It doesn’t seem that long ago since Radiohead did what was once unimaginable – release an album without being signed to a major record company. On the long march to digital ubiquity as the means of music delivery Radiohead avoided the tar pit that seems to be major label thinking and came out clear winners. Yes, they resorted later to releasing the album as a good old CD into regular retail distribution but they were pioneers and were soon followed with great success by Nine Inch Nails and to lesser success by many others. Both these bands had an understanding of what their fans wanted [price level choice, quality and special packaging] and both bands understood the power of the internet for marketing purposes and direct reach. [NB: Although I believe that the digital music file will rule the day, vinyl still has a role to play and I'll get to that later.]

The most interesting part of this experiment [which at the time, I would argue it was] was not only that it was wildly successful but it laid the groundwork for what I have coined the end of the organizing principle. In other words I suggest that we are now seeing the end of the album-length work as the permenant work, the everlasting body of work that represents the pinnacle of an artists’ creativity. I am fully expecting to hear the howls of derision over this but bear with me.

Radiohead

If you were honest how many albums do you own that demand to be listened to from beginning to end? AV Club recently came up with a list of 25, some of which I agree with and Rolling Stone, Spin and other mags regularly post their lists of the “all time greatest albums” whether its 100 or 50 or less. My band Gang Of Four’s album Entertainment! is often featured on these lists but take it from me it has its flaws. The problem with lists and suggestions is that they are all subjective. Being engaged by music requires too much of a personal commitment on an emotional level for anyone to be able to provide an ultimate list. [Imagine if an art critic attempted to make a top ten list of the world's greatest paintings. Why does popular music suffer from this conceit?]

We live in an era of MP3 players, streaming internet radio, web apps – not to mention the iTunes music application and its ability to shuffle your entire digital music collection – now the cloud and almost-mobile ubiquity, the list goes on; in what part of digital music culture does an album-length piece of work now reside?

I’ll answer that question – I believe it has no place in a digital future.

The original organizing principle of music was of course hand written, composed. It then moved along to sheet music and with that came revenue from sales to the musical public and by so doing helped to move revenue income beyond just ticket sales to the opera or orchestra performances. This wasn’t enough though. It was as if music was demanding to be organized and soon enough inventors jumped in to the fray and began organizing music recording and playback – at first on tin foil.

“From the earliest phonographs in 1877, courtesy of Mr. Thomas A. Edison, the cylinder was the preferred geometric form for a sound recording. The first records were made on strips of tinfoil, the predecessor of household aluminum foil, wrapped around a 4-inch diameter drum. The drum was hand-cranked at about 60 revolutions per minute (RPM) and the phonographic apparatus made sound impressions upon the foil. The expected lifetime of a foil recording was short because after a few playbacks the sound impressions were either worn down or the foil had ripped.” [Source: Tinfoil.com]

And then along came the wax cylinder which turned out to be too fragile for popular use. Music lovers had to wait until 1930 which was when RCA Victor launched the first commercially available vinyl long-playing record, marketed as “Program Transcription” discs. These revolutionary discs were designed for playback at 33⅓ rpm and pressed on a 30 cm diameter flexible plastic disc. [Source: Wikipedia]

Technically then, we can say that 1930 was the year that the organizing principle for the length of a popular music album was implemented, and with the advent of that organizing principle it is worth noting that musical artists had no control over the length of time their masterpiece would run; they were at the mercy of contemporary technology. Album length, roughly 35 minutes over two sides of vinyl, was simply a decision made by technologists who did not consult artists. [The gatefold sleeve containing double and triple albums became the norm later for rock bands with more to say - for better or worse.]

If musicians and bands were not part of this decision in the first place then why would they complain of what modern technology now brings – their craft has been unchained from early technological limitations and they now have endless amounts of time and bandwidth to spread their creative message far and wide; along with unfettered artistic control.

The Browser is The New iPod.

On March 24th I attended the Leadership Music Digital Summit in Nashville as a speaker. That morning I heard the keynote speech by Rio Caraeff, EVP eLABS at the Universal Music Group. The stand out phrase from him that resonated with me was “the browser is the new iPod.”

The Byrds – Photo Ed Caraeff

He spoke of lamenting the loss of the experiential and tactile nature of recorded music; he missed the tactile experience of music delivered in its vinyl and cardboard form [his father was the famous album sleeve art director, Ed Caraeff.] The digital file, he argued, had stripped the experience from the music; listening to music was now a flat and unemotional activity compared with holding a well-designed sleeve filled with images, lyrics and artwork. Because of this flat experience he predicted that there would be no future for selling recorded music directly to music fans.

He mentioned one area of success for Universal; the advent of the video game. An all-encompassing experiential medium that included more than just the games – the games came with a community of like-minded people and music. They also generate millions of dollars especially through the subscription fees that are required for online gaming activity.

Welcome to the Cloud

With his phrase ‘The browser is the new iPod’ Caraeff alludes to the ubiquitous access that we have to music. The browser is no longer limited to laptop or desktop computers – mobile devices have browsers too and in the case of the iPhone the music apps have been wildly successful. 4G promises to expand music delivery to mobile users even farther. Very soon there will be even less reason to ‘own’ music as it will be easily available at our fingertips everywhere. The cloud is the perfect place for storing your music collection. All of the above condemns the album to the trash can of history, it also suggest that online music subscription services may finally gain the upper hand.

So what are musicians to do?

First they must put nostalgia, tradition and the old business models and paradigms far behind them. They must, as Umair Haque argues with regard to any business – provide something of value. Haque also pushes the concept of ‘ideals’ – “because they are what ensure the value we are creating is authentic, deep, meaningful value — not just the shabby, threadbare illusion of value.” [Ideals were sorely lacking when the labels sold CDs full of filler for $18.99.]

Humans are subconsciously moved by the emotion of music, it provides a link to their ancestry and to their tribes, it stirs not only positive but sometimes negative feelings linked to moments in time and is often steeped in nostalgia and memories. No other art form is ‘consumed’ as broadly and passionately as music on a daily basis around the world.

How music was delivered used to be in the hands of the few – bands, concert promoters, record companies and their retail distribution companies, radio, and video shows such as MTV. In tech-speak this system embraced ‘push’ – we the mighty and powerful will “provide you” [at a price determined by "us"] with access to our treasures when “we” feel like it. These days that system is rapidly breaking down as music fans now ‘pull’ what “they” want to listen to.

Control has moved from the few to the millions of many. Dull labels and dull bands offering dull, flat, non-experiential product – e.g. a CD, will go the way of the CD as it goes the way of the Dodo. Consider what Cirque Du Soleil provides as an experience compared to Barnum and Bailey’s circus. Or Burning Man compared to your average music festival. Even the Las Vegas Beatles-themed show ‘Across The Universe’ wipes the floor with most rock concerts these days.

Music fans are no longer patiently waiting for their favorite bands to deliver new music according to the old customary cycle – album, press release, video, radio, tour. No, the fan base has to be regularly and consistently engaged. Some Ideas:

• First, communicate openly and ask your fans what they want from you
• Listen to what they have to say. Really listen
• Provide unique content such as early demos of new songs
• Never under estimate the power of a free MP3
• Forget completely the idea of an organizing principle. Invent a new one
• Use social media wisely. Twitter and Facebook Pages are best, MySpace is too cluttered
• Don’t push messages to your fans, have a two way interaction with them
• Invite them to share, join, support and build goodwill with you
• Scrap your web site and start a blog
• Remember to forget everything you know about the CD “business”
• Start to monetize the experience around your music
• Remember – the browser is the new iPod

And finally I leave you with one organizing principle that works as a tactile and experiential format and gives great pleasure – the vinyl album. Having said that I do not want to contradict any part of this article as I do not suggest using vinyl as a format for delivering an album-length piece of work. I do suggest using vinyl for the physical manifestation of your demos, out takes, live tracks etc, and always accompany it with a coupon for free download of any related digital product.

Related Links:

My Love of Vinyl Records
The End of the CD and CD Retailers
Puddlegum – Top 5 Reasons Why Vinyl Will Outlive CDs
David Byrne Tells The Record Labels to Embrace The MP3
How Killing the CD Single Killed the Recording Industry
How Bands Can Make More Money By Not Pricing Their Merchandize at Shows

Ok, this is a fascinating rant from Robert Scoble. His list of the newspaper industry’s woes, and in some cases unforgivable missteps, when presented like this could take your breath away. Yet all is not quite what it seems – e.g. the Huffington Post is a news aggregator and walks a fine line in repurposing other news outlets’ content. Google and Yahoo are search engines linking back to the newspaper’s sites etc, etc, but there is a point here – the newspaper industry [rather like the music industry] would have preferred that the internet would have just curled up and died – unfortunately it didn’t and it won’t….plan B anyone?

All the text below this line is from Scobleizer the blog:

The newspaper industry just gave away another free meal, er Twitter: do they have any left?
I’m listening to Dave Winer and Jay Rosen “reboot the news.” Jay is a journalism professor and Dave is a geek that helped either birth or bootstrap all sorts of publishing technologies including blogging, RSS, OPML, XML-RPC, and more. So, hearing the two of them do an audio podcast every Sunday is very interesting.

I’ve been pretending in my head that I’m a newspaper exec. When I do that I keep beating myself around the face. Why? Because the newspaper industry keeps giving the geeks free meals. Let’s study the free meals:

Free meal #1. Giving away classified advertising to Craig’s List.
Free meal #2. Giving away photography to Flickr (look at the photos from the Chinese Earthquake, why didn’t this happen on a newspaper branded site?).
Free meal #3. Giving away front page news to blogs like Huffington Post.
Free meal #4. Giving away “small” community news like births, deaths, birthdays, etc to Facebook.
Free meal #5. Giving away real-time news to Twitter.
Free meal #6. Giving away news distribution to Google News and Amazon Kindle, among others. With new sites like Kosmix coming on strong (hundreds of percent of growth month over month).
Free meal #7. Giving away restaurant reviews to Yelp.
Free meal #8. Giving away traffic information to Google Maps.
Free meal #9. Giving away celebrity news to Facebook and Twitter. (Why is Oprah on both of those, and why didn’t the newspaper industry lock up Oprah and keep her on a newspaper brand?)
Free meal #10. Giving away local news to Topix (at least that was funded by a newspaper brand).
Free meal #11. Giving away business news to Yahoo Finance and Google Finance (and something new that will get announced tomorrow).
Free meal #12. Giving away news ranking to Memeorandum.
Free meal #13. Giving away astrology to Astrology.com.
Free meal #14. Giving away comics to Comics.com.

What is their latest giveaway? Crowd-sourced news. I visit Twitter Search every day to find out what is “hot news.” That’s something I used to look at newspapers and older media for (radio, TV) but Twitter is just plain better at telling me what is trending.

OK, so now my face is bloody because I’m seeing all the things the newspaper industry gave away. Do they have anything left to give away?

YES!

Read the rest of this very lengthy post here….

Leave it to Billboard Magazine, a scion of the fading music industry, to resort to old media tactics. This editorial on their web site is worthy of discussion but unless you happen to subscribe to the magazine for $24.95 a month you do not have the ability to comment. Clearly what happens as a result of this madness is that Billboard’s music business subscribers can hold up this editorial as a sign of “things aren’t so bad after all chaps…” and then continue to ignore the future of their business whilst looking backwards at the good old days. [Ironic note: check the image above and note the arrow in the right corner and the line 'Teen music spending drops.']

It’s not my ego nudging me to write that I can’t help thinking Steven Wilson is talking about my article, ‘The End of the Album as The Organizing Principle‘ when he sarcastically writes about ‘industry experts’ here – “Reports that CD sales continue to decline—they fell 14% in 2008 compared with 2007—have once again inspired a pundit-led roll call of the music industry’s dead and dying institutions: major labels, record stores, terrestrial radio and the CD itself, to name but a few. Recently added to the obituary page is the album itself, thanks to industry “experts.” However, I’m happy to say that the reports of the album’s death are greatly exaggerated.”

I am pleased to say I don’t consider myself an ‘industry expert,’ at least not a ‘music industry expert.’ Although I have had a long career as a professional musician [Gang of Four, Shriekback] and have run record labels etc, I would rather be remembered for jumping feet first into the future of music by joining eMusic.com as GM in 1998.

Unfortunately Wilson’s editorial completely ignores what is actually happening at the MP3 stores that he mentions – Amazon MP3 Store and Apple’s iTunes – music fans are buying more single tracks and not so many albums. He recognizes that the vinyl album is making inroads into the market place once again but he misses the point about the end of the organizing principle whilst admitting that people don’t have the attention span these days – “When the computer becomes a listener’s main source of listening to music, it’s hard to focus for 40 minutes, let alone 70.” It’s not about the computer Steven, it’s all about the Cloud and what Rio Caraeff, EVP of Universal Music’s eLABS understands when he says “the browser is the new iPod.” The browser is everywhere on almost all mobile devices, millions of them around the world – and users are not listening to album after album on them, most likely they are listening to their own playlists.

And here’s Wilson’s killer ‘make the recording industry feel better’ moment – “…. the argument that technology killed the album is a diversion—the mere availability of downloadable music is irrelevant to the question of the format’s viability.” The part of that statement that I have bolded out is simply an idiotic statement.

Technology doesn’t kill anything. In fact it moves things forward. For artists, technology and the advent of almost ubiquitous broadband has brought unparalleled freedom of expression. I wrote in my article, with regard to the early technologists who devised the album-length organizing principle, that – …..musicians and bands were not part of that decision in the first place then why would they complain of what modern technology now brings – their craft has been unchained from early technological limitations and they now have endless amounts of time and bandwidth to spread their creative message far and wide; along with unfettered artistic control.

I also wrote –
How music was delivered used to be in the hands of the few – bands, concert promoters, record companies and their retail distribution companies, radio, and video shows such as MTV. In tech-speak this system embraced ‘push’ – we the mighty and powerful will “provide you” [at a price determined by "us"] with access to our treasures when “we” feel like it. These days that system is rapidly breaking down as music fans now ‘pull’ what “they” want to listen to.

Control has moved from the few to the millions of many. Dull labels and dull bands offering dull, flat, non-experiential product – e.g. a CD, will go the way of the CD as it goes the way of the Dodo. Consider what Cirque Du Soleil provides as an experience compared to Barnum and Bailey’s circus. Or Burning Man compared to your average music festival. Even the Las Vegas Beatles-themed show ‘Across The Universe’ wipes the floor with most rock concerts these days.

If these ideas and opinions, not to mention the debate around them, are ignored, then the recording industry and Billboard Magazine will definitely follow the CD into extinction…

I am still reeling after watching the latest amazing “news” piece from Jon Stewart. I wrap “news” in inverted commas because this man is a comedian and a great one at that. So why is he more important than any of the talking heads on cable TV news and political shows?

Here’s why – In an era where newspapers are dying and mainstream TV and cable media are flailing around trying to increase viewers by using limp content, Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News points out that “Great research trumps good access to the powerful.” In essence all Stewart’s team did was juxtapose past remarks on the economy from people like the CEO of Ford or blowhard and so called ’stocks wizard’ Jim Cramer and even bigger blowhard CNBC’s Rick Santelli [who in a magnificent performance gets traders on the floor to boo President Obama because "we shouldn't be paying for those folks who can't pay their mortgages, those losers!"] and compared them to more recent statements to show how hypocritical these people have been and continue to be. Great research all available at any journalist’s fingertips online. Stewart’s team just did the research and then they are not afraid to have Jon go out and skewer these people not lionize them.

You must watch the Stewart video.

And here’s an extract from Will Bunch’s very prescient article:

As briefly noted here earlier, the most talked-about journalism of the day wasn’t produced by the New York Times, CNN, Newsweek or NPR. It was Jon Stewart’s epic, eight-minute takedown on last night’s “Daily Show” of CNBC’s clueless, in-the-tank reporting of inflatable bubbles and blowhard CEOs as the U.S. and world economies slowly slid into a meltdown. You can quibble about Stewart’s motives in starting the piece — after he was spurned for an interview by CNBC’s faux populist ranter Rick Santelli — but you can’t argue with the results.

The piece wasn’t just the laugh-out-loud funniest thing on TV all week (and this was a week in which NBC rebroadcast the SNL “more cowbell” sketch, so that’s saying a lot) but it was exquistely reported, insightful, and it tapped into America’s real anger about the financial crisis in a way that mainstream journalism has found so elusive all these months. As one commenter on the Romenesko blog noted earlier today, “it’s simply pathetic that one has to watch a comedy show to see things like this.”

But that’s not all. The Stewart piece also got the kind of eyeballs that most newsrooms would kill for in this digital age — planted atop many, many major political, media and business Web sites — and the kind of water-cooler chatter that journalists would crave in any age. In a time when newspapers are flat-out dying if not dealing with bankruptcy or massive job losses, while other types of news orgs aren’t faring much better, the journalistic success of a comedy show rant shouldn’t be viewed as a stick in the eye — but a teachable moment. Why be a curmudgeon about kids today getting all their news from a comedy show, when it’s not really that hard to join Stewart in his own idol-smashing game.

Read the rest of the Will Bunch article here. It’s a great read for anyone in media.

Red is the new black? Nope – less is the new black

Everywhere one looked recently on the blogosphere, especially social media blogs, the ever-so-informed pundits were banging out their year end lists around mid-December and by today the 2009 predictions/trends/forecasts lists were rapidly turning from a flurry to a blizzard. [US-based bloggers, especially on the East coast, are panicking as the clock ticks down to Midnight.] So I give thanks for two forecast contrarians – Ana Andjelic and Fred Wilson.

Ana Andjelic runs the I Love Marketing blog where she posted ‘The Problem With Forecasts.’ When a post begins like this: “The end of the year is known for releasing “best of” / “worst of” lists, forecasts, & trends that will “shape” the next year. While I heart lists, it’s the trends that I found real dumb. And no, I am not alone in this. Predictions usually go from plain ridiculous to rather obvious and to those that are there for shock value – “blogging is dead”, “podcasting is dead” that no one but Armano really takes seriously.” You know you’re in for a fun read. She’s spot on.

From there I linked to Fred Wilson’s A VC blog where he posted not a forecast list but a wish list of what he’d like to see happen in 2009. Two interesting wishes are 1. a $1.50 gas tax which I agree with and 2. a request of Apple – “I just want Apple to come out with an aggressively priced touch screen mobile computer that can be used to read books, blogs, watch movies, listen to music, and work as a home remote too. This is a huge opportunity for them and others too.”

And by the way, I found both these blogs via Twitter which I have been using more and more as a business tool lately – finding I can’t live without it these days..

So, having written the above I will now throw caution to the wind and present you with a 2009 forecast that is only marginally tongue in cheek. Here’s my baker’s dozen:

Malcolm is thinking about a new book

01. Malcolm Gladwell will publish another book.
02. The New York Times print edition will continue to arrive on my doorstep.
03. It will be cold and wet when I arrive at the Oregon Coast tomorrow.
04. “Feels free” will take a hold. [I've been waiting for this since my time at Intel in 2000.]
05. The CD business will continue to shrink but the music business will grow.
06. Art will be smaller, leaner, cleaner.
07. Consumer products will be simpler – see the Flip.
08. Socially conscious projects such as public housing will thrive under Obama.
09. Blogs will not die.
10. Twitter will see a huge growth spurt and continue to have growing pains.
11. U2’s new album will be as boring as the last 3 or 4 have been but will sell millions.
12. The rich will continue to cut back on their mistresses.
13. And finally, less is the new black.

Got your own 2009 trends, forecasts or wishes list? Post it in the comments section…

Finally, an advertiser being honest about social media advertising. Ted McConnell general manager-interactive marketing and innovation at Procter & Gamble Co spoke recently at a forum on Digital Media where he came across as rather negative about social network platforms and advertising. He singled out the Facebook platform, saying “I really don’t want to buy any more banner ads on Facebook.”

Other key phrases of his that stand out –
Social networks may never find the ad dollars they’re hunting for because they don’t really have a right to them.
What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?
I don’t think everything every consumer says to someone else and writes down is somehow monetizable by the media industry.
Fragmentation thwarts artificial scarcity.
Performance-based advertising will gain share over CPM

Ted McConnell. [Pic Ad Age]

McConnell’s premise is that social network platforms won’t be able to collect ad dollars because they don’t really have a right to them, which I believe is entirely accurate. And his negativity about the platforms appears to hinge on the wrong-headed idea or a misunderstanding of the meaning of the term “social media” – he asked – “Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.”

McConnell’s ideas strike a chord with me as I have found myself on the contrarian side of the social media argument recently. I have argued on panels and in essays that technology did not transform the way we socialize –

When we wrongly consider technology as a ‘new’ medium that simply and efficiently transformed culture, business and society, we forget our own human ancestry. We leave out Nature. In our hearts we want to belong, to share; we fear dying alone and as we age we become thanatophobic – we fear dying. Individuality is an illusion. [By that I don't mean an individual's style, taste, fashion etc, things that set us apart aesthetically from others, I mean we are forever bound to being social animals.] Read the rest of these thoughts here.

We need to rethink the term “Social Media.”

Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview in the movie ‘There Will Be Blood.’

Much is being made in the current election cycle of which presidential candidate will bring about change. The Vice Presidential Debate twisted and turned on which party’s presidential candidate was more of an agent of change than the others. ‘Maverick’ was a word that I heard a lot during the VP debate and it only came from the lips of Governor Sarah Palin when describing herself, Senator John McCain and their team. It suggests McCain and Palin will act with single-handed impulsiveness more than checking their guts. The Obama camp meanwhile sticks to its message of change and hope, something that sounds more inclusive.

It had me thinking that maverick is a word for describing an agent of change; after all it’s not a word we use often in common currency. But no, a maverick is defined as someone who is not inclined to conform to accepted rules or standards. It has its western connotation too – an unbranded range animal, especially a motherless calf.

De Niro as Travis Bickle

Stepping outside of politics and into the world of movies, maverick brought to mind three brilliant actors in perfect screen roles. Robert De Niro in ‘Taxi Driver,’ Paul Newman in ‘Cool Hand Luke‘ and Daniel Day-Lewis in ‘There Will Be Blood.’ Not that maverick is a word that describes the actors although arguably it could. The men they play in each of their roles are most definitely mavericks and notably the characters in these movies are all loners, they manage very well without help from others; there is no team spirit here.

As I looked up these movies online I came across a review of Cool Hand Luke that was prefaced with this paragraph:

“For the secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.”- Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

It seems to sum up Luke in the movie quite well – the authorities attempt to control Luke’s every movement and unsurprisingly Luke fights back regardless of the consequences that befall him. The review goes on – “Luke is sent to prison, and what follows is one of the greatest existential movies of all time. His conversations with God, the nature of his offense, his isolation and alienation, his experiences and a pair of profound scenes, both involving his mother, elevate “Cool Hand Luke” above most prison-break movies.” A portrayal of a true Maverick.

Meanwhile in ‘Taxi Driver,’ De Niro’s Travis Bickle, tortured by what he sees as a night shift cab driver, becomes a one man nihilistic machine dedicated to cleaning up the streets of New York, as he says “Someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.” In ‘There Will Be Blood‘ Day-Lewis’s character, Daniel Plainview “is a charismatic and ruthless oil prospector, driven to succeed by his intense hatred of others and psychological need to see any and all competitors fail.” Real Mavericks.

In Hollywood this maverick stuff makes for gripping plot lines and thrilling movies but it should stay right there on the movie lot. A Maverick or two in the White House is a whole different storyline and that script should be relegated to B movie status.

Chasing the story, chasing the numbers. This presidential campaign season is a tricky time for the TV networks. It seems that the network evening newscasts and network news divisions are struggling to pin down any hard stories. The media pundits are flailing around as the Democratic Convention didn’t go the way they had predicted, [Clinton this, Clinton that, disaffected feminists revolt etc,] and now with Hurricane Gustav hitting the Gulf Coast the Republican Convention has been downsized and all the top journalists and commentators have decamped to the storm zone.

It’s very telling, and yet still amazing, that here we are in 2008 with the networks covering the presidential race while looking longingly over their shoulders at the 2000 race, a time when YouTube had yet to make its mark. They have not been paying attention. The networks are still looking for ratings and are judging their results based on the number of viewers they attract. Yet, as Frank Rich writes in his op-ed article on Sunday, Andrew Rasiej, the founder of Personal Democracy Forum, which monitors the intersection of politics and technology, points out that when networks judge their success by who got the biggest share of the television audience, “they are still counting horses while the world has moved on to counting locomotives.” [Rasej also runs TechPresident, a group blog that covers how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web.] The Web, in its infinite iterations, is eroding all 20th-century media.

On cable, CNN consistently beat ABC, NBC and CBS in the ratings last week according to Nielsen, but as media are being transformed cable news channels may not last much longer either.

it was laughable seeing the networks fall over themselves as they struggled to understand how Obama got to the nomination. Obama’s supporters didn’t have that problem. As Rich says “the Obama campaign has long been on board those digital locomotives.” The Obama campaign has been telling its story online well beneath the radar of the mainstream media. When the networks focused on how many people turned up at Invesco Field to watch and listen to Obama they were counting horses. Meanwhile the real story lies in how many people are following the candidate’s every move online. Obama’s fund-raising and organizational networking online is unknown. That might give the networks another big surprise come November.

And then another fast-moving story breaks. As Hurricane Gustav moves over land and dies down the networks can switch their attention to the Republican VP nominee, Sarah Palin, whose 17 year old daughter is pregnant. That’s one that will have them horse counting.

AdWeek reports that “Federated Media Publishing, the blog-centric ad network helmed by Industry Standard founder John Battelle, has partnered with Microsoft to launch CrowdFire, a music-themed social media platform where fans can share and consume videos, photos and personal accounts from live concerts.”

Reading the story and then digging through the CrowdFire site I can’t help but feel that this is just yet-another-social-network. The site is clean enough and easy to navigate but seems a bit jargon-heavy as in the use of the word crowdsource. And Battelle comes over as oddly quaint when he says that the idea for CrowdFire was sparked when he attended several recent music festivals, and saw how prominent cell phone cameras and other portable video recording devices have become. That sounds so 2000 to me….

I can see a firing in your future!

The state of the U.S. economy is beyond dismal at the moment and with the downturn, job cuts are following suit. With Starbucks closing 600 stores across the country, 12,000 employees are bracing to lose their jobs.

And, with a job loss comes the inevitable goodbye to the company you once poured your blood, sweat and tears into.

The NYTimes.com article, Dear Valued Worker, You’re Fired reminds us of how to handle getting fired:

1. It’s okay to cry (but you may not be permitted to stop by the bathroom and wipe away your smeared makeup on the way out)

2. There’s no need to ask every question on the spot (but do make sure you get someone’s contact information)

3. Don’t get defensive or argumentative (oh, really?!)

The pros agree that if you’re in charge of the firing, it’s best to avoid using the word ‘fire’ altogether. The winning phrases are, “It’s time for us to part company,” “I need to let you go,” or the uplifting “It’s time to help you succeed elsewhere.”

The bottom line: No matter how you sugarcoat it, you’ve still been fired.

As CNet reports today, Hollywood and YouTube may be edging towards their own version of Pax Romana. Meanwhile, beyond the learned walls of the law courts and Google’s battle with Viacom, we here at Social Cache have been scratching our heads over Viacom’s position.

Obviously Viacom is up in arms over what it argues is copyright infringement whenever one of its artists’ songs are used in a user-generated video. Their lawyers are even arguing that in most cases they want to set aside the notion of fair use. That in itself is ridiculous as in a lot of circumstances Viacom has stepped over the edge of copyright boundaries. In 2007 Viacom sent YouTube 100,000 takedown notices! And as this video from the EFF points out, many of those videos that Viacom had asked YouTube to remove, were not infringing anyone’s copyright.

We ourselves received a takedown notice and had a video removed from YouTube. The video was of one of our numerous snowboarding expeditions to Mt Hood and it included a clip of a song by the group White Zombie. We could have argued that under the law if we had used the music for parody, for comment, for criticism, for news reporting or for non-commercial use then we’d be in the clear. In this instance it was the latter – non-commercial use. We couldn’t be bothered, we weren’t that attached to the video and anyway, like millions of other folks, we put up videos at an alarming rate. Here’s our latest.

So here’s the Nemo and Social Cash POV. By removing our video Viacom denied thousands of people the pleasure of hearing a White Zombie song. One of its own artists! And no money was changing hands. One solution – Viacom should provide YouTube with a license from a roster of its artists who agree that their music can be used in a video for non-commercial use. In return YouTube provides its users with a simple license that allows users to add music from these artists to their amateur videos for non-commercial use for a small fee of, perhaps $3.00. Now Viacom and its artists get a share of this revenue, YouTube users won’t receive takedown notices, and Viacom can go a long way to recouping its, no doubt, millions of dollars it is spending on these lawsuits.

You’re welcome. Let me know why it won’t work….

Meanwhile over at MySpace, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has a business that’s built on the backs of thousands of unsigned musicians. Who is looking out for them?

Q. How do we reach these young people? A. You don’t, you wait for them to invite you

The social media folks and their blogs have been buzzing lately over a story that seems to have come from Deloitte but perhaps was more widely circulated by the WSJ. Josh Catone at Sitepoint drilled down further into the story from where it got picked up by Marshall Kirkpatrick on ReadWriteWeb.

Both Josh and Marshall have great points and their posts are a good read. Marshall’s post had the most provocative headline – Corporate Social Networks Are A Waste of Money, Study Finds. I thought I’d pick up the story there – A Waste of Money. Companies have a bad habit of throwing money at everything that moves, especially if it looks like “something we should be doing.”

Here are my thoughts distilled from my own writings on the subject and insights borrowed from Josh and Marshall’s posts:

Here’s an extract from my essay ‘On Social Media, Blogs and Advertising.’ – To understand and embrace social networking is to place the idea that says “technology makes this possible” to one side and embrace the idea of the basic human need to stay in touch with other like-minded people at all times. As Clay Shirky says “The desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct.” Read the rest of this post here.

With that thought what follows is:

Businesses can not “build a community” however much money they throw at the idea. They merely need to look outside of their own walls, find the influencers who are already championing their products and join the communities that already exist.

Businesses can not attract “visitors” as measured in traffic to their sites. People who enjoy their products will be talking about them elsewhere in other communities. See above.

Businesses have to realize that having a Facebook page for their products makes them look ridiculous and could actually harm the brand. See my post about Spraychel and “her” Facebook page brought to us by the folks behind I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter®

It is the way of businesses to make predictions about their market. They should not invest in software that makes predictions, or even social-networking technology, unless they have discovered a clear market need.

Positive word of mouth marketing by online communities that enjoy a businesses’ product is a far better metric than the ratio of visits to the corporate web site or its community.

Online communities led by influencers that champion a businesses’ products are doing just that, championing the products not the corporation that brought them to market.

So what should businesses do? Here’s a list that I have reworked to address businesses as it was originally written with rock bands in mind.

They should:
01. Run a blog to which actual company members post regular updates.
02. Ensure that the blogosphere is alerted to any new and breaking news or important posts.
03. Offer early access to special offers and discounts for their customers loyalty.
04. Give away free samples of their product.
05. Be active in their customers online communities.
06. Never push unwanted messages to their customers.
07. Ask their customers to interact directly with their product, for example through competitions and giveaways.
08. Allow the sharing of their products amongst a community.
09. Work closely with influencers.
10. Embrace radical transparency. Openly discuss their problems with their customers and allow negative comments to remain on their blogs.

That’s the top ten; number 11 in my list would include – have dedicated staff working on your company’s online communication 24/7.

Read more of our thoughts on Social Media here.

I love coincidences. Or maybe I should say that as you spend your waking time fully immersed in your daily activities you should deliberately give some of that time over to your subconscious, then there would be no such thing as coincidence; we would just call it awareness.

I posted my summer reading list recently and mentioned that I am buried in E.O. Wilson’s wonderful intellectual adventure ‘Consilience; The Unity Of Knowledge,’ in which he argues just that, the need for unity of knowledge – a common system of knowledge. Today in the New York Times I read an interview with Dr. Wilson and, not for the first time in his career, he is challenging common wisdom. He is arguing that the gene is not the only level at which natural selection acts and because he has new data about the genetics of ant colonies now believes that natural selection operates at many levels, including at the level of a social group. Interesting; what does this mean for all you social media advertising gurus?

He argues that we have long been conditioned to believe that natural selection favors only behaviors that help the individual to survive and leave more children. His studies of ant colonies, a passion of his for many decades, suggest otherwise. He says there is another level at which evolution operates – social groups. He suggests that we may have genes that underlie generosity, moral constraints, even religious behavior, that benefit a group at the expense of the individual. He will be working on these theories for his next book. I can’t wait to read it.

So what genetic code could Dr. Wilson possibly unravel that would explain the human proclivity toward having “feelings” for inanimate objects? Cars are cherished, protected and nurtured like family members. Ships are regularly christened with female names and referred to as “she” or “her.” Houses, cities, buildings, mountains – this urge to have “feelings” for inanimate objects is the same urge that drives humans to want to save the Earth; it is a controlling urge and is a by-product of Christianity.

All of which brings me to the brilliant Spike Jonze and his Ikea ad. [Full disclosure - Nemo and in particular our creative director, Mark Lewman, have deep ties to Spike.]

The ad works from a simple premise; play on our emotional attachment to inanimate objects – in this case a desk lamp that is discarded. In the first second, as the woman leans in to turn off the lamp, we hear a click of the switch or is that maybe a goodbye kiss ? The lamp is then dumped outside alongside a trash bag. It’s raining… How do we feel as the piano tugs at our heartstrings? We should feel nothing, it’s a ridiculous situation, but in many people it may trigger deep human responses to abandonment. That illusion is shattered by a man with distinctly Scandanavian/German overtones to his accent, who berates us for having such stupid feelings.

Spike spent exactly one minute reminding us, if we are really watching and tapped into our subconscious, that the human need to control other animals and inanimate objects is foolhardy and doomed to failure. It won’t stop us buying new desklamps though.

Other than an elongated literary adventure through Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Border Trilogy,’ reading ‘All The Pretty Horses,’ ‘The Crossing’ and ‘Cities of the Plain’ in the summer of 2005, followed in 2006 by reading McCarthy’s masterpiece, the aweful ‘Blood Meridian‘ [and I use aweful by way of its true Middle English definition - "Filled with awe, especially: 1. Filled with or displaying great reverence.",] I’m not inclined to reading novels. McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ and ‘No Country For Old Men’ were both outstanding and Martin Amis turns out great work but I prefer non-fiction; currently I am buried in E.O.Wilson’s ‘Consilience’, re-reading Robert Wright’s ‘The Moral Animal’ and am halfway through John Gray’s ‘Al Qaeda And What It Means To Be Modern’ having finally finished his ‘Straw Dogs: Thoughts On Humans and Other Animals’ for the third time. This summer’s less than light reading list just grew by two – the Amazon package today contained John Gray’s ‘Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and The Death Of Utopia,’ and ‘Heresies: Against Progress And Other Illusions.’

Otherwise I’m keeping an eye on the Madonna – Guy Ritchie marital farce.

An oil rig off the coast of California

Here in Portland I am seeing signs that the price of gas is making a difference in how people get around the city. Bus ridership has spiked, there are less cars on the road during the commuting hours and bicyclists seem to be everywhere. Yesterday as I walked my dog along the banks of the Willamette River, I noticed far more sailboats than the motorized variety. Maybe the price of gas is making Americans think twice before getting into the car? Maybe.

I carpool to the Nemo warehouse and it’s still a drag to see that of those cars that are on the road I’d guess that 95% of them are occupied by only the driver. And don’t get me started on the hypocritical Prius owners who fly past at speeds that exceed the legal limits. And on Sunday’s the Hillsdale Farmer’s Market is filled with people buying fresh, locally-produced organic food while the parking lot and the surrounding streets are crammed with their cars. None of this makes sense. If you’re concerned perhaps you can leave a comment on their blog.

It seemed that once gas went through $4 a gallon and the $100 fill up entered the public’s economic equation we’d see a marked change in the way we would use our energy. Unfortunately that’s really not the case.

Portland is one of the more environmentally-friendly and green cities in North America. If we can’t break the automobiles stranglehold on our city then what hope for other cities that are less friendly toward buses and bicyclists? Portland has also shown strong support for ending the war in Iraq. If we disagree with the Iraq war, and the inevitable future Middle East wars that will be fought over oil and water resources, what will we Portlanders do at home to reduce our dependence on foreign oil?

I argue that if we are unwilling to drastically reduce our gasoline use then it is hypocritical of us to oppose off-shore drilling in California and drilling and exploration in Alaska. We simply can’t have our cake and eat it.

Today, President George W. Bush plans to lift a presidential ban on offshore drilling to combat soaring energy prices, a largely symbolic move unlikely to have any short-term impact on the high cost of gasoline.

Who will stand in his way this time?

Related Post: I’m Sick of the Co-Opting of Green

Once the mainstream media and the more hysterical tech blogs have got over the fact that the success of the iPhone 3G launch caused Apple’s servers to be overloaded, we can sit back and take stock.

I own the iPhone v.1 and I’m currently happy without 3G access so I remain content with my device. One reason for staying put with the original model is that the new software update from Apple brings some rather cool new applications [or Apps in the vernacular,] that improve the original phone’s productivity.

I chose a couple of productivity apps, Zenbe, a list sharing tool and Jott, a voice to text tool. I got AirMe for uploading my iPhone pictures up to my Flickr account and added MPG and Spend [no link available, tsk, tsk] so if I care I can track my miles per gallon in the Element and set budgets for my gourmand extravaganzas. These apps all perform well without G3 and most were free. One app that fell into the epic fail bucket was Reqall. Couldn’t sign up on the iPhone and couldn’t load the web site either. Fail! Turns out that Jott does the same stuff anyway.

The most interesting app of all is Loopt which enables users to broadcast their whereabouts and send a status of a broad set of services and find interesting locations and reviews nearby. This could be the next breakout social networking platform as it works best from the phone [mobiles, not just the iPhone] and is simple to update ala Twitter. In fact it has a Twitter plug-in so you can post once and hit Twitter too. Follow me on Twitter here.

One problem though – Loopt could be a predators dream. In fact Loopt’s Be Safe page spells out in no uncertain terms that you need to control who has access to your location.

Anyway, here’s my thinking behind the title of this post. David Griner wrote a post entitled Are Blogs Still Good Places for Conversation? which at first glance I took as simply a Google bait tactic. The answer would seem to be “of course they are.” He raises a good point but I still believe a good, well written blog is the place for conversation. Twitter, a micro-blog, is not. I use my Twitter account to drive traffic back to my blog where the conversation can really open up. After all Twitter only allows 140 characters so truncated updates are the norm, which is fine. If I follow Marshall Kirkpatrick on Twitter I get up-to-the-minute breaking tech news from him but I prefer to read his blog at Read Write Web for a more in-depth review. On both my blogs, the other being Pampelmoose, I enjoy reading comments that can often be longer than the original post – something that is impossible with Twitter.

Joining the conversation and being invited in are two things I have stressed when it comes to advising our clients on their forays into social media advertising. A blog is the right venue for extending conversations, not a micro-blog. By all means post links to your original content stories to Twitter so that interested followers can link to your blog. Be sure to use FriendFeed to share your blog posts with others, use Tumblr too for the same reason, but understand that many of the social networking arenas, Twitter, Loopt even Facebook, are way ahead of the general online populations’ capacity to juggle all of them, and those folks not partaking in every widget, bell and whistle are your customers too.

Run a blog, embrace radical transparency, get invited in to communities that might enjoy your products and join the conversation. But whatever you decide to do, don’t do this – OHSU Director’s Blog. If you don’t immediately see why feel free to ask me.

Well not exactly. Portland, Or, the home of Nemo and thousands of cyclists has a problem it seems. The price of gas, the economic slump and the fact that Portland is a cyclists dream city has led to an uptick in the amount of folks biking everywhere. Inevitably they run into vehicles, and I’m speaking both literally and figuratively.

It’s causing a lot of friction. Case in point being this video of a fracas, that took place outside our offices here at Nemo, between a motorist and a cyclist caused, according to the driver, by the cyclist not obeying traffic lights. The biker literally attacks the guys car with his bike.

On the local blogs both sides have weighed in about who’s right and who’s wrong but there is only one solution – car-free streets for cyclists and pedestrians [who are treated worse than cyclists by drivers if you ask me.]

I’ve been a proponent of the Long Tail theory since stumbling upon Chris Anderson’s blog of the same name. Reading the book affirmed some thoughts I’d had about how certain niche products found a life online that they most certainly would not have found in a regular bricks and mortar retail outlet.

Granted, because of my background in online music distribution the theory immediately appealed to me. I saw it as an idea that would help unlock the gatekeepers stranglehold over the discovery of music either as CDs or legal music files. Those gatekeepers being terrestrial radio, the record companies and online music retailers such as iTunes who wrapped their music files with DRM.

A simple explanation of the Long Tail theory is that the internet gives us unparalleled access to more products across the “tail” and doesn’t just expose us to those mass products at the “head.” It suggests that people are willing to search and pull a song from say, Tortoise, an alternative music outfit that sells modestly, rather than sit back and be bombarded by iTunes trying to sell them, or push, a song from Coldplay. As the theory goes, Tortoise could make a living selling its music vertically in its slice of the tail.

Like any good theory it is open to question and discussion. This is where Anita Elberse steps in with her article in the Harvard Business Review entitled ‘Should You Invest in The Long Tail?’ Meanwhile Chris Anderson has been gracious enough to accept the challenge to his theory by responding to it on his blog.

I need to spend time with the article as it is not only lengthy but includes a lot of data and links to sources, as well as concluding with advice to different businesses on how or not to include the Long Tail in their marketing efforts. Anderson’s responses will take some digestion too. Perspective and insight is required before comment. That’s why it’s frustrating to me that people like Lee Gomes of the Wall Street Journal’s Portals column has jumped in gleefully accusing Wired magazine [where Chris Anderson is Editor-In-Chief] of having a “template” where they “take a partly true, modestly interesting, tech-friendly idea and puff it up to Second Coming proportions.”

Gomes is of course allowed his opinion of Wired magazine articles but I wonder if he has really had time to read and digest Elberse’s paper as well as study Anderson’s responses. It’s also odd that he blames bloggers for “talking up the theory, which is no wonder considering how it held out the promise that even the most obscure among them could win a robust audience.” As a columnist for the WSJ he has been happily debunking the Long Tail theory since it inception as he did in this article from July 2006. Is he more fearful of the Long Tail theory or of the bloggers who may gain audience share along the tail away from the WSJ head?

Whatever the outcome of the debate between Elberse and Anderson I doubt that there will be immediate agreement on the benefits or not of the Long Tail. One things for sure, it is way too soon to be joyfully jumping upon its supposed grave.

As celebrities are constantly followed in the media with their every move recorded and scrutinized for a slew of gossip shows and blogs, a side effect has emerged in the form of the ‘human billboard.’ Now more than ever, celebrities themselves have morphed into lucrative brand names, hawking everything imaginable from credit cards and cars to perfume and yogurt.

The line between celebrities and the products they’re pitching has become increasingly fuzzy as the two merge to create mutual benefits. Brands are now relying on hot stars to not just stamp their name on products, but to co-design their own lines that capture the attention of their rabid fan bases. 

The Power of Celebrity Endorsement

While the endorsement of products and services by celebrities is nothing new, there has been steady growth in this area over the last ten years with an estimated 14% of all U.S. advertisements including stars last year (via marketing research agency Millward Brown). 

Why is this phenomenon so powerful? Why do stars sometimes earn more from advertising revenues than they do from their actual day jobs?

The truth is that companies would not be paying celebrities exorbitant fees to stand in as spokespersons for  their brands if they didn’t see a positive effect on sales. People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves and if they truly believe that their idols actually use the products they are paid to pose with, sales and (website traffic) can go through the roof.

Consumers are constantly shown glimpses of a celebrity’s lifestyle and even though they may not be able to afford the cars, mansions, and private parties, they can at least buy the fragrance, t-shirt and sunglasses their idols (appear to) prefer. It’s easier to live vicariously through products and services than to look inward to the real issues. 

Controversy: The Downside of Endorsements

When a company chooses a celebrity to endorse their brand, it’s all about image. To make a partnership successful, they have to decide whether a person’s image is in line with their values and further enhances their reputation. When Magic Johnson announced his HIV-positive status in the early 90s, he was swiftly dropped from endorsements, though the companies claimed it was the affair factor that sealed the deal. 

Sometimes controversy can help a celebrity land even more endorsement deals after the dust has settled. Supermodel Kate Moss weathered a scandal in 2005 when she was caught snorting cocaine. Her lucrative contracts with Chanel, Burberry and H&M were dropped, yet Yves Saint Laurent and Gucci held on. Since her release from rehab, she has landed even more endorsement deals from the likes of Calvin Klein, Longchamp, Bulgari, Stella McCartney and Virgin Mobile. Amazingly, Hollywood.com claims that these deals have reportedly brought Moss’ earnings from $10.3 million before the bust to $17 million after!

Celebrity Power and Ranking

The numbers for celebrity endorsements in advertising are down this year after hitting an all-time high of 19% in 2004. In the over-saturated world of advertising, this may be the beginning of a trend. Many companies are now realizing that their roster of brands are being overshadowed by the bold-faced celebrity names they once courted. While the celebrities promoting the products are gaining increased notoriety, the company image can be lost in the shuffle. In the last few years, Pepsi has dropped Beyoncé and Britney Spears for this reason.

Companies are now looking to the two year old Davie Brown Index to see how hot a celebrity is. Ranking a total of 1,800 celebrities, the D.B.I. determines a celebrity’s ability to influence a relationship with the brand and to also encourage consumer purchases.

The Future of Advertising

The future of advertising may be in ‘friend endorsements.’ Allen Stern of Center Networks makes the case that most of us would rather have our best friend recommend a product to us over a paid celebrity. This is becoming increasingly easy since many of us are connected into tight webs of friends, family members and acquaintances with similar interests via social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook.

The reason why we value the opinions of friends over celebrities comes down to one thing: TRUST. Celebrities are instantly recognizable and even likable, but that doesn’t mean that a consumer fully trusts their endorsements when making purchases. For this reason, social networking truly is the wave of the future for advertisers.

The debate over global warming may well continue for many years. Whatever the consequences of our spewing pollutants into the atmosphere day by day one thing seems certain – sources of fresh, potable water are becoming scarce. In the western states of the USA rivers are running dry, reservoir levels are shrinking and wildfires, sparked by heat-burdened, tinder-dry woodlands are burning by the dozen and it’s only June.

The states of the USA will have to learn to share; asking people to use less water will not work – look at the oil situation and American’s unwillingness to cut back on driving. Beyond our borders, countries that do not have a plentiful and easily accessible source of water will soon look to their neighbors or nearby countries that have a plentiful supply of what is becoming known as ‘blue gold.’ There will be envy.

T. Boone Pickens

When an oil man becomes a water baron we should all take note. In an article in Business Week Susan Berfield tells us – “If water is the new oil, T. Boone Pickens is a modern-day John D. Rockefeller. Pickens owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already has, some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property.” He makes no bones about his ambition to sell water – “There are people who will buy the water when they need it. And the people who have the water want to sell it. That’s the blood, guts, and feathers of the thing,” Pickens says.

Meanwhile Americans spent nearly $11 billion on bottled water in 2006, when we could have guzzled tap water at up to about one ten-thousandth the cost. That fact comes from a book by Elizabeth Royte called Bottlemania – How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It. She also tells the tale of how the residents of Fryeburg, Me, are trying to stop Nestlé’s Poland Spring from sucking 168 million gallons of water a year from its pristine aquifer. All of which goes into plastic bottles.

Something has to change as, just like oil, there soon will not be enough to water to go around. And those eight glasses a day that some “experts” say we should drink? Not true. As more clearheaded experts point out, drink when you’re thirsty. Soon you may not have that choice.

Related Post: Fiji Water: A green product?

The Tower of Babel

Cities live and breathe. As I wrote in a post last week on Social Media, cities are no more artificial [technological] than the hives of bees. As we go about our daily lives [mostly unconsciously,] we psycho-drift from block to block through neighborhoods that we know well, in amongst communities that have been drawn together by like-minded people. Think East Village in Manhattan, Venice Beach in Los Angeles, Camden Town in London, Pigalle in Paris – and here in Portland, the Pearl District.

Where we tend to live and work is often amongst communities of like-minded people, unless, as in the USA, one lives in a far-flung exurb and commutes for hours to work. Over centuries we have moved as a species from the rural countryside into large urban centres. As we have done so the ‘idea’ of the city sprang up. Throughout different periods in history, planners and architects have had differing ideas about how to cultivate urban living arrangements. There has been some success and much failure.

As James Kunstler writes in his book, The City in Mind, – “[the] nation’s massive suburban build-out was an orgy of misspent energy and material resources that squandered our national wealth and left us with an infrastructure of daily life that, left as is, has poor prospects in the new century.” Kunstler points out that as global warming, oil depletion and other epochal disorders are upon us, we must reconsider what is a ‘city.’

He argues that one of the chief side effects of the move to suburbanism is “the cultural destruction…especially the loss of knowledge, tradition, skill, custom and vernacular wisdom in the art of city-making that was thrown in the dumpster of history….”

A city is not just a series of streets and avenues with buildings on either side, a city is people, culture, society and the networks that form to bind those societies together into communities. The suburbs were literally a dream, an idea that General Motors had of a drive-in utopia in its plan for a World of Tomorrow. Kunstler goes on to point out the folly of the “Edge City,” a term coined by the writer Joel Garreau. Kunstler says “I essay to show how Atlanta took the urban model of car-crazy Los Angeles to its most ludicrous, and in my view, terminal stage. With Atlanta, you can forego agonizing over the future, because the present doesn’t even work there.” As he points out “our human ecologies – namely our towns and cities – remain devalued, depopulated and decivilized.”

In America we prefer landscape over urbanism. What then now as our dependence upon oil, refined as gasoline for cars that transport one person at a time from these suburbs to the cities, proves the folly of these far-flung suburbs? Will we see a move toward urban vitality? A migration back to the city?

Government spending at any level, state or local, does little to help. We need to “nurture the unplanned civic engagements that make mixed-use city life so appealing” – writes Douglas Rae, the Richard Ely Professor of Management and Professor of Political Science at Yale University, in his book, City; Urbanism and Its End. “Small scale retailing, neighborhood clubs, informal enforcement of sidewalk civility and new urbanist design may be the keys to the future.”

I agree with Rae on the idea of “nurturing unplanned civic engagements” as he puts it but that’s as far as I would go. The rest of his thought sounds like the issue of we humans being in control of our destinies again, trying to have the answer that is beyond nature, beyond what we actually do when we congregate in cities. Our desire for urban centres always seem to be about ‘order’ or ‘cleanliness’ and ‘organization.’ So on one hand we have the thinkers – the planners and the architects, and on the other – the citizens who actually inhabit the space that we call city. What we might call the ‘Few and the Many.’

Alongside a piece by the New York Times film critic, A.O.Scott, called Metropolis Now, where he writes about the idea of how yesterday’s film sets became today’s cities, there is a sidebar that takes some lines from Fritz Lang’s 1927 film “Metropolis” – “The minds that had conceived the Tower of Babel could not build it. So they hired hands for wages. But the hands that built the Tower of Babel knew nothing of the dream of the brain that had conceived it. One man’s hymns of praise became other men’s curses.” There’s that word again, dream.

We humans dream. We dream of controlling nature, we dream of saving the earth, we dream of organizing our cities. Those dreaming deny the fact that cities live and breathe. Not the concrete architecture, not the buildings – the people that inhabit them. When someone talks of Rome having a ’soul, a feeling’ they are misinterpreting the difference between the city and its cultural makeup; people can be said to have souls and feelings, we ‘know’ this – buildings don’t have soul and feelings.

As Fernando Pessoa writes – “Only if you don’t know what flowers, stones and rivers are can you talk about their feelings. To talk about the soul of flowers, stones and rivers, is to talk about yourself, about your delusions. Thank God stones are just stones, and rivers just rivers, and flowers just flowers.” We dream and we delude ourselves.

Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class dreams of organizing urban centres [which he correctly identifies as 'place'] around the idea of a mythical “creative class” who are bound by the idea of the “three T’s,” Technology, Talent and Tolerance. This dream involves cities having a strong technology base, a “creative” class as he calls it, and a strong gay community. And of course the idea he spins is that to grow a city’s economic base it should invest in nurturing the “three T’s.” Once again – The Few and the Many. Planners and architects can no more decide what a city’s culture will be than we know that a stone has feeling.

The fabric of a city is its population. Like a bee hive [architecture] or an ant colony [social network], natural rules of engagement spring up through the daily interaction of those who inhabit a city. They commune. They gather in tribes in their ‘places.’ They share information, ideas, things they like. They become less ’selfish.’ They are city.

As John Gray writes in Straw Dogs – “Anyone who wants to escape human solipsism should not seek out empty places. Instead of fleeing to the desert, where they will be thrown back into their own thoughts, they will do better to seek the company of other animals. A zoo is a better window from which to look out of the human world than a monastery.”

Most large cities have a zoo.

Listen to and download Psycho Drift. Shriekback – Psycho Drift

For references –
References:

James Howard Kunstler – The City in Mind. Published 2001 by The Free Press.
Joel Garreau – Edge City
Douglas W. Rae – City; Urbanism and Its End. Published 2003 by Yale University Press.
Richard Florida – The Rise of the Creative Class. Published 2002 by Basic Books.
A.O.Scott – Metropolis Now. Published in the New York Times magazine June 6th 2008.
Fritz Lang – Metropolis
Enrique Peñalosa – Man With a Plan. Published in the New York Times magazine June 6th 2008.
Fernando Pessoa
John Gray – Straw Dogs. Published 2002 by Granta Books.
Solipsism
Shriekback – Sacred City [Compact Disc]. Released by World Domination Records 1992.
Barry Andrews – Lyrics to Psycho Drift.
Peter Carey – 30 Days in Sydney.

Roy Christopher has posted his annual Summer Reading List. Click on that link and all will be revealed. For those not inclined to click through here’s my contribution, followed below by Roy’s.

Dave Allen

I’ve traveled less this year than is normal for me. No Gang of Four activity anymore, so no more mind numbing journeys by train, plane, and automobile alleviated only by the power of a good book. If I was a humanist I could say that at least my carbon footprint is lower, but the Earth has plans for us, and we can’t do a damn thing about it.

That thought has always been at the forefront of my mind as I have tracked the environmental/green movements, and then followed the chattering classes’ attempts to reduce the United States’ energy dependence as they dropped into the arms of the more-than-willing Toyota Corp, helping to push sales of the Prius through more than one million.

More than one million new vehicles added to the world’s roads. Well done. A bicycle and public transport would have actually made a difference.

That brings me to the book that affirmed my thoughts on our epic — but inevitably useless — human battle to change the course of the Earth. John Gray’s Straw Dogs (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) published in 2002 is a book that I keep returning to. As the UK author, Will Self says, “Straw Dogs is that rarest of things, a contemporary work of philosophy devoid of jargon, wholly accessible, and profoundly relevant to the rapidly evolving world we live in.” Gray simply and concisely slices through the human conceit that we are radically different from other animals.

Otherwise I rediscovered Philip Roth especially his wonderfully depressing Exit Ghost (Houghton Mifflin). I also finally got around to reading Roth’s The Plot Against America (Vintage). Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) was a great read on long trans-continental flights and Robert Hughes’ memoir Things I Don’t Know (Vintage) was a fascinating read from the man who brought me two favorites, Barcelona (Vintage) and Culture of Complaint (Grand Central Publishing).

————–

Roy Christopher

David Mitchell Cloud Atlas (Random House): This collection of nested-doll stories from 2004 is like exploring an abandoned building via descending staircase, stopping on each floor to read some left-behind letters, a travel journal, or a mystery novel. Like Mitchell’s previous novel, Ghostwritten (Vintage) [also recommended], each section of this one refers to the others. It’s like reading pieces of several quasi
-related books that somehow add up to an engaging whole. I snagged this at Powell’s during my last few days in Portland based on its cover alone.

Sherry Turkle Falling for Science: Objects in Mind (MIT Press): One of the largely unsung voices of the digital revolution, Sherry Turkle has been hard at work for over two decades trying to keep tabs on technology’s influence on our lives. Inspired in the early eighties by Seymour Papert’s essay on an interest in the inner-workings of gears and how it lead him to study math (included in this volume), Turkle has assigned her students at MIT to write a similar piece. Falling for Science collects fifty-one of these essays — by her students and colleagues over the past twenty-five years — explaining how certain physical objects influenced them to pursue a life of science. Legos, bicycles, erector sets, computers, and other usual suspects get their due, but so do shirts, walls, bubbles, and keys (among many other things, both exp
ected and surprising). It’s an interesting look at the subtleties of design, influences (often unintended), science, and inspiration.

Mary Roach Bonk (W. W. Norton): Mary Roach has a knack for finding intriguing book topics (and writing interesting books about them, of course). They’re all slightly askew, but one can easily see how anyone would be interested in them. In Stiff she followed the afterlives of cadavers, in Spook she followed the afterlife of afterlives (ghosts), and in Bonk she, ahem, gets science laid. It’s everything you always wanted to know about sex — if you’re a science geek.

Mikita Brottman The Solitary Vice: Against Reading (Counterpoint): If there were a Bibliophiles Anonymous, this would be its bible. Brottman isn’t actually averse to reading, quite the opposite, but in The Solitary Vice, she explores the reasons that attitudes toward reading have been so historically conflicted. Coincidentally, her book is a damn good read.

James D. Watson Avoid Boring People (Knopf): As marginally interested as I am in James Watson’s Nobel-winning scientific work, I’m finding his memoirs completely enthralling. Here’s one of the co-discoverers of the building blocks of life breaking down his academic career into first-person narratives and — true to its title — easily digestible lists of practical advice, unwritten protocols, and lessons learned. This book proves that Watson’s gift for scientific inquiry is well matched by his wily way with words.

I’m also currently reading and re-reading the following: Gilbert Ryle The Concept of Mind (University of Chicago Press), Jack O’Connell Word Made Flesh (Perennial) [Thanks, Ashley], Terry Eagleton The Gatekeeper (St. Martin’s), Christopher Vogler The Writer’s Journey (Michael Wiese Productions), Etienne Wenger Communities of
Practice (Cambridge University Press), Rebecca Solnit Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Penguin), and Andrew Ortony (editor) Metaphor and Thought (Cambridge University Press).

For musicians, 1000 true fans may be the way to lift their sales, and therefore their careers, out of the flat plains of the Long Tail. Looking for information about 1000 fans, I entered ‘1000 friends’ as a search term in Google – it returned 12.2 million results. Here are the Google results.

In this context there isn’t much difference between ‘fans’ – who support musicians and artists, and ‘friends’ – who tend to support causes and the environment. For instance, 1000 Friends of Houston wants 1000 people to donate $100 each to kick start an initiative to improve livability in Houston. Meanwhile the musician Jill Sobule put up a web site asking for donations to make a new album. She needed $75,000. If you visit the site today she happily proclaims that she has achieved her goal and recording is under way. Here’s her original post setting out her goals and the different levels of donor participation.

Kevin Kelly, who describes himself as follows: “Kevin Kelly is a Senior Maverick at Wired magazine and is currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website” says in a post at his site, The Technium, “A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.”

Kelly’s article [from which I borrowed that image] provoked a lot of comment and in one case an outright rebuttal from a musician who has been using the 1000 fans technique to sell his music. As this musician wrote, he couldn’t make a living from operating with such low income. [I would argue that the real point of reaching out to your true fans is networking and not about trying to make a living solely from the income derived this way. It should be treated as another arrow in the quiver of tools that musicians already use.] Kelly then wrote another article entitled ‘The Case Against 1000 True Fans.’ The debate continues.

I like the idea of 1000 true fans. It’s rather like a patronage and when it works it must be wonderful to be that artist who feels the affirmation of her fans. Yet what if it doesn’t work? Fundable is a web site that helps artists by putting up the page that solicits the donations. If the artist requests $5000 for her next work to be created but falls short of that goal then no one pays. Fundable helps in two ways 1. It’s an easy way to create a web site for this purpose, and 2. Artists learn how many fans are willing to support their endeavor before starting a new project.

Arguably these groups of donors are more than just ’super fans’ of artists, they are a micro social network. In April, Peter Bowman, a contributor to the web site Internet Evolution wrote a post about the emergence of micro social networking. He argues that companies and businesses that have built micro-sites for their brands are now branching out and creating micro social networks and asks:

“Will this growing micro-social trend dilute the existing power of social network elites like Facebook and MySpace , or will they empower more people to participate in a wider selection of online communities based on their individual needs and wants? Large brands and businesses have been using micro-site spinoffs to vertically promote products and services while targeting a very defined and loyal online market. Micro-sites have worked wonders for companies that want to align something specific to a targeted online audience. Now, there is a growing movement to transform micro-sites into micro-social networks to become more in line with Web 2.0 applications that aim to engage users with more interactivity and peer-to-peer networking options.”

I think he’s right. As people tire of the faceless anonymity of Facebook and MySpace they will either seek out or start their own network to attract like-minded people to their particular cause, movement, musical group or hobby; a group such as the one that donated $83,000 to Jill Sobule. Sobule should start a Ning network to help all those people stay in touch with each other. After all, they share a common goal.

On a much larger level, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails had huge success with his direct sales set up where he sold a deluxe package that was a combination of MP3s, CDs, DVDs and a book that he called an “Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition” package available in an edition of 2,500 units. Critics scoffed but he sold every one of them raking in around $750,000 gross. That’s a micro social network in action. His next release, ‘The Slip’ comes as digipak CD in a limited edition of 200,000 units.

Dave Allen, Director, Insights & Digital Media, Nemo Design.

Related Post: On Social Media, Blogs and Advertising.

Obama’s viral timepiece.

These days the advertising and marketing world is all abuzz with phrases such as – Social Media, Social Advertising, Facebook Ads, Mass Media Networking Advertising…..etc, etc.. In the last two weeks I have been a panelist at the L I S A seminar in Portland and the Hawaii MusicTech Conference in Honolulu. L.I.S.A., which is an acronym for Lessons In Social Advertising, was aimed at marketers and advertisers who [for some reason] don’t understand social networks or haven’t yet worked out how to advertise effectively to them. It focused on topics such as ‘What is social advertising?’ and ‘How do you get young people to recommend your brand?’ The Hawaii MusicTech panel discussed how musicians could effectively use social networks such as Facebook and MySpace to reach an audience and communicate with them.

Two sides of the table as it were. One group wants to advertise, or push, their messages to a mass audience, while the other wants to create a network of like-minded people who hopefully will pull content such as free MP3s and then “evangelize” on behalf of the musicians by spreading messages by electronic word of mouth. With no hint of schizophrenia I happily migrate between both camps.

To understand and embrace social networking is to place the idea that says “technology makes this possible” to one side and embrace the idea of the basic human need to stay in touch with other like-minded people at all times. As Clay Shirky says “The desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct.” Think about rock concerts for a minute…..

Most people that take a position on social networking and advertising come at it from a technological point of view, as in “technology has created the means for everyone to be connected and to stay in touch.” I disagree with that statement because it removes nature from the game. It is entirely natural for humans to want to interact as often as possible as we are all social animals. Cities are no more artificial (technological) than the hives of bees. Therefore the Internet is as natural as a spider’s web. People who believe that technology is driving our interactions are missing the point – we ourselves are technological devices, invented by ancient bacterial communities as a means of genetic survival. Bottom line – social media is as natural as apple pie as we all want to be as connected as possible – we can’t help it. [A really good book from which I have borrowed some thoughts is 'Straw Dogs' by John Gray, professor of European thought at LSE, published in the UK by Granta.]

Online networks might be seen as antidotes to boredom at work, school or college. These new social networks do more than transmit information about their members, they change behaviour by propagating moods. These days we can all share “news” really fast, even about ourselves – for example, my Facebook or Twitter status might say “I’m heading to the beach in Waikiki…” and the mood that simple statement makes might become very contagious.

The Internet confirms what we have all known for a long time – the world is ruled by the power of suggestion but in the case of social networking it is “influencers” that lead the suggesting. Then suggestions might become “group think.” John Gray writes – “in evolutionary prehistory, consciousness emerged as a side effect of language. Today it is a by product of media.”

So, the question currently being asked by companies and advertisers is “how do we market and advertise to social networks?” Having to ask that question suggests the rocky ground that online advertisers are standing on. For instance, Jack Myers sees nothing but doom and gloom in online marketing: He says “Advertising is simply not a sufficient revenue model to sustain content companies into the long-term future.” And goes on -

“I have preached evangelically for nearly three decades about the bifurcation of the media and advertising marketplace into 1) a transactional commodity business model and 2) a relationship-based brand-focused premium marketplace. Most media companies and agencies are investing appropriately in the technology resources required for their transactional businesses. [But] Brand building, relationship-based business models and premium-priced enterprises require completely new and innovative models, and can take years before they generate returns that justify the investments. Industry realities place enormous pressure on executives to adhere to traditional business models, and companies that foster and advance innovation are often drained of resources before they can deliver the return-on-investment demanded by the stock market, equity rights holders and VC investors. Typically, implementation of new business models must be forcefully imposed by the CEO, need the blessing of investors, and they cannot be managed by executives trained exclusively in the ways of traditional media and advertising.”

Neil Perkin in a slideshow entitled ‘What’s Next in Media’ that can be found here says that today – Social Media is counter-intuitive to communications media. Here’s one of his slides that shows just how counter-intuitive things have become for marketing online:

Meanwhile, the old way of marketing is through push messaging and therein lies the mistake of many of today’s marketing managers. Take a look at this slide to see how things don’t stack up nicely into a marketing message or ‘drop’ that has been long planned waiting its turn on the calendar.

The Linear model above reminds me of traditional TV and Print advertising. Some people in advertising and marketing today still view the Internet as a “channel” rather like TV.

Let’s consider another buzz phrase – viral marketing online. The success of YouTube in extending an advertising campaigns length and reach is now common currency. We’ve all seen the videos, perhaps even this one – My girlfriend and the Wii Fit. 2.2 million views and going strong.

The viral aspect of YouTube pleases advertisers and marketers because they can take pride in the statistics – 2.2 million viewers, that’s great! Not so quick though. The wise online marketer knows that it’s not all about page impressions. Broad use of metrics is far more important – users, time-spent, interactions and pass-alongs. The Wii certainly got a lot of exposure in that video but how can the results be tracked? Where’s the ROI?

Those YouTube stats don’t show the whole picture. It is clear that the video is very popular and it fits the rules of users, time-spent, interactions and pass-alongs, but there is no clear ROI except in its “value.” By value I mean that the brand is being talked about, the brand via the video is being shared, people are “spending time” with the brand. The ROI though is difficult to judge. Even if Wii sales were to jump by 5% in one week can we really say it was due to this “viral” campaign. Probably not. The video’s value will continue throughout its lifetime on YouTube. Talk of value over ROI makes marketing managers queazy.

Viral campaigns are not just online. From Adrants: Jack Goldenberg tells the story of how he and Kevin Glennon turned a custom-made Obama for President watch into what could become a fairly sizable viral campaign for the candidate.

“Most people think of viral marketing as something they’ve seen on YouTube or a similar site. But in reality, a viral is any communication that causes one person to be so affected by “experiencing” the viral that they communicate it to another.” He also argues that “Happy Meal toys were an in-home reminder of the need to visit McDonald’s. Kids would see two or three of them on their desk in their room and say, “Mom, Dad, we HAVE to go back to McDonald’s. I need 3 more Star Treks Happy Meals to complete my collection…..the Happy Meal was viral – kid to parent-multiplied by the millions of kids who frequented McDonald’s.”

That’s an example of an early viral campaign. We can perceive its “value” but we can’t perceive its ROI. And that’s why Jack Myers, as I quoted above, says “(completely new, innovative models) can take years before they generate returns that justify the investments.” If as marketers we don’t understand social media and merely pay lip service to viral marketing then we are basically flying by the seat of our pants.

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and blogger at The Long Tail, has pitched in to the social media advertising conversation with a post entitled You may be on Facebook But the Money’s in the Long Tail. He also posits that “social networks should be a feature, not a destination.”

As Chris says, and I agree, “I’ve been thinking a lot about how to integrate social networking into websites better. Right now the world is focused on stand-alone social networking sites, especially Facebook and MySpace, and the fad of the moment is to take brands and services there, as companies build Facebook apps and MySpace pages in a bid to follow the audience wherever they happen to be. But at the same time there’s a growing sense that elements of social networking is something all good sites should have, not just dedicated social networks. And that suggests a very different strategy – social networking as a feature, not a destination.”

He has a proviso too – “social networking to me means the tracking of individual preferences and behavior and giving users the ability to draw upon implicit or explicit connections between them and other users to do something useful.” This brings me to Ning, a social network platform that both Chris and I like. As he says “Ning, suppresses its own brand for the sake of those of the microsites it hosts.” Go here to see how the hip hop/rap label, Rawkus, uses Ning as its entire web presence.

Chris goes on to say – “As I think about the current Facebook craze and the notion of it as an all-encompassing platform, sucking in functionality from other sites across the board, I find myself skeptical. With my Long Tail hat on, I think that one-size-fits-all will fail in social networking, just as it has everywhere else.”

Meanwhile MySpace admits that it is not making as much money through ads as it would like. See Selling Ads For MySpace is Hard Work. MySpace COO Peter Chernin said:

“We remain incredibly optimistic about social media. But there are specific challenges 1) Tons of inventory. Lack of scarcity creates a liquidity challenge. Working on bringing big brands aboard. 2) People who are visiting social networks are there for different reasons, different uses. Figuring out how to target. 3) What’s the value of a “friend”? Trying to figure out new metrics to communicate with marketers.”

Bottomline: It’s the wild, wild west out there.

Anderson points out that ad rates on MySpace go for an astonishingly low $0.13 cents per CPM (one thousand impressions.) So that’s $0.13 on a general-purpose social network like MySpace and on his Ning-hosted network DIYDrones he’s getting $7.00. Even with a more generous scenario–$0.50 on MySpace and $5.00 on a focused Ning site–the difference is still a factor of ten. He believes that as big networks like Facebook and MySpace struggle to target ads based on the faint signals of consumer behavior in a generic social network, the smart money is going to the niche sites, where laser-focused content and community makes targeting easy. I couldn’t agree more. Also see: Facebook Ads Don’t Rock an experiment by Bob Gilbreath, an advertising executive who ran an ad on Facebook. It’s a real eye-opener. And another – Ad CPMs Are Higher In The Tail. And of course companies are springing up that think they have the answer to your problems in dealing with big social networks. Here’s one.

What this all points to is that companies should be advertising directly to those niche groups and networks that include people who would like to hear from their brand. The brands need to wait until they are invited in. A mass, scatter-shot approach to the large social networks will only fail.

Companies also need to consider Radical Transparency. For those unaware of this concept there’s a great article here on Wired Magazine’s site. I also wrote about it myself when Wired’s web site crashed. The basis of this theory is that you open the company’s doors [only as much as you like] by creating communication between your company and its fans and detractors. It’s a big step and for some, especially executives, it will cause a great deal of unease.

Wal-Mart used this approach to great effect. Here’s the original story from the New York Times and here’s just one bloggers’ reaction. And here is the Wal-Mart blog.

As the NYT article says “Known for its strict, by-the-books culture — accepting a cup of coffee from a supplier can be a firing offense — Wal-Mart is now encouraging its merchants to speak frankly, even critically, about the products the chain carries. This unusual new Web site, which was quietly created during the holiday shopping season, has become a forum for unvarnished rants about gadgets, raves about new video games and advice on selecting environmentally sustainable food.

Corporate blogs are nothing new — General Motors, Dell and Boeing have them — but Wal-Mart’s site, called Check Out, turns the traditional model on its head. Instead of relying on polished high-level executives, it is written by little-known buyers, largely without editing.”

And the key point there is “without editing.” Once a company opens the doors it can not close them. If a company starts a blog [and it should] it can not moderate the comments. And the CEO and other executives should not be contributing to the blog if they do not have the right “authority” or “voice”. By that I mean authenticity. It’s an overused word at times but in the right context it is completely accurate. If a CEO were to jump on the blog to blow her own trumpet non-critically about a company’s service or product the readers would see through it immediately. Being authentic means the blog author is a “trusted source” and this trust can never be abused.

A blog is a micro social network. My blog garners around 100,000 unique visits a month and its adherents are seeking out what I have to say about music, technology and the web. I am well versed in those things. I have an opinion about them. I also provide free music downloads from artists that I have “filtered.” I only post music from artists that I like and I believe that my audience will like them too. In short I have become a trusted source [people like my opinions,] a filter [people share my musical tastes,] and I am an influencer [I push certain artists and online companies that I support,] as well as an authority [people believe that I know what I am talking about.] A company’s blogger or bloggers need to have all these bases covered if they are going to safely cover the company’s communications through the blog.

Meanwhile the executives have to sit back and allow the comments, both good and bad, begin to flow. They can never interfere if they want the blog to be taken seriously. They will feel insecure and perhaps a little nauseous but if they wait it out it will work fine. It works for Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer.

A company with a good blog policy will be listening to its customers and then shaping its communications around that data. It will also create content that is both relevant and hopefully surprising. Influencers will pass along the good stuff creating the viral moment that marketers pray for. Then people in the outer circle of the influencers will also start to talk about the brand, and as they do the company has to make it very easy for its core fans to spread the word. Do not fear negativity, it is just more communication – let it roll. There should never be a barrier to communication or interactivity. Remember, it’s not about technology, it’s about people. Bloggers have to be about having an opinion and sharing it but never about reporting….it’s a two-way conversation.

Sometimes people look at it backwards. Points 1 and 2 in this slide are wrong. As I said at the beginning of this post, we are technological beings and we are naturally immersed in technology; it can’t be any other way. And you can’t enforce social cultures online as there is no central “being.” Facebook’s “soul” is merely the millions of disparate people who are members. When Facebook goes away, as it will, those millions will migrate to the next application that allows them to socialize freely and easily.

For marketers this is a huge dilemma. In social media we create a selfless or virtual “self” – for instance, in the Facebook friends network one might see a coherent global pattern but that pattern only emerges from the activity of all its members (friends). The group or network seems to be centrally located but in fact it is nowhere to be found. No one has the slightest idea what these people do or want; they actually don’t exist. The good news is that within each of any of these social network groups resides at least a couple of influencers; again, companies and brands must wait to be invited in. These are parties that can’t be crashed.

Dave Allen, Director, Insights & Digital Media, Nemo Design.

The following URLs link to people, companies, articles or stories that are referred to in this post:

Grammy’s Hawaii MusicTech Conference
LISA 08
Content Marketing = Brand New Marketing
What’s Next In Media
My Facebook profile
My Twitter
My music and technology blog, Pampelmoose
Clay Shirkey’s blog
Jack Myers’ Web Site
Neil Perkin’s Blog
Wii Fit YouTube video
Adrants Obama watch story
Obama watches web store
Wired Magazine
You may be on Facebook but the money’s in the Long Tail
Social networks should be a feature not a destination
Rawkus, a social network on Ning
Selling ads on MySpace is hard work
Bob Gilbreath’s Facebook ad experiment
Ad CPMs are higher in the tail
Lotame.com
Blog reaction to Wal-Mart blogs
NYT story on Wal-Mart blog
WalMart blog

Even with a barrage of endless new options, today’s teens are still partial to many of the ‘old school’ brands that were popular with past generations. Last winter, networking website Habbo conducted an online survey of teens ages 11 to 18 and asked them to name their favorite brands.

Many of the biggest brand names in their respective genres were rattled off as favorites including Coca-Cola (beverage), McDonald’s (fast food), MTV (TV channel), Seventeen (magazine) and Nike (shoes).

With a constant link to the internet and access to so much outside information, it seems surprising that teens would identify such mainstream brands as their favorites. This may partially be due to the constant exposure of their big budget advertising campaigns that span the globe.

Nike: Staying Ahead of the Curve

Nike stands tall amongst its fellow footwear competitors with 40% of the market share for shoes. The brand recognition among teens has surely benefitted from one of the most recognizable logos in the world (the swoosh) and the empowering “Just Do It” slogan that has managed to cross all race, economic and gender barriers since its 1988 inception. Nike has been especially aware of teen consumers’ changing preferences with two notable additions to their roster being the Nike 6.0 and Nike SB lines. By focusing on the hot action sports and skateboarding sectors, they have remained a viable competitor in the fickle teen market.

Nike has also smartly followed in the footsteps of Vans, adding a larger amount of ‘lifestyle footwear’ to their product mix. Both brands have realized that while not all teens participate in sports, they will still gobble up the stylish soft good offerings.

Market Saturation Equals Recognition?

Though some teens may not actually prefer McDonald’s over its #2 competitor Burger King, its market share is so broad and the convenience of its locations so unparalleled that the iconic golden arches immediately come to mind.

A Case of Impressionability

Habbo, the site responsible for the brands survey is a social networking site aimed at teenagers with chat rooms that are set up in the form of virtual hotel rooms. Each user creates an avatar representing themselves and purchases credits to buy virtual items like furniture for the hotel rooms. 90% of Habbo’s users are between the ages of 13 and 18 and for this reason, it receives sponsorship from large corporations as well as bands targeting teens.

The broadness in age of its survey respondents should be noted. Teens on the younger end of the spectrum may be more impressionable; perhaps they haven’t branched out from their mainstream brand preferences yet, many of which they’ve been exposed to over the years in their households.

As teens mature, it’s normal for them to broaden their scope to lesser-known brands, many of which have less visibility (and smaller advertising budgets). This can be part of their allure since the need for individuality and the push towards the customization of products is an integral part of growing up.

While many of the top brands of our past will remain viable for future generations of teens, they should keep an eye on the smaller up-and-comers, many of which are playing by their own sets of rules.

On reviewing ‘Netherland,’ a novel by Joseph O’Neill, in the New York Times’ Book Review section, Dwight Garner reflected thus: “But sorting through the pile of so-called 9/11 novels is a sad exercise, one that grows more pointless by the day. They’re all 9/11 novels now. It’s impossible, though, to stop scanning the horizon for something else — the bracing, wide-screen, many-angled novel that will leave a larger, more definitive intellectual and moral footprint on the new age of terror.”

That last italicized sentence struck a chord with Alec Niedenthal a student at Mountain Brook High School ‘08 Birmingham, AL; that fact I discovered of course on his Facebook page. He wrote a letter that I have posted below that challenges the assumption that all great post 9/11 novels must come from the long list of novelists that have been writing for many years prior to 9/11. He also challenges the reviewer and the Book Review editor to look “right under your collective noses” as he points out that the novels that Dwight Garner yearns for “will spring from the iMac-fettered keyboards of the young, challenging, Facebook-and-MySpace-addled minds that you have so hastily jettisoned as literary jetsam.” And at the end he ever so slowly twists the knife – “Perhaps it would not trouble you to take a peek.” Nice. And here’s a piece that Alec wrote for ‘Sup Magazine.

To the editor:
I found Dwight Garner’s review of Joseph O’Neill’s “Netherland” (May 18) to be virtuosic in nearly every respect, but that is not why I write. Garner struck a chord with me, and probably the vast majority of younger readers, when he so impeccably communicated the longing for, the necessitation of that transcendent Great Post-9/11 Novel: “the bracing, wide-screen, many-angled novel that will leave a larger, more definitive intellectual and moral footprint on the new age of terror,” he writes so consummately.

Don’t worry; we’re working on it. You’ve heard it straight from the tropical mouth of a teenager who is entirely conscientious of the metamorphoses in ideas, principles (or lack thereof) and influences being undergone by your Youth right under your collective noses: the next Great American Novel will come not from Pynchon, Wallace, DeLillo (he’s already had his turn anyway) or any other of your literary heroes.

It will spring from the iMac-fettered keyboards of the young, challenging, Facebook-and-MySpace-addled minds that you have so hastily jettisoned as literary jetsam, from those who see and comprehend, still to the delirious ignorance of the villainous Powers That Be, incalculable brands of grade-A terror being perpetrated unabashedly both by those whom we trust and those whom we loathe.

The literary call to arms sounded long ago (only many neglected to listen), and, Mr. Editor, well, we’ve been whiling away for a long time, persisting on raw fish and Red Bull in the frozen caverns of the blogosphere; and we don’t mean to boast, but, to be perfectly honest, we think you’ll be more than impressed. We’re standing beneath the adit of our long-desolate cave, proffering a sheaf of papers that you might consider a manuscript.

Perhaps it would not trouble you to take a peek.

ALEC NIEDENTHAL
Birmingham, Ala.

Every waking moment we are inundated with brands from all over the globe. We have our brand loyalties but when something new comes along that can offer the same plus more, we tend to find a reason to jump ship. The brands we tout determine the general perception of who we are by the overall population. But that’s what we want, right? After all, when we adopt the mission of each brand, don’t we suddenly become their soldiers in a war for users reiterating the bullet points and three line tags that they have strategically written and milled over in little conference rooms just for the pure objective of speaking directly to us and our demographic? Planning all the right words, the right slang, and just the right length to appeal to the short but detrimental period of time we will absorb this information. Probably the easiest and most obvious for all of us computer dwellers is the MAC, PC rivalry. You are either one or the other. And when the argument arises, both speak with such conviction that one would think it was Gates and Jobs being summoned for that short period of time. Of course we all know MACs are better.

So, the point of all this is really to steer you in the direction of something I found called “Brand Tags: A collective experiment in brand perception.”( www.brandtags.net ) Its an addictive little site that allows you to give a single word or a phrase for a random brand logo that it shows you. You also have the pleasure of seeing what other users have written. A guy by the name of Noah Brier ( www.noahbrier.com ) put this together as a little experiment. I must say I can’t stop. So go ahead and give it a whirl. You just might surprise yourself on what you come up with. 

K-Mart has just announced that it will be releasing a new collection of action sports-inspired apparel under an unimaginative in-house brand name called “Boarding.” This is taking place on the heels of similar retailers’ forays into the same market including Walmart, Target, and Steve and Berry’s. Unfortunately, it is a telling sign that the terms action sports and extreme sports (which were once a hallmark of announcing one’s place in the counterculture) have finally lost the last remainder of their street-cred.

When the term extreme sports first surfaced in the late 80s, the market was geared more towards adult sports. As Baby Boomers and Generation X have aged, the marketing efforts have shifted towards Generation Y with ads focusing on their clothing, music and even soft drink preferences. In the meantime, as more mainstream sponsors have infiltrated the market (including Mountain Dew, Taco Bell and the U.S. Navy) the edginess of being associated with the extreme sports movement has dramatically dulled.

Youth-centric culture is constantly pushing boundaries and influencing larger societal movements, but in time, the ‘new thing’ loses its charm when every mainstream outlet markets the hell out of it and drives it into the ground. What’s interesting about this phenomenon is that many of today’s trend-setters eventually grow up and fill the marketing positions at top-tier ad agencies whose sole job is to blanket the mainstream with their clients’ take on the next social rebellion.

Just as the hippies of the 60s grew up, tuned in and transformed into yuppies during the 80s, action sports fanatics will eventually mature. Their gashes will heal and though you’ll still be able to spot them when their dress shirt cuff rises to reveal a smattering of tattoos, the gaggle of babies in trendy t-shirts and the new home tucked into a safe suburb is bound to give them away.

As the term action sports continues to lose its coolness, it’s natural to wonder what the next rebellion will be. Youth by nature is often tangled in rebellion and you can’t rebel any longer when the remnants of your scene are splashed everywhere, including K-Mart.

I use my Facebook page to stay in touch with hundreds of people every day and during the course of those days I post a lot of interesting content that is not available for search by all the usual suspects – Yahoo! Google etc. Not to mention that our Nemo Design Facebook Group can’t be searched either. All because Facebook is a hold out in endorsing the OpenSocial initiative.
Google, Yahoo, and News Corp.’s MySpace.com announced in March that they have formed the OpenSocial Foundation, a nonprofit group to support the OpenSocial initiative that Google kick-started last year to promote a universal standard for developer applications on social-networking sites. Google has focused efforts on creating code, such as the open source OpenSocial APIs and the Social Graph API, to make social data more portable and accessible to applications. Just in case you were worried that all those heavy hitters might have too much control OpenSocial is now managed by an independent organization.
OpenSocial is basically a set of common APIs that application developers can use to create applications that work on any social networks (called “hosts”) that choose to participate.

“As the largest contributor to the memecached system, Facebook has long been a leader and supporter of open source initiatives but will not join the foundation,” a statement from the company read. “The company will continue to evaluate partnership opportunities that will benefit the 300,000 Facebook Platform developers while improving the Facebook user experience.”

So Yahoo! and Google’s search engines are shut out which is a drag.

Starbucks continues to struggle and is now looking to “examine all aspects of our business that are not directly related to our core” according to this article. This means that the first decision was to let go of Ken Lombard, the unpopular head of Starbuck’s entertainment division. That wasn’t unexpected, I covered this earlier this year. The unexpected part of the re-org is that Starbucks’ Chief Technology Officer has been chosen to run “the division which selects and markets music, books and other items sold in Starbucks coffee shops.” Mmmm, watch this space.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:
“Starbucks shook up its entertainment division on Thursday in the latest bid by the company to invigorate its sagging sales. The chief of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, center, and Ken Lombard, the entertainment unit president who has left the company. The overhaul comes a day after Starbucks said it would post weaker-than-expected earnings for the second quarter amid slumping sales and a darkening outlook for consumer spending.

In a statement, the chairman and chief executive, Howard Schultz, who has previously taken steps to bolster the chain’s coffee offerings, said the company was “committed to examining all aspects of our business that are not directly related to our core.”

As part of the changes, Starbucks said Ken Lombard, president of the entertainment unit since 2004, had departed. Chris Bruzzo, the chief technology officer, will take the reins of the division, which selects and markets music, books and other items sold in Starbucks coffee shops. Starbucks also said it would turn over management control of Hear Music, its in-house record label, to its partner in that venture, the Concord Music Group.”

Related Post: Starbucks’ Hear Music Program Messes Up.

Will Ferrell and Heidi Klum solve the left brain vs right brain dilemma.

“My main task in writing the drawing book was to dig down underneath everything I knew about art and drawing to try to find the most fundamental level of ‘thinking’ that goes on in drawing,” she said. “What was I seeing, how was I ‘seeing’ what I was seeing, and how was I transforming those perceptions into a drawing? It makes my brain hurt even now to remember the effort required by that seemingly simple task.” – Betty Edwards in her book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. 

I have written many songs in my lifetime. Frantic bass lines over frenetic beats mostly, and then, in conjunction with other like-minded musicians together we formed the complete whole entity recognizable as the “song.” My all time favorite song I’ve written with others? ‘Natural’s Not In It’ with Gang of Four, found first on its ground breaking [so I'm told] debut album, Entertainment! and later as the title track to Sofia Coppola’s movie Marie Antoinette. A close second? Evaporation by another of my bands, Shriekback, from its album ‘Care’ which also made the movie soundtrack ranks being as it was in Michael Mann’s ‘prequel’ to Silence of the Lambs, Manhunter.

The act of songwriting or the forming of musical ideas is a nonverbal form of intellect; we musicians cannot ignore the artist within, the one that resides in the right hemisphere of our brains, but being a nonverbal activity it obviously can be hard to describe the process that takes place from the germ of an idea to the seeding and ultimate fruition of a song – the left, logical hemisphere of the brain is of no help here. Unfortunately for some time the idea that the partitioning of our more creative thinking, tapping a mental connection via countless synapses that form the route to the right side of our brains, was dismissed and often scorned. Of course now we know the theory has been well tested and confirmed; simply put the left side of our brain is where our language center resides; it is the logical, linear problem solving and processing half of our brain. The right side, the side I use the most I reckon, is home to spatial perception and nonverbal concepts; it is the nonlinear, high-concept source of the imagination and of pleasure. It’s my ‘ideas centre’ where the songs, the ideas and even this post come from. I write less songs these days but I write much more; two thirds of my day at Nemo Design is spent over-heating the right hemisphere of my brain.

Which brings me to creative businesses; where are they headed and who will lead them? You might be surprised to learn that the current common wisdom points to a new generation of business leaders who “get the right brain thing.” In an article in the NY Times titled Let Computers Compute. It’s The Age of The Right Brain there’s this nugget – When General Motors hired Robert A. Lutz in 2001 to whip its product development into shape, he told The New York Times about his new approach. “It’s more right brain. It’s more creative,” he said. “I see us as being in the art business,” he said, “art, entertainment and mobile sculpture, which, coincidentally, also happens to provide transportation.” [That sounds positively McLuhan - see post below.] The article goes on to point out that today someone with a master of fine arts, M.F.A., trumps someone who holds a good old M.B.A. The point made that rings loud and clear is that if G.M. says it is in the art business, every company in any other industry is, too.

My most successful songwriting was mostly in collaboration with others – the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. It was about investing in each others ideas and sharing and adding to the burgeoning art piece or project with complete openness – today we call that radical transparency; nothing hidden, nothing guarded, no walls, no barriers to entry.

So, after considering the worth of being a right-brained musician, a songwriter, a blogger, a creative who finds himself running Nemo Design’s outward-facing digital properties I’ve come to this conclusion – I’m in the right place because Nemo has been set up with tools that provide a success formula for the future [left brain,] and that the right brain is King in our business [right brain!]

At Nemo Design we need to harness the power of the collective whole, understand that at the core of the company we are fundamentally operating as a ‘right-brained unit.’ When we require logic and strategy our left brains won’t let us down but the thinking and all the fun, the pleasure centre, the high concepts and the imagination all reside to the right. We no longer need to verbalize our ideas; we can now show them interactively in motion, in film, in video, in graphics, in projections on buildings, in sculptures, in events, in our actions because actions speak louder than…. 

So what does the future look like for branding, marketing and design companies like Nemo Design and similar companies such as Anomoly, Odopod and Crispin, Porter + Bogusky?

Who innovates, who creates in collaboration with others, who shares in the wealth of knowledge and experience that employees hold in their heads? Does it have to be put in words or business plans – left brain. Or expressed creatively through drawings, film, music, design and song – right brain? If Nemo Design embraces ideas and innovation (right brain) over execution and strategy (left brain) what will it look like in 5 years?

This morning the day began with me catching up on last Sunday’s NY Times Business Page and a story entitled Thinking Outside the Company’s Box. The article discusses one of the oldest barriers to innovation amongst large technology companies – Not Invented Here, wherein even the most creative people have a persistent bias toward their own creations versus the ideas of people from other companies. As I was pondering the way companies get round this dilemma (which had me also contemplating “The Curse of Knowledge,”) I came across a blog post from Adrian Ho at Zeus Jones who’s post outlines how large companies, e.g. Apple, “don’t really use advertising agencies and instead rely upon innovative business ideas to communicate their benefits and values to their customers.” Ho mentioned in a comment elsewhere that he wasn’t touching upon an ad agency version of “Not Invented Here” known as “Not Created Here,” (in fact he’s tip-toeing around it,) but rather was making comparisons to Alex Bogusky’s “Anything and everything is an ad” quote and what Ho sees as the “dangers of ad people presenting ideas about how to run a client’s business under the banner of everything is an ad” and how he’s “seen presentations go horribly wrong” because they were built upon that premise.

Which brings us to this thought – If “everything is an ad” should businesses communicate with their customers by simply continuing to run their business and therefore do they need an ad agency at all?

What are their options? Here’s a list for starters: Radical Transparency, a Facebook Page or Group, delivering groundbreaking stylish and functional products that brand the company and change how its customers approach communication, or an unfiltered company blog written by employees. And then there’s authenticity.

Back to the beginning; Not Invented Here and Not Created Here are both roadblocks to innovation and creativity. In the first case, large companies such as Google buy up other companies that bring them an edge in new technology or an opening into a new market. In the second case, Ho argues that “Rather than creating “communications objects” that help to grow a client’s business, agencies who champion the idea that “everything is an ad” should instead be helping to magnify and extend the communication and marketing effects of the client’s own business objects.” Which really means that a cultural shift within agencies needs to take place – agency creatives have to listen to the clients ideas rather than presenting something from scratch; one size does not fit all, companies need to embrace innovative business ideas to communicate their benefits and values to their customers. This morning another article in the NY Times caught my eye – How to turn a herd….

Sometimes things are just in the air. And sometimes those things are nerdy. This week is one of those times. On the heels of reading this article just published on A List Apart – Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry, I was forwarded an article about a large local Portland agency adding a Director of Search. Later in the week, I sat in a conference room going over marketing requirements for a client, near the top of the list was “SEO strategy”. This got me thinking again about why we in the industry do the things we do and who we’re doing them for. (Really, I’m the life of the party) Looking at the sort of prototypical web application, something like Wikipedia, the mechanics and reasoning of search are obvious: we’re searching for a specific piece of information, we find an entry on it, we’re happy. For those of us who work in marketing though, the reasoning can become muddled.One of the things that makes interactive attractive to our clients is that it’s very easy to define and retrieve success metrics. If we launch a digital media campaign, it’s nice to be able to tell our client that the banners we made got a .8% click through. We can show charts of drop-off points. And of course – we can show search results. But what do all these things really mean? It shows that people are seeing the message, but says nothing to what they think of it. And even when we can infer some type of opinion, what they don’t show is what the viewer wanted and didn’t find. Our goal is to craft a message, and then try to get as many people as possible to view that message. It’s TV, with craftier Nielsens.

But by viewing the web as a channel, like TV or radio, we’re missing one of the things that is fundamentally great about the web: its a conversation between our clients and their customers. It’s the first and best chance to help our clients create the sort of relationship dynamic that converts the curious into customers and makes customers fanatics. If all we’re doing is helping people find our one way broadcast message, then aren’t we really just finding new and creative ways to say and do the same old thing? On the other hand, if we change the goal from getting our viewers to listen to our client’s pitch to providing viewers with a meaningful experience, and if we start making our clients a part of the communities they’re selling to, then it becomes necessary to expand our conversation from the tactical methodologies of SEO into the more holistic notion known as find-ability.What’s the difference?

If you go and read the article on A List Apart (and you should, but then come right back) you’ll see that there are many things, both technical and non-technical, that go into making a site find-able.What really makes the notion of find-ablity stand out for me though is that at its core, it requires us to consider the relative value of our interactive projects through the lens of the user rather than ourselves or our clients. It makes us ask the question: Are we simply trying to get people to the site from a Google search? Or are we trying to help them find the content and experiences within our site that are meaningful to them? It asks us to look at our sites as more than one monolithic exercise in marketing and instead see it as a collection of content that in some way benefits the user. It transforms the notion of SEO from a metric to a service. It changes the way we look at content, from being something that we create that is consumed by the viewer into something that reacts to the community that views it, that is portable and contextual. We stop writing the narrative and realize that the brand is the vessel into which the community pours its own experiences. At its foundation, the notion of find-ability is far less about technology, and more about a genuine empathy for the people who use our products.