Saving damsels isn't healthy

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday September 9, 2013

The heroine is overtaken by a fainting spell and falls into the lake, sinking to a watery grave. Suddenly a great splash as the hero, fully clothed, dives in and raises her unconscious body to the surface. It's a key moment in the movie I was watching on DVD at the weekend, and as usual these days it was accompanied by a "making it" documentary that takes you behind the scenes.

The director and his stars remarked how expensive the filming had been. As well as the massive camera crane for the water's-edge shots, they were hit by a long list of health and safety regulations. A couple of weeks in advance they needed laboratory tests of water quality. Four frogmen stood next to the crew in case anyone got into trouble. They had an ambulance on site, with nurse and doctor. The actors wore wetsuits under their costumes, and stunt doubles stood by in case it needed a re-shoot.

My mind drifted back to the Yarra in the 70s and my first solo commercial. We needed a cheap ad for the Toppa Twosome ice cream and could only afford a cameraman, production assistant, two actors and "who's going to direct it?" "You."

The script was basic: couple in a rowing boat, young man falls in, his girlfriend dives after him and pulls him out (these were the days of women's lib), they dry off on the bank, in the sun, eating ice creams. All to the wonderful Smacka Fitzgibbon singing, "Nibble on a Twosome, Toppa Twosome, when you come out with me..." an adaptation of Tiptoe Through the Tulips that Smacka and I wrote on his kitchen table a few nights earlier.

Notice: no ambulance, doctor, nurse, frogmen, stunt doubles or wetsuits. Health and Safety Rules? What for? Ah how the world has changed.

Not that I have anything against making the workplace safer and healthier, far from it, enormous strides have been made. But with the developments a whole process has been added, a machinery that sometimes seems a little... excessive.

Already throughout this election we have seen politicians of all genders and persuasion trying hard to not look like dorks in their hair nets and safety wellies but somehow, try as they might, they do.

There's a fallacy that politicians persuade themselves, that they look more manly in hard hats and orange vests. Nope.

Earlier this year it was discovered that the new health and safety laws had overlooked Australia's overseas super-spooks, ASIS. So it was an offence for our spies to do outside work - like following villains - without their fluoro vests on. Now that's one-up on James Bond's tux.

But for true bureaucratic pettiness you can't beat the Brits. Recent times have seen sack races banned from school sports because children might fall and hurt themselves. Dodgems were forbidden from bumping each other. Remembrance Day poppies had their pins removed - in case someone stuck it into themselves rather than their lapel, presumably.

Again, let me say, it's quite right we have regulations to protect our workplaces. I remember in years past seeing very dangerous machinery - presses, guillotines, power saws and the like - with inadequate protection that would never be allowed today. Quite rightly.

But perhaps we can leave a buffer in there for some common sense. Not like a town in England where after their annual "community day", local workers would bring down the flags and bunting. This was stopped because of health and safety concerns - you wouldn't want someone falling off a ladder. The workers were the local fire brigade.

The agony and the selling lesson

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday August 29, 2013

A few months ago, losing my mobile phone turned into an agonising experience - that became a deep le

sson in selling.

Shopping for a new one, I spent hours on hours questioning the internet, visiting phone stores, talking to salespeople, asking friends, because I wanted to "get it right".

Lots pointed me to an Apple iPhone, but too often their own were patched with sticky tape over the cracked screen or looked scuffed, and I was warned they were fragile. Besides, I liked the sound of the Android system. But the HTC or Samsung felt too big and Blackberry were launching a whole new platform, and I've learned to not be the first in anything new in computing.

Can you see what my problem was? Not a lack of choice - it was having too much choice, making my head spin.

Choose: durability versus ease of use; long battery versus loud music; old faithful Nokia or born-again Blackberry? And of course every brand sported half-a-dozen model numbers.

Then there were the dealers themselves. Telsta or Optus, Vodaphone or Virgin, Dodo or Lyca or Boost? And by the way do you want broadband with that?

In the end I confounded everybody, including myself, with a Motorola Razr. It was small but strong - Gorilla Glass screen, Kevlar case - I liked the idea of a bullet-proof phone. I'd had Motorolas in the past without problems, so it ticked a lot of the boxes.

But revealing to me was the sales process. I felt that all the way from the manufacturers to the dealers to the sales staff, nobody grasped the degree of confusion in customers' minds. The vendors live with, and understand, all the maze of details - phones, systems, plans, pros and cons - so why shouldn't we?

Here's why, in a quote from the guru of marketing, Steve Jobs. The man made billions following this simple philosophy: "People don’t know what they want until you show it to them."

Forget all that you already know, wipe the slate clean and look from the position of the customer. Here I'm not just talking about mobile phones. It might be cars, or fridges, a house or an evening dress. Choice can be an agonising process, and as a good marketer your job is to help the customer handle the pain.

Don't leave them struggling through a jungle of vines and branches, gasping and confused. Find out what the customers is looking for. Take the time to listen closely, ask questions. Get them to picture what they want - giving a little guidance to the process. Don't hurry or push, a good sales assistant is never in too much of a hurry to give you full focus.

Then lead them into your grove, point and say, "This is what you need, isn't it exciting?". If you read them right, they'll say, "Yes!"

Take a lesson from Jobs. He did this again and again with the iMac, iPhone, iPod, iPad - each a basically simple product that said, "I am the answer to what you need".

If one of the many phone salespeople I met had done this with me early in the piece, I would have meekly followed and the process would have been completed in hours, not days.

It's the same when you create any marketing campaign. Think yourself into the position of the customer entering your shop (or office or web site) for the first time. What do you see? What don't you understand? From that initial point of view, you can build a campaign as big as you need.