Talk When People are Listening
The other day I made the horrific error of forgetting my iPod. Now I’ve never really been clear on why people in the suburbs need an iPod but when you’re getting on crowded smelly subways everyday, like I do in New York, your iPod can be just the means of escape you need when confronted with the drip you just felt on your arm was indeed the sweat of a stranger.
Often when I’m wearing my iPod I can get more than a little oblivious to my surroundings. I try to perk up around each subway stop so I can move if I need to let someone off but I often forget and end up with either someone yelling at me or the polite tap on the closest part of my body. I’m not proud of this but it happens. It’s worth it to hear Wowee Zowee on the way home after a long day.
Yesterday, while traveling sans iPod I was surprised to find that I did it again. This time I had nothing in my ears to make me deaf to the world but, when the train stopped and the man behind me needed to get off, I simply didn’t hear him and he was forced to give me the tap. He was completely audible and when he tapped me I immediately realized that his “excuse me” was meant for me but I just wasn’t paying attention.
This experience made me think of all the clients who talk about “cutting through the noise.” While some people in PR understand the benefits of pitching the press in competitive industries during slower periods, you still often hear “how are we going to cut through all the noise at CES and tell the world about our ______?”
The answer is to wait. Interrupting people during their favorite crime drama isn’t the perfect time to tell them about your new mini-van. Similarly, a roadblock ad that appears when you’re clicking a link to read about primary results isn’t the time to tell people about your low mortgage rates. In fact, there is now automated advertising system that really knows the best time to reach people when they want to pay attention to you, which is all the more reason to try to offer your customers word-of-mouth tools and allow them to decide when is the right time to tell their social networks about your product.
If you truly cared about people you would not block them out of you world with an I-pod or any other device that distracts you from others. You would look for opportunities to say, Hello, I am ___, How has your day been going? We too often assume that because there a many people around us we need to ignore them. We need to stop thinking that they are just objects that get in our way. That they are just taking up space (our space). We have forgotten that they are one of God’s creations, with value, importance, needs, and breathing persons who have concerns and feelings just like ourselves. Why are we afraid to talk to strangers and acknowledge their presence? Why are we afraid to get to know them? Take that I-Pod out of your ear and maybe you will find some new friends.
Good point. I’ve always been annoyed about how car culture can create unnecessary “bubbles” between people and it’s true that iPods can do the same thing.