Bing — The Decision Engine Tries to Change Search

June 14th, 2009 by Arun Sinha

Bing is trying to create a new category called decision engine, which is clever. Because then it can never be the second-ranking search engine.

But will decision engine take?

No. For many reasons.

One, it’s usually futile to try to change entrenched nomenclature. For instance, try getting people to say table tennis instead of Ping Pong.

Though if anyone has a chance of bringing about a name change, it’s Microsoft. But not if they keep running ads like the one below.

Two, search is a verb, decision an abstract noun. You can visualize someone searching for something; it’s hard to imagine a decision. Search is a more appealing term.

Search engine more closely expresses a user’s interaction with the software. Search is what a user does when he types keywords into a box. A decision is what he makes from the search results. Without search, there is no decision. Without the journey, there is no destination.

Ultimately, no matter what Microsoft calls it, users will treat Bing as a search engine. And compare it to you-know-what.

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Communications for CEOs Who Don’t Communicate

May 31st, 2009 by Arun Sinha

In a New York Times column, David Brooks writes about a recent study on the traits of successful CEOs. To be good as a CEO, he says, it pays to have these qualities:

attention to detail, persistence, efficiency, analytic thoroughness and the ability to work long hours.

On the other hand, these attributes don’t count for much:

…a good listener, a good team builder, an enthusiastic colleague, a great communicator…

But the rank and file needs to hear from its CEO and department heads (call them mini-CEOs). There’s ample research showing that effective internal communications improve employee productivity and company performance.

Good executives know this. They also know they need expert communicators who can translate their thoughts into messages that employees can relate to.

Which is why guys like me stay employed.

Here’s a secret: Most CEOs may not be good communicators, but all of them care deeply about the company, its people and its future. This sentiment gets masked by the CEO’s constant drive to analyze and execute, which is why it falls to the writer to recognize it and give it expression.

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Large Advertisers Spending Less, Buying More Media

May 18th, 2009 by Arun Sinha

Wal-Mart, Unilever, McDonald’s and others, according to this story in Ad Age, are reaping “an improved bang for the buck on their media in the last quarter, or say they will do so this year”

The prime suspect behind the increased efficiency is weak pricing in some media and markets, though there may be other reasons as well.

Wal-Mart, for example, reduced its advertising costs 20% compared to last year, mainly because of lower media costs. But its share of voice rose 67%.

The company didn’t speculate on whether that SOV increase was helped by some of Wal-Mart’s competitors cutting their spending to near zero.

Procter & Gamble, too, extracted more efficiency from its ad buys. It said spending as a percent of sales dropped 2.4% last quarter, while global ad impressions edged up 5%.

P&G’s chaiman and CEO wouldn’t commit to that 5% number in a conference call, however, merely saying he thought in a lot of cases P&G was building its share of voice.

There’s that reference to SOV again.

The lesson: Maintain or increase your ad impressions during a downswing in the economy. You’ll be rewarded with higher SOV as competitors slash their spending. And that could translate to increased SOM (share of market).

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“I Never Said She Stole My Money” - 7 Words, 7 Meanings

May 4th, 2009 by Arun Sinha

This story in the New York Times has a great example of a sentence that has 7 different meanings depending on which word is stressed.

The sentence is: “I never said she stole my money.”

Here are the 7 ways to say it, and their meanings:

I never said she stole my money. (Meaning: Someone else may have said so.)

I never said she stole my money. (She may or may not have stolen it. The only thing you can say with surety is I didn’t accuse her of the theft.)

I never said she stole my money. (I may have pointed at her or written it somewhere.)

I never said she stole my money. (I said her sister did it. You don’t listen too good, do you?)

I never said she stole my money. (She merely found it on the floor and thought it was hers.)

I never said she stole my money. (Better check your wallet pronto.)

I never said she stole my money. (But did you notice the Degas is missing?)

What other meanings can you think of?

P.S.: The Times story is about an IBM computer that will compete with humans in a real game of Jeopardy! It’s quite interesting; check it out.

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Posted in Advertising, Communications, Technical communications, Writing | No Comments »

The Red Balloon - Communicating without words

April 19th, 2009 by Arun Sinha

This 34-minute movie contains just a handful of words - not even sentences. It won the 1956 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Proving that a picture is, indeed, worth a thousand words. Or in this case, 10,000.

Enjoy.

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Teens buying less music

April 13th, 2009 by Arun Sinha

Teens are buying fewer CDs and cutting back on music downloads. To the music industry, this has to be really alarming news.

According to a study of 4,000 teens age 13 to 17 by The NPD Group, music purchases dropped in 2008 in almost every delivery category: CD purchases, paid downloads, peer-to-peer downloads, and borrowed CDs.

Reasons cited by buyers:

  • Grew dissatisfied with the music
  • Felt content with their existing collections
  • Reduced their spending on music because of the economy
  • More venues where music is available, such as online, satellite and social-networking sites.

Online and satellite music listening both increased in 2008.

Music consumption behavior is changing in general, according to the survey. Teens listen to songs on websites like MySpace, and if they like the songs, they simply go back to the site and listen again. In the past, teens were more inclined to buy the song on CD.

All of this means the music industry has to adapt. Again.

Posted in Communications, Web | 1 Comment »

End jargon, says UK government body

April 8th, 2009 by Arun Sinha
Impenetrable Jargon

"Impenetrable Jargon"

With the recession driving more people to using government services, it’s time the public sector abolished its incomprehensible jargon, says the UK’s Local Government Association.

The association is a lobbying organization that speaks for local governments in the national arena.

It wants government employees to stop saying things like coterninous, stakeholder engagement. When consumed by the urge to utter such words, staffers should just say talk to people instead.

The object is to get citizens to understand clearly what the government can do for them.

Some 200 words have been put on the “terminate with extreme prejudice” list. The list includes gems like holistic governance and predictors of beaconicity.

That last one has me flummoxed. Does anyone know what it means?

I’m all in favor of cutting out jargon and being clear, so I wish the LGA success in its efforts.

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Open external web links in a new tab

March 29th, 2009 by Arun Sinha

For the longest time, web usability experts have recommended against creating external links that open web pages in new windows. Click here for an example of this kind of advice from 2005.

The advice may have been sound a few years ago. But that was then; this is now. Broadband and tabbed browsers were novelties then; they’re commonplace now. As a user who routinely keeps several tabs open, I like having an external link open up in a new tab.

Because then, I can flit from site to site, secure in the knowledge that when I’ve completed my travels, I can return to my jumping-off point by simply clicking its tab.

Whereas, if every external link were to open in the same window, I’d soon be lost. I’d need to click the back arrow repeatedly (or look up my browsing history) to find my way back to the first site. And then click the forward arrow over and over to navigate between sites.

It’s time to revise the conventional wisdom. Internal links should open in the same window, but external links should point to a new tab.

You can set up your browser to open new links in a new tab or window. In Firefox, click Tools > Options, then click the Tabs icon.  Under New pages should be opened in, click the appropriate radio button, then OK.

To do the same in Internet Explorer, click Tools > Internet Options. On the General tab, look for the Tabs section and click Settings in that section. Then set up your configuration by clicking the proper checkboxes and radio buttons, click OK, and OK again.

In both browsers, you can open a link in a new page if you press the Ctrl key while you click the link.

If you’re creating a website, it’s easy enough to tell external links not to open in the same window. To your <a href HTML tag, add the attribute target=”_blank”.

Another option is to add a <base target=”_blank” /> tag in the head portion of your code. This will send all links to a new page. The tag needs to be closed in XHTML, but not in HTML.

WordPress allows you to set the target for a link. Blogger doesn’t. Try using the <base> tag on your Blogger site.

Whatever you do, be sure to send your visitors off to a new tab. They will thank you. And if one of them is me, so will I.

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Posted in Communications, Web | 2 Comments »

Mention in Toilet Paper Entrepreneur

March 26th, 2009 by Arun Sinha

Access Consulting was quoted in the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur blog (50,000 visitors in March) on March 24. The title of the TPE blog post was 163 Ways How to Be an Entrepreneur.

Feels good to be included. I’ve been an entrepreneur for several years, and there’s always stuff about business you can learn. I’ll look through all the 163 tips. See what I’ve been doing wrong — and right.

Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Web, Writing | No Comments »

Write “you,” not “me”

March 24th, 2009 by Arun Sinha

When a visitor arrives on your website, they want to know:

  1. Where am I?
  2. What can I get here?
  3. Is it of any benefit to me now?

In response, your website copy should tell them:

  1. You are on a site that will give you information about _______ .
  2. Here, you can buy or learn about ________ .
  3. You can’t really influence the answer to this one, except by being ultra-clear about 1 and 2. If the visitor doesn’t feel the pain that you’re offering to alleviate, you can’t help them at that instant.

You may have noticed the questions in the visitor’s mind were all about himself or herself. Not about you, the site owner. The only pronoun the visitor totally cares about in your copy is you. And its relatives your and yours.

But engaging websites try to hold a conversation with the visitor. And our normal conversations are littered with words like I, me, and us. (Listen to yourself sometime, or read the emails you send.)

How do we sound conversational without using first-person pronouns?

You don’t. Go ahead and use I, me, and us. And we and our, too. Just don’t overdo it. Keep the balance in favor of you and yours.

After writing your copy, count the number of we’s and us’s, including your company name, and the number of you’s.

The you’s should hold the majority.

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Posted in Web, Writing | No Comments »

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