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Hall of Shame

I don’t usually do this but the South Bank Centre emailed me a questionnaire today which was stunningly awful. My prize for Most Unanswerable Question goes to this pair of lovelies: What would you put? No, I still have no idea. On the last page of the survey, after countless other difficult questions, there was [...]

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: a quick critique and rant

Or, Marketing’s Need to Hear Simple Stories. If there’s one theory of motivation that everyone has heard of, it’s good old Maslow and his pyramidal Hierarchy of Needs.  It’s the basis of many other theories, including the simpler concept that motivations can be divided into the essentials (hygiene factors) and motivators to action (motivators). I [...]

On loving 70-page Powerpoints

I feel compelled to weigh in on the whole ‘Death by Powerpoint’ discussion.  Steve Gatt of Volkswagen was interviewed in August’s edition of Research Magazine, and gave an interview in which he complained about the standard of market research in general and in particular about receiving 70 pages of Powerpoint when all his team really [...]

Over to you

Pro tip: Never advertise something as part of a two-part series unless you have both parts already written.   Sigh.   You can triple this if Thing 2 is slightly harder to dash off than Thing 1. (It will come, but I’m in lockdown at the moment what with project deadlines and the upcoming End of [...]

Quick overview of Research 2010

I attended the MRS Conference in London this week, invited by Ray Poynter to perform (there’s no other word for it!) a five minute piece at Tuesday’s Ideas Rush.   I have not been to this conference for absolutely ages.   Met quite a few people from former lives and it was great to see them (shout-outs [...]

Special Google Buzz rant edition

Google Buzz came to my Gmail account yesterday. I am beyond angry with Google right now, as well as with the other developers of social networks who seem obsessed with recreating their own smug worlds of urban white male 20somethings geotagging their coffee bars. Vaguely coherent reasons for hatred: 1. Appalling usability – options and [...]

Are you ready to deal with enragement as well as engagement?

A quick follow-on from Friday’s post on climate science and the need to engage the public.   Science’s vision of ‘the public’ is typically a bunch of  respectful yet unfortunately undereducated folk.  In reality, there are many publics,  including the respectful and the occasionally hostile. Yesterday’s Sunday Times carried an interview with Professor Phil Jones, the [...]

Show and tell: finding lovely communities

After Christmas, I got a bit weighed down by the Twitter-created business blogosphere – often wonderful but increasingly like a giant webring where you know you will eventually come back to Seth Godin.   This web-fatigue is part of the cycle, I think, because I see it in other online settings. My overwhelm got to the [...]

Wisdom of Mobs: the feedback loop

It’s that eerily calm pause between Christmas and New Year frenzy.  There’s a number of half-formed posts in my head, but we’ll go with a swirling scarcely-formed one about crowds, audiences and mobs. Desirable audiences and undesirable ones. Thought one: the way that the internet has caused unknown mass audiences to become active participants.  I’m [...]