Changing Conversations: Can We End Partisanship?

Because of the presidential race and recent debates, there has been plenty of conversation about the role of government. And frankly, it seems to me the national discussion often causes more confusion than clarity for anyone attempting to follow it.

Part of the problem is that there doesn't seem to be any real authority in reconciling the federal budget. If you want to give it a go, start with Wikipedia. Otherwise, you will find different sets of numbers that categorize how the government spends its money. Almost all Americans know is that the federal government spends more than it collects.

They also know that we can't keep doing that. It's a lose-lose proposition because not only do we continually lose every month, but the interest rates on debt erodes purchasing power. Ergo, if you have $100 and spend $110, borrow $10 to cover the difference, and then pay back $10 plus $5 in interest, you'll only have $85 the following month. So to maintain $110 of spending, you'll have to borrow $25 next time. And so on.

Except, in the case of the U.S. government, it's worse. It is more likely to ask for $115 the following month, thereby increasing the rate of the debt and its inability to catch up. We all know it has to stop.

Why what should be simple math becomes partisan and complicated.

The simple math problem illustrated above becomes complicated because in order to solve the debt spiral, the conversation centers around the question "how does the government find more money?" In other words, both parties want to find a way to collect the $110 it needs (maybe $112.50 to pay for past debt) so it doesn't have to borrow any more money.

Two partisan positions eventually surface: raise taxes (and who to raise them on) or increase the number of the employed people who pay taxes while decreasing the number of people who need help (via economic growth). Both have risks.

The risks associated with the first is that if you try collect $112.50 instead of $100, then the number of contributors might diminish revenue to $98. The risks associated with the latter are related to the speed of recovery. For every month more contributors aren't added to the labor pool, the debt spiral continues (perhaps at a faster rate if you temporarily reduce taxes to $98 in order to stimulate growth).

What is even more difficult is attempting to talk about the other side of the coin. Maybe you don't have to collect $110. Maybe you can collect $100. Most politicians don't like to talk about it because cutting $10 means that somebody will lose something. For example, some people think if $450 million is cut from PBS, then there might not be PBS. (The federal funds represent 15 percent of its budget.)

Although PBS would likely weather such a cut, the outcry is generally emotional. There are dozens (maybe hundreds) of expenditures just like PBS. All together, some estimates place federal, state and local governments near $1 trillion in welfare and social programs (more than $700 from the federal level and $210 billion on the state level). Depending on where you look, some consider it to be significantly higher and others significantly lower. Regardless, it's a big number and there is outcry with each program cut.

We need to change the conversation and evolve our culture.

I am not sure that we can change the conversation. In the last decade, politics has become overwhelming partisan — enough so that I avoid most political conversations unless I can tie it to a teaching opportunity for communication. (Political mistakes tend to make for pronounced examples on both sides.)

And yet, the conversation needs to change. We need to find ways to move more welfare and social programs away from government and make corporate and individual giving part of our culture.

This isn't partisan. It's math and morality. The return on investment for government-funded social and welfare programs is paltry compared to direct giving to fiscally responsible nonprofit organizations.

When people give $1 direct to a nonprofit, 80-90 percent of that dollar directly benefits the person in need (assuming the nonprofit is fiscally prudent). When we pay taxes, the value of that same dollar is diminished by bureaucracy and oversight on the federal side and nonprofit expenditures related to pursuing grants, lobbying efforts, and administration costs.

I'm not sure if there has been a study, but I wouldn't be surprised if the value of that $1 drops to 50 cents before reaching the program (and then another 10-30 cents is deducted by the nonprofit), leaving 20 to 40 cents for the people who need it. If we found out a nonprofit was delivering 30 cents for every dollar raised, it would be a scandal. When it's government, we expect someone else to pay more — even if government further erodes the benefit by borrowing to cover the loss of value.

It's also not uncommon for many government-reliant programs to think differently about government funding. They don't think of it as taxpayer money. They look at it as earned money. Earned money doesn't inspire the same frugality as charitable donations. It tends to be spent in the least efficient areas.

At the same time, for every tax dollar increased, people have less to give. It's not a coincidence that tax increases tend to reduce charitable donations, thereby driving more people to government programs.

Still, we won't see it during this election cycle, and maybe not ever. But it would make a lot more sense if the so-called millionaires for higher taxes started writing checks for social and welfare programs instead of insisting other people write checks to the government for a lower return on social investment.

If you can afford more taxes, then you aren't giving enough to charity.

If they and others started to donate more, maybe we really could reduce spending to a hypothetical monthly budget of government to $95 or $85 instead of $110, with $10 borrowed. And maybe, if other people follow by example, we could start to make charitable giving such a strong presence in our culture it would lower the need and demand on government.

As much as I like PBS, that might even be a good place to start. The $450 million in tax dollars it received is nothing compared to the $1.5 trillion or more that was spent on political campaigns this cycle. Maybe the government could ask the private sector (that already donates 60 percent of the PBS budget) to cover it. Or maybe consumers can just buy an extra Elmo. There is some very big money in Sesame Street merchandising. I've been an avid contributor over the years.

The more programs we could take off the government books with affluent individuals and corporations agreeing to adopt in lieu of tax increases makes much more sense. It would also empower people to prioritize their own giving instead of entrusting a third party to take some and spread it around.

Managing Messages: Repetition Works Enough To Fool Us

A few years ago, there was an interesting study conducted on the power of repetition. Specifically, the work done by Kimberlee Weaver (Virginia Polytechnic Institute), Stephen Garcia and Norbert Schwarz (University of Michigan), and Dale Miller (Stanford University) demonstrated that repetition from a single source infers the popularity of an opinion across an entire group.

It's our brains. They tend to trick us. And in this case, they tend to trick us consistently, given that the researchers constructed six different experiments to show it. The opening nails down the research.

"From college students gauging their peers’ views on alcohol, to stockbrokers speculating about consumers’ confidence in the market, to everyday Americans wondering how scared others are about terrorism, our estimates of group opinion affect not only the decisions we make on behalf of groups but also our perceptions of reality." ... However, "perceivers integrate information about the number of times they have heard a sentiment expressed [without] information about the number of people who have expressed it."

The same idea applies to the credibility of the sources. It hardly matters. The more familiar the opinion seems, the more perceivers think that they have heard the opinion from multiple sources — even if it comes from one source or less credible sources. The opinion itself feels familiar through repetition.

How did the researchers test their theory?

1. Participants reading opinions in favor of open space preservation were more likely to support open space preservation when they read similar opinions from three different sources and one opinion from a single source, three times.

2. Participants believing they were helping a company make a decision about whether to hire a CEO from outside the company were swayed by three employees suggesting it and one employee suggesting it multiple times (saying the same thing in different ways).

3. Participants in another test estimated more widespread support for a moderate stance on a reproductive rights issue after reading one opinion statement advocating that position three times than those participants who only read the opinion once. (It didn't matter that it was the same statement.)

4. After being exposed to a string of words related to open spaces (a similar scenario as in number 1) or neutral words, participants were more likely to support open space preservation if they had been exposed to a string of words related to open spaces.

5. In another study, researchers tested repeated opinions that were contrary to what participants knew to a specific group's preference to be. This was the only time that repeated opinions had no affect on the outcomes.

6. In the final study, the researchers provided one statement of opinion to a group, one statement repeated three times, and three similar statements from three different people to test their theory against time delays. They were then asked how they perceived the opinion as it was representative of a group immediately after the presentation and after a time delay. Interestingly enough, agreement with one opinion waned whereas agreement with the repeated or reinforced opinion increased over time.

What does this have to do with marketing and public relations?

In connection with earlier research on how misinformation spreads, repetition seems to have significant weight in shaping our perceptions, provided a pre-existing opinion doesn't already exist. (In which case, people tend to have a defense mechanism against changing their opinion, even if it is wrong.) It doesn't matter whether or not we receive the information from multiple sources as much as the information is repeated by the same source.

This is a pretty significant study when coupled with the more recent study on misinformation. It sheds some light on why children, for example, tend to adopt the opinions of their parents, even when those opinions represent inaccurate bias. It also shows how difficult developing objectivity as a skill set can be if the communicator doesn't vary their sources of information.

Ergo, one biased media source will eventually be able to frame the narrative of policy, position or candidate merely by repeating similar statements over and over. Without any countering opinion, the study suggests people will be that much more likely to adopt that opinion and even feel that the opinion is somehow reflective of the population (whether it is or not). On the flip side, it also shows how marketers are better positioned by focusing on a few clear messages than attempting to sell everything.

Sticking With Tactics: Do Marketers Know Strategy?

A recent study by Econsultancy tells the story. Marketers believe in content marketing. Ninety percent of those surveyed say that content marketing will become more important in the next 12 months.

It's not a surprise for anyone working in social media. But what is even more telling about the survey is something else. Only 38 percent have defined a content strategy. It's also likely most don't know how.

What happens when you work without a content strategy? 

The entire communication process becomes tactical, relying on the tips of the trade but never really reaching business objectives, campaign goals or even brand reinforcement. Remember Bud TV?

But perhaps even more disturbing, even those that are in the process of planning a strategy demonstrate thin objectives. The top three goals: increase engagement, increase site traffic, and raise brand awareness.

Seriously? While some of these might be considered outcomes, none of them are well-defined objectives on their. Rewritten, marketers might consider increasing brand loyalty, positioning themselves as source experts, or improving positive brand recall (e.g., not only increasing awareness but also ensuring people get it right and have a positive impression of it).

Even some of the lower scoring answers — improving SEO links, generating leads, influencing stakeholders — represent a tendency to focus on tasks that lead to something but seldom define what those tasks are likely to lead to. Ergo, marketers are becoming too reliant on "doing" something but many of them don't know to what end while others plug in "increase sales," which ought to be a given. (Businesses are in business to sell things, hopefully in such a way that they actually benefit people.)

Establishing objectives always starts with a situation analysis.

Many companies do not start their planning process with an understanding of organizational purpose (preferably one underserved in the market), their long-term achievable position in that market, or a handle on their most pressing issues within the company that are holding them back. If they did, it would likely change the fundamental nature of their organization and establish different objectives.

To give you an example, I worked with a company that developed an environmental solution for the construction industry to meet certain environmental protection regulations. They could have picked any path to do it, but the shortest path made the most sense — prove to the construction industry that they have the most cost-effective solution (lower cost and fewer fines) and prove to the environmental policy makers that they had the best available technology (in order to be recommended or even mandated).

The communication plan was built around this understanding because if the company could prove its value to general contractors and necessity to policy enforcers — everything else would fall into place. Sales would increase. Brand awareness would increase. Their reputation as innovators would increase.

There were many ways to accomplish this, including partnering with regulators, cooperating with environmental organizations (shifting them from aggressors to educators), and targeted educational communication to companies that would purchase their technology among them. I'm not going to list all the details today.

I mention it merely to illustrate the point. Without a strategy, they would be chasing likes, follows, SEO links, web traffic, and lead generation like many marketers. So the question becomes ... to what end?

This is why a communication strategy is the most important part of a campaign. If it isn't, then your company can waste money chasing the wrong numbers for very little results beyond a short-term spike. At the end of the day, especially in this economic climate, you most assuredly can't afford it.

Going Social: From Hunger To Hope

The facts speak for themselves. One in four children in the developing world is underweight. One in six people don't have enough food to lead a healthy life. About 25,000 people will die of hunger-related causes today. And that means 18 people will die of hunger by the time you finish reading this post.

There is no question it will happen. There is no question that something can be done about it. The only question is what do we want to do about it? Nothing? Something? Anything? Here's one idea.

From Hunger To Hope Starts October 16. 

From midnight (ET) on Oct. 16 to 11:59 p.m. (PT) on
Oct. 17, Yum! brands and several thousand people all over the world will be raising funds for the World Food Programme, which already provides 460 million meals to millions of people. It can provide more too, but they need help.

For $10, 40 more children will receive a meal. For $25, one child in school will be fed for six months. For $100, a child under 2 years of age can receive supplementary food for 18 months. But really, this campaign will benefit the program even more than that because Yum! brands will match $10,000.

You can donate direct via the World Hunger Relief 2012 page developed by Razoo. It makes giving simple, even if you only contribute $10. (Your $10 will become $20 with the matching grant.)

You can do a little bit more than that. Razzo put together a social media/social network kit to help. I'm not going to lie and tell you it's perfect. It's not. You might even feel lost when you visit it.

Having worked on dozens of these global campaigns, including one that was recognized as one of the first social advocacy campaigns on the Web, there is a sequence of steps that can maximize your contribution. Many of them were employed in For Hunger And Hope, a program we developed with Heifer International. That campaign worked, as many Bloggers Unite campaigns did before BlogCatalog had to temporarily move it to the back burner. But that's another story. Let's talk about now.

Six Steps To Help Alleviate World Hunger On Oct. 16. 

Step 1: Commit. There isn't any time to waste. Tell people you are committing to the cause today
(Oct. 15) and ask them to join you for From Hunger To Hope (Oct. 16). Share the link. You can also add a Twibbon for Twitter or Facebook, which helps promote this event. (Twibbons are little banners that frame your profile picture, expressing your support of a worthwhile event.)

Step 2: Connect. Join the campaign at Twitter and Facebook. And any time you tweet it, post it, or share it, try to remember to include a hashtag. The official campaign hashtag is #hungertohope and although the campaign says to include it on Twitter, use it on Facebook and Google+ too. Let people know you joined/liked/followed and ask them to do the same.

Step 3: Promote. If you have a blog or any other content creation account (YouTube, etc.), visit the blogger resource page for pictures, logos and facts. The resources will make it easier for you contribute content to the campaign and make connections with other people who care about world hunger. Set your content to be published on or around 8:30-9:30 a.m. (ET) on Oct. 16, which will help kick off the campaign.

Step 4: Donate. Once it runs, please remember to keep your commitment to donate at least $10, which will be matched by Yum! brands. It might not seem like a lot, but if 10,000 people make similar donations than four million meals will be served. That is the power of compounded generosity.

Step 5: Take The Lead. Having worked with nonprofit organizations all over the world throughout my career, I know that giving is a very personal thing for most people. Not everyone likes to tell people they gave a few dollars here or there for fear of looking like they're bragging. While I respect those who prefer to be more anonymous, you are wrong. When people know you are giving to a cause, they are that much more likely to give to the same cause. Talk about your contribution and let it inspire people. If you are still uncomfortable sharing your own contributions, recognize and promote those who do.

Step 6: Track The Results. Stay up to date with the campaign, at least through Oct. 18. Once the tallies are made, let anyone who saw your messages, notifications, posts, or other content know that it really did make a difference. They will appreciate it, but none of them as much as that child who will go to sleep with something in their belly, maybe for the first time.

All six steps might seem like a lot, but they don't have to be. Giving works best when people do what they can within their comfort zone. If all you feel inspired to do is make a small donation, then do that. If you want to do more or simply give kudos to others who step up, then that works too. It all counts.

While I am not part of the campaign team and merely a contributor, it reminds me how many great causes there are out there and how much I have missed organizing social media campaigns for causes since promoting Patch Adams. Maybe that will change. We'll have to see what happens in 2013. But for now, I'm thrilled to have found some comfort here and elsewhere. I hope that you will too.

Seeing The Future: The Active Office Space

One of the more interesting research projects coming out of Australia is a pilot intervention study being conducted by the University of Queensland. The study, which employs Ergotron WorkFit Sit-Stand Workstations, is designed to reduce the amount of time employees sit.

Mostly, the study is confined to seeing how long employees choose to stand as opposed to sit at their work stations. The initial report found that when workers were given the choice, they would reduce on-the-job sitting time by more than 27 percent. The company that makes the stations links excessive sitting with an increased risk of certain cancers, heart disease, diabetes, and other health conditions. 

Highlights from the sit-stand workstation study. 

The researchers conducted the tests right, with two groups of office workers who were predominantly of the same demographic (women in their 30s). One group of 18 workers were given sit-stand workstations. The other, 14 workers, retained their non-adjustable desks.

In the sit-stand group, sitting time was reduced by more than two hours and standing time increased by more than two hours after both one week and three months of workstation use, compared with the group that did not receive the desks. Overall sitting time during a 16-hour weekday was reduced by about 80 minutes and standing time increased by up to 90 minutes in the sit-stand group, though no significant changes were found in walking time, researchers said.

"The pilot study provides evidence that a sit-stand workstation (approximate U.S. $399) can reduce sitting time in office workers," said Genevieve Healy, Ph.D., University of Queensland. "Furthermore, epidemiologic evidence suggests that the reductions in sitting at the workplace could potentially have considerable impact on cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes prevention."

What sit-stand workstations need to do next. 

While Dr. Healy and her team are currently extending this research into multiple workplaces to examine the most feasible and acceptable ways to reduce prolonged sitting, these studies need to be expanded to consider other areas that corporations and small businesses will notice.

For example, if the study were expanded to measure productivity, employee morale, customer service, or even space economy, businesses would be that much more likely to adopt the idea. In addition, the manufacturers wold probably benefit from stations that could be pre-programmed to match the sitting and standing height of employees without any effort on their part to adjust for ergonomics.

Currently, the the company has been mostly focused on the more apparent health-related aspects of sitting vs. standing. However, it does have an interesting set of calculators designed to guesstimate a return on investment that alludes to the 12 percent increase in productivity related to ergonomics and 20 percent increase in productivity with dual displays.

In such a scenario, the company claims that 100 employees could realize an estimated savings and productivity gain of $1.5 million, which is pretty substantial. This means the payback occurs in about 5 working days. But what interests me about the innovation is even broader.

By merging these simple low-tech solutions with modern technology, it would be that much more possible to increase the ability for people to present while standing at their workstation (e.g. Skype, Google Hangout, etc.), which always delivers better results than sitting in front of a desktop camera. Likewise, for companies that still use cubicles, planning for elevated workstations would give workers a greater sense of privacy instead of always feeling like they have to sit down to feel it.

Marketing Madness: How Stereotypes Hurt Campaigns

I've always believed companies need to be culturally sensitive, but I've never been a fan of most "cultural" marketing campaigns. A new study by Columbia Business School underscores the reason.

Columbia Business School's Michael Morris, the Chavkin-Chang professor of leadership, and Aurelia Mok, assistant professor, City University of Hong Kong (she received her Ph.D. from Columbia Business School in 2010) set out to better understand bicultural identities and how marketing cues might influence their response. It turns out that culturally-skewed campaigns may not resonate.

Cultural campaigns ignore the integration of cultural identities. 

The researchers do an excellent job setting up the myth. When a Japanese-American woman strolls through a food court at the mall, is she more likely to opt for sushi or a hamburger? It depends on the woman. It depends to which degree she has integrated her cultural identity.

Prior research found that bicultural individuals switch between their two sets of cultural habits in response to cues in their current setting. Morris and Mok show that these responses differ between two kinds of bicultural individuals: "integrated-self" individuals exhibit chameleon-like behavior, expressing Asian tastes after exposure to Asian symbols, while "divided-self" individuals behave like cultural contrarians, expressing American tastes even after exposure to Asian symbols.

This holds true even when cues are presented subliminally, suggesting that unconscious motives are at work. It's these unconscious responses that can add the most weight, but it's also the hardest to measure.

So the researchers devised a subliminal priming technique in which participants were repeatedly flashed "Asian" or "American" while reading words in a word recognition test. The cues could not be seen, but were flashed long enough to be caught by their subconscious minds. The subjects were then shown different products that they could click on for more information.

These Asian-Americans did not skew toward Asian presets. Instead, subjects responded based on their degree of bicultural integration. In some cases, integrated individuals experienced a self-defense response that caused them to respond with less interest to marketing messages that skewed Asian because they felt (consciously or subconsciously) the ads were exclusionary and even caused them anxiety in losing their self-identity versus a cultural one.

The brilliance in understanding people and not stereotypes.

Modern marketers place considerable effort on lacing campaigns with cultural markers in the hopes of reaching a specific segment of the population. The idea might show cultural awareness, but it is equally likely to prey on stereotypes and cause some members of that segment to become disinterested or even disassociated with the brand, depending on how integrated the individual's identity might be.

It is especially prevalent in Hispanic marketing efforts, which often attempt to reach a Hispanic public based on the pre-conceived belief that they fit certain stereotypes. They do not.

Not only does Hispanic marketing run the risk of alienating diversity within a broad definition (e.g., Cuban vs. Mexican vs. Dominican Republican, etc.) but each generation removed from their cultural identity becomes less motivated by Hispanic messaging and more likely to identify with being American. In such cases, much like Asian groups, they may even have an aversion to the message.

Likewise, although not part of the study, there are other differences as well. Hispanic and Latino publics in California, Florida and Texas are all very likely to have different regional identities unique to their geographical region. But despite this, marketers frequently insist on developing campaigns to the broader base.

Certainly, some cultures seem to be more resistant to assimilation than others. But at the same time, given cultural identity is strongly associated with individual preferences and not groups, marketers need to start asking themselves if attempting to capitalize on cultural identity is worth the long-term risk of alienation. And, perhaps even more importantly, if attempting to base marketing campaigns on stereotypes is the exact opposite of what they are trying to accomplish.

People are more likely bound and identifiable based on specific interests and experiences. Marketers need to give more cadence to those identifiers than cultural bias, especially in a country like the U.S.