The vuvuzelas, LOUD and proud.

As the host country South Africa have worked wonders in presenting their Rainbow Nation to the world. Stunning scenery, brilliant stadiums (all with better grass than Wembley), vivid colours, a joyous vibrant welcome all adding up to a sense of enormous  pride and optimism of a country on the move.

Sadly, and this is true for all host countries, as we get into the sport itself  ‘brand’ Africa starts losing out. Our screens are filled with images of the football where the inside of one stadium is much like any other and the ubiquitous pundits much as they are in any Match of the Day. The very ordinary England/USA game could have been anywhere.

This where the vuvuzela comes in! 

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 It has been described as sounding like a lovesick elephant and at the opening cremony some 80,000 of them, at 127 decibels, were louder than a jet taking off.  Ear plugs are being sold at stadium entrances, broadcasters have complained but FIFA, in a rare moment of good sense, have not banned them.

As one fan said “it represents our country, its what we’re about”. Or, as Dan McDougall in the Sunday Times put it “this cacophony of sound that has become the symbol of this World Cup”.

When the predictable pundits have finished being predictable and the last controversial football has been kicked,  the  sound of the vuvuzela will long remind us how this World Cup really was different.

Could pitches use sound to greater effect?

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Should BP send for Capello?

 Two stories have dominated front pages over the last few weeks. BP’s attempts to stem the oil and England’s preparation for the World Cup. One is about a disaster that is real. The other about a possible disaster that is not. 

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This is the face of the man who is trying to reassure the world, particularly America, that things will be alright. He is not succeeding. Partly, of course, because no-one knows yet what will work. But partly because he simply does not look the part. He does not inspire confidence  and some ill-chosen words have not helped.

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This is the face of the man who is trying to reassure us that, despite Rio’s Knee, things will be alright. He is succeeding. Wisely, he  says little so that there are few ill-chosen words. But, as Hugh McIvanney writes in the Sunday Times, “he has an aura of the formidable…” Against our better judgement we are reassured.

Such is the power of body language. Capello is paid some 50% more than Hayward, but now that Inter have dropped out perhaps BP should make him an offer.

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The concept of corporate body language.

The scene for this pitch story is the Eurostar area at St Pancras  at 6.30am, shortly before the departure of the Paris train. Two shops, side by side, have the ideal monopoly pitch for serving passengers with very predictable needs.

The problem, for customers, was that one was really interested in their business and you could tell this at a glance. The other could not give a damn. And you could tell this at a glance. But you needed both.

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The Paul coffee shop not only looked inviting, it was. At least six staff behind the counter handled time-pressured customers with energy and friendly enthusiasm as they met responses for this, that or the other cappuccino. The place was buzzing. The customers happy.

WH Smiths looked tired, messy with unopened stacks of magazines, narrow aisles with a long dispirited queue being served by a single cashier seemingly taken by surprise that the customers had a train to catch. The customers’ unhappiness compounded by the non availablity of newspapers.

The pitching point is that before actually experiencing the two you could tell instantly from the visual clues, their “corporate body language”, how they were likely to perform and which one you would like.

Pitch teams with good corporate body language are more attractive to the judges. 

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Incidentally, the generally poor corporate body language of WH Smith may help explain why they came 100th in a recent survey of UK retailers. They should revisit their history when, in 1850s, their staff raced along platforms selling books to on-board passengers in the few minutes of a station stop.

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Hybrid vigour in team selecton.

It was Gregor Mendel(1822-1884) who first understood the concept of hybrid vigour as the “increased vigour displayed by offspring from different varieties”.  He might not have described the coalition this way but so far one of its key characteristics is energy, arguably more than a single party would have given us.

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The cross-fertilsation of talents  in the cabinet in this honeymoon period is proving to be positive, energetic and dynamic. The signals it is sending out are all ‘can-do’ and this right now transcends political differences.

Put another way, they have got the casting right something pitch teams too often get wrong,

The team decision is vital and yet can fall into the trap of selection through convenient availablity, or they deserve a chance, or  or they won last time, or they know the prospect or…Whereas, the only criterion is who are the best team to win the business?

The team will need relevant experience, good people chemistry and pitching ability. All three skills may not reside in any one member but the team must have all three. Sometimes the way to achieve this is to apply the concept of hybrid vigour.

It works in football! Inter Milan won with a Portugese manager and no Italians in their team beating Bayern with a Dutch manager and few Germans. The English yeomen are hoping an Italian manager can invigorate them in the World Cup.

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The theatre of likeability.

In any pitch, no matter how apparently mundane, when push comes to shove it is not the clever solution or the carefully crafted argument that wins the day. It is the sense of theatre that captures and makes the emotional connection with the audience.

Fine words are important, yes, but it is the look, the feel and the tone, just as in drama, that make the lasting impact.  Cameron and Clegg understood this in what was a make or break first joint press conference.

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” The extraordinary press conference in Downing Streeet’s rose garden could have been directed by Richard Curtis, a light romantic comedy with the male leads played by Hugh Grant and Colin Firth”.(Sunday Times).

It was calculated performance. Calculated to make us feel good, after days and months of uncertainty, about them, the coalition and, for a while anyway, the future. And it worked. They understood that in any pitch the judges, us in this case, are  thinking ‘Do I like these people? Do they like each other?’

What happens in too many pitches is that teams are so concerned about getting the words absolutely right that they concentrate on this at the expense of performance. Their natural likeability is diminished, enthusiasm becomes forced and  confidence falters. 

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All pitches call for some level of theatre that allows personality to make an impact and this in turn calls for rehearsal.

Only through rehearsal can you work on the dynamics of the team and see how people ‘come across’  as opposed to simply ‘what are they saying’.

And, rehearsal makes nice people nicer!

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