Fluid intelligence: Do grads have the right stuff?

I am returning to Lancaster University on Wednesday for the Alumni Careers Fair. It got me thinking about the skills that I will be looking for when we come to recruit our first graduate. My thoughts were further stimulated along this line following a chat with Katrina Delargy, CEO of TIYGA, an interesting start-up based at Daresbury Innovation Centre.

Katrina raised the issue of 'fluid intelligence' versus 'crystalline intelligence'. These are terms created by psychologist Raymond Cattell and developed in partnership with John Horn. Fluid intelligence describes the innate ability to think abstractly and solve problems. Crystalline intelligence is learned through teaching, practice and experience.

Historically we as a society may have placed equal value on each form of intelligence, perhaps even the balance on the crystalline. Certainly the theory behind the switch from O-Levels to GCSEs was to increase the emphasis on reason over learned facts. But today there is arguably much less value in learned intelligence, since the sum of human knowledge is available via a search engine. What is valuable is the ability to interpret that knowledge quickly and use it appropriately.

This doesn't devalue experience completely. I can make much more intelligent guesses about the right approach in various situations based on experience; doing something many times over almost invariably means that you do it faster and more efficiently. And there are certain key skills that have to be learned: arithmetic, grammar, and spelling being particularly important for this industry.

But beyond these basic skills, I don't expect a graduate to have much experience and I am unlikely to be swayed by what experience they do have unless it is a fine margin between two candidates. Rather I am most concerned about their level of aptitude, and most of all, their willingness to apply it.

A lesson for the Liberal Democrats: be different to win

As a company we have no political affiliations. But we think the Liberal Democrats make for an interesting case study. Nick Clegg has great potential as a political party leader. The Liberal Democrats are arguably more in tune with the beliefs of much of the country than either Labour or the Conservatives - particularly since their switch to tax cuts rather than tax increases. So why does their share of the vote remain so low? The latest polls place it at just 12%.

Like many market challengers, the Liberal Democrats are making the mistake of basing their marketing strategy on what has been successful for the other parties. Look at the leaflets you get through the door: bar the colours and the logo they could all be from any one of the parties. Look at the website: "The Liberal Democrats are..." blah, blah, blah. Nothing different there.

The lesson from the business world is that even if being different isn't enough to make the sale, it will at least capture people's attention. And that is the primary challenge for any marketer: the first barrier to a sale is if the customer doesn't know a product even exists.

If the Liberal Democrats are to challenge both the other parties, and the general apathy in the country about politics, they need to present themselves as genuinely different. Adding a tag cloud and a bit of video to the website isn't enough. They need to be as marketing-savvy as the younger generation that seems to be their natural audience.

We're not in the habit of giving away freebies, but if anyone from the Lib Dems - local or national - wants to get in touch, we might be willing to do you a deal. We think we could have some fun working with you, and help you to win at the same time.

Get your targets right

We all hate spam. It wastes time, our most valuable commodity.

Spam exists because the marginal cost of each additional email sent tends to zero. For the less scrupulous spammers, the cost of each campaign tends to zero, since they use other people's resources.

But the crudest spam is easy to filter out. It is the accidental spammers that wind me up. Those who wouldn't ever consider their output spam.

For example, I moonlight as a blogger and commentator on the technology industry. I have a separate email address for all my journalistic endeavours. In the last couple of weeks I have received to that address press releases and pitches about such diverse subjects as a tradeshow about baby products and some lost tapes of Agatha Christie. Not very relevant.

By sending me those emails, the PR companies responsible have wasted a small amount of my time. If hundreds of PR companies made the same mistakes, it would waste a lot of my time. That is why most journalists ignore their email until they are looking for something specific.

But the PRs are also wasting a small amount of their own time, every time they send out a release to someone irrelevant. Even if the sending process is automated, they have wasted time inputting an incorrect entry to their list; they have wasted a small amount of resource sending the release to the wrong person; they have eroded the chance that I will ever read anything else they send me; and they will lose a little bit of time reading my response ('why have you sent me this?'). Most of all they are damaging the value of the brand they represent. Given that they send out multiple releases to tens, hundreds, or even thousands of contacts every day, this effect is quickly compounded.

This is true of all forms of marketing, not just press releases. Irrelevant marketing is wasteful. At best it is ignored, at worst, derided. Every campaign must be carefully targeted, your resources and efforts marshalled against appropriate targets for the best possible effect.

Otherwise, it is nothing more than spam.

Mystery shopper

We added a new string to our collective bow this week: mystery shopping. We've been helping Flexistore to test the sales capabilities of its store managers with a series of telephone enquiries.

The amateur dramatics were great fun, and the results were really informative. All of the managers we spoke to rated well for their patter, but the variation in styles and even the content of the conversation was significant.

It reminded us of an old internal communications adage: everyone in your organisation is in sales. Every one of your staff will at some point come in to contact with a potential customer. So it's important to make sure that all of them tell a consistent story.

However this has to be done in such a way that doesn't eliminate all trace of personality. Although we were looking for each of the managers to sound professional and present a consistent image for the company, we found that it was the individual quirks and personalities that were most likely to turn an enquiry in to a sale.

The responsibility for marketing doesn't stop with the marketing department. Everyone in a company has a responsibility to present the right image and messages to the world. But to do this employees need both support from the company, and to have a sense of belonging. Both of these things can be achieved with an effective internal communications programme.

It is hard to objectively measure the value of an internal communications programme. But they can be completed so cost-effectively that it's hard to argue that the results are not worthwhile.

Give us a call if you're interested in finding out how.

(PS - Without wanting to suck up, we were actually very impressed with Flexistore's proposition. Instead of you lugging everything to one if its locations, the secure storage vault is delivered to your door. You load it up and someone comes and picks it up when you're done. Cool, eh?)

Laughter is the best exercise

How do you make a newsletter interesting? Really, how many of your customers want to hear about your latest products? The answer, sadly, is probably not many.

Too many newsletters fall in to this trap. The aim is noble: to maintain regular contact with your customers and prospects. But all too often the content ends up reading like one of those much-pilloried Christmas round-robins.

"Jack got straight As in his A-levels and Jill is off to finishing school."

"Our new LR7 PR9 is the fastest widget in the business."

Who cares?

We have been helping Penrillian to create interesting newsletters for nearly two years now. Instead of talking about the company, we talk about the industry. We summarise one of the key issues facing Penrillian's customers, then just mention that Penrillian can help solve it. We discuss an issue that is of interest to the market and then point readers to some additional research, news stories, or downloads.

But the highlight of the Penrillian newsletters is the cartoon. We searched through the portfolios of hundreds of artists to find someone who could interpret technology stories in a pithy, punchy way. Eventually we found Noel Ford.

I've included one of Noel's cartoons here. You can see the rest if you check out the Penrillian newsletter.

The visual impact of Noel's cartoons immediately differentiate the Penrillian newsletter from other vendor communications that the targets receive. Sure, they add significantly to the cost of each issue. But their value is immeasurable.

Don't knock the value of marketing agencies

Yesterday I went to a networking event. The lead presentation was by an accountant promoting a series of business growth seminars.

In his presentation the accountant referred disparagingly to marketing agencies, suggesting that they cost a lot for little return. His seminars offered to teach people to do their own marketing. He talked about getting 'free publicity' as if PR was some sort of innovative marvel.

PR isn't new. it is an established profession. It has decades of history. It is studied as both an academic subject and for professional qualifications. It has its own industry bodies. So do many other forms of marketing. A morning learning how to write a press release does not a PR-expert make. I wouldn't expect to be able to manage my annual accounts after spending a morning learning how to use Quickbooks.

To diminish the value of marketing agencies in such a cavalier fashion showed both a lack of understanding and a disrespect for the other professionals in the room. There were 101 people in attendance: the law of averages says at least a few were from marketing agencies.

I can't guarantee that all of them provide good value. If all marketing agencies were equal we wouldn't be accumulating clients so quickly. But to dismiss the value that the right marketing agency can bring was not only rude, it was bad advice: something an accountant should never want to give.

I am a marketing professional. I don't have to qualify with the ACCA or the ICAEW as accountants do. But I do have over ten years experience, as do my colleagues. Over that time we have all brought immense value to our clients. We have helped people to sell products and even whole companies. We have been responsible for securing the investment that made companies viable in the first place.

We measure the value of our services in purely financial terms. A metric an accountant should surely understand and appreciate.

Better winning through chemistry

Continuing our abuse of great album titles, with apologies to Fatboy Slim. This phrase just seemed to be a neat summation of the benefits of Permission Marketing.

Permission Marketing has been around a long time as a concept, but was rejuvenated for the internet age by online marketing guru Seth Godin back in 1999. I use the term 'guru' advisedly. Many marketing theorists are just that. Godin has turned his ideas in to a large pot of cash.

Permission Marketing is about a return to the one-to-one relationship between vendor and customer. Relationships that these days we imagine exist only in sepia-tinted photographs of housewives making the weekly trip to their local butcher and greengrocer.

Today these relationships are enabled not by the grocer's good memory but by vast databases that examine our buying behaviour and aim to treat us all as individuals based on that information. Amazon offers one of the best known and most effective examples with its recommendations of things you might like. But Permission Marketing is not restricted to massive global enterprises like Amazon (an enterprise whose viability was still being questioned when Seth wrote his book).

The practical barriers to entry for Permission Marketing are relatively low: the technology is cheap and widely available. The reasons that it isn't a de facto part of every modern marketing campaign are human: it requires patience, commitment, and a change of mindset.

People have unrealistic expectations of marketing. They want every ad or direct mail piece to deliver immediate sales. Sales is the ultimate metric for marketing, but in almost every case there are intermediate steps where you build the relationship with the customer - especially for high-value items. Godin compares this process to dating.

In the dating analogy, we are your style consultants, your dating expert, your PA, and your florist. We will make sure you look good for every date, say the right things, and go to the right places to meet people. As the relationship progresses we'll remember the days when you ought to send something nice, and come up with creative ideas for what that something might be.

Taking the time to build up - and maintain - a degree of chemistry with your customers is hugely rewarding. Over time each sale becomes that bit easier. You will sell more. And, if you treat them right, your customers will bring other customers to you.