The engineering of consent

Bernays in the 1920s

The modern master of propaganda and public relations -often termed the modern day Machiavelli- is Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s Vienna born nephew. Based in the United States, Bernays -(November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995)- was a pioneer in collective manipulation. To this effect he skilfully and successfully combined individual and social psychology, public opinion studies, political persuasion and advertising. He used all these to create what he termed necessary illusions which he then presented (or filtered) as reality to the masses. Bernays referred to this social process as the engineering of consent. He’s one of the first people in advertising who used manipulation of the subconscious as a tool to influence public opinion. Bernays himself believed that manipulation was needed as society was dangerous due to it’s “herd instinct”.

One of the reasons this came to mind and blog is related to cigarette smoking and women (more specifically as I mused on why I had started smoking in boarding school in Britain as an early adolescent).

One of Bernays campaigns in the 1920s was made by request of the American Tobacco Company to increase cigarette sales among the female population, among which it was considered taboo to smoke in public. To this effect, he sent a group of young models to march in the New York City parade. He subsequently told the press that a group of women rights marchers would light “torches of freedom”. On this prompt, the women lit up Lucky Strikes cigarettes in front of eager paparazzi. According to Wikipedia, The New York Times, on the 1st of April 1929 edition, printed: “Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of Freedom”. This helped to break the taboo against women smoking in public.

More on the man and his third party authorities here. Third party authorities is a method based on the statement that: “If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway”.

Portrait of Edward Bernays via wikimedia commons

A little sign of our times

Found a good photo today in the Freakonomics blog; made me think of the times we live in under a tragicomic, self-gloating and perverse light. Some food for thought, I guessed.

Thanks to Author.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shuttercat7/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

The state of the Russian advertising market

In yesterday’s Russian daily RBC, the president of Mindshare Group Russia, Vladimir Rass, conveyed that he expects the ad market will decrease 25-27%, to RUB 195-200bn (EUR 4.41-4.52bn) in Russia in 2009 vs 2008.

• The TV ad segment will fall 20-22%, to RUB 107-110bn
• Outdoor ads by 30-40%, to RUB 27.3-32bn
• Ads on radio by 35%, to RUB 9.1bn
• Ads in printed periodicals by 40%, to RUB 34.56bn

In his opinion, the amount of ads in the Internet will remain at the level of 2008 by the end of 2009, or will grow about 5%. Thus, demand for ads in Runet will total RUB 7.5-7.88bn. Managing Director of Aegis Media for Russia, Andrey Brayovich, supposes that the segments of TV and Internet will overcome the crisis faster. The Russian online advertising market grew by 5% in H1 2009. Original article in Russian here.

A Russian demographic catastrophe

Russia’s single and most acute problem is the demographic trend of the country. National Human Development Report, Russian Federation, 2008: Russia Facing Demographic Challenges is a study recently released by the United Nations. This report projects that Russia would lose at least 11 million more people by 2025. According to the study, “in the coming decades, the nation confronts accelerated population decrease; a dwindling of the working-age population; the general aging of the population; the drop in number of potential mothers; a large immigrant influx; and a possible rise in emigration rates”.

“The mortality crisis is one of the clearest manifestations of Russia’s long-term demographic crisis”, the report warns, with the gap between Russia and other developed countries widening since 1964. Further, life expectancy for both sexes was shortest in Russia among 33 European nations, and Russia lags far behind both the United States and Japan.

A two-pronged strategy is needed to reverse these trends, the new report said, calling for the promotion of active and healthy lifestyles on the one hand, and the adaptation of social services and institutions to the needs of the aging population on the other. It also pointed to migration as a possible way to fill gaps and boost the workforce to support economic growth.

In the past 16 years, nearly 6 million immigrants have come to Russia, but the study warned that for migration to be a truly effective solution, Russian society must adjust to accept the newcomers. Another UN report said last year that the population could fall to as low as 100 million in 2050.

More news and analysis here and here. Images of the Republic of Karelia, courtesy of Eero Korhonen.

Finland and the “cleantech” sector

Finland encourages domestic expertise in clean technology, which it promotes worldwide. Testimony of this reality follows.

1. Between 1998 and 2007 Finnish companies invested 337 EUR Million in energy efficiency, saving 7,35 terawatt hours of energy
2. The International Energy Agency has established that “Finland is a model for the world” in combined heat and power generation
3. A whooping 7% of Finnish exports are in clean tech, the highest of any OECD country
4. The number of Finnish nanotechnology companies has tripled since 2004
5. Since the 1990s, Helsinki has increased energy production by 60%, and has also increased air quality

Sources: Helsinki Times and Cleantech Finland

What Russian Workers Want

According to a survey made by the company Kelly Services, about 65% of Russian office workers are ready to change their job. 84% would be glad to accept an offer to work with another employer since they “do not like the tense atmosphere at their company and the unstable position of their employer”.

1/15 office workers have quit their jobs on their own accord as a result of bad relations with colleagues and top managers. About 41% of workers are ready to find new jobs due to their company’s instability. During the crisis, the work load of 72% of office employees changed; about 38% started to work less and 44% more.

According to the survey:

• over 50% of Russians would like to work at “an international company”
• 22,5% at a “young developing international company”
• 10,3% at a “Russian company with high potential”
• 8,1% at a “Russian state-run company”, and
• 7,7% at a “Russian private company”

A total of 2.400 office employees all over Russia were polled. This news item comes from Trud, edition of 22th June 2009.

In the picture, Metro Moscow escalators by Sansculotte licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 3.0

The Paper Video Pig

Last night I was looking for information on how to descale a kettle. I found a cool site with all things handy for life. Actually, the site’s slogan is “Get Good at Life”. The place is called Videojug and they basically show you videos on how to do stuff to fix some everyday problems and many other things (like How to Make an Origami Pig or an interview with a specialist on What is Bronchitis).

What I liked was how they are selling video ads. In the screen-shot I have a video about something as bizarre as origami pig making and it has an overlay on the bottom part of the screen. I also find the content is extremely suitable for this format (videos are well executed, pruned and edited, useful and purposeful (for the most part, forgive my examples). So, quality is reliable and acceptable which, for such a utility service, is critical.

As it’s a “solving-daily-issues-by-video-snaps-for-the-masses” kind of place, its content perfectly lends itself for click based non-intrusive video advertising formats.

The Facebook Samovar

Last week Yuri Milner picked up 1.96 pct of Facebook for US$200 M, putting the company’s value at about US$10 B. After doing this, he made the following statement to the media:

We are seeing a fundamental trend on this in Russia – all our businesses are profitable and we believe that the consumption of advertising online will change. Google started this revolution and social networks will continue it. Social networks will allow advertising to be much more targeted.

Milner is CEO of DST (Digital Sky Technologies) with interests in Russia’s e-mail portal Mail.ru, social networks Odnoklassniki.ru and Vkontakte.ru and dating site Mamba, along with others. Russia’s internet audience is Europe’s 4th after Germany, Britain and France, says comscore.

Anyone for comments?

Read That Post

“Experiments are only revealed in retrospect to be turning points”.

I strongly recommend to anyone working in media, or classifieds, or publishing of any kind to read this post.

And now, back to thinking about Aldus Manutius, the Elder.

Good night!

Perception (mis)management

The phrase perception management has often functioned as a euphemism for “an aspect of information warfare”. A scholar in the field notes a distinction between “perception management” and public diplomacy , which “does not, as a rule, involve falsehood and deception, whereas these are important ingredients of perception management; the purpose is to get the other side to believe what one wishes it to believe, whatever the truth may be“.

I shared this information on perception management with a colleague of mine just as I came across it, and he sent me the following and positively interesting interpretation on the issue:

Please bear in mind that the Truth is absolute, simple, universal and unique (“Truth is Truth”).
Perceptions of Truth are relative. Therefore, facts (which are perceptions of Truth by human beings) are relative. The Truth of the human mind is also relative therefore, perception of that which is personal Truth.

Only WISE PEOPLE may perceive the TRUTH, although they call it by different names. Truth shall triumph. That is why the Truth is singular, but the perceptions are plural.

I found this statement of special interest and highly relevant to the world we live in. However, I am not sure all of us would agree that facts are “perceptions of Truth”… Read and interpret at your own whim!

Smoking away

I work and live in countries where smoking is prevalent. Last night I had diner next to a 60 year old man who, while he ate, let a concatenation of cigarettes pretty much smoke themselves on the ashtray next to him. Today, it occurred to me to check just how much smoking is going on in these parts. As I imagined, the countries in which I spend most of my time are the world’s most notorious smoking centers. Just looking at the map of smoking males aged 15 or plus, I came across the following data in a recent World Health Organisation atlas.

With 60% and above smoking in that gender age group we have: Russia, Romania, Turkey, Tunisia, Georgia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, Republic of Korea, Cambodia, Yemen, Kenya…

Just for comparison I looked at my country, Spain, at 40-49% and also Finland, at 20-29% (like Canada). On the low end places like Sweden, below 20%, alongside Oman or Barbados. The low end has an interesting mixture of countries, which indicates that a number of different and possibly mutually exclusive factors contribute to low smoking indices. I leave this to another post.

More in 10 Facts about Global Burden of Disease; Tobacco Free Initiative of World Health Organisation

Image courtesy of darkroastedblend

Segundamano closes all print business in Spain

I recently read in the blog of the ex-IT Manager of Anuntis Segundamano (the Spanish operation of Schibsted Classified Media) that – as of November 2008 – all print publications of the company in Spain are closing.

They are leaders in the Spanish online market in Jobs (Infojobs and Laboris), General Merchandise (Segundamano), Real Estate (Fotocasa) and Automotive (Coches.net). Segundamano newspaper in Spain has been for 30 years a kind of transactional ‘institution’ for used goods. I think in Madrid almost 100% of the population over 30 knows it as the ‘free ads paper’ and has used it at some point or another to sell a house, get a job or find a car.

By now print was an irrelevant part of the company’s profit (they were issuing only 14 print titles now, versus +160 in summer of 2004). However, they had managed to keep the overall growth by aggressive online positions and pricing and closures of loss-making and non-strategic print titles. According to Juan Carlos’s blog, the flagship title “was not loss making at this time”, but the strategic decision was to close and re-structure accordingly.

Schibsted revealed in it’s interim report of Q3 2008 that Schibsted Classified Media had Q3 operating revenues of EUR 38,4M – 19% less than in Q3 2007. According to the report, “the decline is primarily due to the negative trend of the print publications in Spain”. Operating revenues from online grew 13% to EUR 27,5M in the same period. Online contributed 72% of operating revenues vs 52% in the previous period. Internet made an operating profit of EUR 8,4M vs an operating loss of EUR 1,2M for print.

Classifieds in print are, indeed, on a sliding scale. The general trend in media, according to enduragement’s interesting post, is another relevant signal.

The Russian Hour

A Russian internet professional was telling the other day some facts about the runet which are quite interesting.

The runet has a 29% yearly audience growth; 70% of users are on broadband; there’s an 80% penetration rate in ages 12-24; 48% of households have computers; 39% of Russians conform the runet’s monthly audience; 500M$ was the ad spend of 2007; 800M$ is the 2008 forecast (maybe less now after the crisis); the e-commerce turnover was supposed to be 2B$ in 2007 and is forecasted at 3,4B$ in 2008. About 150M$ were spent in Russia in web production last year (programming, design, webmastering…)

15B queries were made on search engines in the Russian language in 2007 (that’s 40% more than in 2006); there were 90M mailboxes with 9,5M daily users; in 2007 there were 50M user profiles in social networks in Russia. Number of profiles grew 15x in 2007.

The Bible Seller of the Digital Age

Other day I listened to some interesting comments in a panel in the Internet CEE conference in Warsaw, where the general manager of Google Polska (Artur Waliszewski), the product marketing director of Yandex (Andrey Sebrant) and the sales director of Seznam (Tomas Buril) debated.

When asked about the search eco-system, all three coincided on one mission and some key assets…

All 3 agreed that R&D focus pursues their main search mission: to anticipate and answer in the most relevant manner the questions posed by the people using their engines. In this respect, all efforts on the technology move for relevancy. Up to here, all clear. But then, when establishing the key assets of turning this into revenues, they said something to this effect:

Sebrant, Yandex: direct selling builds trust and is key to the revenue model. In this respect we focus fully in training and certification of our (sales) staff and understand that the only way to build trust is by facing our customers with people, generating trust by having “someone look you in the eye”

Waliszewski, Google: certification and training are keys in the Ad Words ecosystem; without those people to educate the clients, there is no success, however much we optimize and improve our algorithms to achieve search advertising relevancy

Buril, Seznam: we employ 250 in direct sales to get our products to the clients, this is the equivalent of the Google and Yandex effort to educate staff and certify them in order to get to the final customer and show them how to use search advertising

In my understanding what they’re saying here is: our products could be extremely complex on the technical side, but making them come across to the final customers and making money from them is, still and by and large, a direct selling and educational effort.

Could this be true? How do you feel about the issue?

The end of the world as we know it. Chapter One

New York University’s Nouriel Roubini (Istanbul, 1958) aka Dr. Doom, said yesterday that the markets have become destructive forces and it could make sense to close them for a period of time to stop the free-fall. He also said yesterday in Madrid that he “prefers the costs of over-regulation than the risks of the current regulatory system” (the one that just collapsed in front of our eyes).

I like the prognoses of Roubini, even though nobody ever used to take them seriously before. And this one is for revision (meaning, let’s get back to this in 12 months time): he said yesterday that things now are just getting worse, not better, and that the recession will last more than 2 years and will also affect emerging market economies worldwide. (ie. China growing less than 7% means increased poverty).

We will see, but looks like Dr. Doom could be more on target than we’d like. I mean, read this excerpt from October 24th 2008: “In July 2006, Roubini predicted the financial crisis. In February this year he forecast a “catastrophic” meltdown that central bankers would fail to prevent, leading to the bankruptcy of large banks exposed to mortgages and a “sharp drop” in equities.

In any case, he does not think it will be as bad as the Great Depression, where output in the US fell more than 20%. 

Photo courtesy of wallstrip and media.collegepublisher.com

Collaborative creativity

Charles Leadbeater, who used to advice Tony Blair, is considered a leading authority on innovation and creativity and considered one of the top management thinkers on Earth. He recently spoke at Picnic Amsterdam on collaborative creativity (which is the subject of his book, We Think) and put forth 5 key elements of this phenomenon:

1. Diversity is king, participants need to think differently and have different knowledge.
2. Give people ways to contribute. They need really simple ways to add their piece of information.
3. Connect people with each other by using the most suitable technology
4. The most important one: participants must have a shared sense of purpose and an individual sense of pay-off. Use a mascot or something.
5. Communities need to have some element of structure to make decisions.

He of course also pointed out how the media environment has changed (mainstream media vs Youtube, WordPress and Twitter kind of thing) as well as how it’s now commonly understood that creativity is not the product of one brilliant mind, but “most creative ideas come from people blending and mixing things”. He also reminded us that not all collaboration leads to creativity and can become boring from excess consensus or lead to nothing if there’s too much chaos in the group.

Images courtesy of www.charlesleadbeater.net

Consumption metaphors and neural activation

I am still not sure if this is very interesting or very creepy, but let me briefly describe it. Marketing guru Gerald Zaltman has developed a technique over the years called Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) which gets consumers to express their deepest feelings and thoughts about a brand or product -whether they want to or not- via an encounter which goes through a series of phases.

ZMET uses visual and non-visual images gathered and/or generated by consumers to elicit and probe the metaphors that represent consumers’ thoughts and feelings about a topic.

Images are important units of analysis for marketing managers. When augmented by consumers’ explanations during careful probing by an interviewer, the images provide a clear idea of what consumers really think and feel. Almost invariably these insights are far deeper and more clear than the insights of verbal discussions alone. Although many images are visual, images may take other forms (tactile, olfactory, auditory…). Whatever the form (technically, every image is a neural activation), an image represents a thought or feeling consumers have about, say, privacy, treating heartburn and indigestion, or the meaning of art in their daily lives, or what they think a company thinks of them. Therefore, images are referred to as metaphors.

A metaphor is the representation of one thing (a thought, feeling, action) in terms of another thing (a picture of someone screaming, a swimming pool, the color blue…). During a ZMET interview, verbal descriptions of the thoughts and feelings represented by these images are collected to help researchers understand their meaning. Strong evidence exists that these verbal descriptions are far more complete and far more useful to managers because they were stimulated initially by these images (or metaphors).

I am not sure if I would call this ”a well developed research technique” or just a methodology that gives me the creeps. Of course it’s a technique that, beyond consumer products, can be extrapolated to all forms of information individuals receive, making it easier for marketers to lure us into a less cerebral approach to the social and informational environment. Intrestingly enough, if it is true that 95% of thought is unconscious, or as Zaltman calls it, “hidden knowledge”, I can only guess that it’s so very easy to guide us in one way or the other.

Tapas in Madrid (anytime)

Here are three recommendations for a tapas trek in Madrid. Pursue at your peril as they’re based on my personal tastes and the years of my youth spent living in the city. If you’re staying at the Tryp, don’t forget to take a stroll in the Plaza de Oriente before pursuing any of these routes. You might also decide to stay in that area and opt for a quiet dinner in the Cafe de Oriente with spectacular views of the Palacio Real and the Teatro Real.

 

La Latina – Austrias. The true Madrid castizo

Start at the trendy and progressive El Bonanno (Plaza del Humilladero, 4) for a beer and then head down Almendro street, riddled with tapas bars, towards Taberna Almendro, 13 to have some huevos rotos (broken eggs) and porra antequerana (a much thicker and very tasty kind of gazpacho with some iberico shavings). In the streets Cava Baja and Cava Alta is where most of the tapas bars of the area are located, as well as legendary restaurants like Casa Lucio or El Viejo Madrid. A very animated neighbourhood, muy castiza. You can also climb to the top of three story restaurant El Viajero, head towards the animated Delic, on Plaza de la Paja for a mojito, or stroll down to the Basilica of San Francisco el Grande and have a digestive orujo at Las Vistillas, in Calle Bailen, over a view of the Cathedral of La Almudena.

Almudena Cathedral

Plaza de Santa Ana – Madrid de las Letras

Plaza de Santa Ana (Cervantes lived a couple of streets away) is the center piece of what has become known as the Barrio de las Letras. It’s just off Madrid’s geographical center, the Puerta del Sol and it’s a pleasant and animated square. There you can eat good tapas in historical venues like La Moderna or Cerveceria Alemania. For great views try the Penthouse Bar & Terrace on the Hotel Melia Reina Victoria, also on the square. Stroll around that neighbourhood down Calle Huertas and head to a more sophisticated seated diner experience in the cozy East47 or simply walk around the small bar filled pedestrian streets of the neighborhood and get a glimpse of the very lively Madrid theatre district. 

Plaza de Santa Ana

Retiro – a stroll in the park and great food discoveries

If you find yourself anywhere near the more up-class Barrio de Salamanca, do not miss Taberna Laredo (Calle Menorca, 14) and La Castela (Calle Doctor Castello, 22) for some of the most extraordinary tapas of the city. These are classic venues which will be packed. Just find a spot as close to the barra as possible and enjoy the fantastic wine choices by the glass and their very articulate and well executed tapas selection. Before you may want to take a stroll in the Retiro park, which is just across these two great venues.

Retiro

They’re open: mission future

On September 8, 2008, Mission Future will bring together visionaries, innovators and creative entrepreneurs from diverse disciplines to explore and drive the impact of the sharing-economy on society and business.

Under the theme “We’re open: How open minds and open industries are shaping the world” will focus on open innovation and open economy by contributions from guys like Joichi Ito, Technotari’s VP of International and Mobility Development, Issac Mao, director of the Social Brain Foundation and Gerfried Stocker, director of the Ars Electronica Center.

The event commits itself to the principles of open source, where attendees are active participants and the boundaries between expert and participant are fluid. Mission Future’s goal during this day is to advance pathbreaking projects guided by open principles. It’s in Linz’s Art University

The future-teller of the classifieds industry

Jakob Nielsen

In September of 1997 Jakob Nielsen wrote a post in his useit library where he stated the following about classified ads and why they are the most suited form of advertising for Internet – but are terribly inefficient in print:

They are a classic pull medium: customers seek out the classifieds when they decide to look for a used car or when they want to hire a house-keeper; most people don’t leaf through the pages just for fun

They are well-suited for computerized searching and sorting: you may want to look only for used BMW cars that cost less than $5,000 or are less than 3 years old, or you may only be interested in a red Z3

They are time-sensitive, but not on a day-to-next-day basis: you want to see all open offers, no matter whether they were posted today or yesterday, or even earlier. As soon as the advertised offering has been sold, the ad should be pulled and not shown to any more customers (a static listing wastes both parties’ time)

Sellers can type their own entries directly into the ad database since they know what they are selling.

Using the hypertext feature of the Web, ads can link to as much background information as necessary; cryptic but space-saving abbreviations go away (hard disks are cheaper than newsprint)
multimedia features can save both buyers and sellers time by allowing potential buyers to learn more about the offering before contacting the seller (just how cute is the puppy? – well, see the photo, or even the movie)

That was 11 years ago. Talk about having a good eye for the shape of things to come. If you want to see an empiric example of this, look at this material on the Schibsted Investor Relations page

Image courtesy of andybudd