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AKA more neuro-nonsense...
Marty points out a silly piece here - copying being responsible for only the bad stuff like panic in financial markets
But not real stuff like fashion, culture, what we call our kids, how we cut our hair, adoption of technology, what charities we give to etc....most of human life, in other words
DOH!
Guess it's what happens when brain-folk start to think about human behaviour.....and journos get involved!
Pic c/o Frick Museum and that nice Signor Veronese
Neil's got a nice series of posts around an online communities speech he's giving here and here
Form and content reflecting each other perfectly: what you need to do and how
Recent events should have dramatically challenged our ideas about how change occurs: we'd like to imagine that slow and steady is the typical pattern, but reality again and again confounds this.
One year ago, few in the apparel business saw the end of the Crocs shoes phenomenon; few the return of hostilities between Russia and the West; few the recent chaos on the markets.
Part of this lack of foresight is our cognitive bias towards how things are - we don't want to see change; another that we find it extremely hard to embrace the complexity that underpins things - complexity that results largely from interacting and copying agents, rather than a machine - and the unpredictability that comes with that complexity.
Every dog has its day; every empire will eventually fall. Are we seeing - as this piece suggests - the end of American domination of business and politics? Or, if not, when the change does come (as it must) how do you think it will come? What will it feel like and how will we know?
Tomorrow sees the start of Jamie Oliver's latest attempt to change the nation's eating habits: the Ministry of Food.
Does he look to persuade us with a beautifully crafted proposition or a lovingly shot 60 sec TV? No.
It's like a template for good HERD marketing:
1. focus on what you can do not what you can say
2. ...on what you can give folk out there to do...
3. ...that they can do with each other
4. ...oh, and make it highly visible and oh, yes fun
I.e. get the nation to teach itself to cook, friend by friend
Here's a vid(?) that's already appeared (not sure if it's been uploaded by C4 or Jamie)
Yay!
More news from Secret Squirrel land: the UK's secret service are recruiting on Facebook
Copy reads:
"A career in world events? Help influence world events, protect the UK.
Operational officer roles collecting and analysing global intelligence."
But don't tell anyone I told you or it wouldn't be secret no more
Another thought prompted by my weekend College reunion
Of course, each of us uses anniversaries or regular reunions to get some sense of how we're doing - "oh, I can't believe I was with that girl, I'm much happier now" is a common internal narrative.
But what's really interesting is how readily and how thoroughly folk check themselves vs. other people:
Who still looks the same? Who's aged badly? Who's got a portrait in the attic? Who's still a c***?
Who's doing better or worse professionally compared to me? Or has a prettier wife/husband/labrador?
And even:
Compared to how we stood back then, is our relative position the same or better/worse than it was all those years ago...? etc etc
I make that at least 3 dimensions of comparison
And no, it's not just me thinking this stuff....Social proof is really important to our species - much more so than you or I would normally allow. It's how we tell all sorts of things about ourselves and the world and the relationship between the two. It's only human
Great line from Nancy Pelosi this morning: the party is over
In other words, the bailout of the failing financial sector is not going to leave Wall Street and its inhabitants free to carry on as things were ("so sorry things got out of hand..."). Once we clear up the mess, it's not just going to be business as usual - we're going to have to rethink some big stuff about business and in particular the influence the financial sector exerts. THe party's over now
The Democrats, at least, seem to be on the edge of embracing the stuff that so many of us have been talking and writing about for a long time - calling for a fundamentally different approach to business. One based more on people than numbers, on acknowledging that business exists in and is answerable to the society in which it operates (at least as much as it is too its shareholders). All the same stuff that we talk about in social media land.
Interestingly, this is very much what the British PM was edging towards (why so cautious?) last week at the Labour Party conference but will probably stop short of really going for. And, while I could be proved wrong, I'm not sure that the Conservatives have it in them to abandon their recent - Thatcherite - love of deregulation for its own sake and wealth-creation as a separate thing from the rest of life.
So where to start? You may remember that Henry Mintzberg piece we chatted about with Hugh and the Rabbi earlier this year Download Mintzberg-beyondselfishness . At the heart of this lies a critique of the world view that has created the current financial crisis. Beyond Selfishness, indeed.
Who's up for it?
UPDATE: Memo from Wall Street to DC
(Hat tip Aneel, via Twitter)
UPDATE Even Rory's on the case!
Reunions are odd things. School, College, workplace and family ones all offer similar stuff: not just the chance for catching up with folk you haven't seen for ages (sometimes it turns out that there's a good reason for estrangement) but also time for some sneaky "who's been ageing with least grace" bitchiness (don't deny it, you do that too, I'm sure). Weddings, funerals, bahmitzvahs, christenings, even conferences - all these deliver our super social ape with a great chance to show off their amazing skills.
25 years ago this summer, I "went down" (i.e. left) Oxford University (hardly seems that long, does it?). That landmark led me to attend last night's reunion or "gaudy" in my old college. And I'm glad I did (though my head might challenge that this morning, if could only stop pounding...)
Lots of lovely people that I hadn't expected to see there - you know who you are - and lots of fun and laughter had but amid all the reminiscing and gossip stuff that super social apes do on such occasions we demonstrated the we-(or distributed) memory function.
N couldn't remember the surname of an old boyfriend. Nor could I. But we asked around and within half an hour, we had the name and between us pieced together the story of where he is and so on.
A good social animal outsources cognitive functions like this from individual to group to release the burden and be able to devote more of it to...oh, yes, other people
It doesn't take the skills of a latterday Poirot to work out what is going on behind the the decision of the governors of the first (faith-based) school to come out against the plans to vaccinate teenage girls against the virus involved in causing cervical cancer.
Perm as many as you want from scaremongering, moralising and blatant medical ignorance on the part of the Catholic authorities...Monsignor John Allen, governor and parish priest, is quoted by Guardian as saying "This is not a moral judgment on the vaccination. It's a question of where this vaccination should be given and how it should be given." Yeah, right. Even the Catholic Education Service disagree.
But what's striking is the lack of real understanding about how vaccination works to curb diseases in a population (as a process generally rather than in terms of particular vaccines). Not just in the school but also in the local health authority.
Of course, the initial benefit to the individual of any vaccination is protection for that individual from the virus; the longer term benefit is to the rest of us - reducing the prevalence of the disease in the population so that it can be controlled. The whole MMR ballyhoo has ended up giving once almost unknown but dangerous and damaging diseases a real foothold again.
If you refuse to permit the vaccination, not only are you putting those individuals at risk but the rest of the population also.
Great trip to see Hamlet at the RSC last night. Every bit as good as the press think.
Interesting talk to us supporters by the RSC's Artistic Director, Michael Boyd before curtain up:
"If theatre is about anything, it's about community: about people gathering together to tell and listen to stories"
Well, that's one really good reason - and it explains a lot of the abiding appeal of communities of purpose... (try thinking about these as excuses for social interaction & conversations rather than being particularly dependent on the purpose thing...)
But remember, just like the gang who assembled last night in Stratford, most of these gangs dissolve and reform daily...
If you're around the Czech Republic (or nearby in Central Europe, maybe), you should definitely join me at London in Prague - a cool event the Jaroslav has organised at Prague Castle on October 15th.
Blake (Facebook), Andrew (Face), Ivan (Naked), Richard (Sony) and Moi (HERD). Oh, and Matt MC-ing also.
What a smorgasbord! BUT we're not just talking - we'll try and solve a real problem in the afternoon, together
Go on...
Thanks to sponsors Ogilvy, too!
The delightful David S of Technorati has asked a number of folk who know about these things (and me) what the future of the b-sphere is.
Seems we all agree: "mainstreaming" is the answer
More over the next few days.
Meanwhile, for you British children of the 60s, here's the Ask-master himself in action
"Pish", indeed
Been researching something today around national identities and tripped over some nice stuff about national anthems: the song we get to sing together when we get together to remind us all that we are a group...
Seems they started gaining in popularity in Europe in the 19th C with the rise of the Nation State.
Typically, they invoke curses on enemies and glory and all things wonderful for our "team". As the little known (or sung) 2nd and 3rd versions of the UK one does so cutely (damn, your knavish tricks...):
"O Lord our God, arise,
Scatter our enemies,
And make them fall;
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks;
On thee our hopes we fix:
God save us all.
Thy choicest gifts in store
On her be pleased to pour,
Long may she reign.
May she defend our laws,
And ever give us cause
To sing with heart and voice,
God save The Queen."
The content and style varies (but not that much from hymn or march stylee).
Mostly they're just songs for us to sing together - something to do together anyone, with branded merchandise/flags?.
And of course they spread by copying both within a group or a nation and beyond -
the idea and style of the national anthem seems to be something we Brits seem to have taught the world.
Just like football or rugby songs. Or anything you and your mates choose to sing along to.
Am off to a College gaudy on Saturday - wonder if we'll end up singing the college song?
As JR put it, "We Mean It, Man..."
Actually no, it is the combo of guns and humans. And not a lot to do with your taste in music
Another terrible news story from Finland this morning of a School Massacre
Less than a year since the last one.
So how do you think this stuff spreads?
a. the human factor - copying again - like suicide. And so much else.
b. guns - much harder without the weapons being readily available
UPDATE: c/o BBC a timeline of recent such events to help you follow the trail
Q: In a world where it's so easy to see what other folks are doing, what would you do to minimise the chance of this happening again?
.
The UK Met Office - hardly a radical bunch of treehuggers - today published an interesting rebuttal to former Chancellor Nigel Lawson who thinks that climate change has stopped
I know it's difficult to tell the tune precisely with all the noise in the date but Ol' Nige thinks "the global warming [thang is] nonsense". And if you disagree, you are either lying or ill-informed
That's clear then.
With all the wailing and gnashing of teeth down Wall Street way, I found this piece rather amusing.
Sure, it over-interprets the implications of the data derived from a tiny sample - being more specific than the data reallly permits
It also has some really silly things to say about hormones and the market:
"Market traders, like some other
occupations (such as air traffic controllers), work under
extreme
pressure and the consequences of the rapid decisions they have to make
can have
profound consequences for them, and for the market as a whole"
What a difference a few months makes. eh?
Sitting here on the roof of Ceaucescu's mega palace (suitably, the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon, I'm told), my thoughts wonder to what happens after the current economic crisis: what will become of those banking execs? Some of course will retire to the Cayman's or wherever, others may work again. Most however will do something else - sooner or later.
Apparently, there's been an upsurge in applications for teacher training. If you were sitting at Teacher Recruitment Campaign HQ, you'd probably be patting yourself on the back right now (even though the change in folk's behaviour is bugger all to do with the TR campaign team
The fact of the upsurge is interesting in itself and probably denotes something we all sense around ourselves - a shared mood/desire for safe choices etc
But what I find even more interesting is that it reminds me that almost everything we do is more than a binary choice - a yes/no, tick/cross. Even if it's just
A. Continue to exploit innocent peeps' financial naivity and robbing them blind
B. Do nothing
C. Give it all up, join the church and save souls etc
It's more than "do my thing or nothing".
When we think about how things spread, this is worth bearing in mind. We get too hung up on "our thing", "our product" etc and spreading "our stuff" through the population, we sometimes forget that our stuff travels together with other stuff (that other stuff is often more important than ours)
Nice contrarian piece by John Quelch here.
Rather than looking to exploit newly available niches down the tail, he suggests you focus on blockbusters - the megahit.
While it's an interesting response to the same observed feature of the world that technology is allowing us to see (and serve) - the long tail distribution - it occurs to me that Quelch's advice is riskier than it seems. Of course, most of us would like to have the blockbuster (or think we would...see below)
So what makes it risky? Long tail distributions exhibit a pattern which suggests that random copying underpins things.
This means popularity - the blockbuster phenomenon itself - is inherently unpredictable and volatile.
And as Duncan Watts has shown, things come and go - rewinding the tape produces a different winner in the same circumstances
So however good your "thing" is, you need to place a lot bets to get your winner (much Hollywood used to do...)
Also - and I'm seeing more and more examples of this - I'm not sure that everyone wants to build the really BIG success: it's hard to handle extraordinary success and takes you away from doing what you really love
Some odd conversations recently following my championing here of the Bad Science book.
Here's a thought that keeps coming up:
science matters more to all of us than it does to any one of us
The kind of science that Ben champions is a way of thinking (not just a particular bit of 'fact', a technology or nice idea that lots of people accept)
The fact that we share a way of thinking makes it possible for us all to talk together usefully in such a way that the conversation we have can be continually refined and improved (our fact base is enriched over time)
Without it our conversations and our collaborations could easily go backwards, and become spurious
and/or you or I get duped.
It does matter that we can both adduce evidence properly from trying to disprove hypotheses (rather than just retelling anecdotes or making spurious interpretations of from data)
It does matter that we are able distinguish science from pseudo-science (neuromarketers, beware!)
Of course, the other mechanisms (like copying) are going to continue to be important in how scientific ideas spread but the scientific process keeps us and our conversation honest
Regular readers won't be surprised if I start to suggest that politics - like most other aspects of human life - provide good material for the Herd thinker.
Mike Tyldesley points (in a comment on a recent post here) to this great piece by David Brooks on the Social Ape aspect of the current presidential campaign over the water . Here as there, the generals on the Centre Right are realising that their recent obsession with individualism is ultimately misguided: the "ties that bind" and "social capital" are two political jargon terms that underline this. And as Brooks points out, the We-politics of the Right go back to their patron saints. Certainly, the Bush-Cheney 04 team had this bit right. Rearrange the following words to form the basis of political debate/phone-in language: "Ordinary", "decent" "hardworking" "taxpayers" "people (like me)" "rank and file" etc - it's about US, not I.
Over there again, Paul Krugman expresses some surprise that testable facts about a supposed external reality play such a small role in contemporary American politics (things were ever thus...).And Bob Garfield bemoans the willful disconnect in GOP attack ads between claim and oh, er...facts
Yet as both Presidential candidates' advisors know, Politics is a We-think game and not an I-think one: individual voting behaviour (like so many other behaviours) is not independently driven but shaped by that of others; much of what passes for our political debates are 'tribal' turf wars (see the story around the republican VP candidate) rather than debates on "issues"; most political communication is designed to 'activate the base' and whatever Uncle Tony (and our better selves) would have us believe, it's the people stuff that we care about, not the policies.Yes, that means, The Palin Thing is for real. And as Obama himself pointed out, the election is not really about him and what he stands for but about "us" (or them, depending on the colour of your passport) and what "we" think about ourselves.
Because we are a social ape - first, foremost and finally.
If there was tv quiz show in which different species had to choose a specialist subject, homo sapiens would be answering questions on...other people
It's a HERD thing
Pic from Orchard Lake
A number of times over the last decade, I've found myself publicly questioning the value of the huge investment marketers and other folk make in Ask/Answer market research (that's surveys and focus groups) - for example on the grounds of its spurious, positivist transparency (it provides very plausible accounts of why folk do stuff while the real mechanisms remain necessarily hidden to those witnesses given how our minds are constructed).
I've weighed in against scientism and the false sense of precision that many vendors promise; I've warned against the cognitive biases in research users' minds that skew the value of whatever data is served up to them; I've argued against using research to tell you what to do (rather than helping you refine your ideas).
It didn't make me very popular - particular in research circles. At MRS a couple of years ago, they ran a wisdom of crowds poll with Brainjuicer on what delegates thought was going to be the most influential paper and I came just about last. Comments included, "wrong, wrong, wrong!". Things got so bad at one point that I even found myself described by Research Magazine as Public Enemy Number One
...which I've always thought a bit harsh: I'm in no way a "touchie-feelie", "it just kinda feels right", "crystals will tell us" kind of marketing thinker. No, I think disciplined and evidence-based stuff is the only sensible way forward - we just need better (and perhaps less) research approaches which harness what we now know about human beings and not more and more of the same old stuff (This btw is why I rate the folks like Brainjuicer and Spring/Mesh so highly - they're trying to provide better insights to their clients by turning the new behavioural science consensus into practical research methodologies. They're not alone of course, but they are unusual)
So nice to see today that the ARF and two big clients seem to be arguing very much along the same lines as I've been arguing for: to be more observational than interogative and in their world and against their agenda and not ours.
"Our consumers have been sending us messages for years that they're not interested in the traditional survey process," says Kim Dedeker of P&G. That's right: co-operation rates (folk agreeing to do a survey are at an all time low: 4 out 5 say no)
Makes me seem (spuriously) that I had some kind of influence on this....maybe I've just got my timing wrong?
Pic c/o Gizmodo
Nice piece here by Neil on leadership (particularly like Mandela's riff on leading from the back as well as the front)
Made me think of Jens Krause's experiments with a robotic stickleback (hence "Robofish") to see how one fish could change the direction of the shoal (and what the limits of deviance are...) (NB pic features another experimental design, which I don't think is the one JKr uses; more groovy versions are more commonplace in Asia AI circles)
For those of you who've not been paying attention, fish (like other social animals and like us) steer by each other. This makes it possible for a change in the motion of one individual to shape that of the shoal/flock/HERD(!).
The interesting stuff here is how little change in that individual's direction of movement is needed to change the shoal's direction (albeit it has to be consistent movement in the new direction). And also how little change can be too much.
This is I think what lies beneath Mandela's leading from the back. And much consumer peer-to-peer influence. Maybe we can learn something about how to do these things from Jens' experimental work...
BTW Still struggling to find any video footage of his experiments but just found (and ordered) his co-written book on animal social networks. Will keep searching for the footage that John and I saw last year but meanwhile here's some other stuff about robotic fish here, here and (videos) here
and here
PS I'll be thinking of Jens tomorrow, when I'm sitting here. Hopefully not in the pouring rain, mind you.
pic c/o bewarethecheese
Just seen this really nice vidcast around Innovation that Brainjuicer have put together.
Not all of it new but most of it bang on the money, I'd say.
And I love the fact that it's clients and academics - nobody from a creative agency in sight!
What's really interesting here is that Brainjuicer are a market research company, not a design or innovation consultancy. So they're talking about something that's not exactly in their industry's ballpark
Some wise old heads might be tempted to suggest that they should back off - there's no obvious link back to the brand paying for this content (familiar)...
But I think it's a great example of engaging branded content around the customer's interests. Surprising and intelligent in both form (vidcast) as well as content.
When was the last time - individual bloggers aside - that an agency (creative, media or research) actually had something interesting to say about things that matter in business? As opposed to the tiny parochial concerns of their own part of the swamp?
[PS Just in case you missed it, here's the one that JK did on Innovation with me (that's "with me about innovation", not the the other way round) earlier this year.]
But I bet what you really want to know is will JK beat Rory to his first TV presenting job?
We've all got used to using case studies to make our points: business books like my own work are awash with them (to illustrate better what I fear might otherwise be rather dry and dull points to the reader). The bloggersphere is ripe with case-study arguments, too.
But beware: case studies are bad at establishing truth. Just like using individual cases to make legislation...
1. Case study thinking excludes failures the grey mush of moderate success or indifferent performance. This makes it hard to be clear about what the real causes of success are - btw "blueness" turns out not to be the secret of IBM's success under Lou Gerstner...
2. Case studies make it seem as if the success was inevitable (when all too often the underlying mechanisms mean that rewinding the tape would produce another - different - winner)
3. Case studies force things into an oversimplified narrative arc which we chose to reflect and support our preferred ideas about how things are (and how successful our work is - when was the last time a case study was presented in a "I'm not sure quite what this means or whether it really worked" manner...)
Even HBS thinks there might be a problem, in trying to teach with case studies, at least
Remember: the reason why you're being told the story you're being told is because it makes the point seem real. It makes it tangible. It makes it seem clear. And to whose benefit is that?
So the next time you hear someone extrapolating an explanation for success in e.g. the music biz based on e.g. why Leona Lewis (of all the Talent TV contestants) got to be enormous in the US - as a recipe doing the same again, beware. Go get some real data about this and similar cases (successful or not)
And don't even start me on "best practice" and "benchmarking"
Let's try a bit harder, eh? What's the data say?
In case, you thought we'd given up poking purveyors of Neuromarketing in the eyes with the Pointed Stick of Reason...
Bad Science refers to this article from the Journal Of Cognitive Neuroscience about how a little pinch of neuroscience makes your dodgy methodology seem that much more appealing. Download Seductive Neuroscience
Hands up all those who've fallen for this one?
BTW Interesting spat here between real live medical practitioners about the usefulness of brain imagining technology in diagnosis of common mental health conditions. Seems to me that until we clear that one up, it'd be better to keep the fMRIs out of marketing land.
I've long been a fan of Dr. Ben Goldacre whose Bad Science blog and column in the Guardian continues to shed some light on some of the worst examples of contemporary...er, bad science.
Back in April 2003, he outlined his targets in a manifesto
"First, of course, we shall take on duff reporting: ill-informed, credulous journalists, taking their favourite loonies far too seriously, or misrepresenting good science, for the sake of a headline. They are the first against the wall.
Next we'll move on the quacks: the creationists, the new-age healers, the fad diets. They're sad and they're lonely. I know that. But still they must learn. Advertisers, with their wily ways, and their preposterous diagrams of molecules in little white coats: I'll pull the trigger.
And the same goes for the quantum spin on government science. I'm watching you all"
Today's column is a must read for marketing and marketing research professionals and anyone involved in creating or interpreting data.The story of how the media willingly distorted a study of happiness in across the UK (by focussing on the small differences between the small samples taken in different cities.
But let's be honest, it's not just newspaper reports that do this - all kinds of business folk misread survey and other datasets every single day, in every company, consultancy and media and creative agency, everywhere in the world. We squeeze out differences and significance where there is none, hide and deny the parts of the datasets that don't fit or flatter our opinions and mistake correlation for
causation.
However many times the folk who collect the data say (as in the featured study) that "the variations ...are not statistically significant" - and in my experience market researchers and data folk are really not that good at ensuring their users understand the limits of the data - we users insist on misreading data for our own ends and purposes.
So do yourself a favour: buy your favourite data user a copy of Ben's book. And one for yourself. Read it. Note and mark, as my old headmaster used to say.
My copy just arrived and it is just as brilliant as I hoped.
And remember, Ben is watching you
And now so am I...
Unicorns, check
Hobbits, check
Change management that actually changes anything...*
Sorry, no. That second one's rarer than hen's teeth.
McKinsey say so. It must be true.
*looking for free download...
Off now to join the other folk who've helped get School of Life off the ground celebrate the official launch.
So exciting when a bold and unprecedented idea becomes tangible reality.
Like this lot sang, "love it more than a thousand christmases" (sorry, couldn't find a vid)
DON'T FORGET: Open Day Saturday 6th
Really nice little film that Douglas and co at Meetup have put together
Go on. Switch those devices off, meet some real people. Do some stuff - almost any stuff
I did it yesterday: fishing with 13 year old nephew. (Think he enjoyed it almost as much as me...).
Or help someone you know to get off the grid for a bit
Point is there's a world of human interaction out there. And that's what you're made for - NOT screens.
It's only human...
Just finished the Forrester book and stewing on my reactions.
I'll be honest, I'm conflicted. Some of it I liked and other bits less so.
(FYI I don't like to slag things off on this or any other blog because
1. a lot of effort goes into writing a book like this (I should know) and this in itself should be encouraged and admired
2. a negative comment is easy to give but always looks much worse when it's down in print (particularly to a vanity-searching author)
And there are some proper things to be admired here (the practical to-do list style, the insistence on working out what problem you want to solve before you reach for the social-media gun and the authors' temerity to suggest that Apple might have something to learn rather than assuming they know everything); a lot of it is however rather too familiar for anyone who's been awake in the last half decade or so.
But my abiding thought is not about the book itself but what this line of argument represents.
For all the useful cataloguing of social media and how and when to use them, isn't what this book (and so many others like it) advocating really just good marketing?
Stuff like listening to your customers and then acting upon what you hear, getting really close to what matters to them, developing things with them in mind rather than your organisation? Oh, and doing stuff not just talking about it?
Isn't the the Groundswell just today's set of solutions for the problems that big business has got itself into with its focus on scale and its greed in focussing on shareholder interests alone?
Technologies come and go (I think Douglas Adams once suggested that there are 3 kinds of technology: natural stuff that we see around between birth and teens; technology, the stuff that appears between teens and your thirtieth birthday (or thereabouts); and, unnatural stuff - everything that comes after that) and the technologies described in the book are already evolving.
But these kinds of underlying ideas seem pretty important and unchanging. Get close. No, get really close. Make it matter to your customers. It's about them and their social interaction, not about you. How can you make things better for them in their world. Use whatever tools you can. Try stuff. See what works. etc etc.
The fact that these are wrapped in groovy new technologies seems kinda irrelevant, doesn't it?
And the fact that the problems to which these solutions are posed are the same old, same old is interesting, too
Or have I missed something?
Call me cynical, but I'm beginning to get the impression that lots of companies' primary reason for doing the big marketing budget thing is to avoid actually having to do anything that might make a difference- to avoid having to make the product really interesting or having a point to the stories they tell (as this rather odd reenactment has it)
"Have a point...it makes it so much more interesting for the listener" (thanks, Will)
Gareth points up this great piece by David at Howies on the advantages of not having a budget. Maybe the current economic climate can help us (re-)learn this important lesson.
I'm just happy that I don't have to start with the assumption that we need to spend a lot of money - on my business or my clients. I just keep trying to keep things interesting...to me, them and hopefully, you, too
UPDATE: seems it's a good thing - HERD has somehow crept into the Adage Power 150 list. Thanks, everyone!
We all know what world-famous premium brand this is supposed to be. (And nice people they are, too)
This I found in a v mainstream Spanish grocery chain.
Who'd like one? The Tobacco Mojito it is for me
As I stirred into life on Sunday morning I caught an interesting piece on the radio by one of our favourite modern philosophers - Anthony Grayling.
He is part of that tradition of useful philosophers that stretches back at least as far as Bertrand Russell - engaging with the real stuff and dilemmas of everyday life rather than the arcana and walled garden of much that passes for philosophy today...and as such is rapidly becoming a national treasure. Go here or here to sample his humanist wisdom and his lovely prose.
That said,...
I think he gets it wrong (e.g. on Sunday a.m.) in the way he places thinking and reasoning above the influence of others as preferred sources of influence on individual behaviour; those whose trade is thinking always do. I've done it myself.
Like a good Enlightenment warrior, he encouraged us to resist the lure of conformity to other people's opinions and behaviour - to think for ourselves. To think things through. To be guided by Reason.
Now it may make you feel a bit better to feel that you've thought something through, but in general it is an entirely impractical suggestion - we do not have the bandwidth or mental computing power to do this all or even much of the time (we need the shorthands that Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahnemann describes here) to navigate our way through the world; one of the most important shorthands is what other folk do (and think) as we've argued for (ooooh) ages
And this other stuff doesn't just produce the bad stuff, the madness of crowds: it's a key strand of who we are and how we negotiate our way through the world together. Indeed, a growing consensus of behavioural and cognitive scientists are seeing this 'sloppy' unthinking approach as the key to our success as a species. Remember that homo mimicus letter in NS recently?
“I propose a hypothesis, summed up by changing our name from Homo sapiens, "wise man" to Homo mimicus, "mimicking man". Many animals mimic each other's behaviour but we do it more often and with greater fidelity. Our compulsive copying encodes collective knowledge into our society, and it is really our society that possesses humanity's "intelligence"...
Of course, trapped in the prison of an individual's consciousness and in a culture which rewards thinking so highly, it's not surprising we want to imagine things are other than this. The truth is that thinking is much rarer than we (and those paid to do it) imagine...and that's just fine. Humans are to thinking as....
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