How many ways can you peel a Banana?

No this blog isn’t a PC version of how many ways can you skin a cat. When I first saw the question “How does a monkey eat a banana?”, I thought it was a joke. But the answer wasn’t because he found it ape-peeling.

What’s more the answer came in a video, the video that’s featured below. After trying the monkey peeling method it got me thinking of a lot of different things.



It is actually easier to peel and the stalk acts like a handle. Equally, you don’t get to chew on the bit on the end that tastes pithy.

What if you just assume you know how to peel a banana and skip the video? One thing I’ve l heard from older business people is that they’ve tried everything once, so it’s not worth trying it again. That might be true to an extent. There are few truly original ideas. However, societies change and opportunities can be missed by not looking at other viewpoints. The hotel that still sends out its direct marketing via the post is adding massively to its costs by not considering electronic messaging and promotion.

The company that ignores social media to connect with its customers can’t engage with them. They then can’t find out what they truly feel towards their products, services and brand.

Learning to eat something like a banana is a meme. We don’t know where we learnt it but it must have been from watching our parents eat bananas. The stalk looks so obviously like a lever that it must be the ring pull of the natural world. Let’s not forget that the fruit was still fairly rare in the UK even up to the 1950s so it is still a relatively new food to these shores.

It’s not just the British. I’ve yet to see any mainstream American or European media featuring upside down banana eating – yet in the countries where bananas are grown, this is not unusual and they’ve developed their own meme for peeling a banana.
There is an assumption that our ‘meme’ is best, that the lessons of our fathers are better than those from other cultures. The problem is that these prejudices are often subconscious and the British way to be understood is to shout louder and more slowly. It is not about understanding the cultural landscape or listening to alternative ways of working.

Take the Greek example. A shake of the head tends to mean yes in that country, and the word Nai means yes. A nod and the word Ochi means no. It is counter intuitive to most of Europe and these differences can lead to mistakes.

In my work life I’ve often had to translate the cultural aspect of a business or news story. Think of a company in the UK that’s made a new product made from recycled plastic. It’s a great selling point on the environmental side of things – right?

Well, it depends where you are selling that item and in which markets. Yes the environment is high on the consumer agenda in most European countries, but is this a key point everywhere in a recession? What about countries where recycled products have an image of inferiority or a potential health risk? The facts may be clear on this area, but a public perception can be damaging even if it is wrong.

We’ve all heard the stories about how American working practices were shoehorned into the UK in the 1960s and 70s or the stories of product names that just don’t translate tastefully.

Another good example of why memes mean different things to different people comes from Andy Green on the Greenblog. His posting pointed out that Cheverolet dislike the term “chevy” to describe their products, despite the shorthand being so common in US culture and beyond. To the company, it cheapens the image of the brand yet they’ve not tried to find a different way for people to associate with the name. The company is trying to raise awareness of their brand in the UK, and I’d have thought people would associate a little more with the term Chevy.

What’s my advice? Try it out for yourself and learn a different way to do something. I’m not talking just about bananas, but the way you do business.

Learning points:

• Remember a meme is just one way to peel a banana.
• Your way may be good, but is there a better way
• Just because you understand something, it doesn’t mean that everyone gets it, or finds it straightforward.

The Utility of Communication

The problem with communication is the subjective nature of a message. Even if the message is good and honest, the perception or miscommunication can lead to big problems. An article that demonstrates this is here where web administrators failed to realise that Pen Island can be misread in a URL.

It can be as simple as not looking directly at someone important when talking to them, the method of message delivery or other conflicting messages.

I always remember the Macclesfield Express with a front page headline splash of Double stabbing after family row right next to Cheshire Police celebrate drop in crime figures. The second story might be true, but it seems insensitive and crass despite the force not having any idea the two news items would appear on the same page.

The way the communications industry gets around this is by measuring sentiment. This isn’t perfect in itself. As well as the additional cost of in depth analysis, some systems are automated picking words with emotion without checking whether there is irony implied by that word. If done by a real person, one person’s perception could be different from another.

Now although it is possible to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of communications, it isn’t always done and it is not always the main business focus.

In economics, there is a similar problem – how do you measure the feel good factor as happiness affects confidence and the decision to invest. They came up with the express utility which is the amount of happiness someone derives from a good or service.

Why is this relevant you may ask? The reason is that in the downturn cuts are made to reduce costs to minimise the impact on income. There’s an excellent TEDx presentation by Chip Conley showing how a hotel came out of a downturn by looking at making his workforce and guests happier rather than cutting the costs. It marked the company out as more than your standard hotel delivering a service.

Communication is a key area where cuts can be made. In the film Up in the air, there is the dichotomy where a firm of HR consultants, taken on to fire employees, shows its humanity by rejecting video link technology even though it saved costs. No one wants to hear they’ve broken up with someone by text or that they’ve lost their job via email. But it does happen regularly.

Companies can see communications as a soft target for sales without looking at what the function of the role is and how maintaining a good reputation can be valuable to retaining business. Equally I’ve noticed some very good communications campaigns being hamstrung by clients scaling back projects to a point where a good idea is made pointless by missing the key element of the proposal.

In difficult trading conditions I’d argue communications is more important. There is a difference between finding cheaper ways of getting a message across and falling between the two stools of a highly creative campaign without the funding. Without it how do your customers know how hard you work, the great people you employ, the innovations you’ve created and the care you deliver to each one of them.

(pictures courtesy of www.engrish.com)

A to Z in an instant!

Trying out the new Google instant service, I decided to check out the difference between the US and the UK service.

If you aren’t aware, Google instant is a service that updates the search list with every keystroke. There already was a predictive text box, but this takes it one stage further anticipating the most searched for content.

That said, after looking at the results I have become a little sceptical about them. I’ve compiled a UK and US A-Z and 0-9 and hopefully this will demonstrate why. There is certainly some censoring going on but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I was surprised about many of the top searches but whereas the US list had a broader range of returns but both lists were very commercial.

This begs two questions. Does this mean that UK internet users are looking for commercial sites and internet shopping has taken off? Does this mean that retailers are paying for these slots? I’d like some transparency as it looks like we are an unadventurous nation looking for high street retailers and not exciting and dynamic content.

Judge for yourself (UK first, US second):

A is for Argos in the UK and Amazon in the US
B is for the BBC or retailer BestBuy
C is for Currys or Craigslist (a US classified ads service)
D is for Debenhams or Dictionary.com
E is for Ebay
F is for Facebook
G is for Google maps or Gmail
H is for Hotmail
I is for ITV or Ikea
J is for John Lewis or Jetblue (a US airline)
K is for KLM or Kohls (an online retail site)
L is for Lotto or Lowe’s (a home improvement retailer)
M is for MSN or Mapquest (interestingly M (space) brings up M&S)
N is for Next or Netflix (DVD rental site)
O is for O2 or Orbitz (a travel firm)
P is for Paypal or Pandora Jewellery
Q is for QVC or Brainy Quotes
R is for Rightmove or REI outdoor gear
S is for Sky or Sears tools
T is for Tesco or Target.com (online retailer)
U is for Youtube or US Postal Service
V is for Virgin or Verizon (mobile phones)
W is for BBC Weather or Weather.com
X is for Xbox
Y is for Youtube or Yahoo
Z is for ZARA or Zillow (real estate)
0 is for O2 or 007.com
1 is for 192 or 14th Amendment on Wikipedia
2 is for 24 (TV) on Wikipedia
3 is for 3 mobile phones or 3 DS from Nintendo
4 is for 4 on demand or 4Chan
5 is for BBC 5 day weather or 50 Cent
6 is for 6Music or 60 minutes (CBS)
7 is for 7Zip file service
8 is for 8Ball T-shirts or 84 Lumbar (professional contractors)
9 is for 90210

So out of 36 UK sites, the BBC has 4 hits, Youtube and O2 twice. There are 10 retail sites, 9 TV related sites, 7 technology or web service sites, 5 phone related sites, 3 social media sites and two others. It doesn’t reflect my searches, but does it yours?
I’d have expected say Ancestry to out-place Argos – or Amazon. There’s little media or sites like digital spy, drudge report or The Onion.

Tiddler, Tiddler, Tiddler’s Late

Reading a bed time story to my three year old son doesn’t normally make me think about public relations and brand management. Thinking about one story made me realise that perhaps there are some lesson’s in Julia Donaldson’s Tiddler.
This is just a bit of fun, but hopefully it will get you all thinking.

Some of you may be aware of the story, but if you are not here’s a synopsis. Tiddler is a small fish who is always late. He’s not big, doesn’t have any attractive colouring and not the best swimmer. Because Tiddler is always late, he spends his time dreaming up imaginative stories of why he was late that day.

One day he’s so busy daydreaming about his latest excuse that he’s caught in a fishing net and taken far from home. Being just a tiddler, he gets thrown back to the sea not knowing his way home. Then he hears a story, a story that he’s heard before – one of his stories – and he follows the trail of sea creatures who’ve told the tale back home.

So what are the lessons? Surely making excuses all the time and being late isn’t good PR? Well, firstly there’s brand management. Tiddler is unprepossessing, yet the other fish remember him. His imagination is his USP and he plays to its strengths. Had he be a bright, colourful fish, the real heart of the story might be confused and they might remember him for a different reason.

Secondly Tiddler has an audience. Some of the other fish dismiss his stories, but Tiddler stays true to who he is and his strengths. One fish in particular, Johnny Dory, loves his stories showing that Tiddler knows his audience and delivers what that audience wants. You don’t have to be relevant to everyone, as long as you understand the niche, market you are involved in.

The third lesson is the power of word of mouth and viral marketing. Tiddler told his stories to his friends. He made them creative, genuine and compelling. His initial audience was just his class and his expectation went no further, but his friend told his granny who told a starfish, seal, lobster then eel – multiplying the audience and extending far further than he dare dream. It only works because it was a good yarn that people and fish wanted to hear meaning genuine content is at the heart of a successful viral campaign.

The fourth lesson is engagement. When Tiddler was in new waters and far from home he listened to the conversations around him and chose to engage with the one that was relevant to him. Even though that fish didn’t know the answer to the question of how he got home, it was six degrees of separation which allowed him to return safely. Equally, Tiddler asked the right questions to find the information he needed, engaging with new creatures he’d never met before and discovering his wider audience.
It’s amazing what you can learn from a bedtime story ;).