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Just to explain a bit more about this Resonance thing I keep banging on about…

Resonance applies to physics and planets (orbital resonance) and music (acoustic resonance) and temperature (heat being caused by movement) and oceanography (tidal resonance) and brands and you and me and pretty much everything. In physics, the definition of resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate at maximum amplitude at certain frequencies. Consider that in light of what marketing attempts to do in terms of emotional connections; moving and shaking us.

A pleasant vibration is relaxing (consonance) versus a turbulent vibration that is torturous (dissonance). There are interesting parallels between marketing and music in endless ways (anyone who’s a musician and marketer gets it – you know who you are). A while back we knew our place – things were structured, holding form, shape, pattern (people accepted their lot), ‘photographic’ in artistic terms…think Bach, Mozart, cheesy aspirational image broadcast marketing. Then it became more extreme, ambiguous and chaotic… like new marketing and new media, eclectic, informal lifestyles, new found freedoms – no longer one right way to live and think. Society used to be static, set, still, calm, everything in its place – ‘classical’. Now it’s hip-hop, modern jazz, rock, pop, metrosexual whatever.

Then there’s musical colour, i.e. timbre (look at Klangfarbenmelodie, for example). Colour is all about mixing pigments, as is music. Pointillism, for instance; and minimalism, where there isn’t much going on at all. Then there are some people who hear, say, a G chord and see the colour green, consistently (synesthesia).

Also words – I love words. Words are vibrations (sounds) – but when you look at a word, do you see it or hear it? If there was no such word, would it still exist? Okay, okay. But what I love about words is their rhythm; and rhythm is just a slowed-down vibration that becomes a beat when our ear can pick it out. Vibes man

Resonance ties in with physics/space time/existence too. Look at the ancient Greek stuff: Pythagoras and the muses were all about physics, geometry, mathematics, philosophy and music. Sound is characterised by the properties of waves: frequency (check out Dominic Travers’ work on frequency-of-use data), wavelength, amplitude, speed – like science and marketing and anthropology.

If you fancy a real brain-strain, check our Nassim Haramein’s Resonance Project, a bunch of scientists living in a think tank compound in Hawaii trying to work out stuff about the universe, from the origin of spin, to scale unification, to the role of the vacuum. If you can get over the garland-wearing weirdness and quasi-religious undertones (and the fact if you close your eyes you could mistake Nassim for Cheech / Chong), it’s truly fascinating stuff, whether or not you buy the theories.

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in… marketing, music, film, publishing, media… we’ve got to face up to the fact that open and transparent services are the future. So hand over control to the people, earn trust, have conversations as opposed to indulging in monologues / broadcasting / messaging and promote enablement, not prevention / hindrance.

Thumbs up:

Gerd Leonard: http://www.mediafuturist.com/
Radiohead: http://www.radiohead.com

Thumbs down:

Hakan Roswall, IFPI: http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-trial-day-10-calls-for-jail-time-090302/
Feargal Sharkey, UK Music: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7722340.stm

Duh!

As Bob Dylan said:

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

I had a fascinating chat with Ogilvy Group UK Vice-Chairman Rory Sutherland the other day. We talked about the need for advertising to understand psychology and behaviour, rather than focusing on proposition alone.

On that note, it’s always useful to be reminded of how our heads really work; and how our biases affect belief formation and decision-making. Here are some examples:

* Bandwagon effect — the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behaviour.

* Bias blind spot — the tendency not to compensate for one’s own cognitive biases.

* Choice-supportive bias — the tendency to remember one’s choices as better than they actually were.

* Confirmation bias — the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.

* Congruence bias — the tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, in contrast to tests of possible alternative hypotheses.

* Contrast effect — the enhancement or diminishing of a weight or other measurement when compared with a recently observed contrasting object.

* Déformation professionnelle — the tendency to look at things according to the conventions of one’s own profession, forgetting any broader point of view.

* Denomination effect — the tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g. coins) than large amounts (e.g. bills).

* Distinction bias — the tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.

* Endowment effect — “the fact that people often demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it”.

* Experimenter’s or Expectation bias — the tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.

* Framing — Using an approach or description of the situation or issue that is too narrow. Also framing effect — drawing different conclusions based on how data is presented.

* Hyperbolic discounting — the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, where the tendency increases the closer to the present both payoffs are.

* Illusion of control — the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes that they clearly cannot.

* Impact bias — the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.

* Information bias — the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.

* Irrational escalation — the tendency to make irrational decisions based upon rational decisions in the past or to justify actions already taken.

* Loss aversion — “the disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it”.

* Mere exposure effect — the tendency for people to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them.

* Moral credential effect — the tendency of a track record of non-prejudice to increase subsequent prejudice.

* Need for closure — the need to reach a verdict in important matters; to have an answer and to escape the feeling of doubt and uncertainty. The personal context (time or social pressure) might increase this bias.

* Neglect of probability — the tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.

* Not Invented Here — the tendency to ignore that a product or solution already exists, because its source is seen as an “enemy” or as “inferior”.

* Omission bias — the tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).

* Outcome bias — the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

* Planning fallacy — the tendency to underestimate task-completion times.

* Post-purchase rationalization — the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value.

* Pseudocertainty effect — the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.

* Reactance — the urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice.

* Restraint bias – the tendency to overestimate one’s ability to show restraint in the face of temptation.

* Selective perception — the tendency for expectations to affect perception.

* Semmelweis reflex — the tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts an established paradigm.

* Status quo bias — the tendency for people to like things to stay relatively the same (see also loss aversion, endowment effect, and system justification).

* Von Restorff effect — the tendency for an item that “stands out like a sore thumb” to be more likely to be remembered than other items.

* Wishful thinking — the formation of beliefs and the making of decisions according to what is pleasing to imagine instead of by appeal to evidence or rationality.

* Zero-risk bias — preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.

Leading on from the previous post about the coolness of chaos…
 

Have you ever had to deal with a big lumpy piece of complex old software that was written years ago, then updated countless times, new bits added on, a new guy adding another bit, bolt-ons, sticking plasters and fixes… until it’s a big slow cumbersome piece of crap nobody can change or work with?
 

That’s pretty much industry as it stands – and other big systems for that matter (e.g. government, education). Since the industrial revolution, we’ve built up this massive ball of crap. Now nobody can do a damn thing with it.
 

The most obvious example that’s hurting right now is the whole free thing. We can listen to music for free. We can watch TV shows for free. We can read books for free. This of course screws record companies, publishers, broadcasters… oh yeah, and then there’s the whole fact that we don’t pay a blind bit of notice to advertising. The big massive balls of crap are stuffed because they’re prisoners within their own structures – too slow, too fat, too inflexible. They’re waiting to die, with their fingers in their ears, screaming ‘lah lah lah!’ as nimble network-based businesses spring up under the radar, taking over the world at lightning pace.
 

At the end of the day, all a business traditionally does is ensure people get paid. That’s it, when you think about it. Traditionally the big boys get paid much more than the little boys, but it’s just a bunch of individuals getting paid.
 

Now, think about the overhead in a big-lump-of-crap business. Big shiny offices, management structures, HR departments, blah blah blah. Think about MARKETING BUDGETS… zillions and squillions… to make sure you sell LOADS to make sure you can pay the overheads and pay the individuals (staff, bosses, shareholders etc). So we pay more to make more to sell more to pay more.
 

And it ain’t just the hippies who know sustainability is an issue. We need to stop producing so much crap. Reuse, reduce, recycle and all that jazz. Yet still we need to make people want more so they buy more so we sell more to pay individuals.
 

What if we scrapped all the crap?

What if there were no management structures?

What if there were no multi-million advertising / marketing budgets?

What if there were more or less no overheads?

Answer? We wouldn’t need to sell as much, so we wouldn’t MAKE as much. Sweet! It isn’t rocket science.
 

And could we do business without these business-as-usual / this-is-business stuff that costs so much? Hell yeah. It’s already happening. It’s soooo easy to change from ground level, as a bunch of individuals, with no management, a pinch of leadership and a sprinkling of magic dust – in comparison to attempting change from the ‘top’. It’s no surprise that people feel pretty darn good when they’re an individual within a collective, creating profit through good growth, without all the psychologically, environmentally (and every other ‘ally’) damaging self-fulfilling prophecies inherent in business as we know it.
 

I mean, we all know we went a bit crazy over the past few years (decades). We all got a bit carried away. It’s like full on raving in the 80s/90s (or whatever equivalent!). Bloody hell what a blast. Dance your face off – time of your life. But after a few years everybody starts to feel like crap, go nuts and realise it’s no fun any more and life’s better when you feel good. The individuals-formerly-known-as-consumers are just started to ease off the uppers. They’ve been turning your brain cells to mush and it’s much nicer to be wide awake.
 

So what now? Sit back and wait until the chaos period is over and this network-based commerce phase kicks in and emerges as the new status quo?
 

Err… that would be pretty boring.
 

Instead you could join a tribe. Or you could start one. Soon it’ll pay way more than your job (if that’s what you care about)… and really when you get into the swing of the new way you won’t give a toss.
 

Take it a leap beyond ‘markets are conversations’ into the realms of DOING, not planning. ACTION IS THE NEW FORECASTING.

Craig Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, reckons “If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.”

For the past seven years, a team in Germany has been searching for gravitational waves – ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes. GEO600 hasn’t detected any gravitational waves so far, but it might inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for half a century.

Check this out.

As David Weinberger said in The Cluetrain Manifesto, ‘Management is a powerful force, part of a larger life-scheme that promises us health, prosperity, calm and no surprises in every aspect of our lives, from health to wealth to good weather and moderately heated coffee from McDonald’s. We are all victims of this assault on voice, the attempt to get us to shut up and listen to the narrowest range of ideas imaginable.’

Here here.

It’s bizarre, when you think about it, that we seek health, prosperity and calm in a framework that’s configured to avoid surprises (not to mention the fact such management frameworks do quite the opposite, restricting prosperity and wrecking your health… duh!).

Essentially a framework that avoids surprises is setting us up for a fall, given that life is totally unpredictable (just look at the accuracy of trending, forecasting and predicting in retrospect – we’re pretty much always wrong, usually wildly, except for the one in a zillion folk who are hailed as heros / experts because they won the prediction lottery).

We’re actively encouraged (forced?) to surrender our individuality in return for a financial bribe and a supposedly non-disturbing, secure, predictable, managed environment. How damaging is that?

If we focused on understanding basic psychology – and in particular neuropsychology – rather than technology, management, or most things to do with ‘professionalism’, we’d learn to cope with surprises. There’s no anti-depressant and productivity tool quite like understanding what your brain is up to (which is normally the opposite of all the crap we reel off in our inner narrative). We’d learn to adopt calm by flicking switches that send neurons on productive paths, as opposed to destructive panic / depression / fear trains of thought. Most importantly, we’d learn that we have myriad choices… without all the BS constrains we confabulate, largely as a result of managed structures and irrational fears.

Coupled with the lack of cynicism and suckerism for imbalance and hype, our denial, biases and love of fallacy are at best sub-optimum… at worst bloody dangerous.

Every last pirate-lynching dinosaur the management structure spews out has been conditioned to fear change – to be unwilling to accept that bettering society involves doing new stuff that isn’t business as usual. It’s not business as usual! IT IS NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL!! Some folk never seem to get it. “But I’ll be out of a job!” they shriek. “More fool you,” we think quietly, while we bend and flex and change at pace with the world… mostly ignoring them and opting to avoid a ‘proper job’ at all costs (although some of us work form the inside).

The thing is, the pirates, the Scrmblrs and every single one of us are changing and bettering society from the bottom up. We’re faster, more innovative and powerful. We organise without organisations. We run on leadership, not management; passion, not KPIs. We’re not afraid to let one-another loose… in fact we love loose cannons. They’re our favourite.

You know who you are!

(Email me!)

Seth Godin’s recent post here hit the nail on the head. He says ‘TV advertisers are finally discovering that YouTube + viral imagination = free media… The biggest shift is going to be that organizations that could never have afforded a national campaign will suddenly have one. The same way that there’s very little correlation between popular websites and big companies, we’ll see that the most popular commercials get done by little shops that have nothing to lose.’

Funny he should say that. It’s exactly what we Scrmblrs (’scramblers’) are up to (Scrmblr is a global network of producers who create low cost, good quality video and audio content… what you might call anti-ads).

Cognitive dissonance is central to many forms of persuasion; changing beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviors. It’s a high-tension state between two opposing beliefs, often inducing confusion, then anger and finally an intense desire to correct the imbalance and rediscover consonance (RESONANCE).

Rather than using cognitive dissonance by manipulating people into making decisions they wouldn’t normally make, e.g. by asking someone a daft question (e.g. (“Do you ever worry about your monthly outgoings and wonder how you could reduce them?”) before pitching… the new way involves turning the mundane on its head, giving us a jolt to make life-altering choices.

Sympathetic resonance is a harmonic phenomenon wherein a formerly passive string or vibratory body responds to external vibrations to which it has a harmonic likeness. In other words, if you have two similar tuning forks, whack one and the other will sing, despite the fact they’re not touching.

In communication terms, brands are attempting to create sympathetic resonance… emanating vibrations in the hope that they’ll affect people. In fact the frequency of the vibrations is so high, it threatens to shatter everything: trust, auditory range (we won’t listen / can’t hear it any more) and effectiveness. Any cool new underground vibes emanating from the bottom up – from parkour to capoeira – are leapt upon by trend-spotting brands and thrust it into the mainstream.

But brands are missing a trick. To emanate vibrations that’ll make people respond in sympathetic resonance, they must have a harmonic likeness to those they’re trying to affect. The only way to achieve this is to stop pumping out deafening fake-folksy vibrations and start enabling the people of the world to create their own. Then you can be sure others in their social clusters will respond, start vibrating and cause a ripple affect to yet more social clusters; and eventually millions will sing in harmony. Mass marketing via facilitation – as enabler, not doer.

A fundamental law of physics (in one formulation) states that left to itself any closed system will always change towards a state of equilibrium from which no further change is possible. One example is swinging a pendulum… if you hold it up to one side it’ll be in a state of extreme disequilibrium, then as you let go and it swings back and forth, gradually losing energy, it’ll come to a standstill.

Other examples include many media agencies and advertising agencies. You know why.

Someone said to me today, ‘but we need to prove the ROI – how much is it [implementing a vision that gives power to the people, to cut a long story short] going to cost and what will the return will be? How do we show that listening to the customer has better ROI than direct marketing?’

Errr…. I’m not even going to answer that.

Our obsession with plotting loads of numbers in loads of rows in so-called forecasts, that ‘demonstrate ROI’ may be a comfort blanket for some, but are forecasts ever accurate or meaningful? If we look back at them later (which we seldom do thoroughly, because they’re so irrelevant and unfriendly) we’ll be astonished (or not) at how far off the mark we were.

Way too many business models set themselves up for equilibrium. A scalable business model should be fractal in nature… infinitely scalable, independent of any company’s resources. You should be able to zoom all the way in… or all the way out… and see a repeatability, recursiveness and simplicity. We should focus on setting ourselves up to leverage the unforeseen opportunities, rather than attempting to predict the unpredictable and produce reams of comfort crap on autopilot.

The rotary motion of a harmonograph produces a series of complex drawings influenced by relative frequency, amplitude and direction.

Brands should communicate with a harmonic balance between relative frequency (WHEN… don’t interrupt), amplitude (WHAT…loudness…don’t shout / broadcast) and direction (WHERE… targeting, permission).

Companies should seek to produce beautiful pictures… not chaos (disharmony / dissonance). Business models that can be boiled down to a simple, beautiful picture tend to have inherent scalability.