Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 313

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #114

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 (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) 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:

The Only Recipe for Ice Cubes You'll Ever Need - Slate . "The Web is full of recipes. And it's even more full of people who comment on those recipes, often changing them entirely and then complaining they didn't turn out; or arguing over tiny details, or rating them without ever trying them. So what about a recipe for ice cubes? Turns out, it's pretty funny stuff." (Alistair for Hugh).

Crazy Smart: When A Rocker Designs A Mars Lander - NPR . " Curiosity is merrily cavorting around the Red Planet at this time, and the accomplishments of the London Olympics pale beside the insanity of the program that put it there. This NPR interview with Adam Steltzner looks at one of the people behind the project, one with pierced ears, snakeskin books, and an Elvis 'do. NASA needs more people like this. In fact, we all do." (Alistair for Mitch).

Andrew Scull on All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry's Transformation of Natural Anxieties into Mental Disorders - Los Angeles Review Of Books . "What happens when everything is a psychiatric disorder?" (Hugh for Alistair).

Space - Radio Lab . "Do you like stars? Romance? Have a listen to the story of how astronomer Carl Sagan proposed to his wife, Ann Druyan, from an old episode of Radio Lab." (Hugh for Mitch).

Robot learns to recognise itself in mirror - BBC . "This is where technology gets interesting. Personally, the minute something feels creepy is usually the same moment that it starts to become more and more commonplace (and acceptable) by the human race when it comes to technology. I remember people wondering why my family needed a computer in our home when they first came out, and I remember how the vast majority of people would laugh at people speaking on a cellular in public when those first came out. Now this. A robot that can recognize itself in the mirror. Somewhere on this brave new planet, Ray Kurzweil is smiling." (Mitch for Alistair).

What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day - Fast Company . "I think I just uncovered my lack of success. Yes, it's a little sarcasm. In short, the idea is to do the one, big thing first - the stuff that you really have to get done. Not email. Not responding to Facebook requests. This concept was first introduced by Brian Tracy (who wrote the famous book about this, exact, topic: Eat That Frog ). I'm the opposite. I need to get the little things out of the way, right away (emails, quick news review, responding to some tweets, etc...). For my dollar, that frees me up to spend the rest of my day eating the frog. Regardless, this awesome article is filled with links worthy of clicking on, so don't miss out on where this piece will take you... just make sure you read it after you've done the real work first ;)." (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.

Tags:

adam steltzner

alistair croll

andrew scull

ann druyan

bbc

bitcurrent

brian tracy

carl sagan

complete web monitoring

curiosity

eat that frog

elvis presley

facebook

fast company

gigaom

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

librivox

link exchange

linkbait

london olympics

los angeles review of books

managing bandwidth

media hacks

nasa

npr

pressbooks

radio lab

ray kurzweil

slate

story

the book oven

year one labs

The Time To Think

Did we used to live in simpler times?

I'm a fan of documentaries. I'm a fan of science fiction. I'm a fan of author, Ray Bradbury. Bradbury died this past June (he would have been 92). Brain Pickings (an excellent website!) posted this amazing 1963 documentary on Bradbury titled, Ray Bradbury: Story Of A Writer. It's a quick view (under 30 minutes) and it's worthwhile on many levels. You get a peak into his creative process, his thoughts for young and aspiring writers and it's also quaint to see what the writer's life was like when the only technology they tinkered with was a typewriter.

This is beautiful...

Tags:

aspiring writer

brain pickings

creative process

documentary

ray bradbury

science fiction

technology

writer

Is The Next New Digital Thing Something Physical?

Virtual goods are one thing. Brands are still stuck on the physical.

My mind went wandering. I was reading the Gadgetwise blog on The New York Times and came across the news item, Batman's New Perch Above Gotham: Your iPad. It was all about a new game/toy/app from Mattel called, Apptivity. For about twenty bucks you get two toys (in this case, one is Batman and the other one is his flying machine from The Dark Knight Rises movie) and the downloadable app/game. The toys can glide over the iPad screen without doing any damage. Mattel and Batman aren't the first to do this (Lego and Crayola have offerings as well). What makes this interesting is the marketing opportunities and the integration of the physical and digital world.

Souvenirs, novelties, party tricks.

As the digitization of books, music and film rapidly changes how we buy and interact with these media, I'll always remember how Seth Godin said (many years back) that the physical entities (he was speaking of books and CDs, in particular) will become more like souvenirs (collectibles) and the value would come from the desire to collect in lieu of paying for the value of the content (premium, exclusive and VIP products as well). When you think about it, it's pretty amazing to see how quickly our world has adopted to a digital entertainment economy. When I pay fifteen dollars for a book, I now prefer the digital-only version (nothing to schlep around and nothing to pack when I move). My iPad doesn't collect much dust (unlike my CD, DVD, book and comic book collections).

But, we still like things.

Whether it's collectibles, knick knacks, a toy or something to show off to the neighbor, the vast majority of people still like to collect and have that physical connection with something (admittedly, this is something that is becoming less and less important to me). This Batman game/toy/app/collectible interests me because you can see the extension as it unfolds into many layers. Things like: additional characters, new games, crossovers into other games, limited edition pieces, hidden levels (for a price) and beyond. From a marketing perspective, this is less about how a brand can integrate product placement and much more about understanding the dynamics of having something in market that is both physical and digital and where each path can lead down new and interesting roads with significant paid models (when done right). Physical goods and virtual goods collide.

As with everything...

"When done right" is the key here. If the game is lame, the product is lame. If the toys don't really add to the experience, it will be seen as lame, and then the product is lame. I haven't played with Apptivity, so there's no judgment on how this plays out (pun intended). It's just fascinating to think about this moment in time, because so many people still want to hold on to the physical while we race (at breakneck speeds) towards a digital world.

Let's see how the consumers take to this. Smart brands can do some pretty innovative things (if they have the courage).

Tags:

app

apptivity

batman

book

brand

brand integration

cd

collectibles

comic book

content

crayola

digital entertainment

dvd

film

gadgetwise

innovation

ipad

lego

marketing

mattel

media

mobile application

music

product placement

seth godin

souvenirs

the dark knight rises

the new york times

toy

video game

virtual goods

The Problem Of Scale

This or that?

Have you seen the regular editorial piece titled, Eat This, Not That, from Men's Health magazine? It's a quick way to not only think differently about the food choices we make, but slowly - over time - you start learning (no, educating yourself) to make better food decisions. We make calls like this in marketing on a frequent basis, the problem happens when we're not learning from each speedy decision. Lately, I've been hearing a constant challenge from brands (and peers who work with brands). Several years ago, they jumped into social media and now, they're faced with some tough decisions. While the channels are aligned with their strategy, they're starting to feel like their ability to truly connect with consumers has become even more fragmented.

The conversation goes something like this...

"We have almost 100,000 people that like our Facebook page and about 50,000 people connected to us on Pinterest. Should we just drop doing this whole Pinterest thing and focus on Facebook?" Without question, these types of decisions need a deeper-dive. We need to look at how each platform is performing, the type of engagement, amplification and conversion that we're getting. We need to look beyond "how many" people are connected and focus more on "who" those people are. That all being said, these questions aren't popping up because brands are suddenly waking up to the old "quantity over quality" debate. In all of the cases, it's a question of scale. They simply don't have the resources and/or funding to scale and maintain the level of quality that people expect in these highly personalized social spaces, so they're stuck in that old, "this or that?" paradigm.

The problem with social media success.

It's become a bit of a sad joke, but the majority of brands are simply not prepared should they become successful at social media. Much in the same way we love to watch brands flame out when a social media crisis happens, the same is true for success: it's overwhelming and hard to wrap the brand's hands, head and heart around. It goes from awesome to awkward in the speed of hitting the refresh button on Twitter. We go from a brand speaking in a human and personal way to these awkward mass messages that attempt to speak to a larger majority, instead of one-to-one.

Scale happens.

Chris Brogan (co-author of Trust Agents with Julien Smith and author of Social Media 101 and Google + For Business) is feeling this today. There's something up with his blog and he's getting pinged non-stop from every angle (social media, email, etc...) from kind and well-intentioned people who are just trying to let him know that his website is having a problem. That type of help isn't a problem for the vast majority of us, but when you have hundreds of thousands of followers, fans, readers and more, it becomes overwhelming. Chris explains in a Facebook posting that he's well-aware and thrilled with his lot in life (who wouldn't want lots of followers and helper-bees looking out for them?). What he does say is this: "Truth: we're not MEANT to have thousands of friends. It's not sustainable. Over the last many years, I've met tens of thousands of people. No exaggeration. Of those, I've done what I can to be friendly and stay somewhat aware of maybe a thousand or more. But think about that number. What can you really know when trying to connect with 1000 people?"

That's one person. Imagine a brand that has multiple people looking at all of these different human touch-points.

You see, on one hand we do want to thank each and every person who is kind to us. On that same hand, we want to ensure that we can correct someone who feels like they have been wronged as well. In this strange arms race that brands are facing in the pursuit of likes, plus ones and followers, we're starting to see how hard it is to authentically scale and get it right. Scott Stratten (UnMarketing and The Book Of Business Awesome - How Engaging Your Customers and Employees Can Make Your Business Thrive and The Book of Business UnAwesome - The Cost of Not Listening or Being Great At What You Do) was talking up the issue of automation on his Facebook page. He tweeted something along the lines of: automation in social media is like sending a mannequin to a networking event. He got a response from someone at Hootsuite (a social media management system for businesses and organizations) with the title of "Ambassador of Happiness" who tweeted: "Truth is, @marketing cannot fathom social media beyond his own utility, so his advice should be taken with a grain of salt."

Is automation the answer to scale?

One of the coolest online tools I have seen in recent times is IFTTT (If This Then That). It's a site that creates a ton of interesting automation hacks to make life easier (things like taking your highlights and notes from your Amazon Kindle and automatically putting them into Evernote). With that comes some of the uglier hacks (things like automatically sending a direct message to a new follower on Twitter with a sales pitch). Scale and automation do not have to go hand in hand. See, what Chris Brogan, Scott Stratten and Hootsuite are all talking about is either using automation to overcome personalization or a scenario where you simply can't connect with enough people, so just do what you can do (and, as Brogan so beautifully states, is bad because it lets people - who are connecting with you - down).

What now?

Let's not confuse using technology and automation to better organize and understand who we are connected to and the types of people that they are (how they amplify, share and convert) with using automation (and bots) to replicate the power of human interactions. Those two should, probably, be mutually exclusive. What we are talking about is this strange and awkward place where brands are getting exactly what they wanted: lots of people who are engaged and want to connect. The problem is that it's overwhelming and instead of forging ahead, they're learning the same truth that Chris Brogan uncovered above: it's hard to have a substantive relationship... it's even harder to do it when you have many people on the brand side and a massive amount on the customer side. Technology automation isn't panacea. It can help a brand get better organized, but it doesn't solve the problem.

Now, it's over to you: can you scale social media? Is that even a sensible sentiment?

Tags:

amazon

blog

brand

chris brogan

eat this not that

evernote

facebook

google plus for business

hootsuite

if this then that

ifttt

julien smith

kindle

magazine

marketing

marketing strategy

mens health

pinterest

scott stratten

social media

social media 101

social media automation

social media crisis

social media management

social media scale

social media success

the book of business awesome

trust agents

twitter

unmarketing

The Fatigue Of A Great Offer

Was I ever wrong about Groupon.

Back in 2010, I was very bullish on Groupon (more on that here: One Product. One Sale. One Day Only. One Exciting New Business Model). It wasn't about prospecting or trying to ride the latest craze or trying to score at the stock market. I, genuinely, felt like they were able to crack the code of local merchants using digital marketing channels to create interest. That part, I wasn't wrong about. I also wasn't wrong about how many copycats and more would come along (more on that here: The Pending Implosion Of Daily Deal Sites). I was wrong about their ability to scale and the power of the brand. It seems like Groupon "owned" the space. While LivingSocial is still strumming along, when people think of daily deal websites, they think of Groupon (much in the same way we think of Kleenex when we think of tissue paper), but the returns just don't seem to be there anymore (for the most interesting take on Groupon, please read this piece from the always-insightful, Om Malik: Groupon is not a tech company. Why was it valued like one?).

What happened to the brand?

When you're a public company, you're expected to act in a certain way (we can dance around this issue all we like, but it's true... just ask Facebook). The public part wants one thing: more money. This puts tremendous pressures on businesses to figure out new and inventive ways to generate more income (consistently and constantly). When you have a company like Groupon, this means that you need more people buying more of your daily deals, or you need more daily deals so more people will buy them (and share them). On top of that, because their business is based on local merchants, they need scale (being able to grow Groupon in as many cities as possible, as fast as possible). What sounds like a recipe for success can sometimes become a recipe for disaster. In truth, the problem isn't about Groupon. The problem is about the customers.

As customers, we're tired... very, very tired.

The best marketers know this. With each and every message that is blasted in front of a consumer, you are creating two opposing reactions:

The positive reaction: through repetition, we create awareness. Awareness creates a feeling of comfort or discovery. Through this, customers will feel more comfortable choosing your brand, product or service.

The negative reaction: fatigue. Consumers get tired. It can happen very fast or it can creep up on you and happen slowly, over time. If you look at email marketing, fatigue is one of the biggest challenges that marketers face. After offer after offer, the payout just isn't there for consumers.

How we react to the negative reaction affects everything.

I've seen smart marketers scale back on the frequency of sending a message out and increasing the value of the offer (which could be better content or a better discount). These types of marketers are few and far between. What we'll see more often is that when things are working, they pump up the frequency, and they do a little of the same when they start seeing their numbers drop as well. As Groupon struggles to scale, they're creating more offers and sending out more and more emails. This is creating fatigue.

Surprise and delight.

That was (and can still be) the magic of Groupon. That one email with that one little surprise and delight about a local merchant. It was a good story. Now, it's handfuls of emails each day from non-local merchants that are highly untargeted (I'm hardly in the market for a barber, let alone a Brazilian waxing) and the fatigue is setting in. On top of that, they have aggressive competitors who are sending messages (some of them spam) and local newspapers and media outlets trying to cash in on the daily deal craze too. Now, we have noise and fatigue... and all of this affects Groupon as well.

It's not about Groupon. It's about what's next.

Two news items prompted this train of thought. ClickZ published a news item on August 20th titled, Smartphone Content Buyers More Favorable to Mobile Ads, that stated: "An August report released by the Online Publishers Association found that 38 percent of smartphone content buyers said smartphone ads are similar to Internet ads, and 42 percent said they are hard to ignore. Among smartphone users who don't buy content, that number dropped to 28 percent. A higher percentage of content buyers also said smartphone ads motivate them to research or buy items - 25 percent compared to 14 percent of all smartphone users." On the same day, Marketing Charts ran a news item titled, Most Smartphone Owners Open to Receiving Weekly Promo Emails, that stated: "Smartphone owners are far more likely to be open to receiving promotional emails from their favorite brands on their devices than are standard mobile phone owners, per results from a StrongMail survey conducted by Forrester Consulting, released in August. 65% of smartphone owners said they would want to receive promotional messages once a week or more, almost double the proportion (34%) of standard mobile phone owners. Smartphone owners were also more likely to say they were open to receiving promotional emails once a month (12% vs. 4%), and far less likely to want to avoid these emails entirely (23% vs. 62%)." 

Marketers, let's not mess this up.

As we transition to a mobile world, we're seeing the same types of data points that we saw when online advertising was first introduced. It's novel and interesting. It surprises and it delights. Consumers are looking at our advertising, open to it and yes, even clicking on it. What we do next will be very telling. This is not about opening the floodgates, but rather taking a step back and thinking about the relationships that your consumers have both with your brand and with their mobile devices. Think about how they connect - to your brand and to one another - and then start putting a plan in place to ensure that you don't fall into the trap of blasting them more frequently because you need to keep your numbers all juiced up. Fatigue is going to happen (and happen fast) in the mobile space. So, just as we're getting primed for the marketing opportunities, we need to be equally primed for how quickly the fatigue will set in.

Good luck.

Tags:

awareness

brand

clickz

content

daily deal

daily deal website

digital marketing

email marketing

facebook

fatigue

forrester consulting

groupon

internet advertising

kleenex

livingsocial

local merchant

marketer

marketing

marketing charts

media outlet

mobile advertising

new business model

newspaper

om malik

online publishers association

promo email

smartphone

smartphone advertising

spam

stock market

strongmail

The Trouble With Online Advertising

Is online advertising any good?

Last week, DigiDay ran the news item titled, The Ad Contrarian's Reality Check. Bob Hoffman (CEO of Hoffman/Lewis) runs the blog, The Ad Contrarian, and leverages the platform as a place to debunk the over-exuberance that many digital marketing and social media professionals have when they're chest thumping or declaring the latest online platform that everyone is jumping on as panacea for brands and the future of marketing. Hoffman is direct and to the point. When DigiDay asked him if the digital ad industry was irresponsible, this was his response...

"...First is qualitatively. They initially sold us on 'banner' advertising by telling us that display ads would be so much more effective than static print ads because people would interact with them. Then when they found no one was interacting (clicking) they changed their story. Now, according to many in the industry, clicking (interaction) means nothing, and display ads are effective because of their 'branding' value. So the thing they were selling against is now what they're selling. Second is quantitatively. We still have no idea how many clicks are fraudulent or how many are mistakes. But we're paying for all of them. This has been a problem for years and no one seems to be in a hurry to fix it."

Ouch!

It would be easy to dismiss Hoffman as a traditional ad guy, doing everything in his aging power to hold on to the dream that tomorrow the mass population will wake up and stop using their DVRs to skip television advertising, or that cities all over the world will stop banning billboard advertising as visual pollution. Who knows, maybe if Hoffman has his way, the only way you can get the news will be rolled up on your doorstep each and every morning, or on the television at six and eleven pm (no time-shifting for you!)? Hardly. Hoffman's insights (while jarring to those of us who have been working in the digital advertising space for close to twenty years) should act as a catalyst for those of us who are trying to establish the next generation of advertising. In fact, you may be surprised to find out that Hoffman is not alone.

We're doing it wrong.

As if on cue, comScore (self-described as "a global leader in measuring the digital world and the preferred source of digital marketing intelligence") released a white paper last week titled, The Economics of Online Advertising, that looked at the state of online advertising. You would think that the findings would debunk any contrarian perspectives that people like Hoffman and the like may have. You may think that online advertising is the future, and that as media dollars shift to digital (because that's where the eyeballs are) that online will be able to better serve brands in terms of delivering higher relevancy with better metrics. It turns out, that after close to two decades since the first online ad was served, that our industry still has a ways to go.

It is early... very early days for online advertising.  

MarketingVox covered the release of the comScore white paper with a news items titled, comScore: Unlimited Inventory, Lousy Metrics Cheapen Digital Ads. Here's the crux of the white paper as described by MarketingVox: "comScore President and CEO Magid Abraham believes that two 'unfortunate byproducts' of aggressive innovation in the online ad ecosystem have been 1) to increase in the complexity of campaign delivery and 2) a virtually unlimited supply of inventory, both of which create significant waste in the buying and selling processes. 'We believe that moving the industry toward a 'validated impression' standard introduces an element of digital scarcity that helps match the value flowing to publishers and advertisers with the value being delivered by the impression.' In short -- higher standards makes ads more scarce and valuable. Use more exacting measures (like the ones comScore coincidentally offers with its Validated Campaign Essentials [vCE] offering). This would 'bring the forces of supply-and-demand in online advertising into greater alignment,' said Abraham. 'We introduce value to the ecosystem, accelerate the flow of ad dollars to digital, and foster a win-win environment for all stakeholders.'"

It's going to take more than the validation of delivered impressions.

Google is already working on different digital advertising models (and, make no mistake about it, they are not the only ones attempting to crack this Da Vinci Code). Look no further than YouTube and their TrueView model (where advertisers pay only if consumers choose to watch the video or when a video ad is played for more than thirty-seconds without being skipped). The challenge with this model is fraud and getting some kind of third-party validation. This doesn't - in any way - discredit the model (or Google), but it is tied directly to some of the issues that comScore has raised in their paper. 

But wait... there's more!

Hoffman and others (myself included) are right about the creative, as well. While we do see some diamonds in the rough when it comes to digital advertising creative at the annuals slew of award shows, there is still a vast majority of brands that are either copying their traditional advertising and pasting it into digital media or the adaptation is simply not performing within the new media channel. The macro issue still remains: is it at all possible that these new, digital media channels simply don't compliment the type of advertising we have traditionally seen in the more traditional media channels? It's a deep and philosophical question that few brands (and even fewer media companies) are willing to face. Ultimately, if it turns out that new media is not the best fit for advertising (as we have seen to date), this begs the question: now what? Clearly, we have not exhausted all of our creative resources or seen a busted bubble in the online advertising world to call it a day, but what we are seeing is a quickly evolving industry that is trying to keep pace in a world where advertising is no longer based on a scarcity model and the consumers are not clicking with the vigor and enthusiasm that the industry had promised to brands.

What's your take? Can digital advertising turn a corner or will it simply commoditize the value of advertising even more?

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:

The Huffington Post - Online Advertisers Still Don't Have it Figured Out .

Tags:

advertising

advertising award

advertising creative

advertising metrics

banner advertising

billboard advertising

bob hoffman

brand

branding value

business column

campaign delivery

click fraud

comscore

digiday

digital advertising creative

digital advertising industry

digital marketing

digital marketing intelligence

digital scarcity

display advertising

google

hoffman lewis

magid abraham

marketing professional

marketingvox

media

media hacker

new media channel

newspaper

online advertising

online advertising ecosystem

online platform

online publisher

online video

print advertising

social media

television advertising

the ad contrarian

the economics of online advertising

the future of marketing

the huffington post

traditional advertising

trueview

validated campaign essentials

validated impression

video advertising

web analytics

white paper

youtube

What Will Become Of Blogs And Blogging?

Episode #319 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Mark W. Schaefer over at Grow Blog recently published his second book, Return On Influence - The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing, which dissects the fascinating world of social scoring an individual consumer's true influence in the online channels. Beyond that, he also wrote a contentious blog post titled, Is there anything new in blogging? No (I even responded over here: What's Next? It's You). As we frequently have debates and deep-dives on topics here at the Six Pixels of Separation Podcast, we felt that we could delve deeper into what blogging means in 2012 and how it can (and should evolve). It turns out that we're not the only ones who are thinking about the evolution of blogging and publishing. The day after we recorded this conversation, Twitter founders, Biz Stone and Ev Williams, announced the launch of Medium (and place where they hope to rethink the publishing through a new platform). Is blogging old news or is it still brand spanking new and in need of some evolution? 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 #319.

Tags:

advertising podcast

artists for amnesty

biz stone

blog

blogging

brand

business book

david usher

digital marketing

ev williams

facebook

grow blog

itunes

mark w schaefer

marketing

marketing blogger

marketing podcast

medium

online social network

podcast

podcasting

return on influence

social media

the tao of twitter

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #113

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 (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) 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:

Envisioning the future of education technology . "The Internet fundamentally rethinks teaching. For centuries, education has solved a distribution problem -- getting someone in the village smart enough to teach the children. With distribution free and easy, education is changing and teachers are flipping around homework and schoolwork. In this infographic, Envisioning Technology shows how education tech might evolve." (Alistair for Hugh).

Hear, All Ye People; Hearken, O Earth (Part One) - The New York Times . "In this ingenious pair of posts, Errol Morris suggests just how easy it is to sway us. I won't spoil it for you. But given the results, just how much can we trust our collective opinions?" (Alistair for Mitch).

Château Sucker - New York Magazine . "A good old fashioned caper about the great counterfeit wine scandal, and the young guy who fooled the experts into spending thousands on bottles of sub-par cru." (Hugh for Alistair).

Pussy Riot Closing Statements - n+1 . "I have no idea how this is playing out in Russia, but you couldn't invent better headlines: feminist punk band Pussy Riot sentenced to two years in prison for 'hooliganism motivated by religious hatred'... for staging an impromptu 'concert' in an Orthodox Church, singing a song urging the Virgin Mary to oust Russian President Vladimir Putin . The trial has been seen as a travesty, at least in the West. Here are the final statements (all thoughtful) from the three women, just prior to sentencing." (Hugh for Mitch).

A Startup Asks: Why Can't You Resell Old Digital Songs? - Technology Review . "One of my first jobs - a long ways back - was working in a used CD store. While that may not seem like such a big deal, this was one of (if not the) first one of its kind in my city. And, to be honest, the government didn't know how to deal with it (they called it illegal). This little retail venture was sued and threatened with legal action on a constant basis. Why? Because the owner would buy the CD and then rent it off (and yes, it was fairly obvious that people were copying the music to cassettes). Well, what are we going to do about this new situation? I have tons of songs that I bought from iTunes that I don't listen to. Why am I not allowed to sell them? It's a fair question and it's one that we all need to pay attention to. Why? Because if I buy a book on my Amazon  Kindle , why can't I share it or give it to someone else when I'm done? See, digital makes everything an original (there are no copies). Traditional economics, meet modern technology. Modern technology, meet antiquated business models." (Mitch for Alistair).

How Bestseller Lists Work...and Introducing the Amazon Monthly 100 - Tim Ferriss . "Tim is one of those fascinating characters who likes to hack the world. Whether it's the work week ( The 4-Hour Workweek ), the human body ( The 4-Hour Body ) or even learning and cooking ( The 4-Hour Chef ), he seems to dig down deep and be able to unravel and explain a lot of things that have mystified the rest of us. Well, in this blog post, he hacks the bestseller lists for books. Yes, I'm a massive nerd and I'm very curious what it takes to crack The New York Times bestsellers list for books. On top of that, anyone who can get their book to rank - at one moment in time - on Amazon (because their bestsellers ranking is in near-real-time) may now be challenged by Tim, who is also launching an Amazon Monthly 100 ranking to show which books are selling over time (not just in the moment). By the way, I sent this over to my literary agent and he says everything in this blog post is accurate (no surprise)." (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.

Tags:

alistair croll

amazon

bitcurrent

complete web monitoring

envisioning technology

errol morris

gigaom

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

itunes

kindle

librivox

link exchange

linkbait

managing bandwidth

media hacks

n 1 magazine

new york magazine

pressbooks

pussy riot

story

technology review

the 4 hour body

the 4 hour chef

the 4 hour workweek

the book oven

the new york times

tim ferriss

vladimir putin

year one labs

The Future Of Google

Do you think that Google is a one trick pony? That it's all about search? They've got nothing beyond search?

I don't (and I blogged about it back in 2009: Google's Next Step Is Not Search). I'm a massive fan and brand evangelist of Google. No company is perfect (so I won't profess that they are not without sin and challenges), but I'm fascinated by those who think that Google is a one trick pony and that this pony is called, "search." Good on the folks at HTP Company for producing this short (five minute) documentary on the future of search and what it implies when it comes to digital marketing and how consumers will behave.

Take a quick look...

What does the future hold?

When search crosses over into biology mixed with context, the world becomes less about search and more about creepy. That's the immediate reaction you will probably have when you watch this video. Some of the concepts seem a little "out there" and more science fiction than reality. That being said, nothing surprises me anymore. We walk down the street surrounded by people who are talking and texting people all over the world and don't bat an eye at it. It wasn't that long ago that if you drove up in a car next to someone and they were in the car alone talking, you thought that they were clinically insane. Now, we can't understand when those same people are in a car alone and not doing anything but staring out the window (it must be such a lonely existence).

The future of search.

While some see less value in traditional search engine optimization and even search engine marketing, they're missing the bigger picture: people are always looking for answers and solutions. That's the problem that search solves... and that problem is not a one trick pony. It's much more complex than that. The company that gets it right (Google, Bing, Yahoo or whoever) is going to have analytics, data and customer attention that will be unparalleled.

Search is just getting started (and, it's still early days for Google).

Tags:

bing

biology

brand evangelist

contextual search

digital marketing

documentary

google

htp company

online video

science fiction

search engine

search engine marketing

search engine optimization

sem

seo

the future of google

the science of search

yahoo

youtube

What Seth Said

I'm not a marketing apologist.

For everything that marketing can be, it isn't. The truth as to why I am proud to consider myself a marketer is because of what the profession (and the industry) can be. Just this past week, I published both a blog post and a podcast conversation with Scott Stratten (aka UnMarketing on Twitter) - you can read the blog post here: Are You In The Business of Awesome? and listen to the podcast here: SPOS #318 - How To Be Business Awesome (And UnAwesome) With Scott Stratten. Scott's latest book, The Book Of Business Awesome - How Engaging Your Customers and Employees Can Make Your Business Thrive and The Book of Business UnAwesome - The Cost of Not Listening or Being Great At What You Do (yes, it's a two-books-in-one deal) takes brands out of the corporate skyline and down to the streets and into the hands of the people. He uses the book as a platform to demonstrate that a brand is now a whole lot more than a perceived image or how a collective feels about a particular product or service. I have always questioned (deeply) Stratten's approach to everything as a "market of one," meaning: just because a brand did something nice, it doesn't make them a good company, and just because they do something stupid, it doesn't mean that they will go bankrupt. In the end, these little Twitter spats never affect these corporations in a meaningful way. They come off as speed bumps on the highway to quarter-on-quarter profitability. On Twitter today, Jay Gilmore, said: "Listening to @mitchjoel's interview w/ @unmarketing and loved the notion that 'the people are the brand' well said." 

If the people are the brand. 

If the people are the brand, then it is incumbent on us - as a society - to rise above the quibbles and customer service issues that we're so eager and willing to tweet about and post to Facebook, and to start holding brands accountable with the only thing that truly seems to matter: our money. If I had a dollar for ever time that I said, "Seth Godin is right," I would be a rich man. Before reading any further, please stop and read Godin's blog post today titled, Corporation Are Not People. I'll wait for you...

How do you feel?

Angered? Enraged? Apathetic? Despondent? I'd like to focus on one paragraph, in specific, from Godin's post: "Corporations (even though it's possible that individuals working there might mean well) play a different game all too often. They bet on short memories and the healing power of marketing dollars, commercials and discounts. Employees are pushed to focus on bureaucratic policies and quarterly numbers, not a realization that individuals, not corporations, are responsible for what they do."

It's almost poetic, isn't it?

Do you disagree with Seth (and if you don't, you're also disagreeing with me)? If the people are the brand (as Scott and Jay have said above), where does everything fall down? You can blame it on how we hide behind our policies and/or the corporation. You can blame it on the few bad apples that have spoiled the basket for the rest of us. You can even blame it on corporate greed. Seth has it right, doesn't he?

"It's not my problem... I just work here."

"Just following orders" is never a good excuse when a brand (or anyone else) is doing the wrong thing. The problem with all of this is that brands can be apologetic, move on and it has no bearing on their financial outcome. Here's the dirty little secret: it doesn't have to be that way. You see, if people are the brand, then people can stand up and change the brand. Just tweeting about it, blogging about it or sharing a story on Facebook isn't going to do anything about it (unless you count an apology and one customer getting some kind of resolution as the solution). In today's world, we are all consumer advocates. Now, we have the power to do something. To chose who we do business with and to provide - to everyone else - the ammunition and power for change. It's true a customer service spat that gets resolved on Twitter is good for the brand and it's good for the consumer. It's also true that the plethora of these are turning into noise that many/most are beginning to ignore. The power of social media is in how we can all get ideas to spread.

People are the brand is an idea that I would like to see spread. You?

Tags:

a market of one

advertising

blog

brand

brand image

business book

consumer advocate

corporate policy

customer service

facebook

jay gilmore

marketer

marketing

marketing industry

podcast

scott stratten

seth godin

social media

the book of business awesome

the book of business unawesome

twitter

unmarketing