The love affair between big brands and mass media is over. But where
do marketeers go next? Open Source Marketing has the answers.
(Read whole article below or follow this link).
End of A Love Affair
Today’s consumer is unrecognisable from even just twenty years ago. More savvy, more sceptical, wealthier, better informed, less deferential and generally more in control. The advertising industry, however, is still largely using tactics that were created in the 1950’s, like the 30 second ad slot. The result is that consumers find advertising irrelevant, or even irritating, and are increasingly using technology like PVRs to filter it out of their lives.
That’s not to say that people aren’t interested in brands and products. And companies are obviously just as keen to find new customers. People just find the old-school techniques out-of-synch with their lifestyles and advertisers want to excite people about their brands, not annoy them.
All quite a conundrum for the marketing industry, a global business worth $370bn in 2004. Clearly, marketing isn’t going to disappear. It existed before the TV schedule and will continue as long as markets exist. The question is, where can the industry turn to next to reignite its passion?
The answer lies in a phenomenon which demonstrates all the energy, innovation and excitement that TV brought to people in the 1950s: the Open Source Movement (OSM).
Geeksville….
Open Source started when programmers began collaborating online to build new technical platforms and systems. Freed from institutional red-tape, hierarchy and shareholder responsibility the ideas flowed fast and furious through these online communities. The rewards weren’t profit but the buzz of collaboration, the intellectual challenge and the opportunity to shake things up. At the heart of the process was the community’s willingness to share programming ‘source code’, albeit under certain conditions. And so the Open Source Movement was born.
By any measure, the results have been staggering. Linux, a computer operating system, was one of the first big breakthroughs. So successful that, when referring to the software giant’s future, Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer said, "I'd put the Linux phenomenon really as threat number one".
More recently, an Open Source community called Mozilla created Firefox, a web browser that at the time of writing had been downloaded almost 21 million times. Its members are so passionate that at the end of 2004 they funded a double-page advert in the New York Times announcing its launch.
...And Beyond
With origins like these it’s not surprising that the Open Source Movement seems like a nerdy online cult far removed from the glamour of advertising and Madison Avenue. However, it’s quickly moving beyond geeksville. Mainstream consumers are falling for the values that drive OSM and the super-charged, online communities that are its constituent parts.
The buzz of meeting like-minded people from all over the world: the fun of sharing ideas, however crazy or leftfield; the feelings of empowerment; the can-do, pioneering freedom. It’s these social, entrepreneurial values that are driving Open Source among gamers, petrol heads, food lovers, film fans, musicians, sports junkies, globetrotters and almost every other area of modern culture. Just like TV did 50 years ago.
The non-technical examples of Open Source are varied and growing fast.
The massive file-sharing communities that gave birth to Napster and reinvigorated the music industry are based on Open Source values.
Howard Dean’s presidential campaign used Open Source techniques to mobilise 600,000 people and raise more than $25m, changing the face of US politics for good.
The Creative Commons license is a new type of copyright (nicknamed copyleft) created by an Open Source community that gives artists the flexibility to collaborate. Its fans include Chuck D, the Beastie Boys, David Byrne and Gilberto Gil.
Wikipedia is an Open Source encyclopaedia (recently recognised by the Press Association) containing 1.3 million articles in eight different languages, all written, developed and maintained by regular people around the world.
Ohmynews is an Open Source Korean newspaper written by more than 40,000 individual citizens.
All massive collaborations among thousands of far-flung individuals, turned on by Open Source values.
Free and Easy
An important factor behind the explosive growth of Open Source is that technical knowledge is no longer required. The rapid growth of online tools that have made it easier for people with no technical interest or knowledge to chat, publish, promote, discuss and interact online.
Weblogs or blogs are the star of the show. Pubsub, an online blog monitor in the US, estimates that more than 24 million were launched in 2004 and expects continued exponential growth. But there are plenty of other cheap accessible digital tools (Bittorrent, RSS, Podcasting, LiveJournal, Technorati, Feedster, Flickr) that are making Open Source communities more accessible and sophisticated.
Open Source Meets Marketing
So TV audiences decrease and fragment while Open Source values create influential, vibrant communities. The question for brand marketers is how to interact with these new powerful consumer groups in ways that will win hearts and minds.
This is a difficult question to answer because the new marketplace requires a view that is very different from the past.
To date marketing has been about command of the media and control of the message. Borrowing the language of war, marketeers have been used to launching campaigns, targeting consumers with brand collateral, adhering to strict rules of engagement (known as brand guidelines), under the guidance of personnel known as brand guardians. The results have been measured using analytical models based on TLAs like TVR and OTS. It’s been about secrecy and it’s been about driving consumer demand by bombarding their senses.
But the new marketplace doesn’t respond to this approach. It is made up of new more powerful consumers who use technology to switch off what they don’t want to see. In fact, not happy with filtering what they don’t like, Open Source communities are increasingly creating their own adverts and branded content.
George Masters is an American school teacher and a big fan of Apple’s iPod and at the end of 2004 he made a homemade advert for the iPod Mini. He then shared the viral film with an online community of Apple fans expecting nothing in return, other than a little credibility from his peers. In fact the film spread quickly and within a few days had been viewed more than 40,000 times by curious individuals. The quality of the ad was so good that many people presumed they were watching the output of a big ad agency.
More recently an even more advanced example of such content was created by a couple of
advertising creatives in London in the shape of an advert for VW Polo. The advert used a suicide bomber to demonstrate the strength of the car. When released online the shocking advert was viewed by millions of people.
All of which can sound like total chaos to a marketing department run by command and control policies. VW’s reaction was to demand a public apology and call the lawyers, a course of action straight from the old school. In fact they demanded back the ‘source material’ from the makers of the ad.
A New View
However, a new breed of marketeers is emerging with a different vision of the world. Inspired by websites such as The Cluetrain Manifesto, they understand the mindset of the new consumer and the values of Open Source markets. And this has set them on a path very different from the command and control mindset of the traditional marketeer.
They understand that the powerful new markets created by Open Source values are transparent, that they operate in real-time, that they are controlled by people not companies, that they are global, highly reactive, flooded with information and that made up of millions of interlinked niches. And they understand that for marketing strategies to be effective they must reflect this new marketplace.
These strategies are as sophisticated as the new markets themselves but a few principles are emerging.
1. BACK TO THE SOURCE
Consumers are no longer happy to sit back and be fed a brand and its values. They want to interact with the ‘brand source’ in the same way that Linux programmers want to get their hands on the programming source code. That means giving consumers access to the brand and inviting them to co-create on branded projects. Open Source marketeers understand this and make it easy for customers to get involved with a brand and affect its direction, maybe even its values.
2. SPOT BRAND FANS The new breed recognise there is no point in ‘demanding back the source material’ because it is well and truly out there -- in the public domain. And it’s not coming back. In fact, they look to put the brand source materials in the hands of the consumers, especially brand fans like George Masters. Then they sit back and watch the fireworks as communities create and innovate in ways that enlarge and enrich the community.
3. BE A BRAND HOST
They know that that brand guardians are no longer relevant to the marketplace and that brand hosts are more in tune with the times. Today’s consumer wants to interact with big, exciting, sexy brands, but on their own terms. Brands can host the party and try and make it attractive to consumers but they must realise that the new consumer has a full diary and plenty of suitors. marketplace
and that brand hosts are more in tune with the times.
4. ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? The voice of the mass markets was a LOUD and BOOMING monologue. Which didn’t leave a lot of time to listen to anyone. Open Source communities are all about conversation and dialogue. Open Source Marketing means listening really closely to the rumours and whispers that bring the new marketplace alive.
5. GET REAL (LIKE SCOBLE) Authenticity is one of the most valuable currencies in the transparent marketplace. So human, friendly voices (like Robert Scoble) are particularly effective. Corporate speak and PR flack is just ignored. And it’s no good just pretending. YOU WILL GET RUMBLED. This can be a difficult leap of faith for companies who have been used their brands like shields, to keep the world at bay.
6. YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE CLEVERER THAN YOU Open Source marketeers understand that their customers are clever, cleverer than themselves and their agencies. So they try and tap into this intelligence to help grow their brands. By the way, this includes the obssessive customers who make a racket about every last product detail or development and constantly get in touch with leftfield ideas. They are probably the most valuable.
7. LET GO Open source marketeers understand, most importantly, that people are now in control of the brands that for so long have been wrapped up and locked in corporate safes. Brands are no longer proprietary and companies need to adapt to that reality. There’s no point in calling in the lawyers to try and change things back. The world has moved on.
8. OPEN MINDS Open Source marketeers also know this new environment is not as dangerous as it sounds. They know the greatest barriers are the mental ones built up during the reign of mass marketing and TV.
By setting some rough parameters and then challenging consumers to get involved, or co-create, they are already seeing some fantastic results.
Already In Motion…
When Budweiser launched the hugely popular Whassup! campaign consumers started making their own versions and competing to see who could be most innovative and entertaining. Groups of Rabbis, English gentlemen, superheroes and South Park characters started Whassuping! appearing all over the web. They may not have realised it at the time but they were collaborating in an Open Source style.
Last year, General Electric ran an online advertising campaign called 'Pen' which allowed people to
create a drawing online and send it to a friend. Effectively, the campaign direction and content was handed over to an online community, once again a very Open Source concept. This incredibly simple idea was a multi-award winner and resulted in users from 140 countries e-mailing 6 million sketches to 1.5 million recipients. This year the company is taking the campaign one step further and allowing people to collaborate on sketches in groups of 3.
Redbull’s ‘Art of the Can’ campaign challenges consumers to turn the product packaging into inspiring works of art, to be judged by tracey Emin. They have set a few rules and then asked their customers to come up with the ideas.
The Next Great Love
The power of Open Source values can be unleashed to create marketing campaigns that are innovative, surprising, energetic and engaging. Campaigns that people want to join.
All the qualities that the marketing and advertising industry once loved about TV are alive and well in the Open Source Movement.
But this time the consumer is in command and control.
You can help me first by giving me your definition of open source marketing. I can guess at what you mean but since I haven't heard that exact term before a guess is the best I can do.
bruce
Posted by: Bruce DeBoer | February 03, 2005 at 02:08 PM
OK - For some reason the full article wasn't available to me.
Interesting viewpoint, and a good read – thanks for posting and inviting me to view. Be prepared to see me refer to your writing in future articles of mine. The term Open Source Marketing seems to me to be a broader term to describe Viral Marketing, Permission marketing and Buzz Marketing that has been on the minds of many industry gurus for years.
I'd caution anyone to not jump to far ahead and claim that advertising will change as a result of this phenomenon. Open Source Marketing is a great tool but so is product placement and other vehicles that are now more viable since TV’s impact is lessening (far from dead however). I consider myself a member of the “Old School” and I maintain that we will get better and better at manipulating the on-line viral response, yet, it will remain only one element of a brand strategy.
I’ll bet VW spent hours in the boardroom deciding how to respond to the “fake” ads – but I promise you, they were thrilled that their brand efforts resulted in mimicry. VW is a strong brand: I’m not certain they made the right decision by renouncing it (I may have chosen to ignored it) but – who knows – their risk management group may have strongly suggested they come out against the ad. Also, by saying nothing VW would lose another PR opportunity [we wouldn’t be talking about it as much].
Open source marketing doesn’t happen by chance, it’s seeded by “Old School” advertising agencies and companies with “old fashion” marketing strategies. For more on my viewpoint I invite you to read: Thoughts on Internet Marketing: http://www.synthesiscreative.com/newsDetail.php?nid=7
- Bruce DeBoer
Posted by: Bruce DeBoer | February 03, 2005 at 02:48 PM
How can a marketing concept be "very open source"? ... Never mind. I don't know if you think you're riding on the clue train, but it won't matter. You're still headed straight for hell. I encourage you to have someone read your post out loud, and just listen to it. Then listen to Bill Hicks: marketing is evil. Open source is about creating value collaboratively, not promoting some proprietary manufactured object with manipulative irrational appeals.
Posted by: Dave | February 07, 2005 at 05:54 PM
Bruce,
I agree that traditional marketing techniques have and will continue to have a role to play in traditional marketing (generating broad awareness, lead gen, etc.)
But I disagree where you state:
"Open source marketing doesn’t happen by chance, it’s seeded by “Old School” advertising agencies and companies with “old fashion” marketing strategies."
What I've taken Open Souce Marketing to mean, distinct from agency-created Virals, or traditional agency marketing, is that it is community-created. It is the customers, fans, and users that create, distribute and evolve the content.
There 2 examples that sit bang in the middle of the OSM definition as I understand it (http://weblogs.asp.net/alexbarn/archive/2005/01/27/361549.aspx ):
**Gizoogle (A Snoop Doggy Dog version of Google), See http://weblogs.asp.net/alexbarn/archive/2005/02/06/367979.aspx . Gizoogle is mimicry in the most literal sense. Google may be thrilled, but not because of a clever idea by an ad agency exec.
and
Windows Noises (See http://weblogs.asp.net/alexbarn/archive/2005/01/25/360114.aspx )
What makes these 2 examples OSM is that they are neither traditional marketing, nor seeded, nor nurtured by 'Old Shool' ad agencies, but created by the customers. No ad agencies were involved, non required. They didn't seed anything. And there are thousands of examples running around email boxes, blogs and RSS feeds.
Google's reputation emerged by word of mouse of the customers, to become one of the world's biggest and most used brands.
How much have Google spent on advertising? How much have VW spent? Who do you think is getting more bang for their buck?
Posted by: Alex Barnett | February 08, 2005 at 01:10 AM
Are you sure you're not describing anything other than the difference between PR and advertising?
For modern PR to be effective, it obviously needs to be aware of the new ways people communicate, but it's still just good old PR.
Posted by: CEO Blogger | February 08, 2005 at 02:31 PM
Alex,
I liked your examples. I think Polaroid did a campaign once that included end users in an innovative way as well. Can't remember clearly when or what though.
When I say iPod you have an impression of the brand; an essence. Apple and their agency created a brand image that is imbedded in our minds; it has mind share. That essence is perpetuated by those recruited to participate in the open source campaign. It is driven by the product performance but seeded by the integrated promotion efforts of Apple. It doesn’t happen by accident. Yes, end users are free to contribute as they wish to open campaigns, but the “hip” successful entry will mimic the brand essence seeded by the marketing. If it doesn’t, it will fall out of favor by the masses of end users who want to participate as well - it's a tribal society of sorts.
The great thing about this new channel is accountability. There are now consequences - both good and bad - for brand and marketing performance. For example, VW may not give a stamp of approval to all open source contributors but the brand message was accurate in the case of the suicide spot: the look and feel of the media, the message of quality, etc. It was pure VW – that’s why it worked. VW has been working on that messaging for years.
Brands are still created by consistency across all points of contact with the customer. Create a strong meaningful experience for the customer at those points of contact and they will want to participate in the experience more and more; they will become brand advocates. Open source may be collaborative but it’s not out of the companies control any more now than before. Viral, Buzz, Word of Mouth, Idea virus, Open source marketing, whatever you call it these days - it is created by points of contact with the brand that are still controlled - in most part - by the owner of the brand. No drastic change, just new innovative tools.
-bruce
Posted by: Bruce DeBoer | February 10, 2005 at 04:49 PM
you know you're on the right track when the economist is on side...see http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3623762. interesting article that asks if goods/services/etc other than software can be open sourced in a commercially beneficial way....
Posted by: roger | February 10, 2005 at 05:31 PM
Hence particularity, they cause some of our best and brightest business minds to reinvent business models to revisit the meaning and purpose of intellectual property (IP) protection.
http://www.evision.com.pk/promotion.html
Posted by: jack | August 02, 2006 at 07:38 AM
v good
Posted by: mohit sinha | November 12, 2008 at 08:21 AM
I liked your examples. I think Polaroid did a campaign once that included end users in an innovative way as well. Can't remember clearly when or what though.
When I say iPod you have an impression of the brand; an essence. Apple and their agency created a brand image that is imbedded in our minds; it has mind share. That essence is perpetuated by those recruited to participate in the open source campaign. It is driven by the product performance but seeded by the integrated promotion efforts of Apple. It doesn’t happen by accident. Yes, end users are free to contribute as they wish to open campaigns, but the “hip” successful entry will mimic the brand essence seeded by the marketing. If it doesn’t, it will fall out of favor by the masses of end users who want to participate as well - it's a tribal society of sorts.
The great thing about this new channel is accountability. There are now consequences - both good and bad - for brand and marketing performance. For example, VW may not give a stamp of approval to all open source contributors but the brand message was accurate in the case of the suicide spot: the look and feel of the media, the message of quality, etc. It was pure VW – that’s why it worked. VW has been working on that messaging for years.
Posted by: ภาพโป๊ | June 07, 2011 at 02:31 PM