Like A Rolling Stone

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.

Start-up Marketing 101

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

All "LIKES" Are NOT Created Equal

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 Innovation & The Technology Of Change

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?

Story Ecosystems (A Thought In Progress)

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 Network Is My Teacher

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/

Variations On The Word Change

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.

Reputation, Racism & The Reality Of Search Results

Louis Gray twittered asking the question as to why Techmeme didn't post anything about the ongoing racism conversation that is happening in the Blogosphere and places like friend feed. (To have a look link here to the friendfeed debate).

Techmemer, Gabe Rivera made his comment saying:

"So, what's the story here? Some anonymous losers said nasty racist things in some chat area (which happens all the time), and then Louis Gray noted how bad that is? Hmm...if you're going to suggest that an omission on Techmeme is wrong, you're gonna need to find something more uncontestably newsworthy than that."

What I found interesting was that I was sure I had seen a number of discussions tracing the original debate that started this all (Complaints about techvideo comedienne/commentator Loren Feldman's Verizon deal due to a parady he created a year called TechNigga - read Mathew Ingram's post here)
So rather than searching by subject, I typed in Loren Feldman's name and what I got was this below (and a bunch of posts on the entire puppet debacle)...



Now I've got a pretty balanced view when it comes to this type of stuff. I personally don't think Feldman is a racist although I do think the video was stupid, insensitive and not particularly funny. But the truth is, regardless of his intent, when you so grossly cross a line (that he had to have known he was crossing unless he's lived under a rock for the last ten years), you have to be prepared for the consequences.

In the technologically networked world that we live in, the repercussions are that the majority of the network will end up discussing their opinion of you and what you've done. You can certainly comment if you want on friendfeed or on your own blog. But search engines aren't built to tell two sides of the story and at some point you have to look at the power of technology over reputation and concede that what you meant to do and what Google says about you are two different things.

Mea Culpa in such situations, may not only be the RIGHT thing to do but it's also the smart thing to do and something that Feldman finally did yesterday. Corporate brands are learning the need for speed and vigor with which they have to respond to these type of PR disasters a while ago and it's something that personal blogging micro-brands might like to pay some attention to as well.

I Am Context, We Are The Network

I was intrigued by a conversation in the video below where the hosts all discuss the elevator pitch by Daniel Ha the CEO at Disqus.

Feel free to watch the entire video below, but what struck me was a few quotes from the guys having a somewhat philosophical discussion on comments in general.

Let me paraphrase one part in particular. Ezra (the guy with the glasses) says, "Comments are usually pretty tightly intertwined with whatever the content piece was but if you start to abstract them away from whatever the symbiosis with is with that piece of content they begin to really drift…." to which the other dude starts talking about the continuity of the conversation. Because it starts with the publisher, they view the community and ecosystem from that perspective.

What I found interesting from a relatively new disqus user's perspective, is that I don't view it at all like they do (ok it's an ugly diagram but you get the idea).

They talk about context. Context can be important but comments are so much more to than that. They start to shape and form a piece of one's online identity. I can't tell you the amount of times I have linked from a disqus profile from a blog comment to read through their other comments and further link from those to other posts/conversations. What they say on an on-going basis is a key to who they are. They become an accumulation digital memory by digital memory through the myriad of Web services (disqus being one of them) that they utilize.

I'm not sure if this post is being that clear, but I think what struck me as I watched their discussion on the video is how they seem to be applying traditional linear offline mass models of publisher/reader to the interconnected hyperlinked blogosphere. I don't think the old rules apply.

To me it only makes sense that comments will drift and much like my own digital footprint will. It seems right that they will ebb and they will flow. As for context and continuity which the two guys in the video discuss? I think the whole point on the Web is that it isn't the content that provides the only context. Equally so, I am context and I am continuity. After all, we all are the network, aren't we?

Marketing Is Dead. Long Live Marketing.

When I first met Peter at McCann back in '97, one of the first things he introduced to me was the concept that with interactive media brands create customers and customers create brands. He had this slide that talked about the future of networked brands as not only the promise but the experience of the brand. I swear the first time we talked about that, I had to have him explain to me what the hell he was talking about at least a hundred times before I got it. With the continuing lower costs of interactions, and high levels of brand engagement due to the ever empowered digital customer, our brand landscape has evolved somewhat to look a little bit more like this...


And yet, we still have done very little to re-look at how organizations and agencies not only build brands but engage their customers. If customer experience is the marketing proposition then we have to look at how traditional marketing departments are organized.

Marketing is more and more about the customer. It's about engagement, intimacy, conversations and every other cliche word that we love to hear and use at digital marketing conferences. And if that is the case, should agencies be Agents of the customer? And shouldn't then marketing departments actually be about customer engagement? Shouldn't it look something a little bit more like this?


To understand the customer, CMO's should have to spend a certain number of hours a day listening to the ideas, frustrations and insights that customers bring to organizations every day through customer care call centres. They should have their email addresses prominently displayed so unhappy customers can contact them directly. They should be in charge of PR and community relations so they are keenly attached to the communities of people they serve.

Marketing is dead. Long live marketing.

A Picture Is Worth A 1000 Stock Points

Is Google slowing down? Panic in the markets? OMG! Sell...Buy....Head for the digital hills...What does it mean...! Or does anyone know?

I could go on about what i think or don't think about this but I would rather let one picture say it all. It's a visualization of Google. The broccoli looking cloud is all the links and that tiny point on the bottom, that would be Google.



picture via Mark Ury

Adobe Air & The Future Of The Network

According to the New York Times, Adobe "will release the official version of AIR, a software development system that will power potentially tens of thousands of applications that merge the Internet and the PC, as well as blur the distinctions between PCs and new computing devices like smartphones."

It was only a couple years ago when i was talking to VCs about funding the oponia ucaster that many of them told me the personal computer was dead. Everything was moving to the cloud. However, it always seemed to me that the growth of the edge and edge services had to do with DECENTRALIZATION and not CENTRALIZATION. The notion that I will be fine with having Facebook as my central hub giving my control over to their whims and changing business strategy did not seem in-line to me with where the power of the network was (and is) going.

With ucaster, we wanted to make everyone a node in their own right -first class citizens and full participants in the network (And that was both technically and spiritually speaking).

I found it interesting that still no one is mentioning Blake Ross' venture Parakey that was scooped up by Facebook, Parakey, whose product positioning looks like it was borrowed heavily by the folks at Adobe.

"Parakey is a platform for building applications that merge the best of the desktop and the Web"

We are still only at the beginning of this phenom. I still think ucaster and what the role it could play could be the next generation. Having a node to call your own - having applications that sit on your desktop - utilizing the cloud when it creates the most value - and how these things intersect with each other, and how we ascribe meaning to it in a way that creates value to each of us as individuals...that to me is the thing to watch in the coming 12 months.

Value Creation & The Business Of Innovation

It seems to me that there is a sea of change going on in the business world. More and more companies are recognizing the seismic shifts in the customer market place are looking to innovate from the inside out.

But can they be successful? This got me thinking of a post by Fred Wilson on Twitters business model.

He pointed to the fact that "some of the best web companies of our time; Google, YouTube, Skype, and Facebook all launched without a business model and too their sweet time getting to one."

and that

"You can't monetize web services very well until you have an audience of scale."

What are large corporations tolerance for sweet time? Part of the problem of being a mass organization is that you have a mass audience and therefore generally speaking, a mass media approach to product development and marketing. With customer data bases as your starting point, and a larger than start up marketing budget, it's difficult to not think big.

Emergence is an often spoken about phenomena, and yet having the foresight to truly understand the value that is being created (and co-created) with your customers takes not only patience but bravery. Companies obviously want to reduce their risk, however, in a desire to speed to mass market there are also risks. Determining too much too soon could mean missing key opportunities and defining too much from a top down approach versus the focus on the ecosystem and allowing the network to co-create the product and/or service alongside you. Sometimes to think big long term, you have to focus on the small in the short. It may seem obvious but as they say, common sense isn't as common as it should be.

Of course, there are success stories already in market and no doubt we are going to see a tidal wave coming soon of many more. And I hope that both the successes and failures are going to be interesting to watch and learn from (I'm thinking maybe some sort of widget score board??)....

"Me" The Operating System

Robert Scoble thinks we are all missing the point about Google.

"The real race today isn’t for search. Isn’t for email. Isn’t for IM. It’s for ownership of your mobile phone"

Short term sure. But it's ubiquitous access that's key.

I am the network. Home is wherever I am. I have one screen - the one I am looking at right this minute. I am my own operating system.

Eyeballs & In Your Face Marketing: Microsoft 1.0 Step Forward & 2.0 Back

I've been sitting pretty quiet about the Microsoft Yahoo deal mostly because I don't really get it. I mean, i get it, but I just don't get it.

In a world where we know traditional marketing approaches aren't working as well anymore, we see Microsoft buying up the community of Yahoo with all its eyeballs. After all, Google is succeeding largely in part because of their immense advertising network and an argument can be made that they are a modern day advertising agency vs. a technology company (see Vanessa Williams brilliant post on this The Long Tail Of Web Services)

But will traditional advertising revenue come to the Web? I say it will but not in the form of key word searches and banner ads. The big mistake so many companies continue to make is believe that non-networked business and other mental models can be and should be replicated in the digital space.

"Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which [people] communicate than by the content of the communication."

- Marshall McLuhan

Awareness advertising works on TV and therefore, we copy that model in the form of banner ads and now Google ads and throw it on the Web not taking into consideration that the dynamics of the medium are completely different than mass media (oh and by the way, being able to dynamically and behaviorally target these doesn't make them more successful).

But we know that Google has been successful up to now with an open ad model where they stitched two key elements together: Satisfying a huge customer need - a more effective search with a new advertising model that saw the network become the portal.

Think about this - I don't think content is king anymore and I don't even think it's community as Jeff Jarvis says. It's about connection and that more than anything is at the foundation of the social media revolution (...and in the digital age all media is potentially social).

So why the focus on eyeballs? Why is Microsoft looking in the rear view mirror as opposed to creating the future?

Google themselves have started talking about social search and there are a bunch of us (see my post on social tagging systems, and Fraser's post over at the blue blog) who think this is going to be the platform of the future.

So why Yahoo? Why not Lijit who as I understand is starting to walk down this next brave path?

IMO if Microsoft continues to focus on competition and doesn't change the game altogether, they are going to continue to find themselves struggling against the power of the network.

In the words of Blake Ross (who ended up doing a start up that was playing the same space we wanted to play with oponia with his startup that was bought by Facebook Parakey),

"The next big thing is whatever makes the last big thing more useful"

It's Not The Brand, It's The Network Silly......

Ive been wanting to write a post on this for a long while but I've been having trouble articulating exactly what my issue is. And I do have an issue. Forrester came out and said that digital agencies aren’t positioned currently to be key brand strategic partners.

Why?

"The interactive agencies are in a position where all their staff is focused on executing on digital," he said. "They need people who understand that broader relationship between online and offline media."

Ok, so here is my beef. The relationship between offline and online media is only relevant if:

a. you are speaking about advertising
b. you are speaking to a target audience that even differentiates between offline and online (which is becoming a smaller and smaller segment of the population as the lines between virtual and real become completely blurred)

The key isn't offline and online - it isn't integrated 360 media, or convergence - it's about networked brands and understanding new and complex networked marketing models.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, digital has changed everything except how traditional advertising agencies build brands. A singular brand promise can be communicated in a 60 second TV spot or print ad. However, if you want to now extend that brand to be meaningful in a call centre, in retail, or on a corporate website, you need to dimensionalize it beyond one aspirational thought.

Similarly, marketing models need to account for the interrelationship of complex parts - the ecosystem approach that I have blithered on about for a while now.

Anyhow, it's sounding like a rant. Read this article (i've mentioned it before) about asking if ideas are too big for advertising and then add on to that, is it really about an 'idea' or is it really about building networked brands and networked marketing architectures that can then support that.

An Ecosystem Approach To Marketing In The Digital Age

Cross-posted from One Degree.

As an environmental planner, I studied the impacts of technologies (waste treatment plants, large dams, road work projects etc.) on communities. Technology has always had an impact on how we live, how we work and how we interrelate with the environment around us.

Similarly, working in interactive communications since 1996, I have seen the growth of digital networks and their communities.

While at first glance, it may seem that environmental and digital ecosystems have little in common, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. There are many parallels between natural ecosystems and their networked counterparts and therefore many lessons to be learned.

‘GreenMan marketing part I’ attempts to formalize this strategic approach and lay down a foundation, a philosophy and a way of thinking.

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Brand Mashing: To Enable Or Not To Enbale That Is The Question

When Vanessa first talked to me about xml back in the day, I had to wrap my head around a major shift that I think sometimes I am only beginning to understand the profound impacts of. I remember sitting in meetings with clients and taking a marker and madly putting big crosses on the box formally known as a website and starting drawing circles that represented bits and pieces that i then started drawing arrows to and from with words like, business requirements, marketing objectives, customer need states yada yada.

Think data i would tell them...
Think digital!
Interconnect them...
Think networks!

But most of this thinking at the time was in relationship to connecting customers with brands and brands with customers. But while we could now, differently than traditional mass media communications, morph and shape the communications based on customer interactions, what we didn't really conceive of at the time, was the fact that our customers would spend the majority of their time out there....on the network....connecting with EACH OTHER...

How then, do we start to fundamentally change the way we create more connected interactions? In essence, if the party is happening elsewhere, how do we get an invite?

Today's conventional marketing wisdom would have us widgetize the experience and I get that. A distributed brand experience model is certainly a step in the right direction. But the truth is that still involves US creating SOMETHING (in this case a widget) that we then CONTROL and give out for DISTRIBUTION.

See.. the widget is still a thing... a website, a webpage. It's not thinking bits and pieces, networks, or layers.

So I got to thinking about the open code brand and what Blyk is trying to do (that I wrote about here) and it got me blithering (It is Leigh's blitherings for a reason after all)…

Traditionally, brands try to control their standards. I’ve been in meetings where brand champions simply freak out when customers utilize their standards in a way that is not considered appropriate. While this thinking has changed a bit with the entire UGC, no one has really taken the bull by the horns. What if clients websites became open APIs? What if they actually encouraged customers, users to take whatever content they wanted and mash up their brands?

Sure it would mean that some customers are going to do things you might not like. Maybe they will start creating product by product comparisons. Maybe they will aggregate your content into THEIR widgets or reformulate your services offers or, or, or…

While we may be able to focus on what might be lost….the real question is what may be gained? Unpaid media opportunities that export your brand….likely even business value and creative ideas that maybe you haven’t even conceived of that you can capitalize on?

As everything gets connected to everything else…brand mash-ups are inevitable…As brands and businesses, we have to ask the question “to enable or not to enable" Yep that to me is the question.

Most Clubs Are For Losers

Via WebTeacher:

Kottke had some interesting stats about the lack of gender diversity at Web conferences. The debate rages on with opinions on both sides.

Anil Dash weighed in with his posting called the boys club is for losers and noted that many of the comments on the Kottke site from the conference organizers ended up being really defensive. In response Anil said something that I think no woman would ever have the chutzpa to say:

“Guys are almost always unable to see the barriers they construct.”

I think most 'exclusive' clubs are for losers, and not just the boys clubs. The Web has always been the anti-thesis of that. Open, collaborative, diverse. It’s what I love about it. Where rules are made to be broken and where the very dna of the network is constructed to go around obstructions.

Hopefully at some point (and maybe the tides are already turning this way) the business of technology will to take some lessons from its very own network.

update: Anil wrote a second post on the subject - I think he's officially pissed (in a good way)!

The Portal is the Network

This morning, Peter and I were discussing a post by Fred Wilson on the deportalization of the Internet.

Personally I think Google has been building a portal in reverse. With all the different services they are adding on to their main search function, Google should look like a better designed Yahoo in no time. Now of course, they are smarter about it because they are not trying to centralize the eyeballs, but as long as they are centralizing all the data, it doesn't really matter does it? As Fred puts it
they have "introduced a monetization system that existed off its own network".

Peter furthered that thought and noted that what is happening is just a redefinition of the whole notion. While portal used to mean an entrance point to MY websites, now portal has opened itself up as any good healthy ecosystem should, to the Web in general. It is a starting point to discover the network.

In Peter's words, "when you are as pervasive as google the network is the portal"