I have to say I’ve been disappointed with the way the Republican presidential candidates have been handling the YouTube/CNN debate. When I first heard that only Ron Paul and John McCain were committed to appearing and how Romney wasn’t gonna answer no questions from no damn snowman, I immediately thought of Henry Jenkins.

Continue reading "An Humanizing Technology" »

John Hagel is giving rhetorical form to what I think are the most important issues at the confluence of business, economics, marketing and even epistemology. His “Unanswered Questions at Supernova 2007” post from a month ago is still consuming my thoughts even when I’m trying to do other things, like eat and sleep.

Continue reading "Perceiving The Whole From The Parts" »

In the graceful, brutal arc of a doomed relationship (romantic, professional, abstract, etc.), there may not be a staccato thunderclap signaling that Things Just Went 'Round The Bend. Most often, evidence of the downward spiral comes in the aggregate, the result of a slow leak from pressurized discontents. What starts with an uncompromised disagreement evolves into militant passive-aggression and thereafter degrades to bitter nothingness. This has been well chronicled in the Cure's old stuff.

Continue reading ""just"" »

Here's a recent McKinsey report on Web 2.0 in business. The highlight for me was that 42% of respondents said that they, "Invested at the right time but should have more in our companies internal capabilites," and 24% said that they, "Should have invested sooner in technology that in the meantime had a significant impact on our industry."

I don't know why I haven't posted something about this before. I find myself talking about this all the time. Here's the gist:

Marketing is dead. You can be humans again.

No, really. Not the practice of taking things to market; I mean “marketing, the paradigm”. Marketing, of necessity, has been about dealing with customers at arm's length. This is a byproduct of the industrial revolution. In order to pass the value of economies of scale to customers, companies had to be big. They had to talk to a lot of people. Since Gutenberg, the only tools available for—indeed the only ways to even think about—talking to a lot of people have been unidirectional. These univalent tools are the currency of marketing. They offer really no meaningful dialogue.

Continue reading "It's the Humanity, Stupid!" »

Innovation demigods, IDEO, have available for purchase these jaunty “method cards”. We bought some from the fine folks here at William Stout Architectural Books. We shipped ground—because our CFO is just like that—and we waited.

When they arrived, I took a third of the deck and divided the remaining between Steve and Ben. We thumbed through the cards, nodding and occasionally shifting our weight from one foot to the other. Perhaps it was the 11am sun reflecting off the mirrors that cover every surface in Ben’s cube, or even all the Sangria from breakfast; but whatever the reason, we were rather shocked to discover these.

Ben soberly suggested they were simply misprints. Obviously, this was met with derision. Steve and I had quickly recognized them for what they are; origami unicorns—clues alluding to the presence of a higher concept. What is IDEO trying to tell us here? We know they’ve worked with some of the biggest companies around, and even the government. Have we been chosen for enlightenment? Is there a handshake we need to learn? Please help us make sense of these cards. Maybe an IDEO adept (preferably like a 33-degree-er with access to this kind of knowledge) can give us some more information. I, for one, feel like I’m finally seeing the fnords.

In the new edition of Fortune they call out “America’s Most Admired Companies” and to nobody’s surprise; Apple is in the top 10. They have a great article on Apple’s success with retail. When they got into the retail game in 2001, industry experts where extremely critical of their approach and didn’t think they would succeed. I think the opening paragraph is worth repeating here:

“Sorry Steve, Here's Why Apple Stores Won't Work," BusinessWeek wrote with great certainty in 2001. "It's desperation time in Cupertino, Calif.," opined TheStreet.com. "I give [Apple] two years before they're turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake," predicted retail consultant David Goldstein.

Continue reading "The Apple of Retail's Eye" »

I've been mercilessly threatened by thugs at the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies. They're the ones in the swank flowery shirts. They insist that if I don't consider the broadest possible multiplicity of potential outcomes, I may overlook the one I actually want to pursue. And while I couldn't really hear over the howl of ukuleles, I think they said that if I don't respect the almighty S in futures, they'll rub a pineapple against my neck. Not lovingly, either, like Don Ho does to tourists in the front row.

Now, maybe I've got a bit of a Honolulu Syndrome thing going on, but I think all that talk of possibilities and pineapples has gone to my head. In a recent client-attended ideation session, all I could feel was the pull of the far-fetched and improbable.

Continue reading "as far as possible, and then some" »

So everything is changing. You may have heard. Technology, of course, is always changing. The communication culture is changing. Business is changing. Politics is changing. Change is changing.

Continue reading "Object Permanence and the Chrysalis" »

Ahhhh, the wager is on. Can web 2.0 make money for companies? Will people continue to work for free?

If you believe Nicholas Carr, people will NOT work for free forever. The economy simply hasn’t figured out how to charge for the model yet.

If you side with Yochai Benkler and the gift economy, people will contribute for free for as long as they are appreciated and moving toward the perceived greater good. Or, in his exact words, the key is:

"managing the marriage of money and nonmoney without making nonmoney feel like a sucker"

I like him.

Continue reading "So the hacker said to the economist…" »

Last week I wrote a post about Best Buy and Circuit City in an effort to discuss how innovative companies stay ahead of their competitors. I got a couple of great responses from two successful entrepreneurs which you can find here highlighting the problems that Best Buy has had with Geek Squad.

What I really wanted to emphasize is that companies need to think ahead, innovate and continuously take risks. Those that choose what I call the “me too” strategy always follow and are never first to market with an innovation.

Continue reading "Tale of Two Companies: Part 2" »

For some reason I have been obsessed lately with Circuit City and Best Buy – a tale of two companies. Maybe because of all the holiday and Super Bowl promotions around Flat Screen TV’s. Regardless of why, it makes me think back to my days as a retail executive with the now defunct May Department Store Company, which merged with Federated Department Stores last year.

May Company grew dramatically during the 80’s and early 90’s under the leadership of David Farrell. It grew through the acquisition of a number of other traditional department stores – mainly regional players. Then May centralized a number of functions creating efficiencies and more central control. For a number of years it held the title of the nation’s largest department store company (if you classify out discounters such as Sears, Wal-Mart, Target, and JC Penney’s).

Continue reading "A Tale of Two Companies: The Innovator and the Follower" »

Every Woz needs a Jobs. And every Jobs needs a Woz. I’m talking, of course, about Apple Computer co-founders, Steve Wozniak, and Steve Jobs.

Continue reading "JobsWoz" »

Brand Noise has a post about a "hot new idea shop" called Fahrenheit 212. The post links to a BusinessWeek article about the firm. From that article:

Clients think of the firm as a way to make long-shot bets without having to use their own research and development resources. "Samsung is a lean organization. We can't afford to have people coming up with ideas that don't work," says Chief Marketing Officer Gregory Lee. "The people at Fahrenheit are very helpful because they are working on ideas that can fail--it allows you to experiment a bit." What's more, Fahrenheit ties much of its compensation to the success of the product, making it an even safer bet.

An inevitable debate is taking place around the nature of the marketing. John Moore, at his excellent blog, Brand Autopsy, has been a recent party to the discussion. He offers this edited footage of David Jones, global CEO of Euro RSCG speaking at a recent AdAge clambake.

Continue reading "The Nature of Marketing Revolution" »

Russell Davies recently posted the results of his “what will marketing become” poll. This reminded me that it’s been awhile since I posted the introduction to my little exegesis on the future of marketing, so I figured I’d best finish off this second piece. The top two winners of his poll were especially inspiring in this pursuit. Here goes:

I’ve long had the sense that marketers—especially the “stars” of the field—constitute something like a “prelacy of cool.” I think I extracted this idea from some Emigre essay I read like eight years ago. The essay in question isn’t available on their site, and I can’t recall the issue of the magazine in which it appeared, but it was of a piece with other of their essays in one respect; it decried the ostensible “co-opting of cool” which commercial interests visit upon the otherwise vital, dynamic art of the social vanguard. In a move that surely evoked both the adoration and egoic ire of the Emigre coterie, this essayist denominated the marketers whom execute this diabolism as, “Antinomian (Wikipedia, Catholic Encyclopedia).” I admit, I thought it was pretty clever. Which is why I’m stealing it.

Continue reading "Integral Marketing, Part II - Antinomian Marketing" »

Matt has a post in which he points out the folly of the advertising agency that does not post their work on YouTube. His point seems painfully obvious, and yet, as he points out in his post, many do not. As to why this is the case, I think Thomas Kuhn's watershed "The Structure of Scentific Revolutions" offers a simple explanation. Basically, those whose life's work has been in the service of a particular paradigm are understandably reticent about the possibility of having that paradigm overturned.

Marketing blogger, CoolzOr provides an example of this in action. He has been served a DCMA notice from YouTube because he had posted a PSA about drunk driving which British ad agency, Lyle Bailie International cited as a copyright infringement. What does Lyle Bailie think they have accomplished by this, except to have limited the reach of a PSA about drunk driving, and demonstrated to the world that they are bullies?

Anyway, I'd wager it is exactly this kind of old-paradigm thinking that provides the space for early adopters create novelty while the incumbents sit by and watch.

h/t - Ilya Vedrashko at the MIT Advertising Lab blog

There's a lot of discussion around innovation in marketing these days. Joseph Jaffe is legitimately trying to find out who is doing innovative things in the various communication disciplines of marketing. I can’t wait to hear his analysis of the feedback he receives.

Max Kalehoff makes a very interesting point that the ad industry is usually behind when it comes to innovation. Most of the innovative ideas are coming from companies like Google, Yahoo! and Apple. He argues that it is because these companies put dollars and emphasis behind R & D along with some other interesting point. There are quite a few comments on his post worth reviewing.

My take is that agencies in general (interactive, traditional and otherwise) tend to sell what they know the client will buy (with some exceptions of course). Agencies take the fastest path to cash or the path of least resistance. Many clients want assurance that their agency can deliver results, and they generally want evidence of it. Most clients will not want to fund experimentation for initiatives or tactics that don’t have any kind of track record. I have experienced that again and again. It’s a very hard sell, and you need an incredible amount of trust and a great relationship with your client to get them to move into new space that requires significant capital with no guarantee of success.

Doing the R & D on your own dime is not very likely either. Because agencies serve their clients, and because the industry is so competitive, most agencies can’t charge enough to build the necessary cash reserve to fund non-billable experimentation.

So what’s the answer? Part of me thinks that agencies have to play a little further upstream than they are used to. They need to get back to working with clients on strategy instead of just delivering on tactics. If you can position yourself as a resource for innovation, creativity and strategy, you may be able to influence the client to go down a road not yet traveled and do something truly innovative. Often, this space is internalized, goes to the consultants or niche companies like IDEO.

If you have examples of agencies playing in this space and having success, please share. There has been plenty written about Agency.com and their poor execution of a forward-thinking approach to a client pitch, including my colleague Carrie’s post a week ago. So what else have you seen?

Turns out this whole Lost thing is bigger than I thought. Not wanting this to turn into a Lost forum (since there are hundreds of others out there with thousands of posters), I’ll keep this short and sweet. I just stumbled upon the “Lost Experience”, an interactive, multimedia experience that takes traditional TV show advertising beyond the realm of TV. Cool, huh? They have commercials that direct viewers to either an 800 number or a website with clues. There’s even a full-length fiction book penned by a ghost writer, an alleged passenger on the plane.

As stated in a CNNMoney.com article:

Whether or not these novel ways of advertising will actually work remains to be seen but it's clear that the TV networks and marketers have to do something to combat the growing tendency of DVR-owning couch potatoes to skip ads.

"This is an attempt by media companies to grab hold of a market they are losing control of," said Doug Ryan, chief marketing officer of Y&R Chicago, a subsidiary of ad agency Young & Rubicam.

Well done, chaps. I want more.

So this is a blog. And a rather new one at that. Acting under the assumption that a blog is the proper venue for tempest-in-a-teapot grandiloquence, I intend now to unwind my narrative on new marketing. It will shake out into a number of parts, but I must to warn you now, fair reader: I have a penchant for a kind of looping, lateral storytelling which some (the lawyers want me to warn people with epilepsy) might find, well, obnoxious. So you’ve been warned and all that.

Continue reading "Integral Marketing, Part I - Exordium" »

Wired has just come out with their “Wired 40” list of the most innovative and progressive companies. They identified 5 major trends, power to the people being one of them.

Look at the trend today around Internet-based technologies. There are millions of individuals sharing information on blogs, sharing photos & videos, and participating in forums. Business and government are slow to adopt these new innovations using the Internet because they are seen as “radical” and therefore scary and risky. Government and large corporations are much more comfortable with evolutionary improvements. Even though they have been developed by and for the masses (ie MySpace), the applications of these technologies hold great promise in the business world. Those that choose to adopt them more aggressively will make great strides in moving ahead of their competitors that choose a more evolutionary path.

Continue reading "Big Co’s resistance to “Radical Innovation”" »