Pitching an idea

Apr 26, 2013 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business

question

The most powerful way to get someone to agree with your idea is to ask them the leading question, and have them tell you.

Ronald Regan used this technique a lot. He did not tell the American people “your economic situation has deteriorated over the last 48 months”, instead  he asked the famous question during his election campaign: “Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?”. The answer was a resounding “NO” and he was elected.

Asking the right question can prompt a favourable, almost pre-deternmined response, but the formulation of the words to convey that response provokes a deeper, more intensive processing of the question. This leaves less room for ambiguity and uncertainty in the way the receiver responds to the question, and considerable committment to the answer. 

I have also found it a great way to generate engagement at the opening of a presentation.

Cognitive productivity.

Apr 24, 2013 | Collaboration, Innovation, Operations

collaboration

At a simple level, cognitive productivity is just using the brainpower at your disposal to deliver the optimum outcome, weather that brainpower be resident between your ears, or between the collective ears of many in a group.

However, it is also much deeper than that. The notion of cognitive overhead how much effort there is in understanding something comes from this post  by David Demaree, a software engineer in Chicago, which was prompted by the early iterations of Google+. Cognitive Overhead — “how many logical connections or jumps your brain has to make in order to understand or contextualize the thing you’re looking at.”

As conceived, it applied to software engineering, and the resulting products, but it seems to me it has much wider application.  All those remotes that run our “entertainment centers” are testament to that, what happened to the simple old TV remote, one device, did everything without a science degree?.

Clay Shirky talks about the notion  of cognitive surplus.  This idea proposes that people are motivated by the opportunity to create and share, no longer just by the command and control ideas of the hierarchical employer where money and power emanating from a position description are what counts. The real power in the new economy comes from individuals, and the power vested in them to create by the digital revolution. Even if that creation is just another silly cat picture posted on Instagram, it is nevertheless a creative action taken by someone who could not have done it just a few years ago

If you put the two notions of cognitive overhead and surplus together, you have a recipe for cognitive productivity. Leveraging the cognitive surplus in a manner that minimises cognitive overhead, to deliver greater and greater value to society.

That my friends, is the future!

The “Twitter Pitch”

Apr 23, 2013 | Communication, Small business

Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) famously said “I do not have time to write you a short letter, so I have written you a long one”.

This statement is a pitch for twitter 100 years before it was conceived, as the sentiment of clarity through brevity is the same. Writing to convey an idea is a challenge, writing to convey an idea in a few words requires a discipline of thought that can be extremely hard.

The restriction of Twitter to 140 characters does seem to encourage a written shorthand that I find excruciating, but at its best, also adds a discipline to constructing an idea that squeezes out the superfluous, the hyperbole, the distractions,  and forces clarity by brevity.

It seems that the “Twitter Pitch” is replacing the “Elevator Pitch” first made popular by Dale Carnegie, but the idea is the same.

A measure of brand maturity.

Apr 19, 2013 | Branding, Marketing, Strategy

 

coke

Ever noticed that people who seem to “really have it all together” are able to poke fun at themselves, take negative feedback as an opportunity to learn and improve, and surprise with their capacity to be absolutely, selflessly, honest?

It is often the same with brands, another example of the similarity of people and brands, of how brands take on human characteristics.

However, it is a revelation to see this astonishingly honest ad by Coke.

Is this the beginning of a trend, a measure of maturity of the Coca Cola brand that it is able to spend resources advertising the downside of consumption of the product, or just a mistake, like the appalling blunder with “New Coke”  in 1985. Perhaps, my cynical side asks, it is because they make more money out of their other beverage products, and want to switch consumption?

It seems to me that despite all, it really is just a measure of the security that Coke management feels in the strength of their brand. It is a recognition that if they do not talk about the cause and effect between sugar beverage consumption and obesity, and all its problems,  others will, and they better have a credibility and a stake in the conversation.

 

Brand ambiguity will be terminal

Apr 18, 2013 | Branding, Communication

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In a world of homogenisation, being different is both dangerous and necessary.

Standing for something of value  is absolutely essential, ambiguity is death.