experience matters

Book Review: Brain Rules by John Medina

Joel Stanley | Critical Mass Chicago

What is any organizations’ true competitive advantage? Vision, values and process are all necessary, but fundamentally what makes one company different than another is the people. People are always our most important resource…so, in our ultra-competitive fields, are we equipping our people to perform to the best of their abilities?

The following are 8 brain rules – concepts of how our brains work that directly impact how we work best. These are taken from and all credit is given to John Medina’s excellent book, “Brain Rules”. These 8 rules provide insight on how we can align ourselves and our work to how we’re wired as people (with the added bonus of scientific backing behind mid-day naps).

1. Exercise Boosts Brain Power
The human brain operates best with proper oxygen flow. One of the most interesting scientific findings of the past few decades is that an increase in oxygen is always accompanied by an uptick in mental sharpness. Exercisers outperform non-exercisers in tests that measure long-term memory, reasoning, attention, problem solving as well as ability to reason quickly and think abstractly.

Basically, fit employees are capable of mobilizing their God-given IQs better than sedentary employees.

The most productive business day (and meetings within that day) would include walking.

2. We Don’t Pay Attention To Boring
Better attention always equals better learning. But, research has shown you have about 10 minutes of an audience’s attention before attention starts to wane.

You must do something emotionally arousing at each 10 minute mark to regain attention…and it has to be relevant and interesting (random jokes won’t work). Inserting information/data that is unusual, unpredictable or distinctive are powerful ways to harness attention.

3. The Brain Cannot Multitask
The brain is not capable of multi-tasking. We can talk and breathe, but when it comes to higher level tasks, we just can’t do it. This doesn’t bode well for our always-connected culture, specifically at work.

The biggest problem comes from task switching, which is basically being interrupted from whatever is your primary focus. Research has shown that it takes someone 2x as long to complete a task if you are interrupted and you make 3x more errors as well. An error for a 4 year old means 2+2=5, an error for those of us in professional world means sub-optimal output. Whether it be in a new business pitch, creative presentation or strategic recommendations, we can’t afford those mistakes.

4. Repeat To Remember
We usually forget 90% of what we learn within 30 days. The human brain can only hold about seven pieces of information for less than 30 seconds. If you want to extend that, you’ve got to consistently re-expose yourself to the information.

Repetition is key in remembering ‘effortful’ information (kinds not easily remembered, as opposed to remembering first kiss – that’s ‘automatic’). Here’s the easy solution: 30, 60-90. Repeat information within 30 seconds to get information to working memory, then repeating within 60-90 minutes to get it into long term memory. Without repetition, your brain resets.

Read the next 4 Brain Rules to keep you going strong into the 5:00 hour

Several weeks ago, our global leadership team converged at our Calgary headquarters, “the mothership” so to speak, for annual strategic planning meetings. One of the key themes of the week was “Moving at the Speed of Culture.”

Neil Clemmons, President, and Arif Hirani, Consumer Research Director.

We spent hours and numerous breakout sessions outlining the myriad obstacles that can prevent companies (ourselves included) from moving faster, more efficiently, and above all, more effectively. From noise to process to culture and tools, we mapped out the challenges and corresponding solutions to keep us on a path toward continual evolution, and to manage growth while remaining a nimble, innovation-focused culture.

Our lengthy discussions on this topic underscored a compelling point: no matter how steeped you are in digital expertise or “best practices”, whether you are a boutique hot shop or a leading established player, the pace of change—in the industry and culture at large—is mind-blowing. Seemingly everyday, the ground is shifting: new agency models, new technology players and platforms, new consumer behaviors that are rendering our tried and true marketing strategies utterly irrelevant.

So how do you remain competitive or, as we strive to do, continue to lead our clients and inspire our employees by “moving at the speed of culture”?

Our good friend over at Business Week, Bruce Nussbaum, penned a great post on “Cultivating Innovation and Creativity, Not Managing It.” In it, he alludes to a wonderful analogy made by Diego Rodriquez, partner at IDEO, about how “cultivating” a culture of innovation is much like a tending to a garden, as opposed to the traditional command-and-control model of “managing” from the top down.

Read about Rodriguez’ Innovation Principles

Toyota reminds me of a guy who buys flood insurance the day after the big rain.

In a recent post on my personal blog, I proposed that an effective ethical strategy required speaking to the emotions of your audience. Watching this car maker’s mounting mistakes and the continuing ethical violations still coming to light, I’m reminded about one of the keys to a successful crisis management strategy:

Crisis management begins before the crisis.

In January (the same month the Toyota debacle really hit the fan, incidentally), clothing retailer H&M was hit with a story claiming that their employees were slashing up clothes before they were discarded. While some brand protection can be understood by some, it looked dastardly in the midst of a recession.

H&M responded to the hubbub immediately, issuing a 5-tweet salvo that concisely stated their case: They gave their brand statement, contact information, a promise to resolve the problem, and a link to a robust corporate social responsibility page. (Here is a history of the incident and the Twitter effect.)

You’d be forgiven if you missed this story. At the time, H&M’s 30K Twitter followers got out the message, mostly defended the brand (or at least stopped disparaging it), and pretty much quashed the story. Compare this to Toyota’s handling of their ethical crisis.

Toyota Goes The Old Route: Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems

Toyota spent a lot of money on ads in newspapers (yes, they still exist) and on television. They had very few Twitter followers. They have no blog that I know of (and certainly not one I heard about developed after the story broke).

No customer communication channels. No tools for dialogue. No presence in a community where fans could defend them.

Consider Joseph Jaffe’s admonition of Toyota:

“Toyota did not have a direct line…with their customers, with their advocates, with their loyalists, with their influencers. They weren’t able to go to their community and say, ‘Help us, we need your help, we need your advice…’

You can’t expect to miraculously turn to your customers if you haven’t been building up that relationship with them in advance… You’ve got to anticipate this stuff because it’s going to happen.”

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Last week, we learned that Idea Aid, with not-for-profit partner Heifer International, selected its top five idea submissions. In a bit of unexpected news, one of the winners came from Critical Mass – submitted by this very blogger.

The goal of 2009’s Idea Aid (the first of hopefully many to come) was to generate new fundraising models to raise $1 billion annually. The weeklong brainstorm benefit, organized by Mensa Process, resulted in 585 ideas from participants in 66 countries including Argentina, Bangladesh, Belgium, Congo, Croatia, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, and Iraq. Heifer International will share the winning ideas with other like-minded organizations – after all, when the goal is to eradicate global poverty, sharing the idea wealth is a must.

The five winners include ideas that emerged multiple times over the course of Idea Aid week. (“Great minds think alike” is cliché for a reason.)

1. “Rounding Up Around the World” has an approach alá Bank of America’s “Keep the Change,” where users enjoy automatic savings derived from rounding their check card transactions to the next dollar. Here, consumer transactions would round up for the benefit of charities. This idea came from Tomer Ram of Israel – and based on the results of our brainstorm breakouts, it was a popular theme. An added thought from this blogger: Just as BoA offers a 100% match for the first three months and a 5% match thereafter (with an annual cap) to help motivate sign-ups, a similar tactic should be used here – with the help of a generous third-party entity (anyone have Richard Branson’s or Bill Gates’s number?).

2. “A Penny Goes a Long Way,” from Dr. Christina Bautista of New Mexico, suggests that an extra penny from consumers’ credit and debit purchases go to charity. Though consumers would hardly feel these micro-transactions, money would accumulate to a significant charitable sum. This theme was another popular one – in fact, more than a handful of brainstorming CM’ers referenced Office Space as silver-screen proof.

3. “Gift Cards: The little bit that’s left” proposes that the little bit of extra on retailer gift cards be funneled to charity. It’s a no-brainer – consumers could lighten their wallet of those pesky remaining gift dollars, to benefit those who need it more. This idea, from Jay Bassett in Georgia, had at least one idea doppelganger in Critical Mass’s very own Duane Wheatcroft.

4. “Global Online Auction,” a winning idea from Ruth Parvin in Oregon, combines art, charity, and the global reach of the Internet. Artists would donate works to an online auction, with all proceeds going to charity. Ebay would be the first tree to bark up, as they have the global reach this idea would thrive on.

5. The final idea was a submission of mine – originally called “Beautiful Change,” revised to “Destinations for Donations.” In this idea, artists, sculptors and/or architects would create fun, interactive money-collecting structures to appear in cities that get significant tourist traffic. This idea was inspired by the Chicago cows, an irresistible coin-spinner I experienced as a kid (a donation mechanism itself), and a similar thought from a coworker of mine (Senior Copywriter Jamie Toal, who, during one of our office-wide brainstorms, asked, “Why can’t we just clear out the change from the fountains of the world?”)

Needless to say, my Critical Mass cohorts and I are thrilled to have contributed a fundraising idea worthy of the hope and confidence of Heifer International and the Idea Aid organizers. If you asked me, I’d say it’s a lovely way to close out the year. We’re excited to see what comes next.

As a Copywriter in the advertising and marketing industry, having good ideas is the foundation of my day-to-day. But for many organizations, good ideas save lives.

Starting Saturday, 11/14 and for one week, I’m going to donate ideas to Idea Aid – the world’s first online global brainstorming benefit. In addition, Critical Mass will harness its creativity for the cause through flash-brainstorms.

For Idea Aid’s inaugural year, participants around the globe will identify solutions to help Heifer International raise $1 billion annually to eradicate global poverty.

From the latest press release:

According to the World Bank, 1.2 billion people – 20 percent of the world’s population – survive on less than $1 a day. More than 800 million people go to bed hungry every day and 300 million of them are children.

Heifer International has said that one thing that makes a difference is, indeed, money – but at this point, there’s no single way to efficiently and consistently generate necessary funds for the cause.

Critical Mass is signed up. Will you participate too?

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This weekend, the world gathered around one iconic idea: 350ppm.

350 parts per million is the level of CO2 many climate scientists agree is the safe upper limit of carbon in our air (we’re at about 390, by the way). But that’s not all 350ppm is. It’s also one of the strongest examples of social media optimization the world has ever seen.

To help promote its International Day of Climate Action (last Saturday, 10/24), 350.org simply asked supporters to use a special hashtag in related tweets: #350ppm. According to search.twitter.com, it was used 1,500 times over the weekend (10/23-10/26).

The Day of Climate Action was a rousing success. 181 countries participated (meaning fewer than 15 didn’t), and there were 5,245 events across the globe.

As for SMO success, 350.org now has over 10,000 Twitter followers. They’re ranked #43 in the “Everywhere” region (via Twitterholic). 350’s most recent Influence score from Twitalyzer is a “profound” 64 of 100, after a recent increase of 31,900%. Twitalyzer bases Influence on Reach (followers), Authority (getting retweeted), Generosity (RT’ing others), and Clout (getting mentioned). 350’s Clout score is 100 of 100, unchanged in the recent past.

On Sunday, 350’s Day of Climate Action was the most talked-about news story on the planet – tops on CNN, The New York Times, Le Monde, Google News, and more. The top Google headline was “Campaign Against Emissions Picks Number,” due in no small part to thousands of participants using “350.” For Sunday and Monday, the story of 350 got more impressions than any other in the world.

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In Jan 2009, the FTC released proposed guidelines for marketing in social media. The FTC understands the role and influential impact of social media marketing and wanted to update its 29-year old guidelines to reflect this understanding. WOMMA worked directly with its members and the FTC to submit feedback and shape these guidelines which were released, in the form of a 100 page document, on Monday, October 5. They will go into effect on December 1, 2009.

These guides can be used by any law enforcement agency or consumer class action cases. Because other legal avenues can use these guides, no party is too small to be caught and fined.

Highlights

• Any sponsored communication is subject to regulation.

• Any relationship between blogger and advertiser must be disclosed i.e. a blogger must identify when he is speaking on behalf of an advertiser. The FTC equates an influencer who has been given consideration to a paid review or review by an employee

• Any kind of consideration that goes from an advertiser to the blogger must be disclosed. This includes cash payment, gifted product or service, and likelihood of future receipts of compensation or products/services.

• Celebrities must disclose their relationships with advertisers when endorsing products outside of traditional advertising, including blogs and twitter feeds. Other examples include talk show and other public appearances.

• Performance claims must represent typical results and have supporting evidence. Safe-harbor disclaimers like “results may vary” will no longer satisfy these guidelines.

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Over the past few months, I’ve had some great opportunities to meet folks from a variety of companies and I’ve detected a bit of a pattern. Organizations are genuinely challenged with what to make of the changes on the Web, both from an external marketing perspective as well as the internal enterprise.

For example, many companies are eager to take advantage of “social media” efforts, meaning non-traditional marketing initiatives that involve either unpaid media or interacting directly with consumers/customers/users and communities. BUT, there is risk involved and the most often asked question which is inevitably asked becomes “what’s the ROI”?
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Cross posted on iMedia Connection

Trouble keeping everyone up to speed? See how this easy-to-use tool can organize your team. 

Picture this. You have a senior executive who is responsible for your digital initiatives. She is extremely bright, knowledgeable and savvy. She even spent hard-earned political capital to secure your budget. But she is extremely busy. She is not trained in analytics or user experience metrics. She does not place priority on the minutiae of your many worthy projects. Neither does she have time to keep up on digital-related reading.

Now multiply her by 10.

How do you keep all of these execs informed in a timely, relevant basis?

A widget can successfully provide this information in an efficient little package. At Critical Mass, I’ve had great success utilizing widgets to share knowledge with clients and I’m willing to bet you can too.

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My wife had experienced strange (and very uncomfortable) abdominal pains for a number of years. No one could ever properly diagnose it. Every time the pain flared up, she’d trundle off to a clinic, they’d run a couple of tests (which would always be inconclusive), and a couple of days later it would disappear again. Painful and frustrating, since the obvious conclusions were that no one was reading the history of what was happening, and we both knew it would come back again.

Finally, last December (during another bout of pain), she lucked out and got in to see her long-time doctor. (Yes, read that sentence again. I said “lucked out” to see her own doctor. But I digress.) After recounting the last few years of goings-on, the doctor recommended something a little different. A new test revealed acute appendicitis.

In all of this running around, one thing struck me as being so backwards that I was amazed that someone didn’t accidentally remove, say, my wife’s spleen. Everyone communicated verbally. Is it just me, or did we suddenly regress 100 years?

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