Archive for June, 2011

When I pick up a shiny new top off the shop rail, nothing makes my heart sink faster than a “one size” label.  Why? It never fits.  You’re pretty much guaranteed either your boobs, your tummy or your bum will be mercilessly exposed by a garment designed to be OK for everyone but that usually provides a poor result.  And it’s usually the one part you want to hide that ends up on show.

I hadn’t intended to start with a shopping analogy but hey ho, I am short of time so let’s press on.

We’ve been doing a lot of work recently with small to medium sized businesses and it never ceases to amaze me how many companies just don’t get what they need.

Small yet individually formed

In March this year, when David Cameron told the Conservative Party Conference ““There’s only one strategy for growth we can have now…and that is rolling up our sleeves and doing everything possible to make it easier for people to start (and) grow a business,” a line was drawn in the sand.

Only two months later, business secretary Vince Cable stood on a national stage alongside Lord Green and William Hague to announce that, “we’re rightly proud of British firms and making sure they can increase their exports to a worldwide audience is vital if we are to rebuild our economy.”

From grassroots campaigns to large-scale media pushes by the likes of The Mirror and The Independent; Google’s “get your business online competition” to HSBC’s small business confidence monitor, championing British small and medium-sized businesses and wanting them to succeed has never been more fashionable.

This is different.

If the UK is to recover from recession and bounce back from the economic woes that currently face us, we need small businesses to succeed.

Q. But how many large organisations truly understand the needs of small businesses?

A. Not many…..at least not when they are trying to communicate with them.

The most common complaint we hear from journalists (and the counsel we provide for our clients) is that the story IS different….solutions selling doesn’t work in the same way for SMEs as for large enterprises.  As for targeting audiences by job title, how does that achieve the desired results when the HR director is the finance director and the marketing director and the managing director all rolled into one?

From IT complexity to changing taxation; super-fast rural broadband to money laundering regulations; cloud security to the cost of “free”; understanding changing privacy laws to increasing remote working and the power of micropayments to the impact of mobile technology.  As the managing director of a small British business today, there is currently a LOT going on in your head.

And the end game? Cutting costs and achieving growth.

So where are the danger points? And why do (according to Experian) over 1800 small businesses a month fail in the UK?

According to Jonathan Hogg in April’s Independent SME supplement, “businesses fail to understand that the most successful time in a company’s life is its most dangerous time” and attributes this to what Freud called “totems and taboos”.

“Totems are ideas that become so sacred they cannot be questioned and taboos are the questions that cannot be asked. They arise from some very deep-rooted human instincts…reflect our natural conservative bias in the form of a reluctance to change….and the herd instinct where everyone wants to agree with the majority.”

And why this reluctance to change? At an enterprise level, businesses usually have non-executives to lean on.  To spot trends, point out pitfalls and to provide experience from learning the hard way.  But what do SMEs have?  Very often a combination of gut feel and a very small amount of spare time.

Doing well by doing good

In the UK at present there is a real opportunity to provide not only support, education and competitions/giveaways to the SME market but genuine help. The media want this, the government wants this and only a very few global organisations are really doing it.

I believe here is a wealth of industry knowledge, support and mentorship sitting within vertically-focused global businesses that can be shared to mutual benefit with the SME market in the UK.

What does this mean for PR and social media?

Where the focus on technology in the broadsheet media has shrunk over the past ten years, the tabloids, regionals and small business/consumer titles have seen an increase, particularly online.  An increase in blogger credibility, search and link-led marketing, has meant that ideas MUST be good enough to be shared amongst friends and colleagues and campaigns must deliver more than just news.

What works?

Businesses that are succeeding in reaching SME and industry audiences through print, broadcast and social media are using a simple but successful communications formula:

Simple language + human angles x strong support from real businesses= PR success

In the UK, there is a real opportunity to take initiatives such as business mentoring and community partnerships a lot further.  PR-wise, it amazes me that still companies are not talking the language of small businesses, instead burying all the interesting stuff under mountains of product marketing speak.

The smart company that can couple the wealth of interesting business news that its end users generate EVERY day with the political, social and macroeconomic picture in the UK today (alongside providing genuine support for British businesses) is a PR success waiting to happen.  So come on then, who’s game?

(cross posted with my personal blog)

David Maseng Will is a second year student at Princeton University who recently started a summer internship at Ruder Finn. Born and raised in Washington DC, he developed a passion for politics growing up in the centre of the free world, and David plans on concentrating his studies on politics and international relations.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and no not in any way reflect those of Ruder Finn.

As I sat across from my new boss, each of us trying to decipher terms put forth by the NHS to explain its adoption of the recommendations made by the future forum, I couldn’t help but think: what’s the point? Chalk it up to American apathy , an antagonism to socialism or jetlag, but all I can make of the Health and Social Care bill (HSCB) is a mere reshuffling of the bureaucratic behemoth similar to that which is set to engulf one sixth of the U.S. economy.
The passage in the U.S. of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), known not so affectionately by detractors as “Obamacare”, marks a distinct turn towards the U.K. status quo. The HSCB, as modified by the Future Forum, aims to reorganize and somewhat streamline the National Health Service. Meanwhile, the PPACA sets out to construct an immense, esoteric artifice of unprecedented oversight. Though the current future of American healthcare and the current British system are analogous, a stark distinction ought to be made between the pursuits of progressivism by politicians in both countries. Initially, both efforts are marked by an urge to help all, but the form of progressivism pushed by today’s democrats in is polluted by a sinister bankruptcy of trust in the American people. Insomuch as individuals should retain their freedoms, the American progressive movement seeks a dominant hand in their daily lives. For, it becomes clear that to view government as the ultimate solution, one must also concede that the people are the problem.
To unbind the public system of care in the U.K. would be a foolhardy exercise in social engineering, and it is imperative for the government to swiftly implement reform, within the confines of practicality, to curb rising care prices. However, the impossibility of a move to a more competitive, market-based design seals the fate of the British healthcare structure. Destined to be an indecipherable maze of entangled authority, it appears a myriad of commissions and more than 41,000 over-seers will have a permanent presence in perhaps the most precious corner of a person’s private life: his or her health.
That the U.K. system is not refracted through a dangerous political ideology, but is rather characterized by a pervasive sense of government dependency is precisely what I believe has allowed for the programme to be successfully sustained over so many decades. And although I still very much ideologically oppose what has been established in the U.K., what I truly abhor is the ultimate asphyxiation of creativity furthered by the Affordable Care Act.
To describe the act as polarizing would be an understatement, as it strikes at the source of ideological departure between American conservatives and liberals. The former group favours greater personal liberty while the latter advocates for government to provide greater economic and social protections. As a true republican and advocate for the largest possible unleashing of individual dynamism, it is my view that the spirits of great nations have languished under the cradle-to-grave oversight of European socialist systems. And furthermore, that the entitlement mentality which accompanies broad centralized government authority is the ultimate sedative to the personal creativity at the heart of prosperity.

Since enterprise technology became an accepted part of business infrastructure there has been a language barrier between those that use the technology and those that create and install it. So significant has been the divide that it spawned a whole new industry – IT consultancy – effectively a middleman between business and technology.

This divide is set to become even more of an issue now that Cloud has become part of the conversation. In many larger organisations there is a place for the CIO at board level, which meant the responsibility for understanding the business need and translating that into a technical requirement sat mainly with one person. Cloud however has brought a whole new set of decision-makers into the mix.

Some software providers are better placed to take advantage of these changes than others. For companies like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft there has always been a focus on lines of business because of the nature of what it sells. HR, finance, procurement and customer service systems exist to support particular lines of business so the heads of these divisions have always had a say in what is delivered. Translating technology into business benefits has therefore had to be at the heart of the message that SAP delivers.

Up until now the onus has always been on the IT people to understand better what the business needs. Now however the businesses are trying to understand better what technology can do for them. Cloud is seen as something that can not only save money but can also make the business more agile, more flexible and more dynamic. From a PR perspective this means that the approach is sometimes the reverse of what we have traditionally seen. It’s about showing real understanding of the technology and showing what it can deliver.

This change in the way technology is viewed is a huge opportunity for the company that understands it. The impact of consumerisation, Cloud and the way social media has changed the media environment so radically over the last 12 months demands a fresh approach not only to the way IT companies speak to their customers but to the influencers on those customers too – be it traditional media, bloggers, analysts or industry influencers. Businesses now actively want to know how technology can benefit them and its time for the geeks to step into the limelight and take centre stage.

NTT DOCOMO have announced that they will be attending CommunicAsia in Singapore (June 21 – 24) and a couple of things that they will be showing off caught my eye. First of all NTT DOCOMO are pushing the boundaries on technology to try and ensure that we can have world phones that support existing and next generation networks – they will be showing off a six-band prototype amplifier.

Probably of more interest was the idea of roaming mobile payments via NFC. NTT DOCOMO already signed a deal to make this happen with KT (Korea Telecom). The question that crossed my mind was did telecoms carriers have the processing capability that credit card processors like MasterCard, Visa and American Express? I don’t think that the current systems for roaming charges would be sufficiently swift and optimised for the wide range payment values. Cross-posted from my personal blog.

Yesterday morning, myself and Han attended the most recent Gorkana Breakfast Briefing. This time round we were hearing from the London correspondents from the German financial news outlet, Handelsblatt. Though not traditionally an outlet one would immediately prioritise for client coverage, the briefing did throw up some really interesting points/thoughts about both Handelsblatt and how to approach international publications/stringers in general. I thought I would share four in particular……

1. Your company does not need to be German to get into Handelsblatt. German readers are always interested to know what other countries think of events/issues taking place in Germany. You can also make a case for your client if you can show that the German market can learn something from the company, if you know that the company has German stakeholders, or if the trend/technology will soon make its way to Germany. Think a little harder and you may well be able to find a German connection.

2. Germany has a strong heritage of family-owned companies – these types of stories will always resonate well with a German audience.

3. The Handelsblatt team prefer a pitch via phone – it allows them to practice their English and they like to speak with PRs. The impression they get is that we are too busy to phone them which is why we email. Pick up the phone.

4. Stringers are always working to a different time zone i.e. Handelsblatt has its editorial meeting at 9am CET – this means that the London team has to dial in from home at 8am GMT and will be thinking about stories prior to this. Time differences also mean that stringers often have an earlier deadline than you would expect – the Handelsblatt deadline is 4.35pm GMT. When pitching think carefully about the time constraints a correspondent is facing because of the time zone of his/her outlet’s country.

As someone relatively (under three years) new to PR, it is always good to go to as many as the informative talks on offer as possible. However I have noticed myself of late becoming increasingly frustrated by the treatment of digital in these talks. For some reason those giving the talks still seem to think that a back to basics approach is needed for us PR folk. For the record, I know that digital is important for PR, I know that it needs to be integrated into wider campaigns, I know what Facebook and Twitter are and how they work and I have seen examples of great digital PR in action. What I would like to see external organisations doing more of is offering talks on the practical side of digital - how you go about planning a digital campaign, how you SEO content, what the next big thing to watch is etc. Stop giving me a rundown of the history of social media and actually tell me how to use it. That is all I am asking for!

I know that there are still many sectors where the understanding of social media is pretty limited however I just don’t feel like PR is necessarily one of them – or am I wrong – what do you think?

Old Microsoft

One thing that Microsoft was always really good at was doing demonstrations of new technology. Bill Gates historically gave barnstorming performances demo-ing products, even when they crashed. Although this sounds quite twee, as an area of expertise, its really hard to do. If you want an idea of how hard go on to YouTube and look for Apple keynote product demonstrations before Steve Jobs returned versus once he was back at the mother-ship.

The tile interface

One of the most interesting things that I found about Windows 8 was the tile interface, because of the implied design choices that Microsoft seemed to have made.  Historically, one of the key sales points of using Microsoft software was that there was lots of people who were familiar with it and it consequently improved productivity and reduced training requirements; generally how things work is one boat Microsoft historically hasn’t rocked. There has been some changes like the Clippy help character and the interface of Microsoft Office 2007.

Clippy was removed from future products. As for the interface of Office 2007; well it still cause consternation at the different companies that I have worked at as users have struggled to transfer their skills over. So from a user experience design point of view; tiles took a lot of guts for Microsoft to roll out.

The tiles concept is also an interesting compromise. It move the interface away from 3D eye candy; so reducing processor power required; but still keeps the transitions which are the true magic in modern touch interface operating systems. Which is an interesting trade off in power and performance.

The two dimensional aspect of the Tile interface reminded me of a 21st-century HyperCard stack.

There were a number of aspects of using backwards compatible applications alongside native Windows 8 applications in the Steven Sinofsky demo that looked like a user experience car crash. This difference is even more marked when you think about the difference in philosophy and mindset between the interfaces: from keyboard to touch.

But is it innovative?

One question that I did have about the design choices for Windows 8, was whether Microsoft is being buffeted into these choices by trying to match competitor innovations, or whether this was Microsoft carving a new path.

Let’s look at some of the main features:

• Boot disk on a USB memory stick – in Microsoft marketing speak this is called Portable Workspace; this has been available from the Linux community for years. Apple historically hasn’t gone down this route, mainly because it also wants to sell you the hardware that you boot up on as well. The hardware and the software license are one. In terms of Microsoft’s current business, this isn’t much of an innovation as they already have licenses that allowed consumers to use Windows at home; based on their work Windows licenses: WHERE those machines were not used concurrently – Portable Workspace is a logical progression in terms of licensing terms. My initial take on this, is that Microsoft does not seem to be embracing Intel’s USB replacement Light Peak / Thunderbolt
• HTML5 desktop applications – back in the day Microsoft used to be able to rely on having an army of developers coding the new, new thing for its platform. A lot of that expertise is now working with web technologies. Microsoft’s use of HTML5 desktop applications follows in the conceptual footprints of Konfabulator, Yahoo! Widgets, OS X widgets, Google Gears and pretty much the entire SDK for the HP/Palm WebOS
• App store – Nokia used to have a poor app store experience, but still had one back in the day. Apple have one, Google has one, GetJar has had one for years. As had mobile carriers

Maturation of a platform

Historically, one of the key differences between the Apple ecosystem and the Windows ecosystem was that a PC could be upgraded, with the hardware being much more modular in nature. In reality, there was a lot of work required to get all the pieces to talk to each other and it used to provide hobbyists no end of satisfaction. There is a whole ecosystem of aftermarket board, component and case manufacturers that supported tinkerers and hardcore gamers. The ‘Franken-PC’ was also the entry-level computer for many lower income consumers.

By comparison, Apple computers were considered to be more of an appliance, with true plug-in and play, years before Microsoft described it as a feature of the Windows operating system. It also allowed Apple to take a more holistic systems-based approach to consumer design.

With Windows 8 Microsoft is more closely with component and PC manufacturers to reduce the amount of component configurations and combinations that they have to code for. The operating system also supports system-on-a-chip architectures. Historically compiling lots of different functions on a chip was used as a way to reduce costs in mass-produced consumer electronics. The use of it in PCs implies a different design philosophy, one that is looking to simplify mass manufacture, and by implication that there may not be as much room for differentiation and after-market components.

The PC looks like it is discarding its hobbyist heritage and becoming an appliance; a bit like the same journey that radio went through in the early 20th century, or the motor car over a longer period.

A focus on the middle

I get the sense that power users are being abandoned with Windows 8, it is a world away from a hard day’s graft in a CAD programme, or Excel; based on a hope that it gains the resurgent consumer demand for touch computing devices.

Is touch all its cracked up to be?

One of my colleagues Becky talks about the way her young daughter pokes and prods at their iMac computer screen to try and interact with it. Seeing something like that makes one think that touch is the THE future. I think that touch has a future but is only one part of the future.

First of all a trip back in time: touch interfaces aren’t new. Some of the earliest computing work on touch interfaces was done as part of American efforts into defence, with light pens being used as part of the SAGE system that utilised computing technology to help detect inbound Soviet bombers and direct US missiles to intercept and destroy them. This was all developed in the 1950s and put online by 1963. SAGE influenced the original research that would eventually begat the ARPANET; what most people acknowledge as the precursor of the modern internet.

What was interesting about the SAGE system was that the light pen operators didn’t have to type that much, so it made sense to keep their hands on the screen.

Now move forward to 1968, and Doug Engelbart’s now famous technology demonstration to the public of the work done at the Augmentation Research Center – which was part of SRI in Menlo Park. Engelbart demonstrated many of the concepts that we now take for granted: desktop video calling, WYSIWYG interfaces, graphical user interfaces, the computer mouse, file system structures and hyperlinks. Engelbart was probably building on research and a body of knowledge that would have come out of the SAGE system on man-machine interaction; from a technological, ergonomic and human behavioural point-of-view. The big thing that came out of that demo was the prominence that was given to the mouse, over a touch interface. This was because, if you are creating content by typing, it is a bit of a pain to move your fingers then on to the screen.

If we move forward to 1983, Hewlett Packard launched the HP-150, this was a MS-DOS compatible computer with a touch screen and keyboard. It didn’t sell that well, Bob Cringely in his book Accidental Empires talks about how engineers not using the touch screen whilst working on the machine before launch: preferring to use the arrow keys on the keyboard instead showed how difficult it was to put the touch screen into human behaviour.

When the HP-150II was launched the following year, the touch interface was only an optional extra; which was rarely chosen by customers.

If we move forward to the present day Apple is taking a two-pronged approach to touch: with a touch screen interface on the iPhone and iPad; where as the Mac product range has track pad-related interfaces. There are some commonality of gesture controls but that’s it. A lot of this is down to user contexts: the iPhone and iPad are about information consumption and doing kiosk-like tasks; whereas the Mac range is about content creation. With content creation; users like to keep their fingers closer to the keyboard hence the track pad solution. Also because this is closer to the metaphor of the mouse; Apple hasn’t adopted a universal look and feel across all the devices.  You can certainly argue that it is narrowing the gap between them but the important bit to emphasise is not their similarity but their differences: what Apple has chosen not to do.

For my sins, I worked for a brief while in consumer banking; part of the work that I did was with front-line contact centre staff. Whilst I was there, we moved from terminal style screens where you moved around by pressing the tab key to a full graphical user experience (GUI) requiring operators to use a mouse as well as their keyboard.

Whilst there was lots of research to indicate that GUIs help productivity, we found in our particular context that that just the opposite occurred. Average call times increased as contact centre operators slowed down their calls to match the speed at which their worked through customer account computer screens. Having to constantly move their hands from keyboard to mouse, together with increased time it took to render the complex screen started to add up during peak hours resulting in longer customer wait times and an increase in levels of customer dissatisfaction.

I am not trying to say that touch is bad, but that different user contexts require different approaches, and like previous technology manias before it where vendors glom on an idea regardless of any context considerations. So I am a bit concerned about the user experience design for Windows 8.

This is cross-posted from my personal blog.

More reading:

10 Things to Know About Windows 8 – Extremetech

Live from Microsoft’s Windows 8 preview event at Computex 2011 – Engadget

Previewing ‘Windows 8′ – Microsoft News Center

Microsoft Brings Touchscreen to PCs & Laptops to Challenge Apple – But Will it Work – ReadWriteWeb