Introducing the well-known

I usually avoid talking about advertisements here but I could not help putting this one up. I have not seen any television advertising for the Accord 2009, but what I saw in print really caught my attention.
Imagine what perhaps would have been the brief for this piece of communication?

Accord is a well-known brand from Honda and has a history of more than 15 years or so. Thus with a new 2009 Accord coming to the market – the objective was not as much to talk about Accord as it was to talk about the 2009 version. It is not very difficult to imagine that, with one new version of Accord coming to the market almost every 18 months, the new features would be more incremental than transformational. The twin challenge could thus have been
1. How to make incremental changes, from a well-known brand, look interesting
2. How not to leave everything just to the looks of the car?

This is the beauty of this magazine advertisement. Here is how it addresses the above among other challenges, effectively:

1. Make a well labeled diagram but give it a story: The cross section of the car is more than just that – it uses a visual compartment with miniature people in it to demonstrate each feature. It makes each new feature personal and thoughtful and visually arresting. You will definitely stop and read more.

2. Talk about many things and yet give one message: The care has many new features – but the one message that it gives is that the new Accord is loaded much more than ever before

3. Do not just get stuck with the inside: The advertisement still shows the car from outside – looks take care of the rest of the concerns about “is the new Accord looking any different after all?”

4. Tell people what they want to know: Everybody knows Accord is good. Everybody also perhaps knows that the new Accord would be having something new. The question would be - what? This is exactly what this advertisement tells the reader.

Accord 2009 is a winning product. And if I were to go with this example, I would say that the communication also does full justice to make everybody understand that.

The story in the summary

These days you tell people something and they will urge you “Tell me fast!”
When you have an interesting idea you are urged to “turn this concept into an elevator speech!”
When you have a concept you are often asked “what is the key visual for this creative approach?
When you have a theme with multiple facets, people say “can you show this as a visual board?”
And one of my favourites, “Do not give me a research report – just give me a well edited video film that I can play for about 7-10 minutes..”

People try to get more out of their life and time in more ways than one “The album sucks – just get the 1st and 4th track”, “What is the one thing that this workshop told you?” “So what is this book really saying?”

And then of course everyone tries to convey their feelings with communication expressions like “LOL”, “Rgds”, “Tks” “tc” (in addition to, the now, more than 50 kinds of smiley)

Also, in the past almost 2-3 years, people have even started rationing spelling their names – I guess it started with the lack of time and soon turned into a statement of style through on brevity. So Saurabh Sharma is not needed at the need of every mail – ‘s’ is enough however if you really mean to sign off, it can be “S”.

The rise of visually rich adult comics, messages with symbols, PowerPoint presentations without words, word documents without many words, music without words, music videos with Karaoke are some examples of the new shorthand culture.

While on one side everything is getting “shorter, crisper, smoother, faster, focused, narrow, now and quick”, on the other side there is this constant appeal for the “Story”. “Can you say what you want to say in a way that I not just hear but I also ‘like to listen’, ‘remember’, ‘believe’ and ‘act upon’?”

I believe that the paucity of time is intensifying the tension between ‘relaxed story telling’ and ‘brevity geared for efficiency’. The long story needs to get short but the short point needs to tell a story!
Today, the classic - ‘brevity is the soul of wit’ also needs a story that can be engaging and yet at the same time ‘the stories that we tell need to be told in the elevator’.

Interpersonal communication, especially in work situations, is becoming increasingly demanding and most of us who do not recognize this end up at the wrong side of it. The key perhaps is to understand (in real time) when to switch to the story, when to say the summary and when to say the story in a summary.

Hey work, I will not think about you after work!

The more people I meet from the urban workforce (the non-assembly line service sector), the stronger my belief gets that “in these modern times, the place of work is getting reduced to an execution zone”. Notice how many of us draw a “Jobs to do” list on the night before Monday morning or in the subway or bus on our way to work.
Place of work no more seems to resemble a place for contemplation, at least no more individual contemplation.
There is just too much ringing, buzzing, pinging and falling apart - for one to be able to ‘switch oneself off’ and contemplate. There are way too many people pressured by the weight of project delivery date!

No wonder some people are trying to create zones that can still trigger some thinking – usually through groupthink. A more popular word for this is brainstorming.
Increasingly brainstorms tend to be proxies for lack of opportunity to think on one’s own feet (and rest of the times it is aimed at ‘creating a perception of consensus’ for something that might originally be an individual’s idea).

Lack of opportunity to think at work might not lead to anything significant, as long people do not treat their work and life as two separate and watertight compartments. If we are telling ourselves that we are not at all going to think about work after office hours, then in a way, we are telling ourselves that we are not going to think about improving the quality of our work!

My good friend Manish Sinha often used to say, “The best work happens at the fringe of work”. In other words best ideas usually come our way when we are not necessarily looking for them.
This, I am sure contradicts with what we hear most of the business leaders claiming in media– “I stop thinking about work the moment I am at home”.

I would not say if it is good or bad but if we try and demarcate work and life the way many of the business leaders make us understand that they do, we might not be able to achieve the quality of thinking that is needed for the same breakthroughs to happen.

This does not mean that we cannot be great achievers if we are not workaholics; it just means that we need to keep our minds open for fresh thoughts and breakthrough ideas can come anytime.