Matter/Anti-Matter

(Credit: Somebody Else's Phone)

If you found somebody else's phone, would you look through it? That's a rhetorical question. Of course! Your phone is your life, at least if you're under 25, and there's nothing more interesting than the "lives of others."

The advertising firm Wieden + Kennedy London translated the idea of "cellular oversharing" into a much gushed-about ad campaign for Nokia. "Somebody Else's Phone" depicts the lives of three twentysomethings through their text messages, multimedia messaging service, and pictures, and it essentially creates a new story format: the phone novel.

Fusing scripted content with real-life audience interaction, the campaign runs in 10 different languages, following the characters' evolving storylines through a 24-7 feed of content, across three time zones, over 6 weeks.

Nice idea, though the blog of marketing firm Luon comments, "Sometimes it feels a bit like trying too hard. The advertising-tries-to-be-socially-smart thing, where it's not clear what is real and what is fake."

But that's exactly the point. Fake authenticity--I've already written about "Mad Men" on Twitter in this context--is a burgeoning trend. Fake is fine, as long as it feels real. We'll see more of it in 2009.

(Credit: frog design)

In a recent blog post on the upcoming Fortune Tech summit, Fortune's senior editor David Kirckpatrick hinted at the possibility of having "a super-amazing special guest from outside the industry who we aren't yet able to announce. (Joining us at the original Brainstorms were Bill Clinton, Shimon Peres, Jordan's King Abdullah, and John McCain.) This visitor could make things really rock."

Hmm...who might that be? The magazine, in its current print issue, just examined both candidates' economic policies in a 1-to-1 comparison, and, in a not so subtle endorsement, chose to display Obama on the cover...

While we (frog design, my employer) won't be able to feature Obama himself, we will provide a look behind the scenes of his campaign. On July 16, at NYU, we'll host a very special Design Mind event with Arun Chaudhary, Obama's director of video field production.

EllenMcGirt from our co-host Fast Company, who wrote the magazine's April cover story on the "Brand Obama," is going to interview Arun -- about the impact of new media on this year's election, the new rules of political communication, and life on the campaign trail.

Timothy Schigel is the founder and CEO of ShareThis, which "lets people easily share the things they find online, in the most convenient way possible." ShareThis consolidates address books and friend lists, so that anything can be shared immediately, without even leaving a Web page. Since its launch, the ShareThis button has been installed by thousands of publishers, generating 100 million plus views from more than 26 million unique users every month.

Timothy has led technology investing for the past 10 years at Blue Chip Venture Company, an early stage venture firm with $600 million under management, investing in leading companies such as Advertising.com, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, and Third Screen Media. Prior to Blue Chip, he was a technology entrepreneur and international consultant leading innovative projects for Apple Computer, Hitachi, Hallmark Cards, Motorola, and Procter & Gamble. Tim received his bachelor of science in electrical engineering from Case Western Reserve University.

How do you define "innovation?"

There are degrees of innovation, but at its core I would submit that innovation is the result of applying a non-obvious modification to a system resulting in improvements to quality, performance or cost that exceed current expectations. Breakthrough innovations seem to change our definition of a system or product itself.

What are the most important areas of innovation in your organization (product, process, IP, marketing, etc.)?

In our case I would say that "perspective" is the most important area for innovation. Once you have redefined the problem, opportunities for innovation seem to be everywhere. In addition, applying state-of-the-art science to new problems creates real proprietary advantage.

What would you consider your most successful innovation? How did you "find" it?

Disconnecting the process of sharing from specific content and communities, which was found through conversations and observations with stakeholders which exposed limitations and challenges of current systems.

Which innovation "failure" did you learn the most from, and why?

Pushing a technically elegant solution into a market that was not prepared to embrace it. This experience demonstrated the need for several factors to be true for market success, most importantly timing. Good ideas should be tested as early as possible and pursued if the demand is compelling and urgent.

What lessons can you pass on to others from how your organization has changed to make itself more innovation driven?

It's still early for us, but I would suggest that continuously asking the question "what problem does this solve?" keeps the organization focused on what's important. In turn, focus drives opportunities for innovation.

In your opinion, what are the biggest barriers and challenges that stand in the way of organizations becoming more innovative?

Losing focus. It's easy to be distracted by things that really don't matter at the end of the day.

Beyond your organization, who do you admire for risk-taking innovation, and what do you think makes them successful?

Steve Jobs. He's willing to take big risks. I admire someone who knows his customers, but is also willing to lead and follow his or her intuition. It's very similar to the creative process in art or music. Most of the best-known music was created because the author liked it and thought it was good. Polls and opinions can only take you so far.

What innovation are you still waiting for?

Teleportation.

Here's a link to a presentation I gave last week. Forgive me for the "conversation 2.0" moniker but it's a catchy way to pinpoint what's happening right now in the world of marketing. Marketers and brands have always had conversations, but at a much slower pace and mediated by professional parties. That's no longer the case. Conversation 2.0, that is, the Web 2.0-enabled conversation, shifts places and times; it is ubiquitous and doesn't pause--it is, in all senses of the meaning, a "never ending conversation."

Thus, "social marketing," derived from the more common "social media marketing," is all marketing that utilizes the social graph of both marketer and audience (in fact, the interesting thing is that they can be one and the same) to facilitate and cultivate a conversation. Social marketing is whenever more than two individuals collaborate online or offline for content generation and distribution. Social marketers harness the viral power of social networks in order to grow both the frequency and the reach of conversations exponentially. They know how to feed the social orbit with content that catalyzes conversations. And they understand that an "architecture of participation," that lets employees be marketers, has become paramount for turning brands into live brands.

The media of the new era of social marketing are characterized by the following attributes:

-- Hybrid: The boundaries between institutions and players are blurring. This results in the mash-up of producer and consumer (prosumer), fan and consumer (fansumer), professional and amateur (proteur), and the convergence of media, platforms, and communication modes.

-- Adaptive: Change happens in real time and is organically built into the social media mechanisms. The never-ending conversation is in fact a never-ending loop; feedback is creation, creation is feedback.

-- Transparent: Everything is visible to everyone. Self expression and revelation go hand in hand. Privacy has become a public asset, and the more you share, the more (information) you will receive in return.

-- Open: Open is the new closed. Everybody can join. Systems are becoming inter-operable. The best way to build loyalty and retain visitors is to let them go whenever and wherever they want to go. The best way to lock customers into your business model is if you open it up for everyone. Seth Goldstein just had a great post about this, in which he argued that open systems need to be closed, to a certain extent, in order to function.

-- Micro: The online social universe is fragmented into an increasing number of micro-universes that develop their own micro-crowds and micro-formats. Micro is the new macro: Not only is "small the new big," and "selling less of more" may be "the future of business" (The Long Tail) -- communicating more of less is the future of media and communications. More and more businesses identify and carve out untapped niches for their business models with ever more targeted, personalized, and localized offerings.

-- Social graph: It's not just who you know; it's what you know about what who you know knows. We are "a crowd of one" (Clippinger), an interdependent cohort of individual personas. We experience a widgetization of content, of social behavior, of value(s).

-- Instant: "Now is gone" (Geoff Livingston). Everything that happens is happening immediately or not at all. Live-Chat, live-streaming or 24/7 life-casting (Justin.tv)--we want it all and we want it now. The time between action and reflection has shrunk to zero. Beta is eclipsing meta.