Take Five. A List of 2018's best. (Books, Podcasts, Youtube Channels & More).

Every new year comes with new hopes, habits, notes to self and reflections on the passing year.
It's not important what you have covered this year, but what did you discover.

Keeping up with the festive tradition here is a list of the best 5's I have stumbled upon this year.

5 podcasts 

1- Big Questions with Cal Fussman:

First stumbled upon him with Tim Ferris (another great Podcast), then was thrilled to find that he started his own podcast. Fussman is a New York Times bestselling author, longtime Esquire writer, corporate consultant.

The format is simple, it's one on one interviews with diverse driven,accomplished and success figures I highly recommend stating with Kobe Bryant episode

2- Leadership & Discipline:
Because motivation is like showering we need to do it everyday in the morning Jocko Willink  is a decorated retired Navy SEAL officer, author of the book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win.


3- The Message:

The first confirmed signal from outer-space has reached us, a team of specialists is trying to decode the message. Documenting the whole process is a Cyphercast podcast host Nicky Tomalin.

The reason why this is not all over the news, is that it's fake. The Message is fictional podcast about a podcast that was described as a sci fi serial. Interesting concept worth discovering.

4- You're not so Smart:

The easiest person you can persuade and manipulate creatively is yourself, as it turns out your brain sometimes takes part in self delusion as well.

you are not so smart is a podcast dedicate to the exploration self delusion. It covers topics like why your memories are not reliable, the idiot brain and naive realism.


5- HBR Ideacast:

Some podcasts are great at capturing the start up life, the silicon valley spirit of positive productivity at work, other podcasts are great at theoretical academic analysis of theory and philosophy of business.

It is very rare (at least for me) to find a podcast that does both greatly. HBR Ideacast is a weekly podcast featuring the leading thinkers in business and management.

5 Youtube Channels.

1- Jablinski Games:

This is Jack Black's gaming channel, as I am writing this now the channel got more than 2.5 Million subscriptions and 13.4 Million views with only 79 seconds of video content.

No Spam, No sponsorships, No Ad campaigns just jack speaking for 79 seconds.

2- Nerdwriter1:

This is a weekly video essay series that visualize and articulate beautiful a wide variety of thoughts and concepts.

The Channel covers diverse topics, From how to understand a Picasso and why did Dylan won the Nobel prize?, to topics like Fidget Spinners and why Apple needs a Samsung.

The Videos are average of 6:00 minutes long which makes them a perfect refresher in the middle of the day.

3- The Hot Ones From First We Feast:

Inbound Marketing in action at it's best.

The Idea is to interview celebrities over while they eat 12 spicy chicken wings. While the concept is extremely simple, the questions are very well researched and the host is extremely competent.

The series of videos gained traction of both celebrities and viewers alike, some of the guests of the show were Natalie Portman, Kevin Hart, Jeff Goldblum & many others.

The show is a great case study for inbound as the whole show is build around promoting and increasing sales of the products of the Hot Ones.

So the viewer not only opt in for the commercial by subscribing and viewing the content.
The celebrities endorsements adds to the mega influence campaign that is the Hot Ones.

Worth watching if not for the content then for the concept.

4- Kurzgesagt:

This Channel creates one animation video per month about scientific concepts and it is beautiful.

The visualization of concepts like aliens under ice, why beautiful things make us happy and time: the future and history of everything.

The channel is also known as in a nutshell as they chunk down scientific concepts into a bite size animated video. In an age where our digital world is overwhelmed by massive quantities of content, such a channel provides a quick intelligent breeze that pays respect to our very short attention span.

5- OnePercentBetter:

"I wish I can read more books" and "I don't have time to read any more", are two statements that I hear very frequently.

One Percent Better provides animated book summaries! featuring the key lessons from success and self-development books in 10 minutes or less.

While a recent article published by Inc. Magazine, says you only need 417 hours a year to read 200 books.The  average person spends 608 hours on social media and 1,642 hours on TV.

If these stats are not enough and you still don't have time then I do recommend 1% better.


                                                                     5 Books

1- Becoming by Michelle Obama:

Only 46 families got to live in the same house that she lived in, and only one family of her heritage and back ground got to be the residence of the White House.

This is a story of existence, resilience, tolerance and acceptance. The book provides an eye on a very rare life in the human experience and an insight into a survival spirit.

2- Educated by Tara Westover: 

Born and raised on a mountain in Idaho. her survivalist family didn't believe in schools, collages or any form of education; But Tara did.

This is the story of her ascendance from a young girl raised by her anti- education family to a woman with a PhD from Cambridge University. The story is unbelievable, captivating and above all true.

3- Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke:

The average amount of remotely conscious decisions an adult makes each day equals about 35,000, Annie offers a better mechanism to increase the quality of the decision making process. 

The poker champion shares her insights, on what kind of decisions we should be making and what actions we should be taking.

On a side note you can find Annie's google talk and other interviews online.

4- The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks:

From "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" to "Hallucinations ", Oliver Sacks's work is a must read.

In this collection of essays the professor of neurology, explores his own evolution on ideas, memory, innovation, and sickness,along with a range of subject matter from Freudian psychoanalysis to Darwinian evolutionary theory.


5-  Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi:

In this work of fiction we get introduced to a city, where the sins can be eaten.
When a sin-beast is killed, a tattoo of the beast appears on his skin while the guilt of committing the sin appears on the mind.

The story is captivating and the narrative is unique.     

                                                                        
                                                                     5 Movies

1- A Quiet Place:

Other than dominating the movie theaters by becoming the number 1 movie in USA,
getting recognized by the king of horror himself Stephen King.

A Quiet Place is a great piece of content and storytellers can view this movie, not just as a successful cinematic experience but a great piece of content as well.

2- Searching:

This is a story about David Kim. A father who becomes desperate when his 16-year-old daughter Margot disappears and an immediate police investigation leads nowhere.while the story sounds very familiar we have never seen it implemented that way before. the story is told from the perspective of phones, laptops and Ipads.

This is a classic story retold with digital technology. Innovative and brilliant.

3- Bohemian Rhapsody:

Because Queen.

4- Green Book:

This is a journey of A working-class Italian-American bouncer who becomes the driver of an African-American classical pianist on a tour of venues through the 1960s American South.

The car ride doesn't only reveal the struggle throughout the long road, it also reveals the characters differences, similarities and most importantly their personal stories.

5- Hereditary:

Very unsettling horror movie.

Having said that as a storyteller, content creator and a movie buff, I deeply appreciated the strong visual storytelling aspect of the movie.

The story is engaging, captivating and disturbing. Worth watching.


                                                                  5 Articles. 

1-  A Few Principles for Thinking Clearly by Charles Chu

A quote from the article:

"It gets worse. When people are exposed to evidence that contradicts their identities or tribal affiliations, they’ll actually double down and become more confident in whatever they believed. This is why it’s important, when trying to think clearly, to avoid identifying with any particular tribe."

Read More here: https://bit.ly/2NINGlu 

2- The (Very) Best Books I Read in 2018 by Ryan Holiday

A quote from the article:

"I know that people are busy, and we don’t always have time to read as much as we like. Nothing wrong with that (though if you want to read more—don’t look for shortcuts—make more time!). What matters is that when you do read, you pick the right books."


Read More here: https://bit.ly/2F3pngB


3- The 10 Biggest Archaeology Stories of 2018 by Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor

A quote from the article:

"The inscriptions are actually similar to speech bubbles in comic books, because they describe the activities of the characters, who offer explanations of what they are doing,"

Read More here: https://bit.ly/2Ql9aVR

4- Why CRM Projects Fail and How to Make Them More Successful,
     by Scott Edinger

A quote from the article:

"CRMs today also serve a lot of masters, from executives in the C-suite, technology, marketing, finance, and, oh yeah, sales. They try to address more objectives than are reasonable for any software system."

Read More here: https://bit.ly/2SZbyU1

5- There Is More to Behavioral Economics Than Biases and Fallacies. By Koen Smets 

A quote from the article:

"The proliferation of biases masks the truth that human behavior is fluid and fuzzy. The use of discrete, distinct labels implies a rigor that is simply not there."

Read More here: https://bit.ly/2NIZHa1


That has been a recap of my best lists of fives, Thanks for reading.

Twitter: @Fouad_Khafaga

Brand Biology Survival by Customer Perception

Think of a bird.

Let me rephrase that when you read the word “Bird” what are the first three bird species that comes to mind?

Most people wouldn't choose (penguin- chicken and an ostrich) in one set. There is a neurological reason for that, it has to do with not just the way we as humans think but with how do we categorize information cognitively.

The human brain - Includes your brand’s audience brains - tend to take mental shortcuts known as cognitive heuristics.

In concept they are simple, efficient rules, hard-coded by evolutionary processes or learned, which have been proposed to explain how people make decisions, come to judgments, and solve problems, typically when facing complex problems or incomplete information.

Brands are victims to both the overwhelming amount of data produced and heuristics of customers minds.

Both of these factors are very difficult to control that the only way to for a brand to survive and eventually evolve is to understand both phenomenons and to create an evolution ability characteristics in order to survive such a tough environment

Organizing information and raw data are not an exception  in his book the organized mind Daniel Levitin asks the question How are categories formed in our brains?

There are three ways in which we categories information and by extension perceive such data based on former heuristics those three categories are

• Based on mere appearance
  when we read or hear words like ( Car, trees, fish, books) we have a visual description of what that is with degrees of variance.
  
• Based on functionality
  if we look at a tool box the tools inside doesn't look the same yet all of them serve a common function they fix things .
  
• Based on concept
  the wallet not everything inside a wallet is looking the same or serve the same function by conceptually they are things you need while you are physically outside your home

Remember the types of bird question? As it turns out that penguins, chicken and ostrich doesn't fit our perception of what a bird is according to these three basis.They don't fly, not covered with flying feathers and don't really fit our concept of flying creatures. 

So what does this all means for brands? 

Based on appearance

From the caves of France to the tombs of Egypt visual storytelling was a vital element of human heritage

Nearly 70 % of all the sensory receptors of the whole body is in the eyes. Back in 2004 there was an article from the University of Cambridge titled seeing things part of the team conclusion was that “The visual appearance of products plays a significant role in determining consumer response” & “product appearance influences commercial success and consumer quality-of-life.”

So it’s no wonder to find that visual mediums gaining global traction considering that Pinterest has 150 million active uses, Instagram has 600 million active user and YouTube has 1000 million active users.

Brands doesn’t just need to be present in such mediums they have to tell meaningful stories that will enhance users experience of life through adding visual value to the brand.

Based on functionality

Functionality in branding can fall into 2 categories that functionally of the brand itself as what is the function of the product or the service that the brand offers, how does a brand demonstrate functionality through different tools.

One of the brands that demonstrate usefulness in itself is Google, other than being a

Verb, according to the useful brand report the brand is viewed as “useful because it  connects users to what they need to know, the way they want that information. Google scores particularly high relative to its peers for being quick, easy to use”.

Other demonstration of functionality is the functionality through tools and platforms,  @Hiltonsuggests Is a twitter handle with a bio that says:

“Exploring a new city & looking for insider tips? We're here to help! We're @HiltonNewsroom tweeps sharing our favorite travel suggestions.” 

The idea is that this twitter handle offers expertise on travel and travel tips to travelers whether they are Hilton residence or not. The brand is not converting or making sales or selling offers and discounts on this account, this handle serves one function only providing travel advice to travels.

Another F&B brand is using Snapchat as a customer service feedback medium, if customers have a complain about your plate, food is not hot enough, and other restaurant related complains. That goes directly to snapchat.

Snapchat depends on ephemeral content and because of this dynamic the tool serves the function of the ultimate customer service tool.

Complaints answered within one day and at the same time doesn't live on the restaurant reputation forever like a shipwreck survivor who has only one story to tell.

Based on conceptual perception 

At the core of it. the idea of branding is a conceptual idea.

There is a core concept that the brand stands for, this concept is crystallized, revived and asserted every step of the brands journey by all means available and necessary.  

The revolution of the digital world made it possible for brands to leverage that sense of belonging to the core idea of the brand, creating communities and thought leaders that embrace, enhance and amplify this core idea. In other words creating digital tribes.

Sports brands for example are not just about the sports. It’s about the concepts that the sport represent (competition, victory, hometown, nostalgic attachments).

Some brands evoke that conceptually on specific campaigns not the whole branding strategy Like the dodge campaign (God Made A Farmer). 

Red Bull is not about the energy drink, yes we can argue that this is the ultimate goal is to increase brand equity and sales yet what the brand promotes is the sense of adventure the challenge of human limits.

Final Thoughts  

According to the T3 report 87% of the brands were not seen as being “very useful”,

62% of the brands fell in the middle of the bell curve and were seen as undifferentiated, 88% of consumers do not rely heavily on advertising to inform their decisions.

Keeping in mind that companies introduce 30,000 products every year, but 70% to 90% of them don’t stay on store shelves for more than 12 months.

One of the things that these facts suggest is that brands needs to get out of the egocentricity of how great, innovative or revolutionary the brand is.

And get into their customer's mind through their behavioral and cognitive patterns not just to influence but to enhance the human experience.

References:

http://bit.ly/1NcoGP6

http://bit.ly/2rDqpKK

http://bit.ly/2sFjXTq

http://bit.ly/2sdCsNv

http://bit.ly/1Uk1C5h

http://bit.ly/2mquoYF

http://bit.ly/2snQElC

http://bit.ly/2rCQpGh

http://bit.ly/2sKI5no

Brand Biology (Define your species).

Brand Biology

“Brand is not what you say it is. It’s what they say it is.”

Marty Neumeier

Brand biology is a metaphorical term that I will be using during this series of articles, to refer to different types of elements, factors, cognitive phenomena, and components, that gives a brand life and help the brand survive in the different environment of the market.

Your brand biology is your customer’s categorization, your brand’s DNA is your audience perception, and your clients market is your future environment.  The target market defines your species and their thoughts shape your organisms.

There is more than one element to the idea of brand biology and customer categorization, in this article I will review two elements, the first is related to customer perception and the second is cognitive behavior.

Customer’s perception is manipulated and persuaded by factors like brand color, name, personal experience and campaigns.

In a paper that was published by California State Polytechnic University, titled the Effect of theForeign Brand on Consumer Perception.  The paper empirically examines the influence of brand names (foreign versus national) on consumer perception.

The results support the hypothesis that the national brand elicits more positive consumer perception than the foreign brands. In this study, consumer perception is operationalized by four constructs: attitude toward the brand, purchase intention, advertisement feeling, and attitude toward the advertisement.

This is important in terms of brand biology; just the awareness of your species as mentioned in this study affects your survival. In future articles we will look at your brand survival tactics, brand environment, brand biotic and abiotic.

The second element that affects the categorization of the brand is cognitive behavior, as humans we tend to create mental short cuts, especially in the age of the digital worlds the choices of any product or service could be overwhelming.

Within social psychology, cognitive miser is an umbrella theory of social cognition that brings together previous research on heuristics and attribution biases.

 The theory suggests that humans, valuing their mental processing resources, find different ways to save time and effort when negotiating the social world. The term cognitive miser was first introduced by Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor in 1984.

 We tend to crate mental short cuts to ease the process of digesting, transforming and exploring data of any kind. The brain activity of categorizing data lies at the heart of cognitive economy. We treat things as being of a kind so we don’t waste neural processing cycles in details that are irrelevant to the core o the process itself.

When we go to the beach we don’t remember every grain of sand, when we look at the forest we don’t name every tree that we see.

And there is a very good evolutionary reason or this, it’s to prevent our brains from getting overwhelmed with data, making sure we don’t have too many brain tabs open at the same time or too many labeled products on the same shelf because too many choices are paralyzing in most cases.

The process of categorizing data in three main ways

the first one is the Gross or partial appearance which means if they look the same they are the same.
The second form of categorizing is functionality; appearance in this case is not the major concern if it can be used for writing it belongs to the writing tools section and sometimes we might call it a pen.
 Finally the third way of categorizing is conceptual and a perfect example of that is the tool box “If it fixes things it’s in the box”

In order for your brand biology to be compatible in such a harsh environment, in order or your kind to survive, the brand must master the skills necessary to stand out among your species.

First Study the industry before entering the market, understand the audience reactions to the existing, past and future products and services in your industry.  That will provide some needed input and insight into the customer’s perception.

Second define your species if your brand is serving an appearance, a function or a specific concept. Make sure you highlight those features build your campaigns based on how unique and authentic your brand is.

The elements of brand biology are many. Customer’s perception and audience cognitive behavior are two essential components of determining the DNA of your brand biology. 

What are some psychological facts that people don't know?

We don't see with our eyes

There are a lot of interesting psychological and behavioral facts that most of us are unaware of,  like the fact that we tend to over estimate our abilities check out the tapping experiment "Tappers and Listeners" ... An Excerpt From One Of My Favorite Communications Books and a Story I Tell Clients Often - Rassak Experience.

or the fact that we tend  to confirm whatever beliefs we happen to have in a phenomena known as the confirmation bias check out http://bit.ly/21wk53b. In other words different people could be looking at the same scientific solid results and come up with a totally different conclusions in support of believes that already have.

Yet to answer your question the fact that we don't see with our eyes is for me a psychological trick that never gets old, one of the good reference on brain effects is a book titled Brain rules http://bit.ly/1YXtNWH, in the book one of the experiments that proves that we perceive with our minds instead of seeing with our eyes is the wine experiment.

"a group of brain researchers in Europe. They descended upon ground zero of the wine-tasting world, the University of Bordeaux, and asked: “What if we dropped odorless, tasteless red dye into white wines, then gave it to 54 wine-tasting professionals?” With only visual sense altered, how would the enologists now describe their wine? Would their delicate palates see through the ruse, or would their noses be fooled?

The answer is “their noses would be fooled.” When the wine tasters encountered the altered whites, every one of them employed the vocabulary of the reds. The visual inputs seemed to trump their other highly trained senses".

Here is a reference to the wine experiment We do not see with our eyes. We see with our brains. Another interesting article on the same matter is this Eye/Brain Physiology and Why Humans Don't See Reality But a Translation of It

As a final thought i think a couple of years ago it was the age of the atom and nuclear power then it was the age of computers we now live in the age of the mind, the more we research about neuropsychology and cognitive behavior the more we will reveal the mysteries of the self and the universe that is the human mind.

we can talk more on
twitter : @fouad_khafaga

Familiraity breeds Creativity ( creative thought process ).

Familiarize 

Monsters of the wild and creatures of the sea adapt to the environment they live in as much as they physically can.

If they could not adapt or evolve, they go extinct. If the climate is changing, they change the immigration path, if it is too hot for them they try to move to a cooler place and vise versa.

Only humans had the creativity and aggressiveness not to adapt to the environment but use the environment and make it adapt to their needs.

Humans are able to cut through mountains, fly into the clouds, dive into the deep of the ocean not because they are the strongest or the most skilled, but because of their ability to familiarize themselves with the most abstract and most challenging situations their environment has to offer.

So how does one adapt? This technique is used by magicians, stand-up comedians, painters and different artist of all kinds.

Magicians are the masters of using this technique; it is the only way they function. From weird character concepts to magicians who cut people in half and artists who disappear in less than 30 seconds while they were chained in a pool cage filled with water.

Just to illustrate how early the magician’s circles adapted the concept of familirisim, here is a story from ancient times.

 In ancient Egypt, there was a magician called Dedi and the story goes as follows:

According to the Westcar Papyrus, prince Djedefhor brings up the story of Dedi.

He stands before his father, king Khufu, and says: “There are only tales of miracles which happened a long time ago, something known by past generations. Truth and falsehood cannot be distinguished here.

 But there is someone under thy majesty´s own lifetime who is not known, someone who is able to make a ignoramus become wise".

 Khufu asks: “What's the meaning of this, Djedefhor, my son?” Djedefhor answers: “There's a commoner named Dedi, living in Djed-Sneferu.

 He's a simple citizen, but 110 years old, eats 500 loaves of bread, a shoulder of beef and drinks 100 jars of beer every day. He is capable of resurrecting decapitated beings. He is also said to be able to make wild lions so obedient that the animal would follow him with a cord dragging on the ground. Furthermore, this Dedi has the knowledge of the number of I put in the wenet-sanctuary of Thoth.”

The pharaoh spent a good deal of time seeking for these chambers, planning to build something similar to his horizon. And Khufu orders: “You thyself, Djedefhor, my son, may bring him to me!”

Even in that very early start of humanity the magician was painted in a more of a mythical figure. He does not eat , drink or live in a normal manner and this lifestyle made him able to perform bizarre and abnormal actions. In other words the magician was able to familiarize himself with unfamiliar surroundings.

A great modern example of how we as a species are able to familiarize ourselves with the environment with disregard to how abstract the object in question is, would be the modern technical field of IOT. 

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an environment in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.

 IOT has evolved from the convergence of wireless technologies, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) as well as the Internet. The concept may also be referred to as the Internet of Everything.

It is the network of physical objects or "things" embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data. The following examples are to elaborate on the implementation of such a concept in real life and how we are again using our creativity to familiarize our environment;

Smart Cities

Smart Parking: Monitoring of parking spaces availability in the city.

Structural health: Monitoring of vibrations and material conditions in buildings, bridges and historical monuments.

Smart Roads: Intelligent Highways with warning messages and diversions according to climate conditions and unexpected events like accidents or traffic jams.

Smart Environment

Forest Fire Detection: Monitoring of combustion gases and preemptive fire conditions to define alert zones.

Snow Level Monitoring: Snow level measurement to know in real time the quality of ski tracks and allow security corps avalanche prevention.

Earthquake Early Detection: Distributed control in specific places of tremors.

Smart Water

Potable water monitoring: Monitor the quality of tap water in cities.

Chemical leakage detection in rivers: Detect leakages and wastes of factories in rivers.

Pollution levels in the sea: Control real time leakages and wastes in the sea.

This concept as shown above can be used in a variety of fields by listing the field , the topic , the story , the character or the industry on one side of the table and create a list of 10 unfamiliar tools, things , approach on the other side of the table. By matching, eliminating or just brainstorming a process with the creative team.

Some Final thoughts

According to Dr. Yuval Harari, there were three major revolutions in the history of mankind; a cognitive revolution, an agriculture revolution and a scientific revolution. It is of no coincidence that the three revolutions are made by the capacity of the human brain to both innovate and create. Creativity is a unique feature of our race.

 For far too long the human mind was lost in the woods of ignorance until the mind have let the light of innovation guide us through this dark forest. Innovation skills and techniques are observed in all the aspects of our lives from business to parenting, from survival to discovery and in both creating and destructing.

This book offers a crack to the code of innovation through experimenting some case studies and examples. Yet creativity in itself is just a tool that should guide to an ultimate goal. Just being different doesn’t mean it is useful, just being innovative doesn’t grantee success. The tools that are offered in this book should be used as youtility built that is making the process of reaching a specific goal easier, faster and overall more efficient.

This small E-book should be my personal guide to create another book under the same title both longer in length and deeper into the code of innovation.

So if you’re reading this and have any ideas, feedback or thoughts on what would you like to read in the next edition of the book feel free to contact me and send your thoughts.

twitter : @fouad_khafaga