I attended the NESTA workshop run by Mark Earls, Johnny More and James Cherkoff on Social influence. There was lots to consider - complicated by the fact that every group exercise drew on general learnings but there (gasp) was no powerpoint or document - so you really needed to take notes or get something written to ensure you took something away. So I'm keeping my eyes open for blogs.
The last session allowed people to ask questions and to gather around them group to help them find the answers. So here's my output from the discussion. Conventional marketing draws on replication. Very Marshall McCluhan this - in the Guttenberg age - the printing press or the TV becomes the prevailing metaphor.
Markters want to create messages and replicate them - endlessly at low cost with utter fidelity.
Humans aren't like that - they aren't blank ciphers waiting to be filled. So when they interact and pass on messages - imitation not replication of the message is what they do. And the original message gets corrupted. Trouble is marketers who want to achieve social effects are still briefing for replication - they want predictable results.
The chinese whispers exercise - so simple but so eloquent demonstrated the dilemma perfectly - a sequence of 3 gestures was passed down the line. an embrace, knee slap and bum slap translated into a double kiss and bum slap by the end of the line. Another exercise: echochamber where a circle of us were each given someone to imitate on the other side of the circle -showed quickly how even slight trivial movements are magnified (or ignored) and bored people made up new moves to see how far their innovation could carry. Which makes humans very unreliable replicators but useful imitators. You need to change your goals and metrics though. In my little group we debtated the differences. This is what emerged - the difference between replication and imitation
Replication Imitation
Programmatic Organic
Underlying structure: Rationalisation Emotion
Communication model Trumpet blast Jungle drums
Medium of communication Message in a bottle Stir up the waves and follow currents
context Context free Context dependent
How to get traction Transmit the answer Ask a good question - questions travel
Involvement of Medium Medium carries Medium translates and embroiders
Cathy Cawley introduced me to a new triangle - accuracy, low cost and coverage - you can't have all three. a lot to think about. The challenge is to take the client with us - if we have conceded accuracy the message in a bottle then does the client really want to pay to make waves with no explicit messaging benefit at the end of the process.?
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