Only Dead Fish

Why Clever People Believe Stupid Things

This is the title of a chapter in Ben Goldacre's excellent book 'Bad Science'. In it, he talks about inherent bias - the kind of false beliefs or 'cognitive illusions' that come from the shortcuts we use to simplify complex problems when we reason informally, and that can often mean (to paraphrase Ben):

1. We see patterns where there is only random noise

2. We see causal relationships where there are none

3. We overvalue confirmatory information for any given hypothesis

4. We seek out confirmatory information for any given hypothesis

5. Our assessment of the quality of new evidence is biased by our previous beliefs

Another very real form of bias of-course, is the tendency we all have not to change our established behaviours unless there's an extremely compelling reason. Status Quo bias. Loss aversion means that our preference is to avoid losses rather than secure gains. Our tendency is to underestimate the advantages of the new, and overestimate the disadvantages of giving up the old.

I think it was Marshall McLuhan who said that we tend to see new media through the lens of the old. I was reminded of this reading John's post:

"The industry's reaction to the realisation that people are ignoring their messaging is seemingly to search for an alternate way to control the message."

Commonplace thinking on the way that ideas and behaviours spread talks about 'influentials' - that elusive minority who can influence an exceptional number of other people and so are disproportionately more important to the formation of public opinion. This thinking persists, despite evidence to the contrary. Duncan Watts has shown that in a connected world large scale changes in public opinion, or 'cascades of influence', are typically not driven by influential individuals but rather by a critical mass of easily influenced individuals. Other research (using a dataset of over 250,000 Facebook pages and their associated fans, no less) has shown that the number of friends, user demographics or activity have no bearing on how ideas spread through social networks or how popular they are. Exposure on the other hand, does. As Mark says, its not about inflentials it's about emulation. And further studies have shown that time, differences between people, and relative context also play their part.

We simply don't know enough about this stuff. So the IPA's recent focus on behavioural economics makes sense, not least because (to quote Rory Sutherland):

"We spend almost all our time attempting to change behaviour through overt persuasion - while paying no attention to influencing the other, barely conscious ways in which people behave."

I believe that this has the potential to change the way in which we all work. But then I'm biased.

Bots And People

 
Image courtesy

"Ask yourself this: do you think Wikipedia ever hired an SEO consultant in order to get its high rankings on Google?" Jeremy Keith

I posted this quote (via armandoalves) over on the Tumblr the other day because it makes such a good point about the rounded benefits of good, people focused content.

There are of-course many ways to attract people to content (notice I didn't say 'drive traffic'), not least by ensuring it is as well marked-up and relevant as possible (what Jeremy calls 'optimising for people'). But whilst many owners and producers spend an awful lot of time, money and effort focused on optimising their content for Google bots and algorithms, the inherent value that socialised content has for search and referrals through its associated richness of in-bound links, is often forgotten.

Similarly, many owners and producers underestimate the value that socially distributed content (what you might call 'social syndication'), and socially based personalisation, has for getting your content in front of more people.

The real game changer here of-course is Facebook Connect. Facebook now accounts for 1 in every 7 page views in the UK. It may still be second to Google in terms of visits, but it accounts for over twice the share of UK page views (14.5% compared to 5.8%, and, as James has so eloquently pointed out, has a level of user trust and scale that has enabled a richness of data like nothing we've ever seen before).

Earlier this week Gordon posted on how The Huffington Post (which has just surpassed The Washington Post in scale and is now second only to USA Today and the New York Times) has used a wider breadth of content combined with social tools based on Facebook Connect that allow users to personalise as well as comment on and share content easily with Facebook friends, to increase its unique users by 50% year on year. Its worth noting that underneath that headline figure, Facebook referral traffic is up 48% and 15% of all comments on HuffPo now come from Facebook.

Similarly, many owners and producers underestimate the value of a distributed but engaged community in attracting referrals. When it was announced that SamFry (the company that manages Stephen Fry's website) were launching their network of celebrity sites earlier this week, the co-Managing Director Andrew Sampson talked about the huge surges in traffic that come as a direct result of Fry's tweets and blogs. Not surpising perhaps, given that at time writing he has over 885,000 followers on twitter. But Sampson used an example, saying that when Fry had tweeted the URL to his "Poles, Politeness and Politics in the age of Twitter" post earlier this week, the site had received five times the number of daily vistors which typically averages about 1.1m unique users. If every single one of Fry's followers had followed the link, it wouldn't have even doubled the number of visitors. I'm not advocating that Twitter should be used as a glorified RSS feed, but when a piece of content like that spreads, it really spreads. And if it doesn't spread it's dead.

Hands From Above

This is genius. From artist Chris O'Shea. Fun, interactive, doing stuff with people rather than at them. Wonder how long before an advertiser uses this idea...

Hand from Above from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo.

Via

Planning For Streams

“We applied the lens of advertising (interuptive, message-based) to new media. Instead we should apply the lens of new media (interactivity, iteration) to advertising”

This challenging presentation from Gareth and Jason was doing the rounds on twitter yesterday. I think it asks some good questions, and picks up on a theme I've written about before, and one on which there's been a couple of excellent posts recently - the need for a more agile, iterative, and adaptive approach to creative processes.

Jason and Gareth talk about the flow of information over time: "ideas as unfolding stories, a stream of iterations and interactions that invite people into the process". This makes sense in a world in which people are becoming content creators as much as they are consumers, and where content increasingly needs to be free-flowing and responsive, and services and applications need to be both scalable and portable. It's What Russell Davies once called 'designing for streams'. As my Mum used to say, it's all about the journey, not the destination.

Connections Planningness

View more documents from Jason Oke.

Content And Community

I spoke at the Oktoberfest Innovation Seminar (organised by the smart folks at Brainjuicer) in Munich at the end of last week, sharing the bill with the Herdmeister,  David from Ag8, Simon Blyth at IDEO, and John Kearon (Chief Juicer). It seems there's much talk of the death of this and that, so I chose to do my talk on the opportunity I see for content owners and producers in a connected world, if they think in the right way. Some of the points (and a few of the slides) will be familiar to regular readers of this blog, but there's also some new stuff and I was keen to include a selection of examples I think exemplify what I talk about. I thought it might be useful to share it here, so here it is.

Content And Community

View more presentations from neilperkin.

Britain's Got Talent

 

Image courtesy

“In the knowledge economy all staff are volunteers, but our managers are trained to manage conscripts” Peter Drucker

I've been thinking about this quote ever since I read it over at Johnnie's place. I did a webinar the other day about social technologies, and there were a number of HR professionals on the call. The discussion turned to how employers might best attract and retain talent in the connected world. The point was made about the need for companies to resist the temptation to impose too many controls on employees in their use of such tools, and how many bright young things have a level of expectation about the use of such technologies in everything they do (including their work).

But it felt like there was a big point that was in danger of being missed - that corporates have already become far more transparent to everyone, prospective employees included, whether they like it or not. A networked world creates choice and leverage for individuals. It's easier than ever to find inspiration, start something interesting. The barriers to entry have never been so low. My sense is that talented young people coming onto the job market for the first time have a very real sense of their connectedness and the possibilities that that enables.

So the question should not be about which organisations 'allow' the use of such technologies, but rather which are the ones where the employees are visibly empowered by them. The awful state of the current job market allows organisations the luxury of choice, but for how long? As Hugh MacLeod rightly said the market for something to believe in is infinite. And this, to quote Seth, is "where the real truth lies, where growth occurs regardless of the state of the economy". My hunch is that when we come out the other side the future will belong to those companies that are visibly driven not only by a strong sense of purpose and a culture of transparency, but empowered and connected employees.

Blog Action Day 2009 - Climate Change

September 25th was Earth Overshoot Day. Just over three weeks ago, humanity began living beyond its ecological means for this calendar year. Since that day, we are in the ecological equivalent of deficit spending, using up resources at a rate faster than what the planet can regenerate.

Today is Blog Action Day - the annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day - and this year's issue is climate change. For my post, I'm going to point at an interesting initiative from those smart guys at IDEO to apply 'design thinking' to help imagine what life will be like 20 or 30 years from now. Thanks to global climate change this is a question we all think about, but the talk about our impact on the environment is often framed by abstract statistics. Living Climate Change is described as an "open forum for sharing solutions to these problems". What I like about it is that, as Tim Brown describes in the short video below, it moves the conversation away from what we have to give up, and toward what we can create. It attempts to "ask the good questions an then bring them to life in an optimistic and real-world way", which is no bad thing. Go take a look. 

Post Of The Month - September '09 - The Winner

 
In spite of a late run on Helge's post, the early leader held out so I'm delighted to announce that the winner of this months Post Of The Month is Michael Litman with his excellent post on social media measurement. Well done Michael. You get the props of your blogging peers and are entered into the ThinkTank Hall of Fame. Thanks everyone for taking part. Don't forget to bookmark your good reads to nominate for next months vote.

Post Of The Month - September '09 - The Vote

Thanks for the nominations (and thanks to AdLand Suit for nominating one of mine). Our shortlist this month is...

How To Be A Better Brand Planner by Julie Cottin
This is Not The Time For Big Lazy Brands from Helge Tenno
Why Not Take A Moment To Define Success Before You Pursue It by Alex Bogusky

When The S**t Hits The Fan, It's Time To Innovate by Alan Moore

A Brief Message For European Marketing Directors from Gemma Teed

Kate Moss & Me by, er, me

Is Social Media Measurement Really Meaningless? by Michael Litman

And you can vote below...

Post Of The Month Nominations - September '09

Time to nominate your own favourite posts of the past month. Gotta say, there was some great reading to be had in September (including Tim's post on agile measurement, Jon on outsourcing and some posts that were not about advertising, like John Moe's lament about the death of David Foster Wallace, and Hank Williams with the provocatively titled 'The Problem With The Economy: You Aren't Needed Anymore'). But in the end, my starting four are the ones below. After a time I'll stick these, with any additional ones that are put forward up for a vote so please do nominate any posts which you particularly liked in the comments below.

How To Be A Better Brand Planner by Julie Cottin
This is Not The Time For Big Lazy Brands from Helge Tenno
Why Not Take A Moment To Define Success Before You Pursue It by Alex Bogusky

When The S**t Hits The Fan, It's Time To Innovate by Alan Moore

Please add your nominations below...