This is a technique I used in Dublin at the end of November. I had been asked to speak to a group of marketers about Waggledancing and wanted to find an exercise for them to do something and not just listen to me. Ireland has had a dreadful year  - their economy is in a much more precarious state than the UK. So I was startled to compare the best seller lists from the UK and Ireland and find some quite significant differences. For one thing Ireland's top selling books are all about how the banks screwed up the Irish Economy. There are books on how to make do as well as fiction titles more than a little dominated by vampires!

So here's what I did. I produced a list of best sellers for each person who was there. And asked them to imagine that they had to buy a book as a gift for their average customer. I asked them to think which book their customer would be most interested in receiving. For those who might say their customers didn't read books I pointed out that with Christmas coming a lot of books are given as gifts even if they are never read. So what is pre-occupying your customers. And what are you going to send them?

Once they made a decision I asked them to find other people who had selected the same book. I asked them to compare notes. Was it the same customer type. Or the same book but for different reasons. Interestingly there were some marketers who would send a book about the financial crisis to their customers though someone working for a bank told me they just daren't do that!! My point was that if this is where peoples' interests lay then what were we doing trying to get them interested in our own marketing agenda if that was different. And is it any wonder that they found it difficult to pay attention to our agenda if we had such scant regard for theirs.

The final question I asked them was How would our sending them a gift of this or that particular book change their perception of us and our brand? Would they be surprised? Pleased? Angry?

This is a very simple but profound Location exercise. Location because one of the skills of the Waggledancer is simple ways of finding the good stuff. And this exercise very quickly takes you out of your own corporate agenda and confronts you with what your customer is concerned about. Of course there is no guarantee that you are right. But a research survey should swiftly answer that particular question.  Bestseller lists are giveaways about what matters to people, how they spend their time. Or even what they think about to get away from the drudgery that so often surrounds them. My theory about the passion for vampire books is that if there's no money then sex and power and great alternatives to think about instead.  Stories about money for the time being aren't so interesting unless it is to demonise those who put you into your financial predicament.