furtherandfaster

Quality time

Having been away for a few days - I did my best to spend some time with each of the children. The 10 year old proved the hardest nut to crack. When I offered to 'hang around' with her she retorted What sort of an adult  wants to hang around with a ten year old kid? The 10 year old's parent I offered? She wasn't having any of it.

So since I clearly wasn't leaving she opted to write me a message in number code - which was less than complimentary.  Nothing daunted I wrote her a post it note in number code  and stuck it on the ladder of her bunk bed.  I later found it annotated and abandoned. The observant among you will spot that the post it note had been turned into a paper plane.  She did make sure however to tell me how cheesy and obvious my message was.
So it couldn't have been all bad...

APG Mark Boyd of BBH on Content

I wasn't supposed to be here - I was double booked at an AGM but I couldn't resist - content is the latest frontier of account planning and I wanted to hear despatches from the front. Mark Boyd is the head of creative content at BBH. He had a number of theories about how planning worked with content - in retrospect it would have been useful if some planners from BBH had showed up to back him up. The 3-4 models seemed to me at any rate to recognise planning as a creative role in its own right which worked iteratively with creative which is great but hardly a massive breakthrough and the different models seemed to be variations on this theme. However what made this so interesting was the casestudies - the story for example behind the Audi TV channel.  It was this which I thought was largely left unanswered - making new content and constructing new channels for it is very hard work and often the entrenched forces opposed to new ways of working are immensely strong. Agencies are by nature conservative beasts and content doesn't in itself offer lucrative rewards at the outset. For example with the Audi channel they bought 500 hours of Australian soaps for £500 and launched it as an Aussie soap channel before a reverse takeover allowed Audio to take it over.  Why would an agency bother to work so hard at this if the client is happy for them to go on running TV ads? Mark never really gave a satisfactory answer to this one.  There was a solid turnout perhaps 150-180 people - with a solid turnout from the digital planning fraternity - as I would have expected.  At some point I will try to write my notes up and publish them.

IDM Academy

I hurried back to do  a half hour presentation about how to build Strong Propositions in Earls Court this afternoon at the Direct Marketing Fair - I think Internet world was also there - I didn't really have time to look around afterwards. Exhibitions exhaust me - they are immensely tiring places for people to meet and to work out who they want to do business with. I did my free offer of the audience questionnaire which got me a plentiful supply of business cards. But no one had seen the video podcast that I went all the way to Richmond to film for the conference organisers back in March so I think I'll put that to one side for next year. One of the main points I make in the presentation is about people being different. Exhibitions do a dreadful job of making otherwise individual companies look very very samey.

Your own personal Jesus

This week has been particularly interesting because the days have been packed but I have been running the first unit of a distance learning course with students who are in Madrid - And using a bulletin board and a place for uploading documents I had to get them thinking through the way in which research is applied before getting deep into the world of online research. Because I was deep in Sussex away from my usual broadband connection and away from a mobile phone signal - I found myself at 6am Tuesday morning trying to post the first day's questions and found the borrowed computer just didn't work. Very stressful.  But at least this meant I got a service call from the Business School's IT support guy who introduced himself as Jesus - hence my posting a recording of Johnny Cash singing this classic!  By Tuesday night I was back homeon the system with everything working normally so we seem to have got past the gremlins. Thanks Jesus -  Enjoy!

Arnie and introspection

I drove over to see my brother this evening - partly to save time driving to the south coast for a workshop on Monday but partly because we are supposed to be getting a set together for a festival at the end of June so we really need some practice time. I didn't get there till 9pm and Arnie was on the TV in 6th day - so we watched it instead - a film so bad it was good - I had not realised how carefully most directors ensure that Arnie does stuff and doesn't introspect - in this film he has to think out lout which more than overwhelmed his acting ability. To hilarious effect. Pulling faces doesn't indicate that something is going on inside or that you are experiencing inner tension. And Arnie was pulling faces not acting. We really should have played some music instead!

One Giant Leap - episode 2 ch 4 wednesday around midnight

  Its back and I missed the first episode - the Channel 4 website is a nightmare - I don't seem to be able to download the programme on 4OD but it will be back next Wednesday just after midnight- you could always wait for the full DVD to come out but short of that here's the website for you to browse around for clips.

Really great stuff - this is all too rare material on UK screens: http://www.whataboutme.tv/

And here's the one giant leap website: http://www.1giantleap.tv

photoshop silliness

I'm in process of trying to shift a Wayfarer dinghy so I can put a nifty Laser in its place. I was prepping an image on ebay this morning and decided to fool around by cleaning up the hull on photoshop - though it would have been a better gesture to have headed down to the sailing club and cleaned up the boat for real. So after a few minutes I felt ashamed of myself so amused myself by painting my image onto the sail.

If you really want to buy a Wayfarer dinghy - good nick and built like a tank - easy sail then of course you are welcome to call me about it - mebbe I will get around to getting the algae off the side!

Exciting new changes ? or Sorry we're closed.

Fri 25/04/2008 12:44 25042008013

Not even Nike can get away with this one. I think better to say Sorry We're Closed.  The triumph of marketingese over plain English: its not safe to sell to you so run along to the website and buy some trainers. Euww!!

Now THAT's what I call an agency website

I had lunch today with the planning director of DMB: one of Austria's biggest agencies. Still an independent. Their website is um different. Click around reception to get various gruesome FX.  My favourite is the dominatrix client trying to lash the agency founder into make the logo bigger. Whatever happened to personalities in the adland eh? I love this business!!

quick and dirty research with lofi tools - the mobile

I put a film together this week. Based on a visit to a town on the Bulgarian border. We were doing some observation training - some store checks and some street interviews. What made the exercise interesting was that all of the material came from my mobile phone. I had a DVCam with me and an audio recorder but chose to use the mobile. The results didn't have high production values but were perfectly usable and editable.

I needed to make a short intro film of myself for a course I have to run. Turn to the DV cam ? Nope - just use a snap away digital camera - 2 minutes footage - memory stick into the computer and ftp it up to the relevant website. Digital media is getting ridiculously easy to use. The only reason you're not already using it is because you haven't worked out how to do it yet. I've got hifi gear but increasingly I'm thinking lofi - because I always have lofi gear with me.  So I'm putting a course together on the topic. If you're interested - mail me and tell me.

Brands and what lies behind them...

I was running a branding workshop today for a research agency - service brands are always a very different kettle of fish because you need to get to grips with the culture -otherwise you are stuck with generic best of breed service yada yada yada. To get the ball rolling I showed these  pictures of Carol Smillie the TV presenter as permitted by her publicity agent. And then one of her as captured by Hello magazine - Carol on the beach without the benefit of the airbrush. Then Carol back in the 1980s trying to make it as a glamour model.  So many attempts at brand onions start with the brand image which is like pointing a mirror at a mirror. A service brand has to be true to what it actually is before you can get to work with the airbrush and start carving off lovehandles. Service brands are no different.

We used this as an exercise to think about what the agency was capable of when it started and what it is capable of now.   As a footnote I had to work SO hard trying to find the alternative images of Carol. Clearly her agents take the trouble to sweep the web and remove material like this. Because its bad for her image <sigh>

so busy communicating I am not sure who is following who

Interoperability is a blessing - if only hardware manufacturers tried harder to use the same plugs, designs and so on. It can be confusing but since I have more than 1 website and a few blogs plus facebook plus IM, anyone who can help me bring them together is doing me a favour (I think). So this morning I found a way to blog from within Facebook and (deep breath) am experimenting with twitter with feeds to my blog and facebook page. It feels confusing but I hope it becomes clearer and I will know who I am and what channel I am using, and can access several of my publishing channels from the mobile. I'll keep you posted.

You got the power (not!) client disclosure

Yesterday I penned a guest editorial for the International Journal of Market Research asking some hard questions about respondent anonymity - it should be published in the next couple of months. In the course of which I discovered something which I found rather disturbing.  The new Market Research Society code which all researchers are supposed to abide by makes clear provisions for the anonymity of respondents to be protected. What I had not noticed is that there is no requirement for respondents to be told the identity of the client who after all is paying for the whole exercise, and who will we hope profit from it. I have always told respondents the name of the client - if it isn't already blindingly obvious- there is usually a pleasing shift of perceptions when moving from unbranded to branded which is very useful for the researcher.  But it is a courtesy not a requirement.

There is a curious anomaly that if the client is observing the group and their presence is likely to be prejudicial to a respondent then the respondent should be informed. And respondents have the option of withdrawing at any point.   But this puts the onus on the client observer to inform the researcher that they know the respondent - giving the respondent the opportunity to leave.

This balance of power is archaic, woefully out of step with the reality of empowered vigilante customers who take a poor view of companies which do their best to avoid public scrutiny. Surely it is time for market research to clean up its act and to make it mandatory for the paymasters to reveal to research participants who they are whether they like it or not.

A youtube film I couldn't resist...

I just like the hyper-bolics of it and how evidently irritated the creator is by advertising overclaims

Distance learning - distance communication

I have spent part of today getting familiar with a distance learning site. I have to teach a course in a week's time to a class in Madrid and this involves using a blend of bulletin boards, chatrooms and email. It is a challenge getting used to the idea, and the interface and then figuring out how to optimise it when I have got the hang of it. But suddenly I have realised that I have other resources at my disposal - I don't need to be dependent on text - even a phone or a digital camera can be used to make quick films which can be uploaded very easily. So I'm trying to do more of that.

White gold

I am indebted to Teo from Bucharest for drawing this to my attention - White Gold the latest content from the You got milk campaign. What is it exactly? Is it an ad? It reminds me of nothing so much as a narrow necked vase which catches few people but pulls them deeper and deeper. When most ad campaigns are trying to be flat plates which give up traction in exchange for coverage. If like me you think the future is about content then think deep before you think wide. .

One (More) Giant Leap

The boys are back in town - I found the link by accident because Jhelisa - whose set I saw the previous night is on the new album. There's a new TV series as well as the DVD starting April 23rd on Channel 4 for 7 weeks. The idea behind One Giant Leap is a very simple one. Two guys from the band Faithless take a DV cam, some microphones, some headsets and a laptop with some guide tracks and travel round the world asking musicians to jam along. While you're travelling film what you see and ask people about big talk topics. The first outing was wonderful. I didn't think they would have the energy to do it again. Well they have.

I leave you with a personal favourite from the first album Michael Stipe and Asha Bhosle (Bollywood diva) adding their vocals to the same track in very different circumstances.

Humanity? you can lump it

Heard this on the radio and.. well it made me pause for thought. Tom Stoppard's Hapgood has been put on again - Stoppard loves to play with philosophy and physics. This was a gem that got quoted. Most of the ato is empty space. So if you put all the electrons, neutrons, and protons of the 6 billion human being next to each other, how much space would it occupy. I didn't believe it either.  Tom Stoppard says memorably "Make a fist, and if your fist is as big as the nucleus of an atom, then the atom is as big as St Paul's, and if it happens to be a hydrogen atom, then it has a single electron flitting about like a moth in an empty cathedral, now by the dome, now by the altar." We are a race of ghosts.

Interesting because the portrayal of the human soul is often head or heart sized. When our entire embodiment is ghostly. I enjoyed the way in which souls were portrayed in the recent Pullman film The Golden Compass as daemons in the form of shape shifting animals external to their owners who accompanied them. Personally I think materialists have a lot to answer for. There is so much more in heaven and earth than we imagine.

How spooky - back in Christchurch college again.. perhaps we should apply degrees of separation to metaphors also.

Debrief with a difference

I have to blog this - cos this is NEVER going to happen again. Debrief 3 bishops (and an archdeacon) of the Church of England in Christchurch College Oxford. If God had meant us to drive cars he would never have created Oxford. Parking was a nightmare after a 2.5 hour journey there was nowhere to park more than 2 hours at the outside. Once I got in with laptop and projector I got to the second problem - panelled wood - so nowhere to project - so we had to move to another room and take pictures off the walls in order to do the presentation. At which point the laptop cable started to misbehave turning the screen to a lurid yellow glow. And the screen didn't reformat properly throwing half the text off - but there was no time to fix it. The project involved 4 separate pieces of research method - the summary ran to 85 slides and I was asked to summarise these in half an hour to allow time for questions, discussion and decision making.  The miracle was that I managed to keep the talky bit to 30 minutes (ex-agency boys/tricks of the trade eh?)  Debriefs are funny things - if you start from the decision that needs to be taken - actually a lot less needs delivering. You need the credentials of the researchers, you need to understand a bit about the method - but the rest is really options and decision support. Which is a lot less than 85 slides. It was a lot better meeting for the debrief part being half an hour and by letting the decision making breathe actually it felt like more time passed than really had. We got feedback from all of the 8 people in the meeting.

The last thing to say was that the screen played a supporting role - it endorsed (in yellow) what I was saying rather than me glossing findings on the screen. Hope I have the fear/prudence/discipline to be that ruthless again. Bet I don't.

My birthday treat - Mavis and Jhelisa

Mavis Staples is a legend - she has been on the road for 58 of her 68 years - she sang in front of Martin Luther King - and she was at the Barbican on Tuesday where Karen took me for a birthday treat.  Here's a taste of Mavis singing with Joss Stone - my personal favourite is her singing happy day with Aretha Franklin which is a near death experience as far as I am concerned (in a good way).

This evening was rather different to what was billed. Firstly Jhelisa came on and sang a storming set. Her band included the virtuosa piano player Robert Mitchell Their set was so long and so accomplished that I wondered how Mavis could have matched it. It turned out that Mavis was suffering from a throat infection so the evening turned into a combo of her band and the audience nursing her song by song which certainly made for a different kind of vibe.  A different kind of 'live'. One of her backing singers had to be ready at a moment's notice to leap in and take over the lead vocals. Rick Holmstrom led the band and did a jam with the band in a bid to give her a break - but she came on for the encore and stayed another 20 minutes. I got the distinct impression that her band was an emotional wreck by the time they finished. The final beautiful touch was another of the backing singers Chavonne Morris letting rip for a couple of minutes after Mavis had been helped off stage for the last time. A 23 year old can belt at a level that the best 68 year old can't and it was great to see a group of musicians dip their colours to make room for a great artist albeit in difficulties but to be reminded that the level of musicianship present was awesome even if it was restrained. I leave you with some Robert Mitchell on youtube - trio jazz  you can dance to.

Paul Valler and Identity theft

I've been listening to a CD of Paul Valler in the car while I was driving this morning to my next lot of church research. He is former FD of Hewlett Packard in the UK. and has a new book out called Get a life which you can buy here and the website will get a percentage! He has a really interesting idea about Identify Theft and the way in which people's identities are stolen by their companies. Even to the extent when your company starts to provide concierge services to make you more productive and have taken your role identity outside of work as well! His very simple point is that no one should take away your identity unless you let them. And you don't have to.

Dirty dancing and morning prayer

Back to research this morning. And the vicar's sermon was all about his sabbatical. Vicars are allowed to go walkabout every 7 years or so.  This one had managed to do a month in New Zealand - the slideshow was last week's sermon. And this week we got the next instalment - he had been studying musical theatre which means he went to watch a lot of shows and got to interview some of the people behind them. I'm not sure I really made the connection between your average morning worship and a west end show. But in principle the idea that you send your staff to watch dirty dancing, high school musical, blood brothers, Billy Elliot et al as well as I'm sorry I haven't a clue - is probably going to have interesting and unforeseen repercussions when you get them back on the shop floor. Full marks to the Church of England for letting him do it.

Crashing a wedding anniversary - the Thorny Wedlocks

I dropped in on Andy and Eugenie Thornton with almost advanced warning - and discovered them celebrating their first wedding anniversary in a pretty unique way. The song on myspace is a special anniversary production They put the song togethe r for their wedding in Oz last year.Eugenie may be more familiar to you as one of the founders of we are what we do - which produced the best seller Change the world for a fiver.  A memorable evening - Now I just have to get the song out of my head!

Induction and the power of a history lesson

I've just got a new responsibility on the board of trustees for a particular organisation - I shan't name drop - its a bad habit of mine anyway I must learn to drop. And as part of my induction I have been given a history to read - the organisation is 200 years old and I have discovered I am in rather funky company - other board members have included William Wilberforce and the Earl of Shaftsbury (he namedropped). It gets better and better even if the details year by year are a little tedious. But it struck me how useful history is as a way of telling us what to do and not to do - or at least what the rules are. There are principles here from 1818 - which won't be challenged not now or in the future. One of the problems with brands is the way the advertisng centric treatment of them puts them in a kind of eternal present. Actually most products and companies have a history - and if someone bothered to write it down there would be more than enough material to establish the core values and they quite often wouldn't be based on category values as most brand values inevitably are.

Kickstarting sales with a giveaway

More on publishing and the inimitable Russell Davies is up to his tricks again. Giving away books to get more blog mentions to get more eyeballs to get more sales to hike his sales in the Amazon league tables. Is this a casual experiment -or a cunning trick to boost sales, or a wholly different way to market books. Probably a bit of all three if I know him.

That was the week that was..

when I went to Dublin to be a fly on the wall at the Diageo planning leadership team event at the Guinness storehouse in London. This was a unique opportunity to find out how a client company planning department operates. It was soo interesting. I've now written this up - it will be going on a website very soon. Watch the blog because I'll tell you when it is ready.

thinking about insight

I've been working on a presentation about insight which has allowed me to develop my thinking that Insight is the difference between the way that a client looks at the market and the way a customer thinks of the market. What I haven't enough physics to work out is whether the difference between the two is a metaphor about stereoscopy or one about diffraction - the way light is diffracted when it moves into another medium. Any suggestions from roving physicists out there?

Wii gets Iplayer

The Iplayer has been one of the success stories of 2008. If you can't be bothered to programme a VCR then just head over to the BBC website and you can download programmes within 7 days and you then have up to 28 days to watch them - a neat trick to stop you tape loads of programme and never getting around to watching them. We download Dr Who pretty regularly in this household and I have used it to watch things I never would have bothered to watch in the programming stream - Goldfrapp and a fantastic narrowcast on the history of the harp.

Iplayer is a killer app for the BBC and could prove to be the same for the Wii. Xbox and Playstation seem firmly stuck in gaming territory - profitable but not mass market.  Iplayer offers Wii a ticket to the big time. No ads either. Damm

Jewellery and precious metals

I've started a project on jewellery - so spent some of the afternoon wandering the west end stores sniffing the wind. I was intrigued to find what looked like a shift towards semi precious stones. But suspicious about whether this was to do with anticipating or driving consumer taste - or that with the cost of precious metals rocketing in the last 12 months - the margins are in shiny stones not in shiny metal. hmm. Did you know that the world's supply of silver currently stands at 11 years. Yup no more mined silver after 2020. Buy now to avoid disappointment.

Monsters and Fair trade

I got a bit of a shock today. A neat trick of Fair Trade products is to incorporate storytelling into their packaging so the focus is on the producers rather than the product. All well and good but what if one of their fair trade producers looks like.. well Joe Stalin - surely some photoshop is required to make them look less like the biggest mass murderer of the 20th century?

April Snow

This Sunday and the next I have to conduct research in two churches trying to catch people after the services who don't read a particular church newspaper - seat of the pants stuff. The churches are more than 50 miles away from me. This morning it was complicated by a fall of snow - which hit congregational numbers -and made driving hazardous - the M25 was busy for a Sunday morning - the overhead signs told us to stay at 40mph but no one was paying any attention. Somehow I got to the town where the church was. But even though by then I was running late I had to stop to take some photos of the fruit trees in blossom covered with a fresh fall of April snow.

The research itself didn't go too badly - a  positive tradeoff is that I have to go to 2 services per church to forage for respondents and it is refreshing to see how different churches can be from one another and how experimental churches are becoming.  The first service in particular was designed for young families - early in the day since most children wake up far too early! After a short service the service then moved to 'a messy time' where parents made craft objects with their children at low tables while breakfast was laid out at the side for anyone to help themselves.  Messy church is one of the experimental formats which have emerged from a movement called Fresh Expressions which is re-inventing how conventional worship is defined in the Church of England. A downside was that this is the church Jon Howard goes to but he wasn't there today.But here's a reference to his site and blog anyway!

If you hurry up....

you can catch my blog of Online Research 2008 the 2 day conference run by WARC

And you can catch my blog of the How to Workshop run by the Word of Mouth Association UK

I did a little bit of audio with both - interviews with some of the delegates for the Online Research conference, but a little WOM test for the speakers at the How to workshop - I asked them to tell me who had spoken before and after them and what they had talked about. You'll find this material rolled in with the blogs.

If you're a subscriber to WARC.com you can always check them out but if you're not then they are dropped behind the corporate ice after a month - and I blogged both during the month of March. So the clock is ticking.