This is what I sound like

I had the pleasure yesterday of joining Scott Hoffman on his Cliqology podcast to talk about all the madness around Digital Strangelove, and the ideas contained in it.

We talk about the presentation itself, the response it received, and how some of the ideas contained within are going to play out over the next few years, while also looking at some things that are emerging now that weren't obvious when I first made the deck. Wordpress is being difficult and not letting me embed the player, but Tumblr is giving me no such issues, so please go here to listen to it. I'd love to hear what you think, what you thought was on the money and even more so what you think completely missed the mark.

Regardless, I had a great time doing it, and will be rejoining Scott in the new year to do a special look at how small businesses can apply some of the thinking to what they do.

Hope you enjoy it, and thanks again to Scott for having me!

**Update**

I totally forgot to mention Digital Strangelove has been nominated for Slideshare's Zeitgeist Awards. To vote for my presentation, all you need to do is go to the page, and click the Nominate just next to my picture. Your vote is greatly appreciated, I promise to lower taxes and serve cold beer at a reasonable price.

When honour is at stake, this vow I will make

I've been thinking a lot about The Three Musketeers - my framework for business models which places them (perhaps overly simply, but simply none the less) into two baskets: All-For-One (self-serving pursuit of value) or One-For-All (pursuit of value for an ecosystem). The former is business as usual up until the advent of Google, at which point things seem to turn, and we see more and more businesses cropping up and being successful by creating value

I had, for the longest time, felt uneasy about Facebook. My sense was that it was founded with All-For-One principles, and I have a hard time viewing it as a business that seeks to create value for an eco-system; it is, to my mind, the second coming of Microsoft rather than the second coming of Google.

I say that, but I also now can't help but acknowledge the market they have developed for small and local businesses to target customers, and the platform they have provided for brands to interact on a more personal level with fans. In some ways, it lessens the role of the ad industry, which to my mind has a hard time justifying itself as even remotely One-For-All, and so can only be viewed as a good thing.

Your friend and mine Umair Haque takes aim at Facebook in a recent Harvard Business blog: over the Farmville debacle

Once, banks held debt till maturity. The great unnovation was being able to sell it to the next guy, who sold it to the next guy, and on and on and on. What was once a simple, short value chain lengthened to the point of absurdity. Exactly the same value chain pattern is surfacing in media. Ads used to be bought and sold through a short value chain. Facebook ended up serving toxic ads because they were sold through lengthening chains of intermediaries — each of whom shifts the buck to the next guy.

The argument does and doesn't hold water in places - to my mind it swerves dangerously close in places to the kind of opinion that states ISPs are responsible for their customer's illegally downloading music. The overall point stands however, which is sacrificing the end-user for the man with money is a short-sighted strategy.

We need to spend more time creating things that user wants in the first place.

That is what One-For-All is all about.

All that noise, all that sound

So my agency is on a decent size pitch at the moment, and we were talking about the acceleration of technology over the last three years as it pertains to this particular company. And we were video taping various people saying different things and so I of course being the narcissist I am went off back to my desk and sat running a monologue over and over in my head, trying to think of something clever to say while being able to toss it off as if it was largely off the cuff.

And then when they came to film me I was on a conference call. And then the opportunity was gone because they're in a bit of a rush.

The thing I thought of though, I thought was quite interesting, and it was this: the technological revolution we're going through right now is currently being framed as a change in lifestyle, when what we're really dealing with, on a really fundamental level, is a change in life itself. 20 years ago, many-to-many communication was basically impossible, and even one-to-many was limited to those who could afford to do it, usually requiring a publisher.

Now anyone can, and because there are still more people in the world who knew life without the Internet than there are who only know the Internet, being always connected is deemed a lifestyle and a choice. As that ratio changes however, being disconnected is going to be seen as a lifestyle and what is currently (at least in some circles, not mine) considered an "other" state, will be the norm.

The norm on the rise now is being able to get a message to anyone you want or as many people you want at any time you want. After thousands of years of relative status quo, it's changed over night. Which is why I say the web is young, and why I say we haven't fully grasped all this yet. I could just have a smaller mind than most (it has often been suggested), but sitting and pondering it for a moment kinda blows it to a thousand tiny pieces.

And having said all that, the only thing I can be sure of is I would have wound up on the cutting room floor, with the Creative Director going "Do you really have to do that every time?".

...I suppose I do...

---

Image courtesy of bass nroll, with thanks to compfight.

Tell the whole world the truth is back

Image via Wikipedia

I've spent the last couple years talking about intent in various guises. Sometimes related to marketing, sometimes to business, but always, always at the heart of what anyone is doing. It has become an intrinsic part of what I write about, as anyone who has been with me for a little while will attest.

In February 2008 I penned a piece looking at Facebook's advertising ecosystem (things have changed dramatically since) and referenced a piece by your friend and mine Doc Searls on The Intention Economy. This phrase showed up again in a presentation I did called Digital Strangelove, and I realised just today, after stumbling across Doc referencing that presentation (tremendous honour and incredibly humbling) that despite spending a long time making sure the appropriate references were in place and credits given, I had not tipped my hat to Doc and his original article which clearly made an impression on me.

Thankfully the medium within which we work allows for easy retraction, correction and re-dissemination of correct information - if we choose to take advantage of it. I have updated my deck with a link to Doc's original piece in the credits, and wanted to take the time to acknowledge the source of that phrase. Additional credit I can only add by stealing from Sir Isaac Newton: if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Thanks Doc.

Ch-ch-changes

I just got spammed by Glue, looks like maybe their notifications engine had a little freakout and sent me a bunch of messages I had already received. Which is fine. Part of playing in this new space (both as a producer and a consumer) is sometimes things go awry. Software (i.e. anything on a screen) is in flux, it is not right - just least wrong. And it gets less wrong as people find ways to improve it.

Seeing those messages suddenly arrive though, I'm wondering about the tolerance people have for that. Nobody expected those to arrive (least of all the developers I imagine), and if it had been a major brand, then it would have been annoying. But it came from a service trying to do something good - connect people.

They're a start-up and still getting things figured out, and that is fine. Last year people were fond of droning on and on about Twitter having scaling issues. You know what? They're supposed to!! That is part of building a popular service!! They had scaling issues because they focused on building something people wanted - their server going down on a regular basis meant they were doing their God-damn jobs. In turn you got a service you love for free.

Give. Me. Strength.

Image via CrunchBase

I am fond of banging on and on about my mate Tim saying "If you want to understand change you have to be part of it." And part of that, particularly when playing with services like Glue or FourSquare or whatever it will be tomorrow, is an understanding that this shit is in flux. And it will get better and it will get worse and that is the contract you sign when you join.

It is called the bleeding edge for a reason, things get broken.

And thank God they do.

I'll send an S.O.S. to the world

Tomorrow I'm teaching a course at the agency I work at, titled (long before I arrived) "Today's Digital Consumer". The first thing I'll be doing is pulling out "Digital" from the topic heading, which will come as no surprise to anyone who has read Digital Strangelove.

I'm wrestling with theory vs. practice right now though; it could be a very practical talk, or it could be one of big ideas, and I'm not sure where the common ground is. I feel like it's a moment for practical advice, for saying things people can take away and do. I also feel like advertising spends too much time just doing, and not enough time thinking about how it should be done.

Regardless, I'm thankful to have an audience that stretches across a variety of disciplines, from media planning to print production, and I'm hoping what comes out of it is a practical discussion, a lively debate and some points of view that challenge my own. It isn't about being right, it's about being least wrong, and I'm viewing all of this space right now with a smile and a shrug and a sly nod to a future version of myself who is already looking back and saying "Remember when..."

---

Image courtesy of the gracious and lovely Hugh Macleod.

Smoke on the water

Twitter's Biz Stone (via CrunchBase)

At the recent Web 2.0 conference, Twitter search deals were announced with both Microsoft and Google, something I was pleased to see given about a week earlier I had made the prediction in Digital Strangelove (slide 178) that a deal was imminent with one of them - turns out it was both.

Twitter's Biz Stone has gone on the record saying of all the options they are considering for a revenue model, advertising is the least appealing. My feeling on that statement is this: either they changed their minds, or they've done a deal to monetise the most natural part of their business while they think about the avenues they're truly interested in pursuing. It's akin to having a field of lavender and making a deal with local photographers to let them take pictures, all the while trying to figure out what you really want to do with all that crop.

I could be over-complicating things, an activity that is a favourite of mine as many an ex-girlfriend will attest. Apple CEO Steve Jobs is famous for saying he had little interest in a feature, such as video on an iPod, before revealing it the next quarter. I can't help but feel the web is so eager to answer Twitter's revenue question for them that they've jumped on the first clue that appeared and cried "Case closed!"

Call me paranoid, this one stays open in my book.

On the road again

Cover of On The Road

I have had Jack Kerouac's On The Road given to me a gift to keep at least three times. I imagine some combination of traits my friends spotted in me (wannabe-philosopher mixed with restless-and-easily-distracted) focused their attention on this book. When people visit, they remark on the copies that line my shelf:

"You liked it enough to buy it twice?"

"No. I ignored it long enough to be given another."

This is not about that book though. This is about perception (and a little intent).

Your friend and mine Mark Earls referenced a piece from Lynne Truss in the UK's Sunday Times in which she states:

...I like to see what other people are reading on the bus or the train; how far they’ve got; whether they’re enjoying it. It seems to me that such information needs to be public for the good of us all and I’m sad to think of reading in public places ultimately becoming so private...

Lynne was lamenting the arrival of E-Readers and the disappearance of actual book and magazine covers from the parks and cafes and public transport systems of the world, along with the loss of a shared look or a fleeting conversation about the work at hand.

Lynne Truss' worry stems from the removal of social identifiers in public spaces; it seems we don't just judge a book by its cover, but the reader as well. I smile whenever I see another grown-up reading Harry Potter in public, because I remember being consumed by those books and also embarrassed to have them out in public without an 8 year old in sight. We use these things (and clothes, iPods, cars and holidays) to signal via the perceptions we assume others will have. My intent given my office wardrobe today of boho-cardigan and falling apart at the seams (but limited edition John Varvatos-collaboration) Converse sneakers, is to signal something true about myself; unfortunately that truth is little more than the clothing equivalent of the never opened copies of Kerouac's masterpiece, or as I wrote in Everyone 2.0, you're unique.

Just like everyone else.

I have friends (they shall remain nameless because I love them dearly) who have taken great pleasure in displaying tomes they have conquered in the name of enlightenment. These friends drew more pleasure from others seeing they had read (or at least bought) the appropriate books than perhaps they did from the work itself. On The Road is a book a selection of my friends feel I am supposed to have read, and as anyone who knows me will tell you, something someone says I am supposed to do instantly defaults to the thing I am least likely to do. Their intent is to help me appear a culturally astute and well-rounded individual; my intent is the equally pretentious attempt to thumb my nose at convention simply for the sake of it.

Now, my favourite magazine is British GQ as its collection of columnists is a veritable who's who of the UK's newspapers. They are regularly funny and insightful and it pains me when the publisher stoops to putting a scantily clad woman on the front cover, partly because the writing is better than that suggests but also because I then feel the need to explain to others, much as the joke about Playboy goes, "I read it for the articles." Perception reveals, or so we would assume, intent. Perception is also said to be reality, and so given the option of tangling with the looks I imagine women might give me on the subway in the mornings, I opt for Wired and instead leave Heidi Klum in her various states of undress on my coffee table for next Sunday (sorry dear, you know how it is).

Back to the Kindle, on one hand I like where we're heading as I could potentially just read A.A. Gill's column without wondering if someone's nipple is slipping out on the other side for the rest of the train to see.

On the other hand I'm envisioning a birthday not too long from now, where a gift arrives as a download along with a note "Didn't see it in your "Read Items" list on Amazon and thought to myself David is supposed to have read books like this!!"

The identifiers are perhaps moving out of the physical world in some ways, I doubt however this will have much impact on the intentions we have for everyone else's lives.

I feel the earth move under my feet

There's so much talk about platforms - Facebook-this, Twitter-that, more specific but no better than loose conversations about blogging or podcasts. I overheard someone say "It's OK, there's a slide on Twitter in the client deck", which stopped me in my tracks. These tools are not the kinds of things that make sense when being described; who in their right mind would want to tolerate 140-character updates among a sea of people you barely knew? It in no way describes the vibrancy of using Twitter, nor the opportunities inherent in it.

Your friend and mine Tim Beveridge has a great saying: in order to understand change, you have to be part of it (it probably isn't his saying, but I'm not sure where he got it from, so it's his now).

The point is the best way to explain Twitter to somebody is to take 30 seconds to sign them up, another two minutes to follow some people they might be interested in, and then sit back and let them have at it. On the (often false) assumption you have a strategic reason for using Twitter, if your client doesn't already use it then paying it lip service is not going to get you anywhere. Only by engaging  do people actually understand, or as I just commented over at AVC, being heard is not enough, you must also be understood.

Starting a strategy conversation by talking about a platform is a recipe for disaster. It is like deciding what kind of house you are going to be build based whatever hammer you have handy. It needs to begin with intent. Every. Single. Time.

For those who've just joined us here by way of Digital Strangelove, thanks so much for stopping by. We're going to keep talking about intent for a bit, at least until the rest of the world starts to understand the power of it.

--

Image courtesy of onkel_wart, with thanks to compfight.

Commented on "A VC"

Shana,

Thanks so much for your thoughts. The point on McLuhan is one I've been wrestling with for a while. I got a great comment from Rob Long on this. Rob works in Hollywood, and his perspective was that we're slowly coming full circle back to being around the campfire. Now maybe that is more semantics than reality, but I do think given the ubiquity of media, we're living in a very different world to the one McLuhan occupied. I'm not proposing moving beyond his thoughts for the sake of it (indeed I have a lot of his stuff still to work through), but I think it is an idea worth grappling with.

I'm going to be pondering your comment for the rest of the day... =]

Originally posted as a comment
by davidgillespie
on A VC using DISQUS.

Everyone wants to be the man at the top (Commented on "Howard Lindzon")

The conversation taking place around the web about Digital Strangelove is truly blowing my mind. All I wanted to do was move the conversation forward a little, the fact so many people have taken the time to work through it, comment on it, think about it and share it means the absolute world, and it's great getting to visit a bunch of new blogs and engage with different audiences I would never have had the chance to find out about.

Below is a response I wrote to one post in particular on Howard Lindzon's blog to an anonymous comment that had said (and I paraphrase) "The ultimate goal is to give people what they NEED", to which I responded:

"Name" - appreciate your thoughts. And for saying I was smart, I wish my high school teachers could see! ;]

I would suggest the ultimate goal is not to give people anything, except for an easier way to spread their own message. It is entirely unquantifiable, but I would love to know how many people with no prior experience just had a stab at recording some music because of how easy it was to use Garage Band.

At the end of the day, I don't think you should aim to give your customer something meaningful, you should create an environment where they can give something meaningful to you. To use the Apple/Microsoft example, MS is launching a campaign for Win7 based around having listened to its users, whereas I believe it is arguable Apple's platform tries to facilitate being able to listen to each other. A subtle but crucial difference.

Now, off to find a cushy job in a Think Tank!

(Written, for the record, on a PC. With a Mac to my left.)

Originally posted as a comment
by David Gillespie
on Howard Lindzon using DISQUS.

The Think Tank comment was due to a wry observation on the part of the poster than I had taken so many slides to say something they thought was blatantly obvious. Maybe they're right, though other comments had come in stating how concise it was.

Each to their own.

You gave you away

A few days ago I posted a presentation on where I think this space is headed. On slide 191 (yes 191) I mention something called The Three Musketeers rule, All For One or One For All. The former is siloed value creation, the latter creates value for an ecosystem.

I realised in the shower last night (keep it clean people) I had actually been thinking about this since November when I drew the below image:

I believe the Internet is, on a DNA-level, structured to create value for an ecosystem, and I believe this is why we're seeing traditional business having a hard time playing in the new landscape, with models being destroyed and a new kind of value creation making waves.

This is also why I'm still on the fence about Facebook over the long term. Nobody can deny their growth or do anything other than applaud getting to profitability. But I feel on an instinctive level the model is All For One, it's old media dressed up in shiny new threads, it's a system that creates value for Facebook alone, and it's questionable if any value is created outside of its walls.

In the presentation I included a slide of companies who are operating with a One For All approach:

[caption id="attachment_826" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Looking for a model?"][/caption]

If over time it transitions into One For All it will be interesting to watch. As it stands now, I can't help but feel it is organised against the natural order of the Internet, which is open and connected. We're seeing what happens when you do that across all kinds of industries, and it being an Internet darling does not exclude it from the same principles.

Even Rome fell people.

You light up my life like a polystyrene hat

I give advertising a really hard time, partly because I work in it, and partly because it is a collection of some incredibly insightful and creative people who have chosen to try and sell more soup. I know soup needs to be sold, but I feel like after 8000 or so years of it, soup's proposition is fairly well established.

Imagine my surprise when I found myself loving the below TED Talk from Rory Sutherland, Vice-Chairman and Executive Creative Director of Ogilvy UK. I originally found it via the newly-discovered (by me) brilliance of Simon Kemp, and after bristling self-righteously that someone would argue for perceived value instead of actual value, I found myself giggling at Rory and remarking to a friend how insightful he was; his delivery is so desperately English, I love it.

Watch and enjoy.

[ted id=658]

*Update* The afore-mentioned brilliant Simon Kemp is also sharp and posted a link to a Q&A done with Rory after the talk he gave.

I mentioned last week I had been staying in on weekends and up at night trying to get everything I was thinking about out of my head. The space I feel was created in my head is amazing, leaving room to think about a bunch of other projects I have on the go but have also played second fiddle to this.

I'm not presenting the below presentation as gospel, if I may be so bold as to quote myself, I am not looking for right, just for least wrong, as one of the premises I state in the presentation is that so much of this space will continue to change for a long time to come.

The deck covers a lot of ground, mainly from the point of view of where we are right now in the evolution of the Internet and culture, and where I think we're going. I welcome feedback of all kinds, from bursts of agreement to arguments against each and every slide.

If I have moved the conversation along in even the slightest way, I have succeeded. As always, thanks for reading, I really appreciate your time.

[slideshare id=2238584&doc=digitalstrangelovefinal-091016000419-phpapp02]

I need something to believe in

For the last month or so, I have locked myself away on weekends and any week night I had free, which I made most nights, in order to get a dump of informatino out of my head. I feel like last year I had or at the very least made the time to get it all down ona  regular basis via this blog. This year there's been a bit more going on, and trying to stay on top of it all, "all" being the job that pays me, the thing that I love and this place where I do my thinking, let alone whatever may happen in my personal life has been a bit much to digest.

So sometime in September I got a big stack of Post-It notes, a Sharpie and a glass of wine, and went to town, covering my loungeroom with notes, ideas, thoughts and pieces of things I was thinking. After that I left it for a few days, then came back and organised it into a flow that made sense. Then it was a case of pulling it all into a presentation that said everything I wanted in as few words as possible. I've perhaps wound up a little more verbose than I ahd in mind, but I feel like I've arrived in a place where I can say "Yes, this right now is the summation of everything I'm thinking and feeling about this space."

There are still a few edges I need to round out, and some great questions posed by friends whose feedback I've sought. I'm looking forward though to being able to think about something else, I feel like while I've had this deck coming together I haven't had space to think about anything else. I'm looking forward to your feedback too - call it perhaps the Gospel According to David, it is once again a testament to my innate desire to follow interesting lines of thought, regardless of whether they're "right". I feel lucky to be able to experiment publicly with thoughts, and I love it when the readers of this blog come back at me with an opposing point of view. In a few days when I post it up, I hope you'll do just that.

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Imagine courtesy of jannalauren, with thanks to compfight.

We off that

While looking at Katie Chatfield's blog last night and thinking about the various ways I'd like to be like her when I grow up (I'm sure she'd say she'd like to be like her when she grows up too), I stumbled back across a post she'd made in May of this year on "done". I liked it so much at the time I printed it out and stuck it on the glass door to my office, though I'm not sure anyone else got it (complete aside, taking the time to turn something in bits into atoms surely has to be the most you can like something, ever).

Re-blogged below for the sake of further cementing its awesome-ness, here it is in full:

Something I preach and rarely practice is the importance of just doing, and not waiting for perfect because perfect never happens. My musical self, all nerves and insecurity, decided to make good on threats to be less hypocritical, and found once it started it was actually fine and better than expected.

Done is the engine of more, and the important thing is to have done it, not talked about it. If Nike's slogan had been "Just practice and be ready to do it at some point", then odds are they wouldn't be the rock star brand that they are.

The point of done is not to finish, but to get other things done. Amen.

(and we're done!)

I never said that I told you so

I'm not one to revel in another's misfortune (unless it's James Blunt of course, he's first to go when the revolution comes). I couldn't help but smile however when I got wind of Glenn Wheatley's Stripe radio network having closed its doors in June this year. For those that don't know (and that would seem to be everyone given it has joined Pets.com in the place bad ideas go to die), Stripe was going to be radio you paid $10 a month to access on your mobile phone.

Long time readers may recall me writing about this last July when news of its impending launch first came out. Rather than re-word it, I'm just going to paste what I wrote:

---

1. Why would I pay $10 a month for radio on my phone?


2. Particularly me who does not listen to radio at all?


3. Why in an age of increased personalisation will I believe you can satisfy me with someone else’s taste-making?


4. Why create a service that relies on early-adopter up-take when the early-adopters do not listen to radio or value music in pure ones-and-zeroes terms?

Now, I imagine much of the VC money has already been sunk, unfortunate for those involved. If you guys with the money could just begin to understand that broadcasting in a one-to-many model is dying and being replaced with niche-casting and many-to-many, you might have a hope of creating something with lasting value.

This last quote from Programming Director Jarrod Graetz is killer:

“A great advantage of our service is that you don’t need a new device or gadget to hear us. If you’ve got 3G coverage, you can access your favourite music and programs from your (3G) mobile phone, and of course on broadband internet. No ad breaks, less interruptions, more music. We position ourselves as “What you want on radio” because we believe Stripe delivers what Australia wants.”

The bolding is mine (the lack of vision entirely their’s). I may not need a device to hear you, but I have a device anyway, it is called an iPod. It comes with NO interruptions and ONLY my favourite music and programs. See, it doesn’t actually matter if you do serve up what I want on radio, because I don’t want radio.

Ever.

---

*ahem* All together now...

TOLD YOU SO!

You were always on my mind

In a meeting yesterday as I sat dreaming up ideas to make my wealthy clients even more money, someone blurted out "We need to ensure they stay top of mind" which I didn't like at all. It sits alongside "the big idea" and "single-minded proposition" as a decidedly 20th century approach, and the reality is none of the brands people really want to be have anything to do with being top of mind.

The top-of-mind approach in fact is a challenger brand's mentality. If you aspire to be top of mind you're clearly not winning in your category, and you're likely spending a good deal of time and energy just trying to compete. It's the same as making a case for a piece of work focused around time with brand, while never pausing to consider just how much time is spent without.

The trick to both of those things is that the brands that are really thought of as top of mind, the Apples and Nikes and what have you, aren't top of mind at all. In fact if they were to become top of mind, it would be a step back in some ways.

Those brands transcend any notion of "mind" and instead ingrain themselves in culture. I don't just think of Apple when I'm shopping, and I don't just think of Nike when I see someone run. They are the brands everyone else wants to be because nobody pauses to think about them.

So don't bother with top of mind. Save that for the guys in second place, they don't know any better anyway.

--

image courtesy of Esparta with thanks to compfight.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/218/482348262_b97ed473c1_m.jpg

On to the next one (Commented on "Gary Vaynerchuk")

Seems everything is moving so fast right now, I'm finding it hard to take the time to write. So instead I'm trying to read more, comment, and where I can bring those comments back onto this blog. I wish Wordpress had a Disqus plug-in for their hosted sites (which is what this one is) as that would mean we could continue the larger conversation wherever we were, unfortunately they bought a Disqus competitor, so that is unlikely.

Your friend and mine Gary Vaynerchuk posted a video saying social media wasn't the "seasoning" to the changes going on, it was the steak. I have a slightly different take on this, which I commented on. Watch the video then see below.

[viddler id=c123a603&w=437&h=288]

I feel like the "steak" is made up of so many things though, of which social is a part of.

Or to put it another way, we've operated under the guise of the Internet being, well, the Internet, and "social" being a part of that.

The reality is the web is *inherently* social, and given every business must have a presence online, every business is now missing something core if they don't have a social aspect to what they do.

In the ridiculous growth that we've seen the web go through, I think we've confused maturity with expansion. We're still figuring out exactly what this beast is, but I think we can assume bringing people together and giving them something to do is not going to go away.

So, here's to the steak. I wonder what else it comes with? =]

Originally posted as a comment
by davidgillespie
on Gary Vaynerchuk using DISQUS.

This is an echo of something I said to Fred Wilson last November which he re-blogged here, which is itself an eho of a post I made last October. Social media is not part of the web, it is the web. The sooner we all realise that, the sooner we get onto the next thing.

And as a fan of buzzwords and technology, I always love the next thing.

He just sits and listens to the people in the boxes

OK, so here's an idea for a campaign. I don't care who does it, I'd just love to see it in action, so if you work on Nintendo or a major cereal brand, listen up.

We're long past a place where kids are interested in putting together dinky little toys made from plastic parts in cereal boxes, but there's something there about the notion of the prize inside which i don't think is going away. I'd like to see Nintendo collaborate with someone for the next big Pokemon release. Except rather than put a toy in the box they produce a series of cards which trigger an augmented reality game when placed in front of a camera.

Let's say I have my cereal and I get a card that displays Pikachu. My friend gets his cereal and he gets a card with...well...one of the other ones on it (Pokemon was more my little brother's set). When I put just one card down in front of the camera, I can interact with my character, and perhaps get additional cards or items in other boxes or products that allow me to do different things to them (in a less kinky fashion than on the example below - it's just for effect people).

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JOM6Y_88Nc"]

When my friend puts his card next to mine though, our Pokemon proceed to fight. Now, as in the game proper, I can play (read: place) additional cards down that give me character different attacks and abilities. So instead of just playing cards or controlling it on a screen, I can physically interact and play with my friends while needing to purchase product from someone to expand the available repertoire of moves available to my character.

The downside is it would be horrendously expensive to produce, the upside is of course that it would be effortlessly cool.

Even if only for me.

I've got big ideas, I'm out of control (Commented on "A VC")

Fred Wilson has an interesting short piece up this morning on failure. After reading it, I left the following comment:

I was doing a review of a (young but brilliant) guy on my team recently, and as we were discussing the feedback he said to me "You know, the thing I worry about more than anything is making mistakes."

I looked at him blankly and said "That is like fretting that the sun might come up tomorrow. Guess what? It's going to happen! Don't worry about making mistakes, worry about things you can actually have a positive impact on. If you spend your time worrying about the possibility of mistakes you're not going to get anything done."

Now, being Australian (living in Canada atm), there's a fair amount of a "no worries" attitude that is ingrained in us, but Fred I think you hit on something really crucial about the States - the fact that success is rewarded and if you fail you are encouraged to give it another go; as fortunate as I feel to be from Australia we don't have the latter as part of our psyche. I've benefited from tremendously from growing up in Hong Kong among other places, and I think a willingness to get it wrong is one of the best things any society can have in its DNA.

It's probably also the reason I'm a long way from home right now :)

Originally posted as a comment
by davidgillespie
on A VC using DISQUS.

Now, I adore Australia and it will always be home. We do have an odd relationship with success and failure though, born no doubt from a myriad of cultural sources others I'm sure have written long and eloquently about, and which I don't want to get into right now. Instead I'll just say, as I did the other day when someone asked me what this blog was about, I said "big ideas".

"Are they the right ideas?"

I laughed and said "That my friend, was never the point."

So, here's to the big ideas today. Wherever they lead us.

This is for everyone out in the real world

There was always something about the idea of influencers I didn't quite get, as if someone interested in being one somehow popularised the term, and it became self-evident based on that. It was easier for me to believe the audience tuning in to American Idol were environmentally pre-disposed to engaging in that type of content than it was to accept mass stupidity had somehow infected the entire known world. Mind you, that may still be the case...

Never the less, your friend and mine Katie Chatfield has a stunning piece up about this, citing research suggesting the important thing is not key influencers changing behaviour en masse but rather easily influenced people influencing each other in an interminable cycle. The main deck she references is below, but go visit her and say hi, she is a bit of a genius after all.

[slideshare id=432947&doc=duncanwattsicitizen051608-1211987312341473-9]

Give me a reason

I find Nokia a fascinating company. Relegated to a bargain basement offering in North America, outside of that continent their phones are sought after. Perhaps not the way an iPhone is, but then Blackberry doesn't have the cache on my island that it seems to have here in Canada either (helped in no small way by being RIM's backyard).

Never the less, the launch of their Netbook is an interesting move. Most curious to me is the inclusion of a SIM card slot, which reverses the trend of phones with computer-like functionality and brings us a laptop with the portability accessibility of a mobile phone. It feels gimmicky, though Nokia's Tero Ojanpera is on the cover of this month's Fast Company, stating:

We will quickly be the world's biggest entertainment network.

Big words from a hardware and software company. I have no crystal ball into Nokia's future, but I can't imagine the plan is anything as mundane as content exclusive to Nokia proucts in some capacity. We're moving ever faster to a ubiquitously networked world of transportable identity, one that will be less and less beholden to business models (see the music industry for reference) and more beholden to consumer habits.

The other thing I'm thinking is they're trying to boost developer support for their Symbian platform...actually the more I think about it, the more this seems to be a play that has nothing to do with the cloud, and everything to do with the device you have in your pocket. What I can't wrap my head around is why anyone would look at the whole sale destruction of the music industry and still exist in a world where a device and content are somehow interminably linked.

I'm all ears if someone has a different take on this.

I just called...to say...

I have Skype running pretty much constantly on my computer due to being a long way from home. I like being able to talk for free to any of my friends back home, or indeed any friends in other part sof the world, and I look forward to a day when ubiquitous Internet access makes ridiculous carrier plans a thing of the past and blows the communications space wide open, with access for all.

Until that day however, we make do with what we have. And as I was doing this last night a message came in over Twitter from my dad back in Australia. We went back and forth and then I asked him why I never saw him on Skype. He responded with this:



Now, you can argue Skype provides an entirely different service to the above or you can argue that it crosses over in a few really key places. It isn't hard to imagine Facebook implementing its own video chat service, and this was heavily rumoured back in May. Add to this ongoing concerns about the future of Skype's underlying technology, and what we have left is a legacy of arguably Europe's biggest VC success story (in 2005 eBay ponied up ~US$3.3 billion) winding up in the hands of a company that had no idea what to do with it (and may soon go the way of Pets.com).

The ultimate take-away is, for me, about sticking to what you do.

Or put another way, the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

In our private universe

From the "No-that's-not-right-here-let-me-show-you" Department, Blizzard and Future Publishing have announced a World of Warcraft magazine, hoping to leverage an additional $40 a year out of their 11.5 million person base of players. At a time when I can't imagine too many other companies entering a paper-based publishing medium, I actually think the move is genius and hits a few really key things, primary among them all is a hark back to Kevin Kelly's 1000 True Fans.

Of course in this case the fans number in the millions.

The premise is simple: your biggest fans will go above and beyond to have every ounce of content and information about you they can get their hands on; these people are not the mainstream, but they're a profitable niche that usually go uncatered for, making do with what everyone else gets most of the time.

The World of Warcraft example above stems nicely from selling access to a service for everyone and then breaking away additional offerings for the hardcore within your audience (as I write this BlizzCon is concluding, in-person church for the faithful but also available as a pay-per-view event online...you couldn't write this stuff!).

Mark Earls made a similar link to the music industry, referencing this piece in the New York Times and saying:

maybe this marks the end of that really selfish buy-to-own model ("it's mine, all mine") as opposed to pay-for-access?

Mark was referencing some interesting visual data showing the decline of physical music sales over the past 30 years (shown below). Personally the games industry leading the way here doesn't surprise me; it's a relatively young industry not bound vehemently by outdated models and able to flex with the times. It was the first to take user-generated content mainstream, I imagine it will be the first to do many, many other interesting things. But take note: create something genuinely of value to an audience, treat them right, and reap the rewards. Rinse and repeat.

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And the world seems to disappear

So I was watching Curious Films' Best Ads on TV vodcast this morning, the latest installment of which has a cracking Johnny Walker ad in it featuring Robert Carlyle. It's below, enjoy.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.862031&w=425&h=350&fv=clip_id%3D5996591%26server%3Dvimeo.com%26autoplay%3D0%26fullscreen%3D1%26md5%3D0%26show_portrait%3D0%26show_title%3D0%26show_byline%3D0%26context%3Duser%3A401515%26context_id%3D%26force_embed%3D0%26multimoog%3D%26color%3D00ADEF%26force_info%3Dundefined]

posted with vodpod

So as I was watching this I got thinking about the length of this "commercial". It may get a few runs on TV in its entirety, may get a few more in cinemas, but will most likely find its life, if it is to have one, online. So, that takes us quickly to a place where it isn't a TV spot, it isn't anything other than video which will be consumed in various places and fashions.

We're seeing the destruction of industries built to sell physical things in large quantities. Text, pictures and sound are things that will shortly exist almost exclusively in bits, not atoms. Fred Wilson talks about the destruction of industries that are "end-to-end digital". We're seeing in the music industry, in publishing, in television, in marketing, in R&D and we're going to start seeing it in a bunch of other industries that perhaps aren't as innately adaptable to being entirely digital, but you can bet that the parts that are will follow swiftly.

Clay Shirky said in a recent TED talk that advances "don't become socially interesting until they come technologically boring", and we're almost there. When everything is delivered via what we used to differentiate as "the Internet", the medium may infact cease to be the message.

That strikes me as, social or not, very, very interesting.

You're invisible now

I was going to title this "Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people" but that was too obscure, even for me. 5 bonus points to the person that picks the song without using "The Google".

So my motivation has been a little lacking lately (alliteration = triple word score), and try as I might I hadn't been able to rekindle it. I chatted long into the night with your friend and mine Matt Granfield who pointed me to his recent piece on sourcing the appropriate place to express a particular thought. I read it and it rang true, though it uncovered another thought of mine, that being a general wondering how long we will maintain digital identities we segment into neat boxes as if our own lives existed in a similar fashion.

And that's when it occurred to me that something had recently clicked inside my head, and all of a sudden I realised that even using the word "digital" felt utterly redundant. When it permeates so much of what we do on a day to day basis it ceases to make sense in drawing any distinction. Having an afore-mentioned neat little box for it has worked until now, because for a long time it existed in a way we could separate and escape from. Now however we're in a place where it no longer makes sense to segment it, and to not include some sort of digital element to a campaign, a product, a service, whatever is to commit commercial suicide (extreme viewpoint I know, prove me wrong!).

While this thought was buzzing around my head I swung by TIGS, as Faris had posted plenty while I'd been sunning myself in France. He, of course, had gotten here a little bit before me but along the same line of thinking, having said

Increasingly I'm finding the work 'digital' more of a hindrance than a help. It's too broad to mean anything.

in the same post he linked a great Slideshare presentation from Helge Tennø, Strategic Director of Screenplay, an Oslo, Norway-based agency. Helge's presentation is simply titled "Post-Digital Marketing", and while I'm loathe to attach a new name to it, it seems to make sense. Have a look at the deck, it's really quite lovely.

[slideshare id=1700217&doc=137postdigitalmarketing2009-090709062105-phpapp01]

Of course Iain Tait beat us all there, telling me early in '08 "digital is not a thing anymore". I didn't get it at the time, but I do now. My only concern is having canned UGC, social media, and now "digital" itself, I'm going to need to invent some new things just to shit on them.

And I'm quite OK with that. And I'm OK with not writing about "digital", in fact I'm excited about it.

"You're excited by a blog ostensibly about nothing?"



Yes.

It's never been like that

Apologies for the recent period of AWOL-ness, I stepped away from real life for a couple weeks trotting around Europe, recouts of which will be posted shortly over at my non-marketing online self. Final thought: there's an incredible untapped audience of tourists; watch this space.

Back into things though, and my Google Reader overflows with tech and marketing goodness (as well as more from Rod Stuart Loves The Hamptons of course). One post from Fred Wilson stood out for me: Streaming Kills Piracy. It's a short take on how his son has taken to legitimate means of watching his favourite TV show rather than downloading episodes illeagally. It's a classic case study in making the barrier to entry lower than the alternatives.

And then this morning, I came across this story in The Guardian which talks about a collapse in illegal sharing and a commensurate increase in legal streaming. The story says 26% of 14 to 18 year olds shared music illegally last month compared to 42% in December of 2007. The story also says 65% of teens stream music regularly.

'Lo and behold, me and my generation of reprobates aren't the thieving bastards old media had us pegged for. What you can count on however is a relentless dive to the easiest experience available. Yes, paid will always be a hurdle when positioned next to free, but instant compared to delayed is just as compelling, perhaps even more so.

Look at your own business. What are the barriers to entry that you can bring down?

Show me the way

From the "I-have-too-had-girlfriends!" department, Japan's Information Architects released and delivered straight to my door their latest Web Trend Map, an ongoing series mapping the Internet to various public transport systems. Version 4 which has just been released is the Internet mapped onto Tokyo's Metro System. If I'm at Wired and I want to get to Digg, I have to take the News Line to The Huffington post, get on the Domain Train to Google, then switch onto the Filter Line to wind up at Digg.

One part document of how far we've come, one part time capsule for us to look back and say "Remember when...?", the poster is shipping now, and even the most laid back of hipsters in the agency have swung by my office, stood back and said "...that's actually quite cool."

At just under 3' by 4', it is a fine addition to, well, any surface you care to put it on.

Get yours today.

Let's give them something to talk about

So while waiting for Toronto's subway system to get its act together this morning, I caught Clay Shirky's latest online lecture, given as part of the TED series. The title, "How Twitter, Facebook and cell phones can make history" does a lousy job of conveying the depth of information and the ideas contained within. Back in November I touched on issues around social media and the gross misunderstanding of what was important in this new revolution, making the following statement:

It is a period that will forever be known as a time where it became as easy to create content as it was to consume it. THAT is the important part of what is going on.

Now, I'm on the record as being a fan of smart people agreeing with me, and in this case, Clay's latest talk is bang on the money.

The moment we're living through is the largest increase in expressive capability in human history.

He says it far more eloquently than I, granted, and the rest of his talk is loaded with fantastic insights and examples of how technologies, once ubiquitous, develop interesting uses (and not the other way around). The TED Talk is below. Enjoy, then go change the world.

[ted id=575]

Don't believe the hype

Image via CrunchBase

I just finished working my way through a series of lectures given by Rupert Murdoch late last year on the future of media, something my good friend Jeremy Smart put me onto. The six-part series reveal a far more insightful and aware captain of industry than I think even Murdoch’s biggest fans would give him credit for. Waxing lyrical on everything from the impact of Craig’s List on newspaper classifieds to the educational needs of his birth country (Australia), Murdoch’s lectures show a man not wearied by age, instead acutely aware of where his media empire stands and thoroughly steadfast in his vision for a strong if dramatically altered future for news media, and for Western civilization itself.

Those not from Australia can perhaps skip the introductory lecture as it is fairly antipodean in focus; the remaining five though are candid and incredibly insightful, and will turn even the most hardened cynic into something of a believer in the boy who began his media career in Adelaide, one shoulder carrying the local paper, the other his father’s coffin. Do yourself a favour, and check them out.

It's all about them words

A few years back I did a consulting gig on a print directory service everyone is familiar with. The project looked at how digital media was changing the landscape they existed in and they were interested in finding out how they could continue to be profitable while these changes happened. In the end the recommendation was to ensure migration from the offline service to the online one, and involved a strategy for doing so. Having delivered the final report however, the response came back stating their print directory represented X-million dollars of revenue so they expected it to still be a thriving business in years to come, regardless of what we had to say.

No prizes for guessing how that turned out.

I was reminded of this when I got home one day last week to see the below in the lobby of the building I'm living in at the moment.

Now, Yellow Pages wasn't the company so desperate to display their desire to stick their head into the sand, however they must, at some point, have had someone have a similar conversation with them. Three years ago when I was doing that project I stood in the middle of my agency and asked the entire office who had used a print directory in the last 6 months. Unless I was willing to accept "door stop" as an appropriate use, I had nothing.

It used to be if you weren't in the Yellow Pages you didn't have a business. Now it's a matter of being on Google's pages, and you best make sure its the first one. If I was advising a company still advertising in the Yellow Pages, I would tell them to take that spend and invest it in SEO, optimising its site for core competancies and locality.

Understand I don't think it is a good thing that a once proud business is dying, but few things are more Darwinian than business itself; ignorance should not be rewarded, nor should an inability or unwillingness to change with the times.

And we definitely shouldn't invest in delaying the inevitable.