Blog

James Devon

26th January 2011
Laws of Conservation & Association Juice

There's something interesting in this, but I'm not sure what it is yet. Do feel free to give me your thoughts.

This is my LinkedIn map, showing the various connections that I have. But there's something fundamentally missing from it...

And what's missing is the strength of those connections.

I was reminded the other day about the scientific concept of conservation - that things can't be created or destroyed, they can only change form. Probably the best known law is that of the conservation of energy:

"energy can neither be created nor destroyed: it can only be transformed from one state to another"

This is closely related to the law of conservation of mass (via a rather well known Einsteinian equation). Ever so slightly pompously, (and according to Wikipedia) these ideas are present in ancient Greek philosophy, expressed as "Nothing comes from nothing" by Parminedes.

When my eldest son gets a new toy, his attention and thus time spent with older toys is diminished. He has a finite amount that he can give, so it gets divided up. Sometimes bonds are broken entirely. Sometimes they're just weakened. Perhaps there's a law of "conservation of toy salience" where toy salience can neither be created or destroyed, just moved from one toy to another?

Consider then how this concept of conservation applies to brand associations. Let's say that a concept (some emotion such as creativity, happiness, cool etc.) in the brain has a limited amount of "association juice" to give to other concepts (e.g. brands). Association juice can neither be created not destroyed, just moved from one association to another. So a concept that is shared by many brands can only have a small amount of association juice to give to each. Whereas a rarer concept can be much more firmly associated with a brand because there's more association juice available. This model accounts for why brands that focus on a singular purpose are more distinct. Our brains work on the strength of the connections between the concepts rather than the concepts themselves. And assuming that we like the association, lots of association juice = high salience.

Does this idea of conservation apply to everything? When my second son was born in April last year, I found a new amount of love. My love for my other son, wife, family, friends etc. was not diminished. So is love exempt from the conservation laws dictating a finite amount to share? Well it's either that or the amount of association juice that "love" can give is so vast that a new baby is a drop in the ocean. I suspect it's the latter but I have no intention of testing it by having more children.

Hmm.
3rd November 2010
Effectiveness above all.

Understandably, we're remarkably chuffed that our work with Everest has been recognised with an IPA Effectiveness Award. Here's little me picking up the incredibly heavy trophy along with Lord Burns, our Clients from Everest and Clive Anderson.

I'm not bothered that we didn't win the Grand Prix. We were often up against brands that have been spending gazillions for decades. And besides, even having a case that's clear enough to bother entering these awards is pretty darn good!

Our work with Everest is evidence that our "Brand Action" philosophy works. Big idea / brand thinking married to response / business tactics working together in harmony to deliver the numbers for Client's business.

Now I want to win another one.
20th September 2010
Design with Intent

Thanks to the IPA, nudging and Behavioural Economics are now common lingo. This thinking is often not new to marketers, rather it often provides a solid framework for expressing what we knew to be right in the first place. (I have much sympathy for Herdmeister's point of view).

I recently came across a nice presentation (links below) packed with 'nudges' that will help change behaviour. Working out how (traditional marketing) agencies can make money from this type of thinking for Clients is an important question to resolve going forward.

Here's the PDF toolkit of "101 Patterns for Influencing Behaviour Through Design". Here's the blog post announcing it - and a hat-tip to the ever useful Seth Godin for bringing my attention to it.
16th August 2010
Object Ideas

In my relatively recently installed, and so far remarkably effective, cross-platform way of managing my to-do list - Evernote - I have a note filled with seedling ideas for blog posts. And one of them says "connect Social Objects and Purpose Ideas".

Annoyingly, yer man Hugh MacLeod of GapingVoid has just gone and written an eloquent and well thought out post doing just that. So please go take a read of Hugh's post about Object Ideas.

It's sort of my idea, but mostly not. Damn it.

Important stuff methinks. Nearly as important as there being a Calvin and Hobbes search engine.
3rd August 2010
Even More Interestingness

A few weeks ago, we launched a project to create a permanent repository of vaguely marketing related wonderfulness, designed to be a source of inspiration and a means to share thoughts and ideas.

The Interestingness blog is by MBA staff and (primarily) for MBA staff. But do feel free to take a look. You can follow the blog via Twitter (@interestingmba) which is a slave account providing a link whenever a new post is made. The RSS feed is here.

Since launch we've curated a wonderful array of content.

There's SMS Slingshot.

There's "Claire in the Community", which is a "Culture Vulture" presentation from our monthly company meeting given by our most esteemed Claire Frankling about some community initiatives that she's coming across. Includes her award winning fruit-based owl sculpture.

There's Old Spice spoofs.

And there's even Veronica pretending to be Spanish for the World Cup.

Please check it out.
8th July 2010
Simon Sinek on the Power of 'Why?'

Another fascinating TED presentation littered with great examples. Here the presenter discusses the necessity for businesses to find their core purpose - their 'Why?'. Not an entirely different train of thought from the Herdmeister's Purpose Ideas.

I'm not totally sold on the "people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it" shtick. Yes, being clear about why you do things has helped to develop some incredibly successful, often entrepreneurially-run, businesses (Zappos, Apple et al), but it is by no means an immutable law of business.