From Stina Stockholm, Flickr

When I became a corporate “outsider,” almost three years ago, I felt that marketing as a business function was changing fundamentally.  I plunged into research mode to learn how the “old media” (print publications, radio, network & cable TV, with staff writers employed by giant media companies) were giving way to the “new” (citizen publishers producing content on the web for free).

I launched my consulting business by exploiting social networks, this blog, and free content (see Resources) in order to stimulate my network and tease out interest in project work ranging from part-time-CMO to white papers.  It worked.

I also witnessed “tulip mania” as self-styled (and genuine) experts emerged and captured the attention of almost everyone on a marketing career path.  For a time during 2009 old media events (conferences) were popping up left right and center headlined by new media gurus extolling one of the movement’s foundation principles: Give, give, give… listen, listen, listen… engage… and in the end you will be rewarded a hundredfold with opportunity (and, presumably, filthy lucre).  Become known as a source of quality content, and customers will beat a path to your door.

A couple of months ago, I spotted an ad on Facebook which quoted social media beacon Chris Brogan’s daily rate at something in excess of $20,000.  The offer was to gain all of that wisdom by joining a new community featuring Chris, Darren Rowse, and Brian Clarke — known as Third Tribe Marketing — for a mere $97 initial payment, followed by $47 per month.  As their blogs, collectively, have over 300,000 readers, even using the old school marketing yield on direct mail of 2%, that’s a neat $3 million (with an M) per annum!  Now that’s capitalism for you.  My guess is they timed that initiative just right.

Go for the promotional material on the website if you wish (after all, they’re amongst the best at web copy writing), but let’s be clear: as well as these guys have been doing living off the “give it away for free” model, these leading lights have clearly seen an opportunity to do business one $500-per-year subscription at a time.  Perhaps, like Lebron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh — it’s not about their ego or the money — they just want to win the new media world championship.  Time will tell.

Another recent observation: though the new media mantra of “inbound marketing” (nowhere more religiously observed than at Hubspot) poo poos the old-school outbound tactics of telemarketing and direct mail, I know many of us with marketing in our online profiles were bombarded with offers to sign up for the April Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco — notably as the conference’s dates were drawing perilously near.

So should this mini-bubble burst, should the petals drop from the precious tulips (and I believe it/they will), what can we take away?

First, it is true that the media have irreversibly changed. The problem is, the changes are not that dramatic, nor are the implications that difficult to understand.  There isn’t a huge amount of magic; no need for wizards; no new secret handshakes and shibboleths for the elite of this new marketing paradigm.  Brands are their own publishers, and they are largely in control of their own media.  A capability once outsourced to one or more agencies has moved in house, and media costs are heading toward zero.  That’s about it.  I speak to groups of young entrepreneurs from time to time… and after two hours of very high level teaching, they are off and running and becoming their own content foundries.

Psst… guess what… it’s not really that hard to figure this stuff out!

Second, brands (and marketing professionals in particular) need to take much more seriously the content responsibility with which they are now saddled.  We used to talk about a people to programs ratio of 40:60.  Leverage in marketing meant distributing costs 40% in human resource costs, and 60% in media and external programs designed to “drive the fish to the nets.”  Today companies need to invest much more heavily in the creation, curation, and distribution of content — using human beings to do so.  Marketing departments will be moving discretionary spend (which is easy to cut in case of a revenue shortfall) to personnel expense (which is difficult to cut, at least for most sentient humans).

Finally, marketing needs to attack with every fiber in its being the “signal-to-noise ratio” problem which all of this new media and social networking technology has created.  Zero barriers to entry for publishing and vastly expanding user-generated content volume conspire to create a polluted information environment which makes the BP Deepwater Horizon mess look like “On Golden Pond.”  In addition to relentless promotion of our own messages and achievements, we are going to have to exhibit leadership in filtering the extremely high volume of extremely low value information, and continuously enhance our web sites to make them more like museums, libraries, and exhibits — destinations for quality, creativity, and clarity — and less like cheesy storefronts.  Content curation solutions, like the one just launched by HiveFire, may be extremely valuable in attacking this enormous challenge.

What do you think?

Merry Christmas.  Whatever your celebration at this time of year may be — may each of you enjoy a warm and restful holiday break.  I most certainly intend to!

2009 has been one of those “Best of Times, Worst of Times” years.

In what ways was it “Best?”

• My consulting business not only survived, but thrived.  I added several new accounts, including Acquia, GolfTripGenius, and Rosen Law Offices.
• My most significant piece of marketing advisory business, RSD, remains a strong account for me.
• I added Presence Engineering, or interactive website design and delivery to our offerings, launching several small business sites including Olde Thyme Home, Dana Landscaping, and Todd Michel Construction.
• I added photography services, bridging my lifelong hobby with my business, via my ‘affiliate’ Synopshots.

In what ways was it worst?

• Many friends and former colleagues experienced varying degrees or financial or professional hardship.
• The markets are seeing signs of recovery, but somehow no one believes we are in a dynamic recovery just yet.
• Our domestic political atmosphere is as partisan and replete with hypocrisy as I have ever observed.

So looking forward to 2010, here’s a few things I foresee:

1. Glacially, buyers will be authorized and funded to invest… and well-positioned businesses will begin winning and growing once again.
2. The businesses that are in position to win have the following characteristics:
   1. Rather than reinventing themselves under the stress of the last 18 months of economic uncertainty, they further refined and in many cases narrowed their “addressable market” scope.  Did you?
   2. They pulled back, perhaps both in overall spend and in staff levels, but are poised to reinvest in calendar Q1 as the number of indicators of recovery, however soft, begin to build.   Are you?
   3. They have built strategic reinvestment strategies and tactical plans, which are not radical in their love embrace of social media, but aware of the need to earn a loyal prospect / buyer community.  Is yours?
3. Small and growing businesses (most of the companies I work with) will clearly see that in the online world, they can stretch their brand to have every bit of the presence, authority, and reputation that far larger businesses possess.  And because they can act with more agility, they can disrupt those larger competitors with decisive strikes and aggressive tactical actions.  In other words — it’s going to get fun again!

And that’s what I miss most… the fun.  Let’s raise a virtual glass to seeing the fun return to our business lives in 2010!

I was walking to work this morning (after writing my Apologia to the Blogosphere for last night’s rant & rave), and out of the corner of my eye I caught a passing delivery truck with a large soft panel bearing a promotional message for a printing company.

“Plus que du papier.  Print.”  More than paper.  Print.

Imagine the challenge you face if you are in the print industry today.  The butt of carbon footprint jokes, the scourge of the global climate change movement.  “People who consume paper are ravaging our wilderness.”  Though printers rarely consume paper except at the behest of their customers, it must just the same be extraordinarily painful to be a printer in the current climate, so to speak.

I’ve always believed that outdoor is the most challenging medium.  In few words, with the opportunity to capture attention which is measured in milliseconds, how do you inspire minutes of follow-on reflection and reaction?

“More than paper.  Print.”  This firm’s  job is to help you communicate.  The paper is a detail.  An important one, an interesting one, an emotion-laden one.  But for me these five words effectively persuaded me to rethink the role of the printer… and to stretch the category in my own mind.

I find this extremely compelling outdoor copywriting.  I did a Google search, but found no reference — and I did not see the panel long enough to capture the company name — another hazard of outdoor.  Do any of my Swiss readers have a tip on whose great work this was?

I work with executives and entrepreneurs in businesses large and small.

Most are technology firms.  They are trying to innovate — to create a solution which never existed before to a problem which is plain to see but perceived to be difficult or impossible to solve.

On the other hand, I also work with small businesses, like a couple who just opened a gift shop where they want to offer quality crafts,  gifts and decor at an attractive price.  Far more straight forward.

Both, however, need to build a brand — create a memorable impression for potential customers about who they are, what value they offer.

Larger, more sophisticated businesses seem to have a far harder time remaining steady and consistent in expressing their essence to the community.  Smaller firms in niches, in general, do a better job “sticking to their knitting,” than larger companies hoping to serve many segments or industries.

“Who am I?”

Here, I am a writer and from time to time the provider of advice and services related to marketing and communication.  I may be other things to my family, loved ones, and even to my enemies.  But here, I am an advisor to businesses seeking to grow — not only to survive but to thrive.

In that role, I try to inspire my customers / partners to imagine and to stretch — but I also try to help them avoid making mistakes — including some which I have made myself.

Have you ever rolled down your car window so that you can honk the horn, make a gesture, and holler all at the same time after getting cut off in a downtown intersection?

When I was younger, I used to do that a lot.  I do it far less frequently since a friend offered me this timeless piece of advice: “Breathe.  Once in the morning is not enough.”

Well I stopped breathing yesterday.  I was riled up after a very busy (if productive) day.  I was packing up at night and feeling energized about my final day on my current business trip — and excited about getting home again.

I “checked the traps,” which is my term for catching up on email and other networks, reading some news, and so forth.  Someone sent me a link to a funny YouTube video which got me clicking through several related links of very funny and irreverant celebrity impressions.  I have no idea what he was singing, but I was laughing myself silly at a Korean band where the lead singer was doing an impression of a pop duet — both the male and the female parts.  Switching gears, I checked out some the blogs I regularly read.

Then someone must have cut me off in the proverbial downtown intersection of cyberspace.  I decided to “rant,” which I think is to blogging what a “flameogram” used to be to email.

It felt great to get some of my deepest darkest feelings off my chest.  I swore in my blog post.  I was vitriolic and mean.  It felt great.  I got more comments within an hour than I’d received on my best-read posts in weeks.  By some blogosphere standards this was a good thing.

Another questions: have you ever wished you’d waited just a little longer before pressing the “send” button on an email?  I know I have.  And a trusted friend who has, too, called me up and provided me with some marketing advice: Unsend.  Hit the delete key.

What I had done was wrong.  And so I took advantage of my self-publishing power and I hit the delete key — a privilege one has in the blogosphere (which my rant had just viciously criticized).

Today I can’t wait to get home.  Today, I will breathe.  Once in the morning is not enough.

Have you made ever made a mistake?  It feels great to admit it, and to learn from it.

Michael Calienes is a blogger and marketer I stumbled across as one does about a year ago.  I clicked through a link recently to a fine piece of guidance for marketers planning their next communication program — whatever the media and however narrow or broad the goal.

It’s called the “three-step strategy statement,” is available readily at his site, and represents the kind of simple but planful thinking we should all do to keep our communication programs on the same path as our broader business strategy.  An excellent tool.

Thanks, Michael!

Improves Attention in School!

I have a problem.  I was taught grammar, and required to memorize my vocabulary lists.  Yes, I had to create sentence diagrams as a child.  Feel free to observe, as many have, that all that teaching was a waste.

This has had one lasting side effect.  When I hear things like television advertisements, I sometimes notice what’s being claimed.  Listening to a Frosted Mini-Wheats advert recently I picked up on this claim: children who had Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast were 11% more likely to be attentive in class than children who had not eaten breakfast.

Hoo Ray!  Frosted Mini-Wheats kids outperform the starving!

So that’s absurd on the surface, but in doing some follow-up research for this post, I discovered that Kellogg’s has been taken to task by the Federal Trade Commission, and penalties were imposed, for this claim in the recent past (April 2009).  A common-sense blogger, rangelife, shared some information about the case, which I recommend to you.  Turns out only half of the Mini-Wheat-eaters showed any improvement in attentiveness, and only 11% showed an improvement of 20%.  I happen to be numerate, so the microscopic insignificance of this claim, in the scheme of things, is obvious to me.  Pity the poor consumer trying to pick a breakfast food based that will give their cherub the competitive edge on this week’s grammar and vocabulary tests, and therefore get them into Harvard.

The TV ad is still running, modified to conform to FTC Truth in Advertising requirements.  In my opinion, the spot still makes a ridiculous claim, and one which fails any test of responsibility in communication, never mind Truth in Advertising.

Is there any wonder that traditional promotional schemes (slick and manipulative television advertising copy) and old-school media continue to suffer as buyers gain more access to more information on the web?

Nope.

The Arrogance of Power

I had the great honor to work with Irving Wladawsky-Berger while I was at IBM about 12 years ago.  He is one of the clearest thinkers I have had the good fortune to know.  Thus, no surprise, he was at the heart of many strategic initiatives, arguably projects which saved IBM from near-ruin back in the ’80s and ’90s.  To name two: the RISC chip; the Internet Division.

He does not, however, have an eponymous entry on Wikipedia, and I love him for that.

He wrote recently about power and responsibility in the wake of the credit crisis which drove the current economic downturn: “How Can ‘The Best and Brightest’ Get it So Wrong?“  It is a compelling reminder of the cyclical cultural phenomena which occur around the accumulation of success, wealth and influence.

Soon, pride rears its ugly head, and arrogance taints clear vision and decision making.

Power clusters tend toward homogeneity — the human desire to prefer “like” people, ideas and things to “unlike” people, ideas and things.  The concrete begins to harden.  The alert, flexible and agile entity that initiated the cycle can no longer respond to changes in the surrounding environment.  A new cycle must begin again.

Irving references how arrogance led to an indefensible policy in Vietnam in the early 60’s.  The big ideas from Harvard overpowered the career State and Defense Department thinkers.

I lived through the arrogance of the Internet era, when an infinitesimally small coterie of venture capitalists infused small technology companies with massive amounts of cash in order to create vast but artificial valuations for initial public stock offerings.  I’ll never forget the photo of a dot com chairman and CEO, wearing sombreros and mounted on horses, addressing employees on the beach at a resort in Cabo San Lucas.  Not a bad place for a company meeting.  The company was called “Agillion,” an amount only slightly higher than what was spent on the off-site extravaganza.

And now it’s the banking and finance sector, the creation of highly complex derivative financial products, sub-prime… you get the picture.

Bloom off the Web 2.0 Rose?

We are seeing another power-arrogance-collapse in the magical land of Web 2.0 (or is it 3.0?): the new communication environment created at the intersection of the worldwide web and some innovative “social” technology: blog tools, online video services like YouTube, social networks like Facebook and Flickr, and Twitter.

Starship Enterprise

In the world of news media, communication, and culture, the rate of change is incredibly high.  I’m reminded of Scotty from Start Trek, the Scots chief engineer, warning James T. Kirk as he presses the spaceship’s engines harder and faster: “She’s breaking up, Captain.”  Somehow Kirk, the symbol of leadership and responsibility, guides the Enterprise through the threat to a new state of greater intergalactic safety and security in the end.

Newspapers are losing readers and suspending print operations, going entirely online.  Advertising agencies have had to completely reinvent themselves in order to continue to deliver value to customers: there’s no “15% of the media buy” left to pad the bottom line.  Public relations firms have to help companies find influencers not within a community of hundreds of print publications, but amongst millions of self-publishers (bloggers).  It makes your hair hurt.  And it is creating panic as brand stewards try to figure out what decisions to take under high stress.

This is due to the growing amount of that fixed-asset, time, individuals are shifting from old media, like print publications, radio and broadcast or cable television to new online communities and media: blogs, podcasts, streaming videos.

A million blog posts are published every day.  News stories are spreading instantaneously not through free online news sights like Yahoo! News, but through individuals posting micro-messages on Twitter.  200,000 new videos are posted to YouTube daily.  Microsoft, once the symbol of personal productivity, is now investing nearly $2 billion annually to brand its “Bing” “decision engine,” the company’s nth effort to respond to Google’s remarkable success in the extraction of cash from web search.

What have we lost, in finding what we’ve found?

What the old media world provided, whether we want to admit it or not, was a structure for the flow of information.  The media community had a hierarchy.  Leaders had names like “The New York Times” and “The Wall Street Journal,” Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.  There were giants with enormous power, and smaller niche players with less influence, but a role to play.

In the new media world, we have no such structure.  There are no barriers to entry.  Anyone can become a publisher, a director / producer / leading actor, a self-styled pundit.

But that doesn’t mean to new media world isn’t subject to exactly the same cutural, cyclical patterns which have shaped the human experience for centuries.

IM#1, not N1H1, is the new threat.

I have observed over the past couple of years that an important cultural side-effect of the zero-barrier-to-entry new media world is the rise of an alarming number of super-egos.

Cable news started the process with the creation of on-camera experts — that cast of characters who don’t actually have a vocation in, say, politics, they just serve as on-camera expert on politics for the cable news discussion of a real news event in the political realm.  I don’t think they own trousers or skirts to match their suitcoats and jackets either.  But I digress.

The blogosphere is clogosphered with similar experts.  And what concerns me is not that a new generation of “Rock Stars” has been created — it is the basis upon which they have been created and the durability of that foundation.

The basis of relevance in the new media world is, quite simply, the numbers.  How many subscribers and visitors to your blog?  How many followers on Twitter?  How many views of your YouTube video?  Old school publishers like bloggers with lots of online readers.  Looking for a soundbite from an expert?  Take the one with the most awareness.  Nothing new here.

But what we need to ensure, to protect the richness and texture of our culture, is quality.  We need to be able to discriminate the original from the knock-off, the sage from the lunatic.

There are thousands of technology tricks that can be put to use in order to inflate your on-line metrics.  Sign up for Twitter if you haven’t already and you will receive a thousand suggestions a day within a few weeks.

Search engine specialists are extracting thousands of dollars per month from unwitting business people in order to drive web site traffic which is numerous but completely irrelevant.  There are tools which will grow your Twitter followers by tens of thousands.

And all of this “relevance” is bogus.  With it, however, we do get the unattractive aspects of arrogance and greed.  Web 2.0 snake oil available from thousands of spammers who have made on-line millions.  “The Four-Hour Work Week.”  And worst: bloggers who from behind the avatar’s shield, and who, bearing absolutely no responsibility for the outcome, cast their judgment on others mostly for the purpose of attracting attention to themselves.

I wrote recently about the Susan Boyle phenomenon.  Don’t remember?  That’s because she didn’t win the “Britain’s Got Talent” show, her audition for which generated 70,000,000 views of her performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables. I didn’t track the show closely, but it was clear from the snippets I heard that Ms. Boyle’s 15 minutes of fame occurred during that audition.  She just never rose to the same level of performance again.  She may have gotten the YouTube views, but she didn’t get the votes.

On a local media note

WTKK talk show host Jay Severin built an enormous ego for himself on the basis of success in the ratings book.  He also managed to wangle a contract believed to be in seven figures annually.

Then one day the ratings methodology changed.  Instead of a listener maintained written log, ratings were based on an electronic system which records listener activity electronically — no opportunity for human intervention between the listening and the logging.  Severin’s ratings dropped like a stone, and suddenly advertiser and management tolerance for his outrageous statements tanked as well.  After a particularly strong statement with racially unsavory overtones, he was suspended for a month — and presumably a contract renegotiation.

What do we do in the meantime?

How will we sort out the junk from the quality in such a media environment?  We will figure it out — and I’m certain there will be further innovation in technology that helps us apply the uniquely human constructs of judgement and hierarchy to this “flat world” and open communication platform that is the worldwide web.

The smart companies, however, will stick to their values as we sort things out — and avoid the temptation of pride and arrogance which success and power often brings.

Narcissus by kazukichi, Flickr

I haven’t posted in quite a while; which is always a sign that lots is going on of the kind that offsets future tuition obligations, which for the next few years of my life is a good thing.

So what awoke me from my social publishing slumber?  As is often the case, it was a visceral reaction to a seemingly small thing… in this case a tweet from a friend and industry colleague — but the content of which furrowed my brow.

This friend is a great writer, speaker, affable fellow, and has been a great advisor to me personally as I gave up suckling at the corporate teet about two years ago.  He has a big following.  When he speaks or blogs or tweets, lots of people listen, read or retweet.  He’s a new media guru.

He has been a thought leader as fellow marketing functionaries sought to understand how new communication tools (blogs, in particular) and the power of web search engines turned the traditional media context upside down.

He uses his first-mover advantage to spread what was once riot-inciting marketing rhetoric, and is now common sense about social media, social networks, social publishing:

• Listen ten times more than you speak
• Give ten times more than you expect to receive
• It’s all about the virus: try to create ideas that will spread to squillions over the web

He uses his platform to challenge brands to wake up to the ways of this new world, and always acknowledges them when they respond.

He blogged recently about what one of the very large manufacturing entities bailed out by the government could do to fix its marketing.  Excellent suggestions and, as usual, steeped in the perspective of the new media.

The next day, he went out on Twitter, essentially saying:

“Knock Knock. Hello? Hey  is anyone home? Care to comment on my post??  It’s been 24 hours..”

I dashed off a reply (via Facebook, where I first saw the tweet), which said:

“Yo: Those guys have  just been told to take orders from a 31-year old who’s never held a job with products or revenue on the line in his life. Perhaps they’ll get back to the social media moguls a little later on. ”

It was meant in light seriousness… but it got me thinking.  The new media are so powerful.  And yet the temptations are so great.  Here was a case where a good guy and a bright industry light used his platform to essentially say, “Hey — I’m talking over here.  Are you listening to me?”  To me, it read like a violation of the Gospel according to the New Media Gurus.  Off to confession!

Thankfully, about an hour or so later he tweeted again:

“OK, this company has more important things than my blog to do this week.”

I was relieved.  But there’s a lesson here: with barriers to communication to vast audiences so low, people need to keep in mind that social media aren’t always at the center of everyone’s universe.

We are stewards of our online persona(e) — a very very big responsibility indeed.

Happy customer!

About a year ago, I had the good fortune to work with an aggressive and entrepreneurial team at a company known as FirstDIBZ, based in Chicago. They are a very interesting and innovative group — having taken on the challenge of inventing a new type of market: forward rights to highly desirable events.

All That

Mashable had a nice write-up on the company back in September.

The FirstDIBZ founder had nice words to say about our work together, which made me blush:

Tim Dempsey came into our shop, an established corporate entity with 5 years of serious revenue generation under our belts, and quickly showed us how much character our overall marketing personality was lacking – no real authority, no real presence and zero reputation. We were stunned into silence and then into change. Tim’s honest and pointed prodding of our goals truly opened us up to his methodology, which continues to inform our marketing efforts to this day. In a simple and clear manner, with his enormous marketing intelligence, deep experiences and razor instincts, he led us through 2 days of focused and well planned marketing work. We learned more about our company in those two days than we had in the previous 365!
Richard Harmon
CEO, Founder, Ticket Reserve -dba FirstDIBZ
Chicago, Il.

There are many definitions of the marketing term “brand.”  There are brand managers.  We speak of the brand experience.

Companies craft and shape their brand image.

Loads of lucre is spent to preserve, protect and defend brands.

The definition I most like?  An

Enduring

Buyers believe that value will remain consistent.  Coca-cola conjures a shapely bottle, bright red cans.  Mouths salivate in anticipation of that unique taste.

Promise

I lace up my Nike shoes and suddenly I can “Just do it.”
of

Value.

“No one ever got fired for buying IBM.”  “Volvo.  For Life.”

We just know these things about these mega-brands.  But we should be asking, and answering, these questions about our own brands.

If that’s what a brand is – then how can a brand be elastic?  Why should a brand be elastic?

Because this notion of a “brand” was established when the world was r_ouⁿd.

And as we know from Tom Friedman, the world is now flat.

Technological advances have not just leveled the competitive playing field.  They have redefined the cultural and commercial structures of the global economy.  The “flat world” has created both enormous threats to well-established businesses (think of the phenomenon of outsourcing to India in the 90’s), and laid the groundwork for the emergence and rapid growth of a whole new generation of businesses, business models, and – yes, brands (dare I mention Goog… nah).

And what it means to be and to manage a brand must change as well.

I suggest that along with these great technological advances and planet-flattening changes, there has been a fundamental change in the power balance between buyers and sellers.

There was a time when brands could control what information buyers had about their products.  Those days are over.

There was a time when the owners of newspapers and magazines, billboards, television and radio stations, owned the only communication vehicles consumers could consult for information about products and services.  Vendors financed those businesses through advertising, and thus had great influence over what information reached subscribers, viewers, or listeners.  Those days are over, too.

Brands, or vendors, have lost control over what information buyers have access to, and how they get it.

Thanks a lot, Vice President Gore!  Your internet has taken our flat world, and turned it upside down!