America 2.0 - when Generation X reaches The White House

This is the first post in my series on the A to Z of 2.0.

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Barack Obama is about to give his speech accepting the Democratic nomination to be the next President of the United States of America, an idea I find pretty exciting. Whether people like it or not, America can still impact our world in a way no other country can. True, China has the potential to do so, but it is wholly focused on its personal rise to the global stage and is unlikely to be distracted by regional conflict, preferring a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that has bit the US squarely on the ass more times than anyone would care to remember. They do after all say history is doomed to repeat itself.

Obama gets compared often to JFK, a comparison that taps into notions that aren't uniquely American. Through the 50's and 60's it invented popular culture, and the gospel of the teenager spread like wildfire around the globe, reaching hundreds of millions of people who were sold on a promise, on an ideal, and only the tiniest proportion of those people would ever set foot in the land of the free to find out how the ideal held up once you got to the source of that ever-flowing river.

In the years following JFK, that dream got lost, the promise extinguished in a haze of misguided foreign policy, diplomatic arrogance and an innate misunderstanding of the global populace that began right at the top and worked its way down to the lowest denominator it could find. Actually misunderstanding is the wrong word, because you can't be an idiot and become president of the US, despite all evidence to the contrary; it was a complete lack of appreciation for how anyone outside its borders perceived it, a point of view brought horrifically home on my mother's 50th birthday in 2001.

That was the first time America as a whole snapped out of a haze and realised things were not as they believed they were, something anyone occupying a seat anywhere else in the Western world had accepted an uncomfortable knowledge of long before.

The American dream isn't something anyone has talked about without a strong sense of irony for quite some time. It is a virus that infected the world more than 50 years ago that managed to wear itself out through its own self-importance, one that was caught when the world was sick and weary in the aftermath of World War 2, when the global populace was lost and ready to grasp on to anything that would lead them out of the land in which they'd lived for a decade.

And we're back there again.

The mere idea that Barack Obama could become president of the US is an opportunity for America to light a fire under the dream again. 200,000 people turned up to see him speak in Germany. 200,000 people who have an innate understanding of what the promise of America is, despite most never having set foot there. How much more powerful could an idea be than to have had eight years of Bush's foreign policy doing irreperable harm to global relations and opinion of America at an all-time low, yet have that many people turn up to a rally in a part of the world that doesn't get to have a say on who the next president will be? Having been born in the American century we are products of the American ideal, whether we like it or not.

This is an opportunity for America to reclaim the dream. To elect a president who because of his childhood has a first-hand understanding of cultures outside his own, and in doing so re-ignite a long lost notion of what it was that country promised the rest of us.

Barack Obama gives Americans a new direction, and he gives the rest of us America 2.0.

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Image courtesy of jetheriot, with thanks to compfight.

Endtroducing...The A to Z of 2.0

So I've had an idea kicking around in my head for a while which I keep meaning to take away and work on, only to find myself preoccupied with other things. Posting about it though means I have to go take it seriously, because now we have a contract wherein I say I'm going to do something, hence I better to do it.

So without further adieu, I'm compiling the A to Z of 2.0. This is not your standard 2.0, this is my-oh-my-it's-Friday-have-we-really-spent-four-days-taking-our-marketing-selves-seriously 2.0. I'm going to take some of the ideas of web 2.0 and place them out in the real world to see how they measure up. I'd love to hear your own suggestions as we get to each letter - if you have an idea for a letter we haven't reached yet, drop me a line and I'll include it when we get there.

Let's have some fun shall we?

A - America 2.0 - When Generation X reaches The White House.

B - Borders 2.0 - The lines don't run where we say they do.

C - Celebrity 2.0 - The greatest story never told.

D - Dogma 2.0 - The rules are there ain't no rules.

E - Everyone 2.0 - Remember you're unique; just like everyone else.

F - Fundamentals 2.0 - Open beats closed. Every time.

They say you gotta stay hungry

Springsteen talks about chasing a silver thread between him and the audience, and some nights he grabs it on the first note and holds it the whole way, and some nights he spends every second trying to catch it, only to have it constantly slip away.

I'm feeling a little confessional today.

Don't know whether that's due to Matt quoting Bible verses at me while we argue over if Mother Theresa was a good marketer, but I had trouble getting started yesterday and today doesn't feel much better.

One thing there's never a shortage of in advertising is confidence. Confidence and ego. When I made games a good friend and I would meet up at conferences and make secret confessions that we spent so much time second guessing the design decisions we were making  it was a miracle we hadn't been exposed for the frauds we were. That friend then played a lead design role on Bioshock, a game that appeared and mopped the floor with everything else that showed up to dance last year.

In the time since we'd both rationalised those feelings through many encounters with others who never lacked confidence, yet consistently produced mediocre work; if you think every idea is sprung from genius, you're not likely to try harder at anything.

I say all this sitting on an idea for a client. A great idea. Game changing, Lion-winning, great idea. I know in my gut it is a great idea, and I'm struggling to boil it down to a simple, one line pitch, which it needs to be as the company is quite conservative. It needs to hit home and they need to get it before the sentence finishes leaving my mouth.

I'm searching for that silver thread today, and the bitch is if I knew I'd find it then it wouldn't be worth a thing.

How low can you go?

Here's the thing: companies don't need strategies (even digital ones), they need a fundamental reason to exist. Having arguments about which discipline should lead is like entering a three-legged race with you and your partner on your knees; by the time you figure out something is wrong, everyone else has long since finished.

One thing I'm trying to move the folk I deal with away from is the desire to be so channel focused. While I'm a passionate advocate for digital, I'm not blinded by the channel (or even the myriad of channels that make it up). Depending on your audience there's an argument to be made for using traditional media, and some of the most innovative movements in marketing business strategy at the moment are tapping in to as many different channels at once as possible.

I said a couple weeks back things will get (really) interesting when we get down to a level where everyone functions as a single organism, and that can happen as a joint venture as Marcus advocates, but I imagine it can probably happen a few other ways too.

Whatever form it takes, it is about getting so deeply involved with companies that you do move as one. That will take a lot more trust on both sides than either client or agency is prepared to invest right now. But I believe we're headed there, and I find that pretty exciting.

What's that? How deep?

How low can you go?

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Image courtesy of lolodrake, with thanks to compfight.

It wasn't me

Moving on from last week where I was thinking about marketing and strategy and the blurring lines between the two, and yesterday's thoughts around the lack of imagination inherent in the day to day lives of most marketers, I'm thinking now maybe most marketers are thinking more about treading water and doing their best to attract the least amount of attention while only a handful (like me and mine) are interested in hanging our careers out to dry in the hope of actually doing something remarkable.

Julian Cole and I (who I imagine will wind up one day the old guys in The Muppets) were at breakfast the other day trying to figure out where the chips were going to fall in terms of the companies that drive social media forward.  Straight after that conversation I read a piece I can't find now suggesting the likes of McKinsey et al would soon enough swoop in, grab the brightest in social media and whisk them into the ivory towers of business strategy and management consulting.

While I find the idea somewhat abhorrent, I don't particularly like being in agency land much better; any industry that defines itself by stating what it is is a touch too old school; let's state what we are not and then see where the road goes.

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Image courtesy of photo.bugz, woth thanks to compfight.

Minute by minute by minute by minute

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Marcus's piece is thought-provoking.

Why?

Because he advocates a joint-venture between company and client over either an agency or doing it in house.

Why?

Because in house has too many political hurdles and an agency doesn't get deep enough in the business.

Why?

Because there are too many other distractions.

Why?

Because there has to be; it isn't their job to focus on it, and that is what they require.

I was with a client on Friday who told me, in no uncertain terms, that they didn't do technology. "We're just marketers" she said. "We don't understand that stuff."

Jesus. H. Christ.

"We're just marketers" was quote of the week for me, strong contender for quote of the year. Another boffin from an agency I work with had asked aloud what Flickr was, which in itself is maddening. What really frustrated me though was the lines these people were willing to draw around what they did and didn't do. Apparently being "just a marketer" means you can float through on ignorance and leave "teh interwebs" up to the geeks in the corner.

Can you imagine 50 years ago talking about TV to have someone turn around and say "Oh, I'm just a marketer, I don't understand that TV stuff"?

The mind boggles. Let's get it straight: nothing is off the table. Not digital, not analogue, not experiential, not bespoke, not DM, not TVCs, not PR, not ambient, not out of home, not print, not word of mouth, nothing. Marketers who opt for a career with blinkers on will find themselves swept aside in the eternal race for consumer's hearts and minds. You don't have to be an expert in everything, but you should at least be aware of where everything fits.

And you should also be aware that every waking minute of your day, you are marketing something.

We all are.

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Image courtesy of M J M, with thanks to compfight.

One bourbon, one scotch, one beer

Julian Cole and I have been going back and forth a bit lately on social objects offline and some of that chatter is making its way online. He put up a vlog yesterday which Scott from Marketing Magazine chimed in on. Not wanting to be left out, I added my 2 cents. I hadn't actually uploaded anything to YouTube before, brought back some of the initial terrors that come with blogging (the world will see this, oh no!).

Anyway, the videos are below. Watch them (Scott's alone is priceless for the shots of his afro, little children may turn away in fear, you've been warned) and then leave a comment, or better yet, add your own response! While you're at it, give Julian some stick for the video responses needing to be approved by the owner - Jules I thought the whole point of social media was acknowledging you couldn't control the conversation right!?! :)

[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=jhXSR4q1cMY]



[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvFVzSMg2OQ]

Stars seem to lose their place

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"If I were a client, I wouldn't use an agency."

Way to get somebody's attention.

Marcus Brown's short but provoking series "If I were a client today..." has been weighing on my mind. It's been weighing on my mind because it hit home on a couple conversations I've been having with people offline.

A friend of mine is currently doing her MBA at INSEAD. We were chatting earlier this year when she said something that I had been thinking for a while: "I sit in strategy classes and marketing classes, and I can't tell the difference between the two."

BANG.

"Say that again?"

"Marketing and strategy, I'm not sure I see a difference anymore."

Having that opinion is one thing. Having it validated by a person whose intellect makes you feel like Europa orbiting Jupiter is another.

Let's just connect a few dots here:

• Google is the world's best known brand


• They didn't advertise in order to become that


• Their marketing is the product


• They are always in R&D

If you still haven't gone and read Marcus' piece at this point, just read the first part. Then come back, share some thoughts, I'm interested to see where this goes in my mind, but where it goes in other people's as well.

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Image courtesy of Planet Tyler, with thanks to compfight.

You can't hurry love

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="239" caption="What if people knew what this moment felt like?"][/caption]

We'll get to the stuff I was talking about yesterday in due course, it ain't goin' nowhere baby. And what I have on my mind is much bigger than that.

So I was reading this piece on movement through the web which touches on notions the web having made creativity itself more accessible - mind you it does this in a fairly esoteric fashion wherein a bunch of stuff does straight over my head).

It got me thinking about how the advent of blogging platforms like Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad etc. gave people the ability to express themselves, or at least opened other avenues to express themselves. if like me, you believe creative is not a department and we're all inherently creative as a by-product of being human, then that's pretty exciting.

YouTube, Vimeo and a bunch of other video services (such as Seesmic and Oovoo) have allowed people to express themselves in a similar fashion via video. What I'm thinking about though is something that enhances people's ability to express themselves musically. Yes we have Last.fm, Pandora, what have you. These all function around recommendation engines, I'm interested in tools that allow people to make music more easily.

I hear you saying "But I can't read music." You know what? Most people with a blog couldn't spot the difference between a verb and an adjective without the help of Wikipedia, I've played guitar for 15 years, I'm less good at reading music now than I was when I was 13, which is much more than The BeeGees ever could.

The issue is this: people love to construct barriers to entry. They love to put up walls around things they have achieved in a move towards exclusivity; if everyone can do what I do, then it isn't actually an achievement.

How does that relate to blogging? In terms of raw self-expression, blogging has enabled more voices to be heard than any other publishing medium in the history of the world. The individual impact may not carry that of Tolstoy or Goerge Bernard Shaw, but that makes it no less valid a form of expression, and the collective voice is far greater.

Being a musician myself, I'm wondering how music can be made more accessible - not the acquiring of other people's music but the actual creation. Maybe part of the equation of putting value back into the 4 megabyte files everyone is downloading is sharing more of the experience of creating them in the first place. Maybe that will only serve to drive down the value further, but as the perceived value continues to approach zero, what do we have to lose?

I'll happily acknowledge this post is a complete shot from the hip, but I really believe theres something in this.

My only question is: where to from here?

Let's drown deep in us

There's something about a Sunday that allows for clarity of thought - that might be due solely to having a day's buffer between the events of the working week, Saturday playing the part of a sink hole that allows Monday to Friday to slowly but surely gurgle down the drain (hopefully not along with your career), Sunday existing to just enjoy the quiet of the room before the plug goes back in and the sink starts filling up at 6am the following morning.

This week I'm going to be thinking all about Marcus Brown's excellent piece entitled If I Were A Client Today..., so please check that out and then get into the discussion that takes place, I think we're going to dig up some interesting stuff.

For now though, enjoy your Sunday.

If you don't know me by now

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="262" caption="This is Toad. Toad belongs to Nintendo."][/caption]

I'm working my way through a great article by Marcus Brown, a guy who has clearly been doing this for a while, though I've only just found him. The article, If I Were A Client Today is actually on a blog he was previously writing and now has left behind called The Kaiser Edition where he would write from the point of view of a handful of personas (as far as I can tell, I'm still figuring it out as I'm not actually all that bright).

The piece is part analysis of where we're at in agency-land, part retrospective of his time client-side at either Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft (if he reveals which one I'm not there yet, but I have a hunch based on the litany of characters sporting mushrooms on their heads). One of the more curious revelations thus far is the Internet Department he was hired to be a part of didn't get placed with the Marketing department or the IT guys but in their R&D labs.

This is curious but also brilliant, an early realisation that the Internet and technology in general is good for more than just spitting out new kinds of ads. For me it naturally harks back to Iain Tait's 10 Reasons Digital is Better Than Advertising, in particular his first point in that series, that you don't have to do advertising.

When Iain says advertising there though, what I think he means is you don't have to do something that lacks substance, you can do something with balls, that means something and actually impacts people's businesses long after a campaign has finished. I'm not saying this is unique to digital, Droga 5's Tap Project is evidence it can happen anywhere. But I think there's a greater propensity for it to happen online, it moves things from distinctly separate operations closer to functioning as a single organism - and that's where things are going to get really interesting.

Always the last to know

Last year I got invovled with a start-up backed by a reasonable amount of coin from traditional media folk. My thinking about online and where media was headed in that time matured drastically, in large part due to the wildly differing opinions on it at any given turn.

Yesterday I touched on corporates in the social media space, and was thinking about why they so often get it wrong. I'm perhaps over-simplifying, but I believe a big reason is the ubiquity of all the tools we're asking people to take seriously when they're so flippantly used most of the time. Everyone uses email, most people know somebody who has worked on a website or writes a blog, a large portion of industrialised society has watched video online, has played some sort of game online, chatted and interacted in ways ranging from one off to incredibly meaningful - my younger brother even met his wife online, but that's for another time.

What this creates is a level of familiarity with the mediums if not the methods and brings with it a false sense of security for all involved. "I send email every day, why would I pay someone to do that for me?". "I played Scrabulous on Facebook, I know how games work." "I have an idea for a viral, like that one you sent me last week."

All of the above statements are absolutely valid. The problem is they don't know what they don't know, which is not something you can beat people up for. I have the same problem with massages, I do them well, so I can't bring myself to pay for one. Why would I? If I can do it, how hard can it be?

Contrast this with a DM piece or a TV commercial. Most people have never made a TV commercial, the barrier to entry is pretty obvious. "Do I know how to edit film or use a camera? No, better hire someone." That barrier exists for a very good reason: it is hard to make a good TVC, but you very rarely need to explain that to people, the medium is more obvious, the inner workings easier to see.

So, where to now? We wanted the internet and all its glories to proliferate and invade every aspect of our lives, which is has now done. What matters from here on in is taking people on that journey, making them understand the difference between the notes we get from our families and lovers and the communications they send out that can radically alter the course of their businesses. More than that, why technology is fundamentally altering the way they should be doing business, and how those of us in this space should be helping people get there.

I got called out on being a ranting bastard by a friend the other day, and realised I ultimately wasn't helping anyone. So this is Day 1 of trying to give something back. I do so love the rants, so I may slip back into it from time to time, but here's to being a little more positive.

If you'll excuse me for the moment though, I have to go argue with a client.

Har.

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Image courtesy of Allan Ferguson, with thanks to compfight.

As she rises to her apology

Somewhere early Sunday morning (sober, I swear Mum!) I was talking to a friend about intent, and the revelation of intent through actions. She suggested action wasn't enough, that consistency was required. Consistency then perhaps becomes the actual revealer of intent - or at least of priorities.

You can have the best intentions in the world, but your priorities will always one-up you with a slow reveal (or sometimes not so slow) of what your true intentions were.

This is no where more prevalent than corporate intrusion into social media spaces, where increased sales is the intent, revealed by the lack of consistency (which itself a form of consistency I suppose). I've actually been talking clients down from the social media ledge recently on account of so many other aspects of their online being fundamentally flawed. I'm always amazed at an organisation's willingness to drop $50,000 on a "viral" campaign while being happy to ignore things that are fundamentally wrong with their main website.

The fact is we used to call social media "community management", and much the same way that had a dedicated employee playing that role, social media requires the same. Companies who want to get involved have to ask themselves how much they want to get involved, and how much they're willing to invest in it. It will only work if you are consistent, you can only be consistent if it is somebody's job to handle every day.

If you're not willing to hire someone to do the day-to-day on your organisation's social media, to deliver consistency, you need to pick a different game to play.

Tomorrow we'll look at why the barrier to entry is more than a 30-second spot (and why that's a good thing).

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Image courtesy of spud murphy, with thanks to compfight.

We're not here for a long time

Being in the office on Sunday fees like I'm back in high school and am the only kid who forgot it was free-dress day, having showed up in my school uniform much like any other day.

In between the burst of work, I'm catching up on feeds. Quick off the mark this morning was Gavin Heaton's great Servant of Chaos blog, and a fun little video about growing and nurturing creatives. Ultimately pointless of course, but Sundays aren't made for productivity.

Most Sundays anyway.

Why creative is not a department

How I hate a title for a post that isn't a line from a song.

Anyway...

The below talk by Sir Ken Robinson (again at TED) is extraordinary. I wish I'd seen it when I was a kid, it would have made a whole lot of things make lots more sense. Thankfully I had parents who were already thinking along these lines, so they made everything a whole lot easier than some of my friends got from their traditionalist upbringings. Ken's talk is on creativity and the new role it has to play in today's world.

Please watch it.

I'll pick you up at half past three, we'll have lasagne

So I mentioned willingness to pay the other day, which is intrinsically linked to notions of value and price point the former being set by the customer, the latter by the operation doing the selling. Raising the perception of value increases the chance your customer will agree to the price point, and you do this by heightening the expectations set by the brand you're pushing.

Now, I'm pretty fortunate in being able to eat at some nice places. Not all the time mind you, but I'm a big fan of food, and I get to indulge that often enough to keep me happy. Most people out there would be familiar with Jamie Oliver (aka The Naked Chef), a guy for whom branding and food are inextricably linked. This naturally brings with it all sorts of extra notions of value.

In his books, you look for the recipes, tips and tricks that mean you can deliver a wonderful meal for anyone who comes to dinner. There's this idea of product delivered, life enriched - through the learning of a new skill and the sharing of that experience. Enriched living? What a great place for a brand to occupy; let us help facilitate this wonderful evening and not be at all responsible if you cock it up. Brilliant!

He has a restaurant in Melbourne called Fifteen, which I've been to a few times. The first time I went I was blown away, but the last couple times have left something to be desired. The pull for me was very much getting to eat at Jamie Oliver's restaurant, and while the service and wine list is impeccable, the food left me feeling a little unsatisfied.

This is interesting because in both cases, the product is the extension of a single brand into places the person cannot be; Jamie can't be at my house making sure I don't drown my risotto, and he can't be cooking in Fifteen every night. Yet in the first example his brand isn't dminished by me messing up a dish, in the latter he can't help but be held responsible.

What it boils down to is a single brand, executed to differing standards in different mediums, which overall dilutes the whole. In the case of the book, he has done all he can do, the rest is up to me - the notion of willingness to pay in this instance is my willingness to buy the right ingredients and invest the time in making a dish; this good will naturally gets transferred to eating in Fifteen, but after that I'm less willing to invest in a Jamie Oliver dining experience than I am in a book of his and my own compass.

I'm trying to think of other examples where a product can be offered but any negative experience had in association fails to actually taint it...I'm drawing blank. Anyone?

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Image courtesy of Christop, with thanks to compfight.

Play yo' part

Last week I talked about ING and a newsletter I got from them, specifically about how it contained only a small amount of information I was actually interested in and a big chunk of stuff I didn't want to know about. Like an eager kid banging at my door to tell me about their day, once I've gotten a "No" to my question of "Did anything bad happen?" I have what I need to know.

When brands step outside the zone they have asked permission to occupy (those that are smart enough to get permission anyway), they're jumping the shark, they're stepping into territory where they don't have credibility, and all the onlookers can do is sigh and roll their eyes.

In the same way the web has allowed the proliferation of niches, it means brands are afforded smaller and smaller spaces to occupy in our lives. What they need to work on is owning that niche, becoming a credible and trusted source. Once they have that down, they can expand - carefully. The move for ING from savings account bank to home loan bank isn't a huge step for anyone to make; when they start talking about dolphins, this is where I lose interest.

Know your role, and play your part. Meet expectations consistently and you'll be afforded the platform to grow, one piece at a time.

Tomorrow I'm going to look at how expectations support a brand and tie into the customer's willingness to pay.

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Image courtesy of discola with thanks to compfight.

I've seen a million faces and I've rocked them all

Consistency. Consistency is the key to a killer product, service or brand. McDonalds build their business on the premise a cheeseburger you ate in Tokyo would taste the same as one you ate in Chicago. It didn't matter where you interacted with them, the product would be (for better or worse) the same.

In game design, consistency forms the rules within which your world exists. Getting through a game is basically a process of learning the rules, the fundamental building blocks of that world, and stepping up your own level of skill as those rules evolve. This extends to the aesthetic of the game too, which is why although it has some of the lowest resolution artwork of any game around, people marvel at how beautiful World of Warcraft is. The tiniest detail is completely consistent with the largest, which all works towards a single thing: suspension of disbelief.

Use of consistent imagery and mechanics in design gives the person you're dealing with an innate understanding and expectation of the experience they're about to have with your offering. You can imagine if the way you drove a Toyota was completely different to the way you drove a Ford there'd be incredible problems moving from one car to another, but we rarely think about this when dealing with design.

See, 99% of problems in a relationship stem from expectations not being met (the other 1% is always my fault). It is the source of the most frustration, regardless of whether you're dealing with another human being or a magazine.

Be consistent so you can spend your time with someone getting to know them better, not continually covering off the basics.

Tomorrow I'm going to be look at ING and talk about the difference between knowing your role and playing your part.

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Image courtesy of M J M, with thanks to compfight.