I’LL HAVE WHAT SHE’S HAVING

A friend lent me a book all about mapping social behaviour which I thought might help me understand the rise of social networking entitled “I’ll Have What She’s Having” (taken from the brilliant scene in “When Harry Met Sally”) by Alex Bentley, Mark Earls and Michael O’Brien. I had hoped it would be a fascinating insight into the world of social media and the continued rise of the “trusted voice” concept.

Whilst it no doubt is a fascinating insight into that world – it was far too intelligent a read for me and I am no clearer in my understanding of social marketing. Not exactly racy. Sadly, it made very little sense even though I tried my hardest to concentrate. I finished it, but it has taken me a very long time because I have had to reread vast swathes of information 85,000 times because I found it all very hard to ingest, let alone understand.

Essentially the book (I think, but don’t quote me on it) is about how human beings are social creatures and as such our choices are influenced by those around us but I am not really any the wiser about understanding how people behave or how “influencers” actually influence anything at all. They talk about how we should aim to be “more fox and less hedgehog” but I don’t really know how to do that – presumably that means be cleverer and more friendly and not so spiky? (you see why I’m not getting the more advanced concepts?). Apparently we like to copy – but who we copy appears to be relatively open for discussion – attractive people, those we are related to, those similar to us, popular people, older people, younger people and so on – I wanted them to tell me who to copy – not just give me all the options. But instead I had to try and understand different models – the undirected copying model – which apparently is surprisingly powerful – because it owes much to “cascade models” … and then they lost me again.

I believe, their overall summary is something like “even when individual decisions are defined very simply, their aggregate effects at the population scale can be complex. In a global communication saturated society we navigate out in the rolling social seas, far from the prominent buoys of clear and important options, where copying others is often the best possibly strategy. We have introduced a rough but useful distinction between copying that is directed in some way versus copying that is undirected. Determining which predominates in a certain situation becomes crucial in anticipating and preparing for the future”.

Easier said than done – if I knew what they were talking about I would definitely attempt to anticipate and prepare for the future.

Instead I spent too much time being horrified at the number of typos for such an “intelligent” book. I suggest they sack their editor.

In the meantime I think I’m going to read “50 Shades of Grey” next – which I gather is much easier to understand.