Originally made for the Australian design community at Australian INFront.

Your right brain is a wonderful thing.

Largely misunderstood, it makes conceptual, visual and word connections that people who don’t do what you do for a living often can’t make. And, because of that, it earns you a living.

Thing is, your clients are probably extreme left-brain types. The rational, processes, systems and structure matter to them. And while they admire and understand the value of your right brain, the truth is that it also probably scares them a little.

The chasm between the right and left can often play out in frustrating ways: the right-brained gets frustrated because the left-brained ‘doesn’t get ideas’; the right-brained complains that the left-brained ‘doesn’t understand my business’.

If you’re stuck in this chasm with a client now, try the below.

1. Talk numbers

Make sure you know how your client makes money. Know how their sales are going. Know how their competitors’ sales are going. Know how the industry (or category) they’re in is performing and what share of the category they currently have.

Then, depending on the type of work you’re doing for your client, try to establish a financial goal. To do this, you (and they) will need to know a few key things:

The lifetime value of a customer

A car manufacturer may find, on average, that people buy 2.5 cars from them in their lifetimes, and service them with the manufacturer 4 times in the first few years. This may make the company $10,000 in profit. This is their net lifetime value (simplistically speaking).

Expected return on marketing investment

Most companies with business savvy will have an expectation around what money they expect back from any money they invest. Typically this ratio comes from a textbook someone studied at university or through trial and error.

Marketing allowable

Let’s say, based on the example above, this company expects a return at a ratio of 4:1. That is, for every dollar they spend they expect $4 back. This means that to earn their $10,000 in profit they should be willing to spend $2,500. A lot of companies haven’t established these numbers; some know them but don’t want to share them because their aim is to drive down costs while getting valuable customers (ie they keep you in the dark and try to get cheaper services from you). If you’re a marketer reading this, try sharing this information with your agencies/suppliers because it could change their entire approach to your business.

Often marketing budgets are set based on a percentage of annual revenue (5-10% is common). Then, for those involved with advertising campaigns there’s been a traditional 4:1 ratio of media spend to production spend. So you may get a brief with these arbitrarily made budgets and ratios stipulated that actually don’t take into account the business opportunity – including the lifetime value of a customer, ROI and marketing allowable.

Based on a $2,500 marketing allowable for a car, maybe your ‘creative solution’ is actually to hire ten people to drive to schools in a particular suburb and offer mums free test drives after the morning drop-off. Who knows? The point is that being able to speak these numbers will help your clients realise that you’re focused on results and not just ‘pretty pictures’.

2. Show numbers

There is an abundance of free data out there now. If I was you I’d make keyword research part of every project. It helps you understand how people research your client’s products. You’d be wise to reflect some of that behaviour and language back in any communication.

Google Adwords is a free tool from Google that now shows approximate numbers for monthly searches. If your client is Australian, be sure to change the settings to Australia then ‘show’ the Local search volume.

Google Insights is a great tool to look at search trends over a period of time.

And, if you make the internet, you could get use out of this free data from Forrester that describes how Australians behave online: Social Technographics.

You can find a tonne more here: Delicious bookmarks.

3. Paint a picture

So you’ve got your head around the business numbers and the customer behaviour numbers. Next, show them what their competitors are doing. Show them what companies overseas are doing – show them the best. Then summarise in ten points what best practice is.

Have a long-term vision for what you can help your client with, an ambition. What can you help them be best at? Again, connect a number to it.

As far as a brief strategic presentation… define the problem/opportunity (don’t use words like ‘drive sales’; talk plainly – ‘people think our shoes fall apart’). Find an insight to exploit (an insight being an ‘unspoken human truth’ – ie saying ‘mums are time-poor’ is not insightful; saying ‘mums are time-poor because being busy makes them feel better about themselves’ – completley made up – is more poignant). Show any consumer research you’ve done – show video, show consumer quotes. Then tell them what the strategy is. Again, talk plainly. Avoid words like ‘empowerment’, ‘enrich’, those fluffy marketing poetics that nobody really understands. That’s unaccountable strategy. Say it in a sentence (a ‘to/by’ format is sometimes useful).

Then…

4. Show it’s kind of been done before

Obviously, real creativity brings something new into the world. A lateral thought. But I find it’s good to show 3 examples of campaigns or designs that are just a little bit like what we want to do. For instance, if I’m presenting some video content ideas I may show Will it Blend or the T-Mobile flash mob. Again, I’ll summarise in a handful of points why these examples were successful and then what I present as a new idea will apply these principles.

5. Show your thinking

Regardless of what field you’re in, being able to describe an idea in 25 words or less, a logline, is really useful before you show any visuals. Show some inspiration along the way – photos, screengrabs, words. This is all about story-telling – from the numbers through to the visuals.

What do you think?
Is there anything you’d add to the above? Anything you disagree with?

If you enjoyed this article, you may enjoy How to get into strategy.

Photo courtesy Pier Mario under a Commons Licence.

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Dealing with depression – directly or indirectly – is something many of us have to confront at some point in our lives. This post won’t be for everyone but I feel compelled to write it anyway… mainly because I couldn’t find anything to read when I needed it.

Manchild

About 4 years ago, I nearly imploded. I’d flirted with it since I was a teenager. A lot of my young angst came from my perspective of my experience being in a divorced family and the stuff that can go with it.

I still remember over-hearing a parent when I was in third class point me out in a group of kids as ‘the one’ with parents who were split up. I think, at that time, there was one other kid in my year with separated parents and a handful in the entire school. Yes, it was different to now.

In primary school, I was convinced I had migraine headaches all the time. To be honest, I think I did get headaches but I made it out to be worse than it was to get attention. So I was sent to a hypnotherapist. Best thing about it was this relaxation tape he/she made for me. I used the techniques to relax and then used the recording technique to record my study notes as a teenager to fall asleep to. Weird, eh? But it worked for me.

My school reports always talked about my ‘rough corners’ that needed ‘smoothing out’. I thought and acted differently. I felt I lived through a lot of my parents’ relationships – their happiness, their despair after break-ups – not as a child but as an adult with the emotional capacity of a child.

As a teenager (and even beyond) I struggled to relate to people who came from families that appeared to me (often entirely superficially) to be ‘normal’. I envied them on one hand and didn’t understand them on the other.

In high school, we had a system where a group of 15 or so of us would meet the same teacher before lunch every day for 4 years. Once a week we’d spend 2 hours together. One time, we were doing some bonding exercise and the teacher asked if anyone would come to the front of the class to answer any question that someone wanted to ask them.

I stuck up my hand. I wasn’t fearful about that sort of stuff.

What struck me was the question I was asked: “What’s it like having divorced parents?”

It was a weird question to ask me because that’s just how it was. It was like asking a Chinese kid what it was like to be Chinese. I replied: “It’s better than coming home to parents arguing all the time.” I meant it. But I got sent for counselling.

There were so many other much more intense and real stories that I’m not comfortable talking about now – some completely devastating and involving people close to me. Point is, that from a young age a lot of this angst kept building up and I didn’t know what to do about it.

Depression at Christmas – 2005

So, Christmas four years ago.

I was burnt out at work – working late nights and weekends. I’d flirted with insomnia for years and doing the long hours took me there again. Often, it would take a drink to put me to sleep… and I’d spent years mostly sleeping on the floor in front of the TV.

I didn’t know what I was going to do with my own little business, a magazine I’d started when I was 20. It was my identity, my passion, my hobby, my social network, my nights out. It was everything great and everything bad about me. It allowed me to escape into busy-ness to avoid dealing with all the stuff above; but it allowed me to find an outlet as well.

I also didn’t know what I was going to do with myself. Square peg, round hole thing. I knew I had a lot to offer but didn’t know where to put it. I was married and needed to focus on building for the family but felt that everything I needed to do was going to compromise everything I was about.

On top of that, earlier in the year, I’d watched my grandfather breathe his last breath. It was both the most incredible and saddest experience of my life. To breathe him into me as he passed is something I will cherish forever. To lose him – and my symbol of stability – was crushing.

I had some relationship stuff going on that was just painful (not my wife).

Most of my close mates that I could try to talk to about this stuff were all living out of Sydney.

Oh, and I had my firstborn on the way. So, on top of all of the above, I felt under incredible pressure and had no emotional energy to dig myself out of an extremely black hole.

I was lost; an emotional cripple.

I don’t really want to go into what I was thinking or what I did while I was on the dark side; I’d had stints of depression over the years – especially after I’d burnt myself out after publishing issues of my magazine (weeks of 20 hour days at a time). But this was the worst.

And it was Christmas.

What I did about it

I talked to my wife about it… quite a lot. But I felt so alone that I was convinced she didn’t understand what I was going through and that her advice was irrelevant, to a degree.

I just (as in, right now) asked her how she felt during that time. She said: “Helpless, sad. I wondered, ‘What can I do?’” Sorry, honey!

I confided in one or two other family members – but, again, it either back-fired and made me feel more angry and vulnerable, or I felt I’d burdened them with something that would tear them up inside.

I avoided a few friend get-togethers pretending I had to work on my magazine. Truth is, I couldn’t even focus on that.

I looked up a few things online. I Google’d depression. I read about some of the really creative minds that were depressives as well – it made me feel a bit more at peace: “Maybe, feeling like this is just part of being someone who writes a lot?” I thought. I did a few self-tests: fill in a form and it tells you if you’re depressed. I read a few stories from other people but I wasn’t really in the mood for their situations – I just wanted to sort out mine.

Some time after Christmas Day, I decided to visit a GP. I knew it was the right thing to do but felt a little stupid taking the issue to a GP. I wanted more from the consultation – I wanted to walk out ‘better’ – but that was unrealistic.

The GP put me onto a counsellor… but the worst thing about dealing with depression at Christmas is that a lot of people are on holiday. I had to wait 2 weeks to even be able to call her. I couldn’t find any other alternatives.

If you go through this situation – please, please do your best to be patient through this time. If you know of help that is available, please post it in the comments.

Counselling

I eventually went for about 6-8 sessions, once a week (I wanted it to be quicker). I think each session cost about $60-80. I got some money back from the government but it still felt like a big financial commitment.

My two main wishes were to know why I was this way – was it genetic, a chemical imbalance? And how could I get out of ‘this way’ as quickly as possible?

Into the 2nd or 3rd session, when the counsellor just answered back my questions or thoughts with more questions – not answers – I realised that this was my journey and that I had to get strong on my own.

The best thing about counselling was hearing myself talk about my experiences growing up and as an adult, my fears, what I felt guilty about, what kept me awake at night… and to be able to do that in one big go… to line my ducks up. I was paying for the privilege so didn’t feel like I was burdening anyone. I could say anything – that was the point.

The second best thing I took out of it was forgiving myself and making a commitment to myself and my wife to try to focus on what mattered to our little family; and any external influences would have to get involved in our lives on our terms… not theirs.

So

From what I understand, for many, Christmas sets off depression. Lost and missed loved ones, money problems, family pressures and so on.

If you go through this experience, know that you’re not alone. Try to talk to someone – but understand that they may not know how to talk back. Try to be patient with them, and, more importantly, yourself. And, please, get yourself to a GP.

If you can get through it, life looks incredibly beautiful – as it truly is.

P.S. Thank you, wifey, for sticking by me through the tough times… And if my kids grow up and read this stuff, know that all of us are a bit broken in some way; it just took me a while to work out what to do about it.

Image courtesy coljay72.

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Below is a presentation I put together recently for the Exhibition and Event Association of Australasia industry day. It covers a bit of personal philosophy about what social media is and the ‘secret’ behind it, a re-cap of some recent research that looks into the correlation between social commitment and financial performance plus some steps to making it happen.

A few things to keep in mind:

1. The how-to part of this is simple for a few reasons. I don’t belive you absolutely must have all the expensive tools to ‘do’ social media well; and most of the fancy-pants diagrams I’ve seen in the space aren’t actually useful and usable. What you do need is a great understanding of both your business and your audience.

2. I had 45 minutes – you could spend a few days on all the ins and outs, case studies, possible approaches and still be scratching the surface. I realise this is very high level – but hopefully practical.

3. Metrics – I mention in the presentation about focusing on one key metric. I don’t mean that you do this without tracking anything else. I do mean that this focus at the start of a project really helps sharpen discussion and strategy.

What do you think?
Have I missed anything – even at this high level? Have you applied this and found it working?

P.S. There are some photos of the presentation here.

Photo courtesy Radar DDB UK.

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I have two kids, both of whom have been in childcare since they were about 11 months. Every day that I drop them off I’m happy that they will find stimulation in and care from great teachers and some really cool kids.

But, when the gate closes behind me, my heart sinks just a little bit as well. Every day.

At the same time, I understand that – in the society and ways I’ve bought into – this is the way for the time being, that with two employed parents we are very fortunate… and, for the most part, our kids seem to be really thriving with the stimulation. The fact that my oldest sometimes asks to go to childcare at 8am on a Saturday kind of gave it away.

Tonight, I had my 4th parent-teacher night ever… for my 20-month old. Typically, the teacher shares photos and stories about your child then asks a few questions like: “What should we focus on with your child? What goals do you have for your child?”

My answers usually revolve around ‘a balance of everything’ and that ‘goals can come later’. I feel like I’m letting the question down, but doing my job as a parent – as I see it. Is that called cognitive dissonance? Word.

Anyway… I thought I’d share my thoughts on what I actually want for my kids – knowing that I have impact – but no control – over what actually will happen.

The headline: I want them to find their own rhythm in life

I’ve said this a few times when asked by different people. It’s cute – but it’s bullshit. If I was honest with myself, that means that I want them to be happy being themselves but hopefully absorbing a lot of my values in the process. But it doesn’t mean that they have to get into uni, that they have to work as obsessively as I have over the years, that they have to make lots of money.

It does mean that I want them to engage in the good, constructive things that humanity has on offer – and to choose a lot more of this than the opposite.

So, having given it a little more thought… here are 7 things I would like my kids to become – and, if they read it some day, know that this is not a checklist. You will get high-fives and knuckles as long as you do good.

1. Intellectually curious and adventurous

I can’t help it but I struggle with people who aren’t curious about the world. Like, why are we here? Why do we behave how we behave? Where do butterflies come from? But, I struggle even more with people who are curious but have no desire to do, to turn their thoughts and ideas into actions. I respect this value.

2. Problem solvers

This is connected to the above but I love the analytical mind that tries to make things better. I try in my own way to do this. It doesn’t have to be on a grand scale, but I hope they solve problems more than they complain about or create them.

3. Empathic

Easy to say; hard to do. I simply hope that they think more about other people around them than not. Sometimes you meet people who are so in tune with others – how they feel, how to help them, patient listeners – that you realise how self-absorbed you are. I don’t wish that my kids become saint-like but I do hope they consider the issues in the lives of people around them and try to be change agents in those situations.

4. Physically ambitious

This is not about being the best in the world. It’s about exploring the world through their physicality – not turning it off. I hope they get to experience their bodies in ways they couldn’t have imagined (keep it clean) – my main personal example is through martial arts. If you’ve ever trained and seen your leg pop up above your head, felt exhausted but punched on, wrestled your way out of a choke… you know what I mean.

5. Good communicators

I think you can have average ideas, communicate them well and still make an impact. Of course, I hope my kids have the odd fantastic idea – simple fantastic is cool; versus Nobel Prize – but ideas are nothing if you can’t express them to people in motivating ways.

6. Able to love without being blinded by it

I hope my kids can love the crazy, unbridled love. The meal-replacement kind of love. I just hope that, in doing so, they keep most of their senses about them.

7. Aware that I’m always there for them – and completely flawed

Times will get tough but we’ll get through them. I’ll physically be there to make sure we do – touch wood. Also, nobody’s perfect – especially your parents. Every day we learn stuff. That’s what keeps us going.

What do you want for your kids?
I’d love to know.

Photo by foreversouls. (Not my kids!)

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I tinker with a lot of stuff – not as much as I probably should – but I do have a tendency to wait until something seems like it’s getting a bit of traction before giving it due time. (Just so you know, Second Life didn’t pass the test – don’t hate me).

But, to be honest, I’ve definitely been a mobile skeptic until the past year or two. In 1999, when I was at K*Grind (Sydney dot-com phenom backed by Macquarie Bank), I remember hearing prophesies of stuff like Foursquare. In fact, I still remember the exact example someone smarter than me stated: “Imagine being on Pitt St in front of McDonald’s and you get a message saying your friend is inside and McDonald’s then sends you a special offer to take up in-store.”

Every year since then, I’ve been waiting for my mobile McDonald’s offer… and a friend to share it with.

Possibly, Foursquare – and there are several other tools like this out there – is the platform off which this stuff will become mainstream reality. If not, whatever happens next will be. That’s why I’ve decided that it’s worth my time to play with it. As social networks go mobile along with years of our personal data, the real-world possibilities are very exciting.

BTW, here’s a snapshot of website traffic to Foursquare.com via Google Ad Planner (doesn’t include iTunes information access or app usage stats):

So, what is Foursquare?

A mobile social network that allows people to share with each other where they are at a particular time and what to do there. That’s the guts of it. The bonus bits include being told (via push messages) when your network checks in somewhere and the ability to compete to become a mayor of a place (by being there more often than anyone else).

That mayor thing, I admit, turned me off a little. Mid-year, Foursquare was going nuts in the States and everyone kept Tweeting about becoming mayor of stuff. I didn’t appreciate it. But, today I became Mayor of the Sydney Convention Centre and it feels good.

Some Foursquare screenshots:

What I like about Foursquare

Helps me appreciate where I live even more
I live in the inner city and take the family on plenty of long walks around town. I documented a bunch of what I got up to on the weekend then looked at it today and realised how much stuff there is to do – even though sometimes I beat Sydney up.

Faster than Lonely Planet – and doesn’t try to sell me books (yet)
Every time I’ve traveled overseas in recent years I’ve tried to jump on Lonely Planet but have found the experience either slow, underwhelming (felt like, for a while, the content was really light in order to flog books) or a bit confusing. If I’d had Foursquare on my last trip, I’d have been able to access a tonne of short, useful stuff in an instant. Definitely keen to use it next trip.

Realise people I sort of know have similar likes and patterns
When you start on Foursquare, you can add contacts from Gmail, Twitter etc. Over the weekend past, there were people like jjprojects (we’ve never met) doing really similar stuff as me. Was cool to watch. Maybe we should be friends in real life.

Risk-reduced ‘new’
When you’re new to a city or even an area, doing something new is always risky: you may waste your time or worse. Seeing a food recommendation from a friend like Ian Lyons at a particular cafe is more compelling to me than both the menu and waiter’s recommendation because I have a feeling for what Ian’s about and have known him for years.

Curiosity competition
Every time you tell Foursquare you’ve arrived somewhere (ie you ‘check in’), you get points that earn you badges and titles. This weirded me out initially but it’s a bit of fun.

The maps
4mapper and Social Great are just the start. Watch what the masses are doing and get ideas about where to go and what to do.

What I don’t like about Foursquare

Outing where I live
What if someone puts my personal address up? Some people ‘check in’ to their home – but a complete stranger could tell Foursquare where I live. Then…

Push-bullying
If I had push notifications on, had my address outed, a bunch of people could flash-spam me (sorry, made that up) by telling Foursquare they are in my house.

Push-noise
I think I got 3 push notifications in the space of a few minutes and decided it was time to turn it off. You’ll probably do the same.

People can cheat
Sebastian Vasta is the mayor of where I work and I don’t think he’s ever even been there. If he did, I’d Rick-roll him for his mayor-dom anyway.

Social network spam
I get how this could be useful but it’s annoying when people have Foursquare linked to all of their social networks… and you’re ‘friends’ with them in all of their social networks. I get it. I get it. You’re having expensive wine in an expensive restaurant, while I just put my kids to bed and don’t need to know that EVERYWHERE I’M ONLINE right now.

What I’m curious about in the future

Offline impact
Overseas, small businesses have been seen to offer freebies (eg free coffee) to the mayor of their places. But I’m curious to see – if this takes off in Australia – what weirdness takes place. For instance, will physical altercations happen over who’s mayor of a place? Will an Accused used their documented (but not verified) Foursquare behaviour as an alibi in court? And so on.

Dealing with scale
If Foursquare does get big, it will be interesting to see how they allow people to create groups and sub-groups, to minimise noise, to facilitate short-term but high-impact use (eg exploration competitions, conference use, etc).

Getting more like-minded
Currently, the ‘like-mindedness’ of Foursquare is purely defined by people in my social network – people I’ve already determined are a bit like me. I’m keen to see what happens when ‘like-mindedness’ incorporates data, words and behaviour about/by me and people I know (or don’t know) from other channels.

Tiered status systems
As the community gets bigger, we’ll need ways of deciphering who’s worth listening to – and about what – through the noise.

What do you think?
Will Foursquare take off in Australia? Will it be something else? How are you using it?

Badge photo by @naveen.

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