THE PRICE IS SO NOT RIGHT

There’s something in each of us that likes to play a game or two.

Call it competitiveness, achievement, even self-expression.  The notion of winning at something can lure us into arcades as well as casinos, seduce us with smartphone apps or a family Scrabble feud.

When it comes to work, though, gamification – the millennial word for infusing game mechanics in the Web – smacks of management control, and of automatons doing a higher-up’s bidding.

Hey, we’re being honest – and we know that the world just might be agin’ us:  August corporations use these kinds of software programs for various goals, from teaching about sustainability to exercising more effectively.  Many large salesforces thrill to using specialized game mechanics, such as badges, points, virtual gifts, and leaderboards, that help prompt higher performance.   Or so they say.  Gartner even predicted that this year more than 70 percent of global businesses would adopt at least one gamified app.

But is there truly safety in numbers?  For some routine jobs and tasks, such as onboarding and customer service, the games we play could well spark improvement.  Learning, too, deserves all the gamification we can absorb.  Yet the things that make us collaborate with our colleagues, enhance our interpersonal skills, and increase our productivity are not found in the Web-ified non-human prompts from our employers.  We want to figure out, ourselves, our own sources of motivation and good behaviors; understanding “me” from an online Chutes and Ladders-type exercise makes us want to, yes, game the system.

Besides, how would it make you feel to hear that Hezbollah uses gamification to market its philosophies to adolescents?

THE TRIPLE-HEADER TROIKA TRILOGY

Triangles.

The Three Stooges.

Snap, Crackle, and Pop.

Red, yellow, and blue.

For years, we – as marketers, advertisers, designers, and communicators – have almost blindly followed the rule of three … in visuals, in messages, in benefits, and more.  It’s been one of the unproven facts that informs our universe; somehow, three and no more seemed to cement our case.

Now, more than gut says we’re right:  Two UCLA behavioral science/marketing professors investigated a handful of scenarios with hundreds of undergrads, testing recall and reactions to anywhere from one to six reasons for each.  They deliberately explored the theory known as “set size effect,” or, in other words, the more descriptors, the better.  [Guess the “set size” creator never met Mies van der Rohe.]  The results were to be expected:  Students embraced the list of three, with four or more receiving a raised eyebrow or words of disdain.

Don’t stop there, though:  Three means more than a simple count.  It points to one of the issues we face now:  Way too many choices and way too little time to make effective decisions.  Though every day we face that challenge (especially in grocery stores), it’s just recently, when shopping for healthcare insurance, that we wished for an easier process.  We not only had to review the in- and out-of-network providers, but also go through, grid by grid by grid, comparisons of benefits, making sure we were matching apples to apples.   Multiply that by five providers.  And hear our frustration.

So “three” is now our golden rule. 

For us, that involves skirting aisles with too many similar products (how many different kinds of oatmeal do we need?), glossing over ads with more than three descriptors, ignoring multi-multi-imaged signs.  It also includes our stricter adherence to tri-anything in our work. 

Like our headline.

BIRDS DO IT MORE. THEY SHOULD

Call us the “reluctants.”

A few months ago, we were gently persuaded by colleagues to establish a Twitter handle.  [Facebook and Instagram, to us, are very personal spaces; we don’t use either for business.]

We did.  And promptly forgot about it.

Which is why, when more and more social media experts are shouting that, in this job-hungry market, seekers need to actively manage their personal brand via Web sites and postings and group contributions to drive personal visibility, we politely say “humbug.”

First, Google knows you … intimately.  As do the other search engines.  Chances are, whatever you say about yourself in an e-space will have already shown up.

Second, we truly get the need to social-media-ize.  For business, that is.  LinkedIn pages and postings, Twitter notes about events and ideas, Instagram visuals:  All good, if they’re done with care and without braggadocio.  Nothing annoys us more than egregious publicity for publicity’s sake.  [Many celebrities practice it; why should we?]

Third, it’s about value.  Got a clarifying comment for a discussion or a footnote about certain references?  Add it.  Want to talk about your expertise in a non-promotional fashion?  Those seven to ten critical steps or three to five “gotta dos” about a hot topic make for a great blog or mini-thought paper.

Finally, Mom always told us to speak only when we had something to say.  That’s awfully good advice today.

GET LOST! IT'S OUR PLEA

It had to happen:  Some tech entrepreneur developed a smartphone app that not only shows individual store floor plans, but also, when interacting with other apps, will re-create your shopping list in the form of a store map, routing you to the best and fastest way to hunt and gather.

And it’s all in the guise of great – and differentiated – customer service.

Hmmm:  We beg to differ.                   

For those in a hurry to amass food and other products, this kind of mapping makes sense.  After all, who’s got time (chefs excluded) to slowly examine a head of Boston lettuce or closely scrutinize the freshness of leeks?  Even consumer goods, like Nike shoes or a Tahari sheath, can easily be plucked from their shelves or hangers when armed with a retail planner.

It’s also a boon for in-store pick-up, when you don’t have the bandwidth to putter or truly shop for the item you want.

Wait.  Isn’t retail all about visual cues, enticing us to stop, look, and handle – and dream?  What ever happened to the thrill of discovering, say, a new kind of organic snack or an out-of-the-world designer label while meandering through a confusing store layout?  Even brick-and-mortar bookstores, of which there are all too few, beg us to wander and browse, read a few pages, and fall in “like” with an author.  We can always order e-books.  But not discover a different writer or illustrator or magazine editor.

Sure, we’re all about navigational signals when we need to get somewhere – a corporate strategy, business goals, even directions to off- and in-sites.  Yet even when we’re so inclined to go straight and not deviate, isn’t there something infinitely human about getting lost?

OF MARS AND FELINES

End-of-year musings are not natural to us.  We typically prefer to ponder events when they’ve occurred, as our “get it off your plate” psyches demand.  [No psychologists, please!]

But annual round-ups are part and parcel of the news media’s job, along with listing the 10 best and 100 worst of anything.  In particular, Bloomberg’s Businessweek catches up in December, tapping corporate celebrities and trends to forecast and prognosticate the next year and beyond.  In late 2013, Barry Diller was among those offering insights; two of his (edited) sentences grabbed us:  “We’re in a world now where it’s not enough to be smart.  You have to be curious.”

That statement was enough for a pause.  Is curiosity a trait we demand in ourselves, and within our business?  What will it gain us?  How often are we driven to explore the unknown … or do we just subside in a state of ennui?  And how will we be rewarded for incorporating this quality into our personalities?

Look no further for a tangible example than NASA’s Mars Rover, named Curiosity (of course).  It’s now exploring the ups and downs of the Red Planet, to better identify if that far-away sphere has any habitable -for-humans spaces.  Of course, it’s a robot, powered by science people who truly live to investigate.

On the other hand:  Other historical “let’s explore” precedents with not-so-successful outcomes are Eve and Pandora, much like the old saw that curiosity killed the cat.  What we’re supposed to learn from this is that all sorts of unexpected disasters will fall to curiosity-seekers. 

We disagree.

Risks begone!  We personally seek out those who have a passion for learning, and exhibit a sort of metaphysical wonder about the world.   Poking around in new tech stuff (like Twitter’s Medium).  Researching, say, average readership for annual reports.  Even working within a new industry.  All that piques our interests, holds – and then asks for more. 

Curiosity is a powerful way to experience, one that, to be honest, will help continue to shape our marketing and design, communications and change perspectives.