Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Networked Media Doesn't Do 'Channels'

Do you know what the most annoying thing about builders is?  It’s when they refuse to talk to each other. You’ve probably been there. ‘Guys, why is there water leaking in through the ceiling?’.  ‘Don’t ask me guv, the plasterer probably knocked the pipes upstairs'.  ‘Can you take a look at it?’.  Cue sound of obligatory-sucking-in-of-air-through-teeth.  'Not today mate, ring Mick and ask him if he’s got some waff-wizard’.  ‘Huh? What’s waff-wizard. Actually, never mind, could you ring him?’.  ‘I haven’t got his number mate'.  ‘I can give it to you'.  ‘Bye, make sure to ask about the waff wizard'.  ‘Hi there, John said I should ask you about waff wizard because there’s a leak in the kitchen.  ‘Waff-what?’. ‘Waff-wizard, oh forget it, look there’s a leak in the kitchen'.  ‘Yes I saw that, looks nasty, talk to Gary - tell him he needs to use a pobble-pibble'.  And so it goes on.  What feels like an infinite number of specialists all of whom have their own languages and tools, but who see any other professionals as being inferior or incompetent, feel obliged to contradict any advice they offer and refuse to talk to each other directly.  Whilst flicking through last week’s Campaign Magazine, I had a strange feeling that the marketing industry was showing some similar traits.  There were experts from each part of the business talking about the way they saw the year ahead panning out.  Each was extolling the virtues of newspapers, digital, TV, outdoor, production, direct, sponsorship and many other areas.  All of them made sound, interesting points about their own fields, including lots of technical terms and diagnoses.  However, there was very little, if any, reference to how well they all work together.  These first-class professionals were all deeply dug into their own particular siloes.  Now, this is hardly new.  We’ve all worked in agency networks where...

Marketing's 'Big Bang' Is On The Way

There are some huge technological changes coming down the line that haven’t quite hit the marketing and media industry as yet. However, like massive waves a long way out at sea - they are on the way. Think about the effects of the ‘cloud’, or in other words, the limitless amounts of storage space that the web provides and the speed at which people are filling it up with personal information, creating scrapbooks about every tiny aspect of their lives for clever folk to analyse and decipher. Or the rise of the mobile web driven by new types of groovyware that mean we can log onto digital grapevines wherever we are and snack on a mixture of tips, opinions, offers and suggestions, all personalised to our own specific interests and passions. Or the reality of products being linked to the web and providing information about themselves. All huge waves that are about to crash onto the doorsteps of brands and global businesses seeking to maintain the mainstream audiences that drive their revenues, balance sheets and state-sized market valuations. When trying to understand this kind of epic-style change, I’ve been wondering about other industries that have dealt with similar levels of disruption. The one I keep returning to is the global financial services industry that underwent its so-called ‘Big Bang’ in the middle of the 1980s, with its epicentre in the City of London’s Square Mile. The specific date of the ‘Big Bang’ was the 27th October 1986, an event driven by the Tory government overhauling the way the London Stock Exchange was regulated. The primary changes consisted of...

Web 3.0 Is Virtual Dog Food Says Pincus

When you talk to people about the mega-growth in the sale of online virtual goods, the reaction tends to be similar to the first time they hear about Twitter.  ‘They do what!?’ – followed by rolling of eyeballs and looks around the room for mutual support about this latest round of web craziness.  It’s an entirely understandable response.  Why would anyone spend real money on, for instance, virtual dog food for their virtual pet?   Or more confusing still, why would anyone wish to pay $335,000 in hard cash for a virtual leisure club in Entropia, an online science-fiction world?  One way to move beyond the perplexing notion of people spending their shekels on such apparent lunacy is to stop viewing it as people buying ‘goods’ and start seeing it as people paying for ‘content’.  Albeit of a novel interactive variety.  After all, gazillions each year are spent on media content including cable TV channels, music, books and magazines.   And we don’t hear about the madness of people buying virtual goods from Hollywood.  But, just a minute I hear you cry, people don’t pay for content online do they?  Free is now the default, right?  It's the bugbear of Content Kings everywhere, including the Old Digger Murdoch who has thrown up the paywalls around his valuable content, even though he knows he'll lose most of his online readers.  It’s the reason that Hollywood has blocked Google TV accessing its AAA-productions in case Messrs Brin & Page repeat the havoc they unleashed on the newspaper industry by giving their treasures away for free to a global audience.  So what's going on?  On the one hand we have people paying good money for virtual dog food.  On the other a refusal to pay for the insights of cerebral journalists and the world's finest movies.   With these apparently contradictory trends in mind, I was interested to hear Marc Pincus, the CEO of Zynga, the social gaming empire, describe in this frenetic talk his theory that, ‘the third business plan of the internet will be users paying for things; often digital only, virtual and high-margin; and services that are found as apps.  I believe every major franchise on the Internet is up-for-grabs, just like it was at the beginning of Web 2.0’ (52 mins).  Well he would say that wouldn’t he?  Pincus’ company, Zynga, has made a king’s ransom and...

UK Media - Enjoy This 'Indian Summer' While You Can

I went along to an event this week entitled, ‘Making Money In the On Demand Media Age,’ hosted by consultancy boutique Oliver & Ohlbaum.   The session had the feel of an investment bankers’ world view and, as a result, there were plenty of Grand Fromages in attendance including Lord Hollick, ex-media baron turned VC; the much-admired broadcasting player David Elstein; Patrick Barwise the formidable LBS Professor and Government advisor and new kids on the block such as Richard Halton, CEO of the nascent UK web TV service YouView.  The initial presentation was a Meeker-esque onslaught of macro trends, backed up with some proprietary research that the room lapped up with a verve suggesting sober, grown-up analysis of the new broadcasting world is thin-on-the ground.   My overall impression of the hundred or so people in the room was something akin to a Monaco casino packed with high-rollers working out where to lay their next chips.  You could almost hear the neuro-based balance sheets ticking over as the analysis developed.  Among the many nuggets thrown out for the pack to chew on was that the recent speedier-then-expected recovery in the UK’s media markets might be something of a mirage.  One effect of the corporate axe being wielded in recent years is that profits have bounced back and there is a natural inclination for many big brands to invest straight back into what they know.  However, Oliver & Ohlbaum see this as being an, ‘Indian Summer’ before the realities of, ‘long-term structural change’ take grip in a couple of years and a, ‘new industry structure’ emerges.  What will this new world order look like?  In short, no one knows and in the follow-on session...

Digital Grapevines

It can be very difficult sometimes to understand what new technology actually means when it comes to changing the way people lead their lives.  Partly, this is because technology is created by techies.  By which I mean that the clever folk who create new widgets are, naturally, more interested in the gubbins inside the box than what consumers (aka people) are going to actually do with it. This leads to the classic marketing error that the technology industry makes on a continual basis – talking about Features Not Uses.  Nowhere is this viewpoint more prevalent than in the world of smartphones, tablets, mobile and wireless web development. The mobile space has a lot of the standard desktop web jargon but with its own additional lexicon bolted on for good measure.  For instance, Geo-Location, Augmented Reality, BBM, Accelerometer, Bluetooth, QR codes, RFID, or the cryptic, ‘Web of Things’.  And let’s not even get into the world of wireless OS upgrades : Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyon and now Gingerbread.  It's enough to make your Google Goggles glaze over. However, now that smartphones have finally become a part of the mainstream, ten years after the UK’s 3G licence auction, it’s helpful to think what they mean in terms of people's lives beyond Steve Jobs’ bank account and the VC-driven, jargon-heavy dreams of Silicon Valley.  One aspect that’s of interest is that people now are increasingly connected to their friends and family - all the time.  This may sound obvious but it’s a fairly new phenomenon with far-reaching consequences.  People from small villages...

Google TV Goes Through The Looking Glass

The intriguing battle between Silicon Valley and Hollywood shows no signs of abating. This year Google offered the US TV Networks an olive branch with its 'Smart TV' only to be brutally rejected in recent days like just-another-starlet. However, at some point the proceedings reached a strange Alice-like point. While Google has built its own Web-On-The-TV without any TV content in the shape of Google TV, the US TV networks have built their own TV-On The-Web without any web content in the shape of Hulu. Confused? Don't worry - you aren't alone.  In fact it only makes sense when you realise that many of the ongoing developments, as the world reorganises itself from broadcast to networked media, are best viewed through Alice's Looking-Glass - where the standard rules don't apply. Just think back a few years to when the music industry was offered an apparent refuge by Steve ‘Brighter, Whiter & Lighter’ Jobs, away from those horrible ‘pirates’ (aka customers who just will not stop enjoying your products) on his lovely new, shiny and oh so secure iTunes store.  Only to discover that they had accidentally relinquished control of their industry to Apple. Oops. Now in the normal world handing over your business to a competitor who uses your generosity to unbundle your product, slash your profit margins, and in doing so transform themselves into a world-beating powerhouse, could seem like a strategically bad-hair day. However, in the topsy-turvy world of networked media, this was actually an improvement on what had gone before.  Previously, the newspaper industry gave over its house keys to Google without even noticing. All that was required was to look the other way and pretend the digital revolution wasn’t *actually* happening, allowing Messrs Page & Brin to open a global news agent to which they, and only they, had the keys.   So, while the music industry suffered badly at the hands of Silicon Valley, they did slightly better than their publishing bretheren.  And, in turn, the TV execs have done slightly better than...

Shiny Shiny Syndrome

Why do brands that spend gazillions and employ teams of econometricians to ascertain the specific nuances of demographic reach and frequency in traditional media throw all of that out of the window when it comes to digital?  I’m sure you’ve been there.  The brand manager who pours over TGI, BARB and planning schedules to wring an extra juicy rating or nudge up an index by a few points throws all caution to the wind when it comes to online channels.  ‘Just make it go viral,’ or ‘we’ll need an app for that,’ is as far as the analysis sometimes goes.  This can lead to the unbecoming site of a stampede of brands running from one web service to another, driven purely by trend and fashion.  A world view I refer to as ‘Shiny Shiny Syndrome' (SSS).  For example, a few years ago, when Second Life was in its ascendency, there was a trend for big brands to open shops in the metaverse.  The fact that Second Life was created by a bunch of people who were trying to get away from the restrictions of what they saw as an overtly commercial First Life was ignored.  Also, the reality that the avatar-driven, bizarre world of cyber-geeks and punks was only accessible to a tiny group of people with super-fast machines and chunky bandwidth was lost in the rush to be first.  More recently a similar view seems to have held sway when it comes to the iPhone or anything that comes from the Whiter, Brighter and Lighter Church where Steve Jobs reigns supreme.  Companies and brands who in the morning were waterboarding their above-the-line media agencies in a vat of latte to drive their TV spots harder, spent the afternoon launching an application into the AppStore, ignoring the fact that none of their customers own, or maybe have even heard of, an iPhone.  Of course, this isn’t true of all marketers.   Many obsess about the latest SEO techniques and the ROI from their Paid Search campaigns. However, SSS is still not an uncommon mindset.   I think the reason for this is an excessive focus on technology.  We’re all prone to losing our sense when High Priest Jobs gets on stage and starts waving his latest creation around.  However, only when you get back to first principles, focusing on your customers and how they are using technology in their lives to find brands they can trust and services that offer good value can you create helpful market insights.

Google TV - Marketing's Missing Link?

Computers aren’t made for watching TV on, are they?  This low-level epiphany came to me the other day whilst viewing a thirty-minute show from BBC’s iPlayer on a laptop balanced on my knee. As the programme began my MacBook was a comfortable few degrees above room temperature. Twenty minutes in, however, the whirring machine felt more like a scalding cup of tea gently griddling the skin on my thighs.   Luckily, that’s all about to change as TV is sucked onto the global networked media platform, currently dominated by Search and Social.  Sony’s decision to roll the dice with everyone’s best frenemy Google, now looks like the shot from the starting pistol, with Apple and several well-funded start-ups like Roku and Boxee as the early race entrants.  For the marketing industry it's a change that offers the chance to seriously reinvent its business.  A business that’s still reeling from Silicon Valley’s realisation that global media budgets were up for grabs, rather than the Mad Men’s birthright.  The big change will be based on a very straightforward tweak in consumers' behaviour.  People will be able to merge web services and mainstream TV content on a single large screen in their living room, rather than juggling a red-hot laptop in addition to their three remotes.  Which means that when people see any type of advertising within their personalised, socially-driven schedules they will be able to drop into the brand’s virtual showroom, without leaving their armchair, let alone their living room, whilst their favourite show rolls on without interruption.  They can just click-on the in-show link and a second screen or AppStore will appear where they can read a few customer reviews, pop the brand goodies in their Amazon basket and pay with those Facebook Credits they were sent last Christmas.  Yeah, yeah, so what.  You can do all this now, right?  Interactive television has been around forever and most people combine a smartphone with the TV, rather than put up with laptop-induced skin grafts.  Well, yes.  However, as the ever-prescient Mick James once commented on this blog : ‘There is no limit to human laziness. I find this more and more when I'm online. Drag the mouse all the way up there and click it to get that free content? You must be joking. Thing weighs a ton.’  Whilst additional kit is a boon for geeks and the gadget-crazed, it’s an unwelcome pain for...

Why Earn When You Can Pay?

It’s been five years since I wrote a manifesto called, 'What Is Open Source Marketing?' where I tried to hint at a different view of media based on the trends emerging at the time.  My main suggestion was that the, ‘love affair between big brands and mainstream media is over,’ and that the Open Source Movement gave an idea about where we might all be heading.  Namely, into a people-powered, super-collaborative world where only the only way to garner meaningful attention was to offer channels through which people could participate with your brand.  Unsurprisingly, some of these observations proved to be correct while others were overblown.  Vast open networks where people can collaborate in whichever way they wish have miraculously appeared.  However, TV networks remain just as powerful, albeit without some of the kudos, and have largely resisted any change - to date.  Meanwhile, the marketing industry has roadtested a gazillion 'open' campaigns, with varying degrees of success.  On the positive side there is the most overly-used, yet still rather dreamy, example of marketing openness, Nike+, a largely open platform where people upload detailed personal information about their running lives to a massive American corporation in exchange for community.  The benefits of ‘openness’ to the sports giant have been considerable as explained by Nike-dude Roberto Tagliabue shortly after its launch: 'As of February, 2008, Nike+ members have run over 50,000,000 miles, logged over 14,000,000 runs and issued over 450,000 challenges. We created the world’s largest running club at nikeplus.com. 40% of community members who didn’t own Nike+ ended up buying. That is pretty tangible.'  And on the less splendid side, there is Walmart’s social network - The Hub.  Only ten weeks after the big launch, the site was shut down after a poor reception because it seemed no one wanted to give this other massive American corporation any information about themselves at all.  (In fact I don’t think there’s any mystery here.  The Nike brand was already part of grassroots running communities everywhere, whereas Walmart were seen to be paying lip service).  Which all begs the question why do some open projects work and some do not?  Clearly there has been no shortage of debate on this subject online over the past few years.  However, I thought the blog post by Jono at Mozilla Labs offered a succinct critique - ‘Openness is a lot of work’.  He observes that overuse of the ‘open’ label has meant that, ‘people are starting to attribute near-magical powers to it.'  Furthermore, 'Openness is a policy choice, not a replacement for old-fashioned hard work. I happen to think it’s a good policy choice in many cases: An organization that is open to outside ideas and criticism will learn faster about its own mistakes. It can build more trusting relationships with its users, because it doesn’t have to keep secrets. It attracts self-motivated contributors, and it get more diversity of viewpoints. There’s that old mantra about how, ‘with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow’”.  Jono then decries the rise of some marketing crowdsourcers who assume that just the act of setting up a blog will bring Nike+ style benefits to any project, when the more likely outcome is virtual tumbleweed and awkward client briefings as an analysis of the participants reveals a list of agency friends and family.  ‘Successful open organizations aren’t just unorganized mobs,’ he notes. However, it seems that lessons are being learnt. I put up a Tweet about Jono’s blog post this week and a very lively, little meme began, powered by people who seemed all too well aware, maybe after difficult experiences in the area, of the challenges that ‘openness’ represents for a marketing industry that still prefers to pay than earn.

Linked Data For Dummies

I really liked Michael Hausenblas' imaginative explanation of Linked Data : 'Imagine you’re in a huge building with  several storeys, each with an incredible large amount of rooms. Each room has tons of things in it. It’s utterly dark in that building, all you can do is walk down a hallway till you bang into a door or a wall. All the rooms in the buildings are somehow connected but you don’t know how. Now, I tell you that in some rooms there is a treasure hidden and you’ve got one hour to find it. Here comes the good news: you’re not left to your own resources. You have a jinn, let’s call him Goog, who will help you. Goog is able to take you instantaneously to any room once you tell him a magic word. Let’s imagine the treasure you’re after is a chocolate bar, and you tell Goog: “I want Twox”. Goog tells you now that there are 3579 rooms where there is something with “Twox” in there. So you start with the first room Goog suggests to you, and as a good jinn he of course takes you there immediately; you don’t need to walk there. Now you’re in the room you put everything you can grab into your rucksack and get back outside (remember, you can’t see anything, in there). Once you are outside the building again and can finally see what you’ve gathered you find out that what is in your rucksack is not really what you wanted. So, you have to get back into the building again and try the second room. Again, and again till you eventually find the Twox you want (and you are really hungry now, right?). Now, imagine the same building but all the rooms and stairs are marked with fluorescent stripes in different colours, for example a hallway that leads you to some food is marked with a green stripe. Furthermore, the things in the rooms have also fluorescent markers in different shapes. For example, Twox chocolate bars are...