Replacing ANTI-Social Marketing

For most of the twentieth century and even through the first decade of the twenty-first, marketing has been anti-social. The three primary modalities of advertising have been Interruption, Entertainment, and Information. While these methods were effective in a one-way mass media world, they are failing in a mass-connected social world. It is time that marketers learn to replace these anti-social marketing methods with three new social modalities - connection, collaboration, and support.

Before I explain how the new approaches can replace the old, it may be useful to once again explain why the old approaches are failing and are anti-social, even in a dictionary definition way,

Antagonistic toward or disrespectful of others; rude.

Eric Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management at the Wharton School of UPenn offered this very interesting article on Techcrunch, "Why Advertising is Failing on the Internet" and Doc Searls followed up with "After the Advertising Bubble Bursts." A pleasant half hour can also be spent on John Willshire's "The Future of Advertising in One Afternoon" (available as an easy to skim slide deck).

What all of them are talking about is that the transition from a one-way broadcast media to a deeply interconnected two way communications medium is, to use Clemons' word, shattering advertising. Ultimately the goal of the three strategies of interruption, entertainment, and information is the same -- get attention for a company's brand, product, or service. The common theme here is that companies must now work to earn attention through the social communications medium as opposed to being able to simply buy attention from the control points in the old mass media model.

THE OLD: ANTI-SOCIAL MARKETING

INTERRUPTION
For awhile now the old ideas of interruption marketing have been receiving challenges. Seth Godin offers a great description of the underlying problem of interruption in his book Permission Marketing and nicely summarized in this short essay by Angelo Fernando entitled "So Interruption Marketing Isn't Working"

Let’s say you’ve gone to the airport early morning. Someone walks up to you, and asks you directions to a gate you’re not familiar with. Since you have time to spare, and don’t mind the interruption, you try to help the person out.

Now imagine it’s later in the day at the same airport. You’re late for your flight, and someone asks you the same question. Will you give him the same attention? Finally, a third scenario: You’re late for the flight, the airport is crowded, and this is the fourth person to ask you the same question. What are the chances you will pay any attention at all? You’re probably going to even develop a strategy for avoiding further interruptions –not making eye contact, brushing them off, refusing to help.

This is the simple case - information overload or "smog" - as a reason that interruptions are not working. So many interruptions are competing for our attention that we have developed strategies for avoiding them. But there is something else happening here as well, something deeply anti-social.

When advertising was presented as part of the one-way stream of information arriving on our porches, radios, or televisions we accepted that advertising as a part of the total experience of the medium. But once the medium for information becomes two-way, interruption advertising becomes disrespectful or even rude. Imagine yourself in a conversation with another person:

You: How did you like that episode of Heroes?

Friend: It was great I really liked the special effects

--interruption-- Buy Heroes T-Shirts NOW --interruption--

You: Anyway, as I was saying...

This conversational example is an anecdotal way to illustrate what happens when the directed engaged communicating online user is interrupted with advertising - even when it is "contextual." To expand on this illustration, consider two shifts at work here that contribute to the downfall of interruption --

(1) Freedom of Choice -- more and more information sources are emerging which have the relevant information that we may want. Sources which are free of interruption and easy to navigate will be preferred over sources which are choked with interruptions. In addition, we have an increasing array of strategies to eliminate the interruptions from the information we consume - Tivo, pop-up blockers, etc. This expansion of choice also leads to the second shift...

(2) Seek vs. Browse -- when we received a bundle of information which happened to include advertising, we would browse through all of it and select that which was most interesting (sometimes even advertising). Now an increasing amount of our media diet is search-originated and it is much more difficult (and unfriendly) to interrupt someone when they are pursuing information in a directed mode. Even how we browse is shifting with more of it happening in social spaces in which we are browsing what our friends are doing, thinking, watching, reading. Learning about something interesting to read from a friend is a much more difficult (and unfriendly) mode of behavior to insert interruptions.

Interruption, the corner stone of the advertising industry, is "shattering."


ENTERTAINMENT

When is an interruption not an interruption? When it makes us laugh? When it is art? Although not everyone can agree on what is funny, or what is art, or (more broadly) what is entertaining, a stand-by of the advertising industry to rise above simple annoyance has been to create advertisements which in some way entertain.

And sure, the "bud - weis - er" frogs were amusing. The first time. Which is why the company has had to run thousands of different "funny" advertisements over the past few years -- once a particular punch line has been laughed at, it's time to move on to the next one. Very few "entertaining" advertisements are as entertaining the second, third, or fourth time we see them.

And this may not be the biggest problem with entertainment as a method of advertising. The biggest problem is more likely to be -- does it even work? Do people watching an entertaining advertisement actually remember what brand was associated? And if they do remember, is the association positive or (as in the recent case of the GoDaddy.com Superbowl ad) can you actually do damage to your brand?

The core problem is that the "entertainment" is probably not core to the brand value. So while a scantily clad woman may get attention, it doesn't actually communicate anything related to running say, an Internet service (as in the case of GoDaddy.com).

Obviously entertainment products can be a lot more successful using entertainment as a building block for an interrupting advertisement. A snippet of a song, for a singer. The movie trailer. Any excerpted material from an entertainment product can itself be entertaining as well as remaining core to the brand value -- sometimes the trailer IS the core value and is better than them movie itself!

But leaving aside entertainment products, why should a beer company, an auto manufacturer, or an accounting firm use entertainment as the content of a strategy for getting people's attention? Because it is less irritating than an interruption that doesn't entertain?


INFORMATION

Finally, the last of the core modalities of twentieth century advertising - provide people with information. What a great idea. People need information and companies can be the source. Want to buy a new Ford Taurus? Get all the facts at ford.com... or should you? Why would you trust the company that wants to sell you the car to give you honest information about the car? According to Edelman's "10th Annual Trust Barometer"

Trust in corporate communications like press releases, reports and emails fell to 26% from 38%; a company's own Web site to 24% from 31%; and corporate or product advertising to 13% from 20% among informed publics ages 35 to 64 in 18 countries. (emphasis added)

Just 13% of people "trust" advertising. And you can expect that this 13% is the most trusting of any communications from anyone -- not the best audience on which to build your business strategy.

Of course the other problem with information based advertising is getting it to the right person at the right time. While I may be interested in price information on a new car when I am making a purchase decision, I am definitely not interested in such information a month after my purchase. Search engine marketing is the one place where an advertiser has a high likelihood of success in placing information in front of a potential customer at the moment of interest, and for this reason it is, so far, an enormously successful advertising medium.

But given a choice between information from a peer and information from a company, there is no doubt (as Edelman's survey shows) that people will chose to heed information from a peer when making a purchase decision.

Even advertising as information fails when social communications reaches critical mass and exceeds one-way broadcast as the way in which we gather knowledge and entertainment.

Next post -- How the new will replace the old - connection, collaboration, and support.

Facebook Missed the Whale (and it's OK)

UK blogger (and deep thinker) Chris Thorpe writes on his blog jaggeree "Why Facebook Shouldn't be Twitter" opening with a tweet from Tim O'Reilly

FB redesign also shows the danger of paying too much attention to competition, instead of thinking more deeply what you are about. It's hard

As Chris writes, "...he’s nailed it again" and I'd have to agree. Chris goes on to provide some good thoughts on why the "activity stream" that Facebook had served a quite different purpose from the "status stream" of Twitter. In particular he highlights the difference between these two different "communities" of people which helpfully points out why the two different design patterns work well for the way in which those separate communities work. All of which sort of explains my sense of loss every time I look at the new Facebook page and don't see my activity stream.

Expect a lot more of that over the coming days and weeks - and expect the activity stream to return in some form. Facebook is looking over its shoulder and worrying that they are missing out on new ideas like Twitter - and perhaps they are irritated that puny little Twitter turned down their acquisition offer. But most importantly they are looking at an engagement model that may become more compelling than their own for constant connected repeat usage.

Which gives me an excellent opportunity to revisit one of my favorite topics over the last 10 years - how we are slowly building up a set of online communications tools to support all of the different modalities of communications we have in the physical world. Its also a good follow up to my April 2007 post in which I first attempted to explain Twitter.

Looking at the graph to the right, you can see my attempt to more visually explain the idea from that past article of "Presence, Scope, and Permanence" as defining the three axis of a communications cube that we operate within. From that earlier article, here is a more complete description of these axis:

PRESENCE
Is it necessary for the participants in the communication to be present at the time the communication is created? For example if you are taking a class, you need to be present in the classroom to get value from the lecture. But you can read a book thousands of years after it was written. The recipient must be present to receive the lecture but is usually not present when a book is written. Similarly, a phone call is a synchronous form of communications -- both speaker and listener must be present. Voice mail is asynchronous -- the listener need not be present at the time the recording is made and the speaker need not be present at the time of listening.

SCOPE
Classrooms engage a defined group of people in a conversation, newspapers engage an undefined group, a phone call typically involves just two people. Scope is about the number of people involved, the relationship between those people, and the privacy of the communication.

PERMANENCE
Information has a shelf life (or even a half life). Some information is valuable for thousands of years, other information is valuable for only a moment.

Each of these two different communications tools - Twitter and Facebook - fit into different (albeit adjacent) section of the cube. But they are NOT the same -- and the successful design pattern for each will be quite different. In fact, the only axis in which the two clearly share an edge is Permanence -- and even here, Twitter is now being used in ways which might actually move at least a part of their database toward more permanence, whereas Facebook (or at least the old activity streams) are very much about ephemera. Not that Twitter isn't mostly also ephemera (or what Chris calls "nowish" linking to this great visualization on Flickr by moleitau). But there are aspects of how Twitter is being used which can usefully be searched meaning that they have retrospective value.

But along the other two axis - Scope and Presence - the Facebook activity streams and Twitter status updates clearly play(ed) different roles. The reciprocal nature of Facebook meant that you were really only talking to your friends, whereas on Twitter you might be talking to friends, stalkers, the Federal Justice Department -- of course you could control access, but the design pattern didn't make that an attractive usage. And on Presence, Twitter existed as a stream with most tweets being relevant if you were near-immediately present, whereas a Facebook activity update remained a prominent part of a user's profile for as long as that user left it there.

In considering this analysis that I have presented, please do not rely solely on the user experience offered by the two companies, but consider instead the larger user experience created by the communities. In the case of Twitter in particular, look at the 100+ products that have been built around this "message bus" for how people are really using the service.

All of this is why in the end there really are two different businesses here and Facebook will migrate back toward activity streams and someone else will have to challenge Twitter for the status update business. The strategy that Facebook has been following of trying to absorb every part of the communications cube is flawed - the strong anchor for them is SCOPE - this is about reciprocal relationships. For Twitter it is PERMANENCE - this is about ephemera and occasionally about how that ephemera is transmuted into something more permanent because in aggregate it teaches us something new.

The Butterfly of Change

A number of very good posts on the future of News (and media in general) out in the past week. Struggling newspaper SF Gate offered this summary (via columnist Mark Morford) The Geek gurus all weigh in on the end of dead-tree media. Are they wrong? It's not a bad question, despite an opinion piece full of what seems like bitterness or frustration. After all Clay Shirky's article, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable, and Steven Johnson's speech at SXSW, Old Growth Media and the Future of News didn't seem to be a "...pile on the I-hate-mainstream-media bandwagon..." that Morford insinuates.

But it is certainly reasonable to look at all the Morfords (and Alan Mutters) out there and all the Shirkys out there and ask - how can these two groups of very smart people be so opposed to each other on the basics and how can anyone understand where this is really going?

To this debate I offer a visual aid, the butterfly graph which I have thus named because you could see each of the loops on the left and right of the image as wings and because I like the idea of catching the winds of change... allow me a little poetic license.

But here is how to read this graph -- The red line is the "old way" of doing things and the green line is the "new way." The slope shows that the old way declines in efficacy as the new way increases. At some point the pace at which the old way is declining accelerates and then flattens again as many niche uses hang on over time.

The blue bar in the middle is the period of confusion during which the old way is still working, so adherents can claim that there is a path ahead for their existing model of how things should work -- and their claim is bolstered because the new way isn't yet clear and working.

One of the really interesting characteristics of this blue period is that the old way will take on attributes of the new -- which will both hasten its demise as well as suppress the emergence of a new way that works. An example in the news business is the "free content" which is so hotly debated now amongst the two sides of the future of news argument. Early on in the process, the economic rationale of providing free (advertising supported) content made sense to newspapers eager to build online audiences. So instead of radically re-examining their businesses (and maybe creating craigslist or match.com) newspapers continued to pursue the product logic of the printed world but with a digital distribution. So for this reason every online paper reproduces the print version horoscopes as one example.

But as the "old way" declines -- in this case physical paper distribution becoming less desirable to consumers than instant online access -- having adopted the model of free content and retaining the bundling logic of the physical media, prevents newspapers from radically rethinking their model - they simply don't have the economic wherewithal to experiment. And at the same time the continued flood of free high quality content is dampening entrepreneurs ability to accelerate new models effectiveness. It will take many more Rocky Mountain News and Seattle P-I failures before the slope really shifts and we start to see a crossover of new experiments working and the old recognizably being dead and done.

So to Morford's reasonable complaint to Clay Shirky that he "...has no idea what will replace newspapers and professional journalism." I would answer that Morford himself as a stakeholder in the future of journalism has a better chance of answering the question than Shirky the professor -- answer by stop supporting the old print media and start experimenting in the new digital media. Yes as in other periods of revolution there will be a period in which many of these experiments fail. But the seeds of the new are already planted and growing and the strong ones will fully replace the old over time. And I don't agree with the pace -- I think it will be years and not decades.

Experience Economy Requires Authenticity

Back in February of 2004 when Joseph Pine (author of Mass Customization and now Authenticity) gave this talk at the TED conference, few people were using the words "Social Media" -- "Joseph Pine: What do consumers really want?" But his comments speak directly to why (to quote one of my favorite articles on social technology's disruption of 20th century methods):

...the new media are rewarding more participatory, more sincere, and less directive marketing styles than the old broadcast media rewarded." (Harvard Business School: Working Knowledge
"Digital Interactivity: Unanticipated Consequences for Markets, Marketing, and Consumers" September, 2007)

In his talk Pine provides a model for thinking about the "Progression of Economic Value" from agrarian society to the modern day.

Pine outlines these four stages of economic value which he associates (like Toffler) with an agrarian, industrial, and now a post-industrial economy. In the agrarian phase all we had were commodities and the production and control of those commodities was the central aspect of our economy.

In the industrial phase we took commodities and manufactured them into goods, which then could be distributed and marketed. But Pine describes a "commodification" of goods as the broad-based ability to manufacture a high quality and low cost product.

His first book, Mass Customization explored how companies should escape from the commodification of goods. His suggestion that companies add a service, customization. But this approach has been commodified as well as all providers learn that they can be equally good at customization.

This led Pine to the idea of "experience" and more recently "authenticity" as the differentiation which companies could strive to provide to keep their products distinct from those made by others. In his view it is not just the product that customers care about, but the experience of buying and using that product. Think of Apple's retail stores as an example.

But as Pine observes, this new "experience economy" requires a high level of authenticity and most companies, in the age of social media, are unprepared to deliver. Charles Green wrote recently on the topic of Customer Centricity in his Trust Matters blog:

..."customer centricity" is so easily hijacked by the dominant ideology of competitive advantage. The competitive paradigm—our leading view of business today—is repressively tolerant of customer-centricity. The hijacking turns the new idea into merely a tactic to serve the old idea. Customer centricity is neutralized, subsumed into the competitive paradigm.

Charles goes on to give specific examples, like the message when you are on hold with customer service assuring you that "your business is important to us." This rings untrue to the caller, it isn't what Pine would call "authentic."

If your company is selling a product that has become equivalent in cost and quality to those of your competitors, Pine's message is for you -- you must now focus on the total customer experience and not just the product to succeed. And once you do, you will discover a whole new challenge in rising to the demand for authenticity. Meeting that demand will require you to reformulate your company's policies, philosophies, and your organizational structure.

Scoutlabs Launches Today

Yes its true, the super-secretive Halsey Minor backed Scoutlabs is launching today according to a post from co-founder Jenny ZesZut. And even better, they are giving away 30-day free trials for their outstanding social media monitoring and collaboration platform. I learned about Scoutlabs through ex-Technorati folks (they have hired some of the very best) and am very grateful to have been one of the early testers on the system. We are already using the product with a number of our clients and I expect that to increase.

There are a lot of aspects of the Scoutlabs product that I like, perhaps the best is the collaboration model -- getting all of a team on the same page about what is going on with our company. I will post a longer review later -- but for now rush over to their site and request a free 30-day evaluation... tell them Ted sent you!

The new Symbian

The new Symbian Foundation is getting its first public exposure this week in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress. A new blog has been created for the Symbian Foundation where you can see some photos from the booth and also see the new logo. It is a great compliment that Lee Williams, the new Executive Director, has invited me to contribute to the Symbian Foundation leadership team as an advisor and I have thrown myself into this effort with heart and soul.

The basic mission of the new Symbian is to release the entire Symbian operating system as an open source project and to coordinate a broad community of companies and individuals to build that OS as the premier mobile computing platform. With the long heritage that Symbian has and the tremendously deep technology that is a part of that history, this decision to open source the operating system really changes the game in the mobile world. There is a long road ahead to fully realize the vision, but operators, manufacturers, and software developers will need to take Symbian into account as they make their future plans -- and I believe in Lee Williams and the movement that he has begun to make Symbian the pre-eminent mobile computing platform.

Join me in following this journey by reading the blog, following on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/symbianf and by joining the Symbian facebook group.

Apple and AT&T have this really wrong

Another lovely visit to the AT&T store, this time because a member of my family dropped her iPhone into the, err... toilet. "It was in my back pocket and I..." oh whatever. Fine I will get a new iPhone for you. But wait! What is this! I have to pay full price AND sign up for an additional 2 year contract?? Huh??

Apparently the special price is only for NEW lines being activated. But for some reason when you purchase an iPhone as a replacement you not only pay the higher full price for the device but AT&T still insists upon tacking on two more years to your contract commitment.

Surely this is not right! Timothy, the "sales consultant" at the 425 Market AT&T store assures me this is true and insists that it is all Apple's fault. And you know what? I agree with him. It is definitely Apple's fault that in the US I have no choice (if I don't jail break my phone) but to have AT&T as my service provider.

Which reminds me of another beef I have about AT&T -- how is it that I can have five bars of signal strength and the 3G symbol but absolutely no data connectivity? Why is it that from my office, also with five bars of signal strength, no one can hear me talk? Why is it that you guys can't figure out how to give me an iPhone app that lets me alert you to a problem with your network using the GPS coordinates for where I am having trouble? Why can't you become more customer centric? Oh, because you are a monopoly and you don't need to be customer centric. Right, I knew that. Hey Barack!!!

Business Will Change

As some of you already know, I have been working on a book. So far I have written first drafts of twelve chapters and second or third drafts of a few. The book is the result of reflecting on the fifteen years I have now spent participating in the evolution of the Web, and more specifically is inspired by the consulting work I am currently doing. In this work I am trying to help businesses understand the fundamental shift that is underway right now in the very notion of production, brought about by the rapid adoption of social technologies.

Many people have written about The Power of the Network (David Cushman) or to be more academic, The Wealth of Networks (Yochai Benkler). And marketers have been warned about what happens when there is a Groundswell (Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff) or what to do when Here Comes Everbody (Clay Shirky). And these all have been terrific inspirations for my thinking.

But this book is a little bit different from these others. As I write in the introduction

"I wrote this book for every business person struggling to make sense of the changes that are sweeping through our world today."

That is, this is a book that seeks to help explain what is happening in every day language and what to do about it as an individual business person.

Embracing the same concepts that I am writing about in the book, I have launched today a website on which I will be publishing drafts of every chapter, open to comment (and hopefully improvement!) by anyone who chooses to stop by. The site is:

http://www.business-will-change.com/

To start with I have posted just three pieces:

Introduction -- How Collective Intelligence Will Change The Way We Do Business

Chapter One -- Adapting to Change: How We are evolving into a new species

Chapter Two -- The Precursors of Change

In a week or so I will load a few more chapters on and so on, hopefully settling into a regularly weekly update cycle. I hope this idea of writing a book in public captures your interest and that you join in and tell me what I am getting right and wrong!

When is Advertising Not Spam

Please step in and disagree with me. But personally I am really starting to feel an emotion when I see advertising that I feel when I see SPAM in my email inbox which is to say -- anger, frustration, and in some cases a sense of befuddlement... why is that brand wasting their money cluttering up my media experience? So I have been trying very hard to come up with a model that explains when advertising "works" and when it doesn't.

In the broadest sense, SPAM email messages are:

unwanted messages from unknown senders

which can also be a good description for advertising. Most of the time advertisements are by definition unwanted -- they are clutter or they are blockades between me and what I want to see or do -- whether in my real (magazine, TV) or virtual (web) environment.

But there are certain circumstances in which an advertiser can overcome either the "unwanted" aspect of their message or the "unknown" aspect of themselves as a sender. Here are some of the ways an advertiser can overcome the "unwanted" message problem:

• INFORMATIONAL - provide (or link to) valuable information -- I may not have realized I wanted the information, but having it makes me feel better.


• ENTERTAINING - make me laugh, or at least smile, or have a sense of wonder -- I'll likely forgive the intrusion


• CONTEXTUAL - get the context and timing right -- such as an ad in search results -- you guess correctly that I am actually seeking the information

The unknown sender problem is a bit more complex and an understanding of this challenge can emerge from again comparing with email. Think about emails you receive from people and how you would evaluate their appropriateness based on the content of the email and the relationship you have to the person sending the message. Messages might be more beneficial (a party invite) or more costly (a solicitation for money, a request for an introduction) and you will evaluate these in the context of the social strength of the relationship. A message from a "best friend" might always be welcome, even if it contains a quite costly request. Whereas the most beneficial message from a stranger would likely be unwelcome (if not also distrusted).

The same calculation is true of brands -- you might know of a brand, like McDonald's, but hold it in low regard. Thus as solicitation to purchase cheap burgers might seem very unwelcome. But if you really enjoyed eating at McDonald's the same solicitation would perhaps be quite welcome.

An interesting option is presented by Retargeter to which I was recently introduced by Auren Hoffman of Rapleaf (more on Auren's really interesting business in a later post). Mechanically what Retargeter does is tag a visitor to your website so that later on, when that visitor is on a page with advertising on which Retargeter has bought the ad space, an ad for your company can be shown to that visitor. In this way you are showing an ad specifically to people who (by visiting your site) have expressed an interest in your company.

This can of course be taken to an extreme and I have not yet connected to Retargeter to ask how a company can limit the number of ads shown to any one person or the length of time after a site visit during which an ad might be shown. But by showing ads to a person who has proactively visited your site, you are almost certainly connecting in the short run with someone who has a strong interest in your brand.

This may seem counter-intuitive. Shouldn't a company spend money to raise awareness with people who DON'T know the company? Why spend money advertising to someone who has already visited your site? Actually for many kinds of businesses a company needs to build up awareness and be top of mind to ultimately lead a customer from an expression of interest to a purchase decision. Advertising to people who already have some awareness of your business can remind them of an option under consideration and thus shorten a sales cycle or raise your brand over a competitor.

I am very interested to hear of other examples of advertising that is not spam. My inclination right now is to strongly recommend against spending money on advertising and instead for companies to focus on creating meaningful connections with their markets. But I also accept that there are circumstances in which advertising "works." Defining those circumstances will become an important tool for companies to understand how to allocate marketing dollars between this one-way messaging and the more labor intensive (though usually more rewarding) two-way communication.

No Comment

One might wonder why an organization would choose to use a blog as a communication tool if, as in the case of Federated Media's Blog, the organization doesn't allow comments. To be clear, at the bottom of each post there is a form for submitting comments. But one glance at the home page shows that submitted comments do not move from moderation to publication.

Sure, lots of blogs out there have no comments -- my blog in fact has very few. The number of people who choose to comment after all is relatively small by comparison to the total number of readers, and there has to be something to say. John Battelle was, for example, kind enough to comment on my blog when I published a compliment of his Web 2.0 Summit. But what else would anyone have to say to that post?

On the other hand, if you claim, as John has in his "Change and Opportunity" post about a 10% staff reduction at Federated Media, that your company has

...completely reinvented the concept of what "marketing" could be.

you might expect a few people to want to comment. And if you are going to claim that you

...helped define the practice of what we call "conversational marketing."

then you probably owe the market a real conversation. But maybe this blog post shows exactly what is wrong with the definition John has been using for "conversational marketing" -- too much marketing and no conversations.

Totally Transparent Layoffs

Tony Hsieh has certainly set the bar for transparency quite high in his blog post about Zappos layoffs back in November. Crain Communications' Workforce Management magazine wrote about that act of courage, "Social Media Begins Forcing the Totally Transparent Layoff." In this article author Ed Frauenheim quotes Libby Sartain, former head of human resources for Yahoo, saying

“People tweet, people blog, people text,” Sartain said. “You are going to have a completely transparent workplace at all times. You can’t really spin it.”

The blog post that Tony did has pages of comments from engaged customers, past employees, and industry observers. One past employee writes

Tony Hsieh and Alfred Lin are some of the insightful, kind, and compassionate corporate executives that I have ever had the privileged of working under.

Now that is a company people will want to work for, even if it (like all companies) will sometimes have to layoff employees.

The Case for Transparency

Done right, transparency can be a powerful tool for a company to communicate its core values and, even in a difficult time, build a positive impression of the company in the larger marketplace. So what was wrong with John's blog post? Let's start with the title - it wasn't about respecting the people who were being shown the door, it wasn't about telling the marketplace that Federated treats its employees, even in bad times, with honor and respect. It was instead a marketing pitch for Federated. From the title of the post -- "Change and Opportunity" -- and on throughout the post John writes about FM and not about the people who are now without work.

Secondly the post didn't communicate to customers, in this case the sites which Federated represents, what will happen to them. Will it take longer to get a report? Will fewer ads be sold? Will some sites be cut? An important customer, Michael Arrington, claims he read about the changes on their blog. Certainly in both communicating to employees and to customers a blog post does not replace private communications (in which FM was undoubtedly also engaged). But transparent communications can help bridge the communications gap and make sure that the company's point of view is made clear.

And transparency has the additional benefit of speaking to the much larger audience of potential customers and potential employees to tell the company's story and show what the company stands for and believes in, demonstrating how it treats its stakeholders through good times and bad.

Advertising vs. Conversations

For me the most interesting aspect of this story is the one which appears to have been the most mangled in the way in which it was communicated (and reported). Paid Content reported the news with the headline "Federated Media Shifts Away From Display Ads" which is probably not the lede that John was hoping for. According to Chas Edwards, quoted in this article, Federated had over $39 million in revenues in 2008. One would guess that most of this is from "dumb display advertising" as Edwards calls it, hoping perhaps that his dumb advertisers don't notice how dumb he thinks they are for giving him their money.

But I think Federated Media does have a great opportunity to lead the industry in a fundamental change and that John Battelle could be a great spokesperson for doing marketing in an entirely different way. As Joseph Pine tells us in his latest book, what we really crave is authenticity from the companies with whom we do business. In my view "conversational marketing" is about being transparent and being authentic - having a real, open, interactive conversation with others in the marketplace, treating them as peers.

But if FM is going to be a leader, they will have to start by being a good example themselves.

Gaza Solution - just $75 B

Reporting on the Forbes list of the wealthiest people in the world, CBC News (Canada) writes that the 34 "Web Billioniares" have a collective net worth of $109.7 Billion. Overall the total worth of just America's wealthiest is, according to "The Forbes 400," worth approximately $1.57 trillion. And in this time of global economic crises, the governments of the world plan on spending many trillions in the next 12 months to help our industries and citizens.

So when we look at the tragedy in the Middle East of the Palestinian and Israeli confrontation, it is helpful to put into context some simple math. 1.5 million people live in Gaza. If you assume an average family size of 20, that is 75,000 families. What if the wealthiest people on earth offered each of these families a relocation package worth $1 million dollars, for a total investment in world peace of just $75 Billion? Add in a few governmental and non-governmental bodies instead of just making this the work of private individuals, and suddenly we could expand beyond Gaza and institute a global relocation program for politically displaced families.

The plan is not without challenges beyond convincing one (or more) wealthy people and countries to donate the funds. And you would have to find 75,000 places around the world ready to accept a Gaza family (albeit now worth $1 million) or a family from one of the other places we would expand this program to include. And there would be an enormous challenge as the program expanded in trying to determine how to distribute funds to non-Gaza families who would also want to join the program. The struggling citizens of a thousand places would wonder why they too shouldn't be the beneficiaries of such largess.

But there is a good reason to start with Palestine. Is there any other people on the planet that have been displayed by the United Nations establishing a nation state for a different group of people? While many injustices have been done to many people around the globe by individual governments, I can't think of anywhere else where the world governments have come together to displace a people (albeit for a great cause in establishing a Jewish homeland).

Of course one might wonder whether a Gaza family would make the rational economic decision to leave their land and relocate to an unknown place and, having done so, whether that family would use the opportunity to build a new life or to plot revenge upon Israel. A program of this kind would need to include a great deal of social and educational support. And not every family would agree to go so there would be the challenge of a diminishing population in Gaza who would be increasingly a concentrated minority of interests which oppose Israel.

But an offer of this kind would also bring into the sunlight two perversities of the current conflict -- first, that Arab states find that it is more valuable to have this embattled civilian population constantly on the edges of Israel and second that some of those people themselves are more dedicated to the destruction of Israel than they are to the well-being of their own people.

And the math points out a fascinating and frustrating asymmetry to the war on terror. We are willing to spend billions of dollars every month on an unnecessary war in Iraq, but we are unwilling to spend the money required to solve one of the most critical issues contributing to political instability in the middle east (and the world).

So here is a challenge to the economies of the world as we launch trillion dollar "stimulus" programs. What can we do to organize resettlement of the Palestinians? How can we create a program into which individuals and governments will be challenged to contribute large sums of cash on an ongoing basis, and regional governments encouraged to accept the resettled immigrants, so that over the next half-dozen years every family who wishes to leave Gaza may have the opportunity to do so?

First step - Begin a fund for the resettlement of Palestinians and invite individuals and governments to contribute funds for this purpose.

Second Step -- Once some minimum funding level has been achieved ($50 million?) establish the Gaza Sweepstakes. Any family who elects to leave Gaza may receive, for free, a lottery ticket. Each week, a number of families will be transported away from Gaza. The relocations will be covered by the media, the relocated families will receive ongoing attention as they integrate with the new communities into which they have been delivered. The families will receive money and counseling to assist them in integrating into their new community.

Third Step -- having demonstrated the success on a small scale, a global campaign of citizens appealing to their governments will be launched to raise a growing fund to relocate Palestinians, and when that project has been completed it will be expanded to the next most problematic population in the world.

Pierre Omidyar, are you listening?

The Future is Already Here...

William Gibson is credited with the wonderful quote, "...the future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed." I was reminded of this quote twice here in Helsinki this week as I spoke with a variety of companies about the impact of social technologies on their businesses. It is way too easy when you are sitting in the middle of the tornado of change to lose perspective on the winds that rage around you and, more importantly, the seeming calm in the path ahead of the tornado.

Forrester has done a great job of documenting this path, where it has been, where it is now, and where it is heading. The survey data which they have made available through the Social Technographic Profile Tool can give you a snapshot of this progress. Now updated with 2008 data, you can see the differences between the US, where 38% of 18-24 year-olds are now creating content online and Germany, for example, where the number is a much smaller 22%. Or the difference between the 18-24 year-old cohort and 45-54 year-olds in the US where the creator rate is only 16%.

But as Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang shows on his Web Strategist blog the trends for every demographic in every region are toward more engagement. Perhaps the most dramatic finding is the change in "inactives" -- people who are paying no attention at all to social media -- from 44% in 2007 to 25% in 2008.

In addition to engaging more people, the other often overlooked impact of social media is in the way that it is changing mainstream media. So even for those people who are not engaging directly, the news and entertainment that they consume is changing. Journalists and entertainers are amongst the most likely to be engaged with these new social technologies and what they report and create is clearly being influenced by this new medium.

As Gibson might say, the future will never be evenly distributed, but the path of this cyclone seems clear to us now -- social media will change every business and will change virtually every aspect of how we develop products, market and sell them, provide service to our customers, organize our work environments... In every industry there will be companies that embrace these new tools and new approaches and those that are torn apart by the fierce winds of change.

Which will your company be?

More News

I love David Byrne's music, but I feel compelled to disagree with his recent blog post in which he opines that the bankruptcy of the Tribune Company is leading to a world in which we will have "No More News." I would, by the way, complain on his blog but he doesn't provide a comments capability. Perhaps as a public figure of his stature it is impractical to allow comments since moderating them would be such a time burden. But lets bookmark this point for a moment, as I think the lack of dialog (and perhaps the lack of understanding of what this dialog brings) contributes to Byrne's misunderstanding of what is happening in the media ecosystem.

The basic point that Byrne makes has certainly been repeated endlessly - the Internet has radically transformed the business of news and the companies which have understood how to make a living collecting and distributing news in the last century are failing to find a new model as the fundamentals of this business change. Byrne also mentions (though without commentary) the fact that the people running these news businesses have been making changes which make them even less relevant. I thought this observation was particularly well stated:

Likewise, these newspapers have dumped most of their foreign bureaus, food critics, and film critics, and are loathe to assign reporters to stories that will take months to research and write. In doing so, they are eviscerating that which makes newspapers different from online reviews, blogs and websites.

But Byrne goes on to complain that there is an enormous threat to our democracy because of the decline of these traditional news businesses and I think this is a mistake.

It is undoubtedly true that we are in the midst of an enormous tumultuous period of change for the news business. It is also true that from the perspective of the traditional news business, their model is being eviscerated. But this does not mean that there are no possible models for a news business. In fact, I believe that the future of news is very bright and that as a society we will (and in some cases already are) enjoy more news content not less in the future.

First of all, Byrne ignores the fact that bloggers and "citizen journalists" are already making an enormous impact in challenging entrenched media interests and bringing more facts and more "sunlight" into our political processes. The political campaigns of the past year showed how effectively the non-mainstream media could play a role in debunking lies, providing information which would otherwise not have made it into the limited space of broadcast media, and giving people with specific local information a way to get that information to a national (and international) audience.

The wonderful NPR program "On The Media" recently had a segment on the Japanese Kisha Press Clubs which make transparent a fact which is as surely true with our mainstream media -- that journalists will sometimes become too friendly with the people that they are covering in order to obtain access and that this closeness will then taint the coverage of these people. The Kisha Clubs institutionalized this closeness even going so far as to manage a list of issues which all participating journalists (which is to say, those that got access to representatives of the government) would agree NOT to cover. And this is only coming to light now because of bloggers.

Journalism will change, the business of news will change, but rather than looking at the failure of the traditional news media as being a threat to democracy, as Byrne does, I prefer to look at the strength of our democracy as being the force which will lead to a new journalism and a new business of news. This was certainly the case for the newspaper industry we have today. Newspapers were started by people passionate about the mission of the fourth estate and only later were taken over by accountants.

Al Gore, in his closing keynote speech at this year's Web 2.0 Summit conference, provides an interesting perspective on the broadcast media industry. In brief he observes that the printing press started a process in which knowledge was democratized but that television (and in general the concentration of media ownership) was a "re-feudalizing" force in our society for the past 50 years. Concentrating ownership and control of the media into a small number of corporate interests reduced the number of voices participating in the conversations of our society. While one could certainly point to the tendency of some news vehicles (like Fox) to use this power to promote a particular ideological position, the more frequent result was blandness.

Social creation of the news is removing the blandness and is a force FOR democracy. The future of in-depth reporting, investigative journalism, and foreign news desks, which Byrne worries we will lose, will emerge from this creative power of social production. We are still in the infancy of this new medium and we have a lot to learn still about what forms this NEW fourth estate will take. But I already believe that we are witnessing an explosion of news, not an elimination.

The Odd Couple: ATT and Apple

I recently went to purchase an iPhone 3G here in lovely San Francisco. Walking toward the Apple store, I remembered that halfway between my office and the beautiful apple store at one stockton street is an AT&T store. I don't really need to go to the Apple store, I thought to myself. So instead I went through the glass doors at the corner of Market and 3rd and into customer hell.

The first thing I noticed was the grouchy sullen customers seated around the room -- perched is probably a better way to describe this as there wasn't really anywhere to sit. So they were leaning against displays, sitting on the ground... The second thing I noticed was the sullen AT&T employee with a clipboard who approached me.

"Hi, can I put you on the waiting list?" he asked.

"Uh... how long is the wait?"

"Only 20-30 minutes."

OK, so here I am, a live customer wanting to give them my money, and they want me to sit on the ground in their store for 20-30 minutes in order to have the privilege of buying something from them!? I said no thank you, turned around and walked right out again. Off to the Apple store a few more blocks down Market.

When I arrived at the Apple store it was buzzing with happy people. A smiling Apple employee was waiting at the front door here as well.

"How can I help you today?" he asked.

"I'd like to buy an iPhone 3G"

"I can bring it right to you - do you know what size and color you want?"

This is a company that actually wants my business. Too bad it is attached to one that doesn't. Like Oscar and Felix, you have to wonder (other than a script writer looking for gags) what makes these two companies able to even stand talking to each other much less trying to offer a joint customer experience.

When I happily walked back to my office, I had to stop at the AT&T store again and wave my new phone at the sullen AT&T employee with the clipboard. In the same amount of time that I would have been sitting on the floor of his horrible shop I had walked to the Apple store, had a great shopping experience, and walked back again.

Memo to AT&T executives -- could you PLEASE learn something from your partner Apple?

Web 2.0 Summit is a Success

From October 5 through October 7th in 2004 I was at the Hotel Nikko in California as a paying attendee of the very first O'Reilly Web 2.0 conference. It was a fantastic event and got my attention re-focused on a set of technologies and markets that I continue to focus on to this day. At the time I was an entrepreneur-in-residence for Mohr Davidow Ventures but since then I have been a poor struggling entrepreneur and have chosen to hang out in the lobby instead of paying to attend. This year that changed, and I once again paid to attend the now 5 year old Web 2.0 Summit and I am happy I did.

Yes, it is expensive to attend. But overall, there are few better places to check in with the leading change-makers in technology and business. The topics, people, and format all generated a perfect environment for thinking about the coming year and what we have to get done as business people and citizens to improve our companies and the world.

Whether it was Mary Meeker pushing through 50 slides in 20 minutes of her Technology / Internet Trends Report or Shai Agassi explaining how his company Better Place is transforming the way we will use electric cars or the brilliant closing remarks by Al Gore about the election and how the Internet is transforming democracy... Web 2.0 Summit absolutely delivered on the promise that:

"...the leaders of the Internet economy are turning their attention to the world outside our industry. And conversely, the best minds of our generation are turning to the Web for solutions. At the fifth annual Web 2.0 Summit, we'll endeavor to bring these groups together."

They did and I was glad I was there for the event. I'll be a paying attendee again in 2009.

Mashup Camp

I think there is still room at Mashup Camp in Mountain View this weekend, you can register here: www.mashupcamp.com/mountain-view-november/

They seem to have a great group of sponsors and also have over $9k in prizes, including:

-Amazon Kindle

-Amex Gift Cards

-Dell 24” flat panel LCD monitor

-Macbook Pro

-cash prizes

Hope I see you there!

Aer Lingus Bankruptcy

Hello Aer Lingus, are you listening? I doubt it. Today you had an opportunity to make me into a huge fan and instead you turned me into a hater. If you'd like to know how customer service can work to make your business loved by customers, go study Zappos and see how a REAL company treats its customers. You guys? Well, you suck.

Sure, you just lost 20 million euros. Sure your staff is all about to go on strike. But maybe your real problem is that you have really lousy policies that demonstrate that you hate your customers!

I booked a flight from Heathrow to Dublin - a route you fly every hour. I happened to get done in London early and came out to the airport early. So I walked up to your ticket counter to see if there was space on an earlier flight. Why yes, there is! In fact there is lots of space! And not just on one flight, but on three flights prior to mine (I am on the last of the day). BUT your policy is to charge full fare -- an extra 150 pounds sterling -- to change!! That is stupid.

You had the chance to delight me by getting to Dublin early, at no additional cost to you. Instead I am sitting in the Heathrow airport, mad at you, vowing never to book on your airline again.

Sounds like you'll lose more than 20 million euros next year. In fact, I think you'll be BANKRUPT. In a bad economy, the remaining customers have choices and they will choose the best airlines - and that is NOT you.

Or you can change! It would be hard, but give it a try.. oh yeah. You aren't even listening.

Well, for the rest of you that are -- take a look at Aer Lingus, they are a great example of what NOT to do.

22 Solid Social Media Examples

Great article by Peter Kim on Mashable "The 22 Step Social Media Marketing Plan." Peter lists these 22 social media tools and gives concrete examples of companies using them:

Here’s a framework of 22 tools to consider with notable brand examples:

1. Blogs (Johnson & Johnson, Delta Air Lines)
2. Bookmarking/Tagging (Adobe, Kodak)
3. Brand monitoring (Dell, MINI)
4. Content aggregation (Alltop, EMC)
5. Crowdsourcing/Voting (Oracle, Starbucks)
6. Discussion boards and forums (IBM, Mountain Dew)
7. Events and meetups (Molson, Pampers)
8. Mashups (Fidelity Investments, Nike)
9. Microblogging (method, Whole Foods)
10. Online video (Eukanuba, Home Depot)
11. Organization and staffing (Ford, Pepsi)
12. Outreach programs (Nokia, Yum Brands)
13. Photosharing (Rubbermaid, UK Government)
14. Podcasting (Ericsson, McDonalds)
15. Presentation sharing (CapGemini, Daimler AG)
16. Public Relations - social media releases (Avon, Intel)
17. Ratings and reviews (Loblaws, TurboTax)
18. Social networks: applications, fan pages, groups, and personalities (British Airways, Saturn)
19. Sponsorships (Coca-Cola, Whirlpool)
20. Virtual worlds (National Geographic, Toyota)
21. Widgets (Southwest Airlines, Target)
22. Wikis (Second Life, T-Mobile Sidekick)

Definitely worth reading the whole post but also his blog, Being Peter Kim

Obama Already Changing Government

OK its not working right now, but keep trying it -- Obama's transition team has launched a website -- http://www.change.gov/ which invites all of America to start getting engaged in the work of changing government. I am so glad that the terrific team that Obama put together to guide his online work for the campaign is still hard at work and is already making history with the way this government is going to use the Internet to connect citizens with their government!

HOPE

This says HOPE to me: