Social Hallucinations

The more focus on profit, the less good ideas

What motivates us...

Empathic Civilisation

Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society. Must see...two things may surprise you: there is no empathy in heaven and Bible was right - we are descendants of Adam and Eve. 

Via Johnnie Moore

The World is a Global Village

Marshall McLuhan explores how electronic media are changing society moving from individuals of print culture to tribes of electronic media culture.

The old media aren't replaced by the new ones, the just change the role they play in people's lives and society along with cultural changes the new media trigger. Evolution.

It is incredible to see that 50 years old interview and experience how future proof are some McLuhan's thesis.

via Wabi-Sabi Lab

Making is Connecting

The new promise of creativity and innovation by connecting digital tools, activism, happiness and social capital by David Gauntlett

Digital tools aren't really worth much unless they are enable people to do stuff, innovate, initiate the change. Brilliant.

Are People Turning into Distrusted Media?

Definition of media got extended significantly over many years, starting from newspapers to social media that are media disseminated through social interaction or even people. Are people media? Are we the mere instruments conveying information that are currently losing trust of other people. Can our communicative abilities be reduced to objects that transmits information?

I don't agree with Armano's theory of decreasing trust in people as the result of overall decrease of trust in media, the correlation doesn't imply the causation. Following Armano's deduction, we could easily come to the conclusion that we are on the way to slow social disaster of mistrust and alienation along the growth of social media. This is oversimplifying of human relations built on trust. Trust is essential to human relations and is fundamental for social interaction and their development. The question lies in how far circles of trust stretch. 

"Trust surveys"  suffer from the lack of understanding of what people define as friends/peers. Those surveys deliver mere numbers without any understandings. Facts.

As I wrote two days ago, the main culprit here are "friends" and our language. We should maybe look at the decreasing trust in friends / peers as the result of the devaluation of friendship caused by media as Facebook. We have experienced rapid growth of our circle of friends with people who were in fact strangers to us. 

I say it once more: we still trust "people like us" but we are simply not sure whether Johns we follow on Twitter are really like us...

Homo Skepticus?

The couple of last years we've been sticking to mantra "people trust people like themselves" (Edelman Trust Barometer) to convince business establishment to jump into social media wagon, to understand better how people act and activate the power of WoM.

We've always trusted the circle of friends, so called significant others and their recommendatiosn mattered a lot us as the key influential factors. We've done this and will keep on doing this as anything else would break the social ties and lead us to alienation.

Edelman comes with the new 2010 results of the Trust barometer and something interesting happens - friends/peers as those whom we trust drop from 45% in 2008 to 25% in 2010.

 
It is quite natural the question about our skepticism and our ability to trust arise.

I don't think we trust less our friends and peers. I don't think we've become more skeptical. I just think we are in the phase where we rethink the word friend / peer. The word friend got stretched widely due to social networks. We call friends people we've never met in our lives and people we have no common history with. We do have hundreds of friends on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo...whatever you call it. The social networks devalued word friend. Anyone can be my friend today. It just costs one click and you have a new friend. But it ain't so easy and we are aware of that. We are aware that social networks bring also "virtual friends" we can't really trust because we simply don't know them, don't know their agenda and there is no really point of reference between our and their lives. Who are really those hundreds of people we follow on Twitter, we connect with on Facebook? We know the faces, we know the key facts we can find out from info tab and status updates. What really connects you with other people are common experiences...

Web revolutionized our lives for sure but there are still some barriers we need to overcome, like integrating online lives with offline lives. Meeting people we know online, exchanging offline experiences will be the way to create trust. Online relationships won't replace face to face time and sharing of real time experiences.

We still trust "people like us" but we are simply not sure whether Johns we follow on Twitter are really like us...

Photo by mek22

via AdAge

Give People Something to Copy

...and you will be able to trigger the change of behavior. Old and funny video demonstrating the power of group influence on individuals. In fact, there is nothing to laugh at but adopt this elevator psychology into communication efforts.

 

 Hat tip to  Simon

Visualize People's Thoughts

It is such a great tool to play around with - Web Seer - and visualize what's going on in people's minds when they google and explore differences and similitude, stereotypes, ideas by comparing 'Google Suggest' results. Plenty of interesting insights to dig for. I love how info-graphics democratizes data and make them more understanding-friendly. 

 

 

Rethink the way how you run your business

Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Incentives block creativity.

Time to build business based on the knowledge of human motivations, it is what can lead to creating the change and making a difference.

Average Consumers: The Product of Single Story

"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics" (Churchill)

Who is the average consumer? Does he / she exist? How do we define it? Or does average consumers exist, isn't just a mathematical construct that was aimed at making easier for us to explain world?

People are different, we are the individuals with different stories that shape us, stories that are driven by our mind, our bodies and social environment we are living in. Every human is the patchwork of different stories that make him/her a person, not an average consumer. The average consumer is a type of urban myth to me. 

Woman, 34 years old, urban, modern, income above average, lives in apartment, career oriented, heavy user of internet, buys organic food, interested in technology, owns mobile phone, heavy consumer of culture, blah blah...Yes, it could be me...but the above description brings more questions. 

Can a human being amount to this?

Average consumer is just a construct that derives from the single story and is intended to make easier for us to work out things like strategy, advertising, etc. But the concept of average consumer doesn't really 'disenchant' the world, it makes it single storied and mass produced.

...listen to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie inspiring talk about the single story as the source of misunderstanding and stereotypes that keep us away from seeing the whole picture

Yes, I am aware it is difficult to work with the concept of individual when we talk communication, it is difficult to capture the complexity of people's lives but we can try with replacing or at least enhancing demographics with needs, motivations and more focus on the social aspects of human's lives.

Thanks for inspiration: Eskimon

Secret Life of Fliers

While most of researches stays grounded (mostly to computer screen), there are two guys who decided to take off to conduct very fascinating consumer research. Dustin Curtis and Alaska Miller have bought JetBlue All-You-Can-Jet Pass that allows one month of unlimited travel, any available seat for $599 and took off for 30 days adventure to talk to "hundreds of people with rich backgrounds and histories" that can be found on planes. 

As they put it on their website 30dayflight.com

"(...) They have fascinating stories. We want to tell some of them. Our plan is to strike up conversations during our flights and see if maybe, after 30 days of constant flying, we can get a good understanding of the average jetBlue flier."

They took off for their adventure on Tuesday. You can follow the trip on 30dayflight.com and their twitter streams: Dustin Curtis  / Alaska Miller.

I wonder how JetBlue will capitalize on this great initiative. There is the serious possibility for JetBlue to get interesting knowledge about their customers and their secret lives, none of questionaire can reveal. Plus there is plenty to learn about how their own services and staff works. There are already some complaints from Alaska Miller.

If they should live up to their claim about bringing humanity back to air travel, they should listen and learn from the real people.

I look forward to seeing final result of this 30 days trip into the secret life of fliers.

Herd Redefined

If you are in the communication business you must know what Herd is. (by Mark Earls - Herdmeister)

Generation M and the Conflict of Generations

The situation, most of you will recall from the young years. You come back home very late. You  open the door quietly, so as not to cause noise, because you know everyone in the house is probably sleeping. You sneak slowly inside, creeping like a cat. You don't want to wake anyone, just head directly to bed to hide your too late arrival. But your efforts fail - there is always someone waiting for you. The conflict of generations - round one. Parents are angry cause they worried and feel deeply responsible for you and expect you to play by their rules and you are tired and think this is the storm in a glass of water cause you are grown up enough to decide yourself and do what you want - your independence from parents is crucial for you.

Each society has its own culture, a different era and different generations like every family. Every new generation is different and poses some other values, has other interests and what to emphasize and rationalize their otherness. The conflict of generations is as old as humans existed. Such conflicts seem to be an inevitable necessity. Only when two cultures / generations clash, their interdependence and fierce fighting can lead to the creation of something new, revelatory and riveting. Development as the result of conflict. Well, conflict doesn't need to have the negative staining. The secret lies in how we do play the rounds in the match between generations. How clever we are to use the old's wisdom to build something new.

Umair Haque writes "Dear Old People Who Run the World, my generation would like to break up with you." Every era has its own goals and tend to forget about yesterday's dreams, but trampling on the previous generations altars will not bring any good. I agree with Umair Haque that we need to "create an authentically, sustainably shared prosperity". We need to do instead of talk. But manifestos and breaking up will not take us there. In my humble opinion, it is interdependence along with fierce fighting and learning from the past success and fails that will bring us to the new set of values and allow to make a difference and move forward.

It is irrevocable, that everything is transient and the light of the young stars who just won over the old ones will be turned off later on in the curse of history as the new generations arrive. We need solid foundation anchored in culture and cores values to make a difference. Development. Otherwise we build house of cards. Every time the new winds blow, house falls down and the new generations come and build the new houses of cards, over and over again. In the result we never learn from the past and seem to start from the scratch.

The new generations like to rebel but overthrowing the old and replacing it with new manifestos doesn't guarantee the success. We can't cut off our heritage that shaped us and the society we are living. Not everything sucked what old people created as long as the new generation turned out to despise greed and crave for the new authentic and sustainable reality - we haven't been created in vacuum. The Generation M is the natural result of the collapse of the systems and economies that is happening in front of our eyes but it can't bury the past. It needs to learn from it. Generation M can't burn down the old monuments, it would be revolution and those usually lead to decapitations in the first place. Generation M needs to analyze the past, learn, blend and act, act smarter as it has the potential and tools to do so. After all, Generation M is a necessary reality, as if we don't introduce new trends, if we don't have ideals, and don't discover the new experiences, our world would be wishy washy and dull gray ... we would be stuck...

Photo by Pensiero

Come Together

We may never diminish the powerful role of emulation for our behavior. This funny video shows how powerful emulation is in connecting people in spontaneous ways. Music and a guy who felt like dancing - it is a must see for all people working with communication. It's not about reaching people, it is about giving them something to copy.

Found at Asi's blog

I Belong therefore I Am

Image by michael.heiss via Flickr

The need for belonging is one the most powerful needs we share. Being with others people, being social is what our nature demands to function. Some wise-men even claimed that the secret of a good life lies in the harmony between social and personal feelings.
We are herd species and we want to belong something bigger than us. Danes proved it when Anders Colding-Jørgensen Internet psychologist from the University of Copenhagen made an experiment on Facebook. He created a group called 'No to demolition of Stork Fountain' (Storkespringvandet - fountain in Copenhagen). There was nothing strange in it, except the fact that no one wanted to demolish the fountain.
He sent invitation to the group to all his approx. 120 Facebook friends with a message that there was an experiment and asked them to join in. First, the group began to grow quietly. On the second day was reached small 300 members. Then went the stronger and after a little week, reached the 10,000 members. The group has around 25,000 members and is growing fairly stable with approximately 2 members in a minute!

Despite the fake cause, there were 25.000 people who joined and were against something what wasn't suppose to happen. The conclusion - the people didn't join the group to protest against the demolition of the fountain, they joined to be a part of something bigger than them, something that connected them with other people and gave them feeling of joint cause and belonging. This the same as with the groups that protest against new FB layouts. It is not about layout, it is about being part of something bigger than ourselves.

Belonging, being part of something bigger is the one of the most powerful needs you need to consider while working on your digital strategy.

PS. FB group changed its name to "I love Stork fountain" after experiment was done. And it has now over 27.000 users.