One of the speechwriter’s greatest fears is the cutting room floor. You know… the nagging worry that all your hard work will end up for nought due to a cancelled event or a change in communications strategy.
But, fear not. There’s hope for us all. It turns out that even unspoken speeches can be important.
What would Richard Nixon have said if the Apollo XI lunar module didn’t make it off the moon?
What would John F Kennedy have said if he hadn’t been shot in a Dallas street in 1963?
And what would Eisenhower have said if the D-Day landings failed?
The answers to these questions – and more – can be found in this excellent and revealing BBC article.
At last… a way to save the world from death by Powerpoint… one presentation at a time.
Here’s a little experiment to try when you’re next giving a presentation.
Stop for a moment, press the letter ‘B’ on your keyboard and then keep talking.
For just a moment, you’ll see everyone in the room look a tad unhinged… like they’ve suddenly woken from a little Powerpoint-induced catnap and they don’t quite know what to do.
But then something wondrous will happen.
They’ll all turn to you.
They’ll be focused on your face and your words… not the fandangled process chart, breezy stock photo or (I dread to say) Magna Carta length prose on the screen.
With the press of a single button you will, for the first time in your presentation career, have wrested control of the room back from that bloody computer.
So, what happened here?
Did a sign saying “I’m with stupid” and an arrow pointing at you come up?
No.
The screen went black. That’s all.
This is the secret the Powerpointerati don’t want you to know. When you press the ‘B’ key during a slideshow (it also works with the full stop key), the screen will go black. And, wonder of wonders, when you press ‘B’ again, your presentation will return.
Of course, maybe black isn’t your thing. You know, all those connotations of darkness and negativity.
In that case, just press ‘W’ (or the comma key) and the screen will go white.
There’s actually quite a lot of things you can do with shortcut keys when you’re using Powerpoint. Here’s a list of them.
Of course, none of them are as cool as the B & W keys.
A powerful reminder of how simplicity lies at the heart of all great communications.
Recognise the drawing above? If you said a sail or a yacht, you’d be right.
Sort of.
But what if I said this particular object took 70,000 cubic metres of concrete and 9,000 tons of steel to make and sat on 230 x 40 metre long poles buried in sand on a made-made island?
You got it. I’m talking about the Burj Al Arab – the iconic hotel that has become the symbol of Dubai.
I was watching a National Geographic Megastructures documentary on the Burj Al Arab the other night. What struck me most about this documentary was that one of history’s most complex feats of design, engineering and construction can be drawn with three lines.
As the architect, Tom Wright, said:
“We decided that if you could draw a building simply with a few strokes of a pen and it was instantly recognisable as not only the building but the place… you’d created something that was iconic.”
To demonstrate his point, Wright went on to draw a series of simple shapes on a screen: the pyramids; the Sydney Opera House; the Eiffel Tower. All were instantly recognisable within just a couple of strokes of the pen.
According to Wright, the inspiration for the Burj Al Arab came… surprise, surprise… from a yacht. More particularly, an Arab sailing vessel called a dhow, which happened to sail past his team while they were out having a beer one day.
If you think about it, Tom Wright’s observation provides a powerful lesson for all communicators.
Clearly, what we’re communicating must be unique. After all, you can’t inspire people by giving them something they already know.
But, beyond that, the real power of communications lies in its simplicity.
Just about everything we do in business – our strategies, plans, product development, processes and so on – is complex.
If we want the outcomes of all this complexity and effort to really resonate, it’s our job to make them simple.
Sadly… in one of life’s great ironies… simplicity can be a very complex thing to achieve.
But, as Tom Wright shows, it’s worth it.
If you’re interested, you can see his thoughts (and drawings) at 4 minutes 45 seconds in the video below.
Rules are a vital part of society. They’re the antidote to anarchy. But when rules are used as an alternative to critical thinking, intuition and inspiration, they need to be ruled out.
Signs, Signs, Everywhere there’s signs.
Blocking out the scenery. Breaking my mind.
Do this! Don’t do that! Can’t you read the signs?
There’s an interesting news article doing the rounds today. It seems that the NY Times – for the first time in history – is making more money from circulation than from ads.
That is one almighty achievement. The ‘paper’ now has a paid digital subscriber base of almost 700,000 readers. And that represents a stinging boot in the bottom for the ‘experts’ who spent a decade telling us no-one would pay for digital content.
Over the Internet’s short history, there’s been almost as many wacky rules as there has been wacky fads (more on that shortly).
The impossibility of charging for digital content was one of the greatest. The theory was never really tested. It was just a belief that the Internet’s faceless gurudom adopted as mantra. That mantra has now been blown out of the water.
But there’s others.
Like the rule that says people never click more than three times to reach any web site content. Or, back in the early days, Jakob Nielsen’s usability rules. They should have been interpreted as guiding principles. Many, however, adopted them as iron-clad rules – and created awful web sites as a result.
In Marketing, there’s the underpinning belief that a market is made up of sheep. Everyone in that market does the same thing in the same way so we treat them all exactly the same. Admittedly, we had to think this way in the past because it was the only option we had. But those days are gone and the thinking needs to go with it.
Strategy discussions often defer to an unwritten rule that we shouldn’t do something until someone else has proven it works. If we all thought that way, innovation (and progress) wouldn’t exist.
And there’s rules we need to break as communicators too.
Like the oft-considered immutable laws of grammar. Just yesterday, I was discussing the merits of ‘And’ at the beginning of a sentence (wow… don’t we have fun conversations). The rules say no. But the way people think and speak says yes… and I will always defer to the latter (as I’ve demonstrated several times in this post).
Communicators also need to see the big picture – often from within businesses that are consumed by the now.
They need to be agents for customers, people and society when others have only dollars on their mind. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, you’ll sometimes make more money that way.
And they sometimes need to stand up and be the sole questioning voice – for the good of the organisation.
I’m not advocating that we tear up the rule book. I’m saying we need to have the confidence to break the rules (or at least bend them a little) when our judgement tells us we should.
That’s our job.
And the sign says, “Long-haired freaky people need not apply.”
So I tucked all my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why.
He said “You look like a fine, upstanding young man – I think you’ll do.”
So I took off my hat and said, “Imagine that! Huh… me, working for you!”
Quotations from “Signs” by The Five Man Electrical Band. Lyrics from LyricsMode.
Slideshare is genuine proof that the geeks are rising. Join them… and build your organisation’s profile.
The geek shall inherit the earth
You may not know it, but there are many in the world today (most of them wearing Pokemon t-shirts) who quietly go about their days buoyed by a single belief: that this well-worn (and, okay, slightly bastardised) battle cry will one day become true.
And, believe it or not, there are signs it will. One of the most prominent is Slideshare.
Slideshare is like YouTube for Powerpoints. It’s a massive social library of presentations on just about any topic you can name. To give you an idea of its scale, the site holds over 50,000 documents just on social media.
It also has over 50 million visitors a month and is one of the world’s 200 busiest sites.
Which is tacit proof that geekdom is on the rise.
Why?
Well, let’s face it. Great graphic designers are revered in the world of content. But, according to many people out there, Powerpoint – despite being the most widely used (and misused) design software on earth – is for poindexters. Slides are for smarties.
So the mind-boggling scale of Slideshare shows that geeks aren’t just a small rabble hiding away in comic book and gaming stores.
They’re everywhere.
Now, before you say “geeks… eewww” and decide to give Slideshare a miss, there’s something you need to know.
Slideshare is a boon for building your business or personal profile.
As YouTube does for videos, Slideshare lets you post your presentations to a global audience of knowledge-seekers and embed those same presentations in a snappy little player on your web site, blog etc. You can even – if you feel so moved – place an audio track over the pack and turn it into an audio cast.
At the same time, trolling through Slideshare is a brilliant way of picking up knowledge on just about anything. And it can be a great source of design inspiration for your next pack or other piece of content (especially if you fit into the ‘design-challenged’ bucket, as I do).
So, don’t be afraid of Slideshare. Embrace it. Come and join the geeks as their march to domination continues.
Despite all your contrary instincts, you’ll be glad you did.
P.S. A quick search of the many user profiles on Slideshare brings up twenty Sheldon Coopers, three Howard Wolowitzes, one Leonard Leakey Hofstadter and one Rajesh Koothrappali (who hasn’t posted any presentations… presumably because there’s girls on Slideshare too).
Who’d think of creating an entertaining book to promote an oil company? Theodor Geisel did… in 1935.
Theodor Geisel was an advertising executive with Standard Oil during the Great Depression.
On the back of his success promoting Flit insect spray and Esso motor oils, Geisel was asked to develop campaigns for a new line of Essomarine boating lubricants.
One of his many responses was a book entitled ‘Secrets of the Deep’ by ‘Old Captain Taylor’. It was an eclectic collection of stories, illustrations and yachting advice.
The book was an enormous success, with 75,000 copies distributed by mail order. Not bad for the pre ‘click here’ days.
In fact, it was so successful that Geisel and Essomarine went on to produce two sequels – Secrets of the Deep II and The Log of the Good Ship.
Of course, all this begs a question. If this guy is so clever, why have you never heard of him?
Well, actually, you have.
Midway through his advertising career, Theodor Geisel started writing children’s books.
Under the name of Dr Seuss.
P.S. If you’re interested, there’s a wonderful book called ‘Secrets of the Deep. The lost, forgotten and hidden works of Theodor Seuss Geisel’. You can see a preview of the book (including some of his advertising work) here.
Content marketing is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened to communications in years. There’s just one problem…
I was sitting here yesterday pondering two things.
The first was “damned summer colds – especially on 40 degree days.”
The second was how exciting it is that content marketing’s on the rise. You see, I’ve been poking around in Marketing and Corporate Affairs for many years now. I’ve done a lot of different things, but my real shtick has always been content – analysing data, trends, customers, consumers and the world in general, imagining stories and producing all sorts of written and visual content.
Maybe I’m biased but, to me, the rise of content marketing tangibly recognises (for probably the first time in my career) two realities:
That, despite our past obsession with platforms, it’s actually content, creative, or whatever you want to call it that drives successful communications. Great content will be successful on any platform.
That, as a result, every company on earth is only one creative idea away a million friends on Facebook. Or one TVC away from a brand that lives for decades. Or one roadshow away from a deeply excited and engaged workforce. [All provided, of course, that the reality delivers on the comms].
That’s how powerful content can be.
Having said that, I do have a beef with all this content marketing mania. It’s that content marketing needs to be bigger… much bigger.
“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
Now, that’s a pretty hardy, general definition. Importantly, it doesn’t lock content marketing into any particular platform: the inference being that content marketing is applicable everywhere.
In practice, however, that’s not the case. Content marketing is most commonly related to a particular range of platforms (odd, that) – almost totally social and digital. Despite the fact that CMI’s list of the top content marketing platforms below touches on things like roadshows, print newsletters and books, the widespread perception of content marketing is that it’s all digital:
But, in reality, the principles behind content marketing should be applied to every single piece of communication we ever do. And that means not just marcomms but corporate comms as well.
Look at it this way. Like most business people, you probably sat through dozens – even hundreds – of speeches and presentations last year. I’ll bet if I asked you to tell me about five of them, you’d be challenged.
But if I asked you about the the words “I have a dream”, you’d almost certainly come firing back: they come, of course, from the famous speech made by Dr Martin Luther King at the Lincoln Center five decades ago this year (believe it or not).
Again, such is the power of great content – even in a speech.
The same goes for TVCs. Apparently, the average person is subjected to several thousand TV ads every month. So, tell me, what ads did you see yesterday?
If you’re like me, you don’t have clue.
But, despite the fact you can’t remember the ads you saw yesterday, there’ll be certain ads you’ve seen in your lifetime that have stayed with you… even if you haven’t seen them for years.
For me, it’s probably Goggomobile (although I confess I might be coloured by having worked for Sensis), the Qantas “I still call Australia home” ads, Antz Pantz (ahem!), Mrs Marsh (I shudder to confess) and the old Louie the Fly ads – so powerful they brought them back years later.
So even the much-maligned TVC can be fun and sought-after while still getting a powerful point across.
And the right ad can live on not just for the duration of the campaign but in the minds of its viewers for years to come. If only the media could monetise that!
Again, such is the power of great content.
I guess, at the end of the day, there’s two points to take away from all of this.
Firstly, that content marketing principles apply everywhere – to every piece of communications you’ll ever produce.
And, secondly, that content is the backbone of great communications.
If you don’t have the content right, no amount of media spend or stakeholder relations will save you.
But if you nail the content, you’ll inspire, connect, change and live on for a long time to come.
So here’s a challenge to close. Take some time to think about the content you’re producing. Is it good? Or is it great?
And, no matter what form of communication you do, spend a bit of extra time this year creating stories that really stand out and connect.
And then sit back and see just how much great content can achieve.
A Christmas lights display provides a useful lesson for every communicator.
It feels awful starting off the year with a rant. But if the cap fits…
Early on Santa’s big night, my wife and I took our children on the obligatory (and very enjoyable) tour of the local Christmas lights. This year I got clever and checked out the newspaper web sites to find homes that were putting on a show.
In our little corner of the world, I found three homes with lights.
Two were utterly amazing. It’s so uplifting to see how far people will go to bring some Christmas spirit to local children and families. It was also fantastic to see how both these homes were using the opportunity they’d created to collect money for charities.
On the flip side, the third home we visited was… well… interesting.
You see, it wasn’t a real home. It was the display home for a new estate being built in our area.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with this per se. In fact, it’s quite a good idea. It’s an opportunity to support (and show commitment to) the local community in a really personal, family-friendly and entertaining way. At the same time, it’s a terrific opportunity to meet the neighbours.
Sadly, there was one wee problem with this particular ‘display’.
It was crap. Honestly, the pathetic little solar-powered, flashing number chugging away in my front yard would just about keep up with this ‘display’.
So what you have here is a company promoting their Christmas display in a newspaper (without mentioning it’s a business) and, as a result, enticing people to come from as far as half an hour away.
All to be disappointed by a Christmas display that has the candlepower of your average headlamp… oh, and a bunch of signs spruiking this wonderful new estate.
Some might call this brand engagement.
I’d call it brand enragement.
To me, there’s a simple lesson that springs from this. And it’s a lesson that applies to anything any communicator creates.
Successful engagement lies in the execution, not just the idea.
No communicator’s arsenal would be complete without a healthy smattering of wildcards – those wonderful buzzwords you throw in when you can think of nothing else to say.
Last week, I read an article by Phil Baumann about everyone’s friend (and enemy) – buzzwords. I could, of course, say buzzwords are a ‘frenemy’, but that would be resorting to a buzzword.
You know what I mean here… all those nifty phrases we all pull out of the language deck to instantly make something sound cool/futuristic/meaningful/exciting etc.
Now, we shouldn’t discount the buzzword, as many often do (straight after they’ve used one). After all, buzzwords can be powerful tools in the hands of the astute practitioner. Consider these two phrases:
“The team thought about this for a while and then did some research. As a result, I think we’ve come up with a new idea.”
“We huddled together and collectively integrated out of the box thinking with a deep dive into the data. The payoff is we’ve engineered the platform for a genuine paradigm shift.”
Both phrases say exactly the same thing. The only difference is that the first speaker sounds like, well… everyone else, while the second sounds like a high-powered, zoot-suited enabler (buzzword alert) of the future.
Anyway, this article got me thinking about a particular class of buzzword that doesn’t get a lot of attention – the greatly under-appreciated ‘wildcard’.
Wildcards began their lives as eminently legitimate terms. However, somewhere along the way, they were press-ganged into active service as all-purpose catch-alls for those times when you can’t think of anything else to say.
As a result, these wildcards have become chronically over-used. And this over-use has rendered these terms near-impotent. They now carry all the gravitas of the pasty young Prince Edmund in Blackadder series one.
Anyway, enough of the pre-amble. Without any further ado, here is a list of the top five communicator’s wildcards.
5. Evidence-based
This relatively new inclusion has become an instant hit with politicians and is now making its way into the business lexicon.
Evidence-based is an exciting new term because it allows you to create the image of a carefully researched decision when said research hasn’t actually been done.
“Don’t question me on this… it’s evidence-based.”
See? Works like a charm.
4. The next level / a whole new level
Damn it… what level???
3. World’s best practice
The really sad thing about ‘world’s best practice’ is it’s a total contradiction.
It’s designed to make you sound like you’re way out there on the futuresphere (hey, is that a new buzzword?) bravely leading the troops as they tip-toe across the cutting edge.
But the reality is that world’s best practice means you’re just following the crowd and doing what some book (currently 25% off at Amazon) by some bod (with absolutely no knowledge of your business) is telling you to do.
And, besides, who defines world’s best practice? And why does it change every week?
2. Key
Memo to those who refer to everything they do as ‘key’.
If everything is key, then nothing is key.
1. Innovative
Without any shadow of of doubt, the shimmering star among all wildcards is ‘innovative’.
As we all know, innovation is one of the most important components of a great business. But, somewhere along the way, the word ‘innovative’ has been usurped as a way to describe a product or practice when there’s nothing else good to say about it.
It goes a bit like this:
CEO: “So, this is the new X59. How are we selling it? What’s unique about it?”
Team: Blank stares
CEO: “C’mon. Is it better than the competitors?”
Team: Blank stares
CEO: “Is it cheaper? Does it do something the others don’t?”
Team: Blank stares
CEO: “C’mon, there must be something we can say after 10 squintillion dollars of investment?”
Larkins: “Umm… it’s innovative.”
CEO: “How? What’s innovative about it?”
Larkins: “Well… umm… we’ve never done it before.”
CEO: “That’s it! The ‘innovative’ X59. Give that man a raise.”
My favourite buzzword – P2P
As a closing aside, I couldn’t finish this story without sharing my all-time favourite buzzword.
Many of you would be familiar with P2P as the acronym for ‘peer to peer’.
However, during the dying days of the dot.com boom – when the hopeless cash position of many dot.com high flyers became evident – P2P was given another meaning. It went a bit like this:
Yes, I know we’ve got a chronic case of commercial diarrhoeaand we’ve been pouring mountains of VC cash down the toilet for months.
But, we’re a P2P business – we’re on a ‘path to profitability’.
Priceless stuff.
P2P? BS.
Author’s note: the author reserves all rights to be a complete hypocrite and use these (and any other) buzzwords and wildcards whenever it suits. That is, after all, world’s best practice.
National marketers aren’t happy with the digital expertise of their affiliates. Maybe it’s time to get more involved.
You all know that hideous feeling when you have defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.
Think Jane Saville at the Sydney Olympics. Think Mitt Romney. Or think Sheldon Cooper when he was scuttled by Will Wheaton in the Mystic Warlords of Ka’a tournament.
Yes… Yes… Noooooooooooooo!!!
Seriously, Will. The infamous ‘my Grandma died’ trick? How low can you go?
Sadly, this gut-wrenching last second failure is being lived out every day all over the world, as national marketers invest big-time in brands but then trip at the last turn due to poor, or non-existent, local conversion strategies.
I remember dummy spitting in B&T over ten years ago about retailers who put enquiry forms on their web sites but didn’t respond to the resulting enquiries.
Thankfully, this habit seems largely a thing of the past (I hope). But that doesn’t mean the potholes on the road from brand to bucks have disappeared.
National brands not happy with their affiliates
Last week, a report by US local marketing firm, Balihoo (yes… I found it in eMarketer again), captured what looks like a major area of frustration for national brands. It revolves around what they see as a lack of local marketing expertise among their affiliates – the dealers, agents, resellers, reps, channel partners, retailers and franchisees who bring in the dollars.
According to the report – Microstudy: National Brand Use of Digital in Local Marketing – over 50% of US national brands thought their affiliates lacked mobile marketing expertise. And almost half felt the same about SEO, local search, local blogs and PPC advertising.
Perhaps its time to get involved
On the surface, this is a pretty damning indictment on the ability of channel partners to drive the sales both they, and their national brand suppliers, need.
But maybe there’s another issue at work here. Maybe what this report is telling us is that there’s an imperative – and perhaps a huge opportunity – for national brands to get more involved in local marketing themselves.
Let’s take a closer look at these numbers:
While 53% of national marketers think their affiliates lack mobile marketing experience, only 32% of national brands use mobile themselves. Given the huge – and growing – role mobile plays in local, this is a clear sign that mobile needs more attention.
The same trend goes for local search, local blogs and customer reviews. In all three cases, there is a high level of dissatisfaction matched with a low level of national brand involvement.
Overall, this data suggests that the big end of town is far more focused on driving logos than loot.
And maybe this mix needs to change a bit. Here’s a few thoughts about how:
How can you improve your local SEO so that your local dealers’ contact details – not just your home page – rank highly in a local search engine search for your products?
How can you build a brand position in local search and directories? Maybe it’s time the local search companies developed a product that enabled you to do this.
What digital ‘umbrellas’ can you build: branded toolsets and portals (e.g. in social media) that will enable your dealers to strengthen their local position under your brand?
What about a branded, national blog underpinned by local posts from local dealers? And what about further enabling this by providing writers and other capabilities to assist the dealers?
What about location-aware PPC and display campaigns focused on the dealer, not just the brand?
Honestly, the fact that affiliates are, in many cases, struggling with digital should be no surprise to anyone. Many channel partners are small businesses and just about every bit of research ever done makes it clear that small businesses struggle with the fragmentation of digital media. They simply don’t have the resources to manage the huge spread of channels.
So why not get in there and help them? Doing so may help strengthen your affiliates’ local position, and make you far more discoverable. And it might just give you a big edge against competitors who are not just in the local area but fighting you on the affiliates’ shelves as well.
Preaching to the converted?
Which leads me to the final interesting insight from this data. While local maybe low on the national brand agenda today, the data suggests change could be afoot. The media that national marketers say they ‘would like to use’ in this research is skewed far more to local than national.
So, maybe, in the end, I’m preaching to the converted.
