Discounts on Social Media In Business and Being Social

I'm speaking at a couple of London events in May. And, as is traditional, there are some discounts available for those of you who'd like to come along beyond the usual book-early stuff.

Social Media in Business - educating businesses in using social media - is on at Paypal's HQ in Richmond, London on May 21, 2010.

I'll be talking about the whole Using + Social Media = Fail thang.

Anyway. Loads of good people are lined up for it, check the agenda etc out here. Follow that link and you can also land a 15% discount if you use the code: SMIBUBNK

And then there's Being Social on May 13. Another great line up of folk - many of whom I appear to know... I'm speaking on... well that's still TBA - but favourite at the moment is What Replaces The Failed Experiment of Advertising (on a similar theme to that which we presented in Madrid).

The Death Of Advertising: Omexpo Madrid 2010

View more presentations from david cushman.

I've got 10 25% discounts (on top of the earlybird discount) to give away. Once they've gone, they're gone. Use this link and use this code: SPEAKERS_BS10

Hope to see you at one or both.

Related articles by Zemanta

• If advertising didn't exist would you feel the need to invent it? (fasterfuture.blogspot.com)
• Somesso London 2010 - The Social Business Summit (onemanandhisblog.com)

Time to end the failed experiment of advertising

As promised, here's the slidedeck Jamie Burke and I presented in Madrid last week. By way of disclosure we were in Madrid for the official launch of 90:10 Spain - and took the opportunity to present our thinking at the OMEXPO.

The slides ask the question, if advertising didn't exist today, would you reinvent it? We think too much digital tech, innovation and effort has been focused on making a better message when what is better for all parties is that we should work together on making better things.Platform thinking that delivers value innovation.

It's time time to end the insanity of repeating the failed experiment of advertising. Time to start creating platforms for change.

Video will follow later this week...

The Death Of Advertising: Omexpo Madrid 2010

View more presentations from david cushman.

Related articles by Zemanta

• If advertising didn't exist would you feel the need to invent it? (fasterfuture.blogspot.com)
• We want more than incrementally better messages (fasterfuture.blogspot.com)
• 90:10 a company purpose built for the networked society (smlxtralarge.com)
• Bumble and the human voice (herd.typepad.com)

We want more than incrementally better messages

There's a rule about new technologies - bleeding edge tech doesn't equal bleeding edge demand. I'm old enough to remember Betamax.

Electronics companies have a track record in this kind of failure. Famously (and quoted in Blue Ocean Strategy) Phillips CD-i was a commercial flop because it tried to do too many things - and customers weren't sure what value it could add to their lives.

That and the fact the games were rubbish.

Phillips added and added technical functions and spec. With all this 'special stuff' - the execs were convinced the market would lap it up. But they forgot to ask what the user would find useful.

Innovation is only any good if it's useful to people. The more people it is useful to, the better the outcome.

Often the focus of innovation is on ourselves - how can we make things better for us. Or it's on showing off how technically clever we are (our spec's bigger than your spec).

And isn't that what a huge chunk of digital marketing has been all about? Sharper and sharper focus on tracking and responding to online behaviour - cleverer and cleverer tech, more and more spec?

All the better to serve the right ad at the right time with.

All the innovation focused on building a better advert.

What we're talking about here is a technological arms race in pursuit of incremental improvements in quality or relevance of messages.

Which is the answer you'd come up with if you asked advertising and marketing teams what they wanted from digital innovation.

But is it what all elements of the route to market actually WANT from the best-ever ability to connect with people that digital technologies enable?

Is a better advert what the manufacturers and service providers want from digital technology? Is it the best they can expect from our growing ability to form communities of purpose at the drop of a hat?

And is a better advert what 'consumers' want?

Oh, I know, the right information at the right time becomes really 'useful' so you could argue the more effective you are at this the more effective your 'adverts' for all parties. There is some truth in this. Ads that take this approach attain much higher click-thru rates (but all those that don't get clicked must still be counted as spam).

More importantly, this is defaulting to the belief that what we all want is better messaging.

What if that isn't true? What if what we all actually want (manufacturers and service providers -
customers, too) is improvement in quality or relevance of products and services?

More potential 'customers' for advertising would find that useful.

So the role of advertising and marketing may just be in deploying your skills and relationships to improve the quality and relevance of products and services.

How do you innovate that using digital tools? Well that's pretty much what I'll be talking about at OMEXPO in Madrid tomorrow.

Expect references to the best set of tools to bring us together (the social technologies which form the web) being wasted on gathering eyeballs - and how platform thinking can put them to their best use: innovating better and more relevant products and services.

See you there (slides will follow :-)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Slides Business Model Innovation Euromed (slideshare.net)
• Opening New Doors (paulisakson.typepad.com)
• Innovate100.com - The Best Startups From Over The World (killerstartups.com)
• If advertising didn't exist would you feel the need to invent it? (fasterfuture.blogspot.com)

If advertising didn't exist would you feel the need to invent it?

I'll be in Madrid for the OMEXPO on Feb 24-25. I'll be presenting alongside Jamie Burke (CEO at 90:10) on the, obviously, non-controversial subject of: The Death of Advertising.

This is how our 45 minutes is being sold:

90:10's Jamie Burke and David Cushman confront you with the end of business as usual.

They'll examine how everything you thought you knew about traditional advertising will fail you in the rapidly emerging and increasingly dominant networked world.

They'll explain how the shift from a broadcast world to a network of peers disrupts content creation, distribution and user experience.

And they'll ask what lessons Spain's advertising industry can learn from the peer-powered disruption tearing the UK's media landscape apart.

If you landed in a world without advertising today, would you reinvent it?

And, of course, I'll be making the slides available via slideshare shortly after. Expect some conclusions involving platforms, naturally.

Jamie and I arrive around 1pm on the 24th and leave on the evening of the 25th. If you'd like to meet with us while we're there, please drop either of us a line: david AT ninety10group DOT com or Jamie AT ninety10group DOT com.