Emap: Strategic review? Against what world view?

Emap plc is undertaking a strategic review - which roughly translates as 'is up for sale at the right price'.
As a humble employee I'm told to 'carry on - business as usual'. And, to be honest, isn't any and everything up for sale, at the right price, at any time?
Experience of friends who have been through similar strategic reviews in other companies suggest one thing: This process won't be fast. So I'm not putting my seatbelt on just yet.
Latest rumour is this was all sparked by a specific £1.3bn offer for the B2B division.

As usual, when I'm close to a story that makes the mainstream media, I'm completely underwhelmed by the standard of 'professional' reporting. No wonder mainstream broadcast media is characterised as struggling! (and I write as a professionally trained journalist of some 20 years experience).
Take for example the Mail on Saturday's report on emap's Friday announcement. It said emap had done a u-turn only months after claiming the numbers didn't stack up for a sale or demerger. And our expert financial guide in the report thrilled us with the insight that the change in mind was as a result of the share price hitting £8.65.
But, as any semi-sentient would have been able to tell the writer, the share price rose to that level as a result of the announcement on Friday morning. Basic cause and effect. Basic point missed.
No wonder people now turn to each other to create trust. A handful of partially informed non-experts would have spotted that simple error. A co-created version of the story is already ahead on points!
And the moment a report makes a simple mistake like that one - that's the moment I lose faith. Why trust the hotch-potch of suggested buyers tagged on?
A digital communal version of that would have that simple notion revealed- and corrected in moments, faith restored - sensible discourse continued.
No surprise then that NowPublic has just secured another $10.6M of funding.

The Sunday's were little more enlightening (those I saw, anyway, please do share if you found someone who had a sensible view writing somewhere).
One argued that major emap shareholders were getting jittery over emap's lack of a decent digital strategy.
Without context there is no meaning - so to say emap lacks a decent digital strategy means little unless you're going to compare it with what (for example) other traditional mainstream media companies have done or have revealed they are doing.
Off the top of my head - emap has one - is investing heavily in one - and is growing its digital revenues. How does that compare with traditional media rivals? I'll leave that to the time-rich Sunday print journalists to consider.

A strategic review responds only to the stakeholder with the most political power in a system: The City.
The City is conservative in its thought. If it can be characterised in systems terms, it is a hard systems thinker.
To be an effective company in a time of change means operating at the creative edge of chaos. It means having a paradigm shift in world view. It means soft systems thinking.
None of these sit well with the view from the single most powerful stakeholder.
But if The City is genuinely interested in growth, as opposed to comfortable mediocrity, it has to change its world view.
The City wants to see us honing our scissor kick technique in order to keep raising the high jump bar. It's the only way it understands change.
We have to do a fosbury flop. It can't even guess at how that might work.

Make no mistake, the world is changed. Your world view must change with it. A number of key stakeholders will always have an important role in influencing how well any system adapts to that change. Their world view must change too.
It's up to us to make that happen.

Google moves to own the network

There have long been rumours that google wanted to move from providing the content to providing the network.
Rumours of them buying up large swathes of land, thousands of miles of cable and securing vast energy supplies provide the theory with its legs.
And last weekend it emerged the company will be among those bidding for spectrum in the US - with the potential of making it a hugely disruptive player in telecommunications.
With ads served against content (mobile adsense is now in beta) there's every possibility that serving their core business (adwords) is what google has in mind. Free calls and data anyone?
The emergence of Blyk's model is already demoing the model as an mvno.
What could google do with ownership of the network and potentially of device (the google phone is still a very hot tip)
The operators must be sweating.

Why Nokia bought a photo and video sharing site

The common sense view of Nokia is that it is a mobile phone manufacturer. Those who look a little closer note that is about as close to the truth as describing it as a rubber boot manufacturer (which it once was...).

The deal to buy Twango (click here for report) is extremely revealing. Nokia is clearly positioning itself as a media company - the definition of which stretches by the day.

The Twango deal (an image and video sharing site with fantastic mobile accessibility) makes obvious sense when you also consider that Nokia is the world's biggest manufacturer of cameras (yep, the ones integrated in your converged handset).

They also believe themselves to be manufacturers of computers (yep, once again, that converged device somewhere very close to you right now).

And the appetite to see themselves as a media company is clarified when you note that Gerard Wiener, is the company's vice president of multimedia mergers and acquisitions.

A Nokia phone user can snap photos or videos while at a sporting event and have those images integrated with their online photo collection at Twango's Web site. It works the other way too - so you can view images from your pc on yoru mobile (a la Orb).

And all deployed through your (Nokia) Widset for fast internet access perhaps? And with Nokia Adservice ads against it?

Make no mistake, Nokia is in the game.

The Church of Brands and the marketplace of the people

I'm indebted to an emap colleague for some sticky thinking. A metaphor he used while explaining information architecture to me has set me off on this (often meandering) journey. It will end at the wisest destination if you join me in its conversation...

As media brand owners, we have an overwhelming desire to build our information architecture in the style of churches: We want the congregation to look up to us. We design to impress, to leave the congregation looking up, to dominate the landscape, to bring a body of people together, line them up and preach at them. Ideally we'd prefer it if they only ever read one book - ours.

That's the deficit-thinking approach to the notion of brand as church. It would be wise to try the strength-based channel of thought at this point.
Churches are trusted, Churches have strong values, Churches build communities, Churches are led by people who care about their flocks, Churches help the most vulnerable, churches are a force for good, they speak out against the threat of evil. They offer moral guidance.

Perhaps these are the things (in their wider senses) media brands should consider if they wish to continue with the Brand as Church approach to information architecture.

I have to declare at this point that I believe the Church model was at its most effective in a world of controlled information. And that this applies to brands, too. And I believe that world of centralised control is over.

Think of the pre-printing-press world of information. Life before Gutenburg was life informed by the church. Alan Moore often refers to this (see Communities Dominate Brands)

The resonance with the control of information enabled by mass communication of the mass industrial world won't escape you.

Let's flip the thought channel again. Let's apply a little Common Sense Thinking. What do you tend to find next to any church? Think about your local one. Generally, marketplaces have grown up around them.

Apply a little insight to that. The marketplaces grew up around churches because church was once very important to the same people who go to the market. The group of people who went to church - whose lives were dominated by church and the information it disseminated - were the same people - the same size of popluation - as those who went to market.

This is no longer the case.

It's no longer the case in the real world of bricks and mortar shops and churches (think of the rise out of town retail that sucks the heart out of towns). If the groups were still one and the same it's fairly obvious that each Tesco Extra would come with a chapel.

Shops today get built where people go. Ancient marketplaces were located where people went - therefore, next to the church. Now the shop itself is the draw. Which came first?

Again, there are obvious parallels to be drawn with the digital world.

Time for some re-integrated thought (ie trying to bump ourselves out of the binary world of either/or).

Can a church be a marketplace? Can a marketplace be a church?

Can a media brand take the positive things that have made it successful and build on those to create a place people will want to be once more (with the market following)?

Or is the solution closer to taking a marketplace and infusing it with the best elements of the church of brands?

Dragging ourselves back into the re-integrated channel - must this be an either/or?

A marketplace was always somewhere where information was exchanged (distinct from a church, where information was broadcast), where people were entertained (churches once did that - and media brands would certainly contend they master this) and where people could both buy and sell. (Churches/Brands, well they might set up a stall at the back to sell you postcards and tea-towels... but...)

Apologies - I've now introduced quite a powerful image with sticky potential. Media Brands sell tea-towels and trinkets while the market gets on with the business of business. And taking the image still further - we used to be able to control the market - we sold the pitches and charged rent.

The world that's emerging is one in which the traders set up where they wish and don't need us to bring them trade.

It would be easy to now equate the idea of the Church of Brand with the sale of a few bits and pieces to people who have more interest in the history of the building than participating in its community.

Where does that take us?

To switch thought channels once more... how do the stakeholders feel about this. Does the person rooting through the history books and picking out postcards want anything more than this distance relationship with the Church? Are they hoping to connect with something warmer when they walk through the door?

How does the priest feel? Is he desperate for them to stay long enough to listen? Is he ready to walk over and start a conversation? Is he ready to change what he does in response?

What does the parochial church council feel. They are working like mad to keep the church in good order, having to do more and more distasteful commercial things to keep a roof over the vicar's head... Are they happy about this - are they fearful for the future? Do they blame the vicar for poor sermons - or the out of town store for dragging the heart out of the town?

What is god's point of view on this? (apologies, this isn't meant to offend anyone. In this case perhaps God equates to the shared passion that the community gathers around - we are personalising (or deifying!) an idea).
Does he like a huge but empty house? Is he saddened by the failure of the congregation to congregate in the church. Or impressed that they still have any faith left in the circumstances? What do you feel his preferred solution may be?

Does he care how he gathers believers together? Would he prefer a nice big community or a nice big (usually empty) building?

Whichever results in more believers?

Bring this back to the real world of business (to flip channels to common sense thinking once more): Which ever results in greatest profits.

We live in a post Gutenburg world. The blog is one example - anyone can publish. The Church of Brands is no longer in charge of the disemmination of information.

There is less reliance on 'The Word' - more faith in each other. The trends towards co-creation of content and the inherent disruption of the value of mass produced, centrally controlled content that brings, are a solid example of how the relationship between the Church of Brands and the marketplace of people is changing.

The marketplace of the future will be at its strongest where the principles of peer-to-peer transacting and co-created products/services/content are easy to produce, easy to share (in).

If the Church of Brands understand this and become part of it, they can be part of their communities, their communities part of them.

But they must understand that the new marketplace communities do not want to be told what to do, or where to do it. They will appreciate it if you join with them in shaping how best to do, where best to place. The Church of Brands has as much right to be trusted as any other member of the community - but no more.

That doesn't mean it can't earn more trust by doing the things a Church is good at (see list earlier) which may give it a powerful position of influence in the community. But that influence must be earned as a respected, high-reputation member of the community - not demanded, by virtue of the fact that we're the one in the pulpit.

Where does this metaphor describe for you? What's your view? What other options emerge for you? How might the possible outcomes make the stakeholders feel?

Join the conversation. It is far from over.

• Communities Dominate Brands on the 'Church of Brands and the marketplace of the people'
  

I blog, therefore, I am! Give us humans a break!

Apologies for the delay... Google's (blogger's) spam-prevention robots decided to lock my posts until I'd proved I'm a human being.

Apparently the process of proving this, involves a human being taking a look at my blog and making a judgement on whether or not I'm one, too.

Therefore, if you ever get to read this post you should regard it as compelling evidence that I am in fact human.

I blog, therefore I am. What would Descartes make of this, I wonder?

Hurray for humans. A computer programme couldn't possibly deal with this as well... could it?

The voice of Blogger tells me:

"Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What is a spam blog?) Since you are an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy and we sincerely apologise for this false positive.

"We received your unlock request on 20 July 2007. On behalf of the robots, we apologise for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.

Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs."

That's the message I'd clicked to read. Blogger appears to me to be saying that the simple act of responding to the message, that I've been locked out, is a pretty good indication that I am indeed human.

So how about giving us humans a break, Blogger? How about releasing my posts from draft purgatory the moment I clicked to respond.

And if you wanted to double check - how about auto-generating a message to your bank of humans that maybe they should come by and check my blog just in case ( the less likely scenario, by all accounts) my blog is actually spam-tastic.

Google/Blogger, please, repeat after me: "humans are your friends... spam blogs are not".

Now start that customer service excercise again. Thanks.