The COMRADITY Journal

#Fraternite

There is little coverage in the US Sunday news shows of the Paris Unity Rally. So here's a link to the live coverage on the BBC.  In Connecticut's Cablevision it is channel 104.

Here's to the power of the "we" over "I", a theme we have been encouraging in The COMRADITY Journal:
Our appeal to Ariann Huffington that she personally responded to and invited us to publish in the Huffington Post.
An inspiration to realize that a positive purpose will compel the "I's" to contribute to "we".

Good luck to all of us.

Fear of Missing Out

Buying "Innovation" requires a leap of faith.

We all know there's a temptation to make the leap because everyone else does.

But we may not realize just how irresistable the fear of missing out can be.

Or that it is so persistent today that there is an acronym for it: FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).

Or that there is evidence that it can blind us.

FOMO is why "Americans Can't Go Two Hours without Checking Technology Devices" according to Crucial.com: "One in four Americans becomes stressed by going longer than 30 minutes without checking their email or phone due to fear of missing out."

But more importantly, we don't perceive how compelling FOMO is: "The independent survey . . . conducted by GMI Research . . . found a disconnect among Americans when it comes to the perceptions and realities of their technology use . . . While three in four men reported having a balanced or very balanced tech-life ratio, 84 percent of men admitted to having checked a mobile device while driving . . . "

This disconnect isn't benign. It is related to "Inattentional Blindness" -  "an event in which an individual fails to recognize an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight."

In a driving fatality case in Utah, the accused driver, Reggie Shaw, has become an anit-texting law evangelist after being shocked to realize that he didn't remember texting at the time of the accident, until the evidence was presented to him in trial.

Since FOMO is so irresistable and blinds us to reality, some liken its power to an addiction. But others contemplate that it could be even worse. Addiction is usually related to something that gives a positive reward all the time. Matt Richtel, author of 'A Deadly Wandering,' loooks at the science behind why FOMO is "so magnetic." 

You would think that if our devices delivered us lots of irrelevant or non-urgent information, we'd be conditioned to press it less.  Perservsely, we're conditionded to press it more.

He calls it "Intermittent Reinforcement" which comes from the early behavioral research of B.F. Skinner on rats.

Every parent can see the FOMO effect in their kids - evidenced by the piles of tried and discarded toys children "had to have" six months earlier. The size of that market nears $100 Billion in the US.

But FOMO drives marketers' judgements too, encouraging digital media and marketing innovation bubbles that burst. 

FOMO is a powerful barrier for innovations based on market intelligence instead of illusion.

What Makes a Strategy Great?

A couple of nights ago I was driving home and listening to NPR's Melissa Block's @NPRmelissablock interview with Bill Prady @billprady, co-creator of "The Big Bang Theory" (among other rare TV block busters). He was talking about the buzzwords used by comedy writers. The phrase that resonated with me was "Laying Pipe" (get your head out of the gutter, not the 'urban dictionary' definition "/). Here's how the conversation went:

PRADY: Laying pipe is one of the most annoying things to have to do when you write a script. And laying pipe means delivering exposition, creating a way to share with the audience information usually that the characters already know. So you often hear it done very clumsily. You hear somebody say, well, John, you're my brother and an attorney, so you should be familiar with this.

BLOCK: (Laughter).

PRADY: What you look for is a way to do it artistically, and sometimes, you know, you can talk about how it was done in restoration comedy, where you had what was called feather-dusting scene. So a maid came out and said, well, here we are in sunny Spain, and that set the scene. But, you know, in a modern comedy, that's not the kind of thing you want to do.

BLOCK: That's not going to fly.

PRADY: No, you look for an elegant way to lay pie. And then you can sort of modify the lingo. You say, oh, that pipe is nicely hidden.

Here's the entire interview: http://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361820803/in-comedy-writing-fear-the-bonos-and-nakamura

This brought to mind the days at Leo Burnett of training creative strategy writing. Most beginning account executives were wannabe copywriters, so part of their training was to understand that inspiring great creative does not mean writing the copy. It means "laying the pipe."  

As Bill says above, it can be tedious to "lay the pipe." Behind every great creative strategy is a study of the marketplace - the consumer, the competition, the product development. 

But a really great creative strategy is elegant in its simplicity. Like a "well-hidden pipe," it has just enough information to "get" the key who, why, where. But it leaves the "how" to be discovered.

To inspire a great "how", a great strategy ignites ideas the way a match sparks when it hits a strike. For example, 'the Holidays are a busy time when stressed-out customers deserve a treat' paraphrases a strategy that inspired a promotional spot for McDonald's by Jim Ferguson @HicoBoy. It featured a family at a christmas tree lot safely tucked away in the station wagon while the Dad posed with different trees in the pouring rain for their approval. That spot performed so well vs promoting McDonald's Holiday Chicken McNuggets as a party pack it was repeated in subsequent years.

Russ Klein @KleinRuss, the recently named CEO of the American Marketing Association, writes about the importance of "tension" in a good strategy:

The tension must be relevant, and must live at the intersection of your brand and your customer’s life. Finally, the tension must be vividly set up, and then discharged by the story of your respective product or service.

I continued to test and retest this theory incessantly in the days and weeks that followed. I studied tension and what was known among psychologists and social scientists on the subject. I came upon the quote by Sigmund Freud that became a mainstay of every presentation that I’ve ever given since: “Without tension, there is no release. Without release, there is no joke.” All of the best humor is rooted in tension. Think about it: Tension is at the root of all great stories however they are told or whatever medium is used to tell them, including advertising.

He points out in this post that most of the time, it is the creatives who come up with the tension, as is illustrated by the "Be Like Mike" campaign, written by @BerniePitzel. He then goes on to describe the thinking process that led to the strategy for the long term positioning of Gatorade around the tension of sustaining confidence day-to-day for atheletes.

The examples shared here relate to a time when advertising was designed to build awareness - primarily via Network TV at home - far away from the point of purchase.  Do the criteria for a great strategy from this time apply today?

Bill Prady's interview explains that "laying the pipe" is not a new concept, but must be applied with today's  audience in mind.  Today's audience has a shorter attention span than ever before. So the techniques of the best :30 second advertisements, print ads, and billboards should be more relevant than ever before.  But there are new factors to consider. The flood of information overwhelming the strategists, the creators, and the customers. New media which reach customers or prospects at diverse stages in the purchase decision process, including the "Moment of Truth" at retail. The resulting tension of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should." 

To improve results - and there is a lot of room for improvement - we need to put as much time into figuring out how to use new media capabilities strategically as was done "back in the day", when we had less information and fewer choices to make.

Partnering with Customers during a Crisis

Today Time Warner internet service was down. Reportedly, the company's public communications were silent until the problem was resolved.

What if companies empowered customers and service teams to partner in crisis management?

For example, by visualizing service team progress on a map and integrating customer participation in triaging priorities.

How?

1. Flatten the customer service structure. Place customer service personnel with the service people during a crisis or train the service people to communicate directly with customers during a crisis.
2. Develop an interactive map to update service restoration progress, "triage" based on customer input, and communicate where service personnel are going next.
3. Integrate existing technologies:

• Project VRM (Vendor Relationship Management)
• Multipeer Connectivity through Mesh Networks, like FireChat or the local mesh network in Brooklyn's RedHook
• Real time social media image curating 
• Social Media GPS locating
• Crisis Management
• Process Improvement

In general, customers can be very understanding if they witness action being taken on their behalf and are empowered to contribute info to a triaging system.

What Makes a Webinar Great?

Most webinars are intended for a "captive audience" - employees or students - who are required to participate.

But what if your webinar does not have a captive audience. For example, there is growing interest in using the "webinar" as a marketing tool to educate prospects about the features and benefits of today's more sophisticated offerings. What are the standards for success - in terms of creative strategies for content and production values?

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition for Webinar is: "a live online educational presentation during which participating viewers can submit questions and comments."

To develop these standards, we have something to learn from professionals with each expertise a webinar requires - for example, live broadcast producers, educators, interactive game designers, live event promoters and influential bloggers.

Live broadcast producers know a live event is more challenging than a recorded event, both from the writer/director perspective and the technician.

Education pros know how challenging it is to engage learners today.

Game development pros know the challenge of motivating audience participation.

Live event promoters understand it is more challenging to draw an audience to a scheduled live event than to promote an event available on the viewer's schedule "on demand."

Influencers who have built and maintain a subscriber audience know the challenge of converting the curious to a trusting audience.

Subscribe to learn from experts in each of these professions and to learn how we connect the dots to develop a workflow to produce a webinar that delivers a return on investment - or a great marketing webinar