processing power
Several prospective clients appeared at our doors last year carrying massive albatrosses: their companies' names.
We reacted much as we had to a recent Star Tribune article noting that St. Paul had retained a firm to create a brand for the city. Among that firm's proud accomplishments was its theme "Where culture and creativity come together" for Lansing, Michigan -- not a likely destination for any traveler craving a day in museums and a night at the symphony.
In each case, the creators of these names and themes succumbed to the DeNiro Error, an error with which every modern moviegoer is painfully familiar -- illustrated vividly in DeNiro's nearly excellent directorial debut in The Good Shepherd.
Leaving the theater after that movie, my wife Christine phoned our son Brooks. He naturally asked "How was the movie?" "Well," she replied, "complex."
A couple walking immediately behind her said in unison, "That's it -- that's the perfect word!" -- just before a woman in front of us turned around to say the same thing, and just minutes after our bright 12-year-old son Cole turned to me as the theater lights came up and said, "I think I got about a third of it."
Robert DeNiro, like so many communicators, knew what he wanted to say. But like virtually all communicators today, he assumed too much of his audience. Like the company executives who burden their enterprises with five-syllable names and city leaders who choose thirteen-syllable slogans, DeNiro misunderstands processing power -- specifically, the modern brain's ability to absorb and remember complex information.
This error reflects our failure to realize that while information continues -- we live not in the Age of Information, but the Era of Overinformation -- our brains have not evolved beyond those of our ancestors in the Fertile Crescent, whose lives were comparatively information-free: no newspapers, books, television or radio.
In an age of overinformation, only the simple survive.
It's worth noting one vivid example: the most famous and memorable formula in the history of science has just five symbols: E=MC². And it's also revealing that for decades, few people knew about, understood, or made the considerable effort needed to understand "gravitationally completely collapsed objects." That all that changed, however, when one astronomer devised a vivid shorthand for those objects: he dubbed them "black holes."
We can process only so much information. Give us too much and we divert our attention to things we can understand.
Are your communications attracting people -- or unwittingly diverting them?
Are you "Just Do It?" -- or "Where Culture and Creativity Come Together?"
Are you Intelligent Search Incorporated -- or Google?
Are you The Godfather -- or The Good Shepherd?
Are prospects shaking your hands -- or their heads?
Get simpler.
The Lighter Side
Favorite Christmas Gift: Having all the kids home, without question. But the best gift-wrapped present, no question: my new candy-apple-red Fender Stratocaster. The neighbors have been alerted.
Movie of the Year: The Queen. United 93 an impressive runner-up.
Movie Moment of the Year: Will Smith celebrating some good news -- at long last -- in The Pursuit of Happyness.
Performance of the Year: Helen Mirren, The Queen.
Happy New Year!
Find out how to get a newsletter for your own company.
I used to visit bookstores three times a week. Now, it's three times a month.
All the hot air inside makes me uncomfortable.
Publishers are no longer in the information business. (Perhaps this has been true for decades, even centuries, and I've been naive.) Instead, they are like today's journalists: they are entertainers. They do not want to inform, but to sell -- as many copies as possible, by whatever means necessary.
As part of their sales effort, authors often ask other authors for testimonials. This request sounds like a lot to ask at first, but then you read their request further. You don't actually need to read the manuscript! In fact, the author has not even enclosed one. You can just send back a nice quote, book unseen.
What if even writing "A wonderful book?" sounds too arduous? No problem! The author has actually written and enclosed your "comments" for you. Just choose which you like!
In a recent request I received, the author had actually categorized my possible quotes as "great," "good" and "middling." The two "middling" testimonials each came within an exclamation point of ecstasy. But if I was only somewhat impressed with the manuscript -- which again, the author had not enclosed -- I could check that quote.
Was this experience unusual for me? Not at all; it happens monthly.
Do these books get published? Every day, by some of America's best-known publishing houses. Will you benefit from them? In many cases, you may not be able to decipher them. It is possible to finish these books feeling more bewildered than enlightened, or, as Lily Tomlin once put it, "confused, but in a more profound way."
Do readers trust the testimonials that do appear? Perhaps not. Many movies attract larger per capita audiences in cities where they are poorly reviewed than in those those where they receive raves. In many cities, local movie fans seem to ignore the comments, perhaps because they have learned to mistrust them.
Thus, the generous spirit of the holiday suggests that we should highlight some books worth reading, and fortunately, we can: Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb; How We Know What Isn't So by Thomas Gilovich; and the best of this class, More Than You Know by Michael Mauboussin.
Like The Tipping Point and The Wisdom of Crowds, these books encourage readers to think in different ways -- you will learn what "heuristics" means, if you have not already -- although only Gilovich's book reads as easily.
(For lighter fare, Michael Lewis strikes again with The Blind Side. For fiction, get Joyce Carol Oates' 2001 book Blonde. A fictionalized biography of Marilyn Monroe, Blonde is worth reading simply because reading Oates' writing will improve yours, and because it's worth learning what all the fuss about Oates is about.)
Also worth noting: All of the blurbs on these books appear to have been written by credible reviewers who actually read the books first.
 | ||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Harry Beckwith is the Director of Beckwith Partners, an internationally regarded branding
and marketing firm. His classic trilogy on marketing a service -- Selling the Invisible,
The Invisible Touch, and What Clients Love, has sold over 900,000 copies
in 22 translations, and the first book has been named one of the ten best business and
management books of all time. He has been a keynote speaker for 14 Fortune 200 annual sales meetings and the National Speakers' Association convention, and has made presentations in Europe, South America and Asia. He is cited regularly in |
|
national media including CNN,
The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Entrepreneur,
Crain's New York Business and numerous
American, European and Asian newspapers. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University, Harry resides in Minneapolis with his wife Christine Clifford Beckwith. He is the father of six children. Beckwith Partners' clients include Wells Fargo, Fidelity Investments, Microsoft and Target as well as many venture-capitalized startups worldwide. |
|
| ||||
| ||||
Logos Success Stories Project Gallery Request an Evaluation Contact Us
E-mail questions and comments for Harry Beckwith to invisble@bitstream.net.