In a recent WordSpin article, we gave a number of tips on using formatting and graphics to make your text easier to read. One of our suggestions was to use a dark font on a light background - because it’s easier for readers to make out the letters. It’s nice to see that DSB has decided to use this technique on its S-tog maps.

Next time you’re on the train, check it out for yourself. The new S-tog map is crisper than the ‘old white writing on dark blue background’. Nice one DSB.

Aaron would like me to point out that this post wasn’t written by him - it was actually written by me (Dan).

While working on our recent WordSpin article “Can SMO help you grow?”, I thought a lot about the reasons for and against using social media to promote business.

Much has already been posted about this – concerns over secrecy, consistency, control. But another factor that might prevent a company from jumping on the social media bandwagon could also be – understandably – employee resources. It takes time, energy and planning to create and maintain all this stuff!

But here’s an argument to consider: starting a blog or forum – or simply producing more reader-friendly, useful, link-worthy web content – could actually be a great way to motivate employees both in and outside of your communications department (and as Aaron has already argued, an important factor in recruiting new people). It can be an easy outlet for having a little more fun at work. Happier employees = more motivated employees = more stimulated, productive and satisfied employees. A priceless side benefit of using a new tool to boost your brand.

As long as you don’t get too carried away – you shouldn’t expect your employees to blog around the clock – it could be a win-win.

In my last post I touched on recruitment, arguing that companies hoping to recruit the brightest and best needed to move with the times and embrace the world of social media.

I was a bit pressed for time and didn’t add in much in the way of references so I thought I’d try and make amends by pointing you in the direction of this post from Silicon  Valley PR professional, Brian Solis.

The premise of his argument?

‘We’re witnessing the shift from B2B and B2C to P2P (peer to peer) marketing - or better described as conversations between people, and not companies doing their best impression of adults in the Peanuts cartoons as they talk to audiences in a monotone, robotic, insincere voice. . .’

Have a read of his post, Conversational Marketing Versus Market Conversations.

Okay – I just bought a new frying pan. The brand itself, though well-known, didn’t mean much to me, but I liked the look and feel of the product. The entertainment started when I got it home, however, and read the little brochure that came with it.

But first, a little backgrounder. There’s an ad agency in Copenhagen which is known for its very simple formula, consisting of two basic words: “freedom” and “sense”. For a long list of clients, the agency has come up with the slightly altered versions of the same idea. It goes kind of like this:

“Free yourself”
“Free your senses”
“Sense your freedom”
“Free your creativity”
“Sense your creativity”
“Sense your delight”
“Delight your senses – for free”

I could go on with this mindless drivel, but you get the idea. It seems that, by seeking the deeper meaning in things as elementary as a frying pan or an ironing board, and presenting this to the advertiser in beautiful images and words like “freedom” and “sense”, the poor client can’t help but fall in love with this stunning new angle to what they had previously (and rightly) considered quite everyday. The result is text like that appearing in the frying pan brochure:

“Sense…Combination, Material, Form. We receive the information that enables us to make choices through our senses. When we cook we use all our senses – we taste, we use our sense of smell, we feel, hear and see – and we choose our utensils. The choice of utensils is part of the experience of cooking and serving food. Chosen with common sense and a reliance on our senses, this can become a great experience.”

Who orders text like this to be written – who approves it? Only people who can’t see past their own ego. Now, I am just guessing that this text was written while the fyring pan manufacturer was a client of the aforementioned agency.

Here’s another of their gems:

I can’t remember the exact wording, unfortunately, but the company was a famous Danish household hardware manufacturer. The product was an ironing board. A lavish two-page, full-color ad in a leading lifestyle magazine showed the ironing board suspended across a deep abyss. The basic idea read something like: “An ironing board is a bridge between your shirts and your personality”. It then raved on about personal style, taste, whatever. People, it’s a friggin’ ironing board. Get a grip. If anyone’s interested, I’ll go back and try to find that ad, because it’s a legend, at least in my own mind.

Luckily, it seems the hardware manufacturer has recovered from its senseless drift into La La Land. And they no longer appear on the agency’s client list. Today, they focus on, and strongly communicate, a single and very clear positioning: developing “solid household products that retain their beauty and performance for up to 20 years”. This simple statement has become the central thread for almost everything they communicate. And that’s a fantastic example for many other advertisers to follow.

A final example of the agency’s propensity for lavish flights of fancy: I saw a pitch the company did to a US-based company that manufactures the green foam stuff you push flower stems down into when you are arranging flowers. That’s all – just a holding device for the stems. The concept for the pitch? “Free yourself”. Apparently, this humble material made it possible for the purchaser to realize their true creative potential.

And that’s how to make a ton of money on the perpetual readiness of many advertisers to fall madly in love – with themselves.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” they say. But what about its font?

A new Wordspin article reminded me of a pretty unfortunate literary experience I had a couple years ago.

Back in Washington DC, I went to a bookstore event where author Monica Ali read passages from her new book Brick Lane and answered readers’ pressing plot questions. No one questioned font choice.

I picked up a copy of Brick Lane just before moving to London for a year to study. The book was about a woman from India who had come to London and was adjusting to the alien new world around her. I wasn’t coming from India, but it still piqued my interest. And, by coincidence, I soon found a flat just off London’s famous Indian food mecca: Brick Lane.

The first few chapters were fairly engaging. I was enjoying the drama, the descriptions of otherness, her shock at coming face to face with revolving doors - it was good fun.

But then the letters from the heroine’s sister began. And they were all written in italics. Page after page of tiny text that looked almost hand-written. I struggled on for a while, thinking “Come on! I can’t be this shallow! I can get through this!” But I couldn’t. I got tired of having to re-read lines. My mind drifted. My eyes glazed over. I tried skipping the letters but then the story stopped making sense. And I never found out how Brick Lane’s heroine ended her London adventure…because of a font.

What about you - has formatting ever affected your experience with a written text? I’d love to hear about it!

Recruitment . . . it’s needless to say that this is a vitally important issue for many companies.

But I guess I just said it anyway, so what does that tell us? Maybe that it’s so important that one has to resort to repetition to ram home the point. Who knows? Perhaps.

Moving swiftly on . . . recently I’ve been holding seminars with customers to discuss the potential business value of social media.

Denmark - and for that matter Europe in general - is really lagging behind the States in this area.

There, many companies are busy experimenting and finding real value with some or all of the many social media tools - blogging, video, micro-blogging, wikis, forums, networking sites etc.

As with many trends that originate across the Atlantic, the trickle-down effect is slow. But this one is rapidly gaining momentum.

Have you noticed the creep of articles about blogging in your newspapers? Berlingske recently launched an impressive network of 10 blogs, while more and more companies are dipping their toes into the blogging waters.

What has all this got to do with recruitment, I hear you bellow.

Well, my point is simple. The generation graduating from university live in a networked world. They are smart enough to see through glossy corporate spin. In fact they are bored of it. And it is from within this generation that you must recruit your future workforce.

These people pull the messages they want and reject anything too forcefully pushed at them.  

Marketing guru Seth Godin explains the impact of this particularly well:

“The new reality of the marketplace is that consumers have a choice. They can ignore you. They can ignore your ads, your letters, you web banners, and your salespeople. As a result, you and every other marketer face a choice: You can make something worth talking about or you can become invisible.”

For marketing and communications professionals, this means it is no longer possible to control your brand in the way you are used to.

If a new flavour of Coke is particularly terrible, that message will spread through the blogosphere, across YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, via SMSs, and instant messaging quicker than you can imagine.

This is how this generation communicate. It’s where they go for ‘buzz’ about the latest tech products, TV shows, music and pretty much everything else you can imagine.

And this generation - switched-on, in demand, web-savvy - will be researching your company, way before you can research them.

So what will they think when they look at your homepage and they see a company that is not blogging, that is not engaging with its customers in any kind of two-way conversation, that is not using video to showcase its offices and employees?

They will think that that company has not moved with the times and they will take their hard-won expertise and their first-hand knowledge of the new marketplace to a rival.

Pure and simple.

I recently moved to Norway after living in Denmark for four years. Now, when I return to Denmark, I’m often asked what differences there are between the two cultures. There are a lot - too many to explain here - but one thing that someone traveling from Denmark to Norway notices immediately is the level of service.

The first time I walked into a restaurant in Norway, I was greeted with a smile and had a menu in front of me the moment I sat down. The waitress confidently talked me through the dishes and took my drinks order. She was back with the drinks in a couple of minutes, ready to take my food order. I turned to my (Norwegian) girlfriend and said, “The service is amazing.” She raised her eyebrow and replied, “It’s just normal service; you’ve been in Denmark too long.”

Put simply: service is much better in Norway. And I’m not just referring to restaurants. I’ve found similar differences when dealing with my bank, the Norwegian tax system and my phone provider. So why is this?

I wonder if it’s something to do with Jante Law. According to the book Culture Smart Denmark by Mark Salmon, Jante Law is a set of social principles that stem from a 1933 novel. Written by a Norwegian/Danish writer, Jante Law had great impact in Scandinavia in general and echoes of it are still found in Denmark today, although it’s no longer so strong in Norway or Sweden. Essentially, Jante Law says that no one is better than anyone else. Could it be that this is interpreted to mean no person should ‘wait’ on another?

Can anyone shed any light on this for me?

Over the last few months, I’ve seen a lot of media buzz about Copenhagen’s status as a “creative capital.” In other words, a hot-and-happening European city that attracts creative, cosmopolitan professionals from around the world in much the same way that London, Paris, and New York have done for quite a while.

Sure, it’s been nice to hear that we’re surrounded by driven, adventurous, and international peers - whether they’re foreigners who’ve relocated to Copenhagen or Danes who’ve lived abroad. But now (finally!) we can actually meet each other.

Custom House - the collective of French, Italian and Japanese restaurants on the waterfront by Nyhavn (appropriately created and managed by London-based Conran Restaurants) - is taking on the task of gathering creative expat minds over tapas and wine.

Check out the invitation here. The upcoming event will be Custom House’s third - and the first two seem to have been a hit.

The evening sounds like a great opportunity to meet some fun people in what my Danish friend - who always seems to know the cool locals’ spot-of-the-moment - described as the place to be. If the location, ambiance and food are as good as people say they are, this expat night might turn into quite a popular trend - definitely worth a try.

Hope to see some of you at Custom House, Havnegade 44, at 18:00 on Tuesday, September 25th. The invitation is open to all internationally-oriented minds - and as you’re reading this on a site about international communication, that means you!

A frequent flyer, I often get to sample in-flight magazines from low-cost airlines. And let’s be honest, they often look as cheap as the tickets. Sterling was a case in point. The magazine was poorly translated from dull originals - in fact, a friend of mine had even suggested that Eye for Image contact Sterling to offer to improve the magazine.

But on my last flight to Copenhagen, I was amazed to enjoy reading the Sterling in-flight magazine. It was packed with well-written articles, in enjoyable and compelling English. Not only that, but the content was varied, from an interview with Anthony Hopkins to interesting takes on travel articles to Sterling destinations. It was so good, I took a copy home.

It seems that Sterling have outsourced the entire production of the magazine to an external agency. From content to layout to proofreading to editing - everything is done by a group of professional writers who know how to hook a reader and keep them entertained.

Some airlines treat the in-flight magazines as the forgotten son of marketing - and they are missing a trick. A good magazine will entice flyers to read further: once you’ve enjoyed an article you look for more - and so the special offers and promotions get extra attention and have a greater chance of success. And a well-written travel article will encourage the reader to visit the profiled destination (flying with that airline).

I passed my copy onto a friend who I thought would enjoy the article on Swing dancing in Berlin. It will be interesting to see if he visits Berlin as a consequence - and of course, if he flies Sterling.

As a newcomer to Copenhagen, I thought I’d visit the DAC (Danish Architecture Centre) to see the Copenhagen Changing exhibition. The bookshop there alone is worth a visit, with its comfy seating and skyscraper-high shelves stuffed with every conceivable book on art and design.

The exhibition is excellent. It shows how the city is developing – now and in the future. Each of the six featured areas (Valby, Frederiksberg, Nørrebro Station, The Harbour, North East Amager, and Ørestad) is represented in large wall panels full of colorful maps and images. The architecture and planning for these areas is refreshingly edgy (I guess I’m still a Milton Keynes girl at heart!), and I came away from the DAC with a good insight into how Copenhagen is being transformed from an industrial city to a thriving cultural metropolis.

What really impressed me was how well the exhibition encouraged interaction with its visitors. Copenhagen X has done a great job of presenting the information in different formats (video, podwalks, maps for cyclists, slide show, posters, catalogue/city guide, online tour, guided tours through the city, workshops and activity packs for kids). I really like their website (sticky notes on a Copenhagen landscape), and the Gallery section is particularly good because it features a summary of all the projects. The exhibition is on until 21 October 2007 and really worth a visit!