He’s as good as listening as he is at broadcasting. And he’s interested in people’s stories.

Each Saturday morning his show on Radio 5 Live has several running themes which act as open invitations to ordinary listeners to call in with extraordinary stories.

This week (at the time of writing) it included “Violence against inanimate objects”, “Legitimate reasons for talking to yourself”, “Floods of things other than water”, “The dangers of food and drink in stadiums”, “Ever had a shock when looking over someone’s fence, through a window or letterbox?”, and “Footballers in lifts or department store changing rooms”.

Talking of football.

I also have a lot of time for football.

(There is a significant other in my life who would argue – vociferously – that I have too much time for football.)

Anyway, in amongst the usual phone-ins and banter at the weekend was a little gem of a conversation between Baker and Terry Venables. Two enthusiastic and articulate geezers reminiscing about the game that shall not be named. The show is on iPlayer for a few days but it will be gone by the time most people read this. So no link I’m afraid.

Venables clearly has informed opinions about every aspect of the game.

But it was his stories more than his opinions that made the chat worth a listen.

For instance…

Jimmy Greaves giving a young Tel a lift to Chelsea. Stopping to eat a full roast beef lunch in a pub in Gant’s Hill and only just making it to Stamford Bridge in time for the game against West Brom. Then proceeding to score four goals on a far from empty stomach.

There were stories about 20 a side games as a kid in Dagenham.

Stories about the abolition of the maximum wage for footballers.

Stories about playing for England.

And so on.

Every story made a point about the modern game much more effectively than simply offering an opinion about the modern game would have done.

There’s an important lesson or reminder here for anyone that blogs or speaks at conferences.

Myself included.

Stories > opinions.

Case studies > theory.

First hand anecdotes > second hand hearsay.

In my experience people have a lot more time for the formers and are more likely to lose concentration on the latters.

People have a lot of time for stories.

Said someone had just retired after an illustrious career in blue chip marketing departments and a blue chip marketing consultancy.

I was expecting an immediate, well-rehearsed response. I was expecting a highly polished definition that was the result of decades of honing and refining.

What I got was hesitation, followed by what was clearly a carefully considered response that was being made up on the spot.

The seemingly naive questions are often the most powerful.

They don’t get asked very often.

The answer is assumed or taken for granted.

There is no question that my learned, recently retired friend knows what marketing is. But he hadn’t had to put that knowledge into words for a long time.

Many years ago I was stopped, mid-presentation, by a new marketing director and asked to give my definition of the word “salience”, having just (foolishly and assumptively as it turned out) used the term on a chart.

I kind of knew, but hadn’t had to put the knowledge into words before.

I flunked the test, but learned a hard lesson.

I’ve never used a word or phrase that I couldn’t explain since.

And, on occasion, I’ve tested people’s mettle by asking the same kind of deceptively simple, apparently naive questions mid-meeting.

(Bastard).

What about Twitter?

A very bright client of mine was recently asked “what is Twitter?”

She was asked by her CEO in front of a board meeting.

I’m guessing that most people reading this will “know” what Twitter is.

But I’m also guessing that you won’t have been asked to put that knowledge into words.

And certainly not by your CEO in front of your board.

What would you have said?

What would you have said, knowing that the CEO wouldn’t tolerate waffle.

One sentence.

My clever client said this.

Twitter is where news breaks in 2012.

In so saying she did a better job under pressure than I would have done in her shoes.

It’s a concise, true definition that answers the question that will be on most CEO’s minds – “why should my company be on there?”

It’s the kind of answer that establishes a credible platform and buys you time to expand.

I can imagine the CEO saying “Hmm, interesting. Go on.”

The definition is true in terms of world events.

It is true of celebrity gossip.

It is true of most industries.

It is true amongst friends.

It is similar to, but in my opinion better than, Twitter’s own definition.

If you think you can do better, and if you can be arsed, you can add alternative definitions of Twitter via a comment.

This is the story of Betfairpoker. Of a man who is a machine. Of an eagle that dreamed of being President of the USA. Of a mouse that sings.

A year ago I wrote about “The method behind the madness that is @Betfairpoker“.

The post was based on a telephone interview with Richard Bloch, Betfair’s Head of Global PR.

At the time the question on my lips was the question on the lips of most people who were encountering this zany, personality-led corporate Twitter account for the first time – “What the fuck?”

Twelve months later and Richard kindly agreed to speak to me again. This time the main questions were “what have you learned?”, “what do you do to keep it fresh?”, “what do you measure?” and “what next?”

This post contains his answers plus, at the time of writing, a couple of breaking news developments.

Richard, Betfair and the Betfair Poker writers have “learned loads”.

A year ago the random 140 character outbursts sat uncomfortably within the culture of what Richard describes as a basically conservative, whiter-than-white service company. The @Betfairpoker account was drawing as much raised eyebrow attention internally as it was externally.

Twelve months on and Richard is clearly pleased at the extent to which the Betfair culture has not just embraced and celebrated the success of this errant outpost, but also by the fact that the link between creativity and effectiveness has been recognised and internalised. The environment in which he operates is “a little bit warmer” than when we last spoke.

He is also very proud and protective of his writers. The Twitter profile is manned (womanned?) by the same four writers who were setting the tone 12 months ago. It was his strategic decision to adopt a personality-led approach to the brand’s Twitter presence. It was his decision to outsource the tweets to professional writers, managed by Dave Allen – an unusual move at the time. And now he is keen to maximise the share of credit given to said writers. You get the sense that Richard is as pleased by the additional work that his writers have secured within Betfair and beyond because of their work with him as he is pleased by the commercial benefits of their input to Betfair Poker.

The writers also handle the lion’s share of replies and conversations, although Richard himself jumps in on DM’s and serious business enquiries.

In Richard’s eyes the Twitter profile, which grew from 8,000 to 15,000 followers during 2011, is still primarily a brand awareness play. And it does this job well, generating between 50 and 100 comments per day, and with some standout posts like the dognapping episode below generating around 300 retweets.

This morning I received an anonymous email from a dog kidnapper. Here is the transcript. twitpic.com/82r69g

— Betfair Poker (@Betfairpoker) January 3, 2012

But he also “jumps through a few hoops” to demonstrate Twitter’s harder commercial value to the business. He can attribute new customers to Twitter and, over a a period of 6 to 12 months, derive a reasonably accurate calculation of the lifetime value of these converts.

One of the main learnings has been what to talk about and when. The Twitter account is steadfastly targeted at low stakes casual poker players and poker newbies. Between the hours of nine to five the tweets are steadfastly random – what Richard calls “normal rambling”. But the poker quotient is ramped up in the evenings.

It struck me that, in this context, the commercial hub associated with the Twitter spoke is a pretty hard landing for a curious but inexperienced newbie. Richard agreed but, not surprisingly, had a plan up his sleeve.

STOP PRESS 1

Betfair Poker is heading for Facebook.

To be precise Betfair Poker is heading for Facebook with a page and some apps some time within the next 6 months.

The page is already there but it’s a holding exercise for the time being. The status updates are no more than an RSS feed of @Betfairpoker tweets.

It can be a tough challenge for brands putting meaningful daylight between the objectives, content and approach for Twitter and Facebook. Too often it’s the same stuff simultaneously broadcast on both channels.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that this has been thought through for Betfair Poker.

The brand’s Facebook page will be the soft landing for poker-curious new customers that the website isn’t.

To be precise Facebook page will be a place where new players, attracted by the brand’s personality, can learn to play poker in a fun way. Richard isn’t able to give more details at this stage but it already it makes intuitive sense. The Facebook page will be set up to play a complementary role to the Twitter profile. It is clever and commercial.

Betfair Poker “zagged” on Twitter, and will soon be “zagging” on Facebook too.

Everyone is obsessed with the Like button, which I hate. The “we need fans” approach is forcing people to do things that aren’t natural. It sounds simplistic but we’re just going to provide things that people want and that people want to talk about. It will be a soft place for people who are new to the game to land, a comfortable environment. We already have a forum on our site for the experts.

STOP PRESS 2

Google offers over 7.5 million returns for a search on the two words Twitter and serendipity.

There are lots of examples of good things happening to people who do good things on Twitter.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when Richard told me that a book was in the offing.

He has been approached by the literary agent that brokered (meerkat) Aleksandr Orlov’s hugely successful A Simples Life with Money Supermarket.

As with the Facebook page there aren’t too many specific details about the book at this stage. Indeed it’s not yet a done deal.

That said the Twitter writers are working on the concept and example copy and the agent is making confident noises.

If the project comes to fruition it sounds like it will adopt a similar approach to the meerkat book (which sold an astounding half million copies in the run up to Christmas 2011). Namely it will primarily be a softly, softly branding exercise for Betfair Poker rather than an additional revenue stream. Indeed, Richard’s view is that 90% of whatever spoils will go to “the guys”, i.e. the writers.

Having spoken to Richard twice now about Betfair Poker and its approach to all things social, the enduring themes are…

Thoughtfulness.

The question “why?” has been asked and answered. Repeatedly. In Betfair’s case this has led to some interesting (radical?) answers to the question “how”? But “why” came first.

Creativity.

Yes social channels are about being human. But, as demonstrated by Betfair Poker, they also respond well to applied creativity.

Trust and empowerment.

A culture that didn’t naturally get or embrace social gave space and time to an individual that does. In turn that individual has given space, time and responsibility to the most appropriate hired guns for the job.

Betfair Poker is a social space worth watching.

It was a sticky lesson in more ways than one. Learning by (sticky) doing meant that the lessons stuck. I only know this story because my daughter was sufficiently engaged and inspired by the lesson to tell me about it.

Good teachers make learning fun.

And Vinnie Jones makes this hard, hands-only CPR lesson lots of fun.

It’s taken 14 days but I’ve finally seen a decent TV ad in 2012.

The fun is supported by visual, audio and verbal mnemonics to ensure that we, his unruly class audience, remember and internalise the lessons – call 999, don’t kiss (of life), push this hard, push here (“on the sovereign”), push at this (Staying Alive) rhythm.

And it is underpinned by a surprising fact/insight. If you get the hands-only CPR right there is enough oxygen in the blood stream to keep someone alive until the ambulance arrives. No kiss of life needed.

The offline/online integration is well thought through, unfussy, simple and therefore probably effective. The British Heart Foundation and its agencies should be commended.

There is PPC around “Vinnie Jones”.

There is a Twitter hashtag link embedded in the YouTube video that takes you to a pre-written “share this” tweet.

And there are just the right amount of the right kind of additional information and goodies on the BHF page associated with the campaign.

This is a classy, professional, well executed piece of communication. It has a touch of the determined to be different, HHCL-at-its-best vibe to it. Grey and Glue should be proud.

Time travel ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

This realisation came as a bit of a shock to a lifelong Dr Who fan, particularly the latest Matt Smith iteration.

Time travel ain’t all it’s cracked up to be if you work in the time travel industry and fix time machines for a living.

More specifically, time travel ain’t all it’s cracked up to be if you are a…

…certified network technician for T-class personal use chronogrammatical vehicles, and an approved independent affiliate contractor for Time Warner Time, which owns and operates this universe as a spatio-temporal structure and entertainment complex zoned for retail, commercial and residential use.

In the science fictional universe created by Charles Yu time travel is mainstream and prosaic.

Time machine repair is a blue-collar occupation.

Time machine repair men have line managers.

My manager IMs me. We get along pretty well. His name is Phil. Phil is an old copy of Microsoft Middle Manager 3.0. His passive-aggressive is set to low. Whoever configured him did me a solid. The only thing, and this isn’t really that big a deal, is that Phil thinks he’s a real person. He likes to talk sports and tease me about the girl in Dispatch, whom I always have to remind him I’ve never met, never even seen.

Your average time machine repair man doesn’t have a TARDIS.

He has a TM-31 Recreational Time Travel Device.

(Which, by the way, is a “standard-issue chronogrammatical vehicle, rated for personal, private use.”)

Unlike the TARDIS the TM-31 is slightly smaller on the inside than it is on the outside. And your average time machine repair man only has the TM-31 equivalent of Siri for company.

The TM-31′s computer UI comes in one of two personality skins: TIM or TAMMY. You can only choose once, the first time you boot up, and you’re stuck with your choice forever. I’m not going to lie. I chose the girl one. Is TAMMY’s curvilinear pixel configuration kind of sexy? Yes it is. Does she have chestnut-colored hair and dark brown eyes behind pixilated librarian glasses and a voice like a cartoon princess? Yes and yes and yes. Have I ever, in all my time in this unit, ever done you know what to a screenshot of you know who? I’m not going to answer that. All I will say is that at a certain point, you lose the capacity for embarrassment.

Is this book funny? Yes.

Is this book high on originality? Yes.

Does this book give you a regular fix of cool, sci fi (for which read scientifically baseless) geekery? Yes, yes and thrice yes.

But this book is mostly, achingly, poignant.

Don’t read it if you’re on the verge, or in the midst, of a mid-life crisis. Don’t read it if you reject the notion of mid-life crisis but you are asking yourself all the big introspective questions that are symptomatic of the same.

Definitely, definitely don’t read it if you have any regrets, doubts or shameful memories about your relationship with your father, or your son, or both.

Do read it if you answered yes to any of the above and have masochistic tendencies.

Charles Yu plays himself, or rather Charles Yu plays himself playing a time machine repair man, in this science fictional universe of his own making.

As a teenager he and his science-fictional father worked together in their garage to turn the latter’s time travel vision into DIY prototype reality. It transpires that his father was the father of time travel, but in a sad, unlucky, uncelebrated, other-bugger-gets-all-the-credit, highly embittered way.

Years later, in his TM-31, Yu gets stuck in a Groundhog time-loop that forces him to relive the most excruciating moments of this claustrophobic and unsatisfactory (for which read normal) relationship.

I am angry at myself, realizing how many hundreds or thousands of instances in which my father must have looked at me, his son, looked in my eyes to see if I believed in him, if I had any more optimism than he did, if I saw the world just as he did, or if instead he had imparted his sadness and feeling of incompleteness on me. I have let him down. I have let him down countless times. I am seventeen years old, and even then I know that seventeen years old is not very old, but it is old enough to have disappointed him, old enough to have been able to help him, and then chosen not to, it is old enough to be a coward, to not have protected him when you could have, even should have. Seventeen years old is not old, but it is old enough to have hurt your father.

Time travel ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Charles Yu cracks it up to be a nightmare.

Not a monster-propelled nightmare. No Daleks. No Weeping Angels.

A technology-propelled but very human and therefore entirely credible nightmare.

The reason I have job security is that people have no idea how to make themselves happy. Even with a time machine. I have job security because what the customer wants when you get right down to it, is to relive his very worst moment, over and over and over again. Willing to pay a lot of money to do it too.

The real nightmare if you are a father and/or a son is that the book forces you to project yourself – you the disappointing and you the disappointed – onto Yu’s dystopian vision of time travel.

It is funny, clever but very uncomfortable.

This is good advice, but there’s no point giving it.

You watch your mother, their grandmother, give your child £20 for its birthday and you give the advice that you know won’t be heeded. Appreciating the benefit of delayed financial gratification has to be learned the hard way.

“Don’t blow it all at once.”

In my experience this good advice applies as equally to paternity leave as it does to hard cash.

But, once again, it’s good advice that there’s no point giving.

You’re given your extra days off as a lump sum, just like money on your birthday.

When Molly, our first daughter, was born I blew my paternity leave all at once and immediately after her birth.

I spent two weeks basking with my wife in the shared doting afterglow. And, to be honest, I don’t regret that at all and I’d do the same again.

But, from a practical point of view, I was bugger all use. As a newborn, Molly fed and then slept for extended periods. Fed and slept. Fed and slept. She was low maintenance.

It was only a little later, when she became a sentient being, that my extra pair of hands, and my extra pair of nocturnal eyes could be put to good use.

By then of course I’d blown my paternity leave. Spending even more time off work meant spending holiday allocation. It was also frustrating for colleagues who’d coped with an expected fortnight’s absence only, unexpectedly this time, to have to cope again.

We were older and wiser when it came to the subsequent kids. We struck a better balance between shared afterglow doting and hands-on paternal usefulness.

But I’ve never dared to suggest to other first time fathers that they might benefit from our experience.

It’s good advice that there’s no point giving.

I’m starting to feel the same way about social media.

If you are an “advertiser”, it is almost certain that you will enter social spaces with an advertising mindset.

For which read “target audience”, “proposition”, “messages”, “brand idea”, “call to action”, carefully quality controlled “tone of voice” and, yes, “media”.

The very term “social media” invidiously plays to an advertising mindset that is not fit for social purpose.

Branded message in a "medium" with a call to action.

It’s formulaic and sterile. A lot of counter-productive effort has gone into making a human sound like an advertising brand. When actually they should be trying to make the brand sound like a human. They look at the pages of other brands, their peers, and assume that “that” is how it is done. It all looks comfortably on-brand, on-message and in-medium.

Human response to branded stupidity (I mean message).

There is plenty of good advice you can give to new branded entrants to these spaces, but I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s worth giving.

And another. Well you did invite people to "engage" with your call to action Heinz.

Maybe we should just give them their metaphorical £20 and let them blow it all at once. Learn the hard way.

My gosh, these humans are pesky aren't they?

Sooner or later someone at Heinz (and just about every other FMCG brand with a Facebook page) who doesn’t have “marketing” in their job title is going to ask someone who does, “Why are we doing this?”

Maybe that kind of deceptively naive questioning from within will create a market for good advice that might just be worth giving.

It’s not easy choosing a single image to define a month when you take dozens. What does “defining” mean?

Here is my definition of defining.

It’s not about me.

It’s not about Instagram.

It’s about me and Instagram.

January 7

Oh fuck off snow.

This image works on both literal and metaphorical levels.

The snow started at the end of November and dominated life for the next six weeks. First we were snowed in. Then our farm track turned to glass and not even our “vehicle” could make it up the hill. Christmas provisions we’re carried the mile up to the house in 70 litre rucksack units. Heating oil was delivered in a tractor-towed mini-bowser by a friendly neighbourhood farmer and then manually decanted into the tank. The novelty of #uksnow wore off pretty damn quickly.

So when it started to snow again on Jan 7th as I walked up Dundas Street to the station it was somewhat less than welcome. I whipped out the iPhone and shot the wind-driven flakes through the light from a street lamp. I used the Lomo-fi filter. And “Oh fuck off snow” was the succinct, erudite and heartfelt caption.

A lot of other “stuff” happened in January. Stuff that triggered a blizzard of questions and emotions. Stuff that had a major influence on the whole of 2011.

So this shot is a pretty good metaphor for the year, not just the month. Blurred and confused. Driven and frenetic.

“Oh fuck off snow” was a comment on the literal image. I’d write something different for the metaphor. Not as strong or sweary but definitely with a view to drawing lines and moving on.

February 26

We spent the day on the beautiful beaches of Tentsmuir by St Andrews. I took shots on both my Canon G9 and the iPhone. By and large the iPhone shots were the better shots. This one again uses the Lomo-fi filter. Instagram filters obviously move the images one step away from reality but, used judiciously, they can help to capture the feeling of being there. Instagram is primarily a social platform, with images as the objects of conversation. It’s about sharing experiences and feelings through pictures rather than the intrinsic photographic quality of the images themselves.

This day on the beach was intense and vital. The low sun made for long shadows and high contrast. And the wind served to amplify the readings from all five senses. The Lomo-fi filter heightened the contrast in the original image and went some way to capturing the amplified feeling of being there. The filter adds to rather than detracts from the storytelling.

March 13

All four sprogs on the walk for once. High on life can't you tell?

We live in the country. We have two dogs that need a lot of exercise. That means that I get a lot of exercise. Come rain or shine a large part of my weekends is spent outdoors in the company of said dogs and various permutations of my offspring. It’s actually pretty rare, and therefore remarkable, for all four daughters to walk the dogs with me. I’d guess that around 25% of my 2011 Instagram shots were taken on these walks. It’s second nature to take my phone with me, whereas taking a “proper” camera would indicate a special occasion. Therefore it’s much more likely that magic moments will be captured on my phone than on my camera.

I’ve learned that one of the big advantages of living where we do is that it allows the kids to enjoy a properly extended childhood. They’re all tooled up with various digital devices and gaming platforms but, once you get them out of the house, they enjoy the simple outdoor pleasures just as much as I did at their age(s).

April 9

Morning ladies.

A Saturday morning in April. Sitting on the deck with a coffee, enjoying the first real warmth from the sun in 2011. I turn to my left to see that our chickens are feeling much the same way. Once again the moment is captured only because I have my phone in my pocket. The Hefe filter emphasises the warmth. This image was a celebration of returning warmth.

May 1

Future apples.

Living and learning. The lawnmower idling in our orchard. An image shared via Instagram but processed by the TiltShift Generator application. The primary purpose of TiltShiftGen is to add fake miniature effects to mobile photography. But it is great for saturated colours, high contrast and vignette effects. This shot is the result of heavy-handed over-use of the app’s blur function by a tilt-shift newbie.

June 28

Molly hanging by a thread.

My eldest daughter attends a Tuesday evening youth club at the Edinburgh International Climbing Arena (EICA). It is a disused quarry which has had a roof added and its rock faces clad with every shape and size of artificial climbing wall. We are blessed to have such a world class facility on our doorstep.

The EICA roof is home to an aerial assault course that traverses the arena at a height of 100 feet. I jacked the TiltShiftGen contrast on this shot to the max on this shot to pick out Molly’s silhouette amongst the gantries.

July 3

Simultaneous running and shaking. Multi-tasking dog.

My wife’s clans gathered at Kielder Water in Northumberland to celebrate my nephew’s 21st birthday. My two year old Border Collie, Ky, went for a swim in the reservoir. Several swims actually. This was a lucky, lucky, almost from the hip shot that caught him shaking dry at the same time as running to catch me up. Those Amazon tribes that thought a camera could steal your soul may have been onto something, because this image perfectly captures the character of this dog at this moment in his life.

No filter needed. No filter added. There is a whole Instagram community built around the #nofilter hashtag which is used by many “Igers” as a badge of pride. I’m quite proud of this shot.

August 9

Classic beach day.

Another #nofilter shot. Another image of Northumberland. My sister moved back to England from Spain earlier in the year and now lives less than 2 hours drive away. Needless to say we have seen a lot more of her recently. There have been several spontaneous weekend visits and the kids (and dogs) love the amazing beaches. Yet again the iPhone edges it over the camera when it comes to spontaneity. It’s the device that’s more likely to be in the right place at the right time.

September 9

Oh dear. It was indeed #nopartyforoldmen. #blondedigital.

Blonde, the agency that I work for, turned five in September. It was indeed no party for old men. In choosing the shot above I’ve erred on the tame side. Another TiltShiftGen treatment to oversaturate the colours by the way.

The real Instagram story behind this shot is the use of the #blondedigital hashtag. We have been using the hashtag for several months now to capture candid, intimate shots of the agency at work and at play. And I mean “we”. Most of the iPhone users at Blonde have contributed to the collection of 141 shots and counting. The beauty of using a hashtag rather than an official agency account is that multiple users can contribute. Multiple contributions over time, contributions from more than one place at a time, and multiple perspectives on the same event. (Like #nopartyforoldmen). It is of the agency, by the agency, for the agency. I expect the #blondedigital hashtag feed to be conspicuous by its presence on the new Blonde website, which is a work in progress at the time of writing. It says more about our culture, more transparently and more accurately, than even the finest “about us” copy could hope to do.

I think that internal communications will be the big deal for digitally enabled social networking over the coming years (and I’m not alone), and it’s nice that my own agency is dabbling in this area as well as advising clients.

October 6

Sun on wet street.

Instagram is habit forming. In a good way. A mild Instagram obsession makes you look at the world in a different way. The mundane can be made to look interesting, even beautiful, if considered from a different angle and through the lens of an iPhone. This shot was pure opportunism. I had nipped out to the shop next to the agency and, on my way back, I could barely see a thing looking into the sun on a wet Dundas Street. I’ve had some interesting results from pointing the iPhone at strong light sources and so I gave it a go. The Lomo-filter jacked up the already strong contrast to the point of creating a monochrome image. It makes 2011 feel like 1921.

November 12

Why nag the kids to put their stuff away when you have a puppy to incentivise them?

Meet Harvey, who joined my family and other animals at the end of October. The shot was shared via Instagram but taken through the Hipstamatic app. I’m a big fan of Hipstamatic. Its lens/film/flash combinations usually give more interesting results than the Instagram filters. Instagram is first and foremost a social network. Hipstamatic is a full-on photography app. I’m a big fan of its business model. And I’m a big fan of its customer service.

Hipstamatic images are square so they’re guaranteed to work perfectly when shared through Instagram. I evidently follow quite a few people on Instagram who feel the same way as me about Hipstamatic. This shot was taken through the John S lens onto DreamCanvas film.

December 8

Made it over. But the road bridge is shut.

Of all the lucky shots in 2011 this was the luckiest.

Hurricane force winds hit Scotland. The school that my kids attend in Edinburgh decided to shut and send its pupils home at 10 o’clock. I decided to go home with them and we crossed the Forth Rail Bridge at about 11. By this time the Road Bridge was already closed completely to all vehicles.

I was lucky to be sitting at a window seat looking over at the Road Bridge. The view was dramatic to say the least. Travelling at, I guess, 30 mph over the Rail Bridge I fired off about 10 shots, aiming to get at least one that had some element of Rail Bridge steel in the foreground without totally obscuring the view of the Road Bridge beyond. The shot above was the last of the ten and the only one that “worked”.

I was lucky that there happened to be a tug boat on the river as we were passing by.

I was lucky that only a day or two previously Neil Perkin had drawn my attention to the Dynamic Light application. I used the app to dial up the inherent drama of the shot.

Finally I made the lucky decision to share the shot on Twitter. Instagram makes it easy to share on Twitter and /or Facebook. I know a lot of people who do this with every Instagram image. I tend not to. I like the intimacy of Instagram and, by and large, what happens on Instagram stays on Instagram as far as I’m concerned. But there was understandably a lot of conversation on Twitter about the hurricane and so there was a relevant context for me to share into. As it turned out the Twitter post linking to the image was heavily retweeted, to the point that I was the number one trending topic in Edinburgh for a while. It was my 15 minutes of SoMoLo fame, courtesy of Instagram.

The End.

P.S. This post was made a whole lot easier by the My InstaAlbum application. Without it putting accurate dates to each shot would have been a laborious manual process.

High denomination, low value small change from my Mongol Rally trip.

I blog therefore I am…

…obliged to post a review of the year past.

Well fuck that for a game of soldiers.

Tweetdeck is amok with links to review and prediction posts already. They’ve even managed to displace the “7 ways to write a list-based blog post” brigade. And I think, like the January sales, they’re getting earlier every year.

(If I were to make a prediction for 2012 it would be that we’ll see the first 2012 review post some time in November.)

So no review post from me.

But, whilst I’m not going to write about it, I have been reflecting on people, relationships and ambition.

And, as a result I had cause to re-read the LinkedIn recommendations I’ve written in the last 12 months.

I don’t give LinkedIn recommendations lightly. I only wrote three in the last 12 months, which is a fraction of the recommendation requests I received.

Your opinion on other people says as much about you as it does about them.

So, given that I’d like to be taken seriously, I only write recommendations for other people that in my view deserve to be taken seriously too.

Verbal language has body language.

It’s obvious when someone is going through the motions. Particularly so when it comes to LinkedIn recommendations. And going through the motions devalues what should be a valuable testimonial.

My conditions for writing one of these are as follows :-

• I have to know you. You’d think this would be obvious. It isn’t. A connection on LinkedIn is a one-size-fits-all measure of acquaintance. Connecting with me does not signify my endorsement of your work. Based on a few requests I’ve received some people clearly think otherwise.

• You must not recommend me back. There’s too much you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours going on on LinkedIn. It’s transparent and it devalues the recommendation for both parties.

• You have to deserve it. That might sound like arrogance on my part, but I hope it isn’t. Nobody likes a broken promise, and a LinkedIn recommendation is a promise to prospective employers that the person concerned is worth hiring. Your opinion about other people says as much about you as it does about them. If you deserve it I’ll go out of my way to write something that is obviously anything but going through the motions.

Here are my last three recommendations.

Chris Miller

The copywriter with his own strapline.” This is one of my favourite Twitter biographies and it belongs to Chris. It epitomises what Chris is all about. 1) He will fit great copy into all the nooks and crannies required of modern integrated communication, both offline and online. 2) He elegantly conveys personality and tone of voice in as little as six words. 3) He doesn’t just write. His advertising background has taught him to be a focused conceptual thinker. 4) He “gets” the whole social thing. 5) That should be enough.

Rachel Lane

I write this two weeks after Rachel left Blonde to embark on her big Canadian adventure. Two weeks that have confirmed beyond doubt that Rachel was “on fire” in terms of both the quantity of work she was getting through and the self-imposed quality control that she was applying to that work. This should have come as no surprise given that a steady stream of colleagues had been approaching me after meetings to say that Rachel “is on fire”, or that “the client loved her.” We would definitely take her back. Here are some good things about Rach. She cares passionately about everything she does. This applies equally to a strategy piece or to a homemade birthday card. She makes things happen. This applies equally to networking with mobile technology vendors on Blonde’s behalf, or to confronting head on any deficiencies in our culture or processes. Rachel constructively fills vacuums. She takes professional development very seriously. Her insight gathering skills were strong from the start at Blonde. But in the last year she has added intuitive leaps, compelling storytelling and conceptual thinking to her armoury. She left us very much the rounded planner. Good luck to her.

Keith Wallace

I miss Keith, as does the rest of Blonde. He was so much more than our finance director. In a company of 25 people, each person theoretically makes a 4% contribution to the culture. Keith overindexed significantly in this respect at the 99% confidence interval. (Enough of the lame maths pseudo-geekery.) He also over-delivered against his job description. Being the finance director of a creative business is not easy. You have to strike an appropriate balance between the firm, disciplined, strategic hand of prudent corporate governance on the one hand, and the gut feel to allow the occasional outwardly extravagant indulgence or gut-feel punt on the other. Keith was a natural in this respect. Whilst he might have inwardly winced on occasion I don’t think he ever blinked. And he definitely knew when to put his foot down. To the best of my knowledge Keith also discharged his non-trivial reporting and forecasting duties to our Cello Group plc lords and masters to their satisfaction. Ditto when it came to the annual audit process. Whilst at Blonde Keith had one person reporting directly into him. Said person has the utmost respect for Keith.

I’ve learned from people that have moved on from Blonde that headhunters and employers put great value on both the quantity and quality of LinkedIn recommendations held by job candidates.

Valuable currency indeed.

So surely we should all be doing what we can to help this currency hold its value. We devalue ourselves every time we devalue it.

Optimise for humans, not for robots.

That’s always struck me as good, sound SEO advice. Write good, relevant, useful stuff for human beings and the Google algorithm that is doing its best to direct humans to good, relevant, useful stuff will reward you.

Don’t waste your time trying to game the system because you’ll take your eye off the ball.

This post by Dean Hunt is, at the time of writing, the highest ranking organic return for the Google search “headline writing for SEO”.

His reward is (yet) another inbound link.

He expands on this theme of optimising for humans with his advice to put yourself in the shoes of your intended audience and think about the way a human being would search for your good, relevant, useful content.

That couldn’t be better for me because I had this idea in my head about Roald Dahl being an ace SEO headline writer based on his chapter titles in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory *†.

It couldn’t be better because one of the things that made Dahl a great children’s writer was his ability to sink to their level, to understand what would make them laugh rather than their parents.

Putting himself in their shoes.

What is good for the SEO headline writing goose is good for the children’s story teller gander.

(It is a mark of Dahl’s genius that much of his storytelling operates on two levels, making both children and parents giggle out loud).

So with this SEO/put-yourself-in-their-shoes theme in mind, here are some of those chapter titles.

3. Mr Wonka and the Indian Prince.

5. The Golden Tickets.

8. Two More Golden Tickets Found.

9. Grandpa Joe Takes A Gamble.

12. What It Said On The Golden Ticket.

17. Augustus Gloop Goes Up The Pipe.

19. The Inventing Room – Everlasting Gobstoppers and Hair Toffee.

20. The Great Gum Machine.

24. Veruca In The Nut room.

27. Mike TV is Sent by Television.

30. Charlie’s Chocolate Factory.

I can tell you from recent experience of reading this to a fourth daughter that every one of these is “optimised” for human children.

They know exactly what is coming up next.

And what is coming up next is exactly what they want.

No clever word play that amuses the writer but tells the reader nothing.

Economical prose that isn’t stuffed with “key words”.

Were he still alive, and were he to find himself at a loose end, I think we might be able to offer Mr Dahl a position as a junior copywriter.

*† Oh, the irony of ironies. The official Roald Dahl website is built in Flash, and I can’t link directly to the content relating to Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.

The Spitting Image puppets were three dimensional caricatures of famous people, mainly politicians, that were used to extreme satirical effect.

And I got to thinking about the nature of caricature, how it works by extreme emphasis or, in the case of poor old John Major, by extreme stripping out, to draw attention to the essence of a person.

And then I got to thinking about whether the notion of caricature could usefully be applied to web design. Extreme emphasis and extreme stripping out to focus on essential content and functionality are ideas close to a UX designer’s heart after all.

“Caricature Design” had an intriguing, pithy ring to it I thought.

So I ran it by a couple of designer colleagues at Blonde.

And, whilst they kind of got where I was coming from, I wasn’t exactly bowled over by their enthusiasm.

But, as you’d expect from experienced and intelligent people, their indifference was concise, cogent and constructively critical.

This from Andy, our top User Experience bod.

It kinda feels the other way round in a way. That the mobile is the original. Honed. As intended functionally before it gets blown out of proportion by marketing.

Reflecting a lot of our recent conversations about responsive design, Andy’s lukewarm reaction to the idea of Caricature was an instinctive rejection of the idea of stripping away from a position of clutter to get to a honed, essential solution. Do your planning properly and be honed from the outset.

To Andy, Caricature Design was just a variation on the decreasingly popular theme of Graceful Degradation.

Then this from Ricky, our creative director.

Examples off the top of my head:

Most good property websites versus iPhone apps (strips the marketing guff away and allows you to focus on what you’re there to do: find property). ESPC iPhone app is a good example.

Most good car dealership websites versus iPhone apps (for exactly the same reason as above — even the mobile version of the site does this) Arnold Clark mobile site is a good example.

Being pedantic, the only negative I can muster about calling it “caricature design” (looking back on my art school days and admiring the works of Peter Howson & his main influence Honoré Daumier), is that a caricature in the artistic notion of the word is most often an exaggeration of bodily features that are the most distinguishable and quite often are the feature/s that is/are least liked about that person. The two artists I mentioned depicted quite grotesque people in their paintings… mind you – Peter Howson is from Glasgow

Is it not more about the “cream rising to the top” or “separating the wheat from the chaff” when it comes to the mobile/app version of a site?

Ricky’s indifference (it was probably a stronger negative reaction than indifference but it’s my blog and I’m being gentle with myself) wasn’t about a dislike for the notion of stripping away the unnecessary.

Ricky’s artistic training made him instinctively wary of the whole notion of caricature. In its artistic, often satirical, sense caricature is about emphasising the negative and the ludicrous.

To Ricky, caricature implies stripping back to focus on the wrong things rather than the essential.

I understand where he’s coming from. The dictionary definition of caricature talks about its focus on the ludicrous.

Caricature n. – a picture, description etc. ludicrously exaggerating the peculiarities or defects of persons or things.

No-one wants a ludicrous website or application whose defects are exaggerated.

But I’m still drawn to this idea.

I actually like the idea of ludicrous.

Ask most people (stakeholders) in a scenario planning session to strip back the peripheral and focus on the essential, and they won’t go far enough. They’re too involved to apply an appropriate degree of ruthlessness.

Maybe it needs to feel ludicrous to the stakeholder in order to be right for the user.

In the context of what went before Google was, and still is, a “ludicrously” simple, stripped back interface.

I’d originally intended to post about Caricature Design on the Blonde blog.

But, at the very least, it needs some work to move it beyond the “these views are my own, not those of my employer” stage.

Andy and Ricky didn’t actually try to ban this post, but “The post they constructively criticised” wouldn’t have made for a very punchy sub-head.

I don’t think I was barking entirely up the wrong tree with Caricature Design.

It’s the right tree.

But I should have been barking down from the top rather than up from the bottom.

Or something like that.