December 2010

Lonely Planet – The Travel Book

First Impressions

On first sight of this very weighty tome, one wonders at Lonely Planet’s diversification of their brand. The volume is huge, glossy and indeed, weighty. It is a beautifully put together piece of analogue publishing from the one-time bible of young travellers.  And now that travellers are moving away from physical travel guides to real time access and travel blogs from their contemporaries and a wealth of other online information grows, if there is going to be a book, it should indeed be a great piece of work to immerse yourself in from the armchair as opposed to sticking in your backpack.

 Lonely Planet has now set its sights more towards the 30/40-something once-young-travellers who want to relive the adventures of their youth from the comfort of their living rooms and dinner parties but who have no intention of actually immediately visiting any of the numerous destinations covered.  This is very different from Lonely Planet's heritage, but it is great as a stimulation for the imagination and serves as an excellent prompt to imagining the lives of people around the globe.

The Reality

The introduction gives a description of the book as “A grand snapshot of our diverse and kaleidoscopic world rather than an encyclopaedic reference” which absolutely sums up the offering before the reader. The pictures are beautiful and pitched just right to evoke the splendour of the landscape and the people of each place. While there is only a quarter of a page of information, it is introduced in such a way as to really draw the reader in and the facts are interesting yet generic enough to remain relevant over time. These cover best times to visit, top things to see and do, some background reading, a quirky bit of language and a random fact. Also included are a map and some geeky facts about landmass and population. All over two pages per destination.

Conclusion

This is a lovely coffee table book that is absolutely aimed at the 30/40 something one-time traveller. This is a book that has been lovingly put together and the effect is to immediately want to visit/revisit the places described. One could lose oneself in the pictures alone but the prose really does give some great insight.

This is the perfect gift for anyone with an interest in the world around us.

And the sheer range of destinations and journeys available will remind us of the range of journeys available to consumers, and the importance of creating the right Real World Journeys to bring them closer to your brand.


Creative Disruption

Creative Disruption by Simon Waldman takes us on a different kind of journey.  It is however a journey most of us have had to face, or are facing.  It is the journey from a business based on practices from before the internet changed everything to a business that is not just surviving but succeeding in the new digital world.

Waldman spent 14 years at the Guardian Media Group, first as a journalist and subsequently running their digital strategy, and is now group product director at LOVEFiLM.  This book is his analysis of how new businesses and new entrepreneurs have emerged and capitalised on the new ways of doing business.  It covers an era that has seen businesses that have been successful for decades “fighting for their very existence”.  While a new set of businesses have been created that have transformed how sectors like publishing and music operate.

Waldman highlights four forces which collided to create the eponymous Creative Disruption:

Entrepreneurs – who have seized the opportunities the internet brought

What people want – a set of basic desires that can be “exponentially satisfied”

A proliferation of connected devices

Economic volatility.

He argues that since 1993 a relatively small set of individuals have accelerated spectacular change and lists 25 who have created businesses that changed the rules of their category and made significant profits – from Larry Page at Google to Tony Hsieh of Zappos who is getting people to  buy shoes online in the US.

Waldman gives advice to companies who need to change in the face of new more complicated ways of working.  He also gives an honourable mention to MediaCom: we’re cited for successfully restructuring our business to reflect the new core by creating our single investment department across all media (on and offline) and launching MBA – MediaCom Beyond Advertising our content division.  Waldman writes “This reflected the changing nature of the media buying business as a whole, not just the growth of “digital”.

He defines the three types of people you need in the toughest times

Firestarters  - to spark the organisation into action

Rockstars – that people will follow, and

Fixers – to make things happen.

Of course you don’t need many of the first category or you end up with more fires than you can deal with. 

Waldman ends by looking forward to the next wave of Creative Disruption and points out he can’t predict what will happen because there is still a great deal that “we don’t know we don’t know”.  This is true up to a point, but what we do know is that all the truly great disruptive ideas have succeeded because they give the consumer what they want.  And we can’t escape the truth that the new normal is very fast change. 


Resonate by Nancy Duarte

The intention of this book is to reinvigorate your presentation technique.  All great presenters are essentially great story tellers and Duarte’s book gives a series of tips about telling a great story.

A recent survey quoted in this book indicates that only a minority of people put significant time (more than a couple of hours) into practising for a “high stakes” presentation. When reviewing our own habits in this area, we should remind ourselves that when we go and see a poor performance of a great play – say a Shakespeare or an Oscar Wilde – we don’t console ourselves with the fact that the content of the play is clearly written by a genius. We swear that we will never darken the doors of that theatre again because the cast were under prepared and under rehearsed.

So this book acts as a healthy reminder of the fact that we need to rehearse our communication skills. It also explains how to tell a good story, as opposed to simply reciting a list of facts, which is a well known pitfall of writing a PowerPoint presentation.

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of” (Blaise Pascal) is the theme of the section of the book which explains how to use emotions as a tool to bring emphasis to the facts of a presentation. One technique suggested is to contrast what is with what could be. The current pain of any proposal side by side with the future gain for example.

Another suggestion is to reference every business suggestion or organisational change proposal with a personal story about the customer. So for a Cisco System’s presentation to sell supply chain technology to a small business the story was told of Dave, the president of a micro-brewery hungry for success, who was thwarted by his prize hops disappearing via a customs problem in the supply chain. Fortunately Cisco saves the day in a last minute, resolution of a rollercoaster ride of emotional and logistical story telling that makes the technology seem personal.

Inspirational chapters include: Create a STAR moment (Something They’ll Always Remember) and how to do it; There’s always room to improve (including the value of brevity); Change your world (referencing the techniques of world class heroes including Martin Luther King); Inspiration is everywhere (break the rules like Lee Cummings).

I’ve been presenting for more years than I can to remember, but I found this book a great refresher of techniques. I will be definitely trying out its suggestions in a meeting room near you imminently.