Inverting The Insitutional Narrative Part 2: Telling It Bottom-Up

In Part 1, I suggested that to properly understand our motives at the ballot box the election narrative needs to be told from the bottom-up, not top-down.

How is that going?

False outrage in the headlines of certain newspapers is merely a top-down attempt by those institutions to influence how people vote (I won't dignify that rubbish with any links). And while pieces from Dispatches and Charlie Brooker genuinely expose the party leaders as institutional machines, they do nothing to reveal what individual people actually care about.

Ironically, Gordon Brown and the TV media came close to revealing what individuals think when he was caught expressing his annoyance off camera when a Rochdale resident expressed her own views instead of letting him list his government's achievements.

So what do people actually care about? And how does that resonate with candidates?

The team at TheyWorkForYou have bothered to find that out. By doing a quick survey yourself you'll find out the most common issues in your constituency and where your candidates stand - at least those candidates who've bothered to respond (1156, when I did it). Tellingly, the Guardian's report on this initiative focused on the Tories' refusal to complete the survey rather than people's issues, which were dismissively and condescendingly referred to as "everything from CCTV cameras to gay parenting."

Sadly, VoterPower have also done the analysis to explain just how little most people's votes actually count in the UK electoral system:

"The average UK voter only has the power of 0.253 votes. This is because most of us live in safe seats, where the outcome is pretty much certain regardless of how we vote... [for example] 57.60% of those who voted in Hammersmith in 2005 did not vote for the winning candidate. These votes count for nothing in the First Past the Post system."

There's clearly much work to be done before we'll see Politics 2.0!

Photo: 'expectant crowd' via BBC.

Australia Bans Lawful Sales of Cigarettes

Australia is to phase out lawful retailing of cigarettes from 2015, starting with a ban on corporate logos on packaging in 2012.

"The new branding for cigarettes will be the most hardline regime in the world and cigarette companies will hate it," the prime minister, Kevin Rudd, is quoted as saying in the Guardian:

""Introducing plain packaging just takes away the ability of a consumer to identify our brand from another brand and that's of value to us," an Imperial Tobacco Australia spokeswoman, Cathie Keogh, told ABC radio, adding that the company planned to take legal action."

A leading expert in non-brand retailing, who declined to be named, welcomed the move. "We've been working with government agencies for many years now on ways to improve the distribution and marketing of non-branded products, and this is a great endorsement of our efforts," he said, during a brief exchange of gunfire with a colleague.

The value of shares in private security firms also received a boost, as A$215bn was added to the value of the sector in same day trading on the Australian Stock Exchange.

Social Currency: Think PayWells, Not PayWalls

A thought provoking post by David Armano on "Why Social Sharing Is Bigger Than Facebook or Twitter".

David identifies the implications of the social media in terms of 'data gathering', 'knowledge sharing and collaboration', 'content distribution' and, importantly, 'social currency' as a means to generate or extract value from the social dynamic.

The social media is certainly a daunting phenomenon to monetise - especially for businesses with decades and fortunes invested in proprietary 'walled gardens', like newspapers, struggling to get their offline activity to pay for the digital presence, and vice versa. The overall structure of their merged online/offline business model seems dictated by the dynamics of sharing that David Armano also discusses. However, while it's clear there is value being exchanged and costs saved in terms of shared content, hosting and other services, where is the cold hard cash to contribute to the rest of the overhead and profit? There isn't much ad revenue left on the table after the ad networks have had their fill, and the few 'paypoints' where people will actually make retail payments has remained very limited. Previous attempts at 'paywalls' by newspapers were unsuccessful, and there's little reason to think trying them again will prove any different. Only niche providers with deep, vertical content - specialist publications - seem able to make the subscription model work, by being intrinsic to their readers' day jobs.

Given the speed at which the social media phenomenon is growing, and the finite resources and revenues available, more and more businesses will need to cluster around the existing 'paypoints' and those businesses - the new intermediaries - that already have a place at the well. Businesses that erect paywalls which interfere with, rather than facilitate, our day-to-day activities, will lose out to those who can telescope their transactions and payments into existing transactions in a way that is seamless to the consumer.

Big media - like all online businesses - need to think about 'paywells' not 'paywalls'.

Photo from Ontario Ministry of Health:'Know Your Well - Basic Well Types' ;-)

Innovation Doesn't 'Kill' Anything

As someone who's been involved at one bleeding edge or other of retail innovation for over a decade, I flinch when anyone mentions the words 'critical mass'.

Innovation is hard, because it always means change for someone. And change is a difficult process - more so for most of the population than the comparative minority of innovators and early adopters who preach it. So, while it's vital that there are evangelists for change who are passionate and completely biased in their view of the benefits of the new and the disadvantages of the old, it's also important to temper their message when addressing the wider world. After all, new products don't need to 'kill' old ones, they need to co-exist.

Tempering the discussion of innovation is more easily said than done. Once upon a time, change was only whispered at the top of organisations or society, and you or me would get fired or killed for daring to speak its name. The joyous challenge presented by the social media is that discussions about change are open to everyone.

For instance, I've been directly involved in e-payments for over a decade, and various people have called for 'the death' of cash or cheques at one point or another. Some still do. But, while this resonates with the faithful innovators and early adopters, it is neither helpful to most people's acceptance of innovative financial services nor to the process of getting those services released. Ironically, it's a tactic of the sceptic or the laggard to seize upon the 'death' of something held dear as the reason not to embrace change, often relying on 'hard data' from the current process against merely honest estimates of the benefit to implementing the new one. And that can be enough to eliminate many an innovative project from crowded boardroom agendas.

But it doesn't have to be that way. I can readily see why cash (or cheques) are still a vital payment option. All payment methods should co-exist, and if people naturally refrain from taking up new ones, or gradually abandon one form or another until it becomes untenable, so be it. Releasing another useful option - with the sole benefit of increasing choice - can be enough to see another method abandoned, which can then be gracefully retired. Like the humble cheque, perhaps, in the face of the myriad alternatives. But as can be seen from the reports on that announcement, merely discussing the 'abolition' awakens deep resistance, and provides the sceptics and the laggards with a platform from which they can make change harder than it needs to be.

Photo from WNYmedia.net

Stumped By Social Media Slang?

I saw #HowYouBallin trending on Twitter this morning and thought WTF.

Well, if you're occasionally (always?) stumped when it comes to abbreviations, acronyms and slang in the txts, tweets, hashtags and status updates that comprise the social media, try InternetSlang or WhatTheTrend.

WhatTheTrend explains #HowYouBallin as:

"People with improper grammar are asking how can you be rich if you still do things that the average person would do."

InternetSlang explains that "Ballin" means "Playing basketball or Living the good life".

All clear now?

Photo from Travelinlibrarian.