what's the vibe?

A while ago I worked with a very nice and talented designer chap called Stu. Stu liked doing things that would feed into his design so went about asking lots of interesting people to write 90 words for him on anything they liked. One of the interesting people he got 90 words out of was Mr Seth Godin, and here they are in the style of those nice Seth Moo cards (as quickly set by me not Stu, he could do lots better).

 

I recalled them when writing that digital dude stuff the other day, and the importance of making sure someone is taking responsibility for a brands social vibe. So I asked Stu if he could dig them out again, and that he did. So please enjoy them and the vibe they emit.

emotional motivations vs rational

How do you save the world (well electricty at least).

A rational method would be to measure electricity use in real time and relate this back to a user in numbers or colour. Like the Wattson.

An emotional way would be to re-interpret the savings associated with measurement to a real world cause or place. Like OFF-ON.

Why is this important (to me at least)? Because I've just read this by Paul Maiteny the Ecological Counsellor and Psychotherapist.

"The causes of ecological breakdown are rooted in emotional and spiritual yearning – for satisfaction and meaningfulness, so we need to look at ourselves deeply, at what really drives us, in order to continue sustaining ourselves. Ecological sustainability depends on how we find emotional sustainability".

gross national happiness

What do the coalition, Bhutan and the LSE all have in common? They all measure happiness in relation to other economic stuff (as of very recently in Cameron & friends case).

The divide between intellectual and emotional is becoming ever thinner. Let's get happy.

a way with words

Keen followers will know that the hard drive in my MacBook Air crashed last week. It's never a fun process when computers go wrong. But it did yet again highlight the importance of decent customer services to me, with this page from Apple's support site being a great example. Most visitors to the page are going to be pretty stressed by the default, but the use of language in it counters this straight away. It's calm, assuring and compassionate.

It's probably going a bit to far but it reminds me of the bedside manner of good nurses in hospitals who use a very reassuring language to actively ease patients apprehensions. Words like 'probably just' 'usually'  'in most cases' and 'all that is needed' have come from someone with a high degree of emotional intelligence, and not just technical efficiency.

Well done Apple support website copy writers.

share and share a like

One of the few big themes of all this social media stuff is sharing. And here are some very wise words on sharing by that fella from the telly that does the architecture stuff on Channel 4...

being present

Great bit on consistent praise vs just being present in children's education from yesterdays FT. Lots of analogies for companies use of communications, whether to let us know how sexy we'll look with their product in our hands or just being around and available to chat to.

what is empathy?

Something like this perhaps.

more emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence as the cutting edge of human intelligence (in relation to making robots more like humans in this instance).

wholy rounded

There's this thing at the minute about whole education, emotional intelligence vs academic intelligence, and students getting great results just by being left to it and being encouraged. And I'm pretty interested in it. Because I'm pretty sure all the principles of it apply just as well to companies and brands as they do to students and schools. And that the gulf between what the education system provides and the student needs is mirrored by a gulf in what companies provide and consumers/ employees need. That there's something going on at the minute that can't be tangibly defined, but will tangibly define the future.

 

two important books on social media

If you fancy reading two important books on social media (that make no reference to the term or concept social media) you could do a lot worse than these two. They argue that our view on intelligence is far to narrow, and that our emotional & social intelligence can play an equal, if not greater, factor in our life time success than intellectual or educational intelligence. The argument can easily be migrated to brands who understand systems and models and theories but don't practice impulse, persistence, zeal, motivation or empathy so well.

I heard Chad Hurley of youtube speak last week and referencing why google keep on getting their efforts into social media so wrong compared to the other stuff they do so well. For me it's because they seem to have quite a low level of emotional intelligence (possibly because it's run by young male geeks, not particularly known for high emotional intelligence). The brands that are doing well in social media however have a much higher degree of emotional and social intelligence. Maybe the subjects will even be taught in schools one day.