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I posted to delicious.com
i [love] marketing. : in digital, is campaign vs. platform moot?
http://anaandjelic.typepad.com/i_love_marketing/2010/02/in-digital-is-campaign-vs-platform-moot.html
July 12 2010, 11:38am | Comments »
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I posted to delicious.com
The 10 Most Addictive Sounds in the World | Fast Company
March 19 2010, 9:43am | Comments »
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I posted to google.com
Doc Searls, The Cluetrain Manifesto, 10 Years Later
This is the mother of all conversations, to borrow from a title to a post Doc Searls wrote, which I link to down below. He's among my personal heroes for thinking about the buyer's side - and doing something about it. Something hopefully radical and, if you're paying attention, really important.He writes about independence, and about providing tools for individuals to manage relationships with organizations. Personal tools for people to collect their own data, control it, share it selectively, assert their own terms of service (TOS), and give them means to express their own demand in the open market. In the 10th Anniversary Edition of The Cluetrain Manifesto he writes about these points and says: base relationship-managing tools on open standards, open APIs (application program interfaces), and open code. It's what he calls the Intention Economy.His project, Vendor Relationship Management (VRM), is about improving how buyers and sellers relate. With all that he's working on, I'm beyond thrilled that he'd find the time to have a conversation with us here.________You've been a hero of mine as co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto. I own the souvenir, the actual book. Stories and the facts that anchor them were my daily diet for my degree in Liberal Arts from the University of Bologna. I loved Dante Alighieri's version of things. Probably primed by this context, the image you conjured with your friend's story: "the cluetrain stopped there four times a day for ten years and no one ever took delivery" stuck with me over the years. Ten years after the fact, what would you change if you were writing the Cluetrain Manifesto today?
Doc: I think we answered that question with the 10th Anniversary Edition of The Cluetrain Manifesto, which we wrote about a year ago. In my case I wanted to shift readers' interest from conversation to relationship, and from marketing to markets -- from the verb to the noun form of "market."
It's important to remember that Cluetrain in the first place was an expression of rebellion against marketing, and a declaration of liberation from it. Note the voice in "We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. We are human beings and our reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it." We were not speaking there as marketers, or as "the audience," or as "consumers," but as ordinary people.
Cluetrain was a commentary on the Net, more than one on marketing. We just happened to be pissed more at marketing than at other professions that were just as deserving of rebuke (if not more -- such as venture capitalists). We were telling companies -- and marketers especially -- to wake up and recognize that the Net was a place where buyers were at least as important as sellers, and not just as "targets" for "messages."
Most of the opportunities opened by the Net are still overlooked, because nearly everybody in business still thinks only about improving what they're already doing on the sell side. Better sales, marketing, data collection and so on. They can't stop pushing long enough to recognize that there's room for improvement on the buy side too. They don't yet see how equipping demand to drive supply changes and improves the whole game. While buyers need cars, sellers are still building passenger trains. Worse, all the trains are different and run on their own tracks. Every company's loyalty program is a private customer railway system.In the CM you famously described markets as conversations, which is the cornerstone of what I write about at Conversation Agent. Many companies have started talking, but are the people in them actually listening? Doc: Most of the time I don't think so. A call center is not a listening instrument. It's a way of controlling conversation rather than of listening.
But the problem isn't with call centers, or even with companies. It's with the absence of relationship tools on the customers' side. These tools should provide customers with ways that make it easy for customers to deal with multiple sellers in consistent ways, and on the customers' own terms. In the absence of those, every company says "we have ways of making you talk." And those ways are all different.What sparked this interview was my notice that you've placed me on a Twitter list called Postcluetrainians. What does this term mean? Doc: I was just goofing around with names for lists not long after Twitter came out with them. I chose to use "ian" at the end of each list name (not sure why), and I didn't want to say "Cluetrainians," because that looked like the name of a religion. (Or so I recall.) As it turns out, you can't change the names of lists once you've made them. Not as far as I know anyway.Part of my job is public relations, and I smile as I write this as I read your good rant about PR. You put your finger on the real role of PR... yet it's not the only culprit in the "check the box" category. Or is it? Many company Web sites work very hard at maximizing lack of conversation. It looks like the automation people are still bringing in more business conversions than the conversation people - or else we would have more dynamic, people-centric tools by now. Forrester's projection for Internet advertising was also off - it grew only to $8.75 billion in 2004. Which goes to show that things move more slowly than we think. What's your take on all this?
Doc: My take is that it's early. Very early. The Net and the Web as we know them are only about fifteen years old, yet the Net may prove to be as world-changing in our day than the invention of movable type was in Gutenberg's. You don't change a world overnight. Or even over a decade or two.
Perspective... The Industrial Age is nearly two centuries old, and isn't ending. Over that time we have become very good at selling. The flywheels in the selling machine are huge. So far the Net has offered to sellers countless ways to improve what they're already doing. That's why "the automation people" appear to be more successful than "the conversation people." They've been at it longer, and the Net gives them more ways to get better at what they already do.
The "conversation people" also have two problems. One is that they work for the sell side. This subordinates their work to sell-side systems, imperatives and defaults. The other is that their tools are inadequate. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and pretty much everything we call "social" are good, but don't cut it for everybody. Most ordinary citizens don't read blogs, much less write them. They also don't have a Facebook account or use Twitter. Even if they did, those tools aren't built for any of the things we need, that I list in my "Markets are Relationships" chapter in the 10th Anniversary edition of Cluetrain. I list those again here: The Father of All Business ModelsThis piece should also be helpful: Where Markets are Not ConversationsIf you were to share one word of advice with us, what would it be?
Doc: Persevere.I'm a highly spontaneous person, it's probably crazy I ended up in marketing communications. It's my hope that I've learned some of your lessons and those of my mentors and continue to focus on my craft to help businesses listen and relearn how to talk.
Doc: I don't think any learning is required. There's a music teacher I know who says nobody who knows how to walk lacks a sense of rhythm.Unfortunately, what we need are tools that do not yet exist. I'm working on some, and so are a few others in the larger VRM community. But it's going to take awhile.Thank you so much for your time.
Doc: Yours too![image by eszter. cc attribution http://www.flickr.com/photos/eszter/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]***Do take the time to read both of his posts linked above. Do you see the issues as clearly as I do? In a response to a comment in the second post, Doc writes:VRM is about fixing the means by which each of us relate to companies. We should have simple and common means of relating to multiple companies. We should be the points of integration for our own data, and the points of origination about what we do with that data. We should have our own terms of engagement and service, which companies that we deal with can accept or not. We should not have to remember a zillion different logins and passwords in order to deal with companies or other entities. The absence of those abilities is what needs to be fixed. If “the market” gets fixed along with that, cool. The problem in the meantime is that we keep looking to the big companies to fix these problems for us. They’re not going to do it. In fact, they can’t — any more than AOL could fix email, or Yahoo could fix instant messaging. All these companies tend to do is make what they already do for themselves work better. Thus a free market becomes “your choice of silo.” We won’t get a truly free market until we equip individuals with tools of engagement that are independent of any one “provider.” We have to provide for ourselves. From the first one, I learned that Doc is working on a book titled The Intention Economy: What Happens When Customers Get Real Power. And he's looking for helpful scholarship, research and stories for the book. So if you have any, send them his way.Spend time with these ideas and think about how they'd work in your business. We won't have a two-way conversation until we both - customers and service providers - hold the tools to develop those relationships in terms we both want, not just we can live with.As Doc says, the money - and demand - is with the buyer.
- Tags:
- marketing
- social media
- future
- conversations
- business
- 100 Marketing Conversations
- communications
- Doc Searls
- The Cluetrain Manifesto
January 13 2010, 4:00am | Comments »
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I posted to google.com
Paul Williams: Mini Cooper Ad Fires On All Cylinders
Great advertising is extremely challenging to create. An ad or promotion needs to do many things for it to stand out among the clutter of messages. They need to...Be Attention Getting Have a Clear, Memorable Message Be Brand Appropriate Be Locally/Audience Relevant, and as a bonus Be RemarkableThe team at Amsterdam-based UbachsWisbrun/JWT got their Christmastime Mini Cooper ads right. Brilliantly right.
Along with the rest of the Christmas trash pick-up - dotted around Amsterdam in the Netherlands - were large empty boxes with torn ribbons and wrapping paper. Apparently tossed by those who received new Mini Cooper cars for Christmas.
As you can see below, boxes were labeled with a line drawings of the car, minimal product information, and - whoops someone left on the price tag - €99.00 per month. Almost looks like a box IKEA items are packed in.
But, of course, new Mini cars don't arrive in a cardboard box. This was an ad. A brilliant ad.
Mini Cooper has a history of clever, relevant ad messages. They promote the fun, style, and diminutive size of the Mini.
Let's take a look at what makes this ad so great. Attention GettingTry NOT to see a box the size of a small car on the street corner. Especially one with bits of wrapping paper and broken ribbon. It's not a bus or tram ad. It's different.Clear, Memorable MessageThe fact that a car can fit into a box that can be piled at the curb says "small." The Mini box was piled with the rest of the Christmas packaging. Along with other toy packaging. (In the U.S. you'd see this stacked with boxes from red wagons, the Barbie Dream House, and new bikes). This ad reinforces the Mini as something fun - like a great toy. Additionally, the label on the box reads "99,- per maand" - translates to "€99.00 per month." I didn't know they were that affordable.
Brand AppropriateThese ads hit on everything Mini. Small. Fun. Cool. Hip. Different. Clever. Not Too Serious.
Locally/Audience Relevant"Someone lucky got a Mini for Christmas!" is immediate reaction. Seasonally relevant.
While you don't have to be from Amsterdam to appreciate these ads, living with the local trash pick-up system makes this ad that much more brilliant.
Most Amsterdammers don't have cars to take large items to the dump. So, we can put nearly anything out to the curb for pick-up. From a broken TV to your old couch, special trash trucks arrive with cranes and scoop up large items. It is not unusual to see random household things on the curbs throughout the city. But a car-sized box? Wow! That makes this tactic that much more relevant.
RemarkableThis post is about garbage. A friend told me about it. Someone else posted about it. I'm telling you. Images can be found sprinkled across the internet. You'll probably show or forward this to a co-worker or friend. You may even Tweet this article. Or re-tweet someone else's tweet. That - my friend - is remarkable.
Take a look at the video, and the typical reaction. See the smiles, hear the chuckles. I garun-tee these people told others.
I'm disappointed I didn't get to see this tactic personally right here in Amsterdam. John Moore from Brand Autopsy - 5,089 miles away in Austin, Texas - passed this on to me. Remarkable.
I spoke briefly with Lisa Merelle at UbachsWisbrun/JWT. She is the account manager for this campaign. She and the team are excited how people have reacted to the ads and the momentum it has on the internet. (Including this post!)
So, fellow marketers and business managers... it can be done! Let this example inspire you.Be Attention Getting Have a Clear, Memorable Message Be Brand Appropriate Be Locally/Audience Relevant, and... Be Remarkable
That's the recipe.
What are your thoughts? Reactions?
BONUS MATERIAL
Search Google Images for "mini ads" to see other Mini ad examples.
Thank you Ads Of The World for posting the images. Visit the link to see more images and names of the full team at UbachsWisbrun/JWT who worked on this project.
More Mini Cooper ads at Marketallica site.
- Tags:
- marketing
January 8 2010, 6:25am | Comments »
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I posted to google.com
Go Across the Table
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ConversationAgent/~3/l_fzzLa6x8s/go-across-the-table.html
Sit next to your audience, listen to them, and give them what they want and need - whether it's yours or not. This is the winning model of a new media company, Amazon. Yes, you heard that correctly. It was one of the two examples I discussed with John Hagel, co-chairman of Deloitte's Center for the Edge recently.Amazon answered the question "what business are we in?" and used that answer to create value. Ask that question in your business when you're ready to challenge your assumptions and mindset. If you're in technology, telecommunications, media and automotive, you might want to do that sooner rather than later.Here's why You probably worked hard at maximizing efficiencies, yet you're still facing increased performance pressure - and not just to prove the ROI of your social media program. Hagel and his team found that there is a disconnect between productivity improvement and increased asset profitability.Are you like these companies? Do you? treat knowledge as a primary source of economic value? Therefore protect and store it have a hard time answering the question "what business am I in"? Where true value resides
Get out more! The better question is how do I insert myself in the knowledge flow? So that my knowledge doesn't depreciate quickly and I gain the benefits of learning while I'm implementing
No matter how great you think your company and team are, there are always smarter people outside its walls. If you want to take performance to new levels, you need to ask who are the 20 smartest people we should meet? does someone on the team know them?
And go spend time thinking with them. At this point in the conversation I was curious and asked John about the talent thing. Companies spend a great deal of time talking about hiring and retaining the best talent, so why is it that especially technology has such a high turn over rate? Dilbert paradoxExecutives say that talent is their number one priority. So how do you explain the popularity of Dilbert and the stultifying effect on talent and creativity it communicates? It's a matter of focus. Companies hire the best talent after attracting it and often worry about retaining it, but they rarely, if ever, do anything in the middle - to develop it.That to me sounds a lot like social media. In conversations with the president of an interactive agency recently, I asked the money question. Where is the money with social media? He was very upfront, tool and asset development. Why? Because that's the easy part. The hard - and murky - part is that in the middle. Managing the development of the programs from initiatives to insertions in knowledge flows.More bluntly, companies hire you for your superb skills, then put you on a shelf from there on. Focus on problem solvingIn discussions with communications pros, I often get the question about message control and push. When you feel tempted to ask that, gently step away from the space in front of me. Seriously, can we agree that the best way to provide value is to harness the knowledge of the whole organization?It's the leaders' job to focus it on problem solving. By the way, a good indication of an organization's culture, is the leaders' ability to delegate work - including decisions. SAP does that well. They've built communities and a network for developers and partners. This platform contains information on identity and reputation. Plus it is a mechanism for the company to create new teams and plug its own developer teams into them.Your simple checklist be helpful help people connect to the right resources become a trusted advisor
Nobody cares about your product. That's not as exciting as what developers can do with it. Next stepsThe trends at the US economy level are pretty clear. Most industries are facing diminishing returns on assets. I thought the report was a bit depressing, and I told John. Then I had to recognize with him that companies will only do something different when hair is on fire. But, as Hemingway put it, don't ever confuse motion with action. You need to work on the right things. There is a direct correlation between engaging with knowledge flows and measure of success. Focusing on real work, real performance challenges, will be a good demonstration to the rest of the organization and will allow you to identify passionate people connect them with social media to plug into knowledge sharing focus on real challenges
The best way to go about it in a fairly conservative or laggard organization is to identify the leaders who are most ambitious (for the company) and those who are suffering from the most severe performance challenges.Do you know how you create and retain value? That's where the money is.The key to sustained success in this new economic reality is to move from a transactional world to a long-term trust-based world. ___________Research:My Take on Passion© 2006-2009 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.
- Tags:
- marketing
- social media
- business
- 100 Marketing Conversations
- communications
- new media
- Deloittes Center for the Edge
December 4 2009, 4:00am | Comments »
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I posted to google.com
The Agency Side of Business: Larry Weintraub, Fanscape
I've always been fascinated by the entertainment business, and a couple of weeks ago we learned a thing or two about sound design from Diego Stocco. Larry Weintraub and I met when speaking on the same panel at Mediabistro Circus a week ago. He is the CEO and co-founder of Fanscape, a company that believes in creating a better connection between brands and consumers.Over lunch we talked about the state of marketing communications, media, and our respective projects. This is my follow up conversation with Larry about his work.How did you come to the decision to start your own company? Larry: I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was 12 years old. I started by mowing people’s lawns and painting their houses. When I was very young, I mapped out a career for myself in the music business and did that from the time I was 15 until I was 28, the latter 8 years I’d spent working for a major record company, A&M Records. When that record company’s parent company was sold, I decided it was time to strike out on my own and try running my own business. I could have gone to another record company but I knew that I’d always regret it if I didn’t try my own thing, which is why I started Fanscape. When you started Fancape 11 years ago, was your focus exploring alternatives to traditional advertising from the beginning? Were there other types of services you offer today available from the onset? What I'm trying to get at here is has there been an evolution of your work in a specific direction? Larry: Continuing from the other question you asked, when A&M Records was sold, there was a 6 month period while the transition took place. During that time, my business partner and I concentrated on coming up with an idea that hadn’t been done. We’d both spent the last 8 years helping to market bands and we realized that the old way of developing artists wasn’t being done any more, the record business was focused on chasing pop hits. The history of the record business had been to put out a record, hope it got played on the radio, and then if you were lucky, millions of people bought your album. Then when it came time to put out the next album, the record companies had to try and find the buyer again. No one had ever thought to keep track of the fans. Sure, there were mailing lists, but none of them were well maintained. We created Fanscape as a company that musicians could hire to keep track of their fans and ultimately communicate with them. Thus, this was not really an advertising-minded business, it was a database management and customer service focused business. Over the years it has evolved into what we now call social media marketing, but the same core components are intact, which is to communicate with the customer through open and honest dialogue.
There has definitely been an evolution of the services we offered. When we started we literally had people fill out address cards at concerts, then we entered them into a database, then we printed out brochures and sent them to people in the mail. Within a few months we put that whole process online. Our focus early on was e-commerce and ultimately selling a product – a t-shirt, CD, hat, etc. But after about two years we evolved into a marketing company, shed the e-commerce and subscription services and became pretty much the company we are today. The other evolution over the years has been our clientele. For the first 5 of our 11 years, we were exclusively music. We were a dominant music marketing company but as the music business lost their way, we concentrated on other areas such as film, TV, and now products/brands. You are an active participant in many social networks and have direct experience with social media. How much did your direct involvement help you feel you understand its dynamics well enough to explain them to your clients? Larry: For much of the past 5 years or so, education has been a major component of our business. I’ve had to explain to people why they needed to embrace social media; I literally had to simplify it because it was so confusing. We used to start a conversation with, “you know how your kids are on MySpace?” or “Do you ever watch videos on YouTube?” – “That’s Social Media!” The term social media has actually evolved. First we were doing New Media Marketing, then Digital Marketing, and now it is Social Media (aka Digital Word of Mouth) Marketing. It is all the same thing really – at least how we do it, connecting with people through the Internet. But most of our clients understood traditional media and the Internet was just this place they heard about but didn’t know what to do with. In the last 2 years people have really woken up to it and that education process has become a little easier. Now, however, there are a new set of challenges, specifically measurement – and how our clients often want to measure social media the same way they measure advertising and search.
From the corporate side I have not been impressed with agencies over the years. Creative that did not sell and account teams that did not understand the business have by and large been a real challenge. Social media is transforming work, the dynamics and business models. Yet, it seems that agencies have underestimated this shift. As an agency that was born around the idea of joining the conversation, does Fanscape have the opposite challenge - that of educating and enlightening clients?
Larry: Yes. I spoke to much of that in the previous question. The main thing that needs to be understood, and we’re not there yet, is that social media is not a campaign-based project. It is ongoing. It is hard to really feel the effects after just 2 or 3 months. You have to build trust, you have to prove that you are going to be there and that you aren’t just popping in to promote your product and then you’ll disappear. It's very hard for a major corporation to understand that this is a division they have to have in their company. It's merging customer service, marketing, and public relations. You can’t start a Twitter account, tweet for a few weeks, and then stop. Same with Facebook, YouTube, and on and on. But most companies run on quarterly systems and right now social media is primarily a project-oriented function and it needs to be put on the level with marketing, public relations, and customer service which never end.
Credibility and value are the currency of social media. Companies are struggling to figure this one out, especially those that are used to think in terms of their messages. You have an advantage over internal resources in companies: as an outsider, your advice may be followed. How do you work with companies to help them build better relationships with their customers?
Larry: One common thing we hear is that companies want help making their media viral. Which, as you know, is impossible. You can’t make something viral, it is or it isn’t. If you have a community of people that like what you have to say, then you’ll have an audience to start your marketing with. If you’ve built up a great report with your customers and they trust you and they know that you will give them good information then they’ll listen to what you have to say. If you want to show them a funny video, they’ll watch it. If they like it, they’ll share it. I’m a big believer that every company needs to build a community around it and its product(s). This means creating an interactive online destination, i.e. a social network or socially minded website where people can interact with you and others like them. You also need to have extensions in other communities where people congregate – Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, etc. But there should always be a consistent knowledgeable voice that can answer questions, ask questions, and inspire the audience. It’s a privilege to have customers come check you out, reward them, entertain them, engage them!
We tell each company this when we start a campaign. We let them know we need access to information and the ability to communicate with people and to allow people to communicate back – even if it’s negative. If you do this, then you will build better relationships with their customers.
What do you think is in store for agencies in the next 3-5 years? Will agencies rethink their dependency on media? Is there a new model in sight? Larry: I like what Shiv Singh at the Razorfish agency says. He basically states that there is no traditional media and social media, it’s all one. My extended thought to this is that every form of media will have a component that is social. A television commercial that you see during your favorite show is also available for viewing online. You can comment on it, share it with your friends, and maybe even re-do it through editing tools. If you are brand, you shouldn’t care. It means people are spreading your message. This is counter-intuitive to the historical advertising and the agencies that deliver that. Usually the agency creates the message and it’s a one way street. I see this social convergence of media happening quickly and agencies will just have to keep that in mind when they are creating media. I really think this is already happening and happening quickly.
What is your personal secret sauce? How do you influence your colleagues and team?
That’s an interesting question. I don’t really know. I’ve always just been a hard worker who cares about the people around him. I also believe in collaboration and that everyone should collaborate on new ideas. I like to make everyone feel like they can contribute and make a difference.
Who would be your ideal client?
A client that is excited to try new things. A client who says, please show me all the great new things that we can do to market our products. And then they let us do it!_________What questions do you have for Larry Weintraub?[Larry at Mediabistro Circus, June 2009]
- Tags:
- marketing
- social media
- agency side of business
- conversations
- Fanscape
- The Agency Side of Business
- viral marketing
- word of mouth marketing
June 10 2009, 4:00am | Comments »
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I posted to google.com
Who Will Be The Next Big Players?
http://www.180360720.no/index.php/archive/who-will-be-the-next-big-players/
Taking the suggestion from one of my previous posts, that marketing can be divided into three segments based on its abilities. (Messaging, The Collective Exchange of Ideas and Utilities) One can further claim that the skills needed to understand, conceptualize and create for these different abilities are, or will be, totally different from the skills available in the advertising industry today.
It’s like the Flash Software – back in the days, around 2000, one single person could do everything. Today, you need two, three or even four experts in order to handle the design, animation, front-end and back-end of the software. It is more than likely that moving from first to second generation social web and digital utilities will demand new roles, new skill sets and new players. Twenty years ago, the stuff and the skills we use today didn’t even exist, and there is no sign of this slowing down, rather it’s constantly speeding up.
My point is that, as agencies for a long time has had their coffin nails fitted it hasn’t been that obvious why these institutions where going out of style. But if one leans to think that the Abilities Model holds some truth, then the next expansion of the marketing landscape won’t grow from inside the agency model, but will come from somewhere else – and by that the importance of traditional messaging advertising diminishes further more. As the thought that hit me after reading Adrian Ho’s masterpiece Strategy: beyond advertising: Awesome Marketing will outperform awesome Advertising
And if all this holds true, then the really interesting question is: Who will be the next big players?
June 9 2009, 11:09am | Comments »
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I posted to google.com
Your Friends May Vary
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ConversationAgent/~3/Klw7jAr6PXc/your-friends-may-vary.html
Depending on the social network you're in, the number of friends you have may vary - and so will your mileage. Connections and collaboration, which are the currency of modern times, especially when it comes to relationships with customers, depend on your ability to thrive not just as an individual, but as part of a group or community. In other words, they depend on your friends. What is the definition of "friend" online? Does it change depending on the context? Perhaps it's different depending on the tool? You're someone I follow on Twitter, but we're not LinkedIn because we've never met. And we're definitely not connected on Facebook or MySpace, because I'm not there.Charlene Li gave a thought-provoking talk on the convergence of search and social networks a couple of weeks ago at SxSWi. She predicts that once they come together, they will make everything we do more social, without the need for special places to go. She highlighted the problem with many of the social network activities today, including the ads you find on Facebook. They all require you, the user and profile owner, to do something explicitly. You need to select, or like, or share. What would happen if the preference or selection were made explicit by your search and navigation behavior?In that case you might end up seeing information depending on who your friend(s) is(are). A little less than two years ago, in a discussion we had here, Greg Verdino observed how: anyone who starts using more than one of multiple social networks, sharing sites, etc. finds herself with multiple circles of friends, constantly updating various profiles/status posts, etc - there isn't any way for a user to bring all of their stuff/friendships/updates together in a single interface -- which can be a real pain if you're in MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Flickr, Photobucket, YouTube and delicious. With your face everywhere -- are there too many social networks? At the time I did not even include many of the big ones - MySpace, Flickr, SlideShare, Digg, Ning, YouTube and more. I did ask some questions then - July 2007 - that we're still grappling with answering today, when we have even more social networks. What about the work it takes to update all these networks? Has anyone thought about integrating? And now that we have social networks are blogs obsolete?
Given that the numbers have changed so much in the last couple of years, I wanted to provide a best guesstimate of where social networks are trending.In my mind blogs are still very important. They will actually be even more important as the number of publishers thins out. And they will evolve, they already have. Some consider blogs a form of social network or community. A while back we also asked are blogs becoming more like old media? Or are we talking about a whole different ball game altogether?There are still so many questions, and yet there are many more tools coming to a browser near you. We may be using Ning to create communities like the one spearheaded by Francois Gossieaux at Marketing 2.0, but there are other options for companies. Think open brand managed externally using a Jive [disclosure: they are a customer] or Telligent. [hat tip Bert DuMars] We do need to determine - is there value to customers?It does come back to the question of value, which is very subjective.[from the popular sitcom Friends by Warner Brothers]April 16 2009, 4:00am | Comments »
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I posted to google.com
Team Star Trek Does Earned Media
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheGistOfMarch/~3/3nb452o6o1I/team-star-trek-does-earned-media.html
Star Trek does an awesome job rewarding their fanboys, by turning a run of mill screening of Wrath of Khan in Austin, TX into a World Premiere of the New Star Trek movie.Its yet another example of JJ Abrams and Damon Lindeloff walking the talk with the fans who drive the early buzz around the excitement of their projects. It's not only good for the new Star Trek movie, but its putting money in the bank (or "earned media") for the next project. Its on brand. Its beautiful marketing strategy.Call me greedy but I would've tried to hold up more of a megaphone to this moment. Multiple cameras, fan interviews, encouraged a hashtag on Twitter, promoted a Qik.com live stream. Cut it into a pre-roll commercial and served it to a targeted group of movie goer's and Star Trek searches.Do you think the further promotion of this authentic moment takes away from it? Or if you could directly expose a couple million people to it (instead tens of thousands), does the benefit of that echo outweigh what you lose in authenticity?
April 8 2009, 1:02pm | Comments »
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I posted to google.com
Will Personal Brands be “in” in Web 3.0?
Like you, I’ve read and shared my good dose of articles, posts, and even a couple of books on personal brands. I suspect that the personal brand movement started in earnest more than 10 years ago when Tom Peters published his book Brand Called You and Fast Company magazine wrote an article based on it. My post on the 10-year anniversary of the book at The Blog Herald, built on the concept.
At the time, it was in intriguing thought, especially for those of us who worked on creating and developing brands for organizations. Those were the times when advertising and marketing budgets were still substantial, as were agency fees and media empires. Brands were invented and built up through sheer push – design the logo, have a big enough media buy, and talk it up in the press.
Peters proposed that people, too were brands. The presentation was new, but it was not an entirely new idea. On the personal front, a certain class of people and professionals have benefited from the idea of “brand” before it became the phenomenon it is today. Aristocrats, captains of industry and celebrities enjoyed instant recognition and distinction. They were known for having created a new way of doing things, or for leading a particular project. Recognition came at a cost – the marketing budgets of big ticket movies, or the empire building of industry captains.
In both cases, the exclusive image recognition was the domain of that protected class. Protected because the representation was often the product of an artificial process – building an icon or a star meant defects and true personalities were swept under the carpet or hidden from any praying eyes. If you add the political arena to this conversation, you will then understand the whys of investigative journalism, the birth of the unions, and that of the paparazzi.
We’ve always had a fascination with the behind the scenes, the unvarnished angle, the story that contributed to the façade. Fast forward to today, and you have the democratization of self-publishing and self-expression tools, which have accelerated the networked effect of this idea of personal brand.
The accelerators to this process have been many, but fundamentally we can point to a couple of shifts. The experience economy, which followed the service economy, and the break-down in what used to be the work contract. I would also add that right now we’re in the age of disruption; everything that was proven and worked in the past is brought into question. There is no job security anymore, and career is a much broader concept than any one job. It’s also not attached to any specific discipline or industry forever, especially when it comes to marketing, communications, and public relations. One could argue that customer support functions are also changing nature.
Hence the increased emphasis on personal brands. But parallel to this movement that Dan Schawbel calls Me 2.0 in his book written for Gen Y by a member of that tribe, there is another, more profound change taking place in the way we do business. Crowd-sourcing, co-creation and co-working are becoming viable alternatives to the industrial, castle building age of organizing resources and work. Here comes everybody is very much a reality, even when dormant.
More than Gen Y, those of us who are living and contributing to this change in the way we work, this new information architecture for how to organize projects to get ideas done, are Gen “Why”. With social media, the tension between serving the needs of the individual and paying off the networked nature of how things get done is somewhat reconciled.
The me-centered conversation may not go away any time soon – we are, after all, human. However, some of the best practices that are emerging today are around service to the community, sharing, and giving. You can create a powerful personal brand using social media, but careful on how you go about that. We’ve been talking about the power of conversation – as in two-way – also for more than 10 years. While there are some useful guidelines floating out there on how to build a personal brand, few welcome Me 2.0 as in Ego 2.0. I’d think about it more in terms of Us 2.0. How can we use our skills and experience to elevate not just our own status and condition, but that of those who come in contact with us?
We’re learning to build a personal brand in a Web 2.0 world. Will the idea of personal brand still be “in” in the Web 3.0 or semantic Web? Is authenticity online really authentic or is it the evolution of the mechanisms that produced stars? Are personal brands leveraging their friends and colleagues for their own benefit? Can there be a common outcome? How does community reconcile with personal brand?
These are all important questions. I've been managing my own career since the beginning - across countries and languages. I can tell you the high road is not an easy one. Balancing your needs with the needs of others and the community can make or break your credibility and reputation. I dedicate time and resources to help young professionals emerge - entrepreneurs, leaders, people with interesting projects alike. We've met some of those young talents here. Are you using your influence? Read the book, learn about the tactics and strategies Dan recommends, but consider these questions seriously. And remember that with greater power comes greater responsibility, so handle with care.
April 7 2009, 4:00am | Comments »
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I posted to google.com
Mark Goren: Let the Top Online Content Come to You
I made a fairly big decision about how I consume online content last week. While I had always used my newsreader – Google Reader is my aggregator of choice – traditionally by subscribing to the bloggers and news sites I’m interested in, I’ve decided to let more of the top content come to me.Finding “Community Identified” content First, I reorganized my folders – I have ones for “Must-Reads”, “ Tech + Tips”, “Search”, plus “Government and Healthcare” – and unsubscribed to the blogs I wasn’t really following. And, now, I’m relying more on my network to identify what I should be reading. How so? I’ve created a folder named, “Community Identified”. What’s in it?
• Delicious. I’ve subscribed to a feed that aggregates all the bookmarks identified by my entire network on this social site. (Become part of my network here.) So if you’re a part of my network, I will be updated, through RSS, every time you bookmark an item and make it available to your network. I’ve always subscribed to this feed, only now it’s the lead item in this new folder.
• Google Shared Items. Same concept as Delicious, only these are the items identified by those I’m connected to through Google. (Become part of my network here.) I get some great content through this channel, as Google makes it really easy to share articles from the reader itself. So every time you click “share”, it reaches my “Friend’s Shared Items” folder in Google Reader.
• Social Reader. As explained on their site, “Social Reader reads the public stream of shared urls/stories for the service Google Reader at FriendFeed.com, then after processing, filtres this data to bring out the popular stories.” Constantly updated, I’m always in the loop on the most frequently shared items. In fact, Social Reader shows you the number of times an item has been shared, so you always know where the most highly referred links are. While I'm not necessarily connected to anyone to gain this information, I'm allowing the wider social community to identify great reads for me.
• MicroPlaza. This is a new service I just subscribed to (hat tip to Dave Fleet). And it’s actually the one Twitter-related app I’ve been waiting for. Basically, it allows you to “discover relevant and interesting items from the people you follow on Twitter.” So, every time someone I follow posts a link to Twitter, I get to see that link in my reader – and with references from more people than just the individual I follow. So it’s not only a great way to discover content, but new people as well. (Follow me on Twitter.)
• Backtype. This is a service that helps you to track comments, yours and other friends', throughout the blogosphere. By allowing you to connect with others and see what they're commenting on, fresh posts are consistently brought to your attention. And, as has become the theme here, you're able to subscribe to a feed that sends you the comments from everyone you're connected to. As a result, you'll start to see which posts are generating a lot of comments and, from there, click through to the post at its original site to comment there yourself. (Connect with me on BackType.)
What's most interesting about this approach is that each feed brings content to your attention in a different way. Delicious and Google Shared items by friends you're directly connected to. Social Reader fills in the cracks by highlighting content from a wider group of people. Micro Plaza through Twitter updates and then validates your contact's link by showing you other people who have shared the same link. And, finally, BackType shows you where your network is inspired to comment, which helps you identify where the truly interesting conversations are.
Following your lead Now, I’m following your lead. Thanks to the seeds I’ve planted and the connections I’ve made on different networks, I’m finding great content and new people to connect with. In addition, because of some overlap between the networks, the best of the best content rises to the top, making it easy to pick the true must-reads every day.
Let me know if you’d like to demonstrate some of these ideas to you. Conversely, if you have some other networks you’d add to this list, let me know. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
- Tags:
- marketing
April 2 2009, 7:30am | Comments »
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I posted to google.com
Matthew Grant: Design Needs Marketing, But Does Marketing NEED Design?
A friend of mine, who happens to run a small design agency with his wife, feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of free WordPress themes out there quipped, "This is really the end of web design." I was reminded of my friend's realization when reading Paul Dunay's Facebook post last week. While I concurred with most of the commenters that Facebook as a platform may be too limiting for business purposes, I agreed with Paul's underlying premise that investing in costly website design and development nowadays seems more and more like a fool's errand. As Skittles' web makeover last month, and Modernista!'s last year demonstrated, the name of the game is no longer web "site," but web "presence."
As far as web design goes, I've been thinking of it more in terms of orchestration or arrangement than "design" in the traditional sense. It's no longer an issue of controlling a brand's image or policing brand standards. Instead, it's a question of monitoring, coordinating, and wading into ongoing and sometimes divergent streams of "brand activity," activity that is less and less initiated and undertaken by the brand owner and more and more by the brand consumer.
Around this time last year, design superstar Phillippe Starck made a lot of waves by declaring that "design is dead." I'm not willing to go quite that far given that "design," in the sense of "forming or decorating objects and environments to be useful, expressive, and aesthetically pleasing," seems to be a basic human behavior with us since the caveman days.
What I am willing to suggest is that, from the standpoint of marketing, graphic design (print design, web design, logo design, package design, etc.) is rapidly losing, and to a large extent has already lost, it's relevance and value. In it's place, we have the 3 Ps: Platform, Personality, and Presence. The ability to appear almost anywhere at anytime and engage people in a memorable and practical way steadily increases as the ability to project a visual identity into or onto the world dramatically recedes.
Designers need marketers because, at the end of the day, most of the work done by the former is done at the behest of the latter. The question is, given the proliferation of communication options (and I'm not just talking about channels) and the evolution of participative consumer behavior, do marketers really need designers?
- Tags:
- marketing
April 2 2009, 7:21am | Comments »
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