Tag Archives: emotions

The Imperfect Way to Enforce New York’s Child Data Protection Act

It’s often good to use emotion in your marketing.

For example, when biometric companies want to justify the use of their technology, they have found that it is very effective to position biometrics as a way to combat sex trafficking.

Similarly, moves to rein in social media are positioned as a way to preserve mental health.

By Marc NL at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2747237

Now that’s a not-so-pretty picture, but it effectively speaks to emotions.

“If poor vulnerable children are exposed to addictive, uncontrolled social media, YOUR child may end up in a straitjacket!”

In New York state, four government officials have declared that the ONLY way to preserve the mental health of underage social media users is via two bills, one of which is the “New York Child Data Protection Act.”

But there is a challenge to enforce ALL of the bill’s provisions…and only one way to solve it. An imperfect way—age estimation.

This post only briefly addresses the alleged mental health issues of social media before plunging into one of the two proposed bills to solve the problem. It then examines a potentially unenforceable part of the bill and a possible solution.

Does social media make children sick?

Letitia “Tish” James is the 67th Attorney General for the state of New York. From https://ag.ny.gov/about/meet-letitia-james

On October 11, a host of New York State government officials, led by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, jointly issued a release with the title “Attorney General James, Governor Hochul, Senator Gounardes, and Assemblymember Rozic Take Action to Protect Children Online.”

Because they want to protect the poor vulnerable children.

By Paolo Monti – Available in the BEIC digital library and uploaded in partnership with BEIC Foundation.The image comes from the Fondo Paolo Monti, owned by BEIC and located in the Civico Archivio Fotografico of Milan., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48057924

And because the major U.S. social media companies are headquartered in California. But I digress.

So why do they say that children need protection?

Recent research has shown devastating mental health effects associated with children and young adults’ social media use, including increased rates of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and self-harm. The advent of dangerous, viral ‘challenges’ being promoted through social media has further endangered children and young adults.

From https://ag.ny.gov/child-online-safety

Of course one can also argue that social media is harmful to adults, but the New Yorkers aren’t going to go that far.

So they are just going to protect the poor vulnerable children.

CC BY-SA 4.0.

This post isn’t going to deeply analyze one of the two bills the quartet have championed, but I will briefly mention that bill now.

  • The “Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act” (S7694/A8148) defines “addictive feeds” as those that are arranged by a social media platform’s algorithm to maximize the platform’s use.
  • Those of us who are flat-out elderly vaguely recall that this replaced the former “chronological feed” in which the most recent content appeared first, and you had to scroll down to see that really cool post from two days ago. New York wants the chronological feed to be the default for social media users under 18.
  • The bill also proposes to limit under 18 access to social media without parental consent, especially between midnight and 6:00 am.
  • And those who love Illinois BIPA will be pleased to know that the bill allows parents (and their lawyers) to sue for damages.

Previous efforts to control underage use of social media have faced legal scrutinity, but since Attorney General James has sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution, presumably she has thought about all this.

Enough about SAFE for Kids. Let’s look at the other bill.

The New York Child Data Protection Act

The second bill, and the one that concerns me, is the “New York Child Data Protection Act” (S7695/A8149). Here is how the quartet describes how this bill will protect the poor vulnerable children.

CC BY-SA 4.0.

With few privacy protections in place for minors online, children are vulnerable to having their location and other personal data tracked and shared with third parties. To protect children’s privacy, the New York Child Data Protection Act will prohibit all online sites from collecting, using, sharing, or selling personal data of anyone under the age of 18 for the purposes of advertising, unless they receive informed consent or unless doing so is strictly necessary for the purpose of the website. For users under 13, this informed consent must come from a parent.

From https://ag.ny.gov/child-online-safety

And again, this bill provides a BIPA-like mechanism for parents or guardians (and their lawyers) to sue for damages.

But let’s dig into the details. With apologies to the New York State Assembly, I’m going to dig into the Senate version of the bill (S7695). Bear in mind that this bill could be amended after I post this, and some of the portions that I cite could change.

From https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/S7695

The “definitions” section of the bill includes the following:

“MINOR” SHALL MEAN A NATURAL PERSON UNDER THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN.

From https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/S7695, § 899-EE, 2.

This only applies to natural persons. So the bots are safe, regardless of age.

Speaking of age, the age of 18 isn’t the only age referenced in the bill. Here’s a part of the “privacy protection by default” section:

§ 899-FF. PRIVACY PROTECTION BY DEFAULT.

1. EXCEPT AS PROVIDED FOR IN SUBDIVISION SIX OF THIS SECTION AND SECTION EIGHT HUNDRED NINETY-NINE-JJ OF THIS ARTICLE, AN OPERATOR SHALL NOT PROCESS, OR ALLOW A THIRD PARTY TO PROCESS, THE PERSONAL DATA OF A COVERED USER COLLECTED THROUGH THE USE OF A WEBSITE, ONLINE SERVICE, ONLINE APPLICATION, MOBILE APPLICA- TION, OR CONNECTED DEVICE UNLESS AND TO THE EXTENT:

(A) THE COVERED USER IS TWELVE YEARS OF AGE OR YOUNGER AND PROCESSING IS PERMITTED UNDER 15 U.S.C. § 6502 AND ITS IMPLEMENTING REGULATIONS; OR

(B) THE COVERED USER IS THIRTEEN YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER AND PROCESSING IS STRICTLY NECESSARY FOR AN ACTIVITY SET FORTH IN SUBDIVISION TWO OF THIS SECTION, OR INFORMED CONSENT HAS BEEN OBTAINED AS SET FORTH IN SUBDIVISION THREE OF THIS SECTION.

From https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/S7695

So a lot of this bill depends upon whether a person is over or under the age of eighteen, or over or under the age of thirteen.

And that’s a problem.

How old are you?

The bill needs to know whether or not a person is 18 years old. And I don’t think the quartet will be satisfied with the way that alcohol websites determine whether someone is 21 years old.

From https://www.budlight.com/

This age verification method is…not that robust.

Attorney General James and the others would presumably prefer that the social media companies verify ages with a government-issued ID such as a state driver’s license, a state identification card, or a national passport. This is how most entities verify ages when they have to satisfy legal requirements.

For some people, even some minors, this is not that much of a problem. Anyone who wants to drive in New York State must have a driver’s license, and you have to be at least 16 years old to get a driver’s license. Admittedly some people in the city never bother to get a driver’s license, but at some point these people will probably get a state ID card.

You don’t need a driver’s license to ride the New York City subway, but if the guitarist wants to open a bank account for his cash it would help him prove his financial identity. By David Shankbone – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2639495
  • However, there are going to be some 17 year olds who don’t have a driver’s license, government ID or passport.
  • And some 16 year olds.
  • And once you look at younger people—15 year olds, 14 year olds, 13 year olds, 12 year olds—the chances of them having a government-issued identification document are much less.

What are these people supposed to do? Provide a birth certificate? And how will the social media companies know if the birth certificate is legitimate?

Birth certificate of a B.H. Obama II. From https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf

But there’s another way to determine ages—age estimation.

How old are you, part 2

As long-time readers of the Bredemarket blog know, I have struggled with the issue of age verification, especially for people who do not have driver’s licenses or other government identification. Age estimation in the absence of a government ID is still an inexact science, as even Yoti has stated.

Our technology is accurate for 6 to 12 year olds, with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 1.3 years, and of 1.4 years for 13 to 17 year olds. These are the two age ranges regulators focus upon to ensure that under 13s and 18s do not have access to age restricted goods and services.

From https://www.yoti.com/wp-content/uploads/Yoti-Age-Estimation-White-Paper-March-2023.pdf

So if a minor does not have a government ID, and the social media firm has to use age estimation to determine a minor’s age for purposes of the New York Child Data Protection Act, the following two scenarios are possible:

  • An 11 year old may be incorrectly allowed to give informed consent for purposes of the Act.
  • A 14 year old may be incorrectly denied the ability to give informed consent for purposes of the Act.

Is age estimation “good enough for government work”?

A Marketing Question, Not An Identification Question: Is Facial Coding Accurate?

While I don’t use all the marketing tools at my disposal, I am certainly curious about them. After all, such tools provide marketers with powerful insights on their prospects and customers.

I became especially curious about one marketing tool when re-examining a phrase I use often.

  • I use the phrase “biometric content marketing expert” in a non-traditional way. When I use it, I am attempting to say that I am a content marketing expert on the use of biometrics for identification. In other words, I can create multiple types of content that discusses fingerprint identification, facial recognition, and similar technologies.
  • But if you speak to a normal person, they will assume that a “biometric content marketing expert” is someone who uses biometrics (the broader term, not the narrower term) to support content marketing. This is something very different—something that is generally known as “facial coding,” a technique that purports to provide information to marketers.

What is facial coding?

By Peter Ziegler – Pixaby, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63519842

Earlier this year, Reshu Rathi of Entropik wrote a blog post about facial coding. Rathi provided this definition.

We all know that our face conveys emotions through facial expressions; facial coding is the process of measuring those human emotions. With the help of computer vision, powered by AI and machine learning, emotions can be detected via webcam or mobile cam. The tech tracks every muscle movement on the face or all-action units (AU) based on the FACS (facial action coding system).

From https://www.entropik.io/blogs/facial-coding-what-why-and-how-to-use-facial-coding-in-marketing

The differences between facial coding and facial recognition

Unlike the topics in which I usually dwell, facial coding:

  • Does not identify individuals. Many people can share the same emotions, so detection of a particular emotion does not serve as individualization.
  • Does not provide permanent information. In the course of watching a movie or even a short advertisement, viewers often exhibit a wide range of emotions. Just because you exhibit a particular emotion at the beginning of an ad doesn’t mean you’ll exhibit the same emotion at the conclusion.
From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzFRV1LwIo

As Rathi describes the practice, it preserves privacy by allowing people to opt-in, and to record the emotions anonymously.

So, the user’s permission is required to access their camera and all this data is captured with consent. And no video is shared. Only the emotion data of the users are captured through their facial expressions and shared in real-time. The emotions on a person’s face are captured as binary units (0 and 1). Hence no PII (Personally Identifiable Information) related to race, ethnicity, gender, or age is captured at any point in time.

From https://www.entropik.io/blogs/facial-coding-what-why-and-how-to-use-facial-coding-in-marketing

Of course, some of this is a matter of implementation, or in the way that Entropik uses the facial coding technique.

  • But what if another firm chooses to gather more data, thus reducing the anonymity of the data collected? “I don’t only want to know how people react to the content. I want to know how black women in their 30s react to the content.”
  • And what if another firm (or a government agency, such as the Transportation Security Administration) chooses to gather the data without explicit consent, or with consent buried deep in the terms of service? In that case, people may not even realize that their facial expressions are being watched.
By Paweł Zdziarski – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1906323

Examining facial expressions is not the only way to decipher what is happening in a person’s mind as they view content. But it’s powerful.

Well, maybe.

Does everyone exhibit the same facial coding?

The underlying assumption behind emotion recognition is that you can identify emotions at a universal level. If content makes me happy, or if it makes a person halfway around the world happy, we will exhibit the same measurable facial characteristics.

Lisa Feldman Barrett disagrees.

Research has not revealed a consistent, physical fingerprint for even a single emotion. When scientists attach electrodes to a person’s face and measure muscle movement during an emotion, they find tremendous variety, not uniformity. They find the same variety with the body and brain. You can experience anger with or without a spike in blood pressure. You can experience fear with or without a change in the amygdala, the brain region tagged as the home of fear.

When scientists set aside the classical view and just look at the data, a radically different explanation for emotion comes to light. We find that emotions are not universal but vary from culture to culture. They are not triggered; you create them. They emerge as a combination of the physical properties of your body, a flexible brain that wires itself to whatever environment it develops in, and your culture and upbringing.

From https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/26/why-our-emotions-are-cultural-not-hardwired-at-birth

If Barrett is correct, then how reliable is facial coding, even within a particular region? After all, even Southern California does not have a single universal culture, but is made up of many cultures in which people react in many different ways. And if we preserve privacy by NOT collecting this cultural information, then we may not fully understand the codings that the cameras record.

Back to the familiar “biometric” world

And with that, I will retreat from the broader definition of biometrics to the narrower and more familiar one, as described here.

The term “Biometrics” has also been used to refer to the field of technology devoted to the identification of individuals using biological traits, such as those based on retinal or iris scanning, fingerprints, or face recognition. Neither the journal “Biometrics” nor the International Biometric Society is engaged in research, marketing, or reporting related to this technology. 

From https://www.biometricsociety.org/about/what-is-biometry

My self-description as a biometric content marketing expert applies to this narrower definition only.

When Writers Talk: Hanging on the Telephone

I self-describe as a “you can pry my keyboard out of my cold dead hands” person who likes to use physical or virtual keyboards to communicate. But what about using a telephone handset (when used for voice rather than data purposes)? That’s a different matter entirely.

By Jonathan Mauer – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50534668

If you have a personality that gravitates away from verbal communication, you sometimes find that you need to get out of your comfort z…I mean, you need to stray from your normal routine and use your non-preferred communication method.

I just did that earlier this week, and refrained from sending an email or other written message, instead choosing to use good old-fashioned voice communications to contact someone. And it worked, showing that voice and written communication do not have to compete with each other, and can complement each other.

This post takes a look at how writers function, both in textual and verbal environments, and what can happen when writers stray from their normal routine (or comfort zone).

The flip side of my written compulsion

I’ve talked before about my compulsion to write. Whether on a piece of paper, a typewriter (yes, I’m that old), a computer, or a smartphone, I am very accustomed to putting words to a text-based medium.

Writing compulsion, or writing obsession. Designed by Freepik.

Maybe I’m TOO accustomed to typing words into devices.

  • I communicate to a number of different people on WhatsApp, but recently took a break from non-business WhatsApp communications for a few days—probably to the relief of my friends who saw my FREQUENT written comments at ALL hours. (“Not a text from John again…”)
  • Which reminds me; I have to ask my younger German daughter if she has returned from her out-of-country trip.
  • And I also need to ask my artist friend if she has set up her art room yet…

It may not surprise you to learn that my VERBAL communications are less frequent. While I’m not mute in front of crowds, I gravitate toward written rather than verbal communications when I have the choice.

This preference is not uncommon, and Highly Sensitive Refuge speculates that there is a reason for this.

If you have noticed that it’s easier and more enjoyable for you to write rather than speak out your emotions, thoughts, and experiences, you might be a highly sensitive person (HSP). Highly sensitive people are the roughly 30% of the population who are wired at a brain level to process all information more deeply. This makes them more sensitive to the world around them, both emotionally and physically.

In other words: if you’re a highly sensitive person, you’re experiencing the world very differently than others do. You think more deeply, feel more strongly, and have a lot going on in your head. That can make it hard to get your words out — unless you have the time to sort them out in writing.

From https://highlysensitiverefuge.com/do-you-prefer-writing-to-speaking/
By Eleven authors named in the source journal article. – Greven, Corina U.; Lionetti, Francesca; Booth, Charlotte; Aron, Elaine N.; Fox, Elaine; Schendan, Haline E.; Pluess, Michael; Bruining, Hilgo; Acevedo, Bianca; Bijttebier, Patricia; Homberg, Judith (March 2019). “Sensory Processing Sensitivity in the context of Environmental Sensitivity: A critical review and development of research agenda”. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 98: 287-305. Elsevier. DOI:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.01.009. “This is an open access article under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/)”.This SVG file contains embedded text that can be translated into your language, using any capable SVG editor, text editor or the SVG Translate tool. For more information see: About translating SVG files., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=96282736

I’m not sure if I am a 100% match to the descriptions above; for example, I believe I have a LESSER awareness to environmental subtleties. However, I certainly tend to be sensitive about some things. (Are my WhatsApp friends tired of my incessant messages?) And you already know that I enjoy the process of working in my brain through drafts 0.5 and 1.0 of a piece of content.

But there are drawbacks to staying within your comfort zone.

Excuse me. Sorry, but there’s something going on in my head that I have to address.

Why I’m tired of the phrase “comfort zone”

I’ve decided that I’m tired of the phrase “comfort zone,” in the same way that I’m tired of “game changer,” “thinking out of the box,” and (shudder) “best of breed.”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the phrase “comfort zone.” Unlike the other phrases above, the literal meaning does not radically differ from the common usage. But “comfort zone” has reached an oversaturation point.

Google search results for the phrase "comfort zone." About 65,200,000 results (0.59 seconds).
Google search results for the phrase “comfort zone.”

Now I’ll grant that some of these 65,200,000 search results are non-psychological and refer to air conditioning and other things, but the phrase “comfort zone” is used an awful lot.

I wasn’t sure what would be better. So I asked my buddy Google Bard.

Sure, here are some succinct, less jargony alternatives to the phrase "comfort zone": Normal routine Safe space Known territory What you're used to Your comfort bubble
From https://bard.google.com/share/3ef66dd50a4d

In my view, a couple of these (“safe space,” “your comfort bubble”) are just as bad as “comfort zone,” but “normal routine” and “what you’re used to” are much better and less jargon-y than “comfort zone.”

So I’ll use that instead.

OK now, where we were?

Returning to the flip side of my words obsession

Sorry about that.

But there are drawbacks to straying from your normal routine. Sometimes written communication just doesn’t cut it. (“Doesn’t cut it” is another piece of jargon I should eliminate. But one per post is enough.)

I don’t know how many times I’ve had this exchange with coworkers, friends, and family.

PERSON: Did you resolve the issue with Jane?

ME: I emailed her a couple of days ago but haven’t heard back.

PERSON: Why don’t you pick up the phone and call her?

ME: I’ll email her again. Or maybe I’ll text her.

PERSON: CALL HER!

ME, IRRITATED: OK, I’ll call her!

From a meaningful apocryphal conversation. Not put to music…yet.

When I strayed from my normal routine, good things happened

I thought about this during a recent interchange with one of my Bredemarket clients.

I had emailed a question to the client, and the very busy client said they would get back to me with the answer. After a while, I emailed the client again. And again.

At this point I started to get worried. (Maybe I am sensitive. A bit.)

But before I jumped to the wrong conclusion, I decided that I had better pick up the phone and call the client.

Not that day, but the next day. I mean, you can’t be rash about things like that.

So the next day I did pick up the phone and called the client…but the client wasn’t available.

A few minutes later, I received an email with an explanation for the delay (the busy client had been even busier than usual due to unanticipated circumstances), AND the client provided the answer to my question. Everything was very good.

All solved by a simple phone call.

Maybe I should do this more often.

Hanging on the telephone.

“Not a phone call from John again…”

How Bredemarket Works

Bredemarket logo

(Updated question count 10/23/2023)

I’m stealing an idea from Matthew Mace and adapting it to explain how Bredemarket works.

What am I stealing from Matthew Mace?

Matthew Mace is a freelance content writer who recently posted the following on LinkedIn:

Do you need a freelance content writer but don’t know what to expect?

I created a “work with me” pdf that explains what I do and how I can help you.

From https://www.linkedin.com/posts/matthewmace-contentmarketing_cycling-running-wellness-activity-7094675414727450624-8U_Y/

His post then explains what is included in his “work with me” PDF. If you’d like his PDF, send him a message via his LinkedIn profile.

But what if I want to know how to work with Bredemarket?

Glad you asked.

After reading Mace’s LinkedIn post, I realized that I have a bunch of different online sources that explain how to work with Bredemarket, but they’re scattered all over the place. This post groups them all the “how to work with Bredemarket” content together, following an outline similar (yet slightly different) to Mace’s.

And no, it’s not a stand-alone PDF, but as you read the content below you’ll discover two stand-alone PDFs that address critical portions of the process.

Question 1: Why would I work with Bredemarket?

As you’ll see below, “why” is a very important question, even more important than “how.” Here are some reasons to work with Bredemarket.

By Federal Bureau of Investigation – https://washingtonian.com/2016/11/24/the-fbi-opened-its-crime-lab-here-in-dc-back-in-1932, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=128508441
  • You require the words to communicate the benefits of your identity/biometrics product/service. I offer 29 years of experience in the identity/biometrics industry and am a biometric content marketing expert and an identity content marketing expert. I have created multiple types of content (see below) to share critical points about identity/biometrics offerings.
  • You require the words to communicate the benefits of your technology product/service. I have also created multiple types of content to share critical points about technology offerings.
  • You require the words to communicate the benefits of a product/service you provide to California’s Inland Empire. I’ve lived in the Inland Empire for…well, for more than 29 years. I know the area—its past, its present, and its future.
  • You require one of the following types of content. Blogs, case studies / testimonials, data sheets, e-books, proposals, social media posts / Xs (or whatever tweets are called today), white papers, or anything. I’ve done these for others and can do it for you.

Question 2: Why WOULDN’T I work with Bredemarket?

This question is just as important as the prior one. If you need the following, you WON’T want to work with Bredemarket.

  • You require high quality graphics. Sorry, that’s not me.
I did not draw this myself. Originally created by Jleedev using Inkscape and GIMP. Redrawn as SVG by Ben Liblit using Inkscape. – Own work, Public Domain, link.
  • You are based outside of the United States. Foreign laws and exchange rates make my brain hurt, so I only pursue business domestically. But depending upon where you are, I may be able to recommend a content marketer for you.

Question 3: What are Bredemarket’s most popular packages? How much do they cost?

Here are the three most common packages that Bredemarket offers.

By Staff Sgt. Michael L. Casteel – [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2407244

Note that these are the standard packages. If your needs are different, I can adapt them, or charge you an hourly rate if the need is not well defined. (But as you will see below, I try to work with you at the outset to define the project.)

If you follow the link above for your desired package and download the first brochure on each page, you’ll get a description of the appropriate service. The pricing is at the bottom of each brochure.

Each brochure also explains how I kick off a project, but the procedure is fairly common for each package.

Question 4: What are Bredemarket’s working practices?

When I work with a client, I hold a kickoff to make sure that we have a common understanding at the beginning of the project.

The first seven questions that we address are critical. In fact, I wrote an e-book that addresses these seven questions alone.

  1. Why?
  2. How?
  3. What?
  4. Goal?
  5. Benefits?
  6. Target Audience?
  7. Emotions?
Go to https://bredemarket.com/2023/10/22/seven-questions-your-content-creator-should-ask-you-the-e-book-version/ to download this e-book.

But that’s not all that we address in the kickoff. There are some other lower-level questions that I ask you (such as the long and short form of your company name).

Once we have defined the project, I iteratively provide draft copy and you iteratively review it. The number and length of review cycles varies depending upon the content length and your needs. For example, I use up to two review cycles of up to three days each for short content.

Eventually I provide the final copy, you publish it and pay me, and both of us are happy.

Question 5: What about samples and testimonials?

Because I usually function as a ghostwriter, I cannot publicly provide samples or identity my clients. But I’ve written yet another e-book that anonymously describes some sample projects that I’ve performed for clients, including a testimonial from one of them.

Go to https://bredemarket.com/2023/04/16/four-mini-case-studies-for-one-inland-empire-business-my-own/ to download this e-book.

Question 6: What are the next steps to work with Bredemarket?

If you believe that I can help you create the content your firm needs, let’s talk.

Or if Matthew Mace’s content services better fit your needs, use him.

No, I Don’t Need Two Refrigerators

In some cases, a customer’s purchase of a particular product or service indicates possible future interest in that same product or service.

But this indicator only goes so far.

If you just purchased an expensive item such as a refrigerator or a car or a house, chances are you’re not in the market for a second refrigerator or car or house.

Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson (a Monty Python character who became a beer) is a notable exception to the rule. From https://untappd.com/b/ganz-anders-brau-arthur-two-sheds-jackson/4055802

But some companies don’t understand that high priced items are not usually purchased in bulk. According to a parcelLabs emotional shipping experience study:

People have lost patience with brands who send incorrect or inaccurate marketing materials. In fact, brands that do this are driving their customers away.

Of the 49% that say they were incorrectly targeted to in the last six months, 42% said they immediately unsubscribed from the brand’s marketing content. Another 24% chose to block the brand on social media!

43% said that they received marketing for a product they’d already bought.

You have to be more intelligent in your customer focus. Once a customer has purchased an item, they may—or may not—need a second one. In a different context, I have referred to this as “somewhat you why,” or the need to understand the intent of what someone is doing.

If I’m standing outside my former employer’s office with some computer equipment, perhaps I’m returning equipment to my former employer.

If I’m purchasing a refrigerator, in most cases I’m not contemplating purchase of a second one immediately.

Although if I’m opening a chain of restaurants…

From By Id1337x – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6354368

Is the Funnel Consideration Phase Quantitative or Qualitative?

From Venn Marketing, “Awareness, Consideration, Conversion: A 4 Minute Intro To Marketing 101.” (Link)

The picture above shows a simple sales funnel example. The second of the three items in the funnel is the “consideration” phase.

  • In that phase, those people who are aware of you can then consider your products and services.
  • If they like what they see, they move on to conversion and hopefully buy your products and services.

But how do prospects in the funnel consideration phase evaluate your offering as opposed to competitor offerings? Is it truly a quantitative and logical process, or is it in reality qualitative and emotional?

Quantitative consideration

For purposes of this post, let’s assume that there are two competing companies, Bredemarket and Debamarket, who are fighting each other for business.

OK, maybe not literally. I have never boxed in my life. By Royal Navy official photographer – http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//31/media-31189/large.jpg This photograph A 29806 comes from the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25124750

Second, let’s assume that Bredemarket and Debamarket offer similar services to their prospects and customers:

  • Blog posts
  • Case studies
  • White papers

Finally, let’s assume that a big government agency (the BGA) has issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for blog/case study/white paper services, and Bredemarket and Debamarket are the two companies competing for the award.

Source selection

Now I’m not a big-time pre-acquisition consultant like Applied Forensic Services, but I’ve been around long enough to know how pre-acquisition consultants work—especially when working with big government agencies like BGA.

A pre-acquisition consultant will develop a Source Selection Plan (SSP). In competitive procurements such as the one in this example, the SSP will state exactly how proposals will be evaluated, and how the best proposal will be selected.

Here is the U.S. Government’s guidance on Source Selection Plans. (link)

SSPs can be very complex for certain opportunities, and not so complex for others. In all cases, the SSP dictates the evaluation criteria used to select the best vendor.

Michael Ropp of RFP360 has published a very simple example of how a particular group of proposal responses may be evaluated.

The weighted scoring approach breaks down your RFP evaluation criteria and assigns a value to each question or section. For example, your RFP criteria may consider questions of technical expertise, capabilities, data security, HR policies and diversity and sustainability. Weighted scoring prioritizes the criteria that are most important to your business by assigning them a point or percentage value. So your weighted scoring criteria may look like this: 

  • Technical expertise – 25%
  • Capabilities – 40%
  • Data security – 10%
  • HR policies – 10%
  • Diversity and sustainability – 15%
RFP360, “A guide to RFP evaluation criteria: Basics, tips and examples.” (Link)

Individual question evaluation

In most cases the evaluator doesn’t look at the entire technical expertise section and give it a single score. In large RFPs, the technical expertise section may consist of 96 questions (or even 960 questions), each of which is evaluated and fed into the total technical expertise score.

For example, the RFP may include a question such as this one, and the responses from the bidders (Bredemarket and Debamarket) are evaluated.

QuestionBredemarketDebamarket
96. The completed blog post shall include no references to 1960s songs.0.8 points awarded.

While many Bredemarket blog posts comply, “How Remote Work Preserves Your Brain” does not.		1.0 points awarded.

Debamarket fully complies.
Example evaluation of a proposal response to an individual RFP question.

Final quantitative recommendation for award

Now repeat this evaluation method for every RFP question in every RFP category and you end up with a report in which one of the vendors receives more points than the other and is clearly the preferred bidder. Here’s an example from a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposal source selection process. (And you can bet that a nuclear agency doesn’t use an evaluation method that is, um, haphazard.)

From U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, “FINAL EVALUATION RECOMMENDATION REPORT FOR
PROPOSALS SUBMITTED UNDER RFP NO. RQ-CIO-01-0290
ENTITLED, “INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES AND SUPPORT
CONTRACT (ISSC).”” (link)

So what does this example show us? It shows that L-3 Communications/EER received a total score of 83.8, while its closest competitor Logicon only received a score of 80. So EER is the preferred bidder.

So in our example, BGA would evaluate Bredemarket and Debamarket, come up with a number for each bidder, and award the contract to the bidder with the highest evaluation score.

Quantitative recommendation for the little guys

Perhaps people who aren’t big government agencies don’t go to this level of detail, but many prospects who reach the consideration phase use some type of quantitative method.

For example, if the (non-weighted) pros for an item under consideration outnumber the cons, go for it.

“What are Pro and Con Lists?” (link)

Five pros and only three cons. Do it!

All quantative, objective, and straightforward.

If people really evaluate that way.

But is consideration quantitative?

Now of course the discussion above assumes that everyone is a logical being who solely evaluates based on objective criteria.

But even Sages such as myself may deviate from the objective norm. Here’s a story of one time when I did just that.

As I previously mentioned, I had never written a proposal response before I started consulting for Printrak. But I had written a Request for Proposal before I joined Printrak. For a prior employer (located in Monterey Park), I worked with an outside consultant to develop an RFP to help my employer select a vendor for a computer system. The questions posed to the bidders were not complex. Frankly, it was a simple checklist. Does your computer system perform function A? Does it perform function B?

The outside consultant and I sent the final RFP to several computer system providers, and received several proposals in response.

  • A few of the proposals checked every box, saying that they could do anything and everything. We threw those proposals out, because we knew that no one could meet every one of our demanding requirements. (“I can’t trust that response.”)
  • We focused on the proposals that included more realistic responses. (“That respondent really thought about the questions.”)

As you can see, we introduced a qualitative, emotional element into our consideration phase.

According to Kaye Putnam, this is not uncommon.

Qualitative consideration

Humans think that we are very logical when we consider alternatives, and that our consideration processes are logical and quantitative. Putnam has looked into this assertion and says that it’s hogwash. Take a look at this excerpt from Putnam’s first brand psychology secret:

Your brand has to meet people at that emotional level – if you want them to buy. (And I know you do!)  

Findings from several studies support this, but one of the most seminal was outlined in Harvard professor Gerald Zellman’s 2003 book, The Subconscious Mind of the Consumer. Zellman’s research and learnings prompted him to come to the industry-rocking conclusion that, “95 percent of our purchase decision making takes place in the subconscious mind.”

From Kaye Putnam, “7 Brand Psychology Secrets – Revealed!” (link)

But how can the subconscious mind affect quantitative evaluations?

While logic still has to play SOME role in a purchase decision (as Putnam further explains in her first and second brand psychology secrets), a positive or negative predisposition toward a bidder can influence the quantitative scores.

Imagine if the evaluators got together and discussed the Bredmarket and Debamarket responses to question 96, above. The back and forth between the evaluators may sound like this:

  • “OK, we’re up to question 96. That’s a no brainer, because no one would ever put song references in a BGA blog post.”
  • “Yeah, but did you see Bredemarket’s own post that has multiple references to the song ‘Dead Man’s Curve’?”
  • “So what? Bredemarket would never do that when writing for a government agency. That piece was solely for Bredemarket.”
  • “How do you KNOW that Bredemarket would never slip a song reference into a BGA post? You know, I really don’t trust that guy. He wore two different colored shoes to the orals presentation, a brown one and a black one. Someone as slopy as that could do anything, with huge consequences for BGA communications. I’m deducting points from Bredemarket for question 96.”
  • “OK. I think you’re being ridiculous, but if you say so.”

And just like that, your quantitative logical consideration process is exposed as a bunch of subconscious emotional feelings.

How does qualitative consideration affect you?

As you develop your collateral for the consideration phase, you need to go beyond logic (even if you have a Sage predisposition) and speak to the needs and pain points of your prospects.

Yes, pain.

Spock is behaving illogically. Jayenkai, “Pain – Star Trek Remix.” (link)

Here’s a example from my law enforcement automated fingerprint identificaiton system (AFIS) days.

  • If your prospect is a police chief who is sick and tired of burglars ransacking homes and causing problems for the police department, don’t tell your prospect about your AFIS image detail or independent accuracy testing results. After all, 1000 ppi and 99.967 accuracy are only numbers.
  • Provide the police chief with customer-focused benefit statements about how quickly your AFIS will clean up the burglary problem in the town, giving residents peace of mind and the police department less stress.

If you can appeal to those emotions, that police chief will consider you more highly and move on to conversion (purchase).

Can I help?

If your messaging concentrates on things your prospects don’t care about, most of them will ignore you and not shower you with money. Using the wrong words with your customers impacts your livelihood, and may leave you poor and destitute with few possessions.

Remember what I said about pain points? By Unknown author – Library of Congress[1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6237178

If you need a writer to work with you to ensure that your written content includes the right words that speak directly to your prospects, hire…Debamarket!

Oh wait. Debamarket is fictional.

OK, talk to Bredemarket then.

How Non-Commodity Content Creators Collaborate with Clients

On Friday, I shared a Kaye Putnam video on my Bredemarket LinkedIn page.

From https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bredemarket_be-irreplaceable-differentiate-your-brand-activity-7085682536026165249-tq01/

While I won’t go into all of the video details here (you should spend a few minutes and watch Putnam’s video yourself), one of the points that Putnam made was that the best content creators need to differentiate themselves from commodity content providers—in other words, to “be irreplaceable.”

If it’s not obvious how your product or service is wildly different, not just better, your ideal clients will resort to looking at you like a commodity.

Kaye Putnam, from the transcript to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNGos1kVIdM

One of the ways in which content creators can differentiate themselves from their competition is to have a unique process.

In addition to having the emotional appeal and positioning that we already talked about, you can employ tools like having a proprietary process. A unique way of achieving a desired result.

Kaye Putnam, from the transcript to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNGos1kVIdM

I’d like to look at one such process, the process in which a content creator collaborates with a client, but I’d like to take a look at how two very different content creators achieve the same outcome.

How Bredemarket collaborates with clients

One of the many differentiators between Bredemarket and its marketing and writing competitors is the way that Bredemarket kicks off projects.

Before I work with you, I ask a series of questions to better understand what you need.

(UPDATE OCTOBER 23, 2023: “SIX QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU IS SO 2022. DOWNLOAD THE NEWER “SEVEN QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU” HERE.)

Now these are not all of the questions that I ask. After all, my process is, um, “Bredemarket-developed.” (I avoid the word “proprietary” because of its negative connotations.) But the limited number of questions that I did share suggests how I try to understand you. Why you do what you do. How you do it. And so forth.

(If you are interested in this topic, I have written an entire e-book focused on the first six questions that I ask you. To download the e-book, visit my blog post “Six Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You: the e-book version.”)

In true Putnam manner, I approach this entire process as a Sage, or someone who imparts wisdom which, when combined with your wisdom, results in an effective piece of content.

Yes, this is a Rembrandt painting, anticipating the next section of the blog post. By Rembrandt – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=157824

But not everyone is a Sage, and other content creators approach collaboration differently.

How Paso Artis collaborates with clients

As I’ve frequently said, my primary emphasis is words. My graphic execution capabilities are somewhat limited.

I did not draw this myself. Originally created by Jleedev using Inkscape and GIMP. Redrawn as SVG by Ben Liblit using Inkscape. – Own work, Public Domain, link.

But there are many, many people who have better graphic execution capabilities than I do.

One such person is the artist behind Paso Artis.

From https://www.facebook.com/paso.artis

Now I don’t know Paso Artis’ personal archetypes, but I’d be willing to bet that her primary archetype isn’t Sage. The obvious guess for her primary archetype is “Creator.”

Get ready to celebrate the power of your creative brand archetype! Whether you resonate with being an Artist, musician, writer, dreamer, builder, or designer, your brand has the incredible ability to amaze and inspire others.

When customers encounter your creative brand, they can’t help but feel captivated. They look at your work and think, “I want to be able to do what they can.” Your brand ignites a spark of inspiration and ignites the imagination within those who connect with it.

One of your innate advantages as a creative brand is your boundless creativity and imagination. You possess the unique ability to see the world in a different light, to think outside the box, and to breathe life into your visions.

Kaye Putnam, from https://www.kayeputnam.com/brand-archetype-creator/

A few of you may recall that I initially thought that I was a “Creator,” until I realized that this archetype applies more to imagery rather than words. And not stick figures.

Despite our vast differences, Paso Artis and Bredemarket have one similarity.

  • We both work together with our clients to create a piece of content that satisfies the clients’ needs.
  • With Bredemarket, it’s a written piece of content.
  • With Paso Artis, it’s a custom painting.

But because Paso Artis is…well, an artist, she doesn’t use Sage-like words and tables and bullet points to describe her client collaboration process. The Paso Artis-developed (again, I don’t like the word “proprietary”) collaboration process is described much more…artistically.

As an artist, I do feel the responsibility and privilege of taking a vision and turning it into a painting that will hang on the wall for years and be seen every day and regarded with affection.

Don’t be scared of handing over your dream to me.

In order to achieve a happy outcome, you and I will work together.

From https://www.facebook.com/paso.artis/about_details

Note that Paso Artis uses some words that Bredemarket never uses, such as “affection” and “dream.” Now I might use “vision” and “scared” in the proper context, but most of my clients and prospects do not dream of having their customers regard their products and services, or their blog posts or white papers, with affection. Even the Bredemarket client who chose to “truly say thank you for putting these (proposal) templates together” didn’t get affectionate about them. I mean, I love Microsoft Word, but I don’t LOVE Microsoft Word.

So Bredemarket and Paso Artis use a different vocabulary. This happens to come back to another point that Putnam made, to speak the language of your clients.

If you only know Italian and your ideal clients are speaking French, you might get a few people that understand what you mean, but it’s not going to have the transformative effect that we’re looking for. You want to learn to be fluent. In the decision making language of your ideal clients.

Kaye Putnam, from the transcript to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNGos1kVIdM

Marketers, imagine if you will a possible persona for a Paso Artis prospect.

By David Teniers the Younger – 1. Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Bilddatenbank.2. khm.at, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=659517

“Jay” is a homeowner who loves art and desires a particular type of painting for his home, but does not have the artistic talent to paint it himself. Ideally, the completed painting will be one that brings Jay delight when he sees it in his home, and will also delight his guests. But can he trust anyone to realize his dream?

So Paso Artis (who has years of marketing experience in her day job work) knows that she has to address Jay’s pain points. She first does this by addressing them in her “About” text (“Don’t be scared of handing over your dream to me”), but then addresses them more deeply during her consultation with Jay.

I have never performed a competitive analysis of artists who respond to commission requests, but I’d guess that some are better at collaborating with clients than others.

And the ones that collaborate well earn a positive reputation, which translates to increased revenue over those who don’t collaborate well.

How should YOU collaborate?

But of course Bredemarket doesn’t matter, and Paso Artis doesn’t matter. You matter.

When you collaborate with a partner, either one in which the partner provides a product or service to you, or you provide a product or service to the partner, make sure that both of you are on the same page (or easel) before launching into the work project.

And if you have a dream for a painting, contact Paso Artis via her Facebook page.

And if you want your blog posts, white papers, case studies, and other content to be regarded with affection (or something like that), contact Bredemarket.

On Benefits, Features…and Advantages

I’m trying to flesh out the usefulness of the Bredemarket website.

  • Initially, much of the content was benefit-focused.
  • As the website matured, I began to include and flag more information on features—not only as features relate to benefits, but also discussing features independent of benefits (example: my discussion of the Touch ID feature).
  • It’s time to throw one other term into the mix.

Using bad statistics, addition of a third term to the two existing terms improves bredemarket.com by a whopping 50%.

Not bad for (more than) 5 minutes of work.

Review of features and benefits

The home page for the product management platform provider Airfocus, https://airfocus.com/

Airfocus has published an article about…well, I’m not going to reveal the title yet, because that gives away the massive surprise ending.

(Whoops; I already revealed it. Pay no attention to the title behind the blog post.)

For now, I’ll just say that the article discusses features and benefits.

Here’s how Airfocus defines features (which coincides with my own definition of features):

(Features) are characteristics that a product or service has. It is a simple statement about attributes. 

For example: ‘An automated photo storage app that edits, selects and stores photos’ 

From Airfocus

Contrast this definition of features with Airfocus’ definition of benefits (which again coincides with my own definition of benefits):

A benefit…is why a prospect would ultimately use a product.

This key benefit provides an emotional hook point that you can leverage in helping the user imagine the positive experiences felt by using your product. 

For example: ‘If you don’t waste your time editing and can store more of your best photos, you’ll keep happier memories for longer’.

From Airfocus

So again, the feature is a characteristic of a product (or what the product does), while a benefit explains why that characteristic is important to a prospect.

This is good in and of itself, and has served me well for years. I could stop right here, but I’ve just passed 400 Bredemarket blog posts and am on a roll to get up to 500.

So I’m going to tell you that Airfocus expands the feature-benefit model by defining an middle category between features and benefits.

The stage between a feature and a benefit

Airfocus defines the intermediate step between a feature and benefit as follows:

An advantage is what that feature does, and how it helps. These are factual and descriptive but do not yet make a connection as to how it will make users’ life better. 

For example: ‘It automatically keeps only the clearest picture of a similar set, and deletes the rest. Your photo storage is reduced on average by 80%.

From Airfocus, https://airfocus.com/glossary/what-is-a-features-advantages-and-benefits-analysis/

So now it’s time for the big surprise. The third word is advantage.

No, not tennis. By kance – https://www.flickr.com/photos/kentmercurio/59629166/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=507392

Perhaps I’m oversimplifying the analysis, but the three terms (features, advantages, and benefits) can be related as follows, using my three favorite question adverbs and incorporating Airfocus’ examples:

FeatureWhatAutomated photo storage app
AdvantageHowReduce photo storage 80%
BenefitWhyKeep happier memories for longer
I’ll use this caption to plug my first e-book, which you can get here.

Since I talk about benefits ad nauseum, you may get the mistaken view that features and advantages don’t matter. They do matter—in the proper context. For example, if you’re working on a data sheet or a user manual (if they still exist), you definitely need a feature list and could probably use an advantage list also.

Now do you have to use a feature-advantage-benefit model, instead of the simpler feature-benefit model?

Not at all.

But if you find it helpful, use it.

How the “CSI effect” can obscure the limited role of DNA-based investigative leads

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

People have been talking about the “CSI effect” for decades.

In short, the “CSI effect” is characterized as the common impression that forensic technologies can solve crimes (and must be used to solve crimes) in less than an hour, or within the time of a one-hour television show.

Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13587416

When taken to its extreme, juries may ask why the law enforcement agency didn’t use advanced technological tools to solve that jaywalking case.

Advanced technological tools like DNA, which has been commonly perceived to be the tool that can solve every single crime.

Well, that and video, because video is powerful enough to secure a conviction. But that’s another story.

Can DNA result in an arrest in a Denver homicide case?

A case in point is this story from KDVR entitled “DNA in murder case sits in Denver crime lab for 11 months.”

This is a simple statement of fact, and is not that surprising a statement of fact. Many crime labs are inundated with backlogs of DNA evidence and other forensic evidence that has yet to be tested. And these backlogs ARE creating difficulties in solving crimes such as rapes.

But when you read the article itself, the simple statement of fact is painted as an abrogation of responsibility on the part of law enforcement.

A father is making an emotional plea and putting up $25,000 of his own money to help find his son’s killer.

He is also asking the Problem Solvers to look into the time it has taken for DNA evidence to be tested in this case and others.

Tom O’Keefe said it’s taking too long to get answers and justice.

From this and other statements in the article, a picture emerges of an unsolved crime that can only be solved by the magical tool of DNA. If DNA is applied to this, just like they do on TV, arrests will be made and the killer will be convicted.

So why is it taking so long to do this?

Why is justice not being served?

KDVR is apparently not run by impassioned activists, but by journalists. And it is important from a journalistic perspective to get all sides of the story. Therefore, KDVR contacted the Denver Police Department for its side of the story.

The Denver Police Department has identified all parties involved, and the investigation shows multiple handguns were fired during this incident. While this complex case remains open, which limits details we can provide, we can verify that a significant amount of forensic work has been completed, but some remains. Investigators believe the pending forensic analysis can potentially support a weapon-related charge but will not further the ongoing homicide investigation.

OK, let’s grant that they’re not trying to identify an unknown assailant, since “all parties involved” are known.

But once that DNA is tested, isn’t that going to be the magic tool that provides the police with probable cause to arrest the killer?

Um, no.

Even IF the DNA evidence DOES happen to show a significant probability that an identifiable person committed the homicide, that in itself is not sufficient reason to arrest someone.

Why not?

Because you can’t arrest someone on DNA evidence alone.

DNA evidence can provide an investigative lead, but it has to be corroborated with other evidence in order to secure an arrest and a conviction. (Don’t forget that the evidence has to result in a conviction, and in most of the United States that requires that the evidence show beyond a reasonable doubt that the person committed the crime.)

Why was a serial killer in three European countries never brought to justice, despite overwhelming DNA evidence?

Reasonable schmeasonable.

If DNA ties someone to a crime, then the person committed the crime, right?

Let’s look at the story of a serial killer who terrorized Europe for over a decade, even though ample DNA evidence was found at each of the murder scenes, beginning with this one:

In 1993, a 62-year-old woman was found dead in her house in the town of Idar-Oberstein, strangled by wire taken from a bouquet of flowers discovered near her body.

Nobody had any information on what might have happened to Lieselotte Schlenger. No witnesses, no suspects, no signs of suspicious activity (except for the fact that she’d been strangled to death with a piece of wire, of course). But on a bright teacup near Schlenger, the police found DNA, the only clue to surface at all.

The case went cold, given that the only lead was the DNA of an unknown woman, and there was no match. Yet.

Eight years later, in 2001, there was a match when the same woman’s DNA was found at a murder scene of a strangulation victim in Freiburg, Germany. Police now knew that they were dealing with a serial killer.

But this time, the woman didn’t wait another eight years to strike again.

Five months after the second murder scene, her DNA showed up on a discarded heroin syringe, after a 7-year-old had stepped on it in a playground in Gerolstein. A few weeks later it showed up on an abandoned cookie in a burgled caravan near Bad Kreuznach, like she’d deliberately spat out a Jammy Dodger as a calling card. It was found in a break-in in an office in Dietzenbach, in an abandoned stolen car in Heilbronn, and on two beer bottles and a glass of wine in a burgled bar in Karlsruhe, like she’d robbed the place but stuck around for a few cheeky pints.

And her activities were not confined to Germany.

Over the apparent crime spree, her DNA was sprayed across an impressive 40 crime scenes in Austria, southern Germany, and France, including robberies, armed robberies, and murders.

In 2009, the case took an even more bizarre turn.

Police in France had discovered the burned body of a man, believed to be from an asylum seeker who went missing in 2002. During his application, the man had submitted fingerprints, which the police used to try and confirm his identity. Only, once again, they found the DNA of the phantom.

“Obviously that was impossible, as the asylum seeker was a man and the Phantom’s DNA belonged to a woman,” a spokesperson for the Saarbrücken public prosecutor’s office told Spiegel Online in 2009.

But how could this be?

DNA evidence had tied the woman, or man, or whatever, to six murders and numerous other crimes. There was plenty of evidence to identify the criminal.

What went wrong?

Well, in 2009 police finally figured out how DNA evidence had ended up at all of these crime scenes in three countries.

The man’s death led to an explanation of the case: there was no serial killer, and the DNA could be traced to a woman working in a packing center specializing in medical supplies. It was all down to DNA contamination.

Well, couldn’t that packing woman be convicted of the serial murders and other crimes, based upon the DNA evidence?

No, because there was no other evidence linking the woman to the crimes, and certainly “reasonable doubt” (or the European criminal justice equivalent) that the woman was also the dead male asylum seeker.

This is why DNA is only an investigative lead, and not evidence in and of itself.

But the Innocence Project always believes that DNA is authoritative evidence, right?

Even those who champion the use of DNA admit this.

If you look through the files of people exonerated by the Innocence Project, you find a common thread in many of them.

Much of the evidence gathered before the suspect’s original conviction indicated that the suspect was NOT the person who committed the crime. Maybe the family members testified that the suspect was at home the entire time and couldn’t have committed the crime in question. Or maybe the suspect was in another city.

However, some piece of evidence was so powerful that the person was convicted anyway. Perhaps it was eyewitness testimony, or perhaps something else, but in the end the suspect was convicted.

Eventually the Innocence Project got involved, and subsequent DNA testing indicated that the suspect was NOT the person who committed the crime.

This in and of itself didn’t PROVE that the person was innocent, but the DNA test aligned with much of the other evidence that had previously been collected. It was enough to cast a reasonable doubt on the conviction, allowing the improperly convicted suspect to go free.

But there are some cases in which the Innocence Project says that even DNA evidence is not to be trusted.

Negligence in the Baltimore Police Department’s crime lab tainted DNA analysis in an unknown number of criminal cases for seven years and raises serious questions about other forensic work in the lab, the Innocence Project said today in a formal allegation that the state is legally required to investigate.

DNA contamination, the same thing that caused the issues in Europe, also caused issues in Baltimore.

And there may be other explanations for how a person’s DNA ended up at a crime scene. Perhaps a police officer was careless and left his or her DNA at a crime scene. Perhaps someone was at a crime scene and left DNA evidence, even though that person had nothing to do with the crime.

In short, a high probability DNA match, in and of itself, proves nothing.

Investigative leads and reasonable doubt are very important considerations, even if they don’t fit into a one-hour TV show script.

Why is Kaye Putnam happy that I’m IGNORING her marketing advice?

This is the cover art for the album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme by the artist Simon & Garfunkel. The cover art can be obtained from Columbia. Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2184092

A few hours after finishing my revision of Bredemarket’s work process, I attended this month’s Orange County (California) Freelancers Union SPARK webinar. I’ve shared some things from SPARK meetings in the past (July’s happy hour, May’s AB2257 discussion), and I’m going to share some things from the August meeting also.

Jung and the restless

This meeting (which also happened to be the national Freelancers Union meeting for the month; our chapter rules!) was led by Cara Raffele, who spoke about “The Power of Storytelling.”

From https://www.freelancersunion.org/community/spark-events/#spark–monthly-theme, although it might have changed by the time you read this.

I’m not going to talk about the ENTIRE meeting, but will focus on the last part of the meeting, during which Raffele discussed “understanding your brand for maximum impact,” or brand archetypes.

The idea of archetypes started with Carl Jung, who defined them as images and themes that derive from the collective unconscious.

Jung claimed to identify a large number of archetypes but paid special attention to four. Jung labeled these archetypes the Self, the Persona, the Shadow and the Anima/Animus.

In modern-day marketing, this “large number of archetypes” has been boiled down to twelve, and it was these twelve that Raffele referenced in her presentation.

Twelve archetypes. From https://www.kayeputnam.com/brandality-archetypes/. More about Kaye Putnam later.

Raffele encouraged all of us freelancers to listen to all twelve, and then to select multiple archetypes (not just one) that seemed to reflect our freelance brands. So I iterated a first cut at the archetypes that I believed applied to Bredemarket; my preliminary list included Sage, Creator, and Explorer.

From https://twitter.com/JEBredCal/status/1423068533278142466.

Why Sage? That particular one resonated with me because of my experiences with my clients (educating on benefits vs. features, expanding the understanding of law enforcement agency stakeholders), and because of the way I’ve been marketing myself anyway. After all, when I self-reference as the biometric content marketing expert and the biometric proposal writing expert, then it’s obvious that I can add the sage to my clients’ parsley, rosemary, and thyme. (Sorry, couldn’t resist, even though I know it’s bad.)

From https://twitter.com/JEBredCal/status/1423304673977540614.

But after guessing that Bredemarket is Sage with a pinch of Creator and Explorer, I realized that I might not know myself as well as I thought, so I asked if there were some type of online “archetypes test,” similar to the online Meyers-Briggs personality tests, that could help you semi-independently discern your archetypes.

Raffele responded by pointing us to Kaye Putnam and her online Brand Personality Quiz.

(One aside before moving on to Putnam’s test. A few of you realize that I did not come up with the section title “Jung and the restless” on my own. Yes, I stole it from a Steve Taylor song title (and he stole it from a soap opera). I used the title even though Taylor is frankly not that positive about secular psychology. But he did say “some of my best friends are shrinks.” Oh, and that’s obviously Gym Nicholson of Undercover fame on guitar.)

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JNOMb_IG8I.

My “Brand Personality Quiz” results, and Kaye Putnam’s recommendations

If you’ve taken an online Meyers-Briggs personality test, or any other similar online test, the process of the Brand Personality Quiz will seem familiar to you. Putnam’s quiz asks you a series of independent questions, some of which have as many as twelve options. It then tabulates your answers against attributes of the twelve brand archetypes, and produces a final result listing a primary brand archetype and some secondary archetypes.

Here are my results.

So if you take Putnam’s quiz as gospel, I was somewhat accurate in my initial self-assessment.

  • Note that “Sage” came first and “Explorer” came second in the quiz results, and those were two of the archetypes I initially tweeted about before taking the quiz.
  • Considering the personal writing style I use in my blog, tweets, and elsewhere, “Entertainer” wasn’t much of a surprise either.
  • Upon further personal reflection, “Royalty” makes sense also. (So bow before me, serfs.)

And after reading Putnam’s description of “Creator” and its emphasis on visual presentation (rather than textual presentation), I can see why this was NOT on the list.

I did not draw this myself. Originally created by Jleedev using Inkscape and GIMP. Redrawn as SVG by Ben Liblit using Inkscape. – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1692938

Along with my results, Putnam provided a link that allowed me to download a brief description of my primary archetype, Sage. Now this brief description doesn’t include all of the detail found in Putnam’s 12 Brandfluency courses (one for each archetype), but it does include many actionable items.

The “Sage Inspiration Kit” provides useful tips for Sage businesspeople to include in their brand marketing. The kit asserts that if the tips are followed, the results will produce emotional responses in potential clients that will increase brand attractiveness, thus allowing businesspeople to win more business (and win better business).

Tips are provided on the following:

  • Color.
  • Typography.
  • Words.

Obviously that’s a lot of stuff to absorb, even in this brief kit. (The paid course offers tips in additional areas.) And even if I wanted to, I couldn’t change all the colors and fonts in my marketing overnight.

But I could look at Putnam’s word suggestions.

Ignoring the expert

Now Kaye Putnam’s word suggestions are freely available to anyone, but I’m not going to just copy all of them and reproduce them here. Request them yourself. (The link is for the Sage archetype)

But I’ll offer comments on a few of the 18 words and phrases in the kit.

From https://xkcd.com/386/. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.5).

First off, I’m NOT going to use “think tank” in Bredemarket’s marketing. Perhaps this phrase may resonate for a larger firm, or even for a smaller firm with a team of people addressing their clients’ needs. But it would take a lot of stretching to describer a solopreneur think tank.

Another term that DOESN’T make sense for Bredemarket is “engineering.” Now obviously engineering is a good thing, although I’ve seen cases where engineering is overemphasized. But it doesn’t really make sense for my business, in which I make a point of emphasizing my ability to communicate engineering concepts to non-engineers. The same issues apply with the phrase “the code.”

I won’t go into all of my concerns, but there are several “Sage words” in the list that I would never use for Bredemarket, or would use very sparingly.

And that’s…OK

Remember, of course, that Stuart Smalley is not a licensed practitioner. By http://www.tvacres.com/words_stuart.htm, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31855280

When someone gives you advice, whether it’s Kaye Putnam or John Bredehoft, you have to judge whether the advice is good for YOU.

Even if you narrow a brand down to one archetype, there are innumerable differences between individuals who align with this archetype. One size does not fit all, and I personally may love the term “experiment” but hate the terms listed above.

Now perhaps I may be wrong in rejecting Putnam’s advice. Perhaps there’s a really, really good reason why I should sprinkle the phrase “think tank” through all of my marketing materials.

But in the end it’s up to the recipient to decide whether or not to follow the advice of the expert. That applies to people giving advice to me, and that also applies to the advice that I give to my clients. (If a client insists on using the phrase “best of breed,” I can’t stop the client from doing so.)

But several of those words and phrases DO seem like good ideas, and I’ll probably make a concerted effort to sprinkle the GOOD words and phrases throughout Bredemarket’s website, social media channels, proposals, and other marketing.

Even though this might require me to re-revise the content creation process that I just revised.

Oh well. It’s good to…experiment with things. After all, Bredemarket is in effect a laboratory in which I like to try solutions out myself before I try to make a case for them with my clients. It’s easier to speak to research-based proven solutions than ones with which I have no experience at all.

By Rembrandt – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=157824

Did that paragraph sound sage-like? I got six of the words/phrases into that paragraph!

Oh, and if you’re looking for a Royally Entertaining and Exploring Sage…

Bredemarket offers clients deep experience in content marketing, proposals, and strategy. I can offer expert advice to biometrics firms, since (as noted above) I am a biometric content marketing expert and a biometric proposal writing expert. However, this expert advice can also be provided to other technology firms, and to general business.

You can read here about how my content creation process ensures that the final written content (a) advances your GOAL, (b) communicates your BENEFITS, and (c) speaks to your TARGET AUDIENCE.

If Bredemarket can fill a gap in your company’s needs (NOTE TO SELF: DO NOT MENTION PARSLEY. DO NOT MENTION PARSLEY. DO NOT MENTION PARSLEY.), then feel free to contact me and we can discuss your needs and possible solutions.