I had wanted to send some sort of holiday greeting to my family, friends and colleagues, but it is so difficult in today’s crazy politically correct world to know exactly what to say without offending someone. So I met with my solicitor recently, and on her advice I wish to say the following:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally friendly, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender non-specific celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted Gregorian calendar year 2011, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our world great and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.
By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.
No trees were harmed in the sending of this message.
OR, if you prefer, have yourself a merry little Christ-mas and a wonderful new year.
It used to be an art form. Sending Christmas cards, that is.
You had to select just the right card to portray the right message: not too wintry if you’re southern hemisphere, not to secular if you’re religious (or vice versa), and always consider buying from a charity – it showed you cared. Then, you had to spend a long time making your list of recipients. Was there anybody to add? Anyone to remove? And, of course, you then had to hand write each one of them, and send them individually.
It was costly: in money, time, effort.
It was personalised.
It meant something.
That was then.
But it’s different now. It’s been happening for a while, but I only noticed this past week how many people have now gone digital with their Christmas cards.
That’s not a problem – it makes sense. But I don’t think we’ve got the etiquette quite right. Too many of the email “cards” I’ve received as Christmas greetings this year have been sent out as mass mailers. People haven’t even taken the time to customise the greeting for me, preferring to just hit “send to all”. I recognise that some have taken some time and effort to craft. And I have enjoyed some of them as they’ve helped me catch up on the lives of some of my friends. That’s been useful for friends who still haven’t started chronicling their lives on Facebook.
But mostly, I have just deleted the emails after a very cursory reading. They really haven’t made a connection.
I don’t think I am turning into a grumpy old man who yearns for the “good old days” before all of this “dehumanising technology” took over. I firmly believe that, correctly used, technology can help us to connect more, and connect better, than we ever have. But sending out mass mailer “Dear friend , you mean so much to me” emails is not such a correct connecting use of technology. It doesn’t feel that way to me, anyway. I’d be interested in your thoughts, and am always keen to see the world through other people’s eyes. Feel free to help me out in the comments section of this blog entry.
In my view, we either have to downgrade what we think Christmas cards are (maybe they were never heartfelt before, and maybe we weren’t as friendly with all those people anyway). Or we need to take the time and effort and energy we used to take to make a personal connection with people who mean something to us. I did not send Christmas greetings this year, and I am sorry I didn’t. It feels like an opportunity to connect has been lost. But sending out a generic greeting is equally a lost connection opportunity.
I don’t want to downgrade my view of Christmas cards. But I want us to upgrade our use of technology to make personal connections at this time of year.
Let’s use technology to enable a better humanity, rather than detract from it.
One of the keys (not the only key, but a very important key) to advertising and selling to Generation X is to connect to their families. Gen X are the generation who were born and grew up in the 1970s and early 80s. They are not “the young people” anymore, although this is still how Boomers think of them.
They’re in their 30s and early 40s, have families, mortgages and mid life issues. They’re as settled as they’re ever going to be (although this isn’t what it looked like for the Boomers). One of the things they’re very focused on is their families. Some of these middle managers, for example, are turning down promotions – not because they don’t want to move up in their companies, but because they don’t want to move their families to a new location (their son just made the first sports team at school, and they don’t want to move him). And they will prioritise family time more than any previous generations.
So, if you want to impress them, get their attention, touch their emotions and connect with them, it would be a good idea to connect with their sense of family values. But it’s a new type of family these days, isn’t it?
Microsoft’s latest campaign attempts to do just that – and they get it mainly right. “It’s a great time to be a family” is the tag line, and the series of adverts portray families using technology to do traditional family activities in exciting new ways. Here’s a great example (see more below):
They are really well put together and strike a chord with Gen X. To connect with Gen X you need to show that you understand the new rhythms and relationships of today’s families. They’ve also been adapted for different cultures (there are some excellent changes made for different countries in the homework video, for example – I like the Indian version best; compare it to this).
But they also show the limitations of traditional advertising these days. If you’re an Apple fan, for example, you’d be very unlikely to change across to a PC with Windows based on these adverts – you might even laugh a bit as you realise how simple graphics, videos and multimedia are on Apple compared to Windows. And if you own a PC, you get Windows standard, so I am not sure what these adverts are trying to do. Surely, Microsoft can funnel their creativity (and awesome budget) into something that achieves a lot more.
The connection with a generation’s value is important – in fact, a vital starting point. But you then also need to connect with the experiences of that generation and communicate with them in ways that make sense to them. This series of adverts from Microsoft does the first thing brilliantly, but falls short on the rest. But, that’s better than most, who don’t even pass the first connection hurdle with this middle aged, but still much misunderstood, generation.
Some other adverts from this series include:
PS – isn’t interesting that these last two adverts are from different sides of the planet, and are for different cultures, but they use the same music?
Exciting news: My best-selling book, “Mind the Gap” originally published by Penguin in 2004 has been fully revised and updated and is now available. Buy it from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com or Kalahari.net.
Nearly 25,000 copies of the book have already been sold, making one of the best selling South African published business books of all time.
And now it’s even better.
This new edition includes a few new chapters. You’ll find our predictions for the latest generation, and maybe you’ll agree with what we’ve decided to label it (there were many options). We’ve added information (and some predictions) about today’s children, and completely revamped the section on Generation Y.
You’ll find an entirely new section at the end of the book about how to apply generational theory around the world, to different countries, regions and people from different economic classes. Our team has spent the last ten years applying generational theory on every continent, and we’ve learnt a lot from people all around the world. We hope these new chapters distil some of what we have learnt into helpful lessons for you.
You’ll also find a few new ‘quick info boxes’ scattered through the book. We know from feedback that these were a much enjoyed feature of the first edition. We have updated almost all of the first edition lists too.
There is not one single chapter that hasn’t had a thorough update. Some chapters have been almost rewritten, while others have had significant additions and expansions. The bibliography and further reading list at the end has also been updated to reflect some of the latest research into generations.
The only downside is that right now the book is not available in ebook format. Penguin, the publisher, are still negotiating author rights across the world for all their authors, and have not yet released any of their titles in ebook format. They are hopeful this will happen in early 2012. Watch this space for more info. Or just buy the physical book for now! Thanks for your patience on this issue – I can promise you it’s not our choice that this book is not yet in ebook format.
I continue to be humbled by the way the concepts presented in this book have had an impact on so many lives. We’ve worked around the world with big corporate organisations, where we’ve helped teams develop new products, revolutionize marketing and advertising, and significantly improve HR, talent management, recruitment, leadership and teamwork. We’ve worked with governments and states, and helped to influence policy that will last for decades. We’ve had the pleasure of helping non-profit organisations, schools and charities, as well as many faith-based organisations (from many different religions).
But my favourite moment of the last few years was when a middle-aged woman came up to me after a presentation recently. She had tears in her eyes. She explained that about five years earlier she had seen me present ‘Mind the Gap’ as a keynote at a community centre one Friday evening. She had been battling to connect with her 14-year old son, and was afraid she was losing him. That talk helped her to understand how her son saw the world, and opened up a bridge into his life for her. Her tears accompanied her thanks: ‘You saved my relationship with my boy’.
Of course, my team and I have done no such thing. All we have had the privilege of doing is showing people things they probably already knew about themselves and others. But we seem to have found a way to do it that rings true and spurs people to change and action. We’re thrilled at all the stories we’ve heard since we wrote this book. We’re honoured to have touched so many lives.
We hope this updated and expanded edition of our book continues to have an impact.
Don’t forget: it’s the edition with the orange cover!
I am not a regular Sun newspaper reader (I might skim a copy in a dentist waiting room, trying to avoid page 3, of course). But it was nice to get a call from a national newspaper and be asked to contribute to a feature they were writing on recent early census data which indicates that the UK will have the largest population in Europe by 2050. It was even better to then discover that my contribution had been turned into a quite large stand alone feature on page 32 of The Sun on 28 October 2011.
“75m of us will mean death of NHS, benefits…and your dining room” – read it here
Needless to say, the journalist took my most extreme predictions and hyped them up as The Sun is wont to do. Still, I enjoyed the exercise of thinking so far ahead.
