'TIS THE SEASON

Along with holiday jingles and tra-la-las, expect the frequency of online surveys this November/December – and beyond – to escalate.

After all, the 2016 POTUS election is less than 12 months away. 

Today, prognosticators say there will be increased emphasis on gathering online and mobile data, adding to the already $10 billion marketplace (more than telephone and face-to-face opinion-izing combined).  SurveyMonkey and peers have done a great job in selling services to professionals like lawyers who now use this kind of polling for all sorts of matters, from assessing racism in potential jurors to backgrounding those up for judicial appointments. 

As well as to communicators and brand gurus.  At the same time, many of us fail to use these tools wisely – and/or follow the pollsters’ leads.  With a tip of the hat to Advertising Age, here are three rules that might make our employers’ bottom lines ring – and our employees’ experience, a bit more compelling:

• Remember the two Cs – continuity and consistency.  Judging new directions on the results of one or two polls isn’t advisable; asking regularly is.
• Truth rules.  Yeah, it might not be popular – but if what you’re hearing can be readily validated, leaders need to be told and your efforts, guided.
• The wider, the better.  Especially inside business, it can be tough to grab employee attention.  And therefore, very tempting to go to the same-old, same-old for questions.  Expand your horizons – and offer incentives for responses.

What’s real is the data we’re seeking.  Make sure you get the right kind of information to guide decision-making, inside and out.

A NEW-FASHIONED CANDY STORE

Announcements of new mobile and Web-like tools come almost daily, it seems. 

Sometimes, it’s old stuff in tech format, like our childhood’s Viewmaster® collection of reels and hand-held viewer.  [Thank you, Mattel.]

Other times, it’s a brand-new spin for ageless concepts, such as flash cards made digital.

No matter what, though, we get jazzed about the novelty – and pondering ways that we might use this software to great impact.

Take flash cards, for instance.  They were pre-school mainstays, helping us learn our ABCs and numbers and names of items.  Today, programs like Anki, Cerego, and Memrise not only jolt our memories, but also make our knowledge much longer lasting.  [Confession:  Which is how we got through college chem courses …] 

What’s more, researchers have proven that there’s something to these spaced-repetition tactics – i.e., fixing information in our brains through repeated exposure at planned intervals.  Students get better grades.  Memorizing is less onerous.  Even exposures to difficult foreign languages like Mandarin stick … somewhat better.

Imagine, for instance, salespeople drilled on products and pricing and spiffs.  Or the smartphones of new hires embedded with this software and info on the company, its strategy, history, vision and mission.  And the litany of human resources programs instantly recalled via visual images and quick blurbs.

Hmmm:  Candy retailers are so non-PC.  Shall we call it, ‘acting like kids in the Apple store’?

LIE TO US (WE DARE YOU!)

These days, software (and a brilliant engineer) can work wonders – or havoc.

A six-year-old program/company that analyzes facial expressions for ad campaigns and TV pilots, though not yet profitable, is getting much traction from the CBS’, Kellogg’s, and Unilevers of this world.  Now boasting a database of 2.5 million facial samples, Affectiva asks its subjects to watch a video on the computer screen while a computer camera watches them back.  Results, claim marketers, are a lot less touchy feely than findings from focus groups or polling.  Future apps?  Politics, education, and psychological conditions like autism.

Facial analysis actually started with the same Charles Darwin who pioneered survival of the fittest.  It continued with professors who’ve looked at almost every form of non-verbal communication known to man (and yes, chimpanzee too), from blinking rates (those who fluttered their eyes more in US Presidential debates lost all elections since 1980) to pupil dilation, eyebrow lifts, and forehead furrows.  Clearly, expression provides major clues about what we think and feel.

Yet no one has mentioned what might be the most intriguing of all apps:  To determine the link between employees and engagement.

Sure, it’s a bit Big Brother-ish (though subjects DO know that they’re being watched).  

On the other hand, how many of our leaders have questioned the percentiles of engagement, as foretold through surveys?  When do we ‘know’ that our teams and staffs have disconnected from their tasks?  At what time(s) would it be prudent to assess the state of employee well being?

The computer knows.  Or does it?

MINDING OUR STORIES

With stories now becoming the center of what we do, everyone has an opinion about best ways, best techniques, best values.

Visual storytellers insist on incorporating principles like authenticity, relevancy, sensory and archetype.

Community organizers, long-time astute power users of tales, propose three interlocking circles:  the story of self, the story of now, and the story of us.

And (not to be forgotten) corporate types espouse messaging and expression as part of a strategy that considers goal and audience front and center.

To be honest, everyone’s right.  And wrong.

A brain researcher (Princeton neuroscientist Uri Hasson, to be precise) is showing us new ways to think about creating compelling narratives. 

Which is:  It’s all about how our brains react and respond to stories. 

In a series of incredibly complicated analyses and tests, he and his team reveal that different people respond in remarkably similar ways to great stories, no matter what the media.  Using MRIs and other medical technologies, the scientists prove that the best of storytellers have gotten into our minds and altered them in some predictable ways.  Even better:  That the storyteller somehow makes the listener’s/viewer’s brain match his/her own.

You heard it here first:  We predict soon we’ll be taking our ads, messaging, and digital promos to the docs for brain imagery … not just copy-testing.