Keep Clam and... PISS OFF.

I thought it was a passing summer fashion from a few years back, but no the ‘keep calm and carry on” thing is STILL going.

If this has been written about already and I'm last to mention anything then I've been avoiding it until I was sure I wasn't just feeling isolated and missing out on the 'fun'.

 

the cards were one thing... but I’ve noticed a new generation of messages turning into kitchen or hall hanging signage. These appear to have clichés such as “a cheerful house is a happy home”, or “a smile costs nothing” along with other references to dancing, wine, coffee and conversation.  Lots of middle class crap.

I’m saddened and embarrassed for us as:

You’re paying upwards of £20.00+ for something sprayed onto wood and brass chains. This is just shitty landfill assembled by children in china to hang on your fridge.

You could type out or at worst write out by hand on paper the sentiment.

But the worst and more saddening aspect is the belief that this shitty coloured trite makes us feel any better. Like we need to spend MORE on thinking and feeling what a good loving home takes for granted. Why we need to remind ourselves of it is one thing, but to have our family values and home north stars based on varieties of wine, dance moves and coffee conversation is just wrong. Any good intentioned sentiment is lost in the material acquisition of buying the bloody statement in the first place. Shame on you for doing so in John Lewis too.

I’ll choose my own emotions thank you  and I don’t need a poncy lavender board to tell me to do so.

 

Keep calm.

Piss off.

 

I thought Karen Brady would be a little more innovative...

t.v. this week provided much joy.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se8JdqjyUrc



The Apprentice season 9 (season 9!!!) episode 6 required the teams to design corporate events.



Much as I'm tempted to get into the content of this, I won't.  My focus is on a Karen comment. I like Karen.  Never met her. Probably won't but for the record, this is all a good intention blog.

 
Anyway.

 
46mins into the programme the candidates are all facing the usual bollocking.

One pipes up and makes a comment about corporate people talking crap.

 

It’s at this point Karen says “you might find that a rough attitude when you stand up in front of a bank and ask them to invest in your business” (steely eyed look, yet retaining glamour)

 

Well Karen.

 

I disagree.

 

The last place anyone want to ask for investment is a bank. It’s a bit 19^th century to go cap in hand to some uptight economist reading home county living banker and ask for a business loan to start an online cupcake business. the last thing we should give up is our opinions and attitude too.

 

The alternatives are MASSIVE.

Online lending and peer to peer support is growing by the second.

I have two pieces of stimulus to help
1. the excellent what’s mine is yours by Rachel Bosman and Roo Rogers describe in detail how the growing tide of co-created, co-shared and co-owned work and life is very much part of a successful and sustainable future. To be supplicant to a restrictive set of banking terms isn’t worthy or attractive to anyone with a modicum of ambition.  There are also countless currencies out in the virtual and semi virtual world that represent value and credit in context.  Imagine if we got a £1.00 for every ‘Like’...

2. In addition, I met with Microsoft’s CMO this week.  I heard Phillipa Snare talk very openly about her healthy distain for the establishment and authority.  So hooray for the opinions.

 

Much more attractive than fence sitting professionals.

 

Apart from you Karen – you’re an exception.  J

 

 

co-creation (or should I say the differents engine)...

Been busy this week in Brazil with some of the sharpest minds on the planet.  http://www.differents.com.br/ are challenging the agency model. in fact, I think they're challenging nearly EVERY model.

I think it all needs a push too.

Why buy in ‘experts’ (nasty term) and additional heads of a few agency people when you can work with thousands of volunteers and like minded entrepreneurs on your challenge?

This isn’t about running a suggestion box in the foyer (please don’t do that either) or an online competition to arrive at the answer.

it's not about getting latte drinking agencies in (like me) who make ppts with the same examples (we know the usual suspects and I've written before about this).

This is co-creation.

I feel embarrassed I have only recently started to think about it.  Running an agency out of London it’s easy to get swept away and distracted by hundreds of other agencies and individuals all trying to do the same thing.  We use the same language in describing what we do. Usually this is about ‘being fresh and different with a little strategic thrown in’. I can’t think of a client who’d NOT want an agency who didn’t value working with customers and insights to arrive at new ideas – what’s the alternative... I leave the reader to ponder.

Co-creation gets me excited as if the facts are anything to go by then we can all say cheerio to the business models that got us here.  Good bye banks – peer to peer lending rising year on year. And perhaps goodbye brands too.  Co-creation is here and it’s time to ship up or ship out! I love the idea that consumers get a say in what they want the brands that they are fans of do and say. innovation is dying.  I'm surfing the co-creation wave.

Go to it and thanks Differents for the week.

I’m off to buy a 3D printer and find me some more brain power.

bitesize shot or weekend away...

Been racing around the world with the team recently hence lack of updates but here’s something to keep you going for now.

 

The health spa vs. massage debate.

Is it better to put your learners away for a week or expose them to a series of small bitesize chunks over a number of weeks or months...  mmmm.

Opening the batting in a consistently brilliant fashion is the guru of learning Dr Seb Bailey from the Mind Gym. Here’s a starter for 10:

http://clomedia.com/articles/view/is-the-future-of-learning-bite-sized#comment-883319633

 

my thoughts are. You learn not what the lecture told you but what it caused you to do.

If it’s content (regardless being 90mins or 9 days) failed to engage you (for whatever reason) then you’ll learn that you can attend workshops and check your email without being spotted, think negatively and daydream about running up to the MTV beach house...

Nail the causing piece and you’ve got it cracked.

In a shameless piece of trumpet blowing, we worked with the CEO and team of JWT MENA last week on unlocking business issues that had rattled around for a while. It took 3 days. These guys worked day and night. They rocked. Like Aerosmith BUT they also realised very strongly it is their immediate action after the workshop that seals the learning.

For me nothing happens during a learning intervention when the learner is conscious of his/her experience in the classroom. It’s when you pass it on AFTER the event you realise what has been acquired.

At the point of transfer you aint you; it’s like suspended animation. And like a CD on pause, 90mins or 3 days can pass instantly when you’re in that status.

Now,

Go think.

CUSTOMERS AT THE HEART OF EVERYTH...zzzzzzzz

Put 'customers at the heart of everything we do' in a search engine and see what you get.  The highest number of related comments I got when search was 99 million.

What made me smile more wasn't the quantity of material, but the range. On one page I saw that both Thompson Reuters and William Hill the book keepers put customers at the heart of what they do.  Along with tanning salons, cake makers and of course, your business.

I believe that 'putting customers first' etc. has become another platitude.

three reasons I think it's a 'fail'.

1.  If you are putting customers first, you don't need to tell them.
2.  Customers is a generic term. No two are the same and although a few may be groups because they all want the same loan (or car, or t.v, or fake tan) they did so for different reasons, their friends will give them different comments and 5 minutes later, you can bet (on William Hill) they'll want something else that differs to each other.
3.  If every business achieved this customer utopia, then there would be no effort in the world needed at the customer end to discriminate and discern one quality of service from the other; think about it. It's because some offerings are poor that the customer chooses you over another - but then if such were the case we could do nothing and wait for everyone to make mistakes right? if only life were THAT easy.

But putting customers etc. almost creates a platform that no-one can own and thus you're setting the conditions around yourself that you can't satisfy.

odd one this.

I've been asked to think about a 'customer centric brief' and as such feel it's worth a longer explore to get to know the brief.

if only we did the same with all our customer requests...



 

note bag does not inflate.

Thomas Homer Dixon speaks of the ingenuity gap. That growing distance between the complex world in which we live and our natural ability to deal with it.  It’s a compelling argument.

Here’s some evidence to make you smile as it did me; evidence of genius at work.

See attached  shot from my local off licence.

 

I guess the owner got so tired of repeating herself time and again the request for customers to hang on until the machine WAS ready that she stuck the sticker on instead.  It took less than a minute of her time and has made her life at the till easier.

 

The designers of the chip and pin machine spent £millions in its development yet over look the insight that people do follow machines in a certain way despite being asked to do other actions...

 

I’ve spent several of the last few weeks on planes. Can’t help wonder when someone will come up with a cellotape solution to the international expectation setting clause of ‘bag will not inflate’...  perhaps design another bag or hope someone bridges the gap with some ingenuity.

Conference Cliches - 6 gems of advice so you rock rather than roll...

We’ve been about on lots of plane trips recently and spoken at a few events and got the year off to a strong start.  The tongue in check nature of what I write here is meant to provoke my dear readers into think long and hard about any content and delivery you have planned for your own conference appearances.

1. It’s massively important to make a link as explicit and as a strong as you can to the headline of the conference and the presentation you give. You audience are being boomed at all day by dozens of PowerPoints and stimulated by nothing but free mints an luke warm coffee. They don’t want to be given an intellectual resume of your business performance, your cleverness (that’s just isolating) and you shouldn’t ask them to work hard to understand your speech.  If the conference is about HR ENERGY, then your speech should be about HR ENERGY!!!

2. Write your content so a BABOON can understand it. If it contains material that hurts a scrabble player, take it out.  The best guide is FEWER. BETTER. WORDS.

3. Have pictures – they paint a thousand words, but don’t get them off ‘getty’ etc. anyone can do that.  Impress me with your own photography of a moment in life that you captured and made you think. If you don’t do that, I’ll just ignore you and play with my mobile along with the guy next to me.

4. you don’t need to out the ENTIRE CHART OF 1000 figures to show me result went up 65%.  Just tell me. I’ll believe you.

5. If you find yourself saying “the point i’m trying to make...” in your speech. It fills the room with doubt.

6. The reaction you get is the communication you give. (yeah, thought i’d leave you with a philosophical one)

 

And now some fun...

 

Here’s a chart of stand cliches.

In at number 5 is “man suit  holding world in his hands” . Not seen this one since “shrub in soil held delicately in palm of child’s hand” became out of fashion. What I enjoyed about this photo was the poor resolution of the printing.  Close up he looked like he was made of Lego.

 

 

 

In at 4 is “conference bag made from environmentally friendly fabric”.  This allows users to gather up as many pens, leaflets and free mousmats as possible before throwing them away in the trash to become more landfill; genius.

 

 

 

 

 

At 3 is conference muffins and sweets.  Nothing sells contract mobile packages, or fleet hire cars more than sponge and sugar and an empty glass bowl where all the sweets used to be

 

 

 

 

 

At 2 is a BIG EMPTY WHITE BOX. So ... your brand is about what exactly?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And my favourite from this year is an insight stand where the monitor is ... off all bloody day!!

 Not a single insight to be found despite three juniors searching their facebook page for the answer below.

 

 

 

 

See you next conference.

Sigh.