Do you know exactly what you want in a product? What about in a service?

Here is a long (18min) video from Malcolm Gladwell at TED in 2004. Watch it if you want but it has only some bearing on the rest of this post. In 2004, Gladwell also released this article in the New Yorker (The Ketchup Cunundrum).

Consumers are naturally dumb. Not to say they’re unintelligent or anything along those lines. But when it comes to knowing exactly what they want they have almost no idea what they want or what will make them happy.

So what does this mean for us as marketers in a social world? There is no reason we shouldn’t know what our potential clients want! That may be stretching it a bit, but with the wealth of information and the range of demographic & psychological analytics we can derive from information posted (thanks to restaurant check-ins and social ratings), we can cater directly to the clients unknowns.

As consumers it’s likely they will not know exactly what they want, but we as the providers can take this information and take a look into their tastes. By using this information we can develop strategies for companies that cater directly to these people and literally exploit the things that they love.

Mashable! also related to the way consumers behave on internet but from an alternate perspective, User Competency in Social Design.

If these are simple assumptions that Adrian Chan is making, then we can also assume much more about their behavior based on their previous trends.

Let me know what you think! Leave a comment!

Photo by bonedad

• Being a college kid, and having a focus on International Business, presentations are a huge part of my college life and my business life. Many times the common presenter overlooks the benefits of simplicity in presentations. I have composed a few presentations for school that grabbed attention and held it throughout the whole time. The key to keeping focus during presentation is to keep the information coming and to make it easy for the audience to pay attention.

• A picture is worth 1000 words
  • Sometimes presenters get a little too picture happy with their presentations. Try your best to use only relevant graphics, whether the graphic is a graph, chart or photograph, make sure it is useful and can assist in describing the overall point of your presentation.
• Hard hitting facts and support
  • Use your facts often and make them support your overall purpose. When you present the fact on your slide, if you put a graphic along with the slide, make sure it is non intrusive. For example:
• Simplicity Sells (To take a TED Title)
  • Simplicity in the presentation will very well be your key to attention. Keep the amount of information on the slide to a minimum, and allow most of the explanation to come from your own words rather than letting people read from the slide. If they wanted to read the slides, you wouldn’t be there.
    Take a look at the TED talks, specifically Stefan Sagmeister, Hans Rosling and Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 Rule for presentations which can be found Here.

Focus carefully on your presentations, Slide Share is basically a YouTube of Presentations and PowerPoints.

Keep in mind also, that with everything else, you’re trying to sell yourself, so think, What point am I trying to get across? How am I getting the audience’s attention? What is my goal with this presentation? How do I present it?

Design Carefully, keep the presentation easy on the eyes, and load it with facts.

You’re on your way to a proper Presentation!