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’?

THE FUNDAMENTAL THINGS OF LIFE

Of late, we’ve been pondering intangible stuff.

Like authenticity, truthfulness, honesty, and so on.

And figuring out how, exactly, it relates to what we do.

This millennium’s writers are similarly obsessed, whether it has to do with temptation or excess or authenticity.  Our wonderment, though, concerns less of the weighty observations (i.e., ‘what’s the world coming to?’ ‘where did we stray?’) in favor of the how to identify and embed sincerity:  techniques for spotting; methods for infusing speeches, videos, even annual reports with the straight stuff; and ways to differentiate between the different kinds of truths.  [And yes, Virginia, there are many; it just depends on the side you’re representing.]

After all, we specialize in framing and creating those conversations.  It’s important to us that our readers, our audiences, our viewers understand that we’re being as sincere as we can be.  It’s somewhat easy to see if a speaker is disingenuous; body language, tone, and style are usually the give-aways.  It’s not that easy to see through emails and emojis and Internet copy to determine the truth-telling factor.  Sincerity is more than the facts; it’s a cinch to validate those.  Rather, it’s the communication’s intent and its desire to not deceive, to not boast, to be clear and honest in its content that has us thinking. 

Many writers in past centuries would have pooh-poohed our quest; it was Oscar Wilde who said, “a little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”  Truth – or dare?