Is the Internet Changing our Brains?

I have been involved in a debate about whether the internet has changed marketing. It began in an exchange between myself and Paul Feldwick in Market Leader, the UK Marketing Society’s journal, and then moved on-line. There have been, as we hoped, some great contributions, including one from Elen Lewis who referenced an article in The Guardian that features several very eminent scientists (and a novelist) debating whether and how the internet has changed our very brains. I was interested in this since a big part of my argument that marketing has fundamentally changed as a result of the internet is based on the fact that society and people have changed. To be able to show that our brains have changed is therefore a killer point.

The article is worth reading in its entirety and being given some quiet consideration rather than surfing this short post to get the gist – you will realize the relevance/irony of this recommendation if you do. However, if, as a child of the internet, it is gist you want then here it is. Yes the internet is changing our brains. Some argue that it is for the worse, some argue it is just different with pro’s and cons, others argue it is our choice whether or not we allow it to change our brains (reading more books would help us retain our intellectual reasoning apparently).

For me the most interesting comment in the Guardian piece comes from Ed Bullmore, Cambridge Professor of Psychiatry no less. He argues that the internet resembles a human brain and how it works and therefore we can learn a lot about how we think by studying it. He calls the internet “a prosthesis of our collective memory” that’s an artificial brain to you and me. I know extrapolation is a dangerous thing but it has struck me before that if, at some point in the near future (near being imminent in evolutionary terms) everything that has ever been written and conceived, everyone one of us, every artifact and idea is digitally coded and available on the internet, and if every person on the planet is uploading their thoughts and conversations in real time, and if there are search engines and social networks able to allow each and everyone of us to access and connect all of these things again in real time, that is in effect one global brain is it not? This sounds a bit far fetched I agree. So do the views of Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. Far from being shame-faced that community information has leaked out he believes that everything should be transparent and publically available. He thinks – this is really crazy – that the world would be a better place, we would all behave better, if there were no secrets, if we were all honest with each other. Actually there must be a flaw in this argument since I have only one brain and I’m not honest with myself.

Anyway, the fact is that the big brains agree the internet is changing our brains and how they function as well as how we interact in our global cyber society. I think that means marketing must be changed fundamentally since at its heart it is about influencing how people think, behave and choose, individually and collectively, to the commercial benefit of a business. In fact I’d say that was game, set and match Paul! I’d now like to move on to a debate about the cult of celebrity and its role in our slide into destructive global decadence (aka Paris Hilton will be the death of all of us).

Any takers?

Shezza put the Twat in Twitter

Oops, typo, meant to say put the Twit in Twitter (no, I didn’t). Shezza loves his tweets and I now see he’s trying to tout himself as some kind of expert in Social Media. I’m happy to call it Social Media, I’m even happy to call it Social Forum or Social Bollocks. As I keep pointing out, if you want to reach the true social opinion leaders, the people who can really change purchase decisions based on the respect their peers hold for their expertise, then talk to me. I don’t tweet or twat but I can take you down my local pub and introduce you to my mates who will put you right about which car to buy or phone upgrade to go for. They can even tell you the most effective insurance scams.

I’ve tried Twitter but I find this 140 characters thing a pain. If you’ve got something to say other than “@ anybody out there, I’ve had a really tough week, looking forward to the weekend, LOL” which seems to be the majority of the crap filling the airwaves, then you need a few paras. I’m sure you would agree that this post is of great value to mankind and I’m already up to 205 words.

Why doesn’t someone super size Twitter.  Keep all the easy to use bit (I will grant you Twitter is heaps better than Facebook if you are over 20 years old and acne free) but just allow up to 200 words. Less than blogging but more than 140 characters, so we get some decent ideas flowing. I’d go for that and then more of the world could benefit from my pearls of wisdom.

Up yours, Stame

Social Media or Social Forum?

I’ve written in the past that marketers made a telling mistake by calling digital and the internet – “New Media”. By doing so they associated it with traditional one-way media such as print/TV etc. The internet is essentially a multi-dimensional exchange and probably its least effective use is as a medium for banner ads. The same people, in my view, are making the same mistake by calling Twitter and Facebook “Social Media”.

Twitter is a social forum, a big on-line conversation involving 100 million people and 65 million tweets a day (and counting – the new generation of mobile devices with Twitter as a main page app is going to make this explode). Of these Tweets 91% are people (yes – people, NOT ‘consumers’ another word that gets us into the wrong mindset). The balance comes from brands and just a tiny percentage – 0.4% – from celebrities. Celebrities are people too but the key difference, apart from their desire to make themselves a profitable brand, is that they reach, on average 300,000 followers, which is 1000 times more than the rest of us.
I have got all these stats from an excellent report by 360i published on the equally excellent Brandchannel. Definitely worth a download. Another telling stat from the report (completed in March 2010 so fairly up to date) is that 92% of all tweets are public so this is an on-line forum brands can and should tune in to. But that’s the point – people use Twitter to converse and air their views. Only 12% of the Tweets mention brands and most of these brands are technology, entertainment or other social networks. The rest are things like cars, cameras, music, restaurants – in other words brands that are a part of their lifestyle and interests. Not a lot are about Persil or Coke. Only 1% are engaging in conversations with brands which is hardly surprising since only 12% of brand tweets are conversational. The brands are talking AT them, not with them, just like they do in other ‘media’.

Here is how I think marketers and brands should think about social forums or networks. Imagine you are Coca Cola or Persil and you were sitting at a table in a pub or restaurant and on the table next to you were a big group of friends, talking loud enough for you to hear.  You would listen and learn but you would not interrupt unless there was a socially acceptable opportunity. For example one person complains that they have a stain in their favourite shirt they just can’t shift and have had to throw it away. Or someone complains that they think the draft Coke they are drinking always tastes watered down. You would pick your moment and you might say something like this:-

“Excuse me, I hope you don’t think I’m being rude but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. I am actually Persil or Coke and I’m really sorry you’ve had a problem but I think I might be able to help you”.

If they had not mentioned anything to do with you but you have gathered from who they are (by the way, quite hard to do with Twitter other than by inference) that they are people you’d like to talk to, you would take a different approach.

“Hi guys, sorry to interrupt but I’m from Coke and I just wanted to let you know we’re having a party you might like to come along to (for ‘party’ read anything you are actually doing that could be of interest to this group). Let me tell you about it and you tell me what you think”

You see the point I’m making – treat it like the social discourse it is. Don’t barge in, don’t talk at them, talk with them, be helpful, be relevant, be interesting.

And recognize that most of the time, they do not want you involved in their conversation. There is no socially acceptable moment to interrupt them and introduce yourself. That said we have to be careful with percentages. Based on 360i’s figures I reckon that even if it is only 1% of the 12% of tweets that mention brands other than technology/entertainment etc this is still close to 100,000 conversations a day you may be interested in and where the participants may be interested in you. That’s 3 million a month. How many people do you talk to in focus groups? How many effective messages from your very expensive conventional media actually get through? But please, just remember to be sociable. As 360i say in their report – Twitter is not a megaphone.

If you don’t have the patience for all of this then get hold of a few celebrities and get them to plug you but try not to make it too obvious.

A Great Idea Goes Down The Toilet

I was taking a slash in a pub toilet in the West End last week, several actually – you know what it’s like after a few pints, once you break the seal you pee like a puppy. Anyway I spotted this promotion from Toshiba (advertising in toilets is called “ambient media” so I’m told) – I should be posting a photo but I didn’t want to get caught with my iPhone out in a public lav. Doesn’t matter, I can explain it easily enough. The deal was that if you bought a Toshiba PC in June they would refund the full price if England won the Soccer World Cup.

This must have seemed like a great idea to the witless brand manager, or his/her agency, who dreamt it up. On the one hand, capture a bit of World Cup vibe, get behind the lads and all that, on the other hand, not likely to be paying out. Well that’s the bloody point isn’t it? As soon as England got knocked out they needed to get these ambient posters down. Not only did England exit early on, losing to the old enemy, Germany, they played like one legged cripples in an arse kicking competition in all their games (4 in total). England fans are pissed off beyond belief – not only has their team embarrassed them, many feel literally robbed having forked out for new tele’s or even trips to the Rainbow Nation.

So how do they feel now, looking at Toshiba’s World Cup promotion? How warm do they feel towards the brand? Do they think, “Well done for getting behind the lads, getting in the spirit of things, you are definitely a brand I have a strong affinity for”?
Or do they instead think, “You slimey bastards, you knew f***** well we wouldn’t win didn’t you. You bet against our boys and you won – well f*** you. Toshiba – Japanese innit? Only Germany’s f**** allies during the war, weren’t they? etc etc etc”

Buy Toshiba – the foreign brand who knew all along that England have a shite team who never win anything.

I think advertising, “ambiently”, a truly crap promotion in a pub toilet is somewhat ironic.

Watch this space for more great case studies.

Up yours, Stame

Thursday’s Joke

A little polar bear goes up to his mum and asks her, “Am I real polar bear?”

“Of course you are” his mum replies. “I’m a polar bear, your dad’s a polar bear, so you’re a polar bear”.

“But are you sure I don’t have any brown bear or grizzly bear in me?” he asks.

“Listen, if you don’t believe me go ask your grand-dad”

So he goes and asks his grand-dad

“Grand-dad, are you sure I’m a polar bear. I don’t have brown bear or grizzly bear in me?”

His grand–dad looks down on him and smiles.

“Listen, my boy, I’m a polar bear, my mum and dad were polar bears, and your granny, she was a polar bear, so your dad is a polar bear and so is your mum and her mum and her dad and her grand parents. We’re all polar bears so you are a pure, 100% polar bear”

The little polar bear doesn’t look convinced so his grand-dad asks him’

“What’s worrying you?”

“Well” he replies, “If both mum and dad are polar bears and all my grannies and grand-dads are polar bears, and even their mums and dads were all polar bears, and there’s no trace of grizzly or brown bear in me……then why am I so fucking cold?”

Stick and Carrot Doesn’t Work

The excellent TED.com has served up another gem in this talk by Dan Pink. Using hard evidence from experiments around the world he makes the case that stick and carrot type incentives actually reduce performance in any task requiring a little creative thinking. As he points out that means pretty much everything businesses expect from their employees these days.

http://bubble-cast.com

The explanation is that an attractive financial incentive actually narrows our thinking. If the solution to the task is anything other than obvious this kind of ‘motivation’ causes us to focus on the task at the expense of a better solution that might lie at the periphery.

He suggests – he would say, proves – that autonomy, mastery and purpose are what drives motivation. The desire to have control over our lives, the ambition to get better at something and the need to feel we are serving a higher order purpose that we believe in. In this short talk he only gets to prove convincingly that stick and carrot does not work. He does not get much time to explore the more enlightened approach but it makes sense.

I’d add recognition to his list. A little public acknowledgement for our efforts goes a long way towards motivating people. It also allows everyone else to see what they should be seeking to emulate.

As Dan Pink argues, business is not applying what we know to be true – what we can prove – from science. I am with him. My comment above, that public acknowledgement allows others to copy desired behaviour is also based on social science.

Facilitating copying is the most powerful way fro ideas and actions to spread. We have long known that it is not necessary to first change people’s attitudes. We need to change behaviour and attitudes follow.

Dan is optimistic that business is prepared to look at radically different ways to manage and motivate. We have the “carrot” of organizations like Google who take a more results focused approach and give a great deal of autonomy, e.g. in NPD, to its team. We have the “stick” that old models of management, oversight and incentives have so spectacularly failed in financial institutions. Maybe, but I fear the change will be a long time coming for the big business behemoths. Inertia is the most powerful force and insecure greedy people will find it very hard to believe that fear & greed are not the best motivators.

Loosen Up

Regular readers (how are you both getting on?) will know about my interest in creativity. Like a lot of people I think I’ve always loved ideas – having them and hearing about them – but I can remember when I first started to take an interest in understanding creativity. I was lucky enough to be in a small group of people working on an innovation team at Unilever. JWT heard about this and offered to have Jeremy Bullmore, their Chairman, come along to talk to us about creativity. He told us the story behind the Eureka moment, he talked about creativity in scientific exploration and he explained the philosophy of creativity of JWT’s Creative VP in the 1920’s, James Webb Young (I still have his book ‘A Technique for Producing Ideas’ that Jeremy gave us).

This started a journey for me, one with no final destination I suspect, to understand creativity in all its aspects, but most especially in business. The difference between art and business is that in the latter creativity is applied, it has a commercial purpose. Or perhaps more accurately it has a commercial context so it is forced to have a commercial purpose. Artists create for the sake of creation irrespective of whether it has commercial value. They seek to evoke an enduring emotional response. In business we seek to want to get a commercial response.

There are commonalities. Creativity in ones’ endeavours is a disposition – it is not something that can be switched on and off or compartmentalized. You are creative because you think creatively and because you get excited by ideas.

“The difference between that which is constructed and that which is created is that the former is loved only after it is constructed, whereas the latter is loved before it ever exists” Chesterton

At the risk of compartmentalizing I see 3 kinds of creativity, whether in art or business:-

New connections – where different elements are brought together in fresh and original combinations to create a new idea.

Distillation – where the creativity takes us to the heart or essence of something, to some pure idea (like chipping away at a block of stone, removing all the unnecessary bits, to find the sculpture)

Inspirational – the idea just comes whether from divine intervention (unlikely) or some unconscious version of connectivity and distillation (more likely). The idea just comes like an epiphany. Another variation of this is spotting the idea – looking at what everyone looks at but seeing what they do not see – a penetrating and discerning insight.

I’ve always felt the first two can be facilitated. James Webb Young’s book talks of how he always kept notes of random thoughts and then used them like a roller deck when he tried to solve a creative advertising problem. He very deliberately collected eclectic stimulus to enable him to make fresh connections. Ideation workshop techniques make a lot of use of this – they force participants to free up their thinking and introduce lots of ways to reframe the problem and apply new stimulus to allow new ideas to be formed. We can use a variety of techniques to increase the chance of seeing the essence of an idea – we can immerse ourselves, we can experience and we can stand back and look from fresh angles.

But inspiration and the ability to spot and develop an idea seems to me to be an innate talent. However, you still need to give people the incentive and/or the permission to be inspired.

Perhaps the central point is that we can improve the environment for creativity. I enjoyed this blog from Neil Perkin. It talks about the need in business to create some space – some air is how I have also heard it described by my much missed friend Robyn Putter – for ideas to come. We have to loosen up and this can be a challenge in business. There is a tension – but is it a creative tension? – between managing the business efficiently, clear targets, clear roles and responsibilities, and yet being loose enough to allow ideas to surface. We need to organize everyone but, as Neil points out, we need to let diverse groups swarm on problems, to create fresh solutions.

Jeremy Bullmore has always identified the power of a tight brief to unlock creativity. We need to be clear about what problem we are solving and, importantly, by when, but loose about how we solve it. Maybe that is how we resolve the tension – we need to be serious about what we are trying to achieve but passionate about the creativity needed to achieve it.

But we cannot, must not, try to limit creative thinking to just product innovation, marketing, the ideation room, the 20% of your time you are allowed to work on ‘new projects’ or whatever. Creative thinking approaches everything creatively, all the time.

We have been talking a lot about this at Quirk recently and we have concluded that creativity in digital applies to everything:-

•    The strategy
•    The ideas
•    The creative use of technology
•    The creative application of all the tactics at our disposal
•    The aesthetics (because aesthetics or ‘eye-candy’ have a purpose – they demonstrate values, they engage and they are viral)

We have defined good creative – great creative – as being:-
•    Strategically relevant
•    Measurable (or else we don’t learn and if we don’t learn we don’t improve)
•    Able to generate response/action that far outweighs the cost – ROI

We recognize that this poses tough choices in terms of tight/loose management style but trust that a love of creativity balanced with a need for commercial growth will guide the choices.

I applaud and commend Quirk’s approach to being the best creative agency in their field. They have applied themselves to what this actually means and what it requires in terms of culture. Most agencies or businesses do not – they just pay it lip service or rely on inspiration.

Risky Business

Risk management has become a bit of a hobby-horse for me. It’s part of corporate governance for UK Plc’s and US corporates. I was exposed to it first when I was on the board of Tempus Plc and then again at SABMiller Plc. It’s fair to say that like a lot of corporate governance, company directors regard Risk Management as at best a necessary chore and at worst a pointless exercise. Business is at its heart a risk/benefit decision process and well-run businesses would claim that their normal management processes take care of risk assessment. Every time Risk Management came on the agenda at SABMiller, my old boss, Graham Mackay, would, with some irritation, point out that the origins of Risk Management lay with governance for banks and their particular needs rather than manufacturing businesses like ours. He had a point and to be fair SABMiller is an extremely well run business.

However, always the contrarian, I really enjoyed Risk Management (I was on the RM committee at Tempus and had to oversee its implementation for the marketing function at SABMiller). The arguments made sense to me:-

When businesses suffer serious calamity people with hindsight always say the risk could have been forseen. They are right more often than not. In fact, more often than not someone in the organization or a disaffected former employee claims they wrote a memo about it.

An exercise where you take a hard look at what could go wrong and then discuss ways of either avoiding, mitigating or insuring against it, is a fundamentally very strategic exercise. Of course you see risks but you can also see opportunities. At the very least you get fresh insight.

There are various ways to approach RM (good old Wiki lays them out) but it is essentially fairly straightforward. An experienced and accountable group of people look at all the potential risks for all aspects of the business and draw up a list. They then catagorize the list into how likely they are to happen (high, medium, low probability) and how serious the effect would be if they did (high, medium, low impact). This then gives a matrix and of course you start with the highest probability/highest impact and work your way through them. Can they be avoided by improved management processes and/or better monitoring? Can they be insured against? Is further work or more fundamental change required? Logical stuff.

The point is, the risk is brought out into the open – what is the worst that can happen, how likely is it, what can we do about it? It’s impossible to do this without getting some great insights about the business and identifying some sensible actions to manage the risk.

The reason I am so obsessed by this subject is that for me it lies at the heart of what triggered the Recession i.e. the failure of the banking system (ironic that isn’t it?). It is also the solution, for me, as to what we should do to prevent a future reoccurrence of the systemic failings in the financial institutions, and a preferable one to lots more regulation and red tape.

Surely if Risk Management had been effective – that is to say applied with conviction and purpose – at Lehman Brothers (and the rest of the banks) they would have realized that they were massively exposed if house prices turned down? Does anyone now believe that Risk Management (forget the ethical questions just focus on the good business sense argument) was alive and well under Lord Browne at BP?

We don’t need loads more legislation. We have Risk Management – we just need to ensure that it is taken entirely seriously. And whom do we rely on to do that? Non-Executive Directors, that’s who. There has been a lot of whinging and whining among that elite group NED’s on the boards of the big corporates. They complain that they carry so much accountability and responsibility for very little by way of reward as a result of all this pesky governance. How can they be held accountable, they have to rely on what the executive board tell them about a business they get involved with only 6 or 8 times a year? Bullshit.

A well chosen, vetted and experienced Non-Exec should know enough to be able to ask the tough questions and should be relied upon to see that protocols like Risk Management are taken seriously. Are you telling me an experienced banker could not have asked a few probing questions about toxic debt and the impact of a downturn in house prices (especially given how deep Lehman and others were into it)? Are you telling me an experienced oil man could not have spotted the shortcuts that BP were taking and the risk they were exposing themselves, their shareholders (which includes a lot of pensioners) and all of us to? I’m bloody sure I can in marketing which is my chosen area.

We do not need to change much. Keep the governance and regulation we have, just make sure it is applied vigorously and hold the NED’s to account if it is not. The one change I’d make is to have a potential Non-Exec vetted and approved by an independent authority. And I don’t buy the argument that any of this will put the good Non-Execs off joining a board. It is very prestigious, very interesting and already well paid. They get circa $50 -100,000 to attend 6-8 board meetings a year (and read the papers and take an active interest in the business). This fee could be increased – surely it’s worth it – but in my view that is not the issue or the barrier to having good non-execs. Breaking up the cosy club of senior businessmen and well connected retirees and opening it up to better qualified people is the issue. No names, no pack drill but I have met some truly ineffectual and disengaged Non-Execs in my time.

Business is risky and the impact of corporate calamities affects all of us. It can be made much less risky and no less profitable with a bit of common sense.

Post Script

For those interested in the application of risk management thinking specifically to marketing you might like to read ‘Brand Risk’ by David Abrahams. You’ll see some contribution from yours truly but despite this, it is an interesting book from a smart author.

At least I think it is but then Risk Management is a hobby-horse of mine.

Thursday’s Joke

Two great white sharks, a dad and a son, spot a sinking ship with drowning people in the water. The Dad shark says to the son:

“Listen, we’ll just swim round them once with only a bit of our fins showing. Then we’ll swim around again with all our fins showing, then we’ll go eat”

The son shark does as he’s told and they scoff the lot. He asks his dad:

“What was all that business with the swimming around showing our fins before we went for the kill”

His Dad replied:

“I find people are like prawns, they taste a lot better when they’re not full of shit”

Agency of the Future

Came across this the other day – very interesting contribution to the agency of the future debate. It also has some useful links.

Direct your comments to Bud not me – if you scroll down you will find mine, which in summary is that we live in a both/and world. There will be a need for a ‘conventional advertising agency’ for many years to come, but there will be growing demand from both conventional clients (P&G et al) and non-conventional clients (i.e. everyone else but especially the new economy businesses) for a whole host of new configurations of services in which digital (= creative use of technology) will play a bigger and bigger part. As Bud points out, increasingly clients will bring some aspects of ‘marketing services’ in-house facilitated, as they are, by galloping technology.

A couple of simple observations. Clients have always paid only for what they cannot do cost effectively themselves. If clients cannot get what they want from their current agency roster they will go looking for it and someone will offer it or develop it. As I keep pointing out – age has its advantages – Ad agencies used to offer everything from making ads, pack design, research, new product development, PR, media buying etc etc. However, only the first of these did they do very well so new agencies developed as clients went looking.

I offer one piece of evidence of this both/and view, and it is a back-handed compliment to Martin Sorrell. If it was obvious that one agency model was going to be the clear winner rather than it being both/and with lots of different and emerging agency models, then WPP would look much more focused. As it is he buys everything that moves and even aims to have 3 competing brands in every major sector (I don’t think this is just about managing client conflict). He is betting on every horse in the race and any new ones that come along, a bit like his mate Rupert Murdoch. Who’d bet against this “strategy” – no-one but a private independent which is where I think the real action is.