Posts Tagged ‘frequency’
Sympathetic resonance
Sympathetic resonance is a harmonic phenomenon wherein a formerly passive string or vibratory body responds to external vibrations to which it has a harmonic likeness. In other words, if you have two similar tuning forks, whack one and the other will sing, despite the fact they’re not touching.
In communication terms, brands are attempting to create sympathetic resonance… emanating vibrations in the hope that they’ll affect people. In fact the frequency of the vibrations is so high, it threatens to shatter everything: trust, auditory range (we won’t listen / can’t hear it any more) and effectiveness. Any cool new underground vibes emanating from the bottom up – from parkour to capoeira – are leapt upon by trend-spotting brands and thrust it into the mainstream.
But brands are missing a trick. To emanate vibrations that’ll make people respond in sympathetic resonance, they must have a harmonic likeness to those they’re trying to affect. The only way to achieve this is to stop pumping out deafening fake-folksy vibrations and start enabling the people of the world to create their own. Then you can be sure others in their social clusters will respond, start vibrating and cause a ripple affect to yet more social clusters; and eventually millions will sing in harmony. Mass marketing via facilitation – as enabler, not doer.
Equilibrium and fractal business models
A fundamental law of physics (in one formulation) states that left to itself any closed system will always change towards a state of equilibrium from which no further change is possible. One example is swinging a pendulum… if you hold it up to one side it’ll be in a state of extreme disequilibrium, then as you let go and it swings back and forth, gradually losing energy, it’ll come to a standstill.
Other examples include many media agencies and advertising agencies. You know why.
Someone said to me today, ‘but we need to prove the ROI – how much is it [implementing a vision that gives power to the people, to cut a long story short] going to cost and what will the return will be? How do we show that listening to the customer has better ROI than direct marketing?’
Errr…. I’m not even going to answer that.
Our obsession with plotting loads of numbers in loads of rows in so-called forecasts, that ‘demonstrate ROI’ may be a comfort blanket for some, but are forecasts ever accurate or meaningful? If we look back at them later (which we seldom do thoroughly, because they’re so irrelevant and unfriendly) we’ll be astonished (or not) at how far off the mark we were.
Way too many business models set themselves up for equilibrium. A scalable business model should be fractal in nature… infinitely scalable, independent of any company’s resources. You should be able to zoom all the way in… or all the way out… and see a repeatability, recursiveness and simplicity. We should focus on setting ourselves up to leverage the unforeseen opportunities, rather than attempting to predict the unpredictable and produce reams of comfort crap on autopilot.
The rotary motion of a harmonograph produces a series of complex drawings influenced by relative frequency, amplitude and direction.
Brands should communicate with a harmonic balance between relative frequency (WHEN… don’t interrupt), amplitude (WHAT…loudness…don’t shout / broadcast) and direction (WHERE… targeting, permission).
Companies should seek to produce beautiful pictures… not chaos (disharmony / dissonance). Business models that can be boiled down to a simple, beautiful picture tend to have inherent scalability.
The frequency of fear
In the early 80s, engineer Vic Tandy was working in a supposedly haunted lab when he broke into a cold sweat, hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed an ominous grey shape drifting slowly into view. Terrified, he went straight home.
Tandy discovered that source of his discomfort was a 19hz standing wave, caused by an extractor fan. 19hz is in the range known as infrasound, below the range of human hearing (20hz). Low frequencies in this region can affect humans and animals in several ways, causing discomfort, dizziness, blurred vision (by vibrating your eyeballs), hyperventilation and fear, possibly leading to panic attacks. 19hz standing waves have since been discovered in many a ‘haunted’ building.
Prior to an attack, a tiger’s roar contains frequencies of about 18hz, which might disorientate and paralyse their intended victim. Is this the sound of fear itself?
Read the full Guardian article here.
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