English and Seduction

The Pew Internet & American life Project just released a new report on the Internet Evolution - The Future of the Internet II (download full pdf here)..

Major predictions by 2020 include:

• 
  
• A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a “flattening” world.
• 
  
• Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and “smart agents” proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.
• 
  
• Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.
• 
  
• Tech “refuseniks” will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.
• 
  
• People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.
• 
  
• English will be a universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence.

I gleaned this off of the Emergence Marketing blog but have seen these results floating around the blogosphere for a few days. I am one of the proud administrators of a hub on Viaduc called Anglais Pro. The hub has been operational for a little over a week, the sign-ups are rolling in and the debate is lively. It seems people have a lot to say about the place of English in the current global market and the acquisition of it in France.

I have seen for a number of years the evolution of English use in a professional context. This is not the same as an observation on the level of English obtained by French school leavers but more specifically the way the acquired English is then used. I use as many techniques as my brain can think of to turn the soldier-stiff use of the language coming directly from books, programs, DVD's, dictations et al (this is the cue for all you ESL teachers to howl me down, again) and turning the communication into something which is flexible and ultimately, desireable. If you are talking to someone in a professional context - you have something to sell (think of this in the largest possible sense). If you want people to buy (again think large) - you must seduce them into wanting to buy.

Your idea is your product and your communication is your ability to sell. If part of this is using English then are you thinking about your English communication correctly or not? Is the English a tool in your capacity to create and seduce or are you still hung up lounging around with Brian in the kitchen?

 

Multi-billion dollar company design

Am I the only one who thought I'd come across a throwback to internet circa 1990's? Google's error page looks like my sister designed it (no offense Catherine). 

Guess the decor.

Look at the picture. Lounging around the showroom at Ikea? No. Sucking down a burger at McDonald's. McDonald's is re-inventing itself and going right-brain at the same time. What is being communicated here? Meaning and emotion. Gone is the functionality of the red and yellow plastic (get 'em in, feed 'em then get 'em out) and bring on in the muted olives, terracotta, and blond wood tones (let 'em stay for a while with their fancy computer thingies), appealing to our senses and enticing us to hang around and feel comfortable.

Ninjas in the Fog

The Japanese have been putting their cool as hell, ninja in the fog, tilt on contemporary marketing for about 2000 years apparently. The Japanese have two expressions which should be part of every marketing curriculum. One is atarimea hinshitsu which roughly  translates to as a type of taken-for-granted quality. This is obvious in every interaction, the quality of what is being presented must be above reproach. This is what people are employed to do and have been slaving over in an analytical way since the industrial revolution, but continuing in my "hard work is not enough" theme for the past month which has been leaving more than one poor listener battle-weary, I discovered the Japanese have this other term- miryoku teki hinshitsu. Now this little baby means a type of enchanting or bewitching quality. This is the quality which kicks in after we accept the functionality and reliabilty and become emotionally involved. this appeals to our sense of elegance, our desires, our need to find meaning in what we do.

 

Simple

This from 37signals: 

"Really want to impress someone with your words? Then either 1) be direct/clear or 2) shut up. Anyone worth impressing will respect you for saying less a lot more than they’ll respect you for using big words that don’t actually say anything."

 It doesn't get much clearer than that.

Nike is Uncool

It's official. Nike is uncool. They are paying jillions in sponsorship and sales are down. Everyone is shaking their head by the look of it, trying to understand why people are stopping the blind lemming dive into automatically buying Nike. I remember when Nike was truly cool. When Jordan was cool. When the world of Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (no one remembers their shoes) was catapulted into the next era by Michael Jordan and it was cool. We marvelled at the photo of Jordan flying toward the basket from about the half-court the ball gripped in one hand overhead, shouting his approach as if the guy couldn't believe he was actually going to dunk the thing himself. Air Jordan. It's been three years since Jordan has played a game and about twenty since he was majestic, and the retro-Jordan shoes still outsell the new models.

The fact is no one wants to wear big goofy white basketball boots anymore because, well, they look big and goofy and the aura is gone. The product hasn't changed but the story around it has. Now, when I talk about the difference between information you have (the product) and creating the desire in your audience to want the information (the story), this is what I mean.

 

Needless Oblivion

I couldn't resist this from Gaping Void: 

 

cafe de la merde francaise

Apparently Loic Le Meur's blog traffic has gone crazy since he announced that he voting for Nicolas Sarkozy in the next French presidential elections:

The reason I did that is that Nicolas Sarkozy, currently #2 in Government and future candidate is the only politician in France to my knowledge to say he wants to transform France into a "nation of entrepreneurs" when entrepreneurs are often seen as "enemies of the State" these days, so I can only support him. Of course, many people disagree...

I certainly don't disagree. If anyone is going to save that lovely but stubborn country from needless oblivion, it's going to be its entrepreneurs, and not the L'Ecole de La Mort mandarins currently running the place like their own private country club.

Rock on, Loic! Godspeed, Sarkozy! Vivent les entrepreneurs!

 

 

The bold type is mine.

Changes

Well that's done. Change of look for the new season, slightly different font and change of blog header. I wanted something which leaves a fresh taste on the palette whilst appealing to your heightened senses of logic. Hope you all like it.

 

Who's your consultant?

This appeals to my sense of aesthetics, I guess but it also justifies hours of meetings leaving my poor colleagues tired and their heads spinning with my excited rantings about the need for symphony. The ability to synthesize seemingly different ideas to innovate in our communication and to stop analysing the living Jesus out of one idea. You don't need to be a genius to think like one. Geniuses put ideas together, this from Il Giornali puts an interesting twist on it.

Surgeon, Martin Elliot from London's Great Ormand Street Hospital made the connection between the operating table and a Formula One pit stop then contacted Scuderia Ferrari. The Ferrari boys filmed the surgery and implemented pit-stop mechanics to co-ordinate. "The post-operation phase is probably the most sensitive, and until a couple of years ago it was chaotic: there was alot of noise, everyone moved around with no coordination with the others: we've totally redesigned our way of working...For years we've been convinced that we were doing things pretty well, but seeing the tape it was shocking to notice our lack of coordination", says Nick Pigott of the intensive-care unit."

Look at the photo. This is symphonic

Design Thinking and Management

So I was in a meeting yesterday in Nantes and this is really the idea I was trying to get across:

"[W]e must consider the possibility that if Design Thinking is critical, maybe restricting it to designers and protecting them from business people is not actually the most productive avenue to pursue. Perhaps eliminating the need for protection by turning business people into Design Thinkers would be more effective. To create a Design Thinking organization, a company must create a corporate environment in which it is the job of all managers to understand customer needs at a deep and sophisticated level and to understand what the firm's product means to the customer at not only a functional level, but also an emotional and psychological level... ...The great firms of the 21st century will be those that recognize the goal isn't to supplement analytics with design; it is all about integrating design and management." Roger Martin.