read news. Only slightly more than half spent that much time getting news from the TV or a PC. On my husband's Ipad, I find myself actually reading and not skimming and it is a great joy to see how some magazines are actually experimenting with digital content specially formatted for the tablets. In Elle a model actually appear as a living cover and walk across the screen before settling in the middle of the screen in a n editorial pose. In National Geographic, its digital edition not only ran an article on aardvarks but also included video of the photographers working to get the shots on camera. Social Reading Digital tablets are also best suited for how social our reading has become. We read. We share. Reading is no longer a solo endeavour. Articles are linked on Twitter. Quotes lifted from magazines are posted as status updates. We share links as content. Adding a social layer to the content experience means staying relevant in an over-populated space. It may be a QR code, a Facebook promotion or a section featuring the up-and-coming blogs. Incorporating bloggers can also help magazine broaden its audience and provide new forms of engagement. As the digital space becomes a second home for print publications, there are some major considerations. Remaining fresh is going to be a major time constraint, writers may need to learn a new set of skills to re-purpose content across multiple platforms and unless publishers can come up with a business model that speaks to the convergence of the digital and print world, print sales may continue to decline because as of last week as I downloaded the latest version of Vogue, I wondered which print subscriptions I'd definitely not be renewing .

Business requires patience and hope

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 08:36:00 -0400

Hope is an essential ingredient when growing your business, so too is patience. They will get you through the inevitable dips and bumps in the journey and provide you with the bits of optimism necessary to persevere. Patience though does not come without the work. The long hours, the worry, the working weekends negate any word-associated thinking that patience is about any waiting game. Instead it is all about action, doing, thinking re-looking, revising, pressing forward, stepping back, rethinking, doing. 11 years in Grenada I met a CEO who epitomized all of this. Joel Webbe, CEO of W&W Electronics Ltd., a high technology production company, had just Entrepreneur of the Year award when I went to Grenada to interview him. What amazed me about his story was his resilience. After painstakingly building a profitable business in 1989, it was destroyed by a volcano in Monsterrat. A year later he moved production to Grenada and watched his factory crumble to the floor during two hurricanes. Through each dip, and on the verge of bankruptcy Webbe relied on faith, family, day-in and day-out patient work to get through and rebuild. Likewise Starbucks didn't become Starbucks without the work and mistakes necessary to become a global business. At first they plugged along with a few stores. "They raised bits of money here and there, flirted with disaster, added one store and then another, tweaked and measured and improved and repeated. Day by day, they dripped their way to success." Writer JK Rowlings sat in coffee shops for days on end, was virtually homeless and a single mother while she worked on her book. What do the three have in common. There was no magic lottery ticket for Webbe, no silver bullet for Starbucks, no quick fix for Rowlings. Just time and a painstaking, patient kind of work. But what of hope? It's an ingredient I think that is even more difficult than patience to get a hold of, because hope is less tangible. When a fledgling entrepreneur rushes over to a financier who just appeared on a panel and goes into a speech about his business with the 'hope; that she will be impressed enough to write a $3 million dollar cheque, that hope is misplaced. Hope never involves shortcuts. And while it can be magical, it also suggests a precision like focus on what's important to succeed. It suggests that your work should be grounded in passion and be worthy of your energy. It dictates that what you deliver day in and out ought to be remarkable. It necessitates that you delight your audience. It demands that you work your way up. In the end what it really means is that you should follow the longer, more deliberate path and walk it one step at a time. Every step, at the end, becomes a remarkable journey in hope.

Love this quote

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 07:39:00 -0400

From Steve Crescenzo's article "Ready for Change" in IABC's Communication World "Social media and new media demand talent. They demand personality. They demand human beings. And where are you going to find those things? In the accounting office? Where engineers hang out? Over in HR? Of course not. Communicators have those qualities in spades, and we're starting to show them off."

How newsrooms should evolve

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 08:27:00 -0400

Just last evening, Nicole Duke-Westfield, former business editor at the Trinidad Guardian (now Guardian Media Limited), and I spent a careful twenty minutes pondering the state of new media in the Caribbean. Why was it that few editors were running on the social media track? Why weren't newsrooms engaging more on Twitter? Why weren't journalists repurposing content for video and podcasts?

With the exception of some newsrooms (I am referring to both print and broadcast) that have added social links to their online streams, few newspapers have fully embraced the new social way to communicate. They prefer to remain on the sidelines like a very timid fan on a red carpet night. Duke-Westfield made a good point saying that the very nature of newsrooms with their understaffed desks and overstretched reporters preclude editors taking the time necessary to turn a newsroom into a true news organization. And that's sad. Sad because each time I pick up the newspaper, I am regaled with stories and snippets of yesterday's news, stuff I've read online already.

So the obvious question is: What steps should newsrooms take to evolve? Jeff Jarvis in his book "What Would Google Do" (which by the way is an excellent read for journalists and public relations professionals) gives some insight. According to Jarvis: "In the shift from physical to digital and mass to niche, the best way to exploit the legacy value of a paper is to use its old-media megaphone to promote and build what comes next. First, a paper has to decide what is next. It has to design and build its post-paper products - retraining and restructuring staff and sloughing off unnecessary costs. It has to promote the new products even at the expense of the old... Convincing audiences and advertisers to move to the future is better than following them there after they have discovered other sources of news."

Journalists too are not exempt from the need to change. Laura Dowrich, Editor of Metro Magazine is a great example of what a new media journalist should look like. Dowrich not only knows how to write a good story, she also has somehow been able to figure out what news is important to people, how it should it be reported, displayed and socially distributed. What elements of it should be on Facebook and/ or Twitter. What is real critical here is deconstruction. Reporters should be able to decide which story should be narrative, graphic, audio, video and data based.

This requires new thinking. And while in the Caribbean newspapers plod along traditional lines citing poor internet penetration in their countries, time should never be any organization's excuse since it becomes a great enemy once you're moving against it.

Jarvis sums up a number of differences between new and traditional media. I've picked eight but the differences tell us why it is so critical that news organizations adapt.

1) Traditional Media: Newspapers marketed themselves to a population. New Media: News organizations converse, engage and collaborate with the communities they serve; the population markets the news organization among itself.

2) Traditional Media: Newspapers operated in a climate of "scarcity;" news space became tighter when ad sales diminished or the price of newsprint increased. New Media: News organizations have an abundance of space online.

3) Traditional Media: Newspapers spent money conducting focus groups to find out what readers liked/disliked and analyzed the findings with skepticism. New Media: Through conversation, news organizations ask readers/users what they want, so the news organization can serve the communities better.

4) Traditional Media: Readers got their news when the paper hit their doorstep, or soon after it rolled off the presses. New Media: Readers don't wait for the presses to roll but expect the information immediately.

5) Traditional Media: Deadlines were mostly daily with stories due at a set time. New Media: We're always on deadline.

6) Traditional Media: Newspapers reported the news, but reporters weren't allowed to make themselves part of the story. New Media: To connect with readers in niche communities, news organizations seek to put personal touches on news and information, often in the form of blogs.

7) Traditional Media: Newspapers were hesitant to even mention competitors in the newspaper. New Media: News organizations do what they do best and link to the rest, as Jarvis says, and yes, that means even if the link leads to the competition.

8). Traditional Media: Newspaper employees told readers with complaints to "write a letter to the editor." New Media: News organization employees engage angry readers, so they don't lose or alienate them.

Jarvis’ checklist is extensive and provides a good guide but the real key is perhaps for newsrooms to get strategic, jump in, take some risks and evolve. Waiting for it all to become mainstream may mean that newsrooms are already too late.

Lies. Truth. And Shoes

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 07:27:00 -0400

Every once in a while, someone will stop me in a mall and say: “Your face looks familiar, are you that person who used to work on TV.” It’s not a silly question. I did once, a long time ago, but if I am in a hurry I’ll look that person directly in the eye and say: “Maybe you have me mistaken for someone else.”

I would be lying if I said that sometimes concealment does not sometimes work in my favour like when I don’t want to engage in conversation with a perfect stranger or when I walk into the house with yet another pair of black shoes and my husband asks me what I’ve got. “Oh something cute to wear,” I’d say when I don’t want to admit I’ve been seduced by another pair of black shoes to add to a closet already filled with over 15 pairs.

I think in all of us there lies some capacity for deception. We may make serious efforts to overcome any biases when we recall a certain situation but the fact that we love stories and tell them a lot means that they can become tainted with our embellishments or even what we deliberately leave out. Our memories can also be faulty and it is sometimes impossible to get every fact correct when recalling something.

But I think our capacity and love for story telling also makes us the best lie detectors. We can sniff out lies, falsehoods and half truths like we do a rotting piece of vegetable in a fridge. It also allows us to value honesty especially when it comes from the most unexpected places.

That's why the business of politics is just so strange to me. The spinners lie constantly. They lie with a straight face. They lie sentence after sentence, relentlessly.

They are the masters at taking a story, emphasizing certain facts and linking them together in ways that play to their advantage. They’ll downplay or ignore inconvenient facts. They’ll interpret the known facts in a way that allows them to portray their position in a positive light. The basic story being told is always distorted.

Some people will suspend disbelief and just believe all of the spin. But I think the majority of us lie detectors can see right through it. Moreover in a constantly switched on media it is inevitable that it all begins to unravel. Ask George Bush. Ask Tiger Woods. Ask Reshmi Ramnarine.

This brings me to the huge opportunities I think that exist for media take on spin from all quarters and throw it back in the face of the spinner. Show the spinners video of themselves from last week and ask them to respond. Journalists need to continue to press with the open ended questions, asking them in many different ways while looking for the non-verbal cues: laugh, voice, posture. And when the spinners ask that the reporters move on from the story, they should be ignored.

And for Public Relations? Front groups should not be used to cover up or to lie. Biased research surveys should not purport to be factual representation of the views of the public. Communications campaigns that say one thing and mean another should be considered duplicitous.

Why does this truth seeking and telling matter? Well for one trust accelerates the way business is done and while deception always makes the gears sticky. Secondly, it sets a standard for a country to navigate itself in a global village. Finally, it matters because we are not just talking about a pair of shoes.

Some commonsense ideas for your next meeting

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 08:55:00 -0400

They are not mine, they’re Seth’s but the more meetings I go to (4 yesterday) the more I believe that something has to change. I’ll start with these.

Get precisely the right people invited, but no others.

Make the meeting start right on time.

Schedule meetings so that they don't end when Outlook says they should, but so that they end when they need to.

Ensure that every meeting has a clearly defined purpose, and accomplishes that purpose, then ends

Welcome guests appropriately. If you are hosting someone, make sure the guest has adequate directions, a place to productively wait before the meeting starts, access to the internet, something to drink, biographies of who else will be in the room and a clear understanding of the goals of the meeting.

Manage the flow of information, including agendas and Powerpoints.This includes eliminating the last minute running around looking for a VGA cable or a monitor that works

If someone is more than two minutes later than the last person to the meeting, they have to pay a fine of $10 to the coffee fund.

Bring an egg timer to the meeting. When it goes off, you're done. Not your fault, it's the timer's.

The organizer of the meeting is required to send a short email summary, with action items, to every attendee within ten minutes of the end of the meeting.

Create a public space (either a big piece of poster board or a simple online page) that allows attendees to rate meetings and their organizers on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of usefulness. Just a simple box where everyone can write a number. Watch what happens.

If you're not adding value to a meeting, leave. You can always read the summary later.

My bet is that you’re in agreement with these tips, I’ve discovered that with some precious planning and control, time might just be able to be bought.

Some commonsense ideas for your next meeting

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 08:32:00 -0400

They are not mine, they’re Seth’s but the more meetings I go to (4 yesterday) the more I believe that something has to change. I’ll start with these.

Get precisely the right people invited, but no others.

Make the meeting start right on time.

Schedule meetings so that they don't end when Outlook says they should, but so that they end when they need to.

Ensure that every meeting has a clearly defined purpose, and accomplishes that purpose, then ends

Manage the flow of information, including agendas and Powerpoints.This includes eliminating the last minute running around looking for a VGA cable or a monitor that works

If someone is more than two minutes later than the last person to the meeting, they have to pay a fine of $10 to the coffee fund.

Bring an egg timer to the meeting. When it goes off, you're done. Not your fault, it's the timer's.

The organizer of the meeting is required to send a short email summary, with action items, to every attendee within ten minutes of the end of the meeting.

Create a public space (either a big piece of poster board or a simple online page) that allows

attendees to rate meetings and their organizers on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of usefulness. Just

a simple box where everyone can write a number. Watch what happens.

If you're not adding value to a meeting, leave. You can always read the summary later.

My bet is that you’re in agreement with these tips, I’ve discovered that with some precious planning and control, time might just be able to be bought.

New Engine on the Block

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 08:49:00 -0400

Making it's debut yesterday was the new search engine qwiki.com. You're going to like its look and feel.

The New Influencers

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 08:28:00 -0400

“When we debate,” said Prakash Ramadhar in Parliament last week, “the only winners must be the people of Trinidad and Tobago.”

When the Legal Affairs Minister made the statement he was not referring to the Reshmi Ramnarine affair, in which a clearly unqualified person was thrust into the leadership role at a national security agency, but he might as well have been. The ensuing debate about her suitability and the government’s insensitivity (some say stupidity) put two things into focus: the power of social media and the importance of the new influencers.

I actually first heard of Ramnarine’s appointment when Renee Cummings, a former journalist and criminologist posted the story as a link on her facebook profile. Cummings (disclosure both Cummings and I were journalists together at TV6) did not break the story, the Express did. But it was Cummings' status updates along with other key influencers on facebook that roused the public’s emotions to a fiery cadence and brought an intelligence and even tongue in cheek humour to the debate. This kind of conversation works well on social platforms.

Here are a few of Cummings' updates during the first few hours after the appointment was announced:

“Imagine Obama appointing a clerical worker the head of the CIA? Lol.

“SIA; the new URP? Lol”

“It is not a question of age, ethnicity or gender; it is a question of 'qualifications' unless of course you don't understand the importance of being qualified.”

At one point Cummings fielded hundreds of comments, questions and responses on facebook. On Saturday when Ramnarine’s resigned citing “the high-level of exposure over the past few days,” one could not help but ask: what impact did non-traditional media have on the discourse?

The answer would be plenty.

Clearly the voices of traditional influencers such as government and media are being augmented, maybe even surpassed by people with combined experience, passion, voice and audience. Cummings and the other social influencers posted on the topic constantly. They were passionately interested in demonstrating the unfairness of the appointment (Cummings sought the opinion of a FBI expert) and engaged with a frequency that demonstrated their intention to inform and shift opinion.

These are the new influencers with tools that are fit to purpose. They are not folks necessarily with millions of followers rather they are the ones who are truly ‘engaged,’ based on the frequency of their updates and how many times their posts are linked to, commented upon and re-tweeted.

They are the ones to watch because they allow for a debate where the winners are the people.

Quora useful for journalists too

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 01:35:00 -0400

There has been lots of buzz around Quora in my network. After Monday’s post I received a significant number of requests for invitations.

Quora calls itself a “continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.” According to the public relations go to site,Ragan, "users can ask any question, ranging from the broad to the very specific. In most cases, anyone may answer the question, and other users rate those answers. Sometimes, users who ask questions limit who may answer them to a small group of people or one specific user."

Last week there was an excellent post on Quora's usage and worth here. The answers by Poynter’s Mallary Jean Tenore are at the end of the article and easy to miss but they contain nuggets that may be very useful for those of us in public relations and in journalism.

• Ask questions about local events and hotspots.

• Find story ideas and sources by following users who work in the areas you cover.

• Ask users what they’d like to know from the people you’re going to interview.

• Find out whether people are interested in a topic you’re covering by asking about it or searching for it.

• Search for what people are saying about you and your organization. Build your reputation as an expert by answering questions and giving feedback on others’ answers.

Quora is still very much a new kid on the social block but then so again was Twitter just three years ago.

My five minutes with Robert Scoble

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 08:02:00 -0400

They say that every activity worth doing has a learning curve: riding a bike, learning to swim, figuring out social media ... the first attempts are always challenging but fun.

But I confess I suffered with twitter fatigue in the latter part of last year. I was constantly switched on. I followed friends who I longed to see but checked their feeds instead. I followed strangers who I knew who would never follow me. And I linked with the news feeds of all the major publications just so I could be in the know.

But in November last year I jumped off the fast track for at least two months, and only dipped my toes gingerly back into Twitter’s crowded waters after the Christmas vacation. This time I was armed with some new perspective.

“Welcome back,” my friend at Trinidad Lookbook tweeted, it’s good to see you on again.”

“Oh , but I am only doing drip drip,” I replied, “don’t expect to see me on here too much, yearning for more face to face this year.”

But on Saturday night Robert Scoble reminded me why it is important to be plugged into the noise even if it is in fits and spurts.

Scoble is best known for his blog, Scobleizer, which he started during his tenure as a technology evangelist at Microsoft. He’s the guy to follow if you want to know about tech trends and news. So naturally I do. Over the past few months there has been quite a buzz in the digital space about Quora, but I couldn’t get past the wall that welcomed you. Turns out that visitors have to be invited to join and so I tweeted Scoble, who I never met or corresponded with before.

Me: Hi Robert, I am interested in Quora but I need an invite. Can you send me one please?

Scoble: What’s your email address (Scoble direct messaged me on Twitter)

Me: I can’t send it to you on direct message because you don’t follow me, but I’m at info@mangomediacaribbean.com

Scoble: I am following you now

Me: Great. Well then it's judette@mangomediacaribbean.com

Scoble: I have invited you, have fun.

Me: I will, thanks so much

This happened all within 5 minutes but our short tweet up confirmed five fundamental rules about Twitter.

1) There will always be a riot of information racing you by on Twitter

2) You to decide whether to amplify the noise, bring it close and immerse yourself in it.

3) You can disconnect and connect again

4) It’s fine to connect those who don’t immediately connect with you

5) On Twitter you can gain meaningful insights and things that you really want, yes even from a person you’ve never met.

Your Body. Your language

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 07:01:00 -0400

I was happy to receive a newsletter this week from executive coach Dr. Carol Gorman months after I contributed some insights to a chapter in her new book: The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language can Help -or Hurt How you Lead. Gorman says that when she begins to talk about body language some leaders think the topic may be interesting but never critical to their success that is until they finish her course. That's when they realise that "not only has science validated the impact of body language," but that there are concrete ways nonverbal skills can help them develop positive business relationships, influence and motivate others, present their ideas, and authentically project a personal brand of charisma. At the end of the course she writes: "They learn that body language is not only "interesting, but also imminently practical!" How does Gorman define body language? She calls it the management of time, space, appearance, posture, gesture, touch, smell, facial expression, eye contact, and vocal prosody. Saying that the latest research in neuroscience and psychology proves that body language is crucial to leadership effectiveness, she states that "it is easy to determine how it impacts a leader's ability to negotiate, manage change, build trust, project charisma, and promote collaboration." For example, Gorman cites research by the MIT Media Lab which shows how subtle nonverbal cues provide powerful signals about what's really going on in a business interaction. Whether you win or lose a negotiation is strongly influenced by unconscious factors such as the way your body postures match the other person, the level of physical activity as you talk, and the degree to which you set the tone literally of the conversation. Based on data from devices (called Sociometers) that monitor and analyze patterns of unconscious nonverbal signals passing between people, researchers with no knowledge of a conversation's content can predict the outcome of a negotiation, the presentation of a business plan, or a job interview in two minutes with over 80% accuracy. Gorman also states that the first seven seconds of meeting someone is the most crucial since that is the time it takes to make major decisions a person assessing credibility, friendliness, trustworthiness, confidence, power, status, and competence . "In business, these first impressions are crucial. Once someone mentally labels you as "likeable" or "un-likeable," "powerful" or "submissive," everything else you do will be viewed through that filter. As a leader looking to make a positive first impression, you'd better know how to instantly project the nonverbal signals of warmth, candor, credibility, and confidence. The fact is people are always evaluating your body language unconsciously.

Storytelling, the best way to get your message across

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 04:25:00 -0400

Quick fact, there is a huge difference between information and stories. The latter resonates and I've got the proof. Information: Our mission at Tech X is to dominate the IT industry by developing innovative software solutions for multinationals offering them increased productivity and time saving strategies for their global workforce. Story: Tech X was founded by geeks. We got off to a slow start in would you believe, the fax market. This was at a time when being first really mattered and the company lived on peanut butter and over the counter headache pills. Those were some really long days and nights. We really hit a wall when fthe ax became less prevalent in the work place so we kept thinking about "what could be the next big thing?" It was John who said software solution and the globalisation of the market really helped him to narrow his focus. So the first thing John did was..... See what I mean, mission statements, powerpoint slides showing your current market share and revenues may have their role in your organisation but people only begin to understand your company when you begin to tell your story, and stories happen to be everywhere. Every product has one (We never thought we could get this on the shelf by Christmas and then we ...). Every repair job has one (I was tightening the ring on the compressor when I noticed it had burnt out but the most surprising thing was the ..). Every sale has one (All it took was one email, when I sent it I prayed so hard because reaching that manager would have been the answer to.....) The fact is we live in stories and breathe them. Most of our conversations are told in stories and they are a key to ensure that we understand the world around us. Stories are also a big step up from information. Author David Weinberg in the Clue train Manifesto writes that stories.. "Unlike information have a start and finish; Talk about events and not conditions; Imply a deep relationship characterized as unfolding, as if the end were present in the beginning; Are about humans; Do not pretend to offer the certainty that life will work in a particular way all the time; Are told by the human voice, it maters who is telling them." How to apply this to your every day work world? Maybe you already are. When you are telling someone how you lost that account and won another, when you explain why the trade show was a disaster, when you're telling a financial analyst how your industry got to be erratic as it is you're already telling stories, You can't help it. You're human. Stories are how we make sense of things Anything else is just information and we all know what happens with that.

Have you heard the story about Hope...

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 06:14:00 -0400

... No, not the one about Bill Clinton being born in a place called Hope or even for that matter what President Barack Obama embodied for the majority of his electoral campaign. The Hope I’m referring to is a marketing campaign that the Red Cross produced last year to raise funds for its main causes during the Christmas season.

The Red Cross built a pop-up retail store inside a popular shopping mall in Lisbon selling an unusual product as the perfect holiday gift alternative. The product, you guessed it, was called Hope and it enabled people to feel the experience of purchasing something they had never done before.

The Red Cross store featured the expected fixtures and displays, but also sold photographic cards valued at 10 euros as donations to the Red Cross. It offered different sizes, values and kinds as they related to their various causes. People might have left the store without the traditional shopping bags, but their hearts were full. The results: a massive amount of media attention in both print and broadcast, word of marketing and trending topics on social feeds. Hundreds of people lined up to buy Hope on opening night. On day 1, the store reached the mall’s top 10 in sales and the Red Cross found its own awareness climbing among the public even as the board rolled out plans to have similar stores selling Hope in other countries.

Talk about bringing a brand to life.

Hope changed the way people saw the act of giving. It channeled and timed a behavioral opportunity and linked it to a specific business opportunity for the Red Cross. Can you think of any other brand campaign having that kind of effect recently? Old Spice, for sure, though sales of the product have been questionable.

As marketers continue to roll out campaign after campaign that reeks of familiarity and maybe even hints of boredom, it is not a far stretch to wonder how it is possible to generate new forms of creative thinking capable of developing ideas that cross retail channels, customer databases, mobile applications and social networking platforms. Perhaps it starts with marketing, communication and sales acting less territorial. Maybe it requires a commitment to focus on actions — namely, what needs to be done to bring the brand to life and connect with people. Not what is going to be said, or what is promised . But rather what is going to be done.

Some questions to consider:

What behavioral opportunity lies at the core of your most important business opportunity.
Who are the people at the center of it and what do they value?
Where can they connect with your brand’s purpose?
How can you bring your brand to life in a way that engages them around shared values?

I think the answer will activate some powerful insights into what marketers can do to create meaningful customer engagement, at the very least I know the answers may lead us to a place of Hope.