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Mar 31

Observations and Insights

By Communication theory, content, Contract theory, Uncategorized

What’s the difference between an observation and an insight? Insights are generally based on observations but they go further. They’re generally unexpected, and they have real value to the reader.

They often require joining some dots and give an ah ha moment to the person who discovers them or is told them for the first time. They are often the product of asking the question “why?”

People generally read text for insights but they want to be able to see that the observations are there to back those insights up.

Mar 30

Conversational context

By Uncategorized

Sometimes people write stuff up for the benefit of those they’ve just had a conversation with. And what you often get is an aide memoire for both parties, and that’s perfectly fine. But if you then hand the same piece of writing to someone who wasn’t in on that conversation, and you present it as a report, the results can be quite confusing.

Think of the whole transaction as the white and the yolk. What was said is the white and what is written is the yolk. The yolk can seem like the concentrated essence of the egg, but that’s not really the case. They’re two different things. If you’re going to help people who weren’t in the room at the time of the conversation to understand what went on, you’re going to need to include some context.

 

 

 

 

Mar 30

Value Exchange

By Uncategorized

When we give attention to a piece of text it’s almost always because we think we’re going to get something out of reading it. That’s a value exchange and if you’re not giving your readers any value, you won’t build any readers. The only exception to this is if you’re working in a coercive environment where you can penalise people for failing to read. Good luck with that to anyone writing outside North Korea.

(See also the difference between and observation and an insight.)

Mar 30

Larry McEnerney

By Uncategorized

According to McEnerney, every successful piece of academic writing has the same structure. It goes like this:

“You and many others think X. But I’m here to tell you that you and they, are wrong.” By the end of the paper you have been sold Y which is right. And being corrected represents the value exchange for the effort you’ve put into reading it.

On the Copycourse, we don’t see that as very different from a piece of marketing writing. Marketing writing goes as follows:

“You’ve be doing X. But X is something of a problem. We’re here to tell you there it’s easier if you do Y.”

By the end of the marketing communication you have been sold Y. And the possibility of having a marginally better or easier life represents the value exchange for paying attention to the message.

So in case you’ve ever wondered about the difference between marketing communication and academic communication, the answer is that fundamentally they’re the same structure.

Mar 25

Dove

By Uncategorized

Dove took a very ordinary soap and found what was at the time a very extraordinary proposition. At the heart of this leap forward was research which told Dove what everyone already knew but had never really identified properly. Namely that women filtred out most marketing messages delivered by models because they weren’t real women.

More Dove

Jun 21

Story change and communication

By Communication theory, content, Story, Strategy, Uncategorized

From zero to hero. The classic log line for a Hollywood storyline. Why? because there’s lots of change implicit in zeros becoming heros. A perfect example of this would be the log-line for Down and Out in Beverly Hills. Where the filthy rich meet the dirty poor. You can almost see that there will be change for both the two main characters. Without change there can be no story and without story there’s no communication. These three things go together and if you’re going to understand any one of them you need to understand them all.

Another way of looking at this is by investigating what happens when there’s no change. And by that we also mean no change in expectation. If you were to try to build a story around visiting a vending machine: You go to the a vending machine in some big building.

You select, say a Kit Kat, put your money in, and a Kit Kat duly drops onto the tray. Well, there’s no possible story that can come out of that because in no way has any expectation been thwarted or confounded. However, if a Kit Kat didn’t drop down, but something much more unexpected did, say a packet of class A drugs, you have the beginnings of a storyline.

Mar 17

Pregnant Man – the logic flow

By Communications craft, Creativity, Uncategorized

“The ad made headlines all over the world when it came out. It was such a bombshell, one of the most controversial ads ever. There were questions in Parliament about the propriety of running such an ad, especially in the government’s name. It made a furore all around advertising and beyond, all over the world.

The client was delighted, even more so after it had made such a fuss, because that put it on the map. I hope it did some good. It’s weird to me that it’s made such an impact and still makes an impact. Because in photographic terms, what is it? A picture of a bloke. I find it pretty baffling really.”

Alan Brooking was the photographer of “Pregnant man”

How do you get the pregnant man from a proposition that says “Be more careful about getting your girlfriend pregnant”?

Answer: Start with every related idea around pregnancy. Especially the ones that are so obvious you no longer see them.

 

Especially the  rule that says men don’t get pregnant. Turn this upside down.

Then exaggerate it so they get very pregnant – just like a woman close to term.

Finally, make it look the most normal thing in the world. To sum up: Start with a trope, invert it, exaggerate and normalise.

 

 

 

When the above process is done, you’ve created a symmetry across the impossible. On one hand your brain sees the logic of it and on the other it fights the impossibility. The power of the communication comes from this.

In another example of creating ideas by creating symmetries is shown in the following idea for Robinson’s Barley Water. This is a sketch of the ad.

The idea starts with mapping out the form of a tennis ball on an orange and then normalizing it. The visual is such so closely symmetric you hardly notice the orange dimples on the tennis ball.

Henry Ford and the car cow symmetry

Predictive text and symmetry with opposite

Jet engine and mushroom symmetry

Banksy and inversion of value sets

Jan 12

Tone Wheel

By Brand, Tone, Uncategorized

In any highly competitive market, where there is a surfeit of products all competing for the same proposition, then inevitably, the propositions become hard to distinguish. In these cases a sort of exclusion principle applies.  Once one successful brand has occupied one slot, the next successful product to compete in that space will have to occupy a different tonal slot.

This is where brand tonality and personality becomes the difference; When price, product, promotion etc are all identical.

To understand this graphically it helps to see tone in terms of the following wheel. It shows how brands connect to the idea of archetype, an idea originally conceived by Jung.
If you’d like to read more about the role of archetypes in brands and organisations try The Hero and the Outlaw, by Margaret Mark and Carol S Pearson.

 

Jun 12

Working like a detective

By Case Study, Uncategorized


For a great professional case it’s important the expert sees beyond where other lesser professionals get stopped blocked or fobbed off. In what is a classic twist from Murder on the Orient Express, the incriminating hankerchief bears the initial H. So it can’t possibly belong to Natalia. Or so you might think. However Poirot knows that in Russian an H is pronounced an N and so it could indeed be Natalia’s.
The premise of expertise in case history writing is that when nothing is quite what it appears only a specialist with raised levels of perception can ascertain what really is going on.

16 pointers to interviewing a topic holder of a case study
1. Think like a detective.
2. Assume something brilliant has happened, then sniff it out.
3. Spot the unusual
4. Get clear about the problem involved and the pain of the original situation
5. What’s at stake? Beneath the ‘nice to have’ need which triggered the engagement, there’s often a crisis brewing.
6. If another agency handled this, would the kids have gone into care? Would people continue to die unnecessarily, due to missing out on cancer treatment?
7. Probe beneath buzz phrases.
8. Seek out the raised level of perception and knowledge that goes into the brilliance. Hercules Poirot knew that H is the Russian for N, so Natalie could have owned the handkerchief with H on it.
9. Ask what people were doing at the critical moments when the idea or insight came into being.
10. Seek out what’s important, not what appears to be conventionally important.
11. Look for signs of change and transformation and ask what caused these.
12. Don’t forget to ask open questions – and wait for them to surprise you.
13. Ask questions that force the interviewee themselves to make the choice of what was really important. What one single thing contributed most. Where did the value really add? Etc.
14. Locate the passion point. The bit where the interviewee starts to get excited. You know you’re onto the MOB because they’re about to get found out.
15. Get the interviewee to talk about the parts of the story they haven’t spoken of before. If it’s fresh it’s usually more interesting.
16. Enjoy. They’ll wriggle around avoiding their brilliance, but just like a murder suspect, the interviewee will feel relieved when they’ve eventually told the truth.

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