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Architects of reality

By Tina Ambos

Each of us lives in our own world with its own rules, values and priorities, building our own reality. As a consequence, everybody who is unhappy can make themselves feel better by changing their world view.  At least this was the opinion of the communication scientist and psychotherapist Paul Watzlawick, who would have celebrated his 93^rd birthday today.  He is perhaps most famous for his quote “one cannot not communicate.” (Sound advice for all those brands that think, just because they don’t have a PR budget or employ an agency, they don’t “do PR”).

Watzlawick argued that, by architecting your own reality, your future becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  More simply: by predicting what could happen to you, you can actually make it come true.  For instance, if your horoscope in today’s newspaper warns that you (and about 400 million other people with the same star sign) might fall out with a friend, you might be more inclined to start an argument.

It’s not just individuals who are influenced by self-fulfilling prophecies, entire nations can also be affected.  For example, the more a country feels threatened by its neighbour, the more it will arm itself.  In turn, its neighbour is more likely to take defensive measures, and so the situation escalates.  A similar thing happens when a shortage of a commodity is predicted (whether real or perceived).  People, will hoard that product, creating scarcity that may not have existed in the first place.

We’ve seen this happening in the tech industry, with China stockpiling the rare earth metals used in consumer tech devices.  It seems that, nearly a century after his birth, Watzlawick’s arguments still have relevance.

 

What’s in a name?

By Lindsey Challis

Naming a company must be difficult.  Like with a child, it becomes intrinsically connected to its owner, it can cause mockery, intrigue and even speculation, but how much of a brand’s success is built on the name itself?

There are hundreds of ways people decide a brand name and there are a number of basic requirements it needs to meet.  A name must work in different languages, be different from the competition, have a recognisable URL available and, in some cases, even have an available trademark.  After the basics are checked off, there is a whole world of different avenues a company can go down.  The length, for example, should you stick with something simple such as ‘Sony’ or would the more descriptive ‘Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering’ be better?  Does it pay to be clever?  One of my favourite brand names is an authentication client called Nok Nok Labs, chosen because the internet is constantly trying to determine ‘who’s there?’.  And, what about the golden letter ‘z’ which, according to name-maker Lexicon, resonates particularly well with consumers.

No matter how good the name, no matter how many boxes it ticks, in my opinion, a name can still fall flat on its face if there isn’t a solid brand behind it. 

A name can’t create an identity – in a person or in a company – and this is where the hard work starts.  Not only does a company need to decide on the type of identity it wants, but it needs to make a concerted effort to create this.  It’s about finding a concept that the whole company believes in and sticking to it, creating a tone that penetrates everything the company does, from articles to adverts.  It must become natural, part of the fabric of the company, if it’s going to work.

In fact, the ultimate success of brand name could be that it’s no longer about the words at all.  Who cares if Hotmail is a prettied-up version of HTML, if it’s the email service you trust and want to use?   And, I’d put money on the fact that when you hear IKEA, you don’t think of a Swedish village; or that when you hear Adobe, you don’t think of a creek.

That’s not to say, however, that there isn’t something so much more satisfactory in hearing the dispute of whether Yahoo! is named after the definition ‘rude, unsophisticated and uncouth’ or ‘Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle’, as opposed to Groupon’s Jedward-style morphing of group and coupon.

A social and technological tour de force

By Jonathan Mathias

Although Brasil 2014 has been the major sporting focus for the past month, July also plays host to the biggest annual sporting spectacle in the world – the Tour de France.  ‘La Grande Boucle’ is played out on a truly epic scale.  This year’s edition, the 101^st, features 198 riders from 34 countries competing to complete the 3,664km route in the fastest time.  Watched on TV by a staggering 3.5 billion people in 190 countries (allegedly), le Tour is hungrily consumed by fans in a growing number of ways.

Being more than 100 years old, the event is of course steeped in tradition – the yellow jersey being perhaps the most iconic emblem in sport.  What fascinates me is how the race manages to marry tradition with constant innovations in both technology and, perhaps to an even greater degree, media. 

This year has seen the arrival of on-bike cameras, which bring the viewer closer to the peloton than ever before, and teams are even sharing the power stats of some of their star riders.  

Unless you’re lucky enough to be at the roadside, TV is still the best way to witness the action unfold – a feat of broadcasting which I only recently discovered involves not one, but three helicopters and a plane.  Where it has come into its own in the past few years, though, is the unprecedented access that the teams provide via social media.  Every team has its own Facebook page and the majority of the riders are to be found on Twitter, which often provides more drama than the race itself.

The sport is set to become even more open to technological advancements, but it will perhaps be more interesting to see how media coverage of the event develops and to wonder what watching le Tour might be like in the years to come.

 

France, the pioneer of open data management

By Violaine Desmons

The French Government, often considered reluctant to innovation, recently announced the creation of a new job role within the French administration: the Chief Data Officer (CDO). As part of its policy to modernise the State and public administration, the Government has decided to bet it all on open data, as it will provide real strategic value for tomorrow’s economy.  Or at least that’s how the Secretary of State in charge of Digital, Axelle Lemaire, explained it, as she set out the need for a French CDO.

This news is quite surprising as it puts France at the top of the list of innovating countries when it comes to going digital.  Indeed, the CDO function is not even common in the private sector! It confirms that France is convinced by the potential of data management and the benefits associated with it. With Gartner forecasting that, by 2017, 25 percent of large companies will have a CDO, does this make France an early adopter? As the first European country to hire a CDO and manage data at the State level, I think we can say France is on the right path!

France’s CDO will have multiple responsibilities including having the authority to collect administrative data.  Although this is likely to be a long and difficult task, by collecting this data and making it available on the data.gouv portal, they’ll be fulfilling the objective of “sharing, improving and using public data”. The key advantage of having a CDO at this level is that the decision-making process will be centralised so a lot more efficient. Public services are one of crown jewels of France, however citizens are requesting more efficiency from the State, as well as a more relevant ways to use taxes. According to the Government, improved data collection and sharing will help craft more appropriate public services.

Developed in partnership with the open data community, the data.gouv platform allows people to download/upload data, but also to provide information on data utilisation and reutilisation. In addition to the data being collected from public institutions and administration, all general interest data – such as those from OpenStreetMap, a French openly licensed map of the world – can also be uploaded and accessed through the portal. This initiative of opening data is also a good way of putting citizens at the centre of Government decision making, as well as a huge opportunity to create value added services and, in turn, new business.

Is France taking its revenge of being categorised as part of “old Europe” as it hires the first ever European “State CDO”? We can’t be 100 percent sure, but it certainly seems to be the case…!