“Wikipedia? Why would you print anything off Wikipedia?”

Silence.  A loose ball of cat hair tumbleweeded past.

I stirred the tea and hung my head. Why can’t I get into good debate with Kate? She makes me feel dumb. Nevertheless, I had to talk to someone about my thoughts on Wikipedia.

Unlike a real life Encyclopedia you need two hands to carry, Wikipedia is generated and edited by its users. There’s an article for just about every search term out there, and it’s often the first link on the search results page.

What came first, Wikipedia’s popularity or its accessibility?

Anyway, thousands of iterations by users shape a package of apparently relevant, well structured content, updated into real time. But with any piece of information plucked from the net, you should fact check your finds against your own research.  

For very casual research, I don’t have a problem with Wikipedia. It is fairly obvious to see which content has been approved by a substantial body of readers. And we know that scientific rigour is based in sample size. 2 approvals – not very rigorous, 200 approvals – much better. However, it’s true that we don’t know what these people are agreeing upon. I have never really checked out the references (not called references but “Notes” – suspicious).

Obviously Wikipedia was never made to fly with academia. There is also this satirist who calls Wikipedia an example of “truthiness” – the repurposing of “gut feeling” as equivalent to hard evidence.

Then again, Wikipedia is a soft target because it’s such an annoying buzzword. It’s high street, common, unfashionable. It’s in the distressing realm of the hyper-real (Wiki isn’t a real word). It symbolises our separation from what we were… think of the massive encyclopedia clutched to the chest with tiny child hands…the effort of finding the page we wanted.

But it should be fashionable for at least a couple of reasons – it’s free, it doesn’t make any money, it’s community-led.

People wanna get their facts straight!

Now I am part of our own agency, I feel I can stand back with a little more authority and give thought to this mantra.

The idea that what I do during the ‘day job’ is very different to who I am on the weekend, is one I have at times aspired to but never really succeeded at. I find it impossible not to be worried at home by worrying office stuff, or for a successful workday not to give me the foundation for a great evening out with my mates. Thus far the flick of the switch on the No. 38 to Angel has eluded me.

The strongest and best relationships we have are ones where we allow ourselves to be human, working alongside other humans, who worry, laugh, err and create… whether that’s at home discussing broad beans or striving for patient-integrated Rx strategy.

Being ourselves and keeping it personal was built into the agency culture from our earliest plans. The business side made Barclays happy and ensured we had rigour and efficiency. But by valuing personality we don’t break people down and rebuild them the ‘hive’ way, or force a process on a relationship. All actors are free to contribute ‘their’ way adding to what we are as an organisation.

What we want most is for people to say that we understand them at a personal level: what they want, where they plan to be, what they love, what they don’t – not just the business of the brand, political situation and process.

Because of this our business could never be anything other than personal.

The key word is ‘seemed’. We are wiser now. We have seen the gap between promise and delivery. We know how it affects users attitude and behaviour.

It’s nice to be sweet talked at times; it’s fun visualising how great things will be. It’s less thrilling to hang around waiting for non-existent goods to turn up. That’s when you feel disappointed and want to kick your bright, flawless, newly painted walls down.

Customer service is something everyone gushes about. “We are competitively priced, but our premium is justified by our outstanding commitment to…” You’ve heard it. Why is it companies and brands still haven’t got it? Buying a service is about the delivery, not the promise.

Things that should have happened naturally were eclipsed by a tortuous string of phone calls and frustration: Transferring phone accounts: O2 say ‘1 day’, our panel say, Att-Ahhhh 2 months of chasing, cajoling and being let down. In the end we gave up and went to Vodafone, finding out that it’s easier to change provider than stay with the same one… hello? Putting landlines in. Our provider says cat 6 will be fine, so that’s what we do. Our panel said Att-Ahhhh, I meant cat 5, not cat 6 cable – 2 days wasted.

I could go on but I’m starting to tremble.

Brands must contain a promise, but more importantly they must fulfil it. One company that would never let that happen is First Direct. Their brand promise (or should I call it brand truth?) rings loud and clear from their call centre upwards, for them it feels that delivering the brand is actually more important than communicating it.

Something always comes good from bad as my Grandmother used to say. It got us thinking. Do we in the pharmaceutical industry focus so much on selling to HCPs that we fail to properly consider the impact on end users? The token patient programme, the leaflet, the poster. Not being able to talk to consumers is no excuse, we can talk to patients. Even if we can’t hear their complaints, the rest of the world will.