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The Thinkshift Credibility Quotient Goes Beta

Published May 14th, 2009 in branding, communications strategy, marketing, sustainability | 2 Comments »

I’m excited to report that the Thinkshift® Credibility Quotient™ is ready for public consumption: we are beta testing it now, and would love your feedback.

We’ve been working on the CQ (as we call it in-house) for some time, and it’s exciting because as far as we know, this is the first system for measuring the credibility of communications—and letting people see how they stack up against competitors.

Why credibility? It’s a huge issue for companies trying to get people to adopt clean technology or a new approach, and for any company or institution promoting sustainability initiatives. (Don’t want to be accused of greenwashing? You’d better be credible.) It’s essential to being persuasive, whether you’re trying to convince people to buy a product or service, support your endeavors, or take action on an issue. And it’s just too important to assess based solely on insider impressions.

The CQ rates the credibility of any type of communication (websites, reports, marketing collateral) on a weighted 100-point scale. The system considers 10 factors integral to credibility and scores for each, with the most important receiving the most weight. The CQ rating (or grade) is the sum of those scores.

Thinkshift can provide a Credibility Quotient for a single communications vehicle or an entire program, or benchmark an organization’s communications against others in its field.

You can download a PDF that tells you more about how the CQ works and includes sample ratings (short versions) here: http://www.thinkshiftcom.com/ThinkshiftCQ_beta.pdf.

We’d love to know what you think: Do you see the value? Is it something your organization, or one you’re familiar with, could use?

Matching Communications to Cognitive Habits

Published April 22nd, 2009 in communications strategy, green marketing | 2 Comments »

The cover feature in the The New York Times Magazine‘s recent “Green Issue,” “Why Isn’t the Brain Green?” delivers rich food for thought for communicators. The article delves into what decision science research tells us about how people respond to environmental issues. Basically, our tendency to undervalue future benefits, assess risk based on emotion, and deal with a “finite pool of worry” spells trouble for efforts to deal with climate change.

It’s a long article not amenable to summarization, and it’s worth reading in full for the insights it provides on how we might communicate more effectively about climate change solutions.  For example, this nugget: a fee for carbon pollution described as an “offset” gets much more support than one described as a “tax.” Turns out it’s not necessarily the principle of paying for pollution that people object to; it’s the negative loaded term “tax” that inspires rejection.

That’s no surprise, you might think, but in environmentalists’ discussions of the pros and cons of a carbon tax, “people won’t accept a tax” is always a main con. Calling it something else to make it more palatable doesn’t seem to have emerged as a solution. People may fear that it won’t work because the public will see it as a dodge, but that may be true only when you’re using alternative wording that’s already been tagged as misleading and has its own negative connotations–”fee” instead of “tax,” for example.

Such solutions lead author Jon Gertner to an interesting ethical question: is this unfair manipulation? Gertner writes:

[Elke] Weber and David Krantz, two of the co-directors of CRED [Center for Research on Environmental Decisions], have given the matter a good deal of thought, too. ‘People need some guidance over what the right thing to do is,’ Krantz told me. But he said that he was doubtful that you could actually deceive people with decision science into acting in ways that they don’t believe are right. ‘Remember when New York tried to enforce its jaywalking laws?’ he asked. ‘You can’t enforce stuff that people don’t believe should be done.’

I’m with Krantz: what’s the harm in helping people get to an end they want (and I think most people, even if they don’t see it as a priority, would like to halt climate change) by working with their brains instead of against them? Read the article and see what you think.

Sustainability: It’s All in Our Heads

Published March 17th, 2009 in communications strategy, sustainability | No Comments »

The more analyses I read about how this or that technology won’t deliver the kind of energy (or whatever) we need, or can’t deliver enough of it, the more I think the primary challenge we face in pursuing sustainability is not technology—it’s how we think about solutions. (I’m not alone; there’s a recent book on the topic, The Power of Sustainable Thinking, by Bob Doppelt. If you’ve read it, please chime in.)

The negative conclusions of these analyses are often based on the assumption that we can’t—or won’t—change the way we do things. Because we don’t want to, or powerful interests don’t want us to, or it’s just not convenient. But, as venture capitalist Vinod Khosla points out in a recent interview, radical social change is hardly unprecedented (he cites the mobile phone, e-mail, and personal computers), “It just feels improbable before it happens.”

The upshot for communicators is, we need to make change seem possible as well as desirable. We need to make change seem exciting, fulfilling, status-enhancing—whatever it takes. (And yes, those are all emotional concepts, because our “rational” rejection of change often comes from an emotional fear of it, played upon by those with an interest in maintaining the status quo.) Not so long ago, a lot of people were chanting “Yes we can!” We need to keep chanting that—about more than a presidential race.

Be Upfront About Your Challenges

Published March 11th, 2009 in alternative transportation, communications strategy, renewable energy | 1 Comment »

For companies introducing advanced technologies, one key to credible communications is honesty about the challenges you face—market barriers, infrastructure gaps, and the like. People often think they can head off market skepticism by putting on a brave (problem-free) face, but that can backfire.

  • People who understand the challenges may assume that you don’t—or that you don’t have a plan for overcoming them.
  • People who don’t understand the problem may develop false expectations, and feel misled when they learn the full story.
  • Your silence leaves skeptics free to exaggerate the problem.

Real courage calls for facing up to challenges. Do that publicly, and you’re more likely to be perceived as trustworthy and farsighted. The best approach: bring up known issues yourself, so that you can describe your plan for overcoming them, or show how the positives outweigh the negatives, or talk about why the negatives don’t apply in your case.

For Whose Convenience?

Published March 1st, 2009 in communications strategy, marketing | No Comments »

“For your convenience.” Just contemplating that phrase generates a flare of irritation and bad memories. “For your convenience, we no longer offer phone support.” “For your convenience, you must now walk around the building to enter.” “For your convenience, we can offer you a four-hour appointment window.” And so on.

I assume businesses and institutions do this because they imagine that telling us something is convenient will make us believe that it is—even if that notion runs counter to our direct experience. (I assume that because the only other alternative is to assume that they want to make an annoying situation doubly annoying by presenting it as a favor.) This is delusional, bordering on moronic.

Lying to your customers—or implying that your definition of their experience trumps theirs—is never the way to get them to support, or at least accept, new practices or difficult changes. I can’t believe I feel compelled to point this out, but the phrase appears to have become a convention—and anyone who uses it should know that it will inject an odor of bad faith into the entire customer relationship.

If you need to make a change that people won’t like, be honest, and explain why you need to do it. (Even “For our convenience …” would be better, and might generate a laugh.) If it will benefit customers in the long run, say so—as long as you have a credible case. People may still be annoyed, but at least they won’t be insulted by your dishonesty to boot.

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