Andrew Hennigan's Blog

Plain packaging for cigarettes is widely seen as a way to reduce the number of people smoking, but the notion that selling cigarettes in uniform, logo-free dull-green packages covered in health warnings will deter smokers fails to take into account both human nature and the way brands work. I wrote about this two years ago in Why Plain Packaging for Cigarettes is Unlikely to Work  but in a way I was wrong. Not only did it not deter smokers it actually had the opposite effect,  but for reasons that nobody seems to have predicted. Advocates of plain packaging believe that smokers and aspiring smokers will be repelled by unattractive plain packages.  This doesn't happen.  Nobody smokes because the packages are cool; people start smoking because they believe that smoking is cool and they continue because they are addicted. Existing legislation also ensures that people are not going to pick up a packet of cigarettes from a supermarket shelf b...

Some products are so successful in the marketplace that their trademark is widely used as the generic name for all products of that type. Google is the most common of these. People often talk about "googling" things or say "let me google that for you". There are many others: Xerox has become a synonym for photocopy, Hoover for vacuum cleaning, Jet Ski for acquatic motorcycles, Frisbee for flying disks or Jeep for compact sport utility vehicles. Outsiders often see this as a sign of success and wonder why the companies who own these trademarks are apparently unhappy about the situation and try to discourage the use of their trademarks as generic names. There is a good reason for this. In the US and some other jurisdictions you can lose your rights to a trademark if it becomes generic and if the owner has not made sufficient effort to stop this. This is not paranoia. Many famous trademarks have been lost by their owners precisely for this reason. Aspirin used t...

After all his troubles with Twitter in the past, you might think that former US representative Anthony Weiner would be more careful, but he is in the news again for favoriting a tweet about sexting. According to the Slate article about this story , he claims that he did this by accident, touching the star symbol while scrolling the page. This happens all too frequently when you are using apps on a touch screen device. Almost every day I inadvertently view someone's profile on LinkedIn while I am scrolling through updates one handed. I can easily imagine that someone could also like or favorite posts that they don't actually intend to endorse. When my fingers slip on a touch screen the consequence are insignificant -- at most I leave someone wondering why I am suddenly interested in their profile -- but for politicians, celebrities and other high-profile social media personalities these mistakes are much more serious. As Anthony Weiner has found to his cost every slip on ...

People like me who teach online reputation and networking take it for granted that using your real name on social sites is a good idea, but a recent question on Quora reminds me that this is not as obvious as it seems. An anonymous user asked  Did you provide your real personal info to Quora when your user account was created?  and explains that he or she avoids using their real identity to thwart data mining. There might be cases when this is a good idea but for most people it is actually better to use your real name because it boosts your online reputation. When people hear about you or meet you for the first time they are likely to Google your name to see what comes up. This test will only find web pages that use your real name because Google cannot know that the owner of the username SqueakyPencil87  is actually John Smith. Some of the people googling your name will just be curious colleagues and friends, but quite often they could be potential employers or bus...

Turning a good speech into a great speech is a challenge. There might be writers who can draft a perfect speech and there might be actors skilled enough to perform it convincingly. But for everyone else the best way to make a compelling speech is to focus on structured ideas and improvise the actual words. Once the basic outline of the speech is defined one of the best ways to take it from the good to great level is to evolve the content . Test the first version with an audience and note their reaction, especially the parts that resonate and the parts that felt flat. Now try making some changes to the parts that didn't work and do another test run with a different audience, noting again which parts worked well and which need work. Keep repeating this process until all of the parts resonate with the audience and you feel that the entire speech is at your best level. This approach to evolving content works find when you have plenty of opportunities for testing. This could be...

One of the most common sources of workplace stress is dealing with angry emails from customers, colleagues or even managers. These messages can be extremely annoying but there are some tricks for dealing with them effectively and painlessly. Sometimes you can even turn the situation around 180 degrees, turning an infuriated adversary into an ally. There are many proven methods you could use, but here are the three most important. 1. WAIT TILL YOU CALM DOWN . It's a natural human instinct to get steamed up when you receive a provocative message. If you reply immediately you are likely to send an equally angry response that is unproductive and escalates the situation. Wait a few hours and your perspective will change. Wait a day and the anger will often be gone completely. By this time your neo-cortex will be able to assert it's authority over the amygdala regions of the brain that are useful in an emergency when time is short, but sometimes provoke emotional responses tha...

2 When you are given the task of writing a company blog there will probably be times when you run out of ideas to write about. You can draw inspiration from the company's news releases or scheduled events, but there are bound to be days when there are neither. What do you do in these cases? Luckily there are dozens of ways to find ideas for interesting and original posts that will be relevant to your customers and other stakeholders. Here are just five to get you started: BUILD ON CUSTOMER QUESTIONS. G o through all the questions people ask the company  by mail, phone or social media. For every person that asks a question there are a thousand others who have the same problem so pre-empt these questions with answers on the blog. That will give you content that both appeals to customers and at the same time maybe reduces the number of mails and calls you get. SEE WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT YOU . Search also through social media for posts made by use...