Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Our Mission (1.0)

Back in 2000, myself, Dug and several other excellent individuals, spent a year planning a huuuuge MMORPG for the owners of the original James Bond IP.  Part of the process was working out the cost of building a system that could support 100k+ simultaneous, 007 wannabees.  As you'd imagine, the spreadsheet was something to behold.  I was reminded of this when reading Fred Wilson's take on the difference in economics between Web 1.0 and 2.0 start-ups.  It's well worth a read if you are of a commercial bent.  Six years ago, our plan was to build, from scratch, various large component parts that would merge to create an online spy world.  Looking back, it was a vast social networking system.  If we were to create such a beast today the economics would be entirely different as we wouldn't have to build everything.  We'd *just* wrap up...

Reevoo Secures $5m

Reevoo, the customer review site (that I have advised) has secured a $5m investment round, led by Eden Ventures, to expand the unique way it gathers and publishes genuine customer reviews into areas beyond its current portfolio of electrical retail clients (including Comet, Dixons and Orange).  It goes to show that Web 2.0 is alive and well in the UK - and starting to attract the attention of the market makers.  Many congratulations to Richard, Ben and the team.  (And if you're off Christmas shopping you could do worse than start with Reevoo's buying guides.)

When You Say Community....

Brands love community. But do they know what it is?  The growth of social networks has forced marketeers to view their consumers differently. Instead of seeing them as ABC1 caricatures, personalised datasets, psychographic segments or simply 'the target', social networks make them look very, well, human. And that's a problem. Traditional marketing likes neat and tidy segments. Not messy human beings.  One way to redress this irritating lack of order is to focus on community, instead of the people in them. The creation of a community is something that marketeers can get. After all, what brand manager worth his cluetrain doesn't want to create (and by definition own) a place...

More Weinberger Magic

If you need to understand what is happening in the modern marketing world, then go here and watch David "Cluetrain" Weinberger lay it out in twenty minutes.  Don't let the fact that he looks like he has just been arrested put you off.  I heard him recently describe the modern web as, "externalising meaning".  So good.

Those Guys In The Garage

Traditionally, ad guys have seen the garage as somewhere to stick the Aston and send the valet off to.  However, recently Martin Sorrell (WPP's plus grand fromage), when asked about future threats, has started talking about, "software engineers working in a garage".  This type of garage-anxiety is normally reserved for software chiefs such as Messers Brin and Page, who can probably still - just about - remember what it's like to spend time in one and quite how productive they can be.  However, Sorrell's concern can be neatly summed up by the Innovator's Dilemma (Clayton Christensen,1997).  The idea is that (my words) big, smart, successful companies can know that their market is changing, want to adapt and still fail because they can't bear to stop servicing their lovely, profitable, mass market customers for a single second.  And even if they do tear themselves away to try a little innovation they don't want to be too successful in case they come up with something their existing customers actually want - instead of the lovely suite of products they buy now! This allows the garage guys space to rejig some of the stuff they've already got knocking about, flog it to a few early-adopting geeks and later on become gazillionaires.  So now you know.  Next time you're in that meeting wondering why everyone is agreeing that something needs to be done, but not doing anything about it, it's because you're in the wrong place.  Kick back that boardroom chair and dig out your overalls.

Webbys In The UK

I went along to the UK Webby launch this week at the ICA.  Organised by the Pokers, the evening was designed to help raise the UK profile of this wide-ranging US award programme.  There were some fine presentations from the vodka-loving Shooting People team, the kitten-loving Joel Veitch from Rathergood.com and the coconut-loving we-make-money-not-art.  The overall theme was that these days networked media really does enable talented people to find an audience and, increasingly, earn a living without having to kowtow to the big boys. So, the plebby-webbys in fact.

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....