Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 331

Consumers Control The Brand (And Other New Media Myths)

Marketers don't control their brand... the consumer does.

It's been the battle cry of Social Media enthusiasts since The Cluetrain Manifesto was first published over a decade ago. If "markets are conversations," as The Cluetrain Manifesto says, then we can't be so presumptuous as to assume that the marketers can both control or lead the conversation, can we? It's actually a myth to think that consumers now control the brand, simply because those consumers can say (and publish) whatever they want and feel about a brand in the online channels. In the past few weeks, I've come across a handful of Blogs that are regurgitating this myth about consumers and control. As someone who spends the majority of my time in the boardrooms of some of the biggest brands in the world, please trust me when I tell you that the marketers are firmly in control of the brand.

What? The brands now control the brand message?

Not exactly. The brands control the brand. The consumers can (somewhat) influence the brand message. Brands still choose their products and services, they decide on the pricing, placement and promotion of the brand. They work (either internally or with an advertising agency) to set the tone, feeling and emotions that they want the brand to capture in the zeitgeist of the world. I'd even argue that they're getting increasingly smarter when it comes to Social Media and are doing a fairly good job of connecting and engaging in many of the online and mobile channels to give their brands a more human voice and offer consumers an opportunity to have some kind of real interaction between real human beings. When everything goes the way it was planned, it is poetry in motion. When it goes awry, it can get pretty ugly. Either way, the company still decides the brand's path. The are firmly in control.

What doesn't kill us, only makes us stronger.

Look at the many Social Media mishaps that have happened in the past decade. We can all rattle off instances like United breaks guitars, Dell hell, the BP oil spill (and yes, the list goes on and on). Were consumers really, ever in control of the brand at any point or were they merely able to communicate how they feel? In looking back, did any of those instances make us - as a general mass community - feel like we had any true control over a brand? What consumers did have is the platform to express their feelings - in text, images, audio and video... and in real time. Consumers now have a very vocal voice. Did the brands listen? Yes. They're listening like they never have before, because the world is watching to see if they are listening. Did it fundamentally change the brand and what it stands for? Hardly. It changed the way the brand communicates. It may have changed the way the brand deals and interacts with consumers, but the brands of United, Dell and BP are still - at their core - the same. They may be better at communicating and may have changed a lot of their internal processes, but they have not ceded control of the brand over to consumers.

Brick by brick.

Lego is known for saying that, "we own the logo, but our consumer's own the brand." Without being cynical, I'd like to know the last time Lego (or any other company) told their Chief Marketing Officer that they no longer report into the CEO, but that they now report into the consumers? In a world where consumers truly own the brand, we would see a lot more than customer service replies delivered via Twitter or the use of a Blog to crowdsource new and innovative ideas (which - when done - never offers ownership or partnership of those ideas over to the consumer... so much for control).

Welcome to the brand illusion.

Is consumer control simply an illusion? It may well be. Yes, brands are listening like never before (just ask the folks at Gap or Netflix about this). Yes, brands are interacting with consumers like never before (just ask the folks at Dell or United about this). Yes, consumers can now hear what the products and services are actually like by either asking their peers or looking for consumer reviews online. But, all of this has been sprung on brands. For the most part, the majority of brands have been dragged into the realities of social media kicking and screaming. Most of them aren't scaled for it properly and even fewer have shifted Social Media from a vertical within their marketing and communications department to a horizontal strategy that drives through the organization. Until that happens, the true control of the brand lies in the same place it always has... with the brand.

Let's stop confusing listening and interacting with control.

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 - Consumers Control The Brand (And Other New Media Myths) .

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The Truth About Marketing Leadership

Episode #293 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 is about to publish his second book, Return On Influence - The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing, which dissects the fascinating world of scoring an individual consumer's true influence in the online channels. While this is already a very contentious issue, there's something bigger happening is our online world that bears reflection: what, exactly, is leadership? Is it how many people follow someone on Twitter? Is it the success of a Facebook campaign? What about a successful Blog? In this Podcast, Mark and I debate the merits of true marketing leadership and what brands need to know as they continue to struggle with success metrics and ROI. I should also mention that the audio conversation recorded a little strangely (so apologies for non-perfect audio quality). 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 #293.

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The Last Temptation Of Social Media

There's a growing lesson for big brands in Social Media.

Unless you own the platform (like a Blog, Podcast or your own, personal, online social network), ensure that everything else is a channel for you to connect and not the entire platform. In a world where Facebook has close to one billion users and a day's worth of video is being uploaded to YouTube every sixty seconds, it is tempting for brands to forgo their own spaces and just do everything within someone else's environment... it's dangerous.

Direct relationships.

In a more simplistic way: if everything you do happens on Twitter, who owns the direct relationship with the consumer? You or Twitter? The answer may not be as simple as you think. While you are the one interfacing with people, and they know your brand, should you want to move that moment of engagement elsewhere, you really can't. Twitter owns the data, analytics and information behind it. There's nothing wrong with that... it is their business model, but too many brands are falling into the vortex of not differentiating between a channel of communication and ownership of the platform.

It's also not a zero-sum game.

There will be instances where the value of leveraging a network of connected people (in places like Google +, Pinterest, Facebook, etc...) makes sense as a sort of mini-platform (a quick contest or to test out a new product innovation), but ownership of the direct relationship will become an increasingly important element to maintain as Social CRM becomes a much more prevalent part of the marketing equation. What we're talking about isn't the surface engagement that everyone sees on a day to day basis, but all of the data and information that lies behind it.

The Last Temptation of Social Media.

It is the success of Social Media that created this beast, but step back and ask yourself this question: what makes YouTube, Facebook or Twitter any different from the initial portal plays of AOL and Yahoo back in the day? It's not hard to argue that the online social networks of today have fundamentally taken on this role and their walled gardens are more impenetrable than their predecessors. The Last Temptation of Social Media is for brands to give up and relinquish that information, engagement and data over to these third-parties. Brands must be vigilant. The problem with this vigilance is that it doesn't seem like the terms of service agreements between the users and the these online platforms is going to change any time soon. In fact, it will probably never sway in favor of the brand. The last thing consumers will want to know is that their data is now being shared to "third-parties" by these online social networks. You'll note that any time data has been shared between a Social Media channel and a third-party, there is total upheaval in the online channels because it is a core breach of their agreement with the users.

What's a brand to do?

Build a better brand narrative. Create engaging and real experiences for consumers. Then, leverage Social Media as a channel to share, connect and tell your stories in new and different ways. Scott Stratten (author of the best-selling business book, UnMarketing, and a well-documented Twitter celebrity) is the first to admit that by building his platform through Twitter, he is at risk. Twitter must maintain its popularity and growth for him to benefit from it, and should Scott ever change his mind about how he connects to the people that matter to him, he suddenly has to figure out how to get those one hundred thousand-plus followers to now go where he is (not easy). Should Scott even be able to make that happen, all of that historical information and data is not his to take, use or even look at. The temptation for brands is to initiate their marketing tactics where the people are (which is smart), but the long-term outcome of these activities could well be that the brands do not have the data and insights of their own, direct, relationships (which is very bad). This is the digital marketing equivalent of cutting off your nose to spite your face. The challenge (and you always know that there is always a challenge) is the hard work it takes to actually get that direct relationship with the consumer on your own terms... and your own platform. Part of the solution to this challenge is to always ask yourself if you're using Social Media as one of your channels to extend the brand narrative or as the entire platform.

What's your take on this issue?

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #87

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:

An Excerpt From "Killing the Competition: How the New Monopolies Are Destroying Open Markets" - Harpers . "Economies of scale mean that a few big players can dominate an industry. When they get too big, they can dictate pricing, control standards, and generally become uncompetitive -- which is why monopolies are regulated. In the rise of new monopolies, author Barry C. Lynn sees nothing less than the potential downfall of a democracy." (Alistair for Hugh).

A brilliant answer to copyright . "There are some songs you can't use without paying hefty royalties. Here's a creative alternative. I won't spoil it for you, but the next time someone ages a year, consider playing this -- royalty free! -- instead. In addition to being funny, it does raise a really good point about the legal issues around claiming something that's effectively in the public domain." (Alistair for Mitch).

Error Rates of Hand-Counted Voting Systems - Bruce Schneier . "This article, about error-rates of hand-counted voting systems (apparently 2%?), is worth it for the thoughtful comment section. I love finding blog posts on obsucre topics, and remembering what's so great about the Internet." (Hugh for Alistair).

The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia - The Chronicle . "Many years ago I had a discussion about Wikipedia with a friend of mine who's a bit of a political activist, and our conclusion was that Wikipedia is in many ways a very conservative source of information. It relies on 'trusted sources' (citation needed) as the arbiter of what should/should not get to stay on a Wikipedia entry. This makes it very difficult for new facts, or facts which challenge accepted wisdom, to make it through Wikipedia's (self-appointed) editorial guardians. Timothy Messer-Kruse, a historian, writes of his failed (so far) experience trying to right a long-enshrined historical mistake - only to run into the problem that: 'if all the history books say it is so, then it is so on Wikipedia.' Even if the books are wrong, and you've got the documentation to prove it." (Hugh for Mitch).

Steve Jobs rare footage conducting a presentation in 1980 . "You would think that for a technology company to remain relevant, it would constantly have to change and morph. Not true. In this interview - from 1980, Steve Jobs talks about the vision for Apple . Much of what he said (over 30 years ago!!!) still rings true to this day. Part of the beauty and charm of this video comes in the Q&A session - where Jobs waxes poetic about the potential for computers. In some strange and interesting way, what he says is still happening right here, right now. From now on, when people call Jobs a visionary, I am going to refer them to this YouTube clip." (Mitch for Alistair).

Rules For the Social Era - Harvard Business Review . "When it comes to Social Media, I feel like we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what's happening. My good friend, Nilofer Merchant (and I have to thank Tara Hunt for the intro to Nilofer a few years back), is currently writing a series for the Harvard Business Review on what corporations need to do in this Social Era. Nilofer is truly on to something. This isn't about media or technology... it's about a new way of being (gotta that term, 'The Social Era'!). Her initial argument is sure to raise some eyebrows because the biggest corporations going forward are not going to be based on size, but rather speed. From '800-pound gorillas to 800 gazelles.' I could not have said it better, myself (but I wish I did!)." (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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Slimy Sales And Marketing Tactics

Are you a salesperson?

How does that sentence make you feel? Most people say that they either hate sales or hate salespeople and yet, those same people fail to realize that everything we do in life is sales. When we wake up and get dressed, the clothes we put on is a sales pitch to ourselves (we sell ourselves that the clothes we are wearing best represent to the public who we are... or who we want them to think that we are). When we are pitching our ideas, we are selling. When you are having lunch with a client (or a potential client), you are selling yourself in the hopes that they will work with you. Yes, there are soft selling techniques and hard ones (and we have to be careful of which lines we cross), but everything we do in life is a sale... and there's nothing embarrassing about it. If you think there is, I would recommend that you pick up a copy of Jeffrey Gitomer's amazing book, The Sales Bible.

It's only embarrassing when it gets slimy.

Sales gets slimy very fast when people misrepresent their intentions as wanting to be helpful when all they're really trying to do is close a sale. Recently, a major media company reached out to me to discuss what they called, "a new business opportunity," for Twist Image. In the email exchange that ensured, the individual indicated that they had clients who may require our services and would like to set-up an exploratory conference call. It seemed reasonable enough and there have been multiple instances in the past when these types of conversations have led to new client work, and a reciprocation in terms of business opportunity (the old "win-win scenario" we often hear about). We settled on a date and time. About an hour before our scheduled meeting, I was sent an email with a PowerPoint attachment. The body text of the email went on to describe to the Vice-President of the company (I was dealing with a person at the management level) that our call was scheduled for them to present their credentials to us. Yep... I was scammed and the got the old bait and switch. I quickly responded back to the VP (cc'ing my original contact) that my understanding of the call was that there was a new business opportunity for them to discuss with us and not a credentials pitch of their services . The meeting quickly got cancelled with an apology from the VP. The tragedy here is that I may have needed this company's services, but I would not have led this conversation - it would have been someone else within my organization. Now, not only will we never work with this company, but their image is tarnished forever. Over what? Lying. Plain and simple.

Did someone get fired?

I hope not. I hope this person was given an education in leadership. People don't hate being sold to. People don't hate advertising. People don't hate being marketed to. People hate bad advertising. People hate marketers who lie about the benefits and value. People hate feeling like they're being taken advantage of instead of being offered an opportunity. It sounds simple enough, but it's so rarely practiced that we wind up giving sales, marketing and advertising a bad rap. It's a shame...

And it's easy to solve. Here are some simple steps:

Follow first. Before calling on a company, follow them online. On Twitter via Google Alerts, whatever. Within a couple of hours you can better understand their needs.

LinkedIn them. Use LinkedIn to see if you know (or are connected to) someone who knows someone. You would be surprised how often this is the case.

Give value first. You don't have to buy them anything, but think about someone you could introduce them to or uncover a piece of content (a Blog post, Podcast, article, whatever) that they have not yet seen and send it to them with an introductory note (keep it short and sweet).

Be honest. If all you're looking for is a sale, let them know. You're probably going to get blown off. Let this be a lesson to you: there is no quick sales in life. Give value first and keep giving. Sales is a long, hard road of relationship building.

It's not easy.

I'm a sales person. My main job at Twist Image is to get people to buy our marketing services. In reading a ton of sales material, I realized that the best way I can do this is by providing value and building relationships first. It's slow going. This is why I Blog, Podcast, write books, speak at events, pen columns for newspapers and magazines, join industry associations and do a lot of community work/outreach. I don't want to cold call companies. I'd much prefer that Twist Image makes itself as findable and as shareable as possible. It's not easy. It's not easier than cold-calling a random list of potential customers, it's just different. One of the biggest differences is that in all of this hard work, I don't have to lie, misrepresent or posture. This is who we are. In the process of using more of these inbound marketing channels, it has also made me much more knowledgeable about the industry I serve. The process of selling like this forces me to constantly educate myself about the industry, so that once we do get a new client in the door, I'm also in a better position to provide a unique solution to their problems (I do this as part of the strategy and creative teams here).

What's the point?

Being slimy, lying or misrepresenting your services may get you an immediate sale, but it's never going to foster a lasting relationship. The funny thing is that you know this. It's obvious. And yet, with Social Media, look at how much posturing some of the most respected brands take part in that make them look, feel and act pretty slimy. Don't believe me? Look at what a brand is willing to do simply get someone (anyone) to like their brand on Facebook. Is that a real "like" or a little bit more like a slimy move to bump up numbers? Is there an actual marketing result that comes from that? There is much more real work here for all of us to do.

Don't you think brands need to be a lot less slimy? 

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As Seen On TV - Media Hacking The Tube

How much disruption will the television industry face?

New Media pundits made a big mistake when betting against television. Sure, the Internet has put the pain on media platforms like newspapers, magazines and radio, but television is still going strong. Most research firms will tell you that viewership has either maintained or risen in the past few years (and yes, I realize that younger people don't have the same affinity to the platform as the rest of the world), while advertising revenues (still a relevant metric) continue to maintain or rise (slightly). Is this always going to hold up? It's hard to tell. So long as television has an audience (and yes, fragmentation, cable, DVRs, on-demand and more has changed the game dramatically), there will always be advertisers lining up to hock their wares. Is TV advertising as relevant and powerful as it was in the day and age when it was the 800-pound gorilla, because there were no other pertinent media apes swinging along the vines? No. There aren't only three broadcasting networks that offer a very scarce commodity to a massive and captive audience anymore. And yes, the Internet is capturing a lot of the video content (and that stat continues to rise - each and every day).

What is TV?

This is going to be the real question going forward. Hugh McGuire (friend, co-host on the Media Hacks Podcast, founder of PressBooks and Librivox, and now editor of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) likes to provoke by saying that there is little difference between a book and a website (for more on that thinking, please read this article from today's The Guardian: Are books and the internet about to merge?). As I read the article in The Guardian, another news item from The New York Times' Media Decoder titled, New Service Will Stream Local TV Stations in New York, came across my feeds. Aereo is being described as an Internet television service that will distribute television over the Internet (it is being backed by Barry Diller - who created Fox Television). While the concept is nothing new, it seems like the initial buzz of this initiative (especially if Aereo is used in combination with services like Hulu or Netflix) could be a changing tide in how we watch television as well.

Is there a difference between a TV show and a video that you watch online?

We may have been looking at the new media equation backwards. Instead of wondering how TV is going to adapt in the Internet age, maybe we should have been looking at how the Internet is going to adapt to TV? We all see the spikes in Social Media when something on TV is worth talking about (it could be ads on the Superbowl or when a celebrity unveils their baby bump), and it's this point of media multi-platforming that exists in a world where everything hasn't melded into one channel. Yet.

A Futurist's Media Manifesto.

No more platforms. One platform. We simply see media as text, images, audio and video. The subtle differences between a movie, TV show and video Podcast goes away. It's video - when we want it and how we want it. The subtle differences between a newspaper story, a magazine article, a book and a blog post goes away (a notion Seth Godin recently tackled in his The Domino Project Blog post, The end of paper changes everything). It's just text - when we want it and how we want it. Think about it this way: once the delivery platform becomes one pipe and ubiquitous, the biggest challenge is going to be for marketer's to figure out where to stick their advertising. Is this a trend we're going to see tomorrow? Probably not. But, let's confuse linear growth with exponential growth. Because you can now stream this high definition content with little buffering and quality issues, expect to see exponential technological improvements moving forward. What does that mean? It's going to happen a lot faster than most of us (including the experts) are prepared for.

Social TV.

In a somewhat strange coincidence, I received a copy of the book, Social TV - How marketers can reach and engage audiences by connecting television to the web, social media and mobile, by Mike Proulx and Stacey Shepatin today in the mail. I often lament the idea that TV is the type of media that people don't like to be overly active with (more on that here: The Next Layer Of Social Media). We tend to forget that TV is - for most of the population - an act of escapism. It's not something they want to create, share, tweet, friend, +1, comment on, etc... They just want to sit back and let it wash all over them, so that they can forget about the crappy day at work that they just had while also not thinking about the one that's going to come tomorrow. If you're reading this (and you made it this far in the post), you are the antithesis of everything Clay Shirky writes about in his book, Cognitive Surplus. You're not wasting your cognitive surplus. You're active, a creator and a doer. This futuristic view of media as one platform is probably something you can't wait for. So, as you sit at the edge of your seat and beg for your TV to be more interactive, intuitive and everywhere, my recommendation is that you read a book like Social TV and figure out how to create marketing campaigns that effectively cross-channel promote, while the lawmakers and cable companies do everything within their power to keep their business models cash flow positive. Just watch and see how the traditional TV broadcasters are going to deal with companies like Apple, Google and Aereo as they begin creeping in to disrupt their industry.

How much disruption do you think the TV industry is going to face?

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How Cloud Computing Changes Everything

There's been a lot of talk about "the cloud" when it comes to technology and IT in the past few years.

It's a revolution as big as the advent of the microprocessor and just as relevant as the desktop computer. If you've had to sit through a technology meeting at your business, this struggle to speed up and move everything to the cloud is probably on your IT roadmap. Now, the cloud is quickly changing business as we know it, forcing it to reboot how it thinks about its consumers in this ever-connected world. We're not just talking about everything from owning data centers to your accounting software to your email server, but the products and services that are being sold.

If the cloud isn't on your businesses mind, rest assured that it should be, and that it will (once again) change everything.

In simplistic terms, the cloud is just another term for the Internet as a storage facility. The core technological innovation is that instead of storing a single piece of software and/or data on your own, single, fixed computer, you can now store data and run software off of the Internet - giving it freedom to be accessed by any computer of your choice and creating the ultimate backup plan.

What does this look like?

Currently, the majority of my business software and data is cloud based. So, if someone should steal my laptop or if it should break down, all I have to do is grab another one and log on to the Internet. My information, pictures, music, videos and everything else are also backed up to the cloud (thanks to a great application called, Dropbox). It also enables everything I create and need to be available asynchronously. When I write a document on my MacBook Air, it is automatically saved through Dropbox and I can access it from any other computer and yes, even my iPhone - in real time. Companies like Salesforce.com have helped to innovate the cloud as a business model by offering software as a service (also known as SaaS) for years. Instead of buying software and installing it on every computer, you purchase licenses that can be used to access the software through the Internet. Not only is all of the data and customization also stored securely online, but when the company updates the software or fixes bugs, the platform is simply updated and the long hard work of having to update each and every workstation goes the way of the dodo bird.

Changing business forever.

While some of this may seem very technical and not relevant to your day-to-day work of trying to grow your business, these new ways to access and interact is creating some fundamental shifts in business. As the music industry continues to unravel and as the next generation of music business models evolve, the cloud is starting to weigh heavy on how we all connect to music. iTunes enables all of us to buy music, store it on our hard drives, iPhones and iPods. The ability to create playlists and organize our music has fundamentally changed how we buy and listen to music. Recently, services like rdio and Spotify offer unlimited music, everywhere. For a small monthly fee (usually under ten dollars), you get access to a massive collection of music that can all be streamed from the cloud to almost any device that has Internet connectivity. So, instead of choosing songs on iTunes, buying them, downloading and storing them, you can no simply stream everything from this massive collection. Think of it as a TV cable service for music.

Why own?

I've been given an evaluation license to Spotify and it made me realize that the struggle between my CD collection becoming digital and now the lack of desire to actually own any sort of data creates a compelling case for the power of the cloud. Would I rather own a bunch of songs or have unlimited access to as much music as possible? Yes, both rdio and Spotify also allows users to buy and download music, but there just doesn't seem to be a point to physically owning the files (unless there are times when you're not connected to the Internet and want to listen to music - like on a plane or in an area that lacks connectivity). As mobile data and Internet connectivity converge with faster speeds and more competitive pricing, everything is quickly moving to the cloud - from your business data to your home entertainment to new and interesting products and services to buy. This creates new businesses, new job opportunities and much more innovation. With that innovation also comes massive disruption. Yes... more disruption. This is a time of great upheaval in business. With that upheaval comes considerable opportunity for the companies and individuals brave enough to see this as an once-in-a-lifetime chance to do something truly new and amazing in business.

A new world. New business models.

Tying this all together, I am thrilled to announce that my next business book is titled, CTRL ALT DEL - Reboot Your Business (and Yourself) in a Connected World. The book will be published in Spring 2013 by Business Plus, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing (Hachette Book Group USA) - the same publisher's as my last book, Six Pixels of Separation. CTRL ALT DEL will teach businesses how to identify these new opportunities and how to seize them. It will demonstrate how to transform your business thinking for this very different business world, and it will act as a guide through this time of mass disruption. CTRL ALT DEL will be about how businesses should be thinking and navigating through this very tumultuous time. I hope you will continue to join me on this journey both here... and when the book comes out next year.

The above post is my twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun newspapers called, New Business - Six Pixels of Separation . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:

Montreal Gazette - How cloud computing will change everything .

Vancouver Sun - not yet published.

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consumer

ctrl alt del

data center

data customization

desktop computer

dropbox

email server

grand central publishing

hachette book group usa

home entertainment

internet

iphone

ipod

it

it roadmap

itunes

laptop

macbook air

microprocessor

mobile data

montreal gazette

music business

music collection

music industry

newspaper column

postmedia

rdio

saas

salesforce

spotify

technology

technology innovation

the cloud

vancouver sun

The Modern Marketing Agency

Give credit where credit is due.

If I was the publisher of Advertising Age and/or AdWeek, I would be paying very close attention to the quality of content that the folks over at DigiDay have been producing in the past short while. It feels like over the past six months that DigiDay has really found both a groove and unique voice in the marketing industry by churning out some great content coupled with killer headlines (you just know I'm going to click on articles with titles like, Should Agencies Act Like Software Startups?, Brands Want Content Curator Jobs and Web is Dead, It's All About Mobile - to name only a few). I've gone from grazing their headlines to making the time to deep-dive into their features.

What does the modern marketing agency look like?

As an agency owner, I am (obviously) fascinated by this question. When Twist Image was founded in 2000 (it's hard to believe that we're twelve years old), we came into the marketing industry unencumbered. Myself (and my business partners) knew, lived and breathed multimedia and the Internet. We saw this as the future of our industry, but we were in the minority. There's no denying that the past twelve years has brought tremendous change, disruption and new thinking to the marketing industry. It turns out that DigiDay has also become enamored with this topic. They've begun a series of video conversations with some of our industry's leading luminaries to dissect and discuss what the present looks like and what the future hold.

If you're interested in the future of the marketing industry, please watch these...

Watch live streaming video from digiday at livestream.com


Watch live streaming video from digiday at livestream.com

Watch live streaming video from digiday at livestream.com

Tags:

aaron shapiro

ad age

ad agency

advertising

advertising age

advertising agency

adwekk

akqa

brand

content

digiday

digital agency

future of marketing

headlines

huge

internet

jean philippe maheu

marketing agency

marketing industry

marketing industry publication

marketing magazine

modern marketing agency

multimedia

publics modem

publishing

razorfish

rep inamoto

scott ferber

twist image

videology

Nick Morgan Explains How To Give A Presentation That Changes The World

Episode #292 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

When I got my first offer to speak in front of a large audience, I wasn't sure where to turn for more professional public speaking and presentation skills training. Many names of individuals and organizations were fed my way, but one name that kept rising to the top was Nick Morgan. I immediately purchased his book, Give Your Speech, Change The World, and it did - in fact - change my world and perception of what a presentation is really all about. I eagerly bought his other book, Trust Me, and have become not only a fan of his every move (which isn't as creepy as it sounds), but also of his Blog, Public Words. In the marketing world, the best ideas don't always win. One of the main reasons is because they're not presented well (in essence, a poor presentation can kill the best of ideas). Being a great presenter is a core capability of some of the most respected business leaders and marketing professionals we've seen to date. Nick Morgan knows how to get you there. Just take a listen. 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 #292.

Tags:

ad age

advertising

blog

blogging

cast of dads

cc chapman

chris brogan

christopher s penn

david usher

digital dads

digital marketing

facebook

facebook group

give your speech change the world

hugh mcguire

in over your head

itunes

julien smith

librivox

managing the gray

marketing

marketing over coffee

media hacks

new marketing labs

nick morgan

online social network

podcast

podcasting

presentation skills

pressbooks

public speaking

public words

social media 101

social media marketing

strategy

trust agents

trust me

twitter

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #86

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:

How, Exactly, Did You Get Elected? - Literally Unbelievable . "The Onion is funny. But nobody would take it seriously, right? Turns out, plenty of people -- including the occasional congressman -- do, frothing with righteous indignation all over Facebook. Hilarity ensues. What the Internet needs is a healthy dose of skepticism." (Alistair for Hugh).

Retro design is crippling innovation - Wired . "Clipboards, recycling bins, and those little floppy disk icons that mean 'save': all skeuomorphs, vestiges of our atomic past that act as metaphors, but ultimately constrain what we do and how we design. In this Wired UK piece, Clive Thompson reflects on just how we limit ourselves." (Alistair for Mitch).

Is GPS All in Our Heads? - The New York Times . "What is GPS doing to our brains?" (Hugh for Alistair).

Hit Record - Open Salon . "Salon starts doing 30% fewer stories (but spending more time on them, and doing longer pieces), see traffic go up 40%." (Hugh for Mitch).

Research chat: Dan Ariely and Malcolm Gladwell on writing about social science - Journalist's Resource . "I remember thinking to myself, 'wow, the world has really changed,' when I saw Malcolm Gladwell 's books being sold at HMV many years ago. As someone who spent a ton of time being a music writer covering the rock music beat, it's somewhat humorous to me that the real rock stars in our society today are now people like Malcolm Gladwell ( The Tipping Point , Blink , Outliers , etc...) and Dan Ariely ( Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality ). Marketers and business leaders seem to have adopted Gladwell and Ariely as their own, but the stuff that they write about is less of a business book and much closer connected to the social sciences. What's it like to write about the social sciences? Check this out..." (Mitch for Alistair).

Read to Lead: How to Digest Books Above Your "Level" - Ryan Holiday . "I grapple and grind my way through books about math and science. I usually quit. I also struggle with books that are too academic. I'm beginning to realize that while I love to consumer books, I'm grazing much more than I am deep-diving into the content. Is there a right way or wrong to read a book? How should I prime myself to read a book that has me boxing out of my weight class? This wonderful post is filled with ideas and techniques to get more people reading better material. By the way, this Blog post is from 2007... so, long live The Long Tail ." (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

bitcurrent

blink

clive thompson

complete web monitoring

dan ariely

facebook

gigaom

hmv

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

journalists resource

librivox

link exchange

linkbait

literally unbelievable

malcolm gladwell

managing bandwidth

media hacks

open salon

outliers

predictably irrational

pressbooks

ryan holiday

salon

story

the book over

the long tail

the new york times

the onion

the tipping point

the upside of irrationality

wired

wired uk

year one labs