The challenge in creating this video was to step back and take a macro view—how broad trends in demography, economics and technology are shaping the digital landscape.

The statistics included are eye-opening, and we found ourselves at multiple points in the discovery process taking moments to reflect—on the scale of these figures, the surprise factors and the implications.

A big Thank You to our clients at HP for inviting us to participate in this initiative.

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This monster is immediately recognizable: it’s the PowerPoint presentation that has been assembled from disembodied slides of dead presentations. Used as its building blocks, these slides come from everywhere and anywhere. You know what I’m talking about…

“Let’s see, I can just drop in the company vision slide, copy over that ’10 trends to watch slide,’ a placeholder here, and oh, where is that slide that shows spending by sector—yeah, the yellow one? That can go right here.”

We’ve all done this. I’m guilty too. I admit it.To keep ourselves here in Denuo honest, however, we call out presentations like these. The content, when taken altogether, usually doesn’t make all that much sense. The slides are poorly formatted—different fonts and color schemes, animations and images. They look like what they are: roughly stitched together abominations of mismatched body parts. And so, in Denuo, we call these presentations what they are. Frankensteins.

I don’t mean Frankenstein in the Mary Shelley Modern Prometheus way. The metaphoric creature in the novel is intelligent, articulate and sensitive. I mean Frankenstein in the Boris Karlov, Phil Hartman ‘Fire Bad’ kind of way—with bolts sticking out of its neck and a flat head.And just as the ambitious doctor brings his monster to life by zapping it with The Great Ray, we do the same with our digital atrocities when we click ‘Slide Show > View Show.’ It’s Alive!I’m not suggesting that we should never re-use slides. Of course we should. But there is a huge difference between incorporating ideas contained in other presentations and the straight CTRL-C – CTRL-V. The former is prudent and responsible. The latter is the business equivalent of pillaging graves for spare body parts.

In the long run, crudely Frankensteining (it works as a verb, too) decks together serves nobody’s interest. So I encourage you to join me. Pick up your torch and your pitchfork and recognize these crimes against nature for what they are. Only when we acknowledge the existence of the Frankenstein presentations and call them by their rightful name will the world be free of these thought monsters.

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Last month we celebrated the first anniversary of Reflecteur, a product we created to help us understand digital culture. The modern marketplace is one that increasingly is shaped by digital culture – how people use digital platforms to connect with each other, share with like-minded people, express themselves, and find entertainment, among other tasks.

So, a year ago, we launched Reflecteur to help us keep track of this continually-evolving area. Here’s a quick overview of how Reflecteur works:

1) Everyone in Denuo participates in this step. We use a social bookmarking platform to flag digital behaviors, content and environments that speak to an insight regarding digital culture.

2) Every two weeks, we hold an open editorial meeting, where we go through the bookmarked content and discuss what we believe are the underlying insights for the contender topics.

3) The core team then writes a one-page brief for the publication, which essentially maps out that week’s issue.

4) Last step is production – writing the articles, layout, photos/graphics, etc.

By its very nature, we didn’t design Reflecteur to answer any one particular question relating to a campaign or project. We instead designed it to keep us honest – to ensure that we were not relying on our intuition regarding macro digital culture trends. We use qualitative ethnographic techniques (we don’t use quantitative data to power Reflecteur) to determine the insights behind what we write about. But we do this in a systematic and disciplined way, which has delivered quality insights.

So how do we use it? Simply put, Reflecteur helps us to continually course-correct our understanding of digital culture and calibrate our sensitivity to it. When we develop strategies, campaigns or ideas for clients, that work is informed by cultural insights – which are uncovered from the collective wisdom of Denuo.

As Reflecteur project leader, I’ve learned a ton over the past year:

1) Have the courage to make drastic course corrections. Before we implemented our ‘crowdsourcing’ technique, we used a different technique based on automated CGM listening. It didn’t work well at all, and we had to hit reset. We admitted that our first stab at it wasn’t successful, we then created a new plan, and I’ve been very happy with the new approach.

2) Model the process on Web 2.0 principles. We don’t have ‘versions’ of Reflecteur or a calendar for making scheduled improvements. When we have an idea, we implement it, try it out and decide if we like it. When we launched Reflecteur, we had a more rigid process. As we migrated to a more fluid process the quality of Reflecteur has increased.

3) Listen. It seems ironic, but I’m convinced that people like me, who were trained in formal market research, aren’t naturally attuned to truly listening. We’re too focused on what we are going to say next to prove our argument. With Reflecteur, I purposely rejected that and made the entire process open to everyone in Denuo. Anyone can contribute, and everyone has. The best ideas for Reflecteur have come from people with very different skill sets – Anisha, Sarah and Katie.

4) Repurpose the IP. In addition to publishing Reflecteur, twice a year we aggregate the insights and create a presentation. These Insights from Reflecteur presentations are a great way to engage our clients and be thought leaders. The IP has already been created – but by aggregating it and repackaging it, we extend the value of it.

If you’re interested in seeing examples of our publication, check it out here and here. Would love to hear what you think. Email me at christian.kugel-at-denuogroup.com.

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I really love unintended references to the movie Spinal Tap.
In our Chicago office, we have the Flavia coffee machines – the kind that make one cup of coffee at a time. Like all of those type of machines, this one uses little individual coffee packets. I really like it – the coffee is good and it provides lots of choices, including tea, hot cocoa, etc.

The other day, I was looking at all the different coffee choices. My go-to choice is the Columbia blend, but I thought I would check the others out. One of the things I noticed was that each blend had a Stength/Force rating. The Columbia is rated a 4 on a 5-point scale. Most of the coffees are rated either 2, 3 or 4 on strength. Then I looked at one last packet – the ‘Intense Dark Roast’ blend. It is rated a 7 on a 7-point scale. The unmistakable takeaway here is that it is so strong that it’s literally off the charts!

How great is that? When I showed this to John, he said, “I love the way it just blew right through 6 on to 7.” Reminds me of the classic  scene from Spinal Tap:

“Why don’t you just make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number?
These go to 11.”

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