iPad/iSlate/iTablet/etc., heir to the iPhone, destroyer of lesser technology gadgets?!

The name is not the only thing that has been a closely, and purposefully guarded secret:

The blogosphere and assorted Old Media outlets have over the last few months progressively worked themselves into a tizzy over the key questions surrounding Steve Job’s next mysterious, almost Grail-like product.

Like, how big will it be? How much will it cost? How many men died during its construction?

Kidding on that last one, though not by much…

All of this is of course utterly predictable in light of Apple’s tightly constructed Archetype Branding strategy that I’ve been writing about since the iPhone wave. Secrecy is such that the Tablet so far as only appeared indirectly, as a quasi digital ghost.

Pairing Steve Job’s “Wizard of Oz” character (The Wizard archetype, coming out from behind the curtains – i.e. secrecy – with the newest technological marvel), with The Enigma archetype inherent in this elaborate charade, is creating a launch atmosphere unlike just about anything else in current business, or show business for that matter.

Of Wizards, Grails, And Zeigarnik Effects?!

Not only does mystery draw on this powerful archetype, but, just in case you prefer more scientific approaches, the so-called Zeigarnik Effect also explains the draw of an unresolved, “open” loop that has entered your consciousness. Somewhat dependent upon personality, you are likely to feel a strong urge of just having to know.

This explains why even many months ago, bloggers and journalists alike could seemingly not help themselves but to write about the mystical Tablet. And of course from the very beginning, that is just how Apple wanted it.

Even now, well after midnight in the U.S., there are thousands of tweets on Twitter every few minutes expounding one rumored aspect or the next:

Some have even argued that Apple will deliberately sprinkle out little bits of information mixed with misinformation to stoke the fire.

Whatever Jobs will be presenting on Wednesday, and by whatever name it will be called, all eyes will be simultaneously oriented toward “The Great Unveiling”. Compare this natural feeding frenzy to the rather humdrum affairs that Google or Microsoft had given us of late.

Google’s Nexus One Android smartphone launch a few weeks ago was hardly the stuff of legend with its persistent minimalism. And by the time Windows 7 was finally officially launched, so many public Alpha, Beta, and minor tech celebrity testers had already rummaged through every nook and cranny of the operating system AND written about their findings, that it was hardly news anymore.

Now, a sheer endless parade of blog posts and articles has already been written about the Apple Tablet. But those have all been speculation, rumor, and innuendo! (“Will it be a Kindle killer?” “Will it be a Play Station Portable (PSP) killer?” etc. etc.)

The open loop was NEVER closed!

As if any more titillation were necessary, the issue of Jobs’ ongoing illness/recovery and speculation that this may well be his last new product launch as Master of Ceremonies… I mean CEO. And that he therefore will have brought all of his human and, some would speculate, super-human powers of invention, design obsession, and stage craft to bear in this his final Magnum Opus.

Even now we hear whispers: Did he really say that this Tablet “will Be The Most Important Thing I’ve Ever Done.” Did he? Would he? Can the poor computer thing possibly live up to this level of hype?

Robert Scoble indeed asks if the event can even still be covered in ways that news media, journalists, and bloggers have become accustomed to over the years. Or if we need an entirely new, “curated”, meta-experience to fully appreciate the unfolding of this new reality.

And therein lies the only drawback and potential danger of such a tightly choreographed affair:

All of the pieces have to be in place (when Jobs got sick and was absent from one of these launches, the magic was clearly lacking). And when they are, a deep connection and expectation is formed in people’s psyches that may prove difficult, if not impossible, to live up to.

Beware the pitfalls of this form of powerful Archetype Branding!

So I left you hanging there for a good while, with that "opened metaphor"… your mind feeling the effects of the Zeigarnik Effect (I actually had a few people call me wanting to know the next step).

How is this any different from when your favorite show, say the Sopranos, left you with a cliff hanger scene in the season finale? Do you think this had an effect on you?

Of course it did, your unconscious mind dutifully noted that there was an incomplete item, an unfinished story arc, and it kept this open loop churning, in the back of your mind… waiting… scanning the environment for any sign of the missing piece.

And even though months may have gone by, it never quite went away, this feeling that something was missing. And when the new season opening date would be announced, your awareness and attention was already heightened. Just as the producers of the show wanted them to be.

Now this and the typical episode-to-episode cliff hangers and last moment cut-offs ("24" has created and entire show based on this principle, complete with the "24 Timer") are just some of the most obvious examples and only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Many more examples abound in advertisement and marketing, I’ll just name a few:

Email subject lines with incomplete or otherwise enticing subject lines, beckoning you to at least take a quick look-see what all the fuss is about.

So-called Alternate Reality Games (ARG’s) that have you hunting for a sequence of clues and solving puzzles, are used by some very large marketing accounts for e.g. new product introductions.

TV ads that shock you with an unexpected twist, and then ask in big letters on the screen: "What next?"

Bottom line is, the Zeigarnik Effect and the principles underlying it are real, and real-world people and companies are using it every day. The more you understand how it works, the more you will be able to wield its power yourself, or "intercept" it when someone attempts to use it on you. It’s good to have more choice.

It’s really about understanding more about yourself, about how your own unconscious mind works "underneath the hood". Accept no substitutes…

In her 1962 work "The Pathology of Thinking", Russian psychologist Blyuma Zeigarnik had first reported her studies on a curious phenomenon: People in all sorts of situations could remember incomplete tasks or issues much more readily than completed ones. This therefore became known as the Zeigarnik Effect.

She had been a student of one of the proponents of so-called Gestalt Psychology, Kurt Lewin, and it was this school of psychological thought that had first brought up the issues of Foreground/Background awareness and perceptual processing.

[You may have seen one or more of the famous Gestalt images that can take on different appearance and even rapidly alternate between two interpretations, e.g. the image of an old woman can change into a young woman or vice-versa].

Another psychologist heavily influenced by Gestalt thinking was Fritz Perls, the creator of the more practically oriented Gestalt Therapy movement, which you may have hard of. He famously saw "the unfinished business of one’s life" as likely one of the primary causes for personal blocks, issues, and so forth.

Back to the question of how this all relates to the question of unfinished headlines, Email subject lines, and even stories:

You may have heard a professional public speaker use a technique called "opening up a metaphor", which simply means to begin telling a story and then cutting it off at about 80-90%, ideally at the point of maximum suspense.

Why? Because it keeps the audience’s minds open and on alert, scanning for when the speaker might relinquish that last missing bit of information on "how the story ends". In the process you will be more likely to have good absorption of the presented materials, which is what the speaker likely had in mind.

The downside of this technique is that you may get someone from the audience with such a strong response to it that in the right sort of setting (smaller, more open, less formal), one or more audience members may actually be clamoring for the information:

"Hey, you didn’t finish your story… !?" Which brings up group dynamics issues of a different sort unless you know how to properly handle this type of situation.

It turns out the strength of this response (the "Zeigarnik Effect"), is strongly correlated to the Myers-Briggs personality dimension of Judger(J)/Perceiver(P):

The more you tend toward the Judger end of the spectrum, the higher should be your perceived need for closure, for having the story finished. Conversely, if you tend far toward the Perceiver end, you may notice that something was left unfinished, but you just may not care that much at all.

Luckily for public speakers, most people will fall somewhere in between those extremes.

So, you may already know what’s coming next… this is the part where I tell you that I’ll tell you more about how specifically this effect is used in Marketing and Advertising, actually to such an extent and to such great effect that Joe Vitale calls it the "most hypnotic" marketing technique ever.

So go ahead set your internal clock for the continuation of this post one week from now.

I just got back yesterday (and am still digesting everything while trying to get back on track with everyday pursuits), and figured you’d get a kick out of some of the, admittedly arbitrary highlights. Here goes:

The top honors go to Eben Pagan, AKA David Deangelo, who created a $20 Million-a-year information publishing business in a dating niche with his "Double Your Dating" series of eBooks and CD/DVD programs in six years.

(By the way, if you dare check over at his site, doubleyourdating.com, you will find that there is hardly a visual to be found on his entire site… no fancy header graphics, no gimmicks, no nothing, only the occasional cover image of his books and products. So anyone claiming that they can’t make money online on account of lacking in the Web artistry department should take notice.)

But we’re not here to talk about Eben’s actual business, but about the business expertise he has amassed while building it, which he freely shared during his keynote address (he didn’t even have anything to pitch, other than a brief mention of his high end business building program that will at some point in the future be found at getaltitude.com).

Let me tell you, the guy is a master when it comes to applying some of the Business Psychology principles that I teach to my coaching clients. His entire presentation was a textbook case of how to apply NLP and other techniques to public speaking, from getting complete audience compliance right at the outset, to wrapping each of his points in great visual or tangible metaphors and stories.

I’d love to show you the video of his presentation with a voice-over "play-by-play" of everything he did, but alas there is such a thing as copyrights. Then again, I should probably call his office to get permission to show it for teaching purposes. I just might do it.

Other notables were Tellman Knudson and Ben Mack, each for giving the most hard-core, heart-felt, and business psychology relevant presentations of the conference, in front of rather small "break out" audiences at that.

Tellman spoke on the Zeigarnik Effect (the observable psychology fact that incomplete items are more easily remembered than completed ones) and how it relates to Alternate Reality Games and similar techniques used by marketers in recent years to involve audiences in e.g. product launches.

He actually went all-out to spin along one such A.R.G. right in front of our very eyes during the presentation (incidentally on the question of what A.R.G.’s were), with things such as requiring us to send an email to a given address to receive further clues.

And he also used the most hard-core audience compliance method I have ever seen, by refusing to start the presentation until everyone had completely moved to the front and filled up each of the first few rows. The poor guy sitting by himself in the fifth row must have thought "Surely he isn’t going to make me move as well…", but he did, to the words "This isn’t a joke." Brilliant.

Ben Mack laid out his 9 Step system for becoming a "Bad Ass", in life and in internet marketing, and his introduction of how he had learned about this subject from a guy in high school was extremely genuine and touching.

This is the same Ben Mack who once served as a Branding Specialist on the Cingular account of his former employer, a high end advertising firm, and who routinely performs fire-eating at every plausible opportunity, as he did again on stage the day before for the entire StomperNet audience. I should also mention for Buckminster-Fuller fans that Ben as a youngster spent a weekend with Bucky through some sort of "Bucky bootcamp" for kids, and quotes him almost nonstop…

Get a taste of Ben’s presentation in this replay as a Camtasia presentation of the Bad Ass Report.

More goodies from the conference for your enjoyment in the next post… alright, alright, I am typing as fast as I can over here…