Adrian Trenholm

You cannot replace listening

Rosa Say alerts us to a new mobile phone gadget which indicates the other party’s interest levels in your conversation. Anmol Mada, the MIT researcher behind the The Jerk-o-Meter states in this AP story :

The program, which Madan said is nearing completion, uses mathematical algorithms to measure levels of stress and empathy in a person’s voice. It also keeps track of how often someone is speaking.

“It’s an academically proven thing,” Madan said of the math behind those measurements. “There are a bunch of academic papers published about this.”

It’s only a matter of time before Jerk-o-Meter technology gets added to the corporate marketing arsenal. Company boffins will learn of the Jerk-o-Meter and think “Cool! Now we can make our phone spam more interactive.”

But my objection to the Jerk-o-Meter goes deeper. Some of us are better at listening than others; all of us can get better with practise. In the same AP story:

Frank Guenther, a professor of cognitive and neural systems at Boston University, said there are a host of “nonlinguistic” cues, such as pregnant pauses, flat pitch levels and slow speech rates, that indicate boredom or disinterest.

Listening, then, requires concentration on the speaker, not on a screenful of graphics. Just as we know “always on” connectivity has decreased our attention span, a device which “replaces” our natural ability to gauge another person’s engagement will surely harm our listening skills.

I am no luddite. Tools which take care of scut work (recording and processing data for example) or which overcome obstacles (phones, hearing aids etc), free us to think and communicate more effectively. But tools which purport to replace our natural thinking and communicating chip away at our basic humanity, and I think that is dangerous.

Add comment August 14th, 2005

Bad advice on short conversations

The usually intelligent Tricks of the Trade suggests, a way to keep conversations short , by pretending to be on your mobile phone:

Say into the phone, “hold on one second.” Then tell your talkative friend exactly what you need to tell them. They feel important because you interrupted your other conversation, but then you can motion to the phone to disengage them from any further small talk. Walk away and continue talking to your dial tone.

I can only hope this advice is meant in jest. Apart from the sheer duplicity of such an approach, you look very very silly when you purport to be on a call and your phone rings .

via

Add comment June 13th, 2005

Difficult conversation? Slow down

Rosa Say hits the spot again with a post on difficult conversations

Slow down. Learn to get more comfortable with the momentary silences that happen in difficult conversations. Let the suggestion hang in the air for a moment and don’t respond too soon.

One of two things will happen. Either the employee will speak first, offering up more information for you to better respond to, or you will have had the time to think before you speak. And often, the best thing to say next very well may be, “I think you’re right.” However that moment of silence will have conveyed to the employee that you know it’s a difficult decision, and you’ve taken the time to think about it and about their feelings.

Add comment May 22nd, 2005

Stop Continue the Feedster madness

Useful insight from Johnnie Moore this week. Here’s what happened.

At 173 Drury Lane , I had linked to half a dozen Sainsbury’s-related blog posts which I had picked up from Feedster. Johnnie picked up the thread with a couple more links . We were having fun. At which point, I thought, “OK, Adrian, enough of the funny stuff, time to get serious again. Haven’t got all day.” I emailed Johnnie to that effect, with the subject line “Stop the Feedster Madness.” Johnnie’s response was:

Well, maybe we should actually do more.

I’m serious. It will almost certainly lead to more readers and it might engage some good debates.

I think this is a place for us to play, unsupervised by a client. It would be cool if we became the hosts for lively conversations with real customers…

Of course! Trust a professional facilitator to remind me about the importance of conversation. Quirky posts, funny posts, serious posts - they are all legitimate, because people are quirky and funny and serious in equal measure. This is real conversation, not the sterile stuff you get in focus groups. I am starting to understand Johnnie’s passion for Improv . Improv’s “Yes, And” idea clicked into place for me:

Yes, And : Finding ways to build upon the events that come our way and to include different perspectives. This is not a simple injunction to agree, but rather to acknowledge what happens and incorporate its lessons in our response.

Thanks, Johnnie. Stop Continue the Feedster madness.

Add comment April 16th, 2005

JWT and Carat: big firms taking baby steps

Change is afoot in at the big advertising and media buying agencies. JWT , it seems, believes:

Advertising has a future, but only if we stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in. We need to create work that people choose to spend time with.

Meanwhile, Carat is launching blog starter kits for its big name clients. Carat’s vice-president and national media director, John Cate says on Marketing Vox :

We want our clients to take part in a productive dialogue with serious, like-minded consumers that will be beneficial to both.

No more interuptions. Conversation. Dialogue. Could it be that the big name agencies are beginning to see the light? Maybe. Maybe not.

You see, if JWT want people to spend time with them, where’s their RSS feed? I take no credit for that question - just go and see James Governor’s latest post on Monkchips . Reminding us of Nick Wreden’s analysis at FusionBrand , James says this:

JWT does have a couple more steps to take in understanding and driving the attention economy from what I can see at a glance, and if you know more about the company’s decision to become more conversational please let me know. Authentic or not?

And what about Carat? Back in February, in the John Cate said:

Ads can cheapen and compromise a blog.

Yet, barely six weeks later, Mr Cate is in Brand Republic , saying:

For advertisers, blogs offer a number opportunities…

It’s good to see the big agencies going in the right direction, but one wonders why they have to make such a meal of it. There is such a contrast between the big agency approach and that of new blogger and regular commenter on 173 Drury Lane, Mark Pinkerton , or that of James and Steve at RedMonk .

Mark’s advice: forget the “blog starter kit,” just get a TypePad subscription. Redmonk offers:

Quick and dirty consultation on how RSS can put [conversational] strategy on steroids.

There, I think, is the problem for the big agencies: conversational marketing tools are light and cheap, they are “quick and dirty.”

The challenge for JWT and Carat et al is going to be making sufficient money out of an approach to marketing which does not, at first sight, fit the big agency mould. Do the big agencies have to rely on the “no-one ever got fired for buying IBM” factor? And will their clients pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for what I created in five minutes with WordPress?

The big agencies have woken up. They are taking baby steps. What are they going to do next?

3 comments April 15th, 2005