ViewPoint.Orange » Human Factor

Orange Delight Series#1 – Mind Mapping

Yuki Chow* — Mon, 17 May 2010 02:48:45 +0000

This is the first post of a new series – Orange Delight! This series stems from a simple belief “we are inspired people, we are ready to change the world with a smile.” As a on-going effort, I will share a source of my inspiration every other week. Your thoughts and comments are very much appreciated =)

For this very 1st week, I’d like to introduce my latest addiction - Mind Mapping. It is a fantastic creativity booster and it keeps the thought process well organized. As opposed to linear documents, mind maps are more like graphs, with nodes of information which in turn holds other nodes of information. You can create a mind map for a book, describing each chapter as a node, or for a project, defining each feature as a node. Whenever you have the time to re-create your project, do it with a mind map. Start with the title and then add nodes with features or goals. You can use mind mapping software programs or you can simply start with a blank paper, the physical support doesn’t really matters. The key is that mind mapping makes it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

If you are like me, your brain sometimes feels as if it is scrambled because of information overload, overwhelm, or under tremendous pressure. Switching out of the linear perspective, from the height of bird-eye view, something will start to change the way you process information. You’ll start to see new connections, missing links or unnecessary clutter. Before you know it, you will feel more organized and more inspired.

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TED video offers reasons why people like Apple products

Yuki Chow* — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:16:44 +0000

Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question “Why?” His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers — and as a counterpoint Tivo, which (until a recent court victory that tripled its stock price) appeared to be struggling.

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Asking a little goes a long way!

Yuki Chow* — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 02:56:01 +0000

Most American families all got a brochure from the Census Bureau within the past two weeks. Have you ever wondered why does the Census Bureau send letters telling people that they are going to be receiving their census form in the mail? Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told Jon Stewart on The Dail y Show “past research has shown that if we send this advanced mailing, we can actually increase the response rate the percentage of households sending back the census form by six percent to twelve percent.”

In a similar vein, study has shown that by asking potential voters to predict whether they will vote on an election and to provide a reason for their prediction, participation rate could be increase 20% to 25%.

So what’s actually driving the drastic increase? Based on my recent interesting read of <Yes! 50 scientifically proven ways to be persuasive>, there are two important psychological steps involved in the success of this technique. First of all, when people are asked to predict whether they’ll engage in a socially desirable behavior in the future, they feel compelled to say yes because that’s the socially appropriate thing to say. Secondly, after most of these people have publicly state that they’ll perform the socially desirable behavior, they’ll be motivated to behave consistently with the commitment they just made.

What lessons can we draw from this human factor that can be effectively employed in our lives?

If you plan on joining a charity run for a nonprofit, start by asking your friends, family and co-workers whether they think they’ll donate
If you manage a restaurant or doctor’s office, having your receptionist ASK instead of TELL when taking a reservation. Simply by changing “Please call if you have to cancel,” to “Will you please call if you have to cancel?” I ensure you the no-show rate would drop significantly!
If you are designing a nonprofit/corporate responsibility website where voting mechanism is the center piece, make sure to cement those potential voters’ commitment by making it voluntary, active and publicly declared to others.

Small and easy changes to our messages and to our requests can be made vastly more persuasive, just remember: asking a little goes a long way!

© Yuki Chow* for ViewPoint.Orange, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: book review, Census, Jon Stewart, nonprofit

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Life lessons from an advertising man

Yuki Chow* — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:50:58 +0000

How many problems in life can be solved by TINKERING the PERCEPTION rather than the tedious hard-working messy business of trying to change reality? LOL – isn’t this the main purpose behind all advertising & marketing? Don’t miss Rory Sutherland’s fantastic marketing solutions via TED talk. Check out discussions and comments here.

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8 Key takeaways frOm Seth GOdin’s “Tribes”

Yuki Chow* — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 03:25:34 +0000

Second time reading the “Tribes” after almost a year. It’s still a quick inspirational read just like the first time. This book is more about the “why” less about the “how” & “what.” Despite all the rants & criticism, I’d still recommend it to all the social media enthusiasts especially those who intend to lead new movements in their organizations. The eight takeaways below are simple concepts that I found worth spreading…

Management≠ Leadership

Management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done. Managers know exactly what they need to deliver and they are given resources to do it at low cost. Managers manage a process they’ve seen before, and they react to the outside world, striving to make that process as fast as cheap as possible. Great leaders create movements by empowering the tribe to communicate. They establish the foundation for people to make connections, as opposed to commanding people to follow them.

(...)
Read the rest of 8 Key takeaways frOm Seth GOdin’s “Tribes” (514 words)

© Yuki Chow* for ViewPoint.Orange, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: book review, leadership

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Eyetrack reVeals search is gOing sOcial, sO what?

Yuki Chow* — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 17:55:53 +0000

Do people actually look at ads on social media sites? Marketers face the constant challenge of keeping up with and understanding consumer search behavior. Social networking sites offer opportunities to develop a relationship between brands and consumers, display ads and search. But a lot of confusion over the effectiveness of advertising on social networking sites still exists. An eye tracking study conducted on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube by a digital marketing company reveals trends about the way people interact with paid ads in social media sites. The study hopes to alleviate some of the mystery.

Oneupweb found that not only do people spend time viewing paid ads on social networks, but they often looked at the ads more quickly once they landed on the search results page. For example, 65% of participants engage with sponsored ads within the first 10 seconds of their search. Often times, the path eyes scan the page often does not follow the order of the search results. Contrary to expected behavior, sponsored ads were looked at before the 3rd or 4th result. The Oneupweb study indicates similar behavior was observed throughout the YouTube search. The participants engaged with the sponsored ads in the process of completing the search task. Twitter does not support sponsored ads but the study still observed users’ search habits on Twitter as it has become an essential social marketing channel. About half of survey participants revealed they were satisfied with their brand search on Twitter. Many liked that they could find the most current opinions about a product. If you would like a PDF copy of the study results, access it here!

Okay, we’ve established that there’s not blindness toward ads in social networks, people still look at the ads. But do they click on them? Unlike searching on Google, the interaction with content in social media sites is very different. Many marketers including myself believe that opt-in advertising works best, while behavior-based campaigns and randomly generated ads are far less successful. In my opinion, this notion still holds true although the end users are becoming more acceptable of sponsored ads on social sites. Niche targeting and relevancy are the two areas advertisers need to focus on more when they try to apply their brand campaigns to those new environments. Will targeting based on niche, geographic location, interest, lifestyle & social graph be the future of advertising? Certainly! Will “engagement ads” change the game of online advertising after Google’s creation of “contextual ads” (judge the quality yourself)? Sooner or later. As of now, there is still a lot left to be desired!

© Yuki Chow* for ViewPoint.Orange, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: experiment, online advertising

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The Web ain’t yOur Media-As-Usual

Yuki Chow* — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:28:06 +0000

Last black Friday March 13th 2009 was the 20th anniversary of the World Wide Web. While many of us take this information-sharing protocol for granted like it has always been there, it’s rather difficult to believe the fact that the social web is merely 20 years young, a year away from its legal drinking age. Of course we need to thank Sir Tim Berners-Lee for his incredible vision on this “play project,” which should have earned him an international holiday. But more importantly, 20 years after the inception of the World Wide Web, companies have just started treating their presence on the Web more seriously than an online brochure. It’s about time, companies! Although the learning curve is steep, the cost of change is high, it is still absolutely necessary to participate in this intangible revolution. Why? Here are two basic facts about the Web that might help you understand why.

The Web is a lively place where people connect & converse, it is not an extension of media channels

Does communication technology have to roll out incrementally? Many people seem to assume so. If TV is radio + visual stimulus, then Internet should be Television + something else! But what is that “something else?” Cheaper ad spaces ? Infinite channels ? A “buy” button ? Companies and marketers desperately tried to fill in the blank in order to superglue the Web onto the back of the TV’s history. That way this online market can be monetized, advertising can thrive again, everybody can go back to do their business as usual. Such wishful thinking didn’t go far at all, because the Web is a whole different beast that challenges everything we’ve experienced for the past 200 years. It is a global conversational space where everyone on it can have his/her own voice without any hierarchical management and control. So far it has attracted close to 1.6 billion people in the world, and it’s continuing to expand. t is a real place where people can learn from each other, debate, argue, comment; connect to those who share the same interests, form communities; access information, exchange knowledge; look for business vendors, do business with each other, and the list of activities goes on and on.Sounds different from what TV can do us? Ask the early founders of the Internet, it was intended to be a revolution. What does it mean for companies and marketers then? If TV was the perfect medium for advertising, then the Web is the anti-advertising medium by nature. If TV was the glamorous broadcasting tool for big companies, then the Web is the free playground for ordinary you and me who longs to have a voice. So before developing your next marketing communication plan, think again, 1.6 billion of us are no longer the same passive couch-potato audience.

The Web is where authenticity lives, exaggeration dies

The word “authenticity” has been dancing next to our ears lately, thanks to the advocates of social media =) The reason why authenticity matters more on the Web is very simple: we get smarter as the network gets larger. In the old days of mass media, messages were distributed on a one-way street via the one-to-many megaphone. We had no way of verifying our doubts, no immediate access to satisfy our curiosity. But now with a quick search on Google or 3rd party forums, the truth we’ve always desired will easily rise above the puffery & targeted corporate messages. If nothing more, the Web reveals corporations’ problems. And those problems are not new, they have been there for a long time. The difference is that what these little voices used to say to a single friend now becomes accessible to the whole world. You can continue to produce corporate propaganda and fancy banners, but they would never be able to outnumber the pure human voices on the Web. The wisdom of crowds plus the speed of the Internet can smell those PR spins & advertising exaggerations from miles away. Maybe truth hurts, but remember the big brother is watching, and it’s us.

What’s the solution then?

Listen to the little voices, mock yourself if you dare & most importantly, get closer to your customers! We will reciprocate your effort by linking you, digging you, tweeting you and talking about you…After all, the most successful form of advertising is word-of-mouth, isn’t it? Luckily, the technology available today can amplify the “word-of-mouth” effect that goes beyond your wildest dream. One thing to keep in mind though, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Many savvy marketers have recognized that technology is not leading to a new way of doing business but rather to an old way of doing business based on social need and human touch. It’s going to be a long and arduous road to go back to the old-fashion way after you have indulged in benefits coming out of mass production and mass media for two centuries. But we are in this revolution with you. We are not expecting you to be “perfect,” we just want you to be honest and try to be “better.” You can start by talking in our language , showing us who you really are (not your brand positioning statement, but the actual employees behind the firewall), sharing your resources and knowledge base. As long as making money is not your only incentive, the Web welcomes your participation!

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