The EuroComm Blog 2008

We will be taking a break over the Xmas and New Year period, back in the week beginning 07 Jan 2008.

Wishing you all a Happy Xmas!

by Michael Spencer

Spending much of my time as I do flitting between Japan and the UK in my work for Sound Strategies, I decided to set myself the challenge of attempting to learn the Kanji – the Chinese characters imported into the Japanese language some 1200 or more years ago.

There is a whole range of underlying meanings behind many of these characters which gives a depth and subtlety in nuance of which Westerners are seldom aware.

As a musician, one such coalition of characters I find particularly intriguing.

is the character for sound (pronounced ‘oto’) and when combined with the character for ‘pleasure’ gives the word for music; ‘ongaku’ .

This same character when combined with the character for ‘faith’ produces the word ‘onshin’ or communication. A subtle and potent combination from which to start an exploration into the world of sound and its role in social exchange.

Confucius said that ‘Music feeds social relationships’, and these days music can embrace a wide variety of sounds and cultures. As the avant-garde composer John Cage once commented “which is the most musical, a truck driving past a factory, or a truck driving past a music school”

My own musical journey from the London Symphony Orchestra via a position as Head of Education at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden has given me a considerable exposure to the sounds of different cultures, not only classical, and the way in which they are used to cement social bonds, pass messages, and lend a sense of identity.

For one very simple example which is known only too well by all football lovers, and probably even by those not so enamoured of the sport, click here

The way in which this has spread virally across the globe is an extraordinary phenomenon due in no small part to the exposure of large scale sporting events by the media. To a lesser extent, the same is true of Pavarotti’s ‘gift’ of Nessun Dorma to football. But it was not planned as such.

An older example can be found from the propaganda machines in WW2 where the iconic ‘V for Victory’ hand gesture was combined via its Morse code equivalent, into a powerful message for the unification of purpose. Click here.

Because of technological advance we are now just beginning to realise how hot wired we are in our relationship with sound. Neuroscience is now beginning to reveal the dance across the brain that takes place in the processing of musical stimuli in areas far more numerous that those involved in deciphering language.

Our bonds are created from our early pre-natal stirrings, and it has been shown that sounds played to the foetus can be recognised by the child up to one year after its birth.

As an aid to memory and the preservation of language, history, genealogies and spiritual wisdom song has an extended legacy reaching back through the Nordic saga tradition to the legends of Orpheus. In Japan the dissemination of news was frequently the role of the blind biwa players (a type of lute) who during the 17th and 18th centuries were one of the few groups people allowed to travel freely from town to town during the Edo period, and in Nigeria there is a long tradition of the use of the talking drum for spreading news.

In February at the IABC conference, I will be sharing the platform with David Marti; Director of the Barcelona Conservatoire of Music and Artistic Advisor of the Orquestra Simfònica del Vallès, who will help with the framing of this within a modern communications context. David is something of a rarity in the arts world having developed a career in music in addition to obtaining an EMPA (European Master in Public Administration) from ESADE. He is a deep thinker on the role of the arts and music in society and a significant player in the re-design of arts provision and opportunity in Catalonia.

Michael Spencer (U.K.) was a member of the London Symphony Orchestra and Head of Education at the Royal Opera House. He maintains a diverse career as a consultant, educator, facilitator, and commentator on the use of the arts in a range of contexts. Clients include PriceWaterhouseCooper, Unilever, Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, and the InterContinental Hotel Group. He has significant connections with Japan where he consults for the Association of Japanese Symphony Orchestra. Currently Managing Director of Sound Strategies (www.sound-strategies.co.uk), he is recognized as one of the leading thinkers in the use of sound as a communications tool. Michael will be joined by David Marti (Spain), Director of the Conservatori Municipal de Música de Barcelona.

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Michael will be speaking at the EuroComm Conference on the following:

Singing in the Brain – Why you need to Engage the Ear, as Well as the Eye

With few exceptions, business communicators currently fail to engage all the key senses in creating relationships of loyalty and trust between an organisation and its takeholders. In particular they are yet to draw on psychological research on the ways in which music and sound can be included in the strengthening and underpinning of a corporate identity programme. Identification of design systems and their logos are noted for their low scores. Perhaps a more effective interaction with the use of sound is a new territory for public relations to conquer. Drawing on recent research findings, both psychological and neuroscientific, a trail will be mapped from the exchanges of early man to present day communications systems showing how sound is fundamental to the existence both of ourselves and our societies, and highlighting how little we are aware of its potency.

by Adria Lopez

Adria Lopez is one of La Salle’s team of web designers and shares his insiders view of the sites and tastes of Barcelona for our conference delegates to try.

Barcelona’s architecture, weather, food and entertainment performances make this city a great option to take a breath.
The modernist buildings, as “La sagrada Familia” or “La Pedrera” both by the recognized architect Antoni Gaudí , make walking through the streets of Barcelona as an experience. “Passeig de Gracia”, perhaps one of the most important streets of the city for their buildings, shops and restaurants, is a good choice to stroll and shop in the stores of the most exclusive brands.

You may also stroll through “la Rambla de Catalunya, in the heart of Barcelona, where you can find a mixture of ambients and lifestyles that coexist in harmony to create a corridor between downtown and the sea. If you pass by “la Rambla” don’t hesitate to visit “el Liceu”, one of the most beautiful theaters in Europe, or “mercat de la boqueria”, considered one of the most important markets in the world.

If you decide to stay a few days in the city and you’re fascinated sports, you should visit the FCBarcelona museum and if the team plays in the city, go to a football match and enjoy in one of the most famous stadiums in Europe.

And of course, there is the gastronomy. The Mediterranean diet and “nouvelle cuisine” combine to provide our palates of great delicacies. Restaurants like “Arola” or “Alkimia” make that Barcelona is one of the meeting points of greatest masters of the kitchen.

by Rauf Hameed

There is no denying the fact that Jeddah roads are as confusing as a maze and often riddled with chillingly deep pot-holes. These holes blatantly confront the poor drivers in such an impulsive fashion that even adept acrobats, which most drivers here are, have a hard time in evading them. I daily feel like that as i go through many of the pot-holes on my way to and from my office in Khumra (warehouse city, in the south of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, near corniche). For the last many moons, I am desperately striving to memorise the way but all my geese have so far turned out to be swans.

The roads of Jeddah are not only confusing but cold and endlessly boring too. Driving on Jeddah roads is therefore an art, a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. I am sure I can hopelessly include it in my list of things that I would never be able to do.

Incidentally, I don’t have the luxury of driving a car in the kingdom, courtesy to my disheartening lingual proficiency in Arabic. I was unable to tell the officer behind a glass window in the motor licence issuing authority that I already have a licence and that I had been driving a car for the last 15 years, though in a country which may not have very broad roads but definitely follows an equally efficient system of issuing driving permits. We were hopelessly trying to communicate with each other, each of us in our own language. Alas, it intensely precluded me from telling him that I can drive a car on the roads, no matter how broken or mind-numbing the roads might appear.

Middle East is an interesting region which may include many countries but is united by fascinating ties such as the same language, religion and quite often, similar history. It is an amazing region, often alluded to as MENA (Middle East and North Africa) with its unfair share of troubles. The Arab world as a whole has had a public image problem, a look around the news media in the region will tell you that the region has some of the hottest issues breeding and flourishing all the time. Be it war in Iraq and Palestine, unrest in Beirut, violent reaction on Danish cartoonist’s caricatures of Muslim prophet Muhammad. In a way it is the same journey that many countries have undertaken in their journey to development and modernity.

In fact Middle East is a place much like any other and, as such, has its own complement of secrets and specialties found nowhere else. I can actually borrow and reproduce the words of Philip Khuri Hitt, a renowned Islamic scholar, born in Shimlan, Lebanon, in 1866 who remarked, “No people in the world manifest such enthusiastic admiration for literary expression and are so moved by the word, spoken or written, as the Arabs”. Though the region has its own contrasts such as Yemen versus Dubai, or Lebanon versus Egypt; Yemen being a very remote and challenged environment whereas Dubai oozes out pleasure, travel, affluence and western ideas of commercialization when it comes to the hospitality industry.

When it comes to communications it is quite clear that Arabic is the primary language of communication. The nuance may differ in each country and so can a dialect but it’s still the same language. Thus the Saudis can appreciate the movies of Egyptians and songs sung by Ferouz, who is a Lebanese singer. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, most of advertising and corporate communications is being done in Arabic, though there is a huge population of expatriates (almost 50% of the total population in Saudi Arabia is expatriate). No wonder media experts believe that TV, due to its immense penetration and maximum reach, can achieve best communication results if pan regional and local TV channels are utilised. It distinctly illustrates the power of TV to provide rapid reach of a broad target market across the entire region. Print media is also getting effective in certain audiences which indicates the strength of this medium across the GCC & Levant, as it is important for local market campaigns.

In countries like Dubai and Qatar large format, innovative advertising such as vertical skyscraper branding, bridge advertising, and huge billboards are more popular. Similarly Lebanon and Jordon are most liberal as many of the pan regional television stations are based in Lebanon, censorship on these stations is very limited. Whereas Saudi Arabia is most conservative as you cannot show any naked children and women have to be covered properly such as no revealing dresses and scarf on the head. As censorship is tied to moral/religious grounds it extends beyond creative copy, e.g. “The Matrix” was banned in Egypt. No wonder the most popular channel in the Arab world AlJazeera is based in Qatar because of its liberal poicies.

One new innovation in communication that is taking the world by storm is blogging in the Middle East. The first Arabian blogs to attract international attention were those written from Iraq, either by Iraqis or their dazed occupiers )anyone watching the Baghdad blogger, Salam Pax on CNN, will realise the importance of this tool. Similarly bloggers have sprung up in Kuwait, Israel, Bahrain, Syria, Iran, Egypt and Lebanon. Similarly if you look at the Saudi blogs they give you a peek into the real society and many of the new generation people consider blogs as a powerful tool to communicate, reach out and in showing the real face of the country.

As part of the PR Council and the editorial committee of the management magazine, Pulse, Rauf feels, he is adding value to his network of camaraderie within Tetra Pak. His last appointment was as Communication and Environment Manager at Tetra Pak Pakistan where he found a happy blend of communication and green dreams.

by Angie Macdonald

Social media is changing the way we do things and one of the issues involved is that of control. Control is slipping from corporates when it comes to promoting their products and from conference speakers and college lecturers, who are no longer regarded as the expert with the final say on the matter.

One example of this phenomenon is “back channelling”. In the social media context, this refers to people at conferences, or students, blogging and/or Twittering while listening to a speaker. It can also involve instant messaging or chatrooms and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Channels. This is the “back channel”, where the audience engage in a different conversation, separate from the speaker directly in front of them.

At some conferences, a screen is erected behind the speaker, on which the audience can post comments directly from their computers. The speaker, facing the audience, cannot see the comments appearing on the screen behind him or her. From what I’ve heard anecdotally, the comments which tend to appear are generally negative comments on the speaker’s clothes, or how bored people are, rather than comments that further the debate. It is the equivalent of heckling, only here it is virtual and silent.

I’m sure there are some highly skilled people who are able to multi-task and keep with the programme. But most people are unable to give two things the same amount of attention at the same time. If you are trying to listen, analyse, remember, write and follow the conversation all at the same time, something’s got to give. You just have to think about the dangers of driving while talking on a mobile phone to realise that multi-tasking has its limits.

In an article published in the New York Times, David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist and director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan is quoted as saying, “Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes.” In the same article, René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University, when describing the ‘cognitive powerhouse’ that is the human brain, says “…a core limitation is an inability to concentrate on two things at once.”

What usually happens, is that by the time the blogger or Twitterer has finished writing or texting a particular thought, the speaker has moved on, the information that has been imparted in the interim is hazy, and the thread of the argument has been lost. This creates a knowledge gap which can result in misunderstanding, which in turn can lead to miscommunication.

Now, it’s fine if one individual has misunderstood. But what happens when that individual has published their misunderstood information online and millions of people around the world read it and get the wrong end of the stick? What are the repercussions? Where is the value in that communication?

Don’t get me wrong, I can see that there are advantages to back-channelling. It can be an inclusive behaviour too and means that those unable to attend a conference in person can follow what’s happening by reading updated blogs or receiving Tweets on their mobile phones.

It can also be a way to open up and encourage discussion and debate around a topic. So rather than information being delivered from one so-called expert in a top-down fashion, everybody who knows something or who has an opinion can join in and conference goers have an opportunity to learn from their peers. In that way, learning can become a more democratic process - a knowledge exchange offering instant feedback and reflection.

The danger is that in the process you may have to listen to people who think they are right, when they may be wrong, or people who love the sight of their words in print and subject everyone to their opinions whenever they can. As in the real world, sometimes conversations are inane, occasionally they are a waste of time.

We live in an age where children are being medicated for Attention Deficit Disorder and adults put their lack of success in life down to the fact that they were never diagnosed with ADD in school, and yet, here we are as adults, actively engaging in attention deficit behaviour. Not only that, but rather than being in the moment and giving it all our attention, we are taking a step back to observe and comment on what is occurring, analysing it as it is happening, rather than experiencing it.

There is no doubt that technology is changing social behaviour, communication and relationships. In spite of the advantages, I still think that in today’s attention-seeking world, perhaps the highest form of regard we can offer anyone, is to give them our full-blown attention.

I’m not sure if there’s going to be a screen for a back-channel at the EuroComm conference, but it will be interesting to hear what you think.

Photo: thanks to jean djinni on flickr.com (CCL)