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Lewis University Radio (WLRA) & United Way of Will County Team Up With XNet to Bring You the Spirit & Sounds of the Season

The holiday season has arrived with its usual dance of dry leaves and dropping mercury. To spark the spirit of giving Lewis University Radio (WLRA) has partnered with United Way of Will County to put a spotlight on United Way and their 46 Partner Agencies whose year round mission is to help alleviate the struggle of those less fortunate in the community.

WLRA will be playing Christmas music from Thanksgiving until New Years and instead of commercials, every 15 minutes they’ll air brief messages about United Way Agencies and what they’re doing to make things a little bit better for a whole lot of people who need it. The real gift is that WLRA is doing this free of charge so United Way can focus on what it does best, helping people.

So what does this have to do with XNet?

Well, first of all we host WLRA’s website and streaming internet radio, and we’re proud to see one of our clients doing something this generous. With the economy the way it is every little bit counts, and over a month of free advertising for United Way accounts for more than a little.

On top of that we wouldn’t feel right if we just sat around talking about what others are doing. Whether it’s the Silicon Prairie Social or the upcoming TEDx Naperville we’ve always got our hands in something that we hope will give back to the community.  So in support of WLRA, United Way and their 46 Partner Agencies, XNet will be donating, completely free of cost, the bandwidth for streaming WLRA on the internet.

If you have an iPhone you can download Lewis University’s new streaming radio app for free and enjoy WLRA’s seasonal offerings wherever you go:

“Christmas Memories For You and Your Family”  (Lewis University’s iPhone app requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later)

Even if you don’t have an iPhone, check out WLRA online and hear what it sounds like to really care about community:

www.wlraradio.com

And while you’re at it don’t forget to stop by United Way of Will County’s website and maybe do a little giving of your own:

www.uwwill.org

9 Axioms of an Enlightened Marketer

With all the talk in the media and trade mags of a new Renaissance, we’ve been taking some time to evaluate what exactly that might mean. Since the staff at XNet have never looked good in plunging necklines or crushed velvet we’ve decided to move the clock forward past the average futurist’s line of sight, buckle on our shoes, and start settling in for the Post-Neo-Renaissance Enlightenment.

We hope that things may have rounded out by then so that Marketing is no longer the handmaid of Deceit. To spur this desperately needed transition along here are 9 marketing axioms that eschew baroque emotional appeal and embrace the cold elegance of reason:

~ : 9 Axioms of an Enlightened Marketer : ~

1. We are conversationalists, not carny barkers. Conversing leads to engagement, barking just moves the shills along.
2. Engagement requires active participation. Remote islands with hostile inhabitants are rarely visited by the vacationing set.
3. To participate you must be present at the party, to be present you must be an agreeable guest.
4. A good message is mutually reciprocated like a brotherly handshake, not endured like blunt force trauma.
5. Uniqueness and quality are not easily copied, be wary of best practices that have gone stale.
6. Even with the philosopher’s stone of marketing in hand, conjuring in front of the wrong audience will get you burned at the proverbial stake.
7. No matter how artful, aesthetically pleasing, coercive or perfect, a product or service’s marketing message is only worth as much as the product or service being marketed.
8. However, a well crafted message that spends more time on universal concepts than on product placement can transcend its use-value to become valuable in itself.
9. When you realize that Shakespeare, Milton & Goethe were marketing their ideals you realize the bar for professionalism is set much higher than they told you in business school.

Aberrant Advice

It’s easy to get sucked into “best practice” blogs and tip lists hoping to find that little gem to really revolutionize your business. With busy schedules, active personal lives and an urge to participate in our communities the temptation to take short cuts is an ever present thorn.

Unfortunately our very cognitive structure means we lack objectivity when approaching this kind of information on the web. Savvy website designers have a bag of neuroactive grifter’s tricks that would make Felix the Cat blush. While looking for “best practices” we often end up filling our head with the run off content from someone’s marketing campaign. Content created to lure web-crawlers usually has little to do with providing real value and all too often in our search we’re subjected to a mélange of unexpected psychological cons.

Smiling Faces Tell Lies

One of the most prevalent tricks is as simple as a smile. Images of smiling faces tap into “mirror neurons” tricking our brains into an immediate sense of camaraderie and emotional well being. This mirror effect works best in face to face meetings, but remains successful even when still images or representational forms are used.

Easy Curves

Another trick relies on easy curves. Our ability to recognize a pleasing image is related to how that image is processed in our brain. Crisp, professionally finished websites provide the round curves and image abstraction that neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran and cognitive philosopher William Hirstein posited are necessary for our brains to quickly process visual information. ( See their article: The Artful Brain )

By using this fact in strategic design, websites can lead the viewer to another automatic neurologically based form of engagement. These processes are keyed to such clearly identified brain traits that they don’t need to be artful in their execution to be effective.

The Dreaded Wheel

The most subtle is something we all learned in grade school art class. That long forgotten friend the Color Wheel is a psychological tool kit often overlooked due to its inconspicuous nature. Within this humble wheel lies the key to evoking everything from a sense of nausea to salivating desire depending on the conditioning of the subject. Seems silly but research suggests more than gold at the end of the rainbow, it’s our psyches that are tied to the board by those 24 chromatic con-men.

The Mark Inside

You may think yourself a well tenured professional immune to such paltry parlor fair, but as W.S. Burroughs, American Academy of Arts and Letters, pointed out: “Hustlers of the world, there is one mark that you cannot beat: the mark inside.”

We’re betrayed by our own brain’s functionality into concessions we might not otherwise actively decide to make. Even when designers aren’t fiddling with Photoshop color enhancement to stimulate your occipital lobe, low tech bait and switch still works the crowd like magic. For a few cobbled tidbits strung together to bait web crawlers we often sacrifice our innate ability to develop viable strategies.

If you’re truly searching for “best practices” Burroughs has some additional insight that might help:  “Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.”

Good business doesn’t come from cookie cutter solutions.  You’re the only one who knows what your business does best and it’s going to be you who develops the solutions that bring it to the next level.

Resources:

Wikipedia: Neuromarketing

Neuroscience Marketing Blog - Where Brain Science and Marketing Meet

Neuromarketing: The New Science of Marketing Without Marketing (YouTube)

Andre Marquis - Google Tech Talks - Links Between Biometric Measures and Consumer Response to Media