Matter/Anti-Matter

(Credit: Victors & Spoils)

It's always good to be the first, and while crowdsourcing, the trend, may have jumped the shark, a fully crowdsourced creative agency is a bold creative experiment and still news. Two Crispin Porter + Bogusky alums, John Winsor and Evan Fry, together with Claudia Batten, the founder of Microsoft-acquired video game advertising shop Massive, have launched Victors & Spoils (V&S), "the world's first creative agency built on crowdsourcing principle."

V&S says it will "provide businesses with a better way to solve their marketing, advertising and product-design problems by engaging the world's most talented creatives." The press release promises that "perceived crowdsourcing flaws will be addressed through world-class creative direction delivered through the use of the reputation-ranked Victors & Spoils crowd" but stays mum on how exactly the crowdsourced creative department will operate.

In any event, V & S is eating its own dog food. The first line you notice on its web site (after the humble "Welcome To Victors & Spoils. Let's Change An Industry") is "Why does this site look so plain, Jane?" and the answer is: because the site design, the look and feel, and even the logo are being crowdsourced.

Whether crowdsoucing yields better creative results, who knows? It certainly is a differentiator. V&S COO Claudia Batten twittered that she got calls from five Fortune 200 CMOs in the first five days since launch. We will follow this one closely.

Forrester is about to release a new report on “Adaptive Brand Marketing: Rethinking Your Approach to Branding in the Digital Age,” in which it proposes replacing “brand managers” with “brand advocates.” Advertising Age provides a sneak peek at the ‘new 4 Ps of Marketing’ presented in the report: permission, proximity, perception, and participation. Other core elements include: “embracing an expanded role for consumer intelligence, focusing on strategic brand platforms, and empowering a federated organization."

A fervent advocate of marketing as a cross-organizational catalyst for change myself, I wholeheartedly agree with BBH Labs which believes the Forrester report points to a potentially larger opportunity for the discipline: “It’s not just the marketing organization that needs to reorient itself given the now normal digital age, but the company itself should consider how it reorients itself around its marketing organization. In most progressive companies, it is the marketing function that has most quickly and deeply engaged with the new interactive toolkit.”

This view is really becoming a groundswell, and you will be hard pressed to find anyone these days who would deny the profound change social media presents for all customer relations; the new need for openness, agility, and hyper-sociality; as well as the call for “networked” (or “federated,” as Forrester calls it) organizations. David Armano from the Dachis Group (“Social Business Design”), Francois Gossieaux (Beeline Labs), or Charlene Li and her Altimeter Group are just some of the pundits who have very succinctly articulated these themes.

Further reading:

HSM Interview with Amazon’s former Chief Scientist Andreas Weigend on the four P’s of marketing

Ogilvy and Acision white paper on advertising in 2020

Jones and Bonevac: "Should We Be In the Advertising Industry?"

Dave Evans: "Social Business: the New Black" 

John Ellett: "Marketing has changed"

George Potts: "Political Campaigns: The New Paradigm for Marketing Organizations in the Social Media Age"

Rob Rose: "Stop Being a ‘Data Driven’ Marketer"

(Credit: Modernism Gallery)

The overlap with the title of this blog, Matter/Antimatter, is completely coincidental, but since most meaningful events are coincidental, it makes perfect sense that it prompted San Francisco-based conceptual artist Jonathon Keats to send me a note pointing to his upcoming exhibition "The First Bank of Antimatter."

Keats' previous artistic enterprises include applying string theory to real estate development, and in the wake of global economic collapse, Keats is now introducing a hedge against future catastrophe by creating a mirror economy designed to skyrocket as world markets plummet: the first holistic response to the great recession.

"Economic equilibrium is upset by our unbalanced pursuit of material wealth," explains Keats. "My plan is to offset materialism with modern science, by exploiting the economic potential of antimatter, which is the physical opposite of anything made with atoms, from luxury condos to private jets."

Backed by private Swiss funding, his scheme will be implemented beginning on November 12, 2009, when the First Bank of Antimatter opens in San Francisco's Monadnock Building, the location of Modernism Gallery. The bank will serve as a hub for antimatter transactions worldwide, eventually financing the building of antimatter infrastructure and providing the public with a full range of investment opportunities. "But our first order of business will be printing money," says Keats. "Cash is the foundation of any economy, and an anti-economy is no exception."

Issued in three convenient denominations, ranging from 10,000 positrons to 1,000,000 positrons, and initially trading at an exchange rate of $10 to $1,000, the anti-money will be backed by antimatter stored in the bank's vault. Because matter and antimatter annihilate each other on contact, antimatter positrons will be continuously produced on location by decay of the radioactive isotope potassium-40.

"We want our customers to be confident that the antimatter is available on demand, but we're advising clients to conduct transactions strictly in paper currency," says Keats, who has used his artistry to design the money in multiple colors including red, blue and green. "The paper is cotton rag, archival enough to survive economic Armageddon" he promises. "It's an essential asset in any balanced portfolio. Antimatter is a natural haven for wealth when everything becomes worthless."

Like advertising guru Rory Sutherland said at TEDGlobal: "Most of our problems are problems of perception." And: "We need more intangible value." I always knew we could rely on artists (and advertisers!) to (re)-build an anti-economy of meaning, and I am thrilled to see this vision finally materialize.

(Credit: Barnes & Noble)

It's busy times in the e-book reader world, with Barnes & Noble launching Nook, Plastic Logic making noise about a new Que reader (no doubt to counteract B&N's announcement), and Amazon lowering prices on the Kindle.

The Nook is the device getting the most buzz, having been launched a few days ago. It's white, has an e-ink screen, and is priced at $259, all like the Kindle. But it also adds a nice color touch screen "strip" below that is used for browsing and buying new books. It's an interesting of-the-moment alternative to the Kindle's keyboard.

The Nook's biggest distinguishing feature is its ability to wirelessly "lend" e-books to another Nook user for 14 days. During that time the lender cannot read the book, just as if they'd handed over a physical copy.

This is very reminiscent of the sharing feature Microsoft built into Zunes from the start, in fact this was one of the Zune's biggest distinguishing characteristics from the iPod. However, it did not help the Zune get above single digit market share. So is lending (or borrowing) really a feature that people care about?

I think the Nook has a couple of things going for it that didn't work for the Zune.

1. The Kindle isn't a monopoly
The Kindle, on which I was unduly harsh when it first appeared, has been the most popular e-reader. But it does not yet have the massive market presence that the iPod did by the time the first Zunes came out. (Amazon has not released sales numbers, but TechCrunch estimates it somewhere north of a million.) This matters because lending and borrowing are only attractive if you believe there will be other people near by you whose taste you trust to borrow from.

The tide was clearly against the Zune by the time it came out, which did not give consumers confidence that there would be other Zune users to get music from. In that case, it was just safer to stick with the leader, the iPod.

2. Books are better for short-term sharing
Music is something that, if you like it, you will want to listen to for a long time. The Zune has quite strong restrictions on how long somebody can listen to the song after they first borrow it, and for the lender not all songs can be shared. This makes for a suboptimal experience for the borrower, and frustrating inconsistency and confusion for the lender.

However, with many books a single read will do, so a limited borrowing time is less problematic. It's why libraries worked for so long. (I'm not sure if the self-destruct on borrowed books starts from the time of lending, or the time of first reading. From a reader's perspective, obviously, the second is preferable since with our busy lives it might be a while before you get to starting a book.)

But Barnes & Noble should also take a lesson from Zune and apply the lending rules universally across all titles. Don't let happen what happened to Microsoft where the studios placed restrictions on certain songs and artists who were hot at the time. Barnes & Noble is in the fortunate (for them) position, however, that book publishers are in a much weaker state than music labels.

I can't help wondering if Barnes & Noble is pitching the wrong angle of lending, though. Lending is altruistic, whereas borrowing is selfish. If I'm a prospective Nook buyer, I'm more thinking about what's in it for me than how I can be beneficent to my fellow Nookies (Nook owners).

Gary Hayes little flash application shows how active the social web is. Hayes built the application based on data he pulled from a range of social media sources, which he compiled at the end of September 2009.  You can download his Social Media Count here.

(Credit: Berlin Twitter Wall)

Upon the 20-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the city of Berlin has launched a remarkable “living” online memorial: the Berlin Twitter Wall.

Using the hashtag #fotw, people can share their thoughts on the Fall of the Berlin Wall and tell the world “which walls still have to come down to make our world a better place.” The Web site scrolls messages along a backdrop of the East Side Gallery, a famous stretch of the wall still standing and painted with murals. By clicking "stop" and "play", older tweets are shown. A click on the cameras up on the wall displays a selection of the domino-artwork that will fall in a symbolic act on Nov. 9, 2009 at the "Fest der Freiheit" (festival of freedom) at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

I love how the Berlin Twitter Wall intersects history and real-time action, memory and instant gratification, gravitas with graffiti, concrete architecture and virtual realm--and make all of that open and social.

Forgive me but I have to plug something my company (Frog Design) is involved in. I'm only doing this because it is such a neat event: In collaboration with Frog, NPR will host a unique Digital Think In this Friday in our offices in San Francisco, bringing together 60 thought leaders at the intersection of media and technology to explore new approaches to content creation, distribution, and funding for NPR and NPR member stations.

Hosted by NPR CEO and President Vivian Schiller and Digital Media SVP and General Manager Kinsey Wilson, the Think In will harness the collective expertise and creativity of an exceptional group of entrepreneurs, executives, and innovators. Participants include leaders at the leading edge of technology and media innovation from academia, venture capital, internet design, public media, social media, and research. Notable participants contributing to the day-long brainstorm include: Craig Newmark, Founder of craigslist; Reid Hoffman, Chairman and co-Founder of LinkedIn; Roger McNamee, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Elevation Partners; Chris Beard, Chief Innovation Officer of Mozilla; Krishna Bharat, Principal Scientist and creator of Google News; and Sue Gardner, Executive Director of Wikimedia Foundation, among many others.

The Think In will explore five main topics that are significant to NPR's ecosystem and its future: social media and connection to the audience, the organization's national network of more than 800 stations, the potential of its open API, expansion of platforms, and its diversified revenue model. After an NPR overview and an opening session, participants will break out into small groups to develop concepts that NPR can incorporate into its organizational roadmap.

The event will be live-blogged and the Digital Think In micro-site will feature live video streams of the opening and closing sessions. In addition, attendees will be tweeting the event throughout the day using the hashtag #nprthinkin. NPR's Andy Carvin will be posting to YouTube and Flickr under "nprthink," and updating NPR's Facebook page.

Join the NPR Digital Think In (remotely)

(Credit: Maple and Leek)

Twitter’s “suggested users” list is a Who’s Who of Twitter celebrities, featuring the likes of Al Gore, Lance Armstrong, Ashton Kutcher, John McCain, Martha Stewart, and others with millions of followers. The New York Times claimed that a spot on the list would guarantee 500,000 additional followers and reported that social media guru Jason Calacanis had offered $250,000 to be listed.

Last Friday, Twitter did something remarkable. It added a number of well-known social entrepreneurs and innovators to this list, among them Social Edge, Skoll Foundation, Kiva, Matt Flannery (Kiva co-founder), Acumen Fund, Jacqueline Novogratz (Acumen Fund founder), charity: water, GOOD Magazine, Kjerstin Erickson (FORGE founder), and Room to Read. Not knowing what was going on, Kiva’s Flannery thought there was a spam attack and complained about the 500 new users a minute he was getting. But not for long.

Twitter’s move is huge, not only because it propels social entrepreneurs to enter mainstream but also because the microblogging service--THE trading floor for attention on the Web--has decided to give away some of the attention it attracts to promote good causes. Consider it the New Socialism: a redistribution of attention, not of material wealth. What’s even more remarkable is the reaction of one of the benefitting organizations, Social Edge, which immediately sent out a message to all its new users pointing them to a list of 100 other social entrepreneurs and innovators on Twitter. Give more than you take: that’s the power of meaningful marketing and exactly the kind of giving that makes companies thrive in the ‘share economy.' Good creates more good.

There are other, even more immediate ways in which Twitter can be used for doing good. My colleague Jacob Zukerman proposed it the other day, and I found the concept instantly compelling: instant social action, enabled by Twitter. Tweet Mobs for collective action. The idea is simple: Convert all the attention on Twitter into real-world action--in real-time. With some twitter users attracting more than a million followers, their social influence is significant--why not use it for social good, especially when you can “eventize” it by creating artificially scarce moments of real-time public collaboration?

The link between tweet and deed is not new on Twitter and exists in various formats (Mashable has provided a great overview): Cause-related fundraising (Tweet fund drives) via Twitter has been made popular by Twestival, Tweetsgiving,12for12k, Tweetathon, and others. An alternate concept is Twollars, a Twitter-based currency with no hard money value that allows users to pledge money to charity using Twitter. Describing itself as “a currency of appreciation for Twitter,” it effectively connects micro-payments with micro-blogging. (Speaking of currencies, PollyTrade links Twitter accounts to E*Trade account and allows brokers to trade stock via Twitter.) And there are Tweet-Ups--offline events initiated and organized via Twitter--but in this case, too, the tweet and the deed are asynchronous. Carrotmob, a congenial social media platform for social activism, uses Twitter, but it still requires a moment of translation as well: good will and a commitment to a cause can be immediately “socialized,” however, the output--the action--still occurs via intermediary.

All these formats do not convert instantly into offline action in the way Flash Mobs do. What if followers not only follow but do (in the best “Here Comes Everybody” style)? What if Blog Action Day became Twitter Action Minute? These Twitter Mobs or Smart Tweets would capitalize on the unique combination of peer pressure, presence, location-based eventization, and of course, sheer reach. The train wreck Sarah Lacy-Mark Zuckerberg interview at SXSW 2008 was a negative example of live-mobbing on Twitter, a disaster unfolding in real-time, amplified through the synchronous meta-conversation on Twitter. The #CNNfail campaign in response to CNN’s deficient coverage of the Iranian election, was another one. The enormous power of these real-time conversations is frightening, but it is also promising. The more optimistic equation goes like this: Attention = social capital = social action. What if a group of Twitter followers all picked up one piece of garbage from the street? What if they all gave food to a homeless person? What if they exchanged money, products, hugged a stranger, etc.? And so on. It’d be a real-time, real-world transaction that would be as swift as the transactions taking place at breathtaking pace every second in the highly virtual realm of international finance. A smart attention-to-action cascade. A Good Mob.

Maybe a fantasy--but a good one.

It was just a matter of time: "With brands turning into curators of conversations about them and brand value increasingly determined by the value of aggregated content, third parties might be inspired to hijack these very brands by offering curated conversations on their behalf," I wrote in early July.

And now Seth Godin and BzzAgent have done exactly this. The marketing guru and the marketing agency have launched a portal that aggregates conversations about brands and presents them in a unified public-facing dashboard that gives brands the chance to lead the discussion. Brands in Public translates the Get Satisfaction business model (a portal for public-facing aggregated customer support) into the broader realm of brand management. It aggregates the aggregation, if you will, and centralizes what Modernista, Skittles, and Crispin Porter Bogusky did on their own sites.

The cost of participation for a brand is US$400 per month, and the incentives are threefold: First, brands can publicly demonstrate their commitment to transparency. Secondly, because the portal presents branded conversations just one click away from each other, brands might benefit from an attention spill-over (while of course also having to fear a cannibalization of their feed). Finally, the aggregated conversation tracking comes with some metrics, kind of like FriendFeed and Google Analytics combined. The dashboard view puts brands in control of the conversation, or at least suggests as much.

However, I have a feeling that Brands in Public will fall flat. As with the new Google Sidewiki, one could argue that community dies in the very moment someone tries to "own" it. If it's true that 'your brand is what other people say about you when you're not in the room,' how interesting then is what these people say when you're not only in the same room (any social network feed, i.e. Twitter, Facebook) but actually on the same stage with them (Brands in Public)? The outcome of Godin's and BuzzAgent's experiment remains to be seen: It may mark the next stage of the 'conversation economy.' Or the end of the conversation.

(Hat tip to Kristina Loring)