THE 70 PERCENT RULE

Shame on us communicators and advertisers and content developers (ad nauseum).

Our learning and development colleagues know this principle of knowledge acquisition by heart:  10 percent relies on actual training, 20 percent, from others.  And the 70 percent?  From on-the-job experiences.

Recently, the experiential part of learning has been ramped up. 

Thanks in no small part to start-ups and tech businesses, blackboard-painted walls and tables on wheels act as inspiration and experience vehicles. 

Software developers, eager to understand why clients do what they do and what they want, hold what’s been called ‘participatory market research.’ 

And august institutions such as Harvard regularly conduct hands-on courses, from a prison studies project learning about criminal justice (in tandem) with prison inmates to re-engineering medical devises with doctors close at hand.

Why don’t we practice first-hand learning?  In other words, when there’s an issue that demands not just awareness but also the action to do something, communicators and colleagues need to seriously consider increasing the do-it-yourselves and how-tos. 

Take performance management, for instance.  A number of today’s more progressive organizations are killing the old ranking system and mid and year-end talks, replacing both with ongoing dialogues between boss and individual, team and individual.  At the same time, our high-tech reliance means many employees aren’t accustomed to conversations, with many preferring text, Instagram, Twitter, and email over traditional face to face.

The solution?  Show them how to talk, to handle difficult encounters, and to really listen and hear and learn.  It’s as much our goal as it is our L&D colleagues.

WHAT'S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE ...

It’s always puzzled us why there’s so little fertilization among our communications disciplines.

Take the creative brief, for instance. 

A staple of advertising agencies, somehow the brief seems to have skipped corporate, public relations agency, and consulting worlds.  Outside vendors that take on, for instance, an annual report or the re-do of a Web site may, indeed, pull together some sort of framework that guides the project.  It’s considered a necessary (okay, even mandatory) road map, the architecture that not only keeps the messages aligned but the people as well.

When it comes to those internal professionals managing a major deliverable, we haven’t seen that kind of detail.   For sure, key messaging will almost definitely be established.  But the straightforward language and the thinking behind a brief isn’t always developed.  Such as:  Brutal honesty about what stakeholders believe and feel.  Visual and verbal statements that truly define the brand without ambiguity.  And identifying what’s important, what’s not and the metrics involved. 

Sure, there are templates to follow.  Lots of questions to be answered, from the whats (the project), and whys (reasons for being) to the whens, wheres, and hows. 

On the other hand, it’s not a deck or a massive tome.  In our heads, a creative brief needs to be true to its definition:  something that inspires (creative) and something that’s short (brief). 

What’s been your experience, dear readers?

QUIX PIX = CHAT STAT

It had to happen.

Brands are getting into the emoji business, big time.

These graphics, originally created to add context to text, now live by themselves.  Ford promoted its latest Focus with ‘em.  Unilever’s Dove just rolled out a series of curly-haired faces, customizable by skin tone and hair color.  Domino’s uses its visual as a way to text an order. 

Entrepreneurs are making the most of this emo-design, from a 2013 “translated” edition of Moby Dick housed in the Library of Congress (yeah, called Emoji Dick) to software that suggests emoji as you type.

What’s more, e-statistics are seductive.  As is the psychology behind these hieroglyphics.  Like these:

• The richer the array of emotions, the happier and healthier the users.
• People who use emoticons are more popular and influential than those who don’t.
• Children today recognize corporate logos before they can read.

Now, speaking through pictures is, in short, an almost necessary adjunct to our social media conversations.  Plain language doesn’t cut it anymore.

Perhaps we need to blame Paul Rand who created a rebus of the IBM logo (think:  eye-bee-M).  Or networks like Facebook and Instagram that thrive on communicating in cartoons.  Even Apple which, late last month, announced its first emoji with a cause – against cyber-bullying. 

We have zip against winkies and smileys.  Certainly, as visual communicators, we can’t complain about the explosion of new pictures.  What we miss, really and truly, are the conversations between people, among groups, that rely on faces and sounds and tones and gestures to communicate.

'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.