Prince Philip is a grumpy old man and frequently the laughing stock of those who appreciate a tosser who’s always ‘two steps behind’.
But the man did have a point when he recently told of getting his grandchildren to programme his TV.
He apparently said: “To work out how to operate a TV set you practically have to make love to the thing. They put the TV controls on the bottom so you have to lie on the floor, and then if you wanted to record something the recorder was underneath, so you ended up lying on the floor with a torch in your teeth, a magnifying glass and an instruction book.”
The 88-year-old gent was laughed at by most media accounts I saw, but he was clearly lashing out at the design of modern televisions, claiming they are too hard to use.
We all know people who communicate so that no-one can understand what on earth they are saying. In individuals I’ve assumed it has something to do with the mixed-communicator’s perverse need to control relationships or attract attention to themselves, even if only for petty scorn. The mentality seems to be; if others are set up to fail because they’re confused, you can be the winner.
But why is it that so much commercial communication is incomprehensible – text in a brochure that’s eye-strain small or graphics that scramble the brain? And why is it almost impossible to tell the difference between the ‘shampoo’ and the ‘conditioner’ when standing in the shower with soap in your eyes?
I’m sure that the answer is not a perverse one. Communication that doesn’t communicate clearly is bad communication and it results from a lack of care and judgement.
Grumpy old men complain about nearly everything, but in this case, Prince Philip communicated with great clarity.
In a future post I’ll raise another issue on the subject of loony communication – billboards.
The sight of Carey Smith (aka Ray White Real Estate) in today’s Sunday Star Times got me thinking about my first meeting with the man at a public relations seminar a few weeks ago.
I didn’t know him from a bar of soap, but clearly he got into my consciousness and now he appears to be everywhere.
The seminar paraded a range of speakers, most talking on the subject of social media. Many presentations covered the theory of Facebooking, Tweeting and viral campaigning together with a scattering of case studies.
Carey turned up with a lively virtuoso performance hewn from the edgy world of residential real estate. Here’s a man who is discovering how his blog [www.careysmith.com] and social media activity is merely an extension of his lifelong need to have rich relationships with his family, friends and of course… business clients and prospects.
Refreshingly, Carey’s enthusiasm for social media seems to see it as a huge opportunity but not something to gaze at in gob-smacking bewilderment.
Praise be! Social media is spawning a bevy of overnight gurus who will have us believe that the processes are more important to understand than the ideas that are needed to make it work. I’m sure that when the telephone was invented, there were people offering themselves for “how to best dial to make the telephonic experience a rich and rewarding experience.”
It seems that a blog and Facebook were invented for Carrie Smith. Good on him and he sets a fine example for us all. Next time I sell a house, I might just call Carey.
I’m feeling the need to attack Telecom’s recent promotion of its new XT mobile network.
Call me old school, but successful communicating is about making sure the messages are the right ones for a particular audience, then making sure to use appropriate communications channels to those selected audiences. There is also the not insignificant factor of timing and resources to consider.
But I won’t be complicated; let’s just stick to the question of appropriate messaging.
My daughter, a very media savvy 18 year old, watched the 2Degrees TV commercials and laughed her approval for the way it connected her with the essential messages via a very kiwi sense of humour. The use of Reece Darby created an inspiring and simple vehicle for 2Dgrees to promote a completely new offering to New Zealand consumers.
What is Telecom doing in the same market space? Let’s not forget that Telecom is the firmly entrenched ‘old foggy’ in this market with a corporate reputation as something of a big, slow dragger. Telecom’s answer is Richard Hammond from the BBC’s Top Gear programme.
I can just here the logic at Telecom – high tech innovation demands a smart young presenter from a leading international car programme. Well that’s not what my daughter thinks. She compares the humour and kiwi slant of 2Dgrees communications with Telecom’s offering and there is only one winner.
Telecom need to get out more and work out that New Zealanders, not just 18 year olds, are no longer conned by flash-harries from aunty BBC TV shows talking about how you can get 3G reception from a shipping container sitting in the middle of the Hauraki Gulf.
The old rules remain the same. Appropriate communications can never be improved with the kinds of big corporate budgets and production values Telecom throws at its marketing.
I’ve just spent a couple of days attending and presenting at a conference dedicated to media campaigning.
A wide range of speakers and panelists presented on a wide range of subjects from the social media revolution to crisis management in public relations.
A theme that occured time and time again was the subject of ‘traditional’ mainstream media and the impact of the internet and, in particular, social media. It’s an area that is a particular focus for us in our FRESCO business and in our web enterprise sites, Issues.co.nz and Wotzon.com.
It struck me during the discussions how much history repeats itself with every new media development. Early adoptors may imagine that the processes involved in the new medium have never been seen before – rather like teenagers thinking that they are the first to discover sex. Think of the printing press, telephone, radio and television? Each ones early development had people obsessed with the processes rather than the real benefits once people settled down and learnt how to use it intuatively.
But of course, there never has been anything quite like the internet and we young teenagers may just be right to be so excited. Social media promises to enable people as never before and connect them to a world we are just starting to imagine.
This week my company, FRESCO, released a new website. Issues.co.nz is live but not yet formally launched while we load in more content – I expect a launch within the next week.
The website has been an idea of mine that has simmered for years as we witnessed the explosion in current affairs online. But while many newspaper websites leave control with the media, and ‘citizen publishing’ is diluted with a mass of fragmented blog or information sites, Issues.co.nz brings much of the fragmentation together and, in doing so, gives ordinary people a chance to be heard.
The Issues.co.nz website is completely unique in New Zealand. In a nutshell, we’re setting up a platform where anyone has the chance to run their own website on a burning issue and run it within a large online community.
Take a sneak look at www.issues.co.nz and let me know what you think?
