I was interviewed by BrandWeek the other day for a story on the recent hype around “Design Thinking” in marketing. They were looking for a skeptic and found me. First of all, it is worth noting that the term “design thinking” is of course a clever marketing buzzword. It’s ironic that marketers themselves embrace it as the next big thing as it doesn’t create a new marketing paradigm so much as it proves that marketers are prone to being persuaded by their very own tricks. “Design Thinking” has become a brand, and brands are all the more powerful when they present themselves as memes.
But what does “design thinking” actually mean? Let’s rely on the wisdom of crowds and see how Wikipedia defines it: “Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result.” Wow. Isn’t that what every single task in business is about? Or, for that matter, every single action in life? The rest of the paragraph adds some more specifics: “Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the ‘building up’ of ideas. There are no judgments in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation. Outside the box thinking is encouraged in this process since this can often lead to creative solutions.” Hmm…ok.
Some Design Thinkers herald Design Thinking as the ultimate problem solver for business, social, and political challenges. The current financial meltdown? A lack of design thinking. Our health care sytem? Design Thinking can fix it. The HIV crisis in Africa? Make sure to apply Design Thinking. Granted, design is a fundamental responsibility for organizations in all sectors of our society, and it is absolutely critical in addressing problems of all kinds. But the quest that everybody should think like a designer is not the non plus ultra formula. Or, as Raymond Loewy, the famous industrial designer, pointed out wryly: “Design is too important to be left to designers.”
Today’s marketers need to be experts in what Design Thinkers may define as “a creative process based around the ‘building up’ of ideas.” But the trend towards more participatory product development, consumer engagement, crowdsourcing, etc. goes far beyond just a trendy label – it marks a significant shift in consumer culture and in the way we do business. Good marketers know that and are masters in outside-the-box thinking by definition. In this respect, marketing was design thinking long before Design Thinking was even thought of. As a marketer, you need an in-depth understanding of your audiences, their needs, habits, and desires; you need to develop a storyline and a conversation that engages them; and then you need to establish the channels of interaction. Ultimately, it’s all about desiging interactions between brands and consumers. It has become much more complicated in a highly fragmented, digitized, and fast-paced world of social media, but that’s what it’s still about. Yes, as a marketer you benefit from a holistic, cross-disciplinary view. And you better be creative. The big idea is still big, no matter what.
For marketing is an art, not a science. It is a multi-dimensional, dialogic (or even multi-logic), multi-lateral activity that, at its best, encompasses all touch points with external audiences across all business functions. Marketing is the big integrator, a diplomat within the organiziation but the partisan friend of customers. Marketing needs to innovate or it is just manufacturing. It needs to put customers front and center and give them a say. They hold the truth about your brand so let them design it. You might call this Design Thinking. I call it Marketing 101.
(Credit: Plan Spark)
Now that the exhaustively inspirational Pop!Tech 2008 is over, it’s worthwhile taking a look at what’s next, in other words, at the conference's theme for 2009. The organizers’ choice is pretty telling and may be indicative of a larger shift among not only the elite thinkers gathering at Pop!Tech, but also broader public opinion. Succeeding this year’s theme “Scarcity and Abundance” will be “America Reimagined,” a “top-to-bottom look at America’s opportunities, its challenges, and its future” that promises to explore what it means to be a “superpower in the age of the Second Superpower -- the Internet.”
This theme reflects many of the informal conversations that took place at this year’s Pop!Tech where the predominantly American attendees were wondering whether in light of the depressing news on the economy every morning they maybe ought to spend more time thinking about how to solve critical domestic issues rather than trying to save the rest of the world. The Pop!Tech curators obviously recognized this latent mood and acknowledged that the pendulum has begun to swing back from innovation at the bottom of the pyramid to innovation here at home, where the top of the pyramid has gotten bloated and all of it poisoned with debt. Concerns about a new isolationism, however, are not warranted: “There is not a single global challenge that can be addressed without the US,” as the Pop!Tech site points out.
That’s true, although the relationship between the US and the rest of the world has mutated from a dependence on America to a dependence of America. “Over the past decade, America has made itself a savings-poor country and will be running financial deficits with the rest of the world for the foreseeable future,” writes economist Charles R. Morris in his book, “The Trillion Dollar Meltdown,” which -- released in February of this year -- offers a both sober and prophetic account of the crisis: “The United States, the ‘hyperpower,’ the global leader in the efficiency of its markets and the productivity of its business and workers, hopelessly in hock to some of the world’s most unsavory regimes. (…) that’s where a quarter-century of diligent sacrifice to the gods of free market has brought us. It’s a disgrace.”
And no one can say we haven’t been warned of the coming agony: “For more than a decade, the international financial cop, the International Monetary Fund, forecast a hurricane was heading toward US shores, as did many heads of the treasury and the Fed,” writes economist Juan Enriquez in an op-ed piece for the Boston Globe. “There are five basic drivers of these crises, all based on excess: high income concentration, too much debt, too much reliance on foreign money, not enough tax revenue, and reckless government spending. Time after time governments believe they are different. They are bombarded by warnings but ignore, postpone, spend even more, and crash.”
Now the great unwinding is ahead of us. The US is an over-leveraged economy that has been spending 5 to 7 percent more each year than it earns. A $1,000 investment in Freddie Mac is presently worth less than the return on the bottle deposit of $1,000 worth of beer bottles. With so much debt as assets on the balance sheets, and most of it collateralized as “toxic waste,” as the financial wizards call it, it will take more than social innovation to prevent Allan Greenspan’s “flaw” from becoming an apocalyptic systemic failure – it will take a drastic behavior change.
The US requires a massive restructuring to address its debt, cutting back on its borrowing, spending, and wars. The alternative is “ugly,” as Enriquez stated in his Pop!Tech address. His analysis of the downturn and his passionate plea to the new administration (and the American people) was the emotional highlight of the conference and a welcome grounding in a distressing reality. Enriquez was agitated and the Q&A after his session just didn’t want to end. Fortunately, he also presented concrete solutions to fix the mess, in the form of his “ten commandments:”
“1 - Save the dollar
2 - Fundamentally and brutally restructure debt
3 - All entitlements are fair game:
- If you are 60-65, you probably just lost big chunks of your nest egg
- Social Security/Medicare benefits are intact
- If you are 55-60, we need two more years’ work from you
- If you’re 55 and under, we need three more years
4 - Cut back military by 2% per year for 10 years
5 - Cap medical costs at 18% GNP
6 - Triage our support for companies (do not attempt to save dying whales)
7 - The program has to be bipartisan. It has to make both Democrats and Republicans unhappy.
8 - Simplify and broadly apply Sarbanes Oxley, apply it to government, apply it to hedge funds.
9 - Invest in growing start-up companies (which create most jobs)
10 - Treat education as a varsity sport (and continue to recruit foreign PhDs)”
Download his presentation as pdf
See the full video:
Juan Enriquez (2008) Pop!Tech Pop!Cast from PopTech on Vimeo.
Immediate action is of the essence: The new administration has 30 days, Enrique noted, to make significant changes based on these commandments. If it fails to do so, the consequences will be a breakdown of public infrastructure, a hike in unemployment rates, and social tensions. "Every great empire has fallen by going into bankruptcy," he stated.
Yet the damage is not only materialistic, it is spiritual. The American people need to rebuild America, but, maybe more importantly, they need to re-imagine it -- with confidence and utmost transparency. The covert irrational exuberance in the financial markets, which has occurred outside of regulatory oversight and is now gradually revealed, has shattered trust in institutions both in the business and public sector. "Supercapitalism has spilled over into politics, and has engulfed democracy,” as Robert Reich, Clinton’s first secretary of labor, diagnoses. Public policy debates have become, Reich observes, “on closer inspection, matters of mundane competitive advantage in pursuit of corporate profit,” with the notion of the "common good" disappearing.
In 2009, citizens and consumers alike will therefore ask for more transparency, more accountability from any kind of governance, as well as for more platforms to actively participate in the process of governance themselves. The rising power of amateurs, the emergence of mass-collaboration, crowdsourcing, user-generated content, and prosumers will extend to the political realm, and the open-source nature that the Obama campaign pioneered on such impressive scale, will extend to the new administration, setting up a social media-enabled “new deal” between citizens and government based on transparency and collective civic intelligence. Applying emerging technologies and new communication paradigms to the realm of governance will likely see a renaissance. More than a decade after visions of digital democracy and e-governance were rendered hopelessly visionary, they will be put forward again with reinvigorated momentum and new practical relevance in a brave new politics 2.0 world. America can and must lead this effort.
It’s a sign of troubling times when it is science that gives you faith. Another Pop!Tech speaker, the British neuro-scientist Peter Whybrow, explained in his talk how markets rely on basic human instincts that reside in the Reptilian brain and how a “buy now, pay later” mentality has led to an abundance that remains unquestioned because we tricked ourselves into a positive feedback loop. The good news from Whybrow though is: It’s only during times of scarcity that we use our human intelligence to its full effect. You can also say: scarcity is the mother of innovation. This presents a unique historic opportunity for the creative class. Reimagining America will be followed by Rebranding and Redesigning America, and all will be daunting tasks that require the skills of artists, entrepreneurs, designers, architects, writers, and marketers. Innovation is no longer only a critical economic factor, it has become a moral obligation for all creative people.
(Credit: Pop!Tech)
Crowdsourcing has entered the mainstream big-time. It has become daunting to find a brand these days that does NOT have some crowdsourcing program in place.
My Starbucks Idea is just the latest example: Starbucks asks its consumers for advice, and besides certainly receiving a lot of good ideas, the troubled coffee chain makes consumers feel part of the brand remake.
It's the same template as usual: engage your community, harness its creativity, and let it create the content for you.
It works, sure, but it's getting stale. For some reason, marketing trends take two to three years before they are fully embraced, but if they are, then they become annoyingly ubiquitous (remember the "Tipping Point"?).
The reason is simple: Marketing executives are notoriously risk-averse (Seth Godin once reckoned that only if you're willing to put your job on the line will you do something truly innovative in marketing), and a model like crowdsourcing provides the right balance between safety net ("many others are doing it") and cutting edge ("crowdsourcing?" the CEO shrugged).
Crowdsourcing was a disruptive innovation two years ago, but now it's time to innovate crowdsourcing. It is a viable trend that has implications far beyond the marketing profession, but someone needs to take it to the next level.
So in the spirit of crowdsourcing, let me ask you: in the next stage, what could be a more innovative application of crowdsourcing?
(Credit:
Greatdreams)
"At Davos this year, four luminaries in the world of design were asked to predict what the future of design will be. The themes that arose from this discussion seemed to coalesce into two distinct categories that I'd venture to call 'internal' and 'external.' On the one hand, the speakers emphasized the importance of privacy and personal convenience -- a degree of customization we've not seen before, that will first be available, as usual, to the world's wealthiest 10%. Designers will create ingenious objects with hidden multi-functionality, devices that, for one reason or another, cloak what they can really do. We'll also see designers pressed to find ways to better protect trade secrets and the valued expertise of the genius creator -- in other words, designers will be designing objects that actually enhance their own professional lives and buttress their privileged position in society.
This vision of a rather elitist future of design was counterbalanced by a set of notions that implied a very different path for the world's creative future -- one that many designers with an instinct for self-preservation may treat with some dismay. On this end of the prediction spectrum I noticed a concentration on the external -- an emphasis on transparency and simplicity and social responsibility. A belief that design that communicates its utility to the poorest 90% of the world will take precedence, and that mass design collaborations will serve a vaster public than professional designers have ever reached. This future of design would be world-changing and would mark a new direction for the practice of design -- one that might not require designers.
Much has been made of the consequences of democratizing design. Already, the designer's responsibility has shifted from creating objects and experiences to creating the conditions for innovation -- putting into the hands of the masses the tools to make their own designs. However, the threat to the livelihood of designers may well go beyond packs of online amateurs.
Futurist Ray Kurzweil has predicted that $1,000 worth of computation in the 2020s will be 1,000 times more powerful than the human brain. The result? By 2020, greatly extended human longevity (and a cure for the common cold, thank God); by 2030, nanobots that can repair our bodies on the fly; by 2040, machine back-ups of human memories. In the same time frame, we'll spend less time in front of computers and more time inside of them, working and playing in virtual worlds.
And what comes along with all this amazing progress? A fear that we won't be able to stay ahead of the game. As countless movies and sci-fi stories have told us, the terrorists could use this technology against us or the powerful computers that we've created could take over. While some critics have claimed that this is basically 'the Rapture for nerds,' Kurzweil -- whose fan club includes Bill Gates, Marvin Minsky, and folks at the National Institute of Health -- expects that by 2045, non-biological intelligence will be one billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today. Stanford's Paul Saffo has asked, will this super intelligence treat us like pets or like food?
This presents an obvious quandary to designers, who may be regarded as the agents of our salvation or our destruction when 'the Singularity' (or the nerdocalypse) arrives. As Mary Shelley so brilliantly depicted in Frankenstein, playing God can have tremendous costs. If we're the first species to take over our own evolution, will designers live like Gods or be chronically unemployed?"
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.
With everyone becoming a producer in the YouTube age, self-branding ("The Brand Called You") has evolved from a fancy to a necessity.
Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame have shrunk to 5 seconds of microfame, and in the contained public arena of social networks, amateur paparazzi--thanks to the viral nature of social media--have the power to grant celebrity status. That, in a nutshell, is the thesis of Clive Thompson's poignant piece for Wired on the rise of "microcelebrities."
As Facebook walls make personal communications open to the rest of your trusted network, even your most private moments become public relations. What used to be said in e-mail is now "the writing on the wall." This radical transparency lets more and more Internet users nurture their image, manage their privacy, stage their public appearances, and distribute carefully chosen content to their circle of online friends.
PR professionals will have mixed emotions about this trend, as the borders between profession and confession are increasingly blurry. Thompson quotes Theresa Senft, a media studies professor and one of the first to identify the rise of microcelebrities: "People are using the same techniques employed on Madison Avenue to manage their personal lives. Corporations are getting humanized, and humans are getting corporatized." And he writes: "In essence, I'm sending out press releases. Adapting to microcelebrity means learning to manage our own identity and 'message' almost like a self-contained public-relations department."
The growing sophistication for managing one's online reputation is supported by the findings of a recently released study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, stating that Internet users have become more aware of their digital footprint: In 2007, 47 percent searched for information about themselves online, compared to just 22 percent in 2002, and 60 percent of U.S. Internet users surveyed were not concerned about how much information is available about them online.
This stands in stark contrast to the 84 percent, who, in a similar study in 2000, had expressed concern about third parties getting personal information about them from the Internet. Teenagers, the Pew study shows, understand the implications of their digital footprint best, protecting their privacy by using pseudonyms or private accounts, and locking personal details into "walled gardens."
Everyone wants to be a designer. That's the value proposition of JuJups.com, a new online service claiming it will allow consumers to design their own personalized and customized 3D content. 3D printing, as the underlying technology is called, is a form of rapid prototyping that builds up three-dimensional objects by "printing" successive layers of materials (polymer, cells, sugar, etc.) on top of each other.
(Credit:
George Hart)
As a recent Wired story points out, 3D-printing technology has been around for a while, mostly used by professional design firms and design-intensive businesses such as automakers, handset makers, and aerospace companies. Recent advancements have enabled the technology to "print out" fully functional finished products, leading to a remarkable boom in equipment sales: according to market research firm Wohlers Associates, 8,000 machines, or 36 percent of the industry's two-decade worldwide sales total of 22,000, have been sold in the past two years alone.
Multi-material 3D printers, capable of producing 3D parts and assemblies made from different materials in a single build, are hitting the market, and companies like Freedom of Creation (FOC) are paving the way for making rapid manufacturing technologies accessible for consumers.
In addition, a steady drop in the price of printers has spawned many new businesses trying to push 3D printing into the consumer market: 3D Outlook Corporation is selling 3D models of mountains and other topographic 3D maps for prices below $100, catering to hikers, resorts, and real estate firms.
Companies such as Fabjectory and FigurePrints produce 3D models of virtual characters (from virtual worlds or games). SolidWorks, a U.S. unit of Dassault Systemes SA, a French maker of design software, has launched Cosmic Modelz, a site that lets kids use 3D printing technology to create their own customized action-figures. And now JuJups wants to step aggressively into the emerging market with a Web-based 3D-printing service for everyone.
The JuJups site, however, currently only offers customized designs of photo frames, which it then prints out on 3D color printing machines and ships to customers. Although the company says it plans to expand its printing capacity to support the growing demand for customized objects including giftware, memorabilia, toys, etc., it is a little odd that it put out a bold announcement (for immediate release) of an offering that is apparently not quite ready for prime time at this point.
The JuJups example shows that there's still a gap between hype and reality when it comes to 3D printing for consumers. Trendwatching, and other trend-spotting media (Times Online, Post-Gazette, Make) have long propagated "MIY" (make it yourself) culture as a key trend.
Terry Wohlers, president of Wohlers Associates, says 3D printing is the fastest-growing part of the rapid prototyping industry. Wired believes it is witnessing a design revolution. Earlier this year, Glen Emerson Morris, a technology consultant, predicted in the Advertising and Marketing Review that 3D printing (or desktop manufacturing, as he calls it) would hit the consumer market big time: "It will likely have an impact on society, politics, and business as great or greater than the Internet. So, fasten your seatbelts. This is going to be a really wild ride."
Morris argued that "one of the reasons consumer use of home 3D printing, better described as desktop manufacturing, is likely to take off quickly is that there is very little manufacturing being done in America anymore. As a result, there will be very little pressure by manufacturing special interests against it."
And yet, we're still sitting here with our seatbelts fastened--but the wild ride has yet to occur. Aside from the above-mentioned niche sites, the big mainstream push from Generation C (C = content) to Generation 3D has been lost somewhere along the way. When will big retailers start to add 3D printing features to their sites? Where are the powerful brands or smart start-ups embracing the model? When will see the YouTube of 3D printing?
(Credit:
World Economic Forum/YouTube)
In fin d'année mood, saving the world is en vogue -- and asking the "one thing" question obviously, too.
Inspired by Leonardo DiCaprio's gloom and doom documentary "The 11th Hour," OnEarth magazine asked a panel of leading scientists and activists to "move beyond bleak diagnoses and offer concrete proposals for a sustainable future:"
"Which one thing would you do to save the world?"
You can view it on YouTube or read a transcript of the entire conversation here.
In a similar vein, but slightly modifying OnEarth's impetus (and oddly phrasing it), The World Economic Forum (WEF) asks the "Davos Question:"
"What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?"
Unlike OnEarth, however, the WEF does not seek the advice of experts and instead relies on the crowd. Everyone can upload suggestions on YouTube and make his/her "voice heard in Davos." The highest rated videos will be screened on January 23-27 during the Forum. The world leaders will then be asked to video-respond on YouTube.
(Credit:
Exhibitor Online)
A new study from Nokia predicts that by 2012, a quarter of all entertainment will be created, edited, and shared within peer groups rather than being generated by traditional media.
Jointly conducted with the trend research firm The Future Laboratory, Nokia's study asked trend-setting consumers from 17 countries about their digital behaviors and lifestyles. The company also used information gathered from its 900 million customers as well as views of leading industry analysts.
"From our research we predict that up to a quarter of the entertainment being consumed in five years will be what we call 'circular.' The trends we are seeing show us that people will have a genuine desire not only to create and share their own content, but also to remix it, mash it up, and pass it on within their peer groups-- a form of collaborative social media," says Mark Selby, vice president of multimedia for Nokia. Nokia pinpoints four emerging trends that propel this kind of "circular entertainment": immersive living; geek culture; G tech; and localism.
Selby continues, "We think it will work something like this: someone shares video footage they shot on their mobile device from a night out with a friend. That friend takes that footage and adds an MP3 file--the sound track of the evening--then passes it to another friend. That friend edits the footage by adding some photographs and passes it on to another friend and so on. The content keeps circulating between friends, who may or may not be geographically close, and becomes part of the group's entertainment."
Tom Savigar, trends director at The Future Laboratory, adds, "Consumers are increasingly demanding that their entertainment be truly immersive, engaging, and collaborative. Whereas once the act of watching, reading, and hearing entertainment was passive, consumers now and in the future will be active and unrestrained by the ubiquitous nature of circular entertainment. Key to this evolution is consumers' basic human desire to compare and contrast, create and communicate. We believe the next episode promises to deliver the democracy politics can only dream of."
Of course, you have to take surveys sponsored by big brands with a grain of salt. Nokia's intent is obviously to ride the wave of a powerful current and promote its mobile devices as the venue where that new kind of "circular," convergent entertainment will take place. Moreover, user-generated content (and user-generated entertainment in particular) is neither a breathtakingly new phenomenon, nor is it beyond any dispute that the traditional networks will just sit and watch their dominance wane.
Nokia's study also ignores the fact that the distinction between traditional and "circular" entertainment is becoming increasingly difficult. In times of professional mash-ups, amateur reality TV, and 24/7 life-casting, where does original content end and recycled content start? What if traditional entertainment becomes a micro-format within user-generated entertainment and vice versa? Naturally, the two intermingle, and it may not even be too bold a statement to forecast that at some stage of a highly fragmented and collaborative distribution chain, all entertainment will be "circular" in 2012.
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.
