Digital in the Headlights ... Why Worry?

I often blog (and worry) about the effects of technology on human development. This morning John W. Peterson, consulting futurist and strategist, sent me a couple of pdfs, one of which predicts likely developments in the timeframe spanning 2010 to 2040. Written by forecaster/futurist Marvin J. Cetron, president of Forecasting International, Technology Timeline 2010 blew me away (and shut me up).

If this stuff is even in the ballpark, there’s really no point in worrying about how technology will affect human society. As Cetron notes, “Ultimately, speculations may prove correct that we are approaching the ‘Singularity’s event horizon.’ At that time, our artifacts will be so intelligent that they will design themselves and we will not understand how they work. Humanity will be largely a passenger in its own evolution as a technological species.”

This thought already occurred to be during the BP oil spill, when I realized that – within the behemoth, 80,300-employee complex that is BP – no single person completely understood how the oil spill happened because no single person understands the BP beast. Sure, individuals know how to “fix” pieces of the system, but as a whole? BP – like all other global conglomerates -- has a life of its own, huge parts of which function via technology.

Nevertheless, some of what I read in Cetron’s predictions staggered me.

• Designer babies born outside the U.S. -- 2012
• Virtual reality used to teach science, art, history, etc. -- 2014
• Smart paint containing computer chips -- 2013
• Earth-like planet discovered -- 2012

And that’s just within the next four years. Looking further out, we have fantasyland:

• Robots for almost any job in homes or hospitals -- 2018
• AI (artificial intelligence) technology imitates thinking processes of human brain -- 2018
• Effective prediction of most natural disasters -- 2020
• Antimatter production and storage becomes feasible -- 2020
• Computer-enhanced dreaming -- 2020
• Living, but genetically-engineered, electronic toy/pet developed -- 2025
• Infectious disease eliminated from developed world -- 2028
• Emotion-control chips used to control criminals -- 2025

And in the 2030 decade?

• Robots are physically and mentally superior to humans -- 2032
• Development of an artificial brain -- 2030
• Robots completely replace humans in workforce -- 2035

Even if Cetron is off by 50 years, our children will likely see all of this and more. Turning salt water into fresh water will become economical; we’ll “discover” alien civilizations that travel faster than light; zero-point energy will be engineered/commercialized to the point where all other energy sources will become obsolete. Where are you now, BP?

In the face of all this, how many hours per day a given child is “plugged in” seems immaterial. In fact, no matter what any individual does, technology appears to be "doing what technology does." With or without us.

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Can A Great Copywriter Boost Your Biz? Does Charlie Daniels Play A Mean Fiddle?

I got disturbed yesterday when I read Greg Sterling’s Screenwerk blog, in which he described how certain big media companies are turning to "content farms" populated by barely-paid "digital serfs." Ugh. Writers are worth a lot more than $5 an article. In fact, a good copywriter can save your business.

In its August issue, Target Marketing magazine featured a story about how the Mayo Clinic lifted its newsletter subscriptions 28 percent. Moreover, the boost in subscriptions happened during a price hike, a postal rate increase, and a looming economic recession. The copywriter did it. Marketing Director James Hale, Sr., explains. “I directed our lead copywriter .. to take the tough economic issue, actually acknowledge it, and demonstrate the good value and wisdom in buying our newsletter.”

Still not convinced? Ever heard the phrase "Does Charlie Daniels play a mean fiddle?" How about "I'll take the roast duck with the mango salsa"? Copywriters did that, too (and a lot more for Geico).

That’s right, marketing folks. Copy. Don’t leave the post office without it.

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ReBranding Is the Touch Point at Which We Decide To Trust You Or Not

Ping is my favorite Chinese restaurant. I can see Ping’s logo in my mind. It’s nothing special. The font is some ultra-light version of Bauhaus, and the graphic has a “bamboo” feel to it, though I can’t exactly tell you why.

Still, this logo means something to me. It visually encapsulates my total experience with Ping. I see the logo and I see (no matter how subconsciously), the slick, lean atmosphere, the friendly staff, the famous “Lucky 8” lunches, a terrific make-you-happy hour, very fresh vegetables, and the chef’s “way with food.” As soon as I see Ping’s logo, the entire dining experience comes to me in an emotional wave. I don’t break down the components, but I “feel good” about it.

That’s branding.

A company logo is the single most salient representation of any company. For us customers, everything we think, feel, and have experienced with a company gets all tied up in that single visual – the logo.

So how do customers feel when a company rebrands with a new logo? That depends, of course, on whether anything about the company has really changed. You see, to us customers, that’s what a new logo means -- that something has changed. A company is new, different, better, more contemporary…blah, blah, blah. Why else bother?

Strangely – or maybe obviously -- this little bit of marketing persona – a logo -- is the favorite “mess around” venue of marketing executives, consultants, and new CEOs who may be looking to brand themselves through the extensive corporate “rebranding” process.

If that’s the case – if a company hasn’t really changed – we customers will know because we've already decided who you are now.

Look, customers have a feeling about your company. As with my Ping example, our full experience with a product or service is embodied and connected to the corporate logo. Whether we like you or not, we see your logo and we feel it. We figure the only reason you'd change your logo is to change our minds about who you are, right?

So, a new corporate logo is a promise to both old and new customers. You can say whatever you want, advertise whatever you want, posture in any way you want. We will decide if you’ve changed. If you haven’t, we’ll never trust you again.

And that’s the truth.

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But It’s In Newsweek. It Must Be True!

An article in July 19 Newsweek cites seven dos and don’ts for creativity, all under the title "Forget Brainstorming."

Authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman point to a 1958 study by Yale researchers, which, reportedly, found that “brainstorming in a group… actually reduced a team’s creative output.”

Jonathan Vehar, president and cofounder of New & Improved, is having none of it. The day Newsweek published, Vehar blogged a convincing rebuttal explaining that the Yale project only evaluated whether it is better to brainstorm alone or in a group. No indictment of brainstorming there. [FWIW, sometimes it’s better in a group, sometimes it’s better alone.]

Moving right along… the Newsweek article also reported on research by University of Oklahoma Professor Michael Mumford who, according to the authors, condemned available creativity training, calling it "garbage." Maybe Mumford did say that, but I couldn't verify it. On the other hand, Marty Baker, who blogs at Creativity Central, is convinced that “Newsweek got it wrong.”

“’[The article] is a manifestation of what’s wrong with media summaries," Marty declares. "It is a titillating and provocative sidebar that readers will remember without context ... It doesn’t say what Mumford identifies as commercially available creativity training. It does not give particulars about the Yale study back in 1958 -- over a half a century ago.”

True, I noticed all that. And yet... Bronson and Merryman cite a ton more research supporting their seven creative musts. “Don’t tell someone to be creative [Mark Runco, University of Georgia]; “Follow a passion” [Rena Subotnik, American Psychological Association]; “Explore other cultures” [Adam Galinsky, Northwestern]. Etc. Etc.

So where's the truth? I guess I could track down and verify every one of the citations .. and every one of the inevitable disclaimers to the citations. But even having done that, how sure would I be that anybody understands anything about creativity?

Beats the heck outta me. I’m just gonna get out my crayons and see what happens.

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Free Advice to Wal-Mart from an American Consumer

The July 12 edition of Advertising Age tells the story of how Wal-Mart is dealing with its “assortment issues.” The company's Project Impact, initiated in September 2009, was meant to declutter the Wal-Mart aisles and make the shopping experience more “upscale.” Oops! Current research suggests that people can’t find what they want, so Wal-Mart is quietly putting all that junk back on the shelves. I say, "Don't bother."

In my personal experience -- and really, it is all about me, after all -- any retail effort to be "all-things-to-all-consumers" will tank.

Case in point: I shop mainly at Harris Teeter. It’s a smallish store, with friendly folks and solid prices, especially the ample two-fer specials. I'm always busy and I can fly around the store quickly, so I’m a fairly loyal HT customer. Sometimes, however, I go to Trader Joe’s, which carries amazing stuff like Kerry Gold butter from Ireland at $2.99/pound, flash frozen wild-caught Alaskan salmon, and inexpensive wine from Chile. Every so often I go there to get my growing list of TJ particulars. This multiple-shopping habit is not that unusual.

Case in point: Conversely, I have a friend who shops at Trader Joe’s all the time, but goes to Harris Teeter for artificially sweetened popcicles. Another friend gets groceries at Giant, but goes to Sam’s Club for huge bags of chicken breasts and big bottles of juice. I’m betting that even folks who shop at Wal-Mart hit-up some local market for certain “must-haves” or “taste-betters.”

American consumers – at least for now – have been given a lot of choices over the past decade, and in the process we’ve developed a great many “preferences.” Maybe the economy will punish that out of us, but it hasn’t happened yet.

In fact, I’ve been amazed how far out of the way people will go for a good Indian or Asian grocery store, a fresh fish market, organic locally-grown produce, good deli eats, and fresh baked goods. [Designer cupcakes have growing numbers of fans, actually. Who knew?]

In short, American consumers don't necessarily want to shop in any single place.. and no amount of finagling by Wal-Mart will change that any time soon.

p.s. Harris-Teeter recently dropped its Kerry Gold butter prices almost as low as Trader Joe's. Somebody is doing their homework.

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GenY Takes A Digital Dive To Isolation. Is It Too Late for Them?

A few days ago I blogged about the stupidity of “auto-communication” with social media “friends.” The evidence builds that this is even more stupid than I thought.

A June 22 Time magazine article cited some interesting research about the dismal effect email is having on human relationships, both in the office and outside – namely, that interpersonal trust relies to some extent on face-to-face communication that's often missing in our lives today. Who knew?

Meanwhile, Time says that both current and prospective friendships are being electronically processed, too.

There’s more. Do you have people with whom you discuss important matters? Before 1985, you’d likely have said yes. Now, you just retreat into a corner with your iPhone. According to a Duke University study completed in 2006, the percent of Americans today who say “I have no one” has tripled in the last 25 years. On top of that, Americans report one-third fewer friends and confidants generally. Let's face it; we’re lonelier .. but we still have Facebook, right? Uhhhhhh, sure. We have lots of Facebook friends (hundreds!), except apparently we don’t care about them, they don't care about us and, well, nobody cares.

A widely reported University of Michigan study noted that college students today have 40% less empathy than their counterparts of the 80s and 90s. The study offered no explanation for the indifference, but Sara Konrath, a researcher at the university’s Institute for Social Research, points to the fact that GenYs (born from 1980 to about Y2K) tend to communicate more through social media than face-to-face. Susan Maple who blogged about this for the parenting site Strollerderby thought this research study might simply be one more in a long line of attacks against GenY. Hold on there..

I’m not going to say GenY doesn’t have a problem, but I am most definitely not going to attack the kids who were born between the early 80s and Y2K. I have a host of observations on what was afoot during this period. It wasn’t very good and it wasn’t their doing. They were children.

What exactly happened during GenYs formative years. For starters, how about this?

• shockingly little face-time with the family unit;

• disappearing connections with extended family and mostly zero inter-generational relationships on a regular basis;

• highly structured artistic, learning, and sporting activities, with a growing emphasis by the parents on the “goal” to be achieved from, rather than the inherent pleasure of, the activity;

• a near total lack of free-form, creative play opportunities and almost no chance to play unsupervised with other kids where genuine peer-to-peer relationships could emerge;

• an American educational system hell bent on “message over matter,” like telling kids how very “special” they were, even when nobody believed it -- not the teachers, or the parents, or the kids.

• a frantic drive to achievement and winning substituting for any chance to learn independently about vital life skills like personal insight and self-awareness;

• an atmosphere of near-hysterical “fear” of strangers;

• television sets serving as the nation’s child care provider: always available, but cold, flickering, indifferent (just like computer screens);

• handing much of the country's very significant purchasing power of this era to children, who were given a consulting role in every buying decision from automobiles to housing.

So there it is. There's lots to be said about why this all happened, but that's another story. It happened -- especially to the striving middle class of GenY users that the studies are writing about. Clearly, this has not played out well. No wonder. As my pediatrician was fond of saying, “Being Master of the Universe is too a big a job for a child.”

And now I’ll go check-in with my Facebook friends. CYa.

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Auto Stealth: THIS Is the Top Marketing Idea of the Year

Twenty minutes ago I got an email from Tim Pitts at trendwatching.com.

Tim wanted to know what I think of the trendwatching service. What I like and don’t like. What (if anything) would make me want to buy the premium service. What else I’d like to see the trendwatching masters do.

This email is revolutionary. I've never seen this done before.

The email was not a survey. There was no form to fill out and no buttons to push. Tim invited me to write whatever I want and send it back to him ... you know, write a return email with my thoughts and hit “reply. Simple.

Nothing in this invitation -- at least visibly -- was/is automated. This is friend-to-friend, I-ask-you-tell, human communication. That's how it felt to me and that's good enough.

I've just seen the top marketing idea of the year. I'm going to call it "Auto Stealth." It's new-school and smart marketers will be figuring out pronto how to copy trendwatching. It's real.

Now, back to my email to Tim...

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