Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Book Review : 'Ignore Everybody'

I first met Hugh 'Gapingvoid' MacLeod at Reboot 7.0 in 2005 (my all time favourite nethead do) and have got to know him a little since.  Initially, over a couple of great conversations related to his English Cut and Stormhoek projects; then at a fun evening watching the film he helped out with; on a very entertaining trip to a Microsoft bashola in Paris where we both got to quiz MS' Grandest Fromages; and at a fine dinner with the Edelman crew last year.  And like millions of others I’ve followed his blog forever and have always admired his ability to be one step ahead of the game with concepts like the 'Global Microbrand' and 'Personal Sovereignty'.  Both notions I have taken to heart in my own professional life.  So I was very happy to receive an advance copy of his new book, Ignore Everybody.  However, I thought it might all be too familiar to really enjoy.  But enjoy it I did.  It’s based on Hugh’s fantastic ‘How To Be Creative’ manifesto but could also be described as – ‘Gapingvoid’s Greatest Hits’.  It’s a very unusual mixture of business book for the networked age, observations about life and practical tips on becoming a creative professional.  All genuinely inspiring stuff with the trademark GV dark twists thrown in for good measure.  I’ve already mentioned the book to a few people in passing and have almost given them my advance copy to read.  But I’ve decided to hold onto it.  I think one day it might be a bit of a collectors' item.  So go and buy your own!

Ten Blogging Tips

MediaTrust is a great organisation which helps charities and voluntary groups by teaming them up with media and communications professionals to extend their fundraising and profile-building.  It's also a client of mine.  They recently asked me to add to their excellent marketing guides with some thoughts about blogging, which I've done as Ten Blogging Tips.  Here's the first one: "Do You Need A Blog At All? : Blog is a widely used word and its definition has become a little vague.  It means a website that is designed to foster two-way dialogue among a community of people interested in each other or a specific subject.  Does that sound like something that you might find useful? Then great.  If not there are plenty of other ways to become involved in social media.  A blog can be useful but only if it's going to be used in the right way."  The rest are here.  What's your top blogging tip?

Blog School - Getting Down To Business

John Gapper, the FT's Chief Business commentator no less, says that business blogging has reached a tipping point (via his own blog of course).  Gapper points to a stable of heavyweights including Joe Nocera of the New York Times, Justin Fox of Time/Fortune, Daniel Gross of Newsweek and, natch, Robert Peston of the BBC.  It seems that the blogopshere's transformation from, "sad, joyless people in their underwear who sit in front of their computers all day," to influential market-makers is complete.  A good deal of my professional work is blog training in one form or another.  My aim, as ever, is to bring the subject alive and create blogging plans that people find engaging and sustainable.  I also spend time exploring how writing for the web is different from writing for other media.  Earlier this year a journalist client of mine christened the sessions Blog School - a name which has stuck.  If you fancy joining the new breed of business bloggers but aren't too sure where to start, you can find out more here.

Book Review : Crowd Surfing

Crowd Surfing by David Brain and Martin Thomas is the perfect read for busy executives who need a succinct update about networked media and its affect on marketing and business.  All delivered in a refreshing 'let's not get too carried away' tone.  The points that stayed with me were the discussions about Apple, which despite apparently ignoring all the 'rules' of openness and transparency, continues to attract the most passionate levels of brand advocacy and even fascination.  This highlights one of my ongoing themes with clients that there are no rules in new networked media environments and every organisation should be looking to find its own style with sensible experimentation.  IMHO, the reason that Apple works in the modern environment is because they provide the tools that people use to pursue their passions, whatever they may be.  Which is entirely in keeping with the spirit of today's empowered consumer.  And furthermore, Steve Jobs seems to make a habit of understanding the landscape and creating new modern marketplaces that have the old guard begging him to relieve them of their profits.  Which gives the blogging community much to drool over.  So in short, Apple's networked media - or crowdsurfing - strategy is to make the tools that people use to operate in networked environments.  Just like the people who provided the spades during the gold rush.

Washing Your Assets In Public

"The strategy of moving the same old stuff into a community is a failing strategy. Have you ever been to a community filled with documentation and marketing materials and loved it? No. We can get that same stuff in a million other places, we don’t need another one.  Companies need to spend a lot more time thinking through why they’re doing the community to begin with. The problem is, it’s much easier to justify hanging your laundry out for other people to clean than it is to get people to think differently."  From the splendid Go Big Always.

Dear Mr Livin De Past

From Rory responding to Mr Livin De Past: "I believe that this is what Mr De Past was referring to. It would be worrying if the companies and authorities weren't such a bunch of utter muppets. Free Culture is too fast to be held back. Put in place a regulation, there will be a work around in days. Look at the 'unhackable' DRM on the HD formats, that one took about 2 weeks as I remember. You can make DRM stronger but the result is ever more resource hungry operating systems which burn up 10x as many processor cycles as necessary (Hmmmm - Vista is popular isn't it). So you get to destroy the environment and cost your customers unnecessary amounts of cash on hardware and power bills, in order that the behemoths can protect their precious IP."

You Can't Phone A Friend

Recently a PR company called me up asking for some help pitching ideas to bloggers.  They were perfectly nice people doing a perfectly good job for a perfectly decent client.  But they were deeply misguided in their approach.  I spent a good - and enjoyable - few years in traditional PR including a lot of time talking to journalists of all creeds about clients.  And when it works - as in front page story on a national newspaper - it works really well.  However, IMHO, directly applying the tactics of the old-school to a new social world is pretty pointless.  Firstly, because it's wrong.  It's one thing to spend time preparing a good story and then finding the right correspondent on the right publication with the right interests who might be genuinely interested in your angle. That's one professional collaborating with another to mutual benefit - which is the juice that makes the world go round.  However, it's something entirely different to pitch a story to an individual who happens to be writing about their passions online, in the hope that they can be converted from soapbox to loudhailer.   That's at best inappropriate and at worst pimping.  Secondly, because it won't scale.  In reality there are very few professional...

Money Slows, Conversation Continues

As an economics graduate I can tell you that the dorky definition of a recession is when the exchange of cash between people slows.  Same amount of money, just slower circulation.  And as the money starts to drag, one of the first traditional victims is media spend.  We are probably in a lag at the moment because good times budgets money are still in the system.  But be in no doubt, the bad news is in the post.  However, networked media is unlikely to be hit by the recessionary effect in the same way that traditional media is, because - well it isn't really media.  It's people-powered chat, not cash-fuelled inventory.   Yes, along with fags and booze the usage of networked media isn't related to prosperity.  People carry on chatting through good times and bad.  In fact, the old Linux quote ("It's only free if you put no value on your time,") may mean that recession increases the use of networked media.  After all, one thing everyone has more of in a recession is time.  Personally, having been through a couple before, I think recessions are quite healthy at showing us what is really working and what was always a punt.  As Warren Buffet says:  "It's only when the tide's going out that you find out who's been swimming naked." 

It's All P2P Now (Forget B2C & B2B)

Blogs, social nets and other networked media have atomised communication and made it all personal.  In short it's a P2P world now.   The term P2P itself has gone through a few machinations.  From platform-to-platform, peer-to-peer and the pirate-to-pirate swashbucklers who bypassed the whole music industry by going direct.  However, all P2P really means is person-to-person: normal folk using web tools - without the annoyance of an institution or mega-corp getting in the way.  They may be discussing the weather, sharing photographs, seeking opinion about a hobby or some other passion, but the common factor is no central organising body.  Yes, today's web is a very personal experience which means the terms B2B and B2C are redundant. Increasingly people aren't happy dealing with faceless bureaucracies.  They want to talk and relate to someone.  Wasn't this always so?  Probably but now we've got the means and the attitude to make it happen.  Just think about the impact Robert Scoble had when he ditched the traditional B2B approach and went person-to-person with the development community.  Or the countless blogs written by executives - speaking out from within the corporate machine.  Richard Sambrook at the BBC.  Randy Tinseth at Boeing.  Colin Wright at Birds Eye.  Jonathan Schwartz at Sun.  David Brain at Edelman.  Tom Glocer at Reuters.  All have gone P2P with good effect.  Sometimes the feeling is that this is all small potatoes compared to the Megacorp Marketing Machine of old.  But P&G's Tremor platform has put paid to that idea.  Of course, corporations and brands aren't about to disappear.  However, these days if you aren't thinking P2P you are immediately out of whack with the marketplace.

The Official Line

The Official Line (TOL) has always been a powerful, if rather illusory, concept within corporations and organisations.  However, networked media environments have made it increasingly tricky to pin down.  In a distant age, TOL was very easy to define because it was whatever The Official Gatekeeper said it should be.  And if anyone challenged that view, it was quite easy to find the source and take suitably decisive action to keep others on their toes.  But these days the porous walls of multinationals and other mega-orgs mean TOL is becoming increasingly harder to hold - or even identify in the first place.  It's become more of A Blurry Line that people can interpret as they wish.  For instance, if a small business unit creates a blog that deepens valuable relationships with suppliers or customers, its very presence may puncture the sense of reassaurance that TOL brings to head office, regardless of what is actually being said.  Because blogs and other social media create that enticing sense of private conversations going public they tend not to go down very well with The Official Gatekeepers.  And often for good reason, especially if the company involved is subject to regulation of any kind.  So what to do?  Well, it's terribly easy to blame it on some subset of the emerging techno-mosh-pit such as 'the bloggers'.  But they are as an illusory bunch as TOL itself.  For having moved beyond the initial excitement about micro-publishing and social networking, we see that these new technologies are merely uncovering behaviour and opinions that have long been in existence.  People have always held strong views, disagreed, competed, plotted, been indiscreet or just plain dumb.  However, previously the hullabaloo of the internal bazaar was given a thorough mouthwash and became the sweet choral purity of The Official Line by the time it went public.  But these days TOL doesn't sound so pure and at worst can sound like a spivvy sales spin.  And that is why companies trying to hold TOL are finding it so hard.  But not as hard as the creeping sense that the answer has nothing to do with networked media itself.  As the walls begin to crumble, the only factor that will bring back the reassurance of TOL is increased trust levels that traditional hierachies have previously just enforced.  And without such trust, The Official Line will blur and blur until it just fades away completely.