Hugh Garry

Listening Differently

"But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this." 

I spent all of my 30's working at Radio 1, a radio station aimed at 15-25 year olds. At the time I was working in the media, referring to large coffees as 'Venti' and hanging out in wanky East London. Little has changed to be honest.

When you're producing content for people from a different generation you have to quickly learn how to stop being you. You have to step out of your bubble and become a 15 year old school boy from Derry, an 18 year old MC from Dundee or a 21 year old single mum from Hackney. You have to break out of your default setting.

My eldest son was recently training to be a coach and mentor. I talked to him about the importance of empathy and a little thing I do when I'm on a train in the morning, or in a cafe waiting for someone. I look at the people around and build the stories of their lives based on whatever clues I can grab. It's not enough to form opinions based on the easy clues. You have to look for the hard ones. 

Yesterday I came across this. It's a wonderfully visualised version of a commencement speech given by novelist David Foster Wallace. It's a brilliant essay on empathy and living compassionately. Everyone should hear it. If you work with audiences or customers then you have to listen to them. Hearing is not enough. You have to build the story that lies behind the data rather than just acting on the data. You have to understand people and the only way to do that is by listening differently.

THIS IS WATER - By David Foster Wallace from The Glossary on Vimeo.

Behaviours Kickstarting Revolutions

Whenever I talk to someone about new behaviours I'm usually met with a knowing nod of the head and the gesture of swiping thumb. As a smartphone owner it's no surprise. I probably make that gesture 20 to 30 times a day.

I recently read a book called 'Curious Ritals' which looks at the new physical behaviours that have resulted from our regular interactions with digital technology and devices. Behaviours such as 'The Baboon's Face' - holding your hand over your mouth so that people can't hear your phone conversation, or 'The Periscope' - that 'holding the phone high' thing people do at gigs to make videos they'll never watch. It made me realise how many there are and how seamlessly they become common rituals. We become fluent without realising we'd gone through any kind of learning process.

What fascinates me is how these simple new rituals or behaviours can trigger revolutions. Let me explain. I've been going to SXSW for years and gotten somewhat weary of people talking up average apps as 'The New Twitter'. This usually happens because people need to justify their expense account to their boss when they get back.

But this year was different. All the talk in all the bars of Austin was not about the latest app. This year was all about hardware. I'll say that again. HARDWARE. How the hell did that happen? How did SXSW make such a giant turn in just 12 months?

There was a keynote from Julie Uhrman, founder and CEO of Ouya, the $99 games console that threatens to disrupt the console monopoly. Then there was the Keynote from Makerbot's Bre Prettis. Having created the affordable 3D printer they now have a 3D scanner to add to their ecosystem. Then there was Memoto. A life documenting device that hangs around your neck taking a photo every few minutes.

So what was the common factor and what is the behaviour driving this shift from apps to hardware? Simple. The common factor is Kickstarter and the new behaviour is pledging. Kickstarter is changing everything. At SXSW Film 25% of the movies shown were Kickstarter funded.

Earlier this year Kickstarter products were stealing the limelight from the Sonys and Samsungs at CES. The Pebble and Cuckoo watches, the VR goggles Oculous Rift and the smart skateboard ZBoard were just a few to be raved about. All Kickstarter projects. All possible as a result of a new behaviour that sees people investing in products they want to use.

These new behaviour revolutions have been happening since we first worked out how to use a browser, how to send an email, how to bid on Ebay, how to upload a video to Youtube, how to build a social graph, how to write in 140 characters, how to download an app, and so on. New services or products come along and if the reward is high enough we'll learn the new behaviour.

I used to work in radio and the big advantage we thought we had over TV was that you can listen to the radio whilst watching another screen, something you couldn't do whilst watching TV. And then the screens got smaller shifting from desks to laps to hands. The behaviour of second screening sneaked into our living rooms and TV got new wings.

So what are the new behaviours that might kickstart a revoloution soon? I wish I had the answer for you, but I don't. Instead here are a few simple questions you might want to ask yourself:

What are the new tools or services you and your friends are using? Look to friends who aren't working in the same line of work?

What new behaviour is responsible for the success of that service? Such as 'Pinning' on Pinterest?

What are you starting to notice people doing that maybe you're not? In fashion they say that when you notice something 3 times it's a trend?

What are the new phrases people are using? When a behaviour needs a name it's officially become 'a thing'

 

To make ideas stick...

...we need to make human personal connections. So much of what Rohit talks about here is what I’ve found myself talking about quite a bit recently. Give it a watch, it’s only 8 minutes long.

Rohit makes reference to what has been described as ‘the most unlikely political seduction ever’. He talks about how Nelson Mandela would invite his enemies for tea. Over that tea he would talk to them and listen to them. These moments are widely regarded as the reasons he managed to avoid violent confrontations. I like the idea of the simple act of having a brew with someone as ‘seduction’. Quite powerful when you think of it that way. I know I’ve had many innocent chats with people over a cup of tea that changed my life.

We appear to be living in an increasingly binary world. Just think how much time we spend making judgements on people whilst sat in front of a screen. A piece of glass between us and them. That judgement might be based on big data or small actions on social media. From Facebook ‘Likes’ to the bile you often see in the comments on Youtube, thanks to the new social norms we are encouraged to love or hate based on very little information.

It’s easy to hate someone on the other side of border, whether that border is a screen or an ideology as in the case of Madela. It’s much harder to hate someone when they are sat facing you over a cup of tea having a conversation.

As I said here I worry about over reliance of big data and the disappearance of the ‘human’ behind the numbers. The two worlds need to collide to give us strong insights that will help us tell great stories. Charities get this. They have the data but spend a long time on the ground making human connections. Then when it comes to telling their story they’ve realised that telling the story of an individual gives the audience a greater insight (and therefore more likely to put their hand in their pocket) than just giving big numbers.

Next time Comic Relief comes around take note of how they use those human stories alongside the numbers. The story of a thousand people dying is often less effective than telling the story of an individual. It give the audience a chance to make a personal connection.

Mandela made his ideas stick through human connection. Comic Relief make their ideas stick through human connections To make ideas stick we need to make human personal connections. That means more cups of tea to go with the data, which is fine by me.

Parody videos - the start of an important conversation

Last night I spoke at a great event in Manchester about audeinces. I talked about the how they are in a constant state of flux and how you can never fully understand your audeince because they are constantly changing their behaviours. The best you can do is get amongst them rather than learning about them via powerpoint. The life of the parody video is a great example of this. Their place in fan culture fascinates me.

I was speaking to a group of students at Salford University earlier this month about the cultural value of parody videos. Even the terrible ones. I made the arguement that the really terrible ones may be more important than the really good ones.  

Let me explain.

As I pointed out yesterday most people are waiting for permission to make their moves. As social creatures we take our cues from those around us. We are a nation that needs nudging. We like to copy. Mark Earl talks about this in his book 'I'll Have What She's Having'. 

I explained to the students that for every terrible parody video on Youtube there will be hundreds of super talented viewers saying to themselves "I can do better than that". The terrible parody video is what it took to kickstart their creative career.

So a few day later I was at the Futures of Entertainment conference at MIT in Boston listening to Dorian Electra being questioned about her music videos. "So how did you get started?" came the question. "Oh, you know, I saw a really terrible parody video on Youtube and thought 'I can do better than that'".

In a networked culture everything you make will be part of an ongoing conversation. The conversation will take what you've made to the most unusual places creating scenarios you could never have imagined. Quite often the results can be magical even if your cultural artefact isn't so. 

The media makers are just the starting point of that conversation. Designing for an 'audience with an audience' is a new way of thinking that embraces the power of audience as a 'circulator' or a 'multiplier'. It's easy to dismiss how we label our 'audience' as semantics but putting the labels at the centre of your thinking helps focus on humans and human behaviours and should completely change how you design your experience.       

A tool for listening to culture

When hip hop broke in the mid 70's Levis, not recognising the full cultural impact, chose to ignore it. The cost of the company's culture not being aligned with that of its audience is alleged to be somewhere in the region of $1 billion. US electronics store Best Buy stumped up $700 million for music retailer Musicland in 2001 failing to recognise that the teens with Best Buy Saturday jobs were using Kazaa and then Limewire to get their music. Best Buy ended up giving it away years later. The lesson here being that you have to spot shifts in culture as they happen and adapt your company's culture to fit.

Listening to your audience isn't something that started when digital culture exploded, it's just been made easier thanks to the vapour trails of data left by people using digital products and the rise of analytic tools. Good analytic tools have become an essential part of the kit for trying to understand your audience - they are great at what they are made for - that being analysing data that will enable you to look for patterns. The problem is that they're deaf to culture and won't help you build an algorithm for curiosity. Spotting trends is different from understanding culture. If you don't understand the culture of your audience then you'll have problems slipping seamlessly into their lives.

To understand an audience you must go beyond hearing a really start listening, a differentiation many struggle to grasp. Hearing is simply taking stuff in whereas listening is processing and knowing how to act on the information once you have it. I recently heard someone describe a good listener as someone who doesn't need to be given a christmas present list from their partner, they just know what to buy and why their partner wants it. There is a difference between knowing someone and knowing about someone. 

The question most people want answering is how do you listen to culture when there isn't an app for that? Paying attention to curators is a good starting point. I spent 15 years working at Radio 1, a network whose culture is perfectly matched with that of its audience. How do they achieve this? Easy. Management constantly surrounds itself with curators. The DJs are curators. Many of the networks producers are either DJs or club promoters. Some run their own music websites and many blog about their culture. There are curators at every level. The audience culture runs through every corridor and office in the building. 

In an information age curators are a great filter to help us make sense of culture. They enable serendipity, can find usefulness in useless knowledge and point us to the stuff we didn't know that we needed to know. They are not just aggregators. Over time they have built up a set of tools for unearthing the things that make life interesting and developed a tone that is both inviting an reassuring. These are skills not acquired easily or quickly.

The rise of tools like Tumblr and Posterous are behind the much talked about 'rise of the curator', which has muddied the water a little. Having a Tumblr does not make one a curator. Pointing at new things does not make one a curator. Pick your creators wisely and recognise the difference between curators and those who label themselves coolhunters or trend forcasters.  This is not a judgement, simply a differentiation. Curation is a skill that is journalistic and editorial, creating a frame around the content they share, adding depth and understanding. They add context and a point of view.

So if you want to build a toolbox for listening to culture, which you really should, start by adding a few good curators. 

The Dr. Fox Effect

I'm as guilty as anyone else working in my field of using wanky words when telling it like it is might have made life easier for everyone. To be fair to myself, in general I think I'm pretty good at holding back on the Birtspeak. I may talk a lot of nonsense, but I do so in plain English. Looking around at the language being used by some of my contemporaries I can't help wonder what planet they think we're on. The language confuses me and I'm a native. Allegedly.

There's no doubt as to why they do this though. It's called the Dr Fox Effect. It's nothing to do with a terrible DJ also know for talking a lot of nonsense, but a reference to an experiment carried out in 1976 aimed at testing teacher effectiveness. 

The experimenters produced a lecture on 'Mathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physician Education,' given by Dr. Myron L. Fox from the Albert Einstein School of Medicine to a collection of physchologists at a conference in Tahoe. The thing is neither Dr. Fox or the Albert Einstein School of Medicine existed. They were part of a simple hoax.

A relatively famous actor was coached to deliver a completely meaningless lecture with an excessive use of 'double talk, neologisms, non sequiturs, and contradictory statements.' He was also encourage to adopt a 'lively demeanor, convey warmth toward his audience, and intersperse his nonsensical comments with humour'. 

The result was amazing. The fifty-five psychiatrists, psychologists, educators, graduate students, and other professionals gave incredibly positive feedback. Fox’s nonverbal behaviours coupled with enough jargon to sell snow to Eskimos completely disguised what was a totally meaningless lecture. 

Comments within the feedback suggested the lecture had 'given them food for thought', that 'Fox had presented the material in a clear manner' and 'put it across in an interesting way and incorporated plenty of good illustrative examples'.

So it seems style over substance and a healthy dose of jargon does have a placebo like impact when it comes to delivering presentations and lectures. The more nonsense you talk, the jargon you deliver, the confidence in your delivery, the bigger the impact. Music to the ears of a thousand social media consultants no doubt, though I think I'll be sticking to my own limited vocabulary. 

The BBC: In the business of 'Social Objects' since 1922

Had a pleasant evening in the company of Hugh McLeod and Mark Earls discussing Social Objects. It came at the end of day in which I'd given my last departmental talk at the BBC. Earlier Jem Stone had done a great turn about the history of the BBC and Social Networks. 

In amongst all the conversation around 'big brands not getting social objects' it occurred to me that the BBC has been in the business of social objects since its inception in 1922. If you ever need to convince a brand that social objects work tell them to take a good look at the BBC. 

We originally brought people together around a wireless, then the TV and gave them something to talk about. From the first radio broadcasts to the Coronations, to the first Wimbledon and FA Cups shown on TV, Desert Island Discs, The Reith Lectures and Radio 1's Roadshows and Big Weekends, we gave people a reason to connect with others. 

Around the watercooler, down the pub, in the playground people would share, debate or bond over content that challenged, provoked and stimulated intelligent minds. Then came the internet and social media which made talking and sharing a hell of a lot easier - but we know that the tools are never interesting, it's the social later that sits upon them that is. Thankfully our ROI is not measured in the number of followers we have on Twitter and Facebook - and never will - we measure our success in engagement.

Because we focus on people and not profit the idea of social objects comes easy to us. We have always placed a high value on the conversation that brings audiences together rather than being obsessed with the brand to customer schtik that other 'dinosaur' organisations continue to invest their energies in. 

With an eye on the future, things are looking good too. As our archive grows and we continue chop all our content into easily found shareable chunks people with find new friends and conversations around the objects we throw out there. And like the Kula Ring these objects they share will continue to come second to the ceremony that surrounds the act of giving and receiving. 

SXSW - Dan Arieli on Flexible Morality