Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

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...

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'.

Picking Up Your Customers' Breadcrumbs

As the UK Parliament prepares to publish to the world 1.2 million receipts, invoices and bills from MPs' expenses claims, the media awaits to rummage through the detritus.  After all, it’s the tiny details about each others lives that fascinate us, right?  I sniggered along with everyone else about the viewing habits of Mr Jacqui Smith.  But it was the Home Secretary’s eighty-eight pence claim for a bath plug that caught my attention.  And I'm not alone it seems.  It’s this natural interest in sharing and comparing the details of our lives (intended or not) that makes the social web tick over.  For a long time, such titbits were left online only by geeks and the technorati.  However, now that forty-three per cent of the UK’s online population are members of Facebook, these trails of digital breadcrumbs are becoming more common.  It's easy to see these digital trails as banal.  Individual instances about breakfast habits, for instance, can appear quite pointless. However, when viewed as ongoing narratives, they become rich representations of peoples' lives. Narratives to which we can all relate.  For the marketing industry these breadcrumb trails should be viewed with delight, particularly during economically difficult times.  With a few simple tools, and a curious individual or two, it quickly becomes possible for a brand to...

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...

'Facebook Killed TV'

Paul Graham on 'Why TV Lost' : "This was the most powerful force of all.  This was what made everyone want computers. Nerds got computers because they liked them. Then gamers got them to play games on. But it was connecting to other people that got everyone else: that's what made even grandmas and 14 year old girls want computers. After decades of running an IV drip right into their audience, people in the entertainment business had understandably come to think of them as rather passive. They thought they'd be able to dictate the way shows reached audiences. But they underestimated the force of their desire to connect with one another. Facebook killed TV. That is wildly oversimplified, of course, but probably as close to the truth as you can get in three words."

Digital Britain At NESTA - Just Don't Call It The Carter Report

Stephen Carter may have snaffled a Lordship for his trouble but he has also got a horrible job.  In a notes-free talk at NESTA this morning, the UK Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting explained (confessed?) the painful process of assessing the mangled mix of vested interests, unreconstructed government, personal privacy issues and recession politics that is the reality of Digital Britain - a plan 'of government'.  Indeed, at one point he asked for 'forgiveness' about those areas of the report that he admits are too 'quiet'.  His basic message to the many detractors of the report who say it didn't go far enough in supporting or aligning itself with emerging web culture?  'Not my job, guv'.  He is sticking to the role of policy in shaping the country's web infrastructure.  All of which may account for his bristling at the suggestion that the exercise should have been called the Carter Report.  He may not be in a great rush for his name to be forever linked to such a labyrinthine process.  Peter Bazelgette was also on the panel and posed the more provocative points of the morning.  "Media companies don't know what their business models will be in ten years time," said the chairman of TV production company Endemol UK.  He also seemed to encapsulate the themes of the morning when describing the need to realise the economic benefit from the 'digital dividend' by building 'new organisations', instead of supporting old industries, "like we did with ship-building in the 70's."  For instance, he said in a world where it's no longer possible to, "sell stuff (IP) by putting it in shop windows," we need to explore and support new economic models.  Bazelgette's own view is that in the future content will be paid for, "with attention and access to personal data."  Mr Big Brother also pointed out that yesterday's FT carried a story with a picture of the 'wrong' Lord Carter.  Judging from the look on Lord Digital Britain's face this morning, I bet he wishes the other Lord Carter would step up and navigate a path to the UK's digital nirvana.  It's a long way off.  (Check out the man for yourself on the new Digital Britain blog.)

The Metrics Vacuum

A few weeks ago I met up with a Grand Media Fromage to chat over the state of the social web.  "So where's the money?'" he began.  "Compared with what?" I replied defaulting to my standard line.  However, Mr GMF then took an unexpected tack by saying he thought Social might be at a similar stage to Search (aka Google) when it was 'pre-revenue' (aka skint).  And that it could easily go the same way as the Big G, snaffling many media executives' luncheons along the way.  This was an observation that I've been mulling over ever since.  I've long held the view that we are measuring tomorrow's world with yesterday's tools.  It seems we are now waiting for a social operator (aka Facebook) to find a market mechanism that can unleash the vast latent demand within the media industry for techniques in keeping with modern customers' P2P lifestyles.  Nick Gonzalez gets it just right for me: "There’s currently a metrics vacuum in the social media space and it’s being filled with traditional metrics pulled from search and display. The only problem is that these metrics don’t make sense for brand campaigns in social media."  Which essentially makes it impossible for brands or anyone else to invest at scale.  Gozalez goes onto say: "Branding campaigns don’t have a conversion event, like search advertising. Click through rates and impression volume used to gauge display campaigns are radically different on social media properties. Blogs average a little over one page view per visit, while social networking properties average in the tens or hundreds. It’s not apples to apples. While impressions do adjust behaviour, clicks and conversions also carry a whole different meaning within social media. People click to send messages, make friends, comment, and share."  Of course, the answer could come from anywhere but Facebook's vastness means it bears the weight of expectation.  Which it has tried to meet through Beacon and more recent innovations.  Maybe Zuckerburg & Co. will just follow Google's lead and keep an eye out for smaller entrepreneurs and *ahem* take their lead.  Either way the stage is set for a new marketing sliderule and it will be fascinating to see if and how one develops.  But in the meantime the vacuum grows...

P2P Is TV's Wonderland

Today, the Competition Commission decided that Kangaroo, the UK web-TV platform looking to match the success of Hulu in the US, will not be allowed to move forward.  The reason being that, 'it is a threat to competition in this developing market and has to be stopped'.  What can you say?  The world of copyright, DRM, piracy debates and web legislation seems increasingly out-of-touch with the networked world.  A few years ago I saw Doc Searls make a presentation in which he noted, 'In networked environments, the demand side supplies itself'.  It’s a statement that sums up nicely what is happening in today’s TV industry - all beyond the legislators' gaze.  People aren’t satisfied with what broadcasters are offering.  So they use P2P systems running on free BitTorrent services such as Limewire, eMule, Pirate Bay and Mininova to create ‘services of their own design’.  This allows them to watch whatever they want, whenever they wish, often with the advertising stripped out.  All of which is illegal file-sharing activity of course and therefore hidden away in underground darknets. But it’s increasingly the new norm with more than one-third of broadband users admitting to downloading video content and two-thirds saying they didn’t see it as being wrong.  (Try doing a quick poll in your office about Limewire and watch the shifty glances as a few honest souls slowly raise their hands).  However, despite being largely invisible these systems have now reached a scale and sophistication which dwarfs the professional, mainstream broadcasters.  Mininova, for instance, which launched in 2005, has served more than seven billion downloads, many of which are well-known shows.  Requests for content from the file-sharing network currently runs at ten million downloads a day - almost ten times greater than the BBC's iPlayer.  And while the industry wrings its hands, the Torrents continue to grow and innovate.  An 'invisible' YouTube anyone?  P2P video is creating a vibrant, Alice-like world which is testing the normal rules of the TV industry.  But it seems that the policy wonks and lawmakers don't want to peek down the rabbit hole, in case what they see is too strange.  In the meantime, P2P TV becomes curiouser and curiouser...

[Update : The Doc adds some thoughts here: "Pretty soon the 'TV' you buy will be an Internet file and stream tuner and recorder, with 'must-carry' set-top-box features, so it can still get cable, satellite and over-the-air TV 'channels'. In the world that makes, old-fashioned TV will look as antique as the telegraph".]

Are You A Rational Consumer?

If you aren't feeling very rational on the morning of the 9th February, you may like to spend a few hours at NESTA in the company of myself, Johnnie Moore and Mark Earls, kicking around the challenges created by a P2P world.   After all, when you get up in the morning do you feel like a 'rational consumer'?  No, nor do I.  But that's how the marketing industry has always viewed people and largely still does.  As predictable individuals who can be influenced through big media and the crafting of key messages.  But growing networked media environments, such as the blogosphere and social networks, have made that view of the world seem simplistic.  We know things are changing fast when an ex-Deputy Prime Minister freely blogs that he is 'furious' with a former colleague, FT journalists Twitter about their commuting hell, the old-Etonian chairman of Arsenal FC is interviewed on a fan's podcast, or people book their holidays according to the views of strangers they've never met.  All of which makes the marketing industry look a little too rational.  Of course, brands as markers of trust aren't going to change.  However, the tools and techniques that are used to create and maintain them, most definitely are.  Hope to see you on the 9th at about 9ish.  And if you need some rational reasons, it's free, NESTA does quality catering and it should be fun.  You can book yourself a spot here.