Ogilvy says: From Interruption to Engagement

All Companies must learn to move from interruption to inviting participation. For all marketing initiatives, this no longer means communicating by interruption, but by engagement

Is what was written in CDB, waaaaaaay back in 2005 and in fact it was something I spoke a great deal about in 2002.

What we got back from the media, clients, - well you name them, was something along the lines of a nervous twitch or a blank stare - or some clever dickie leaning over the table and telling me his compliment was a “double-edged” sword because I was a pioneer and they tended to get shot.

Sorry CS - I am still alive and kicking :-))

So - it was interesting to read all about Engagement Marketing in the Irish Times this week.

Ogilvy it seems have become Messianic to the SMLXL philosophy

To influence the engaged consumers of the digital democracy, push marketing needs to be replaced by engagement marketing

Said Patou Nuytemans - who I do know. So nice one Patou - thanks for spreading the word.

An aside I would like to make is that, the emphasis on pure digital is a little cul-de-sac of straight line logic (Not Patou’s fault - I can assure you) because we live not separate from offline and online - we live in a world of blended reality.

A point of view expounded by William Gibson

And it was Henry Jenkins who said that we live in a participatory culture

And Glen Urban who talked about trust based marketing strategies as an imperative in a world of information empowerment.

What this means is that we cannot define engagement purely in terms of a digital reality. Digital provides connectivity, but we still enjoy communing together. And much more besides.

As I said in my interview with Henry Jenkins

Engagement Marketing is a very broad term, and purposefully so. At its heart, is the insight that human beings are highly social animals, and have an innate need to communicate and interact. Therefore, any engagement marketing initiative must allow for two-way flows of information and communication. We believe, people embrace what they create. And why is this important? Because in advanced economies the values of society and the individual change. At the heart of this is the key issue around identity and belonging. We have always had community.

Pre- industrialization, we were tied to our communities by geography, tradition, the state and birthright. External forces shaped our identity. However, in a post-modern world we can have many selves, as we undertake a quest for self identity. This is described as Psychological Self-Determination the ability to exert control over the most important aspects of ones life, especially personal identity, which has become the source of meaning and purpose in a life no longer dictated by geography or tradition.

The Community Generation, shun traditional organizations in favor of unmediated relationship to the things they care about. The Community Generation, seek and expect direct participation and influence. They possess the skills to lead, confer and discuss. These people are not watching television and have grown up in a world of search and two-way flows of communication.

Going further Engagement Marketing is premised upon: transparency - interactivity - immediacy - facilitation - engagement - co-creation - collaboration - experience and trust these words define the migration form mass media to social media. The explosion of: Myspace, YouTube, Second Life and other MMORPG’s, Citizen Journalism, Wicki’s and Swicki’s, TV formats like Pop Idol, or Jamies School Dinners, Blogs, social search, The Guinness Visitor Centre in Dublin or the Eden project in Cornwall UK, mobile games like Superstable or Twins, or, new business platforms like Spreadshirt.com all demonstrate a new socio-economic model, where engagement sits at the epicentre

If agencies persist and clients insist on a siloed approach to communications then they will not achieve the full potential that engagement offers, neither in terms of the end-user experience nor in terms of generating revenue.

Now I know that certain activities can be exclusively digital, but when SMLXL defined Engagement, as a philosophy and process, we never did so looking at digital as an singular exclusive media in which this philosophy could be played out. No we took the Bill Bailey approach: You start with a laugh and work backwards. Engagement must be solely premised upon the end-user experience. Not on the media.

But because of the the way media is sliced and diced, because of the way agencies are structured, because of the way media is bought, sold and measured - it is very, very hard to take a truly holistic view - which in fact is what is required. So its idea + comms + measurement + budget = a hybrid team task, not, siloed orientated.

The theory of the 4C’s: Commerce, Culture, Community and Connectivity is well explained on this site as are the principles that then underpin that theory and practice, mentioned above.

Networks, argues Manuel Castells, whether they be; Economic, Cultural or Media, like nature, have become the nervous systems of society.

This implies that our world of business, media, and communications is evolving from the straight-lines of an industrial era to the more complex and networked world that mimics nature. This interactive networked world isn’t about vertical silos, traditional notions of product and service creation, mass-production and mass media and marketing. It is about the massive flows of people, who are connecting, collaborating, organising and creating in a manner that has nothing to do with a linear approach too much at all. This is truly an engaged and participatory culture.

As Robert Penn Warren wrote in All the Kings Men

You look up the highway and it is straight for miles. Coming at you, with the black line down the centre coming at you, black and slick and tarry-shining against the white of the slab, and the heat dazzles up from the white slab so that only the black line is clear, coming at you with the whine of tires, and if you don?t quit staring at that line and don?t take a few deep breaths and slap yourself hard on the back of the neck you?ll hypnotize yourself and you?ll come to just at the moment when the right wheel hooks over the black dirt shoulder off the slab.

So claiming Engagement only for digital makes no sense - there is still much for organisations to learn.

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Social Advertising Intelligence

The Social Marketing Intelligence company ? Xtract has just released a paper on Social Advertising Intelligence

There are many people, companies, striving to make sense of the networked world from a commercial perspective - this started right back in time when Murdoch bought myspace - but many still struggle with how - and there is a very obvious reason for this - the traditional inventory is mostly inapproriate in a social media space.

As the Chief Editor and Publisher, Jason Pontin of MIT Technology Review - said of Xtract

You are solving the billion dollar most burning question, and, this is the most comprehensive solution for social media advertising I have seen. When I see something like your presentation, I feel it makes sense to travel a long way to this kind event

So I suggest that it would be worth downloading the paper to get a better insight into how advertising works in the world of the Networked Society

As we asked the question a while ago Do you want 6 feet of junk mail or a 29% response rate?

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Xtract at Millenium Prize Finalist Symposium

The Millenium Symposium is an event that takes place in Finland and in fact brings many people together far and wide. For example The Chief Editor and Publisher, Jason Pontin of MIT Technology Review

The organisers provide an opportunity for three Finnish “hot” technology companies to present at the Symposium. The Social Marketing Intelligence company - Xtract were one of those three. Jason Pontin?s comment after Xtract?s presentation was…

You are solving the billion dollar most burning question, and, this is the most comprehensive solution for social media advertising I have seen. When I see something like your presentation, I feel it makes sense to travel a long way to this kind event

Jason also requested a Demo of the Social Advertising Tool ? called XSAI

MIT Technology Review?s next cover story will be about social media advertising, because Silicon Valley is now very focused on this particular area and according to Jason, that Xtract are well ahead of the curve and frankly the feedback Jouko and I received as we traveled in the US last week was very much to that point

More on Xtract on CDB

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Social Media Will Change Your Business - Engagement by any other name

Tomi and I did not use the word Social Media in CDB, but we did describe a phenomenon that we called the 4C’s

Commerce
Culture
Community
Connectivity

The once separate provinces of innovation, technology, economic activity, culture and communities are pulling together and converging into one another in increasingly intimate and more powerful combinations. Thus creating new opportunities for how we create and exchange information, knowledge, and culture. And in my mind this sits at the very heart of understanding the future we are living in today

By mapping our marketing strategies with the 4C?s I believe we can develop a lasting value proposition that has a much greater chance of success.

So set the controls for the heart of the 4C?s

Briefly, connectivity provides companies for the very first time the opportunity to generate two-way flows of information, feedback and engagement. Connectivity, enables via a variety of paltforms to identify who are prolific connectors and social networks that could be key distribution points and sharing word of mouth messages. But connectivity alone is not enough, there must be good content (culture) and a population of interest (community). If this can be combined with a genuine business enterprise (Commerce). One is looking at a powerful business and marketing model.

This is the underpining of Social Media and how it will Change Your Business which Business Week wrote about last week

As Jan van Dijk wrote in The Network Society

Networks cause a comprehensive restructuring of society at large - they are breaking old models of organisation.

Indeed media and technology are not only enabling but they defining.

And CDB has always been more holistic in attempting to get its head around all media vs. just blogs. As the technologies are connected and continue to converge.

The connectivity levels that we witness today, and the with that the rise of networks are transforming the relationship between supply and demand.

The Business article gives some indication of what we mean

More than 16,000 BT employees work together on wikis, using the same technology as Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that lets anyone post or edit entries. But instead of teaming up to edit an online encyclopedia, employees gather on them to write software, map cell-phone base stations, launch branding campaigns.Nearly every new project hatches a wiki. This is especially valuable in a global economy, where engineers in Asia can pick up a project as Europeans go to bed. The new groups that evolve on these wikis raze traditional hierarchies: An intern can amend the work of a senior engineer.

But there is also a philosophical element here which is about a new logic, a new language that helps others understand how to go about engaging, and building in a network society.

I can tell you there is still a great deal of resistance.

Every technological cycle has a Belle Epoque, and our mass media certainly had theirs.

The full deployment of the enormous wealth-creating potential brought forth by each technological revolution requires, each time, the establishment of an adequate socio-institutional framework. The exisiting framework, created to handle growth based on the previous set of technologies, is unsuited to the new one. Thus, in the first decades of installation of the new industries and infrasturctures, there is am increasing mis-match between techno-economic and soci-institutional spheres, as well as an internal decoupling of the economic system, between the old and new technologies. The process of re-establishing a good match and creating conditions both for recoupling and full deployment of the new potential is complex, protracted and socially painful

Writes Carlota Perez and who we quote in The End of the Belle Epoque

So we need to think about the logic and philosophy of:

Assembly
Value Creation
Innovation
Marketing
Media

Because…

IN the mass society the (mass) media were supposed to stand ‘above’ society, distributing information objectively and independently in the networked society, the mass and interactive media are embedded in society.

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Polyclinics are not communities

In the UK at the moment the Government (Civil Service) is moving to roll out a plan to remove our local GP surgeries - GP stands for General practitioner

For what is described as Polyclinics. We blogged abut it previously in Who does the UK government work for? and we referenced a Guardian article A policy for junk healthcare

The topic was brought to mind by a recent report by the Kings Fund

The evidence presented in this report suggests that although there are opportunities to improve the quality of care and address some long standing problems in the English health care system, there are also risks, particularly around the transition to this new model. The report describes contextual differences that may place limits on the transferability of apparently successful polyclinic models from other countries. If polyclinics are to succeed in promoting integrated health care, policy-makers and commissioners need to recognise these differences and actively manage the associated risks.

These polyclinic have been described as community based - I am not so sure. The reason is that GP surgeries sit within specific communities, my village for example, forming part of the fabric of social life. I wonder whether the Government is designing a program which though speaks of patient care - does not embrace how communities actually function.

The report looks at…

1). Quality
2). Access
3). Cost

And key conclusions

1). For some health communities the development of polyclinic-type facilities could offer real opportunities to establish more integrated, patient-focused care, but only if considerable investment of time, effort and resources is put into their planning and development.

2). The primary focus should be on developing new pathways, technologies and ways of working rather than new buildings. Co-location alone is not sufficient to generate co-working between different teams and professionals. Investment in change management and strong clinical and managerial leadership will be required.

3). Commissioners will need to consider new waysofcommissioning primary and community services. Services will need to be contracted on the basis of clear quality standards in order to ensure that the benefits of the new models of care are realised.

4). New approaches to assure the quality of out-of-hospital care and support professional development will be needed. There needs to be a much stronger framework for inspection and accreditation.

5). Amajor centralisation of primary care is unlikely to be beneficial for patients, particularly in rural areas. A hub-and-spoke model, where the polyclinic acts as a central resource base in a co-ordinated network of practices, islikelyto be more appropriate to achieve the desired development of primarycare services.

6). To maximise accessibility, choice of location is critical? polyclinics should ideally be developed in natural transport hubs. Where this is not possible, finding ways to integrate servicesmore effectively within existing facilitiesor on existing sites would be preferable to developing a polyclinicin a lessaccessible location. Improved access by car cannotbe assumed given restrictionson car parking imposed by local authorities
on anynew developments.

7). Substantial cost savings are unlikelyto be made. Costs for some services may increase, unless hospitals can significantly reduce their unit costs and commissioners can manage demand. Scheduling of services will need to be carefully planned in order to ensure effective utilisation of building space and staff time. Developing polyclinics is likely to require transitional funding.

8). There are significant workforce implications that need to be thought through and addressed.

9). New developments should not simply be a response to a new national target, but a well thought-out element of a broader strategic plan that responds to local needs.

10). Any polyclinics developed should be subject to rigorous evaluation to help fill the current gaps in the evidence base.

the American health care system, in which the percentage of outpatient activity taking place within the
community has grown from 10per cent to 50per cent. Currently, only 10 per cent of outpatient appointments in England are delivered in a community setting.

Yet my point is, what in the above terms defines and describes community? We have lost village shops, post offices, and now GP surgeries? I am not of the blue tinted persuasion - however my research tells me that the glue that holds people together is a very precious commodity. And in a post modern world that glue becomes evermore vital.

This to my mind presents a dangerous precedent where life is no longer local but destroyed altogether.

Norman Lamb the Liberal Democrat health spokesman believes the report was a

damning critique of the Government’s short-sighted obsession with polyclinics

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All the rest is Spam, spam, spam, spam

Sitting here at JFK this caught my eye All the rest is spam by my friend DC @ Fasterfuture blogspot

David mentions a Scott Karp post Why Traditional Advertising Formats Fail On The Web

He should have said Why Traditional Advertising Formats Fail On Any Digital Platform

… when people go online they know what they want and how to do it… This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other editorial choices that try to distract them.

says Jakob Nielsen

and so all the rest is spam

says Dave. All the rest is crap in my opinion.

Online advertising must create value for users or it will create little or no value for advertisers

This is a huge beef for me how modern marketers have been so slow, how agencies are so reactive, how digital agencies so don’t understand social networks (direct experience of that one) this is the failure of substance over of style - for me its dead simple - commercial messages must be

1). Life enabling
2). Life Simplifying
3). Navigational

ie. they must become useful ? they must have a higher yield in terms of perceived currency. This can be the only way forward. But this is also a new form of inventory and, requires new metrics.

Brands are not in control and 25% of all media is made by us or will be by 2012. Which means that how brands are built, how marketing is done does not come from the straight line thinking of our analogue world.

This is what Glen Urban calls Trust based Marketing strategies and Trust is the most precious commodity any brand or business can possess when Push becomes Pull

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All the rest is Spam, spam, spam, spam

Sitting here at JFK this caught my eye All the rest is spam by my friend DC @ Fasterfuture blogspot

David mentions a Scott Karp post Why Traditional Advertising Formats Fail On The Web

.

.. when people go online they know what they want and how to do it… This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other editorial choices that try to distract them.

says Jakob Nielsen and Dave says and so all the rest is spam says Dave

Online advertising must create value for users or it will create little or no value for advertisers

This is a huge beef for me - the whole idea that commercial messages must be

1). Life enabling
2). Life Simplifying
3). Navigational

ie. they must become useful ? can only be the way forward. But this is a new form of inventory and requires new metrics.

Its is amazing however that companies are not prepared to fail to succeed.

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All quiet on the Western Front?

Its been a buy week - though not on this blog.

I have been traveling widely this week throughout the US - talking to VC’s, media companies and investment bankers.

So the long days and travel have curtailed my blogging activities.

What was interesting? Well there does seem to be the grass shoots of companies actively seeking life after the CPM/CPC/ model to something I call C.P.R.A. Cost Per Relevant Audience ? CPRA is the notion that instead of blanket bombing via one-way broadcast media, one can, with the right “ refined ” analytic data, identify, the right audience for the right message, with the additional special sauce of how social networked relationships can drive the speed and penetration of commercial communications that are well beyond the limited social networking on places like Facebook and myspace. What I also describe as Social Marketing Intelligence

Mobile moves steadily onto the agenda, and big online players, traditional brands and media, start to explore how they move into the mobile space.

Again data, and data analytics was a significant part of the conversation.

Media companies are actively seeking new capabilities to help them succeed in the networked society. This means the days of limited survey panels with limited accurate reporting are over.

Sadly, I could not stay for the Mobile Marketing Association event, as I am speaking in Barcelona and in Rome next week.

As they say - no rest for the wicked.

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Rehab is for quitters

Sang Amy Winehouse. Well she didn’t exactly say that, but the thought crossed my mind, when I stopped by my favourite wine shop in Cambridge called Bacchanalia.

Because the owner Paul Bowles was reading an article about his shop published in the Cambridge Evening News Calls to remove ‘taunting’ sign

A BILLBOARD outside an off-licence which states “Rehab is for Quitters” has been slammed for “taunting” alcoholics.

The sign outside wine shop Bacchanalia in Victoria Road, Cambridge, has offended residents and members of Alcoholics Anonymous because the message is shown opposite a meeting place for people battling addiction.

I did find this funny, although reading the article I can see there is a serious point to be made. However, it reminded of the sloppy journalism which Nick Davis talks about in his book Flat Earth News I mean “slammed”? What a word, and, I wonder how long the Journo’s had to write the article? What pressure did they have on time to deliver the piece?

And even the Mirror picked up the story with its own version of quality journalism, with the headline ‘Rehab is for Quitters’ sign put up outside Alcoholics Anonymous meeting

Which is complete rubbish. In the article, there was no mention about Alcopops sold in all supermarkets, newsagents and garage forecourts. No mention of Happy Hours and Pints for a quid, or pitchers of something very strong sold for a fiver. It’s just biased cods-wallop.

Now this is where blogs become interesting, because, this is my unmediated view of the above story. I know the owner for at least ten years. Paul does not sell cheap alchohol of any description. He does not do buy-one- get-one-free. He takes his job seriously, he supplies to a wide variety of clientel. And his signs have been there for as long as I have known him. I consult Paul on wines that I might like to try and he suggests and happily recommends.

He does proper wine tasting evenings and is very knowledgable.

There is a hostel in Victoria road (where Paul’s shop is), but it is not; any where near to, next to, on top of, opposite, or even outside an AA meeting place/hostel.

Now I would have thought that if the hostel felt that sensitive they might have had a quiet word with Paul? And I wonder why the Cambridge Evening News did not call up Paul to make an appointment for an interview? And, there is nothing wrong in traveling up to London to go to a wine tasting - because that what people who take their wine seriously do. (I mention this as “Paul was not available to comment”)

So if you want great wine, which is not the 12% sugar based stuff, often sold as quality, (a good wine should have about 1% natural sugar), and if you want good quality honest advice, drop by Bacchanalia in Victoria Road, Cambridge. If you want to read quality journalism on the other hand, that is fact-checked, honest and relevant well, god knows where you go for that these days!

Paul will be on 5 Live this Sunday having his say - and quite right too.

So shame on you Cambridge Evening News, such journalism does a grave disservice to your profession and the integrity of your business. If you want to be a trusted part of the community do some proper reporting. Trust is what makes communities thrive and survive. You have an important role to play in local life, its so disappointing to see articles such as these, picked up by the the PA and disseminated to begin the process of chinese whispers taking

out-of-context reporting

to even more out of context reporting.

I raise a glass of Shiraz bought from Bacchanalia in salute of a great little business.

And a suggestion to the Cambridge Evening News, why don’t you do a wine tasting

in association with Bacchanalia

, it’ll sell more newspapers.

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Connectivity unleashes productivity

Kevin Kelly gives us a blow by blow account of a speech made at the Long Now Foundation about decentralising control, the Gameen Bank and how that has helped local and poor populations presented by Iqbar Quadir

Wikipedia notes

Quadir?s vision, which was deemed radical at the time, was to create universal access to telephone service in Bangladesh and to increase self-employment opportunities for its rural poor. In 1993, Quadir started a New York-based company named Gonofone (Bengali for ?phones for the masses?), which later became the launch-pad for GrameenPhone . Currently the largest telephone company in Bangladesh with nearly sixteen million subscribers, GrameenPhone provides telephone access to more than 100 million rural people living in 60,000 villages and generates revenues close to $1 billion annually. With infrastructure investments of more than $1 billion, GrameenPhone is providing cellular coverage throughout Bangladesh.

Kelly writes

In 1993 when Quadir began, Bangladesh had one of the lowest penetrations of telephones on the planet — only one phone for every 500 people. GrameenPhone project unleashed 25 million phones. Today there are 100 times as many phones, or one per 5 people. Just as Quadir had envisioned, this decentralized connectivity has increased productivity. Without connectivity people waste a lot more time on economic errands. With cell connectivity farmers maximize their profits by getting real-time prices at distant markets; shepherds can call a vet, or order medicine. One study concluded that the total lifetime cost of an additional phone (including the cell tower and switching gear) was about $2,000, but that each phone enabled $50,000 of increased productivity. And surprisingly, the poorer the country to begin with, the greater the increase in wealth from connectivity.

Iqbal is currently investigating whether energy can also be dethroned from its current mode of extremely centralized generation.

And on this blog all 400,000 words of it, relates to the centrality of networks, social engagement and how that is shaping and changing our world. And why we need to comprehend the principles of: trust, co-operation, sharing, co-creation et al are still the basic tenets of successful societies.

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