Flack's Revenge

The Jury is in on double Dipping

It took about 15 years, but the scientific method has finally given us an answer to the question that is on everyone's mind as we approach Super Bowl Sunday.

The answer is not "the Giants! (We can only hope here in NY)."  Wrong question.

No, the question I had in mind was: Is Double Dipping Harmful to your Health? 

This question was first posed in a Seinfeld episode back in the day, as explained in an article in the NY Times yesterday (Dip Once or Dip Twice?).  Apparently, the "double dipping" meme was a brainchild of one of the show's writers.

According to the study mentioned in the article, yes it is. 

[The study found] that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip.

The professor who ran the study at Clemson University said:

“The way I would put it is, before you have some dip at a party, look around and ask yourself, would I be willing to kiss everyone here? Because you don’t know who might be double dipping, and those who do are sharing their saliva with you.”

Myth confirmed!

This is why the Times rocks and us tech PR folks needs to stay attuned to the latest in science news.

Assume the Positioning: Words that work in Tech PR, Part 3

If you have read my first two posts in the series (Part 1 and Part 2), and followed my instructions, then that means you have done a ton of research and your head is probably hurting right around now.

To help, I will switch gears, and revisit an earlier topic: understanding frames and root metaphors, and explore this within the context of technology categories and market positioning.

 

Further to the importance of doing the research needed to understand the technology and space (discussed in part 2), one of the key questions is: what is the space?  What category of technology does your product fall under?

 

Categories are important not just to give trade press reporters beats, bloggers soapboxes and analysts toll machines and areas of specialty and reputation building.  (If this all sounds too abstract, just think of the words that describe your company at the opening of the press release - the strap line - "Acme, an industrial widgets company, announced today...")

 

They pave the way to a greater understanding of the tech universe through a (more or less) neatly ordered taxonomy that places whatever is out there into just the right bucket.  Having a good understanding of the space you are playing in - the dynamics of the space, competitive arena, its history, trends and associations - will inform the process of defining your positioning within the space.

 

Thus, determining the appropriate category is extremely important, and means quite a bit for how you build your story and the words you choose.  Choosing the right category can be a springboard to describing your positioning and where you are going within the space (and perhaps how you will change the space or help it to evolve).

 

The limiting factor here is that your choice of space and positioning cannot be strictly opportunistic, of course it must be credible; call yourself whatever you wish, people will place you in whatever bucket they feel is most appropriate and you will just cause confusion if your choice of category does not mesh with reality.

 

Also, inventing totally new categories poses challenges because you will need to educate people about the need for the category, and you will spend lots of time figuring out which reporter or analyst is the right one (and convincing them of the same). This is not to say that it is never right to invent a new category - someone had to go forth and market the first PC and network-attached storage appliance, for example - just that it should be done with the understanding that sometimes the only things pioneers have to show for their efforts are arrows in their backs.

 

Assume the Positioning: What Bucket to Fall Into

 

When you adopt a category, you also buy into its history, its energy (or lack thereof), and its root metaphors (as described in part I).

 

Each space has a trajectory, a beginning, middle and end.  You can get a better sense of the state of your category by checking out the Gartner Hype Cycle (see illustration above for a somewhat dated example), which seeks to show where technologies are on the adoption curve. 

 

A challenge is that there really is not any single, definitive taxonomy of technology products.  Analysts, publication directories and buyer guides, and Wikipedia don't always agree and may well carve up the tech world differently. Further, it is not just the category you need to decide on, but the subcategory and parent category.

 

Fortunately, the world of Web 2.0 has given us folksonomies, and ways to get a bead on what really counts: the exact words that real people - customers and potential customers - are using to search for and bookmark Web pages related to technology.  You can consult any number of social bookmarking and keyword mining sites to see the words people are using in their searches, and compare various combinations.  You can even graphically chart the popularity of terms and phrases and compare them side by side over a given time period on BlogPulse.

 

These words can play an important role in optimizing your content for search engines.  For now, we will concern ourselves with how your category can influence your market positioning.

 

We Hold these Truths to Be Self-Evident

 

Below I provide some examples that  illustrate my points about technology categories - why it is important to understand their evolution, and the story frames that go along with them.

 

I started out my IT career selling sales force automation (SFA) software.   I marketed one of the first distributed systems (Sales Force Information Manager was MS-DOS based and synchronized data between field workers' systems and a central server) from a company called XYZT Computer Dimensions.  It was in the early 90's, before the ascent of Windows.  At the time, mobile computing meant schlepping around 24 pound IBM "luggable" laptop computers.  Even back then, the SFA field was a very competitive, fractured marketplace, with many contenders and no clear leaders.

 

Flash forward about eight years and a company that some guys from Oracle started called Siebel Systems is dominating the market.  Only now the umbrella name for the category has morphed into Customer Relationship Managemenet (CRM), with SFA occupying a subset of the category.  Siebel was emblematic of a large vendor selling an enterprise class solution amidst a pack of  much smaller competitors. 

Important facets of the company's positioning were its client server platform and industrial strength RDBMS back end.  It pitched itself as a best-of-breed vendor that offered a better solution than could be found in larger vendors' enterprise software suites, and a more comprehensive and industrial strength offering than those offered by smaller competitors and contact management systems.

 

Flash forward even more years and another company, Salesforce.com has disrupted the CRM market with a SaaS (software as service) offering.  The company is perhaps the shining example of the potential of SaaS, and considered to be leading a new wave of hosted enterprise software offerings.  Thus, Salesforce.com is an SaaS vendor specializing in CRM.

 

Or why not take a look at the market formerly known as supercomputing? The rules of the game have been changing here as well.  As the technology becomes commoditized - proprietary massive iron platforms are being replaced by systems powered by Linux and off-the-shelf processors - it is migrating to a wider audience and is one of the bright spots of growth in server sales according to analysts.

 

Techie arcane language that characterized the discourse  in supercomputing is being replaced with more enterprise-friendly terminology.  For starters, the term "supercomputing" is now widely considered to be dated, and most if not all vendors have jumped on the high performance computing (HPC) bandwagon.

 

Finally in the world of data storage, ten years or less ago storage jumped out of the server box and onto networks, leading to the rapid rise of storage networking technologies like storage area networks (SAN) and network-attached storage (NAS).  Now, some say that storage arrays based on mechanical disk drives have seen their day and should be replaced by solid state drives.  Others are saying that solid state is still too expensive.

 

For each example, at every step, the thinking in the industry and jockeying for position could be tied to truisms in the space as stated below  (I am not saying I agree with the statements, just that they represent IMHO the types of thinking that prevailed).

 

SFA, circa 1990;

 

Windows will replace DOS; if you are a DOS based vendor you will soon be toast (it did and XYZT was)

 

The SFA market is fractured and needs a clear leader

 

CRM, circa 1998

 

SFA is so yesterday, CRM is the up-and-coming category

 

Client-server computing is all the rage, mainframes are dead

 

Best-of-breed vs. suite debate continues, with Oracle the shining example of the former

 

CRM, circa 2002

 

Hosted software sounds great but enterprises will never adopt it; their needs are too specialized and the technology can't scale.

 

Web applications are not as rich as desktop applications, the browser dumbs everything down

 

The OS will soon be irrelevant due to the rapid rise of the Web and Web-based computing

 

SaaS, circa 2008

 

Soon, all software will be hosted

 

Where did all the excitement about CRM go?

Web 2.0 technologies like Ajax make it possible to approach the richness of a desktop UI in  a browser

 

HPC, circa 2008

 

"Supercomputing" is oh so yesterday, just try to find the term on the websites of the major (formerly supercomputing) vendors

 

Linux and off-the-shelf processors are bringing cost / performance down and bringing the technology to a wider audience.

 

Storage Circa 2008

 

Where did all the information life cycle management (ILM) buzz go?

 

Tape storage is cheap, disk-based storage is relatively inexpensive and has tons of capacity, solid state drives (SSD) are much faster but also much more expensive and light on capacity.

 

The cost for SSDs is coming down, and capacity growing

 

SANs are very high performance but can be expensive and complicated to deploy and run

 

NAS systems are relatively inexpensive and easy to add to your network but can't scale

Hopefully, this post has helped you to understand the importance of categories, and about the need to dig deep before deciding what can work best in terms of buckets and marketplace positioning.

 

Next Up: Putting it All Together

Good News for Tech PR re: Enterprise Tech Spending

The NY Times featured some relatively good news about projected enterprise tech spending today.

This should mean good things for enterprise tech vendors, and those who specialize in marketing and promoting tech.

Some might be concerned that an impending recession caused by the mortgage mess and its  repercussions could adversely affect the health of the tech sector.

But, according to the article Belt Tightening, but No Collapse, is Forecast in Technology Spending:

The outlook is encouraging, according to corporate technology buyers and industry analysts. There will surely be belt-tightening, and cuts may be sharp in some industries, especially the financial sector. Overall growth in technology spending may fall from 7 percent last year to 4 percent or less this year, according to estimates by IDC, a research firm. That would be in sharp contrast to the experience of the 2001 recession, when technology spending fell 11 percent over two years in the aftermath of the dot-com collapse.

Building Better Memes in Tech PR and Social Media, Part 2

Further to my post Innovative Minds Paradox in Tech PR and Social Media: Building Better Memes, I had the pleasure of reading more about the ideas from the book mentioned in the post (“Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.”), via an interview with co-author Chip Heath that just ran on Scott Goodson's blog.

Some of his tips for crafting "Sticky Ideas" are:

• Make your Ideas concrete and use simplicity in story telling.

• On keeping things simple, he says:

...effective leaders are masters of simplicity. I’m not talking about dumbing down a message or turning it into a sound bite; I’m talking about identifying the most central, core elements of strategies and highlighting them.

• On the power of stories, he says:

Take an abstract message, like “Maximize shareholder value.” What should one of your employees do tomorrow to make that happen? Now contrast that abstraction with the stories told at FedEx. One of them features a driver who couldn’t open one of the pickup boxes on his route—he’d left the key back at the office. His deadline was tight and he knew that by the time he could get his key and return to the box, the packages in it were going to miss the plane. So he got a wrench, quickly unbolted the whole box, and muscled it onto his truck, knowing he’d be able to unlock it back at the office! That’s the kind of behavior you want when your competitive advantage is “absolute, positive reliability.” That’s how you’re going to maximize shareholder value in the long run. But telling FedEx drivers to maximize shareholder value just leaves them hanging. The story tells them how to act.

According to Heath, effective stories are "portable."  This means they work well across various types of audiences and form factors (using the memetics metaphor, they can jump hosts).

 

On this topic he disputes Marshall McLuhan's famous assertion that The Medium is the Message.

 

...but with all due respect his slogan is wrong. In truth, the message is the message. People who think too much about the medium—opt-in newsletters, the Internet, Web 2.0—are making the same mistake that people have made for years in education. Remember how the 8-millimeter film was going to revolutionize education? Then the VCR? Then the personal computer? The medium can certainly help, but an 8-millimeter film didn’t salvage a bad math lesson.

 

Here, I agree with Heath in some ways and disagree in others.

 

On the one hand, this sounds not too far removed from what I have been saying about newfangled schemes for elevating content (see my post PR Blinded me with Science).  If you believe Heath, and what I also have been saying, the story trumps the wrapper and delivery mechanism.

 

It also validates my argument that narrative is important in PR, and new press release formats that aim to communicate through bullet points, links, tags, etc. - i.e., that try to  "remove spin and give just the high level facts"  - are ill advised.

 

On the other hand, how you say it - the medium - can be extremely important as well. Calling something "news" and issuing a press release over the wires can have a dramatic impact on how the information is received and where it is featured.

 

And, although his example about the failed promised of older technologies to transform education is interesting, it seems pretty obvious that social media is transforming journalism (and by association, PR).

 

So yes, technology can greatly amplify reach and distribution - but, as Heath might say - is anyone listening?  True, your information may be in more places but what is the impact?

 

This brings us right back to the need to focus on better story telling and sticky ideas.

Fear and Blogging in the Corporation

The title of this post of course alludes to one of my heroes, Hunter S. Thompson.

He invented gonzo journalism (Wikipedia definition), a freewheeling type of reporting that is subjective  and injects the author squarely in the middle of the story - one of his classics was "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign trail '72."

This post refers to gonzo communications of another sort, namely corporate blogging.

Some consider the phrase to be an oxymoron (I outlined this in my post Launching a Company Blog).

Jason Falls had an excellent post  on the topic last week, Overcoming the Fear of Corporate Blogging.

Setting up a company blog is only part of what he advocates:

Conversations about, or those which simply include, your brand take place regularly. A decade or more ago, they took place around the water cooler. “Did you see that Bud Lite frog commercial?” “That McRib thing is just awful. Don’t even try it.” “Can you believe this Saturn car thing? No haggling for a price? I can’t wait to see that.” “Please, someone tell Cindy Crawford she’s tone deaf.”

Today, those same conversations are taking place online. The only difference is the four people gathered around the water cooler are now hundreds, thousands or even millions of people gathered around social networking communities, message boards, forums and blogs. They are talking whether you want them to or not. (Freedom of speech is a bitch, huh?) So you can’t stop them... But here's what you can do: Participate."

The rest of the post goes on to list common fears and mis perceptions about blogging and offers some calming advice for each.

To go along with the topic du jour, please note that I have updated my news radar to showcase recent posts on the topic (courtesy the MySyndicaat newsmastering service).

Finding the Words that Work in Tech PR Part 2

 

I thought I would add a few more words to my post from last week

 

Many deplore the sorry state of business communications in general and tech writing in particular.  It is a fact that excessive use of jargon and clichéd, empty phrases (see my post Avoiding Gobbledy Gook Puke, which in turn referenced Steve Kayser of the Cincom Expert Access blog) often make it hard to understand what people are actually talking about or what the products do and how they help people.

 

There's a trap I think some of my tech PR  colleagues fall into.  In an effort to sound savvy and speak in the language of the targeted audience - both not necessarily bad things of course - they rely on recycled, empty (but "safe") prose that may have originated in the marketing department.  Or they go to client, competitor and news websites and read articles and press releases that have many of the same empty terms (here are a few: seamless, purpose built, user-friendly, open, next generation, standards-based, etc.)

 

This would be fine if the marketing department communicated in a meaningful way.  Of course, words that work for marketing might not work for PR - sales and marketing have more leeway to use hype, and the copy is often produced or influenced by the advertising and branding folks.

 

Add to this that both sides - internal marketing staff and the ad agency - may well not have the technical knowledge or familiarity of the markets they are serving to pick the words that build the story that resonates with customers and prospective customers.

 

Particularly when it comes to tech products and services, unless you have actually worked on the front lines of the industries of interest, and worked with the products and applications, or designed them, it really is hard to figure out what is what.

 

So, without that firsthand experience, how do you you acquire the knowledge needed to produce copy that grabs attention and clearly communicates the value or your company's or client's product or service?

 

TMI?  Bring it On

 

For starters, as an outsider you may actually have an advantage.  See my post Innovator's Paradox, which describes the Curse of Knowledge, i.e. the danger of being too close to a topic to think creatively.

 

There is no such thing as too much info, as long as you keep an open mind and don't fall into the curse of knowledge, but there certainly is such a thing as too little information.

 

So, unless you want to do no better than communicate at a very superficial level, and offer watered down advice and copy, there is no alternative but to do the foundational work in getting smart about the space, i.e. learning the specific technologies and related business and user issues.

 

Talk, Talk, Talk (What is the Buzz in your Space)?

 

The best kind of research is primary research.  This means talking to real live people, and not relying solely on filtered information like articles and analyst reports.  Just talking to the clients, visiting client and competitor websites and reading articles can provide a very skewed view of reality.

 

Of course you need to talk to your clients, and that is probably where you will start - but don't limit your conversations to the marketing department or the PR manager.  Instead, try to get range of views - technical, marketing, sales, executive and customer service.  Dig deep and challenge them, just like a good reporter or analyst would.

 

Next, talk to so-called domain experts.  These are people in the industry with firsthand, high level knowledge of a space.  They could be friends and family who work in the industry.  They could be clients who might be in adjacent spaces.  They could be analysts you know who cover the space.

 

Ask them about the buzz in the space.  Are they aware of the type of product or service your client offers?  Do they understand the related issues?  Have they heard of your client?  What is the word on the street about this type of technology and the competitors in the market? Or about the space in general: is it growing, in decline, is there a history of unmet expectations?

 

You might also want to engage in a media audit of the space, although this takes time, and you need to be careful in how you approach the task.  For example, divulging that the questions are on behalf of a specific client might color the answer or make the reporter think you are pitching, not researching (I am not saying deceive, just that sometimes a little intentional vagueness goes a long way).   What better way to determine how to present the client to the media than by understanding (again, firsthand) their views on the space?

 

Now, Go Forth and Read

 

After completing primary research, the next step in taking the pulse of the space is to see what the media and blogs are buzzing about.  I personally feel that, given the rapid pace of change in tech, you are wasting your time by going back years.  But certainly search back a year or less, using a range of keywords, as well as client and competitor names, and mining a range of search engines and subscription services assuming you have access.

 

Read analyst reports, again assuming you have access.  Find roundup and analytical articles in which the media has helped with your homework by providing a wrap on the space.  A good way to do this is include in your search the names of the top competitors, so that the hits returned will feature articles mentioning them all. Read product reviews to see which features reviewers feel are important and how vendors stack up.

 

Once you take these steps you will be much smarter about the space, and in a good position to do the following (the next topics in the series):

Assume the Positioning: What Bucket to Fall Into?

 

Understanding Industry Frames

 

Building a Better Narrative

I Did NOT Have Steroids with that Trainer (NY Times Does PR)

So, the NY Times had a piece on Sunday that questioned the steps Roger Clemens took to defend his reputation against allegations that he took steroids: Clemens Faces Dangers of Spin in Steroid Case.

 

The article lined up a coterie of spinmeisters and lawyers, who pointed out that Roger was bucking conventional crisis management tactics like "issue a brief prepared statement" and "limit your public comments."

 

"In my view, you have to make a contrary impression as soon as the news comes out," said Barry Langberg a lawyer who represented [celebrity clients] in defamation suits..."And then you shield the person from direct confrontation..."

 

Langberg and Marina Ein, a crisis-management consultant based in Washington, said they would have strongly advised against Clemen's appearing on "60 Minutes" last Sunday...They tell their clients to assert their innocence, outrage and commitment to fight the charges under oath only in a brief written statement, rather than in the more uncontrollable forums...."

 

I dunno, not sure I agree and I feel some of the commentary in the article is overly legalistic (although I am not a lawyer and agree that there is a valid argument for limiting legal exposure and liability).

 

The article was about PR and spin.  If you want to bring in legal implications and metaphors, why not talk about the good sense of the accused speaking out in their own defense?

 

It is generally assumed that defendants who don't take the stand at their trials have something to hide.  Granted, there is no trial - at least not yet - but there is a congressional inquiry, and, anyway here we talking about the court of public opinion.

 

I saw the 60 Minutes piece and thought that Roger sounded very sincere.  The Times piece and others have pointed out inconsistencies, or problems with the broadcast as well as follow on tactics like the press conference in which he shared the call that he covertly recorded with McNamee to little effect.

 

Look at it this way, regardless, most people will think he, and all others accused are guilty - as Dan Rather pointed at, there is no obvious reason for McNamee to lie - so there is little to lose with a full court press, even though Roger appears to be a loose cannon.  This actually adds to his credibility IMHO.  I don't know the facts of course, but to me and I am sure many others, the anger and self righteousness appear to be genuine and I think gave him a net gain for handling it the way he did.

 

And 60 Minutes is both highly visible and as American as Mom and Apple as far as being the news forum of record when it comes to trying to set the record straight.

What do you think?

Finding the Words that Work in Tech PR

Bob Brumfeld had a great post on the Fusion Forum Blog yesterday: On Root Metaphors and Public Relations.  It ties in nicely with my last post, which made the modest proposal that we as a profession (PR in general, and tech PR specifically) should spend more time worrying about the content of our content rather than the wrappers and delivery mechanisms.

Better stories make better memes (Wikipedia definition) make ideas that get attention, catch on and spread.

As Bob explains:

From Wikipedia “A root metaphor is the underlying worldview that shapes an individual's understanding of a situation....” 

By figuring out the assumptions and narratives that shape any given point of view, we can understand all manner of things about a topic, and will be better equipped to speak about the topic, predict trends, intertwine other narratives into the narrative that we are speaking to, and make distinctions between topic A versus topic B.

So, root metaphors can serve as frames - generally held assumptions - that you should be aware of when communicating with people within cetain spheres.

I'll elucidate by sharing examples from the world of politics, since 'tis the season.  If you are on the right, and closely follow politics, you have no doubt followed the work of messaging maestro Frank Luntz.

Luntz would argue that frame are not immutable, but can be tinkered with based on the message you are trying to get across.

Luntz is a master at finding the Words that Work, and indeed that is the name of his recent book; here is an excerpt from the a description of this book on the Hyperion website:

It is hard to think of any other political consultant in America who has coined as many effective slogans as Luntz. Some, such as his branding of the estate, or inheritance, tax as the "death tax", have remoulded conventional wisdom with devastating effect on their principally Democratic defenders.

"Others have crept into common usage less dramatically but just as effectively. Take "exploring for energy" instead of "drilling for oil", "tax relief" in place of "tax cuts", or "not giving" emergency hospital care to "illegal aliens" instead of "denying" it to "undocumented workers". Words, or rather the slicing and dicing of them to fashion our subliminal responses, do work...

Lest we think that this approach is the sole province of the right, you should know that the Democrats have their messaging master counterpart in George Lakoff, author of the book "Don't think of an Elephant."

Many would dismiss such tactics as spin and deception.  Others would that it just amounts to shrewd use of language and ideas to get your point across.

Regardless of your politics, or the potential ethical implications, I share this information only to point out the power of words, story frames and root metaphors in communicating ideas.

And now I'll bring the post back to something without life or death implications: tech PR.

What do story frames and root metaphors have to do with communicating about technology?  How do you find the words that work when it comes to highly complex subject matter and targeted business and IT audiences?

Bob touches on some of this in his post, and I will be spending more time on the topic on this blog in the coming days.

Innovative Minds Paradox in Tech PR and Social Media (Building Better Memes)

Janet Rae-Dupree had an excellent article in the NY Times, Innovative Minds don't Think Alike, which points to the need to avoid tunnel vision when it comes to communicating new ideas.

 

The article - one of the most emailed pieces in last week's Times, according to their Saturday edition business section, which tracks top stories of the week - inspired me to tie together some loose threads from my recent blog and article reading.

 

This so-called curse of knowledge, a phrase used in a 1989 paper in The Journal of Political Economy, means that once you’ve become an expert in a particular subject, it’s hard to imagine not knowing what you do. Your conversations with others in the field are peppered with catch phrases and jargon that are foreign to the uninitiated. When it’s time to accomplish a task — open a store, build a house, buy new cash registers, sell insurance — those in the know get it done the way it has always been done, stifling innovation as they barrel along the well-worn.

 

It is hard to argue against this thinking, and she does cite several examples, as well as quote author's of books that support the thesis.

 

Yet, when it comes to tech PR and journalism, the opposite can hold true as well - skating across the surface of a space, and not understanding the Zeitgeist, the buzz, the thinking  - not having domain knowledge - can cause one to offer only superficial insight, and to weave narratives that don't resonate, ring true, or are just plain wrong.

The dangers of superficial coverage have been documented elsewhere.

 

In his post Tech Journalism at a Crossroads, Shel Holtz summarized a podcast done by John Dvorak on the CrankyGeeks blog in which top tech journalists from NY Times and PC Magazine discussed the state of tech journalism.  Some of the takeaways:

 

The requirement to have fresh copy online daily has led reporters to abandon the more in-depth and substantive coverage that once characterized technology reporting...

 

[Panelist Gregg Zachary of NY Times]:'suggested that the day is approaching when technology reporters won’t be necessary at all. As he put it, companies will issue press releases sliced and diced into distinct sections that can be assembled anywhere without journalistic intervention.

 

Other experts point to the need to create compelling content in order to elevate stories.

In the post and podcast Putting Search and Recommendation Engines in Perspective on the Tech PR War Stories blog, Gillin / Strom recommend avoiding trying to game these types of sites.

 

Sure, it’s always nice to get a traffic boost from Digg or StumbleUpon, but the value of that traffic may not be worth the effort.  The fundamental skills of PR — creating compelling content, building relationships and delivering on a message — are still critical in the Age of Search.

 

This addresses the need to focus on creativity and better story telling as I have said in my recent posts.  Tech tricks can help to the point, and it is great to talk about optimizing content, and social media optimizing press releases.

 

Inevitably it is people who will make or break your content and ideas - the best memes (Wikipedia definition) will win out in the end, and until machines can think like people, they will be no match in identifying and sharing top content and ideas.

 

To bring this post full circle, I will reference a book cited in the Duprae article.  She quotes Chip Heath, who co-authored “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.”

 

[The curse of knowledge is] "...why engineers design products ultimately useful only to other engineers. It’s why managers have trouble convincing the rank and file to adopt new processes. And it’s why the advertising world struggles to convey commercial messages to consumers."

In their book, the Heath brothers outline six “hooks” that they say are guaranteed to communicate a new idea clearly... To innovate, Mr. Heath says, you have to bring together people with a variety of skills. If those people can’t communicate clearly with one another, innovation gets bogged down in the abstract language of specialization and expertise.

Sounds like a must-read for the tech PR crowd, and a recipe for ways that agencies and clients can work together to build better memes.

 

So, by all means avoid tunnel vision, but have enough awareness of a space or technology to be able to communicate well and tell a better story, collaborate with those who have domain knowledge, and go beyond tech tricks - the mechanics of PR and social media - to develop concepts  that connect with intended audiences.

A $588B Hole in My Day

Can't we all just get along?

Well, according to CIO Insight - which reported the results of a study by Basex - just getting along, or collaborating by email, IM, and blogging is creating  a great big sucking sound of lost American worker productivity to the tune of $588B.

I alluded to this dilemma a bit in my post Blogging's a Big Time Sink, so Why Blog?

It's hard to argue with the numbers and it would seem to make sense that all these ostensible improvements enabled by better (and more) forms of collaboration come with a big down side.

On the other hand, perhaps there are productivity gains that offset the losses - see my post The Google and Web 2.o Productivity Dividends.

Finally, and as the report acknowledges, this all ties back to information explosion and attention diffusion.  As I said in my end of year post: "The companies that can figure out how to help people make sense out of info - to gather info, sift and separate the good from the bad - and do this well - will be successful."