SMLXL: Engagement Courses & Workshop Outline 2008

On the 5th April 2005, The Economist ran an article, which investigated the challenges faced by all businesses, caused by, as they describe it “the newly empowered consumer.”

There are many companies today that seem unaware of the revolutionary implications of the newly empowered consumers. Only those firms ready and able to serve these new consumers will survive.

This statement not only outlines the threat but, also, the new opportunities of rethinking how all businesses engage with their consumers, creating value for all.

smlxl-wkshp-outline-mobile_html_m61e3a516.jpgConsumers have become empowered and want deeper, more personal and richer experiences from those brands they seek out. They want brands to deliver more and deliver better. Traditional advertising has become less effective whilst unpaid media, real experiences, word of mouth advocacy and digital communications have become critically more important. The advertising business model for traditional media those venues where advertisers still channel most of their spending will fall apart faster in the coming five years as the kind of interactive, targeted advertising that is defining the Web comes to the fore.

We are rapidly moving to a world where everyone can be connected andby 2015 five billion people will be connected via mobile device - thatis a 100 fold increase in networked traffic. Networks: Economic,Cultural and Media are becoming the nervous system of society.

This suggests that our world of media and communications is evolvingfrom the straight road of an industrial era to the more complex andnetworked world that mimics nature. Our new media world isn't aboutcontent and distribution. It is about people, connections and socialnetworks.

smlxl-wkshp-outline-mobile_html_1c3dc7f2.jpgIfwe accept that as a truth then that truth changes what we make, how wemake it, who we make it with, and, how in fact we market andcommunicate with our each other. It requires a new logic. And so we seethat businesses are beginning to move towards a more networked way ofdoing things. That also has it’s own unique logic, rules and models.

Yale Law Professor Yochai Benkler argues that the economics ofnetworked information production and the social practices of networkedconversations fundamentally change the role that individuals can playin cultural and knowledge production and dissemination. Benklerbelieves the change wrought by the networked information environment isstructural. It goes to the very foundations of how liberal markets andliberal democracies have coevolved for almost two centuries. Bill Gatesrecently said,

We're saying newspapers will go online, and there will be massiveinnovation that comes out of that. We're saying that TV, the biggest admarket in the world, will completely go online and have the kind oftargeting interaction that you only get out on the Web today. Asdramatic as things happening on the Web are, that's actually what alladvertising … will be in the future.

Which means, great brands and businesses can be created almostexclusively through action, social networks and community basedactivity (with virtually no ‘communications’ in the traditional sense).Think Google, Lego, e-bay, Amazon and MySpace. The rubicon betweenimage building and delivery has been crossed. Yet these belie the trueseismic shift that is happening before us.

Businesses and Brands can engage people in ways that fuseentertainment, participation, knowledge and information exchange andcommercial transaction previously thought impossible. However we arebut the romancing of the very real opportunities of Engagement.Adopting an Engagement Marketing approach requires fundamentalorganisational, cultural and process change, and in the very way wedefine brands, businesses and organisations.

The reality is however that such an approach is a fundamentalchallenge to the organisational structures of every company we havespoken to.

The implications for brands and business strategy

Never before has there been a greater need for brands or companiesto have a very clear set of organising principles to instruct all itsactions. Great brand and communications thinking today needs to be muchmore behaviour oriented, not broadcast communications oriented, and itneeds to be more multi-dimensional. A great brand today also needs toreflect a wider array of functional and emotional needs and sit abovemultiple products, services, customer benefits and/or customersegments. Not, as they used to be, reduced to one word “essences” andall about the emotional benefit.

Crucially, a great brand, business or organisation must define theunique role it can play in people’s lives; a role that istransformational and that has wider cultural resonance. And it mustreflect and deliver to a belief system that its customers use to definethemselves to others through and that they use reaffirm who they are tothemselves.

Mobile as the 7th Mass Media

If Gutenberg were alive today, he would be taking pictures andshooting videos with his mobile, he would be blogging via his mobileand vlogging via his mobile, paying for his car parking spaces via hismobile, getting his library books renewed via SMS and dating onFlirtomatic.

Mobile as the newest mass media channel is least understood. Mobiletoday has twice the reach of TV, three times the reach of the internet,and is the only media carried upon our person every hour of the dayboth when we are awake, and even in arm’s reach when we are asleep. Theonly mass media channel with a payment channel, it also is the onlymass media where audiences are accurately identified. This is easilythe richest mass media opportunity.

Brands today need advocates, not consumers.

Brands need to become more culturally relevant to their customers. Communities are sticky in ways that mass media is not.

Introduction

The purpose of this document is to explain the SMLXL Engagementand Mobile 7th Mass Media Workshop and how clients can use that insightto their strategic and commercial advantage.

Principle Structure of Engagement Workshop

  1. Digital technology: Facts, figures and new applications
  2. The big themes: Sociological and organizational change
  3. Engagement marketing - Who is leading the way?
  4. The new tools in the engagement marketers’ tool-box
  5.  The new rules for brands, businesses and organizations
  6. The new laws for engagement
  7. Putting it into practice : The sharing of SMLXL’s proprietary process

Principle Structure of Mobile 7th Mass Media Workshop

  1. The customer of tomorrow
  2. Advertising from Interruption to Engagement
  3. Mobile as the 7th Mass Media Channel
  4. Social Marketing Intelligence : The black gold of the 21st Century
  5. Building compelling mobile experiences
  6. Engaging communities

What are the deliverables of an Engagement Workshop?

  1. Achieve a better and focused understanding of how Engagement initiatives can significantly drive business success

  2. Enable our clients to understand clearly, the new frameworks of community/ engagement and how that fundamentally changes the way they develop their business propositions, and business models, and structure their organizations to harness the true potential of networks and community engagement 

  3. Open up the collective minds towards the possibilities of this new marketplace and, in particular, help develop ideas on what relevant community engagement marketing initiatives, might look like for your company

  4. To understand the true potential of mobile marketing and communications

  5. Initiate an action plan to realize the most important ideas that emerge, with timelines and responsibilities assigned.

    1. processes

    2. tools and technology

    3. project plan

The Workshop will be facilitated by 2 members from SMLXL. We suggestthe size of the group is limited to 10 to 12 senior decision makers.This core group would take on and own the development andimplementation of the ideas generated by the workshop.

Courses depending on their nature may have a number of advisors and expert participants.

Who should be attending the Courses & Workshops?

Brands, Mobile, Investor, VC and Media organisations that have anintense need to revive their business strategies, find new ways toengage their audiences and in so doing build coherent roadmaps andinitiatives to survive in the digital age.

Can the relationship with SMLXL go beyond the workshop?

Yes. We are developing long-term relationships1with a number of our clients who identify our insights and innovativeapproach to marketing communications and Social Marketing Intelligenceto be highly valuable. This arrangement is probably best discussedpost-workshop.

Timing

We recommend that you book the workshop at least 2 months inadvance, and preferably further ahead in our busy months. This allowsenough time for the brief and preparation work required, and also toclear a 2-day space in the schedules of key people.

How much does a Community Engagement workshop cost?

The Engagement Courses & workshop or the Mobile as the 7th MassMedia costs are based upon on the number of attendees and the level ofgranularity and time required. These can be provided once a properoutline is agreed upon.

We suggest when booking a course or workshop that you allow 2 monthslead time which allows for the proper preparation, research, thedevelopment of relevant materials and the workshop itself.

If you would like to book/discuss a workshop please contact Alan Moore at SMLXL alanm@smlxtralarge.com

Terms and Conditions

A detailed copy of our terms of business is available. If you would like a copy please contact Alan Moore at SMLXL alanm@smlxtralarge.com

We are witnessing the shift from individualized and personalizedmedia consumption & creation towards consumption & creation asa networked practice

SMLXL has undertaken workshops for :

  1. Nokia

  2. SonyBMG

  3. Neals Yard Remedies

  4. T-Mobile Germany

  5. TV2 Norway

  6. The Swedish Post Office

  7. Blyk

SMLXL also co-runs a mobile social networking course twice a year atthe Oxford University for Continuing Education – we also run Mobile asthe 7th Mass Media independently.

SMLXL are currently working on a number of initiatives with the Microsoft CIO community.