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Archive for October 28, 2009

On Hits and Misses Part 2: Engagement and Why things become popular

October 28, 2009 / Luke / One comment

In my previous post on Hits and Misses, I talked about Pipe Size. In this post I plan on talking about ‘engagement’ and why things become popular.

Engagement

The level of excitement we feel for something and the degree of participation that it causes us due to that excitement, is what I like to call engagement. Engagement is not purely participation, that connotes mere activity; engagement is more an emotional and social response to things that excite us because it provokes activity. When you watch the news for example there will be a story on it at some point that grips you. It will grab a hold of you and shake you in some way. For me, it’s stories on the housing market. Stories such as how there will be another boom. It causes me to swear, rise up out of my seat, and wave two fingers at the presenter. It engages me and causes me to engage. The biggest reason things fail is lack of engagement.

Examples of lack of engagement

Whether it be the failing of a university program (INFORMATION SYSTEMS) or the decline in interest in television shows, the ultimate failure of any mass produced vehicle is the result of declining engagement. Great, you say, that’s wonderful… I already knew that. Ok smart ass, what then is the primary reason why people stop engaging? Interest? Probably, I believe it’s because the program in question no longer creates ‘engagement’ space for participants. This means creating new opportunities for conversations and new examples of how to create those conversations. A key example of this can be found in the recent movie, ‘Tenacious D: Pick of Destiny.’

The movie itself is largely for fans, herein lies the problem. The fan base for Tenacious D probably couldn’t generate 40 million dollars worth of movie dollars. Why? Well the movie didn’t create the engagement space for people who weren’t fans. Watching it, I loved it because I am a fan, and I could relate to at least 60% of all the jokes on screen. I had seen it before, I had heard the riffs that are used as cues in important parts of the movie and I was aware of the history. If my wife watched that she would have no engagement space there because she has no idea about Tenacious D or their history. In all honesty, Tenacious D probably should have made the movie more accessible to non-fans. Then again, maybe they still wouldn’t have engaged because they didn’t know who they were anyway? On the other hand maybe they can’t grow their fan base?

Another example of how to maintain an engagement or to put it simply: keep people talking, can be found in the on-going popularity of Lost. At each turn they introduced something new, exciting and interesting, that create the engagement space for on-going conversations. There was a point at which it did seem like Lost was, ‘everything happens for a season.’ But now, the bigger picture is being unveiled and it’s creating conversations. This doesn’t just apply to movies either, can you do something where you work to create conversations?

Why Things Become Popular

Ok, so I don’t have a social psychology background or enough of an idea to explain why things become super popular. Here’s what I know, for me it comes down to a few key things.

1. Creating Engagement Space (or creating conversations)

All of human kind communicate. They share information with each other and have done for centuries. In order to facilitate the popularity of something you need to have something that people will talk about. This is why excellent service increases business overtime and why programs fail … it works both ways. The concept of leverage provides a useful metaphor here. If you have something that people want, you have leverage and provided you find a way they can talk about it, they will. This works in the negative and the positive. For instance, if you have a degree program that is failing the first thing to do is to find out why. How do you find that out? By talking at length to participants. My first instinct is: why aren’t you spreading the word about how great we are?

Sure you might be tempted to make a whole lot of people redundant, transfer load or worst do nothing. Find out why people aren’t talking positively about your stuff and boom I guarantee you will turn things around… if you catch it in time. Negative leverage is as easy to create as positive leverage… especially in a social network where trust, sharing and conversation abound.

2. Facilitating the conversation

You can’t control what people say but you can control what you do in order to help them say what they say. Here’s an example: I went to sea-world last year and I wanted a coffee. What I got was hot watery milk. I went to Borders the other day and asked for a book (Outliers) and I already had $200 worth of books in my arms. The lady told me it was out the back and promptly returned to doing something else. See? Now I have told you because Borders made it easy for me to facilitate a negative conversation. Sure, I could just suck it up but I was amazed that they didn’t want another sale… I left after that because I didn’t want to spend any more of my faculties money! They didn’t want me to spend my money.

3. Making the transition from conversation to action easy

William James said that the truth was something that happens to an idea. It’s the active part. When we go from talking about something to using it, if we find it difficult and hard to manage. When I was in business last time this was the single flaw that stood out more than others. What I was trying to sell wasn’t easy to use. I could start conversations but they would always end in a bad experience for the customer. It isn’t enough to create conversations, you have to make it easy for people to access and use what you are talking about. Make it hard and the engagement fails and people will begin talking about alternatives.

4. Maintaining the conversation

Once we have access to the material, keep us there. You know amazon made a fortune of it’s recommendation engine? It nearly went broke until it realised (or they realised) that selling things to existing customers helps your bottom line. Maintenance… simple maintenance! Things become popular and stay there because we ‘maintain’ the conversation. Stop doing that, yes you who don’t answer your email or respond to customer queries online… YOU, and people will talk about something else. Keep the flow of customer interaction going. Don’t believe me? Go to twitter search and look for a product. You’ll see why Dell made 3 million dollars off twitter.

5. Creating new spaces for engagement and innovating conversations

In closing this second part it’s important to look for ways to create new conversations and use those to develop innovation. Things maintain popularity because they keep us talking and constantly create new ways for us to do so. Without discourse and then action you have nothing. New conversations must continue the old ones and add something interesting to the existing one. The Lost people do this by keeping us guessing. Others are much better at this and do it by testing the boundaries of the audience.

In the final part of my epic blog trilogy I want to talk about the ‘cutthroat island’ problem and some things that are conversation worthy don’t become popular.

Category: creativity, strategy /

On Hits and Misses part 1: Pipe Size and Audience Engagement

October 18, 2009 / Luke / No comments

The theory of the day is the long tail, a reworking of the Pareto Principle (i.e. 80% of the wealth of Italian landowners is concentrated in the hands of 20% of the people), which seeks to explain why hits and misses wind up where they do. In real terms the idea is a useful w to explain why, in theory, 80% of all that’s consumed accounts for 20% of all products and so on. Ironically, this is not a reflection on taste as the following video explains, it’s a reflection of the method of distribution and supply (I call it pipe size). Yet this is not what determines a ‘hit’. Not in my opinion. A hit is determined by many different things… which I will talk about in a minute.

Pipe size has to do with a number of things. We all have a certain amount of influence and as such we can distribute messages to people via our own methods of communication. When someone in the family dies or a baby comes along, the pipes of family communication get to work and the word spreads. Some us are more influential ‘sneezers’ as Seth Godin calls them, and we can have a broader impact. But it’s not a formula and neither is it a constant reason why. The concept of ‘engagement’ or ‘resonance’ as someone else I know put it, explains why things are spread around. We participate. When this occurs on a massive scale the network gets bigger, the pipes get bigger and massive demand is generated.

The long tail works as a technical explanation quite well, that is, it explains how ‘pipe size’ and demand and supply corroborate to create ‘hits’. Yet, it fails to adequately explain why hits occur. This fails in the realm of the unpredictability of human ‘systems’. Human systems form groups, make meaning and do what I call ‘engage’. William James said it this way, ‘the truth is something that happens to an idea… not the idea itself’ (that’s a paraphrase by the way). While I don’t wish to debate the idea of what truth is, I want to touch on what James was saying in my lateral understanding of it anyway. Why things become popular can be stated as: they become popular because we engage with it on a massive scale (big pipes), we spread it around and share it (talking –> see Tipping Point, Idea Virus), and we resonate or engage with it. This latter concept, the idea of engagement is the most understated yet most powerful because big pipes don’t guarantee a hit, engagement does. What level of participation do people have in an idea? A high amount, then you have success, a low amount depending on the context you have a different kind of success, or you have a failure.

Success and failure come down to audience engagement yet we cannot ignore pipe size, marketing or methods of supply. We have to consider these as important, yet the level of engagement, discussion and talk around a product or idea and the overall level of activity, is what propels a product to success. This is what the publishing, music and other industries know and exploit all the time. Consider this qoute from a well known literary Agent Donald Maas:

The fact is that roughly two-thirds of all fiction purchases are made because the customer is already familiar with the author. In other words, readers are buying brand-name authors whose work they have already read and enjoyed. The next biggest reason folks buy fiction is that it has been personally recommended to them by a friend, family member or bookstore employee. That process is called word of mouth. Savvy publishers understand its power and try to facilitate its effect with advance reading copies … samplers, first chapters circulated by email, Web sites and the like. In most cases, someone reads a novel, gets excited about it, and tells a friend. (Taken from Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maas).

Now we know this and we can reliably track all success (yes I said ALL!) down to people. You know why, everything social is social. Wow, it took three degrees for me to work that out but it’s true. Everything social is social. Nothing happens without people. We have fancy ideas such as those found on the shelves of Borders yet in reality the process of sharing information and excitement has not changed ever. What is hard to know is what is likely to be a hit and what is likely to be a miss. Pipe size has a lot to do with it of course. The bigger the pipes, the bigger the exposure. Yet, in this world of media falling apart and the growing disintermediation of media, the pipes are awfully big and the potential for sharing for word of mouth is the biggest and most responsive it has ever been thanks to the internet. Still this is no guarantee of resonance, or engagement, big pipes don’t guarantee success

I will finish part 1 with a story on the recent television phenomenon Flash Forward.

A colleague of mine pointed me towards twitter search a while ago and sent me a link when Flash Forward was on. I watched as real time feedback about the show, jokes and other randomness came up one tweet at a time. I saw people saying what they liked and didn’t like about the show to their friends on the twitter (sorry couldn’t resist) and then sharing with others in other networks these thoughts. Watching the conversations go through in real time showed me how unpredictable and different we really are, and how the idea of the long tail is relevant. Now on to Part 2… Coming Soon: Engagement and why things become popular!

Category: ideas, strategy /

Link: Podcasts that will make you smarter

October 7, 2009 / Luke / No comments

Nancy White from collegecrunch.org sent me this link of 15 Podcasts that will make you smarter.

Some very interesting people here… too interesting and too smart.

Category: personal development, stuff /

Have you read the Old Man and the Sea?

October 2, 2009 / Luke / One comment

As part of my personal development I have decided to read and develop a literary talent. Now, I don’t have one (it’s in development) so I thought it best to study the masters of literature in order to learn from them (yes instead of spending more money on University courses). Usually I am a fan of horror ala Stephen King. But, my wife, an avid reader, recommended Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. This book won both a Pulitzer and a Nobel prize for literature, no mean feat, and has earned a place in history amongst American classics. I enjoyed it for many reasons, yet the main one was the way in which a story that takes place over two days can tell you so much about a character.

I was wondering if anyone here has read and what were your lasting thoughts about it? I found it excellent because of the way the complex character of the old man unfolded as the book went on, even towards his eventually battering at the hands of the sea. Thoughts?

Category: stuff /

Load Balancing your life

October 1, 2009 / Luke / One comment

One of the cool things about teaching technology related courses is that you often get to use language that makes you seem like a mystical twat. This twattery, gives you access on a broader scale, to language of another community. Load Balancing, sharing the load or passing things between devices to manage data better is a common practice. When I thought about this concept, it was an apt description of our lives in two ways. Firstly to manage your life you need the discipline to fit in the things you need to do and the things you should be doing. I am the worst at this. For example, I should do a lot more exercise. I need to make time in my schedule to allow for this load.

Secondly, you need to manage what to put into your life and what to take out. Hmm… this is harder and involves constant challenges to us because a lot of the time what is ‘best’ for us isn’t the course of action we are likely to take. If you know in your heart that you want to be a fireman, you aren’t studying or even finding out about what it takes to put out fires you will, at some point, have to take something out of your load to make room. There are some givens here: family (yes the cat counts), work and spare time. You may have no spare time. The thing is, if you want something bad enough, you have to find at least a small amount of time to create that load. Before you can find a foothold in your fireman career for example, you need to create a reason for people to hire you. That takes initiative, work and connections. You can’t do it without these things. How does this work? That’s another post but for this one, know that part of load balancing your life means time devoted to giving time to your desires.

We often hear about ‘work-life’ balance but what we don’t hear is ‘gift-work’ balance. How much time do you spend developing and stretching yourself? Much time? You don’t have time? What’s it worth to you? A few hours, a few days a few minutes? Think about it. Do you really want it… are you prepared to learn your craft and then spend the time mastering it, even when you don’t have time or can’t find a way? If you are serious about this gift or talent or whatever, you will not find personal satisfaction until you spend this time developing it. If I offered money-back guarantees… this would be the one thing I would stick my neck out for. You can’t become brilliant until you first master the art of load balancing to make room for what you need and what you want. It’s not about balance but about development time. No development time, no mastering of craft, no matter how talented you may be.

Category: personal development, strategy /