Your brain on a slow website…

Five tips for great presentations

Executives are the Simon Cowell of the business world: impatient, critical, often caustic. But they’re also desperately searching for talent. How do you make the right impression? Is the secret just to tell a good ‘story’? Here’s five hot tips to get you going:

http://www.slideshare.net/speakingppt/5-tips-for-presenting-to-executives-13959919

A better elevator pitch

“The best style is the style you don’t notice.” Somerset Maughan.

If you think an ‘elevator pitch’ is just a frenzied two-minute sales pitch you would be wrong! Well, come on, how do you react when someone backs you into a corner and gives you their best marketing shot? Yep, it’s often too much, too quickly, and too in your face. Read this article by Geoffrey James in Inc. magazine to brush up your style:

http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/how-to-write-a-better-elevator-pitch.html

Top 40 management models

“All models are wrong, but some are useful.” George Box, 1979.

Most management models are simple tools, frameworks or checklists. And any self-respecting model also has a self-explanatory (often 2×2) matrix to go with it, of the sort that looks good in a presentation, or on a flipchart or whiteboard. That being said most models are based on theories and have been checked out in practice. They also provide a means of framing (the useful bit!) strategic, functional, process or people-orientated issues; and are of course a source of plenty of new jargon to use in meetings…

So what are the Top 40 models? Here’s a starter list:

www.markparkinson.co.uk/management_models.htm

Should HR be part of marketing?

Talent Director, Head of People Strategy, People and Performance Tsar… Have you noticed that HR is moving in two distinct directions? There’s the bit that deals with wages, rations and fairness, and the other bit that wants to strut its stuff on a bigger stage: to be as sexy as marketing and as important as finance. To be taken seriously as a big hitter in the strategy stakes. And perhaps this is right because what distinguishes most organisations from each other is not necessarily what they do, but who is doing it. It’s also the case that awareness of ‘brand’ is becoming essential to organisations both big and small, especially since what a customer experiences as a brand is usually what gets delivered via its employees.

So where’s all this going? Perhaps talk of talent and brand is really pointing to the fact that HR should be part of marketing. After-all the strategic HR plan is the corner-stone of competitive differentiation, and ultimately the guardians of the brand are the marketeers.

Photo credit: Zirconicusso/freedigitalphotos.net

Smartphone or smart marketing?

It seems your Smartphone use predicts your social life, travel interests, risk of disease and even your political views. Have a look at this post on Dr Shock’s blog (links to Wall Street Journal video):

http://www.shockmd.com/2011/04/27/your-smartphone-use-predicts-your-social-life-travel-risk-of-disease-even-political-views/

Make mine a mega skinny choco-macchiato with extra sprinkles!

Have you ever wondered why coffee shops use such weird names? Does it send you into something of a dither when you’re trying to make a choice? Bingo! That’s exactly what’s supposed to happen. Tall, grande, venti… they all sound quite big don’t they; and that’s no accident because it turns out that consumer psychologists have had their sticky paws all over the naming process.

And the bottom line?  If you don’t have a particular reason for picking something, you tend to go for the one in the middle. The result: if you’re selling coffee (pizzas, soft drinks, chips, anything) put the one you want to sell the most of in the… middle. So a three-way choice actually turns out to be a middle-way choice. I wonder if this applies to politics as well.

Picture credit: Surachai/freedigitalphotos.net

We are the future

Marketing and PR agencies sometimes get it horribly wrong. PHD, who are in the biz, have produced a video for other marketing firms which manages to make a whole catalogue of mistakes. Watch and squirm. Seriously though, there’s something here about really not understanding young people, let alone the intended audience, and probably social media as well. It’s also a bit scary!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P81bb0Tzwbo

Warning: Some of the comments following the video are rather rude.

Website psychology

A fascinating and emerging area of psychology is in website design. I find this sort of thing really interesting as in many ways the web is where a significant amount of human ‘behaviour’ now takes place – and if you’ve got kids, probably most of their behaviour! As a starter have a look at this presentation from Pamela Rutledge:

http://www.slideshare.net/pamelarutledge/psychology-of-website-design-dr-pamela-rutledge

Freemium psychometrics?

In the good old days (a scant few years ago) you paid for the administration of your online psychometric test or questionnaire, and you probably paid for your feedback report as well. And you might well have paid for a number of other things, especially training. Now you can access a high quality test or questionnaire, and get an understandable report, at no cost what so ever. That’s right, you pay nothing. So what’s the catch? On the face of it there doesn’t seem to be a problem, but in reality it’s straight out of the marketing handbook, chapter headed ‘Reciprocity’. That’s because the point is you will use the psychometric and come over all warm and tingly, and then some will reciprocate the ‘free’ gesture by buying consultancy from the vendor – the real point of the exercise. And there is a big issue, because even the best test or questionnaire in the world loses it value when it’s over-exposed, especially in a selection context, and more importantly free stuff rarely gets updated…

Photo credit: Daniel St Pierre/FreeDigitalPhotos.net