Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 296

We Need a Better Definition of "Native Advertising"

What is "native advertising"?

If you're looking for marketing jargon in 2013, look no further than "native advertising." Brands, media companies and marketing agencies are jumping on the native advertising bandwagon faster than you can say, "what ever happened to Pinterest being the next big thing?" But there's a debate about just what, exactly, the advertising industry means by "native advertising." Many believe that native advertising is just a digital euphemism for the classic advertorial that would frequently fill a page in your local newspaper or national magazine -- only with less of a wall between the traditional church-and-state structure of editorial and advertising (like when The Atlantic ran a subtly flagged advertorial for The Church of Scientology). Others will say that "native advertising' is advertising that is unique to a specific channel (like when BuzzFeed works with an advertiser to create a piece of content that will only run on BuzzFeed) or it could even be platform-wide (let's say AOL runs sponsored content across many of their channels, from Huffington Post and TechCrunch to Patch).

No wonder flailing publishers like "native advertising" -- they can make it mean whatever they want it to mean!

In 1996, the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) was founded with a core belief that if media and advertising standards were not put in place, the online advertising medium could never mature and capture a brand's advertising spend. Unlike traditional media (which had established formats and specifications across the multiple channels), every web page could be a media company unto itself with different advertising specifications and measurements in place. The Wild West that was the Web back in the nineties would be equally wild for advertising. Beyond best practices, research, education and advocacy, the IAB managed to achieve a common ground in the area of creative standards and measurement guidelines, but this could all go away if marketing professionals can't agree on a clear definition for "native advertising."

We do need a unified definition here.

Not to sound alarmist, but if there is not a consistent definition (that includes both the technical format along with the content that is embedded within in), the confusion will cause challenges in the growth of online advertising. The industry will revert back to a time and place when publishers could create complex and chaotic environments for advertisers. If every piece of digital creative must now become unique (from the technical to the content), brands are going to struggle with everything from ideation and production to comparable measurement models. So let's try to define it. The divergent definitions above all confuse the unique format (size and technical specifications) of the ad placement with the content (the creative that is placed within that format). I define native advertising as an ad format that must be created specifically for one media channel in terms of the technical format and the content (both must be native to the channel on which they appear and unable to be used in another context). For example, you can't place a Google AdWords campaign on The New York Times' website and you can't run a promoted tweet on Huffington Post. The advertising that you buy from Google to run on their search engine (or network) is unique (or, native, if you will) to their platform, much in the same way that promoted tweets on Twitter were created and can only be run on Twitter. The advertising formats and the content within them are native to the environment.

So does this mean than any ad is a native ad?

If you ran a Super Bowl ad, wasn't that native to the Super Bowl... or native to TV? Not really. Television ads are traditionally shot the same way. An ad on the Super Bowl could be shown on Storage Wars and nothing would need to be changed. The formats are consistent. The advertising content just happens to be tailored for the big football game, but the format is ubiquitous across the entire television medium. For example, The Atlantic also ran an editorial piece titled, Where Design Meets Technology, that was sponsored by Porsche. That was lauded in the media as an attempt to drive native advertising. According to Digiday, the 155-year-old-publication feels that advertising which has the "look and feel of The Atlantic's content... help[s] brands create and distribute engaging content by making the ads linkable, sharable and discoverable." Does this sponsored post truly feel like native advertising? What makes this native to The Atlantic? Is it simply the fact that The Atlantic's editorial team created and curated the content with Porsche's approval? Could Porsche and their media company not ask to sponsor content on any number of other online publishing platforms? Ultimately, I would argue that this was not native advertising, but simply good content marketing or sponsored content that didn't smell like pure advertorial.

The current state of online advertising is about to hit a tipping point.

Last month's MediaPost headline says it all: Online Poised To Break 25% Budget Milestone, Mobile Fueling Half Its Growth. With this growth, interest in and confusion over native advertising is likely to grow. Advertising, as we have traditionally defined it, continues to morph as traditional publishers attempt to figure out their digital monetization models. The complexity is only enhanced as the traditional advertising formats in the online channel (namely banner ads or display advertising) continue to provide weaker results to advertisers. Until we get a better handle on the definition of native advertising and the standardized formats digital ads can take, brands and publishers will continue to go through the standard growing pains when new opportunities and nomenclature enters the fray. (Just look to that much-ridiculed Scientology piece on The Atlantic as an example.)

The charm of traditional advertising was in cost and efficacy.

One ad could be produced and -- with minor adaptation -- pumped into a handful of media channels with enough repetition to create awareness and interest to buy. If advertisers are going to have to create unique formats mixed with unique content for each and every different channel and platform, it's going to massively affect not only budgets and timelines, but also a brand's ability to get their message out to a larger audience in the same way that they used to. The somewhat ironic irritant here is that marketers know and understand that the best kind of advertising is when the message feels unique and highly personalized to both the consumer and how the ad is placed within the context of the media channels. The industry is talking about native advertising as if it is something new. Google AdWords is native advertising. Promoted tweets on Twitter is native advertising. Buying reach on Facebook's newsfeed/timeline is native advertising. Everything else just feels like sponsored content or an advertorial in sheep's clothing. Native advertising can't just be about the creative that fills an advertising space. Native advertising must be intrinsically connected to the format that fits the user's unique experience. There's something philosophically beautiful about that in terms of what great advertising should (and could) be.

But first, we need to all speak the same language around "native advertising." The future of paid advertising depends on it.

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Harvard Business Review . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

Harvard Business Review - We Need a Better Definition of "Native Advertising."

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The Power Of LinkedIn For Business

Episode #344 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

I have a love/hate relationship with LinkedIn. I love the business of LinkedIn and their business model (this was validated earlier in the week, when LinkedIn in posted some impressive quarterly earnings). I love the way the online social network has maintained its stature as the preeminent business network for professionals. I hate the fact that I find the user experience challenging (I'm never quite sure what to do when I head over there). I hate the fact that people don't understand the true value of LinkedIn and this means that spammers roam free and unpunished. Beyond that, it's also somewhat of a challenge when a brand asks about what their play should be on LinkedIn. It's a treasure chest of information for headhunters and a valuable destination for anyone in business. Nobody knows this better than Viveka von Rosen. von Rosen is widely regarded as one of LinkedIn's premier evangelists for individuals and corporations. She is also author of the bestselling business book, LinkedIn Marketing An Hour Day. LinkedIn is a fascinating environment, and it's one that brands and marketers need to pay close attention to. 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 Twist Image Podcast #344.

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #138

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, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik) and I decided that every week or so 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:

Social Media Before the Internet: Tales of Victorians, Comic Book Fans, Phone Phreaks and CBers - Knowledge @ Wharton . "Whatever did we do before the Web? Plenty, it turns out: Here's a look at some of the social networks we used to rely on, and things that probably seemed groundbreaking in their day. Married in Second Life ? Big deal; someone did it by Telegraph a century ago." (Alistair for Hugh).

Pictures of Assholes - YouTube . "The thing about mass media is that it cuts both ways. Ashton Kutcher used to tweet pictures of himself and Demi , stealing the tabloid press thunder. But this takes it to another level-- Joseph Gordon-Levitt decides to interview some photographers who are hassling him. Nothing like turning the lens to level a playing field." (Alistair for Mitch).

3 steps to measure the corruption coverage in Spain - Numeroteca . "Awesome dataviz of Spanish newspaper front pages, designed to show how corruption is reported in the media." (Hugh for Alistair).

The End of the Web, Search, and Computer as We Know It - Wired . "Just when I thought I had it all figured out." (Hugh for Mitch).

USB wristband is a wearable, mobile operating system - PSFK . "Technology just keeps on getting cooler and cooler, doesn't it. Check this out: a USB wristband that is an entire operating system with your files as well. Just plug it into any PC or Mac and it's your computer. It even has an automatic back-up system. Of course, this is a Kickstarter initiative, so get to it!" (Mitch for Alistair).

Library Starts Seed Sharing Program Among Patrons - PSFK . "This is one strange - but interesting - story. What if libraries loaned more than books and other media? What if they loaned seeds. No, that isn't a typo. Seeds. You know, get some seeds, plant a garden, collect the seeds from that garden and return them to the library for others. A sense of community? Sure. Does this have anything to do with libraries as we have known them to date? No. Could lending seeds be a strategy to keep libraries relevant? We'll have to wait and see what comes back post harvest time..." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

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The Making Of Stuff

It's time to push beyond digital.

Most of the stuff that I blog about (or create) is not physical. Digital marketing is very real, but it's very digital. It's the stuff a consumer sees on a screen. We tend to forget that you need the hardware to see all of that cool stuff. As I have blogged about before, one my favorite new video podcasts is Kevin Rose and his show, Foundation. In the latest episode, Rose sits down with Hosain Rahman, the founder and CEO of Jawbone. Most people know Jawbone for either their Bluetooth hands-free headsets or their Bluetooth-enabled speakers. For my dollar, I am most interested in their latest product, Up. It fits on your wrists like a Nike Fuelband, but it does more than monitor your movement and allocate you points. Up monitors your movement along with your sleep and more. It is tied into an app that helps you better understand how you are living (and how to live better). What makes the following conversation so fascinating is the progression of how Rahman and his team took some school research and delved deeper into solving the problem of audio, voice and more... and now into a substantial (and important) international business.

Here's another fascinating conversation about the power of solving problems and turning it into business...

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Putting In The Time

Success at Facebook may be easier than you think.

The senior team at Twist Image spent some time at Facebook the other day. In watching the examples of brands that achieved some serious success leveraging the world's largest online social network, one thing became abundantly clear to me: Facebook is going to be brutally hard and ineffective for the brands who think they can simply take the creative they're using in-market and adapt it for Facebook (be it with paid advertising space and by leveraging the true power of Facebook marketing - which lies in leveraging the feed). You can read more about that line of thinking right here: Where Digital Creative Is Different.

In praise of slow.

In my first business book, Six Pixels of Separation, I had a chapter titled, In Praise Of Slow, that still gets attention and comments. Considering it was written in 2008, I'll take that as a compliment. More importantly, the message was this: while many think that the Internet enables things to happen fast, free and instantly (true!), to get some serious traction, to truly connect with consumers and build loyalty that pushes beyond trust into the land of credibility, takes a long time (much truer!). What has changed since 2008, is that brands have become increasingly smarter at this, and many more players have entered the fray. The growth of content marketing and native advertising also validates this. Suddenly, brands are telling stories in a more personal, human and connected way. It is very effective, but it isn't something that works from campaign to campaign or quarter to quarter.

Ask yourself this question first...

Are you really and truly willing to put the time in? Back to Facebook. Although it's easy to buy attention on Facebook (through fan acquisition and pushing your messaging out via paying for more access to the social graph), the brands that are able to capitalize on the paid strategies are the ones who are putting in the time to actually do something with their content that fits the way that people connect and communicate on Facebook. Again, this may seem simplistic, but we still live in a day and age where the vast majority of brands are pumping out a stock photo with a message akin to : "like this if you like sunshine," or some other kind of bland drivel. To counter that, successful brands on Facebook are really diving in deep to think about what they're going to do in a world where people are more likely on Facebook to connect with family, friends and colleagues than they are to connect with  brand. In short, brands have to be personable and interesting. Again, this takes time.

Putting in the time.

People always want to know how much time it takes. How much time does it take to blog? How much time does it take to podcast? How much time should we spend on Twitter? How much time does it take to create great content for Facebook? The reframe that is needed is not in trying to answer the question by looking at historical data from others, but in asking the question in a more philosophical way. The question should best be phrased like this: if we are going to be effective using Facebook, are we committed to putting in the time and effort it will require to get the results we expect? Don't scoff at this question. The majority of brands are under-indexing on Facebook not because they are not committing the right amount of funds or creative to make a run at it. They are failing because they're not putting in the time to create content that relies on the social insight (versus their creative idea) and they're not putting in the time to truly connect with the audience (which, on Facebook, is individuals... not lumps of demographic groups).

There's something deeper here.

It's not just about Facebook, either. It's about everything that has a social component to it. Building your business to social scale is something that can be bought (whether some like this or not is irrelevant). Building your business to social scale and turning it into something truly valuable will only be  about the brand's commitment to truly put in the long, hard work and time required to build substantive relationships. So, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc... is all about being fast, easy and free, right? Or, are the true winners the ones who are putting in the serious time.

Do you think your brand is committed to putting in the time?

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Where Digital Creative Is Different

It was an interesting question.

Recently, a marketing professional with a major brand asked me this question: "typically, we brief the digital marketing team after we have a concept from our advertising agency, is that the wrong way to go about it?" It's a fair question that acts as a cold reminder. We have come a very long way in the world of digital media, in a short time. That being said, there are still some major (and not-so-major) brands out there who see it like this: we need to adapt the creative for the online world.

Here's a better way to make digital work better...

Instead of trying to figure out how a traditional advertising campaign will play out in the digital world, take a step back, look at the creative and experience brief and ask yourself this question: "what is the message and feeling that we are trying to create with this brand? How can digital make that message and feeling come to life?" That seems simplistic enough, but it's not. The challenge is that a lot of the time (in particular, when the brand is very traditional, risk-averse, etc...) a lot of the final creative is a text or image-based creative that is fundamentally flat. The message was created to break the consumer's pattern and interject itself for a brief moment of time. In short, it is a passive message in a passive channel. As I have blogged about before, digital is a very different beast. Digital is an active medium where the consumers are active within it. Regardless of the creative effort, the output tends to be the attempt to turn a passive campaign into an active engagement. This usually results in a flat campaign with flat results.

Take the core of the message and then think about how to generate something active within it.

The traditional agency is going to push back and claim that the digital output is not aligned with the mass media creative. If the digital execution is aligned with the brief and meets the expectations around audience and potential results, it is incumbent on the digital agency and the client to not push-back to the ad agency, but walk them through the logic. Again, this may seem simplistic, but I've seem digital initiatives get shelved because the creative was not an exact adaptation of the print, TV, radio and out-of-home. For shame.

Extend your brand narrative.

While some may argue that the notion of "the big idea" is dead (I'm one of those people who now believes that you can create many big ideas within many different channels for the same campaign or brand initiative), digital now offers a myriad of new media opportunities that forces brand to think less about how the adaptation comes into play and much more about how to extend the brand story - in a meaningful and aligned way - when the opportunities to do so are so prevalent and relevant.

Shake it up. Rinse. Repeat.

Here's some homework: for your next project brief, instead of asking how the digital will fit into the current mix, please take a step back, allow each agency to understand the core message and let them each play in that sandbox. See what happens. It may not work right out of the gate. It may take some take. It may take a few tissue sessions with all agencies at the table, but eventually you'll get a stride and pace going that allows each media to truly reflect the essence of the brand and the campaign. The goal isn't for everything to look the same if you popped it up on a white board. The goal is to get the desired outcome and results from the brief. The world of adaptation can still work for some ideas across multiple media, but forcing an idea through all of the media for the sake of one is an antiquated way to look at brands in 2013. If you couple this with some of the more modern thinking in transmedia and brand storytelling, you may find a better story arc and something that has legs and opportunities that can outlive the limitations of the campaign as well.

In order to think different about digital, you have to allow your digital creative to be different.

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In Defense Of TED

TED is the most important conference out there. TED is so much more than a conference.

News was announced this week that the annual TED conference would be moving from its current home in Long Beach, California to Vancouver, British Columbia. As a Canadian, nothing could make me happier or prouder (plus, now I won't have to deal with the unpleasantries that is the airport border crossing). TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. While it has been called a "conference," it is much more than that. The origins of this annual get-together took hold in 1984, when Richard Saul Wurman (famed architect, book author and renaissance man) decided to pull together an exclusive group of guests for his vision of the ideal dinner party. Today, TED is curated by Chris Anderson through a charitable foundation, and is best known for the TED Talks that gobble up audiences by the hundreds of millions via online video channels (their own, YouTube, podcast and more) and their 18-minute presentations on topics as diverse as creativity and education to how video games can save you and why every adult needs a LEGO collection. The event/gathering/conference now has a global event (held outside of North America) and is also associated with TEDx events (local organizers leveraging the TED brand and blueprint to create their own event around a specific geography or topic). The tagline for TED is, "ideas worth spreading," and while I've done my own, fair share, of doing just that in past blog posts, I am truly an unapologetic TEDster who has been going to the event since it was last held in Monterey, California, and will move mountains to ensure that my schedule is clear, so that I can attend the annual event and not worry about my other commitments.

TED is not about sharing (to me). 

While I do share TED Talks and share my experiences about the event with anyone who will listen, TED is a completely selfish act. I take two moments out of my year (the other being Google Zeitgeist), to not be Mitch Joel. To not be the President of Twist Image. To not be the author of Six Pixels of Separation or CTRL ALT Delete. To not be the blogger and podcaster of Six Pixels of Separation. To not be an active volunteer in many community initiatives. To not be a family man. But, instead, to empty the cup... to become the student. When I attend TED, I am nobody and I don't want to be anybody. I want to mix and mingle with people who are way smarter than I am. I want to sit, listen, learn, think and provoke myself. I want to hear about areas outside of my area of expertise by people who have something to say. It's a selfish act that enables me to be a better person at home, work and in my community.

That's the thing, TED is what you make of it.

In today's Globe & Mail, there was op-ed piece titled, TED: Ideas worth spreading, or mumbo-jumbo? that completely misses the point. From the article: "...enthusiasm for TED needs to be tempered with the reality that, while it may be a special conference to host, it can also be a fountain of new-agey, mumbo-jumbo futurism that promises far more than it delivers."  Here is a true experience that I had (not at TED, but at another conference I was presenting at). A few years back, I spoke on the same bill as Anthony Robbins and former US President, Bill Clinton. Close to 8000 people were on hand for this full-day leadership summit that was being held at a convention center. Tony Robbins closed the day and spent nearly two hours pumping this audience with the oxygen of life. They were laughing, clapping, dancing, hugging complete strangers and more by the end. There wasn't a single person who didn't leave with a smile on their face and a new zest for life. By the time the attendees were back in their cars, they were honking, screaming and scowling at one another. They were back in a general regressive state of loathe as everyone attempted to get out of the underground park lot, which only had two stalls working. All of that work, re-thinking about how we think and positive energy was tossed out of the window. Whose fault is that? The mumbo-jumbo of Anthony Robbins or the mumbo-jumbo that we each, individually, feed ourselves each and every day through our own internal dialogue and habits?

Life is what you make of it. 

It's true, every TED Talk will not change your world. Some presenters are better at crystallizing an idea than others. Some presenters do a TED Talk with ulterior motives (sell a book, sell a product, sell a service, sell another speaking event), but the vast majority do have an idea worth spreading. The challenge is not in how TED vets these ideas, the challenge is in what we - as individuals - do with those ideas. Go down the list of innovations that have made our world a more interesting place, and you will find one consistent theme from the entrepreneur who originated said idea: they had a vision for the future that did not exist and that no one was doing anything about. TED is a petri dish for these kinds of ideas. Individually, you may not think that a marketing professional like me would get anything out of a talk about physics, disease, medication, book cover design or whatever. Holistically, exposing myself to others and their ideas are where true inspiration and education have come from (for me).

In defense of price, admission and more.

TED is also chastised for it's price ($7500) and how how to get in (you have to fill out a request to attend and you're then notified if you are accepted). The price is expensive (no doubt). It is an investment. That being said, I do about 70 speaking events every year, and on top of that, I attend a handful of other events. TED lasts over four days and the price includes everything (except hotel and airfare). I have attended/paid for conferences that are $2500 and that last half as long, where nothing is included beyond the sessions (no meals, no real conference loot bag, etc...). TED is a five-star event that includes amazing parties, meals and a loot bag that would make just about anybody jealous. So, while it's expensive, it's actually not all that expensive as a comparable to other events I have paid to attend. In terms of being "accepted," it's hard to deal with. Each and every year, I hope that I am one of the lucky 1000 people chosen to attend. But, that's life, isn't it? They have a limited amount of space, they would like the event to be exclusive and this is one of the best ways for them to do this. We don't like to admit it, but life is one big pecking order. There are always those with less and always those with more. While I would love to have a more Utopian and egalitarian world, it seems like I'm constantly finding myself (and others) trapped in this pecking order. I like the exclusive nature of TED. I like the fact that each and every person who attends TED sees it as a privilege and extends to it that type of deference. In truth, this is the magic of TED. Anyone can watch the presentations at some point online, but what those who criticize fail to understand is that TED is all about the relationships, networking, conversations and more that happen before, after and in-between the talks. While this type of experience does happen at other gatherings and conferences, TED is just different. Knowing the selection process, understanding what other attendees went through to get there, makes the group more intimate, connected and open to learning more about what we're expecting while we attend TED and what we're hoping to do after the physical event is over. It's profound, it has deeply affected my life in more positive ways that I can illustrate, and the ideas that it generates for me are worth a million times more than the price tag, admission process, online banter and cynical journalism that comes from those who either wish they could get in or simply don't understand the process of positive self-actualization. Don't even get me started on how much of the TED conversation is about charity and making a difference.

TED is an idea worth spreading. TED is a model that almost every other conference, get-together or event should do their best to replicate.

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The New Digital Experience

So, which were your favorite Super Bowl ads from this past Sunday?

It's the time of the year when brands are glued to their social media analytics to try and decipher if the millions of dollars spent for a thirty-second spot was extended, enhanced and otherwise optimized by the traction that it may (or may not) have received in the social media space. Media planners the world over are neck-deep in Excel spreadsheets trying to show the extended reach of these spots by counting up YouTube views, tracking the numerous blog posts critiquing the line-up and drilling down into Facebook and Twitter to see which ads got the proverbial nod by getting retweeted, shared, commented on, plus one'd, liked, friended, followed, etc...

It's still fairly traditional, isn't it.

When marketing professionals talk up the merits of digital marketing and/or social media, there is a common trend to regress back to the traditional metrics that advertisers have been leaning on for far too long. As deep and as rich as the new analytics truly are, we're still looking at all of this dynamic media with a fairly traditional mindset. We're wondering if people noticed, saw and cared about our messages. We could spin this in a myriad of ways (by using the words like "amplification" instead of "reach"), but in the end, the majority of brands and media companies are still looking for that quick hit and big uptick in sales while making some kind of splash.

There is a new digital experience in town.

Well, it's not so much "new" as it is an "untapped reservoir of opportunity." Instead of showing things (in an ad), brands can actually do things. But, the mass majority aren't. What's a "thing"? Think about it this way: a brand can advertise on Huffington Post or a brand can create their own publishing platform like Huffington Post. Pushing this idea further, if the future is all about a brand's ability to have a direct relationship with the customer (and yes, I believe this to be one of the major forces that will decide a brand's fate moving forward), how will that brand manage to survive if all of their media it is creating is driven through a third-party? We live in a day and age when any brand can put a thing out there in the world. The thing could be a mobile app, a service, a publishing platform, a place to collaborate with their consumers, a true utility, a dynamic loyalty program, etc... And yet, with all of this opportunity and ability, we all sit idly by on a Sunday evening, once a year, to either applaud or lament the creative work of a brand and their representative agencies. Don't get me wrong, I love a great ad like the next person who claims to hate advertising and skips all ads on their TV, but this is a great moment to look at all of these ads and push beyond what the sentiment was on Twitter and ask ourselves a very tough question: if it's getting harder and harder to get consumers to pay attention to our brands and convert that into a sale, what are we truly doing to connect with them? Not in an advertising kind of way, not in a "let's get them to sign-up to our email blasts" kind of way, but in a deep, meaningful and connected way.      

What does a "thing" look like.

It could be a Nike Fuelband, it could be the SitorSquat app by Charmin. The point is that some brands are pushing their marketing thinking out beyond the realm of advertising into a world where they are creating meaningful things (or, at least, attempting to make them meaningful). For my dollar, this is the moment in time when marketing can start to truly get interesting if brands can get over themselves, tone down the narcissism and begin to think about what it means to be a brand in a world of hyper-connected and untethered consumers that are engaged with their own social graph in ways that nobody could have ever imagined (something tells me that late at night, in the darkest of nights, even Mark Zuckerburg must be amazed by what people are willing to share and connect to on Facebook). It's not that brands and marketers are squandering this opportunity. We're just not capitalizing on it. It's hard to get out of the daily grind that is our jobs. It's hard to challenge the brands we represent to be brave and to try daring things. But, here's the thing: what were the best two ads you remember from last year's Super Bowl? Any idea? Did it roll off the tip of your tongue? Are you currently a valuable customer of theirs? Now, think about the brands that truly mean something in your world today. Is it all about their advertising or are they doing more? Amazing, isn't it? Advertising is not dead. Advertising still does the job it was always meant to do (inform a public). Let's just be sure to remember that as brands we can now actually create things. Meaningful things. Valuable things. Not just meaningful and valuable messages, but actual things that consumers would use, would share, would connect to and, who knows, maybe even pay for?

The new digital experience will be about the things that brands create. So, what are you waiting for? Start making things.    

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Huffington Post called, Media Hacker . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

Huffington Post - Brands Can Do Better Than Super Bowl Ads .

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mark zuckerburg

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meaningful marketing

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nike

online sentiment

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reach

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Living The Good Life With Jonathan Fields

Episode #343 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Lately, the podcasting landscape has developing into a steady stream of amazing, insightful and deep content - in audio and video format. It's somewhat fascinating that all of this niche and rich content is so readily available for free, and yet there's a vast majority of people who don't even know what a podcast is - let alone how to download and enjoy one. Perhaps one of the most fascinating shows out there is Jonathan Fields' Good Life Project. These video podcasts offer some of the most in-depth conversations with business and community leaders and thinkers that you will ever see. Fields spends a lot of time digging into deep conversation with his subject matter. Brilliant past episodes have included guests like Seth Godin, Brene Brown, Dan Pink and many more. Fields has authored two books, Career Renegade and Uncertainty and he, himself, is a fascinating individual who understands the power of the Internet, the new ways we work and much more. It is my pleasure to have him on this show. 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 Twist Image Podcast #343.

Tags:

advertising podcast

blog

blogging

brand

brene brown

business book

career renegade

dan pink

david usher

digital marketing

facebook

good life project

itunes

jonathan fields

marketing

marketing blogger

marketing podcast

online social network

podcast

podcasting

seth godin

social media

uncertainty

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #137

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, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik) and I decided that every week or so 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:

Homeland (TV series): What do people in the intelligence community think of Homeland? - Quora . "One of the things I love about the Internet is the transparency. Here's a fascinating discussion on Quora about how closely Homeland mirrors the real world (spoiler alert: not much.) I loved Rubicon before it was taken off the air, and there have been films like Three Days of the Condor and Tinker Tailor  Soldier Spy that apparently came close to reality. But that's not why I'm sending this link. It's because of the thread that followed. One poster mentioned a series called The Sandbaggers, which was made in Canada from 1978 to 1980. It was created by Ian Mackintosh, a British naval officer. Mackintosh's stories were so close to the truth they were apparently reviewed by British Intelligence, and one was actually vetoed--series two is missing an episode. The icing on this cake is that Mackintosh mysteriously disappeared in 1979, when his plane went missing near Alaska in the one area not covered by US or USSR radar. Naturally, I bought the whole series five minutes later. There's nothing like a good backstory to break out the credit card." (Alistair for Hugh).

REM's "Losing My Religion" shifted into a major scale - BoingBoing . "I spent some time last week making music with my friend Sean Power. He's a natural; to me, this stuff is opaque. But it's hard to argue with the impact of a key change. In this video, REM's 'Losing My Religion' has been shifted to a major key. It completely changes the vibe from lament to celebration." (Alistair for Mitch).

Cat gap - Wikipedia . "I love Wikipedia ." (Hugh for Alistair).

Redesigning Google: how Larry Page engineered a beautiful revolution - The Verge . "I recently read someone say (can't remember who): ' Google is getting good at design faster than Apple is getting good at the Web.' For a while there (Buzz, Wave) it seemed like Google had lost its focus, launching then canning big new products that didn't seem to 'work.' But I'm seeing a methodical approach where Google is starting to bake social into their traditional strength of 'good tools,' rather than trying to reinvent social for social's sake (and compete with Facebook head on). Coupled with this (very smart) direction, Google's design approach matured greatly, which ties together this sense I have of a (new) very cohesive Google." (Hugh for Mitch).

An Internet for Manufacturing - MIT Technology Review . "Think about the potential of integrating the Internet of things within a factory. This factory would be equipped with sensors, high speed connectivity and more. Ultimately, it brings us to a place where every product remembers how it was made, is networked and able to better tell us humans the quality level and issues that are happening (or that could evolve). Of course, this is big and new thinking... and, of course, it is already happening. People still think of the Internet as a place to look at cute pictures of cats or to creep on the people in high school that we hated but are dying to see if they got fat. As usual, we have the more evolved among us truly creating technological breakthroughs that will change the very fabric of our society." (Mitch for Alistair). 

eBooks Now Multi-Billion Dollar Category for Amazon - Galley Cat . "I was meeting with my book publisher last month in NYC and they were informing me that the majority of business books are still bought in print. There is something about having them on our desks and bookshelves that make us feel smarter... or something. As someone who reads my books exclusively on my iPhone (occasionally on the iPad ), I tend to act like a market of one , instead of looking at the bigger picture. Then, an article like comes along. 'CEO Jeff Bezos had this comment: 'After 5 years, eBooks is a multi-billion dollar category for us and growing fast - up approximately 70% last year. In contrast, our physical book sales experienced the lowest December growth rate in our 17 years as a book seller, up just 5%. We're excited and very grateful to our customers for their response to Kindle and our ever expanding ecosystem and selection.' So, you would think that I'm sharing this article because it speaks to the end of print books. I am not. I'm fascinated with a bigger, more macro thought: the virtual goods business. A multi-business dollar business of selling a product that is pure bits... and no atoms. Sure, we're seeing this with entertainment (music, movies, books, etc...), but imagine all of the other, new and untapped opportunities." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Major Scaled #2 : REM - "Recovering My Religion" from major scaled on Vimeo.

Tags:

alistair croll

amazon

apple

bitcurrent

boing boing

cat gap

complete web monitoring

facebook

galley cat

gigaom

google

homeland

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

ian mackintosh

ipad

iphone

larry page

librivox

link bait

link exchange

link sharing

managing bandwidth

media hacks

mit technology review

pressbooks

quora

rem

rubicon

sean power

the sandbaggers

the verge

three days of the condor

tinker tailor soldier spy

wikipedia

year one labs