Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Scary Signals

'P2P is a demand signal from the market,' says Cory Doctorow.  If that's the case, what are we to make of The Pirate Bay conviction last week?  For those who don't know, Pirate Bay is one of the world's largest Bittorrent search engines.  It allows people to search through the gazillions of TV shows, films and other entertainment that sit on the web.  This content is broken up into tiny parts and stored across distributed networks of computers, until someone makes a viewing request at which point Bittorrent or another P2P technology will draw the pieces together and put them back in the right order, ready to watch as a film or TV show.  The problem, of course, is that this distribution method is not sanctioned by the people who make and own the content, most of which appears without any advertising.  That's the advertising that pays the wages of the people who make the films and TV shows in the first place.  In the Pirate Bay case these good folk were represented by the IFPI (aka Hollywood).  So why does the world's entertainment industry persist with legal recourse, instead of listening to the 'demand signals' being sent to them through P2P?  The main reason is that P2P file-sharers have been seen as people who steal valuable IP. They must, therefore, be treated as thieves.  But that's misreading the signals.  The real driving force behind the growth of P2P is that it's convenient and gives people what they want, when they want it.  What if you don't want to wait a week to see the next episode of 24?  Or maybe a friend abroad has told you about a great new movie and you want to see it now so you can discuss it?  And, vitally, P2P is also a way for regular folk to distribute their own content and pursue the rock star dream.  Furthermore, with one third of all broadband users worldwide admitting they use P2P there's a massive network effect in place.  One that the entertainment industry will probably never be able to reverse.  However, the truth is that all of these signals are just too terrifying for people in the industry to listen to.  As Mark notes about the latest Digital Britian bashola, many executives in the entertainment industry and beyond, 'are paid to keep the current model going and just don't want to see the digital technology as anything but a means to turbo-charge the current model. It's just too scary to contemplate anything else.'  And this is why Pirate Bay is just one part of the massive bout of creative destruction occuring in our time.  After all, there are plenty of others perfectly happy to listen to the market signals if the uncumbents are too scared.  And despite this court case, Pirate Bay and others like it just keep on rolling, allowing people to create personal media platforms and services of their own design.  As Doc Searls says, 'in networked economies the demand side supplies itself'.

TBL At NESTA

I went to the NESTA Innovation Edge mega-bash yesterday and caught Sir Tim Berners-Lee making a great speech via an equally mega live video screen.  Firstly, he was asked about his reaction to seeing the feedback, 'Vague, but exciting,' on the first paper he wrote about the web, and revealed that this was in fact a personal note scribbled down by his boss Mike Sendall, and only discovered following his death ten years later.  He said the key to such an ambitious project growing was that, while no one had said yes to his revolutionary idea, neither did anyone say no.  He was just given time and space to play around with the notion of hypertext and to 'generalise' a specific problem ie how to let distributed machines share data.  Quoting Einsten, he said that if you know the outcome of a research project before you start then it's not really research.  So 'a long leash' and letting people play around is really important.  His focus is now understanding the different type of 'societies' appearing online and how they affect human behaviour.  Sir Tim then issued a word of warning about the 'stability' of some areas of the web including blogs - or 'social machines' as he calls them.  He wondered if they may eventually become flooded by commercial spam and go the way of email.  Looking ahead, Mr WWW went on to say that he hoped his invention would let people around the world share their thoughts and in doing so tackle some of the really big problems, including AIDS, climate change and poverty.  Or to 'connect humanity' and start a global creative process.  It's amazing to hear an individual talk of such esoteric ambitions and know that he has pretty much delivered!  And it was only afterwards that I realised he hadn't used a single technical term or piece of geekery.  He sounded more like a humanitarian than a technologist.  An amazing man with an amazing story.  (Whereas Johnnie enjoyed the one man life-force that is Geldof.)

Community Costs

One assumption underlying some client conversations I have is that community comes cheap.  It may have something to do with the hippy-trippy quality of the word.  Unfortunately, it's just not true.  As the splendid Community Guy notes it can often cost more than some traditional techniques - mainly because there is a start-up stage.  But this is really just an investment like any other.  One that, over time, will create a valuable asset.  However, the classic comment about open source software is highly relevant: "Linux is only free if your time has no value."  Community building is about smart people spending time building relationships in a way that machines will never do.  Make no mistake community is all about being cost-effective - not cheap-and-cheerful.

"We Need To Protect The Music"

I don't have the mental capacity to unravel the levels of irony currently unfolding in the music business.  Explaining the strategy behind Universal using DRM-free music to create a new market that will challenge the omnipotent iPod is like Sudoku for marketeers.  However, the trigger is clear.  This year, 22 percent of all music sold in the US will move through iTunes.  Having spent gazillions on lawyers fees trying - and failing - to prevent such a DRM-free market being created, it's a remarkable twist in this story.  But in this fascinating Wired article we can understand that myopia created by quarterly reporting and reliance on the huge profit margins of previous distribution systems (ie CDs) were equally culpable in the industry's current desperate situation.  "We need to protect the music. I know that," says Universal Music Group CEO, Doug Morris.  Don't worry Doug, 'the music' is going to be fine.  When you gave it all to Steve Jobs he put it in his safe.  Now he only lets people use it if they pay him.

The Fanning Effect

If anyone doubts the scale of change taking place as the world reorganises itself from broadcast media to networked media they only need to look at the music business' recent history.  First, Napster, Kazaa and Grokster reorganised the industry's entire distribution system using P2P networks. But instead of embracing the technology that huge swathes of its customers had turned to, the music industry ran to its lawyers and temporarily stopped the flood through an edict passed down from the United States Supreme Court.  Which was followed up with a totally unsuccessful war on its own customers, now seen by at least one major as pointless.  Then Apple, a technology company, swooped down into the wreckage, picked up the pieces and created a whole new shiny distribution infrastructure that proceeded to sell a couple of billion downloads - over which the studios had zero control.  Whoops!  And now Prince, Radiohead and Madonna decide they don't even need labels anymore because they can distribute their own products and the business has changed so greatly that all the money is...

Co-Creation Rules

Johnnie and I have had a lot a fun with our Open Sauce workshop sessions over the last eighteen months, working with clients in the UK and the US and also at places like the wonderful Reboot conference in Denmark and the splendid folk at NMK.  The sessions are designed to help organisations explore what it's like to operate in a networked world and there's no doubt we've learnt as much as the good people who have joined in.  We've tried to capture some of these learnings in a manifesto-style document called Co-Creation Rules that's just gone up at changethis.com.  The format is a checklist of actions that may be helpful for modern marketeers trying to get to grips with co-creative projects.  We'd love to hear what you think.  (And many thanks to Jon Winsor for his helpful contributions).

Let The People Show You

I met up with uber-geek and fellow collaborator Chris Raettig for one of our regular fat-chewing sessions last week.  One thread of our discussion was - as ever - the benefits of openness.  In a chat about what people call variously The Delphi Affect/Wisdom of the Crowds/Collective Intelligence but I like to think of as Ask The Audience, Chris used a phrase which has been rattling around my noggin ever since: "Let The People Show You".  For someone as closely involved in the open source movement as Chris such a view for product development is the norm.  But it's in huge contrast to the way that traditional business and marketing works.  Chris also drew my attention to this great quote from Howard Aiken: "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas.  If they are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."  Which this article by the super-sonic Cory Doctorow expands upon very nicely indeed using his practical experiences of book publishing....

Openness Aversion

15 years ago Tim Berners-Lee posted this on a Usenet group and the World Wide Web was born.  Today, the number of web pages is thought to be at least 3 trillion - rising by 25,000 every hour.  But like a lot of technologies, it's the resulting change in human attitudes that are most interesting and just starting to be appreciated as the Web 2.0 mega-tanker picks up speed.  In last week's FT (via Confused) James Boyle, an American law professor, suggests that we are trained to understand the economics of closed economic systems and that makes it difficult for most of us to see the opportunities presented by massive public, open forums. Boyle suggests that, like pilots... 

Creative Commons Worldwide

One of the talks at MIT last week was by Jun Sato, a visiting scientist from Toshiba in Japan.  One of Jun's slides showed the distribution of Creative Commons licenses around the world.  CC is one of those ideas that initially sounds radical and disruptive.  However, the alternative copyrighting system has become very widely accepted since its launch in 2001.  Download junsato.ppt.

It's Better To Give Than To Plan...

In the world of open source the notion of a gift economy makes sense, while the planned economy doesn't.  The idea is that what you give away is what builds your reputation - and that reputation has value.  So a programmer who solves a problem and then gives away the answer becomes quite influential among the people he has helped.  And he becomes even more influential if that answer is something that others can build upon.  It's an interesting question for brands trying to work out how to operate in the social space.  The Stormhoek Guide To Wine Blogging strikes me as an example of a decent pressie to others.  What can you give?