2008 – Page 9 – Movin' Ahead

February 10, 2008February 12, 2008 kenekaplan Marketing, Research, Social Media, Web 2.0

Connected Agencies & Corporate Marketing Change Agents

I just skimmed Forrester Research’s report “The Connected Agency” from their Interactive Marketing Professional team. This is great stuff I’m going to read again and map out how I feel and where I fit in their scheme of things.

UPDATE: I got a nice call from Forrester this morning (2/11/08). Here is how you can access the full report:

The link we discussed (www.forrester.com/connectedagency) now directs visitors to the main report page, where Forrester clients can log in and download the report, or non-clients can purchase a copy for $279.

As an corporate communications dude, I see how things are changing inside. Silos are coming down. People with skills are connecting with people on different teams to get advice, maximize resources and share learnings.I see agencies and vendors evolving quickly too. They’re racing to capture talented people, participate in key communities (for their industry and for the benefit of their clients) and they’re mastering new tools.There is an healthy pull pulling both corporate communications/marketing and agencies/vendors up to new heights, faster and faster. And along the way more people from both sides are participating online, testing and improving new Web 2.0 tools. We’re also learning a lot and getting better at making sense of data and sharing it quickly, broadly. Those abilities will improve in 2008.One thing I’d like is to start pulling in what Forester pegs to happen in 2013 “the agency is part of the community.” I believe we’re actually seeing “the agency promotes the community” in some cases right now. But I do think Forester has it right here:

* 2008 to 2009: The agency involves the community. Even in 2007, agencies and marketers began to reach out to consumers: Chanel worked with viral agency BuzzParadise to tap select bloggers for participation in special events and to receive insider brand news; Publicis launched a blogger advertising network, with the twist that amateurs create the ads. Agencies need to keep consumers involved consistently and begin to build a specialization in specific target markets or with communities based on the brands with which they are working. Where’s the money? Brands will pay a premium for the high conversion rates that the agency can guarantee based on its community insights.

* 2010 to 2012: The agency promotes the community. Agencies focus dedicated teams on creating direct relationships with tightly defined communities. At shops like Leo Burnett, job titles shift from account manager to community animator. Media fragmentation, communities embodying multiple personas, and niche brands offer a rich opportunity for agencies to compile distinct portfolios of closely knit consumers, uncovered by disparate data sources. Much like a talent or sports agent, the community animator will begin promoting its own communities to compatible brands, rather than the reverse. Agencies will take the place of gatekeeper to those communities, and brands will need to pay to get in. By 2010, brands like BMW will have realized that mass marketing is over and that access to influencers is the way forward.

* 2013 on: The agency is part of the community. Agency staff will draw closer to the communities they interact with and ultimately become part of the community itself. Fast-forward to the future: The successful agency has intimate involvement with community members as an external mouthpiece and internal catalyst. This bond allows the agency team to “age” with its community, brokering relationships with new brands as the community’s needs change. Large groups like JWT will scale by managing a kaleidoscope of different consumer groups, introducing and handing off appropriate brands as communities evolve. Advertisers will consolidate business with agencies that can adeptly accompany brands throughout their life cycle within diverse consumer communities.

clipped from www.forrester.com

The Connected Agency
Marketers: Partner With An Agency That Listens Instead Of Shouts
by
Mary Beth Kemp, Peter Kim

Today’s agencies fail to help marketers engage with consumers, who, as a result, are becoming less brand-loyal and more trusting of each other.

A new definition of “mass media” is emerging. Content Creators comprise 13% of the US adult online population and 11% of online Europeans.(see endnote 8) Communities can now find and consume media that speaks directly to niche interests, published by other community members. The new mass media is made up of a collection of communities. While many consumers are involved, each individual community is small, fragmenting the market further. As more consumers become involved in Social Computing, these platforms will grow and eclipse today’s mainstream media.

New players compensate for left-brain deficiencies.

Pull dominates push; quality trumps quantity.

Creative talent resides inside and outside the firm

The agency promotes the community

February 10, 2008February 10, 2008 kenekaplan Uncategorized

BlogTalk Radio — IT Pros from Intel’s Open Port Community

UPDATE: Pasting BlogTalkRadio player code directly into this post:

I tried embedding the BlogTalkRadio player here, using the embed feature (Gigya technology), but the player hasn’t showed up here yet. The title arrive on my blog, no problem and I also see player code in my code section…but now player. What gives? I’ll try other ways.

When this gets up and running, this BlogTalkRadio show “Open Port Radio” will be great for my enterprise tech pals at Intel. They’ve been hosting a community for IT pros interested in bringing the latest IT supported technologies into their businesses. I’ve seen some of the most brilliant passion and can-do energy from this team as they try new ways to share insight and connect experts with one another. Here’s a recent conversation they explored on Open Port.

In a big company like Intel, users get their software in a variety of ways – on their desktops, delivered over a network, or some combination of those. Catherine Spence, an enterprise architect with Intel IT Research and Technology Development, studies alternate and emerging compute models for enterprise operations. In this audio podcast, Spence discusses what her group learned through a recent study on the effects of streaming and virtual hosted desktop computing models on server and network utilization. On-demand software, or Software as a Service, is one of the emerging software delivery models showing benefits in boosting productivity and lowering costs.

[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2008/01/PID_013344/Podtech_IT@Intel_SAAS.mp3&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/home/4890/itintel-software-as-a-service&totalTime=411000&breadcrumb=83ae8f58fe3744cba6cb2e62178ea911]

February 10, 2008February 10, 2008 kenekaplan KenEKaplan, Poetry

Melancholy and Inspiration

Today I really feel the seasons changing. Change is good, disruptive, rejuvenating, difficult. From simply having to move your desk at work to a new location…to loosing a loved one. Change is everywhere and ignites emotions, creating opportunities to pump our next moves with reflections, accounts that drive the best in us.

In addition to the warm sun, smell of cut grass and sounds of spring around the corner, I found two things today: 1) a poem my uncle read at my dad’s funeral service last month and 2) a poem I wrote 15 years ago, just out of college digging my North Beach beat life in San Francisco. Both have that mix of melancholy and inspiration stirring inside me today.

Death is nothing at all…

I have only slipped away into the next room.

I am I, and you are you.

Whatever we were to each other, that we are still

Call me by my old familiar name,

Speak to me in the easy way you alwsys used.

Put no differnece into your tone

Wear no forced air of sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed

at the little jokes we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the housefold word that it always was

Let it be spoken without effort,

without the ghost of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.

It is the same as it ever was;

there is absolutely unbroken continuity…

Why should I be out of your mind because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you for an interval,

Somewhere very near, just around the corner.

All is well.

— Henry Scott Holland, English clergyman, First World War, slightly adapted

A Denizen’s Dream

We are all breeders sparing time for change

We seek destinations, resolutions

But memories are made from the travel between

Interludes of intra-interpersonal interpretations

So much passes with silence

Becoming habbits and addictions

Fixations that unveil the mask of true ignorance

Eyes drooping

Nostrils relaxed

and tongue hanging agape dry and white

I languish in the thought

The dank doldrums wherein we stay steeped so spiraling…

Licking lips to keep a head up

While knee deep in purposeless splendor

Like the unfathomable delight of a denizen’s drive

Dreaming of talks

We’ve had in teh future

Face forward

A jettison through the breeze

— Ken E Kaplan, North Beach in San Francisco, CA, October 12, 1993

February 8, 2008February 8, 2008 kenekaplan Fun, Italy, wine

Italian Bubbly

About.com’s Kyle Phillips recently went to a “presentation of sparkling wines in Viareggio, along the Tuscan coast….there was everything from light, spritzy Prosecco through much more serious, well aged Franciacorta and Champagne.” Below is the list, but here’s Kyle’s commentary.

clipped from italianfood.about.com

Secret to Sucess? It’s All in the New Media Family List

Saw this New Media Family List on Amy Webb’s MyDigiMedia blog and thought it was pretty cool. Highlights from her post, where you can download a bigger PDF file and take a closer look:

In the six months since I first created the chart, there are a handful of notable updates:

AOL’s list has grown tremendously, while Google, News Corp and IAC have remained relatively unchanged.

AOL is heading strong into behavioral targeting and various ad network options.

Yahoo’s buy early and large strategy toned down considerably in Q3 and Q4 of 2007.

Google’s last acquisition was Postini early last fall.

Though I’m not tracking this on the chart, News Corp has also been selling lots of assets – namely local television stations.

Here’s the new Who Owns What page at mydigimedia. Download the new chart (PDF) here. And if you want to read my original post and learn more about why I started tracking all this to begin with, have a look here.

February 8, 2008June 14, 2008 kenekaplan Culture, Intel, Photos, Travel

Alberobello…Trulli-magnificent

Alberobello, il paese dei trulli!, originally uploaded by mery mellivora.

I’ve visited Martina Franca a few times and see why Martina, Alberobello, Locorontondo (great wines) are treasures of the southern heel-region of Puglia. The mozzarella, roasted meats, white painted everythings and the Trulli.

In this picture I found on Flickr’s photo feed by Mery Mellivora you can see how the old round, coned Trulli houses blend with modern homes in Alberbello. There is a historic strip of Trulli lined with excellent restaurants.

I rang in the new year 2008 at Martin Franca. I’ll upload my photos and share on Flickr. If you go, check out the killer antique furnature store Bruni Arte

February 5, 2008 kenekaplan Jeremiah Owyang, Tech, Web 2.0

Pearls of Wisdom Come From Mind Crunching Reality

Lots of talk about Microsoft’s $44.6 Billion bid for Yahoo! Most of it focuses on search and online advertising. But I bet we’ll start hearing more about the social computing value of Yahoo! and how its people have been excerising their brains and buying plug and play social media assets for many years now. Flickr, Upcoming and del.icio.us are a few names in teh Yahoo! family of aquisitions. These tools help people interconnect their online activities form photo sharing to bookmarking articles to managing their calendar of fun community activities.

In a Forrester Research blog post by Jeremiah Owyang on this subject, I really liked this pearl of wisdom about the future of media companies:

A new definition of media. My colleague Charlene Li has written before about the transformation media companies are undertaking due to the rise of social computing. As syndication replaces aggregation, a media company becomes one which assembles an audience, not necessarily a firm which creates content (think Facebook v. CNN). In light of this acquisition, I’d add one more dimension to this observation. With Yahoo gone, the two remaining online media powerhouses: Google and Microsoft are both technology companies. These are firms who specialize in creating tools and innovations to facilitate the user experience of the Web and marketer access to customer data. I think this acquisition signals for both marketers and media firms that the trend of Left Brain Marketing – a data-driven approach to marketing – is irrevocably changing who we call a media firm. Tomorrow’s media companies are technology innovators who can connect audiences with marketing messages, not content creators.

Here’s Charlene Li’s Growndswell take on the bid.

February 4, 2008 kenekaplan Music

Declare Independence

This is a cool, trippy, Orwellian or Brazil-like music video from Bjork I saw on Cindy B’s Pownce site. I first heard Bjork in my musical depths of college at Chico, where I loved Bob Marley, Bauhaus, Sister’s of Mercy, U2, Cure, Mazzy Star, Clash, Circle Jerks, This Mortal Coil, Pixies, NWA, Public Enemy, P-Funk, Digital Underground, PIL… and yes, even The Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd.

February 4, 2008 kenekaplan Uncategorized

BlogTalkRadio Share Show Widget

February 4, 2008 kenekaplan Uncategorized

Social Media Guru Steps Up for Network Solutions

A Twitter king gets interviewed by Shel Israel. That’s the gracious, observant Shashi Bellamkonda.

clipped from redcouch.typepad.com

The very fact that Network Solutions realized that they need a social media person is a positive step toward joining the conversation. We got over the first milestone–getting people inside the company to understand the challenges and the power of social media presence. I have been part of discussions to open new ways for customer communication (blogs, forums).

We have been using Communispace as a social media tool for a few years and now we’re taking steps in mainstream social media.� In a very small way, I experimented using social media to spread the word about a product that I managed called BuildMyMobi. I wanted to let people know that it was an easy to use tool to create a website for mobile phones. I joined conversations in blogs and forums where the people might be looking for such tools. We asked people to try the product. This helped us understand that with the right approach social media can add a new dimension to our efforts to reach customers.