Author Archives: Jorge Sette

“ALEX FROM TARGET” – WHAT’S BEHIND THIS VIRAL CAMPAIGN?

Posted on by under education, humor, language, marketing, sales training, Writing

You must have heard about Alex from Target, if you have accessed any social media in the past few days. This is the story of a 16-year-old boy from Dallas, with Justin Bieber kind of looks, who became an overnight celebrity after a teenage customer – a girl called Abbie – fell in love with him at first sight and posted his photo bagging groceries at a Target – the second-largest retailer in the US – where he works as a cashier. The good-looking boy saw his account on Twitter surge from a little more than a 100 followers to more than half a million in less than 48 hours! Messages of eternal love, passion and admiration, with the hashtag #alexfromtarget, came from all corners. Some girls offered to mother his kids.

Alex from Target

Alex from Target

 

Next thing, Alex Laboeuf is invited to take part in the Ellen Degeneres’s talk show, becoming even more popular. When asked by Ellen how he planned to tap into this sudden exposure,  and if he could dance or sing, he simply answered he was good at bagging groceries. Poor thing. The story has been reported by serious and important media outlets such as CNN and the New York Times.

A marketing agency rushed to take credit for the viral phenomenon, claiming they had orchestrated it, but Target and the boy denied they had anything to do with the agency and were as surprised as everyone else. The boy knew about his sudden wave of popularity through his manager, and, at first, thought he was kidding.

I find this both extraordinary and scary. If it’s really true that this was an organic and grassroots viral hysteria, it’s worrying that you can have your life instantly disrupted by a photo taken and posted without your consent by someone you don’t know or care about, while you are at work, and then getting retweeted thousands of times by pubescent girls who became your instant fans. Downright weird!

Also, these things tend to die out as fast as they start – remember the ice bucket thing?- which makes me wonder about the sense of frustration and emptiness the boy will feel when all this buzz comes to nothing in a couple of weeks, which is what probably will happen, if he does not show any special artistic talent soon enough.

As for the marketing implications of the story, we marketers know it’s very hard, if not impossible, to produce a viral campaign. The elements that make a video or a photo go viral are really intangible and unpredictable, and there’s always the danger that the campaign will backfire, if customers feel cheated. I wouldn’t recommend it as a promotional strategy to any company. A systematic approach to content marketing will yield a lot more results. Educating your customers on a regular basis by providing useful and interesting info is way more productive.

Obviously there will be an enormous boost of awareness for Target during the next few days. But did they need that? Who doesn’t know them in the US already anyway? Besides, customers may feel manipulated and could avoid patronizing the company for some time. Danger.

However, with the power of the Internet to amplify everything and the hormones of the youth running awry, you can’t prevent these oddities to happen. I wish Alex all the luck in the future.

Au revoir

Jorge Sette.

How to improve language learning materials

Posted on by under aprenda inglês, art, edtech, education, language, lerning, Presentation skills

Having just watched the wonderful documentary Africa on Netflix, I realized it’s both worrying and marvelous to find out how little I know about my own planet. The advantage is this means I will be learning until I die. No chance of running out of subjects. Besides, I don’t even need to be concerned about getting to quantum physics or the theory of relativity, which I’m sure would exert a brutal amount of effort on my limited brain: there’s much more basic stuff for me to absorb and immerse myself into before crossing the great divide.

How wonderful learning is. Especially with the tools we have today: millions of video clips on YouTube, Khan Academy lessons , all the info available on Google, MOOCs, all the ebooks you can instantly download from the Internet for next to nothing, blogs on all kinds of topics, apps, podcasts, to say nothing of the huge amounts of info shared by your friends on social media sites (including the cute cat videos!).

Knowledge Is Power by Rockwell, Norman

Knowledge Is Power by Rockwell, Norman

It saddens me that today’s kids will take all this wealth of knowledge and its tools for granted, and many times will prefer to settle for the silliest and most irrelevant games on the Internet. I consider myself lucky to live in this exciting era where we have all this info at our fingertips. All this change has been happening in the last 25 years and it’s hard to believe how different life was in the 1980s. It’s a blessing that those who want to self-educate and choose their own paths through the intricate jungle of information are able to do so. Of course, guides (teachers, tutors, mentors, collaborators) will always be helpful, but it’s liberating to know you can discard them and plan your own journey of discovery if you wish to.

Considering all these tools available, I started thinking what it is that language learning materials are lacking and how these new tools could help us, publishers and teachers, improve them. I have been in this field for more than 20 years now and it’s undeniable that books and other didactic materials evolved a lot throughout these years. However, they are progressively going in the same direction, looking more and more like one another, to the extent of becoming almost a commodity. You can’t tell significant differences between them on the shelves of a bookstore.

One of the main things that print course books cannot do is personalize the lesson to the extent it should be done to meet the different students’ needs, forms of intelligence, learning styles, and paces of language learning. A simple example is a student should be given the right to pick the genre of text he wants to read for the contextualization of the language point he’s been studying. A course book cannot do that. It would make it clunky and extremely expensive to offer in print alternative choices for all the texts they should comprise. An ebook, on the other hand, could offer this variety of choices in a much simpler and affordable way.

A student, now and then, should also be able to choose how to practice the language of the lesson: does he want to follow up doing a writing exercise, a listening comprehension or a reading activity? Does he want to translate a piece of work? Is he allowed to speak to someone from another country through Skype to practice? We can’t offer that range of choices yet in a coordinated and organized way.

Therefore personalization – or lack thereof – is the main problem of print course books or other more traditional materials for language learning. Some digital platforms are already dealing with this. A lot of personalization can be done as homework and be monitored by the teacher through a number of LMSs (learning managing systems) already available. But a lot more is needed. It would be necessary, for instance, to flip the classroom in a radical way, using the time in class for more relevant and interpersonal activities that would be done better involving a real teacher and a group of learners, while the students would deal with the information acquisition on their own time online, outside the classroom.

One More Week Of School And Then by Rockwell, Norma

One More Week Of School And Then by Rockwell, Norma

Moreover, despite the fact that we all agree that language is more effectively learned embedded in content (CLIL – content and language integrated learning), books for children and teenagers do not normally cover the important areas of personal finance, politics, or economy – a growing need in the diverse and complex society they’re entering. I haven’t seen any language books focusing on Emotional Intelligence as part of the curriculum either. If we all agree that teaching through content is the best way for the students to internalize a language, why not offer them this kind of very useful training: recognition of feelings, how to deal with anger, how to negotiate conflict with their classmates, strategies for incorporating diversity, how to delay or postpone gratification? We already teach social values, which is a great step forward, but we don’t focus on interpersonal relationships as content, an area that could be beautifully and effectively covered through language teaching materials.

Cousin Reginald Spells Peloponesus by Rockwell, Norman

Dealing with conflict. (Cousin Reginald Spells Peloponesus by Rockwell, Norman)

Another ideal way of adapting course books would be to cater more intensely for the students’ different learning styles: visual, auditory, kinesthetic. It would be amazing if the presentation of a language point and the activities following it could be personalized according to the strongest style of each student: do they wish to see a video explaining the point, do they want to read about it, would they rather engage in a hands-on discovery activity and find out the solution for themselves? The new tools of technology all make these options possible. All they need is to be presented in a more coordinated way by teachers and publishers so the students are guided through their personal journey towards learning. In summary, language learning materials need to provide a much more flexible structure and remain the backbone of a process that requires individualization.

You are more than welcome to share your ideas on how to improve language learning materials in the comments section of this blog.

NOTE: You might want to check out our eBooks available  from AMAZON.COM . Click here to know more about our series TEACHING ENGLISH WITH ART: http://wp.me/p4gEKJ-1lS

 

Teaching English with Art

Teaching English with Art

Au revoir

Jorge Sette.

 

Webinar: one of the most powerful tools to close a deal.

Posted on by under andragogy, aprenda inglês, Aprender línguas estrangeiras, edtech, education, language, marketing, Presentation skills, sales training, training, webinars

Webinars have been around for a while now, and, therefore, they’re not considered the sexiest media by marketers any longer. It comes as a surprise, though, that, among the social media available, they are demonstrably the one that brings in the most number of conversions and sales. Pretty sexy, in my opinion, huh?

Webinars are a social medium, because, just like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, they boost the creation of a community and generate a lot of interaction between the participants. The sessions themselves have a limited length of time– 75 min is the usual – but, just like a live in-person event, they bring people together who can then sign up for your company’s website or Facebook fan page and become a member of a community just like any other.

Most webinars are done live, although, depending on the software or service you choose to use, the session can and should be recorded for later viewing, in case some of the participants cannot make it at a certain time of the day.

I remember the first time I ran a webinar – facilitating the presentation of famous authors of a publisher I used to work for – with the objective of educating the participants on the new methodology of the English language teaching material we were launching, and, as a consequence, selling the material to the school or teacher who might feel it fit their needs. Being the first time on my own, I was kind of nervous, but then I relaxed and started to have a good time myself. The speakers, at first, were a bit stiff themselves, but then they got in the mood (of course, we all had rehearsed and had been carefully trained many times before) and the session was as a huge success.

Customers watching a webinar

Customers watching a webinar

There are basically three phases to a webinar: the promotion, the session itself, and the follow-up. If all these phases are implemented properly and carefully, the event will go as smoothly as it should, otherwise the session will flop, and the conversion rates and sales results will be disappointing. After all, a webinar is like any other marketing tool for collecting leads and selling the product. Some webinars are so powerful that the conversion from prospect to lead to buyer occurs during the session itself, and the client either makes the purchase online after the webinar or requests the visit of a rep to complete the process. Let’s talk a little bit about each of the phases of a webinar:

The Promotion: creating the buzz

After deciding on the best webinar provider for your company and having had extensive training on it, organize your first event. This does not differ much from how you promote your live in-person conferences, except for, in your communication with the customers – be it online (email, banners, Facebook posts); print collateral/invites that your sales people will hand out to VIP clients; or even phone calls – make sure to reinforce the main advantage of the webinar: the customer will be attending a high-quality session and interacting with people from all over the world from the comfort of their own home or the desk chairs in their office. Many clients still resist the concept of webinars initially, as they will have never taken part in one. Even the reps, if not properly trained, can damage your effort by not explaining to the customer the value of attending a session under these ideal conditions. All the clients need is a computer with an Internet connection. Remember to send out invitations to the event a least 30 days before the session, and be prepared to send two or three reminders afterwards if you feel the registration is low. By the way, make the registration process very simple (ask only for their names and email addresses). You can add more details about them later.

The session and its different parts

When the great day arrives, make sure you, as the facilitator, and the speakers, who will probably be in different parts of the world, get together online at least 30 min before the session starts in order to run some technical tests of sound and image and make sure everything is in fine. There are always some customers who arrive early, either because they are excited, or because they themselves want to make sure they can get in easily. Greet these people warmly, explain them that the session will start in X min (remember they might be in very different time zones) and ask them questions such as how they found out about the session, where they are watching it from, are they alone or with other people, etc., to warm them up. The webinar provider usually has a forum section (or chat room) where the participants can chat with each other by entering their questions, answers and comments in writing. So expect a lot of interaction among them even before the session starts.

When the time is right, introduce the speakers, present the agenda of the webinar (it is a great help for the audience to know what is going to happen, so show a slide with bullet points telling them the plan). In the phase of the preparation for the webinar, ask the speakers if they would feel comfortable telling a story related to the content they will be presenting to open the session. We love stories and this is a great way to break the ice. Of course, the story ideally tells of a problem and its solution – which will be the product/service you are promoting. The speakers mustn’t make it too long, as some attendees will want them to jump straight into the content itself.

Then the speakers start the session per se. If the speakers decide to make it more interactive – which I strongly recommend – they should ask questions during the presentation and teach the audience how to react by using the different buttons available on the dashboard on their end of the interface of the webinar provider: they can say YES/NO, they can insert emoticons in the chat section applauding a point the speakers made, or laughing at one of their jokes. They can also make comments in the chat section. They love it.

When you finish the content part of the session, you or your speaker need to put on your sales hat, and smoothly, transition to a sales close. Ask if they liked what they heard so far, if they have any questions and whether they are ready to purchase it. This is called CLOSING in sales, and you need to do that, if you are using the webinar for business. Afterwards, set up a quick Q&A slot: 15 min max. They can ask questions about anything: the content of the session or the product/service itself. Some will buy on the spot, others will need more time to think about it. Fair enough. For those who need more time, you will establish the third phase of the webinar:

The Follow-up

Both live in-person events and webinars need to pull the prospects along the sales funnel leading them to make a purchase. After the even,  you will hopefully have many converts, but they need to actually take the action of buying your offer. This third phase is essential: your reps could schedule a demo at their office to continue the conversation; you could set up an email marketing campaign highlighting the benefits of the product and expanding on what was not said during the webinar; you can send them more info via an ebook or brochure. However, don’t lose track of the participants of the webinar. Make sure they join your community (website, blog, Facebook fan page, etc). Otherwise, you will be just wasting your time as a business person.

There is a lot of info about webinars on the web and many tips on how to conduct them. The more you read about these sessions, the more confident you will become to start producing them. They are very effective. Don’t miss on this opportunity to close deals.

Au revoir.

Jorge Sette.

 

 

 

 

Which novels do you wish you had written yourself?

Posted on by under art, blogging, Career advice, content marketing, culture, E-books, great novels, language, storytelling, Writing

When you are at the stage of brainstorming for a nonfiction blog post or a piece of creative writing, it’s inevitable to remember a couple of articles, books and novels related to the topic you read at some point and enjoyed. They will be a source of inspiration and influence in your writing, making you somehow even slightly jealous, wishing you had thought of that first. But, of course, you would also have needed the right language to encapsulate it. After all, more important than the plot itself is how you say things.

Take the book Life of Pi by Yann Martel, for example, whose original idea some people claim was stolen from our Brazilian writer Moacyr Scliar. Well, plagiarism is hard to establish, there are a lot of gray areas, but one thing I’m sure of: Martel did not write the same story nor, most definitely, used the same language as Scliar. Jorge Luis Borges, in his marvelous piece Pierre Menard, Autor del Quixote, from the book Ficciones takes this idea even further, asserting that a book written with the exact same words by a different author at a different time would be read in a new way, due to the dissimilar historic contexts, and therefore would not be the same book at all. I agree.

After reading a comment on Facebook by a friend saying that she is full of ideas for blog posts but do not find the time to write them (yes, we all know how teachers are busy!), I made a joke saying that all my good ideas had already been stolen by the likes of Shakespeare, Tolstoy or Philip Roth.

Then I though for a moment, and decided to give serious consideration as to which novels I really wished I had written and why. This is my humble list:

Books I wish I had written

Books I wish I had written

1.The Human Stain, by Philp Roth: it’s hard to discuss this book without giving a bit too much away, so apologies for the spoilers. The story of a light-skinned black boy who grabs the opportunity to pass for a Jew in 1950’s America and later becomes a Classics Professor at a small college is a complex account of the choices you make in life and the responsibilities and consequences that come with them. The need to make concessions and compromise basic values to achieve a bigger goal is the central theme of the book. The deep moral dilemma you face when you take such a radical decision, including the necessity to abandon and cut relations with your family and community to start a new life somewhere else as a completely different person, is evaluated by the author from unusual and unexpected angles in this impressive book. As irony is the hallmark of Roth, the book starts with the most paradoxal of incidents: the professor, noticing that two of the students enlisted in his class never seem to be present, asks the class the question which brings about his doom: “do they exist or are they spooks?” The latter being an old loaded word, a racist epithet for blacks. It turns out that the Professor, never having seen those students before, meant spooks in the most common sense of the word, that is, ghosts, and, after all the pressure and hassle he goes through, without support from any of his colleagues and students – for a number of political reasons – he decides to resign and end his career. I would love to have written this story for its universality: any minority can identify with what Coleman, the Jewish/Black professor, goes through, and can easily put themselves in his shoes. Given the opportunity would you do the same? Would you change your race, color, nationality, sexual orientation or gender? Or would you just give up all of your chances of fully growth and spend the rest of your life as a second class citizen in a society that will only offer you the fulfillment of your whole potential if you are the right color?

The Human Stain

The Human Stain

2. Dom Casmurro, by Machado de Assis: this must be the book I reread most often in my entire life. I know it almost by heart. What attracts me is the way the characters are so well-rounded and fully developed, leaping out of the page as if you could go for a walk and talk to them. This does not mean, however, that you will know them any better. This is the whole point of the story. The dissimulation, the fact that we never know anyone completely. The impossibility of dealing with only one version of the reality. I can’t get enough of the artistry of the author, who, narrating the story in the first person, never lets the reader be sure about what really happened: was the main character’s wife an adulterer? Is the boy she gives birth to his son or his best friend’s? The doubt will corrupt his marriage and ultimately destroy all the love in his life. He becomes empty and isolated, having chosen the version of reality which will cause him the most pain and damage. Don’t we all choose the latter?

Dom Casmurro

Dom Casmurro

3. We need to talk about Kevin, by Lionel Shriver: a professional woman is in love with her work and her husband. She writes and publishes travel guides, having the chance to go places, tour interesting and remote regions, avoiding getting stuck in a housewife’s rut, being independent most of the time. Yet, she can count on a loving husband to comfort and look after her when she comes back home after a long trip: this is a dream life. She has the best of both worlds. Then, what else is it that society claims will make every woman even happier and more complete: to have a baby. From the birth of Kevin, her firstborn, to the dantesque crime scene at the end of the book, We need to talk about Kevin reads like a nightmare. You can’t put it down. A thriller in every sense of the word. But one that goes way beyond the limitations of the genre. Shriver’s ambitions are a lot more encompassing. She discusses the nature of evil. Is it caused by nurture or nature? How is it created? Has Kevin always been the monster she feared he was or was his low self-esteem caused by his mother’s lack of love and care that turned him into a criminal? Was the mother’s resentment for having to give up all the pleasure and independence of her former life, her pre-baby life, toxic enough to corrupt and undo the little creature? The sense of guilt of a mother for not conforming to the patterns of a society that takes motherly love for granted only contributes to the character’s anguish and mental confusion. Of course, the book will show different perspectives of the scenarios we painted, but the conclusion will be up to the reader.

We need to talk about Kevin

We need to talk about Kevin

These are all great themes and I don’t need to tell you how masterfully these concepts and ideas are exploited by those wonderful writers. The angles they illuminate, the perspectives they reveal would hardly have occurred to the average reader. That’s why they are geniuses and we are blog writers. But we can always try to get closer to their art in our writing. According to Malcolm Gladwell, another writer whose books I wish I could have written (although they are nonfictional), all it takes is a dedication of 10,000 hours of work to become a world class master at your craft.

Which books would you like to have written yourself? Let us know.

Au revoir

Jorge Sette.

Five Most Common Misconceptions About Writing

Posted on by under art, blogging, businesstips, Career advice, content marketing, culture, E-books, education, language, marketing, sales

Writing is today more fashionable than it has been in a long time. Perhaps it’s at the peak of its importance ever, with all the blogs, messages, emails and tweets swamping our computer, tablet and smart phone screens every second of the day. Of course, most of the time it’s bad or unclear writing. But everyone is doing it one way or another, and job opportunities are opening up for those who do it well.

Content is the key word in the workplace today. Especially if you are in sales & marketing. The buyer has all the power today and they control when, how and where they will make their next purchase. In this context, writing can be a great asset in educating and persuading prospects, making them see you as the expert, or thought leader in your field. Writing great content and making it available will help you develop a relationship with your potential customers, who will definitely lean towards your offer when the time is right.

Saint Jerome Writing (detail) by Caravaggio

Saint Jerome Writing (detail) by Caravaggio

As a consequence of its importance, the Internet is full of advice about effective writing, how to put blogs together, the dos and don’ts and best practices of publishing anything. By all means, read all you can, as there is a lot of useful information online. Beware, however, of some of the most common misconceptions about writing: in general most of them were acquired or developed at school and academic settings rather than on the Internet. Here are five of the most common:

1. Writing is about inspiration and waiting for the muse to come down and sit on your keyboard. Well, I’m afraid there’s not enough room for the muse to relax and spread out on such a small space. Also, deadlines have a weird way of not accommodating the muse’s busy schedule, so do not wait to get started. Writing is not necessarily what Hemingway warned us against in his famous quote: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Make it more active: brainstorm ideas, do some research, check out what is trending online, use automatic topic generators on the Internet, and do not delay. Start the process as soon as you can,

 2. Writing comes out as the masterpiece you usually read in the printed copy of good magazines, newspapers and books. Well, the final draft is not easy to get to. That’s what you see published. But anyone can get the process started and refine it until you achieve a satisfactory result. The saying writing is rewriting, or writing is more about transpiration than inspiration are indeed true. Once you spill out your first ideas and get them more or less outlined on the page, you will start the process of polishing them. And that is the hard part. This will take time, effort and immense patience.

3. You cannot self-edit. If we are not talking about your PhD thesis or your fiction masterpiece, do not believe you need a team of copyeditors, researchers and proofreaders ready to work for you. They are expensive and hardly available in enough numbers even for big publishing companies nowadays. So, unless you can count on close friends to help you out with it (remember you can always return the favor), you must learn tactics for self-editing. Do not hesitate to count on every piece of technology available to help you with the task: spell checkers, grammar checkers, dropdown thesaurus, online dictionaries, you name it. There are a lot of very useful tools out there. Read your drafts as many times as you can and carry on refining them. There will be a moment when you’ll get so fed up with reading your piece you will want to throw up. That’s when you take a serious break. I’m not talking about the proverbial coffee time (you have probably been drinking coffee nonstop throughout the whole process anyway). Just abandon your text for a couple of days (I hope you can afford to do that. Factor in those necessary breaks when you plan your timetable to meet the deadline). Next time you get back to the text, you will see it with fresh eyes, and give it the final touches as a Steven Pinker would.

4. Sophisticated writing is good writing. Write as you speak. Content that will help you sell is content that’s simple enough for the majority of readers to understand. So drop the long words and complex sentences. The golden rule of elegance is less is more. Apply this to your writing: precision and simplicity of vocabulary, clarity of ideas, avoidance of overuse of the passive voice, and keeping to what is essential are the tactics that will make you win the reader over. As you read and reread your text, try to leave out everything that is superfluous or redundant. Cut, cut, cut.

5. Not everyone can write. You are write (sorry: right) to think so, if you are using Oscar Wilde or Hemingway as your standard. Artistic and creative writing are not for everyone. It does not need to be for you. But most people can learn to develop and communicate clear, authoritative and persuasive ideas in writing. It takes practice, though. All the content marketing gurus agree on this single point: you need to write everyday if you are in the business. The blog post you will write as soon as you finish reading this text will sound a hundred times better than the one you wrote around the same time last year. They will be both there on the Internet: just read and compare them. You will have improved. So keep working at it and surprise yourself month after month at how much better you are becoming. Good luck!

Would you like to share with us any advice on writing? Please do not hesitate to do so on the comments section of this blog. You might as well rate us so we can improve.

Au revoir

Jorge Sette

How to Train Adults Effectively

Posted on by under aprenda inglês, Aprender inglês, Aprender línguas estrangeiras, Aprender português, Career advice, edtech, Ensinar com Arte, instructional design, language, Presentation skills, sales training

You may have heard the term ANDRAGOGY. No, it’s not something you need to treat and there’s no need to be scary if you find out your husband is into it. It’s simply the word we use for “pedagogy” when the learners are not children.

Although there are many overlaps between the processes of teaching adults and children – they both love learning through playing, for example – there are some differences too. And those differences must be taken into consideration, if you are designing a course or training session for your employees, or other adult participants.

Some of the differences, established by Malcolm Knowles, an American Adult Educator of the XX century, are, for example, adults need to know why they are learning; adults wish to take responsibility for their learning, so they should contribute and take active part in the process; they have already a wealth of experience to build on and the new items to be learned (knowledge, skills, or attitude) will add to their baggage; the purpose of learning must be objective and perceived as relevant, which is, to help them with their lives or give them pleasure; they are more willing to learn things that meet a specific need or desire; they are more likely to be moved by intrinsic motivation (self-steem, for example) than extrinsic (rise in salary, promotion, relocation, etc).

Having established these basic differences, we must also add that both kids and adults have, individually, different learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic), and some are more likely to use either the more analytical (left) or the more creative (right) side of the brain. These individual differences must also be taken into account when you design and develop a training course. I know, you must be thinking by now that, unless you are a teaching on a one-to-one basis, you can’t possibly cater for all these needs and idiosyncrasies. The good news is yes, you can. Let’s list here the basic steps you should take in putting together an effective training course for a group of adults. I will be using examples from a very successful course I created while I ran a consultancy service called Tutor in the mid-nineties, The course Pronunciation for Brazilian Teachers of English attracted hundreds of teachers every time it was offered at different venues and times all over the country. Sometimes these were open events, for which any teacher could sign up. Other times, these were tailor-made or adapted modules for specific schools as a service for their teachers.

Training adults effectively

Training adults effectively

Obviously, it’s not possible to cover all the details of a well-designed and implemented training course in the space of a blog post. This is not my intention. But I promise to come back to the topic periodically as you ask questions and comments on this overview of the mains steps I give you below:

1. Needs analysis: being a Brazilian teacher myself, I identified very early on that most teachers in the country had a huge gap in the knowledge and practice of pronunciation. They spoke English – some better than others – but very few had actually learned or knew explicitly about the different phonemes of the language or the mechanics of pronunciation. Many were not familiar with concepts such as stress and intonation either. Therefore, most of them, in their classes, tended to skip teaching the coursebook sections that dealt with these areas of the language. The famous English phonemic chart you can find on a number of websites, DVDs, or apps today was not so easy to access back then. So this was a big opportunity for me to start a business and help the teachers. On the other hand, when I gave tailor-made courses at specific schools, I had to unearth the real needs of the teachers and how much they already knew about the subject, so I could adapt the off-the-shelf course I’d already put together. In these cases, you do your research through oral interviews with prospective participants and supervisors, through written questionnaires, through focus groups or by watching some of the teachers at work.

2. Design: now that you know the participants’ needs, you must define how the course is going to be delivered: is it going to be presential, done via a webinar or blended? In addition to that, you need to determine and write down the learning objectives of the course. What is expected from the participants in terms of performance as they finish the training session? What is going to change?  Of course, the clearer you state these objectives, the more effectively you will create and apply the materials you are planning for the course. A typical objective would be, for example, by the time the teachers finish this first module of the course they should be able to recognize and reproduce (orally and in writing) all the individual symbols that represent the phonemes of the English language and use them in clear contexts (as in specific words). You will notice that the objective follows the popular formula S.M.A.R.T (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound).

3.  Development: this is the hands-on phase of the process, when you are going to create all the different materials that will compose the course and help you impart the content of the sessions (deductive approach: lectures), or lead the students to discover parts of it by themselves (inductive approach, discovery), and finally practice and discuss the learning points. Remember you are creating a course for a number of individuals with different types of learning styles, tastes and ways to use the brain. So variety is the key. Always start with a relevant icebreaker or energizer to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and give the participants a chance to get to know each other from the beginning. Believe me: these warm-ups will make your job a lot easier later on. Especially if they are thematically linked to the topic of the course. Keep the pace fast (that’s the rhythm most participants are used to in today’s hectic world and keep alternating and using diversified activities: short lectures with the help of visuals such as slides (note: even during these lectures, make the process learner-centered by getting them to participate actively, through questions, for example, or comments); games;  guided note-taking (students fill in the gaps of sentences previously written in the handouts;  physical activities (involving movement), pair work, group work, debates, etc. I know, it can sound a bit overwhelming. But it’s doable. Remember: the longer the course the more variety it requires and you will have more time to apply different activities to suit as many different learning styles as possible. If the course is short, or broken down into modules, you will have to prioritize.

4. Implementation: this is the great moment you and your trainees have been expecting. You are putting all your preparation in practice. if you have the chance to run a small pilot with a group of volunteers before that, fine, but most trainers cannot afford the time to do that. Try and include during the ice-breaker, or before that,  a moment when the participants will be able to express their expectations regarding the training. Of course if you did the needs analysis well, there will be no surprises here. But maybe you’ll have to make small adjustments to fit their unexpected hopes. Flexibility is an important characteristic of good trainers. Try to exercise it. As the session progresses and you get more comfortable with he group, allow for more participation,  become more of a facilitator to the process, call them by their names (name tags or desk tents with their names written on them are a must), and carry on making adjustments whenever needed, especially regarding the time each activity lasts. You may have to shorten an upcoming task if the current one drags for too long. Create a detailed schedule for yourself so you can keep track of how much time each activity should take. In long courses, things may get out of hand if you don’t stick to this timetable. Do not forget to have breaks throughout the course. Most people are fueled by caffeine these days or they need to stretch their legs  and walk around after long hours sitting down.

5.  Closing: at the end, allow time for feedback and final questions. You can devise interesting activities for that too. Ask questions about what they think should be done as a follow-up to the session. Or explain the follow-up plan you have already designed: job aids, individual couching, accompanied visits to clients, lesson-monitoring for feedback, etc.

You will not have to start from scratch every time you design a course. I used some of the materials and activities I created for my initial course for years, with small adaptations now and then, to suit different contexts or to update them. But it’s good to understand and go through the whole creation process a few times to make it fresh.

Training is a field that is growing and more professionals will be needed. If you are interested in it, start educating yourself: read as much as you can on the topic, follow blogs, enroll in training sessions as a learner, and participate in conferences. It’s a very hard and demanding job, yet very exciting and varied. Good luck.

Au revoir

Jorge Sette.

Why is TV becoming better than the movies?

Posted on by under art, content marketing, language, movies, TV shows

It all started when a mob family guy began to have panic attacks after a flock of ducks flew away from his backyard  leaving him with an irreparable sense of loss and despair. He started seeing a psychiatrist. We also noticed an uncanny resemblance between the way he conducted his mob activities and the way big companies operate in the real world.  Was this possibly a metaphor of corporate America? Then there was the focus on his family – unusual in mafia movies (except for The Godfather). We had hardly ever seen a mob wife on the small screen before, with all the details of her lifestyle, including a sense of how her ambition blinds her to the criminal work of her husband. As long as she is able to afford the nice house in the suburbs of Newark and the espresso machine, she is not complaining. If you add to these ingredients the fact the the husband is played by the ultra charismatic late actor James Gandolfini and the wife by the remarkable Edie Falco, you begin to understand why TV is changing into a medium of great content and art work. Of course I’m talking about The Sopranos in this case, the show that basically changed the way cable TV producers, liberated from the pressure of sponsors, started to want to experiment with new formats. The revolution is continuing in streaming video now.

The new TV

The new TV

Almost ten years after the end of that seminal show, we have now an offer of excellent series and made-for-tv movies all over the place, competing in quality of content and presence of great actors in the cast. The bar is being raised continuously.  Movie stars don’t think twice before crossing the bridge to the former lower land of television, when the invitation is tempting enough. Some of them, such as academy-award winner Kevin Spacey even bring their own projects to new media channels (which is the case of the successful House of Cards on Netflix.)

I’ve always been a lover of the movies, but I must confess these days I’d much rather watch an episode of Downton Abbey or Mad Men from the comfort of my couch than struggle to park at the nearest mall to watch a superhero blockbuster or a silly Brazilian comedy on the big screen. Besides, there is the new pleasure of binge watching on weekends, that is, covering sometimes a whole season or two in less than 48 hours. I’m aware of the perils of addiction, don’t worry. Look at the tragic end that befell most of the Candy Crush Saga players…

I forced myself to think why it is that TV is so much better now. Could I pinpoint some of the main differences between Charlie’s Angels in the seventies and The Shield? They are both cop shows. Therefore, they’re basically about catching the bad guys, right? So what’s new? Well, for starters, the protagonists in the new shows are not saints, but multifaceted human beings. They all have a dark side and are badly flawed somehow, like the heroes of Greek tragedies. Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis), one of the main characters in The Shield, for example, doesn’t think twice before partaking in the spoils of war the drug dealers he chases accumulate. Don Draper (Jon Hamm) of Mad Men has  a compulsive infidelity drive, despite the nice and caring women who love him. He also hides a dark secret from his past. Walter White (Bryan Cranston) from Breaking Bad or Dexter (Michael C. Hall) from the show of the same name are both hardcore criminals! Walter runs a meth lab and is the kingpin of an international drug operation. His family knows nothing about it at first, but then his wife gets coopted and starts working for her husband. Dexter carves his victims with sadistic pleasure: OK, they only get submitted to the horrific ritual if they’ve committed crimes themselves but then again… Nurse Jackie, also played beautifully by Edie Falco in the show of the same name, is a committed nurse, who loves and cares for her patients, always going the extra mile to help them. Only she has sex with a coworker, jeopardizing the stability of her nice family structure, to have access to the painkillers she is addicted to.

The new TV

The new TV

In addition to the flawed heroes, you will notice that most of these shows are about ensembles. There’s of course the main hero and his journey, but all the other subplots are as interesting or sometimes even more enticing than the main one. Supporting roles are usually played by very accomplished actors, so even a small scene played by a guest star can be a little gem.

Last but not least, there is the superb writing. If movies are the domain of directors and producers, as they have total control over their work, TV or streaming video is the realm of writers. They run the show there.  And surely this is a very strong reason why plots, structure, dialogues, and subtext have gained a lot more prominence over their big screen counterparts. A lot is not said in these shows’s plots. The subtlety of the dialogues, the importance of silences and the facial expression of great actors add a lot to the the depth of a scene. Also, the fact that sometimes the storyline or specific scenes focus on very small things of everyday life, and yet highlight unusual details and reveal interesting motives of a character make for great entertainment: the theft of a bottle of wine by a gay footman (Downton Abbey) or the puberty troubles of a girl (Mad Men) add a lot to the attraction of a show,  illuminating areas of the human experience that in the past were limited to literature or art movies.

If you have not watched any of the shows we discussed above, I strongly recommend you have a go at them. Let us know what you think by sharing your thoughts in this space.

In the meantime, check out my Pinterest board on BEST TV SHOWS (click on the picture below):

Au revoir

Jorge Sette.

What’s so enchanting about THE CATCHER IN THE RYE?

Posted on by under aprenda inglês, Aprender inglês, art, culture, E-books, great novels, humor, Writing

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.” ― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye. I beg to disagree with you, Holden. I don’t think writers will make the best friends. My advice is stick to their books and don’t try to get any closer. Writers in general are not the nicest people in the world, or the most social for that matter. There are exceptions, of course, but I believe most of them are quite happy writing in the isolation of their offices or country cabins, when they don’t decide to live romantically in Paris and write at a café. Many of them are also boozers and rude, and would most probably hate to have someone intrude upon their privacy.

Holden Caulfield is the main character of the ultra famous novel The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger – a recluse himself –  in 1951. It’s a book hard not to identify with, especially if you are male and is or has been, at some point, 17 years old.

The Catcher In the Rye - Holden Caulfield by MelissaHatford

The Catcher In the Rye – Holden Caulfield by Melissa Hatford

I’ve read this novel three times so far, and the last time, a couple of weeks ago, already as a mature man, I found it even more meaningful and relevant than the first time I laid eyes on its pages a long time ago. Most people know the story. Deceptively simple and direct, it tells of a couple of days in the life of a teenager who gets kicked out of a fancy boarding school for having flunked all the subjects but English, and is sent home for the Christmas holidays. He leaves the school on a Saturday evening – he can’t wait to get out of the place –  although he is only expected at home in Manhattan on the following Wednesday, by which time his parents will have received the formal letter from the dean explaining his situation. Therefore, the reader is taken on a journey following the adventures and ramblings of this charismatic youth around the streets of 1950s’ New York for three whole days.

Despite the simplicity of the plot, written from the perspective and in the language of a typical teenager of the time (see the table at the bottom for some of the slang used in the book and its meaning), the story gets a fascinating and strong  grip on the reader. Holden comes across as a very sensitive, intelligent and generous kid – constantly wearing a stupid hunting hat – who is just going through a rough patch in his life, after the death of a younger brother. He is completely lost, lonely and depressed. Poignant and melancholic at times, the book is never sentimental, and, despite the subject matter, a lot of irony and humor underpins most of the character’s commentary and the events narrated during the time we are allowed to spend with him.

Holden is as a very cool youngster. Funny and sophisticated. A rich New Yorker, chain smoker and heavy drinker. Strangely, still a virgin. One of the funniest passages of the book depicts a meeting between the boy and a prostitute, set up by her pimp, the elevator guy in the hotel he is staying at. The act is not consummated, though.

He is undeniably weird – who isn’t at 17? –  spending, for example, a lot of time worrying about what happens to the ducks in Central Park when the small lake in the south part freezes over during the winter months. Do they remain there like the fish? Where do they go? Are they kept somewhere? He is so obsessed with this that he keeps asking cab drivers, out of nowhere, if they know the answer. These conversations are hilarious, as the drivers couldn’t care less, and don’t understand what this queer boy is hinting at. It occurred to me that there is a clear link between this image and what they used in the plot of the first episode of THE SOPRANOS, the TV show, when Tony’s panic attacks hit right after the ducks which mysteriously landed on his backyard fly away, leaving behind a sense of irreparable loss. I’m sure this was based on the book.

IMG_1811

Holden Caulfield (image created by Chat GPT)

Much of the charisma and warmth Holden exerts on us comes from the fact that he loves his little sister and admires his older brother, who’s a writer, although he thinks that he shouldn’t have gone to Hollywood to prostitute his talent writing for the movies. Holden hates the movies, another thing that makes him peculiar and interesting for a boy his age. The love and care for his sister are shown at different points in the book, and reaches its peak in a wonderful and metaphorical carrousel scene at the end – which I won’t talk about in detail to avoid spoiling it for you, prospective reader.

I enjoyed every page of the book, especially the nuanced way in which the character describes his relationships with dorm mates, colleagues, teachers and girlfriends. He is always either planning or actually calling people in the middle of the night, and these pained passages, emblematic of his loneliness and need for human contact, are paradoxically very funny, which only shows the talent and skill of the writer.

Unlike Holden, when I finished the book, I didn’t feel like calling and befriending Salinger, for the reasons I pointed out in the first paragraph of this text. But if I were still a teenager,  I would surely have loved to have Caulfield as one of my best friends. I would have to ask Tom Swayer and Huck Finn if he could hang out with us, though.

Au revoir

Jorge Sette

Glossary : THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (Wikipedia): “Critical reviews agree that the novel accurately reflected the teenage colloquial speech of the time. Words and phrases that appear frequently include:

  • “Phony” – superficial, hypocritical, and pretentious
  • “That killed me” – I found that hilarious or astonishing
  • “Flit” – homosexual
  • “Crumby” – inadequate, insufficient, and/or disappointing
  • “Snowing” – sweet-talking
  • “I got a bang out of that” – I found it hilarious or exciting
  • “Shoot the bull” – have a conversation containing false elements
  • “Give her the time” – sexual intercourse
  • “Chew the fat” – small-tal

5 Myths About Sales & Marketing

Posted on by under Uncategorized

All of us who work in sales & marketing have seen the radical changes the field has undergone in the past few years. Many, however, are still living in the past and somehow do not believe the changes apply to their particular kind of industry. B2B companies especially are resistant to the new forms of promotion the Internet and the social media channels have brought about and insist on doing things the old way. Of course they are not succeeding as before, and more and more senior management are missing their sales targets and losing their jobs. If you are in sales and marketing, make sure you rethink your ideas if you still believe in the following myths:

1. Marketing is about hype. If you think that by promoting the features and benefits of your products as loud as you can, the customers will believe they need you, you will be in for a nasty surprise. Customers are a lot more skeptical today. They’ve been yelled at for far too long. They will just shut you off as soon as you start blabbering about your product, skip your ads, block your emails, and close your pop-up banners in a rage. Hype won’t bring you sales. Educate and inform your public, produce useful content (blog posts, video clips, white papers, infographics, e-books) and let them find out about you. Make yourself available on search engines and wait. The customers will indicate when they are ready to buy from you.

2. Salespeople need to talk the customers into buying. You still need to be very proactive in sales, but not as the typical pushy car salesman of yesteryear. Do not try to take advantage of your customers. You need to work more closely than ever to the marketing team in the process of passing as much information and useful content as possible to your prospects before you close. You need to be more of a consultant. The customer probably already knows a lot about the product when he is ready to buy, and he didn’t get the info necessarily from you. There are hundreds of sources of information available online, so make sure you are prepared to pass on very sophisticated and updated info to your customers when and if they finally get to you, as they will very likely already know the basics.

3. Marketing and Sales are very different departments. The former’s job is to pass on qualified leads to the latter. Not anymore! The basic difference now between the two departments in the number of people they address and communicate with. Marketing will still have to segment the market into very specific buying personas (a refined stereotype of the typical customer for a certain product), but they will be talking to a number of people in that segment at a time. Sales, on the other hand, will carry on the marketing process (which is mainly giving the customer as much useful content as possible) when he identifies a specific customer that needs a more personal approach, a one-to-one kind of conversation with a real human being to ask the final questions or understand the finer points of your offer. Many customers will totally skip salespeople and go straight to purchasing through the self-service websites. You need to be better than ever as a salesperson to be needed and relevant in today’s marketplace.

Sales & Marketing working together.

Sales & Marketing working together.

4. Promotion is the heart of success. Embellish the communication about your product and you can get away with anything. Wrong. The product itself is the most important part of marketing today. You should be offering purple cows (as the marketing guru Seth Godin calls them): products and services that are so exciting and awesome that  can self-promote and inspire the buyers to purchase them. Think Apple and design. Think Amazon and its obsession with customer service. That’s the new marketing.

5. You sell to customers. Another common mistake companies make today. They still think they are selling their products to customers. It’s the other way around: customers buy products from you. The difference is less subtle than you may think. It means that the customers are in total control of the purchasing process. They will somehow identify their needs (through friends and contacts in social media, through blogs, through well-designed and content packed websites) and get as much info as possible about solutions before getting ready to buy. Your job is to be available on every step of the way (we tend to call the stages towards a purchase the sales funnel; we should be calling it the purchase funnel, though). Therefore, you need to provide content to match the stage the customer is at: from more general and comprehensive to more specific and product-based.

These are some of the most common sales & marketing  myths still held by many professionals today. They need to change fast if they want to keep their jobs.

Au revoir

Jorge Sette.

Mick Jagger is Dorian Gray

Posted on by under art, language, Literatura, music, Mythology

Today I read in the paper that the killer of John Lennon, Mark David Chapman, appealed to be released from prison for the third time now. It has been denied. Now he can try again in two years’ time. I don’t think he will be able to lead a normal like outside of prison. There is always the danger of his being lynched. Besides, it looks like Yoko Ono is against the measure too. She must be really afraid he will be coming after her. It makes sense. I can only imagine the amount of publicity he is going to get the minute the steps out of jail: book deals, reality shows, record contracts (Chapman sings Lennon) and what not.

Although I started off as a fierce Beatles fan in my childhood and early adolescence, things changed as I came in contact with the Stones’ music through a close friend while we lived in England in the late eighties. We were language students in Bournemouth and borders in the same house. He introduced me to the Stones and I’m very grateful to this day. The roughness and wildness of the Stones’ music were a lot more reflective of my personality in those days. They are still my favorite rock band.

It’s not only the music that fascinates me, but the whole persona of their lead singer, Mick Jagger. I may have read three or four biographies about him (the one I would recommend is Philip Norman’s) and I can’t get enough of his personal and public story. Mick reversed many assumptions that most people have. He turns ugly into sexy and even cute at times. He makes looking old cool. He makes rock and roll professional and businesslike. He will not have his disturbingly wrinkled face and drooping oversized lips be touched by plastic surgery in an age when even 30-year-olds are having their features altered to look like weird Kens and Barbies.

Mick Jagger is Dorian Gray

Mick Jagger is Dorian Gray

Mick Jagger did not share the most common prejudices of his era. Legend says all he wished to be, back when he started, was Tina Turner. She opened for his shows a number to times in the sixties. Rumor has it he would imitate Tina’s moves for hours in front of a mirror. She was the coolest person in the world for him.  This is one of the funniest things I heard about Mick. There is also gossip that he’s bisexual, but whatever his sexual preferences may be, the fact is he has always treated gays and blacks friendly.

However, it’s undeniable that Mick Jagger has a very dark side to his personality. His whole attitude towards life reminds us a little bit of Oscar Wilde: especially on the occasion when he was put in jail in the sixties for drug consumption at what looked more like an orgy than a party. It’s said prison really broke him for a while, just like it damaged Mr Wilde badly at the end of the XIX century. Even more precisely, he seems to bear an uncanny similarity to one of Oscar Wilde’s most famous characters,  Dorian Gray.

Unlike Gray, however, whose aging process and corrupt and criminal lifestyle were all reflected on a portrait of himself he kept hidden in an attic, while he himself remained young with features as angelical and fresh as when he was a teenager,  Mick Jagger’s  parched and wrinkled canvas of a face certainly bears all the marks of sins and experience of someone who’s been sailing against rough winds for the most part of his life. His 70-year-old body, however, just like Dorian Gray’s tight, flexible and muscular structure, does not seem do be different than a 25-year-old man’s, when you see him on stage. The Stones’ song Time is on My Side seems to say it all about the mythological figure.

Besides, very much in Dorian Gray’s fashion, he is famous for having destroyed and corrupted many lives who dared to get too close to the light and got burned by its brightness. Marianne Faithfull, for example, the troubled young singer of the 60s who dated Jagger, especially reminds me of a modern Sybil Vane, the first woman Dorian Gray destroyed on his path to utter corruption and crime. Some will say that Jagger sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for the success of his career and eternal youth of his body. No wonder he continuously thanks the dark forces through the ultra popular ode Sympathy for the Devil.

Not only until the mid-nineties did I have a chance to actually attend a Stones concert. An unforgettable experience at the Pacaembu Stadium in Sao Paulo, under heavy rain, with some of my closest friends.  Also, in the summer of 2012, I visited a great exhibition in London at Somerset House, where they showed rare pictures of the Stones in poster-like sizes.  This was part of a celebration of the 50-year anniversary of the band. I had a great time attending the exhibition, being in the heart of London, and looking at this rare collection of Stones pictures. The gift store was a rip-off, however, and the same T-shirt you could buy for 10 pounds in Camden Town would cost close to 50 at the museum. I was rational enough not to give in to the temptation.

Unlike Lennon, we are fortunate Mick Jagger is still among us. I know we will always have his music and his taped shows, but it’s good to know that this force of nature is very much alive and kicking. In the movie SHINE A LIGHT, Martin Scorsese manages to capture much of his energy and charisma. You feel like Mick is not performing for the camera at any moment, he is just doing his thing, being his difficult-self, while Scorsese and his crew are running around trying to capture his best on camera. Good thing the director managed to do so. Now we have this wonderful performance frozen in time on our bookshelf and can watch it whenever we need to infuse more energy and inspiration into our dull and unglamorous lives.

What do you think of Mick Jagger and the Stones? Share your opinion with us as you rate this post.

Au revoir

Jorge Sette.