citizenbay

Doodle Business: Visualising your strategy

Companies and individuals are questioning their own future, working out what their short term and longer term options are. Change direction, stick with the plan, shift strategies?

Outside advisers can help, and given citizenbay helps companies with their approach to consumer relationships, I guess I would say that.

Ultimately though, no-one but the company/individual can decide the right route for themselves, no matter how many consultants/third parties get involved or case studies are analysed.

I have found that a useful way to help shape direction is doodling, drawing, scribbling, mindmapping. There are some good software out there. I have played around with Inspiration which works pretty well for all sorts of mindmapping needs. I even use it in client meetings, tidy up the map afterwards and send it back to the client as a visual representation of next steps of a project. Beats a word document status report any day!

However, this is merely a little step in to the world of visualising business strategy.

For me, this is the kind of thing I like.

This was created for a speaker at SBSWi by Sunni Brown, who you can find here. For some, this is just not workable in a company. Yet when such a visual is created by the group, everyone who contributes to the session has a little stake in what has been created.

This is not new though. In my time at Levi Strauss, I had the pleasure and privilege to work with Dan and Meredith Beam from Beam Inc. They would not only help the organisation shape their strategic direction, but turn them into visual feasts that would energise everyone. The visuals were created by their son, Drew,  at the time (now working at Farenheit 212), but now have other great illustrators with them. You can find a link to Meredith and Dan here.

So if you are a company working out the business direction or an individual working out where to go, sometimes you might find clarity comes with crayons and colouring...

Web news aggregation a combination of technology and trust?

Jemima Kiss of the Guardian has been posting like mad from SBSWi conference in the U.S. This one I particularly liked.

It is about how trust plays a critical role for the news aggregators.

Any brand or agency who have plans for trying to create a 'brand community' online, please read this before you start investing time and money.

Dear Colgate, please recall this product now...

Dear Colgate

I bought these toothbrushes recently. On Tuesday, the yellow one snapped as I was brushing, luckily not in my mouth.

Planned to let you know this week when I had a minute.

This morning the second one (the blue one) in the pack also snapped, this time in my mouth. Not pleasant. In fact a couple of the little plastic hairs seem lodged in my throat. Am eating lots of bread to dislodge them.

So that got me focused on getting my complaint in. Also wanted to let you know as if this is happening to others you might do someone some real damage.

Went to the Colgate customer service site. Called the number. No-one available as you are open only week-days. So partly my fault for not phoning when the yellow one broke.

However, having a Monday-Friday customer service line is a bit irritating.

No problem though, I headed off to write an e-mail. Did so, but I presume I will only get an answer on Monday. I do hope I don't get a standard automated response. Let's wait and see. Fingers crossed.

One fascinating thing here when looking to write the complaint/suggestion to pull the product was this:

This is your drop-down menu that helps you know what kind of correspondence you will be receiving. Interesting to see that Colgate get no complaints, otherwise you would have listed it...or is it because you don't think the word 'complaint' looks nice on the list?

Anyway, thought I would post my concerns here also, just in case things take a little while getting through to you via e-mail. Just wanted also to spread the word to my friends to be careful with this product.

This is not a go at Colgate, merely to let you know that there is clearly a product recall issue that deserves your consideration.

Best wishes

Paul Bay

Who watched the Watchmen?

I am one of those who believe that Watchmen is one of the most incredible novels ever written. It might be a graphic novel/comic (or whatever you wish to call it), but it is truly a work of true brilliance by Alan Moore (the writer) and Dave Gibbons (the illustrator).

So I was a little hesitant to see the film. Will it be a disappointment, will it be true to the book? Questions, Questions....

Yet, I was lucky enough to get invited to an exclusive gathering at Paramount to see the movie pre-release. A huge thanks to Rachel Clarke on twitter, for pointing me in the direction of the pre-showing.  Thank you to Dan Light of theppc for organising the showing and for convincing Paramount that it would be a good idea. He turned it round in 24 hours, so that was pretty impressive! Thanks also to Paramount for being kind hosts.

Here we have someone taking it upon himself to organise something for others, and drawing upon a tight community to spread the word and support the cause. The film will now be reviewed by those who attended in their blogs/tweets and elsewhere. Note how the brand owner did not drive this project, but someone who is a brand advocate. Always good for brands to look after their advocates. You never quite know how far they will go to help.

So how was the film?
Within minutes I was hooked. It was if I was turning the pages all over again. The first half an hour was just incredible.

Then the story condensed the book storyline, but still did a pretty good job with it. Being a bit of a Watchmen nut, I could pick faults with elements of the story being dropped almost completely. There are pieces that will not make sense for someone who has not read the novel,  There are also some parts where character development has been lost, most probably, to the (digital) cutting room floor, and the film fails to fully flesh out the backstory at times. It felt that the filmmakers were balancing a highwire between keeping true and keeping within the time constraints of how long an audience will watch for.

At almost three hours long, one could argue that it is too long. I would argue that the film is too short. In fact, what might have been a more powerful route would have been 12 one hour episodes, but hey I am the fan!

I will definitely recommend the film to others. Well worth it, but I will also recommend you read the novel too. Be warned though, there are some incredibly violent scenes that were shocking, even though I knew they were coming. This is not a film for kids. This is not Shrek.

It is an incredible achievement to get this novel on to the screen. Many have tried to find a way to get this to screen and failed.

Visually it is stunning, and you feel the hand of Dave Gibbons all over this.

However, whilst it is a visual feast, I am disappointed with how the movie sounds, and it has been bothering me all day. I have posted a comment about this over at citizensound.

Am off to re-read the novel...then on to Miracleman

By the way, I have also noticed that Rachel has posted her own review over here

Who watches the Watchmen?

Source: Flickr alexpv

More of this kind of messaging will go on now the film Watchmen is about to come out, only this will be done by those who love the storyline, not by media agencies dreaming up a 'guerrilla marketing' campaign.If I were Paramount, I would find a way to encourage people to spot as many of these kind of 'brand advocate' messages and let them know...