Convergence leads to an participatory culture

I met a friend of mine today in Cambridge who runs a well respected retail design company. We had been talking off and on over the past months, and was a opportune moment to catch up, even though he got a parking ticket as a consequence…
We swopped stories about business and focussed on retail in particular. Its been tough. In the FT this week "companies diary" reported that Boots are still struggling. I mentioned this and he wondered if this was cyclical or more systemic. We discussed and I quickly gave my overview that I thought it more systemic, when when factors in the mobile phone, the internet, the wholesale unbundlng of the media and societal change. Jeez I need a drink.
My friend replied that he thought we were moving towards something that was more service orientated and that why would you go to somewhere like Dixons, to get bad retail layout, bad service and an experience that feels more adversarial than going to the internet and doing it online.
We also discussed communities and how they form around issues very quickly , how they can become powerhouses for change or protest. I mentioned Kryptonite and the class action against Verizon in the US as examples. He mentioned the anti-hunting lobby.
This got me thinking over a late lunch – and I went to buy some papers and magazines – In New Media Age (19.05.05) it seems the world has gone digital and mobile. As above the line spend slides into other media

Coke prepares iCoke for global youth marketing drive, FT debuts video and audio news in expansion of mobile services, mobile operator 3 and Flytext link to run video ad for cult film, Volvo to sponsor 4 web site, Endomol pushes mobile video beyond TV programme content, Vodafone to stream "Big Brother' to mobiles non-stop, Uk retailers miss out by failing to push multi-channel services, 2.3 million people say they are likely to buy a media hub in the next 12 months, Johnston Press gets readers interacting via IVR and SMS, Interactive media should adopt the consumer's view

Were a list of headlines -
I mentioned before Microsoft going mobile, and in the Guardian today there appeared an article about the gaming and Hollywood deciding that it makes more sense to deliver a more integrated and seemless product.
My friend and I discussed the "customers are from Mars and Companies are from Venus" scenario and the Adgage article the chaos scenario, we discussed Epic

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and I thought of First Direct delivering banking to my 22 year old son via text messaging. I thought about Tomi's key note speech and panel with young mobile users and my own experience with my children.
I thought about Boots and the struggling legacy retailers and I thought about the recent Morgan Stanley report entitled the Age of Engagement.

I reflected on our book Communities Dominate Brands as all signposts that describe and map out our immediate future.
I thought about my friend who, as a global marketing director says that peoples needs and desires never really change and that is true. But what I see is so much that changes around them. Howard Rheingold talks about the mobile phone to amplify human talants of co-operation. Combine this with the internet and you get something exponential.

I thought about channels and the long list of mobile + digital activities being initiated more channels and more silos? – maybe. And I thought about Chan Kim and Renné Mauborgone from INSEAD that talk and describe business innovation driven through what they describe as creating Market space .
We commissioned a white paper called the LONG GOOD BYE which you can find on the SMLXL blog by author Alan Mitchell. which does describe these issues as systemic. Or am I dreaming. And we have not even started on blogs yet.
So it was quite a conversation. I am sorry that my friend got a parking ticket.

But even in flat Cambridge the debate rages on how companies today can find more intelligent and relevant ways to engage their customers and their audience.
For some recidivists, this is not the dotcom boom and bust – it is more profound. And as Gary Hamel said, it will be the creative leaps of the human imgaination that will forge the success of companies of tomorrow.
I don't think it is about one channel superceding another, from a marketers perspective, but about the holistic alignment of various channels to deliver something exciting and compelling to the customer.

Its not about sales or brand or CRM or advertising, or experiential, but about multiple combinations of things.

Why? Beacuse you can.
Just go and look at the Apple store. Where does that budget come from? Their advertising budget. So what does their advertising budget come from? – a loyalty programme? Ultimately this is all about creative solutions in a changing world.

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Posted in: Convergence, Culture, Darwin, Economics, Engagement Marketing, Engagement Mobile, Marketing, Media, Mobile, Philosophy, Social Networks, Society, Strategy, Trends, Web/Tech

Delivering on an engaged broadcast vision

Silence is golden but not on a blog. Sadly.
Things have been quiet on the blog as we have been working flat out on the final push of a major channel relaunch for a state broadcaster. Phew.
It has been a 9 month journey and a fascinating experience. Especially since our project has challenged not only the technology of the broadcaster but also and more importantly, their internal processes of how people work and interact as more integrated teams. We looked at how the channel markets itself and how it can develop creative strategies to keep people watching, to help them navigate through a daily and weekly schedule. Ultimately, delivering a richer more uniquely branded viewing experience.
I feel particuarly proud as we arrived at the goal we set ourselves. The path by which we got there is less important to me. As one has to constantly readjust the process to accomodate unique challenges as they present themselves.
We realised early on that it always comes down to people. Nobody is as clever as everybody. The people at the channel had to feel ownership, they had to want to share the vision.

And so at that point we became traveling companions working at every level of the company to ensure we all delivered on our goal.
Expect a case history at some point in the near future.

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Posted in: Administrative, Broadcast, Engagement Marketing, Participation

Wikipedia and the collective power of grass roots enthusiasm

Media post published a thought piece on Wikipedia Wikipedia’s Symbiotic Relationship With Search

IF GOOGLE’S ARRIVAL WAS MARKED by its acceptance as a verb, then Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, cannot be far behind. I can recall three occasions in recent weeks where someone asked, “Did you Wikipedia that?” Further signaling this non-profit’s onset, I contributed to a Hitwise report released last week which found that the weekly market share of U.S. visits to Wikipedia grew over 600 percent since the beginning of 2004, making it the second most visited reference Web site. That means Wikipedia now is more popular than destinations like Microsoft’s Encarta and The New York Times Company’s About.com. While it’s inappropriate to make absolute comparisons to those sites, it is safe to say that Wikipedia has achieved critical mass. Wikipedia has harnessed the collective power of grassroots enthusiasm and volunteer experts across hundreds of thousands of subjects, and organized them within one portal.

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Alan speaks to OgilvyOne in Barcelona

Last Thursday, I gave a speech to 60+ senior members of OgilvyOne in Barcelona.
Thank you OgilvyOne for inviting me.
Of course, I was talking about our book Communities Dominate Brands and the converging issues that are forcing businesses to rethink their business models, and

how this has significantly impacted on advertising,

how we advertise,

and how we market and communicate with us, everyday Joe's in the street.

Here are a selection of headlines from last week newspapers to give you an insight into the book

Kodak struggles to adapt to digital world

Advertising fall at GCap unsettles radio sector

The party's over: ad sales fall hits big radio

Microsoft gears up to get mobilsed

Hollywood learns to play the video game
All to play for: Microsoft and

Sony take the video games battle to the next level

Crispin Porter + Bogusky sign content deal with Fox

admen failing to engage

Big media struggles with a modern world

Then buy the book here or drop us a line and we would be happy to come along and take you through a short story about a long journey.

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Posted in: 7th Mass Media, Advertising, Books, Broadcast, Citizen journalism, Convergence, Culture, Darwin, Distribution, Economics, Engagement Marketing, Engagement Mobile, Events, Gaming, Generation C, iPTV, Marketing, Media, Mobile, Music, Networks, News, Newspapers, Participation, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, Social Networks, Society, Strategy, Trends, Web/Tech, Weblogs

Alan speaks to OgilvyOne in Barcelona

Last Thursday, I gave a speech to 60+ senior members of OgilvyOne in Barcelona.

Thank you OgilvyOne for inviting me.

Of course, I was talking about our book Communities Dominate Brands , and the converging issues that are forcing businesses to rethink their business models, and how this has significantly impacted on advertising, how we advertise, and how we market and communicate with us everyday Joe’s in the street.

These things always stretch my head – as there is so much to say, so much ground to cover.

But Rory Sutherland at OgilvyOne did thank me for me efforts – which was great! So thanks Rory.

Especially since my presentation corrupted, crashed and burned the evening before my speech. So I spent that evening rebuilding the whole damned thing. (Note to myself – ALWAYS HAVE A BACKUP DUMBO).

So, if you want to get your head around the following headlines from last weeks newspapers…

Kodak struggles to adapt to digital world
Advertising fall at GCap unsettles radio sector
The party’s over: ad sales fall hits big radio
Microsoft gears up to get mobilsed
Hollywood learns to play the video game
All to play for: Microsoft and Sony take the video games battle to the next level
Crispin Porter + Bogusky sign content deal with Fox
admen failing to engage
Big media struggles with a modern world

Then buy the book here or drop us a line and we would be happy to come along and take you through a short story about a long journey.

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Posted in: Events

Big media and blogs

From reuters

You’re not going to see mass blogs equaling some of the largest media companies in other spaces,” said Dan Buczaczer, a director at interactive media buyer Starcom IP, part of Publicis (PUBP.PA: Quote, Profile, Research). But their very appeal to niche audiences “neatly mirrors where other media is going,” he said.

Buczaczer expects a handful of blogs will develop an audience large enough to secure more substantial ad dollars this year. A wave of companies will also start blogs to create more immediate links to consumers in the near term, he said.

As many as 64 percent of marketers are interested in advertising on blogs, according to a Forrester Research study, though their investment would still be a fraction of the $14.7 billion expected to be spent on Internet ads this year.

Another 57 percent are looking to include marketing messages on RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds which allow a viewer to see instantly updating headlines from news, Web logs and other sites via a simple Internet browser.

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Posted in: Trends

Tomi stars in New York

You can’t keep a good man down is the saying and there is no holding the globetrotting Tomi T. Ahonen back.

recently Tomi was in A href=”http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2005/05/tomi_discussed_.html”/> New York

Tomi says

Tomi discussed Community Power with Telecoms industry in New York

Yesterday I presented the keynote to the telecoms IT event arranged by Amdocs, a specialist company serving the telecoms carriers in North America and Europe.

The discussion during and after the presentation was very rich and illuminating. These very senior telecoms experts in charge of such areas as the IT, CRM, billing etc for companies like AT&T, Nextel, Sprint etc. They were quite receptive to the thoughts I presented. Obviously my current presentations borrow heavily from our book, and this time included the Connected Age, Generation-C and Alpha Users, and of course blogging and cellphone smart mobs.

The audience gave very interesting personal experiences echoing the themes such as one executive saying he would dismiss the Gen-C argument as too radical, except that he just last week witnessed his 13 year old daughter exhibiting that very same behaviour. Similarly another executive gave a pre-digital example of using Alpha Users, which is how discos and night clubs in New York would fill up their evenings. They would recruit the influencers who then would bring in the crowds.

Perhaps the funniest point was that after the event the hosts, Amdocs, had booked an expensive dinner for us. But they suggested that perhaps, due to the great popularity of my case study on the Habbo Hotel, we should go and register to that virtual world instead.

Thank you Amdocs for the opportunity to join in the event.

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The technology Wars update

Those boys at PSFK have been very busy looking at the technology wars which are now starting to get serious. There might be some hand to hand fighting at some point soon. I can’t do Adrian Cronar aka Robin Williams (from Good Morning Vietnam) impersonations, so lets pretend.

Here it is – reports comng in

Apple

On the market less than six months, Apple’s iPod shuffle has grabbed a 58% share of the flash-based digital media player market, up from 43% in February, the company chief financial officer, Peter Oppenheimer, reported in an interview to Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Milunovich in a recent interview

Nokia

Nokia’s iPod/CannonCam

Nokia have unveiled a new premium phone that includes an MP3 music player that it said will outsell Apple’s iPod and another with a camera phone that it forecast will surpass Canon, the world’s top digital camera maker.

The world’s leading mobile phone maker expects its new luxury “Nseries” handsets, which feature built-in hard drives and high-quality camera lenses, to boost sales by differentiating it and increasing its industry-leading margins. The company expects to ship 100 million camera phones in 2005, and that Nokia would sell 40 million phones with MP3 digital music players this year.

By comparison, Apple said it sold 5.3 million iPods in the first three months of 2005 while Canon was the top seller of digital cameras in 2004, with 17 percent of the global market of 74 million units, reported Reuters.

Nokia’s N91 multimedia phone will have a 4-gigabyte hard drive that can store thousands of music files. The phone, which will also run on high-speed 3G and wireless LAN networks, is due out by the end of the year. The other new phones, the N90 and the N70, will have two-megapixel cameras with high quality Carl Zeiss lenses. The N90 will be in shops in the second quarter at a price of around 600 euros ($784), while the N70, also a 3G phone, will hit the shelves in the third quarter. Apple’s original iPod retails for about 319 euros in Europe while Canon’s cameras start at less than half the cost of the N90.

Reuters

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Fear of joining in

Tom Hespos from Media post recently posted an article about the issues facing advertisers who embark on a two-way conversation with consumers On Joining the Market Conversation

ADVERTISING IN ONLINE COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTS has always had its share of complex difficulties, not the least of which is a loss of advertiser control. Many advertisers have strict rules about the types of environments they advertise in, and often those rules are reflective of guidelines regarding editorial dos and don’ts. Such rules make it difficult for a media buyer to recommend advertising with an online community, as consumer-generated content can run afoul of editorial guidelines. Consumer-generated content can produce a negative brand experience. A negative comment about a product, service, or company represents the inherent risk in sponsoring or underwriting such content. But I would argue that for most advertisers, such risk is increasingly acceptable in light of the potential benefits of supporting user-generated content.

One of the central themes behind “The Cluetrain Manifesto” is that markets are conversations. The benefits to joining the conversation are many. Some of the best product development ideas can come from consumers who take the time to provide feedback. However, the biggest benefit I see is that providing a soundboard for your customers and leveraging that input in the form of actionable product and marketing strategy on an ongoing basis shows your customers that you care about their concerns.

All sounds like common sense to me.

Hespos also says

While a company may not want to participate directly in market conversations, those conversations are going to happen with or without its input. Participating shows a willingness to work with the consumer, an understanding of the importance of customer concerns, and faith in one’s own ability to create products and services that are relevant to customers and are as good as they can be.

It’s about time that we stopped fearing consumer control. We should embrace it in a meaningful way, which entails listening to the market and responding appropriately.

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Posted in: Marketing

fear of joining in

Tom Hespos from Media post recently posted an article about the issues facing advertisers who embark on a two-way conversation with consumers On Joining the Market Conversation

ADVERTISING IN ONLINE COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTS has always had its share of complex difficulties, not the least of which is a loss of advertiser control. Many advertisers have strict rules about the types of environments they advertise in, and often those rules are reflective of guidelines regarding editorial dos and don’ts. Such rules make it difficult for a media buyer to recommend advertising with an online community, as consumer-generated content can run afoul of editorial guidelines. Consumer-generated content can produce a negative brand experience. A negative comment about a product, service, or company represents the inherent risk in sponsoring or underwriting such content. But I would argue that for most advertisers, such risk is increasingly acceptable in light of the potential benefits of supporting user-generated content.

One of the central themes behind “The Cluetrain Manifesto” is that markets are conversations. The benefits to joining the conversation are many. Some of the best product development ideas can come from consumers who take the time to provide feedback. However, the biggest benefit I see is that providing a soundboard for your customers and leveraging that input in the form of actionable product and marketing strategy on an ongoing basis shows your customers that you care about their concerns.

All sounds like common sense to me.

Hespos also says

While a company may not want to participate directly in market conversations, those conversations are going to happen with or without its input. Participating shows a willingness to work with the consumer, an understanding of the importance of customer concerns, and faith in one’s own ability to create products and services that are relevant to customers and are as good as they can be.

It’s about time that we stopped fearing consumer control. We should embrace it in a meaningful way, which entails listening to the market and responding appropriately.

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