I’ve always believed that the single easiest way to get your head round digital and more importantly the direction of communications and culture type stuff, is to simply look at the vocabulary being used by the people that do the doing, not the thinking. This post on Savage Minds highlights a potentially better way of looking at marketing by comparing the techy terms like platform to culture and application to subculture.
It makes sense when you think about. You don’t really manage a brand in neat little channels anymore. Like in John Grant’s book, The Brand Innovation Manifesto, brands are really defined by a bunch of complimentary associations and experiences. John calls these brand molecules, but it’s essentially the same. You should be creating a platform, with a series of applications that allow you to keep moving quickly and effectively. Much like Starbucks has done
Don’t get me wrong, we don’t need anymore marketing words, but we do need to use more helpful ones.
Paul Graham has just posted this great read on the acceleration of addictiveness. Essentially the world is more addictive than it was 40 years ago and it’s going to get even more so.
Interestingly he puts this down to technological progress, which in his words means ‘making things do more of what we want’. Which is probably one of the most articulate ways of talking about all this stuff that’s going on in a digital world.
However it’s also this gem of an observation I love;
“What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin and crack have in common is that they are all more concentrated forms of less addictive predcessors….
“Checkers and solitaire have been replaced by World of Warcraft and FarmVille. TV has become more engaging, and even so it can’t compete with Facebook”.
Obviously when technological progress means things doing more of what you want, predecessors such as TV, that don’t evolve quick enough in the right direction, aren’t essentially keeping up with that new demand.
I wonder what ad revenues might look like now if all the TV channels clubbed together, backed web enabled TV and put them in the house of people for free ages ago? They’d probably be more addictive and looking a lot healthier.
Over at Naked NYC’s blog there’s a provactive post about whether the world needs Digital Strategists. As one, I actually agree with much of the post. I agree with the fact that de-centralising strategy is not a good thing.
However one thing that concerns me about some comments, is the air that digital strategy is somehow subordinate to traditional planning and it’s just a skill you can pick up by spending time on the Internet. Or that Digital Strategists don’t get brands or can’t generate insights as well as traditional planners.
I do believe that putting it in a silo is unhelpful, but lets not forget how it came about and why it still exists. As professionals who are paid to understand people/culture/media on behalf of brands the vast majority of planners have dropped the ball and not delivered. Hence digital strategists. You can’t blame people for filling voids and creating opportunities that you have allowed to exist.
My gut says that in the not too distant future digital strategists, won’t exist, but they will be running strategy or marketing departments.
Give the same problem to the best ‘digital strategist’ in the world and the best ‘traditional planner’ in the world and I’d have my money on the former.
So I’d re-phrase their post to ‘Does the world need better strategists?’
So according to this article Facebook is serving 3 Billion ‘Like’ buttons a day. Don’t get me wrong, Facebook did a smart thing launching the like button. It spreads its seed across the web because it’s obviously much easier to like something than it is to be a fan of something. I might admit to the fact that part of me likes prancing about to a bit of Culture Club, but I wouldn’t call myself a fan. It requires less commitment.
From friend to friend it works, but from a brand’s point of view I think I kind of preferred fan as a benchmark, it made you work harder. ‘Like’ lowers the standards (which are already often low), resulting in the interaction being weaker and inflating the numbers. I’d go even as far as saying it’s the closet equivalent of some sort of standard volume metric in social.
I can tell you why QR codes haven’t really flown outside parts of Asia. Because they aren’t really used that well. Replacing a URL or showing another ad, is let’s face, not useful. This on the other hand is…
I’m in the rather unfortunate position to have the word ‘strategy’ in my job title. I say that for a couple of reasons. One, I feel like a tosser when introducing myself to people. And two, the word is a bit on the nebulous side. Perhaps that’s why I feel like a tosser?
I hate to say it, but I will. In marketing land ‘strategy’ is too detached from the doing. I’m not saying planners should also be ideas people, but being good at generating insights and storytelling isn’t really cutting it with me. A planner today needs to be much closer to helping solutions see the light of day and making them happen.
Here are two; not so much contrasting views, but they highlight my point. To be honest I agree with them both, but if you asked me who I would prefer to employ it’s the person that ‘sweats the small stuff’ than tells the stories.
Rory Sutherland articulates the problem perfectly: “The big stuff is done magnificently well, what you might call the small stuff is done spectacularly badly. There’s a complete gridlock in solving these solutions. The people that can actually solve them are too powerful and pre-occupied with what they call strategy to actually solve them”.
1. Rory Sutherland. Sweat the small stuff
2. Skills of the Rockstar Planner: Communicating Ideas
Having worked on both sides of this fence, I’m convinced that the argument over mass reach marketing versus niche ‘influencing the influencers’ is nothing more than a pissing contest. It’s about how both of these work together and to be honest it always has been, but now we can see the relationships through the abundance of data at our finger tips. Here’s a neat explantion of the fallacy of niche targeting courtesy of the Viral Ad Network
It doesn’t happen often enough, but once in a while it’s nice to discover a new blog that keeps you interested. So if you haven’t been to Jeff Monday’s blog yet, Mondaydots you should. To summise, Jeff explains sometimes complex theories simply. Which is good for people like me, who have the attention span of a 4 year old.
In his words: “It works like this: when we come across something new that is not explained by our previous knowledge or experiences, an information gap is formed. If you are a designer, creator or communicator, understanding how to use this gap will have great rewards.
It amazes me how many new product developers, marketers, and advertisers create the wrong sized gap. They either create a “me too” product or service which creates an information gap that is too small and uninteresting. Or they let their engineers and creatives add wild, bloated, and unnecessary “features”, and create a huge information gap that inspires fear over the size of the gap and size of the of the learning curve”.
I love this because it’s so bloody true. I know I keep using Apple analogies here [sorry] but they are very good at introducing new technologies that create medium sized information gaps, the iPad being it’s latest example. It’s like a laptop but different. It’s like a netbook but different. It’s like a magazine but different. It’s like your Mac book or iPhone but again different in some way.
At the other end of the scale you have Microsoft creating information gaps that are too small with minor product iterations (Natal excluded) and Google are arguablly creating ones that are too big like Buzz and putting everything in the cloud [100% stolen/inspired by Wired]
Then there are those that create information that are so big you can’t compare it to anything.
Think of Internet service providers and telcos banging on about how many gigabytes I can get. Now I know 1 isn’t much and 150 is a hell of a lot more than 1, but what does that actually give me? How many movies can I download? How much talktime can I get on Skype?
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