Category Archives: Communications

Communications

HOW TO LISTEN TO CREATIVITY

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Creativity doesn’t always knock. That seems like an obvious statement but it’s amazing how often we find ourselves listening for that subtle rap. We wait for creativity to whisper in our ear. To talk to us in our sleep or spring a surprise thought on us in a moment of reflection. Its a poetic idea and sometimes creativity does appear in a romantic moment of revelation. However, creativity can also show up like a rumble in the tummy. A headache that won’t give or like a song worm that won’t stop playing a tune that only you can hear.  Sometimes, creativity doesn’t speak it grumbles.

Listen to your instincts

A while back I created a social media campaign that I loved. It was clever, funny and delivered the key message my client had in mind, yet I hesitated to run the campaign. There was something about it that felt off. I couldn’t articulate what it was. No one else could see the problem either. The image was spot on, the message insightful… but it felt wrong, whatever it was, the ad didn’t feel right and as it happens it didn’t perform well.

Its not just what you do

It’s in moments like that when your instincts try to grab your attention that you understand where the pulse of creativity resides, inside. For years humans have seen inspiration as an external force. Elizabeth Gilbert in her book, Big Magic, talks about inspiration as having sentience. She describes inspiration as a force that goes looking for the right artist, writer, creator to help bring an idea to life. That all makes a quirky kind of sense to me. But what I wonder is, when that inspiration finds you, what is it connecting to? The idea doesn’t just land in your brain and wait for germination. It must connect to something that fires it into action. I think that something is our own creative power. If our creativity is primed, kept healthy and active, then when inspiration arrives, it sparks into reality. But none of that can happen if we refuse to follow our instincts.

I don’t share the story of my creative blunder so that you can commiserate with me, I share it because I should have paid more attention to my gut. Creativity was using it to send me a message.  In retrospect, I would say that the problem was that the campaign did not speak to the audience as much as it attempted to speak for the audience. Not a smart move when the group in question was actively trying to have its voice heard.

Perhaps radio ad guru Terry O’Reilly, had it right when he advised that if you can’t tell what’s wrong with a piece, its the tone. Whatever happened, my creative instincts, my gut reaction was accurate. It didn’t feel right and I should have heeded the warning because creativity isn’t just about what you do, its also about what you shouldn’t do.

Creativity likes to travel

Fear also lives in the gut. It sits or swims waiting for the right moment to make you stumble and humble. If your creativity gets mixed up with fear, it can spell disaster in the form of numbing anxiety as your imagination plays out all the ways you can fail. It can also create gorgeous nightmares on canvas and on film. It can spawn books so scary you can’t read them unless you’re cuddled up under a blanket next to your loved one… or maybe that’s just me.

Fortunately, creativity likes to travel. It visits us in the brain where it plays with ideas and transforms them into genius. It visits us in our hearts where we create alluring dreams. The point is, creativity can come from many places. It can whisper, shout or thump, learn to listen. 

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Communications, Internal Communications, Management

How do you know if you are on a good work team?

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How do you know if you’re part of a good work team? I’ve been having lots of wonderful and intriguing discussions with friends of mine about teams. With my soccer team, about why we like each other enough to hang out when we don’t have to.  With my friend Ann Max, who coaches corporate teams towards productivity. I also chatted at length with my friend Jen Hunter, who works with leadership teams to build on their collective strengths. The question is harder to answer than you might think. For one, sometimes people don’t know that they’re in a team.

I once had a colleague who regularly and without fail tried to ambush his team members.  He saw us as competition. Was he a bright and capable guy?  Absolutely, he is one of the smartest people I’ve worked with. He just couldn’t imagine us as being on a team and so saw us as chasing the same scarce resources, whatever he imagined them to be. Did the rest of us think he was competition?  Nope, we thought we were on a team.  Therefore, we were regularly surprised at his negative response to simple initiatives. If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know I think surprises at work are terrible things with disastrous results.

Of course, there are those times when a team comes together and does amazing things.  When this happens, it creates synergy, energy and amazing outcomes. My soccer team does one thing consistently, we laugh. If we don’t laugh, then what’s the point of getting together? We also know what roles we play. 

I’ve been fortunate enough to have some fantastic work teams, those times when a group of individuals transcends their independent parts to produce results well beyond their scope. One of the tricks of success is that we didn’t allow ourselves to get too insular. Not only is navel-gazing boring, but it epitomizes counter-productivity.

Good teams also know that effective communication is central to success.  Good teams have frank conversations, respectful consideration of ideas and the freedom to laugh at each other and ourselves when things get goofy. They are patient.  Good ideas take time to share and understand and they can’t come to fruition without a team patient enough to listen. If you’re on a good work team you’ll know it because you not only like your colleagues, you respect them.  You certainly won’t be afraid to speak your mind to them.

Quick Tips

  • Good team members give each other time, patience and fun. 
  • They respect and can anticipate each other.
  • Good teams happen when you realize that you are collectively better than your individual parts.
  • Good teams are self-aware, everyone knows what their role is and how that role connects to and supports others.
  • Most importantly, good teams communicate.

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Communications

HOW TO USE Anticipation IN MARKETING

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Sometimes waiting is better

We all live in anticipation of something, the next episode, the next cup, the next job, the next client, the next follower. Anticipation is one of the more unusual emotions we can have. It plays delicately along the line of pleasure and pain. It can consume, and even overwhelm us until we just can’t wait anymore. The time between then and now can feel excruciating and delicious. Anticipation is what our brains experience when music gives us goosebumps.

The reality is that anticipation can register in our brain as pleasure or pain. Anticipation is often what we try to build when we are promoting an idea or selling a product. We want our audience to long for the outcome or object we have in mind. We want to have them focused on receiving or achieving that objective so that they can experience the relief of having it. Or, and this is the clever bit, by having to wait, by building anticipation, we can also engender our object with value. By building anticipation we tap into a mindset that says, good things come to those who wait.

USING ANTICIPATION IN MARKETING

When Clairol introduced a new conditioner in the 1970s they directed women to let the product stand in their hair for 30 minutes. The conditioner only took five minutes to work, but that was inconsistent with what happened when women went to salons, so the extra 25 minutes was added to give to product more appeal, more value. For those of you who enjoy a good beer, you may be familiar with some of the anticipation that comes with having a Guinness. Pouring a Guinness is an act of patience. It takes time for the dark liquid to settle and the creamy foam to move to the top and then you pour again. Rather than make excuses for the delay or take away from one of the things that make Guinness unique, the Guinness marketing team played on the anticipation. Take look.

Of course, there are those products that extoll the virtues of anticipation, Heinz Ketchup is one of the more notable. Who in North America hasn’t waited patiently for the ketchup to make an appearance?

BUILDING IN ANTICIPATION REQUIRES PATIENCE

Building anticipation is one of the most difficult parts of my job. From conception to completion of a communication campaign can take months if not years. Throughout, anticipation has to be fed and managed. It’s not enough to stay silent and wait until everything is in place, in fact, in order for adoption to work; anticipation has to be part of the communications activity.   When you’re promoting an idea, it is critical that you take the time to build on awareness. Ideas are amorphous creatures. They can be hard to visualize and even more difficult to understand and support.

Adoption requires patience and timing. If you build too much anticipation you can cause a good idea to fall flat. If you move before your audience is ready, you can fail as badly as if you had introduced your idea too late. The business world is full of great ideas that were launched too soon. I can’t imagine the frustration of having someone take your idea and be completely successful where you failed and all because they had the patience to wait. This happened to SixDegrees.com, the forerunner to Facebook and Ask Jeeves, the forerunner to Google.

Whether I’m preparing an organization for significant process changes or new benefits, I know I have to carefully feed information. I also have to manage the most difficult part of the process, my own anticipation. I have to keep it in check even as I start to feed elements of the change. It’s a slow process, but the adoption of new ideas is not the work of a moment.   I love what I do for a living, it calls on my imagination and challenges my mind, but oh… the anticipation.

What about you? What have you anticipated? What have you had to be patient about in your life?

Image courtesy of olovedog and FreeDigital Photos.net

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Communications, public relations

The Chemistry of Good Presentations

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Any number of things contribute to good presentations, not the least of which is their content, but there are other things at play that influence and persuade your audience to either buy in and believe or back away and withdraw their attention.

Context matters. Where are you when you begin your story? Where is your audience? Are you on a teleconference call unable to read visual cues? Are they mentally distracted? Perhaps sitting next to an annoying co-worker? These things matter to their ability to receive your message.

How you frame your message matters too. People will react to the identical information in different ways depending on how it is framed. Are you talking to them in a way that is persuasive to you or in a way that works for them? This is why knowing your target audience is such an important part of delivering effective presentations. Ask questions, find out what’s going on in their heads and build your presentation to suit.

The other thing that’s happening during a presentation is that you are interacting with human chemistry. As you present you are trying to release certain chemicals, chemicals that increase their attention, chemicals that increase their trust, and chemicals that make them bond with you or give you money. Yes, there is a chemical that does that. The job you have when delivering your pitch is to get this cocktail of chemicals going because good stories are told in the body.

The first chemical we encounter on our way to a good presentation is cortisol. It’s released in you as a nervous presenter.

 

Cortisol – Focus

Cortisol is made by the adrenal glands and it helps the body to manage stress. As a presenter, the stress you feel before you speak is actually going to help you to deliver a better presentation. As you begin to feel that early freak out in anticipation of your presentation, your glands will release cortisol. This sharpens your attention, increases strength and helps you to produce more speed. Fight or flight.

That attention and that strength are your allies, use them… watch the speed, you don’t want to talk so fast that you can’t be understood… don’t forget to breathe.

 

Dopamine – Reward

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is part of the brain’s reward system. When dopamine levels are higher it produces more focus, more motivation and better recall, not a bad combination for receiving new messages.

Dopamine is released when we win a game, answer a quiz correctly or get some new likes on Facebook. This is part of what makes social media so addicting and it’s also why gamification has been such a successful marketing approach. If you can make dopamine levels rise in association with your brand, you create a positive experience that will serve your brand well. So how can you do that without spiking the air vents?

  • Thank your audience for giving you the opportunity to speak.
  • Play games with your audience; begin your presentation with simple skills testing questions.
  • Share insights or ideas they might not have come across and reward listeners if they can discover information.
  • Anticipation can release dopamine, so building suspense in a story can work to trigger the release of dopamine.

So now you’ve got cortisol making you more attentive and dopamine is making your audience feel good. The next step is to get your audience to release oxytocin, the cuddle chemical.

 

Oxytocin – Empathy

Oxytocin is a powerful neurotransmitter that generates trust and creates bonds. It’s the love hormone. When oxytocin is released your audience bonds with you, they feel empathy. If you’re looking for investment or donations, this is your chemical of choice.

So how do get it? Oxytocin is released when you have sex, give birth or breastfeed. Now depending on the business, you are in, these may seem like extreme lengths to go to get buy-in, so how else can you achieve this?

  • Tell a character-driven story that draws your audience in and creates empathy. Think about the first time you meet Harry Potter. The boy who lived, that poor baby. That poor baby that became a lonely boy living below the stairs. His awful life with his obnoxious aunt and uncle and horrible cousin.
  • Your story has to operate at the human level.
  • It has to include a struggle with building tension.
  • A story that leads to a climactic moment or resolution.

This story should take place after you’ve said your hellos and played with the audience a little. This story should reflect the current challenge your audience is facing. This story sets the scene for how your idea, product or activity will save the day.

I should add a word of warning about oxytocin. While oxytocin is the love hormone, it can also be the hate hormone. It is known to increase levels of envy and gloating. It’s also associated with increasing levels of distrust towards those who are the outside of the group.

 

Endorphins – Pleasure

No discussion on the chemistry of a great presentation would be complete with some discussion of endorphins. Endorphins are released for a number of reasons but the primary triggers are stress, fear and pain. Endorphins kick in to provide pleasure and a sense of well-being. Endorphins also make you more creative, more relaxed and more focused

In the context a presentation you want to look at endorphins in two ways, the release that makes you feel good about what you are doing and how to release that feeling in your audience.

For you this means using the natural high that comes from your bout of nerves to give your presentation more life, more passion, this is then conveyed as authenticity to your audience. So how do you do this for your audience?

  • Make them laugh, tell a funny story.
  • Alcohol is also a release, its why so many business deals happen over dinner.
  • Spicy foods have the same effect.

So there you have the cocktail of chemicals that represent a great presentation. Cheers!

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Communications, Marketing

5 Ways To Be Strategic with Data

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In business we look at the information we gather from things like surveys, buying habits, polls and online activity to learn preferences, find trends and spot opportunities.  The information we gather acts as building blocks for everything from marketing campaigns to product development, but I sometimes wonder if we are outsmarting ourselves.  All of the data in the world isn’t going to deliver results if we aren’t also employing an effective strategy or if you prefer, creative thinking to our actions.

A few years ago Kathleen Wynne, the former premier of Ontario, participated in Reddit’s AMA (Ask Me Anything) forum.  No doubt she was attempting to get in touch with a younger demographic and take advantage of a popular social media channel to do it.  The data said that the medium would not only put her in touch with the right audience but it’s “hip” factor might also give her a boost in the polls. The audience and the medium were right – the challenge, of course, was the message. 

Ms. Wynne’s team understood the popularity of the medium but seemed to miss the mark on the nature of it. Rather than embracing the “ask me anything” forum and the consequent, “answer everything” that it implied, Ms. Wynne delivered prepared answers or no answers at all.  Participants were unimpressed. The event consequently had the opposite effect from what was intended. To put it succinctly, the Reddit engagement was a fail. But then anyone who has actually been on Reddit could have told the planners that it was the wrong place to be if you weren’t comfortable in being completely open (and possibly embarrassing yourself). Not exactly the inclination of politicians of any stripe.

Data is a tool; it cannot replace careful strategy, thoughtful engagement or a creative approach to solving communications challenges.  You can achieve amazing numbers on your “Twitter feed” and thousands of “likes” on your Facebook account and still see no appreciable difference in sales if you are not also thinking about the wants and needs of your clients. If all you want is “likes” on your Facebook account, run contests with good prizes, buy Google and Facebook ads, engage popular bloggers to review and promote your services or products. Change it up and do it again.  But if you want to get people engaged on your issue or invested in your products or services, then you’re going to have to be more strategic.

1.    Expose Yourself to New Thinking: Read, listen and engage in conversations that are outside of your field.  Ideas that are tried and true in one area are often fodder for new discoveries in another.  Multitasking is actually quite useful in this instance.  When you are working on different projects your mind is obliged to shift gears frequently, keeping it active, but it also means that the thinking you apply to solve problems in one area may lend you additional strength to solve problems in another.

2.    Take The Unexpected Seriously: When strange or unanticipated outcomes occur, investigate them.  Find out why they happened. For example, when retailers realized that their shopper profiling data was having an unexpected negative impact, they investigated and found that their coupons and targeted ads were so accurate they actually creeped out shoppers. Rather than making shoppers feel that their needs were being addressed, they made them feel as though their privacy was being violated. To reduce the creep factor retailers began to introduce unrelated content.  For example, new moms would get coupons for diapers and other baby paraphernalia, but they would also get lawnmower ads and tire specials. This made the coupons useful, but also feel less personally directed.

3.    Learn From Success: Seek out and work with people who are doing good things or have been successful in the past.  Study their methods and determine if their approach can be used to achieve successful results for you. The Pancreatic Cancer Action organization recently ran an ad campaign with the tagline, “I wish I had breast cancer.” Understandably the ad generated a fair bit of outrage and shock.  It also garnered an unprecedented amount of attention towards pancreatic cancer that resulted in the head of the organization giving numerous interviews in the UK, U.S. and Canada. In those interviews, the issues facing those with the disease were discussed at length. Similar shock approaches were used in the early days of Aids research and consequently generated millions of dollars in research.

4.    Take Advantage of Existing Opportunities: When the cashier at Mac Donald’s asks you if you would like fries with your order, that’s a perfect example of taking advantage of an existing opportunity. A similar approach would be looking to existing clients to expand business opportunities.

5.    Turn a Negative into a Positive: In December of 2011, Alec Baldwin was removed from an American Airlines flight after he refused to stop playing a game. The flight was delayed and significant coverage followed. Baldwin could have apologized to the airline for causing the flight to be delayed, but he took a different approach.  Shortly after the event and amid the media stories he appeared on Saturday Night Live and posed as the pilot of the flight.  In that guise, he delivered an apology to himself and a humorous and mocking skit that garnered him praise for being a savvy PR pro.  The skit also made American Airlines look petty and foolish.

Keep in mind that being creative or strategic is an act of will. There are no quick and easy answers. Creative people work at it.  They think hard and try out ideas, hundreds of them if not more before they hit upon those that work.

Have you ever stumbled upon a great idea in an unexpected place? How do you get yourself into a strategic frame of mind?

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Communications, Internal Communications

5 Great Programs That Add Pop To Presentations

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PowerPoint is a great presentation tool.  It’s flexible, powerful and easy to use. It’s also one of the most maligned presentation tools. Its biggest flaw, however, is its users. Some of the regular culprits are poorly constructed slides filled with tiny font. Complex graphs meant to confound instead of inform viewers and then there is the challenge of presenting information. This post isn’t offering alternatives to PowerPoint because I think it’s bad, I’m sharing tools that can shake things up and possibly improve presentations (some can even be used with PowerPoint).

Adobe Spark

  • Adobe Spark offers a great variety of easy to use options for social posting, blog images, ads and more. It’s one of my favourite tools.
  • There are a number of templates and different layouts you can choose.
  • The templates allow you to choose the right size for your projects and you can start from scratch or with one of the choices from their gallery.
  • In addition to templates, Spark gives you access to free images from sites like Pexels and Pixabay from within the program.
  • It also allows you to make videos, an important feature when there is so much importance placed on video in order to be seen on social media.
  • The video option comes with the ability to upload your own images or your own video clips.
  • You can choose silence, a piece from their music selection or add a voice-over or both.
  • You can store your projects online and/or download them.
  • Projects download as jpegs or MP4s
  • On an “easy to use” rating scale, I would give Spark an 8 out of 10. The only reason the mark isn’t higher is that even if you start from scratch there are limits on the customization options within the program (at least at the free level).

Take a look at the video below to get a better look.

Canva

  • One of the best parts of Canva is the ability to create great infographics.
  • Canva also allows you to create awesome social posts, presentations, ads, detailed reports that pop and much more.
  • It also allows you to create logos, though the template selection of options is limited.
  • With Canva you can import the images you want or choose from their selection. Some of the images are free, while others are a cheap (one dollar).
  • Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow you to make videos.

 

Prezi

  • If you have complex information to deliver, particularly if you are trying to illustrate the relationship of things, Prezi is a great choice.  It has many of the same attributes as PowerPoint, but its delivery style means that you have something that feels more like a movie.
  • Prezi also allows you to deliver messages in a nonlinear way.  Prezi is like telling a story on a huge canvas. You can zoom in to show details and easily illustrate complexity or you can zoom out so that your audience sees the big picture.
  • A word of warning though, the movements that make Prezi such a fun can actually make some people feel seasick. Getting nauseous during a presentation is definitely a con.
  • While Prezi has some beautiful design formats, they are much more limited than PowerPoint and while PowerPoint comes with a host of tools, using Prezi means that you have to import many of the graphs you’re used to having automatically with PowerPoint.
  • On the upside, just as you can import your graph, you can also embed Prezi into PowerPoint, making for a great combined outcome.
  • Prezi is a web-based product available for free if you don’t mind your presentation being made public. Otherwise, you can buy a desktop version that is more pricey than PowerPoint.
  • On an “easy to use” rating scale, I would give Prezi a 7 out of 10.  You can achieve a lot with Prezi, but the more specific the desired outcome the more challenging it can be to work with.

For a peek at how Prezi works, take a look below.

Visme

  • Visme allows you to build infographics, presentations, reports, and all kinds of graphics.
  • It comes with a great selection of templates or you can start from scratch.
  • Unlike some of the other tools, it comes with 100s of font choices and customizable icons.
  • You can use their images, paid and free or upload your own.
  • You can create interactive maps and include your own content.
  • You can edit, crop or use your own colour schemes and you can animate just about anything.
  • You can keep your files online, make them private or download them as an image, PDF or HTML5.
  • There are a number of colour palettes available on Visme, but unfortunately, you need to buy their premium package if you want to include your own brand colours.
  • On an “easy to use” rating scale, I would give Visme a 7 out of 10. The challenge with Visme is that with all of its flexibility also comes some complexity. If you are not used to graphics software it can get confusing.

Take a look at the explainer video below to get a better understanding of Visme’s scope.

If you are looking for a way to bring it all together then you will like the next offering on the list, SlideDog.

SlideDog

  • SlideDog allows you to pull together all the best parts of the tools you like working with into one seamless presentation.
  • Essentially whether you want to showcase web pages, video clips, Prezi presentations or PDFs, you can pull them all together for one experience.
  • SlideDog allows you to retain all of the functionality of the original file.
  • The challenge, of course, is that you can’t really create within SlideDog and if you want to make a change in the presentation then you have to go back to the original… that can get tiresome.

There are many other tools out there to be considered, such as Haiku Deck or Google Slides both are free, and they are very similar to PowerPoint, but not quite as good. Haiku Deck makes things pretty and can provide the user with various options for display, but has less functionality than PowerPoint. Google Slides allows you to collaborate on slide creation and being free is a big advantage but the desktop version isn’t as awesome as PowerPoint and the template options for PowerPoint make it an easy choice.

Google Slides allows you to collaborate on slide creation and the fact that its free is a big advantage but the desktop version isn’t as awesome as PowerPoint and the many template options available for PowerPoint make it an easy choice.

I haven’t forgotten about KeyNote. Keynote makes beautiful presentations. If you have a MAC, the price is also right as it comes for free. One of the biggest challenges with Keynote is that it was built for Apple users and although you can now access it with a PC if you use iWork, it seems like a lot of effort to access a program that does very similar things to PowerPoint.  Keynote is also not as intuitive if you are used to PowerPoint.

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Communications, Government Relations, Marketing

Warming Up The Audience Before Delivering Your Message

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Regardless of the setting, whether I’m leading a workshop, lobbying or speaking at an event, I always warm up my audience before delivering my message. When they’re warm, I’m hot.

A Story from the Field

The CEO of the large pharmaceutical company was anxious to meet with an Assistant Deputy Minister (ADM).  His company had considerable concerns around a regulatory process and he wanted to share their proposals towards addressing that challenge.  He knew that in the weeks prior to his meeting there had been quite a bit of bad press about the ADM’s program. What’s more, the bad press was the result of accusatory comments levelled directly at the ADM by another pharmaceutical company.  It was of little surprise to the CEO when he was only granted 30 minutes for the meeting, and even less of a surprise when 30 minutes was reduced to 15 minutes once he arrived.

Rather than launching into his proposal, he started the meeting by explaining that he understood the challenges the department faced.  He explained that he thought the press coverage unfair since it did nothing to contribute to an open dialogue between his industry and the department.  The ADM who had started the meeting with her hands folded across her chest and her lips tightly pursed, slowly began to relax.  When her assistant came into the meeting to get her after 15 minutes, the ADM shook her head and the meeting proceeded. By the time the CEO explained that his company funded a group of independent scientists who would be available for an exchange program with the department due to their specialized knowledge, 45 minutes had elapsed. The ADM was leaning forward attentively and asking how the scientists were chosen and how the exchange might work. The meeting ended after an hour and there were smiles all around.

As government relations exercises go, I have rarely been so impressed with a client for turning what could have been a disaster into a triumph. When we were told we had 15 minutes I wasn’t sure if he would stay or walk out, but he was made of sterner and smarter stuff.  It’s a lesson that has stayed with me.

Four tips for managing first meetings:

  • Do your homework. Understand what challenges and opportunities face your audience.
  • Assume nothing about your audience’s knowledge of you; make sure your position/attitude is clearly stated at the beginning of the meeting.
  • Read the body language of the person you are meeting with and respond to it.
  • Establish rapport before trying to deliver your pitch.

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Communications, Leadership

Personal Paradigms, The Good, The Bad & The Impact

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They say that goldfish have a memory that’s about 10 seconds long, no doubt an exaggeration but for argument’s sake, let’s say that’s true. With a memory that short, they would be forever rediscovering the world around them. They would have no operating principle to help them navigate. Without personal paradigms, we’d be very much like that goldfish.  Though his bowl of water is small he is forever shouting, “Hey, there’s a castle! Hey, there’s a castle!”

How Personal Paradigms Serve Us: Paradigms help us to interpret, define and engage in the world around us. Without our paradigms, we would constantly be struggling to determine and define what we see, what we hear and what we should do about it. Our paradigms help us to move through our lives seamlessly.

When I was in college, I made a friend who often shared stories about her family and their activities. She spoke of the antiques her mother collected and the beautiful old apartment they lived in. She shared stories of their travels and generally painted an amazing picture of her life.  As I got to know her better it became clear her stories didn’t quite reflect reality. There were no antiques, no beautiful apartment and certainly no travels.

Young or old?
Young or old?

Flash forward a few years and I’m on Parliament Hill and the office across the hall has brought in a summer student. One day the student tells us about her adventures. She has met Sting, spent a few weeks on the streets for a research project, her grandmother has left all her money to her cats and she has written for a popular soap opera. As you can imagine, because of my history, my paradigm would not allow me to believe the stories she told unless I had evidence. It was simple when people start telling fantastical stories about their lives you need to look more carefully.

Later, I quietly mentioned to my colleague that I had some suspicions about the truth of the stories shared. Well, my colleague’s paradigm was different from mine, so she got more than a little annoyed at my suspicions and a few uncomfortable days followed. After a short period, the summer student… disappeared from the office across the way. It eventually came out that she had made up all of her stories, including her skills. People were shocked and angry, but not me. My paradigm had stepped in and said, this is bull. Once that happened, all I could see were flaws and inconsistencies. Our paradigms save us a lot of grief and can generally help us to interpret the world.

How Personal Paradigms Make Us Blind to the World: So your thinking, so what? You’ve heard all this stuff before. But what if despite knowing this, the most experienced and in some cases the most powerful people in our respective worlds persisted in behaving as if their paradigm was the only paradigm?

Is the black diamond the top or bottom of the square?
Is the black diamond the top or bottom of the square?

People get used to power and after a while, they can start to think that no matter what they do or say, they are somehow removed from consequences. They can build a personal paradigm around themselves that is so airtight that they become incapable of seeing pitfalls. They lose the ability to judge good from bad. They can divorce themselves from seeing the errors in their own behaviour.

Consider American President, Donald Trump,  celebrity chef Paula Deen or former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, all could lay claim to huge popularity and all had difficulty seeing problems with their own behaviour.

When our paradigms blind us, they don’t just make us blind to opportunity, they make us blind to threats, blind to ethical considerations, blind to the harm we are doing.

Whatever Your Perspective, Understand That You Have One: Although you may have heard it countless times, don’t forget that your truth is not necessarily THE  truth.  Your version of reality may not even be based in reality. If this was an easy thing to remember, then the examples above would be a lot harder to find.

Has your paradigm ever helped or hindered you? Have you ever seen someone else struggle because they just couldn’t see the “truth” of a situation?

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Communications, public relations

Marketing in the Uncanny Valley

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A few years ago the Canadian Association of Optometrists ran a campaign called, “Open Your Eyes”. The campaign included a commercial that garnered a fair bit of commentary. It featured a woman who rises out of bed and begins to make her way through her morning routine with her family. The thing that makes the commercial a point of discussion is that she has her eyes closed throughout, but her lids are painted with eyes in a striking light brown. The result is an uneasy appearance. As the commercial unrolls the camera pans to show the viewer things from her perspective. As she encounters her family and neighbours we, the viewer, are surprised to see that no one reacts. She and they wave and interact as though everything is normal. The commercial is arresting, but it also makes the viewer a touch uneasy, in a word, the commercial is uncanny.

Little Baby’s Ice Cream took uncanny into the realm of creepy. They ran an ad that featured a somewhat androgynous ice-cream being, who stares piercingly out at the viewer as she slowly and methodically eats herself. Starting at the top of her head she scoops away more and more of herself while her stare becomes increasingly vacant.

Although we know that these images are contrived, intended to get our attention, they are still disturbing. Uncanny is like scary but operates almost on a subconscious level. It can sit close to normal without being at all normal. That proximity between normal and creepy can be so disturbing that it can create cognitive dissonance. So why would someone marketing a product ever want to cause the consumer mental stress?

Simple really, if the advertising works just right, they are disturbing, but utterly memorable and believe it or not, appealing. Little Baby’s managed to garner national attention and their sales followed in a steady upward projection long after the initial commercial was aired. The commercial has received well over seven million hits on YouTube and the “YouTubers React to Little Baby” has received over eight million views. The success of Little Baby’s was so profound that they created more commercials, all uncanny, and even a documentary on the making of the commercials.

What these short and disturbing offerings are is a brief titillation. They get our attention, make us giggle, get grossed out or better still, they make us talk. They are startling and disturbing, but ultimately safe. This type of advertising does not require the endurance needed for a horror movie and they do not induce the physical reaction or risk of extreme sports, but they do give the viewer a jolt. They are the flip side of humorous advertising that lulls and amuses while it embeds itself into our minds. Both can be effective or foolhardy.  It is not an easy line to walk, but if you can hit it home, the results can be spectacular. This last video comes as a suggestion from a friend and it hits all the right uncanny buttons.

Whether promoting a book, movie, service or product, when have you seen uncanny work it’s magic?  Have you ever thought of doing something a little off-putting to bring attention to a product or service? What do you think of uncanny advertising?

Image by Masahiro Mori and Karl MacDorman

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Communications, Internal Communications, Leadership

11 Dangerous Misconceptions about Communications

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Communications is as necessary to our survival as breathing. It’s how we engage and interpret our world. We label and reference what we see hear and smell and then use that information to share ideas, solve problems and fire imaginations. Despite the integral role it plays in helping us to navigate our lives we often take effective communication for granted. We assume that everyone is seeing the world through our eyes and experiences. This can lead to misinterpretations, disagreements, and confusion.

Misconceptions can shape how we see and understand messages. They can inform decisions and drive objectives. While errors in understanding can sometimes be funny, too often the results are far from humorous. If you are in business then you are in the field of communications. Without the proper care, you and your brand can be felled by misinterpretation.

The following are some of the most common misperceptions I have encountered working in business communications.

  1. Communication happens when messages are sent. Sometimes people assume that because they have sent a message, that it has been received or that receiving a message is the same as understanding it.  Consider how many messages are sitting in your inbox unopened or all of the promotional mail that goes directly into recycling. Most messages never get to their intended audience. Assume communications has happened when you hear an answer or see an outcome that confirms it. This is especially true when it comes to social media. Thousands of posts don’t mean thousands of views, much less that people have understood or engaged with your content.
  2. Fluency means comprehension. This misconception is related to the idea that your proficiency in a language is somehow a measure of your effectiveness in communicating.  If that were true, then someone with a large vocabulary need not listen, ensure that messages were actually heard, understood or retained. If you have ever read an academic paper you know that a deep understanding of a topic is no assurance of the ability to communicate about it effectively. Unfortunately, having a deep understanding of a particular topic can actually result in lowering your ability to communicate about it well. One reason this happens is that you can get into the habit of using the jargon or abbreviations that are well known to those in the field but become a barrier to those outside of it.
  3. If people don’t agree with you, then they misunderstood.  Overconfidence in the truth or righteousness of your message can sometimes result in an assumption that everyone will agree with you. The belief that your message is the only message can be a reflection of your commitment to an idea or your passion for a cause. Think about how often political convictions can result in disputes amongst friends. Sometimes people hear your message just fine but they simply don’t agree with you.  This is not necessarily a prompt to restate, repeat or say it louder.  It can be a prompt to rethink.
  4. You can’t plan for crisis communications. As a business, not having a crisis communications plan is a strategic blind spot that can result in a hard and fast fall. Consider conducting a vulnerability audit. If you are a small business or operating on your own, ask yourself questions related to worst-case scenarios. What would need to be in place if you got sick? What do you need to do if your regular suppliers are unavailable? Who do you need to train if they need to take over? Are there processes you should be documenting? Do you have an emergency contact list? If you have a larger business, ask people responsible for various departments to consider potential weak spots and plan for worst-case scenarios. Do you have a communication tree set up so that messages can quickly reach multiple people? Make sure that your response process is efficient. Slow responses in times of crisis can grow the crisis.
  5. Always stay positive. Optimism is awesome, its good for you and practising optimism is important to success. However, while having a positive and happy brand has become the default for many organizations, sometimes you have to disagree with people or take a stand on a topic that affects or offends a large segment of your market. Avoiding conflict or negative conversations can actually result in tarnishing your brand or hindering innovation. Innovation often requires taking risks and risks can result in negative outcomes. Employees need to feel comfortable enough to take chances. Risk can be the difference between making the mediocre good and the good great.
  6. One message fits all. If all humans had identical needs, experiences, and aspirations, perhaps one type of communication would be feasible. Since we have unique needs or at least groups of people have unique needs, then we have to tailor communications to match our various audiences. Not only do people learn and understand things in different ways, they have different expectations and priorities. By keeping communication styles responsive and flexible you will be better at getting your message delivered.
  7. Any problem can be resolved with effective communications. Communications is not magic.  There are some challenges that communications simply will not overcome. In some situations, the best that communications can do is facilitate interpersonal exchanges and help to make the position of both sides clear. 
  8. The more communications the better. Whether you are talking about interpersonal communications or the media more is not necessarily better.  If you want press coverage sending countless press releases may only result in reporters learning to ignore your messages. Being stingy with knowledge is rarely a good idea if you are trying to influence an outcome, but as with most things, balance is important. Measure your responses, take the temperature of your audience to determine if your message is getting through.
  9. Good logic makes for good communications. This misconception assumes that emotions play no role in communications. The reality is that you can get different reactions to the identical message depending on how it’s delivered when it’s delivered, and how you and the recipient are feeling at the time of delivery. Think about how effective it is sending a “get to work” message late Friday afternoon in the summer.
  10. Ignore social media in a crisis. It’s hard to believe that anyone still thinks they can ignore social media during a crisis, but every year organizations that should know better do. Not only do you have to engage on social media during a crisis, you have to do so quickly or risk having your brand negatively affected. Being responsive means having a clear policy in place letting employees know what they can and cannot respond to in case of a crisis. It also means being available to respond after hours.
  11. Communications is easy. Just because everyone does it doesn’t mean they do it well. While most people can learn to be better communicators with time and practice, good communications take work. Communicating effectively with broad and diverse audiences requires research, skill, and knowledge.

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