Less illusion - more reality

With the 10th anniversary of The Cluetrain, is it time to stop talking about marketing?

I mean, is it time to stop talking about marketing as a separate function or discipline?

I worry because thinking of it in this way makes 'it' difficult to be embedded in the processes that count.

You know, the processes that squeeze out turds long suffering marketers have to polish. (image courtesy)

I often tell orgs that every single person inside the org is responsible for customer service. It's not the job of the often lowly-paid to read out scripts by the often highly-paid. It's the responsibility of everyone who cares.

Of course that requires something to care about in the first place. And if you have that belief, your actions will attract people who care to join you in the first place.

Oh - and those outside the company too. (Gary Vaynerchuck, Mark Earls, Hugh McLeod can fill in the gaps for you on this)

Anyone who 'does' customer service (read: has conversations with customers) is in marketing as far as I'm concerned.

What is marketing for exactly? At its guts it is to connect people with what they need.

There are a heap of processes, sub disciplines, new and digitized, that we have come to believe have a part to play in that.

But by sticking a label on them and putting them in a box, have we started thinking of marketing as somehow distinct from design and production? Even, and way too often, as distinct from R and D/new product development?

So let's imagine a world in which no one has coined the term 'marketing'.

And into this world we parachute every marketer with their skills intact (but unlabelled)

Given their knowledge of the power of the network (grant me this):
What will they do? Who will they help? What will they aim to achieve?

How will they define and describe the part they play in changing the world?

Less illusion: more reality.

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The Music (insert Industry here) Manifesto

Manifestos rock!
The Cluetrain Manifesto, the social customer manifesto, the call centre customer manifesto.

Now we find the Music Industry Manifesto.

Music to my ears. I rarely repeat in full, but in this case...

The Manifesto

1. Music will always continue, but the parasitical 20th Century music industry is dead.

2. Music does not rely on technology or distribution. It simply requires people. It did not begin with vinyl, the CD, the electric guitar or the synthesizer.

3. If piracy is able to damage your ivory castles, you should seek to understand it and learn from it. Piracy is the most effective distribution.

4. You will never win the war on privacy, because the pirates have a belief, and you are protecting a business.

5. People will only pay for what they want to pay for. Get used to it.

6. Artists and fanatics run the show - if you are in neither camp you’re fucked.

7. DRM’s only function is to limit the spread of music and to irritate the very people you should be pleasing - your audience.

8. I’ve paid for the tape, the vinyl, the CD and the MP3 - if I ever pay again, I’ll pay for the rights to the content in whatever format is appropriate for the rest of my lifetime, not for something limited to one format.

9. Let’s face it..artists can make more money if middle-men are not involved

10. Look - we all know you’re pissed about you’re expense bill no longer being approved but please stop taking it out on the rest of us

11. The people of the world want to share what they love. If you stand in the way there is only one outcome. Rebellion

12. People embrace what they create. We all want to take part. It’s no longer your industry, its ours. Sure that hurts…

13. Just become a concert promoter. Live music will never end. Rip-off, insular and selfish business models already have. Sorry

14. People will pay for what they want to. If you create something of value to people, people will pay for it

15. People will not longer automatically pay for something that YOU think is valuable

16. Resistance is futile. However powerful your connections are, the people of the world will find a way around it

17. Every time you sue, you nail an even heavier nail in your OWN coffin. Think about it…

18. The people of the world love music as much as they always have - not less - its just they have seen behind the curtain now

19. Artists love fans and will get paid by them for products and services the fans adore. Get out the way and let it happen

20. Copyright is a byproduct of the business model for content creation and distribution. It’s not the reason for content creation

21. The case studies of artists making more money from not using your regime will never stop - only increase. Listen up

22. It makes no difference how connected you are to the government. Artists and fans out-number you and always will

23. All the time you spend wining about protecting music you could spend working out ways to help the new world mature

24. If you really wanna get rich, concentrate on facilitating fanatical advocacy. There is no ceiling of value to that

25. People can only truly be of financial benefit to you if they are free. Confined humans have no long-term monetary benefit

It is very cluetrain - and all the better for that.

I'm fond of saying that where-ever the network touches it disrupts (that's central to my book The Power of the Network). Music is just one of the places it has touched and is wreaking havoc.

Of course, you can remove the music industry references in The Music Industry Manifesto and insert Industry X, or any-form-of-centralised-organisation-from-education-to-government Y instead.

The same rules of disruption will apply. The same human-centric models will emerge to dominate.

Which remains the point of the Cluetrain 10 years on.

If you still haven't read it, get a clue.

Bonus question: Who is this masked manifesto writer? I have my suspicions, But there's no contacts or name attached. We think we should be told. If you're into hiding lights under bushels, by all means email me. But if I were you I'd be shouting it loud and proud.

In digital space, everyone can hear you scream

When the transaction cost of group activity falls through the floor, economic behaviour must change.

That's my paraphrasing of Clay Shirky's description of the critical disruption the power of the network is causing (in his book Here Comes Everybody).

Clay has identified essentially the same learning that Dave Weinberger brings us in Everything Is Miscellaneous, or indeed that the Cluetrain Manifesto showed (in the idea that in the digital space the gap between humans is zero).

In the digital space everyone can hear you scream.

And it all comes back to Reed's Law (Group Forming Network Theory).

Value gets created by fuzzy-edged communities of purpose. The thing that allows those communities of purpose to gather, evolve, talk, cooperate and act is the medium of zeroes and ones - the digital space.

Digital IS different from the physical realm because it has the potential for us to ALL to be permanently hotdesking, globally.

Unlike the physical world it is possible for ALL the potential of Reed's Law to be fulfilled in a global digital medium.

Where that potential isn't currently fulfilled it is because we are not able to find absolutely every node on the network with whom we could, or should, connect for any given purpose.

There must be huge value in creating the optimum fitness landscape for the individuals who form groups of purpose to find one another. The more people of shared passion and purpose can find one another in real time, the more value will get created.

Until we as individuals become our own platforms, for want of a better word (ie until we as individuals are each able to connect with networks of trust without the need for mediation of any kind) there remains a place for the mediators of this process, potentially the last generation of mediator.

For media as platforms.

Doc Searls explaining the Cluetrain Manifesto 10 years on

I've added this to my vodpod (see left col) but in case you miss it there, here's your chance to see Doc Searls talk about the Cluetrain Manifesto 10 years on. Gotta get a clue!

Who wants to sell me a Toyota Yaris? (Part II)

My little experiment in VRM has become a little more pressing. Just to recap:

"I'm in the UK.
"I want a low mileage Toyota Yaris in either T3 or TR spec, registered late 2006 onwards (new shape one). Must have aircon of some form. Ideally 1.3 petrol but will consider 1.0. Probably go for the five door. My wife prefers silver (and it will be her car). Ex-demo would be ideal. Will consider new if you can do the kind of deal that makes me accept the ludicrous VAT costs involved.
"Don't need to do part-ex."

It's more pressing because the car it's replacing is now sold.

So it's just as well this blog (and my tweets) is not the only place sharing this story.
Chris Carfi at the Social Customer Manifesto has picked it up and done a great job on it, and that in turn has been picked up by Topix

By the way, the man whose garage has serviced it and carried out the MoTs for the past five years has bought it for his partner. That speaks volumes for his faith in his own work, don't you think. So here's the recommendation for you: Serviceman in Huntingdon, Cambs.

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Join the Conversation: Speaking as I find

I'm one of a number of bloggers Joseph Jaffe has sent his latest book, Join The Conversation, for review purposes. I've posted about the wisdom of this strategy previously, here. And I enjoy Jaffe's blog enormously.

I've just got back from hols - and I've read no-one else's review so far (which I feared could cloud or sway my own judgement) so this is entirely and deliberately my own response.

Let's start with the basics. Jaffe obviously thinks deeply about the notion of human voice and its multiplied effect when the power of the network is applied. And on the vast majority of themes, on the whole big picture thing, Jaffe and I will agree whole-heartedly (after all the tagline 'Join the Conversation' has always been applied to my blog from the off!). He is one of us, he is riding the Cluetrain, he understands the power of the network etc etc.

So, all that said, it's the details that I might get picky about. And as a former sub-editor, even poor use of metaphor or lazy english ("pretty unique", for example) can set my pen a-twitching.
As a European reader, the many illustrative examples of good and bad practice from US mainstream media are often lost on me. That can grate a little. I read my copy on a beach in St Lucia - so checking the references on the web as I went along was out of the question.

But these are just details.

Provocative or patronising?
Jaffe seems deliberately provocative at times - and this can result in a patronising tone... (depending, naturally, on your point of view). It was a tone that often got me riled.
For example on page 172 he refers to the Worst Chase Scenario in which a union advertised in a New York paper asking for consumers' worst experiences at a particular bank. Jaffe writes that he was disappointed that it wasn't the bank itself asking the question (me too!). And he says:
"I don't expect you to understand this idea - nor do I expect any company to implement this form of corporate nakedness anytime soon."
My response is that the argument that finding out the worst people think of you, engaging in conversation about it and trying to fix it is the bleeding obvious to anyone who has read the Cluetrain Manifesto, Communities Dominate Brands, Wikinomics et al.
On page 216 he writes "I introduced the concept that you are the community you keep." I'm sure many of us have toyed with similar notions ( I know I have - I am part of a community therefore I am). Jaffe does a lot of this "I did this", "I introduced that". And that's bound to grate with less-than-pushy Brits.

I'll be honest. I haven't read a book that wound me up more regularly in a long time.

But perhaps this was the intention? Perhaps the tone will aid the conversation - a strong point of view will always inspire a hotter conversation, and isn't that Jaffe's whole point? So I'll grant him that. As a strategy for inspiring conversation, it is brilliant.

And when I analyse the regularity with which I get snarky about his writing there's more criticism scrawled over the pages in the first half of the book and more whoops of praise and shared view towards the end. He's building a case, winding you up and drawing you in, ready to end up on a high of mutual agreement and goading to action.

But I do have some substantive criticisms.

Conversation as science: The risk of codifying art.
Jaffe refers, quite correctly in my view, to conversation being an art (as in not a science). Yet he deploys elaborate and complex codifications of 'how to do' conversation in a measurable, transferrable way. I was reading The Origin of Wealth alongside Join The Conversation which served as an interesting mash-up in its own right. TOoW refers to art as knowledge which cannot be captured (in a schema) in any way.
Jaffe is trying to create some rules which anyone can apply - a schema if you like - and he's trying to find new measures of success. And our traditional company structures and budgets require these so I'll say a big thank you for trying but reserve judgement on their usefulness. Applying the wrong scientific thinking to a complex adaptive system can often lead us to incorrect and damaging conclusions (and I will recommend The Origin of Wealth to anyone who wants to explore that argument a little more thoroughly, where it is applied to classical economics).

On the money... almost
Some of Jaffe's examples are just shy of the mark. He wonders why MasterCard doesn't create a 'museum' (his word) for all the MasterCard "Priceless" spoof ads which circulate free and unbounded around the web. I fear a corporation doing that would be in danger of mummifying the idea. There's something of taxidermy about it. I guess my objection is summed up in this post which suggests brands should sit down around other people's campfires, rather than march in and light one in your backyard.

Another belittles Pontiac's suggestion that consumers "Don't take our word for it. Google "Pontiac" and discover for yourself."

Jaffe points out that those consumers who followed the instruction were confronted with ads for unrelated restaurants and rivals, rather than the positive PR the brand may have anticipated. He suggests that with a little more precision (read control) Pontiac could have been so much smarter.

Patronising? Perhaps Pontiac trusted consumers to be wise enough to know how google works and perhaps Pontiac also feared trying to control the search terms used would be against the spirit of the idea.

Isn't Pontiac saying, 'look we know loads of stuff is written about us. We figure we're good enough for there to be more positives than negatives - go take a look for yourself and use whatever terms you like.' ?

Am I crediting Pontiac with too much wisdom - or is Jaffe being too hard on them? Maybe we're both half right?

It's not just about selling stuff
My final critique is that despite an uplifting and over-arching final message "everything is at stake and everything is on the table" Jaffe consistently fixates on selling stuff to people.
This is quite a personal criticism. Jaffe's remit is of course to serve the world of marketing and to persuade traditional marketers of the error of their ways. And part of that is persuading them that life will be better for them should they see the light. And he achieves this in spades.
There is much value in this in the world as it is and as it may be for a couple of years more.
But for me the impact of the network, its power to disrupt what ever it touches, suggests that the message of engagement goes beyond joining 'consumers' (Jaffe's very deliberate term) in the co-creation of content/advertising, or even brand equity. It means that a new community-powered ecology emerges in which converged individuals are doing the co-creation of the very products and services. This very act is all the marketing a product ever needs. That which we create, we embrace... (Alan Moore, et al). I make this argument in rather more detail here.

In summary? (whaddya mean you stopped reading ages ago...)
Join The Conversation is a deliberately provocative, example-rich examination of the changing landscape of marketing being wrought by the high richter earthquakes of community dominance. It serves as a fine primer for marketing and media professionals and makes a good fist of offering some 'How To' advice on actually joining the conversation.
Those who've read The Cluetrain Manifesto and/or Communities Dominate Brands won't find too many new truths. But Jaffe's central themes are clearly presented and make a compelling case for change.

The blog of the book is available here.

I'm speaking at The Digital Marketing Briefing in London on March 18. Joseph is doing the keynote so I'm hoping he and I can continue the conversation his book has started and this review has contributed to, there.

You are very welcome to join in right now.

UPDATE; I note some bloggers are offering up their copy to the next blogger to share in the new marketing experiment. I've passed mine on to a colleague who writes a blog - but I haven't applied the Jaffe 'Thou Shalt Review' rule. I'll let you know should it inspire her enough to comment on it...

What next for advertising and marketing?

The following is an excerpt from a white paper. I thought I'd share this summing-up to see what you think and perhaps entice you to read the full version (Marketing and Advertising Models for a Networked World, see left-hand navigation).

All contributions to the conversation actively encouraged.

Understanding how the world has changed and looks set to continue to change – how we are rejecting interruption and embracing participation, how we are moving away from control from the centre to the dominance of communities, what should we do?

I see three immediate routes and believe each is worth pursuing. Each represents a significant shift from traditional, interruptive advertising. Each represents something other than business as usual.

1. Widget Marketing: Make use of the current advertising space and populate it with ads which follow the best practice of virals and widgets.
2. Engagement Marketing: Involve communities in the building of the brands they use – connect them to your authentic voice.
3. No Marketing: Instead, apply the new mode of production the web enables. Communities as producers of that which they desire. No ‘marketing’ required.

Widget Marketing:

Widget Marketing is the easiest to achieve right now.
It fits with the how advertising is currently done – creatives can be done, space booked and paid for.
But we will need new measures of success – not necessarily how many times your ad is seen, or how many clicks it generates (though these will still be important). A further key measure will be engagement – how many people use the tool you provide and to what effect, how many people play with it, shape it as their own, and as a consequence forward it, or display it on their own webspace? While the url remains a significant element of web architecture, route 1 will retain strong economic value.

What should we do?
Create widgets instead of standard display adverts – no matter how in-context and related you can make them. (I appreciate you’ll need a period of both, I’m not suggesting you ditch all that in-context stuff over night).

These widgets must speak in the authentic voice of the people who make the products you are selling. That means involve those people in the ‘creative’. Don’t interrupt the conversation with your own spin. They make the pots, let them sell them.

Each widget should allow a personal outcome. That is, offer tools so the user can personalise, add to, subvert, so that it becomes something they actively want to pass on.
Example: The Pampers campaign in the US at the end of 07.

Because your ad is a widget, the user can place it where-ever they wish – on their own profile page on social networks, for example. In doing this they offer their own endorsement and share it with their network of trust – the people they connect with who share their passions and interests.

It is trust which makes recommended-by-a-friend work – not simply discovery (and it is perhaps the trust element that was missing in the friendspam of facebook’s initial poke at SocialAds).

Engagement Marketing:

This can be harder. It’s certainly harder than selling or creating for display space.

First, sort your head.
Start listening. Let the community take control.
Er, and that’s it really. Everything flows from this change in mindset.

Your brand is not your own. It is ours.

Cornflakes are a breakfast cereal not because that’s what Dr Kellogg ‘made’. Kellogg was in fact out to create a food which would suppress your sex drive.
That’s not what the community of users have decided it is!
Lucky for Kelloggs that they chose to allow that development of the brand!

Engagement marketers work on the assumption that they are dealing with converged individuals – people who are rather more than simple passive consumers – of product or message.

An engagement marketing approach would open up the creation of our widget marketing to the community in the first place. A competition with rewards for the person who makes the most-engaged-with widget promoting a brand, for example.

Further, an engagement marketer would be sitting down around the campfire with the community to help decide whether a widget competition was the right thing in the first place.

Simple rules:
1. Put the community first
2. Listen
3. Change

No Marketing:

In this model there is no ‘advertising’ or ‘marketing’ as we have understood it during the mass industrial interruption.
It has nothing to do with supply chains, value chains, or chains of any kind. It is about webs – of supply and value.
It takes advantage of the match between the way in which both the economy and the web work to create extraordinary efficiencies and ultimately greater value.
To take advantage you must create platforms which bring together co-creating communities who share a purpose and offer them the tools of collaboration.

We're getting better and better (and will get better still) at delivering the right commercial messages at the right time and to the right people, by focusing on communities and making use of social data analytics. And perfecting this has big wins for ad agencies, marketeers, commercial enterprizes and media... and this is a fantastic leap forward compared to the interruptive advertising that has gone before.

But the ultimate wins are about people taking control of the creation of the product they want to own.

If a community is involved in the co-creation of the products and services it has decided it needs to call into existence, this has two key impacts.

1. It has the potential to be a perfect fit. The people who’ve been involved in the co-creation of the product or service that results will love it and 'buy' it (that which we create we embrace, as Alan Moore likes to say). They will also rave about it – recommending it to other like-minded people, attracting more with the same passion/purpose to join their niche global community of collaborators.
2. Doesn’t co-creation of this kind imply a perfect fit between supply and demand? What's the need for traditional ads. The community does its own marketing - and it's powerfully peer-to-peer and with all the ramped-up trust that implies.

What is required to make this function?
1. Communities (what makes great communities?).
2. Tools which allow communities to self-form into groups of their choosing around purposes of their selection.
3. Tools which allow them to share and collaborate to produce.

White paper now available here.

For thems that shall not read: Cluetrain: The Powerpoint

You may not have time to read a whole book. You do have time to click through this powerpoint. Go on. You'll thank me for it.

| View | Upload your own

Digital Media predictions for 2008

2008 will be the year the perfect (fire) storm starts doing some real damage.

It’ll be the year in which traditional companies finally react to the alarm bells they’ve heard ringing since the turn of the century – and start shuffling towards the fire exits.

Trouble is, the flames are already licking around their heels.

They’ve heard the consultants, they’ve read the books. Even McKinsey looks like it’s finally read Wikinomics (if not the Cluetrain Manifesto and Communities Dominate Brands).

So I think the biggest economic shift we’ll see in 2008 is the rapid acceleration of old money being invested in the networked world. And they are going to need guidance to get it right. Practical, how-to stuff. (Maybe they should read this before they reach for their wallets).

So in 2008 it will no longer be about the What, it’ll be about the How.

But before we get into that, a quick review of my predictions for 2007 – so you get some idea of how large a pinch of salt you'll need to take the following with.

Those 2007 predictions in full (my comments on them in italics)

1) Access to the internet via mobile will surpass 40% of all internet use (globally).
Yes. 1-for-1. It was 25% in 2006. Now it's up to ??% (Morgan Stanley are predicting that this year 3G users will overtake fixed broadband subscriber numbers). The google-driven Android alliance is going to push this still harder. Half the world now has a mobile phone – and that’s not something you can say of the PC. The dominance of this new pervasive computing will shift how we think about everything.

2) A UK national newspaper will close its print operation. And a series of one-time print only magazine brands will become digital only (pick a number between 25 and 100).
No. Can’t give you chapter and verse on this. It hasn’t happened in my back yard. It still feels like it might.

3) Broadcast TV on your mobile will become commonplace. Sky will offer it as a bolt-on upgrade to your home services.
Yes. Even down to the Sky offer


4) Microsoft/Google/Yahoo (one or all) will launch a mobile phone.
Yes-but-no-but-yes (Android is the closest we’ve got to this)


5) All mobile operators in the UK will follow 3 and offer fixed price mobile internet access.
Yes. Even 02 is offering this in packages for the I-Phone now


6) A mobile operator will seek the edge by launching a fixed price for all services (ie £40 a month for all-you-can-eat internet, voice, text, mms...TV(?)
Not quite. Virgin is closest with a broadband, TV home phone and mobile package for (you guessed it) £40 a month. If only they’d thrown in all mobile data.

7) More than 10% of internet users will blog.
Almost. It’s actually reached 8%.., come on world… you’re lagging!


8) A citizen-journalism TV channel made up entirely of video shot on and uploaded from mobile phones will launch.
Yes. Flashbox TV did exactly this.

9) TV on demand will revolutionise how you consume TV and send advertisers into a blind panic.
Yes (for me it has!) I think this is widely recognized now, and my viewing has changed. Has yours?


10) A slow-burn campaign for users to claim back their digital identities will turn to a riot of noise by the end of the year...
Evidence so far: The response to Facebook Beacon, the UK Government losing ‘our data’, increasing influence on services which only use your data while you are using them.

All in all, not too bad I reckon. How rose-tinted are my spectacles? Post your comments n the usual way.

So given my track record so far – take the following with a pinch, dose or truck load of salt depending on your PoV! I’ll try to offer a concrete-ish example in each case so we can say whether they did or didn’t happen when it comes time to reviewing them at the end of next year!

10 Digital Media predictions for 2008

1) Aggregation will be the key buzz word in media. The BBC’s beta homepage let’s you take control of how you view their content. By the end of the year they’ll ‘get’ that you can’t maintain a reputation as a ‘destination’ in the networked world unless your node is strengthened by its connections to others.
Example: Expect a BBC-curated collection of externally created (including, UGC) feeds and widgets. And this will prove the model – allied to a wide range of social, community-driven functionality, that emerges from established media brands.

2) The new advertising: This is the year in which engagement marketing will finally start taking significant chunks of spend. Mobile is already leading the way with a successful start for Blyk.
Example: Expect forward-thinking traditional companies to set up units to specifically make money with EM. Expect new companies to set up to do this alone. Crash course in EM here. People might even start understanding how viral works

3) Talking of which…Widgets. Widgets play to both the aggregation trend AND the engagement marketing trend. Widgets just had their first conference (Widgety Goodness). Widgets rule Facebook. Widgets carry the promise of widgetising ourselves! Imagine a widget which carries your personal ID – your data - which you can plug into a site as and when you wish – and take with you when you leave. You want your data back? You got it!
Example: Expect to see the likes of google, nokia, Microsoft acquiring widget makers and the engagement thinkers behind them. The digitization of the web disaggregates discreet pieces of information. RSS allows the user to re-aggregate. Widgets lower the technical barrier so everyone can be their own aggregator. And in that context, it’s going to accelerate…

4)A shift in thinking away from the url as destination and towards search as navigation.
Example: Ads in other media will stop carrying urls – more will refer to places to look for services (eg use Macdonalds calorie counter on Facebook Mobile....

5) And talking of Facebook… I think it’ll emerge that Microsoft’s dabble with Facebook is less about cracking digital advertising – more about the future of the desktop – the future of computing itself.
Example: I dunno – Microsoft’s replacement for vista comes across like a newsfeed?!?

6) Tools will emerge to allow online videos to end their TV envy.
Example: Tools which allow everyone to mash up video, add comments into/over the video stream, save and share their own versions... all with technical barriers low enough to be used by anyone (just like commenting on a blog!). These will be available in/on engagement marketing widgets, viral efforts and YouTube itself. And finally 'rich' media will no longer be poor.

7) Games consoles and game user interfaces will have increasing influence on the UI of both hardware and web experiences. This will feed into the design of services for mobile and web.
Example: Expect the fall of the traditional mobile phone nine-number interface, and a pc without a qwerty keyboard.

8) Celebrity will take a dip. Once we talked to neighbours about neighbours. Our friends were the gossip, our friends were the news. Then community took a kicking from the interruption of mass production and command and control economies. Our fascination with celebrity filled the friendship gap, they became our make believe friends. But now we have tools (such as the facebook newsfeed) which make our friends our news once more.
Example: Celebrity-obsessed media is likely to suffer. Viewing figs for I’m a Celebrity start to fall, less Celebrity Dog Walking type shows being made.

9) On the threat-to-newspapers theme, I think the Sun will go free – on the streets of London, at least.

10) Peer-to-peer collaboration will continue its disruptive march. This will go in any and all directions. So let’s pick one to expect to happen by the close of 2008.
Example: OK, someone will launch a peer-to-peer bank in the western world.
UPDATED DEC 20... the wisdom of the crowds (see comments) tells me I was really good at predicting the past on this one! eg http://www.virginmoneyus.com. Have offered a replacement in the comments you'll find below.

And one for fun… Amazon will regret its Kindle, e-book because it’ll get hacked and that'll make book content as free and accessible as music has become. Scarey for Amazon.
Then again, perhaps its closed nature will make more of us realise the tactile value of a real book – which any of us can pass to any of us – or sell to any of us.

So that’s my gaze into the future. What’s yours?

Go on then - delete this!

I've just had a post deleted from a graduate job site's forum. It was a post which offered undergrads or new grads - or you, if you like - a bit of work experience with a media company (emap's specialist media business, based in Peterborough, Cambs, because that's where I work).

I thought it might be the kind of thing that was useful for people trying to work out what they want to do in the world of work. And, of course, the learning experience can and should be a two-way thing.

My post (and at least they emailed me to explain) was being removed because: "...The Forum is a place for discussion and advice - it's not a place to advertise positions I'm afraid. This is a rule we employ across the board. That is why we have a proper, regulated jobs board on the site.

"Unfortunately, we are going to delete your post from the Forum for the above reason. If you are interested in officially advertising your positions with us then please do get back in touch with me and I'll pass your details along to the sales team, who can help you out. Media positions and work experience are hard to come by and I know that our huge user base would love to see you advertising your positions with us in the proper fashion."

Er, we haven't got a position to advertise - and aren't advertising it. I'm offering an open door to someone wanting to learn a little about life in media. Isn't that advice/information that might be of some use to the people the forum is meant to be for - we could discuss it if you like?

The moment you start deleting from forums (unless there's something really offensive going on - and then I'm right there with you) you are defining the forum as yours, rather than ours. Communities don't like that. The last post before mine on the forum in question was in October...

You can't control the conversation. It'll go on with or without your involvement. It'll go on elsewhere.

I haven't named them because I'm choosing to be kind today. I can't promise I'll always be this nice.

Is it just me - or is there a certain irony in the sign-off line of the email signature for the company in question:

"Helping people... make more informed and successful decisions about their future"

Where were the brackets saying (provided there's a buck in it for us)?

So, if you'd like to have some work experience somewhere, here's a tip. Contact someone who works for the company you're interested in - perhaps through a blog one of them is writing. There's a fair chance you'll get in touch with a human being and one who'll be chuffed you're interested in them.

Start with me if you like: david(dot)cushman(at)emap(dot)com

Go on - delete that.

My Vodpod, clues, and the power of the blogosphere

I was blown away this morning to find an email in my inbox from the CEO of VodPod, Mark Hall.
It was as a result of one line I wrote on this blog yesterday, a throw-away mention that I'd like to have added a particular video to My Vodpod (which you'll find in the left column of this blog) but that it wasn't working at the time.

Pre-Cluetrain companies might have set the bots looking for references to themselves and then sent out automated 'please accept our profound apologies for this inconvenience' emails to all and sundry. You know the sort. You get them from google from time to time.

Mark did rather better. Hope he won't mind me quoting from his email - I'm guessing he gets the open-silo'd approach to markets as conversations, since he uses such a human voice.

"Hi David-

I'm at Vodpod, and saw your note on your blog about Vodpod hanging. Apologies for that, we had some problems with the service overnight (our time).

"We launched a year ago today, so typical we'd encounter some gremlins on that day, in the middle of the night of course.

"Seeing your post led me to your blog... I'm going to be in London next week... and wanted to suggest getting a coffee if you happen to be in the city during that time.

"I'll also be over at LeWeb on Tuesday and Wednesday next week if you happen to be there. Would love to talk to you more about Vodpod, and what we're doing generally."

"Also: we just released some nifty new blog widgets, details here.

"Again, apologies for the problems last night.

"Cheers,
Mark".

And I'm impressed. I feel even better about Vodpod than I did before. I'm talking about it some more (hello? THIS is marketing). I'm even happy to hear about some new widgets Mark tags on to the conversation (some more marketing - which I'm happy to be complicit in!)

What a great illustration of the power of the blogosphere and proof of the idea of marketplace as conversation.

For those of you thinking this is all very well but how could we possibly ever deal with every customer this way? Imagine the value of this one conversation between Mark and I - now that it's being shared.

Yes Mark - I'd be delighted to drink coffee with you. I'll be contacting you right away!

Established media will have last laugh in social networks

There remains a reliance on clicks on ads on the web. It's the core revenue stream for most building digital enterprizes. Even social networks.

And yet, as Dana Boyd points out, they only engage a tiny percentage of the people/audiences/communities in question.

Some highlights from her post (which references Dave Morgan's blog post about AOL's survey):

"Ninety-nine percent of Web users do not click on ads on a monthly basis. Of the 1% that do, most only click once a month. Less than two tenths of one percent click more often. That tiny percentage makes up the vast majority of banner ad clicks."

"Who are these “heavy clickers”? ...they look at sweepstakes far more than any other kind of content. Yes, these are the same people that tend to open direct mail and love to talk to telemarketers."

You could conclude that banner ads aren't reaching anyone new. The same old people are just being reached through mutliple channels. And they aren't any more likely to buy as a result.

Whatever the case, it's pretty clear we need something better.

While there is an increasing understanding that community, not content, is king, this understanding clearly hasn't reached as far as what we do about advertising.

For example, the exponential growth of social media is often judged successful because it means loads of people (users/eyeballs et al) are being dragged together in a huge fishing net of their own making. And there they are expected to flap helplessly, mouthing breathlessly, while the factory ship slaps banner ads all over them.

This mentality comes from the Property Developer approach to site building. If you're building it with a view to selling it on, all you are likely to consider is catching those fish and getting them to market before they go rotten.

Even the mighty facebook has suffered from this. The site's lean towards opt-in as default (which has driven its viral growth and that of its apps) came unstuck when it was applied to their Beacon advertising model (where opt-out as default would appear to have been the preferred option for freedom loving fish). Watch video below for how the privacy rules have changed in response.



And so, the idea that capturing the fish in your net (to sell to the next guy) is your prime function is seriously restricting the value creating capabilities of social networks as we have experienced them. It is seriously restricting the amount of thought being given to this.

If you build your social functions with a view to staying with that community for the long run the question of what replaces banner ads (and indeed, what replaces advertising) becomes much more important to you. The rest (the gathering of a huge audience to banner-ad at) is just smoke and mirrors.

So it is left to those of us who have long-established relationships with communities - which we wish to continue - to really activate the power of the network, to understand and implement the new ways in which value can be created - to forge the new business ecology.

It matters more to us. We aren't the ones selling our communities.

Established media is therefore very well positioned to end this story laughing loudest.

Will it be engagement marketing, will it be marketplaces as conversations, will it be the co-creation of products and services, does all this amount to the same and still require a lifeboat of banner ads?

Probably. What is certain is that it will be different from business as usual.

Doc Searls lends a hand to the Call Centre Customer Manifesto

I was thrilled to receive a message from Doc Searls over the weekend letting me know that he was posting a link back (from his blog to FasterFuture in relation to the Call Centre Customer Manifesto).
Doc is a legend (in fact, I describe him as such in my list of recommended blogs). He is co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto (which you'll also find in the recommended list).
I'm hoping for a spike in sign ups. Doc's blog is, after all in the top 5000 rated by technorati
Coming on the back of support from Communities Dominate Brands and the Social Customer Manifesto, it's turning into a veritable who's who.
Thanks all. Keep on passing it on!

SecondLife: Welcome to reality.

Fabulous post by Joseph Jaffe about how brands should set up in SecondLife as a fast track to discovering how bad they are at relationships. Unmissable!
Resonance with Starting a Fire On the Village Green