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Noises from the Colouring In Department - Lists
Submitted by verridian on Wed, 03/02/2010 - 13:28 post commentLists; what on earth is this thing about lists? Don’t get me wrong, I understand the need in some organisations for checklists, http://tinyurl.com/yz5wcuf(please don’t imagine for a second that I read the Daily Mail, but this is the most relevant reference that I could find,) but in general Lists, why?
What is the reason for my ire? Let me illustrate.
1. They’re normally contrived
2. They tend to repeat themselves
3. They’re normally contrived
4. They are a little bit patronising[1]
I was sat waiting to interview a candidate for the position of Marketing Manager some years ago and the candidate was running a little late. Let’s be frank this is not the way to enamour your prospective employer. I was sat with the HR Manager, who’s there to ensure that I follow all of the right procedures and so on, but with the candidate being late, we had a few spare minutes and the conversation organically flowed towards topics of a more casual nature, nothing inappropriate, but we chatted amiably around what we had done over the weekend and any plans for the upcoming Saturday.
“I was supposed to go out with this fella,” she says with a big grin on her face, “but then I found out that he had a cat and then that was that really.”
“I beg your pardon?” I said. “You called off a date with him because he had a cat?”
“Well yes,” she replied, looking a little more nervous now, “well more because he was obviously a cat person. I don’t go out with cat people.”!
“You’re not seeing him, not because he is inherently sexist, or because he’s been caught out as a compulsive liar, or an international arms dealer, but because he’s a cat person?”
“Well when you put it like that it does seem a little silly.” She muttered quietly into her mocha-choca-frappe-ccinno, (as she doesn’t drink coffee).
“What else is on your list?” I asked, genuinely.
And then she told me. She was quite frank about the whole thing, but she told me what was on her list.
She didn’t like people who were cat people, who smoked, who drank coffee; she wasn’t that keen on blokes with blond hair. (They tend to take too much time fussing over their appearance. “Really, all of them?” I say, “Oh yes.”)
She really didn’t like people who wore too much eyeliner, and that was when the list really started.
She didn’t like beans, celery, spiders, bridges with holes in them, radicchio, mustard, calendars, moustaches, people who don’t wash their hair every day, anything by Apple, window cleaners, (because they’re perverts), Brillo Pads, (they feel icky,) footballers, heavy metal. (“What construction equipment?” “No, the music.”) People who drive in the middle lane of the motorway at 65 miles per hour, people that stop suddenly in the middle of the pavement with no warning, doctors. Chavs...
“Stop!” I said. “How do you get out of bed in the morning, seriously, this list is all consuming. Doesn’t it stifle any creativity you might have? ”
“Well there are reasons, the cat thing for instance is because my ex husband was a cat person, and we had such a horrid divorce, how can I bring myself to spend time with a cat person?”
Lists like this exist everywhere; I had no idea to what extent until I went from being the client to the agent.
We redesigned and re-launched a web site recently to 99% approval from the client. I say 99%, because there was one conversation with one person within the business that seemed at loggerheads with the rest of his business, the brief, the approved direction that we had taken and well frankly, me.
I don’t think it was a clash of personalities I think it is a symptom of the common condition that most marketers are presented with which is this.
Everyone is a frustrated marketer.
Some of them are able to control the urge to second guess the work that those of us have chosen to make our careers, studied, made mistakes learned and grown from, and others, those that think all we do all day is gossip and guzzle champagne think that they can redesign the web page that we’ve put together because they...’use the internet a bit.’
There is however help at hand, there is one weapon that it is impossible to argue with and that is Research, Research and Research. The results of consumer insight, analysis and MI are the only real way that these conversations can end in your favour.
Most established wisdom will tell you that these things can be time consuming and costly, and if you’re not careful they can be both of these things, but only with a good understanding of how your customer base acts and how they interact with you can you successfully establish your product.
This I think is where losing the list, and by that I mean preconceptions, misjudged opinions and so on, can really benefit. Take the website; it was aimed at middle managers that needed an outplacement service. It needed to be functional, easy to access, and have a perceived value for money. The people that it was aimed at when surveyed showed traits such as pragmatism, efficiency, no real need for whistles and bells, and a lack of respect for those that place form over function. How do we know this? We know this because we talked to a large number of people that used the site, and asked them directly what it was that worked for them, whether they would recommend it to friend or colleague and if they wanted to change areas of the site what would they change. Not rocket science, I’m not trying to make us out as anything other than good at what we do, but, you would not believe the response that that we got from the individual in question.
“A friend of mine runs an ecommerce site and he uses a lot of flash, we should have flash.”
I am not making this up, when confronted with the fact that we had spoken to a number of his customers and asked them what they wanted, his overarching strategy was to talk to a mate. I am really glad however that he was one voice amongst a number of people that were able to see the results for what they were.
Anyway I digress, after letting the HR manager know that I strive on a daily basis to lose my list, the candidate still hadn’t turned up. I mean that, I have worked long and hard to resist the temptation to define myself by what I don’t like. After about 30 minutes I asked her whether she had sent the candidate a map to the hotel. To which the HR manager said that she couldn’t remember sending the invite out. So busy with her lists of what she didn’t like in people, she had forgotten to let the candidate know they were on mine.
disapproving (UK usually patronise)to speak to or behave towards someone as if they are stupid or not important “Stop patronising me - I understand the play as well as you do.”
Source: Cambridge Dictionaries Online