SD#22: Awareness, emotions and precision
June 12, 2022
Hi friends,
Welcome to another edition of Seven Dawns, your weekly newsletter on marketing, productivity, psychology and more.
Our seven ideas this week:
1. (Marketing) The view how marketers make the ads and how consumers see it is disconnected Brand advertisers have been frantically pouring ad budgets into digital channels for the last twenty years. They’ve chased every shiny object offered up to them from programmatic ads on long-tail sites, behavioural targeting and hyper-targeting, and influencer marketing — using so-called “influencers” to hawk their products. But haven’t they seen enough examples of influencers not having any actual influence at all, because most or all of their followers are fake accounts? It’s also readily apparent now that much of the “digital marketing” was not marketing at all, but just “ad spending” that played beautifully into making many ad tech companies and their investors super rich. And don’t they realize that most of the sales they saw while they were doing digital marketing were not caused by digital marketing; those sales would have happened anyway. Puncturing this “bubble” hurts a lot because so many billions have been spent in its pursuit already. However, brand advertisers should and can do better digital marketing. Augustine Fou via Forbes |
2. (Mindfulness) Awareness creates distance between mood and mind Becoming aware of our awareness is not straightforward, mainly because the untrained mind likes to latch on to whatever object or sight it sees, or whatever thought, emotion, or sensation that arises; in short, whatever we perceive. When we step away from all of this — without ideas, judgment, inner dialogue, or the need to define — we step into a space of awareness; a space where we merely observe how the mind behaves, and where we experience the present moment … without thinking, without distraction. When in a state of awareness, we’re able to zoom out and observe the mind a little like looking at the earth from the moon. Awareness affords us a whole new perspective, and through this perspective, we gain a whole new understanding. By practising awareness — not identifying with what we think, what we feel, what we believe, or what we know — we get to create a spaciousness of mind that sets us free from the impact of our thoughts and feelings; it allows us to be more at ease with the moment-to-moment unfolding of life itself. Headspace |
3. (Writing) Eliminate 20% of the words you wrote to make your draft 100% better Most writing advice will tell you the same thing – making things simple and easy to understand is crucial to making your writing better (and by no means I am saying I am good at it!). Master writers like Ernest Hemingway were adept at simplifying their language so anyone can read it but the image, and the beauty in your head remained. Here are a few tips that all of us can use to keep it simple – write in the active voice; cut out the adverbs; avoid overuse of ‘that’; turn nouns into verbs; don’t rewrite tables; shorten wordy phrases. Writing is an art that takes time and practice. The beauty of a good copy is invaluable and all of us can be better. |
4. (Marketing) The commercial aspect of advertising – budget, media, strategy – require orderly thinking Creativity and science of reasoning interchange within the world of advertising as yin and yang. We spoke of the juxtaposition last time, how both areas are equally important, how diversity of talent is paramount to different aspects of it and it is the commercial aspects of advertising that require the reason most. That’s why it is imperative for advertising agencies to look for opposite qualities within their talent. |
5. (Psychology) Emotions have a substantial influence on our attention, learning and memory The effect emotions have on our attention as well as motivating action and behaviour is linked to how well we can learn. It also facilities encoding and helps the retrieval of information efficiently. However, the effects of emotion on learning and memory are not always consistent, as studies have reported that emotion either enhances or impairs learning and long-term memory retention, depending on a range of factors. frontiers in Psychology |
6. (Marketing) Storytelling in B2B works better when you have a human in the centre of it The B2C world has long been successful at telling human stories. As humans, we need stories. In fact, we’re hardwired to latch onto the emotional aspect of every story we’re told, and from there, make decisions. Of course, the power of human-to-human storytelling has long been recognised and harnessed in B2C, where many brands have mastered the art of humanisation by using language and imagery that resonates on an emotional level with their target audience. But we could argue that B2B brands have been slow to catch up, despite them being the same but simply writing for different audiences. A more human approach is increasingly important in B2B, especially if brands are to achieve authenticity and build trust. Copestone |
7. (Science) Precision and accuracy have very different meanings in science I used to think of the two as close synonyms. Something that is precise surely must be considered accurate as well? Simon Winchester and his book ‘Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World’ changed my understanding completely. Precision is the key to everything. It is an integral, unchallenged and essential component of our modern social, mercantile, scientific, mechanical and intellectual landscapes. Precision and accuracy are two ways that scientists think about error. Accuracy refers to how close a measurement is to the true or accepted value. Precision refers to how close measurements of the same item are to each other. Precision is independent of accuracy. That means it is possible to be very precise but not very accurate, and it is also possible to be accurate without being precise. The best quality scientific observations are both accurate and precise. |
Fun things to click on:
10 visuals that will change how you see success & productivity. Mushrooms have their own language of up to 50 words. The illustrated guide to plastic straws.
Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.
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Speak soon,
Tom