How Can Big Media Get Back in the Game? The Big Bang Business Model

I got this thing all figured out.

The universe, you know.

Once upon a time there was nothing. And then after a “Big Bang” there was something.

And as things started expanding there was a lot more of this something. And then the universal momentum waned and gravity took over. Things contracted. Once again there was nothing.

You’ll have to forgive me. I saw Star Trek this weekend.

So even if Jean-Luc Picard had never lost half his humanity and William Shatner had never traded the 1701-C for a hippie beater van, we still know the universe starts from nothing and ends with nothing. It’s a cycle. The universe expands and eventually contracts.

Now, more than a few scientists out there might want to debate my cosmological accuracy. Not everyone agrees in the closed universe. But that’s okay. We’re not here to analyze the space-time continuum or get published by the Scientific American. We’re here to talk about a business model. Scientists go back to the lab. Everyone else, thisaway.

So as we know, the universe is expanding. (Which for us humans is really the preferable thing.)

But let’s take a look at the media industry. It’s doing just the opposite. It’s contracting. And to provide some movie-worthy visuals let’s just say it’s about to reach the event horizon.

The point of no return.

End of movie.

After reading yesterday’s Mashable article by Stan Shroeder about News Corp’s plan to install the Great Paywall of China, and proclaiming it would be “rightfully high,” it looks like Big Media isn’t exactly caught up on their Sci-Fi (or SyFy). Because they’re on a collision course with a big sucking black hole. Haven’t they heard of Stephen Hawking? If you’ve made enough missteps to find yourself approaching the edge of a black hole, things are about to get a little discombobulated.

But wow. By thinking a paywall is the way out of this mess, Big Media is basically putzing around at impulse power. Hoping it’s a mirage. Assuming if things get that bad they can just dial up that fancy warp core so the lumbering mothership can continue on its merry way through the Milky Way galaxy.

Going where every man has gone before.

Ho hum.

Sorry, but it’s time for the Big Bang Business Model. Where outdated business models collapse, and new sparkly ones emerge from the primordial soup.

Yeah, there’s a chance Big Media can make a resurgence. Expanding out into the ethers with its long tentacles.

But it could also make like a Monty Python parrot and cease to be.

If Big Media wants to leverage getting sucked into a black hole, and hope that its particles cohesively reassemble during the Big Bang, it has to figure out that it isn’t in the information business. It really never was. What made Big Media ubiquitous and highly in demand was the human desire for personal power. No, not information. Not spreads with Annie Liebowitz photographs. Or articles written by Pulitzer Prize winners.

What readers really wanted was the personal power the information gave them.

I mean that’s why business executives read Time magazine or Newsweek or WSJ or Ad Age, right? To amass more knowledge that can be leveraged for power. The more information you possess, the higher-level conversations you can have. Your critical thinking skills might actually improve. Your value to your company increases. Your boss stops asking you to bring him coffee. People want to talk to you more. Listen more. Your mind expands. You revel in acquiring even more information because you like the result of having it. By absorbing and sharing information, you increase your personal power. Why do you think 14 year-old girls read Cosmo or Glamour? It’s about increasing their ability to have presence and popularity. Forget information. It’s just that thing you have to get through to attain personal power.

But somewhere Big Media got lost. The powers that be couldn’t stand to lose what they felt they owned, and chose to engage in an epic struggle to control what they think they offer of value: information. They ventured into the internet-planetary system but once they realized what Web 3.0 is all about, they reversed engines and started planning how to keep their “valuable” information away from users who expect it for free. They started strategizing ways to shield it from pesky blogging parasites.

The problem is that the internet is all about sharing, which is at direct odds with Big Media’s old business model. Big Media placed an arbitrary value on information because they erroneously thought information was their business. But now that the information has lost its monetary value, they’re apparently still not ready to accept that the singularity is near. They’re thinking that by installing paywalls, preaching about expenses, and calling their news “premier” they can miraculously grind the reverse Big Bang to a screeching halt. The problem is, “premier” information is losing its value.

Because free information can grant personal power, too.

Ouch.

To survive, Big Media has to realize that information is no longer scarce. The proprietary information that used to give readers an edge, give them more power, respect, and influence is now available for free. But there’s a way to capitalize on this. Want to solve Big Media’s business model dilemma? Use a little physics. The whole equal and opposite action thing:

When the amount of information increases, there’s something conversely decreasing.

And when the value of information is decreasing because there’s so much of it, there’s something else increasing in value because it’s harder to come by.

If Big Media would analyze their greatest offering, personal power, they’d realize that to attain personal power you need both the access to information and the time to go out and leverage it.

But with so much information out there, we’re experiencing an ever-increasing scarcity of time. More information, less time. And with millions of new web pages every day, it’s not going to get any better.

Anyone who’s lost five hours googling in one sitting, or has 1,700 unread RSS articles in their feeder knows what I’m talking about. The last thing anyone wants is to pay $2.99 for an a la carte article or subscribe to one more news feed. And a paid one? Forget it. Dream on. We’re already overloaded with great stuff. Great free stuff.

What we humanoids need is a way to synthesize information. We need a serious time-saver. We need access to the best information customized to our personal preferences. New stuff. Old stuff that’s relevant to our new stuff. “Trusted” stuff. And untrusted stuff. Articles and blogs and social media conversations that represent our favorite products and brands, complement our daily activities, reflect our personal goals. All mishmashed into an aggregated system that we’d swear was magic. Super value efficiently delivered so we can be on high receive, while still having spare time to act on it and share it.

There’s the value. That’s where the next business model is. Once Big Media crashes into the singularity, there will be an explosive opportunity to harness information.

Not paywall it.

What Big Media should be doing to save themselves is cornering the market on personal power. Developing a property that allows users to aggregate their own “personal power interface.” A truly ubiquitous aggregator. With Big Media populating what should be some of the best content, of course. But also populating from across the web. Being okay with having their stories aggregated along with pesky bloggers or websites they don’t own or control. Drawing in the best articles, blogs, tweets, and updates on the issues and activities and people that shape a person’s world. An individual’s world.

Realize it’s no longer mass media. It’s individual media.

And instead of selling advertising onto a newsprint page or TV commercial, develop innovations to integrate relevant brands and companies into interfaces in a way that doesn’t feel like advertising’s unwanted guest. Take a serious look at the core of social media, maximize its strengths, and create interwoven sharing opportunities. Not just sharing news, but sharing brands. In a way that’s not already being done. In a way that advertisers will pee their pants over.

Seriously. If Big Media had been focusing on innovating instead of quarterly profits, they might have realized that the portfolio of media acquisitions they’d acquired during the 1990’s gives them an advantage to merge content through an interface that has real value for individual users. If Big Media wants to emerge from the Big Bang, it has to embrace its core value and realize what it’s offered all along: Personal power. And create something that maximizes it.

Hard to believe the trick is something as simple as a set of aggregation algorithms, huh? Who wouldn’t love something more relevant than a Google search. Something more focused than an RSS reader. More personal than Alltop. More customized than Twitter. Less asinine than Facebook. Imagine something that creates a powerful information efficiency, aggregating what matters to an individual… saving time… and increasing personal productivity. The perfect storm of personal power.

That’s the Big Bang Business Model: Monetizing the value of information, not the information itself. Making aggregation the focus of innovation. Placing importance on the benefit, not the product. Recognizing the emerging problem: too much information and lack of time to leverage it. And solving that problem, not adding to it.

A lot of companies are toeing the line of this hot, new mystery property. But none of them have yet to capture the magic. A few are getting close. But by creating an aggregator that’s truly revolutionary, one that seriously impacts the ability to gain knowledge and personal power, Big Media could get back into the game.

This is our new universe. The race is not going to be won on control of information. It will be won on the aggregation of it.

Aggregation turns information into personal power.

Information is cheap. Personal power is priceless.

And if Big Media can’t deal with that, not even Captain Kirk with the Enterprise (or William Shatner with his tricked-out van) will be able to mount a rescue from that big, black hole that’s quickly emerging.

Top 10 Tools of the Social Media Swiss Army Knife

You may not like today’s post. 

I’m not laying into ghost tweeters. I’m not telling Domino’s where it’s at. I’m not even going to say a single word about big media. Really.

Today I’m turning over a new leaf. I’m going to whip up an informative post. (gasp!) Something you can actually use. Today I’m going to talk about social media. And what the heck you’re supposed to do with it.

So let’s get to the thing. A lot of people out there are trying to figure out what to make of social media. How to use it. How to master it. How to turn it into something that doesn’t scare small children. Companies are trepidatiously calling their agencies. Talking to their buddies on the golf course. Acting all cloak and dagger in the break room as if they’re talking about tampons or hemorrhoids. Asking the same question. All in hushed tones.

“What exactly is this whole social media thing anyway?”

“What is Twitter?”

“How do you get your kids to friend you on Facebook?”

Well you could ask a social media expert. Or you could just pull out that Swiss Army knife you’ve got stuffed in your shirt/pocket/purse/glove box.

Because social media is essentially a Swiss Army knife. And a Roman legion of social media experts can’t tell you more about social media than a simple Swiss Army knife can.

Social media is a tool.

A tool to get something done. Just like you’d pull out the multi-appendaged knife’s shiny corkscrew to pop open a bottle of wine three minutes after the boss leaves on a Friday. Or flip out the nail file to dig leaky printer ink from your fingernails before meeting with the CEO. Or open up that handy 2″ mini-blade to fend off a savage bear attack.

This is social media. Nothing fancy about it. You can sprinkle fairy dust all over Facebook and MySpace. You can pretend Second Life is going to go mainstream. You can daydream about the 19,530 Twitter followers Gary McCaffrey promises to get you in 30 days. Right. And all the wealth and riches that supposedly goes along with that.

But at the end of the day, social media isn’t magic. It’s just a tool, a multi-functional, albeit bright red and shiny tool. Waiting for a purpose. And without clear objectives and ultra-sharp strategy, using social media is like trying to cut a rope with those cute little Swiss Army tweezers. Not the right tool. Might make a dent but ultimately it’s not going to work. And certainly isn’t going to be efficient.

Yeah, I could have walked away right now and left this a neat, tidy little sub-1500 word post that might not eat up a whole lunch break. But why have a Swiss Army knife if you can’t take it out and play with it. It has so many nifty little pieces. 

So here’s my collection of social media Swiss Army tools. Each for a specific use, each with its own capability. Just like the Swiss Army knife, social media packs a whallop. But it’s only effective when each tool is understood and used for its proper purpose and executed within the confines of a comprehensive marketing strategy.

1. Social Media as an Account Planning Research Tool
When used as an account planning tool, social media helps a company connect to the pulse of the consumer market and gain insight into how to speak with consumers and how to influence them more relevantly. Social media account planning complements traditional primary research methods and gets closer to raw opinions and of-the-moment brand conversation. 

2. Social Media as an SEO Research Tool
Social media can also complement SEO research. Granted, there are a lot of great SEO tools out there that can tell you which search terms are trending for your specific market, as well as what’s being overused or underused, and a whole slew of other fun toys. But adding social media research to the mix allows you to do some of the digging yourself so you can see first-hand the keywords in the context of real-time conversation, get a feel for trends by reading blogs, and experimenting with the results of long tail search terms. It’s kind of like the difference between getting a creative brief in your IN BOX vs. hearing all the nuances from listening to the client speak about the project. I always prefer the latter. A lot of SEO practitioners will probably say that analyzing link juice, page rank, search terms, and evaluating reach and exposure is naturally social media. I’m just saying it can be used in a truly social way, where a warm body is doing the research as opposed to a search engine algorithm.

3. Social Media as a Public Relations Tool
Social media is a way for traditional public relations counselors to execute their strategies in a more proactive way, building even stronger relationships with bloggers, news brands, and online journalists. It also opens the window on getting brand exposure in more venues than they’ve ever had access to. Purposing social media for PR uses strategies similar to traditional PR, but using this new set of tools allows for more proactive innovation in the execution. A social media twist can be spun on press releases, corporate communiqué, reputation management, or awareness programs. And on and on.

4. Social Media as a Point-of-Sale Tool
As a virtual point-of-purchase tool, social media can serve as the catalyst for a buying decision. This can be anything from having a sales agent manning the Twitter feed to being proactive about forum interaction on your website. Or creating a virtual sales agent on your website ready to interact in real-time. Or a strategically-placed banner ad. The key is having a proactive presence at the virtual points where customers are likely to be making final purchasing decisions. 

5. Social Media as a Customer Service Tool
Social media can be used to field customer complaints and questions, or to direct customers to the appropriate point of contact for specific needs and requests. Or to educate. Or just to have a (gasp!) real conversation. Using social media as a customer service and customer relationship management tool (thanks @AlexnNYC!) lets brands get closer to the customer when the customer needs them most, which in turn influences brand trust and provides brand assurance. 

6. Social Media as Direct Sales Tool
Yeah, it’s pretty obvious. There are those wonderfully high-minded folks who’ve discovered that social media can be used as the least appreciated form of marketing: door-to-door sales. Load up an auto DM with a “free e-book” link or the URL to your product website and you’re treading a really thin line. When you don’t have the time, budget, or marketing know-how to launch something subtle, strategic, and targeted, or you’re pretty sure the only way to make a sale is to overwhelm the consumer with big promises and TMI, there’s always social media as a direct sales tool. You’ve seen it around. You know who’s doing it. You’re probably ignoring it. 

7. Social Media as a Direct Marketing Tool
This is a tool that allows marketers to quickly identify and qualify leads and blanket large numbers of potential customers with highly-targeted or loosely targeted direct messaging. Consider it a kinder, gentler form of spamming. Which means when it’s used in social media it probably has a tiny bit more relevance than those Viagra and Mexican pharmacy emails that just won’t go away. But not much.

8. Social Media as an Advertising Tool
In place of television, radio, outdoor, and print are YouTube, podcasting, banner ads, and blogs. Social media as an advertising tool is so massive I can’t even begin to lay out the land without upgrading my hosting package. (okay I’m still on blogspot, just go with me here). The key is that social media as an advertising tool seeks to achieve similar objectives as traditional media, but the tactics and path to sale are different. Requiring a whole new set of strategies. And a very different looking media department.

9. Social Media as a Brand Positioning Engagement Tool
I love brand positioning. There’s just something about getting to the core of a product, service, and company that makes my day. Truly brilliant advertising/marketing is founded on solid brand positioning. Getting to the core of what matters to the client and what’s true about the company and product. Social media is a phenomenal tool in this respect. It’s two-pronged. First, it allows a brand team to delve into the blogosphere, twittersphere, socialsphere, and googlesphere to uncover hidden consumer realities and motivations that ultimately drive brand positioning. On the other side, it gives a brand the chance to beauthentic in its connections. When consumers interact with a brand in social media they walk away with a more saturated, lasting brand aftertaste. Social media as a brand positioning tool makes a connection that can ultimately be even more powerful than the connection made through traditional media. And man. Is that hard for me to say. Because one of my greatest passions is harnessing the power of a core value to make a tangible brand connection using something as flimsy as TV/radio/print. But social media ramps that ability right up to 11.

10. Social Media as a Community Tool
I started to lump this with Brand Positioning. But I needed a 10th. And because growing a social media community hinges on crafting a brand experience from the “promise” perspective. And that’s branding, baby. But because of this new and interesting animal we call “co-ownership” it creates a need to manage the brand community. Let’s just say community picks up where brand positioning strategy ends. Oh and you can expect your customers to now have the title of Brand Manager. You no longer own the brand nor do you control it with an iron fist. This gives you the chance to build customer loyalty in a fresh, new way. Or fail in a fresh, new way. So you better do a good job. With customers. Not just at the awards show and on the blogging circuit. Because people will talk. And that’s why today, protecting your social media community is just as essential as protecting your trademark. Only not as easy.

The Difference Between Marketing and Social Media
Okay, just because you can head out into the hinterlands with nothing but a Clif Bar and a Swiss Army knife and still come out alive, a brand cannot survive with a social media Swiss Army knife alone. 

Pack the whole bag. 

Integrate. Realize that “marketing” is that 5000 cubic inch Kelty backcountry pack you’ve had strapped on for many an adventure. It holds a lot of gear. You need that gear. A social media Swiss Army knife is just a part of it.

Are there more social media Swiss Army tools? You betcha. We haven’t even gotten into the Strategic Alliance tool, Referral Marketing tool, and I’m sure there’s someone out there working on a Timeshare Marketing tool. Lord help us. But the point is social media is a tool that has a lot of different purposes. And none of them should be used just because they look pretty. Yeah, a Swiss Army knife is a beauty to behold. It’s even got a place in MOMA. But unless you’re MacGyver you really shouldn’t expect it to launch rocket ships.

Okay, so as much as I’d like to go on and on and map out which social media networks work best with which tools, and go into the mix and match uses of blogging, video blogging, podcasting, webinars, Yelp, and Yahoo Answers, this isn’t a white paper and that little man with the stick is jumping up and down. Apparently I’ve exceeded the time limit. They want me backstage. Now.

Your turn. What are the social media Swiss Army tools you’re using? How are you using them? And why. Let’s pack this bag.

*****
The term “Swiss Army” is a registered trademark owned by Wenger S.A. and Victorinox A.G.

Domino’s Didn’t Deliver: Another Social Media Fail Whale

I was just going to let the whole thing go.

But after a week of reading countless industry blogs praising Domino’s and its response to the now infamous viral video of two employees desecrating a sandwich, I just couldn’t. Not when Domino’s is being applauded for what’s essentially nothing short of splashing around the big fail whale tail.

Domino’s may know the recipe for the pizza that put 20 pounds on me in college, but it missed a couple of key ingredients on its PR strategy:

1) Speed of Response

Domino’s failed on two counts with speed. While I respect that Domino’s VP of Communications Tim McIntyre took action once he got news of the video, it wasn’t the company that identified and isolated the video and it should have been. Because of a lack of social media tentacles, precious time was lost. And a lot of people saw the video. 

Barf bags abounded.

Speed of response? It was readers of the Consumerist, the now famous Amy Wilson and “whyerhead” who saw the video on YouTube and took the initiative to figure out where the offensive video originated and called the store directly. For Domino’s as a company I’m envisioning more of a “deer-in-the-headlights” look as opposed to Speed Racer rushing in to take down the baddies. Let’s face it. Domino’s was not in position to act quickly. They just got lucky that a savvy internet user had some time on their hands and spared the company an additional million or so viewers on YouTube.

Which brings us to the second way Domino’s failed on speed. The internet moves fast. Real fast. The company was basically trying to win a drag race in a 72′ Pinto. With a late start. Even though the company is now priding itself and being lauded by some pretty big names for its quick actions, the internet was moving faster. Way faster. The race was lost.

But had Domino’s already built up a Twitter community of say even a modest 10,000, the Domino’s tweeter would have either been alerted by a follower in the minutes after the offending video was uploaded or they would have (hopefully) been using a search client like TweetDeck or Twhirl and would have known the second the words “Domino” “Domino’s” or “pizza” hit the Twittersphere. If they were plugged into blogs and connected to social media trail blazers, that video wouldn’t have had a fighting chance.

Lesson for Domino’s: Forget those snappy UPS commercials about moving at the speed of business. Today it’s about “moving at the speed of opinion.” And you can’t be detecting opinion and crafting opinion when you’re fumbling around in the pit while everyone else is on the race course.

2) Proactivity

For starters, Domino’s appeared to have no plan on how to handle a social media crisis, or even know what a social media plan would look like for that matter. They wrangled up management behind closed doors and reportedly didn’t include their creative agency or other consultants in the decision-making process. I can only think of one word to sum up what that smells like: panic. Okay and fear.

Definitely not proactivity.

A company that has a social media plan in place would have their agency in the room counseling on the appropriate tactics and reviewing the plan. Unfortunately, Domino’s was most likely formulating objectives, strategies, and tactics all in one hasty, heparin-popping meeting. Which no doubt culminated in someone running out of the conference room, knocking co-workers into walls, and stumbling over coffee-bearing interns as they raced to their office to create a Twitter account.

This is what happens when you’re not proactive. Things get messy. Coffee gets spilled. People in suits have to run.

3) Creativity

The Domino’s video response was the biggest fail whale of the whole thing. Because it left so much on the table. There was nothing creative about it. It was public relations 80’s style. No brand personality. No finesse. No charm. Just business. 

It might have worked brilliantly in 1983 but today it felt awkward. It was as if Gordon Gecko walked onto an Edward Jones commercial and proclaimed “Greed is Good!” with a cheshire smirk, expecting a round of here here’s. (Sadly, that might have actually worked ten years ago). With today’s Wall Street crisis, it would have been grossly out of place. 

This is along the same lines of how the Domino’s video response was irrelevant to today’s audience. Okay, maybe not so dramatic. But without taking into account today’s audience and the internet climate, Domino’s message was out of touch. They used the right tools but with the wrong voice. While watching the video of Domino’s president Patrick Doyle I wanted to look over my shoulder to see who he was talking to. My dad maybe? 

Creatively, the video could have been so much more. And I don’t mean high production value: 

This instant in time for Domino’s was the hero moment. It was begging for a brand home run. Domino’s didn’t ask to have its image thrust into the media so publicly and negatively, but it was given an unlikely opportunity to shine, to build the brand even stronger, and to come out looking like the hero of Pizza brands. What they could have done was fight fire with fire and create a video of their own that incorporated the brand at its best. It could have been a self-deprecating, aw-shucks moment of brilliance that made the public feel good and LOVE Domino’s.

Instead they love Susan Boyle. 

The world was waiting for a wronged underdog to champion. And Domino’s failed to seize that moment.

Domino’s took the stuffy corporate route. Patrick Doyle didn’t come across as a personable follow-me kind of guy, but more like a stunned corporate stiff that just had the side of his Lamborghini keyed. 

Basically, the video just felt wrong. It didn’t fix anything. And it didn’t seize that special moment that could have been leveraged to build the brand. It felt like an Olympic relay team dropping the baton and losing the gold on the last 100 yards of the race. It’s terrible that this happened and Patrick Doyle has every right to be upset. But go be upset behind closed doors with a bottle of Glenmorangie. This was the chance for the brand to shine. It was a time to creatively embrace the role of underdog hero. And own it.

A lot of industry bigwigs are probably in the process of inking book deals on the crisis. And B-school textbook scholars are no doubt adding case study pages next to the Tylenol fast-reaction bottle tampering chapter. All of them gushing about how great Domino’s PR crisis management was.

But for me and other social media strategists who have a new set of priorities and see the social media landscape as far more than another broadcast medium, and certainly more than an afterthought, we’ll be penciling in Domino’s as new media’s first big brand fail whale.

With any luck, at least a handful of scholars are quickly moving their Domino’s chapter a little closer to the one with the Exxon Valdez. Reevaluating the rules of PR. Learning to move at the speed of opinion.

And thinking twice before ordering a pizza.

***

Big Media Slept on Titanic While Steerage Rowed to Shore

Oh I can just hear it.

“Why Rothchild, look at those pathetic little boats in the distance. Why ever are they paddling away? Don’t they know this is the Titanic? The greatest most indestructible ship the world has ever built?”

“Wretched parasites I say! Let them play on their little Twitters and YouTubes. Let them float along on their blogs. We’re on the Titanic, daaahling. Their miniscule machinations are of no concern to us.”

Ah, don’t you just love big media.

Apparently Google does. A lot more than it loves providing untainted search results. Because Google has decided to dance with the devil. To officially usher big media through the velvet rope. Right past those pesky blogging parasites.

And to justify this sacrilege they’re calling it “trusted results.”

Gee thanks, Google. Trust “this.”

What puzzles me is this move by Google barely got a whimper of response from the blogosphere. Where were the chanting protestors? Where were the snarky T-shirts? I was ready to burn my hard drive. Just couldn’t find a ready bonfire.

This is a big freakin’ deal. Big media basically slept on the Titanic while steerage rowed to shore. Web 1.0 and 2.0 happened while big media put the blinders on and continued with business as usual. They didn’t pay much attention to the pesky bloggers, sneered haughtily at MySpace and Facebook, and for a brief minute discounted Twitter. But then something dawned on them. If everyone in the steerage section can have their own boats, who needs the Titanic?

Engines full stop!!!

So committees were formed and meetings were had. Big media was having none of this. They after all, had gotten the steerage to the other side of the ocean in the first place. What right do these parasites have to abandon ship now?

Enter Google. Who now wants to placate big media by throwing out one of those 100 mile-wide trawling nets to drag everyone back into the boat for a big happy kum ba yah.

Forget that it’s sinking. Forget that it’s a lumbering oaf that can no longer glide agilely through the water. Did I say it’s sinking?

Google can prop up “trusted brands” for only so long before the Twitterers and YouTubers break free of the net and eventually find their way to shore. Google can pacify big media with digital harpoons to stop internet users from easily accessing those parasitic bloggers but eventually, steerage will make it to shore. And unfortunately for Google it won’t be what it apparently considers the “right” shore. Oops!

Tropic of Twitter, anyone?

Now maybe the reason this whole “trusted brands” thing has gone down without so much as a squeak is because it’s an insidious kind of misstep. The kind that doesn’t look so bad at first but eventually oozes over and turns an unnatural shade of green and results in the untimely amputation of a limb. And Google will surely traipse along for awhile as if nothing happened. Merrily building its internal structure like the skeleton of the Death Star. But eventually the damage will surface. That magical thing that made Google as ubiquitous as toilet paper will disappear. Sucked down the big porcelain vortex.

Yes, I did just compare Google to toilet paper.

Okay forget the toilet paper. This is the paragraph to cut and paste. This is why Google’s bow to big media is so huge. If internet users wanted a “trusted brand” they would skip Google and go straight to the brand site to begin with. Those “trusted” sites have been there all along. So if big media and “trusted” brands were what users wanted, Google wouldn’t have gotten such a foothold in the first place. Big media would already be getting primo page rank. Nothing to have meetings about. Nothing to twist Google’s arm over. And duh! Big media had the same opportunities as everyone else for building links and engaging in social media and gaining basic trust to achieve page rank. They just didn’t feel the need to associate with steerage. Until they started rowing…. AWAY.

Ding!

So what we have here is this shiny new algorithm to artificially alter page rank. To expose users to what they were running from in the first place. They didn’t want the corporate party line. They wanted the raw stuff. The untrusted stuff. The whole reason Google gained such huge market share is because people want content that’s REAL. Not manufactured. Not politicized. Not meted out in pre-packaged seal-of-approval bite-size morsels. Users wanted access. And to be accessed. On their own terms.

Google saw the lighthouse through the fog and created a product that leveraged the human desire to KNOW. The desire to communicate, connect, listen, and be heard. Without interference. WITHOUT INTERFERENCE. This is what Google gave us. A central place to find what matters. And to create what matters. Wrapped up in a neat little equal opportunity package. All of the AdSense and Analytics, the AdWords and Gmail, the Reader, the iGoogle. That’s just icing. The cake has always been the search.

And what made Google blaze past Yahoo! and whatever those other search engines were that we’ve now since forgotten ever existed, (oh yeah my favorite, MS SiN) is that it provided a level playing field and gave internet users “innocent” results. Sure, there were algorithms to handle spam, and a recent middle-of-the-night tweak to boost “recent” results to compete with Twitter. But ultimately users could trust Google results. If a story or a blog or a site or a page ranked high it was because someone trusted it. A lot of someones. Or better yet, it was something original. There was really never a need to manufacture another level of trust. It was already established.

So guess where this leaves us? Right where we’ve been trying to get away from: Big media dominating the news and controlling the minds of the masses. Telling us who we want as President. Telling us which morals are acceptable and which are passe. Squeezing out the voice of anyone who could make a real difference. (Anyone remember how the networks put the pinch on Ron Paul?) Is this really the same media you want influencing (controlling) Google?

Oh hey! China would love this. And all those other countries that use the iron grip of censorship… banning and controlling what the populace is exposed to. Maybe China can have a meeting with Google so they can have their own version of “trusted results.” I’m visualizing a “trusted results” algorithm for people who live in Israel. And one for Iran. And one for… New Jersey.

All of the sudden ‘trusted results” have become “tainted results.”

So while big media was missing the boat, Google was missing the point. The beauty of Google and search engine ranking has always been that anyone can rise based on a combination of quality of content and strategic linking. And then Google has to go and pull the plug on its own juice. Compromising what made itself relevant to begin with.

Dropping itself several places in my mental page rank.

Google, are you paying attention? I know your little crawlers will be stopping by in the next 3-5 days.

Funny, I get the feeling I may eventually be looking for a missing Gmail account.

Big Media Slept on Titanic While Steerage Rowed to Shore

Oh I can just hear it.

“Why Rothchild, look at those pathetic little boats in the distance. Why ever are they paddling away? Don’t they know this is the Titanic? The greatest most indestructible ship the world has ever built?”

“Wretched parasites I say! Let them play on their little Twitters and YouTubes. Let them float along on their blogs. We’re on the Titanic, daaahling. Their miniscule machinations are of no concern to us.”

Ah, don’t you just love big media.

Apparently Google does. A lot more than it loves providing untainted search results. Because Google has decided to dance with the devil. To officially usher big media through the velvet rope. Right past those pesky blogging parasites.

And to justify this sacrilege they’re calling it “trusted results.”

Gee thanks, Google. Trust “this.”

What puzzles me is this move by Google barely got a whimper of response from the blogosphere. Where were the chanting protestors? Where were the snarky T-shirts? I was ready to burn my hard drive. Just couldn’t find a ready bonfire.

This is a big freakin’ deal. Big media basically slept on the Titanic while steerage rowed to shore. Web 1.0 and 2.0 happened while big media put the blinders on and continued with business as usual. They didn’t pay much attention to the pesky bloggers, sneered haughtily at MySpace and Facebook, and for a brief minute discounted Twitter. But then something dawned on them. If everyone in the steerage section can have their own boats, who needs the Titanic?

Engines full stop!!!

So committees were formed and meetings were had. Big media was having none of this. They after all, had gotten the steerage to the other side of the ocean in the first place. What right do these parasites have to abandon ship now?

Enter Google. Who now wants to placate big media by throwing out one of those 100 mile-wide trawling nets to drag everyone back into the boat for a big happy kum ba yah.

Forget that it’s sinking. Forget that it’s a lumbering oaf that can no longer glide agilely through the water. Did I say it’s sinking?

Google can prop up “trusted brands” for only so long before the Twitterers and YouTubers break free of the net and eventually find their way to shore. Google can pacify big media with digital harpoons to stop internet users from easily accessing those parasitic bloggers but eventually, steerage will make it to shore. And unfortunately for Google it won’t be what it apparently considers the “right” shore. Oops!

Tropic of Twitter, anyone?

Now maybe the reason this whole “trusted brands” thing has gone down without so much as a squeak is because it’s an insidious kind of misstep. The kind that doesn’t look so bad at first but eventually oozes over and turns an unnatural shade of green and results in the untimely amputation of a limb. And Google will surely traipse along for awhile as if nothing happened. Merrily building its internal structure like the skeleton of the Death Star. But eventually the damage will surface. That magical thing that made Google as ubiquitous as toilet paper will disappear. Sucked down the big porcelain vortex.

Yes, I did just compare Google to toilet paper.

Okay forget the toilet paper. This is the paragraph to cut and paste. This is why Google’s bow to big media is so huge. If internet users wanted a “trusted brand” they would skip Google and go straight to the brand site to begin with. Those “trusted” sites have been there all along. So if big media and “trusted” brands were what users wanted, Google wouldn’t have gotten such a foothold in the first place. And big media would already be getting primo page rank. Nothing to have meetings about. Nothing to twist Google’s arm over. And duh! Big media had the same opportunities as everyone else for building links and engaging in social media and gaining basic trust to achieve page rank. They just didn’t feel the need to associate with steerage. Until they started rowing…. AWAY.

Ding!

So what we have here is this shiny new algorithm to artificially alter page rank. To expose users to what they were running from in the first place. They didn’t want the corporate party line. They wanted the raw stuff. The untrusted stuff. The whole reason Google gained such huge market share is because people want content that’s REAL. Not manufactured. Not politicized. Not meted out in pre-packaged seal-of-approval bite-size morsels. Users wanted access. And to be accessed. On their own terms.

Google saw the lighthouse through the fog and created a product that leveraged the human desire to KNOW. The desire to communicate, connect, listen, and be heard. Without interference. WITHOUT INTERFERENCE. This is what Google gave us. A central place to find what matters. And to create what matters. Wrapped up in a neat little equal opportunity package. All of the AdSense and Analytics, the AdWords and Gmail, the Reader, the iGoogle. That’s just icing. The cake has always been the search.

And what made Google blaze past Yahoo! and whatever those other search engines were that we’ve now since forgotten ever existed, (oh yeah my favorite, MS SiN) is that it provided a level playing field and gave internet users “innocent” results. Sure, there were algorithms to handle spam, and a recent middle-of-the-night tweak to boost “recent” results to compete with Twitter. But ultimately users could trust Google results. If a story or a blog or a site or a page ranked high it was because someone trusted it. A lot of someones. Or better yet, it was something original. There was really never a need to manufacture another level of trust. It was already established.

So guess where this leaves us? Right where we’ve been trying to get away from: Big media dominating the news and controlling the minds of the masses. Telling us who we want as President. Telling us which morals are acceptable and which are passe. Squeezing out the voice of anyone who could make a real difference. (Anyone remember how the networks put the pinch on Ron Paul?) Is this really the same media you want controlling influencing Google? Oh hey! China would love this. And all those other countries that use the iron grip of censorship, banning and controlling what the populace is exposed to. Maybe China can have a meeting with Google so they can have their own version of “trusted results.” I’m visualizing a “trusted results” algorithm for people who live in Israel. And one for Iran. And one for… New Jersey.

All of the sudden ‘trusted results” have become “tainted results.”

So while big media was missing the boat, Google was missing the point. The beauty of Google and search engine ranking has always been that anyone can rise based on a combination of quality of content and strategic linking. And then Google has to go and pull the plug on its own juice. Compromising what made itself relevant to begin with.

Dropping itself several places in my mental page rank.

Google, are you paying attention? I know your little crawlers will be stopping by in the next 3-5 days.

Funny, I get the feeling I may eventually be looking for a missing Gmail account.

Ghost Tweeting is the Milli Vanilli of Web 3.0.

Today I did the unthinkable. For a Mac fangirl it was absolutely preposterious. Egregious. Some might say sacrilegious. Or at least some sort of something with an “ous” at the end. Seriously.

I unfollowedous Guy Kawasakious.

As I rifled through my follow list, my heart was pounding. Was I really going to do it? Was I going to extricate myself from the biggest Twitter party on the planet? Could I really let go of @guykawasaki? Could I accept being relegated to the Twitter clueless who wouldn’t know a Guy Kawasaki from a lawn mower? I mean really. Who doesn’t follow Guy Kawasaki. And if I dared to hit the ominous “remove” button would he swiftly launch his minions upon me in a mass unfollow? What could I possibly be thinking??? Am I nuts?

(Click.)

I hold my breath. I look around. The sky isn’t darkening. Storm clouds not rolling in. No scowling Vincent Price peering through the window. No gargoyles to speak of.

So like, whew! I really did it. I broke up with Guy Kawasaki. No tears. No regrets. And no blood was shed. Or maybe his minions just didn’t have my street address. Finally, I had my freedom. Churn, baby, churn.

This is what happens when you do bad. People walk away. They unfollow. They untrust. I am now unceremoniously referring to it as #guyfail. When you represent something so awesome, but then somehow lose what made you awesome to begin with. Guy Kawasaki used to get it. But when he announced last week at #SESNY that he has three ghost tweeters writing under his Twitter account, I realized somewhere along the way, he lost it. If he can’t see the incredible value of a genuine, unfiltered Twitter persona and the abomination that is a ghosted account, then my friends the man no longer gets it. And it’s time to pass the mantle.

Sure, Guy might get it in a Web 2.0 kind of way, understanding that he must have presence. Write articles. Make Twitter accounts. Build empire. But that’s not Web 3.0. The new era of social media is about more than just making sure you have 30 pithy tweets per day attributed to your name. It’s about CONNECTING. For reals.

Yeah, I can hear it now. The voice out there saying it’s okay to ghost for a brand, and hey, isn’t Guy Kawasaki a brand? Well, let me ask you this. Aren’t we ALL brands today? Isn’t it the new mantra that everyone needs to have “reputation management?” And aren’t we all supposed to be building our “personal brands?” How fast would any one of us get unfollowed if it got out that it’s not really us behind our Twitter. Or behind our blog. If you found out that Seth Godin wasn’t writing his blog would you value him as much? Would his blog feel the same? Would you respect him in the same way? Would anything attached to his name carry the same weight? No, it really wouldn’t.

It’d be kind of like walking down Canal Street and seeing a hundred women carrying Louis Vuitton handbags, and realizing maybe one or two of them MIGHT be genuine. Sure, they look nice and all. But having a designer handbag has lost a lot of its cachet. Because so many out there simply aren’t real. This is what ghost tweeting does to social media. It injects doubt where there should be authenticity.

Think authenticity doesn’t matter?

Put on your denim jacket and parachute pants and let’s H.G. Wells ourselves back to the world of Milli Vanilli.

America loved Milli Vanilli. Six times platinum loved them. Grammy for Best New Artist in 1990. But then it came out that the two guys on the cover didn’t sing a note on the album. We all know where the story goes after that. Now maybe Guy Kawasaki doesn’t want a Milli Vanilli debacle on his hands. So he’s using a little Web 2.0 swagger and admitting to ghost tweeters in the name of transparency. But doing that is what makes it so clear he doesn’t get it. Because it’s not just about connecting and presence and faux transparency.

The magic of social media is in the authenticity.

And if you think people just want the content and don’t care about things being authentic, take a look at Milli Vanilli’s career after their fans found out about the deception. Lawsuits all over the U.S. with angry album buyers and concert-goers demanding their money back. They didn’t seem to care that the albums were great. They didn’t care that the concerts were entertaining. It didn’t matter that Milli Vanilli’s songs were burning up the charts, or that the duo was an MTV darling. The fans wanted authenticity. They wanted it to be real.

Sad thing is, social media is ALL about being real. At the core of what makes social media such a fantastic tool for branding, marketing, and communicating is that it allows consumers to connect on a real, personal level to brands they care about.

But dear Guy Kawasaki, there’s a difference between Coca Cola having ghost tweeters and you having ghost tweeters. Last I heard, Coca Cola isn’t human. I don’t see a smiling, toothy pic of Mr. Coca Cola on Coca Cola’s Twitter profile. However, there is one of you. A brand you may be, but if you’re going to set up a Twitter account that you don’t have the time to deal with genuinely and authentically (ie. Guy Kawasaki, the human, isn’t going to be the author of Guy Kawasaki “the tweets”) maybe consider changing the name to guykawasakifanclub or guykawasakiinc. And then think about maybe putting an image of a book on your profile. Or an Apple. Or a gargoyle.

Because if @guykawasaki pops up in my timeline, I want to know it was his fingers touching every key on the keypad and that he had that same last-second “do I really want to tweet this” moment we all have before hitting UPDATE. And that occasional tweegret. Because if it’s not really you behind the curtain, your account doesn’t have AUTHENTICITY. And I’ve lost a little trust in you. I’m looking at your blog a little differently know. I’ll still read it, but the love isn’t there. You’re now some dude in an ivory tower, sipping mocha frappuccinos shuttled in by an intern. Overseeing your vast domain from afar. Letting the little people eat cake. Give me the @names of your ghost tweeters so I can start following them. And I’ll take that intern’s name, too.

Yes, people are brands. But they won’t be for long if they start acting like a brand, and stop acting like a human.

So yeah, ghost tweeting is not in the spirit of social media, and definitely not in the spirit of Twitter. If social media’s value is ultimately in its authenticity, and one of social media’s greatest networkers is not using his Twitter authentically, then who else out there is faking it? And can anyone, or any brand for that matter, really be trusted?

Because if Guy Kawasaki says it’s okay to put your photo and your name on Twitter and then hire someone to impersonate you, and be a filter between you and the people who buy your books, and go to your speeches and click on the advertisers on your blog and support your new projects, well hell! Maybe it’s okay for everyone else! To heck with authenticity.

Which leads us to a total social media meltdown. Back to the days when brands spoke “at” the masses for no purpose other than to create what was ultimately a flimsy connection to gain market share. Do we really want to go back there? With all the opportunity we have to make a difference with social media?

Maybe it really is time for the mantle to be passed. Maybe Guy Kawasaki having ghost tweeters is a good thing. To mark the edge of the chasm. To mark the difference between the social media Milli Vanilli’s and the NEW “revolutionaries.”

To be sure, this was a difficult post to write. Because I’ve been a Guy Kawasaki faithful for at least a decade. And loved his Apple branding genius well before that. But creating evangelists is a double-edged sword. Because sometimes they pay attention.

Be revolutionary. Be authentic. And when your heroes veer off the path, never forget this one important thing:

Where the “remove” button is located.

(And where you can quickly hide to escape the gargoyles.)

Brand Fail Whale: Restaurant Owner Turns Negative Yelps Into T-Shirts

Yelp’s had some publicity lately, and not a lot of it good.

Let’s forget the “holy crap” moment this week when a judge ruled that Yelpers can be sued for libel. And let’s move on to something a little less disturbing. If only slightly.

I just finished reading an article from NPR’s On the Media http://tr.im/otmy that was basically an interview with a San Francisco restauranteur who got upset about some bad Yelp reviews and “confronted” the issue by turning the offending Yelps into T-shirts. “This place sucks” and stuff like that.

Clever idea but it seems the opportunity to improve and connect with some very important customers was lost. By taking a complaint and essentially turning it into a joke, the restaurant owner made a statement. A big one. Basically that he doesn’t take his customers seriously. And if you’re particularly demanding (or just expect things to be right), instead of being respected as a paying customer you’re going to get called out and put in your place.

Business-to-consumer companies are admittedly having it a little rough right now. In the past, a company that didn’t make customer service a top priority or provided an inferior product or service had total impunity. The customer could walk away upset and the company didn’t have to care. Now with Yelp, companies are all of the sudden being forced by the customer to do the right thing. And a lot of companies aren’t exactly prepared for that.

To prevent bad reviews, companies now have to hire better people, have a more positive management style, and produce a better product. They also have to get serious about their total offering and be prepared to satisfy every customer. Like as in ALL of them.

So back to the whole Yelp factor. Yeah, I know there’s always going to be “that” customer who thinks it’s funny to give one star and say they saw a rat run across the table. But I went to the Yelp page for the restaurant in question http://tr.im/delfina and the bad reviews were pretty reasonable. They were completely believable, criticizing mostly product quality, atmosphere, and employee behavior. No vicious rats, no people lying in the streets convulsing from food poisoning, no swill dripping from the rafters. Everything was pretty straight-forward.

But instead of looking at these Yelps as an opportunity to see things from a different perspective, the owner of the restaurant looked at it as a way to show he’s more clever than his customers and that he doesn’t take negative reviews seriously. Even if he’s privately using Yelp to improve in small ways here and there, the T-shirts (while a successful media grab) are a total brand fail whale.

News Flash: Demanding customers are the ones that can be evangelized.

You think people don’t realize when they’re being demanding? You think they don’t know they expect a lot? They do. But that doesn’t soften the blow when they realize you don’t care to please them. They take it personally. They think you’re doing a bad job because you don’t care about them. They think you want to take the lazy way. Tip the scale in your favor at their expense. These customers don’t suffer the mediocre, and they’re not about to let you get away with giving them the bum’s rush. They want justice. And with Yelp they’re going to get it. Let’s count the number of times Best Buy has recently found itself on page one of Digg. Companies that fail to meet “demanding” customer expectations are in a bad place to be.

But the flip side is that if a company does meet their needs, they’re going to tell the world. Cue the fireworks. They appreciate when a company can meet their expectations because it doesn’t happen very often. This means they’re going to love you. A lot. These are the customers that will Yelp your establishment in rainbow colors, and confront other Yelpers if they criticize you unjustly.

Still annoyed by those demanding customers?

Yelp is a gift. For brands and companies that honestly want to do the right thing, and value customers as unique individuals who don’t want to be herded like King Ranch cattle to the cash register, Yelp is an amazing social media tool that can be leveraged to cultivate and celebrate brand evangelists.

For the companies that don’t want to bother, there’s always the T-shirt business.

Social Media Experts Are Scary.

This is the kind of post that gets you unfollowed. A post with some very unpopular ideas. We’ll call it the Hitler of blog posts. And considering it’s a Twitter #followfriday I should probably come up with something a bit more butterflies and sunshine. Or at least margaritas and martinis.

But no. Not me. I like to live on the wild side. Kinda like companies who hire “social media experts.”

So here’s where I get in trouble today: I think this whole “social media expert” thing is getting really out of hand. Really. And not just because every other person with a Facebook account, a plane ticket to Austin, and a Twitter badge is claiming to be one. It’s because even if a true social media expert actually exists, calling yourself one is just another way of saying “I know enough to be dangerous.”

By even using the words social media expert it’s like you’re intentionally not choosing to say marketing expert. Because that would be hard to pull off if you’re not one. But social media expert. That’s easy. Have Twitter account, will travel.

Which is why social media experts scare me. Because by definition they’re not marketing experts.

DOH!

For all the flashing lights and shooting stars, social media is simply a tool. Technically it’s an advertising medium. When someone says they’re a social media expert it carries the same weight as if someone said “I’m a cable media expert.” Okay. That’s just one medium. Yes, being an expert of a medium does have value. But I’m not going to hand over a blank sheet of paper and expect my cable rep to write a comprehensive marketing program or decide what the best message is, or work on creative or manage the client’s brand. Or (gasp!) all of the above.

Which is what I’m seeing a lot of social media’ers trying to do. Using the term “social media expert” interchangeably with “marketing expert.” Which is why it’s so scary.

So with all due disrespect when I see iPhone app writers and web site designers and 26 year-old “self-employed” twitterers and mommybloggers claiming the title of “social media expert” I feel like I’m Alice in Wonderland. Falling down a really deep hole. Into a world where anyone can be an expert, and having a few years experience and barely any real marketing under their belt somehow confers the status of rock star. It’s like strategic marketing never existed. Like Elvis walked in and everyone lost their head and started throwing panties.

A lot of people with knowledge of the internet but little or no marketing experience are riding the social media hype to make a buck. Or launch a new career. And because a lot of companies don’t have the first idea how to proceed in the social media space they’re forced to trust these “experts” for marketing advice.

A train wreck we are a’pproachin.

So let’s digress for a moment. Let’s assume there is such an animal. The social media expert. The rock star. Versed in all things Twitter, Facebook, Flicker, YouTube, Vimeo, and you name it. Let’s just call them channels. Thing is I don’t ever remember any of my cable reps fancying themselves up and announcing they’re an expert. I respect them for that. Which is why I have an issue with the social media variety. The humility is missing. They’re not happy as simply the purveyors of media planning information. They want to be on stage. With the panties.

So panties aside, I trust cable reps to provide recommendations that include (quantitative) demographics, reach, frequency, GRP, CPP, and CPM for every channel on the line-up. Similarly I would also trust a social media rep for the same type of advice for social media. Am I going to let them dictate what percentage of my budget belongs in social media? No. Am I going to let them have carte blanche to develop creative and determine the best message? No. Am I going to trust them to handle Adsense and affiliate marketing? Unless they can prove they were too busy with clients to get anywhere near SXSWi, probably not.

What’s truly the scariest part of the “social media expert” craze is a lot of companies are getting caught up in the glitz and glam of social media and letting these “experts” have a go at their marketing budget like Mike Tyson at a casting call for America’s Next Top Model. And even a lot of ad agencies are parading their shiny, new “social media departments” in front of clients. Further feeding the frenzied perception that social media experts are the second coming.

Now don’t get me wrong. Social media and internet marketing are good things. And I believe in SEO, SMO, SEM, SMM, CGM, PPC, CTR, PFI, SERP, CPC, SES, and OMG. And I love love love social media. I’m right there with it. No fewer than a hundred beta accounts to prove it. Internet is an effective advertising medium. And social media is an amazing marketing tool. But it’s just a tool.

Kinda like the Twitter search tool I’ll be using later to check my #unfollowfridays.

Bloggers who pop the big smiley-face balloon of social media can’t exactly expect to be a twitterverse favorite, now can we?

Forget the Ad Degree, Watch Mad Men Instead.

When the heart of good advertising can be captured succinctly and brilliantly in a three-minute YouTube video, it kinda makes you wonder about the actual value of spending four years sleeping through advertising classes.

And kinda makes me glad I didn’t bother.

One of my favorite bloggers, Edward Boches (http://edwardboches.com) posted a link to one of the greatest moments in television history. Nope, not James Harrison’s 100-yard interception return. Although that definitely could qualify. But of all the moments in TV history that I could watch over and over and still need a Kleenex the 50th time I see it, an episode of AMC’s Mad Men takes the honors.

What made this clip such a great moment was how it took a critical (and oftentimes forgotten) advertising philosophy and executed it in a way that reminds me why I got into advertising in the first place. It’s about getting to the truth and communicating what’s real. It’s about connecting with the consumer at the deepest level. It’s about not just getting into the consumer’s head, but also into their heart. And when the stars align, into their soul.

I’ve seen both creative and account people get lost in a sea of analytics, deadlines, billable targets, and executional mandatories and forget what really matters. What makes advertising matter. When we do our job right, we can turn a simple product or service into an emotional experience.

As advertisers we add a magical ingredient that no tangible product could ever have on its own. We tell a story that makes a connection. We help the consumer see value beyond the price tag. It’s no longer something they can own, it’s something they can live. We take a product that exists in the outer world and make it a part of their inner world. As humans we’re driven to define ourselves through association, and we begin to LOVE the products we choose, because they fulfill our need for identity.

As advertisers we help inanimate objects and everyday services gain entrance to a special place in the consumer’s heart and mind where the identity lives. We help build a consumer’s “brand family,” the group of products and services a consumer is connected to, has an emotional bond with, and will have a hard time abandoning.

I love how Mad Men demonstrated so eloquently the difference between agencies that create advertising and agencies that build that amazing connection. The difference between agencies that build powerpoints and agencies that build evangelists.

We all want to make a difference in our world and sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the value of what we do. Thanks to Edward for digging up a reminder that as advertising “inventors” we bring something powerful and beautiful to the table. What we do doesn’t just create revenue and profits. We don’t just create ads and reports and powerpoints.

We create MEANING.

Watch the YouTube clip of Don Draper’s presentation to Kodak. It’s three minutes well-spent.

Old Media Falling Into The "Digeration Gap"

I’m a little confused here. Haven’t magazines learned anything from the music industry?

Some questionable protests were recently made by Time Inc.’s CEO Ann Moore that are the epitome of what I’ll call the “digeration gap.” Apparently she preached at some college students that “good information costs money.” By her own admission they started to throw shoes at her.

What should have been a newsflash for Moore turned out to be more of a bake sale challenge. Instead of walking away from that interaction with a renewed quest for finding a viable business model that works with emerging technologies and the evolving consumer climate, she gave lip service to the idea of a new model in one breath, while reinforcing her own perceptions in the next:

“I think it is time for Time Inc. to sit down and seriously think, what is the model? We are going to have to figure out a way to have paid content in the future.”

Our little peek into Moore’s business strategy speaks volumes. Time Inc. intends to look for answers by going back to the old business model: subscriptions. They’re taking a move from the RIAA play book and repackaging it. They’re not looking for a new way of doing things. They’re looking for a new way to do it the old way.

What’s happening at this critical juncture is that some really smart people are just not getting it. Yesterday’s business model will not work now. And it really won’t work tomorrow. But instead of being at the forefront of developing this new model, a lot of key executives are trying to bulldoze past it, hoping somehow it’ll turn into fertilizer for their own crop.

So this is the digeration gap. The difference between people and companies who embrace the internet and the future of information, and the ones who are still in love with the way things were, and desperately hang onto the “tired and true” way of doing things.

There’s one little piece of information that those on the wrong side of the digeration gap are failing to realize: Tomorrow’s business model is about the individual, not the corporation. Executives like Moore are trying to come up with a model that supports the corporation, that reinforces widespread control, that focuses on selling a lot of things to a lot of people from a central point of vantage. And they honestly believe they’re being strategic and logical about it. Sure. But it’s as if they’re trying to play major-league baseball on a croquet course. Things aren’t fitting but they’d rather fumble around instead of just looking down.

Another comment made by Moore that’s hurting my head like a blunt object:

“Who started this rumour that all information should be free and why didn’t we challenge this when it first came out?”

Wasn’t it some Chinese fellow that said “the answer is in the question?”

Moore wants to know why “we didn’t challenge it.” I think the real question should have been “why didn’t we challenge ourselves?” Companies that fall into the digeration gap are the ones that aren’t just asking the wrong questions, they’re also looking for the wrong answers.

Let’s take one more look at this doozy:

“Good information costs money.”

Now that’s the ultimate rub. Good information no longer costs money. As more people on the planet gain the ability to communicate to a mass audience, it’s clear that quality reporting can be done by someone without an editor breathing down their neck, without the necessity of a “Baghdad Bureau,” and without the corporate structure propping them up (and no doubt influencing them). Time Inc. is operating on the concept that information is expensive, and that to survive they need to keep it expensive.

Yeah, I realize they have this big huge multi-national corporation to run, but the consumer doesn’t care. Ann Moore can do the lecture circuit at every high school and university on the planet trying to convince the next generation they should pay for information. Hell, she can turn it into LollaPAYlooza and bring the RIAA and MPAA with her. I hope she has a lot of room in her closet. The shoes will be forthcoming.

Job number one for corporations like Time Inc. should be one thing: “How do we maintain ownership of the space we’ve built in our consumer’s mind over the last 50 years.” Because right now the one thing they stand to walk away from the ashes with is their brands. Brand as in mindshare. When the magazines shut down and the newspapers fold and the television networks are lost in a sea of original non-network INDIVIDUAL content, the brands will be all that’s left.

As aging corporations use their might and brawn to resist their forced approach to the ledge of the digeration gap, they have only two choices:

Corpse or phoenix.