Just when you get comfortable someone bigger but slower bites you in ass. Good old Pure Evil, delighting me on my walks everyday.
Delightfully surreal and powerful piece of film depicting the body’s feeling during extreme physical exertion. Refreshing work from Nikewomen.com
A thought, following on from Rory Sutherland’s fine post about Behavioural Economics:
On a cynical level, Branding can add commercial longevity to the mundane, the common, the old. It adds a form of emotional preservative, lengthening the product/service’s sell by date. Good news for companies, eye-opening for consumers if they suspend their suspension of disbelief.
Spend all day trying to get through on their permanently ‘experiencing high call volumes’ phone line (read: ‘we only have one operator and they have breaks about the same time as you do so they won’t be around when you are trying to call’), only to resort to a web-form…and get this inspired reply:
“Thank you for getting in touch with the Child Benefit Office
If you have asked us a question we will aim to give you a full reply within ten working days, although if your enquiry is more complex it may take up to 20 working days. If we cannot give you a full reply, we will let you know what action we are taking.”
Amazing.
Loving the simplicity. Tell it how it is.
The era of everything being based on the great idea is over,” he says. “Other things have risen to a common level of importance.”
Without interactive experts to bring ideas to life, he adds, the big ideas are like “a fart in the wind.
” AdweekData rocks. Yet our instinct says instinct rocks more. We’re at a cross-roads as our previous linear attempts to guide people into buying from us and liking us via CRM have led to some useful optimisation, but little innovation and little excitement. Why? Because people do not think in linear ways, while emotions, fantasies and peers guide our thinking.
So the presentation of data needs to reflect the connections between things rather than journey from A to B if we are to find insights we can use. This is obviously complicated. And hard to do. We are waiting for a data killer app that creates the connections between the effects of what we do and the causes of people’s thinking and behaviour. It needs to be visual, simple and appeal to our instincts. Otherwise, for many business people, ignorance is less hard work and consequently relatively bliss.
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky.
He’s pulled together a bunch of useful sociology so we can understand *why* people gather in groups, and *how* we can make what do work more efficiently. Bless him. Reads a bit dryly though. And not enough pictures for my liking!
Key points: We operate in groups (of course), but small ones are dense and personal whereas large ones tend to be sparse and impersonal. So if we want to have influence within a group, it’s useful to approach the group with an understanding of the dynamic of ‘social capital’ - that which powers the group. Likewise, the reason we group as we do is because of the wonderfully named Homophily - the grouping of like with like. I’m so using that word when I next see a client.
…isn’t just planning, but includes a big dollop of business innovation. Getting businesses closer to customers, so they can become more loved and customers can feel more in control. Business serving customers? There’s a new thought.
