i [love] marketing.

the enigma of the gift*

*Book title. This is my story: contrary to my usual behavior, last Friday I went to Beacons Closet in Park Slope. That is something like a consignment store, except that they "evaluate" the stuff you want to give & either pay you 35% of that "value" immediately or let you have a store credit. Since the interest i have in wearing someone else's clothes approximates zero (even when that someone else does not want them, or actually especially then), I opted for "fast-cash" option. The bag i submitted for evaluation had stuff that i regularly paid $100+ for and then never wore. yea, real smart. So anyway, i thought that i am doing a favor both to these poor, unloved, clothes and to myself -- after all, they will find a new home and i will get money to buy something else that i will not wear. My hopes for the brighter future for everyone involved in this transaction disappeared when i was offered $16.75. I was not sure if the offer was awesome or offensive. Or both. 

So I thanked the lady, took my bag, and went straight to Goodwill Store in my neighborhood where I disembarked the bag's contents FOR FREE. Yea, I admit it was kinda impulsive decision, and by all counts terribly irrational or just real stupes, but somehow i don't regret it. Which made me think about the types of exchange that could have been classified as "economic" only if any kind of calculation was involved. Which, surely enough, led me to thinking about behavior online. There, people who are mostly, if not completely, immune (um, "repulsed" actually may be the word i am looking for) by ever more creative brand efforts to be "engaged", are actively, immediately, and generously participating when solicited by their fellow online citizens. The evidence includes this, this, and this, and is growing... While it is not hard to imagine why many people choose to do good, there's also something else here.

For one, it is associated with the feeling of the fairness in exchange. I preferred to feel good over felling duped & ripped off + getting a symbolic monetary compensation for feeling that way. So my behavior at the end was not economically irrational at all: actually it made a complete sense. I did calculate, and I calculated that $16.75 it's really not that worth it. Then of course the critical question is what would be the cut-off point for me that would make it worth it ($25? $50?) At any event, my calculation obviously took place within an order of worth that's not the traditional economic one.

Second, there's a whole economy of gift giving that has an exchange structure in its own. This is of course super-old, but it's always been somehow pushed to domains of either "special occasions" and/or primitive societies and was rarely, if ever, related to modern capitalist society. (b/c here, it is thought exchange happens in an anonymous marketplace & in an impersonal manner). So now, while the rise of social exchange on the web does not necessarily mean that market-based exchange is going to decline, it def indicates that both of them operate at the same time. And while this is terribly obvious today, it's funny that actually only few have figured it out. I think it's because people focus either entirely on "sharing" stuff or on "money" stuff. It's actually the friction between these two orders of worth that make possible to create something, well, worthy.

Anyway. Nan Lin says that there are two primitive rewards for human beings in social structure: economic standing and social standing. [standing being defined as a relational measure expressed as someone's capacity to mobilize resources]. And when there's a market that combines the two, marketing should do the same.

p.s. i found out about the site above via Michael Surtees).

contextual advertising

Also found in Chinatown. While at first I thought these were silicones that go inside your breasts, and that you are actually supposed to self-perform an operation on the spot, soon enough i realized my naivette (with no small relief) and figured that you need to tuck this stuff in your bra. For those who are indecisive, there are a few "how to wear" suggestions included in the package. Regarding the size of those *things*, i assume that a reasonable dose of creativity is a must. Anyway, more than the items themselves, I thought it was awesome how they were promoted. Next to the plain regular stuff, you know, stuff that just every girl needs: a bag, some puffy yellow shit that i have no idea what is, a photo frame, some cosmetics, and yes, silicone implants. I love Chinatown. (And no, I didn't get me a pair).

Chairman Mao's not dead

I happened to be walking through Chinatown today at 6pm which usually equals me cutting my way through millions of people whom of I am at least a foot taller. While I never fail to be impressed by a fish stand that is also a massage parlor and a dentist all in one, this one I noticed for the first time: Global Chinese United "World Wide Real Estate". I actually believe them.

at least one of the forecasts turned out to be right

I was so impressed when I read this article from The Onion, that I had to put it here. It's written on January 17th, 2001, just before the last president's inauguration. It's also written in their trademark crazy talk. Well, turns out, maybe not so crazy. Thanks to Ben for this awesome find.

the man who wanted to be king

I know it's not nice to make fun of people, but sometimes there should be exceptions to this rule. Especially  when you get to have the close encounter with "The King of New Media". I find this guy hillarious and almost endearing ("Google me, beyatch"). While others are just gurus, divas, and specialists, this man is no less than a King. And Twitter is his kingdom. The proof? He's a hard-working finalist for a Shorty award in advertising (you know, that's when you manage to mobilize enough friends and relatives to vote for you on Twitter), and sent out a real-world press release about it. It would be a real bummer if he doesn't win. This is either a developing case of megalomania or a person who believes that there is no such thing as enough publicity. He's not alone , tho. Oh, and yes, he offers his definition of the "new media" on his site: "the short answer is "it's not old media"". King's wisdom is profound.

strangers with candy

(I love that movie). A few days ago, I revived my long-forgotten Twitter account (@andjelicaaa) and I have noticed, as I am certain many many people before me did, that I started to get followed by a pretty random people. By random, I mean strangers. So, in order not to offend them with this, I put a status update on Facebook instead (see above). An interesting conversation followed here.

[Disclaimer: Twitter, being an open system, is interpreted by different people differently; is used differently on different media platforms and at different times; and is used for different things. Which is exactly why it's so awesome.]

But talking about Twitter and who do we follow and why and how do you deal with too many people goes back to my conversation with a smart guy Michael Surtees, who was actually the one asking "how do we decide who to follow?" And also when do you jump from personal relations to social relations and use twitter more as a distribution medium than as a way of interacting w friends. For example, look at this. Adam Greenfield says: NOTE: NOT ADDING FRIENDS. PUBLIC FEED AT twitter.com/agpublic. All of this made me think a bit about social influence and actual mechanisms that we deal with filtering information.  That is, without any constraints in production, promotion, and distribution of content, how do we select? And the answer is that we strangely limit our choices.

To "optimize" our choices would mean following as many people as we possibly can [which would equal the number of people on Twitter] and following what each person has to say, at every moment. But a day have so many hours, and our attention is certainly limited, and we probably do other things than stare at Twitter (i hope so). So inst

ead, we choose the most familiar option from an already highly selected pool of options - or, we "satisfice". People in fact rarely behave  or make decisions independently from, well, decisions and behaviors of others. We rely on others in our choices - and that's why we choose what others have chosen. On Twitter, we usually follow the same people that our friends follow, or people that most of others follow. Call it conformism, but it's just easier.

Alan Wolk, who has a considerable number of followers, likes to follow back people he actually knows. Otherwise, it's "creepily voyeristic". Josh Kamler says that Twitter isn't about who is following you, it's about who you are following. And you are following those who you think are interesting. But how do I find those who are interesting, beyond the people I already know? I can make a list of people, of course, but that still make me stay within the already existing limits of my own knowledge - and does not necessarily help me extend it. Brian Morrissey also weighted in, and since he is a Pro Twitter with 3000+ followers, I tend to think that he knows what he's talking about. For him, it's about common interest.
 
I was thinking about it like this, to extend my analogy of strangers with candy. Some strangers have candy, but I don't know which. So I follow strangers that people I KNOW follow. And then, I would like to think that a collaborative filtering mechanism kicks in: if you like what people I already follow are saying, then I may also like what the people THEY follow are saying. Alan would agree - he says it makes sense to look at who your friends are talking to.

There's bigger point, tho. Even if there were a more sophisticated mechanism for finding those *interesting* individuals, people would STILL aggregate around the same persons. Which is kinda expected since we all live in communities. It's the question of social cohesion and social coordination.

Theres' something else too. It just seems to me that the technology that is *meant* to result in greater individualism in content consumption (the long tail, whatever), in fact does just the opposite: it amplifies our copying of each others' choices. It's like, forget the tail, we all want the head. How's this then different from mass media when the outcomes are almost the same? Is individual preference a myth? Example: some people are real or imagined superstars of Twitter as they have thousands and thousands of followers. Is that because they are really more interesting and talented than others, or it's just that we are simply doing what others are doing? 

this is also [unfortunately] regarded as creative

For comparison with Whopper Sacrifice-type of creativity, see this Coke Zero promo advergame thing. It' inventively named "Coke Zero Dance Hero" (awww, copywriters were involved, too). Aside of being really painful to watch (all those Flash billable hours ...), I am super-curious how many people actually found this site; of those who found it, how many cared to load the game (hey, you can also download it, b/c you know, people love downloading & cramming their desktop with one-time shit like this); and of those, how many cared to play it for an extended period of time? or shared it w their friends? And how is this game relevant for anything, except if you want to be weirded out by a creepy tongue? This is ALSO regarded as a creative effort...um.

If today there are more campaigns like Coke Zero then like Whopper Sacrifice, this is because people still like to define creativity in marketing as "making funny stuff". Yea, art director + copywriter + of course a Flash dude because web is all about "telling stories in Flash" and creating "immersive environments". Um, actually it's not.

new definition of creativity?

I really like this idea. More as an excellent example of digital marketing (and the new creativity) than as a particular promotional effort. It demonstrates that, to be creative in a digital agency means to understand how online relationships work, and not to make the website beautiful or the copy appealing. There's really nothing pretty in this thing (literally and figuratively), but yet i find it crazy-creative. Figuring out how people behave, and what's the context & dynamics of that behavior, and then offering something that builds on it, responds to an unmet need (?), or simply offers some related & aligned action should be new definition of [digital] creativity. The BK's target probably has easily 600-700 friends, a considerable number of which they haven't have the slightest clue who those people are. If anything, whoever uses FB and Twitter looks for ways to limit information overload and to somehow filter the amount of content and its sources. People usually don't have a reason to eliminate those they had already befriended: and besides, it's weird to do that (altho i do it regularly :) but then again, i have also tried for weeks to limit the number of my FB friends to 150, just as a social experiment. didn't work). Anyway, the campaign rationale is seemingly straightforward: why not give people the reason to (legitimately) get rid of the excess of friends? Simple as that. After all, creativity is about seeing the familiar situation in a novel way.

the best player ever

Because I have a Mac I gave up on Netflix but since they did enable viewing on Mac a while ago, I am back. This is another version in the line of constantly improved versions of the Netflix players, and it's awesome. Even if you don't select the full screen option, the movie is displayed in the whole browser and you can just press "back" button to return to browsing (or click on "back to browsing" button below the player bar. Very cool. Also, the second image above is when you scroll the movie timeline: it shows previous frame and the following one. So it's super-easy to find anything IN the movie. Also looks awesome. The best use of Silverlight ever. I am soooo over hulu.

forecasts, i don't like. but i have nothing against the lists.

Because people DO love lists, some other people with a lot of time on their hands put together a list of all existing best-of lists of everything that can ever be listed. And also of stuff that can't, which is why they have a "miscellaneous" category. The list is alphabetical and starts with best in advertising through the best (and worst) sex scandals (put together by who else but Gawker. they love that shit) to a compilation called "Mugshots of the Year" (um...). Check it out here.

why didn't i think of this?

Some more great stuff here.

kevin kelly & economies of scope

A couple of weeks ago Kevin Kelly wrote on his blog about the question of value in network economy, in the article "Better Than Free". While this author is always a source of interesting ideas, I was not quite sure how to make sense of his argument. Mostly because it fluctuated between economies of scale and economies of scope. In a manner of setting the problem of declining value of copies in the environment where copying is easy, Kelly uses economies of scale as a framework for his question (the ease of  sharing and copying on the web), and as a way of answering he switches to the line of reasoning that belongs to the economies of scope. Not sure if he makes a link between the two. Actually, I suspect that he doesn't because he mentions advertising as an already known "answer" to free content. Advertising belongs to "scale" thinking (the more eyeballs, the better).

But as it's already also well known, digital networks don't necessarily work that way. Not all nodes are the same, and some nodes (people) are well, more influential then others (who do you follow on Twitter? and why?) If I follow Kelly's argument, when network is both very big, and also transmits data by means of sharing & copying it, the value of what is copied evaporates. (I like to think of it as a shifting locus of value on the web). In this situation, the [economic] advantage starts to move towards something else, and that "something else" he listed in 8 categories (immediacy, personalization, interpretation, authenticity, accessibility, embodiment, patronage, and findability). These are all demand-side advantages. 

Kelly's question is valid enough, and actually super-relevant for digital marketing and branding: "the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?"  He goes on to answer his question: "The simplest way I can put it is thus: When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable." And right here resides my problem. The copies are really not worthless, it's just that something else becomes more important. And that's people & dynamics of their relationships. 

If that's really the case, then the explanatory potential of economies of scope is actually much better suited to explain web's network economy. [Kelly does mention that, "the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits."]  So why not look at the dynamics of attention & size and shape of networks on the demand side?? It really does make much more sense to shift the focus from copies (and disappearing production-side advantages related to them) towards the organization of their distribution on the demand side. That is, to put the focus on the network dynamics of sharing, influence, and consumption of products and information. How do we share, why, when, and what?

Economies of scope refer to efficiencies associated with the perception of the role and importance of the end-customer. So think some of the stuff that Kelly mentions (customization, interpretation, findability -- and basically everything else that shapes dynamics of info sharing in social media). To attract people to certain products/services/content because those products and services somehow fit in their life: they are perceived as relevant and helpful and fun and socially useful and self-promotional and whatever other thing may apply (CPB got it right again with Whopper Sacrifice, and Twitter does it right almost always, think TweetDeck). Solutions like this create, in economic terms, competitive advantage via creating unequal access to customers [also known as "demand" competitive advantage & customer captivity (being repeatedly be socially&informationally useful to customers ... stuff like that)]. Customer captivity arises from consumers’ habits, searching costs, and switching costs = all very tangible things. So it's mostly about how people actually behave and what they value in their social networks, rather than some intangible stuff, like authenticity. At the end, it may not be a question of copies after all. Different story.

if it were this simple ...

I've recently read Umair Haque's article "Edge Patterns: From Owning to Sharing". Generally, I am a fan of Umair's writing, but this one was a bit in the category of things that lack the "how to do this in reality" component. It surely sounds nice that "yesterday, we built advantage on owning assets. tomorrow, we will build advantage by sharing assets." [my response: and today, we are really not so sure how to build advantage.]

Everyone who talks about sharing mentions Zipcar, and Umair is no exception. My question: if the idea is so awesome, why are there not more examples? I find it hard to believe that everyone else lacks vision, and/or is so backwards that they fail to see the business potential of "sharing". Maybe they fail to see it because in order to create the advantage on sharing, there needs to be some business model based on it. Linux is the most famous example of investing free labor in return to intangible compensation (recognition, prestige, development of one's own skills), but Linux can hardly be categorized as business. So what kind of business model should we be hoping for? Apparently, the one with a different locus of value, which focuses not on the product itself, or on the customer itself, but on the relationship between the two. And then it charges premium for bringing them together - and consequently for maintaining and managing this relationship. It does not sound so new now, does it? If you take away the "premium pricing" component, you get any social media "business" where people and products are brought together for, um, no charge at all. Another thing is, NikePlus has already tried something like this - that is, to own & operate a relationship between people & products, as is iTunes. And the problem is, you can't really lock this relationship down (which is the problem of all closed systems). And, if you don't lock it down, you can't make money, etc. etc. Zipcar is a closed system too, and I wonder how it is going to compete once others start offering the same service, like Hertz. What's the source of advantage going to be then? Price, place, promotion, blah ... all the "boring" stuff of the old business model. Or ... something else that no one really has figured out yet on the level of the real-world examples.

In fact, the question is not necessarily the one of "the fabric of value creation is breaking apart"; the challenge is the one of the relocation of the value. Everyone will choose to share once the real or perceived value of sharing surpasses the value of owning.

The "economic" point that "the pressure for sharing in a hyperconnected world is too strong to resist" is, in fact, hardly an economic one as Umair claims ("too strong to resist"? what's that, an urge? an itch?). If there's an economic claim to be made, it's the one of benefits: when there are more economic benefits in sharing, more people/businesses will do it; and more b-models based on this will emerge. Until then, we are stuck w inscrutable terms like "value creation, next-gen." Sounds like something from Star Trek.

a sure sign of crisis

Apparently, NYT idea of innovation is to bring in BONO as an op-ed columnist. A damn brilliant idea, all the while New York Times regular columnists in design, advertising, and/or fashion can't seem to ever get right these days. The reason people don't buy and read newspapers & magazines is that these media hire people who are simply not experts. Or, more correctly, who used to be experts in their heyday (sometime in the 80s) but today lost to the new definition of expertise (more heads are better than one. competition breeds innovation. sharing adds value. and there is no better promotion then self-promotion). Anyway, what reminded me of the growing trend of finding better stuff online then in New York Times is this awesome find via TinyGigantic.  I  wrote about the similar thing last week in relation to NYT article on Vogue. The main take-away: worse than broadcasting of a "wrong" opinion is broadcasting of an old-fashioned one. Wrong opinions often spur a debate; the only thing that archaic ones can spur is the ridicule.

Heidegger & digital technology

A while ago I accidentally came across Faris' post "The Invisible Web", which is fine enough, and in which he refers to Heidegger's concept of "invisible technology". Now, I am not sure if I should even volunteer this information, but did I read Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology" a few summers ago (at a beach ;) No, it's actually a major pain in the butt to understand what the guy meant. In fact, I strongly suspect that those water stains on the pages above are actually me crying and cursing the day I picked up the book. and yes, i sometimes write on books. I am lame. So anyway, Faris is half-right in that "the web is becoming invisible" and that "tools become integral aspects of how we live in and experience the world, extensions of ourselves". [and truth to be told, his is the most popular reading of Heidegger = the one that is most frequently mentioned in the everyday culture]. But there's more to it & and find that "more" super-interesting. Which is a somewhat paradoxical position of digital tools in relation to people. Yea, it can certainly be said that they may go invisible [for us] when helping us conduct mundane & less mundane tasks but what makes it all fun is that we first need to engage - to interact - with them [to figure out how something works?, to explore something, to find it interesting, appealing, useful, delightful, etc]. And from there, we never stop interacting. To stop interacting in digital equals death. Just think banners. Anyway. Our attention is not only directed at what we accomplish (with tools), but also in the engagement (with the tools themselves) that takes over parts of interaction. With digital technologies, we are part of their functioning. That's in fact what makes them unique (it's not very clear where do they start, and where do we end? think Twitter, FB, iPhone apps - they would not make any sense w/o our engagement = our continuous activity & provision of information, connections, content, and relationships). Better yet, all the fun is in engagement (hence the constant new versions of all stuff digital). Engagement is inevitable in order for something to happen or to be done & experienced (if you refuse to click, you would be left staring at your home page. or even at your desktop). The relation between digital tools and people is the one that BOTH does something AND provides experience in itself (otherwise, why would we seek ever new apps or better versions of software?). Digital technology is thus positioned somewhere between "presence-at-hand" (Heidegger's term for tools in use. this is where they become invisible) and "readiness-to-hand" (Heidegger's term for tools seeking attention for themselves). So digital tools occupy this somewhat paradoxical position as they merge the above two modes of functioning. Digital tools = "engaging technologies" as they simultaneously provoke user involvement in their functioning AND user attention. I guess the bottomline is that sure, digital technologies can be regarded as extensions of ourselves, but these extensions require our constant involvement in their functioning - and as such, they are hardly invisible. 

some more stuff on design + transformation

Some more thoughts about design + transformation while I am at it. I think that for this approach to be applicable and useful for digital marketing, the first question to ask when developing & marketing a product is what do we want people to do differently and how to inspire them to make that change [to make people do something differently has to have a lot of actual and perceived benefits for them. so it's a given that the marketing effort has to be about people and not about the product/service/brand]. In short, we are not really in the business of communication, but in the business of transforming behaviors. Which kinda puts a slightly different perspective on our client projects.

First, for a design to transform a habit/behavior or an experience, it first needs to develop an understanding of that behavior. Design methodology uses empathy to develop insights about people’s behavior. Empathy is an approach to problem-solving focused on getting situated and holistic understanding of the problem situation. It exploits innate human ability to understand things about others, and it goes beyond what they can articulate. In that, empathy as a research method is geared towards detecting people’s needs and motivations, and working towards solutions that are sensitive to those needs. Unlike traditional market research methods (survey, interview, or focus group), which reduce complexity by isolating and codifying specific actions, design research (ethnography, moodboards, storytelling) embraces complexity and unpredictability of human behavior. Primarily, it is concerned with how a solution fits in the already existing setting of activities. As a consequence, design methodology develops solutions that address the entire setting and/or experience as a whole.

Second, design research questions how a solution transforms this setting – does it change a routine, tactic, and/or habit that constitute that particular activity? As a result, the output of the design process is such that inevitably builds upon an already existing situation or experience. A solution amplifies, enhances, extends, enables, or in some other way transforms the already existing setting. Design approach is focused on providing a situated and tangible impact on people’s behavior. It is oriented towards solving people’s problems, helping them, and/or transforming their experiences. Design communicates through the change it evoke in the experience. It is in fact this transformation, rather than specific product or service, that is the focus of design efforts. In this context, to design is to transform action.

To apply design methodology in marketing means to start thinking of it as a practice of solving problems and transforming action. Specifically, it means to start a marketing campaign from the insights on people’s experience, rather than from selection of brand attributes that need to be communicated. This calls for alternative methods of researching and creating accounts of action. Further, the experience is always situated, so campaigns need to adopt a systemic approach. Systemic approaches are long-term and generative, and launching a campaign is the beginning, rather than the end of agences’ relationship with a company and its customers. Marketing becomes less about communicating product properties and more about designing and managing systems of activity between products, people, and brands. This requires thinking about products in the context of action, not independently from it. It also calls for a redistribution of the campaign budget, and shift of the strategic and creative efforts in the campaign development process towards the period after its launch.

Finally, a desired outcome of marketing is to create a tangible transformation. Success of marketing campaigns today depends on their ability to transform: to design solutions that do something, rather than messages that communicate something. This goal directs the attention from the product itself to transforming a system of activity that surrounds it. Instead of exploiting strategies of successful communication, advertising and branding efforts shift toward strategies of creating meaningful and useful things that people will be attracted to interact with. This calls for alternative visions of marketing, along with the redefinition of the roles and capabilities of digital marketing agencies. (the photo above was found here)

design & transformation

 

I guess this is a follow-up to my last post. I have been thinking about design (as a problem-solving approach, not as a craft) and some of those thoughts are very much related to transformation. Whereas my friend Lee coined the term "transformation design" to describe the processual development of systems toward a more preferred state of affairs, I think that ANY design is transformative. Whenever we design some product, service, or a system of activity, we change the existing relations into new ones = we transform them. Example: TweetDeck transformed not only the use of a service it evolved from (Twitter), but also: 1) our behavior: the management of our attention; 2) relationship between people & content: the way news & information is delivered & consumed = quick bits of info from filtered sources in a rapid sequence. This has become a standard not only on Twitter but also on "traditional" news & content sites (think CNN's "latest news" format and nymag's hourly updated "vulture" + TV is doing it too (remember the twitter election feed at the bottom of the screen during the  debates? now it almost always included in tv news broadcasting); 3) relationship between people (it allowed us to follow as many people as we want while keeping some sort of  hierarchy of sources). There's so much more to add in relation to relationship between people (just think the scary bunch that "twitter moms" are. yea, they have their OWN site now, beware) + social capital component (how many followers DO YOU have?) +  twitter network of influence vs. real world of network influence (everyone is seemingly an expert on twitter & my personal favs are "SEO diva", "digital maverick",  "social media guru", and other mild cases of megalomania), etc. So all of this is kinda an example for transformation of [social] behavior + habits & for thinking about design as creating an evolving or altogether new system of relationships. [on a somwhat unrelated note, I also think that TwitPic may flourish pretty soon b/c Flickr is awesome but it's not so crazy easy there to share an individual photo IMMEDIATELY with a large number of people. And people take photos of stuff all the time, so may want to transform the way they communicate around them. just a thought.]

eternal riddle

Overseen from my window. There are two things that I will never understand: cruelty to animals and people who dress alike.

if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough*

*Albert Einstein. I've been wondering for a while if Business Week is ever gonna get it right (the most likely answer is no). I was not sure if they are merely misinformed or just don't get it, and recently tend to lean towards the latter. Oh well. Last week's Nussbaum's article "Innovation is Dead. Herald the Birth of Transformation as The Key Concept for 2009" maybe does not belong to either of the above mentioned classifications, but it certainly does have problems of its own. Besides the obvious (proclaiming that a thing is dead only to see it resurrecting some months later), it kinda bothered me b/c of something else. Digital marketing has not yet mastered the art of innovation, and is already ready to move onto some other, equally ephemeral concept. I can see a flood of presentations, white papers, company statements, vision documents around the idea of transformation. The very idea is pretty awesome, and some people have been seriously thinking and talking about it. But, aside of the notable examples of COLLINS and Adaptive Path, and  I just don't see how an ordinary agency, or any other organization as a matter of fact, can use the concept transformation without, well, transforming itself. Here's where the problem resides: just pulling stuff like this out of someone's ass, without knowing the context, or even the meaning of the concept can lead to no real transformation. There's no way around it. I just don't find this rationale helpful: "[instead of innovation] we need a deeper, more robust concept. “Transformation” captures the key changes already underway and can help guide us into the future. It implies that our lives will increasingly be organized around digital platforms and networks that will replace edifices and big organizations (students already know this, university presidents still have edifice-complexes, which is why so many of them are getting the boot)." Outside the organizational and/or business context, what does this mean? All of the included is true, but it fails short of being merely a description and towards becoming an explanation - the all-evading answer to the question of "HOW". Transformation "implies radical transformation of our systems—education, health-care, economic growth, transportation, defense, political representation. It puts the focus on people, designing networks and systems off their wants and needs. It relies on humanizing technology, not imposing technology on humans. It approaches uncertainties with a methodology that creates options for new situations and sorts through them for the best quickly." Even the people who thought a lot about it, like my friend Lee Maschmeyer, have had a long struggle to exactly pinpoint to clients what the reality of "transformative" company is, and how to implement "transformation" in the ordinary marketing project. Not for the lack of knowledge, but for the lack of any pre-existing conceptual and methodological toolset in the minds of both clients and other players in the digital marketing field. Lee's solution was humble: let's first do something and then talk about it. Yes, that means starting from bottom-up, from the level of tactics, of small stuff that incrementally transforms something bigger. As an approach, transformation is awesome. As an implementation, it requires humility in realization that things don't change all at once. If innovation failed, it might be that we expected too much from it. There's no deus ex machina for anything, digital marketing included. Examples first. Update: some great comments on the Business Week article are here.

um...

Granny at Urban Outfitters today. She's got to get herself some skinny jeans.

the irrestistible future of organizing: think of brand as a living system

 "The Irresistible Future of Organizing" is the title of Margaret Whitley's article from 1996. It's funny how the issues that digital marketing industry faces now are really not that new. She talks about self-organizing systems, and it's impossible not to think of Twitter. In fact, it's impossible not to think of any evolving online social aggregate. Digital makes the aggregates tangible, something like 'organizing-made-visible'. Whitley starts her article with a question"Why do so many people in organizations feel discouraged and fearful about the future? Why does despair only increase as the fads fly by, shorter in duration, more costly in each attempt to improve? ... We, and our organizations, exist in a world of constant evolutionary activity. Why has change become so unnatural in human organizations?" Yesterday, I accidentally came across this quote: "the only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery" - by Harold Wilson. It's not the first time that the environment is developing faster than the firms: that is, that organizing tends to disfavor the established market actors at the expense of emerging ones. Whitley says that "it is time to change the way we think about organizations. Organizations are living systems. All living systems have the capacity to self-organize, to sustain themselves and move toward greater complexity and order as needed. They can respond intelligently to the need for change. They organize (and then reorganize) themselves into adaptive patterns and structures without any externally imposed plan or direction."  If I mentioned Twitter that's because it created a framework, a blueprint, for social organizing but after that, it's founders had absolutely no control over what was happening: innovation in applications, @replies, mr.tweet, etc. emerged out of use and from people who used it. As a brand, Twitter is a living system that evolves [for comparison, see NikePlus, and Apple iTunes = not much bandwidth for spontaneous evolution there]. The only plan for brand development is that there should be no plan. Somehow, the living system is going to reach the "greater order" (and yea, there's going to be a lot of spam in the process - but the system is prob going to fix that too. FB is almost an example. and anyway, better spam than a cemetery tho).   

you can analyze the past, but you have to design for the future*

*Edward de Bono. I like the idea, and think it is very true. That was my problem w forecasts & trends and all those "i-see-the-future" kind of things. Same with "it's about the dialog with consumers" type of wisdom. Maybe someone will figure out at some point that the path towards better understanding of digital marketing lies elsewhere. If people don't get it now, this can maybe mean that the challenge is not the one of communication as they know it. The framework may not be media & messages but design. In marketing, design is mainly treated as "now, let's make it pretty" add-on at the end of the campaign development process. After all, it is assumed that people’s perceptions of a brand image are determined by aesthetic appeal of marketing communication (right??).

While aesthetic component of design is important, the core of designing is making things appealing to use. Or, in the words of Steve Jobs: “Design is not what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works”. Similarly, famous designer Phillipe Stark recently proclaimed that, “In the future, there will be no more designers. The designers of the future will be the personal coach, the gym trainer, the diet consultant.” The thing that he meant (free translation) is that those people DO something for you, they TRANSFORM our habits (and our bodies), and create a CHANGE. Bottom line: design is about doing something, instead of making something pretty or funny or whatever the ads should be.

Sure thing, design can be regarded as process or as the outcome of the process. But that depends on what you are designing (objects? images? habits?). Charles Eames says that “design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose.” In the broadest sense, design can be regarded as a methodology of problem solving (i really like this one). It is a way of thinking that is human-centered, integrative, and collaborative, and that seeks to “transform existing conditions into preferred ones” (Simon, 1969, p. 55). Design is viewed here as a process, rather than an end result or a value-add.

So, to design = create a system of habits. The meaning of design in digital marketing then shifts from images to creating relationships & their structures. Some have already figured that out. Steve Jobs (yea, the guys just must be everywhere) says that "in most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains or of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.” Designing is planning and shaping of interfaces and networks of habits & products. These habits/activities are ALWAYS REFERENTIAL (no, you can't promote your product without any context. no one would care), and they regularly tend to assimilate and arrange existing relations into new configurations (there's when you win). Designing = a process that transforms systems, relations, actions, and experiences.

book!

The book that I contributed to a while ago, "Management and Innovation in The Media Industry" has finally just gotten published. My article is called  "Customization and Branding as Strategic Choices for Media Firms" (um). I first presented it back in 2006 at the media conference in Sweden. I dug out that paper, and was happy that most of ideas there are still relevant altho for some reason the thing was written in a terrible consulting language ... oh, well. Anyway, I am prety happy that the book is finally out. Me and other obscure contributors can celebrate :)

A market never gets saturated with a good product, but is very quickly saturated with a bad one*

*Henry Ford.  It's good that he can't see the auto industry today, the poor fellow would probably re-die. Anyway, that's not the point. What this sentence reminded me of is digital marketing "products" in 2008. I really don't think that ads, branding campaigns, and promo efforts were ever more boring, quickly "saturating the market."  Lessons learned don't sound convincing enough. While I am marginally interested in yet another lame mention that "consumers need to be engaged", I am more curious about who should we thank for the awesomness of digital marketing today?

If I had to rank campaigns by 1) futility of the effort; 2) waste of client's money; 3) display of a thorough non-understanding of the digital space, my personal favs would be: 1) AT&T Speak in Thumbs, by Atmosphere BBDO - I was silent for a moment when I saw this one, unsure if someone put me in a time machine as a revenge for something I said on my blog or, this is a cruel joke on Atmosphere BBDO (by someone who approved the campaign), or both; 2) J.C. Penny Doghouse by Saatchi&Saatchi - this one is no worse than any 30-sec spot, just longer (much, much longer). Does something that lasts 5 minutes and regularly takes the equal amount of time to load count as "viral" video? Isn't then file sharing of feature-length videos also "viral"? Funny how the standards work ... Anyway, the campaign plays with honestly retarded stereotype of male's insensitivity + it cost way more than the attention it generated. Not even mentioning the sales-lift here since J.C.Penny asked to be included in the fed stimulus plan on Dec. 24 + it's sooo long, who has that kind of time & attention online? Also, what's up with Kevin Robert's "i am a royal douchebag" blogging?? (someone should pass him a note that economic times are, well, tough); 3) Digital Drag Race for Intel - it breaks my heart to mention Razorfish again here, but this campaign, after almost 2 months, generated 12 video entries and 10 YouTube channel subscribers. BUT - to be fair - the live digital drag races are planned to be held on January 9&10th in Vegas AND are yet about do wonders for the campaign :); 4) Sprint's Plug Into Now - I just don't like Flash used like this; more importantly, entertainment value is moderate and the potential for the long-term interest is marginal ("my body just made 50 mil new cells" ... ok, I have to go now). Never been a big fan of robot-like voices, too. 5) Fiat Eco Drive by AKQA - there's a lingering question of why to over-design an interface for a great service and, more importantly, why to design it sooo terribly. Note: the target audience is ADULT MALE, and the interface looks like this.  I am sure that there are many many more sad digital marketing efforts, but this is all I could remember just now. What's worse, as time goes by, I have increasing problem differentiating between campaigns by these agencies. Not only they are all equally bad, they are for the most part each other's imitations and variations of the same formula (not sure what the formula is, tho).

But, since this is the time to make New Year's wishes, if I could choose, I would like to see more stuff from these agencies: 1) Crispin, Porter + Bogusky - whatever Crispin delivers, generates [not always justified] buzz, but they are the only ones who created a campaign that combined great understanding of the audience, of their client's brand, and of the medium used for promotion - think Whopper Freakout; 2) Anomaly - true to their name, they don't fail to generate a steady stream of campaigns that are always slightly different than what everyone else is doing: Converse & Identitee; 3) HUGE - their deliverables will not exactly spur consumers' imagination, but their clients always know exactly where each dollar of their budget is spent + HUGE knows that brand experience = user experience. And this is why users come back to Family.com & JetBlue.com. 4) Barbarian Group - they have yet to prove themselves with more campaigns, but since they have some of the smartest people in the industry, I am eager to see what they will come up with. Putting them here for their potential, and for "I saw it on CNN" + Getty Images moodstream; and 5) Big Spaceship - not sure if this one really belongs here, since they are mostly a production studio, but ever since HBO "Voyeur" thingy with BBDO I can't help but thinking that there's a lot more to them than just executing someone else's ideas. To conclude: these 5 companies are very different from each other, and I think that's great: diversity of market players is really the key to innovation (in contrast, all traditional & big digital players are pretty much the same ...). So, not only that the outcome of a competitive market is innovative products/solutions, but the continuous transformation. Those people compete on both on innovation & on their expertise. Plainly said, that means that it's not very likely that they will ever saturate the market with the bad product. They won't even deliver two products that are the same. Hope that clients take notice.

i will never completely understand people

Found in front of the wine store in Chelsea. A little wisdom before you get pissed.

really, what is wrong with vogue?

New York Times article from December 31st asks what's wrong with Vogue. Well, the same thing that is wrong with New York Times. No idea who wrote that article, but to me the question seemed terribly reminiscent to one old lady asking another how does it feel to be young. Both are clueless, but they surely have memories. NY Times article asks a good question - but it sadly lacks the tools&expertise to answer it (just think Stuart Elliot and advertising. The two should not be related under no circumstances. Speaking of, I should check what Mr. Elliot is writing about these days. I bet on radio jingles). Anyway, the NY Times critic, by way of conclusion, quotes: "Editors of Ms. Wintour's generation, like the designers they champion and the photographers they protect, have a depth of knowledge not easily reproduced." The question, for me, is SHOULD it be reproduced, and more importantly, is that knowledge still relevant in the world of 2009. Like, who cares about old expertise when there's new expertise? What once deemed to be shocking, "astonishing", and cutting-edge, today is really not. Illustration: Michael Roberts (the fashion director of Vanity Fair, quoted in the article) found it "astonishing" that Vogue published a picture of Nadia Auermann having sex with a swan (hardly, see the photo above). The picture is from the early 90's.  Yes, that was almost TWENTY years ago. If that's the standard of "shocking" & "exceptional" for Vogue, then no wonder it's in deep shit. Nadia Auermann is probably already a grandmother, Helmut Newton is dead, and yet wierdly enough, someone STILL remembers that photo (how old is Mr. Roberts exactly??) AND the editor who put that photo in the magazine is still THE authority in the fashion world. Like the hairstyle of its chief editor, Vogue thinks that being "classy" means keeping the taste unchanged over (many, many) years. Maybe it's just me, but there's something weird about the woman who has the same hair for 30+ years. It's time to redefine the notion of "classic" -- the reality is, things need to change in order to stay the same. Continuity resides in transformation, not in constancy. That's what's wrong with Vogue. And yes, also the fact that it's unforgivably cheesy. (Some great comments are here).

when the excess of creativity is unecessary*

*No, I am not talking about that awesome and truly memorable J.C. Penny "Welcome to the Doghouse" holiday ad (altho it def applies). What caught my eye earlier tonite is some weird drama going on at Moschino's shop window in the Meatpacking. And I gathered that the plot is the following: gnome-sized snowmen, with the help of a reindeer in an oversized-dog sweater outfit holding a giant hammer in its ... yea, "hand", are breaking into the store all the while the very much alive lady-mannequins are looking on, completely unflustered. Sounds like something coming from a 30-sec spot copywriter. Anyway, since I personally find Moschino an Euro-trash, fake-gold-is-cool, & over-the-top brand that only Russians find classy, I remained equally unflusterred. (as a matter of fact, I hope they take everything away and burn it in the Santa's igloo on the North Pole.)