A beginner’s guide to feedback
I’m a huge fan of The Apprentice. (Don’t know if you get this outside the UK – reality TV show about would-be entrepreneurs, working on new money-making ‘tasks’ every week) The Apprentice is highly instructive on many levels, but I’m particularly enthralled by the candidates’ approach to customer research. Every week, the candidates will usually talk to a small group of potential customers about their ideas. And each week I watch, slack-jawed, as the candidates utterly fail to listen to the customers. Ever. People struggle with feedback In the case...
Read MoreHabitat
When I was a wee researcher, I did an unholy amount of research on people’s laundry habits. Much of this was done in standard focus groups. Problem is, people posture like crazy in focus groups, especially when you wish to Get To The Truth of people’s deepest darkest washing habits. So we also did in-home interviews. I was dispatched with my Sony Walkman Professional to talk to housewives in grim London suburbs. They had strict instructions not to prepare for the interview. Uhuh. Scene 1 A kitchen with a blue lino floor that shone in the sunlight. Daffodils on the...
Read MoreHow to interview a customer (properly)
Ah, I know what you’re thinking. D’oh! Hah! Easy! Just go ahead and ask them the questions! WRONG! 99% of people asked their opinion out of the blue stammered, blushed and then lied. It’s a highly awkward social situation, and it goes roughly like this: MARKETER: (brightly) ‘So, what do you think of our shop?’ CUSTOMER: (caught like a deer in the headlights) ‘I er what? Hm. I er. It’s ok. It’s errrm, very nice really.’ MARKETER: (writes stuff down in big notebook, is triumphant) ‘They really like it. They think it’s...
Read MoreDoes your survey reflect reality, or is it just wishful thinking?: Lessons from the Mirror of Erised
One of my favourite devices in the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, is the Mirror of Erised. Harry comes upon this old mirror one day, and when he looks into its depths, he sees his (dead) parents standing behind him. His friend Ron sees himself winning at Quidditch. The mirror, it is explained, distorts: it shows the viewer their heart’s desire rather than ordinary reality. (Incidentally, Harry nearly wastes away gazing into this mirror, hungry for the vision it shows him. But that’s by the by). Only the perfectly happy person...
Read MoreBackstage peformances
I’ve been re-reading Erving Goffman, who wrote a seminal wee book called The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, in which Goffman wrote about our daily life as a series of performances – and indeed, a constant shifting between formal performances on the big stage, and informal ‘backstage’ chitchat. I’ve been working on a social media project for the last few weeks, and one thing that strikes me is the loss of backstage in internet-mediated conversation. It used to be that you had a bad day and you moaned about it to your sympathetic friends over a...
Read More63% of poll results are entirely made up
The Home Office published a report last week, entitled ‘Sexualisation of Young People.’ It was trailed on the radio, along with some of its radical recommendations, which include relegating ‘lad’s mags’ like Nuts to the top shelf. It’s an entirely worthy subject, and as the mother of a young teenage boy and a preteen girl, I was pretty interested in what it had to say. The report author, Linda Papadopoulis, states firmly in the introduction that: This is not an opinion piece, the evidence and arguments presented within this document are not based on...
Read MoreManifesto
Some of us find it quite simple to put our real organisations and authentic selves online.
Others - well, let's just say that some of us can't bear to look at our own websites.
My mission is to help you transform your online presence so that other people understand and appreciate what you really have to offer. So that you can achieve what you want - whether that's better engagement, more readers, or more sales.