Do Sharp Corporation People Need a Holiday?

Recently my TV I has been showing me one of the most nonsensical advertisements I have seen in years. The idea is straight-forward enough – Sharp now have a new 4 colour projection system instead of the old ‘3’ – which apparently the rest of the world still watches(!).  See it at http://quattrontv.com.au/live/

They drive this message home with host George Takei (Mr Sulu from the original Star Trek TV series) who pulls up great video of moving yellow things, tells us how great the extra yellow is and then gleefully waxes “you can just see it ……..oh, but of course YOU can’t see it on YOUR TV”.  Well George,  it looks just excellent on my three year old screen: so good in fact that I can’t think of one reason why I’d run out and buy a new Sharp TV. 

What were those people thinking when they put this add together?…”if we convince them they don’t need it, then maybe they’ll think they MUST need it out of novelty, surprise, the need to pursue trivia, a pre-occupation with the colour yellow,  etc etc”  

And just to make sure you have really absorbed their non-message, Sharp end with a slogan:  “You have to see it, to see it”.  (Actually the correct English grammar would be ‘You have to see it, to have seen it’ so maybe the bad grammar is meant to add to the scary effect).  Overall, it looks like there has been an outbreak of terminally redundant rhetoric at Sharp.

Social Media for Psychiatrists?

This week I was invited to join a “think tank” at Sydney University.  At our first meeting the idea was to start developing ethical guidelines for mental health clinicians so that they can use all those neat new web 2.0 tools, like Twitter and Facebook, in ways safe to themselves and to better enhance their healing methods.  After four hours of spirited discussion, it was concluded that we all know less about these things than we thought we did, and that there are many traps for new players.  The most controversial question turned out to be “Should psychiatrists Google their patients?”.  This question was posited in the context of knowing a bit more about new patients before they start and so better inform the therapy process.   But would a patient see it that way or would they regard it as an intrusion? (Even though Googling them takes place anonymously and the information concerned is already in the public domain).

Seems we all thought the important thing is to value the real people connection and not get mesmerised by the apparent benefits of online technology as a replacement for actual contact, eg, phone conversations and face-to-face meetings.  Maybe this leads to the question “Should psychiatrists be sent to conversation classes first?”

I’ll report more as new ground breaks…..