In my direct experience customers either start their conversation with a company using social media or turn to it as a last resort. Regardless, brands need to be watching these spaces closely and jumping in as soon as possible. It goes without saying that when I say jumping in I mean with trained professionals.

There’s a fascinating behavior economics principle called the peak-end rule. It was first suggested by Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner for Economic Sciences in 2002.

According to the peek-end rule we judge our experiences almost entirely on how they were at their peak (pleasant or unpleasant) and how they ended. Other information is not lost, but it is not used.

It could be fair to say that consumers who post on social media streams are at a peak with a brand. Skilled companies who engage these customers quickly, acknowledge their emotions and work to solve the problem will deliver an end that can leave the customer with a better perception. Ending on a high note means you have won half the battle.

Social media is potentially a new customer experience tool that can be employed to improve interactions on both sides and perhaps nudge the perceptions customers have of a brand. If your customer truly is at a peak, then we should do everything we can to end the event on a high note – if it has been unpleasant – or propel a good experience even further up the scale. Social, has the power to leverage immediacy, intimacy and interaction into a powerful generator of memories.

Image re-drawn from Greg Ness’s graphic

Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, Facebook, Personas, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter Tagged: Daniel Kahneman, Peak End Rule, Social Media ]]> http://expedientmeans.com/2012/05/05/improving-the-customer-experience-with-social-media/feed/ 0 Steve A Furman peak end rule http://expedientmeans.com/2012/04/29/notability-bamboo-ipad-paperless-note-taking/ http://expedientmeans.com/2012/04/29/notability-bamboo-ipad-paperless-note-taking/#comments Sun, 29 Apr 2012 17:44:31 +0000 Steve A Furman http://expedientmeans.com/?p=5287 ]]> I have been a collector of notebooks for decades. I love them. They’re portable, come in all shapes, thicknesses and sizes. Some have lines, others are blank for sketching and still others offer a grid. I have been a devoted user of the Moleskine for many years and very much enjoy the visceral experience paper affords. Although I enjoy the paper, it is difficult to find something you wrote months before, as it’s buried in the stream of pages.

When the iPad came along I thought it would be cool and easier if I could use that as my notebook. But taking notes on a tablet is tricky business. First you need a good app. I immediately begin trying different apps for taking notes. I downloaded and experimented with Draw Pad Pro, Noteshelf, Idea Flight, Design Scene, HelvetiNote, Penultimate, Adobe Ideas, Simplenote and of course Apple’s Pages. Some of them are not very good at all, while others do some things well, but none of them really bring it all together in a way that leverages the multimedia features built into an iPad. I wondered if I would ever get off paper.

There are three ways to get content on an iPad. You can use your finger, a stylus or a keyboard (interface or external). It you choose the external keyboard then you’ve got to carry that thing around and keep it charged. I’ve spent $200 on two keyboards and don’t use either one. Just not comfortable to use. I did come across what looks to be a very cool keyboard on Kickstarter. It’s called Brydge and it looks splendid. I’ve become a backer of Brydge but must wait until October to get one. One’s finger does not work that well because you can’t place things precisely on the screen. The stylus is getting better, but most have ignored ergonomics and balance in favor of rushing to market. I’m a bit of a pen snob and spend lavishly on writing instruments, so I was horrified when I purchased my first stylus. I’ve got a drawer full of failed attempts at finding one.

Then I found the app Notability and the Bamboo stylus. This combination is fantastic. After about two months using this together I’m happy to report that I’m off the paper notebook.

Notability provides:

• Quick toggle between internal or external keyboard
• Several line thickness and colors
• A highlighting feature
• Numerous choices of tablet styles and colors
• Ability to embed voice notes or photos
• Create, organize and file various notebooks
• Simple to use interface
• Auto synch to Dropbox and other storage systems
• And so much more

The Bamboo stylus feels like a finely balanced writing instrument vs. those cheap plastic pens. It has a narrow tip that can be replaced if worn or cracked. I’ve found this to be the best choice for writing and sketching. All I carry to meetings now is my iPad and Bamboo stylus and I love it. Now, what to do with all those notebooks I’ve collected.

I have a fantastic opportunity on my Design, Customer Experience and Social Media team in E-Business at Discover Financial Services.

Join a high performing and diverse group of experienced and energetic professionals as we chart and execute the companies’ digital strategy. We’ve been on the web since 1995 and serve millions of consumers everyday, by helping them manage their finances. and get the most out of their relationship with Discover. We focus on customers and work cross-functionally to deliver a great online experience while helping the organization achieve its business goals. I’ve been there since 1999. Follow the links below to learn more and apply online.

Global Head of Social Media

Responsibilities:

• Managing and executing the overall social media and online community strategy for Discover – to drive engagement, conversation, awareness, loyalty and revenue for the organization. Helps develop an integrated social media program that advances our brand, advertising, digital marketing and public / community relations.
• Creating meaningful, relevant social media experiences for current and prospective customers.
• Building engagement and loyalty across online communities – including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn and key influencer blogs – maximizing the potential of each channel while maintaining a consistent and unified social media presence for Discover.
• Acting as the organizations social media evangelist – educating, training, socializing and reporting on how best to leverage social media to meet the organizations business objectives.
• Successfully collaborating with diverse stakeholders to help create an integrated marketing communications strategy – including branding, digital, public relations and customer service teams as well as partner and business development.
• Developing comprehensive social media programs to position Discover as a world class financial services brand in customer service, advocacy and brand engagement.
• Developing strategy for maximizing as well as responding to opportunities and issues raised on third party rating sites – including Google / Yahoo Reviews, and financial service rating sites.
• Benchmarking the performance of Discover’s overall social media program as well as individual campaigns and channels. Develop and execute plans to improve social media performance and effectiveness.
• Evaluating, reporting and developing recommendations based on engagement, conversation trends, online behaviors, satisfaction and consideration and future behavior intention ratings (e.g.: likelihood to recommend).
• Using social media to listen to the ‘Voice of the Customer and making recommendations to help drive operational improvements in the customer experience.
• Managing agency partner relationship and other vendors for social media campaigns.
• Collaborating with digital marketing team to ensure social is developed in mobile application and emerging platform experiences (e.g. iPad; iPhone, Android devices, text messaging, push messaging, etc.).

Qualifications:

• Must have major brand experience with a portfolio of social media successes to share.
• Demonstrated success in integrating social media with marketing and advertising campaigns.
• Ability to lead, influence and collaborate with diverse groups of people.
• Strong track record of using contests and other gaming / engagement campaigns with target audiences via social and mobile platforms.
• Manage social media campaigns – coordinating numerous contributors and business partners, achieving on-time launches within budget.
• Skilled in creating social media campaigns that support brand objectives, increase digital traffic and engagement and demonstrate return on investment.
• Expert understanding of mainstream and emerging social media communities – including Facebook, Google+, Twitter, FourSquare, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest and key influencer blogs.
• Expert understanding and ability to use third-party APIs, polls and publishing / monitoring tools to execute and monitor social media programs.
• Ensures adherence to financial regulations rules and internal audit practices.
• Ability to quickly recommend responses for addressing negative and crisis communication issues – in collaboration with our public relations team.
• Integrate results from multiple data sources and channels to tell a story with recommendations.
• Lead project strategy sessions, coordinating campaign and strategy development.
• Exceptional writing, editing and speaking skills.

The Company

Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS) is a direct banking and payment services company with one of the most recognized brands in U.S. financial services. Since its inception in 1986, the company has become one of the largest card issuers in the United States. The company operates the Discover card, America’s cash rewards pioneer, and offers personal and student loans, online savings products, certificates of deposit and money market accounts through its Discover Bank subsidiary. Its payment businesses consist of Discover Network, with millions of merchant and cash access locations; PULSE, one of the nation’s leading ATM/debit networks; and Diners Club International, a global payments network with acceptance in more than 185 countries and territories.

Yes we get the Social Media thing. Check us out on Twitter, visit us on Facebook or read our Blog written entirely by customers.

The Persona’s rival has taken the stage and it’s the real customer. Voice of the customer tools have improved over the last few years and companies pay more attention to what customers say thanks to the rise of social media. Everyday I sit at the breakfast table and read yesterday’s voice of the customer stream that was written by customers directly on our web site. It’s sent to me via email unfiltered, except for blocking out any characters that appear to be account numbers or personal information. Then I navigate to our Facebook brand page and read that, then over to our Twitter stream and read that.

We have done a lot to shape and enrich our Personas over the years, by enhancing their stories and adding other attributes in an attempt to bring them to life and therefore more approachable for business partners. But still they are cardboard cutouts. It’s much more powerful to read words from your customer or see someone’s Avatar adjacent to their feedback.

Reading customer comments evokes a roller coaster of emotions. One comment is glowing with praise that brings a smile to my face and a sense of pride. The next one calls out something that is just, well, stupid of us. We take all these comments seriously, logging them, and then trying to evaluate where in the priority fix queue they should fall. It’s a real time customer focus group and it’s beginning to influence how I design and shape project work almost as much as Personas have done in the past.

Curious if others are having the same experience or have other opinions.

Images from Avizor and Meetin’Bytes

We used to say, “I”m going to go on the computer.” We would step down to the basement or enter our study and approach a massive control center. Something resembling a large television occupied much of the our desk space. The PC was called a “tower.” If you were brave enough to look behind that tower you would see a tangle of dozens of umbilical cords criss-crossing their way to various devices. All of it encased in a deep layer of protective dust. Everything was stationery. You had to make a pilgrimage to the altar of technology to experience a computer.

We no longer go on the computer. The computer is “on us”. It encases us. Surrounds us in a halo of spectrum. No cords, no large workspace footprint for a non-interlace monitor needed. One can easily lose a computer today. There is no friction between our curiosity and the all knowing internet. Think about that for a moment.

In her latest book Alone Together, Why we Expect more from Technology and Less from Each Other, Sherry Turkel writes.

Now we know that once computers connected us to each other, once we became tethered to the network, we really didn’t need to keep computers busy. They keep us busy. It is as though we have become their killer ap.

Indeed computers may be sorry they became so powerful. We are constantly clicking, tapping, pinching and swiping them to find out what they have been curating since the last check in. If they are slow we curse. There will be no rest for them, ever again.

This has major implications for marketers who now need to be digital domain experts and social mavens in order to gain value for their campaigns and results. We will need to bring in mobile, social and the web. This means the corporate site of course, but it extends well beyond a web site into society at large. It will require mastery of time and space and behavior. Something very different that we have had to do in the past. Tell them (yourself) to get going and fast. Before we lose another hour. Oh and by the way, Web 2.0 is irrelevant.

Image: homedeisignfind.com

Over time it simply got too big for one team to do it all on their own. And so, tasks were transferred to other areas and assimilated into their everyday work. In most cases those other departments didn’t have digital experience or training, but they did the best they could with what they knew. Now as we are well into the 2010′s, specialists have emerged all over the enterprise and digital is being nicely integrated in many areas. Although we still have more ground to cover, there is progress and more importantly, momentum.

Social Media today is exactly where the web was in the late 1990′s. One team took the initiative to start, learn, stumble and love doing it. Others mostly sat outside the action, despite being intrigued and in wonder at what it may be ale to do for their business.

Learn from the past. Apply it today in social.

It is important to educate as many people as possible across the organization about social. I mean really educate. Not just recite the words Facebook and Twitter. Enlist their talent for creativity and business savvy and get them excited to experiment and learn. Do it now. Things are moving much faster in social than the web moved in the last decade. You won’t have nearly as much time this time around. The sooner you can accomplish this the better it will be for you, your team, your business and most importantly your customers.

Photo: Steve Furman

As time went by content creators became more attuned to writing web copy, not traditional analog copy. This began to differentiate the internet content consuming experience, as writers put importance on the uniqueness of the medium at the forefront.

Copy flourished and with it graphics. Web safe colors limited designers so we saw a primary color palette that brought back grade school art class memories. Eventually browsers began to see more colors and monitors advanced, freeing creative types to polish and refine. Most images were hard edged and PowerPoint like inserts. Not very pleasing.

While designers designed, writers wrote. And of course functionality exploded. Self service, research and commerce grew at a mind boggling pace, completely overwhelming the navigation. Amazon was adding thousands of new products a week. Then lines of businesses. How in the world would one be able to find all this stuff on their site? The answer was of course “The Tab.”

These images are from Amazon’s site in 1999 and 2000. Tab mania infected the world wide web almost overnight. It was the answer we were all looking for and believe me, we jumped on it. This is about the time web site operators began to understand that labeling was one of the most important things they needed to get right. Sites were peppered with corporate tribal language and consumers were confused. Cute names were coined because you couldn’t just call something by its name could you. How pedestrian.

The birth of web Personas and user-centered design helped immensely with navigation and labeling. There were two problems that Personas were great at solving. One was what to call something so a visitor to your site could recognize it, and secondly the density of content to be displayed on a page. It was a challenge to marketing and set up an epic battle between selling and goal accomplishment. Segments tell you how to sell, but Personas tell you how to satisfy. Of course there are many other benefits to using Personas, but these are the two watershed moments in making design better for the user.

Google came on the scene and made search work. I mean really work. The “White Box” began to show up in the upper right hand corner of sites that could organize their unstructured data and catalog content. That was, and remains today very powerful. So much so that on today’s Amazon’s home page not a tab can be found. Search runs across the top of the page and that’s how most people find what they’re looking.

Navigation became nested and included fly-outs, all of which are fine ways to solve for how you make multiple choices available to users without page clutter. But sites are overrun with content and suffer from the weight of an organization’s natural ability to “pile on.” I see this everyday and on so many sites. My advice to you if you control the customer experience on your site is to guard against content creep at all costs. Once something gets on a page it’s very difficult to get it off because high trafficked sites will find that all their links garner clicks. We just don’t know the motivation behind each click.

My favorite property is the property of subtraction. Addition is too easy and is fueled by likes or worse, an org chart. But subtraction. Now that’s an art form. A skill that requires constant honing fed by web analytics, data and real insights. So as you say, “Scalpel please,” many will scream that we can’t get rid of that content or drop that banner. We get x number of clicks from those links. When you look at the number of clicks and put that into the reality of percent of clicks on your entire site, the numbers have quite a few zeros after the decimal point. Not enough to move the stock price, and certainly no one would increase their business goals as a way to justify their existence. Now I will be the first to want to drive business and make money. So bring the data.

I have a theory that I believe would hold true on most if not all often visited web properties. If you take a high trafficked page and put 10 links on it you will get traffic to all 10 links in a given month. If  you expand that to 20 links you’ll get the same outcome. All 20 links will be clicked. But this is not a justification for putting 30 or even more links on the page. I posit that if you reduce the number of links (excluding primary navigation elements) you will drive up traffic to the remaining links. Ten links in total will get as many clicks as the 20 in total, so you are distributing the traffic more evenly across the content. Put your business driving content behind those ten links and call it a day (exaggerating for effect).

Which brings me to the point of this post. Aim for purity in design and navigation. If you can do only one thing with something you will most likely get more people to do it and spontaneously return to do it again and again. Take Pinterest as an example. It made it to 11 million registered users and one billion page views a day in about a year. The fastest growth pace to date. Why? In a word purity. It’s all about one thing, images. when you click the main action button you can do one of three things. That’s right 3 things. Not 5, not 7, not 15. Add a pin, upload a pin or create a board.

That’s it! Simple, crystalline, pure. Anyone can pin and it’s a near perfect metaphor with the cork board and scrapbooking. Genius. Behind that simplicity lurks a lot of other things that will drive toward monetization and potentially commerce. The question is can they keep that behind a clean interface. If they can, then success is inevitable.

Keep it pure. As pure as the driven snow.

Twitter.com has undergone a redesign and is better, but it still falls short for me. I mostly use Osfoora on my iPad. It’s fast, easy to use and enjoyable. I’m not a Tweet Deck fan. On the iPhone I use the official Twitter app.

Here’s my Twitter take

(note some of this content has been repurposed from earlier posts about Twitter)

1. Serves as a window into what’s going on in someone’s mind. These can run the emotional gambit from joy, disappointment and challenge, to triumph or simply stating a pet peeve. You are there with them as they experience it.
2. Allows you to visualize what someone is doing at that moment, and one step further, what’s most meaningful to them about that moment. For instance, when someone Tweets that they are in a familiar restaurant enjoying a fine red wine and chatting with their spouse. It’s a rich picture that comes alive, especially when you know the couple and the restaurant.
3. Can become the catalyst for later conversations. What were you guys talking about over dinner? What did you have? The wine? Etc.
4. Provides the cadence of someone’s daily life. If they Tweet with regularity it’s a GPS of their thoughts as they navigate their day. They are turning left… right… now on a long straight track. You can sometimes watch them go off road.
5. Is a rich digital network. In my unscientific study I have observed that Tweeple are generally early technology adopters, tend to be influencers, have fascinating jobs at leading companies and brands and generally love what they do. Of course some are just bored, which is to be expected with a media service with over 3 million channels. Surf past the noise.
6. Keeps you in the know. Twitterers are constantly scanning the Internet for interesting and insightful ideas; including breaking news. Their Tweets are littered with tiny urls that lead you to a treasure trove of information and value hidden in the cloud. Great for impressing your friends and neighbors.
7. Accelerates your knowledge. Tweets flow freely from user to user within the ever-growing social graph. Re-Tweeting, forwarding someone else’s Tweet, acts as an afterburner, further propelling that knowledge. A convergence of channels.
8. Gets right to the point. After all you have to with only 140 characters. Short, sharp observations. Haven’t seen much Haiku though.
9. Is entertaining. Some people broadcast on comedy central.

This is how I use Twitter

1. Share my knowledge and experience I’ve collected over the years. I love solving problems and helping people solve problems. If I can give them a nugget or spark that advances their lives I’m thrilled. No great thought exists in a vacuum. If it’s a good idea then several people have it as well. If it’s a revolutionary idea then hundreds probably have it. It’s the universe’s way of improving the odds that great things reach the real world. Doing the work is much harder than having the idea, so share freely. when you share you get it back in large degrees.
2. Learn from others much smarter than me. Of course not all smart people are on Twitter, and Twitter does not have only smart people. But it’s full of ideas and insights.
3. Expand my network. All successful people are well connected. Who you know is critical. The smarter your connections the more power you have.

On May 1, 2011, it was announced that Osama bin Laden was killed by a team of Navy Seals in a compound inside Pakistan. The conversation on Twitter exploded.

I took a look at my Twitter bookmarks folder saved on my Safari browser today. Early on, when I earned of a new tool that leveraged Twitter feeds and users, I would check them out and if I found it useful I’d bookmark it. I have 56 bookmarks in that folder today. These days I hardly ever go back to this folder and pull one of them up. They might have been amusing at the time, but it’s only all about the content in the stream.

I’ve made some good friends thanks to Twitter and it’s fascinating to observe how those relationships have progressed. Some of them move from Twitter to the off line world. Conferences, business meetings, even just passing through Chicago to pause for a drink or dinner. Others become Facebook friends and we have never met in person. I’m happy to say  that I’ve blocked only one person in the four years. Not a bad record.

Marketing has a list (or several lists). IT has a list. Advertising has a list. The PMO has a list. It’s list mania. Why can’t we have one list? It would be so much easier. Everyone would see the same projects in the same prioritization order and know exactly where things stood. I know a firm that used to have a Sacred Seven list, but there were usually eleven or twelve on it. Seems like such a simple thing doesn’t it.

Well I’m here break the news that having one list is a myth. It’s not possible, especially if you work in a large corporation. Here’s why.

• The data companies require to track projects could not possibility be crammed onto one list. It would be unreadable.
• Teams or departments need to track the things most important to them and they’re most likely not the things other areas track.
• People process and absorb information in different ways. Visual people like gantt and pie charts. Others prefer dense spreadsheets, and everybody wants things sorted differently.
• Senior executives don’t want all the detail, but project managers need it all.
• The communication necessary to keep that master list updated would consume hundreds of hours and hundreds of people.

So what should we do about it? First of all stop saying,”It would be great if we had everything on one list.” That’s what we’ve been saying for years and it’s yet to happen. Next, stop being frustrated by it. I repeat, it’s not going to happen.

Here are some things that might help. Don’t work from several lists. Identify the one or two that most closely align to your responsibilities and is easiest for you to understand. It’s completely fine to make a list of your own and operate from that. The most important thing is to have a list of your most critical projects. By critical I mean the projects you promised your boss you would launch this month, or quarter, or year. That’s the most important list and arguably, the only one that matters. You should review other lists from time to time and take note of the ones that will impact you in some way. You don’t want to be surprised by someone coming to you and asking for a deliverable and you haven’t even started on it.

One more thing. You will always be working on things not on any list. That’s completely fine. Lists are about what must be delivered, not an inventory of everything that will be delivered. Make a note of everything you accomplish, yes on another list. That’s what you’ll use when you write your self-evaluation at year end.

Lists are important, but not as important as making progress on your projects. Good luck.

No doubt the media, analog as well as digital, will be at full volume and 24/7 with who knows what over the next several months. Unfortunately there’s no way to avoid it without becoming a recluse. Escaping the noise from time to time is necessary, so I want to share what I do each election year to get away from the rhetoric and shrill of the campaign trail. I go to my DVD library and pull out my favorite presidential / political discs and have a movie marathon.

I highly recommend it. And to help you along I’ve chosen a select group of films that always seem to get viewed every four years. Have a look and pick one of these movies (or two, or three), pop some corn, sit back and enjoy. Oh, turn off the phone ringer so those annoying robo-calls asking for political donations don’t interrupt you.

There are probably a hundred or more films about presidents, elections and political power, but these are my favorites, listed in order by release year, latest first.

Frost / Nixon (2008) –  A searing, in-depth recreation of the famous interview that in many ways settled once and for all President Nixon’s involvement in Watergate for the American public. Frank Langella is the cold, calculating Richard Nixon and Michael Sheen is David Frost, who bet a personal fortune that he would get the goods on Nixon as well as a big audience. Takes place entirely post term and captures the time and culture perfectly. Directed by Ron Howard. Full review here.

W. (2008) – A psychoanalytic vista of the life and first term of President George W. Bush. It ultimately becomes a story of the entire Bush family and the presence of the elder President Bush is felt throughout. James Brolin plays W. pitch perfect, and surprisingly, Mr. Stone does not go off the reservation on this one. It’s toned down, compared to his other political outings. Worth a look, or another look to remind us of what things were like during the eight years under Bush. Full review here.

The Manchurian Candidate (2004) – An updated version of the 1962 classic. Soldiers from the first Gulf War are captured and brainwashed. An alternate takes credit for being a war hero and becomes a Vice Presidential candidate (Liev Schreiber). His commanding officer, Ben Marco (Denzel Washington) begins to think things are not what they seem. The details soon unravel for the master planners and they take additional actions to ensure their plan is carried off successfully. A high octane, paranoid thriller directed with precision by Jonathan Demme.

The Contender (2000) – Joan Allen plays Laine Hanson who is running  for Vice President to President Jackson Evans (Jeff Bridges). The story line takes many twists as the characters fight for power and to preserve their view of the way things should be. Sexy secrets are found out about Hanson who refuses to discuss them as irrelevant to her qualifications for the office. Bridges chews the scenery and Allen is steely strong. Gary Oldman is superb.

The West Wing (1999-2006) – Highly acclaimed and popular TV series covering the lives of the President and staffers inside the White House’s west wing. 154 episodes were produced and aired. This series captured the attention of millions for it’s realistic portrayal, likable characters and its occasional wink. Created by Aaron Sorkin with Martin Sheen as President Josiah’Jed’ Bartlet. Quality scripts, acting and production.

Wag the Dog (1997) – Wonderfully funny, oddly prophetic and highly entertaining. Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro are over the top. Anne Heche swears like a drunken sailor and Denis Leary is, well Denis Leary. Barry Levinson and David Mamet scooped the Monica Lewinsky scandal before it even happened, with eerie parallels. The White House staff members create a fake war to distract from the president’s troubles. Hoffman, a seasoned Hollywood producer is hired to carry out the task.

Nixon (1995) – A biographical story of former President Richard Milhous Nixon. Oliver Stone follows Nixon from his days as a young boy to his presidency, which ended in resignation during his second term. Anthony Hopkins inhabits the persona of Nixon so thoroughly that you completely forget it’s not Nixon as early as the first reel. The Vietnam conflict was a major event during the Nixon presidency and Stone, a Vietnam veteran himself, intercuts combat scenes into the political theater. He takes the filmic style used in JFK and pushes it even further, mixing eras and cultures freely across the screen.

JFK (1991) – Oliver Stone’s (again) telling of the assassination of John F. Kennedy caused quite a stir in many camps. Regardless of what you believe about the murder, this picture broke new ground in filmmaking style. It plays more as a sonic mix than an edited picture. Based on the book Crossfire, it features an ensemble cast. Kevin Costner and Tommy Lee Jones are stand outs, while Gary Oldman nailed Lee Harvey Oswald. Special nod to Joe Pesci (David Ferrie), as an absolute loon.

All the President’s Men (1976) – Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein (Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) uncover the details of the Watergate scandal that leads to President Nixon’s resignation. Perhaps the best explanation available on the Watergate scandal. A taught drama that combines intrigue, power and investigative reporting. Excellent work from director Alan J. Pakula.

The Missiles of October (1974) – Made for television mini-series about the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, three years after Castro assumes power in Cuba. William Davane plays JFK in this tense, detailed and an up close look at the process of decision making for an American President in a time of crisis. Also stars Martin Sheen. A good history lesson.

The Parallax View (1974) – Another reporter vehicle. This time Warren Beatty uncovers some nasty things while investigating the assassination of a prominent United States Senator. Ultimately he finds a conspiracy net with a powerful multinational corporation behind it all. The ’70′s produced some of our most interesting films thanks to “director as auteur” freedom afforded many filmmakers by the studios. Alan J. Pakula (All the President’s Men) directs.

Enjoy and please feel free to add your own favorites.