Open (finds, minds, conversations)...

Strategic Mat

Mat Morrison, Strategic Supremo at Porter Novelli has asked that a more strategic picture of him be included than the one I included in the "Can PR evolve quickly enough?" post.

He's sent a photo more befitting of his strategic stature.

I think that sets the record straight.

Technorati Tags: Strategy, serious, supremo, matmorrison

Interviews with Daryl Willcox

Daryl Willcox, he of DWP and ResponseSource fame, interviewed me a little while ago for a new series of videos he's making interviewing people in communications about their ideas. 

Looks like I'm first up and two short videos have been posted up on the new DWP video section.

The first four-minuter I'm talking about whyI joined Spannerworks. Daryl describes it as an explanation of why I "ditched a successful PR career" which will worry my mother if she sees it: she'll think I've dropped out.

In the second video I'm banging on again about things PR people might like do take advantage of the digital revolution which ends with nice rallying call to arms for PR people to take over the marketing world, which perhaps acts as a nice counterpoint to my last post about evolution...

Cheers, Darryl! Looking forward to seeing who you speak to next.

Technorati Tags: PR, videos, darylwillcox, marketing, search, social_media

Can PR evolve quickly enough?

Sounds like a major non-debate has incited a righteous rage in Will McInnes (he of Brighton digital hot shop, Nixon McInnes) on the subject of the PR world's less than rapid rate of change in the face of the media revolution.

Pic: Mr McInnes: *do* make him angry - he gives good rant.

And he's given me some serious food for thought ahead of giving a speech this week at the PR Week Forum. Thanks, Will...

Following an NMK panel session last week with a room brimful of PR professionals, Will's decided to tell the industry a thing or two in a post entitled World has changed: PR agencies haven't: 

I spoke to a couple of seasoned online-savvy PR bods afterwards, and they didn’t feel they’d learnt anything. Education wasn’t the objective. What we wanted to stimulate was a debate about where PR goes from here – and I particularly wanted to put forward reasonably well-argued challenges only to be smacked down by a room full of vociferous PR people (50 odd people).

It didn’t happen. There was no fight back.

The only responses that had a positive ‘PR’s fine’ outlook, for me, smacked of self-comforting hiding behind the cosy blanked of yesterday:

• ‘PR’s always evolving’,
• ‘things haven’t changed that much – clients still want XYZ’,
• ‘Would HSBC have done their turnaround if the mainstream media hadn’t picked the story up from Facebook?’.

Yada [expletive deletive] yada.

It was the same old same old and frankly it was disappointing. I’d have been ashamed to have heard a similarly spineless defence from the digital community or from the marketing community (the two camps I’m caught between)

Will goes on to mount a point by point critique of what is wrong and why PR is dooooomed...

1. You are dated and at risk in your current form
2. You lie about your understanding of and ability to deliver in this new world
3. Your market is being encroached by the wider agency community
4. Yet your core abilities are needed now more than ever

I realise I'm quoting very extensively, but this provocative stuff that demands sharing (and a response).

Yes, you're always evolving, and yes, you will eventually, but what about now. You're out of date.

He's right about evolution, y'know. Being part of an evolutionary process, which PR professionals and their models are, since they operate in markets (complex adaptive systems) and are subject to selection, doesn't guarantee (a) progress or (b) avoiding extinction.

I've long said that PR skills are what are required in networks, as Will says in his post. My optimistic hypothesis, and being a PR by trade I'm always going to start with optimism, is that in the great communications shake-up PR should be able to take on a more prominent role in marketing communications.

Pic: Not all evolutionary roads lead to survival... (Credit: Kevitivity)

But that's the upside and theory - here're a couple of slightly glummer than usual thoughts I've been mulling about possible pitfalls for PR, the tar-pits of marketing and media markets in which slow-to-adapt people, companies and industries will find themselves.

1. Old models are being disrupted everywhere - everyone and everything is on the line. Smart people can move into PR as easily as PR people can move out. The marketing disciplines definitions aren't that useful anymore. The smartest agencies, Edelman and PorterNovelli (if we are to read Mat Morrison's hire there as a strategic commitment to bring stratgic digital thinking into the business- and I doubt he would let them make it anything less) seem to be two of the PR agencies that look most serious about embracing the opportunities that disruption brings. Ach, the point is that it's not the survival of PR that's at stake, it's everything that's at stake.

Pic: Matt Morrison, newly of Porter Novelli... 

2. PR agency models may be less able to assimilate than be be assimilated: One of the curiosities of the PR agency business is that aside from the very largest agencies (and even including a few of them) most are businesses comprised of generalists, with business development, marketing, HR, client management, creative, copywriting, event management, media relations and measurement all done by the same people. I've never met the PR agency that has a project manager or a quality assurance person. This makes it hard to scale these businesses and it also means than they are perhaps less able to bring in new disciplines and approaches than businesses that are structured like, well, businesses.

3. Spin has no place in networks. PR's not all about spin - but some of it is. While listening to what people need and responding quickly to what people need (good PR skills attributes) spin, disingenuousness and messaging legerdemain are more easily exposed.

Pic: Waddington: Keeping it real...

: :  Bonus rumination: Stephen Waddington gives his perspective on his blog. He partly focuses on the need for satisfactory responses to questions like "how do you measure influence". Measurement is a major challenge for everyone online, not just PR.

I refer people interested in taking more than a subjective "it all depends" line on this vital question to the web analytics work of Craig Menzies at Forrester for one. It also nudges forward the real issue for PR peeps when it comes to really getting under the skin of the web and what should really be point...

...4. You need to understand some hard maths. No excuses. When I worked in PR I used to joke that no one ever went into PR because they were good at maths. Bar one or two exceptions, even the most brilliant PR people  looked a bit lost when anyone started talking about numbers. But to get to the core of how media and the web works people will need to get their head round a fair bit of technology, network theory and - most of all - web analytics. Thing is, as I'm learning, is that a lot of web marketers don't fully grasp how to make sense and good use of web analytics.

Pic: Linked - hard maths, but a must-read and must-understand... 

OK, so there's more to go on this topic. I'm not done yet - but this is my blog, my public notebook/testing ground, so I'll share this as is.

I this it all out of love. I didn't *leave* PR when I joined a digital agency, I wanted to see what happened when you mashed up PR and search. I've always regarded it as PR by other means to an extent.

Ultimately, there may not even be a thing called PR, or a thing called marketing (or internal comms, or customer service, or product development). But this is an argument that's worth having, because if there's one thing no one can afford in marketing and media today, it is complacency.

Technorati Tags: PRWeek, PR, marketing, brands, willmcinnes, web, socialmedia, social_networks

Confessions of viral video star

Techcrunch carried a highly interesting account by Dan Ackerman Greenberg last week about how he's taken more than a few videos to the top of the YouTube viewing lists. His company The Comotion Group describes itself as "viral marketing hired guns" and gives viral campaigns a helping hand generally.

A good few of his tactics basically sound fine, but others, like seeding forums with conversations about the videos fall into what I'd think of as social spam (unless they're being open about who they are and why they're posting, but it doesn't sound like they are).

In Ackerman's words:

The Wild West days of Lonely Girl and Ask A Ninja are over. You simply can’t expect to post great videos on YouTube and have them go viral on their own, even if you think you have the best videos ever. These days, achieving true virality takes serious creativity, some luck, and a lot of hard work. So, my advice: fire your PR firm and do it yourself.

Technorati Tags: viral, marketing, youtube, video, advertising

St Pancras: Longest geek bar in the world (well, UK train stations)

Traveling out of the new St Pancras train station on Eurostar this morning was so simple it was a pleasure (apart from the being there at 5 a.m. bit).

There's been a lot of talk in the media about the new station's champagne bar - reputedly the longest in Europe (like anyone was counting). Naturally, determined champagne lover though I am, it was a little early for me to be able to check that out.

However, I was hugely impressed by what has to be the first transport hub in the UK I've seen that's been designed for the needs of the laptop age, to wit a very, very long bar with stools and loads of power sockets in European and UK formats.

Hurrah for St Pancras!

I'd like to see airports and other large train stations adopting features like this, and maybe there will be an end to laptop users furtively scanning the skirting boards of waiting rooms and cafes desperate for a hit of sweet screen-brightening power.

Technorati Tags: st pancras, trains, eurostar, design, laptops

Deck the streets with illuminated networks

Walking through London last night I came across what I think was the immediate aftermath of the annual turning on of the Christmas lights in the West End. Various uniformed, hi-vis jacketed people were bustling about and some were enjoying the opportunity to use megaphones to tell people were to stand and walk.

Crossing Regent Street I looked up to behold a host of... well, call me obsessed, but what looked like the sort of 3D network graphs generated by maps of social networks, websites, blogs etc..

I took quite a few pics and a video muttering to myself, "Well that's the Christmas card taken care of...".

Turns out it's a Nokia-sponsored effort:

The unique illuminations, entitled Unity, are sponsored by Nokia, to mark the imminent arrival to Regent Street of the Nokia flagship store. Designed to echo the modernity and variety of Regent Street, at the same time the lights this year will enhance its hallmarks; quality, heritage, style and success.

Got my attention, anyway... but network obsessed geeks are a pretty niche audience to go after with such a spectacular display but I'm sure a wider audience will just enjoy them for being pretty.

Technorati Tags: christmas, networks, london, nokia, marketing

Overheard: Marketing Society delegate: "Tell us what brands should do!"

Taking the roof off: The Marketing Society conference today was held at the stunning Royal Opera House.

Look at me blogging about a conference on the same day as attending it - almost like a proper blogger!

Anyhow, couple of things following the Marketing Society panel discussion, first off: here's Adriana's dissident marketer t-shirt: Brands are for cattle...

Second, there were a couple of very good presentations before the panel session, the first a view from Nikesh Arora, VP European Operations of Google Europe on the evolution of marketing, the second an analysis of how the "networks era" is completely changing all aspects of business and marketing from Venkat Venkatraman from Boston University of Management.

Venkat's presentation resonated particularly well with me as it focused not just on marketing but the fundamental changes to business models that happen when you are operating in networks.

But a lot of what was said was probably not helpful to everyone. One delegate I overheard in the coffee break directly after the panel session I was on complained "Why does everyone keep pussyfooting around and not just tell us what brands should do?"

It's a fair request. But an incredibly complex one on the other hand. Here's a lit of things I think brands should be doing now. In no particular order (in fact some should be simultaneous):

• Understand the idea and reality of what networks are. Start by reading Linked, or Six Degrees for starters. OK, it is hard maths, but you need to have some kind of idea of what people mean when they say network effect in order to figure out anything at all here.

• Find out where the networks are that are significant for your organisation or brands. Start with Google, move on out through Facebook, MySpace, Technorati, YouTube and see what's going on. Develop some benchmarking / evaluation approaches (yes, Spannerworks can help with this). Look for conversations and content about you, competitors, and topics related to you and your brands. 
• Develop a listening habit. You need someone, be it agency or in-house social media whizz, to be telling you what's going on out there and what it means. Sorry, but knowing that there are 100 mentions of your brand a week on Technorati is just not enough information.
• Start to show that you are listening. There are lots of ways of doing this, but you could start by adapting products / business decisions based on the real-world feedback you get from customers (for once and for all, was that Wispa thing for real or was the groundswell of Wispa fans engineered in any way?). Check out the stories of LEGO's innovation programme or Dell's communties for the best examples yet of listening actively and adapting your products as a result.  

• Try out some innovation in your communications. I'm committing to write up a case study from the brilliant digital team at E.ON in the next couple of days which shows how simply and brilliantly effective this can be). But regardless, have a think about how RSS, search, blogs, Twitter, YouTube might playa  role in making your next communications or marketing programme a little more interesting. Any of them got a role to play?

• Help your organisation to define context and principles. Look, you have to have a strategy and a point of view for all of this. Things are moving too fast for you to bee reacting to every new fad or web-craze du jour - you need to be clear about what the fundamentals are and how you are going to cope with constant, rapidly evolving complexity.
• Start learning fast, or make sure you know someone who is. How do you do that? Read some blogs. Get Techcrunch UK, Buzzmachine, Marketing Strategy & Innovation and Guardian PDA for starters and you'll be mostly in the loop on wha's going on. If you have a long commute or spend a lot of time on the road get yourself subscribed to the For Immediate Release podcast (scroll down and press the iTunes button on the right handside if you already have an ipod) - there's more practical ideas and case studies per minute in that than most conferences - and it's free.

And that's all before you even ask "Should we have a blog?" or think about starting a sponsored group on Facebook.

I'm thinking there is probably a ready market for events where people share their experiments, success and failures if they're brave enough) in practical  workshop sessions. Event organisers take note!

Technorati Tags: social media, marketing, social networks, networks, marketing society, uk, blogs, strategy, coimmunications

Harnesses are for horses and consenting adults, not social networks

I absolutely promise to get picture of Adriana's "Brands are for cattle" T-shirt she's promising to wear for the Marketing Society conference today.

We're both on a panel there today to debate the following question: "Can social networks be harnessed by brands?" a question designed as a provocation to the panelists, first and foremost. I can't imagine anyone's going to offer a straightforward "how to" and will all most likely happily deconstruct and dismiss the idea of controlling people in social media.

Harnesses, to continue Adriana's theme, are for domestic animals and maybe consenting adults, but not social networks.

The question does also reflect the language of marketing from the era of channel media and it's useful for that fact, if only by setting us up to knock it down.

You can control channels, control the message, dominate the medium. In networks your best hope is to be prominent, and you only get to be prominent by earning attention and respect (you do that by being respectful and useful, in case you haven't been reading this blog for a while).

Looking forward to the discussion. Will let you know how it goes.

Technorati Tags: brands, marketing, marketing society, social networks

Brand Republic post: More useful to think evolution not bubbles, Mr Lévy

Hoping it doesn't burst just yet?

Cross-posted from my blog at Brand Republic (log-in required):

"Publicis sees internet bubble" heralds the FT yesterday, in an account of a speech by Maurice Lévy, the marketing behemoth's chairman and chief executive. On our own Brand Republic, "boom and bust" was invoked in the story's headline.

Now I'm of the opinion that advertising's not the whole answer for social media start-ups, and social networks aren't the whole answer for the advertising industry, but invoking bubble imagery - very potent in the web media world - is slightly over-blowing things.

I also don't agree with Mr Levy's assertion that 2007 is "exactly the same situation as we saw at the end of the 1990s, when everyone thought... he'd get the advertising."

2007 is very different indeed. Many internet businesses are making real money from models other than advertising and in fact valuations are being inflated by battles between web giants, not stampedes of  ill-advised private investors and careless venture capitalists.

We're experiencing a period of - even by the standards of the past two years - frenetic innovation and creative thinking about how advertising works online.

Facebook's raft of new services for marketers, the sheer potential of the Google-led OpenSocial standard, and the prospect of the mobile internet opening up at last (sue to Apple and Google's opening up of possibilities and ambitions for innovation) mean that online advertising models are evolving fast - and necessarily so. And evolution is a much better model to think about that the linear connotations of boom and bust, if you want to be planning a winning approach in the medium term for your brand, agency or clients.

Thing about evolution is just because something is changing doesn't mean all change is positive, nor that all the new exciting creatures in the ecosystem are going to end up winners.  

By the way, if you want a good insight into how to plan a business (including advertising) strategy in a complex, fast moving, adaptive environment, I recommend reading The Origin of Wealth by Eric Beinhocker, a senior McKinsey thinker.

In 2007 there may be a lot of hot air, but the bubble metaphor may be a kind of hype all of its own. The best advice for marketers and brand owners is to develop a big-picture view of how the advertising world is changing and place (probably multiple) bets accordingly.

Bonus links: The bubble concern may be a red herring - there are other reasons for marketers to be cautious in assessing the potential of Facebook's advertising innovations (experiments?). Here are a couple of good analyses to chew over:

• Mashable: Social Networks Matter Less to Marketers than You (and They) Might Think
• Techcrunch: The Facebook Ad Backlash Begins

Technorati Tags: publicis, advertising, web, bubble, economics, mckinsey, ericbeinhocker, brandrepublic, socialmedia

OpenSocial, iPhones, Facebook ads: a week when you might be forgiven for losing the plot

Guess I picked the wrong week not to have any time for blogging... heh heh.

Last week was almost too exciting at times. Seriously. At one point I had to get out of the office to get away from the frenetic jumping up and down of colleagues with new ideas...

I think that anyone interested in the web was probably a little over-stimulated last week, though...  the market was spinning on multiple axes with all sorts of things going down: the launch of the iPhone in the UK, the picking over the detail of the new OpenSocial platform and Facebook array of new marketing advertising tactics.

More cause for excitement for me when I got a last-minute request to talk at the IAB's annual Engage conference, themed around one of my current big preoccupations, re-thinking marketing in the age of networks.

There was a good panel discussion afterwards, with Josh Spear (who gave a great run through of his view of being Born Digital (a state of mind, rather than an age thing, he said). Josh runs a really interesting UK / US company, Undercurrent, which calls itself  a "social interactive thinktank".

I didn't have any decent camera with me, just a rather deficient cameraphone, but here's an apt pic of Josh running through his slides...

And a lectern's eye view of the Mermaid Theatre's auditorium...

At almost 700 people in the audience it was the largest crowd I've spoken to yet. Funny, looks smaller in the picture than I recall quaking on the stage...

Actually, this one from the Mermaid's own site is better:

 

Hopefully the IAB will make the presentations and discussions available to view or download - there were some pretty interesting talks from the likes of AOL chief Randy Falco and Owen van Natta, Facebook's COO. If you're an thinking about joining by the way, the IAB is one industry body that is definitely worth getting involved in. Slick, stylish and unremittingly committed to just getting things happening, there's a real energy and enthusiasm about the whole team.

Here's to this week, then... be nice if people could stop announcing things for five minutes, but I hear Bebo's lining up for its riposte to / support for OpenSocial...

Technorati Tags: IAB, advertising, UK, socialmedia, joshspears, facebook, marketing, iphone, twitter, opensocial

Ah, iPod Touch, let me count the ways...

As you may have heard, the iPhone launched in the UK on Friday. If you're enchanted by the idea, or have one I recommend reading Stephen Fry's Guardian column. If you just wish Apple's genius would allow a little more openness, read John Naughton's effort from today's Observer. If you're a miserable sort, The Register will delight you with news that not very many people were queueing round the block on Friday night.

Meanwhile, I've fallen in gadget-love with iPhone's little sibling, the iPhone Touch. I got one early thanks to an extremely nice colleague who took advantage of the cheap-as-chips dollar to bring back an 8GB model from New York.

I'm not going to go into detail about the device - the last thing the world or the blogosphere needs right now is another iPod / iPhone review. Suffice to say, the most breathless accounts of its genius are completely right. It is pure joy to use, stunningly beautiful and practical in all sorts of amazing ways.

Suddenly the iPod classic feels clunky and old. Suddenly my mobile phone is not the go everywhere device it was - it plays second fiddle to the amazing, one-button iPod Touch. If you're wavering... buy one.

If I were in the market for a phone right now I'd even be thinking about lining up for an iPhone (I was previously slightly wary) - as it is I'll muddle by 'til then - goodness knows what Apple will have come up with by then.

Technorati Tags: iphone, ipod touch, apple