Only Dead Fish

Planning For Streams

“We applied the lens of advertising (interuptive, message-based) to new media. Instead we should apply the lens of new media (interactivity, iteration) to advertising”

This challenging presentation from Gareth and Jason was doing the rounds on twitter yesterday. I think it asks some good questions, and picks up on a theme I've written about before, and one on which there's been a couple of excellent posts recently - the need for a more agile, iterative, and adaptive approach to creative processes.

Jason and Gareth talk about the flow of information over time: "ideas as unfolding stories, a stream of iterations and interactions that invite people into the process". This makes sense in a world in which people are becoming content creators as much as they are consumers, and where content increasingly needs to be free-flowing and responsive, and services and applications need to be both scalable and portable. It's What Russell Davies once called 'designing for streams'. As my Mum used to say, it's all about the journey, not the destination.

Connections Planningness

View more documents from Jason Oke.

IPA Social - Principle 06 - Being Authentic Not Persuasive

Image courtesy

So, on October 6th the IPA are running an event (at which I'll be talking) to have a conversation around what social really means for our industry. In the build up to the event, I've been working with a great bunch of likeminded folk from across our industry who all had opinions they wanted to express, and we have worked up ten principles to start the conversation. This introduction (written by Amelia) gives the proper context:

Social Media is a conversation. That seems to be one thing that we can all agree on.

But given that Social Media is a rather noisy and opinionated conversation, what value do we think we will have by adding our voices to it?

We are not Social Media gurus. In fact we are rather sceptical of people who claim they are. We are simply 10 people from across a wide range of communications disciplines in the UK and the US who would like to share some thoughts. Thoughts that have either been bugging us or inspiring us, thoughts that we believe could form some of the building blocks for succesful Social campaigns. We came together to respond to and add our voices to some work that the IPA had done earlier in the year.

We have each defined a Principle which we feel is important in this Social world. You will find each principle up here but they are also on our individual blogs where we will be curating the conversation which we hope they will generate. Please do get involved, maybe you think these principles don't apply, are there better ones? Are there changes that you would like to make? Are there examples that you could add to help illustrate them? The only thing that we ask is that as part of the advertising and communications community that you become part of the conversation. After all the more opinions that are being shared and built on, the more interesting and stronger the outcome. At least that's what we are hoping.

Thank you in advance.

The IPA have created a hub for all ten principles, along with a fantastic summary of the big picture written by Mark Earls, all of which you can find here. Each of us is writing about a single principle and encouraging as much debate through our own blogs, and around the #IPASocial hashtag on twitter, and the event itself:

1. People not consumers – Mark Earls

2. Social agenda not business agenda – Le’Nise Brothers

3. Continuous conversation not campaigning – John V Willshire

4. Long term impacts not quick fixes – Faris Yakob

5. Marketing with people not to people – Katy Lindemann

6. Being authentic not persuasive – Neil Perkin

7. Perpetual beta – Jamie Coomber

8. Technology changes, people don’t – Amelia Torode

9. Change will never be this slow again – Graeme Wood

10. Measurement – Asi Sharabi

These ten principles are just a starting point; provokers of conversation, thoughts, ideas… an invitation to you (yes, YOU) to join in. Why?  Our aim with this project is to move the debate beyond simply the theoretical, and into the practical; examples of approaches that have worked, and which have not.  What does success look like?  What do you need to do first?

We believe that by sharing information and case studies around ’social communications’ we will all, from the largest agency to the nimblest freelancer, from the most traditional client to the youngest start-up, benefit from this open source of knowledge.

So please join the debate by leaving your thoughts around the principle I'm writing about in the comments below, and see the other conversation starters here.

IPA Social, principle 06: Being Authentic, Not Persuasive

Social marketing earns, not buys attention so have an opinion, be true to what you say, be of value, be open - above all be human #IPASocial

As 'markets become conversations' customer relationships and advertising models are changing for good. Passive consumption becomes active interaction. Monologue becomes dialogue. Control becomes collaboration.

Customers are empowered, well informed, connected. Companies are becoming more transparent whether they like it or not.

It's an environment in which the balance of effective communication shifts from being less about interruption to more about participation, less about delivering a message to more about being part of a conversation, less about what you say to people and more about what people are saying about you.

It's an environment, which operates to social principles - creating not subtracting value, serving a larger purpose than your own, being useful, facilitating.

It's an environment in which the more human elements matter - having a point of view, being true to yourself and what you say, being open, honest, transparent. Ford use social media to (in the words of Scott Monty) "humanize the Ford brand and put consumers in touch with Ford employees", and regularly reach out to bloggers for feedback and to encourage the spread of positive word of mouth. Zappos believe that their "culture is their brand" and use social media to create touchpoints throughout every area of their business and ensure customer service isn't just a department, it’s the entire company.

Authenticity is the currency that encourages trust, involvement, engagement. Authenticity is what turns an audience into a following.

IPA Social

Back in January, the IPA ran an event to launch their Social Media Futures report. It caused quite a kerfuffle at the time because for something about social media the whole thing was, well, distinctly unsocial. It felt like another missed opportunity. But then something interesting happened - they listened.

A bunch of people (including me) from across the industry who had opinions they wanted to express sat down with the IPA and got to talking about how things could be done differently. The group have worked up ten principles to capture the breadth and depth of change that social means for our industry:

1. People not consumers – Mark Earls

2. Social agenda not business agenda – Le’Nise Brothers

3. Continuous conversation not campaigning – John V Willshire

4. Long term impacts not quick fixes – Faris Yakob

5. Marketing with people not to people – Katy Lindemann

6. Being authentic not persuasive – Neil Perkin

7. Perpetual beta – Jamie Coomber

8. Technology changes, people don’t – Amelia Torode

9. Change will never be this slow again – Graeme Wood

10. Measurement – Asi Sharabi

The principles are not definitive, but are intended as conversation starters. So the authors will be posting their initial thoughts on individual principles next week (look out for mine), inviting feedback and comment, and the conversation will be pulled together on an IPA blog. This conversation will continue at an event at the IPA (at which I'll be speaking) on 6th October. So please join the debate, come to the event.

Anything which helps push the debate is a good thing, but I think the IPA should be applauded for listening and taking action. I guess the point is that this time the process is more open, collaborative and far more, well, social.

#ipasocial

The Unbundling Of Advertising

Image courtesy

Last week I participated in a lively discussion over on the Forrester blog about digital content. Mark Mulligan had a post up about product innovation in the music industry and made the point that many of the fundamental challenges and solutions they were looking at applied far beyond the music business to all kinds of content producers. There was something that Mark said in response to one of my comments which was interesting:

"we believe that record labels should move away from releases in the traditional sense, where timings are dictated by the legacy of getting physical product to market, and instead move to developing continual releases as the basis of relationships with fans. In the digital age there is no need for the speed bumps in the artist-fan relationship which legacy release schedules place. And once you reinforce the artist-fan relationship, especially in the context of compelling legitimate services, you create more sense of belonging and community with the artists."

I'm reminded about something David Hepworth (founder of The Word) wrote once about how on-demand, the i-player and changing music consumption meant that content distributors could no longer dictate the pace at which the market moved:

"There's something vaguely pathetic about the average pre-release PR announcement nowadays, as if the person who typed it still lived in the world where everything seemed to stop on the day that their particular product 'dropped'. This doesn't happen anymore. Products slip noiselessly into an ever-swelling stream rather than dropping like a pebble in a serenely still lake."

I think there's an interesting parallel with advertising here. Conventional campaigning wisdom attempts to create just such speed bumps. Messaging is deployed at sufficient weight to guarantee reach to a large number of people in a short space of time (for TV, often at weights that mean that heavy TV viewers are likely to see the ad up to ten times - I'm not having a go at TV here, any medium deployed at that weight would be the same). Awareness decays until another burst kicks in. Speed bumps.

Yet as I've pointed out before, building relationships is not about speed bumps. Committing, as opposed to campaigning, doesn't have a beginning, middle and an end. You can't walk away from a conversation. It's not part time. The pace is not entirely yours. The schedule is not predictable. As Mike Arauz says:

"If you've put in the time and effort to show your fans that your listening, don't make the mistake of letting it all go to waste by going dark for 3 months while you get ready for your next big ad campaign."

The advertising process is still largely set up around discontinuous cycles. Yet your customers don't want interaction with your brand at your convenience, they want it at theirs. As advertising, in common with all forms of content, becomes increasingly socialised, it needs to work to a different set of rules. So isn't it time that the advertising process got a whole lot more agile?

A Life Less Obvious

Image courtesy

I've been thinking a bit about authenticity recently through a small project I'm involved with via the IPA. Paul recently made a great point about how the nexus of advertising and social media will increasingly be about finding the center of what makes companies interesting and different - their culture, their soul and the humanizing elements that makes them what they are: "It’s that soul that can help us find the motivating message, that focused positioning that moves people to get beyond just liking us and get to liking to buy from us."

Richard built on this, creating the visual above, and talking about the idea that "the new sense of value that consumers have created since the beginning of the recession requires brands to be of value not just good value for money."

I've written before about how important I think it is for us to focus on the value we create for others, not just ourselves. It is a model that has the potential to be transformational:

It is a model that at times can be counter-intuitive:

“Apple’s goal isn’t to make money. Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products…We trust as a consequence of that, people will like them, and as another consequence we’ll make some money. But we’re really clear about what our goals are.” Jonathan Ive

But it is now the only way.

Post Of The Month - July '09 - The Vote

Some excellent reading in this month's nominations. Thanks to those who nominated, and now time to vote a winner. Our shortlist is:

Surfing The Waves Of Change - a guest post by Jane Young of Scrmblr on Alan Moore's blog

F**k Influencers and I Am Not An Influencer And We Are Not Friends (try 2) from Sean Howard

Is Your Company Thinking That Social Media Is A Job? by Valeria Maltoni

When Objects Become People and Vica Versa by Adrian Ho

The Generation M Manifesto from Umair Haque

2009's What's Next In Marketing & Advertising by Paul Isakson

Bankers Enter The World Of the Teenager by Adland Suit

And you can vote below.

Post Of The Month - July '09 - Nominations

...are open. Some exceptionally good reading to be had in July, as evidenced in the quality of the posts I've put forward below. As usual, please nominate any good posts you've read that were posted in the month of July in the comments to this post. As a starter, I've listed five of my own favourites. In a few days I'll stick these five, with any additional ones that are put forward up for a vote. OK, so the starting five are:

Surfing The Waves Of Change - a guest post by Jane Young of Scrmblr on Alan Moore's blog

F**k Influencers and I Am Not An Influencer And We Are Not Friends (try 2) from Sean Howard

Is Your Company Thinking That Social Media Is A Job? by Valeria Maltoni

When Objects Become People and Vica Versa by Adrian Ho

The Generation M Manifesto from Umair Haque

Nominate away...

Re: Selling Out

Good catch by PSFK, who highlighted this video by You Tube blogger Kristina Horner who posted in response to some criticism about approaches by brands to bloggers. Kristina, who did some stuff as part of the Ford Fiesta Movement, is eloquent in her defence and makes a clear point:- the approach felt right because it was made clear that "our success is their success". A must watch for any brand who wants to work with bloggers.

HT to Nick for the link

The Story Engine

I love this quote from Guillermo Del Toro on the future of film and entertainment:

"In the next 10 years, we're going to see all the forms of entertainment - film, television, video, games, and print - melding into a single-platform 'story-engine'. The Model T of this new platform is the PS3. The moment you connect creative output with a public story engine, a narrative can continue over a period of months or years. It's going to rewrite the rules of fiction.

Think about the way oral tradition became written word - how what we know about Achilles was written many, many years after it made its way around the world with different names and different types of heroes. That can happen when you allow content to keep propagating itself through different kinds of platforms and engines - when you permit it to be retold with a promiscuous form of mythology.

Hollywood thinks art is like Latin in the Middle Ages - only a few should know it, only a few should speak it. I don't think so...We used to think of stories in a linear way...what the digital approach allows you to do is take a tangential and nonlinear model and use it to expand the world."

Several interesting things about this for me. For starters, the new power in incomplete ideas. As Matthew May says in the introduction to his lovely manifesto on the subject (HT to Johnnie Moore for the link): "Conventional wisdom says that to be successful, an idea must be concrete, complete, and certain. But what if that’s wrong? What if the most elegant, most imaginative, most engaging ideas are none of those things?". Matthew goes on to make a brilliant point about this, that it is the "unusually simple yet thoughtful construction of what is there" that gives the missing piece its surprising power. Rather like Itay Talgam's 'Doing By Not Doing' (if you haven't seen that talk yet, watch it. It's worth it).

And then there's the narrow view of creativity of which Del Toro speaks. A view that assumes it is a fixed trait inherent in special people, or special activities ('creative domains' like arts, design). In his excellent book, The Element (which I'm probably going to be quoting for some time it's that good) Sir Ken Robinson draws a parallel between our view of creativity and our view of intelligence, which we also define far too narrowly. We think we know the answer to the question, 'How intelligent are you?'. But it's entirely the wrong question. We should be asking 'How are you Intelligent?'. Like creativity, intelligence is inherently diverse, dynamic and distinctive.

No wonder then, that in a participative culture, it is the end users who often if not always create the real value in collaborative based technologies.

Optimisation And Storytelling

I was reminded of a Dave Winer quote about advertising recently:

“Advertising will get more and more targeted until it disappears, because perfectly targeted advertising is just information. There’s little point in saying something until the time is right, then you just have to say it once, and the idea takes over and does all the work.”

What reminded me was reading Andy's post, sparked by Stephen Wolfram's description of his new "computational knowledge engine" (which launches today). Says Andy:

"Optimisation scares me when it sacrifices meaning. I'm all for better, faster ways of doing things, but we are at risk of losing context. And context is everything."

It's a good point. Optimisation is a great digital model. It capitalises on what the internet delivers in spades - data. Ever more sophisticated technologies that use interaction, behavioural, cookie based, social or other data to increase the efficiency of delivery until a piece of communication becomes so relevant that, as Dave says, it just becomes information. It's a gloriously attractive idea.

Digital storytelling is as much about curation as it is creation. As much about starting stories as it is about finishing them. As much about being incomplete and imperfect as it is about being polished and finished. I'm all for efficiency. But a scenario where everything is optimised to within an inch of it's life leaves little room for the kind of storytelling that can not only surprise, but genuinely delight. My hope is that in the rush toward efficiency we don't lose sight of the power of a great story. As Gavin has said:

'A good story connects us with the emotion of life. Or as Kafka wrote, it is “the axe for the frozen sea inside us”'