Letting Go 2007
Sam started High School yesterday….and far be it for me to say something trite like, it seems like only yesterday…but it does. And I can’t help but wonder, are we both ready for this? I know, I know its only high school; college will be where you will really have to let go.
Letting go? So I just wrote about helicopter parents last week. I didn’t raise the issue then, but of course I secretly wondered…am I a helicopter parent? Well Sam would probably answer that in the affirmative with that little eye roll and smirk that he started developing this summer whenever I would ask, “Who is going? Are {insert name} parents going to be home?”
We actually used to talk…as in conversation; two way, back and forth. Now he seems to be trying to perfect providing the least amount of information possible in the fewest words. This has caused me to try and perfect the art of asking every combination of questions possible regarding a certain event or issue so that the one thing that I didn’t ask is the one that really matters. The one that another parent asks the next day in the context of, “You didn’t know that they….”
OK, I have been through this once before with his older brother, but Sam is my baby. The dynamic is slightly different.
Last Friday we both attended what the invitation said was “Grade 9 Orientation For Students and Parents.” Yes, there more than a few helicopter parents in the room; but then again, this is a helicopter school.
We received several handouts. One was titled “Starting Upper School: Helping Your Teen Adjust.” I think it must have been written by Mrs Rayburn from Leave it to Beaver.
Some highlights:
“Don’t forget that your teen too, is about to enter or has already begun puberty.” Puberty? Oh, hadn’t noticed.
“AND IMPORTANTLY : Do not forget that despite their age, teenagers still need parental affection, love, guidance, and support.” Memo to parents, love your children.
Okay, so as Nordette Adams at Blogher said at the end of her post on helicopter parents,
“What’s going on here is simple: People worry too much. Sometimes you just need to have faith and let go.”
Well, I am not sure I am ready to let go. But I do know one thing, a very positive thing occurred this evening.
Sam handed me this note. A post it note. What’s the big deal? Well, today is Thursday. He doesn’t need the shoes he is referring to until Monday but he is letting me know now. With a note written on a post.
In the past, I would have heard about the shoes on Sunday night, after the stores had closed or on Monday morning on the way to school; even on a phone a few minutes after I dropped him off . And he wouldn’t have known whether he needed new shoes or whether his old shoes fit…and he wouldn’t have been able to find them anyway.
This was a big day.
Yay Sam…way to go!
Attention: Giving It and Getting It
Dave Pollard writes in How to Save the World that "What people seek from others more than anything else, is attention and appreciation." He references an earlier post where he wrote, "It’s really all about attention, and paying attention. The attention we pay to others, and that others pay to us, defines us, far more than our appearance or our name. And how can we appreciate what someone (a life partner, a business partner, a customer, an employee, a friend or foe is about and has to offer) unless and until we pay attention to her, really listen and observe with (as much as is humanly possible no judgment, no personal filters or frames impeding. And once we’ve paid enough attention that we really understand that person (or for that matter, that creature of any species), how can we not appreciate her….watch, listen, observe, pay attention and you will know the reason."
I couldn’t agree more and I couldn’t practice it less. Just ask my children.
And of course I have a million excuses and explanations for this but that doesn’t change the outcome which is that the people that I care most about don’t get my full attention and therefore do not feel appreciated. Linda Stone coined the term "continuous partial attention" in 1997 and described it as a way of life for the past two decades in order to keep up with responsibilities and relationships. She says, "With continuous partial attention we keep the top level item in focus and scan the periphery in case something more important emerges." She doesn’t mention the outer edge of continuous partial attention when the top level item is so constantly shifting that there really is no way to distinguish between the top level and the periphery. I think you have to be a single mother with adolescent sons to experience that.
Newsweek covering the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference that had as its theme the Attention Economy says that "carrying a BlackBerry is admitting that your commitment to your current activity is only partial." Linda Stone, Newsweek noted, draws a line between the benefits of perpetual contact through email, IMs, text messages and so on to the overloaded contact that puts us in a place of constant crisis; where continuous partial attention becomes distraction and we can’t make a commitment to any one thing. She describes continuous partial attention as being motivated by our need to be connected which is enabled by the technologies of connection; we meet a friend for lunch and during that hour we talk to others on our cellphone, eat, email, and answer text messages. We are busy, we are scanning. We don’t have a clue. There is no meaning . It is noise not music.
Edward Hallowell, who is the co-author of Driven to Distraction the first book to, if nothing else make us feel okay about attention deficit disorder (ADD) has declared that there is an epidemic of attention deficit disorder. He has written a new book called CrazyBusy Overstretched,Overbooked, and About to Snap - Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD.
He uses the name attention deficit trait (ADT) to describe the condition when we get overloaded with incoming messages and competing tasks that we are unable to prioritize. Hallowell offers some solutions to "multi-tasking mania" such as allowing for 30 minutes a day for thinking or relaxing and to take time to connect to other people without your mobile device or laptop. I think we all know what we should do…what we don’t know is how to do it. Furthermore, we don’t have time to read his book. Note to Hallowell: Please write a blog so I can read that.
Research has shown that mulitasking reduces productivity. Research conducted by Joshua Rubenstein, PhD.indicates that task switching is counter productive and can even be dangerous when we don’t realize the limitations of our attention. As a matter of fact, Seth Greenberg, a professor at union College, says that "current cognitive models suggest that people have a limited amount of attention available at any moment…Attention can be thought of as a fuel that can be dispersed. Thus tasks can be performed simultaneously with efficiency as long as the required attention for both tasks does not exceed the limit." In other words, attention divided cannot stand….do more accomplish less.
So…back to the issue of giving and getting attention. My kids will ask me to, for instance, watch a TV show with them and say and "you have to come in here" which means without my laptop. Kathy Sierra wrote a post called Your Brain on Multitasking and says that the solution is to just give things your undivided attention, to be mindful and do one thing at a time. In a more recent post she states, Multi-tasking Makes Us Stupid. Well, ok then…that is settled. Who wants to be stupid? I’ll turn off the computer, not answer the phone, not read, or otherwise not give you and the TV my undivided attention. Maybe we can even skip the TV part.
Scott Berkun really summed it up in an attention titled post, Attention and Sex. He writes, "Your obituary will not list the hours you fought off boring meetings or ignored your friends by reading forgettable blurbs about forgettable things on your cell phone or laptop. Instead it’s the intimate, deep moments that refuse division that matter." He goes on to set an attention value proposition: "how we spend our attention changes the value of what we spend it on." His analogy, "if you only spend a fast food amount of attention, you will never have a 5 star dining experience" puts it all into perspective. I think this means, be mindful.
Last week we received an email about the death of a student who was a class ahead of my older son. The kids got out of school for spring break on Thursday, March 17th. That night he was the passenger in a SUV that flipped over and he wasn’t wearing his seat belt. I need to give my children much more of my undivided attention. We would all benefit and no doubt be more focused on our tasks knowing that attention was a continuous whole, not a continuous partial. I agree with Dave Pollard, that the attention and the appreciation that we give defines us and my definition right now is lacking.
Technorati Tags: attention, continuous partial attention, ADD, ADHD, multi-tasking
Ready, Xfire, AIM: Axed again!l
There is a lot being written about the increasing use of Instant Messaging especially about teenagers. CNET reports the following from an AOL commissioned poll: "Nearly 66 percent of 13- to 21-year-olds say they send more IMs than e-mails, compared with 49 percent last year…
Overall, 38 percent of users say they send as many or more IMs than e-mails…One-fourth of users would like to see entertainment content within instant messages."
In a separate article about business use of Instant Messaging CNET reports, "It’s official: Instant messaging is the new e-mail for the world’s businesses." They estimate that there are "1 billion IMs sent every day between 28 million enterprise users." Businessweek deemed email "So Five Minutes Ago" and attributed the trend to "the anthropological shift
occurring among tomorrow’s captains of industry, the text-messaging
Netgens (16-to-24-year-olds), for whom e-mail is so "ovr," "dn," "w/e
(over, done, whatever)." Trendwatching elaborates on virtual anthropology in their December issue.
Of course, where there is a consumer behavior as attractive as this one, advertisers are right there. iMEDIA reports "Major advertisers and their agencies are now leveraging the medium of instant messaging as a mainstream interactive vehicle." IMedia says that "major advertisers including Volvo, Daimler Chrysler, Warner Brothers,
United Paramount Network, NBC Universal, Procter & Gamble, Nike, Tysons Chicken,and ING Direct participate eagerly in IM-related ad campaigns."
MIT Advertising Lab reported in November that AOL was using 2 bots, Moviefone and Shopping Buddy in its instant messaging service. The reception among users has been mixed. In December, they report that MAKE magazine is delivering content via instant message.
"The MAKEbot is a AIM/iChat buddy you add to your buddy list. When you
type latest, he will give you the latest news from Makezine.com. You
can type "subscribe 1" and he’ll deliver the latest news each hour. If
you type "photos" you’ll get the latest photos from the MAKE photo
pool, type "bookmarks" you’ll get our latest bookmarks, type
"Instructables" you’ll get the latest how-to projects. Lastly - if you
type keywords like psp, welding, ipod or whatever he’ll search the MAKE
site, the pages from MAKE and give you a link from our search engine to
help you find what you’re looking for.
MAKE is self described "as a hybrid magazine/book (known as a mook in Japan). MAKE comes
from O’Reilly, the Publisher of Record for geeks and tech enthusiasts
everywhere." You can read more about it on the Make Blog.
We can only assume that this is just the beginning. iMEDIA reports a related trend: The relationship between gamers, Instant Messaging, and advertising content delivery. On-line games users have become their own demographic target. There are over 70 million gamers in the US and they are male and between the ages of 14-35. They are affluent, well educated and love to communicate via IM, blogs, text messages, websites and voice chat.
Remember the anthropological shift I just mentioned? Well, the hardcore gamer is the influencer according to iMedia: "Trends,whether gaming related, fashion, soft drink, cars, music or
film, are determined by the hardest of the hardcore gamers who then
influence less avid gamers"….spreading the word through Instant Messaging while playing games.
Apparently, IMs cause problems with other PC software causing computers to crash. This doesn’t make for a very nice gaming experience. Consequently online game developers solved this problem by allowing for IMs within the game.
One such company, Xfire, "has provided other community tools to improve the ease of
gaming and the spread of community information. Xfire lets gamers see
what games their friends are playing, do IM from within a game to
friends outside the game, do voice chat while in-game, download files
over a fast peer-to-peer system, and more. This has led to Xfire
becoming the fastest growing online gaming community in the world with
over 2.5 million registered users, each user running Xfire an average
of 85 hours per month."
OK, so I had never heard of Xfire and neither had my kids who fit right into the demos. That was the good news. The bad news for parents is that Xfire tracks users. The good news for marketers is that Xfire can implement very targeted behavioral marketing campaigns. Now, while at their site, I noticed a little round burst that said, "Its Free No Spyware". So, if they are tracking all this data, isn’t this spyware??
OK, so I have written before about Axe Deodorant before in terms of their targeting of adolescent boys with the premise that if they use Axe they will get girls. I have also admitted that along with disapproving of the message, I have purchased the product for my son on the premise that the end, a clean boy, justifies the means, buying Axe. In late 2005, Axe introduced a new scent, Unlimited, as in, unlimited ways to pick up girls, and used two characters, Evan and Gareth and sent them off on a blog adventure. They also started appearing on Xfire.
In viral marketing mode they started out with downloads of Evan and Garth movies without mentioning the "A" word. This apparently started the Xfire IM buzz going. Later in the campaign paid placements on Xfire along with Videos with Axe products. According to the iMedia article written by Mike Cassidy, CEO of Xfire,
The results of the campaign were spectacular:
- Fifteen of the 34 top downloaded files ever on Xfire were Evan & Garreth movies with a total of 530,747 movies downloaded.
- There was a 99.4 percent increase in awareness of who Evan &
Garreth were with an astounding 222.5 percent increase in awareness of
which products were really being featured. - Over half (51.7 percent) of the Xfire user base stated their intention to buy Axe products at the end of the campaign
- And 38.7 percent stated they thought "Axe would help get the girl"
Stowe Boyd writes about a Forrester Research Study
that affirms the importance of game advertising. The study says that
there are two kinds of game advertising vehicles: in-game advertising
which is like product placement in TV programs and movies and
advergaming which is an on-line game that is promtotion itself. The AXE effort used both methods.
So, from a marketing perspective, the importance of IMs and in-game marketing cannot be overlooked. Also from a marketing perspective, Axe has been a successful word-of-mouth marketing story. I can even attest to that as a parent having heard my own son give a guest lecture to his friends in the back seat of my car about why he preferred Axe to Gillette’s Tag.
However, from a parent’s perspective I remain concerned about this kind of "word of mouth" campaign targeted at adolescent boys with a message that is blatantly disrespectful and exploitive to women. I am also not comfortable with my kids visiting a gaming site that is mining data under the camouflage of a "no spyware" burst. See Google 2084.
Technorati Tags:
IM, Instant Messaging, AXE, Xfire, Viral Marketing, Word of Mouth Marketing Del.icio.us Tags:
IMs, Instant Messaging, on-line gaming, word-of-mouth marketing
In Case of Emergency
As the finger pointing continues over Hurricane Katrina along with the cries for leadership a thought occured to me while listening to the Head of my youngest son’s school today welcome two families from New Orleans who had moved in with relatives here in St. Louis and had enrolled their children in school. The school had an emergency phone number and a plan developed after September 11th. I wondered how many parents sitting in the room knew what that number was or had it written down….on easily accessible, old fashioned paper. The school had sent it to us numerous times along with "the plan". But like the exit maps on the back of hotel doors and the location of emergency exits on airplanes, in movie theaters, or a fire escape plan from our own homes , it wasn’t top of mind enough to be of much use in case of an emergency. And the finger pointing and calls for leadership should really begin with ourselves.
Back in 1980, some of you may recall there was a fire in the MGM Grand Hotel early one morning. Eighty four people died and 675 people were injured. There were no sprinkler system in the hotel, there was complete chaos as people awoke to discover the inferno around them; they jumped to their deaths, doors locked preventing escape.
Paneras Bread Internet Oasis
It all started with a Saturday afternoon trip to Sam’s Club for some baby back ribs. My 12 year old son, Sam was scheduled to get braces on the next week so we were going to grill some ribs and corn on the cob. An offhand comment about the fact that it looked like it was going to rain as we walked in turned into the reality of the biggest rainstorm I think I have ever been in…and that includes 6 years in Florida and 5 years in New York. As we watched the shopping carts hurling across the parking lot it never crossed my mind that the power would go out for FOUR DAYS. Well, it did and that meant no lights, no laundry, no AC, no morning coffee, and for Sam no PS2 or TV and for me….no email,no Internet, no blogs, need I go on? If not for Paneras, aka St. Louis Bread I think we might not have survived. I think many people would agree judging by the army of cell phones and laptops charging in every available plug and the happy faces of the Internet starved and just plain starved people in all of the St. Louis Bread locations we patronized during our ordeal. The Wi-fi is free at Paneras and although the coffee isn’t Starbucks a free port in this storm, plus cinnamon crunch bagels was indeed an Oasis.
Calling Miss Manners
According to a recent article in Forbes Magazine, based upon a survey conducted by the research company Synovate, 52% of Americans believe they would "die" if their cell phones or email were taken away….to prove just how important our cell phones and email rights are to us, the same study indicates that we are more than willing to forgo any semblance of good manners to stay connected. The study reported that 68% of Americans report observations of poor etiquette at least once a day by cell phone users and 18% report poor email etiquette. Loud conversations in public places are noted as the worst of cell phone offenses while sending along chain emails and poor grammer are the worst email practices.
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