My time with TEDx (Part 2)

The second half kicked off with Alex Graham from the BBC, discussing his five blocks to creativity:

• It can’t be done
• It’s been done
• Let’s think outside the box
• What does the boss think
• Listen to your Customers

The ones to note are the third and fifth. The ‘let’s think outside the box’ argument is that being totally free is limiting. This Paradox applies to the supermarket. They could stock a whole isle of instant noodles to offer a limitless choice – but that only confuses the customer and limits what other products are on offer.

It may be useful to think differently but there needs to be guidance and rules. Rules, of course, can be broken, but it establishes a direction and framework to create a solution. His example was going for a walk. You can be free to go to your local shop anyway, because you know where you are. You could go via the park, the cinema or even just go straight down the road. Go to Borneo and try the same thing. You’ve never been there before and you’ve not seen a shop. A map might help, but you may also need a guide and a translator. This aides the exploration of new territory, not hinders it.

The last point is controversial and deliberately so, but it is more a devil’s advocate point of view. It ties in with the theory of second best, and the view that democracy may be a good solution but it is imperfect. Ask 1000 people what TV shows they want to watch, and create one show to fulfil it. I bet it will be absolutely rubbish, pandering to everyone and no one at the same time.

While it is important to listen to people, it is also important to have your own mind and use the advice to improve an idea, not to drive the idea forward. While a cafe might benefit from someone suggesting serviettes are available from the counter, the same person telling to the chef how to cook the food without any specialist knowledge could be a disaster.

Tom Scott’s presentation speaks for itself and can be seen here http://vimeo.com/10060159 - very thought provoking and worth a watch.

Andy Hessleman, a management consultant, said a lot – most of it was interesting but amaountedf to reviewing your business. How can you not only be better than your opposition, but be demonstrably better in a way that’s hard to copy. Part of it is about having a culture, and the other part is how you do your own job better. He had a thought that marketing is a tax on the uninspiring company links in with Cennydd’s comment that only one company can be the cheapest, the others need design. Equally it shows why PR is being increasingly seen as important. Not only do people have to create a compelling product or service, but people need to be aware it exists.

The final presentation was from former Dragon’s Den’s Doug Richard. I wasn’t expecting a rich economic argument about the sate of this nation and a criticism of the current government. It was refreshing to see a view that I hold being held up when we only get half the argument from the politicians. They say the timing of cuts is critical and the two sides bicker over how miuch and how fast to cut. But like a mortgage, you could pay it off quickly or spread it over a longer period of time. There is a cost to spreading it over time, but it might make repayments easier.

Now Doug’s main argument is that cuts are all good and well, but there has to be investment, innovation and growth as well. Just like the earlier ‘happiness’ measurement presentation, the discussion misses the value in the economy and the way we make it stronger. Growth can only come by using the same resources better, not by working harder or using more.

There has to be an investment in people, in infrastructure and freeing up the capital resources of people who create wealth. These aren’t the big companies, but the SMEs who need help to take on apprentices, develop new products and create the new industries of the future. He hailed back to Schumpeter, his ideas of creative destruction. Vinyl wasn’t ‘improved’, it was destroyed by the arrival of a new and better format, the CD, which in turn was eroded by digital technology. In between you get tape, MiniDiscs, Digital tape and the like.

Equally we can’t support everyone in trouble. He was a bit too Friedman in his approach, but I like the way the Liberals put it in 1911 “What we have done is to strap a lifebelt around him, whose buoyancy, aiding his own strenuous exertions, ought to enable him reach the shore”. It’s a good starting point for a successful British government. Hopefully Mr Cameron will listen to the advice.

My time with TED (Part 1)

When I go to conferences and events, I’m always trying to find a learning point from what I’m listening to. The following are the learning points I picked up from TEDxSheffield. This is not a regurgitation of what I heard, but the elements I drew out from the talks – possibly reinterpreting them or linking them with my own thoughts and opinions.

TEDxSheffield started with Cennydd Bowles, a user experience specialist discussing beauty, design and how this hadn’t translated onto the web. He suggested there were no ‘design classics’ on the web to compare with the London tube map, or even the applemac. Webdesign was either highly functional or highly designed but rarely both.

I’d disagree with this stance for a couple of reasons. I think Google is a design classic but I think it is too commonplace to understand why. It was launched in a time when web pages were getting ever more complex because “they could”, losing usability by being clever. Along with usability comes accessibility.

Google was a white page with a single text box and a couple of buttons and remains largely the same, although, like Tate and Lyle golden syrup, you can see subtle variations over time making a big difference.

The other thought was that web design should be something linked to emotion. The experience of a website is a journey. Sometimes we want a quick solution, other times we may want to wander. But to make a journey memorable, it needs to be linked to emotion. The best designs and art summon up emotion and create an attachment, a loyalty and a desire to return.

Now I think there are deeper elements in web design than visual stimuli and that architecture plays a part and I also think the journey is important in making it personal to the user.

We shared a TEDx video from Chip Connley on measurement and defining what is important to a business.

To the world of business and accounting, his words might seem a bolt from the blue, but from an economists point of view its actually something they’ve been trying to grapple with for a long time. As I have a degree in the subject, I’d like to count myself as an economist. I understand the concept of ‘utility’ a cold word which actually describes your hopes, aspirations, dreams, enjoyment, love and passion.

Chip’s message is that all this stuff is ephemeral, but not immeasurable. You have to make assumptions and it’s not perfect, but you can survey to find out if people are secure or insecure, worried about certain things or looking forward to particular events. Just because TEDx is free it doesn’t make the event have no value – quite the opposite. He used Einstein’s quote “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

So why does this strike a chord with me? It is because I’ve seen blinkered business decisions throughout my career based on accounting practice and with very limited vision of what is important to a company. Hard times tends to mean fewer people and more graft for no or little extra reward. The problem is that this view is dictated by looking at figures and ignores how people spend their time. Especially in a customer focussed business, making people do more admin and less time actually helping customers and solving their issues can have a negative effect. As you lose contact you can lose the ability to change to new circumstances, lose your mission statement and end up in a downward spiral of de-motivated staff producing less.

Newsrooms are prime examples. You can run a newsroom in August with a skeleton staff as there’s not much happening and as long as the story flow is OK, it can look after itself. In an accountant’s, mind, this suggests that the newsroom could cope like this at any time. It ignores the fact that the best stories, the ones that create the buzz with the audience of a media group, are created through hard work and digging and not from making the odd change to a press release. Equally, when a major incident happens, that’s when the strength of a news organisation can be tested. Without the manpower, you can’t cover the events. This is why the scaling down of so many newsrooms is so sad to see as an industry makes itself moribund by the greed of a few shareholders.

So in the downturn, create the conditions for happiness in your business. It’s more important than ever to have a mission that people buy in to, that’s genuine and that you can all strive to achieve. Cutting corners reduces your costs, but it doesn’t add value to your business and its important any savings don’t affect the ability of your staff to deliver the value your customers strive for. That’s why in a recession, high value products often do well – because there is a genuine quality and value in them.

The first half ended with a slick presentation on success from Richard St John. What I valued most was the slick production and visually strong presentation. This was a good example of how to present with the caveat that it was too visual.

The substance of the message would generally be common sense. To be successful you need to work hard, have a focus and a genuine passion for what you are doing, distinguishing workaholics from ‘workafrolics’ – people who work hard because they love what they are doing.

According to the presentation I’ll never be a success as I’m intelligent and have eclectic interests. I’m also keen to ensure my children see me occasionally. While I’ll never be Bill Gates, I hope most will still see me successful in my own way.

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 ;).

Should you open your doors to honesty?

A siege mentality is an easy position to take when the media bangs on your front door demanding a press statement as it investigates the very heart of your business, or even your own personal life. Some of these events are a storm in a tea cup, whilst others are a full scale crisis. It is sometimes difficult to tell the difference until the moment is past and you can see it from a different perspective.

Two very different ways of handling crisis management have been in the press recently and both have got me thinking on whether the strategy was effective. One is William Hague’s recent personal statement; the other is the British government and the Catholic Church’s decision to cover up the involvement of a priest in an IRA bombing.

Not only are the two cases quite different – but the way the allegations are dealt with are also at polar opposites. However, neither is totally without fault.

Let’s start with the 1972 Claudy Bombings which saw nine people killed and 30 injured as a result of three car bombs. Relatives of the victims and the walking wounded have had to wait 38 years for a report into the investigation to get some idea of who was to blame.

The report is baffled by the fact the British Police failed to interview Father James Chesney, an alibi witness for one suspect and a suspect in his own right, despite British intelligence keeping close tabs on the staunch republican priest. The conclusion that seems unchallenged is that a political deal was struck between the British government and the Catholic Church to hush up the situation. The Catholic Church was anti-violence and was keen to remain at arms length from the IRA.

It is highly likely that Chesney knew significant information that was never brought out purely because he wasn’t questioned. Even if a deal was struck, surely some sort of discussion should have taken place. That aside, the main crisis management of the situation was to cover up and protect the Catholic Church.

I understand the situation was volatile and complex, but I don’t feel that this was the right course of action. We know from other scandals, that the Catholic Church liked to cover things up. A siege mentality is a natural position when things are uncertain – but again, it doesn’t mean it is right.
Equally, the decision to move a man less than an hour away from his home to avoid police investigation looks cowardly.

Rumour took over from fact and hundreds believed they knew who carried out the attacks and also knew of the cover-up by association. This can hardly have left those in the community with any faith in the church, the government or the police. We will never know Father Chesney’s true involvement (he died in 1980), but there is more than enough evidence pointing towards the republican sympathiser’s involvement at some level.
Equally, the Catholic Church’s reputation has been tarnished by those who perceived they knew the truth and lost faith in the church on both sides of the divide.

Almost forty years later there’s a second problem when the truth, as it often does, comes out. The Catholic Church is wrapped in scandal for the second time within a year as it shows its backhanded way of dealing with priests involved in murderous activities.
In my opinion, the Catholic Church should have made an example of Chesney. Decisive action to out, rather than protect Chesney, would have sent a sharp warning to the rest of the Church. Putting pressure on other republican sympathisers to strongly denounce the IRA, Chesney and the ‘shame’ brought by the un-Christian actions of Claudy would have made it more difficult for other clergy to stray down the same path.

Embarrassing, yes, but at the end of the day the actions were understandably outside their control. Justice could then have been served and fact replaces rumour. More importantly this ticking time-bomb wasn’t going to explode.
The opposite could be said of William Hague. A smirk, a nudge, an offhand and baseless joke about all the Tories being gay has turned into front page headlines. It is a calculated risk and may work, but Mr Hague has legitimised a rumour by directly referring to the story.

He could have made exactly the same statement avoiding the ‘gay’ slur altogether. It’s a strong story to openly discuss the heartache of not being able to have children. Mourning the death of an unborn baby isn’t easy. Yes the rumours might have still floated about, but it would never be front page news.

From what I gather, it is based on the fact that two men have shared a hotel room in the 21st Century and they look ‘chummy’ despite a big age gap. May be I should feel upset that when I interviewed the then Tory leader, soaked to the skin after a downpour in Halifax, he didn’t wink at me and show me to his room to warm up. Or may be it is just bunkum – this certainly isn’t another Mark Oaten.

I’ve roomed with – not just one other man- but several. I even shared a bed with a Frenchman ahead of a rowing race in London as there were no single beds available. Does this make me gay? No it doesn’t. I could still be proved wrong about Hague, but I think it a ridiculous story created by the sleazier end of political journalism. There is a difference between being open and replying honestly, and fanning the flames of a storm in the tea cup story.

A Victorian lesson in the high art of war

We sometimes think that propaganda is a 20th Century invention but in reality it is a discipline as old as the hills. I was reminded of this when I went to the Leeds Gallery and saw two Victorian paintings which created two strong images of Great Britain at times of great British loses.
The first painting is the Death of General Gordon at Khartoum by George W Joy. This is a painting I remember from my History lessons at school and evokes quite a lot of memories to me thanks to George Benson my teacher. But I was seeing it through slightly fresh eyes as I’d not seen it for a while. The painting shows Gordon defiant, magnanimous and strong in the face of certain death – and a death unlikely to be quick nor painless.
The advancing Mahdi army are seen to be numerous and violent, having already taken the standard with one soldier urging his companions on. This images shows Britain defiant against the savagery of Africa, brave and true in the face of adversity and proud with it.
If you read General Gordon’s memoires days prior to the final defeat, it is far from brave and defiant. He is far from home in a dangerous place, full of strange noises and the sounds of battle all around. He was likely to have died an inglorious and brutal death; and needless as he had been asked to retreat weeks before.
The painting meant something else to the Victorian audience and the death was transformed into act of chivalry, bravery and spirit. A defeat was turned into a moral victory. Whether George joy painted this to demonstrate the Victorian ideals or whether he was compelled to capture the tale spun to him I do not know, but either way the tale was turned successfully and still makes an impression 125 years after General Gordon’s death.
The second painting is earlier from 1858, Retribution by Edward Armitage. The image here is not a real painting but an image of Britain’s relationship with India. A white, European woman is dead, a baby with two tears is lying by her side and a young girl hides from a ferocious Bengali tiger. Britannia is there with her sword of justice, come to rescue the innocents slaughtered by the wild and savage beast depicting the artist’s view of India.
This painting struck me just days after the Rupert Penry-Jones Who Do You Think You Are? Programme dealing in the same period during the Indian Mutiny. It is nice to think the British “civilised” Indian, but the rule of ‘English’ law didn’t really apply to India and commercial law left many Indians disaffected, dispossessed and driven from their lands. The Indian mutiny may have been brutal and savage, but it was not unprovoked. Equally, it was suppressed using military might.
It may have changed the way Britain ruled India, but it was not immediate and had little impact on those suffering at the hands of the commercial British interests. The painting doesn’t depict this side making the British subjects out to be innocents, pure and godly. Your empathy cannot be with the Tiger, digging its claws into Britannia’s arm seconds before the fatal piercing of its flesh from her sword. Yet this is an image for the British to justify the tough tactics in Asia Minor after the deaths during the mutiny.
Flash forward to 19th August, and images are flashed around the world of an American soldier leaving Iraq screaming “We’ve Won”. Have the US really won? Was this staged? Is this just the justification of the war by creating an image of victory over the ruins of a damaged country?

Sharing the benefits of a 'Social Event'

It wasn’t that long ago that I was trying to convince a client of the benefits of Twitter. They claimed it wasn’t a relevant media for their industry but were open to being convinced. We had a further discussion about a major conference and asked whether it was using twitter and was hash tagged.
The client said it wasn’t – but after brining the conference webpage up, the first eye catching thing on the screen was “follow this conference on Twitter”.
Social media is gaining popularity in events but you need to understand why social media can help improve an event. Equally, you should not be frightened of using social media no matter how small your event is. You don’t have to be hosting the next major conference event to use social media.
The benefit of using social media is to be able to hold a conversation without boundaries. This means you can have a simultaneous conversation with multiple people at the same time or have a discussion with one person thousands of miles away in real time. These conversations can be stored, returned to or discovered by people you would never normally be able to find. Integrating this principle is the first stage to making it work for you.
How else can you know whether your thoughts are similar to others or different? You couldn’t talk to 100 other people in this depth.
Equally, what is an event? My definition is when people come together to share ideas and discuss issues. This covers internal meetings, collaborative web-chats, networking events, festivals, conferences and much more. Also, how do you want to communicate?
• Informally to delegates
• Formally to inform delegates of the programme/etiquette
• To create discussion
• To ask for feedback
• To share information
Before an event social media can be used to attract an audience. Twitter can spread the word that an event is taking place, allied with a Facebook page or blog describing the programme, date and time. You can gauge your potential audience by adding open source event ticketing software like Eventbrite, for example. Creating a hashtag (the # symbol and an event identifying code used on twitter) will also allow people to discuss the event even before it has begun, but check it isn’t being used for another purpose. Create a community of attendees using a platform like Ning.
During an event you can continue to use a hashtag to open up an event. May be you could welcome guests, invite them for a pre-event drink, start a discussion by asking a question. If it’s a real event, you can project a twitterfall of the hashtags onto a screen. May be you can use polling or survey apps to help demonstrate or discover the answer to a question as part of a presentation.
Events can be recorded for those unable to attend or for future discussion. Flickr can hold pictures, Vimeo can hold videos of key speakers and Audioboo can capture up to 5minutes of audio. May be your event brochure could be made like the Skittles website – a series of links to other sites. Why re-write someone’s biography when it already exists on Linkedin, their blog or their website.
It is not just about content – it is about demonstrating the atmosphere of the event.
After an event there is more that can be done. Invite people to give their feedback using facebook, twitter or online surveys. Invite them for a drink at the nearest bar. Ask more questions using the hashtag. Create a review on a blog, Audioboo or facebook site and then share or encourage others to share their reviews.
After the event you can look at the data collected by collecting the survey data, hashtag responses and comments across social media. Use this to create press releases and share your peer’s view of the world. You can also share this information on the event page or your blog.
Here are some examples of events I’ve been involved with. The first category is online chats – a much underused tool that can bring vertical markets or different people together to discuss real issues. Deidre Breakenridge’s #prstudchat is a monthly event which brings together PR students, lecturers and professionals from across the world.
It works by asking anyone to submit questions. At a set time, the discussion starts and single questions are asked over the state of the PR industry and hot topics. It is useful for the professionals to gauge industry thought, while the students learn, ask additional questions or put forward a fresh look on a topic. People identify the question and whether they are student, lecturer or professional.
A similar chat event on twitter is #edchat for the education industry where a diverse set of questions is posed on a Tuesday. Further closed discussions sometimes carry on using Google Wave.
The social media is used for Barcamps I’ve been to, with promotion exclusively through facebook and twitter. At the events a twitterfall has helped gain an impression on what is going on and created discussion on presentations. Delegates are encouraged to bring laptops/ smartphones to engage in the un-conference.
I noted that an internal meeting of the CWDC used Flickr to display the results of training sessions and brain storms online so that the material could be stored and used in future. The images are used in future work.
All these elements feed into many TED events with presentations videoed for those unable to attend and a strong virtual discussion from those not attending as well as those who are there.
The events don’t have to be massive though. A local development organisation, Wakefield First, have started using hashtags to promote their monthly networking events - creating a community of local businesses through Facebook. This concept is extended by profiling delegates in a rolling presentation, allowing people unfamiliar with delegates to identify and find those they want to get in contact with.
A good conversation is always positive and that’s the benefit of social media, but if you can extend this into a community – you’ll find a small event could be turned into something really valuable and special.

Are marketeers failing to get social?

[This article is written in a generalising way to provoke discussion and creates a position that can and should be challenged. Please feel free to comment]

The argument over whether marketing or PR is the dominant force in commercial organisations has been going on for decades, if not a century or two. In one respect, it doesn’t matter much as long as organisations understand their communications and they are being delivered effectively.

But I spotted an article that concerned me in the CIM backed magazine The Marketeer. If right it, shows that marketing has a head stuck in the sand approach which could see it make itself moribund and irrelevant to the modern age we live in.

The way people access information is changing and there are socio-economic shifts means Generation Y behaves very differently to even Generation X. PR is routed in getting coverage in the media and has to mirror media to survive. If a PR function doesn’t deliver content relevant and of interest to newspapers, broadcasters, the web or and other journalist, there content won’t be picked up.

Marketing is more sheltered with a toolbox of strategies which have been successful so should work in the future. It’s ploughing its own furrow. Advertising has had to change its tactics to fit in with a media fragmenting to leverage the best opportunities from smaller audience bases, but, again the direct approach from marketing has left it vulnerable from a changing society.

And so to the article I spotted http://bit.ly/aR07te . It states almost a third dismiss social media as something for PR to deal with. A further 58% of public sector and charities are scared of it. That’s a lot. As someone in PR it should make me feel secure that the new ground is being taken up by people in my profession, but it doesn’t. It leaves me concerned that there are many people in marketing (and probably PR as well) who aren’t developing the skills they will need for their future communications programmes.

For example, I spoke to a marketing person in a hotel chain. They stated that their mailing list costs £500,000 or so each year but the returns were diminishing. The cost had always been recouped because the marketing tactic worked but it was becoming less effective. It ignored the fact that some people would rather receive this information in electronic formats and it ignored the cost savings of reducing print.

Some companies now no longer offer printed literature with the belief that people will either print it themselves or would rather access web based media for the same information. I no longer pick up the yellow pages to find a number; I’ll now look online first. (Incidentally they’re now only publishing paid for ads which totally erodes their previous USP). Look at Volvo and their brochures.

Why is this reluctance there? It’s partly fear. Discussing social media with businesses I’ve seen a lack of understanding not only with what social media is but what it can do. It isn’t a silver bullet, a medium to push communications, a drain on time, an opportunity to get slagged off on a daily basis. It’s a medium to create discussion and dialogue that can replace and enhance your reputation. This doesn’t just mean gaining reputation from your audience, it also means improving you SEO rankings meaning potential new customers find you even more easily.

Most companies have a marketing function. I’d suggest less had a PR function. This survey indicates marketers don’t see the need to up-skill in social media. This would, in my mind be a mistake and would accelerate this may be changing. The big FMCGs like Pepsi are already diverting cash into PR and social media taking resources away from marketing. There will always be marketing, but will it soon be a part of the Public Relations department. When will the PR/Social media spend start to become bigger than the marketing spend? Because that day is coming unless marketing departments start to take a look at this area.