Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Do You Bond Or Bridge?

Networked media (eg the blogopshere) at its best is an incredibly varied mixture of expert, passionate voices from around the world throwing their respective types of mud at the wall to see how they mix.  At its worst it's Techmeme.  People who all work in a narrow field trying to incrementally raise the debating bar on a small range of niche opinions.  That's not to say that single issue communities are bad.  Far from it.  However, with the addition of too much caffeine and not enough fresh air they can quickly fester.  One of my favourite ideas from Clay Shirky's new book is there are two types of 'capital' in social networks - that which bonds and that which bridges.  It's a pretty straightforward notion and all the better for it.  The most successful networks have people who are very good at making that network tick and others who remember to open the window from time to time.  Last year I tried a little experiment with a member of the plannersphere (fyi: a distributed blogging community of people who work in the planning departments of advertising agencies).  The aim was to try a little bridging between the advertising and networked media worlds by writing posts for each other's blogs.  Interestingly, it didn't quite come off.  Mainly, I think because we were both too busy.  However, it made me realise that while it's fairly easy to bond in an area that you are naturally interested in - it can be quite difficult to bridge between two disparate groups.  Quoting from Ronald Burt's 'The Social Origin of Good Ideas', Shirky suggests that: "People connected to groups beyond their own can expect to find themselves delivering valuable ideas, seeming to be gifted with creativity.  This is not creativity born of deep intellectual ability.  It is creativity as an import-export business.  An idea mundane in one group can be a valuable insight in another."  I think there are ways to develop bridging skills.  For instance, I try to not read too many RSS feeds from people I know and to refresh them regualrly.  But it's very easy to stagnate and sink back into the Techmeme pool....

Accidental Branding

I was sent an advance copy of the book Accidental Branding - How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands by David Vinjamuri recently.  When I saw the title my heart sank because it looked like more entrepreneur-porn.  However, this was a literal lesson in not judging books by covers because I really enjoyed it.  The premise is that anyone can build a big brand by focusing on a few ideas.  What sets the book apart is that these ideas are taken from very well researched interviews and stories about the lives of seven people who have actually created empires out of thin air.  And I mean empires.  For instance, Roxanne Quimby who was living in a tent with her two children in 1984 but had sold her company, Burt's Bees, for $175m by 2003.  Or the couple who build The Art Of Shaving into a national US franchise in ten years.  And there's an excellent chapter about Craig Newmark of Craig's List and why he's like Chauncey Gardner.  All of the case studies are about people who had a need they couldn't satisfy in the market, or an itch they couldn't scratch as the open source world describes it.  For instance, Julie Aigner-Clark couldn't find suitable TV for her new baby so she created Baby Einstein (a product I am very familiar with) which she sold to Disney for $40m 7 years later.  A common theme which caught my eye was how closely all of the entrepreneurs stayed to the market.  Often taking their cue entirely from their customers.  This quote from Quimby probably sums it up best: "You have to be really open-minded about what business you are in.  You might not know what business you are in for a while.  Your customers will pretty much define that for you, if you're open to their suggestions".  There can be no doubt that the web makes this aspect much easier than it ever was and it makes you wonder which mega-brands are currently being spun together in marketplaces such as Etsy and Dawanda.  People who are not worrying too much about their brand but just staying focused on the most important part of marketing - their market.

You Can't Phone A Friend

Recently a PR company called me up asking for some help pitching ideas to bloggers.  They were perfectly nice people doing a perfectly good job for a perfectly decent client.  But they were deeply misguided in their approach.  I spent a good - and enjoyable - few years in traditional PR including a lot of time talking to journalists of all creeds about clients.  And when it works - as in front page story on a national newspaper - it works really well.  However, IMHO, directly applying the tactics of the old-school to a new social world is pretty pointless.  Firstly, because it's wrong.  It's one thing to spend time preparing a good story and then finding the right correspondent on the right publication with the right interests who might be genuinely interested in your angle. That's one professional collaborating with another to mutual benefit - which is the juice that makes the world go round.  However, it's something entirely different to pitch a story to an individual who happens to be writing about their passions online, in the hope that they can be converted from soapbox to loudhailer.   That's at best inappropriate and at worst pimping.  Secondly, because it won't scale.  In reality there are very few professional...

Arseblog, Modern Marketing & We Think

One or two readers of this blog may have seen me at live events combining web strategy with my passion for Arsenal Football Club.  Sometimes I read out two match reports about the same game, one from Arsenal.com, the official, but dry, website and one from Arseblog, an unofficial, but massively blogger.  The intention is to demonstrate how restrictive official-ese can be in networked media.  Last week I noticed that Charles Leadbetter, who came to an event I spoke at last year, had included the little gimmick and the example I used that evening in his new book We Think.  If you are interested it's the introduction of the second chapter...now complete with an (online) attribution.  Leadbetter picks up on the fact that Arseblog has a thriving community and real influence among the Arsenal faithful, despite being the work of one man.  How?  Well, while Arseblog offers insightful, balanced football analysis his colourful language is very much of the terraces - not the boardroom.  For instance, here's a description of the morning-after his return to Dublin, following a long stay in Barcelona : "My brain is discombobulated and I have had to send Blogette off to her new school wearing my runners which are at least 4 sizes too big for her because all of our stuff is in a box coming from Spain. I now have no shoes at all but I am wearing her fleecey red dressing gown. So all of you who might have a hangover today at least be thankful you have some shoes. I have no shoes.  I am like a bag lady in a red dressing gown without any bags."  You would be forgiven for thinking that such rhetoroic wouldn't ingratiate him with the club, a famously conservative organisation.  In fact, the opposite is true and the Arsenal Chairman, an old-Etonian, and Amy Lawrence, a journalist at the Observer, are both regulars on the blog's Arsecast podcast.  Of course, the language used isn't the only secret to its success.  Arseblogger has created a forum with a life of its own and huge Ooomph Factor by bringing together a disparate community.  As Leadbetter notes in his book, "Sir Tim Berners Lee was probably not anticipating Arseblog, when he wrote the original software for the web at CERN...Yet in some respects it is a realisation of his vision that the web could be a platform for collaboration not just a new way to publish information."

Money Slows, Conversation Continues

As an economics graduate I can tell you that the dorky definition of a recession is when the exchange of cash between people slows.  Same amount of money, just slower circulation.  And as the money starts to drag, one of the first traditional victims is media spend.  We are probably in a lag at the moment because good times budgets money are still in the system.  But be in no doubt, the bad news is in the post.  However, networked media is unlikely to be hit by the recessionary effect in the same way that traditional media is, because - well it isn't really media.  It's people-powered chat, not cash-fuelled inventory.   Yes, along with fags and booze the usage of networked media isn't related to prosperity.  People carry on chatting through good times and bad.  In fact, the old Linux quote ("It's only free if you put no value on your time,") may mean that recession increases the use of networked media.  After all, one thing everyone has more of in a recession is time.  Personally, having been through a couple before, I think recessions are quite healthy at showing us what is really working and what was always a punt.  As Warren Buffet says:  "It's only when the tide's going out that you find out who's been swimming naked." 

It's All P2P Now (Forget B2C & B2B)

Blogs, social nets and other networked media have atomised communication and made it all personal.  In short it's a P2P world now.   The term P2P itself has gone through a few machinations.  From platform-to-platform, peer-to-peer and the pirate-to-pirate swashbucklers who bypassed the whole music industry by going direct.  However, all P2P really means is person-to-person: normal folk using web tools - without the annoyance of an institution or mega-corp getting in the way.  They may be discussing the weather, sharing photographs, seeking opinion about a hobby or some other passion, but the common factor is no central organising body.  Yes, today's web is a very personal experience which means the terms B2B and B2C are redundant. Increasingly people aren't happy dealing with faceless bureaucracies.  They want to talk and relate to someone.  Wasn't this always so?  Probably but now we've got the means and the attitude to make it happen.  Just think about the impact Robert Scoble had when he ditched the traditional B2B approach and went person-to-person with the development community.  Or the countless blogs written by executives - speaking out from within the corporate machine.  Richard Sambrook at the BBC.  Randy Tinseth at Boeing.  Colin Wright at Birds Eye.  Jonathan Schwartz at Sun.  David Brain at Edelman.  Tom Glocer at Reuters.  All have gone P2P with good effect.  Sometimes the feeling is that this is all small potatoes compared to the Megacorp Marketing Machine of old.  But P&G's Tremor platform has put paid to that idea.  Of course, corporations and brands aren't about to disappear.  However, these days if you aren't thinking P2P you are immediately out of whack with the marketplace.

Clay Shirky At The RSA : Fewer Meetings, More Meet-Ups

Yesterday lunchtime, I went to see Clay Shirky talk at The RSA (a client of mine) about his book Here Come Everybody.  It was excellent and you can hear it here.  A few points stood out for me.  One big change created by networked media, Shirky suggests, is a differing view of evaluation and failure.  For a long time we have been used to having an idea and then calling a meeting to grind it through an evaluation process and judge if it deserves backing.  However, as we all know too well, this process often kicks the stuffing out of a new idea along the way.  But cheap web tools and the co-ordination they enable has changed the economics, says Shirky.  When you've had an idea, it makes more sense to just chuck it out there and see what sticks - rather than chewing up valuable executive time assessing arbitrary risk factors.  By way of example, Shirky spoke about his analysis of the giant SourceForge community where people throw up ideas for new software to see if anyone is interested in collaborating.  Mostly the answer is - No Thanks.  However, by keeping those No Thanks displayed to the world, SourceForge has become a wonderful library of failures which gives others clues as to what might fly.  In answer to a question from the audience about how to kick start community online, Shirky observed that once people have signed up the best thing to do is get them all together in a real world Meet-Up.  To illustrate the point, he told a story about an airline which asked him how to use networked media to solve the differences between two far-flung engineering groups.  However, instead of leaping for the social web tool box, Shirky suggested, "airline tickets and beer".  The NYU Professor also spoke about the differences between bonding and bridging capital which I thought was one of the most interesting sections of a very interesting book.  But I'll save that for another time.

The Power Of Attribution

We all do it. Find the perfect example or witty quote and use it within our own work. And now the web is here in its full scrapbook glory - it's easier than ever. In fact, it's the joy of the thing. However, there are two ways to go about this. And the option you take is very revealing. One of them is totally in keeping with the modern web.  Call it attribution, namecheck, egoboo, linklove or whuffie - it makes the web go round.  The belief that we are all building something together and, in doing so, demonstrating passions and interests around which we can create new connections, relationships and collaborations.  Online - particularly in the blogosphere - it's what the hyperlink is for. To create collaborative networks which are greater than the sum of their parts. And then there's the other way. Which is to find that perfect example and use it, but break the chain by not adding a hat-tip in the direction of the source. Such credit-tracks are something that the old school can find difficult. Possibly because they are used to taking the glory, knowing that the platform is all theirs. Of course, in doing so they miss the opportunity to create valuable new connections and signal their reticence to participate. But, worse still, they demonstrate an ignorance of how the world is changing.  A failure to understand that a genuine willingness to share makes the social world spin. Yes, it's only a link.  But the link is also an act.  One that shows you have listened but, more importantly, that you have understood.

There's Only One Interesting Thing About This Blog

And that's the two or three thousand people I have met through it.  Either online, over coffee, at events or through various collaborations.  Which is a lot.  And they are people I don't think I would have met any other way.  Many of them work in the splendid organisations around the world I have consulted to over the last few years.  But don't get me wrong.  Content is important and I enjoy writing the blog and keeping it (vaguely) current and coherent.  Feedback wise, I used to pay a lot of attention to various stats packages but these days as long as that little Feedburner ticker generally keeps on heading North - I am happy.  But when it comes down to it, the content is only as interesting as the people who get in touch.  So far I've been very fortunate in that regard.  But I'm always happy to hear from new folk.  Interesting times as my friend Mr Raettig would say.

Rise Of The Love-App

Butcher 2.0's comment on my post about why networked media isn't about technology got me thinking: "Techies and startups are now working in an application world, where the social nets are just the playground platforms to play in. They say: "The people are already here to play with their apps. So let's build."  And I say, let's build Love-Apps for the people - not the ranting Techmeme bubble.  As Mike hints, mega social-nets are becoming part of the furniture and that's where the real opportunities begin.  If there is a better example of a Love-App than Etsy I haven't found it.  From it's mission statement, to its users, to its fans to its communication, the tech-features are hidden away and the focus is on the stars who are building their lives around Robert Kaplin's vision.  Oh, and Dawanda.  Any other Love-Apps spring to mind?