Reality Upgrade

This is an amazing video. Sean Gourley is a physicist who decided that by mapping the number and size of acts of violence in the Iraq war, and others like it, the behaviors could be modeled, and thereby predicted.

I think this is great, because I believe that human behavior can be modeled, in a general way, to predict outcomes of certain situations.  I have seen this in action in social settings all the time, and it is great to see someone putting this into practice in a large scale. Especially for something as useful as understanding the conflicts in Iraq and Afganistan. 

If we are ever going to really achive world peace, this is the beginning of how we will do it.

If the video will not play for some reason, watch it here on TED.

Here is some more about Sean Gourley, if you are interested.

Once you have a simple message that is relevant to the client and appropriately targeted at their feelings rather than their logic… keep repeating it.

This sounds rather simple, but be careful. It is easy to forget about some great opportunities here. Your brand should be on, or in, everything you do. Eat, sleep, and breathe your message. Every time you have any communication with a client, reinforce your brand. You need to associate yourself and your product so strongly with your brand that it stops being something separate from you and becomes who you are, at least in the mind of the client.

The memory neurons in the brain form memories by building patterns of connections between neurons. If a new pattern is similar to an existing pattern, the new pattern is easier to remember. Similarly, if a pattern is repeated, it becomes easier to remember.

If you have a hard time remembering the names of people when you first meet them, you are probably familiar with this concept. It might take you four or five times of hearing someone’s name before you remember it. Some of the tricks people use to remember names, like associating someone’s name with something else about them, tend to work using this concept as well. By tying together a name and something else, you have reinforced that pattern, and therefor make it easier to remember.

Unfortunately, your clients are not likely to try to remember your brand. They are not going to use memory tricks, or songs, or anything else to remember better. You have to do the work for them, by repeating it over, and over, and over, and over, until they remember it.

One thing to note, before we move on, is that it is very important to have a consistent message. It is one thing to repeat it all the time, but if you are not repeating the same thing every time, repeating it is not reinforcing the memory. In fact, it is probably just confusing.

Step 1 - It’s all about them

Step 2 - Hearts, then minds

Step 3 - Keep it simple

Step 5 - Keep it short

KISS: Besides being a band of relative success and questionable taste in facepaint, it is also a great acronym.

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

This is very appropriate when it comes to branding. A simple brand is incredibly important, for several reasons.

1: A simple brand is easy to remember. It is important to have a brand that is easily associated with you or your company, and so it has to be easy to remember.

2: A simple brand is easy to incorporate. In order to stay congruent with your brand, everything from your advertising to your slogan to your shirts should point back to your brand, and if you have a complicated brand image, this can get hard to do.  After all, how do you make a slogan that implies your company “has a great work ethic, cares about animals (but mostly pandas), likes long walks on the beach, and does software really well, mostly in the military field.” 

Actually, a panda made of lines of code and carrying a rocket launcher would be pretty cool.  But you get the idea.

Examples of great brands that keep it simple are everywhere, from Nike’s Just Do It to Geico’s Save 15% (or more!). The trick is not so much to have a short slogan, but to have a simple concept.

For instance, Coca-Cola does not exactly have a slogan like Nike or Geico, but it does have a concept, which can be nicely summed up by “Ahhhh…” - refreshing, fun, tasty, etc.  Simple, yes. Easy to remember, on a feeling basis, yes. Easy to associate with all kinds of advertising, yes. Check plus for Coke.

So learn from the best, and keep your brand identity simple, stupid.

Step 1 - It’s all about them

Step 2 - Hearts, then minds

Step 4 - Keep repeating it

There are different ideas of how long it takes to form an initial impression of someone, from 7 seconds to 60. However, everyone agrees that within only a few moments of meeting you, your new contact has already decided whether they like you or not. From that point on, all of your interaction with that person will be either reinforcing that opinion, or fighting hopelessly against it.

The reason that the first impression is so important is that most decisions are made emotionally, not intellectually. For all that we would like to believe we are rational beings, humans are more controlled by our subconscious than we would like to admit. If a potential client likes you in the first sixty seconds, then the only thing you have to convince them of is what to hire you for. On the other hand, if a potential client does not like you in the first sixty seconds, you have almost no chance at all of being hired, no matter how much convincing you do.

The trick to real marketing, then, is not to sell what you do, but to sell yourself; or more specifically, your brand. And you have between 7 and 60 seconds to do it.

A great example of marketing to emotions rather than intellect is Budweiser. Anyone who drinks beer regularly knows that Budweiser is not the best quality beer. However, they sell more than 50% of the beer sold in the US. The reason for this is that they are not trying to sell their beer as the best, but as the one that is the most fun. After all, the “beer drinking ideal” is to have a six pack and hang out with friends. So Budweiser is trying to connect their brand with the feelings of being with friends, partying, hot girls, etc. And it is clearly working.

So learning from Budweiser’s example, you need to find what emotion your potential client is looking for, and connect your brand to that emotion. Then, throughout your relationship, reinforce that emotional connection. Remember, there may be hundreds of people/companies that can do what you do, but only you make your client feel the way you can.

Step 1 - It’s all about them

Step 3 - Keep it simple

Branding? What?

Branding has become a catchphrase in the marketing world. I tend to be biased against anything that is a catchphrase for anything, but in this case I will make an exception, because the concept of branding is incredibly useful. 

Branding can be a great marketing tool, and I will talk about it from that perspective in this article and the ones that follow, but “branding” like this can mean a lot of things. Branding can be the brand name of a huge company, like Coca-Cola or Nike. It can be the local reputation of a small company. It can be the “personal brand” of a consultant or freelancer. 

But it can also be your own personal brand, the image of you as a person. 

In the same way, marketing can be selling a product or a service, but it can just as easily be selling yourself. You sell yourself in everything from a job interview to meeting someone in a bar. Developing your own personal brand is critical in social situations of all kinds. In future articles I will talk more about using branding in casual social situations, rather than business. But for now we will discuss the general concepts of branding in business. 

The first step to branding success is that it’s all about them.

Find out what your client wants, and provide it.

That sounds a lot simpler than it actually is. The real difficulty is in the first part: Find out what your client wants.

This is probably the most difficult part of branding success. The problem is that most of the time, even clients themselves do not know what they want.

For example, I worked for an engineering firm who performed design services for new buildings. The obvious answer to the question “what do our clients want” was simple - they wanted good engineers, for a good price. If we asked them what they wanted, they would even say so.

This was a problem for us, because no matter how good and cheap we were, there is always someone better and cheaper.

Luckily, we realized that what our clients actually wanted was something else entirely. What they really wanted, whether they realized it consciously or not, was comfort. Designing and building a new building is a very complicated, expensive, and confusing process. Our clients were rightly nervous. They were afraid that the engineering firm they hired would mess something up, cause them problems, and cost them more money in the long run.

So, we stopped selling our design services, and started selling comfort. We became the company that an owner would not have to worry about later. Yes, we were more expensive, but isn’t it worth it to know you won’t have headaches later?

And it worked.

So the first step is find out what your client wants, and then give it to them.

Step 2 - Hearts, then minds

I first understood the power of the body to affect the mind when I was sitting in a yoga class many years ago. I was in the class after a very long day, I was tired, and I did not want to be there. I was grumpy, annoyed, distracted, and sleepy. Not the best disposition for a class about relaxation.

The teacher said “Take a deep breath.” I did not really want to, since I was feeling somewhat rebellious. But I was already there, so…..

I took a deep breath, and like magic, I calmed down. My frustration and tension and distraction melted away, and suddenly I was ready to do yoga.

The best way for you to know what I felt is to try it yourself. So take a deep breath.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

See how that felt? It had nothing to do with your mind…that was your body taking over, relaxing for you.

The deep breath is a great example of how breathing can contribute to relaxation, but there is much more to this concept. By understanding how the subconscious mind uses the body to communicate,

Nervousness, confidence, shyness, anger, fear, discomfort, sexual attraction; all of these are communicated by body language, and for many of us this happens without our even being aware of it. But for those of us who are aware of it…knowledge is power.

Not only is it possible to bypass the subconscious signals and intercept that communication, but it is even possible to change our own moods and feelings. Act confident, and you will become confident. Act fearful, and you will be fearful. More than what you eat, you are what you do.

In this series on body language, we will explore together several aspects of body language, the subconscious signals that each bit of body language demonstrates…and how to fake it till you make it.

After all, in the words of the great psycologist Carl Jung: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”

Direct your own life. Be your own fate.

Welcome to Reality Upgrade.

The entire history of human evolution (or Divine will, or aliens, whatever) has been slowly distilling the very best traits of mankind, carefully weeding out the weak or useless parts. Generations of your ancestors struggled and lived and had hot wild sex, all for the purpose of making you the best that you could be.  You are the absolute top of the line, cutting edge, best of the best human that there could possibly be.  (Well, you might be the cheaper, generic brand version, but you’re still pretty awesome.)  

Your ancestors went through a lot of effort to give you the very best hardware that you could possibly have.  Shit, some of your ancestors probably had to fight saber toothed tigers in order to pass on their genes to you.  The least you can do is update your software.

Upgrade your reality here.