Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
False Smile, Real Purchase
Is that a real smile?
As we’ve discussed before, your body influences your mood. If you want to improve your mood, all you really have to do is force yourself to smile. It’s hard to stay mad or blue or shiftless when your face is smiling.
I can’t prove this but I think that smiling can also improve your performance on a wide variety of tasks. I suspect that you make better decisions when you’re smiling. I bet you make better golf shots, too.
It’s not just my face that influences my mood. It’s also the faces of those around me. If they’re smiling, it’s harder for me to stay mad. There’s a lot written about the influence of groups on individual behavior.
Retailers seem to understand this intuitively. I occasionally go to jewelry stores to buy something for Suellen. I notice two things: 1) I’m always waited on by a woman; 2) she smiles a lot. I assume that she smiles to influence my mood (positively) to increase the chance of making a sale. It often works.
I understand the reason behind a false smile on another person (and, most often, I can defend against it). But what if the salesperson uses my own smile to influence my mood and propensity to buy?
It could happen soon. As reported in New Scientist, the Emotion Evoking System developed at the University of Tokyo, can manipulate your image so you see a smiling (or frowning) version of yourself. The system takes a webcam image of you and manipulates it to put a smile on your face. It then displays the image to you. It’s like looking in the mirror but the image isn’t a faithful replication.
In preliminary tests, volunteers were divided into two groups and asked to perform mundane tasks. Both groups could see themselves in a webcam image. One group saw a plain image. The other group saw a manipulated image that enhanced their smile. Afterwards, the volunteers in each group were asked to rate their happiness while performing the task. The group that saw the manipulated image reported themselves to be happier.
In theory, such a system could help people who are depressed. It could also be used to sell more. You try on something and see a smiling version of you in the mirror. As they say, buyer beware!
Are Creative People Weird?
Can’t you just focus?
I’ve always been proud of my ability to focus. In many situations, I can quickly distinguish between what’s relevant and what’s not. I can then block out irrelevant information and focus, for long periods of time, on what’s important. It’s a handy skill for a manager.
Like most skills, however, it comes at a price. First, it makes me a bit of an absent-minded professor. I may lose track of “irrelevant” details like anniversaries and birthdays. However, the more costly price may be a loss of creativity.
When I focus intently on something, I’m doing what a neuroscientist would call “cognitive inhibition.” In simple terms, I’m blocking out. I’m inhibiting information from entering my consciousness. I block out a lot of irrelevant stuff but I may also block out information that could lead to a creative solution.
We often think of creative people as being uninhibited. We use the term to describe their behavior rather than their thinking processes. They may dress unfashionably, behave eccentrically, write strident manifestos, and generally seem at odds with the mainstream culture. This is not a new phenomenon; Plato commented about the odd behavior of poets and playwrights.
We use the term uninhibited to describe behavior, but we should also apply it to thinking processes. In fact, a neuroscientist would call it “cognitive disinhibition”. Essentially, it means that we loosen the filters and allow a variety of thoughts to float to the surface. Fewer thoughts are inhibited or blocked out. Some people seem naturally to have fewer filters.
According to Shelley Carson in her article “The Unleashed Mind”, cognitive disinhibition is the basis of both eccentric behavior and of creativity. Carson defines cognitive disinhibiton as “…the failure to ignore information that is irrelevant to current goals or to survival.” Sometimes, this simply leads to bizarre thoughts and psychosis. For people with high IQs and large working memories, on the other hand, it can lead to creative eccentricity. Carson proposes a “shared vulnerability model” that underlies creativity, eccentricity, and high functioning “normal” performance.
The way we talk about creativity gives a clue to Carson’s model. When we have an “aha” moment, we often describe it as a “breakthrough”. We have literally broken through something – in this case, our cognitive inhibition. If we can lower the resistance to a breakthrough – by reducing our inhibitions – we can become more creative … and, perhaps, more eccentric.
Some moths ago, I wrote a brief article about sleep and creativity. We’re more creative when we’re sleepy. Carson’s model explains why: when we’re sleepy our cognitive inhibitions are lower. I’ve also written about caffeine and creativity. Caffeine keeps us focused. By doing so, it also reduces our creativity.
As it happens, I’m a huge consumer of caffeine. Perhaps that’s why I can focus intently on relevant information. Maybe it’s time to take a caffeine break to see if I can be more creative … and maybe a bit more eccentric.
Lighting and Creativity
I’m feeling creative.
In yesterday’s article about daydreaming and creativity, I noted that daydreaming is negatively correlated with parts of the brain that process visual stimuli. I suggested that this might relate to inattentional blindness. If you’re daydreaming, your mind wanders and you don’t consciously see things even if they’re directly in front of you. Some part of your subconscious may see the object (and direct you around it) but the object never registers in your consciousness.
Now there’s evidence that not seeing may enhance your creativity. An article in The Journal of Environmental Psychology (“Freedom from constraints: Darkness and dim illumination promote creativity“) reports on six different experiments on the relationship between physical environment and creativity. The research found “…that darkness elicits a feeling of being free from constraints and triggers a risky, explorative processing style.” (See additional commentary here and here)
The study focused on 114 German undergraduate students who were asked to solve several creative insight problems under different lighting conditions. The upshot: students in dimly lit rooms solved more problems than those in brightly lit rooms. They also reported that they felt fewer constraints on their thinking. The research also suggested that mental priming could effectively imitate a dim environment. In other words, you don’t have to be in a dark room; you just have to think about being in a dark room.
The researchers also note that creativity involves at least two processes: 1) creating or generating ideas; 2) analyzing and implementing those ideas. A dimly lit room seems to facilitate the first process but not the second. In the authors’ words: “Creativity may begin in the dark but it shouldn’t end there”.
Digital Segmentation
The future isn’t what it used to be.
As I read reports from McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group, and others, it appears that we’re moving into a phase of digital segmentation. Analysts used to be content to write about digital consumers in the very general sense. They compared the online (or digital) consumer to the offline (or traditional) consumer in very general terms. Now they’re comparing the different segments of digital consumers to each other.
As part of this process, McKinsey seems to want to brand the term “iConsumer” and has put out a series of reports on how digital consumers are changing the value chain. A recent report (April 2013) includes a summary of six fundamental shifts in the digital landscape that can help us understand segments and trends. I’ll summarize them here and will refer back to them in future posts. Here are McKinsey’s big six:
Device shift – from PCs to mobile/touch devices. In 2008, the PC accounted for 78% of all personal computing usage. By 2012, the PC’s share of usage had fallen to 57%. Mobile was 33% and tablet was 11%. About 60% of consumers in the US now have smart phones.
Communication shift – from voice to data and video. What do we use phones for? Well, it’s not for talking anymore. Only 20% of our phone usage is voice, down from 60% five years ago. Essentially the phone is now a data terminal, for games, web browsing, music streaming, and social media.
Content shift – from bundled to fragmented. Newspapers and traditional television channels bundled together news and entertainment programs. Bundling added significant value until the rise of the modern search engine. Now we can find whatever we want, whenever we want. We buy apps for specific, point solutions, further fragmenting the market. Getting your message across to a large audience depends much more on search engine optimization than on courting the bundlers.
Social shift – from growth to monetization. About a quarter of our personal computing time is now devoted to social networking. Social networks have grown with incredible speed but now seem to be leveling off. Social networks are now trying to monetize what they have. The results are mixed – to wit, my experiences advertising on Facebook.
Video shift – from programmer to user controlled. As I was growing up, my family got together every Sunday night to watch Bonanza and drink homemade milk shakes. No more. We now watch on DVRs, on video streaming services, or on DVDs. We’ve shifted time and place and device. We watch what we want to watch when and where we want to watch it. I sort of miss Bonanza though.
Retail shift – from channel to experience. E-commerce has grown dramatically but still only accounts for about 5% of all retail sales. However, e-commerce – especially mobile – is transforming the retail experience. While we shop in brick-and-mortar outlets, we use mobile devices to enhance our experience and find better bargains. Successful retailers will invest in true multi-channel integration.
Inventing Tradition
That shirt is illegal!
When I was a Boy Scout – many years ago – I learned the proper way to handle and display the American flag. The basic idea was simple: the flag is a symbol and an inspiration.
This simple idea led to numerous rules:
- You should raise the flag at dawn and lower it at sunset. Never fly the flag after dark. How could it be inspirational if you can’t see it?
- There’s a very specific way to fold the flag. Don’t lower the flag unless someone is present who knows how to fold it. When folding, don’t allow the flag to touch the ground lest it get dirty.
- Never disrespect the flag. Among other things, don’t make clothes or jewelry out of the flag. That would convert a symbol into mere merchandise.
In fact, we still have a Flag Code which says, among other things, that, “The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery.” In 1968, Abbie Hoffman (pictured), an antiwar protester, was arrested for wearing a shirt made from an American flag. Such behavior was not only disrespectful; it was also illegal.
Today, of course, we have new “traditions” regarding the flag. Everyone seems to want to show it at all times. We make jewelry and clothing from it. We fly it day and night. While on the campaign trail in 2008, Barack Obama was criticized for not wearing an American flag pin on his lapel. From Abbie Hoffman to Barack Obama, we essentially reversed our “traditional” view of how to treat the flag respectfully.
We invent new traditions all the time. While many traditions seem to be “the way we’ve always done it”, many are quite recent. As Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger point out in The Invention of Tradition, we tend to invent new traditions, “…more frequently when a rapid transformation of society weakens or destroys the social patterns for which ‘old’ traditions had been designed….”
Hobsbawm and Ranger write that we invent some new traditions by “grafting on old ones” and others by reaching back into “well-supplied warehouses of official ritual [and] symbolism…” and giving new meaning to old symbols. Apparently, this is what happened to the Scottish kilt, tartans, and bagpipe.: “This apparatus, to which we ascribe great antiquity, is in fact largely modern. … Indeed, the whole concept of a distinct Highland culture and tradition is a retrospective invention.”
Why do we invent new traditions when we already have perfectly good ones? We may want to preserve an older, supposedly “purer” set of beliefs and loyalties. Or we may want to draw together in the face of a common opponent. (The Highlands “tradition” was invented in opposition to England). We may want to divide people between true believers and those who may be untrustworthy. Sometimes, we simply want to slow down the pace of change.
We need to remember to question our traditions. If we simply accept them as they are, then we lose perspective and see an invented history rather than an accurate one. We see only what we’re intended to see. This applies to organizations as much as to cultures and societies. The next time you hear, we’ve always done it this way, just say, “Is that really true? Let’s find out.”
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