Alexander Chalkidis

Author: alexanderchalkidis

  • I wish the Economist ran the world

    It dawned on me some time ago that I know exactly what sort of political system I agree with.  It doesn’t have a name, it doesn’t end in “ism” and as far as I know there is no perfect example.   Other than a magazine.   A very old magazine, with a very British sense of humour.

    I love the Economist.  Can’t get enough of it.  It is inspiration, explanation and exploration all rolled into one weekly fix for me.  But more than that it is pretty close to who I would love to have as government.  Here are a few of the reasons:

    1. They always remind us of their mistakes.  “As this newspaper falsely wrote then…” features in almost every issue.  Clearly and openly.   They are not perfect but they try.

    2. They take a clear position.  No sitting on the fence.  It is partly why they need to own up to mistakes.  Even in thorny, complex issues, the ones other publications (and politicians!) end with a vague “this is a tricky one….” the Economist will come up with whatever is possible as a practical proposal to move ahead.

    3. They have the know – how.  Or they find it, borrow it, steal it.  End result is that they will be able to come up with that practical proposal no matter what.  And it is so practical it makes you want to get up and do the business yourself.

    4. Stakeholders out in the open.  “This newspaper is partly owned by” someone we are writing about now.  Or “this topic is related to part of our business”.  Sure, I have caught them out doing a publimercial without it being clear, but it is rare and so finely done that only a pro in the field of sneaky beaky marketing like me would even get a whiff of it.

    5. They have a heart.   It is way too easy a generalisation to call them “liberals” or “big money ideology”.  Because (point No2 above) they always take a practical and public position in writing, they are very far away from any sort of unethical Scrooge position most of the time.  Being harsh to people is not good for anyone in the long term and the Economist…

    6. …is as long term as you get!  They have been around longer than most political parties and because (point No1 above) they are always checking themselves for mistakes, they improve all the time.  The adapt to the changes in the world, adding sections, removing others, asking for our help.

    7.  First and foremost you have to admire the persistence in seeking new communication paradigms.  I am not talking about technology, I am talking content.  From obituaries to special reports they boldly go where other publications (and politicians) don’t dare.

     

    So take any measure you want for good government:  accountability, transparency, responsiveness, effectiveness, strategic vision… the Economist scores tops on all of them as far as I am concerned.  Now, how to get them to form a government…

  • Book review: selling products to atheists

    Do you know any openly atheist politicians?  We have had openly gay ones for some time now.  Even a black president.  Yet, despite the fact that atheism is probably one of the major global trends to watch in 2013, atheism isn’t selling much other than itself.  This insightful book helps you open up the opportunities for any brand or product to this excited and exciting new market.   No, it’s not just for sellers of cheesy videos, candles or other “traditional” religious products.  This major shift is changing marketing for every product.

    “How to sell to the Godless generation: the critical thinking obstacle” is an excellent handbook for anyone in sales and marketing interested in finding a new communication channel to brand new customers.   Here’s the book’s anatomy in brief:

    Chapters 1 & 2 don’t waste too much time going over the “why faith died” timeline.  This has been done pretty well before.   We have read about religion as an economic activity or from a branding perspective.  Here the author puts it all together succinctly for anyone who hasn’t read “Acts of faith”, “Selling God” or “Faith no more”.  This is because he uses the perspective of “what’s in it for me?” angle.   Were you making money selling faith or on the back of religious ideas?  Probably not.

    Chapter 3 then proceeds to give you a kick in the butt!  Just in case you fell in the trap of simply agreeing with yourself and not really shaking up your thinking enough, the author really dives into why religion sells in the first place.  It is all too easy to make fun of Christian diets, or bumper stickers without deeply feeling the human need they are fulfilling.  Everyday habits are massive opportunities but also very hard to change.

    Chapter 4 continues peeling away layers of understanding by dissecting many examples of faith products and what opportunities they are leaving behind as they subside.  Who is going to be the new TV evangelist?  If they aren’t buying Tshirts that write “I love Jesus” what will they buy?  The Tshirt argument is actually where the book really starts because so far atheism has only really sold witty slogans.

    Chapter 5 retrospectively pays due to the author’s real idols, the religious and business leaders that used religion in the past centuries to sell.  They followed popular culture in order to sell religion and they used religion to sell products.  The “sneaky beaky” marketing, or what the author calls “social engineering” (don’t confuse it with what hackers use the term for) on a grand scale and with a long term view.  World changing stuff.   Which is why the books reaches it’s dizzying climax here with…

    …chapter 6 where we are inundated with ideas!  “If you were the CEO of General Motors, here’s what you need to do” followed by “and if you are the guy at the corner shop, here’s what it means for you.”  The collapse of religion, as with every major societal shift opens huge opportunities.  The closing chapter is a ray of happy hope in a financially depressed world and you are all too likely to drop the book here and run out to start a new business venture.

    Which would be a shame for two reasons.  One is that chapter 7 has some serious words of caution.  Human beings have eschewed critical thinking for most of their history; this is unlikely to change now.  And – more importantly – the author closes with the real ethical and moral underpinnings of a world without religion.  We aren’t out to game the system just to make money.  A world with more atheist products will actually be a much better world.

    P.S.  This book doesn’t exist.  I doubt I will find time to write it.  However like all good consultants I throw my ideas out to the world.  If any of you reading this actually get around to writing it some day, please let me know, I can probably help you sell it…

     

  • Apple Silli and Google Creepy

    I have been accused of being a “Google basher”.  This is rather unfair.  It would be hypocritical to use so many of their products and complain.    Google Now might well be called “Google Creepy”.  It draws on my email, calendar, gps, web searches and many many other bits of information I voluntarily hand over to them everyday.   And it gives me better advice.  It knows what I am really looking for.

    Anyway you look at it, when you conduct a web search it is well worth sitting back and thinking about it:  “You have just got relevant information from the sum total of human data available on a vast international network in 0.8 seconds“.  That’s not quite how it says it at the bottom of every Google search, but it sure could boast if it wanted to.  Nothing comes close.

    Which of course is why Apple bought Cue.  A desperate effort to get Siri slightly more intelligent by using what little social context you are willing to give it plus access to your mailbox.  Much like Apple’s humbling experience with maps, the point is to buy in some  know how.  Just enough new features for them to talk about at the next iPhone or iOs launch.  Enough to keep the fans happy.  But nowhere near as much substance as Google Now.

    What this approach to customization is effectively doing is making it even harder to monitor what Apple and Google are doing with our data.  Like the Hummingbird changes to Google search, they are introducing an even bigger “not provided” category in Google Analytics.  You will not know how visitors got to your website as it is not a simple matter of keywords anymore.  It might be because Google Now algorithmically guessed really well, or it might be influenced by an Ad campaign or it might even be the NSA giving Google instructions to get you to land on a website.   We simply won’t know and there will be no way to reverse engineer it easily either.

    So no, I’m not Google bashing.  I am in awe of the company’s ability to walk that fine line.  They persuade us that what they offer is so useful that it really is worth handing over personal data for it.     But Apple?  What exactly are they offering?

  • Klout sucks. And I have the influence to persuade you that it does!

    If you don’t know www.klout.com you are probably not really into social media.  Or advertising.   Or influence measurement.  It is meant to measure how much you influence people.  And about a year ago they changed their algorithm.  It was meant to get better.  But it didn’t.

    But how do I know that it got worse?

    Well, for starters I noticed that my Klout score changed.  Since I didn’t change anything dramatic on my personal social media accounts it was obviously them.   A little fishing around showed that Facebook had been seriously upgraded in terms of weighting and Twitter downplayed.  This was counter-intuitive.  It still seems silly.    Surely a more public domain like Twitter where people aren’t obliged to “like” something simply because you know them is more objective a measure?  And retweeting is generally a much weightier backing of a though than Facebook sharing.  There is much less pressure to stay attached to an account on Twitter, you can unfollow fairly easily.

    So how can I measure how “wrong” I think Klout is?  (Let alone that Facebook paid them to rig their metrics.)  Remember, this is a measurement that many other businesses rely on.  Many media monitoring tools have it on the x axis of “social media influencers”.  You want to know who is talking about  your brand or business and matters?  Eh, well, it might be based on something which doesn’t work too well any more.

    There were two ways for me to look into this.   One was using different accounts.   I have access to a lot of Facebook and Twitter profiles.  I experimented with older accounts (many with 5000 “friends” or 2-3000 followers).  With Klout you can associate your Klout to any combination you want.   So I would start off with one Facebook account.  Let it settle down….Klout of 55.   Associate a Twitter account….Klout goes up to 56.  Ahem…..  Unlink the Facebook account.  Measure again.  Link a different Facebook account.   Klout doesn’t seem to mind because obviously it wasn’t designed for data maniacs like me trying to reverse engineer it.

    The other way was to get people I know well to join Klout.   People whose Facebook or Twitter habits I understand in depth.  And this is were the current Klout algorithm lost any respect I had for it.   It is fairly easy to increase the level of interaction a real user with a real Facebook profile has with his Facebook friends.   Facebook hasn’t addressed this issue so much because they are too busy focusing on Pages and Promoted Posts and all that.   So friends who are active on Facebook, especially when they are photo heavy in their posts, can get ridiculously high Klout scores right from the start.

    There is another reason I assume that Klout have got it wrong:  people are too scared to tell them!  “What if they see this post and downgrade my score?”   Oh no!  Nobody will take me seriously anymore!….

    Influence measurement is serious business.   If a fake Facebook account which simply reposts stuff, or a friend who is just a decent photographer can easily hit a Klout of 65, it is probably time for somebody to take it a bit more seriously.  Or just come out and announce it officially that Facebook is funding Klout.

  • Ariel Castro needed to rewrite Greek history?

    As we walked through central Vienna, I pointed to one of the windows:

    “You know”, I explained to an interlocutor who probably knew better than me, “when Greece was formed as a modern country in 1828, the people living in those buildings had several centuries of experience of living in a city with other people.”

    I stopped by a water fountain which looked two or three hundred years old:

    “This fountain has survived upheaval and waves of military events here.  But the people around it found ways to agree despite their differences.  In Greece we would probably have destroyed it from some internal bickering.”

    I have no idea where you start in order to get over trauma like being held in a basement and raped for many years.  But I assume that coming to terms with all that you missed out during those years of captivity is a big part of it.   At the start of the economic crisis I used psychological terms to help readers understand the denial symptoms expressed in Greek society.     Now I want to point out a huge problem in our national narrative.

    Most Greeks are taught a pretty twisted version of history.  Ancient Greek wonders, mainly Athenian, a little bit of a vague Byzantine history and then… a huge gap.    Like prisoners of some Ottoman Ariel Castro, like a rape victim that doesn’t want to talk about it, 400 years are ignored.  During that time the West took off, shook away the obsession with Aristotle and other Greeks and set the stage for the modern world.

    Greece got out of its prison in 1828.   A country of shepherds and people of little means, were suddenly called upon to become a modern Western country.   Athens was little more than a village.   Which grew way too quickly with absolutely no associated experience of how to live in a city.  Yet we cling to fantasies that are a bit like Superman rushing into a telephone booth to change into a super identity.   As if we can instantly turn ourselves into a world leading power based on some magic fairy dust that the location or the DNA of Ancient Athenians have bestowed upon us.

    We need to face the facts.  To openly express our regret that we missed out on the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution.   We need to cry over all the stuff we missed.    Retrace the steps we didn’t make with the rest of Europe.   I often get accused by nationalists of being a “Greek basher” because I systematically try to get Greeks to let go of their obsession with Ancient Greek wisdom.  Maybe if I reposition it as a “rediscovery of the wonders of Europe” it will work better.

    Elsewhere in this blog I pinpointed the mistake that European leaders have systematically made in “selling” the European idea to their citizens.  Maybe the whole of the Continent and not just Greece could benefit from revisiting those great moments in European history as it led the world for many centuries since the Middle Ages.

    Rewriting history is good.  It can be fun.  And – if you get it right – it is a cathartic  experience for all involved.  Not as in catharsis  of Ancient Greek tragedy.  Get over it  I said!

  • MotoX heralds a very quiet revolution

    People talk about Google being increasingly being a “hardware company” but they are missing the point.  It’s not about fancy gadgets, not about whether the Nexus has a better screen than an iPhone and definately not about the MotoX stealing market share.  It’s not even about Google knowing the next worldwide development through some fancy algorythm which crunches all our searches, emails and map data.

    It’s about processing power.

    No, not the CPU or GPU processing power.   Intel would be all over that, guessing when the CPU will be X times more powerful and all that. No, it’s about Google knowing how much stuff Google can process.   Today.   The feature of the MotoX that gave them away was voice recognition.

    Do you use Instant Upload or the iCloud to store pictures?  It is wonderful technology, just humming away in the background.  Yet after all this time using it, if you ask me “what were you doing on the 7th of October two years ago?” I can now tell you.  Because my phone has by all chances uploaded a picture from that day.  It might have been the kids, or a funny sign, or the fridge I promised to move for a friend for reference (to see if it will fit through the door) but chances are, I have a picture from that date that will help me remember.

    I have long held that our smartphones should constantly record what we are talking about.  It would be legal (as long as it only recorded your own voice) and it would be damn useful.  Imagine using the speed of Google instant search to find when you said what.   That conversation your girlfriend is talking about, accusing you of supporting fascism.   Now you can get the transcript!   That interesting chat with a professor.   You have your half of the talk, you can figure out the rest.   And of course…business meeting notes.  All automatically, silently recorded by your MotoX.

    Can’t wait for it to happen.  If they haven’t patented it already, there you go, my gift to the human race for today.

    The point is that only Google will know when Google can make this happen.  They own the cloud, in terms of pushing the boundaries.   They are now on the forefront of applied internet connections and speed issues.   With YouTube they have worked the data streaming issues to the bone.   Not on a theoretical level.  On the level of stuff you can use today, with your current connection.  They have millions of smartphone users to experiment with.  They are also on the forefront of supplying massive computing power to us all from their data centers.    So I can write away with all these theories and ideas but …

    …only Google can decide when it will become a real product.

  • Do the stripes in our flag make it look fat?

    GUIDELINES FOR INTERNATIONAL MEDIA COVERING GREECE

    Since the start of this economic crisis, Greece has struggled with its international image.  Journalists trying to fathom where to start in the coverage of the story, most obviously need help in understanding how to handle issues such as:

    1. We love it when you emphasize the rustic, Zorba the Greek image of our country!  Lay it on.  Don’t shoot any report from Greece without showing some Greek coffee,  part of an ancient monument, old men in a taverna looking at the camera as if they are all retarded, or twenty year old archive footage from a horrible beach full of drunk Northern Europeans.

    2. It really helps when you choose people to interview that can’t really speak English.  Might be cheaper to just hire an English actor to put on a fake “Stavros” accent.  Oh, and dress him like a waiter to, your audience will relate to it much better.

    3. Always, always, pick an angle that shows chaos in the background.  If there is a demonstration with just 30 people outside Parliament, yep, you guessed it, pick a close angle, shake the camera around and make us all sick as if we are watching “Saving Private Ryan”.

    4. If the demonstration was over in half an hour, no worries, for the next 1-2 days just show old footage of street riots anywhere in the world and get a journalist to speak over it from a bad telephone connection.

    Now, the above four points might confuse you in practise, so here are four more to make you feel less guilty:

    1. Yes, no matter what you write, some Greek will hate you.   Get used to it.  Truth is that even Greeks struggle with the idea but it seems to be the way it goes over here since Ancient times.

    2. When a Greek disagrees, yes, be sure he will tell you about it.  You could see it as a great traffic generator for your news organization’s website, but over time it gets tiring.  Use sparingly.

    3. When one Greek disagrees with your article or news item, be sure that some other Greek will immediately disagree with the first Greek.  They will proceed to argue amongst themselves.  Leave them to it or they will instantly gang up against you.

    4. Don’t bother trying to word things carefully.  It doesn’t help.  Also useless is any attempt to contact sources and get them on your side before publication.  Depending on the situation in Greece, they are liable to make a 180 degree turn overnight.

    You may think all this conflicting advice  is like walking a tightrope.  You are wrong.   We understand media better than most countries.  This is the birthplace of tragedy.  All stories are by definition as crazy as you want them.   You want soap-opera material?  Prime minister marrying a flight attendant OK?  A bit thin on the sex scandals lately, but 3-4 families in control of everything is usually enough like next year’s PBS series on the mafia to do the trick I think.

    So stop complaining.  The food is good, the weather is great and we just keep producing great media events.  You don’t even need to work that hard; you can always take even minor developments and set them against our permanent structural problems to blow them up enough to submit something to your boss before heading to the beach…

     

  • Trend detection: there can only be two?

    You can play with Twitter data all day and come up with all sorts of interesting conclusions.   As a social scientist, it is Pandora’s box.  Free research to an extent you couldn’t even dream about a decade ago.   But of course it is just Twitter.  Mainly U.S. and well….just Twitter.

    Compare that to the amount of data Google has in order to detect trends.   Gazillions of web searches.   Gmail.   Google Maps.   And anything going on within at least half the smart phones in the world.  That’s more like it!  Other’s try and guess who your friends are, hell, Google knows if they are in your phone list and if you emailed them today.   You don’t need a particularly smart algorythm to figure out what stock to buy, which songs are on the rise, or which companies are doing a good job.    Google kindly gives us back some information on trends.  It is badly crippled of course, randomized or normalized or generally scrutinized to make sure it isn’t commercially usable .  And it is not quite real time of course.  More like a promotional vehicle.

    Google knows what you are thinking.   Not because of some “1984” like surveillance scheme but because that amount and variety of data they have can bring pretty accurate results.   We know that they sell this know how, but it isn’t an official product.   Which I guess makes it illegal.   Maybe Edward Snowden will illuminate us on this topic, though it is secondary.

    And where is Apple?   Maybe the only other company with a pretty complete understanding of the behaviour of a big chunk of people.   They don’t even give us any data.  They announce no initiative to use this data to make better products for their customers.  They just sit on the lid, like they sit on their cash pile.

    With the amount of data flying around the internet, many other companies will come up with pretty accurate correllations between indicators sooner or later though.   It won’t be as complete as Google and it won’t be as tidy as Apple’s data.

    But it will work.

     

  • Pimms, NewMediaAgencies and the Catch 22 in the world of advertising

    There are two kinds of companies:   the ones that do multiple long meetings and the ones that don’t.   Advertising companies always specialized in the former.   The inspired me to start writing a book entitled “The ‘who gives a s**t?’ management analysis manual.”   I need a catchier title and the book is still at chapter 3.

    As a consultant, you either meet the decision maker or not.   In media, the difference is enormous.  Two hours with a junior marketing person just to get the concept through.  Then, if you’re lucky and they aren’t too scared, you get another meeting with their superior.   Now you have to convince them that they will look good if they play along.   If all goes well, ie your idea is fantastic, they will organize yet another meeting where “the head of marketing might drop in”.   The Head of Marketing, didn’t get that title (or whatever different title they use to describe the job, depending on country and company) by being easy.    They pretend to be tough as nails, no matter how much they like the idea.   They make sure they take the idea, you have no guarantees and they do with it as they wish.    Whenever they feel is convenient for their current carreer path.

    You get the idea.   And yes, it can get even more complicated.   The point is that the organization is wasting time, my time and theirs, and we often don’t get anywhere.   Because if there is a person on the top floor who gives a s**t, none of this usually gets as far as the top floor.

    Enter the advertising agency.   They do useless meetings all the time with these same people.   They stay up late together pretending to work late when they need to.   They did the XYZ success story 1,2 or 5 years ago for this customer.  I can go on bashing advertising agencies ad nauseum.  Because they deserve it and because it is fun.   But it isn’t getting us anywhere.

    New Media Digital Agencies are meant to be the answer.  They are leaner.  Faster.  More responsive.   Basically, they are cheaper.   Are they better?   Well, some of them understand Social Media a bit better than some big old ad agencies.   Some have bright ideas occasionally.   Some of them might have a more clear focus originally, usually from one of their founders.   And what do they do?   They act like the old agencies!   They try and do everything.   And they sit through those same old boring and pointless meetings.   Essentially, they are turning themselves into the big agencies they make fun of.   Catch 22.

     

    It’s time to give a s**t.   It’s time for general managers to get directly involved in communication more.  And it’s about time I wrote that book.   Maybe I will do it the next time I cancel  a large account that is asking for yet another meeting…

     

    PS  Pimms is in the title because a rather bad social media effort in one of it’s campaigns is what started this particular train of thought today.

  • The so called tablet revolution is about my fridge

    Some of you might remember the “smart fridge” idea.  More than a decade ago some companies had made horribly expensive fridges which had built in computers and a touch screen.   You could surf the net, watch movies and generally do most of the things you ended up doing with your laptop parked on the kitchen table.

    There is a fine line in understanding New Media which most people get wrong.  New gadgets should not be viewed like Swiss Army knives.   It isn’t about what they can do.   Much like the top of the range Swiss Army knife, you know, the one with all the extras…well you can’t really carry that around in your pocket.   Which sort of defeats the purpose as you leave it in the car all the time “just in case”.  For all our Twitter, news aggregations, Google search intelligence, mobile apps and different ways to get to these things the correct way to understand all the different technology, all the hardware, the software, the apps, the search engines, the databases is as the ingredients of a very special personalised menu in our brains.

    It is a menu we all make up as we go along.   We consume media via our own understanding of the different options.     When you are about to fry an egg to eat you might think “hey, I wonder what is happening in the world?”   You then turn that need into an action which depends on what you have available and how you perceive those options.   It would have been a transistor radio.  Then a TV in the kitchen or – worse still – a very loud TV in the lounge that you just listened to while annoying everyone else in the house.  Then that laptop in the kitchen streaming your a TV channel for news.  Or your favorite news aggregator, Facebook updates or Twitter timeline.   Most of us missed the futuristic $5000 fridge with the touch screen and now people are getting to tablets.

    A tablet is essentially a smart TV.  Mainly for consuming information as passively as possible.  When they perfect the systems that detect eye movement you won’t even have to scroll up and down those Facebook status updates manually.  So just give them better way to attach them to a fridge and we can call it a day.

    The so called tablet revolution was essentially about how to stick another screen on my fridge.