fiction

Strategic Communications secured an interview with the elusive Alan Davis, CEO of the Kudos Academy at the Ivy, London. We are in a “golden age” of communication thanks to the normalisation of the breaking of the truth barrier since the 90s, he argues.

What was it that started you off?
It was the 90s, you are probably too young to remember clearly, but it was an exciting time. The Cold War was over and there was a buzz, a relief, an ebbing away of the fear that had gripped us all since the end of World War Two. I was a young advertising executive, just cutting my teeth. But this also left a vacuum, a need for new challenges, fresh anxieties, fresh opportunities. What would we do with all the energy we had used fretting about nuclear armageddon? And in this new carefree world stepped a new kind of US president, Bill Clinton. For the first time ever there was this cool president. After the stiff conservatism of those Cold War guys, Reagan and George HW Bush, he was a breath of fresh air. This was going to be how it was from now on in this new no worries world.

What in particular impressed you about him?
It was the whole package. He was so charming he could sell ice to the eskimos, if he needed to. He was effective in what he did and that impressed me. But the moment which really stayed with me, and a lot of people, was in 1998, during his impeachment hearing, when he flipped that question about whether he had sex with Monica Lewinski saying “that depends what the definition of ‘is’ is”. It was a moment of sheer brilliance for someone like me, as good as any sidestep from Pelé or Maradonna, or a Michael Jordan slam dunk. But it was so brilliant, audacious and perfectly executed. What was more important for me, though, was that I knew it was unachievable for most people. Few of us could have seized on the distinction between “is” and “was”, as he did, and have the sheer nerve to use it to defend themselves in front of hundreds of millions. He broke what I called “the truth barrier”, there and then, like a daring test pilot breaking the sound barrier or a rocket going into space. It got me thinking, stuck as I was selling baked beans: How could I help more ordinary people achieve something close to what he did?. What I wanted was to invent the equivalent of a kind of Concorde for liars, so anyone could do it, from any walk of life, so long as they could afford the cost of the ticket.

So you wanted to democratise subverting the truth?
I would put it exactly like that, it makes it sound underhand. I would say I wanted to provide a way to allow ordinary people to achieve their personal goals while largely sticking to the facts. There had to be simpler ways to do it. People need to achieve their goals without being the equivalent of Maradona or Pelé. Equally we should all be able to “break the truth barrier” without superhuman skills. Clinton had a huge natural talent for it, rather like those legendary football players, and he also had a huge amount of experience too. Before taking the presidency in 1993 he had been the governor of Arkansas for all but a couple of years since 1979. His innate skill had been honed for over a decade.

And what was that way?
There were two things to look at. The first was to ignore what Clinton said, but instead look at the response, its structure and evolution. Of course many were outraged by his warping of their simplistic definition of the truth, including many of his loyal Democrats. But then, more importantly, there was also a huge number who didn’t care too much either, for many it was simply a confirmation politicians “lie” [Davis adds the inverted commas with his fingers], not just Clinton. And there was another section who rather admired or envied him for it, they saw it as chutzpah. They might even think it was positive. If he could do this he was surely able to outwit his opponents or America’s enemies? And a whole lot of people were publicly outraged while privately wondering if they might do similar, or much worse, if they were the most powerful man in the world. 

You said there were two things?
Right, yes, the second one was that Clinton showed that ur moral outrage can be extremely intense, but also that it always has a very short half life. We cannot sustain it indefinitely, even if we think we should. It tails off within days, or weeks at the most. Those who cause such an outrage simply need to recognise this hunker down, shielding themselves from the blast, reassuring their supporters it will die down. It may feel like the whole world is crashing down, but it is not. That is an illusion we have got past. People in this situation would give in, or their bosses would sack them, but now thanks to these insights they look to weather the initial storm.

Have the changes in media helped?
Yes, absolutely. During Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 the media as we know it was in its infancy, there was no internet to speak of. Rolling news like CNN had only just started. But the effect it had was tremendous, massively speeding up the half-life of outrage. The internet has only intensified the phenomenon. There is not only the phenomenon of the outrage half-like but also “outrage paralysis”, where we can put our opponents into an endless outrage cycle, unable to act for themselves. This is what people like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have been able to achieve. People like Blair and Clinton broke the truth barrier perhaps 10% of the time, but for the new generation it is their base camp.

And what do they do beyond the truth barrier? Lie?
What we talk about at the [Kudos] Academy is not lying, which is a very crude concept. What we do is help clients focus on the impression they wish to give to reach their goal, regardless of the facts. We then offer creative strategies to help them achieve this impression, while remaining as much as possible within the parameters of the facts. What we are really talking about is “goal-oriented communication”. Truth is not absent, but it is secondary.

Can you give an example?
Let us look at Tony Blair, a different person, but also a long-time Clinton admirer. You can see the same kind of goal-oriented communication at work. Did Blair say there were weapons of mass destruction ready to strike the UK in 45 minutes? No, not exactly. Was he quick to correct stories based on what he said which gave this impression? No. It was not his job to correct mistakes. His goal was to convince the public that invading Iraq was a good idea. And, in that, he succeeded. This was successful goal-oriented communication in action. Politicians, companies, all of us to some extent, are doers, not truth-seekers.

Does this connect with what you have called our Golden Age of communication, rather against what many see?
George Orwell got a lot right in 1984 about the way we can manipulate the truth. But one thing he missed was that the future was not just about a totalitarian authority with a monopoly on the media. It is more everyone manipulating one another. Take any number of people and communication is always imperfect. Communication, miscommunication and their exploitation are all part of the same thing. The media technology does not sort it out. So having more media technology does not help, it creates at least as much confusion as communication, perhaps more than ever. We have far fewer filters, with, fact-checked media and trusted outlets facing long-term terminal decline. So, while it may be a disaster for truth seekers, it is a golden age for doers. Kudos is on the side of the doers.

At this point Mr Davis took a mobile phone call and motioned with his finger as left, leaving the bill unpaid. ■

FunnyBone Technologies Inc (FBT) has introduced long-awaited functionality to its flagship automated social media delivery package, Mirth-24/7, promising 85% humour optimisation.

The update will mean “content suppliers will have greater data, control and modulation of amusement intensity so enabling them to extract the most value from their humorous material”.

Social media content suppliers have long struggled to deliver social media feeds that properly regulate amusement levels to maximise engagement and so return on investment. Perfectly reasonable gags can sometimes fall completely flat.

“What we realised is that our perception of humour is relative, so things which are not funny in normal life can appear funny or simply poignant in the right context,” says Jim Carpenter, chief context technician at FunnyBones.

Similarly, the Carpenter says, content which might be thought to be quite funny in a completely neutral context can seem “lame” if it is placed next to more dazzling material. This is potentially a waste.

“About 80% of material is mediocre, so we can’t waste it. Mirth-24/7 minimises the risk of us squandering solid but unremarkable stock material by featuring it in unfavourable conditions, which means it loses its value.” 

The Funny Bone creates a multidimensional map of content interaction by running it past a representative panel of 10,000 volunteers in random orders and assessing their brain response. Mirth-24/7 is fed the resulting vector. 

“The result is that we know what works with what and what does not. The interactions are complex and unpredictable. We can then use and AI to determine the best running order to deliver to different audience segments.”

In randomised control trials the Mirth-24/7 system delivered jokes at near 85% of optimum efficiency. Similar approach may one day be applied to create contexts to maximise other common social media criteria, like cuteness. ■

The world’s longest phone call is set to end next Thursday afternoon after over 34 years, it was announced this morning. 

“I look forward to spending time on other things,” said the caller Arthur Cummings, now 78. Galaxy Tech, which handled the last five years of the call, told shareholders it was a “great example of smart customer service”.

The call will be formally ended by Bob Zachnich, head of Galaxy customer services, and Mr Cummings simultaneously replace the handset of their phones at 3.3 pm at a special live-streamed ceremony, marking the time the initial call.

The terms of the call-ending deal were not revealed but it is rumoured to involve a four figure telephone bill and a new vacuum cleaner. One former Galaxy executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it set a “ludicrous precedent”.

The phone call began on Tuesday April 14th 1987 when Arthur Cummings, then 44, called the local branch of Orbit Electrical in Stoke-on-Trent to report an unexplained rattling noise coming from a new vacuum cleaner.

“After about ten minutes we reached an impasse. The lady on the other end said rattling noises were not covered by warranty because they were a user error. I was not prepared to settle for it,” said Mr Cummings, a retired electrical engineer, now 76.

The telephone operator who received the initial call, Irene Morely, who died in 2004 at the age of 84, was prevented from hanging up on Mr Cummings’ call because it would break the company’s customer service policy.

“And I, for my part, was unwilling to back down in my complaint, so we were both stuck. At the end of the first day Ms Morely said she was going home, but that her line manager had said that the call could be kept on hold overnight.”

The call then resumed at 9am the following morning with Ms Morely checking to see if it was still active and if Mr Cummings wanted to continue to hold, which he did. “I said, yes, of course,” said Mr Cummings. The same routine continued for days, weeks, which eventually became years.

“She was quite frustrated with having to take responsibility for my call to begin with, but after a few months we started to become friendly, passing the time of day. We realised we were both trapped in a situation we could not control ourselves.”

The pair finally met face-to-face in 1994, with Mr Cummings being a special guest at Ms Morely’s retirement celebrations deliberately held outside call-centre hours. After over nine years the two had come to see it as more than a routine work conversation.

“She was a nice lady and inevitably, after a few years on the phone, you start to talk about other things, family, kids and so forth. She even let me off a few times when I failed to respond. She did not want it to end that way, she told me.”

And the pairs’ call did not end entirely. Mr Cummings had installed a second line in 1988, to enable him and his wife, Mary, to make and receive other calls. Mr Cummins says Ms Morely called once or twice a month to see how he and his call were going. “She and Mary became friendly too.”

Retirement meant Ms Morley was finally given permission to pass the call on to her line manager, Geoff Griffiths. He took a cooler approach to Mr Cummings’ complaint, merely checking-in every 45 minutes for caller activity without smalltalk.

“You had to be on your toes with Geoff. And I respected him for that. But, to be honest, there was no love lost either and no margin for error. One slip and it would all be over,” Cummings says. Mr Griffiths was promoted to area manager in 1999, but opted to continue fielding the call.

“It became personal with Griffiths. He just could not let it go. And I could understand that. Once you have invested a decade or two in something, it gets more and more difficult to stop it, even if the situation is going nowhere.” Mr Griffiths chose not to comment.

It was under Griffith’s 21 year stint that Mr Cummings, an electrical engineer, installed a hands-free system. It initially sounded an alarm, but it later was programmed to play a recording of Mr Cummings saying, “Yes, I’m here,” if it detected activity at the other end. 

“I went through some long periods of feeling bitterness towards Orbit Electricals and Galaxy, after it was take over, but I got through that towards the end of the early 2000s. I had retired and needed something to do. I think, in the end, it was honours-even.”
“I’m looking forward to experiencing what life might be like without monitoring this call.” But old habits die hard, “I have noticed a cracked manhole lid outside the local supermarket and have considered calling the council. Mary is not so keen on that idea, however.” ■