August 2008

Synecdoche upsets critics

26 Aug, 2008  No Comment

A new film has just been released in the US, which is annoying the critics because its title uses a difficult word with difficult pronunciation. The film is Synecdoche, New York [pronounce it something like: sin-NECK-dock-ee]. If synecdoche is to become more well known we should also know what it means. It is a figure of speech where there is a deliberate confusion of scale:

  • a part is used for the whole (use muscle for thugs);

  • the whole for a part (media for a journalist);

  • the specific for the general (cutthroat for assassin),

  • the general for the specific (creature for a man); or

  • the name of the material for the thing made (canvas for tent).

It is an apt time to discuss synecdoche as we are at present talking about Australia winning 14 medals at the Olympics (particularly those from Great Britain who won 16) when, of course, it was the Australian Olympic team that won the medals.

Avoid confusion of scale! Use Madrigal Communications to create your part, your whole, your specific or your general messages!

Cryopolisiphobia is the fear of cold calling

19 Aug, 2008  No Comment

Cryopolisiphobia is an intense and persistent fear of cold calling. It comes from the Greek cryo from kruos ‘frost’, polisi for ‘selling’ or ‘disposal’; and phobia from phobos for ‘fear’.

Many business owners and entrepeneurs suffer from it due to the high levels of rebuttal and rejection you can experience. The main symptom is the excessive desire to avoid ringing potential clients to promote your business. 

Cryopolisiphobia is classified as a panic disorder because it involves an illogical functioning of the brain. You have a product or service that people want or need. Don’t be afraid to tell them about it?

My strategies for overcoming cryopolisiphobia involve warming the caller first. This strategy works best for business-to-business selling not for mass marketing. To warm the prospect you first send them a letter of introduction. This should be a polite letter telling the prospect what benefits you may provide for them and stating that you will follow up with a phone call. If you don’t offer any benefits the strategy will fail. If you do offer benefits there is no reason to fear the call.

Now the call is not a “cold call” but a follow-up call. You can introduce yourself and refer to the letter as a focus of the conversation. If you are lucky they have read the letter and you use it to lead the conversation – ask them questions about how you can help them. If they haven’t read the letter, you still have a warm conversation because they will accept that you have made the effort to contact them. Don’t forget you are discussing how you can benefit them!

Your aim is not to sell them anything. Your aim is to introduce yourself and start a relationship. This may mean establishing a dialogue by getting permission to send them more material. But your ultimate aim is to get a meeting with the prospect so that you can develop a more personal dialogue.

Good luck! If you need help with your marketing communications and cold-calling strategy please contact us for advice.

Goodbye to the man who gave us gulag

5 Aug, 2008  No Comment

On Sunday, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, died aged 89, in his home in the Moscow area. He, through great hardship, brought the Russian word gulag, into the mainstream of the English language.

His book, The Gulag Archipelago, written in secret while he was living in the Soviet Union and published in Paris in the early 1970s, is probably the definitive work on Stalin’s forced labour camps. Having spent eight years in the camps for criticising Stalin, he used his own experience, research and other prisoner’s testimonies to create the book.

Gulag was a loose abbreviation for the government agency administering the ‘corrective’ labour camps across the Soviet Union:

Glavnoe upravlenie ispravitel’notrudovykh lagereÄ­

Gulag came to be used to denote the camps themselves or the procedural system of arrest, interrogation, transport, and forced labour. It is now also used specifically to mean a prison camp for political dissidents (although the gulags had no such distinction) or a place of great hardship.

Solzhenitsyn and his works had a huge impact in the West culminating in his Nobel Prize for literature in 1970.

I remember that, when I was a boy, he showed us that both personal courage and the power of words could challenge the evils of the state. I hope we remember him as he deserves.