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One of the things I love about Christmas is the chance to slow down and chat with friends and relatives. One of our debates this year focussed on the 2012 elections, and who were good candidates in our local areas.

This raised the fascinating thought – if elections test the preferences of the electorate, what would happen if every ballot paper had a box that could be ticked – “None of the above”.

Think about it for a minute. What would happen if we treated an election as a true market research test – where we were provided with a range of options, including the option to say, “Actually I don’t want any of the candidates presented”.

“None of the above” could be treated like a third major party – if it won the majority vote for an electorate, all the parties would have to go back and start over:  finding new candidates and doing a better job of explaining what they offer.

Yes, it would be organised chaos for a while – but it would be interesting to see what changes the major political parties make as a result. My guess is the rate of informal votes would dramatically drop and we would see some interesting shifts in policy and the choices of candidates.

What do you think – should we have a “(c) None of the above” option in elections?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Writer

I talk with many business owners throughout the year. Many of them have big dreams, but only a few follow them up with action. There are always reasons why they can’t pursue their dream.

That’s why I love this video. First of all there is only 2 musicians. 2 … that’s it. The bands that make it big are the ones with a full band, complete with lead singers, back-up singers and a lot of pizazz.

And these 2 musos don’t exactly play the world’s sexiest instruments. One plays a piano – the other a cello. Guitars and drums – sexy. Cello and piano … ?

Normally people in their millions don’t stop to watch a cellist or a piano player.  But put these two guys together, add in dreams, a bit of determination, a splash of creativity and darn hard work, and you get …

At last count nearly 3 million people have watched them play, and a percentage of them (me included) have gone on to buy their music.

If just two guys, playing highly unsexy instruments can do this … what’s your excuse?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

PS: If you want a laugh, then watch this video of theirs (shows they can also laugh at themselves and their craft!)

I was sent a challenging email today – challenging in that it made me stop and think. I have taken out the anti-Asian rants and kept the essence of the message – which can be boiled down to … This Christmas Shop Local.

As the holidays approach … this year will be different. This year Australians will give the gift of genuine concern for other Australians. There is no longer an excuse that, at gift giving time, nothing can be found that is produced by Australian hands. Yes there is!

It’s time to think outside the box, people. Who says a gift needs to fit in a shirt box, wrapped in overseas produced wrapping paper?

Everyone — yes EVERYONE gets their hair cut. How about gift certificates from your local hair salon or barber?

Gym membership or personal training sessions? It’s appropriate for all ages who are thinking about some health improvement.

Who wouldn’t appreciate getting their car detailed? Small owned detail shops & car washes would love to sell you a gift certificate or a book of gift certificates.

For the Gardeners on your list – how about some lovely healthy pot plants or plants for the garden or even a gift certificate from the local lawnmowing man.

Are you one of those extravagant givers who think nothing of plunking down  a large flat-screen? Perhaps that grateful gift receiver would like his driveway sealed, or lawn mowed for the summer, or games at the local golf course.

There are a bazillion owner-run restaurants — all offering gift certificates. If your intended isn’t the fancy eatery sort, what about a half dozen breakfasts at the local cafe. Remember, folks this isn’t about big National chains — this is about supporting your home town with their financial lives on the line to keep their doors open.

How many people couldn’t use an oil change for their car, truck or motorcycle, done at a shop run by the Australian working guy?

What about a gift certificate from a local home handyman for some chores to be done around the home?

Thinking about a heartfelt gift for mum? Mum would LOVE the services of a local cleaning lady for a day.

Someone’s computer could use a tune-up, & I KNOW I can find some young guy who is struggling to get his repair business up & running.

OK, you were looking for something more personal. Local crafts people spin their own wool & knit them into scarves. They make jewelry, & pottery & beautiful wooden boxes.

Plan your holiday outings at local, owner operated restaurants and leave your server a nice tip. How about going out to see a play or ballet at your hometown theatre.

Musicians need love too, so find a venue showcasing local bands.

You see,  Christmas is now about caring about Australia, encouraging our small businesses to keep plugging away to follow their dreams. When we care about other Australians, we care about our communities, & the benefits come back to us in ways we couldn’t imagine. THIS is the new Australian Christmas tradition.

I love the concept. This year, instead of buying things – think about supporting local services and artisans. Buy services and experiences as gifts; and remember that psych studies have shown that experiences bring more happiness than things.

Small business has done it tough – and many areas of Australia have been tested by natural disasters. So think about spending at least a portion of your Christmas shopping budget on local goods and services. Perhaps you will help one small business keep its doors open, or one more person keep their job.

What do you think? Can Santa shop locally?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Back in the 70′s and early 1980′s, women faced an uphill battle at work. I remember working as a Research Officer for a union, having to present to the then Premier Sir Joh Bjelke Peterson & our relevant Minister about a particular legal case we were working on, and then, as I was the female staff member, having to wash up the lunch plates after the meeting. It was common place – women always did the washing up no matter how high they were in the organisation.

I also remember as a young keen person applying for a role in the Industrial Commission, being asked if I was  going to resign when I got married, as the Commissioners didn’t want to hire me if I was going to leave within 5 years to get married and have kids. And this was after the anti-discrimination laws were in place.

I celebrated the “equal pay for equal work” cases as they went through the Commission, and did a dance of joy that my daughters would not know the challenges of blatant discrimination in the workforce. In other words, I lived through some pretty interesting times, and have my war wounds to prove it.

For a time I worked as an Equal Employment Opportunities Officer, working to remove direct and indirect discrimination from government services. Indirect discrimination occurred when the exclusion was not deliberate … it just somehow happened. And in the process, it excludes a whole group of the population from participating or seeking a service.

And one of the things that we learned in those years, were that people liked to see “people like them” in a workplace through photos or through employee representation. People are more comfortable with a business that looked like it represented them, and they were more open to accessing services that a business offers.

I still look at the photos businesses use in their marketing. It makes sense – if your main customers are retirees, you don’t use photos of teenagers.  If you want to promote yourself as an upmarket exclusive boutique – then you use photos of paper-thin white models who don’t know how to smile (can anyone say Gasp Jeans). And if you are trying to attract women scientists to your business, you don’t only show pictures of male scientists in all of your marketing collateral.

It becomes an occupational hazard after a while – looking to see the sort of customers people are specifically targeting with their marketing.  On the weekend I went to Supanova here in Brisbane. It is a celebration of all things pop culture, anime & science fiction. What is pop culture? A reflection of the popular thoughts of society.

And what really hit me when I browsed the many stalls packed to the rafters with books & collectables, was how one entire generation was missing from the representations.  As far as the eye could see, you could spot images of teen, kids and young adults. You could also see images of men of all ages from young to senior citizens.  But as for women – middle aged women did not exist.

If you really did some digging, you would find the odd middle aged woman buried in the meme – usually in the role of either a mum (think Marge Simpson or Mrs Weasley from Harry Potter) or Sue Silvestor from Glee. So, according to pop culture, it appears that middle aged women only fill a mother type role, or are bitter and twisted because they don’t have children.

According to pop culture, guys can be heroes no matter their age. Think of Hugh Jackman in Wolverine, all of the Doctor Who’s and even Rocky. But women, they are only permitted to furtively scurry out from the mantle of motherhood for the odd skirmish, and then race back to where they are supposed to be.

And, who actually turned up for Supanova? Teens and kids in their thousands. If there was an adult around, they were usually male. Us middle aged women who attended, quietly nodded to each other as we passed – we were in the definite minority. It was a very sobering experience, and brought back the feelings I had washing the dishes all those years ago.

So, I think we need to create a new Anime character, or at least a new superhero. Smart, together, funny, sexy, courageous middle aged women with lives outside their families.  What do you think?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

I’m always on the lookout for new creativity techniques – and this bunch from New Scientist is brilliant.

1. Lie Down

Two of the world’s great authors,  Nabokov and Truman Capote, could not think unless they were lying down or stretched out on a couch. And yes, there are dedicated scientists who have studied if lying down on the job actually makes a difference. Darren Linicki and Don Byrne at ANU in Canberra have found people solve anagrams 10% faster when lying down compared with standing. I can see a rush of office memo’s being drafted requesting couches!

2. Strike a Pose

You know that lovely statue by Auguste Rodin -The Thinker? Turns out he may have been onto something. Joel Crestenet and Vincent Dru from Paris West Uni found volunteers who struck “The Thinker” pose, performed much better on creative thinking tasks.

3. Look Left & Right

This is even more esoteric – it appears that simple eye movements left and right across your field of vision help you think more laterally.

Extra bonus points if you look right and left while you are striking a pose! Me … I’ m going to find a nice couch to stretch out on.

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

I love networking – meeting new people and finding ways I can refer business to fabulous other businesses is one of my joys. But there is a side of networking that isn’t as bright and shiny, that I really struggle with.

Let me back up a bit. Many networking clubs and leads clubs push the concept that when you meet someone that you connect with at one of their events, you should contact them and “book a coffee” meeting with them. The intent behind the meeting is to learn more about each others business, so you can work out who may be good clients to refer to them.

On the surface this looks innocuous … but what often happens is the coffee meeting turns into a “let me pick your brains about a problem I am having in my business for free”.  Many businesses take the “coffee chat” as an opportunity to get free consulting or mentoring – all under the righteous banner of networking.

But is it such a bad thing?Let’s take it from the perspective of the consultant and translate the “let me buy you a coffee” request into what they are hearing and experiencing.

Most consultants translate that phrase to “I want you to take 1-2 hours out of your day without being paid for it. I want you to give me the benefit of your professional expertise to solve my business problem. Yes, I do know that your other clients would pay for this advice – but I am going to buy you a cup of coffee in exchange.  And if you challenge me or suggest that I should book in an appointment time – I will get angry at you … after all … I am buying you a coffee“.

And let me tell you – these meetings invariably never turn into any referred work, consulting work or sales. The meetings are all one way.

Does this happen often for me? Most weeks, I get 2-3 requests to be taken for a coffee. Unless the person is in my close friendship group, I have now taken to turning all coffee requests down (and curling into a ball under the table, with my fingers rammed in my ears  whenever the leader of the networking group suggests that we all need to meet for a coffee!). And yes, I feel like a right royal heel at times – but coffee does not pay the bills.

I mentioned this challenge on my private Facebook page, and had many consultants and freelancers either chip in with their war stories or simply agree that this was a common occurrence for them.

What about you? Do you have a similar problem? What do you do to solve it the dreaded “networking coffee” dilemma?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

A few days ago, I shared a link on Facebook to one of my favourite modern artists – Jason Fitzgerald – and I had a few comments back from people – what do you see in his work?

Jason is a client of mine, and I have to admit I am not usually a great modern art fan. There’s stuff that I love, and things that leave me cold. But when I first met Jason, I spent a bit of time talking with him to get to understand why he does what he does. And now that I understand his story, I see his work with new eyes. You see – the “back story” behind why people do what they do is always compelling.

So let me fill you in about his story and then perhaps you will understand why I adore his work.

Jason was always drawing as a kid. Even now, you can put a pencil in his hand and it takes off and does its own thing. But, Jason was also scared of traditional art classes, so did metalwork and woodwork at school instead.

At the end of year 12, his careers counsellor handed him a brochure for art college. He kept that well-creased brochure for years, periodically looking at it while he did a trade in French Polishing instead. You see, he didn’t think he was good enough to be an artist.

It took until Jason was 28, watching the sunset over the Swiss alps from Mt Pilatus in Switzerland, that he thought, “Why not go back and chase the dream – Why not just do it!” At that moment he felt a massive bolt of energy course through him, and from then nothing stopped him.

He enrolled in every art class he could find, with his studies finally taking him to Griffith Uni as a mature age student at 35. He finally knew he was an artist, that he was good enough and he had to make up for lost time. And by then his love of timber had taken root, which meant that he was naturally drawn to wood and timber as his media. He has now won many prestigious art prizes and is rapidly gaining a positive reputation in the modern art world.

I asked him about his creative process – and what makes him suddenly decide to create a piece.

“It all starts when my eye is caught by something around me. It catches a defect, a scar, timber stacked unusually … angles and markings where things have moved creating a new design. I grab bits of timber and try and re-create that glimpse, that moment.

But, in the process of re-creating, I am drawn somewhere else. I use things that are raw, broken and discarded, and craft something new – building on the repetitions in nature and the organic growth of things, where lots of little things become oneness.”

“My works grow and tell me when they need more. Sometimes they grow quickly and at other times they lay dormant until new growth appears. I create and control, yet am controlled by what I see. I have an urgent desire to build and create. It simply happens and I am as much part of the organic growth as the piece itself. “

“And yet … in a moment … it is done. I think it is when there is a perfect unity of aesthetics and balance, that’s when my pieces are complete.”

“I love finding beauty in brokenness, creating a piece that is visually stimulating and that holds attention rather than being something you simply walk past.”

“In life, I am fascinated by how on one level chaos reigns, but when you look closely enough at something, each element is completely controlled, planned and perfectly imperfect.”

“You can visually skim over the surface of an object and just see it as raw, broken and distorted, or you can engage and look deeper to experience the simpleness and naturalness of it.”  

So now, when I look at his pieces of work, I see someone who didn’t feel they were “good enough” but decided to go for it anyway. I see someone with the hands of a creator – placing pieces of timber so precisely and specifically that they appear to be random. I see past the brokenness to the beauty within … I see metaphors for life by a philosopher who uses timber instead of words.

Jason Fitzgerald has an exhibition at the Jan Murphy Gallery in Brisbane until the 22nd October 2011. It is worth checking out – and seeing his work with an understanding of the back story.

This is one of my favourite pieces (which has gone into a private collection darn it).

Swarm Warning - Jason Fitzgerald

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Copywriter

I had an interesting conversation with my dad the other day – he is in his 80′s now. But when I asked him how old he felt inside he said “I am not sure …  about 30 maybe”.

So I started to ask a whole pile of other people of all ages how old they felt inside. Most felt somewhere between 20 and 30, no matter how many birthday candles were on their cake.  Me … I feel about 26 inside, even though my outside tells a different story.

Inside – we believe we are young and ageless. Yes, we can go through the motions of celebrating milestone birthdays, but somewhere our psyche says we are young and evergreen, and that those birthdays are happening to other people.

Cognitive dissonance is where your mind tries to hold two conflicting ideas simultaneously – in this case “I am getting older” and “I feel young”. Our mind tries to find a workaround and can mentally deny our age unless significant evidence happens to the contrary.  Which is why people trying to sell stuff to “old folks” doesn’t always cut it, and people trying to manage us differently because of our age are ignored. You see, we don’t believe they are talking to us – they are talking to the old people, not us.

So, if you are in sales, HR or marketing, remember that inside the skin of most people is a person who is young, enthusiastic, vibrant and full of dreams. Ignore that young person at your peril!

Try it yourself … How old do you feel inside?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

RIP Steve Jobs

While neuromarketing has quietly been looking inside people’s brains to work out what makes people tick, computer and maths geeks over at MIT have been refining sociometric badges to tap into how people communicate.

What is a sociometric badge (and where do I get one?).

One of the problems in the past, as any good HR or leadership development person will tell you, is that most people have blind spots around how they communicate with others. They can do all of the communication training under the sun, but unless they can see and truly understand the impact their communication style has on others, then they will fall back into their old habits.

A few years back, some MIT doctoral students (Daniel Olguin, Bejamin Waber and Taemie Kim) developed an electronic badge that hangs around a person’s neck. This badge, they so nicely dubbed the “jerk-o-meter”, picks up audio cues and works out how aggressive the wearer is being from pitch, volume and clip of the voice.  This data is then displayed graphically, so a person can visually get an idea of when they are being a jerk.

The next iteration of the technology then measured proximity to other people, and graphically showed people how often they spoke, their speaking time and who they interacted with. The size of the dot showed how much they dominated conversations – a big red dot meant the wearer tended to speak a lot and a teeny tiny white dot meant you were a wallflower. What they found through their experiments, was they over the course of time, that people’s dots tended to become more or less the same size and shape – meaning that conversations and group dynamics were more balanced.

Of course marketers leaped into the fray, looking at the application of the sociometric badges on call centres. They wanted to work out how to make call centre operators more persuasive and to increase their performance. The badges found that the highest performing operators were also the ones who had the strongest social ties with other staff. They also found that it was possible to identify units of speech that make a person sound more persuasive.

The MIT students have now spun out into their own company – Sociometric Solutions and have taken their badges to corporations to help them improve their communication.

Like all new technological advances this comes with pluses and minuses. On a plus side, enhanced communication in a workplace and more balanced team dynamics should result in better business outcomes.It also has application for people who may struggle reading social cues, to help them learn what to look for and how to fit in.

On a downside, I have visions of managers trying to force people to achieve certain sociometric “scores” as part of their performance goals. And of course, there are the snake oil salespeople who will use this technology to increase their profits at the cost of people.

And yes, it is time for another discussion of ethics – how should this be applied and in what contexts?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

There’s no shortage of information in the world. In fact our global data mountain is estimated to be growing at 40% per annum (Thanks New Scientist for the info!)

And this massive amount of data is spawning a whole new industry – data mining and forecasting. There are companies around the world that are using these huge data sets to try to predict the previously unpredictable. After all, one of the tenets of statistics is that while you can’t predict how one person can act with reasonable certainty, if you get a large enough sample size, you can create averages that will give you a reasonable idea of a population. So to give you an example, Johnan Bollan at Indiana University, Bloomington is looking at predicting stock market movements from sentiments on Twitter.

New Scientist recently ran a contest between a whole pile of these different data set miners, to see who could most accurately predict the sales of each new issue of their magazine. They pitted everyone from economists to a flock of trained pigeons (no actual psychics though). And the result? While there were some amazingly accurate predictions, there were also quite a few weeks of wild misses.

New Scientist did learn that for their magazine, that the colour purple on their covers was bad for sales, and printing the magazine title in black worked well. But even for the most accurate date mining processes, there were weeks where the predictions varied wildly from what actually happened.

And thus the ethics point comes into play.

Every day on Google, our search preferences are taken into account and we are given search engine results based on our previous search history (unless you know the ways around it). That means the world of Google is vastly different from one person to the next. We only see the results that Google predicts we want to see – sometimes that may be correct, but other times we will have information filtered out that we need to know.

The mass media tailors their news stories based on what the masses respond to – which is resulting in a bland blancmange of predominantly local news stories heavily salted with consumer news about where to buy the cheapest cuts of meat. Key pieces of news are filtered out.

And then there is the trend for politics by poll. Issues are now often determined and pursued based on the poll results rather than balanced debate or principles. Many politicians not so secretly regard question time in parliament as purely a competition to get a 3 second grab on the news, rather than anything actually useful for running the country.

Then you can throw in the odd left field challenge. In the US recently it was found that 12 internet service providers, with millions of customers between them, were hijacking searches made by their customers and directing them to retail websites where the ISP gained a commission if the customer bought. This redirection was silent, unpublicised and happened as an intercept before the individual search request before they reached the search engine. Not surprisingly this is the subject of a class action in the US, and will be a case we will be watching with interest.

This is the time for debate.  And it is the same debate the marketing people are starting to have with neuro-marketing data sets being compared to normal focus groups and traditional methods of gaining feedback from customers. It is the same debate being triggered by Wikileaks and hacktivists.

Is data mining with all its errors, a bad thing? Do we imbue statistics with an almost magical quality that means we accept the results with less question? Does it need to be regulated? And who should determine which data is OK in the public interest to see – and what isn’t?

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter