A NEW-FASHIONED CANDY STORE

Announcements of new mobile and Web-like tools come almost daily, it seems. 

Sometimes, it’s old stuff in tech format, like our childhood’s Viewmaster® collection of reels and hand-held viewer.  [Thank you, Mattel.]

Other times, it’s a brand-new spin for ageless concepts, such as flash cards made digital.

No matter what, though, we get jazzed about the novelty – and pondering ways that we might use this software to great impact.

Take flash cards, for instance.  They were pre-school mainstays, helping us learn our ABCs and numbers and names of items.  Today, programs like Anki, Cerego, and Memrise not only jolt our memories, but also make our knowledge much longer lasting.  [Confession:  Which is how we got through college chem courses …] 

What’s more, researchers have proven that there’s something to these spaced-repetition tactics – i.e., fixing information in our brains through repeated exposure at planned intervals.  Students get better grades.  Memorizing is less onerous.  Even exposures to difficult foreign languages like Mandarin stick … somewhat better.

Imagine, for instance, salespeople drilled on products and pricing and spiffs.  Or the smartphones of new hires embedded with this software and info on the company, its strategy, history, vision and mission.  And the litany of human resources programs instantly recalled via visual images and quick blurbs.

Hmmm:  Candy retailers are so non-PC.  Shall we call it, ‘acting like kids in the Apple store’?

ALL ABOUT EYEBALLS

A year or so ago, we lamented the demise of magazines – and reminisced about our fondness for print.

That decline hasn’t changed.  In many cases, Publishers’ Bureau reports it’s gotten worse, with digitals grabbing market and ad and visual shares everywhere.  [Except for celebrity, men’s fitness, and ‘focused’ mags.]

But the sadnesses really struck home when Ladies’ Home Journal announced it was out of the subscribers’ business this July, moving to quarterly newsstand issues.  Sure, its heyday was in the ‘40s and ‘50s.  Yet we as PR practitioners in the late 20^th century worked with editors and columnists to promote client wares and stories, and celebrated when they said it was a go. 

For those who naysay the medium, contrast it with Web experiences.  How many times have you surfed a specific topic, and gotten lost in the maelstrom that’s Google search?  Or clicked on one link and found, like Alice, that you were falling quickly through hours of unsorted (and sometime un-validated) content?

There’s a finite beginning and end to a magazine.  Something that limits our thoughts, in fact, concentrates it into our memories.  A reportorial coup like Steven Brill’s dissection of our health care system (Time magazine April 4, 2013) is meant to be dissected, digested, and discussed.  Few Web bytes can claim that.

At the end, everyone says, print will die because increasing costs and decreasing ads don’t make financial sense.  Yet, like LHJ, we “never underestimate the power of a woman.”

THE TYRANNY OF LISTS

Almost every month in the year unveils the latest top 10, top 50, or top 100 list.

 A few weeks ago, Time magazine profiled its 100 world influencers, from Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to comic actor Kristen Wiig.  The Wall Street Journal routinely anoints people to watch and calls the year’s hits and misses in different industries.  Fortune has an iron grip on two of the most coveted:  “most admired” and “best places to work.” 

All of which spawn trade and local media cover stories on the “best” and “worst” and “on the fence.”

Sure, these kinds of headlines sell magazines and newspapers.  Any editor worth his/her stock options would tell you that.  But spare us.  Please. 

Behind what seems like an innocuous pastime, one that might be credited, in part, to Richard Blackwell’s Ten Worst Dressed Women’s list (now going strong via the Huffington Post) is an amazing industry.   What does it mean to achieve these somewhat elusive accolades?  Hours and days and weeks are spent crafting the right prose for award – er, list submissions.  Weighty binders stuffed with testimonials and factual documents crowd judges’ desks.  Real-live business firms specialize in managing and/or measuring entries, helping validate the winners. 

Truth:  How much weight do ordinary folks, like you and us, give to these lists?  How much does it influence our choice of whom to work for and where to invest? 

As a very random and definitely unscientific sampling, we asked some of our younger relatives and friends’ kids about their college choices.  No surprise these days, tuition cost was number one for selecting post-high-school institutions.  As were location and environment, where their friends were matriculating, and whether the higher form of education offered courses and majors in their fields of interest.  [Okay, sometimes the school’s party-party reputation factored in too.]

Then we showed them different publication rankings.  Sure, they’d seen them.  On the other hand, not one of the teens really cared.  [Their parents did, though.]  Said one:  ‘I wanted to find a good school, close to home, where I could get a ROTC scholarship and support for my dental degree.”

Wouldn’t it be great if that kind of pragmatism infused American businesses?  Then list-making would revert to its original purpose:  A bona fide way for individuals and teams to schedule and track what was accomplished – or not.