Some good tips and comments in this DailyBLogTips post from January 18, 2008.
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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.
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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.
Twitter Vote for Favorite Super Bowl TV Ads
Jeremiah Owyag ignited a Super Bowl Twitterthon and many are stepping in to use social media to engage more with the Super Bowl. Join the fun and Twitter your take on the TV ads hitting you on Super Bowl Sunday.
Instructions below and pre-game buzz here.
There’s just three steps:
1) Sign up: Get a twitter account, got that? Good.2) Send your vote to @superbowlads: When we’re watching the game in real time, simply send a reply to superbowlads. I created this Twitter account just for this virtual event. Reply to the superbowlads account, name the commerical, and give it a rating of 1-5 stars, 5 being the best.
examples:
“@superbowlads That Pepsi commercial was funny 4 stars”
“@superbowlads The Hillary Clinton advertisement was bunko 2 stars”
“@superbowlads Bud-wise-er, that was so 10 years ago, weak. 1 star”
3) See what others rated: You can then see everyone who’s rated the ads by doing a search on any of the Twitter search tools, I like Terraminds. See this example, it’s showing all the people who have replied to superbowlads.
My friend Rohit also is rallying people to engage online in new ways with the Super Bowl.
Connecting’s Getting Easier
When I joined Intel in 2000, many people were speaking in code. Not HTML, AJAX or C++, but using acronyms in between other English words. The English words…sure I got most of those, but BMK, FSB, SERP? WTF?!! One acronym I got immediately was that email from Andy Grove with these three letters: NFW. I think a simple no would’ve provide more brevity, yet surely less passion.
We’re all hearing about API and other social computing jargon (that’s what it is for many of us) about how we’ll be able to better interconnect our social media and social networking tools. For me, Facebook started the mad rush. Everyone’s creating applications that allow you to use things like Twitter, WordPress, Clipmarks, Flickr and other programs while you’re inside Facebook. It allows you to syndicate or unify the many Web 2.0 tools you use. I LOVE THIS STUFF!!
That’s why 2008 will be a year where we all find new reasons to use new socially juiced programs and fuse them together so we can aggregrate and feed content, but more importantly…so we can grow our social graph = connect to our friends and contacts through any social computing program we use. Unifying and empowering every tool you use at any particular time. Everything, everyone at your finger tips. Better connecting, feeding and growing our social graphs.
Here’s a geeky video from Google describing what’s going on under the hood, driving new possiblities thanks to Open Social and the wonders of API (sure, we’ll have to tackle the ethical/privacy issues over time):
will.i.am Music Video Embodies Best of Social Media, Social Networks
I saw this posted in Facebook from Social Media measurement guru Katie Paine. This will.i.am music video is a great example of an artist being inspired to create, share and connect with his friends to mash media, skills and passion together into an expression of the times. Here’s how the video is described by drsmarty08.
According to will.i.am, founding member and frontman of Black Eyed Peas, the “Yes We Can Song” was inspired by Senator Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and especially the speech Obama gave following the New Hampshire primary. He states, “It made me reflect on the freedoms I have, going to school where I went to school, and the people that came before Obama like Martin Luther King, presidents like Abraham Lincoln that paved the way for me. . . .” Dylan says, “The speech was inspiring about making change in America and I believe what it says and I hope everybody votes.”
The music video includes excerpts from Obama’s speech and appearances from several celebrities: Scarlett Johansson, John Legend, Herbie Hancock, Kate Walsh, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Adam Rodriquez, Kelly Hu, Adam Rodriquez, Amber Valetta, and Nick Cannon. “I’m blown away by how many people wanted to come and be a part of it in a short amount of time. It was all out of love and hope for change and really representing America and looking at the world,” will.i.am said.
Behavior Trending Back to Einstein Aphorisms
Great stuff from Max Kalehoff’s blog Online Spin. The human behavior trend pendulum swings back to Einsteinian inspiration.
1. “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” So why not cultivate imagination? Why not seek it out when screening new hires, or emphasize it in professional development, or cherish it when problem-olving?
2. “A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.” What really are you trying to achieve? How well is your mission defined? Perfection of everything else is meaningless if you and your organization don’t know where you’re headed. This is where leadership begins.
3. “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” This is an ideology of humbleness, selflessness and authenticity. Embodying this ideology creates longer-term, competitive advantage. Value to customer is what really matters, not whether you’re successful. You’ll end up successful if you create value.
4. “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” In an increasingly quant-driven marketplace, it’s easy to obsess on what you can count and disregard the rest. This paradox contributes to the confusion of aims mentioned above. To be successful, it’s critical to find alternative means of codifying and leveraging the important things you can’t count.
5. “Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” Perhaps violence is less relevant in most businesses, but size and complexity are major problems. For reasons I can’t explain, marketers too often get obsessed with size and complexity — as if they’re desirable. The fact is they’re the opposite, and they’re offensive jabs at our most precious assets: time and attention. Marketers may not see this, but customers do. Customers delight in simplicity and efficient use of space and time.
6. “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” This is true for internal employee communications, as well as customer communications. Master your subject matter so you can confidently pick the language, concepts and style that communicate with the greatest ease and efficiency.
7. “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” Mistakes and losses should actually be rewarded. Fear and low tolerance for mistakes breads stagnant cultures and boring products.
8. “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” When you enable passion, you drive focus, cultivate mastery, leverage spontaneity, foster creativity, build intuition and live toward mission. The dots connect, clarity emerges.
9. “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” Truth is paramount, but carelessness with what is small is a window into how one may handle anything large. The small stuff matters.
10. “Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.” Same for marketing and business in general. Need I say more?
Latest Social Media Press Release
I found this today on Paul Gillin’s blog:
The press release evolves again
Maggie Fox’s Social Media Group, which is one of the most innovative boutique agencies specializing in new media marketing, has developed a new version of the Social Media Press Release (SMPR), which was pioneered by Shift Communications in 2006.
The SMPR differs substantially from the traditional press release, which is often long, detailed and inflexible. The new format emphasizes many points of entry, so that journalists and bloggers can pick and choose the information – and the media – that they wish to use. The latter point is important. With so many media outlets today using images, audio and video to tell a story, the traditional press release doesn’t meet their needs very well. The SMPR makes room for story-telling through whatever media the publisher wishes to use. It requires more work on the client end, but should result in much better results.
Another innovation in this new version is its use of popular back-end services like YouTube and Flickr to host content. This means that people can find the information through search engines as well as via the press release.
Maggie has made the template available for anyone to use under a Creative Commons license. She has a more detailed explanation here. Or you can just download the template in PDF format.
This has been a stop and start and stop topic for my team since March 2007. Hope this year we have better luck. This is not a big complaint, because our team was able to turn on some other very cool features like a Chip Shot section for mini updates tailored for journalists and tech bloggers.
BookStack to Excercize Some Brain Cells
I loved the post by my friend Douglas Pollei back in November…the one he called BookStack, where he shared a pile of books he was diving into. By the way, he just did a cool post about how today’s marketers need whole-brain, strategic thinking skills to stay on top of their game.
Here is the pile I got through in 2007. I typically have four books going at one time, so it takes me a while to finish.
From the bottom to the top:
1) Your Inner CEO, Allan Cox (also find him doing great things on Facebook)
This is an inspiring, hands and mind-on book that lets you redefine who you want to be. Allan blends modern psychology and his CEO training experience. He’s really doing a great job connecting with people, getting people involved and showing how to use social media. Bravo!
2) The New Influencers, Paul Gillin
A must read that is quick, filled with mistakes and good things people and companies have done using social media. This book can help many marketers and communications pros get up to speed and off and running with social media.
3) Quantum Leap Thinking, James J. Mapes
I really enjoyed this book. It’s nice to stop and think about how you look at things, how your mind consumes the world. This can help open up perspectives by redefining limits with quick, meaningful leap ahead thinking.
4) We are Smarter than Me, Barry Libert & Jon Spector and Thousands of Contributors
The wisdom of crowds is tightly described in this nifty book. This is one of those huge concepts (like long tale) that are at the core of social media, social networking and how people are communicating better, faster and more openly than ever.
5) The Cluetrain Manifesto, Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger
Many of my friends read this years ago, but it light me up and made me laugh out loud through several plane rides. Most of all, it got me fired up about getting to what matters by being real and honest. Irreverent. Timeless yet of our times.
6) Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
This is mind boggling. It might be telling us all what we already know, subconsciously…pre-reflexively. Think statics is tough? You actually bust our elementary functions, statics and algebra in a blink of the eye whenever you make a snap judgment or life-saving move.
7) Purple Cow, Seth Godin
I finally got to this book several years after it came out, but its as fresh as a warm latte. Seth is a succint storyteller who took off his rose colored glasses long ago and his truly helping marketing and communications pros cut the crap and focus on doing wonderful things. This is about breaking the status quo. It’s about the need for focusing on smaller, more meaningful audiences with something truly valuable. Cookie cutter won’t cut it for everyone anymore. I read this while visiting small towns in Calabria, southern Italy this winter. I believe that each little town is living what Seth is talking about. Each town is getting back to their heritage, their dialect, their crafts and celebrating their specialty foods and songs. It makes them special, and stand out from other neighboring towns.
8) Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin (standing, left)
Picked this up in Berkeley at Cody’s Bookstore and it’s yummy. I’m still flipping through it, but this is Seth Godin taking ideamaking to the next level — what not to do, so that you can see how to free yourself to make the right combinations. To use the right combination of traits from the left AND right sides of your brain.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: SethGodin, Malcolm Gladwell, Cluetrain Manifesto, James Mapes, Paul Gillin, Allan Cox, Douglas Pollei
There’s a Time for Everything: Consume, Digest, Excercize & Create
Tom Foremski has been saying this to me and many others for years: we’re in conversation overload. I agree, but I still see many people feeling like they’re in information overload. Both leave you starving for time to “get away” and “think.”
Today reading his “IMHO” ZDNet blog “We live in the conversation age and not the thinking age,” I felt the wonderful blend of new world desires tempered with old school reality. He does that so well. This got me thinking, “How do people do it?” “How am I staying on top of my game…of life?”
There are prolific people like Robert Scoble (coverage from Davos — even this YouTube brush with Bono paraphrasing writer Thomas Friedman: “don’t change your lightbulbs…change your leaders!”), Jeremiah Owyang (just spoke at Intel’s sales conference) and others who quickly, regularly consumer tons of “content,” blog posts, news, videos…then they make sense of what’s valuable, put it into context for themselves and share it. This is a creative process that require a wondrous metabolism. On top of that, they’re out meeting people, talking at events and helping, inspiring friends and business acquaintances to learn and move ahead.
I don’t have the wondrous metabolism, but I have changed some things in the past few years. I’ve pulled passion up front and center. I’ve opened up more and tried to help more people — more willing to make mistakes and more eager to include others who can help me. Although I’ve been temporarily separated from my wife and kids for 18 months, I dedicate time for talking, thinking, praying and taking care of necessities for them. I’d like my efforts to be more thoughtful and trusted by those I’m with, but this requires self enlightening time, time for dreaming and securing one foot on the ground.
So I’d agree that we’re swarmed by many conversations. Rather then duck and cover, I try to suck it up! Run with it. Remember my principles and build my character every chance I get. Whether its information or conversation or creation overload, what we do for ourselves and one another is only as good as our minds are sharp, spirits are alive, bodies are in motion and hearts are pumpin’ with love.
I better get more slim moleskin notepads!! By the way, I agree that Portland is a place the lets you think…or not think when you want. Love that city!
Movin' Ahead 