Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 218

CTRL ALT Delete Is Now Available In Paperback

It has been two years since CTRL ALT Delete came out. Two years. Wow.

In case you were wondering just how much the world has changed, you should check out this Slideshare deck that I created to get people excited about the content of my second business book, CTRL ALT Delete. The deck is called, 25+ Mind Blowing Stats About Business Today (it was published in late May 2013), and it has been seen close to 160,000 times...

25+ Mind Blowing Stats About Business Today - CTRL ALT Delete from Mitch Joel

But, with everything that has changed, businesses are still slow to adapt.

There is no doubt that digital has become accepted. Still, so many businesses struggle to transform, adapt and truly leverage it to make their brands more successful. Truthfully, after publishing my first book, Six Pixels of Separation (which came out in 2009), I wasn't sure if I wanted to write another business book. It became clear to me that there were areas of business that had fundamentally changed, and that most businesses were doing little-to-nothing about them. I pulled those thoughts together and chunked them together into five massive movements (not trends... movements). From there, it became very apparent that all of us would need to approach our work with a different mindset, and that's when the structure for CTRL ALT Delete came together. The book is divided into two sections (Reboot: Business and Reboot: You). The trade paperback version of the book came out this week. While there was not an opportunity to update it (beyond ensuring that all mention of Twist Image was changed to Mirum), it was amazing to see how little has changed from a macro perspective. In short, if your business is still struggling to put digital first, to figure out how to better connect the brand with your consumers or how to think differently (and strategically) about what it takes to be successful in business today, then CTRL ALT Delete will help you navigate through a world that has changed.

A conversation with Seth Godin about business.

I'm thankful that the book was a smashing success. It managed to find itself on to several bestseller lists, it was also named one of the best business books of 2013 by Amazon. That being said, launching a book is never easy. Thankfully, my friends at Google invited me to host book launches in New York and Toronto. For New York, my thought was to do something a little unique. I wanted to do a live recording of my podcast, Six Pixels of Separation, in front of an audience. I also knew that I wanted the guest to be Seth Godin. He was kind enough to accept, but wanted to flip things around and interview me. We decided to meet in the middle, and we hosted a live conversation between the two of us (and lots of questions from the amazing audience). Since recording this event at Google in NYC and having it posted to the Talks At Google YouTube channel, it has been seen over 13,000 times. So, if you have not read CTRL ALT Delete yet and were thinking about buying it, I'm hopeful that the video below will intrigue you enough to do so. If not, the content that Seth and I discuss is worth it on its own.

Getting attention.

CTRL ALT Delete got a lot of media attention (you can see just some of that here: CTRL ALT Delete Book Reviews And Media). It really did help the book get noticed. It's also a testament to just how much the readers (people like you!) really enjoyed the content. So, I'm thrilled that the publisher (Grand Central Publishing - Hachette Book Group) decided to release a paperback version. I'm also confident that my frenetic pace of publishing posts, articles and podcasts can take you from the last page of the book to today, without feeling like any of the book's content was dated. This blog (and my contributing articles to a myriad of business publications) are all links in the chain that, hopefully, demonstrate the evolution of business, and what it takes for brands and businesses to stay ahead. With that, my publisher also sent me a bunch of copies of CTRL ALT Delete in paperback to giveaway. So, look for that in the coming days and weeks.

Here it is: CTRL ALT Delete... available now in paperback. 

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Marketing Twitter

Life can be strange. 

It's hard to imagine a brand not seeing Twitter as an opportunity to share and connect with customers and potential customers. It's near-impossible to find any semblance of a marketing campaign that hasn't attached itself to some kind of hashtag or Twitter call-out. Some might argue that Twitter is less about communication these days, and much more about a place to share information (a micro-broadcasting platform instead of a micro-blogging platform). At the very least, Twitter continues to be an amazing, public water cooler of information, links and consumer insights. With that, Twitter seems to be struggling at marketing itself. 

The Twitter struggle. 

It's hard for me to see this from inside my little bubble. I joined the platform in late 2006, but did not send my first tweet until 2007. Frankly, I did not understand the value at the time. Back then, if I had anything to say, I could simply update my Facebook status (same thing for LinkedIn) or I could blog about it (and give myself much more than 140 characters to do so). In fact, it took me some time to understand and appreciate the value of Twitter, use it properly and see its breadth and depth of potential (I still grapple with how to use it properly). To this day, I know many people who struggle to understand how to use Twitter in an effective manner. They struggle to understand who sees what tweets, what content is public, how to reply to individuals, how to use hashtags and how to add anything of value or relevance.

I was not alone. I am not alone.

The general confusion of Twitter is similar to that of a new job or learning a new language. It takes time to get comfortable. It takes time to understand the environment and it is, a language unto itself. With that, comes a myriad of different interpretations about what makes Twitter most valuable. Still, Twitter is a public company and they are now reporting to the street. One of the key metrics that the company has struggled with has been growth of their user base. Growing user base? Sounds like a marketing challenge/opportunity, if ever there was one. So, what does Twitter - the place where all brands think about marketing - do to solve their own marketing challenge?

Marketing is now a function of the Chief Financial Officer. 

Yesterday, The Verge published an article titled, Twitter gives control of its hapless marketing department to its chief financial officer. From the article: "As an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, Anthony Noto orchestrated Twitter's initial public offering. Now Noto is Twitter's chief financial officer, and he's changing the score again, moving the social network's hapless marketing department under his control. Marketing is not typically the purview of a CFO, and a source familiar with the situation told The Verge that the unusual structure was discussed in a meeting at Twitter headquarters Monday. 'Noto is consolidating power, so to speak,' the source said."

Marketing and finance need a much stronger connection.

Making boisterous claims that marketing has nothing to do with finance (and vice-versa) is both counterintuitive and places marketing on a terrible course. All disciplines within a business must be fiscally led and responsible. It's also not enough to scoff at the idea that Twitter's CFO should not be leading marketing, simply because his last tweet was April 9th (he had one more since... a retweet on April 21st). Still, it's hard to imagine that a person whose main focus is the corporate fiscal responsibility of an organization can also lead a marketing team that has so much deep, complex and important work to get done. It's also going to be very difficult for Twitter to get a seat at the brand table when their marketing lead shows little-to-no interest or investment in the platform itself. If the CMO is not living the brand, how are their team members and clients expected to do so? Twitter is all about communication, distribution and connections. The marketing of this platform is going to be the critical factor to ensure its financial health into the future. Passing that leadership over to a CFO (as another part of their portfolio) doesn't just hurt the company, it hurts the profession of marketing. Ultimately, that's what is so disappointing in this move. It's not really about Twitter. It's about the value and respect of marketing within an organization.

It feels like marketing is being pushed back a couple of decades. What do you think? 

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The New Broadcaster

A new kind of media celebrity is brewing. I can feel it.

The main media story coming out of the weekend, was the amount of people who used live streaming platforms like Meerkat and Periscope to transmit the boxing match to their social network. It's not exactly what Showtime had in mind (hint: it's not legal), but it's hard to stop technology (see: Mashable - Sorry, no Periscoping Mayweather vs. Pacquiao). With that, came a lot of commentary about how interesting it was to take part in this strange, new way to engage with content. It sounds/feels like live piracy. One person streams the event from their smartphone, while others tune it. Everyone can comment, chat and more. Watch how the copyright lawyers begin their attacks on the industry. 

But, there's a big, huge and important nuance to this experience that brands must pay attention to.

In reading about a lot of these experiences, there were a few people who said that the person streaming the event would also add in their own color commentary and - that some of these individuals - were actually better than the paid announcers for the event. It was as if these streamers were leveraging the event - along with the audience that it was attracting - to also create their own, unique experience by adding their commentary to the event. "Self expression is the new entertainment," is something that Arianna Huffington has been saying for years. 

The convergence of three media ideas:

Media Idea #1 - Mystery Science Theater 3000. This TV show was a huge cult favorite. It featured a man and his sidekick robots, watching a bunch of b-movies and commenting on them. They were sitting in this darkened movie theatre and heir shadows dished on whatever was in front of them. The audience is not really watching the movies, so much as watching the people in the audience comment on the movies. 
Media Idea #2 - Howard Stern tweeting through Private Parts. While he wasn't the first to do this, Howard Stern was - without a doubt - the most famous person to do this first. While his movie from 1997 was being aired on TV on a random weekend a few years back, the radio personality decided to simultaneously tweet a running commentary. Many people, including Entertainment Weekly, wondered whether this was the future of media. In a few short years, live tweeting like this has become commonplace.  
Media Idea #3 - Amazon acquires Twitch. Last year, Amazon purchased Twitch (an online video network) that is primarily known as the destination for people that want to watch other people playing video games. Yes, people watching other people play video games. Did I mention that Amazon payed close to one billion dollars for this media network (not a typo)? While I wrote about this back in 2014 (more on that here: A Twitch In Time), it's hard to argue that people enjoy watching other people - with a depth of knowledge in a very specific/niche area - share their wisdom in a powerful way.

Pulling this all together. 

We're seeing a desire from audiences to have a deep dive into content (even while that content is being played out in real/near-real time). It may have started when DVDs added in director's commentary as a bonus feature, but it has moved from additional material to prime material... in a big way. The ability for individuals to create new forms of content - and act like hosts on top of events - is becoming much easier since live streaming tools like Meerkat and Periscope take hold. It is - without question - a new and unique format that allows individuals to become wanted broadcasters by an audience. We're also seeing a desire by audiences to not just be able to play video games that are networked (and that they can communicate through), but to just watch people doing the things that they're best at. This may have its roots in reality TV... or even in plain old rubbernecking, but the human curiosity is there. Plus, we're not just watching something that others are broadcasting and commenting on. Audiences are also taking part by actively letting the broadcaster know if they like it and what they think. The audiences are voting and active along with the broadcaster. 

So, what's really new here?

A new kind of podcaster? A new kind of broadcaster? It's really a new form of media curation. Individuals live streaming an event, and being the host/broadcaster as they add layers of entertainment, information and commentary that could trump the professionals from the major media outlets. In fact, they're really talking over the original broadcasters. Just more noise? Just more opinion? Possibly. My guess is that we will begin to see the next generation of broadcasters come out of this new kind of commentary. My guess is that we will begin to see a sub-culture of entertainment driven by this. It's going to attract fans, and those interested in watching live events with a myriad of personalities working it, talking over one another and building their own kind of brand on top of an existing one.

Live streaming + new commentary on top of the existing commentary = the new broadcaster.

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Livestreaming Is The New Broadcasting

Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio broadcasting out of Montreal (home base). It's not a long segment - about 5 to 10 minutes every week - about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly to SoundCloud, if you're interested in hearing more of me blathering away. I'm really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry and Heather B. morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.

This week we discussed:

Did you catch the big boxing match? Did you shell out the $100 pay-per-view fee? Did you try to get a seat in a local sports bar? Why didn't you just watch it stream live on Periscope or Meerkat? Both apps use Twitter to announce live streaming. And, while the folks at Showtime were working overtime to ensure that broadcasting rights were kept tight, we live in a very different world now. Anyone can now whip out their smartphone and start live streaming whatever it is that is in front of them. And yes, people were showing the fight on their Meerkat or Periscope channel. But, here's what's new: Rumour has it, that some people were live streaming and adding in their own color-commentary... and that it was very good. Will this become the norm? Maybe an entirely new form of entertainment? 
It's not how you look... it's how you feel. Remember that classic SNL line? Well, Microsoft launched this age-guessing site called, How Old Do I Look? You simply upload a photo, and it guesses how old you are. Seems simple enough, right? Well, it's gone viral. Now, people are left wondering what might Microsoft do with all of this data? Oh, by the way, mine said that I am 37. I'm suddenly falling back in love with Microsoft.
Tesla isn't just about cars. They now have an energy division, called Tesla Energy, and they're going to be doing everything that they can to get all of our homes powered by renewable energy. The first step is PowerWall, which they just announced. For about $3000, you get this nifty looking piece that sits on your wall and stores excess solar energy, and will take power from the grid when it's cheapest, plus add backup power in case of emergencies. Thought the system isn't perfect yet, the PowerWall Home Battery, is already part of a pilot project with 300 customers, and will be available to the mass public in the next 3-4 months. This is an important step for Elon Musk, his team and the environment.
App of the week: Super.

Listen here...

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Winning Experiments With Tim Ferriss

Episode #460 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Mirum Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Tim Ferriss just launched a TV show. It's called, The Tim Ferriss Experiment, and - by all accounts - this is the exact line of work that Tim was meant to do: use his body, mind and spirit to help us all learn how to get better and hack our lives towards excellence. Tim is such a fascinating character. While he describes himself as a "human guinea pig," he is so much more. The bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Chef, Tim is also an angel investor and advisor for companies like Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Uber and many others. If you're not impressed by that, Tim also holds a Guinness Book of World Records record in tango dancing and won a Chinese kickboxing championship. And, there's so much more. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Mirum Podcast #460.

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #254

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

Form Follows Function. "An amazing gallery of interactive web-based experiences show just how far the ubiquitous browser has come." (Alistair for Hugh).
How To Build A Brand In 5 Days - Fast Company . "If Hilary Clinton doesn't fire her current team and hire these guys immediately, her leadership is in question." (Alistair for Mitch).
This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind - Bloomberg Business . "A fascinating set of animated graphs showing how long it took for various social changes to get encoded in law, first at the state level, and then finally at the federal level. Interracial marriage took 19 years. Same-sex marriage took about 2 years." (Hugh for Alistair). 
Nobody knows - Buzzfeed . "Buzzfeed is doing all sorts of interesting things with their tens of millions. They've hired our friend (and my former officemate) Craig Silverman to be the Canadian Bureau Chief in Toronto, and then out of San Francisco, Mat Honan (formerly Wired), is writing existential thought pieces like this. There's still no shortage of articles like, 27 Trees That Don't Give A F**k About You Or Anything That You Do, but Buzzfeed has clearly... branched out... well beyond cat listicles." (Hugh for Mitch).
8 Reasons Successful People Are Choosing to Wear the Same Thing Every Day - Becoming Minimalist . "I can't tell you how many times this week someone linked me over to this article. I wear black to work. Always. I read this article, and while it's flattering that people consider me 'successful,' my reasoning is a little less glamorous. I'm a metalhead. I used to watch Metallica shred it up in the clubs wearing all black, and them walk the red carpet at the Grammy awards wearing all black. It was a type of color and feeling that just worked in all situations. Very functional. So... I ran with it. I do agree with a lot of the rationales in this article as well. It's much easier to get dressed or pack in the dark! Still, clothes are just something else that I don't need to think about... and metal." (Mitch for Alistair).
Why Companies Need Novelists - Fast Company . "We all thought that journalists should spend more time working for brands. Maybe we were aiming too low? How about hiring novelists. You know, the kind of people who can really help a brand to build, tell and share a compelling story." (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

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The Future of The Digital Economy

Are you excited or worried about the future of the world?

There are very divisive lines of thought when it comes to this question. It's hard not to look at places like Nepal and Baltimore, and wonder what the future holds. Both, the things that we - as human beings - create and the reality of things that Mother Nature holds over our heads. Life is complex. Human beings are complex. We are also a very resilient group. We have evolved (though, some might question that). We have created. Technology is one of those fascinating things. If you track the history of computers and connectivity, you are faced with a tapestry of innovation, entrepreneurship and a strong sense of wonder. In 2015, we are beginning to see how technology moves from being a tool that companies use, to being as pervasive as air and an integral component of everything that we do.

What is the forecast for the digital economy?

In January of this past year, several world leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos to discuss the economy, politics, health, business and more. During this conference, there was a panel discussion titled, The Future of The Digital Economy that featured Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook, Eric Schmidt from Google, Satya Nadella from Microsoft and Vittorio Colao from Vodafone. The panel was, ultimately, about optimism. It was about the transformation of business (and much more), and provided a very interested conversation about what we can expect from the giant businesses and how they plan to help the world as their core businesses develop and change.

The Future of the digital economy...

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You Are Not Reading

We live in a world where most professionals are just skimming content.

You can blame Twitter. You can blame Facebook's newsfeed. You can blame YouTube. None of that really matters (because they are not to blame). It's not the Internet. It's not social media. For every tweet that you are thumbing through, the Internet also has a ton of amazing long form content. It's not even that hard to find (in fact, every week, there is post called, Six Links Worthy of Your Attention, that I curate along with Alistair Croll and Hugh McGuire, and it's filled with deep, rich and insightful content). Still, we (half) jokingly use terms like TLDR (which, stands for "Too long; didn't read"), because we live in the era of now. Immediately. Who has the time to spend reading a book? It's an issue. So much so, that Hugh McGuire wrote a Medium piece titled, Why can't we read anymore?, that has become hugely popular. It taps into our need to skim, flip and use multiple screens to consume content. And, in that action, we are re-wiring our brains, and pushing it further away from a place of deep learning and understanding.

What a book means.  

I spent the morning giving a keynote address to a very senior team of marketers at Johnson & Johnson yesterday. During the Q&A, someone asked me a question that I frequently get asked: "where do I get my ideas for content?" What they really want to know, is what tools, applications and engines of curation do I use to get inspired. The truth is, that those are the most boring part of the process. The real truth is this: I read. A lot. Constantly. Not so much articles (though, I do love saving the more heady stuff to Pocket). I read books. A lot of books. Mostly non-fiction. Mostly business books. Why? You can call it "professional development." I call it, "education." I was never good at school (elementary, high school or post-secondary), but I loved to read, and I have an innate curiosity about life and learning more about it. I never let school get in the way of my education. I do not benchmark education against years, certificates or accreditation. Education and learning is a life-long pursuit. The only way to get serious about it, is to read books. Lots and lots of books. And... don't be afraid to take notes!

Are you reading?

You are not reading. Sadly. SmartBlog on Leadership published an article yesterday titled, How much professional reading do you do each month? It was less of an article and more of a reader's poll. The question asked was: How much professional reading do you do each month? Here was the response:

A ton -- more than 5 books per month: 3.82%
A lot -- 2-3 books per month: 13.25%
Some -- 1 book per month: 24.5%
Little -- a book every few months: 42.57%
None -- I don't have time for it or interest in it: 15.86%

Nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Almost 60% of respondents do little to no reading about their work, the industry they serve... or business in general. If you think the lack of innovation or slowness to adopt to technology has something to do with budgets and bureaucracy, it could well be that the vast majority of business professionals haven't spent any significant amount of time reading, reflecting and acting on the change that business has been cycling through. Look, this sucks for me to write. I feel like I'm asking you to eat your broccoli. It's good for you. Trust me. It feels like I'm preaching to you. I read. You should read too. When you tell people to read, there's this immediate sense of someone feeling a little too "holier than thou." It can come off as pompous. Nobody wants that. Even writing this post makes me feel like I'm being all "I'm so smart, because I read a lot." That's not it. 

Take joy in reading. 

There are a tons of sucky books. Life is too short to read bad books. People read business books, because they think it will make them look smart... which is not the same as reading books because they make you smart. Life is too short for bad business books. Reading is also a habit. Reading is also a form of exercise. Reading expands your mind. Reading gives you focus. Reading does a whole lot more. Especially, in a world where it's so easy to shift from your Kindle reading app to Facebook. 

Force yourself to read.  Most people aren't. It's a sustainable competitive advantage. It will keep you employed. It would spark an entrepreneurial spirit. 

Not sure where to start?  Try here (and read the comments too): The Five Business Books That Permanently Changed My Life.

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Home Is Where Your Customers Are

"We see social media, primarily, as a paid channel at this point."

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point. This has little to do with Facebook throttling content and forcing brands to pay to boost their content (more on that here: Facebook And A New Era In Paid Media), or paying for premium real estate in the Twitter feed for more people to see a brand's call to action. It also, has little to do with Pinterest's recently announced advancements in monetization (more on that here: AdWeek - Pinterest Opens Up to Brands With New Ways to Plan Posts and Buy Ads). All of these channels have a right to generate revenue. They are not social causes or non-profits. These are businesses, and they are businesses that want to do well. If the service is free for users, the revenue has to come from somewhere. That "somewhere" is the data, targeting and advertising capabilities.

Don't get too caught up in this.

It's defeatist to think that the myriad of digital channels are simply that: a paid media space. While brands do have to pay to create levels of awareness, it's high time that they look at these channels and paid media entities, put that thought to the side, accept it and deep dive into what's next. So, you've paid to create awareness on a channel that has a growing and engaged audience, what's your brand narrative in this space really all about?

How do you leverage a paid channel and turn it into a earned platform?

That's the real question. Return on investment is only a myth, when the sole marketing benchmarks revolve around this notion that everything is now paid and the platform is like the casino (it takes in the dollars... And it never loses). For years, the brand sentiment used to be that you needed to have your homebase (a website... an app... an eCommerce platform), and that you can drive traffic from these large, digital and social spaces (or "outposts" as Chris Brogan called them) back to your homebase (see: Chris Brogan - Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy from 2008). The early days of social media was so exciting for brands, because the impressions and presence was free. Anybody could open up an account on a social media platform, and anybody could create messages (as many and as often as wanted). With that, the firehose became unbearable. Consumers who followed or friended a brand become so inundated, that they wanted to unfollow or could not even remember why they connected to the brand in the first place. This created a huge issue. If consumers become disengaged, because their experiences are mired in half-baked content that adds little-to-no value to their experience, they will fatigue. They will leave.

So, what's a brand to do?

In the mid-nineties, when I first got involved in the search engine space, we used to try to explain to brands that consumers don't want to navigate through a complex website. We would drop the "every page is a homepage line" in a world where landing pages, onsite optimization and multivariate testing was a dream that was still off in the digital marketing distance. Today, that sentiment needs to be reinvoked, unless brands want to cement this notion that social media is only a paid media platform (which, it is not). So, how is this done? Don't just invest in paying for placement and boosting it, in the hopes that you can lure consumers to your owned properties.

There needs be a significant effort to double-down on these social media channels. Brands need to:

Invest in pages and profiles as if they were the website. 
Be diligent with updating the content in a dynamic fashion. 
Not duplicate what they're doing everywhere else. 
Have a unique brand narrative for each channel. 
Make that brand narrative function by creating utility for customers and potential customers. 
Understand the culture of the channel. 
Not just try to just sell on it. 
Become a part of the culture. 
Provide the type of experience within it (whether it's Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest) that extends both the brand's needs in a congruous fashion with why people stay so connected on these channels. 

This is not hyperbole.

Thinking that a brand can have one destination to rule them all is now antiquated. Thinking that any destination must be owned is now antiquated as well. There needs to be a significant investment into these pages and experiences well beyond a paid model. The Web has become very porous, and it's getting more and more porous as days progress. Every day, there are new channels that come online and new hardware to connect to it (think tablets... think watches).

There is a way.

Social media is a paid channel, only if that's all your brand is capable of doing within the channel. This is why there is so much debate over what's a channel and what's a platform. For most brands that are focused on paying to be present and interrupting the social experience, these are only advertising channels. For other brands (and, hopefully, all brands in the future), if you focus on being unique and valuable in these spaces, they will (quickly) evolve into a powerful platform. A brand that performs at this level, will start to quickly realize that as they nurture and work in these spaces, they wind up having multiple platforms with multiple ways to connect and share with audiences. Ultimately, the best brands will be able to zoom out and see a fortified network of communications and marketing spaces that extends into some very dynamic spaces. This kind of networked and unified strategy will lock brands into a place where they can have real relationships through real interactions with real people, instead of interruptions and bullying-like advertising tactics to get a consumer to leave one environment for another.

This is less about paid media spaces and much more about the type of brand you want to be.

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Counting Screens. Counting Dollars. Connecting Consumers.

Are consumers watching more video content online or on the TV?

On April 16th, eMarketer published a news item titled, US Adults Spend 5.5 Hours with Video Content Each Day. Here's some pieces of staggering data: "Adults in the US will spend an average of 5 hours, 31 minutes watching video each day this year... and digital video viewing across devices is driving growth. In 2011, time spent with video on digital devices - PCs, mobile devices and other connected devices including over-the-top (OTT) and game consoles - totaled 21 minutes daily. This year, US adults will spend an average of 1 hour, 16 minutes each day with video on digital devices. Meanwhile, the average time US adults spent watching video programming on televisions totaled 4 hours, 35 minutes in 2011 and will decline to 4 hours, 15 minutes in 2015. In total, time spent with video on all devices is up from 4 hours, 56 minutes in 2011." There's some curious things happening as consumers watch more video across different screens on different platforms. The average adult is, obviously, shifting much more of their viewing habits to online video as each year progresses. With that, you could say that this is a movement away from television in favor of digital screens.

Do the advertising dollars follow the consumer?

If you did deeper into the eMarketer report, you will see that brands are still pumping plenty of money into TV advertising. How much? In 2015, forty percent of media spending will still be done on television. Yes, this year TV advertising will still be a $70+ billion market. As for digital video ads? That market will only get 4.4% (or $7.8 billion) of all media spend. Taking this up to a 40,000 foot view, television gets 36 percent of media consumption when compared to digital at 11 percent. That sense of uneasiness should be creeping into the pit of your stomach. The viewing habits change, but the dogma of traditional advertising institutions still holds on - for dear life - to what they presume is working, instead of allowing their media allotment to be more aligned with actual usage and viewership.

What do marketers get wrong about this data?

In my second business book, CTRL ALT Delete (and, by the way, the trade paperback version of it will be available on May 5th, 2015), I talk about the one screen world. How we no longer live in the three screen world (TV, computer and mobile devices). We live in a world where the only screen that matters to the consumer, is the screen that is in front of them. Screens are everywhere, they are all connected and they are ubiquitous. We're not seeing that slow down. In fact, we're only seeing it get more pervasive. There is proof in this, if you look at the Google Glass program (regardless of how that eventually played out) or if you look at what's happening with the Apple Watch. It's hard to argue that connected and cheap screens are becoming more and more available. From a marketing standpoint, this means that both content - and the advertising that financially supports it - must be developed in a much different way. It also means that how we spend those dollars has to be redefined.

The thing that is really challenging marketers todays.

At the same time that these pieces of data were being released from eMarketer, MarketingCharts released an interesting piece titled, Senior Digital Marketers' Top Priorities and Challenges. The top two priorities were:

"Telling our story so we stand out against competitors." (46%).
"Translating a deep knowledge of our customers into relevant interactions." (43%).

It's hard not see the obvious disconnect that is happening.

One could argue that telling a compelling and unique story is much more complex in a world where content has been atomized, and is consumed by flick scrolling through a newsfeed, that forces brands to compete with much more compelling/personal content than a traditional TV sitcom. It's hard to argue that pictures of our friends and seeing what they're up to is a way more engaging form of content that is both personalized and flowing into our lives with a speed that most of us could have never imagined. This also makes the issue of relevance (mentioned above) a much harder hill for brands to hump. It's hard to decipher all of this consumption, data and information and be relevant if brands are suddenly competing for attention with a consumer's family and friends over a sitcom on NBC.

But, let's dig a little deeper.

Brands are trying to tell their story in a way that makes them stand out against their competitors. Fine. This isn't a digital challenge. That's been the mantra of brands from day one. Why should a consumer buy my dishwasher detergent over my competitors? Telling a story that brings out a unique selling proposition is the oldest marketing challenge. Then, how do we take the data, information and knowledge that we have on our consumers and make our interactions with them more relevant? Again, not really a new (or digital) challenge. The difference - as time passes on - is that marketing went from a world where we couldn't capture and analyze the data well enough to make these insights, to our current situation where we have so much data that it is causing analysis paralysis. We don't even know where to begin or what to really do. If you layer these two challenges on top of the how dollars are being spent, the answer seems (a little bit more) obvious.

Want your brand to stand out against your competitors?

Why not put your ads where they are not advertising, especially if this space is one that is so highly under-indexing in terms of spend against usage? The data doesn't lie. The consumers/mass market is there in digital, but the spending is close to one-tenth of the size of television. Being where your competitors aren't is an amazing position to take.

Want your brand to create more relevant interactions?

While there is no golden answer to this one, there is still a culture of digital screen spending/advertising that mimics traditional television advertising. Very few brands are creating new digital ads to be reflective of the landscape. Don't believe me? How often do you see a television ad being run in a pre-roll on YouTube. With TrueView, YouTube allows you to skip an ad after a few seconds. If you're creating digital video ads, and not even ensuring that the story captivates in those first few seconds, the brand is already demonstrating a lack of relevancy. Furthermore, if you want your brand to be more relevant, look at how these digital videos are being consumed and how your brand can best become a part of that community, instead of selling to it. Marketing continues to evolve. Technology and data does not make the industry easier. It makes it more complex. With that, the opportunity to do great work has never been more pervasive. Consumers are active and on the hunt for content that resonates with them. This has not changed. If the brands are not mimicking the consumer's usage with stories that work within those environments, the blame can't sit on the channels not performing. The blame resides within.

It's not as easy as it looks.

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