John Drake

Tone of Action

In the presentation "Are Brands Fracking the Social Web?" there's talk about shifting brand tones. Moving them beyond just feelings and compressed language to become a tone of action. I've long held that "tone" is one of the most important parts of a creative brief. But it's often dismissed because tone, too often, shows up as a series of common, lazy, uninspiring words.

In the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On Jonah Berger writes that when it comes to understanding word of mouth, only 7 percent happens online. You might think it would be higher. I did. But it's only 7 percent. Which makes sense. Life is lived going out to lunch and chatting in the hallways. We're talking offline, face-to-face, much more than we're talking online.

These things relate. A tone of action is more remarkable than a tone of voice. What an organization did, how they handled a situation, their degree of uniqueness and originality... such things of action warrant more word of mouth storytelling than just their voice.

The Significance of Inverted-U Curves

In many things, the more resources we add, the better the output. This, of course, can be graphed with increasing performance tying to increasing resources. But does an ascending performance line start to dip back down once too many resources are added? Malcolm Gladwell provides some research in David and Goliath that argues this happens more frequently than we may think.

He takes student class size. It's assumed that the smaller the class size the better the performance. But research suggests that as classes become too small an adverse affect sets in. Too few students means dominant personalities can take over, there's less group discussion (a vital part of a classroom) and educational gameplay opportunities drop. It presents an Inverted-U Curve:

From the book:

"Inverted-U curves have three parts, and each part follows a different logic. There's the left side, where doing more or having more makes things better. There's the flat middle, where doing more doesn't make much of a difference. And there's the right side, where doing more or having more makes things worse."

It's a provocative thought. In business, be alert to the Inverted-U Curve. If there's too much ideation time, when do we begin to over-think? If there's too much collaboration, when do we begin to dilute? If there's too much data when do we begin to over-react? Nice to know there's a principle for such questions.

Wearing A Cheerful Countenance

I heard someone say the other day that, "Miley does an effective job at making Gaga seem a little older." She is, actually, a little older so that's fine. But it's always striking when someone, or something, starts to re-position someone else.

Over the holiday I frequently visited Dutch Bros. for morning coffee. They blasted music every day and were always amazingly friendly for early mornings. Reportedly, the company doesn't care what music is playing as long as it's upbeat and has no swearing. The high school student serving coffee one day said, "I'm lucky to work here... I get to show up for work and jam out all day."

Dutch Bros. does an effective job at making Starbucks seem a little stuffy. Here's the brand creed that every customer can read as they drive thru.