Leigh's Blitherings

Training Hybrid Thinkers

2011-11-26T11:18:00.003-05:00

Companies want training in all sorts of things. But what if instead of social media, digital marketing or project management training, you actually taught yourself to be a better problem solver? After all, 90% of what we all do every day would be THAT much better if we actually asked the right questions and deconstructed problems in a systematic way from various different angles.

That's why i heart this article by Co Design about the Girl Guides. My favourite part is about training hybrid thinkers...

Solving the ambiguous problems that plague our society, such as health care or access to clean water, will require working across multiple disciplines. Instilling the value of hybrid thinking--the mashing up of disparate disciplines--will ensure that we have leaders ready to tackle pressing issues.

I've always tried to build cultures of hybrid thinkers. It isn't about one school of thought, it isn't even that i think hybrid thinking is a school of thought in itself. It's about different ways of thinking and different thinkers coming together to solve complex problems.

And that's the key:

Complexity doesn't mean we have to individually get smarter, but we have to smartly bring collective experience to the problem solving Team.

Being a hybrid thinker and being open to hybrid thinking just makes it that much easier.

The University Of Me

2011-10-31T14:17:00.006-04:00

Yesterday, Fred Wilson announced Union Square's investment in a new start up Code Academy. Cee got totally pumped and joined right away. A couple hours later she had been through the beginners and was wondering what the second language was that was required to go through the intermediate stage.

A couple hrs later, she was testing out her costume for Halloween. As part of it, she ended up with a harmonica (which she had never played) and with the help of Peter and the Web, she had learned Blowing in the Wind within a couple hours.

And it's not just cee. It's an entire generation of kids hacking education in a way that we could never have imagined it. They set themselves a learning goal, go to their devices and with a bunch of patience and a whole lotta discipline, they can get up to speed on the basics within hours.

It's the 'DIY Generation' welcoming us to the biggest campus on the planet, the "University of Me"

Brand Is In The Details: Ode To Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T11:20:00.000-04:00

A commenter over at AVC this morning posted a great story from Vic Gundotra. Net net, Jobs called Vic on a Sunday with this urgent issue:

"I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I'm not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient."

Jobs was one of the greatest markers in the world. His Agency partner Lee Clow said it best:

"There isn't a single thing Apple does that isn't a message that confirms or reinforces how you feel about the company. I often tell people that the best ad we ever did was the Apple Store. We do great TV commercials, we do wonderful billboards, but you walk into an Apple store and you're now immersed in a brand that's going to change your life."

Jobs said that Apple stood for People with passion can change the world. He executed to that vision in everything the company did - from products, to packaging, to the advertising, the website, the store - the vision was the culture at the core and everything became an expression of it. Brilliant brands are in the details, and Steve Jobs was the master of all of them.

"… You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." (Stanford University June 2005)

Social Opinion Vs. Public Opinion

2011-09-17T23:56:00.000-04:00

With a Provincial election coming up, lots of people are watching social streams in order to gauge public opinion on a wide variety of subjects. But similarly to Toronto's last municipal election, what the social opinion in our various networks happens to be and what the reality of how the majority of voters may act, may not in fact, be the same thing.

It's an important to remember as we collectively utilized social data and user comments to drive everything from product development to marketing approaches, that it is only a mere 10% to 15% that like to comment within the social sphere and that they do not necessarily represent the other 90%.

Social opinion does not automagically equal public opinion - and assuming that it is, may end up being a mistake.

Change Doesn't Just Happen

2011-09-17T17:18:00.000-04:00

I sometimes let my frustrations get the better of me.

Today I made a rather offhand remark about a start-up having a lack of diversity - in their case - no women other than the office manager. It's not a revelation. They are one company of many including Google that I've noticed this with.

The comment was off subject and didn't really contribute anything to the conversation that everyone was having which is when I know that something else is bubbling with me.

Here's the thing.

Change doesn't just happen.

I know there are many in the tech world who are bored of the whole change the ratio thing. That people who do conferences don't want us counting how many women presenters there are or how few women are on the sr. executive teams of start-ups.

But change doesn't just happen.

I see the eyes rolling and i hear people when they say, we don't see gender. And, I actually believe that they don't.

But here's the thing - change doesn't just happen.

And i'm sure as some people say, there are fewer women in UX or wanting to go to a start-up environment. That may also be true.

Equally true, change doesn't just happen.

Active involvement and participation creates change. Deciding you are going to stop being annoyed and start contributing to solutions creates change. Maybe that means you should start looking at diversity across all your hires and challenge yourself to do better. Maybe you should create a program - get a intern or hire someone who wouldn't normally get the chance or have the connections to get a job in our industry.

But if we don't actively make it happen, it will never change. And i just can't stand the thought of that.

Boxed In By Google+ Circles

2011-08-17T07:54:00.005-04:00

Google+ is like a book that everyone tells you me is awesome, but I can't get seem to get passed page 5 no matter how hard I try. People keep asking me why and I've been thinking about it and I think it comes down to one simple yet fundamental matter:

The circle sort.

They make me SORT my social network. They want me to LABEL people. I have to think about the relationships I have with people, determine a hierarchy of sorts and decide what i'd like to share within that.

I tried. I swear i did. But I couldn't do it. More importantly, I didn't AND DON"T want to!

Why?

Think of someone new who followed you on Twitter and you follow back. What is your relationship? Well, nothing really. See and that's the problem I have.

ln healthy ecosystems, relationships aren't prescribed they emerge. If i put people into circles, how is that suppose to happen? All of a sudden I will be filtering my content, editing what i say to whom and conversations and relationships won't emerge over time.

I hate that idea. It's counter to every reason and every thing I love about my weak tie networks.

So I haven't done it. I'm open to changing my mind. Feel free to explain the whole circle thing to me. I'm open to the conversation but or now those damn circles just make me feel boxed in.

Game Changing Leading Edge Innovative Mobile Idea!

2011-06-23T12:18:00.002-04:00

If you want to see a game changing leading edge innovative mobile idea...

click here: X

Ad Spend Infographic

2011-06-23T08:13:00.003-04:00

I was sent this infographic which i thought was kinda interesting. It's the Ad spend for top 200 brands. I'm curious what dollars they refer to. I"ll assume paid media. Chevy high. Starbucks Low. One day someone is going to accurately get a picture of where marketing budgets are going. Now that's an infographic I'll look forward to.

I'm just going to link to it bc the length of it is insane. It can be found here ....

Advertising Spend Infographic

F-Commerce & The Implications Of Arbitrary For Brands

2011-06-22T07:47:00.006-04:00

There has been more than one large Fortune 500 company who has casually mentioned to me in passing that their commerce team is considering how to utilize Facebook for a future sign-in method for their Corporate site.

The marketing power of getting earned media messages from your owned property to influence others inside the gated walls of Facebook is something large brands can't afford to not consider.

However, when i read posts like Mathew's here and Jillian York's of the Electric Freedom Foundation here it gives me pause.

Facebook may have a "right" to take down whatever pages it wants for whatever reason it wants (and I'm sure there are a lot of people who believe that), but what are the implications of that on your business? What is the cost of a disconnected Facebook sign-in for an hour or two while they figure out if they've made a "mistake" or not?

F-commerce and Facebook Connect may seem like the best marketing idea but until Facebook comes clean as to how these "mishaps" keep happening, if i were you Corporate IT and e-Commerce departements looking towards the social commerce future, I would seriously consider the ever changing Terms of Service at Facebook and the Implications of what arbitrary could mean for your brand.

Like A Rolling Stone

2011-05-31T20:37:00.007-04:00

This drives me nuts. The owner of Rolling Stone and US Magazine Jann Wenner says that he thinks the ipad will take a generation or two before we see major behaviour change that will see an en-mass switch from print magazines to the ipad.

I'm not really sure which generations he's talking about. I mean, maybe he's referring to my 2 and half year old who just showed my forty something friend how to turn off the ipad the other day when she couldn't figure it out. But even if he is ...

It was only twelve years ago that I sat with a group of Sr. Executives at a major video retailer here in Canada. We told them they were going to potentially be out of business within the next ten to fifteen years and needed to consider their long term business strategy in the context of the work we were doing and pointed to Netflix. Guess what. They thought we were out of our tree. And then they said.....

"Who's side are you on anyhow?"

Well, last week my local blockbuster put its entire movie library for sale last week. Going out of business.

I think it's best to give Bob Dylan the last word on this one:

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you ?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

The Business Of Brand & The Challenge Of Transmedia

2011-05-28T07:25:00.005-04:00

I've been following the blurring of the line between Brands and filmmakers for a while now. l love the idea. I love what Gunther Sonnenfeld and others have to say and agree with many of the fundamental tenets as I've worked with brands my entire career to create content and narratives.

Where I stumble - particularly with brands creating (meaning leading the process, having approvals, going through legal etc.) deeper narratives with cultural impacts, is in the fact that brands often have very narrow platforms for the creation and building of value/s.

In the work that we do at Gravity, we have processes to expand brands to wider platforms in order to better operationalize them and in fact I've been using that process for over ten years. However, powerful narratives are often based on complexity. It's about characters or situations that could be morally ambiguous or are filled with the complexity of a range of our human characters both good and bad.

Brands, even great ones, will never be able to encompass that level of complexity because it ultimately goes against the principles of building great brands in the minds of customers in order to sell products. Having worked on a number of projects now that are films looking for brands or brands looking for films, the conversation inevitably goes towards approvals, control and a discussion on what are the impacts to the brand if the content goes off course from the values of what the brand stands for.

The business of storytelling and the art of it might be blurring, but they are NOT the same thing.

I fear as a brand marketer and innovation driver that many companies and agencies are going to go down wrong minded paths. It wasn't so long ago that many Agencies sold their clients large scale multimillion dollar websites for pet lovers and now they are doing the same for communities of interest (come tell YOUR story about OUR product and WIN as if that's interesting to anyone). What's next?

I believe there is a significant role that brands can play in this so called Transmedia world. I'm working on a number of projects as we speak. But it sees the role of brands often as investor, empowerer, enabler and participator vs. controller and creator. I think there is a big difference and I think we should all give a great deal more thought to how this could play itself out or we will end up not only wasting a lot of brand dollars but we will damage a market that is clearly ripe for change.

Start-up Marketing 101

2011-05-15T03:36:00.003-04:00

Having a failed start-up has been one of the greatest learning experiences I've ever had on many levels. In particular, I've learned a great deal with regards to being efficient with marketing. But as I've watched the start-up market, I've realized that it goes beyond that. It because they have no marketing budget, they have to behave differently when it comes to how they build ground-swell for the company and products. Build it and they should come, is not really a winning strategy. It all comes down to passion, connection, culture and community. So, I put together this slideshare presentation as a way of gathering my thoughts around what exactly they were doing that big brands and all of us as marketers could learn.

Start-Up School 101: Lessons For Big Brands

View more presentations from Leigh Himel

Developing Network Brands

2011-05-06T06:55:00.004-04:00

Oh beware my hyperbole. Rather than doing Yoga this morning in an attempt to help my aching back, here I am writing a blog post about branding.

Why?

I said i strongly disagreed with this post by @jinal_shah

Now strongly disagree was probably the wrong phrase. Because sure I believe a lot of the things she is saying in the post. That being said, how one constructs or approaches something is as important as the common sense that is underneath it. I would say that I think there is some wrong mindedness that is going to lead people in the wrong direction. For today, I'll just start with the first sentence (and I'll try to get to some more commentary on the weekend when i have more time).....

"Digital is a broad term and encompasses a variety of skill-sets and channels to achieve specific goals"

Well, sure i guess so. However, this is where the problem starts.

If you don't see digital as a universal language that has driven the convergence of devices, applications and standards then you won't understand that digital is everything...

People in the advertising industry talk about digital as a channel or skills. They create departments and put people in them that have words like social media in their job titles. This will lead you to integrated or convergence communications which isn't a very new idea or way of doing business at all. It's status campaign quo at this point or should be.

It will not lead anyone to understand why brand now have to have purpose - or create shared beliefs with their customers. Building a network brand and the concept of thought leadership are not interchangeable. While Brands need POVs, the concept of a networked brand is so much bigger than that one piece it again leads one down a wrong path to view them as the same.

Ok sorry, that's all i have for you this morning. The toddler is throwing his iPad in my general direction. If you want some more on network brands and how I view things have changed you can always go over to slideshare and read the two presentations i have up there - Web Circa 2000 an presentation on digital branding from 2000 and Ecosystem Marketing from 2007.

Later......

Dear Blackberry, I'm Leaving You

2011-04-30T09:06:00.006-04:00

Dear Blackberry....

We've been together since 1997. I remember when you were just a cute little pager. I never realized how much you were going to change my life. You were there when no one else was. We grew up like teenagers together. Remember, the first time I typed GTG. TTYL8R? And then the blueberry. OMG. You were so big and you talked! You always changed and grew with me. Let's face it, you were a bit of an addiction for me.

I never even looked at other smart phone options even when that gorgeous iphone was announced with all those geeks drooling over it.

I've been there all along and gave you all my love, affection, attention and support.

But then the issues started. I don't know if i can pinpoint exactly when it happened. The bickering. The discontent. Maybe you got insecure and thought i was going to look at other smartphones. Maybe you thought I wanted you to be prettier - or - change who you were inside. That wasn't true. The truth is, the reason i loved you wasn't because of fancy design - it was because you always met my needs, even when I didn't know what those needs were. You evolved and I evolved with you.

But then you got distracted. When I started to become more mobile and use browsers more, it's like you didn't care. You were mad at me or something. You let all the wireless carriers put their own dumb applications and browsers on the phone. But worse, then you started to tell me what i wanted.

"You don't want to mix your business life with your personal life"
"Photos aren't important to how you do business every day"
"You shouldn't be browsing so much, get back to work"

I kept telling you that things had changed with me. I kept seeing us grow apart and tried to talk to you about it. But the truth is, you didn't want to hear what I had to say. I talked to people at headoffice. I tweeted my frustration. I talked to my wireless carrier. I even got my friends who know both of us to try. But it's like you got stubborn and insecure and most importantly,

YOU JUST STOPPED LISTENING

So this letter is to tell you that I'm leaving you.

I'm sorry to kick you while you're down. I have at least a couple years with this new iphone 4. Maybe in that time, you can figure out what happened and change your ways and then we can talk again.

I want you to know that you were my first smartphone love and always will be. I really wish you well.

Love,

Leigh

The Rethink Rethink

2011-04-29T11:28:00.005-04:00

I found this press release about the changes at Rethink very interesting. They have laid off a significant portion of their staff. Why? In part:

Staples said Rethink has gone through a major restructuring. “We were a traditional agency in Vancouver that dabbled in digital. Now we are a national agency with offices in Toronto and Vancouver, and we are a digital agency that does traditional, so it’s been a huge change,” said Staples.

I love this acknowledgment.

I get rather frustrated listening to all the wrong minded thinking on both sides of the Traditional vs. Digital shop discussion.

If your foundation is cracked, you can't just build on a bunch of extensions. Whether you are a pure play digital shop trying to get brand or if you are a traditional agency realizing budgets are going towards digital - there has to be something more fundamental about the shift you make than your creative brief.

This HAS to be a RETHINK of your business, your process, and your entire purpose in the market place. Anything less means status quo in a business where our ability to innovate and change is at the core of our success.

Good for Rethink for making the changes they did when they opened their Toronto office and good for Staples for not fearing the changes required to innovate not only for his clients brands but for his own business. Probably a long way to go and still we will see new Agencies spring up that take even more radical approaches, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

The Robot Army Doesn't "Get" The Youth

2011-04-28T15:36:00.005-04:00

Shitharperdid released a great little video today talking about the Robot Army Vs. Young Voters.

They make the point that these pollsters rely heavily on calling land lines.

Guy 1: Landlines? You mean people unaware of the sea or sailing?
Guy 2: No. Those are land lovers.
Guy 3: Right. So...What's a landline?

It's hard to argue their logic. And it begs the question, are we in the middle of a complete revolution when it comes to assessing the pulse of citizens?

At the same time, we know that only a small majority of people are the ones actually posting. Listening can have it's own issues because the most vocal do not necessarily represent the mass majority. Case and point, if you only took your assessment of the last Toronto Mayoral election based on my Twitter feed you would have been shocked when Rob Ford won.

For the next time around i can think of a bunch of monitoring and research solutions but for now, the one thing i'm pretty sure of and can agree with our video friends with on, those polls we are seeing in traditional media channels are not representing the scary votes and opinions of Canada's Youth.

People Love Cool Sh*t

2011-04-21T13:40:00.004-04:00

One of the great things about what i do is that i get to be involved with many Social projects that involve research and listening. While i think it is probably stating the obvious, I think it's amazing how much positive sentiment can be created for Brands if they just do cool sh*t.

Maybe it's an iphone app.
Maybe you've done a customer service innovation worth talking about.
Maybe you just have something original to say or something creative we haven't thought about.

Regardless what it is, if it's cool we will care and your brand will be the receptors of our appreciation for it.

Happy Birthday Twitter

2011-03-21T10:50:00.010-04:00

Rachel our community manager at It's Time To Shout had posted a note this morning:

It really struck me. There are a lot of really annoying things about Twitter.

BUT

I don't know another technology platform that has been so fundamental in helping connect weak networks in such an incredible way. For our project It's Time To Shout, it has allowed us to connect with women, families and communities who have been dramatically impacted by Ovarian Cancer. The stories posted to our site, the emails that we get that are private thank yous for the work that we are doing. The ablity for us to bring such an important message to women out there everywhere.

Twitter has been a big part of our success. So today, Twitters Birthday, we want to say thank you thank you thank you Twitter and may you continue to grow and help us change the world for the better.

Digital Isn't Riding A Wave - It's About Sea Change

2011-03-20T08:47:00.005-04:00

I get asked to write a lot of digital strategies. My response to the query is always the same:

"Well, if you understand that digital is now everything, then I'm fine to write a digital strategy"

They always look at me funny and agree regardless and only afterwards really understand what i meant. As we go through the process, they consistently say things like:

" this isn't about digital, it's about a way of thinking across our entire business"
"your talking about completely redoing our marketing plans"
"we now have to stop looking at our marketing from a media channel perspective and start looking at it from a customer/solution perspective"
"you aren't looking at how to take our mass media brand online, your actually evolving it so it can encompass an overall brand experience!" (well ok they never say that exactly but they say they now "get" what i was talking about regarding expanding brand)

This isn't about digital. It isn't about looking at how big Agencies look at the latest wave because it's our most current obsession as this blog post talks about near the end.

It's about reinventing our businesses and our brands to respond to the deep cultural shifts that have been changing the way brands and customers interact since the advent of the commercial web.

The Agencies and startup newcos that get it ISN'T A WAVE BUT A SEA CHANGE are the ones who are going to be able to become cornerstones partners to the Brands they work with verses interchangable creative executors who judge the value of what they do by a series of shiny awards.

The Feedreader Continuum

2011-02-25T08:47:00.005-05:00

When the New York Times implied that blogging was dead, Mathew disagreed. He instead rightly pointed out that it has evolved to a continuum of publishing. In his words:

What’s really happening, as Toni Schneider of Automattic — the corporate parent of the WordPress publishing platform (see disclosure below) — noted in the NYT piece, is that what blogging represented even four or five years ago has evolved into much more of a continuum of publishing.

It was interesting because Scott asked me yesterday if i had any new blogs that I love for creative brain food. My reply to him was that I've started to use Paper.li as my content aggregator. I subscribe to many Twitter key word Paper.li's as well as a few nicely curated newspapers on subject matters that I find interesting.

The challenge of sifting through the gazillions of links, blogs and general smart user generated content is only becoming a harder daily mountain to climb and I'm always looking for newer better ways to solve that particular problem.

So would i say that the feedreader is dead? Well if we consider a feedreader as Bloglines or Google Reader then it kinda is from my perspective. But if we see feedreaders as a "continuum of aggregation" models then I say we've only just begun.

All "LIKES" Are NOT Created Equal

2011-02-18T10:06:00.009-05:00

I was speaking to a friend who has recently resigned from a well known PR firm here in Toronto. They feel that their industry is being transformed by Social Media but not necessarily in the best way. It's become a tactical world of promo driven conversations that are selling snake oil to clients who are only too willing to buy it. Ultimately, we were talking about the marketing crisis of "LIKE".

What does that mean?

You know what I'm talking about.

Build my Social Media [fill in the blank] presence.
We need conversation generation about [really anything].
We need more .... dare we say it -- "LIKES"!

I get it.

-Lots of companies are not using their own URLs anymore and instead have Facebook URLs.
-Traditional advertising is loosing its affect with some key demographics.
-Marketers are being judged by their peers as to their KLOUT score or Facebook Fans.
-The few successful Social Campaigns are consistently paraded out by everyone at the strategy meetings as what we "must do" to be successful in the coming calendar year

The list of reasons are plenty.

But see here's the problem. Let's take Faceobok as the example.

Facebook is not traditional media.

It's actually a social network.
It's my network.
In fact, it's my media.

So what does that mean for marketers?
I think it means many "important ignore at your own peril" things.

You have to understand the underlying dynamics of networks.
You have to consider why people are spending their time there in the first place.
You have to understand the difference between PAID media and EARNED media.
You have to consider that those who feel that this is their media don't want YOU to co-opt it for marketing purposes.

Buying LIKES through contests, coupons, promos is not the same as building community.

It's not the same as having passionate advocates.
It's not building engagement with your brand.
It doesn't create a shared belief system between you and your customers.

There is no smart marketer in the world who i know who would put an entire marketing plan around how to get people to join a contest or use their coupons. So people, if that's what your Facebook plan looks like, I say it's time to get a new approach.

The dynamics of this new era of social enabled networks presents a world of opportunity to become meaningful to the culture, the people and the world around you. Don't waste it on buying yourself some Facebook LIKES.

You will find very shortly that all LIKES are simply not created equal.

Social Meania - In Defense of Kenneth Cole

2011-02-05T08:25:00.004-05:00

Whenever someone uses the term #boycott I pay pretty close attention. So when I saw the #boycottkennethcole hashtag the other day I immediate wondered what was going on and clicked through.

What was I going to find? What kind of tweet could get people’s ire up so dramatically? I clicked through to see this:

Millions are in an uproar in Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at x URL

hum. Ok. A silly comment about a very serious issue….yes. Weird for the Kenneth Cole brand…yes . Inappropriate? Sure. But they posted an apology only 23 min later both on their Twitter and Facebook account and seemed genuinely regretful (As I am sure they are) about the misstep.

Having been a watcher of the tech sector for a while now, I’m used to seeing blogosphere pile ons. People get their ire up and next thing you know, it’s flame posts all over the place. It’s just that it’s usually the angry mean boy tech bloggers and honestly I have no patience with it.

Why?

As marketers we tell brands to risk being in Social Spaces. Be more current.

BE HUMAN.

Well guess what. When you are twittering every day all day long, at some point you are going to make a HUMAN mistake.

If we want an environment of experimentation to exist, we have to have compassion when a mistake is made verses being a pack of wild vicious dogs really to pounce.

Maybe it’s because we don’t have to have the poor community manager right there in front of us teary eyed and apologetic. Maybe it’s the protective cloak of technology that allows us to throw rocks from behind a wall with a group of our friends.

Maybe that is the mean of Social Media where we bring out the worst in ourselves – if it is I say, shame on us.

And Kenneth Cole ….about your apology… I for one accept it.

update: one thing i will say - smarter posts are criticizing KC for the #hashtag and trying to join the #Egypt conversation from a reach perspective. Let's hope more than not saying something stupid in future, that KC never does that again bc that is far more unforgivable

The Case For Simplicity

2011-01-20T11:18:00.003-05:00

Great comment on Quora as to why dropbox beat out its competitors by Issac Hull who co-founded a competitor product called Synchplicity.

"After I left Syncplicity, I ran into the CEO of Dropbox and asked him my burning question: "Why don't you support multi-folder synchronization?" His answer was classic Dropbox. They built multi-folder support early on and did limited beta testing with it, but they couldn't get the UI right. It confused people and created too many questions. It was too hard for the average consumer to setup. So it got shelved."

Hull suggests that no matter how loudly your users may want functionality, if it doesn't work for at least 80% of your users then it isn't worth it.

I think this is a lesson in marketing that can never be stated too often - fewer, smarter, better. Middle gray or just being good is a sure path to failure. No matter how big or small your budget is, be brilliant or be gone.

At the end of the day, it's the business case for simplicity.

That Screen Formally Known As The TV

2011-01-07T09:10:00.005-05:00

"Sure my kid watches primetime TV. Only he doesn't watch it in prime time and he doesn't watch it on his TV"

When my daughter was five, we walked by a house on garbage day with an electric typewriter on the lawn ready to be thrown to the trash. She walked right up to it with a quizzical look on her face and turned to me with one hand in mine - and simply asked - what's that mommy?

Boy did i feel old.

And I guess that's how people feel when they start to debate about if people want Internet on their TV.

TV? What's that? Oh you mean that flat panel screen on our living room wall?

Richard Bullwinkle, chief evangelist at Rovi, says that an entire generation is going to have to stop watching TV before app enabled TV's cross the chasm. It's true that most people haven't really figured out how to get the wireless in their devices to synch and up and running.

But this isn't going to be a ten year proposition.

With the ubiquity of smartphones finally becoming a reality (more kids own a cell phone than a book), the always on pervasiveness of the network will finally have people realizing that their focus should no longer be device specific - because there won't be three screen strategies over at the cellular and cable companies anymore -

There is only one strategy:

- the single screen strategy -

Meaning whatever screen i happen to be looking at in any given moment - be it my cell phone, my book reader, my ipad, or that thing formerally known as the TV screen on my living room wall.

Pardon The Disruption

2010-11-30T08:50:00.003-05:00

Sorry to interrupt your conversations.....but..........

I'm so tired of hearing about the reinvention of advertising.

I'm bored of listening to you talk about your new business model, way of thinking, and the revolutionary new stuff that you are ...going... to create - you swear - one day really really soon.

I don't care you fired half your staff and filled a room with UX designers and social media strategists.

And I don't understand why so many people seem to be missing the point about the dramatic impact technologies have had on the way we now communicate.

Stop talking about it. Stop talking about YOURSELVES. No one cares. Stop with all the mass media and PR promises and start demonstrating that you are doing something different.

Change your process. Change your product. Change your results. And the rest will come.

Ok, now back to your previously scheduled programming.

Failure 101

2010-11-16T10:15:00.006-05:00

Great quote I had to share from this article over at the99percent

The creative process for James Dyson was filled with an exceptional number of failures. His quote:

"I made 5,127 prototypes of my vacuum before I got it right. There were 5,126 failures. But I learned from each one. That's how I came up with a solution. So I don't mind failure. I've always thought that schoolchildren should be marked by the number of failures they've had. The child who tries strange things and experiences lots of failures to get there is probably more creative."

What an incredible concept. Grading kids by their number of failures. This reminds me of a recent meeting where I met with a 20 something year old about his start up. He said he wanted to meet with me because of my super successful career in marketing i just laughed.

You don't want to meet with me because of that, I told him. You want to meet with me because of my completely unsuccessful start-up. It's my failures and the decisions I wish I could change looking back you are going to learn the most from - not the things that I did right.

The lesson here?

Failure 101- it's by far one of the most important courses you'll ever take.

note: Nicole noted on FB that she loved the concept of grading kids on their creativity (note she said creativity and not failures). Couldn't agree more.

Time To Evolve The Mommy Blogger

2010-11-15T10:35:00.005-05:00

A couple people in my FB or Twitter stream have launched Blogs recently and have almost instantly become "Mommy Bloggers". They get linked to on Yummy Mommy, they get invited to speak at conferences, they get shout outs on Twitter. New Mommy Blogger! Welcome!

Got me thinking. Why aren't I considered a Mommy blogger? I blog. I'm a Mommy of two kids who I occasionally mention. But the truth is, similar to why i never bonded with the Mommy's who played in the park where I used to take Cee that was right across the street from my house, I don't really relate the a lot of the content i see on their blogs.

Some will say that there are a bunch of misconceptions about Mommy Bloggers and maybe there are and maybe I'm just contributing to them by writing this post. People will say Mommy Bloggers are lawyers, writers, engineers but all i can see from most of the blogs that self-describe as MB's is cute brand promotions, pictures of babies, puppies, healthy eating articles and of course, articles about being a Mommy. (come to think of it, this is why i don't buy women's magazines like Cosmo either).....

And there may be some great Mommy bloggers that I'm just don't know about. But i think there are huge amount of women out there who blog and are Moms discussing and speaking on a wide range of topics and issues affecting the world. I would love to have a list that I can add at the end of this post because I think it's time to evolve (at least the perception of) the Mommy Blogger so people like me (mom's who blog) can be added to the list.

:) leigh
mom. writer. worker

photocredit: Wifemomblogger

If Facebook Was Designed By A Woman.....

2010-11-11T09:00:00.005-05:00

Gotta love this post by If We Ran The World's Oonie.

A micro-action from one woman to another.

Not to shout for Ovarian Cancer (although we know we need to do that ;)
Not a note to reblog this Mom's story about her son (even though we applaud her)
Not even to join Organic Girl Giveaways (and we know all women love 'free' stuff ;)

This micro-action simply asks you to be confident in who you are. For one day.

Oonie brings up a point that has really gotten me thinking. She says:

"it occurred to me that if more women were involved in the designing of facebook, a poke might be more like what kaisha sent to me."

If more women had successful start-ups and were able to be key decision makers in the design process that shape technologies that change our world, would things like pokes be different? What else would be different? What other changes might this lead to?

I feel like now more than ever before we are finally at the precipice of that change. Initiatives like Rachel Sklar's #changetheratio are getting people talking whether or not people are uncomfortable with that conversation.

It's a subject that is close to my heart and that I've written about a number of times. We (all) need to support more women in technology and give them greater visibility with an acknowledgment that the ratio needs to change regardless of the debate of the reasons to why it's there in the first place.

So if you are woman today, I say go here right now - sign up for If We Ran The World and share the link love. Let's all be more confident in who we are and comfortable with saying what we believe, whether people like it or not.

Photo credit: my bad powerpoint inclusion of 4 designing women - from L to R - Leila Boujanan of Idee, Dina Kaplan of Blip.tv, Cindy Gallop of If We Ran The World, and Make Love Not Porn, and Caterina Fake of Hunch

1 + Co-Creation Does Not = Innovation

2010-10-18T14:33:00.006-04:00

I don't think I'm a design snob. In fact, I think there have been many brilliant co-created programs over the years. Listening to customer feedback, including customers into the design process in one form or another can yield brilliant results.

But when I read this post on Forrester I have to admit I cringed a bit. Do we really think that having contests for new logos will lead to a better end result?

We might all hate the fact that Apple could care less what their customers think (except after extreme pressure over time) but they are poised to become the largest public company in the world. If they co-created their logo or their products with their customers would the results have been the same?

Whether you buy into co-creation or not (again examples of success on both sides) if you lack vision it won't matter. And that's the problem with using GAP as the example of company that could have seen success if they had just included their customers into the process. The new logo is only a symptom of a larger issue within the company. They didn't need a better communication strategy they needed to look at their brand DNA from the inside out.

The real lesson here is that replacing innovation with co-creation will only yield middle gray results and that just isn't good enough anymore.

I heart/hate You Online

2010-10-08T09:15:00.004-04:00

It was a good week for users as they took their love and their hate to the streets.

Firstly, there was the entire GAP Brand fiasco where we saw the cynical marketing types (such as myself) mock the laughable new logo by GAP. And while some might be cynical about the twitterati, those of us who work in design take it pretty personally when we see a large Brand pay a lot of money for something that looked like it was designed as part of a student project. (I would say the only logo that comes even close to as bad was the Toronto Unlimited Logo which still sadly hasn't gone away).

But the news isn't all bad. Users (myself included) of the service Xmarks not only took the Web but took to their pocket books rather than letting the link synch service die a painful death.

It's an important lesson to remember. There is no greater motivation than our passions. If we love you or we hate you, we will shout that out to everyone we know. Tapping into that, is like tapping into either a pile of crap or a pot of gold.

And for fun, I'll leave you with the singing and ukulele playing sensation of Rocky and Balls - I heart you online.

Malcolm Gladwell Is Dead Wrong

2010-09-28T10:32:00.008-04:00

I have to say I was perplexed by Malcolm Gladwell’s article “Small Change – Why The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted.”

At the heart of it he seems to be challenging the notion that Social Networks can be a part of Social Activism.

Why?

Social Activism needs hierarchical structure vs. the networked topology of Social graphs

Social Activism is a ‘strong-tie’ phenomenon when Social Networks are based on loose or weak ties

Social Activism requires financial or personal risk when most activists (or Slacktivists) on Networks are successful because they ask very little of the participants

And yet, this argument makes so many under lying assumptions it kinda boggles the mind. Gladwell himself defines the reinvention argument that he is disagreeing with as follows:

"With Facebook and Twitter and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coordinate, and give voice to their concerns"

Why I'm sitting here perplexed is there was nothing in his article to suggest the contrary.

I don't have my Pdh. But I do have personal experience in being intimately involved in my early career with the environmental movement and helped to set an important legal precedent in Greece and in the European Union through the mobilizations and eventual legal case to stop the Acheloos River Diversion Project.

What I learned from that experience is that building a movement for change is much bigger than one communication technology or another. The strategic dynamic was much closer to how I think about network communications vs. traditional mass approaches.

How so?

We weren't about driving awareness for a single message. That wouldn't have led to action.

Rather, our approach was about creating a compelling relate-able storyline and then setting as many small fires in as many locations as possible. And then we watched to see which fires started to grow. The ones that did we threw more wood on and if the moment was right, some gasoline.

That involved local action in some cases, protests in others, Mass media of all different story types both inside and out of Greece as well as legal action on a National level. And there was more.

The question now looking back, is could Social Media have played a dramatic role in our efforts? Of course it could have. In fact, how could it have not?

If we want a more recent example, I look to the G20 protests here in Toronto. At the time I was reading an interesting debate happening between @Chanders and @AnnaTarkov about an article in the New York Times talking about Mass Media's influence over the language of Torture. It centred about a Harvard study that found newspapers had changed their wording of Waterboarding as Torture after America was accused of it. One could debate that this would then over a longer period of time, have influence over the public acceptability and definitions of torture.

I bring this tangent up because INFLUENCE is exactly what we are talking about here. With Social Activism, a core group of activist attempts to influence the wider population to some form of action. What now constitutes a valid action is at the heart of Gladwell's argument. So back to the G20.

It was interesting watching the media coverage over that period of the weekend. It started off with many small articles of police concerns, overviews of the black bloc, what Torontonains should expect, the new powers of the Police etc. When the protests got ugly, I saw a complete disconnect between what was being reported on Twitter on the ground vs. the mass media. It was pretty astounding. On the one hand, you see videos of peaceful protesters suddenly getting attacked by police for seemingly no reason, all the while the mass media was mostly reporting out of control protesters.

However, as the stories grew and the evidence of photos, videos and first person accounts from 'trusted' sources like Steve Pakin, I could actually see the media start to become more critical. They started to question police accounts and began to report the Social Media from on the street. It shifted their coverage and I would suggest then shifted the overall public perception over time (although the truth is many people still dismissed the later coverage). If this isn't what political activists hope to do, then I don't know what is?

Ok, so I get that this is hardly a rock solid research methodology and in fact, I would love it if some PhD student out there decided to start looking at the impact of Social Media on Mass Media converge and it's subsequent influence on political discourse and activism.

But to get back to the heart of the matter - to dismiss Social Media as a tool within an Activists arsenal simply based on the fact that in all cases it won't physically mobilize people ready to die for a cause....???

Well, while it might make a great New Yorker article, I think it's full of flaws and just dead wrong.

update:

lots of great commentary on his post from others

Anil Dash
Sam Ladner
The Atlantic Readers

Social Innovation & The Technology Of Change

2010-09-17T08:14:00.005-04:00

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. (Margaret Mead)

One of the reasons I have always loved digital communications has been its ability to bring groups together for social change (which includes my own passion project It's Time To Shout). The first consulting project I got after my time at the Agency, was doing the corporate giving approach for one of the largest food brands in Canada. At that time, Corporations and the technology itself wasn't ready to be embraced as a core of a strategic execution. But the times, as Bob would say, are a changin'.

Let's talk "Social Innovation". There are many definitions but I'll give you my own:

SOCIAL INNOVATION: Businesses, platforms and programs built for positive change and social good

What I love most about it is the necessary connections of people on a deeper level. It's not just about 'common interests' but rather what DRIVES me. Some believe it's happening because the development of a 'Passion Economy', others look to the advent of Emotive Networks .

What ever the reason, Social Good, Social Entrepreneurship is every where.

Case and point, a new start up called If We Ran The World. (found via Ms. Oonie)

It's a simple of enough idea on the surface. Just put your good intention into the box and press click. The site either connects you with others who are already doing something about it, lets you start your own action plan or utilize what they call "micro actions" (I haven't really figured out how that one works yet).

While that may explain the function of it, I think their Founder Cindy Gallop's words are far more important for what's really going on on a deeper level - Once you take that simple action of typing some words, you are somehow forced to question yourself almost immediately (as the site goads you to action):

"What's your responsibility?"

The notion of Social Entrepreneurship is not just about doing good - it's about being good as well as being a business and making money all the while. In the past, companies used to ask themselves how can they afford Corporate Social Responsibility, but now they are beginning to understand that they cannot afford NOT to participate in the drive for change in this world.

There are many recent examples of brands jumping on board. They seem to be finally realizing the power to move and connect people (examples here, here and here) is a fundamental dynamic of our new networked society and one that brands can no longer afford to ignore.

So, don't be scared. Maybe it's time to ask yourself the question too. If you ran the world, what WOULD you do?

My Cognitive Surplus: It's Time To Shout & The Story Of Elana Waldman

2010-09-08T11:43:00.009-04:00

The last six months has been probably one of the most life changing periods of my life.

I’ll try the abbreviated version. I saw a video on Facebook of a friend of mine’s wife, Elana Waldman. Elana was talking about the fact that she had Ovarian Cancer and the reason that no one really knew about OC is because they’re were so few survivors.

For some reason, I couldn’t get the video out of my head. It actually bothered me. So one day I woke up and had an idea. If the awareness was low because there were so few advocates, then what we should do is get all the people who are alive right now affected by OC to put their stories up in one place – a living collective and memorial to speak for all women who have and might have ovarian cancer.

Elana and Mark loved the idea and www.itstimetoshout.com was born.

But the story doesn’t end there. At the time I had suggested this concept, Cancer hadn’t really touched my life in a fundamental way. But two months into the development of the project (with a whole lotta help from all my amazing friends), my own father got a diagnosis of Pancreatic Cancer. Five months later, and about two weeks before our site actually launched my father died.

Bruce Mau has a quote, “Let Events Change You” and that is exactly what happened to me. It was a life changing, stop you in your tracks kinda life moment. A 32 year old woman who has a husband and a two year old daughter gets Ovarian Cancer and is fighting for her life. A seventy seven year old Doctor who happens to be my dad gets Pancreatic Cancer and five months later I am next to his lifeless body and saying a final good-bye.

Life my friends, is very short and can change in an instant.

My friend Lianne asked me if this got me thinking more about death and in fact, it hasn’t. What it’s gotten me thinking more about is - LIFE.

What do I want to spend the next forty years (Gd willing) doing with my time?

And that brings me to Clay Shirky’s new book Cognitive Surplus that I recently finished reading. Ok that’s certainly more weird timing. It’s a book all about our free time, what we choose to do with it and how we connect that to what we share of our lives. Not only as individuals but as a society and culture as a whole.

As he puts it,

“The cognitive surplus, newly forged from previously disconnected islands of time and talent, is just raw material. To get any value out of it, we heave to make it mean and do things. We aren’t just the source of the surplus; we are also the people designing its use, by our participation and by the things we expect of one another as we wrestle together with our new connectedness.”

I love the fact that Shirky doesn’t just skim the surfaces but makes the work readable all the same. And while I think he probably meant this as a business book, I think that anyone who is looking to use social technologies to further social change should really take a look.

As for me, I’ll take a number of lessons as we do our next phase of outreach for It’s Time To Shout. Twitter has been an incredible platform for us and it’s not just about the number of “followers” we’ve managed to connect with having only launched a few weeks ago (over 150) or our Radian 6 reach (over 550,000).

It’s about the conversations and connections between Elana and the community of people who are touched by Ovarian Cancer and what our movement can mean to all of them.

For more on our project please go to visit our site to see Elana’s Story at:
www.itstimetoshout.com

Follow us on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/itstimeoshout

Check out her video blog on Chatelaine.com
http://blog.en.chatelaine.com/category/time-to-shout/

And for Clay Shirky’s new book check it out on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Surplus-Creativity-Generosity-Connected/dp/1594202532

Dinner Is A Technology Free Zone

2010-08-30T20:42:00.003-04:00

My 14 year old daughter made a declaration the other day...

"Dinner needs to be a technology free zone"

And she's got me thinking. It's about the polarities.

Wanting to speed up and slow down at the same time.
The Mercedes Benz in the Walmart parking lot.
Always needing to be connected and therefore needing to shut off completely for a while.

I wonder if her generation will be the one's to say enough. The always on, all grow'd up with the network generation.

Maybe they will have a reaction that no one expects.

A let's take a break.
Turn off the stream.
A stop with social media conversation and just have a real one for a change.

If not always and often, at least maybe, at dinner.

We May Be Stupid, But We Are Also Your Users

2010-08-04T19:28:00.003-04:00

Mathew retweeted a comment by @jeffsonderman that I thought hit the nail on the head when it comes to the decision by Google to drop Wave:

"My lesson of Google Wave: Innovate by evolving from users' existing habits, not throwing them a whole new, weird thing"

I have to say, I tried Wave for about a day. Holy crap. Atta way to make me feel stupid. I had no idea what the hell was going on. I'm sure it was innovative but really who cares? If i can't use it because it's too complicated to figure out, what's the point?

It was a constant issue when I was working on my own start-up, Oponia. Some of our tech team would get really frustrated when I got the feedback from people using the product. The phrase, 'what are they stupid' used to come up a lot.

It's a serious lesson whether you are a start up, a big company coming out with a new product or taking a look at making relevant marketing communications.

Never over or under estimate your customer because you may think we are stupid, but at the end of the day, we are also your users (whether you like it or not).

photo credit: http://www.obey.com.pl

Social Media Fashionistas Have Discovered This Thing Called - Advertising!

2010-07-16T09:24:00.004-04:00

Ever since the Old Spice man commercial launched I've found myself extremely amused at all the hype. And let me just say, it's not because I don't find the whole campaign brilliant. It is.

But that's just it. It is a brilliant ADVERTISING campaign.

Let's try to deconstruct a possible brief:

Problem:
1. AXE is considered more innovative and progressive in the younger demographics.
2. Once someone finds a cologne they like, they rarely change unless someone buys them a new scent.
3. Just fixing our product and coming out with new progressive scents isn't enough because our problem isn't awareness, it's perception.

Target: Women who purchase new scents for their boyfriends

Objective: Reposition the brand (note I didn't say sales Scott ;)

Customer Insight: Old Space is considered cheesy, for old guys, smells like grandpa (H/T to James)

Strategy: Use the bad perception and turn it into a good thing (ala Avis Cars - we are number 2 we try harder)

Tactics: Good old TV campaign and seed the campaign in our owned social spaces (duh)

Now watch and listen. Come up with more ways to engage and be innovative. Extend it even further and use the new network to drive excitement (thus the brilliant Twitter campaign the other day).

So advertising is dead? Tv doesn't work any more? When my 14 yr old teenager walks up to me and starts saying, "I'm on a horse" i KNOW it's working.

Smart insight. Great strategy. Brilliant Execution.

The End.

P.s. I'm personally still waiting for the guest spot on a relevant TV show for the Old Spice guy
pps thx to the two Jeff's (Himel and Burton) for pointing out my blogging too quickly spelling and accuracy errors. Always appreciate the crowd source editing love

iPhone Films, Tree Art Transporation & A Diaspora

2010-07-05T08:04:00.004-04:00

An iPhone Film, Tree Art Transportation and a Diaspora....What do these things all have in common?

Kickstarter a website that helps funds creative projects.

Flip through the projects and get inspired. Maybe even fund one or two and you could end up with a profile on IMDB (I'm miscellaneous crew) like i did when i contributed to a film a couple years ago!

ps. for anyone who was following our start-up Oponia, Diaspora is exactly the same product. Start up lesson number 245, timing is everything ;)

The iPad Generation & The Reinvention Of Paid Media

2010-06-01T08:43:00.004-04:00

According to Apple, 2 million iPads were sold in less than 60 days. iPad believer or not, it's a pretty staggering statistic particularly as the iPad is more of an inbetween device.

There have been a number of people who have come out and said that they aren't convinced. Fred Wilson says he prefers his browser to apps on the iPad - but Fred also hated the notion of the Kindle and changed his mind 18 months later for the very reasons I think he is going to change his mind about apps.

And I think Interface labs missed the point when they said it's just like the old CD Rom days.

This isn't like the old CD Rom days at all. There is something much bigger going on here.

It's still about the network:
CD Roms were not networked. You had to go to a store or have them mailed to you (thank you AOL). Now I know that sounds kinda dumb but the experience of the CD Rom wasn't the problem. In fact, CD Rom experiences were pretty awesome in some cases. But they were expensive to make, hard to distribute and impossible to update on the fly.

Teaching us that free isn't always better:
If the open Web taught us to expect everything for free, the app store is helping us recalibrate to the notion that paying for something if there is value is ok again. I've spent a good $25 bucks US for my ipad including a fun $2 app that allows my 18 month year old son to finger paint on a touch screen. Watching him scared because he was afraid he was going to hurt his finger? Tell me what that is worth ;)

We are still at the early phases:
While Wired and Sport Illustrated prototypes are criticized for what they lack, we are talking pretty early days here people. Book readers are now accepted, and magazine readers will be as well.

What will this mean for marketers and advertisers?
Everyone thinks it's ONLY about community and engagement? There is a advertising revolution that is going to storm our industry. Immersive experiences - motion graphics, video. Transmedia storytelling like we have never been able to execute in our wildest dreams.

So criticize away and ignore it if you want. Or like me, GET READY. Because we are coming into a new world, an iPad generation and whether anyone likes it or not, the reinvention of paid media.

The Fatal Flaw Of Facebook

2010-05-26T11:23:00.006-04:00

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. - MacBeth

I don't understand why Facebook continues to use the old "ask for forgiveness and not for permission" approach to their privacy policies.

Mathew points to an article by Bruce Nussman that asks the question if Facebook has a cultural problem? Mathew says yes but that if they move quickly enough those mistakes don't have to be "fatal".

I'm not so sure. The issue is definitely cultural and it's one of core DNA. Zuckerberg has always been about closed and exclusive - it's been at the core of what made Facebook so successful in the first place. He has the attitude (that some call arrogant) that assumes Facebook is the boss and can do whatever it is they want without major repercussions. Can't you just hear 'em? I bet you pounds to peanuts that Mark said something like this:

"Oh come on guys. No one's going to leave FB because of this stuff except for a few zealots....besides if there is a big backlash, I'll just apologize like i did for Beacon. No harm to foul!"

But I think Mark (and Mathew) are wrong. There is harm, and as any good Shakespearean professor will tell you, that's the problem with fatal flaws - they are generally fatal. It's not one decision, but the accumulated path of a thousand smaller decisions. Just ask Rupurt Murdoch who believed that Myspace was his space. I think we can all agree now, he was wrong.

I've said it before in my "Zuckerberg Shrugged: Man vs. Ecosystem" post the network will go around obstructions. When the network IS your business model, not proactively soliciting feedback on major changes to your service, will eventually be your kiss of death.

Ecosystem Marketing Lesson #1: Open Language Builds Open Cultures

2010-05-20T11:13:00.006-04:00

Do any of these things look familiar to you?

Customers now control your brand
Social media should be owned by corporate communications and marketing
HR depts don't have the bandwidth to police social presence
All companies should have full time community managers
We need to build communities not campaigns

All pretty innocuous sounding. But look closer. There are some words that I think are part of a much bigger problem that we need to start to shift.

CONTROL
OWN
POLICE
MANAGEMENT AND BUILDING OF COMMUNITIES

Our usage of language has always been at the heart of how we cultivate culture. If we agree that marketing has to change to a more open approach, (what i talk about in my ecosystem approach to marketing), one of the easiest things you can shift is what language you use in your every day life.

Consumers can become people.
We can focus on proactively empowering positive decision making vs. policing negative actions
We should cultivate and guide communities vs. control or manage them.

The list can go on and on. It's time to start a change. Start that change with the language you use in your organization. It will be one small step for you and one larger step overtime for your new way of marketing.

(feel free to add any other phrases to the comments and i'll add them to my list :)

The iPad Will Only Be Good If [Fill In The Blank]

2010-04-07T13:29:00.004-04:00

Sean got his ipad. You cannot imagine the hooplah in our office. It will like he was the second coming and it was the holy grail. Pictures posted on Facebook. Circles of people gathering to pray to the mighty Apple Gds.

So i was surprised to read people like Fred Wilson not being particularly impressed. He said:

"Over time it may turn into a mainstream computing platform but I don't think it is there yet and I don't think Apple has the kind of hit on its hands that it had with the iPhone."

And today he had a different post on a completely separate topic that quotes a Venture friend (that is my oxymoron of the day) of his on the future of the ipads success:

"iPad’s fate depends on entrepreneurs inventing new kinds of killer apps. (remember how desktop publishing saved Mac?)"

Moments later, Sean sends me this amazing video of a 2 year olds first experience with an ipad:

So yeah I agree with Fred and his friend and probably everyone else out there on the planet. The iPad will only be good if:

- you want to use it for Kids under 5
- you want to use it for kids over 5 and under 12
- you want to sue it for over 12 and under 19
- you want to use it for a book reader
- someone develops a killer app
- you want to blog while exercising
- you want to watch movies on the plane
- you have a document to work on and don't want to drag your laptop to the coffee shop
- [Fill In The Blank]

photo credit: The lovely photo of Sean courtesy of Marcia Brady Shapiro on FB

Why Greatness Fails In Research: The Case Of Pie vs. Cake

2010-03-29T13:42:00.016-04:00

Jasmin flipped me a brilliant link today around an argument as to why pie beats cake. On first read, while not only being funny, I have to say, pie on paper seems better than cake. Why? The author presents the following research:

Pie enjoyment is more sustained over the eating experience:

Cake has uneven frosting distribution:

Flavour anatomy is better with a pie:

Pie has a role in powerpoint presentations and cake doesn't:

This list goes on and on.

At first blush it's hard, no maybe impossible to refute such a strong argument. Again, on paper. But see, that's the problem with some types of research. What they don't take into count is the things you CAN'T see. What's not on the piece of paper - what you can't see is the deeper cultural implications that drive our imperfect decisions on a daily basis.

When I was 6, did my mom make me a pie for my birthday? No. She make me a cake.

Marie Antoinette. Did she say 'let them eat pie?" I think not.

Is there a show called Pie Boss, The Ace of Pie or the great Pie bake off? No, no and no.

Pie has its place but that place is not the same space in our hearts and our minds that cake has.

All of this to say, just because the research tells you so, doesn't mean it's true. Greatness can and has failed in research and if you don't believe me, just look at the case of pie vs. cake.

Living The Artists Life

2010-03-25T11:35:00.004-04:00

When my daughter was in grade two she had a dance performance where the kids were told to dress like rag dolls.

Cee asked me to help her do the costuming. For her make-up I gave her big lashes in the forms of black painted lines of the top and bottom of her eyes. Her cheeks were cherry red circles that matched with her exaggerated fire engine red lips. To top it off we took black string and weaved it into her hair to create bangs and funky looking rag doll braids.

She looked amazing. She stood out. And as you can imagine, being in grade two, that's not always an easy thing. Her best friend Jessica was less than impressed and proceeded to laugh and make fun of Cee as sometimes kids do and encouraged the others to join in.

Cee came to me with eyes streaked with tears not understanding why everyone was laughing at her.

Here's what i told her:

To be a great artist means that people will either love you or they will hate you. But worse than that, the very worst worst thing for any artist is if people have no reaction at all and don't take any notice. You should be proud that you stand out and while it's not always easy, it means that you are an artist!

It's with that context that I read the Seth Godin Quote that Jted posted (by the by haven't had a chance to read Linchpin yet) below:

"I don’t think success is showing up, doing what you’re told and then going home and watching television… I think many people in [advertising] aren't artists, actually, but people working hard to do a job or please a client. Artists do more than that. They inflame critics and they make change and they do things that makes themselves and others uncomfortable."

It's funny because Jted said that it lit a fire to his soul, while our friend Dondy in the comments fell into the "we don't create art" camp. But I don't think we are talking about art here (in the Rembrant or Andy Warhol kinda way). I think it's about how you chose to live your life and make decisions every day.

And that's what i was trying to teach Cee. People sometimes forget to tell their kids how hard it is to be different. What struggles and stresses there can be when you chose to live your life thoughtfully (hopefully) challenging the status quo. But I don't think regardless of those challenges, that I could strive to live my life any other way.

By the way, in the end, I asked my daugther if she wanted me to take off her make up all together. In perfect and classic Cee style she looked at me with her beautiful blue rag doll eyes and said

"well not all of it, but maybe Mommy if you don't mind, maybe could we take off just the cheeks?"

Viral Video, Propagation & The Role Of Agile Marketing

2010-03-23T04:56:00.012-04:00

I wrote a post a in 2007 that has been getting more and more traffic in the past six months. Agile Marketing. Basic Premise - the speed of change and networked ecosystem has demanded that we change the way we market.

And you know, it's really bugging me because social media type people keep using the ecosystem word, but sometimes I wonder if they really get what that means.

We aren't just sitting here creating stuff in a box.

It's interactions (not conversations).
It's a system we are part of (not one we create or control).
It can't be predicted (the only means of prediction is simulation).

Gareth Kay has a most awesome post (that everyone should read right now) on a new study by Millward Brown on how less than 15% of TD ads are 'viral hits'. Gareth takes issue with the entire premise behind the study and how they have even defined viral (for the best bits make sure you read the comments where Millward responds and then so too does Gareth).

But it's not really their fault. All that they've really done is taken how traditional agencies and companies have defined viral. And should we be surprised? Most of them have used traditional media measurement models and applied them to online video.

How many people have seen my video (aka TV commercial that I put online)?
How many people have shared my video (aka turned it into free media)?

Humph. So much for the medium is the message. So much for who we are reaching vs. how many.

The truth is that if we continue to apply traditional advertising models onto mediums that have completely different dynamics we will continue to be disappointed with the results.

It means Agencies have to change but it means clients have to as well.

In the comments Gareth talks about some emerging research by Mark Earls and frankly an entire school of thought that is looking to changing behviour through action (and active media) vs. persuasion via watching (passive media).

Because if it is "less what we do and more about what people do to what we do" - shouldn't we be putting our Agile marketing beliefs to the test?

Peter had a great quote that he first used in a Tao of Internet marketing presentation in 1998 for magazines Canada (too bad we didn't have slideshare back then):

Emergent systems are those in which perfect knowledge and understanding may give us no predictive information.... the optimal means of prediction is simulation.

A big fancy way to say:

We cannot create viral videos.

We cannot predict what will propagate (why or even how).

We cannot create community.

We cannot apply mass marketing thinking and models to a networked medium.

What we can do is discover a pattern, observe the underlying dynamics, create something (a utility, a story) and put it out there - see what happens and repeat.

And until we do that, the only thing we will continue to repeat is our own mistakes.

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31608675@N00/463506749/

News Flash: Marketing Is About Doing Things

2010-03-15T13:38:00.008-04:00

A lot of people like this amazing presentation from Zeus Jones because it says that Social Media is not a communications vehicle. I like it because it says something much more important (cuz I think everything CAN be a communications vehicle).

Marketing is about DOING things for people. Not just saying things to them.

Behaviour change is about demonstration and walking the walk together - after all customer experience IS the marketing proposition.

#Btvsmb

View more presentations from Zeus Jones.

A Girls Pledge

2010-03-07T11:42:00.004-05:00

My beautiful, smart and all around wonderful 14 year old daughter came home the other day and told me a story. At the end of it, she said,

.....And then, J told me I was over emotional. OVER EMOTIONAL! I am not. Do you think I am?

My immediate reaction? Why would you be apologizing or ashamed of being emotional? Cee, I have something I want you to watch with me.

So for those of you who have not seen this TED video (it has been linked to all over the place) i say watch it. But more importantly, for those of you who have daughters, if you haven't shown it to them, I say do it NOW!

Cees and my mantra now every time we are getting emotional and starting to get those looks from the boys in our lives -

we are girls. we are emotional creatures. :)

Changing From The Inside Out

2010-03-02T09:33:00.006-05:00

Peter was telling me this morning about a Agency that was trying to make significant changes in how they work and their go to market strategy. And I've heard a bunch of these more than usual lately because of the panic about where dollars are shifting.

In some cases it's technical digital pure plays who want to become more creative and brand driven.

In some cases it's creative mass advertising agencies who want to shift towards the digital future.

What strikes me in all cases is how they go about it. A few thoughts on it.

You cannot buy change

Companies often try to buy the new vision that they have for themselves. Maybe it's a traditional agency buying a digital shop or a digital shop buying a branding shop. I can't think of one example where the 'buy' and integrate has worked to change the original company in any way, shape or form. I can however, think of many great places that ended up being destroyed by being purchased by a company that didn't understand the fundamentals as to why the company they purchased was successful in the first place.

You cannot hire change

The other strategy many companies look to, is to hire for change. I know, let's put a traditional marketing person as our Managing Director and that will change our production focused digital shop into a more integrated Agency. Or how about, we make our chief creative officer someone from a digital pure play and have all our traditional creative directors report to them? I've got one word for that. Oy.

You cannot rebrand your way to change

Changing a logo, and writing new brand values and promise will not change who you are unless you operationalize it. If you've redone your brand lately, ask yourself if anything else has changed? Have your HR policies changed? Has your new business approach changed? Have you changed your management style? Your language? Anything? Bueller? Anything?

You cannot process change

I recently had someone in my office who was telling me about a company that was trying to become more strategic vs. executional. The solution? Take a few of the strategic people, separate them out from the general organization and then have them try to re engineer the overall process and then mandate that to the rest of the group none of whom report to them. Oh dear. Recipe for disaster.

How does change happen?

Change happens from looking at your very DNA. You cannot change from the outside in. This is not a shallow exercise. It cannot be one thing. It cannot be top down. It cannot be about a colour palette. True change has to be from the inside out and has to be about actions and like i said just the other day, it has to be reflected in every decision that you make every day.

More on this later.

Anti-Social Media

2010-02-24T07:57:00.002-05:00

Dear brand X...

I've got something to say to you:

Twitter isn't going to fix your bad customer service issues.

Your nice "how can i help you message" to my @customer isn't going to make anyone believe that you really care. And it definitely isn't going to fix your fundamental company wide DNA problem.

In fact it will amplify it.

So before you go into social media spaces, make sure you really mean it. Make sure you are really ready for it. Don't run the risk of turning social media into anti-social media and making my madder than I even was before.

So my advice to you?

Fix your business problem before you pretend to try to fix my customer problem.

Best Regards,

Your customer.

Keeping Culture Alive Or Building A Living Culture

2010-02-23T10:52:00.005-05:00

@designthinkers twittered the question: can we keep a culture alive when business, processes, every day reality takes over?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. What does it take to build a great work culture? In my industry, marketing and advertising, creative culture is at the heart of what makes our products and services stand out to clients. Without a creative culture, we fail. So as my bubie used to say, how can we afford not to buy?

We build customer experiences all the time for our clients, but how much thought goes into building experiences for ourselves? From the first interview to the first day on the job...

Building brands and brand experiences starts with us.

It isn't a matter of money, or about other priorities getting in the way.

It's a matter of choices.

Every day, every moment choices.

For me that changes the question from how you keep a culture alive to instead how you need to build a living culture.

It should be how you think and it needs to become part of your DNA, not your business strategy.

Our workplaces are ecosystem and ensuring the health and sustainability of them, should be one of our first and most important priorities.

ps. slideshare presentation to come in the next two weeks - have had an idea of the ROI of building a creative culture and now i really must get to it.

photo credit: http://psixp.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/creativity.jpg

Whose Brand Are You Anyways?

2010-02-09T12:27:00.005-05:00

Thornley Fallis a Canadian PR Agency came out with a new “online communications policy" . The one line that immediately struck me as odd was "your always one of us". While that phrase disturbed me, it is hard to argue their logic. Their policy states:

"You may be active in social media on your own account. That’s good. But please remember that whether you are on your own time or company time, you’re still a member of our team. And the judgment you exercise on your own time reflects on the judgment you exercise at work. There’s only one you – at play and at work."

In fact, research would support this. Our personal and work lives are increasingly becoming completely intertwined in a way that our HR and Social Media policies (if we are progressive enough to even have those) haven't even begun to understand.

On a similar note, there has been some recent controversy around Forrester's new blog guidelines that states that analysts personal blogs on non-Forrester domains must not discuss their area of work expertise. Mathew Ingram's post over at GigaOM has some interesting ideas that suggest that research needs to be social and therefore Forrester's decree moves in the wrong direction.

What i found interesting is that so many of the commenters seemed less concerned with Mathew's social research premise and more concerned over individuals abilities to build their own personal brands. On the opposite end of that, Brandsavant blogger and Forrester client Tom Webster has a great post on why he agrees with Forrester's approach.

Thornley on the other hand doesn't want anything shut down and in fact, allows total freedom with this one little stipulation. He states that he is:

"comfortable encouraging people to post freely if they know that their actions contribute to the achievement of our objectives."

And by objectives he means the four key objectives of their company. I get it. I get that they are trying to be transparent and open. In fact, are trying to take the opposite tact of Forrester but I worry that such a broad policy could be easily taken out of context. Mark Federman wrote a very thoughtful post on this subject that I highly recommend you read (and Joseph Thornley has commented as well)

All in all, I find myself not liking any of the approaches or options laid out and yet I'm not sure I have any meaningful alternative to suggest (gotta love that).

Forrester just shut stuff down. Not liking that.

Having no restrictions seems like a recipe for disaster from a Corporate brand perspective. So don't like that.

Thornly wants me to think about my companies objectives 24/7 and as a friend of mine put it, unless they are paying me 24/7 I'm not thinking about them 24/7. So not liking that.

All that leaves me asking the question, whose brand are we anyways?

What do you think?

Calling All Slacktivists

2010-01-21T10:39:00.001-05:00

Am i an environmentalist because I toss my plastic cup into a blue bin?

Do i care about the homeless issue because I give a loonie to someone begging in downtown Toronto?

And if i click on a join button to support a cause does this actual mean anything?

Apparently, if i think it does, than i just might be a slacktivist. What's that you ask? According to our friends at Wikipedia:

"Slacktivism (sometimes slactivism) is a portmanteau formed out of the words slacker and activism. The word is considered a pejorative term that describes "feel-good" measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfaction. The acts also tend to require little personal effort from the slacktivist."

My first experience of using technology for social campaigning, was my friend Jay's efforts with Greenpeace to 'fax the feds'. And one of the reason I've always loved the Web is its accelerated ability to ignite social causes.

This slacktivism thing has gotten me worried. I'm wondering if rather than having the effect of furthering social change, it's actually doing the opposite. It's allowing people to feel like they are doing something when really, they aren't at all. I'm glad everyone is feeling good, but I'm less glad that they aren't thinking more about doing good.

So that's my thought today, think more about DOING good.

Calling all slacktivists to join me....

ps. should i start a Facebook group???

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/85853333@N00/2414018946/

Story Ecosystems (A Thought In Progress)

2010-01-07T16:27:00.009-05:00

Been struggling with the entire story telling metaphor. Partially it's because I've always seen the dynamics of online spaces mirror closer to ecosystems (being networks and all) than linear models.

Maybe there are some ways to merge the two. The truth is as marketers we do create the nucleus of stories (whether that be the creation of a brand, expanded brand, actual communications or even capitalizing on a story that exists and extending that to our brand). The key is to allow for emergence and focus not on managing that story but understanding that we are actually alongside everyone else, we are part of it.

Anyhoodle, don't know where it's going but any thoughts anyone else has would love to hear 'em. :)

The Right Way Or The Same Way?

2010-01-03T07:33:00.003-05:00

My Uncle Benny was an incredibly wise old Rabbi who had a store in the Junction neighborhood of Toronto for a gazillion years. One of his favorite sayings was,

"A cart that pulls in two directions, goes no where. But a cart that pulls in the same direction, goes further faster."

When I think of most large organizations and their marketing efforts, more so than understanding the latest buzz or Social Media phenom, the biggest issue is getting everyone moving in the same direction. Companies are usually organized by verticals often with competing goals from each other.

But customer experience is becoming the marketing proposition and that experience goes across verticals and doesn't much care about your internal issues. Our expectations as customers are that you are going to not only NOT compete with each other, but actually talk to each other and create a seamless experience for us. While it may not be perfect or the 'right' way, at least it will be moving in a consistent and collaborative direction - or as Uncle Benny would say, a cart pulling in the same direction.

And that is my advice for Marketers in 2010 (digital or otherwise). Forget about the bandwagon and think more about the cart and pulling it as a team in the same direction.

It's Your Obligation To Make It Better.....

2009-12-16T21:40:00.003-05:00

I watched Julie & Julia the other day on a flight there and back from Washington. I really enjoyed the film. Why? Because Julia Child and Julie Powell (and Nora Ephron for that matter) are originals.

It's been sitting with me every since. I can't explain except to say, that I think that it's just such a rare thing. To be an original. And if you think about this whole Web 2.0 thing, when everyone's littlest thought or latest photo can be published without efforts beyond pushing a button, it's got to somehow make you think that it's going to be harder and harder to find true originality.

Slidehshare, the blogosphere, experts on every subject that is related to the word digtial....it's so chalk a block filled with imitators, chart creators and general wanna bees. People who take other people's ideas without any reference to the original thought - and by the time the third party person four degrees away starts quoting them, it's like they've actually said it and not say, Marshall McLuhan, or some obscure sociologist that I've never heard of, who in fact actually did.

I've heard the phrase before that it's ok to copy someone, as long as you make it better. And I guess after all that's exactly what I'm trying to say. It is ok to copy someone. But, it is (especially if you aren't going to give the original creator any credit) your OBLIGATION to make it better.

So i say to you, to any of you who care to listen. Make it better.

I dare you.

Stories & Finding The Heart in Social Media

2009-12-09T10:24:00.010-05:00

I've been thinking about storytelling quite a bit lately. It seems to be the new buzz. The new positioning. The new way old companies are trying to sell what they do in a networked way.

And let's be clear. I love storytelling. I love the idea of storytelling. I love the role that storytelling plays in our culture. I believe that storytelling has an important role within the context of an overall strategy for digital marketing.

But I don't think storytelling can be the heart of a Social Media approach. Why? I found this quote from the Head of ZeusJones that I love...

The web isn’t just a communications medium, it is a medium for interacting with people. Storytelling is inherently one-way, in fact, the main use for stories in the history of humans has been to teach. Using the Web for teaching and one-way dissemination of information are a waste its talents

And he is right.

Storytelling Is Us Talking To You About Us In An Entertaining Way

It can't be any other way because that's why storytelling is:

- Stories are narratives
- Stories are used for education, preservation of culture, to instill moral values and to elicit and disseminate information and knowledge

There are times we need to tell a story. Long form video (with a great Social bent), content in the form of audio, text, photos all contribute to tell a great story. But it's still all about us. How do we become about something more? Something that maybe involves YOU?

From Stories To Memes To Movements

It's not enough to tell a story. Entertaining people online is TABLE STAKES. If you want to stay relevant you have to be more, take a stand, risk with your customers.

Igniting Movements

To create deeper meaning, we have to stop being about need states and start connecting to a deeper core.

Four Elements To Any Movement according to Paul McEnany who has been working on this framework for a while include:

CONNECTION TO YOUR PUBLIC
- Connecting to something fundamental which lies at the core belief system of customers

A DIFFERENTIATED STORY
- Take that insights and tie it back to your Brand. Connect to something deeper and make it meaningful through storytelling (see storytelling has a role)

A CULTURAL CONTEXT
- Find the shared ideal (what some call in injustice frame) that is a collection of ideas and symbols that illustrate the significance of the challenge and how you can collectively come together to alleviate it

A CHARISMATIC LEADER
- People don't follow or join Brands that don't matter. You need the credible, authentic knowledgeable leader who is believable, honest, creative and fallible

Tying those elements together are what are going to make something more than a story. More than just entertainment. But about something bigger and greater that is co-created between a brand and their customers. And that's what I think we should all be striving for.

Harry Rosen's Blog & Understanding the Dynamics of Slow Social Media

2009-11-06T09:52:00.009-05:00

Mondoville linked to an article today talking about the #FAIL of Harry Rosen's blog efforts. As part of an overall campaign urging Canadian men during these difficult economic times to have confidence, Harry Rosen started a blog. The blog had a few videos by prominent Canadians (Rob Guenette of Taxi, and Porter Airlines CEO Robert Deluce).

I had actually gone to the site myself but apparently, I was only 1 of 1000 people leading Harry Rosen's Director of Marketing Sandra Kennedy to say:

"Only about 1,000 people had visited the blog by the end of the campaign, making it an embarrassing and expensive flop."

I have to say, I don't think the tactic here is to blame. I think the bigger challenge that many marketers are going to have to face is the fact that you can't build a Social Media presence (whether that is a blog, Twitter presence or Faceook fan group) quickly enough to employ a Social strategy for a short term campaign.

I wrote a post a while back about how "Slow and Steady Wins the Marketing Race" and Mitch Joel has a post called "In Praise of Slow" that I've linked to before.

The concept is simple. Meaningful marketing isn't a sprint anymore. It's a marathon.

Both posts essentially have the same theme. There are some types of marketing that require time (like utilizing Social Media). Why?

- Because it's about getting to know each other
- Because it's about providing value over time
- Because you are not the star and I'm not your fan
- Because my participation contributes to your success
- Because Social Media is not a broadcast channel and the dynamics are different
- Because ecosystems are organic and relationships can't be created they have to emerge over time

Community is about curation and that doesn't happen over night regardless of your new campaign and a communications calendar time line.

So did Harry Rosen's blog fail? Maybe it did. But maybe it didn't have to. And while their lesson learned was "that their customers are too busy running the world to stop and read blogs" I don't buy that. The real lesson here should be in the effort required for Social and the underlying dynamics of ~~Slow~~ Social Media.

Media Spend Gets Funneled Beyond The Promise

2009-09-23T09:20:00.009-04:00

e-marketer came out with a new study "Social Media Brand Buying And Beyond" (Catchy title!) that had some really interesting stats in it. Firstly, all the clients out there concerned that they aren't moving fast enough and don't know what's going on? Well not to worry. You are in great company as many executives are feeling the same.

But the chart that I thought was the most interesting was this one that shows a huge decline in the belief that TV drives brand building has decreased by 16% (and newspapers by 17% - oh poor newspapers!).

It's interesting to me because it really depends on what one means by brand building. Is awareness building the brand? Because TV is still the best tool to build mass awareness from a purchase funnel perspective. But that mass passive media message in TV is all about a promise. What marketers and executives seem to be finally acknowledging is that a PROMISE is no longer enough. In a digitally empowered world you have not only promise but DEMONSTRATE. As Peter always said "interactive media becomes an EXPERIENCE of the brand". And ultimately that's what builds trust, deepens engagement and creates longer term value whether that be a experience be in-store, with a customer service rep, a community manager, or within digital media spaces online.

1mtweets.com

2009-09-21T07:07:00.005-04:00

In the past year, I've had a really close friend whose Mom has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. It's one of those things that until it touches you, you can't imagine the horrible impact that something like that has not only on the person who is experiencing it, but on their entire immediate and extended family. From what I've seen, it's just a terrible process of helplessness as they watch someone they've known as a wonderful intelligent and connected person starts to disappear right before their eyes and they can't do anything about it.

Today, Jordan Banks launched 1mtweets in memory of his grandparents. Trying to get 1m tweets and have those that do donate $1 to the cause.

I've always loved the Web particularly as a means of social change and now I"ll add 1m Tweets to my list of great examples. Check it out yourselves and spread the word.

Those Who Can Do And Write Books About It

2009-09-08T10:01:00.003-04:00

When I got an earlier copy of Mitch Joel's book, Six Pixels Of Separation . At the time, he told me that it really wasn't a book for 'people like me' but hoped I'd enjoy it anyway. And just to be clear, I think what he meant by 'people like me' was that with my 13 yrs or so of experience in digital marketing, I might find the book too simple perhaps. Or not insightful or filled with new ideas?

Well, Mitch knows I love to debate and challenge him on a good day so I'll do it again here. Rather than not liking the book, I loved it. Why?

It's not that the ideas were earth shattering for me. It they were, I'd be nervous to keep my job. But what i loved about the book and why i think every digital marketer should read it, is Mitch's no nonsense style that puts a lot of very complicated and sometimes hard to understand concepts into really simple terms. Similarly to how I felt after seeing Mitch speak, I find myself often using both his examples and his manner of telling stories when speaking to my clients.

On top of that, I also plan to buy the book for about five entrepreneurs I know who are all small business owners looking to market themselves online.

Net net, I highly recommend you grab a copy whether you be sophisticated digital marketer or a newbie looking to expand your marketing tool set. And it's simply a MUST READ if you have your own business and want to learn how to market yourself online.

Those who can do AND they apparently write books about it too. Congratulations Mitch!

DISCLOSURE: Even though Mitch is one of my bosses I wouldn't have bothered to write this if I didn't mean it. I just woulda not said anything and hoped he didn't notice :)

Real Mobile Web? How About A Regular Old Fake One?

2009-08-07T20:45:00.008-04:00

I just came back from the cottage which is its own little island somewhere in the middle of nowhere, six hours by car from Toronto. The weather was awful. Lots of rain. Lots of mosquitoes. But like the troopers that we are, we made the best of it. The 9month year old did great. Happy as a clam singing away in his baby chair watching the rain fall come down as if it was an episode of baby Einstein.

To make us all feel better (the non-self-entertained babies) I thought I would bake a peach pie. We had the perfect peaches. And made a special trip for some butter from the watershed. And with all that effort and expectation, I realized that I couldn't quite remember the measures for the pastry.

No problem right? The mobile web. So i pull out my trusty cell phone to do a little mobile surfing.

Now this is not as easy as it sounds. Cell phone reception is sketchy at best and email only downloads a few times a day. To get the browsing capabilities it's a careful balance of angles and acrobatics as I stand on one leg on a rock that sits just off the front of the main cabin with my hands stretched upwards to get a signal.

As you can imagine, once i get Google up on my screen, I'm pretty happy and want to get my recipe information as quickly as possible as to not lose my reception momentum. I plug what I'm looking for and what do you think I get? Well, to say the least, the worst bunch of impossible to browse on a mobile phone websites you have ever seen. Downloading links after links that seem to go in mobile circles never quite landing at a simple page with my simple pastry for my potentially mood changing pie.

Read a post today about someone wanting a 'real mobile web', but dammit, i'd just be happy with a regular old fake one.

Just in case you're wondering, I winged the pastry. It wasn't half bad and the mood improved greatly.

I'm Just Not That Into You!

2009-07-28T12:46:00.004-04:00

Do you ever get the feeling that brands get all hot and heavy setting up their community and engagement strategies only to turn around and say just a few months later, "I"m just not that into you"?

It goes something like this. Like most relationships, it all starts off wonderful and exciting. The honeymoon phase. The press release comes out. Community engagement! Supportive tools to empower our customers! @twitter customer service!

Amazing. Who knew? I sign up. I follow you. I get right into it. I start to expand our relationship and feel like we are going some where together.

But then...after a while it just seems like, you're not calling. You're not writing. No response to my emails. Waiting on hold for what seems like hours. The promises of brilliant new functionality to support my needs never happens.

What was a fabulous start to a great relationship somewhere along the line just seemed to go away. When did i stop being your priority? And after all that personalized information i gave to you? You asked for my commitment and engagement, what about you?

I've heard from a bunch of people lately that they would prefer not to get into the social media game if they aren't going to do it well.

I couldn't agree with them more. Community engagement has to be a long term and sustainable proposition. You can't just start a community and then abandon it. Turning around after a year or two and saying, "I'm just not that into you" simply isn't an option.

The Bitter Sweet Sale Of Oponia

2009-06-16T16:41:00.004-04:00

It's been a bitter sweet couple weeks for me. As some of you may or may not know, I had a start up called oponia networks. After trying to get funding for over a year, we ended up like many start ups having to shut it down. However, I always knew that what we set out to do (and technologically succeeded at) was something important.

Vanessa (our CTO) posted our original vision for oponia on her blog:

"In a nutshell, it just bugged me that every computer and every device was not actually a node on the Web. Despite the fact that personal computers in particular are more than powerful enough to act as web servers, the physical and logical topology of the Internet as deployed relegates most devices to being web clients only.

The Web 2.0 phenomenon has improved the capabilities of lowly web-clients, allowing them to contribute content as well as consume it. This is a great thing, and I don’t mean any insult by saying that by itself it just isn’t enough.

I wanted a Web that was end-to-end. Where every device could provide as well as consume web services and content. Where every shared resource had a resolvable URL.

Just because your laptop or your phone don’t have the full power and connectivity of the “great server cloud in the sky” there’s still plenty you can do with them if they’re able to join the network in an active capacity.

So that’s what we set out to do."

Today Opera came out with its own version of our oponia techology called Unite that they are calling their reinvention of the Web. Techcrunch thinks "this is a really good idea at its core."

Well, VC's in Canada didn't agree. So sadly, we were unable to ever see our vision come to life in the way we knew it could.

And ironically, it was just last week we finalized the sale of our core technology to another start-up. Hopefully they will succeed in the machine to machine device market where we were unable to in the consumer market...not only because I would like to see our supportive and loyal investors get their investment back but because I've always believed in the kick ass platform that we created.

So thanks to everyone who participated in our journey. And thanks to all the supportive messages I've gotten today about Opera. Don't know what else to say really - times like these the only thing left to do is quote The Grateful Dead.

Man, "what a long strange trip its been"

omg You're Like Such A Loser: Competition & Curating Your Community

2009-05-30T07:28:00.007-04:00

I love Tumblr. Maybe it's because I work in a creative field where visual design is so integral, but discovering the tumblr community has been a blast. To some extent, it's my own personal image/txt/video repository. A snap shot of things I have found and loved. I actually think if someone wants to get to know me without meeting me on a more emotional level, my Tumblr site is the place to go.

A few weeks ago, Tumblr introduced something they called Tumblarity. Tumblarity, simlar to popularity, is a rating system that tells you where you are in relationship to other Tumblr logs as far as how many followers you have, how many people have reblogged or liked your Tumblr posts. etc.

Ok. I get it. They want us to use it more. They want us to start getting all competitive and trying to get our Tumblr site higher up on the top 100 list. But here's my problem. Competition has nothing to do with Tumblr. In fact, I would say it's more of a sharing community.

The Yahoo pattern library (h/t to Craphammer) on community says it like this:

"When a new or existing community requires a reputation system, the designer must pay careful consideration to the degree of competitiveness the community ought to exhibit. Haphazardly introducing competitive incentives into non-competitive contexts can create problems and may cause a schism within the community."

When competition is introduced into a sharing community what you are trying to achieve may have the opposite affect. In the case of Tumblr, I've noticed people are reblogging less and I sometimes just feel like a loser when my Tumblarity goes from 100 to 10 over night. This hasn't added to my experience at all and I for my part just try to ignore it.

The lesson? Know the dynamics of the community you are curating. And create features and functionality that will support it vs. distract from it.

The Network Is My Teacher

2009-05-13T18:16:00.009-04:00

It's been fascinating watching my daughter's use of the Internet in the context of her eduction. People talk about Un-skool, homeschooling, kids being the new teachers etc.

Cee is 13. She has a really big science test she's studying for. She's being doing the traditional things. Writing flash cardy type things, rereading her notes. etc. But the other day she came downstairs all excited. She decided to look for online study guides on her various test subjects and came across this:

An American teacher who has turned the science curriculum into some catchy tunes and posted them all on Youtube. Of course Cee immediately posted this to her Facebook and next thing you know, a whole bunch of them are singing the photosynthesis song getting ready for their test.

Just one example of the future of education? Small I know. But implications over time could be so much larger. No longer being forced to learn only from your own class, you bring your entire context and the network to the learning process. Students become teachers, teachers become study groups. Mashed up, upside down, backwards and sideways. Just how every great transformation begins.

...oh and as for her test? Haven't heard yet but she's pretty sure she did really well. And yes, she said for sure that the songs helped.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/samxf42/2815897862/

Cluetrainplus 10: Thesis #95

2009-04-27T22:04:00.010-04:00

Thoughts on old school management:

- Top down management with the belief that knowledge is a tool for domination
- Belief that the system can be engineered
- That marketing efforts can be predetermined and have desirous effects
- The notion that they must negate value that can’t be directly quantified
- Belief that traditional linear levers of control can be applied to a networked ecosystem

But we know that the power of networks has changed people's behaviour. It has altered purchase paths and processes. Technology has become biology and our standard path for doing business has become less and less effective.

Traditional constructs do not change quickly or easily. Resistance is everywhere. The belief in centralized control mechanisms reigns supreme. It's at the core of our systems. It's at the centre of our belief.

Why? It's core to our DNA - our eduction, our finacial systems regardless of the fact that those very systems haven't been able to keep pace with the new networks speed of evolutionary change.

Old models need to be replaced by new ones. Networks necessitate that we change. Whether we like it or not. This is a radical cultural shift that goes to the core of our beliefs and values. It's a new world view that embraces connections big and small, weak and strong. It's a focus not on ourselves as individual businesses but understands our role within the context of the larger whole. The centre of our success is intertwined and connected to the collective.

How should we translate this? Some initial thoughts:

- Corporations will need to increasingly accept that they are part of the system and not outside of it. They are one node. Some bigger than others. But nodes nevertheless.
- As such, hierarchy as we have understood it, no longer applies and therefore neither does top down approaches
- The networked ecosystem cannot be controlled or managed and therefore strategies need to embrace the notion of "*KNOW" control (reference Mitch Joel)
- We must embrace the idea of open and understand that there are no boundaries
- We must accept that this is an ecosystem and as such, this system is alive and constantly evolving - change emerges rather than is prescribed
- We need to embrace and understands that as the system changes, we all must change

What does this mean for what we do day in and day out? Hum..not sure if I know for sure. I'm continually trying to figure it out. Some thoughts I've had and picked up from others along the way include:

-Your customers are your creative team
-Everything is a beta
-Open source your brand, products and services
-Change your processes to embrace agile planning models
-Set your content free
-Understand that there are no rules there are rather consequences for actions
-To evolve together, you need to get closer and figure out for yourself and your business, what closer means
-Figure out what you are good at and embrace your contribution in the context of the larger ecosystem
-View our success and measure ourselves not only by what we take out of the system, but what value we give
-Focus on co-operation and co-creation vs. competition

Of course you don't have to. You can continue instead with the status quo. But that's when it's not a bad time to remember Cluetrain thesis #95 which was the inspiration for this post:

We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.

________________

This blog post is an ode to "Cluetrainplus10 is a project to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the manifesto. On Tuesday April 28, 95 bloggers around the world will each write a blog post on one of the 95 theses."

photo credits:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rveldwijk/355290507/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wheatfields/2108978128/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gustavog/2493250897/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mundane_joy/2203097420/

Paraphraseitis & The Quest For An Original Thought

2009-04-12T08:16:00.006-04:00

Have you ever looked at a really fancy diagram in a blog post or slideshare presentation and thought, wow....that's really smart. Digital thought leaders using new phrases I've never seen in a context that appears to be completely original. Words like 'experience vertical design' 'cross-calibrated networked scenrios ' 'transformative media types' ...the list goes on and on.

And then did you take second look. And think...

Hold on a second...

They've just renamed stuff.

They just called marketing planning some new fandangled digital phrase.
They've just paraphrased what was formally known as a creative brief.

Hold on a second, what's going on here?

And then you realize that this isn't a new thought at all. It isn't original. It's something far more sinister.

It's what I call "paraphraseitis".

Definition...

Paraphraseitis: In the quest for an original thought and personal brand building, an expert, usually in the field of digital communications, renames something old and attempts to turn it into something new. They often then put it into diagram form, and distribute it through social media and RSS feeds thus getting notoriety through retweets and blog posts cheering their new great word/phrase discovery

What's the real issue here isn't that it bugs me (which it does) but that it actually is a detriment to what i do every day. It confuses people. It makes clients think they don't know 'what's going on with this digital stuff' when actually, they do.

It makes them think that there is some magic that they don't have powers in that only these shiny new Internet experts with their new diagrams, fancy new processes and fantabulous new phrases can explain.

Here's my personal ask. If there is already a phrase for it, let's use that. If there is a job that is close already, let's just use that word instead of making up a new one. And if it isn't an original thought? That's ok. Just reference what it really is. No one will judge you for it.

As for the quest for a real original thought? If you don't have to work hard for something, it's probably not worth having.

The Community Is The Service

2009-04-07T10:40:00.002-04:00

I used to love friendfeed. Essentially friendfeed is what I thought of one of the first 'lifestreaming' services. In their words they call their service one that

"enables you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends."

For a while there, friendfeed was a daily habit. Really it was becoming more of an obsession than anything else. I had discovered lots of interesting new people. My own network was starting to use it. And, the discussions there seemed to be more thoughtful and provoking than ones i had seen other places.

Until...

Something weird changed. I don't know if it was the type of community that landed there. But, firstly, people went from really interesting to the banal. And I"m not talking Twitter banal. I'm talking whole conversations on people saying, good morning. Hello. Hi. How are you. On and on it went.

The other thing was that I found, no one on friendfeed was ever commenting on my links or blogposts. Maybe i'm just boring. I can accept that. However, in my other communities, like Twitter and Facebook, I consistently get feedback, comments and have interactions that enrich the experience.

Friendfeed just seemed to get really cliquey. There actually seemed to me to be a cool crowd and the rest of us just weren't invited. There was very little reaching out. Very little interaction outside of a core group. And over time, I just got plain bored. I checked in with a few friends and they all seemed to have a similar experience as i did.

I still go from time to time. Check out to see if anythings changed. But it hasn't.

Mike Arrington over at Techcrunch thinks the service might be too complicated and that's what's limiting its growth.

I don't think that's what the problem is. To me it's the community that makes the service not the other way around. And it's the community that's the problem with friendfeed. And no feature set is going to be able to fix that. Coolest app or not.

Ode To Ada Lovelace Day: A Shout Out To My Two Favorite King Penguins

2009-03-24T21:17:00.007-04:00

It's Ada Lovelace Day, a day to celebrate women in technology. And to mark the day I wanted to give a shout out to two women in technology i know in particular.

Someone once wrote to me that they thought having a woman as a CTO was like seeing a King Penguin in the Arctic - very rare and very cool.

I have had the rare pleasure to work with two such women. Vanessa Williams and Tisha Kanfi.

Vanessa was the tech director at MacLaren Interactive in its hayday and is the CTO and co-founder of our start-up oponia networks.

Tisha Kanfi is the technical director of Twist Image and as the important role to ensure that our creative minds will never be hampered and instead, enabled by technology.

And oddly, today of all days the two of them got to meet. I would have liked to have been a fly on that particular wall.

Happy Ada Lovelace day. And if you have the time, do flip through my postings tagged women as many of them are about women in technology... :)

Social Influence & The Future Of Marketing

2009-03-15T13:03:00.007-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

In my post, "My Network Is My Search Engine" I focused on the important of social networks in terms of content filtering. But the truth is, that with the fast paced proliferation of social networks, it's only a matter of time before our networks are completely ubiquitous.

What happens if social networks become "like air?". What changes will happen to our world if they are integrated into every service...search, e-commerce, blogs etc. etc. While it's still in it's early phase, semantic services are leading the way to create this social level on top of everything...and services like Facebook or Google friend connect are attempting to link our networks to the very fabric of the way we utilize and experience the commercial Web.

What will this mean for marketers? We know that clients recognize that word of mouth is important but they often still view the world in terms of mass viral vs. influence. At SXSW Charlene Li showed mock-ups that had 'Amazon in the future' where you could filter recommendations based on your personal network vs. the general public. And many people have been looking at spheres of influence (individuals, close ties, weak ties, friends of friends) and how they might change the way we use the Web for a while now.

But maybe it's time we stopped just imagining that this is some far off future. I mean how far off do we really think this is? 1 year? 2? 3 at the very most and that means companies that want to leverage this as a competitive opportunity need to consider how they are approaching social ecosystem strategies today.

If social networks become part of everything tomorrow, how would what you do every day change? I've already have a whole bunch of ideas and frameworks in my head including of extensions of my Green Man Marketing presentation. Now the hard job. Applying and refining them.

We may not know for sure what the future will look like, but one thing I'm sure of, social influence will be a cornerstone for the future of marketing.

Personal Branding & The Art Of Engagement

2009-03-05T07:45:00.003-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

In these tough times, a lot of people are getting laid off. Even in digital, I'm hearing of more and more people who are moving around.

Just the other day, I got a linkedin invite from someone who had been a digital strategist who was looking to connect. I won't name names because it's not that important but it struck me that the strategies we build for brands online are ones we tend to ignore for our own personal brands.

I mean, I didn't personally know this guy/gal. And yet, s/he wanted to go straight from nothing to personal connection.

And you gotta wonder, if this is how they approach personal branding, how will they be as a digital strategist? Well the truth is, they might be a brilliant but I'll never find out because I'm not likely to be interested in them now.

There are probably a lot of people out there now looking to connect and network for current or future employment opportunities. So here are some suggestions on how to go about networking in the online space....

1. Start following the people who you want to network with
Pretty much we all want to know who is following us so if you follow me, i'll likely go to your link/twitter/tumblr account and see who you are. It drives awareness so if nothing else, your name will be somewhat familiar to me.

2. Start a blog
Now I know what a lot of you are thinking. Blogs are sooooo 2005. But the truth is, i've hired or contacted people for jobs just based on their blog content. You can tell a lot about a person by the blog. It drives familiarity.

3. Link to things I say that you think are smart (well ok, if you think anything I say is smart)
Bloggers are notoriously sycophantic and will almost always check on who is linking to them. More importantly however, if you start to talk about something I'm saying, it gives me an idea of what you think is important and how you think. I might even make the first move and comment on your blog especially if you are being provocative. And thus we have our first moment of engagement. And even better for you, if i make the first move.

4. Work on on-going participation
Now I know who you are. I'm getting an idea of how you think. You follow my blog and likely I probably follow yours too. Maybe you comment from time to time. Maybe you reply to something I"ve said on Twitter. We are definately on the road to getting to know each other.

5. Engagement
At some point one of us might make a move to be more officially and personally connected. And that would be the time to invite me to linkedin. I have a general rule that I don't accept friend or linkedin requests from strangers. But you're not a really a stranger anymore.

Any more suggestions? Feel free to plop them in the comments. Come on, don't be shy. Make the first move. Let's get to know each other better ;-)

Building Community From The 'Outside In'

2009-02-14T10:19:00.010-05:00

In the new connected digital age, corporations are looking to employ social tools to their business.

Go no further I say, then to see how start-ups are redefining the relationship between brands and their customers/users.

Meet the community manager. What used to be a not so important role within an organization, for start-ups it's often a hire that happens even before the chief marketing officer.

Why?

Everyone says word of mouth is key. But traditional thinking has you giving your agency a schwack of dough in order to create a fabulous WOM or dare i say it, VIRAL campaign. But that's only about brand awareness and maybe if done right, perception. However, influence and engagement are about much more. How do users of your products/services become advocates?

For start-ups with little or no advertising budgets, community isn't a nice to have, it's everything. And they're aggressive about it. That means not waiting and hoping that their community finds them, it means going out and finding their community in what I'll call an 'Outside In" approach.

What do I mean?

Well if you're a user of twitter do this test. If you are annoyed with the way a product or service works, twitter it and be sure to mention the company. Chances are the most response back you are going is from your followers agreeing or disagreeing with your point.

However, if you happen to be using a new start up product and mention something about them, chances are you will not only hear back from their community manager (e.g. Here Leigh try this link...or great suggestion Leigh I'll forward that to the team) but they will likely start following you as well.

I didn't need to find them. I didn't need to search for a phone number to a real person on the website. I didn't need to be on hold at a call centre costing both the company and me valuable time and money.

Instead they found me. And they find me every where they can. My blog. Twitter. FriendFeed. Wherever I am, they are right beside me.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking that's fine for start-ups but there's no way a large corporation can do that....Well think again. Dell has been doing it for a while now and according to various articles, they've seen positive ROI on a consistent basis.

The trick of course is to get beyond those smaller interchanges to fostering and empowering that community into something larger.

Outside In. I think it's the wave of the future.

My Network Is My Search Engine

2009-02-09T12:54:00.003-05:00

We are always looking for the next big thing in search. I myself have written a number of posts on the subject (socially connected search, tagging search system).

Something I've noticed lately however, is that more and more my network is actually becoming my search engine. I don't have time to go through my 350 feeds every day and let's face it...on a good day maybe only about 20% of the newest posts are really all that interesting. So what's a girl to do?

Use the network at the filter of course. How?

Well firstly there is delicious. For the most part I only bookmark stuff that I think is really great or something I can use later. As well, there are a few people's feeds that I follow on a regular basis as people who find stuff that I might find interesting.

There is Google Reader. I regularly go to Mathew's Google reader and let him spend the time to sift through his gazillion feeds to find the stuff that is the most interesting. I mean after all, it's part of his job so he can spend the time at work to do it when i can't.

Friendfeed can work - particularly the feature that allows the most talked about links to come up to the top of the list.

Twitter and Facebook both are becoming filters where my network are kind enough to only tweet and link to the most interesting content. And Twitter in particular has become a place where I can ask a question and in no time flat have my questions answered in the form of links, referrals and juicy bits of insight.

I can't think of any others of the top of my head, but I'm sure I'm missing a whole bunch of other services as well.

In our time starved world, where digital overload is starting to fry our brains, we need to remember that we can also use our network for good and let it become our own personal search engine.

If The Medium Is The Message, What Is Toddlers & Tiaras Trying To Say?

2009-02-04T11:35:00.006-05:00

I read an article in the Globe & Mail this morning about a St. Catherine's student who has started a facebook group to get the TLC show Toddlers & Tiaras removed. The basic premise of the show is following a group of small children go through their ups and downs of participating in kid pageants.

Having watched the show for context, I also found it offensive on a number of different levels the least of which is seeing a 4 year old in high heels, full make up a bikini shimming her stuff on stage. But TV being TV, my attitude has always been that I can just turn it off. If I don't like it, I won't watch it. I'm not big on censorship unless it constitutes hate which i don't believe is the case here.

But this is where the medium IMO plays a role. TV is a passive medium. I'm watching something that is edited, scripted and in general controlled. But what happens when that show has a website. And worse what happens when that website actually asks the audience - that's you and me - to participate ACTIVELY in judging these children.

Well that is exactly what is happening over at TLC's website. They have functionality where you and I can actually view and vote. In their words:

"You be the judge. Rate these pageant contestants"

Here's the problem. These aren't just any pageant contestants. These are children. Regardless of what I might think of the entire pageant industry, I don't think it's the same as you and I rating these children. And look at this photo...

Not one of these kids has made it past 5 out of 10. If the medium is the message, what do we think that the Toddlers & Tiara's website is trying to say?

Whether I like the show again, is besides the point. I don't believe in censorship but i think functionality like this goes way to far. These aren't adults who have consciously decided to be on American Idol. These are children.

What do you think?

Reinvention Is The New Black (AKA Reinvent Or Die)

2009-02-01T07:42:00.009-05:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

These days, it seems that Brands have been going from success stories to practically irrelevant over night. Given the speed of change, businesses can no longer rest on their laurels or assume that was is relevant in today's economy will have any meaning two years from now.

But large companies are rarely prepared to reinvent themselves. When they start to see signs of decline, they tend to follow a pattern of hiding from reality and seeking change in small increments. A strategy that while often helps everyone keep their jobs in the short term, usually means a potential business crushing crisis down the road.

We've seen this with the big 3 automotive companies. And even now, most of the discussion is around improving what they already do. Hybrid cars. Wages in line with competitors. Better design. It isn't about what companies like General Motors could be in the future given their distribution centres, manufacturing prowess, and communications networks.

I saw a documentary a while ago on the design house Hermes. At one time Hermes made saddles. You can imagine, this was a big of a problem when the automobile was introduced. Sure Hermes could have focused on better saddles or trying to stop technology in its tracks (ala today's music industry) but instead what they did was shift their entire company. Take their brand which was known for meticulous hand made quality and start making exclusive leather bags. From potential bankruptcy to brilliance.

This morning @ianlyons linked to an article that talked about when Twitter was conceived after the Odeo team determined there was too much competition in their space.

There are a number of companies I would love to see take a new viewpoint on what they do and reinvent themselves.

RIM comes to mind as a company that could crush their competition not by just coming out with parody products like the Storm but by taking the core of what they are successful at and applying that to new products and services beyond the handset.

What companies would you like to see reinvent themselves? What companies/industries do you think are on the brink of irrelevance if they don't take the road of radical change?

Why Digital Marketing Is Like Trying To Lose 10lbs.....

2009-01-24T08:40:00.009-05:00

Over a year ago my brother David asked me to help him with some marketing. He's been in the vintage clothing business a long time and could see that with the market changes and the high Canadian dollar he was going to have to reinvent himself. He wasn't sure what direction he wanted to take his business in but he knew that for any venture he was going to consider, be it his own clothing company, a consultant in the vintage business, that building his personal brand was going to be key.

That's when he started his blog, "The Art of Vintage Leather Jackets". The blog focuses on the historical and cultural role of vintage leather. It's a pretty interesting blog and Dave always has unique and original takes on stuff.

This morning, I wanted to find read his latest post and went to Google and typed in "vintage leather jackets". And guess what? Dave's blog is now third in the Google search results. THIRD! I mean, how amazing is that? And what's even more amazing is the fact that there are all these companies who are not Dave, that presumably have more resources in people and money than him, ADVERTISING based on the key words 'VINTAGE LEATHER JACKETS'.

This leads me to the very simple question, why the hell aren't all of those companies blogging? I mean, it's free. It's not like it's a full time job although there is some effort involved. And that's when it struck me.

Things like blogging are a discipline. You can't just sluff it off to your ad agency (not if you want it to be successful). It's not a money thing, it's a time and effort thing. It's a determination thing. It's a focus thing.

That goes for community building, engagement, connection - you name it, digital marketing is often about effort.

That's why I think it's like losing 10lbs. It should be the easiest thing in the world to do. Eat less (Nicole tells me 1500 calories a day) and exercise more. That's it. But wouldn't you rather just buy a little blue "lose 10lbs" pill?

Sure you would.

Just as you probably prefer to buy a little blue "traditional advertising" pill for community engagement.

Only one problem with the little blue pills. They never work.

Just remember this, if Dave can do it, so can you. Ok, gotta go. I've got 10lbs of post baby birth weight to lose. ;-)

Photos credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/

Variations On The Word Change

2009-01-21T20:20:00.009-05:00

HP did a great commercial a few years back that had every moment in the world shown as a digital photograph. I thought it was brilliant because it captured how my daughter uses her camera perfectly. When Cee has her camera in her hand, her memories are extended into the digital space frame by frame. Her childhood point of view as a part of a memory stream captured in screen after screen.

And now more than ever, those memory streams are becoming part of a greater collective.

It struck me as I was watching both the inauguration ceremony with my children (one of whom feel asleep in my arms as Obama was being sworn in), on the TV and through CNN/Facebook as well as Twitter and the many services that were used to connect the disparate points on the Globe, that we were not only witnesses to an important moment in history but somehow differently than I have ever experienced, actually part of it. No longer just the observers but also living historians as participants that will significantly contribute to how these type of events will be remembered hundreds of years from now.

Whenever I think that the networked world I live in can't surprise me anymore...that I am immune to all the change, something comes along and knocks me on my ass in a way that makes me reevaluate everything. Yesterday, was one of those days. And i loved it.

Good Blogs Make Fart Noises

2009-01-17T12:19:00.002-05:00

I have nothing really to say in this post - but I needed something to stop my prediction series because I've run out of ideas - and i liked the idea of a blog header that said something about farts (must be the new baby in the house - we are all about poos and farts)....

Quote of the Day:

"Good blogs are weird. Blogs make fart noises and occasionally vex readers with the degree to which the blogger’s obsession will inevitably diverge from the reader’s. If this isn’t happening every few weeks, the blogger is either bored, half-assing, or taking new medication."

- Merlin Mann

Prediction For 2009 #5: The New Networked Home

2009-01-11T20:26:00.005-05:00

My friend Dave Chant is a major geek. Peter always calls him 'King of the Kids'. Daves just one of those guys - Mr. ahead of the curve and for no other reason then he loves figuring out how to do things better, faster, smarter. Dave's home has always been networked. I remember when the Xbox came out, Dave was the first in line to figure out how to use it with his TV, Computer, Stereo system yada yada.

But it isn't just the Dave's of the world that are doing this now. In my own home, we most recently got ourselves a Mac Mini and hooked it up in the living room. We haven't quite figured out yet how to get all the computers networked the same way Dave does but we'll get around to it.

What amazes me the most about it is how it's changed our media habits. We are just as likely to watch videos and TV content through the computer now as we are from the Cable or the DVD player. And i have to tell you, every time I get a new 'we've raised your rates again for no good reason' letters from Rogers Cable, it makes me that much more committed to networking my home and completely cutting them out of my content watching loop.

It's just a simple change but the implications could be profound - Not only will it change how we consume media content, but also influence what we are willing to pay for and spawn the proliferation of new services we will be looking for.

2009. The year of the new networked home.

update: A couple good links that are related to what I said above just out today

TV.com content site

And an article on Boxee "Web TV That Makes Sense" (for anyone that didn't read it I also talked about Boxee in my first prediction for 2009, "The Rise Of The Presentation Layer"

Prediction For 2009 #4: Mobile Takes Bigger Role In Customer Experience

2008-12-31T15:14:00.005-05:00

There's been a lot of talk in the past few years about the rise of the mobile device as an advertising vehicle. I've never bought that. Not in the traditional mass marketing sense. My mobile phone is too personal to me. I don't want push messages on there as I wouldn't have wanted them on my computer.

We all know the iphone has revolutionized the way we are starting to use our cell phones. Surfing the Web on mobile devices, Google searches, mobile apps, social mobile. And it will start to push mobile to the forefront of marketing discussions and will start to take some budgetary priority.

One of the biggest areas where we are going to start to see this practically emerge is the role of mobile in the overall customer experience. From marketing to customer service, we need to start working with clients to examine the customer experience life cycle and map where we can fulfill unmet customer needs through the mobile device. How can brands connect you with other shoppers through mobile? How can they create value added marketing experiences in retail (i.e. extend product knowledge on the retail floor?) How can they extend the actual product experience through needs based functionality?

Many clients were only starting to touch on these questions last year and hopefully we will start to see an explosion of examples where mobile starts to take a bigger and potentially even leading role in customer experience.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nobihaya/

Prediction For 2009 #3: Explosion Of Online Retailing

2008-12-27T10:19:00.005-05:00

Well I was going to save this one for later, but Fred Wilson had a similar post this morning over at AVC.

While online retailing has been growing on a consistent basis what's starting to happen is that the world is dividing up into two camps. Those that get how to leverage the online channel to grow their businesses and those that don't. Those that get it, are going to tap into new markets to make up for the decline in overall retail sales.

Case and point? Ron White Shoes. A friend of mine who is not a particularly web savvy person was raving to me a while ago about ronwhite.ca. Now, I"ve never shopped at Ron White in the offline world said a few drive bys when I was at Sherway Gardens. However, Lianne told me she only shops there online now as it's the worlds easiest expedience. I thought, I need winter boots for my daughter, I hadn't made it out to shop because I had been so busy, why not give it a try?

Went to the site, ordered a pair of boots and voila! Within a week they arrived in a lovely gift wrapped box with a discount coupon for our next online shopping venture. Cee tried on the boots and it was a perfect fit, however, if they didn't fit, return policy? Bring back or send back to any Ron White store and bobs your uncle. No fuss, no muss. Ron White? New happy customer and I think I will never buy boots offline again!

While the keys to success for me are simple - the ease of shopping, the no risk return policy, the free shipping, the sexy packaging, the future discounts - many traditional retailers aren't getting this. They suffer offline and on top of that are missing a huge opportunity online.

This isn't about social networking or fancy marketing - it's just plain, simple, smart online design and overall attention to customer experience.

IMO, while setting up such experie3nces might put a retailer back some at first, it's just the wisest investment they could make for 2009. Talk about ROI.

Prediction For 2009 #2: Rise Of The Experiential Class

2008-12-23T09:12:00.008-05:00

Last year I wrote a post "Have We Crossed The Chasm" that questioned whether or not we need to start redefining the 'early adopter'. With the speed of change and introduction of new digital services on almost a daily basis, capturing the first and often passionate users is crucial to your businesses success.

In a US today article from 2005 that studied the make up of the early adopter across the Globe Geoffrey Moore, the author who popularized the notion described them as a psycho-demographic:

"When offered a new tech device, this kind of consumer says, "Great, let me at it," Moore says. "They like to totally engage with the novelty of the device. They're the only ones who really care about how the thing works and the properties of the new object." This group includes the "boys with toys" types who buy almost anything new, no matter what.

Back in the day, these were mostly the tech geeks but that has all changed. We now have new segments of individuals all who are clammering to test, try and play with the newest gadget and/or service.

From what I"m seeing, there are some new classes of early adopter that are as if not, more important than the traditional early adopter tech geek of Moore's theory. Who are they? I'm calling them THE EXPERIENTIAL CLASS.

Years ago I conducted a future looking research study on the digital customer. One of the most interesting insights was the cultural shift in how this new generation learns. This new way of thinking is at the core, experiential, and IMO a foundation for this new experiential class. Think of it like this:

Pre Web:
Read, Write, Remember

Early Web:
Look, Link, Think, Try Again

Web 1.0:
Look, Link, Think, Experience, Try Again

Web 2.0:
Look, Link, Think, Experience, Participate, Try Again

See what I mean?

This group doesn't worry about failure the same way we did. They don't read manuals to find the right way to do something. Have a hive mentality and often will ping that hive with their latest finds and develop new learnings over time through collaboration with their network. They have little or no fear to jump in and try new things and most importantly, they don't have to be tech savvy to do it.

Understanding how to reach, communicate and interact with this new class may be one of the most important trends for those marketing new products and/or services in the coming year/s.

Prediction For 2009 #1: The Rise Of The Presentation Layer

2008-12-21T08:43:00.004-05:00

Blake Ross of Firefox fame once said, the next big thing is whatever made the last big thing more usable. I've always loved this quote and I think it's going to become even more important in 2009.

Innovation comes in many forms. Sometimes it's about creating an entirely new way of doing something but more and more, it's about creating new and innovative ways of experiencing something differently that is already there.

One of my favorite examples of this is Coolaris. What is it? According to their site, Coolaris:

"Transforms your browser into a lightning fast, cinematic way to discover the Web"

In practical terms it means anytime I view images on the web I can click on the that image and have an entirely new experience viewed through the Coolaris interface.

While this may seem trivial, what's been happening is that I mostly view my Google images searches through the lens of Coolaris. Why? Because I can browse the images much much faster and the visual experience is far more rich. What this means is that I no longer have my relationship with my search content with Google - their engine has become just that - an engine for where my real experience is happening - in the presentation layer with Coolaris. And due to this, Coolaris now has the opportunity to create an entirely new business as they are the ones controlling the interface I'm interacting with.

Coolaris isn't the only example. From products like Perceptive Pixel which I talked about here and that CNN used during the elections, or newer products like Boxee that present your multimedia content in a new way, it's how we experience content that presents the opportunity.

And as we are looking for richer experiences online, it will be businesses and brands that capitalize on that who could become the next big thing.

Influence Is Earned

2008-12-16T10:44:00.001-05:00

Media & Influence
Originally uploaded by Leigh Himel Photos

Mitch has a good post this morning on the entire sponsored blog debate. He makes three excellent points:

1. Real interactions between real people
2. Trust is non-transferable
3. You can't buy trust

I believe where a lot of the debate stems from is that fact that we aren't really sure how to view blogs as part of the media landscape.

With regards to 'social media' platforms, as marketers we set objectives like moving opinion. But what happens to the model when we aren't "influencing influencers" with our brilliant product, service, and/or marketing idea and instead, we are actually trying to just buy them? If money can't buy you trust, that leads to the question, what CAN money buy you, if anything?

IMO, money can buy you awareness. And maybe that's what's happening here. As mass media options continue to be disintermediated, marketers are trying to find new ways to get their messages out. Buying media remains one of the easiest ways to get that message out. In digital, this often means banner ads...and now within the blogosphere, it also can mean 'paid posts' with the 'transparency disclaimers'.

As a marketer however, you have to be sure that what you are trying to do is get awareness of your message and not gain influence on your product and/or service - because influence implies that you have somehow earned that recommendation or blog post. As the reader the blog post in question, I now perceive that piece of content differently and therefore how you are impacting my purchase decision is equally changed.

Ultimately, there is likely some influence on every level of the tactics that you choose to employ but if it's influence you want and not just awareness, that simply cannot be bought.

To paraphrase Mitch, money can't buy you trust.

Socially Connected Search

2008-12-11T10:17:00.004-05:00

Mark Ury put a link on Twitter that poses an interesting theory about email as the social network. Om Malik also referred to this in his post a year back asking the question, is email the ultimate social network?

Leaving aside the fact that the younger generation is using email less as a means of communication, I have to wonder as we become more ingrained in network culture, if the notion of email as the platform is completely missing the mark?

While our address books are certainly reflective of who we know, email is for the most part a means of communication with our strong ties. One of the advantages of social networks are its ability to leverage the connections of our weak ties as we all acknowledge that in real life, managing 250 'friends' would be a pretty difficult task.

So I'm not buying what Om says in his post:

"The only way for Yahoo or Google to challenge the social networking incumbents like Facebook [is] to leverage their email infrastructure ..."

Why? Because to me, Google in particular has another infrastructure that seems much more relevant - their search infrastructure. While everyone focuses on serving more relevant and 'personalized' ads, I have to wonder why they aren't also putting equal focusing on connecting people who search for like minded information? After all, if they did that, then as I developed those connections over time, I could then start to search like those individuals I'm connected to or see what content they thought was most relevant based on their searches - and even discover new searches that might be of interest to me?

I've touched on this type of search before. So in my mind it won't be email as a socially connected platform, it will be search.

(This blog post was written with a baby in my arms so excuse any mistakes or fumbled grammar :)

Blogger Mat Leave

2008-10-30T10:33:00.003-04:00

I keep writing half finished posts being optimistic that at some point inspiration will come. But truth is, focusing my efforts on the new office at Twist Image and getting ready for the baby that is due in oh, two weeks, my energies are not on the blogging. So I'm accepting the fact that I'm taking a Blogger Maternity leave for now anyhow!

I'll still be on friendfeed, twitter , tumblr and the usual other suspects (facebook, linkedin) so keep in touch!

The Serious Business Of The Great Schlep

2008-10-14T09:32:00.004-04:00

I thought Sarah Silverman's The Great Schlep (via Mathew) while a bit off colour, was hilarious. Maybe it's because I'm Jewish, and had a Bubie who had a condo called the Green Apple Apartments in Fort Lauderdale or maybe I just happen to find Sarah Silverman funny, but I loved it. And apparently, so did 7 million other people. Another Internet phenom.

But what i didn't realize (because I wasn't really paying all that much attention until this was mentioned on CBC Radio 1 this past weekend) was that the Great Schlep was not just a funny viral video, but rather, it was a strategic marketing response to the very real issue of elderly Jewish voters in Florida not rallying behind Barack Obama.

The organization behind the video was concerned over the lack of support for Obama, and according to the CBC radio interview, linked it back to 18 months of a subversive and anonymous email campaigns specifically targeting older Jewish residents in Florida which suggested that Obama was not only a Muslim, but a radical one at that. From their site:

"In presidential elections, when choosing between a more progressive candidate and a more conservative candidate, Jews overwhelmingly choose the more progressive candidate. Between 1924 and 2004, Jews have given their vote to the more progressive candidates at an average rate of 76 percent. In fact, none of the more conservative candidates has ever mustered more than 40 percent of the Jewish vote, while more than half received less than 20 percent.

Given this history, why is Barack Obama hovering at 60 percent of the Jewish vote, according to three separate polls? Is this all the product of a highly effective rumor campaign, spread through Jewish networks often by well-meaning individuals concerned that they information they received was true? Or is there something more?"

Was there something more? Regardless, the response to the Great Schlep has been impressive with Jews all over the US rallying their grandparents to ensure that Florida not be the deciding vote in an election that will surely be one of the greatest US Presidential races we've seen in a long time.

Our own Canadian election is not immune to the impact of the Web, and no i'm not just talking about Jack Layton being people's Facebook friends. Strategic voting sites like Vote pair and various facebook groups have popped up where people are actually swapping votes in specific ridings with each other, begging the question as to whether or not our foundational systems like our legal and political systems, have the nimbleness to adapt given the speed of change with which people are using these technologies in unexpected and impact full ways.

Did subversive emails impact an entire voter group? Will the comedy site, "The Great Schlep" counter those efforts and make a difference for Obama in Florida? Will internet vote swapping on Facebook determine the next Canadian Prime Minister? Hum...I guess only time will tell but understanding the potential and real impacts that this medium has on our opinions and perceptions may not just be a matter for marketers but also one that could rock us to our fundamental and democratic core.

How To Get A Writing Gig With The Globe & Mail? Write A Blog First

2008-10-10T09:27:00.003-04:00

I kept meaning to blog about my friend Jeremy Bell's blog 360 Winnett Ave. Jeremy by trade is a digital Creative Director, but has a particular love of architecture. When he and his wife Jessica decided to build a new home, not only did they decide to go the eco friendly route but they also decided to start a blog and document the entire process.

Since that time, I've completely enjoyed following along with the trials, tribulations and eco design choices Jeremy and Jessica have been making...and apparently, so has the Globe and Mail. Jeremey twittered this morning that his first of a five part series of articles on his project has appeared on the Globe & Mail Website.

For any aspiring journalists and writers out there, this is the way to do it. Create interesting content on your own and the opportunities will come.

Congrats Jeremy & Jess!

Does The Engagement Justify The Means?

2008-10-08T03:17:00.007-04:00

Facebook is experimenting with new business models. Well, to be more specific, Facebook is experimenting with new ad concepts.

"[Facebook] has been testing an interactive product that draws willing consumers into the advertising itself. MTV tried it out to promote its latest video music awards, posting clips of Britney Spears, for example, and allowing viewers to post comments about them. Those comments then appeared in other users' News Feeds, the Facebook function that tells you what your friends are doing and saying."

Facebook's CEO Sheryl Sandberg talks about this new model in terms of "demand generation". But just because I want to see what applications my friends might be using or see what they might be doing in their status update, does that same thing apply to what advertising they choose to participate with?

It's a rather fundamental question that gets to the heart of whether or not paid/bought advertising models will continue to thrive. Invasive media while still appropriate in some cases, in the interactive model don't seem to work with the fundamental dynamics of the medium. And yet for the most part, advertisers continue to work in a paid media mindset that places invasive banners, buttons and other types of bill boards across the Web.

I like the fact that the Facebook experiment seems to be attempting a hybrid model between bought and earned media - the brand/service purchases placement and then looks at creating some value for the customer (clips of Spears) to engage in a somewhat meaningful social way (comments).

But the million dollar customer question will be, does the engagement justify the means (in this case the paid Ad) and the subsequent WOM FF feed?? What do you think?

[Joke] Trying To Hire In The Digital Market Today

2008-10-01T17:22:00.003-04:00

Mark Rouse sent me this joke that i just had to post given the current hiring climate in digital marketing and communications. Enjoy!

Reaching the end of a job interview, the Human Resources Person asked a young Interactive person, with just 2 years experience, "What starting salary were you thinking about?"

The candidate said, "In the neighbourhood of $125,000 a year, depending on the benefits package."

The interviewer said, "Well, what would you say to a package of 5 weeks vacation, 14 paid holidays, full medical and dental, company matching retirement fund to 50% of salary, and a company car leased every 2 years - say, a red Corvette?"

The candidate sat up straight and said, "Wow! Are you kidding?"

The interviewer replied, "Yeah, but you started it".

Inbox Spam Drives Up The Value Of Social Networks

2008-09-24T14:10:00.003-04:00

Image via WikipediaPeter forwarded me this interesting post on Searching For The Value in Facebook that explores the reasons behind a AOL style closed garden working in an age of openness and transparency.

While this is a larger topic, one of the things it did get me thinking about was why I sometimes use social networks like Facebook and Linkedin to send messages to people. I mean, after all, I have their email addresses for the most post and it's just as easy to drop them a line the old fashioned way isn't it?

And yet, if I really want to get in touch with someone in particular who I don't communicate with often, I tend to do it through those other communication vehicles. Why? The answer is simple. Spam.

Spam has become such a problem in my personal email inbox that I tend to lose important messages either amongst all the SPAM or those messages accidentally get lobbed into my SPAM filter. My assumption is that others have the same issue. So if i really want to get in touch with someone and MAKE SURE that they actually get and read my message, I will sometimes send it through a social networking service.

I started to ask around to my friends, and as it turns out, at least with my compatriots, they all tend to do the same thing. What does this mean for the future of CRM based communications? Hum...not sure yet. But definitely working on it.

The 12 Year Old Does Insights Research

2008-09-15T16:50:00.005-04:00

I am a huge believe in customer insights research but the truth is that not all clients you work with feel the same way or have the budgets to pay for third party research. But that being said there is ALWAYS a way. In the past, planners and the consumer insight obsessed have spent hours scouring the Internet for free white papers, press releases, viewing ratings sites, reading consumer forums and comments etc.

Just the other day, a new source popped it's way into my life brought to me by my 12 year old daughter Cee. I was helping out my brother with a new company he is starting that will be manufacturing authentic high quality horse hide leather jackets. At some point we started to bring her into the conversation and asked her what leather jackets meant to her. She gave some impressions (it's for tough people etc.) and then got bored with us (big surprise there) and skipped off into the computer room. After about twenty minutes she came back and said,

"By the way, I posted your question on Gaia and got over 25 answers already"

Ok so were the answers all that helpful in this particular case? Well probably not but truth be told the Gaia audience is not really the high end vintange leather jacket market. But what I did find interesting (other than the fact that all kids seem to be born marketers) is a new way to use social networks to potentially garner consumer insights and research in the future.

How about you? What are your favorite free consumer insight research sources?

The Blurring Of Fictional & Real

2008-09-11T14:41:00.007-04:00

Image via Wikipedia I was followed today on Twitter by Betty Draper. For those of you who don't know, Betty is the wife of Don Draper, a fictional Advertising Creative Director on the show MadMen.

Now, I do not follow any of the MadMen characters on Twitter so I was a little surprised she found me. I went to see her Twitter stream and found this interchange between Betty and a friend of mine Dondy...

What I find so interesting about this is the on-going blurring of the lines between fictional and real that digital is facilitating. Some say content is king, others community, but IMO it is connection that will be reigning supreme.

A while back, I met someone from the social network Bebo who was in town from London for their NA launch, and she told me that one of the most successful parts of their site (and what they consider a key point of differentiation) is their exclusive webisodic videos. The video viewing numbers she gave me were impressive but more importantly than that were the top 15% of fans who were not only joining in on blogs and other UGC but choosing to interact with the characters of the shows as well.

How this will impact content creation going forward and what it could mean for brands ongoing remains to be seen although it will certainly be an interesting trend to watch.

Open or Die: The Value Of Robust Ecosystems

2008-09-05T07:59:00.005-04:00

From a philosophical place sometimes it's hard beat how Google approaches product development. Let's take Android as a great example. For those of you unfamiliar, "Android...[is] the first complete, open, and free mobile platform."

Why is this so significant? As I discussed in a post long ago "Closed Ecosystems Die, Shouldn't Someone Let The Cell Phone Companies Know?", most mobile companies and handset providers have created closed ecosystems. Breaking in a new product such as Android in such a tightly controlled environment seems somewhat doomed to fail unless of course, you go in the opposite direction.

In Androids own words, "The concept is simple: leverage Google's expertise in infrastructure, search and relevance to connect users with content created by developers" which will be released in the Beta Android Marketplace...for what they are calling a user driven content distribution system.

Will Android and Android driven handsets be able to compete? The value of robust ecosystems and connecting with the developer community particularly in the difficult mobile market place will absolutely blow the doors wide open. Already hand sets with more robust browsers like the iPhone and the Bold are changing the way that people extend their desktop experiences to the mobile work force and economy.

And what will happen to the mainstream players who have up to now kept their ecosystems closed? Open or die will soon become the motto and that's not just what i believe. That's just an ecological fact.

Data Base Marketing: A Life Saver?

2008-09-02T13:29:00.004-04:00

I have always been one of these "paranoid, big brother is coming" types who has been very vocal about online privacy. Because of this that I don't give my postal code out when stores ask for it and am pretty stingy about being on mailing lists. In general, dbase marketing as a consumer (note not marketer) makes me crazy. I don't want to be tracked and see very little value in it for me.

But that was before last week. What happened between then and now?

I belong to Costco. And I have to say, in spite of myself, i love Costco. It's around the corner from my house and always has something that I just can't seem to live without (can you say 40$ cashmere turtleneck sweater?).

Because they are a "member" only business, I have to use my Costco card every time i go there which means I'm tracked to the max. Now at first, this bothered me. But they assured me I would not get Costco mail (which I have not), Costco phone calls (which i have not) or any other annoying usual dbase marketing communication.

And in the past week, I've come to realize that dbase marketing could actually save my life. How?

For anyone not familiar with the story, Canada had the largest recall of food products in its history with Maple Leaf Foods recalling untold amounts of processed luncheon meats with the current death toll of 11 from the bacteria listeria.

I mentioned the food recall to Peter (the hubbie) who was up North and had bought a bunch of stuff at Costco before he left. He was sure that Costco meat was not on the recall list. I double checked and it's not (It's still not by the way). However, later on when i checked my voice mail, i had a phone call message from Costco saying that we had bought a Kirkland meat Pastrami which was from Maple Leaf Foods and should be thrown out immediately.

If anything was going to get me to change my mind that there is some value to dbase marketing, that moment was it. It might have saved our lives. Now if only they had ALSO refunded us the cost. :)

Age & The Invisibility Of The Network

2008-08-21T08:42:00.003-04:00

Fred Wilson had a post the other day talking about When You Wake Up Feeling Old.

It used to be that when you no longer recognized faces on the cover of people magazine or listened to the radio and had no clue who the latest "it" band was that the age thing would hit you.

For me, it's been similar to Wilson, in realizing that people in the generation younger than me "understand how the web works at a level I'll never understand."

Those that are brought up with the network truly don't see technology or even go online as it's just always there and pervasively present (the UCaPP world).

Specifically interviewing this week, it's been interesting talking with so many people about their experience with digital, what it means to them.

And it appears as mostly it means nothing at all. Not that it's not important. It's that its simply so core that it just is. Talking about it almost seems stupid.

And yet at the same time, clearly the invisible impact of the network on how they think, and lenses of how they view the world is creating patterns, attitudes and cultural shifts that we are only starting to see and understand.

There is definitely a learning curve here for anyone trying to connect with this generation. The ways of the past are not going to work. Our old rules will no longer apply. Experience design is probably going to see some of the biggest shifts in the coming few years as we attempt to bridge the chasm between what we have traditional known and seen to the new reality. It will close down debates between navigation styles and do we like Flash or not, to task and experience oriented expectations of monstrous proportions.

And probably and most importantly for marketers, brands that say we can't change because that's the way we've always done it or that's what our guidelines say, will become less and less relevant as companies that focus on the
invisibility of the network and understanding how to communicate and connect with the generation that doesn't even think about it, start to dominate the market place.

Who Died And Make The Box King?

2008-08-18T18:47:00.006-04:00

I just can't resist a great rant. This one from Virginia Magaletta who is the CD at Twist Image (my new place of employment) and doesn't like boxes.

"I'd like to toss my hat into the ring, on the issue of BOXES. What is up with all these boxes on line? What makes a site with BOXES more navigable than one without BOXES? Why do we think that putting a BOX around something and then putting another BOX right next to that with something else in it is the best way to design a site? Who died and made the BOX king?"

For more boxy juiciness go here.

Photo credit: Flikr1309

Pitching Is For Baseball Players Not Bloggers

2008-08-17T11:45:00.003-04:00

There's been a bunch of buzz lately about how to "pitch" bloggers your product/brand and or service. And most marketers (whether they be PR companies, Ad agencies or even old school 1.0 digital agencies) are struggling with the right way to approach this.

I've heard some of the dumbest ideas in meetings which usually start with the sentence "let's send the bloggers..." at which point I generally put my hands in my shaking head and try not to look like I'm going into seizures.

My opinion on the matter is pretty simple. Getting witty emails, fun packages, or even an invitation to the CEO's summer manor for a get to know you spa day, does not take the place of genuine engagement. It means participating in conversations that matter, it means contribution and it means understanding reciprocity and the value you BRING to the network before you attempt to extract value FROM it.

Mitch (Joel) calls it "in praise of slow", and in his words

"Digital Marketing is not a one night stand (like more traditional advertising - "wham, bam, thank you ma'am")"

Now would we like to be able to sit in a room, get paid a schwack of dough and help you figure out how to 'go to market' with a deadline of next month with some fancy pitch to bloggers? Sure we would. But that isn't going to get you what you need and in fact may do more damage to your brand than anything else.

Pitching is for baseball players not bloggers. :)

My New Gig: Twist & Shout

2008-08-09T08:18:00.007-04:00

Mitch used 'Let's Twist Again' so i had to find me a new song metaphor.

Those who are linkedin to me probably noticed that I changed jobs to be the Managing Director of the newly opened Twist Image office in Toronto. Sometimes an opportunity comes up that no matter what, ya just can't pass up. Twist Image is one of those. As someone once said to me, if a rocket ship is about to take off, get on. And that's what I've done.

So i got a bunch of emails from people - what's a Twist?

Some people know of Twist from Mitch Joel. Hey just read his bio. Everyone should strive to have a bio like Mitch's. He and I had been on a panel a while back and I thought he was super smart but I wasn't sure how he'd be to work with. Firstly, we had such a fun interview. I loved him. He's totally humble and doesn't have one of those manly agency egos (you know what I'm talking about). Having worked with him for a while now, is a truly smart street savvy marketer who is a privilege to be working with.

Alongside Mitch is an incredible team. Mark Goodman, CEO who is formerly the founder and long time President of FCB brings his sharp business mind to the group. Then there's Mickael Kanfi ECD whose multimarketing skills in 3D animation, video and audio production as well as digital skills make him one of the most diverse CD's I've ever worked with. And finally Aubrey Rosenhek, Managing Director who brings a creative spirit to actually getting things done on time on budget but with the care that is required to ensure the quality of the product not just the profitability of it. (run on sentences must mean i'm excited).

For the Toronto office, we don't have furniture yet (it's coming!) but we have brought in the incredible and unique talent of Virginia Magaletta who worked with me years ago at the agency formerly known as Maclaren McCann Interactive. It's rare in digital to find someone who is both conceptual and understands brand but is also great at design and building a team. Virginia has it all and then some.

As well we are in the middle of hiring a whole host of staff including Account Directors, Account Executives, IA, Art Directors, Designers and Writers. Already we are getting some of the best. You'd be amazed how many people, particularly those that have been around for a while, who are ready to come on this new journey with us.

I've blithered enough. Won't say too much more. We will be having a more official announcement and office kick off after the summer once we've got the core staff in place.

Corporate Participation Ladder

2008-08-05T13:19:00.002-04:00

Corporate Participation Ladder
Originally uploaded by Leigh Himel Photos

Anyone who works in the digital industry can see in practice that the Corporate public engagement paradigm is changing. Many clients are not only looking to increase their overall use of digital communications within their marketing mix from a campaign perspective, but they are looking at how social media is impacting their relationships with their customers on a much more fundamental level.

Strategies of engagement, the extension of their brand voice within social media conversations, as well as governance models with their employees are all within the new realm that crosses customer service, marketing and PR (talked about here)

After reading Jeremiah Owyang's post on the new job market for roles such as 'community manager' it made me think about Charlene Li's social media ladder needing an internal counter part. So I attempted to create one - a Corporate Participation Ladder (apologies to all those who can actually design diagrams outside of power point in advance).

Enjoy and as usual, all 'how to make it better'suggestions welcome.

If This Happened In a Print Publication....

2008-08-01T10:32:00.003-04:00

Someone would be fired.

Peter sent me this classic yesterday - Hole in the plane story on the left with a West Jet Ad to the right. Talk about dynamic targeted online media. Nice.