The Mail, the messenger, the media

There seems general agreement that the Mail's 'Facebook could raise your risk of cancer' headline was even more ridiculous than the 'Social websites harm children's brains' one that rapidly followed it. Certainly the Mail's reporting wasn't terribly nuanced (in a blog I have to tell you that I'm understating). Much of the response was well argued, and engaged with the topic amirably (eg Jackie Ashley) - but much also seemed no more nuanced and no less ridiculous than the Daily Mail pieces themselves.

A few things struck me. First, the strength of feeling this topic generates - the first comment on this post arrived when all I'd posted (accidentally) was a title I'd abandoned by the time the comment arrived. The risk is that I leap to my own position without actually listening to what's being argued. Certainly I came across that.

Second, and linked to this, we tend to shoot the messenger. The fact that the piece was in the Daily Mail instantly rendered it poisonous for some. Now, I don't much like the Daily Mail, but neither do I much like some of the stances and weak arguments I find in the paper I read every day. I read it because of the quality of much of its writing, not because it agrees with me. There were a lot tweets and blogs that merely focused on the author's well-established dislike (however justifiable) of the Mail, and seemed to use that to avoid engaging with the underlying argument.

Third, I'm struck by the "either / or" nature of much of the comment. So, maybe it's not that kids go out less because they spend time on Facebook OR that they spend time on Facebook because they go out less. Maybe both are true, mutually reinforcing. Maybe social media allow us to connect and interact in truly valuable ways previously impossible, AND, maybe there could be downsides as well. Seems ironic to me that media that have arisen with post-modernity (both / and) are used so extensively to promote modernist perspectives (either / or).

Finally, as a number of pieces highlighted, research is ongoing in this area, and it's complex. But you don't have to look hard to identify research that points to changes about which we might at the least be ambivalent. So, for example, research suggests Generation Y prefers to use blogging, texting, and IM in preference to the face to face and telephone communication preferences of preceding generations. We also know that communications effectiveness is highly dependent on non-verbal elements and tone of voice (the 7%-38%-55% rule). Put these together and we have workforces that are increasingly able to connect and communicate widely and rapidly (good), but who prefer to use communications media that are less effective for communicating emotion, lack of congruence, and nuance (bad). It's both / and again.

What do I want to learn? Like much of the above, it's pretty obvious. Work hard to engage with arguments, neither trumpeting my established positions, nor shooting the messenger. Recognise the potential for 'both / and' positions. And go gentle on the social media revolutionaries. Chesterton spoke sense: "The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right." I find it very easy to be wrong about both.

What do names say?

Following on from the previous post about positioning, I like the Obama Car Wash in Oxford's Cowley Road.  "Can we make the alloy wheels shine and get that difficult muck out of the door sills?  Yes we can."  Makes me wonder about competing car washes, though.  What would you expect from the Sarkozy Car Wash; the Brown Car Wash; even the Berlusconi Car Wash?  Perhaps not.  Sarah Palin used to own a car wash.

Main theme here, though, is positioning and naming around money.  There seems general agreement that one of the causes of the economic crisis is greed - specifically the pursuit of money for its own sake.  The idea that we'd let the desire for (easy) money grip us as a society is an idea that people now entertain as possible, even if they don't fully agree.  There are eloquent posts from consumer and business perspectives, arguing that there's got to be more than getting and spending money.  

Just to be clear, I love what you can do with money - whether that's securing a home and a level of comfort for my family; accessing the arts, sport, holidays, food and drink; or giving it away to effect change where it's needed.  I understand that without money life can be much more difficult.  But I'm also aware of the pull of money - that it can hold you and grip you, whether you have plenty or little.  

So it's from these perspectives I react to the Motley Fool's new web site for consumer finance - lovemoney.com.  It's there "to help you build a relationship with your money". 

 But I don't want a love relationship with my money.  I'm intrigued that the lovemoney blog talks about ensuring that its name had to fit with company values - (not spelt out, but not previously about "loving money", I think).  And what are we to make of the the little heart in the logo?  Seems to me the obvious implication is that this is a site about loving money - albeit with a logo that brings a light touch to it.

I don't get why you would choose this name.  "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil and some by longing for it have ... pierced themselves with many griefs".  That (from the Bible) seems more obvious that it's been in ages, and in our post-Christian culture is a quotation that still resonates.

I exchanged e-mails with Saul Devine - MD at The Fool.  Much credit to him for a thoughtful and generous engagement (in line with how I think of The Fool).  The gist of his response was that the literal meaning of the name is not the intent of the service, and that the brand messages inherent in the site are contrary to the more negative associations of the name.  He stresses that the service is about responsibly handling money - and I've always found it to be that.

But surely that just means the name is wrong?  In naming a business or a service would you not work hard to avoid names that point your customers in the wrong direction?  Would you not avoid names with associations that your site had then to overcome?  Yes, I get the potential for ironic naming; yes, I understand the potential for whimsy, for ambiguity, for attracting attention.  But this still seems a very strange choice to me.

Just to be clear I normally like the Fool's content a lot.  I find it helpful - and reckon it lives up to the 'wise fool' stance pretty well.  But I'm likely to visit a site called lovemoney.com less frequently - because I just don't want to love money.  

The point of this - not to beat up on The Fool - but that names matter.

Integrators, aircraft & positioning

I'm intrigued by the (perhaps) apparent relationship between aircraft and integrators / outsourcers.  EDS build aircraft in-flight and Accenture have this week been giving balsa aircraft to Oxford students as part of their recruitment drive.  

Accenture were dishing out chocolate too (a bit too sweet, I thought), and not just to students - the barbers across the road were dissing their laxative chocolate (plain wrapper) and the 'Assenture' [sic] whose name they saw on it.

Back to aircraft, back to positioning.  What do you associate with planes, and building them?  Yes, you get the romance of travel (huh!), the appeal of engineering (no, me neither), and the sense of humanity pushing against its earthbound limitations (why not space travel, then).  On the other hand you also get industries in trouble; more than your fair share of carbon emissions; chronic lateness; and spectacularly lost luggage.

Turning to the individual associations.  Accenture distribute balsa wood stamped 'High performance.  Delivered', packaged in a bag on which is printed 'See how far you can go with Accenture'.  Can't speak for you, but I've never thought of balsa as 'high performance', nor as far-flying.  Rather, I think of it as flimsy, cheap, and short-lasting - and aircraft built from it as uncontrollable and short-lived.  I've never been an Accenture client, but this seems at odds with their other marketing.

The (now far from new) EDS video pokes fun at itself, and the aircraft builders look to be having real fun.  But, as commented at the YouTube post, it portrays customers having coffee blowing in their face, as they travel in something that's far from finished, and that looks pretty unpleasant and chaotic.  Again, I've never been an EDS client, but I don't suspect this is the desired impression.

Of course, both companies are having fun, and it may be unfair to be quite so po-faced about fun initiatives.  But, if every interaction with customers, potential recruits, and even the general public is a moment of truth for a business, then they (and we) have to be sure that the value of being associated with fun outweighs other the other associations.  Do these ones?  Maybe.

Being more innovative about innovation?

About 15 years ago I did a survey on innovation.  Like a lot of surveys on innovation it re-uncovered the obvious.  We all think innovation is a good idea, wish we did more of it, and don't know how to institutionalise it without killing it.  Yawn.

But, we also highlighted that in Britain we have a peculiar view of innovation.  We tend to think of it as being:

• technology-based
• revolutionary not evolutionary
• expensive
• large scale.

Conversely, other geographies (and at that time Japan in particular) think of innovation as being probably not technology-based; evolutionary / incremental; potentially low cost; and often small scale.

I wondered last week if this was one of the factors behind a recent ITPRO report that non-IT execs value IT but don't see it as a source of innovation.  Rather than just concluding as the report does that this means the IT function still lacks strategic clout (sigh), it could mean that either non-IT execs, CIOs, or both are looking for innovation in the wrong place - in technology alone.  

I remember, as we did seminars about this research, one VC participant talking about how what he especially looked for was businesses that took an idea proven in one domain, and applied it to a new one.  Sounds innovative to me.  But, note, not a new idea per se in sight - just a new context.

So, how about we all try this for a few months: 

• stop looking for new ideas, technologies, etc
  
• start looking for new contexts in which we can apply ideas already shown to work

Might even align with cost conscious times?

Well, yes, and your point is ...

You know how sometimes you read something and you are clearly less surprised than the writer?  Been one of those days.

Example 1: IDC reports that SMBs are using data protection (ie backup, recovery, etc) technologies only previously seen in enterprise data centers.  So, as an SMB (at the small end) who synchronises data between two computers, backs up to an external drive, and backs up to a cloud, this isn't really that surprising to me.  Been doing it for about three years.  

Is it just that I'm a smug git?  Not just that.  Rather, consumerisation of IT (as the analysts have been telling us) is real.  It means that technology adoption (and sophistication) moves more rapidly from enterprises through SMBs to consumers - and then the flow reverses as technology adoption starts at home.  There, t

hose protecting photographs, movies, their entire music collection, etc, now have tools available to them to back-up in sophisticated, rapid, easy to recover ways.  SMBs - well of course they get there too.

Example two: Computer Weekly reports on an NCC Group study that demonstrated that managers click through on games links they're sent, and play them at work.   If this is news to anybody then I suspect it's more a comment on how out of touch with the realities of online behaviour they are.  

But, I realised, the unknown links I click through most are, of course, news stories - like this Computer Weekly one - from aggregator sites.  Wonder how many managers have clicked through news stories without checking where they're going first?  More than click through to games? I think it's possible. 

Postscript: I clicked through to the NCC Group site to read the story there and got a browser warning about the site wanting to run a dll that claimed to be from Microsoft Corporation.  Sounds dodgy to me.

Time, trust and circles

Reading John Griffith's excellent blog 'my perfect ad' reminded me of some thinking I did a few years ago along similar lines.  What clients were teaching me was that how we delivered service was at least as important as the topics to which delivery related (cf earlier blog re iPhone).  Further, because every interaction is a moment of truth, strengthening or weakening relationship with the client, over time we will build virtuous or vicious circles, depending on client experience.

A virtuous circle might look something like this.  

Key attributes are relevance to the task / issue at hand; timeliness; accessibility and usability.  Did the client get what they needed, when they needed it, how they wanted it, easily?

Similarly, a vicious circle might look a bit like this - 

The wrong thing, the wrong way, at the wrong time.  

Key is that you're always building up or running down trust - so if you consistently go round the virtuous circle, you'll probably be forgive one bad interaction, and your client will pay attention whenever you appear on their horizon.  But if you consistently go round the vicious circle you are likely to be ignored - even when you start offering a virtuous circuit.  Share of mind achieved is not transactional, but based on previous experience.

Where does this apply?  Pretty much all customer and client interactions - plus a lot of on-line interactions.  Think about community members, blog-readers, tweet followers, etc.  

And, of course, sorry if I've just wasted your time.

Trusting enough not to go public

In the past few days, I have been in two gatherings with 'Chatham House rules' - one a gathering of IT leaders from the same industry sector, the other of community leaders.  Both were really valuable - the first to an IT vendor testing propositions, both to the participants themselves.

So what?  Well, first, it is a truism that we live in a 'world without secrets'.  Whether it is CCTV on our streets, or the use of Facebook by one party to declare a relationship or marriage to be over, we can find ourselves living much more public lives than previous generations.  And, whilst that's sometimes about media intrusion, it is also to a very significant degree our own choice, directly or indirectly.  Second, in both of my meetings, it was the decision to go counter to this prevailing public trend that enabled the meetings to be so valuable.

So, IT leaders go private, and can give the feedback they really want to, without finding themselves lampooned by their competitors or lambasted by vendor sales people.  Community leaders can talk freely without fear of media misinterpretation, or of doubts, uncertainties and politically-incorrect opinions being held against them, and so forth.  Sounds good to me - but not the norm.  So why do we so rarely stop to make choices in this sphere?  Is information sometimes less valuable when shared widely, because the wide sharing precludes certain outcomes?  Worth thinking about when blogging, tweeting, status-sharing?

And of course, there's the paradox that to 'go private' requires lots of trust.  More trust than going public, because the latter in no way relies on trust - we know once it's out there, it's out there.  So, perhaps the real question is what is it that makes us willing to trust each other? Enlightened self-interest?  Or something more?  I hope so.  I think so, too.