Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Facebook Knows You're A Dog

Peter Steiner's famous cartoon in New Yorker magazine first appeared in 1993 and has adorned a million powerpoint slides since.  The cartoon's single line, 'On the internet no one knows you're a dog', captured some of the crazy, frontier spirit of the web, where it seemed the normal rules did not apply.  However, that could be about to change as Facebook rattles its way up to 300 million users worldwide, making it more populus than all but four of the globe's countries, powered by its new Connect facility and Open Stream API.  In this instantly-seminal Wired essay, Fred Vogelstein makes the point: "Connect and Open Stream don't just allow users to access their Facebook networks from anywhere online. They also help realize Facebook's longtime vision of giving users a unique, Web-wide online profile. By linking Web activity to Facebook accounts, they begin to replace the largely anonymous "no one knows you're a dog" version of online identity with one in which every action is tied to who users really are."  Regardless of the way you may feel about Facebook, it's becoming increasingly easy to see how much better the web can be if you can search people - not just pages.  The result will be a very different looking web, where information-overloaded people circle the wagons to create troll-free social networks of their most trusted contacts, picking up whispers, buying tips and news only from within those groups.  For brands, the value of links from within those circles will be much higher than from any other source.  "Why settle for articles about the Chrysler bankruptcy that the Google News algorithm recommends when you can read what your friends suggest?", says Vogelstein, in a shift which FriendFeed users might recognise.  In other words, who wants to know what a dog thinks?  And the realisation of the value of this information is not lost on Google, as shown by the company's launch of Friend Connect and more recently individual profiles.  No doubt all driven by the ever-growing blackhole in its search results created by Zuckerberg's empire which is vast but invisible to the Google index.  But show me the money, right?  Well Facebook has quietly been building annual revenues to the tune of $275m.  Nowhere near the scale of the shekel machine that is Google.  However, as the Wired article notes, Messrs Page & Brin bowled along for five years before stumbling over the Adsense pot of gold.  And Facebook's recent credit system shows it is serious about innovation.  All of which could mean a troll-free web experience, a shake-up of Search and some genuine competition for Google.  And fewer dogs.

Open Data And The Dangers Of Moats

As all studious web watchers know, the next wave of internet innovation has been brewing for some time, as massive amounts of data has been pumped onto the web and made available for people to share-and-compare, play with and link to.  Yes, prepare yourselves people, The Web Of Data is on the way.  A world in which databases sit out on the web instead of behind firewalls, allowing new powerful styles of collaboration.  For corporations that have built competitive advantage around IP and black box business models the idea of data being open on the web is, to say the least, a bit scary.  However, in reality, it's just the next step along the journey that the web is inviting the world to take.  Initially, the notion of sharing documents on the web seemed unwise, then opening up personal information on social networks appeared risky.  But both have quickly become the norm, and of course are made up of data.  So this next evolution is just more of the same.  None of which will stop the corporate fear rising however.  In the same way that strange ideas emerged about the dangers of sharing company information using simple social media tools, peculiar fears will surface at the prospect of sharing databases that have previously been held under lock, key and firewall.  In fact, many of these fears are based on misconceptions and misguided analysis.  For instance, in the corporate world ‘open’ is often translated as ‘anarchic’.  Despite the fact that, as with blogs and social networks, there is plenty of control built into new 'open' systems.  For example, if you don't want the crazies to...

Marketing Buffoons

If you are marketing into the social space you should read this.  A London-based blogger and mum tells marketing folk how it is: "This mass marketing strategy baffles and worries me in equal measure. When it's all a bit random, when it's clearly a case of "grab these email addresses, fire off some emails, tell 'em what a savvy blogger they are, and bingo, let's sell some washing powder"...I just think: there are a lot of unemployed people about, yet clearly the culling process has not yet extended to the buffoons in marketing."  The 'American companies' in question clearly need an outbound spam filter...

I Am An Outbound Spam Filter

A few weeks ago a client generously told me that they valued my contribution because I was trying to, ‘do good stuff’.  'In fact', his colleague added lightheartedly, 'you are our outbound spam filter'.  The remark was clearly intended as a compliment but initially I was confused.  The client's company was not to my knowledge a great user of low-down spamming techniques.  However, I soon realised that the comment didn't refer to unwanted email but more generally to traditional ‘push’ marketing.  I really liked this fun description and it also set me thinking.  Traditional marketing isn't really like spam - is it?  Clearly spam, the underground practice of harvesting emails from the web and launching bulk campaigns pushing largely illegal goods, is a long way from the activities of the mainstream marketing industry.  However, it's fair to say that both involve dispatching commercial messages to large audiences in the hope that one or two individuals will be interested.  That aside, traditional marketing, in its defence, exists around a positive exchange where people accept some promotion in exchange for free or subsidised media and entertainment.  But there's no doubt that this exchange has been abused to the point that people now use filtering technology beyond their email box.  Sky+ and Freeview allows viewers to ‘avoid’ television advertising.  Adblockers let people remove banners and pop-ups from their surfing.  Direct mail can be stopped through the Mailing Preference Service.  So, increasingly, traditional marketing and spam, while different entities, do share some characteristics.  Which, considering that spammers are thought of as semi-criminal pondlife, can hardly be positive.  But what's the alternative?  If you can’t buy attention for your messages through paid media, what can you do?  A while back I suggested that that as media becomes increasingly networked and socially driven, brands will need to ‘earn the right’ to operate through positive participation.  Only this mindset will allow them to build the goodwill that is the lifeblood of the modern social web.  The web that the majority of their customers probably now use in some shape or form.  I noticed this week that Fred Wilson has picked up on a similar notion that he describes as Paid Media vs Earned Media and suggests it's just good business.  The practicalities of this earn-it approach are creating something of value that people genuinely want, seek out and recommend.  And committing to that over the long-term.  Or as my client put it - ‘do good stuff’.  So there it is.  After years of trying to describe my job to my family, friends and professional associates, it turns out that I am an, ‘outbound spam filter’.  Not the most graceful job title in the world.  But at least there’s a future in it.

When Your Customers Connect

The infrastructure of the web is in constant flux, which is, of course, why it’s so interesting.  However, occasionally a new fault line appears, often over a long period of time, that changes the landscape in a more fundamental way.  The new set of identity standards that have emerged in recent times, under the simple guise of reducing the number of log-ins you need to remember, are exactly that.  At first Facebook Connect, OAuth, OpenSocial and OpenID seem to be basic devices to get around the annoyance of multiple usernames and passwords.  Handy - but no big deal.  However, in fact, they are solutions to one of the main sources of friction on the web.  Currently, as you move from one social network to another, you may as well be moving between countries, setting up a new life in each.  Meet new friends, send some postcards to contacts and family from the old country, and then check out the tourist trail.  Hey, if you want to be a bit more glamorous in this new city, then you can be.  Your old friends aren’t there to ruin the illusion.  My usual cocktail please!  But the new identity standards are about to ruin this party.  And once we’ve got over the shock, we’ll all remember that it’s your real friends and family that count.  We’ll quickly get used to the idea that...

The Unthinkable Marketing Industry

Clay Shirky’s latest essay, that encourages us to 'think the unthinkable', set me wondering about what the marketing industry could be like.  The part of Shirky’s ‘unthinkable scenario’ that leapt out for me was the suggestion that, ‘people would resist being educated to act against their own desires’.  Shirky is, of course, saying that one effect of a networked world is that people have less faith in the lessons being handed out on Madison Avenue.  Now it’s quite clear that media is still the dominant force in the brand and marketing business, which despite tough times, remains a trillion dollar global industry.  Indeed, the idea of building brands through massive investment in this industry is the reason most marketing folk get up in the morning.  And media metrics such as reach and frequency have been a reliable way to fill marketing directors’ pension funds for a long while.  But that’s not the point of Shirky’s challenge.  His suggestion is to think the unthinkable by, ‘simply looking out of the window’.  So, if people are resisting the Mad Men's tutorials and the stranglehold of media is loosening, what’s next?  After all, people still want to find good stuff to buy and use, right? The end of media doesn’t mean the end of consumption or indeed of brands.  All of which requires markets.  But if those markets aren’t going to be media-driven, what will keep them moving along? What will make people act upon ‘their own desires’, and in doing so, keep the shekels flowing into our factories, showrooms and shops?  Where do we begin?  How about if we follow the advice of...

The Share-And-Compare Economy

The web has evolved into a billion soap boxes where people can gather and discuss, rant, plot or chat about their passions and problems.  Naturally, some of the chit-chat is about companies and their products and services - positive or otherwise.  The question is how do companies best react to this mass online critique?  In many ways, there’s nothing new here.  Marketing folk have always kept an ear to the ground and taken the views of their customers seriously.  Focus groups are now so prevalent that almost nothing escapes the confines of MegaCorp without going through a few rounds of such scrutiny.  So what’s the big fuss?  People used to chat away to each other and are now they are doing the same thing on blogs and online communities.  The difference, of course, is that today we also have Google.  And a million other aggregation tools and review sites, such as Trip Advisor. It’s not that we can talk to each other, it’s that we can find out what everyone else thinks.  The social web has created a share-and-compare economy - where traded opinion affects purchase decisions.  And unlike the wider economy this one is growing.  In fact, a McKinsey report this summer noted that : “25 per cent of Western Europe’s Internet users now post comments and reviews about consumer products of all kinds.  User generated media sites are growing in numbers of visitors and participants by 100 per cent a year, traditional sites by perhaps 20 to 30 per cent.”  One area that has become more popular as a result of this new environment is Co-Creation – the idea that innovation and ideas can be discovered by...

'You Want Culture? Then Rent It.'

Lawrence Lessig is the inventor of the Creative Commons license, a 'copy-left' system, that seeks to rebalance the world of copyright and in doing so allow people greater freedom of self-expression. Lessig is a Stanford Legal Professor and super-smart individual.  However, his arguments sometimes get lost in the complex technicalities of the subject - in spite of the rather splendid, 'Lessig Method'.  So I was pleased to see this video where he explains his point of view in plain language: "To my generation what they (young folk!) are doing doesn't seem important because we've never done it.  You want culture then rent it, watch it, sit on your couch and enjoy it.  But younger generations say, 'Why is what I'm doing illegal?  I'm creating, I'm re-expressing, I'm criticising, I'm spreading ideas.'  But the reality is that under our law - that's illegal."  To my mind, this goes right to the heart of the changes that networked media has introduced.  Today, you don't rent culture, you participate and create it for yourself.  For modern marketing that creates plenty of challenges but, equally, many opportunities.

Where Are The Marketing Cockroaches?

In this essay Paul Graham explores how innovation and good ideas can still flourish in a recession. "Fortunately the way to make a startup recession-proof is to do exactly what you should do anyway: run it as cheaply as possible.  For years I've been telling founders that the surest route to success is to be the cockroaches of the corporate world.  The immediate cause of death in a startup is always running out of money. The cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to kill.  Fortunately it has gotten very cheap to run a startup, and a recession will if anything make it cheaper still.  If nuclear winter really is here, it may be safer to be a cockroach even than to keep your job.  Customers may drop off individually if they can no longer afford you, but you're not going to lose them all at once; markets don't reduce headcount."  Graham, as an uber-hacker and innovative VC is talking about the Silicon Valley tech bubble.  However, as the media and marketing world goes through its own hard times there will, no doubt, be many cockroaches emerging from the rubble to satisfy modern consumers' needs.  Which areas do you think they will be in?

Who Needs A Label?

The music industry remains fascinating from a marketing perspective as the distribution networks driven by its fans become increasingly influential and start to supercede the structures of the Big Labels.  This interview at TorrentFreak with a young musician gives a great flavour of what radical change looks like from the Y-Gen perspective.  “'Labels will complain and sue their very core audience just to make a dollar. I can’t blame them, it’s the way they’ve built their company. Change scares them, especially when they don’t control it. I honestly believe that I wouldn’t be a musician today if Napster hadn’t appeared. I think Napster fostered the incredible current musical culture and nobody gives them credit for it. I find it very hard for an upcoming artist to get any exposure without being willing to promote their music on p2p networks.'  The clash between artist and labels, and the ever increasing piracy statistics are forcing the big labels to rethink their business models. Nowadays, BitTorrent has the power to promote artists based on their music, not on the advertising budget. It is hard to deny that the music labels are in a crisis, however, music itself is more alive than ever before."  As Doc Searls says, 'in networked economies the demand side supplies itself'.