speaking in clicks

[June 20, 2011]

What kind of environment encourages creativity?

The biographies of great artists tell us the answer is ambiguous. Throughout history, thousands have reached artistic heights despite physical and mental disability, war, disease, poverty and family dynamics that would make most people catatonic. And, as always, they’ve succeeded despite the incomprehension of their peers.

By that standard, the relative comfort of agency life should remove all barriers to creative success. Surely, if Frédéric Chopin could write his F-minor Ballade while experiencing late-stage tuberculosis, you, with your free cappuccino maker and left over deli sandwiches, should have no trouble mining your creative ore.

But what’s missing from this picture is the modern office, with its manufacturing mentality and the underlying assumption that human productivity can be tested, quantified and predicted from statistical models.

Emerging from those models is the belief that creativity can be sparked by mechanical processes. Accordingly, agency life is littered with creative briefs, PowerPoints, white papers, webinars and brainstorming sessions designed to stimulate, channel and improve creative output.

So great is the faith in these practices that no one is willing to admit how little they contribute to the creative process.

Silence.
That’s because the real work of developing and realizing a creative strategy happens on a one-to-one basis. It starts with moments of silence needed to imagine—not visual vocabulary or a verbal design—but the thought process that will channel and unfold your message to consumers. At base, that’s what a creative strategy is: a way of seeing the world.

As such, it begins as the intellectual property of the creative team who has ownership of the project. It’s not a machine to be designed by committee, the way Nike lets you build a pair of cross-trainers.

The next step includes translating that train of thought into visual/verbal metaphors, those fascinatingly ambiguous objects that move consumers to action. Simultaneously, the team must also develop a positioning and rationale for what evolves next: the first external manifestation of the concept.

This external face of the concept itself, however, only a channel through which the concept message can flow. It’s not the concept and it’s certainly not an “execution.” Execution comes later, in the creative development process, the pragmatic, day-to-day wrangling that results in what your audience will eventually interact with.

But just as there are hundreds of possible concept channels we could create for each concept, so there are hundreds of possible executions of each channel. Making those choices takes talent, experience, diplomacy—and silence.

Time.
Walk a mile in their shoes, then, and see how little time your Creative team has for meetings, check-ins, previews, webinars, and the seemingly infinite series of e-mails from colleagues about the article about the study about the statistic about the trend…and the best practice to address each.

Instead, Creatives need time alone to think, explore, research and experiment. They also need time to crash into a few dead ends, a time-honored way to define the scope and nature of the creative problem to be solved.

Regrettably, that time is cut short by inefficient client communication and management—the kind that expects your creative team to function like a surreal amalgam of auto mechanic, tailor, plumber, psychologist and wait staff. Anyone who has gone through 10+ rounds on a set of direct mail pieces, a retail display or an offer-driven web-banner knows what I’m talking about.

“The schedule is really tight,” one hears every day of the week. Yet, strangely, there’s always more time for dithering, second guessing or trawling the client’s mind—by mental telepathy—to dredge up concerns as yet unvoiced.

Space.
So as I see it, if you want to upgrade your agency’s creative output, bring the entire repertoire of New Age creative machinery to a screeching halt. Instead of doing more, do less. In fact, do one thing only: stop wasting your Creative team’s time.

Give them peace and quiet. Then, if you simply must do something to help, focus your energy on providing all background material and assets for each project up front, on time and with no lingering contradictions or outlandishly impractical requests.

That takes patience and forethought. It also requires you to educate your clients—a task involving enough that, done right, should leave you no extra time to fuss over details, or schedule another Webinar about UX design best practices.

Look at it this way. If you feel your Creative team needs so much assistance just to stamp out the routine work that’s your agency’s bread and butter, you don’t need to “elevate the creative.” You need to learn how to hire real talent.

[June 6, 2011]

In the US, thousands of moderately affluent people take at least one extended vacation a year—complete with hotel stays, plane fare and happy exhaustion. Leaving aside what is cynically referred to as “food” by the airline industry, one of the downsides of vacation travel is the time spent hopping from one booking website to another. They offer, without exception, some of worst user experiences known to human kind.

Take, for example, a detail page provided by Expedia.com for a randomly selected hotel. With an utter lack of visual focus, this text-based presentation effectively atomizes the data. Stare at it long enough and you will absorb the information you need—but only if you read every last word at least twice. Not that any of those words contains a hint of the price of the room you’re looking for. For that, you must dive deeper into the haystack as, over a period of hours or days, you compare and contrast hotels across multiple sites.

Get your boredom pass.
The more travel sites you visit, the more tedious the process becomes. First, there’s the tiresome process of entering and re-entering your travel preferences. Here, a dab of innovation would go a long way to making digital travel booking more manageable. Whether it were a new browser feature or a common data pool all travel sites could pull from, I can’t believe there isn’t some way users could enter their information only once a session and have it picked up by every travel site they visit.

No doubt the absence of such a digital travel tag has its roots in marketing strategy. Once frustrated consumers realize they’ll have to re-enter their data each time they jump, they’re more likely to stay put. Spend more than 15 minutes searching and the waiting time alone adds up to a staggering bore.

But even if you’re more even-tempered than I am about such things, your patience is sure to crack when it encounters those wall of words sales messages. For my money, if the blurb for a hotel is four times the size of the picture of the hotel, it’s a sign of trouble. More than once, as I planned my trip, my eye wandered over to invitingly uncluttered banner ads for products I wasn’t even interested in.

Check that marketing baggage.
Yet another reason for my distraction was the absence of a branded voice. Consult five or six such sites and see for yourself how interchangeable they are. Aside from minor differences in page color, you could open any travel site to one of its interior pages and be hard pressed to know which brand it belonged to.

Yes, there’s a logo, there’s always a logo. But after four solid hours of searching your eyes skip right over it. You’re looking, after all, for advice, not marketing. But, as it stands now, none of the major travel sites offer a sense that, hey, my trip is in expert hands. It’s as if the entire industry had missed the memo about “adding value”—the one that’s been circulating for at least 30 years.

What I do get from travel websites is a meaningless jumble of user reviews, the digital equivalent of reality TV. Amazingly, people who scoff at claims that Survivor is unscripted will blindly accept reviews posted by “real” people. Sure, some of the reviews may be legitimate. But what boggles my mind is that someone expects me to value the opinion of an unidentified person over that of, say, the industry insider a travel site claims to be.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Like many other aspects of American society, sweeping changes are often reflected in trivial details. I can’t help thinking there’s a direct connection between the uncritical acceptance of “user reviewers” and the success or near success of “user politicians” in our national government.

In any case, the missed opportunity here is huge. Having lost 10 days of my life planning an 8-day vacation, I’d jump at the chance to use a travel advisory service that actually gives advice.

[May 23, 2011] 

Helping even a large majority of Americans become scientifically literate is an incremental process. For starters, you have to sell the idea that scientific literacy offers tangible benefits.

Reaching that milestone, however, is meaningless, unless you also build an infrastructure enabling easy access to training materials and frequent updates. Even if we agree that digital space is the ideal medium to promote science literacy, there appears to be no off-the-shelf solution to designing and building that infrastructure.

The phrase “science education” is, after all, a complex, multilayered topic, that must fulfill many different functions. For my purposes, professional training in a scientific discipline is not one of those functions. Given that, a preliminary agenda might look like this:

• Education for children and teens
• Education for adults
• Education for educators
• Education as topical overview
• Education as global impact study
• Education as a background reference for the law

And as the impact of globalization continues to be felt, it’s clear we also need an understanding of the social sciences. Ideology aside, an administration better versed in non-Western worldviews would never have created the quagmire we now face in the Middle East. Nor would voters conversant with social and cultural anthropology have ever accepted the ridiculous assertion that our troops would be greeted with flowers in Iraq.

Access denied.
Let’s start by assessing the tools we already have. Here again, a search engine proves an inefficient way to access and assess digital resources. Fact is, you’ll get better results by subscribing to StumbleUpon and choosing “Science” as one of your search options. It led me (with persistence) to a large collection of materials entitled “Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations.”

The site offers reassuring proof that forces of nature can be described and demonstrated with relatively simple means. Yet, effective as they are on their own terms, demonstrations like these—or like the simplified map of the human brain presented by The Times of London—are intended merely to exemplify, not teach the scientific thought process. Even if such presentations were enough to promote science literacy on their own, simply finding them taxes the nerve endings of even the most obsessive-compulsive personality.

Idling ideologues.
Now, if we believe that improving science literacy in America begins with children, the path to success is no clearer. Having put a child through the New York City public school system, I know that many of the barriers to success are systemic. At some point in the last 60 years, the focus of American education has shifted from teaching mental discipline to producing edutainment.

The seductive phrase “learning should be fun” has generated a vast complex of methodologies that do everything except teach. That’s because the valid premise behind the phrase has been tragically misapplied. The fun in learning comes after the hard work—at the moment you realize you have a new skill at your command. We’re not only depriving children of education, we’re ensuring they miss out on one of life’s most reliable pleasures.

As the pace of scientific discovery continues to raise the literacy bar, it’s time for change. We need more efficient ways to instill the values of scientific thinking. Again, the goal is not to create a society of scientists, but one whose self-image is no longer dependent on being too cool, too pious or too “intuitive” to face the social implications of the tools we depend on for our well-being.

Stepping up.
What role digital space can play in the process depends on the willingness of the scientific community and government to:

• Design and create a practical online reference center
• Create a news service to explain the social
  and political ramifications of new developments
• Promote science literacy with webinars, video 
  (including documentaries), text, etc.

It also depends on the willingness of content producers to work collaboratively with scientists. What’s needed is not mere “coverage,” but substantive discussion.

At this point, even the creation of a “WebMD” for every field of science, would be an improvement. While some of this function is already fulfilled by established magazines like Scientific American, or National Geographic they are, essentially, engaged in journalism, not education.

As I see it, the bottom line for a scientifically literate society is access at any point to reliable materials on every topic, geared to a self-identified level of comprehension. Perhaps the example set by mypyramid.gov for presenting basic concepts in nutrition offers a point of departure. Whether we should create a “myalternativeenergy.gov” or “mygenomemap.gov” to follow in its footsteps, is a question someone else will have to decide.

[May 15, 2011]

A major obstacle to promoting science literacy is the lack of an accepted definition. For my purposes, people are scientifically literate when they can meaningfully evaluate the scientific issues we face as a society as well as the science news they encounter in the popular press. Scientifically literate people are able to grasp the scientific implications of digital news items like:

• Size of Spill in the Gulf of Mexico Is Larger than Thought
• The Stem-Cell Ruling: Scientists Alarmed at “Step Back”
• World’s Largest Particle Accelerator Offers Window into Laws of Nature
• Earth-like Planet Discovered 15 Light-Years Away
• Food for Thought: Irradiation is Dangerous

And they can do so regardless of how journalists piece the facts together to “break news.” Keep in mind, a journalist’s goal is to inform and only secondarily to teach. Journalism focuses on what’s newsworthy in the moment. In the first example, the fact that the spill was “larger than thought” tells us more about the care Government takes to monitor and evaluate ecological disasters than it does about the eventual impact of the spill itself. 

It’s a frustrating topic. Was the damage underestimated due to incompetence, negligence or human error? Or is it, in fact, impossible to predict the immediate outcome of a gigantic oil spill? In my case, I have to make my cynicism take a back seat to a simple truth: I have no precise idea what standards our government officials should be expected to meet in these situations. So if I want to see myself as a scientifically literate person, I have to know the difference between ignorance and knowledge.

Facts. Context. Perspective.
In other respects, the definition of science literacy is less ambiguous. For example, I’ve met hundreds of intelligent people for whom the phrase “particle accelerator” means only slightly more than the phrase “adfywebriu sdogweiugb.” When funding for such research in the US was cut in 1993, how many members of Congress actually understood the implications? Even if the cries of mismanagement were justified, was hobbling our ability to compete in this scientific arena justified?

You’d have to know a thing or two to decide that question, and that’s exactly my point.

Clearly, the issues involved in this and comparable decisions are too important to be packaged as news highlights or left entirely to legislators. Take, for example, the decades-long controversy over a purported link between autism and the standard battery of childhood vaccinations. This link was based on research findings reported in 1998—which, as we now know, were fraudulent. If such fraud had led to legislation outlawing or limiting the use of children’s vaccines, the health of the next generation would have been seriously compromised.

Educated skepticism. Knowing acceptance.
In one sense, the anguish caused by the original report will not be in vain if it motivates us to revamp our education system. Science, everyone needs to know, is a product of human beings. Like every other human endeavor, it’s subject to the emotional needs of scientists themselves. To be scientifically literate, we need to take science news with a grain of thought. We should ask:

• Have the results been validated by repeating the tests?
• Has the journalist described the findings accurately?
• Is there an opposing point of view?
• What’s a reliable source for additional information?

These questions are part of a process—a suspension of belief in favor of verification. In other words, exactly the process most people would apply to buying a used car. In the current environment, where so many first learn of scientific developments in the popular press, informed skepticism is essential.

Yet, what should such skepticism be based on? In an uneducated mind, healthy skepticism quickly flips over into groundless suspicion or even paranoia. That’s why Americans need enough “science sense” to separate useful technology from its frivolous or harmful application. If the principle behind lasers can be used to reattach a retina and save my eyesight, should I condemn it because a startlingly irresponsible manufacturer now markets a handheld laser device to wealthy consumers?

So far, so good. But, as usual, listing problems is much easier than implementing solutions. If I turn, in my next post, to a sketchy outline of online science education, it’s with the clear understanding that improving science literacy in the United States will take more than better distance learning software. It will require a major cultural shift in our attitudes about “brain” vs. “heart,” and belief vs. reason.

[May 7, 2011] 

Before I reconfigure the cyclotron, I realize I should have a closer look at how science literacy is being addressed in digital space. Or rather, what existing sites, regardless of their formal intent, are promoting the cause indirectly.

Certainly one stop along this exploratory path must be lazyenvironmentalist.com, the digital wing of Josh Dorfman’s one-man campaign to make environmental issues accessible to a wide audience. That is, a wide audience of people who already realize that our planet’s finite resources need careful management.

Taking as its premise that people will only do the right thing if it’s cheap, convenient and not too labor intensive, the site features how-to information, feature articles on environmental success stories and expert video from internationally recognized members of the scientific community.

That it also contains scraps of hagiographic nonsense about Dorfman himself reveals that, even at this late date, there’s still a club-like atmosphere hovering around some of the most important topics we face as a people. As I can’t help noticing, lazyenvironmentalist.com is also a fan-site pitched to people who “Like” environmentalism.

At the same time, however, maybe it’s simply a matter of human nature. We strengthen our understanding of complex topics by creating community around them. Whether that’s Dorfman’s intuitive conclusion or savvy calculation, it’s impact on the relative accessibility of scientific concepts can’t be taken lightly.

Presenting expert opinion expertly.
In addition to promoting Dorfman’s own patented approach to environmentalism, the site also curates content from leading experts. As of 5-7-11, this includes a particularly effective video from the BBC, featuring Swedish medical doctor Hans Rosling, that offers a promising model of science education. It’s a presentation on the impact of scientific discoveries on global health over the last 200 years.

As I see it, Rosling’s achievement lies in combining education, advocacy, history and, vitally important, a digestible introduction to understanding and evaluating statistical data. That he does so without wearing a lab coat is an un-hoped-for bonus.

Best of all, this big picture view offers hope, particularly by demonstrating the importance of keeping statistics in perspective and of understanding that perspective itself is a flexible, dynamic tool. And in its seamless integration of live action and animated graphics, it speaks fluent digital-ese to an extent the average point-and-click home page can’t match.

That in itself is no small matter. If science literacy is to be promoted successfully in digital space, the approach taken must grow directly out of the multidimensional nature of the medium itself.

Refreshingly down to earth.
What’s more, this particular video contains none of the Watch Mr. Wizard condescension that even infected Carl Sagan’s otherwise exemplary Cosmos series.

At this point in the history of ideas, the last thing we need is another generation brought up to believe their only possible response to scientific concepts is eye-popping wonder. To move forward, we must bring science, as a cultural icon, into the realm of every day, practical experience.

And that is, in fact, a message lazyenvironmentalist.com conveys, by positioning science not as a school subject, but as a thought process we can use to navigate the world more effectively. Of course, no one would assert that, say, particle physics or genome mapping can help you get a better deal on your mortgage. But the outcome of research into these topics affects everything from the iPad you’re drooling over to the medications you or a loved one’s heart valves depend on.

Ignorance is marginality.
Even if your religious beliefs tell you scientific thinking is a godless delusion, it permeates too much of everyday life to be ignored. In 2011, you can’t afford to be ignorant of the background thinking governing so many decisions made by local, regional and national government.

Now, two of the most obvious ways to move from ignorance to a passing familiarity with scientific concepts, are to keep up with science news and to take time out for old-fashioned learning. You know the kind I mean: when you actually push yourself to expand your mental horizons through—gasp—work. Like it or not, there’s no Spuds McKenzie school of scientific literacy. But that doesn’t mean the task need be horribly burdensome.

That is, unless the digital outlets for science news and science education turn out to be poorly organized and badly in need of a marketing strategy that could bring available resources to light. In my next post, I’ll begin an admittedly unscientific survey of what’s out there in both categories.

[April 29, 2011] 

While the idea of promoting science literacy online is easy to grasp in principle, in reality it’s a huge task. For one thing, the number of interests you’d need to address is only slightly larger than the number of available presentation media:

Interests
• Learning
• News
• Global Impact
• Society
• Legislation
• Quality of Life

Media
• Video (Animations)
• Video (Lecture Series)
• Interactive Tools
• Still Images
• Text (including e-newsletters)

Add to this the vast amount we’ve learned over the last 300 years and it’s easy to appreciate the immensity of the challenge. Yet it needs to be faced. From making medical decisions, to evaluating legislation, to addressing the interrelated cost factors, residents of our technological society can’t survive if they remain scientifically illiterate. In fact, at the pace science is advancing, a crisis about the very definition of life and death is already on the horizon.

Grasp the impact of technology.
As research into developing a workable interface between neurons and nano-circuits continues, we may discover how to rewre our brains as needed. Recent developments may also open opportunities for the controlled evolution of our species. 

At the same time, the field of artificial intelligence—through steady progress—will inevitably expand our concept of what it means to be aware, awake and alive. And, at the extreme edge of credulity, if we eventually encounter extra-terrestrial intelligence, I shudder to think what reception it would receive from a scientifically illiterate population.

But never mind. There are enough real world issues to address as I try to map out a digital marketing strategy for scientific literacy.

Where to begin? Well, maybe we can reasonably expect most Americans to care about the environment—since it is the very air we breathe. Besides, the controversy the topic arouses gets right to the core of our need to be a scientifically literate society.

Look at it this way: Whether your neighbors are diehard global warming deniers or energy-saving light bulb fanatics, either point of view has a basis in scientific data. The question is, was that data derived from careful analysis or emotion-drenched polemics? Sadly, neither extreme is mutually exclusive.

Learn critical thinking.
That’s because, at both ends of the spectrum, emotionalism plays a far greater role than it ought in these discussions. If your neighbors are opposed to the implementation of wind power stations they may believe:

Wind power would kill oil-industry jobs

OR

Wind power is hazardous to wildlife

Of course, each of these indictments of wind power calls up several interrelated scientific issues that only a fraction of the population has the training to grasp. But that’s OK. The goal of science literacy is not to turn every citizen into a biologic computer, packed to the gills with experimental data. The goal is to have every American grasp the standards by which to evaluate what they read, hear or see.

So were someone to claim “wind power is hazardous to wildlife,” our scientifically literate citizens would know what kinds of data could support that statement. They would know, for example, that such claims must be based on a sufficient statistical sample.

Just as important, they would recognize the distinction between wind power in the abstract and wind power in its current configuration. Are all wind power stations hazardous? Can they be made less hazardous in the near future?

And what, by the way, is the degree of wind power’s impact on wildlife? Does it threaten an entire species? Or is its threat to wildlife no greater than that posed by electric cattle fencing, reckless driving, or the destruction of wetlands by real estate developers? Good luck finding the answers with Google.

Balance the extremes.
As it stands now, meaningful scientific matters get equal play with trivial ones. As a result, important distinctions are easily ignored. Even benign pop-science sites like The Lazy Environmentalist—where consumers are always only a click away from an eco-friendly product placement—walk a fine line between education, polemics and commerce.

At the same time, to its credit, this site puts many of the most important environmental science topics within reach of the casual reader. I’ll have more to say about the Lazy Environmentalist in my next post, as I attempt to sketch out a preliminary outline for a meaningful marketing strategy for science on the Web.

[April 23, 2011] 

At a time when scientific literacy in the United States is in crisis and the very definition of scientific inquiry has been under fire so recently by our national government, it seems worthwhile to see how science is depicted and disseminated online.

Did I say “disseminated?” That’s a gross exaggeration. Though Web browsers give us access to vast store houses of scientific information, they don’t deliver it in a consistent, coherent form. They merely expose us to a random array of factoids—useful, trivial, accurate, deceptive, fanciful and false.

Add to that the image of science proliferated by stock art companies, and it’s easy to see how remote this very human activity seems to our collective consciousness. With their atmosphere of sullen solemnity, these images tell us “Science, is for brainiacs only.”

Terminology fatigue.
Complicating matters, the word “science” has outlived its usefulness. While the separate disciplines we understand as science are constantly converging, Medicine, for example is as different from Astrophysics as it is from Mechanical Engineering.

We speak of theoretical science, applied science, social science and I suspect the blanket applicability of the term is a major part of the problem. With so many fields lumped under one term, it’s easy to see why understanding Science can seem an insurmountable task.

The delusion of futility.
What’s more, the way the American film industry romanticizes the concept of Genius feeds directly into our penchant for all or nothing thinking.

“You’d have to be a genius to understand that stuff,” is a constant refrain in our culture of Winners and Losers—in which studying Biology is futile unless you have a shot at a Nobel prize.

So instead of valuing the skills and talents each of us possess, we throw in the towel early on and give up the pursuit of knowledge. Now more than ever, “I don’t have the head for that,” is the self-excusing mantra of the terminally unmotivated American.

Selling ourselves stupid.
And as I see it, nothing spells the demise of our values more clearly than one persistent determinist view of the human condition: The idea that our accomplishments depend solely on our genetic inheritance. Ironically, only someone with actual knowledge of genetics, educational theory and brain development would be in a position to know the impact of our genes on our potential for achievement.

Yet every day, people too intimidated to pick up a book borrow scientific terminology to assign themselves inferior intellectual status. They’re smart enough, in other words, to build a complex rationale for why they’re too stupid to learn.

As with any societal problem, this one is much easier to describe than it is to solve. What appears as one problem from one angle, appears as a cluster of problems from another. On one hand, no single entity owns digital space, so there’s no way to regulate how science is presented online. 

On the other, a tightly regulated Internet would be a pale reflection of its current magnificent multiplicity. Yet to the extent that digital space perpetuates the myth of Science as an aloof, inaccessible pursuit, something must be done. Now that more Americans turn to digital sources for news, information and education than to any other medium, the impact of Web content on our perception of Science cannot be discounted.

A call for science advocacy.
What’s needed is a consortium to help monitor and manage how scientific topics are discussed in digital space. So when a president casually asserts that creationism is a valid scientific theory, or a governor foolishly insists that a brain dead woman is alive, there will be a recognizable voice of reason to counter these manipulative arguments. Manipulative, that is, because lurking behind them is a truckload of revisionist legislation.

At the moment, there’s no organization to fulfill this role. Ultimately, the absence of a sustainable science advocacy organization could be our undoing. The fact that, in recent years, we’ve seen US senators hostile to science rise to the heights of power should be a wakeup call for anyone sitting on the sidelines.

Whatever the solution, one thing is abundantly clear: It’s time for the truth to develop a better marketing strategy. Those who hoped a new administration would ring in a new era are sadly disappointed. If we want to take our culture back from liars, manipulators and the stubbornly ignorant, we’ll have to do it ourselves.

[April 16, 2011] 

If I had to guess, I’d say the just-the-facts approach taken by Dyson.com stems from a mistaken belief: that anydirect, emotional appeal to consumers is synonymous with shameful Hype.

This is both an over-reaction to the worst in advertising and a sad consequence of relentless social pressure. In this case, the strict injunction to “be cool” has led a clever manufacturer to forget how people are put together.

Far from being an unfortunate byproduct of evolution, human emotion is both our universal language and the driver of every human achievement. And that includes the mysterious, innovative thinking Sir James Dyson has applied to the redesign of common household technologies.

Judging from the affable, no-nonsense delivery of Dyson’s TV spots, I can easily imagine what’s happened. Wishing to avoid the sensationalist antics of the ShamWow campaign or its classic predecessors, and believing his products speak for themselves, Sir Dyson has adopted a direct, matter-of-fact style that works well on screen.

As I see it, the key problem with Dyson.com is one of translation. The “simple truths” approach that works when delivered in person, fails completely as blank text laid out in a minimalist narrative. Why? Because it makes no direct connection to consumers. As a result, the site has a messaging strategy about one desert dryer than Steven Wright.

Ironically, though the product designs are depicted in a glossy, eye-candy style and brought to life with simple animations intended to draw oohs and aahs, the accompanying text is morbidly un-celebratory. The only thing in this copy’s favor is that it’s blessedly free of iPad-Narcissism.

Structural flaws in an ideological blueprint.
Here again is evidence of the black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking that’s not only the bane of contemporary marketing theory, but is wrecking havoc with the critical legislative, moral and social issues we face as a species.

There’s no excuse for that. Our choice, as marketers, is not between rabid, “interruptive” flailing and sanitized immobility. Like artists, we have infinite gradations of light, color, shade, tone, rhythm and movement at our disposal. If the ShamWow guy is too extreme for your taste, it’s not because “promotional campaigns are cheesy.” It’s due to specific choices made by one brand.

In this case, with a few light touches, Dyson.com could have a human voice. All that’s needed is a spark of recognition: anecdotal phrases to help consumers place Dyson products in the context of everyday life.

No need for jiggly type or gyrating jeans; just a message imbued with a touch of poetry—lines that use poetry’s ability to sum up a world of feeling in seconds. Now, in keeping with the brand image Sir James cultivates on TV, I could hardly expect him to approve a line like:

The only sucky thing
about a Hoover is
the way it’s designed.

Yet there’s no reason the simple truths he demonstrates in his TV spots couldn’t have made their way onto Dyson.com. Instead we’re greeted with:

Find out why a Dyson vacuum cleaner is different

Neglecting to balance the human equation.
Convinced that people only respond to schematic, “no-hype” instructions, Dyson.com makes a critical miscalculation. Keep in mind that these products are the epitome of the high-priced spread. Consumers asked to shell out more for basic tools need a lot more convincing than a one-dimensional “Ours Are Better” strategy.

While some shoppers’ inner techno-geek might well be slightly intrigued by “Root Cyclone Technology,” the key challenge of any ad campaign is helping consumers feel how well your brand meshes with their self-image, their world-view; how it solves the problem they’re fixated on at this moment.

Needless to say, claiming your product is different accomplishes none of that—not least because “different” does not imply “better” to all people in all contexts.

Now, having handed over its digital presence to a mere design vendor, Dyson’s brand narrative hangs on the thin thread of a consumer’s TV-memory. Coming to the site with this ingenious man’s voice in their ears, some consumers might well be “pre-sold” enough to buy.

Trouble is, they’re much more likely to turn away, since the products pitched as breakthroughs on TV are presented online with only a tad more excitement than the moisture-retaining microwave cookware sold by upscale e-merchandisers. 

Besides, relying on “old media” to plug the holes in your “new media” engagement model? That’s no way to engineer success.

[April 8, 2011]

Despite theories of digital user experience that celebrate Brevity as the only virtue, there are times when a site needs to convey a large amount of information. Does that mean that such content density is ultimately unsuitable for digital space? 

As I see it, it’s a matter of staging. 

While there might be a practical limit to how much content a site can present, there’s no reason to decide the issue prescriptively. Before you bite the bullet and replace any block of text with an unordered list of touch points, take a moment to rethink the flow and internal organization of your content. 

The first step is to re-imagine your message in more fluid terms by abandoning the print-based model we flatter ourselves to think we’ve outgrown. 

Communication in print is understandably linear—a fact of life as much to do with tradition as it is with paper. In digital space, moreover, you have the opportunity to pace your message as a director does in film, building your story through a series of scenes or visualizations. Beyond that, digital space also offers the opportunity to roll out its message through more than one type of content.

Storyboard the message.
Realize that and you’ve had yourself all the epiphany you need. You’ll no longer conceive your message in terms of words or even language. You’ll craft it to unfold idiomatically in a dynamic, multidimensional medium. If the prospect seems daunting, you’re in good company. 

Stroll over to a typical Web address and you’re confronted with a mishmash of rigidly stratified offerings:

•Here’s a text block
•There’s a video window
•Here’s a quiz
•There’s a Facebook feed

And there, underfoot, is the wild underbrush of honking buttons, blinky slide shows and whirling widgets that distract visitors from your central theme. Of course, an experienced digital designer can make even this chaotic assemblage of committee-validated boxes look organized and, occasionally, even beautiful. But, as I see it, the prize will go to the visionaries who get beyond this “good enough” standard. 

Let’s get real: in its current state, digital space uses only a fraction of its potential to communicate. That’s because we’re still thinking in terms of isolated, static pages. What’s needed is a new narrative flow that blurs the boundaries between text, image, video, sound—and the page itself.

Imagine if users could drag selected blocks of copy into a video window to illustrate a point. Consider the boost to coherence and continuity if a video or still image could be dissolved into text to reinforce the site’s umbrella theme. Ultimately, this fluid cross-referencing of content from all sectors of the site would liberate digital space from the prevailing print-page model.

Reblock the experience.
Within current technical limitations, the larger problem is one of order and proportion. Given an array of relevant assets in different media, Web-crafters must solve several knotty problems:

•Creating coherence and stylistic unity across those media
•Finding an efficient, memorable and motivating path to convey their message
•Integrating each of these elements into an ongoing narrative
•Engaging, entertaining, enlightening—to empower repeat visits

As it stands now, we’re great at giving users lots of choices, but terrible at shaping the net takeaway of their ‘net experience.

Adjust the focus.
And that brings me back to staging. With all of these unresolved issues, it’s no surprise our expert corps of usability consultants continue to sacrifice emotional impact at the altar of Brevity. I sympathize. In this state of affairs, tiny little paragraphs make the illusion of integration a heck of a lot easier to create.

But let’s be clear: There’s nothing inherently un-digital about long-form copy. What’s needed is not fewer words but a more idiomatic way to roll out digital content in any form. Again, the root of the problem lies in the very concept of building a Web “page.” A page is flat, limited, solitary, one-dimensional. By contrast, a valid digital unit would be virtually limitless, interdependent and multidimensional. 

Sure, it’s an elusive goal, but it’s one we can achieve in increments. Let’s start by recognizing that a Web presence need not be a flow of text punctuated by design elements, video, stills, flashy buttons, groovy fonts—and then wrapped in a blanket of hastily downloaded, pre-fab templates. Let’s focus on the story we want to tell rather than the content blocks we feel obliged to manufacture, in slavish obeisance to received wisdom.

[March 27, 2011] 

In the last few years, the word “relevance” has cropped up repeatedly in content development circles, gradually reaching Holy Grail status as the one true path to sustainable ROI. Grounded in research, backed by dutifully scrutinized data (provenance unknown) the creation of relevant content is one of the glossiest pearls on the Marketing Theory jewel box. 

On the surface, the relevance crusade has the hallmarks of logic. A one-to-one correspondence between what a target should want to read/view/download and what at target will read/view/download is its logical outcome.

Trouble is, people aren’t logical. 

Look at it this way: If human beings were driven by logic, is there any reasonable way to account for human history? Here, I’ll give you better odds. Let’s limit our view of history to the era since the Industrial Revolution. Oops. How about since World War II…OK, last try. Based on the events of the last 10 years… 

Seriously, as any reasonable person knows, a logical, systematic analysis of human motivation is as deep a delusion as any paranoid scenario cooked up by Glenn Beck after one too many antacids. From that perspective, it’s clear our quest for content relevance—if it has any relevance—must be based on more than the utterly unscientific tool we’re pleased to call Demographics. 

Digital droplets / Analog wave.
“But wait” cries the New Age media guru, “Google Analytics have given me a vast new array of tracking tools. Give me an influencer and I can quantify the world!” Sadly, that’s how high the smoke and mirrors can make you, even if you don’t inhale. Not satisfied with claiming that numbers can read people’s minds, we’ve moved on to believing numbers can predict how people are influenced by their peers. 

You know what I mean, the KOL theory, first cousin of the Domino Theory that once dominated world politics and led to such successful user-experience models as the Korean and Vietnam wars. Get enough Key Opinion Leaders to support your brand, the theory goes, and droves of Key Opinion Followers will take note and change their behavior. 

Leaving aside the moral implications of training consumers to behave like sheep, the magic power attributed to KOLs rests on a slim premise. It assumes that people, like molecules of gas, respond to pressure in precise, measurable ways.

Relevant to what, exactly?
Now, even though no one is a greater fan of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, I’m afraid any application of mathematics to human behavior falls flat for a simple reason. The human mind is dynamic, multilayered and riddled with contradictions. 

You can test this on yourself at any moment. Add up the number of white lies you’ve told yourself since breakfast. Open Excel and tot up the number of people you both admire and despise. And, for good measure, graph that vast army of self-defeating behaviors we all indulge in across time. 

In fact, everywhere marketing theory wants to make us digital, humans remain stubbornly analog. And with that analog mindset goes all hope of pinpointing the precise verbal or visual cues that will make Segment A respond to Stimulus Y. Inevitably, what’s relevant to Segment A will always remain elusive. 

Sure, let market research data, such as it is, help you search for meaningful patterns. Just know that any causal link you think to establish will have a heart of waffle no amount of split cell testing can ever hope to tame. 

Relevant only if it’s also universal.
So how is an earnest ROI-conscious marketer with a mortgage and a shrinking budget supposed to deliver on the mandate to “bring results?” If the little voice in your head just squeaked, “Shift advertising dollars to SEO,” you might want to consider changing your medication. Clearly, the antidote to your addiction to spreadsheets is not an alternative spreadsheet. 

I’d like to suggest you rechannel the energy you now invest in a frenetic search for What’s Relevant to a thoughtful, compassionate search for What’s Universal. Consider the impact made by classic American films over the years. They’ve motivated billions in ticket sales not through narrow targeting but through a broad spectrum appeal to the joy, pain, hope, frustration, tears, hugs and laughter we all experience. 

Even Hollywood’s most tightly targeted genre films don’t succeed because they include a critical number of Google-tested buzzwords. They succeed because of their visceral appeal. And the viscera—as anyone knows who has ever suffered through a bout with bad seafood—are as universal as things get. 

To be clear, none of this suggests that trying to fathom what’s relevant to your audience is a waste of time. What could it hurt to pepper your content with lingo, factoids, imagery and allusions that fit snugly into your target’s frame of reference? But when your Web page finally loads, the only thing guaranteed to make their eyeballs go all sticky is a direct, visceral appeal to the universal themes we share as a species.