PR 3.0 - more brilliant thinking from Philip Sheldrake

PR and Web 3.0

View more presentations from Philip Sheldrake.

Less angry than usual - which is a shame - but the importance of what he's saying can't be overstated.

Data + API's + semantic markup = the future of marketing

borrowed relevance...

Josh Bernoff published a report recently here talking about "boring" brands.

It resonated with me - a lot of the brands I work with at Dig for fire are what he'd define as "boring" - healthcare providers, banks, government departments, building supply merchants and educational institutions - brands that certainly aren't going to be adopted by users just because they're "cool" (I'm aware just using the term "cool" - means I'm likely to be anything but...)

As someone at the coal face of always on marketing, tasked with getting these sorts of brands to exist online, I can attest to the fact that a lot of the issues on a day to day level, come down to brands not being comfortable with "borrowing relevance".

Its not about "cool". Its about convincing brands to get involved with what people are actually talking about, as opposed to what the brand would like them to be talking about.

In other words - there is possibly too much getting stuck up on the relevance of the marketing tactic and not enough understanding, that so long as whatever the application or technology employed (the application, viral, widget, newsfeed, weird bit of technology) resonates with the brand essence - in most cases, that's enough to start.....

So long as they're contributing in a positive way, a brand in unfamiliar territory is something users probably take more notice of, at least initially. Removing friends from your facebook account has got precious little to do with eating burgers but it reinforced Burger King's playful, cheeky brand values. On the other end of the scale, Keep Britain Tidy publishing data in RDF format has nothing directly to do with picking up litter, but being seen at the cutting edge of web 3.0 means the brand can have conversations it could never have had, had it stuck rigidly to its push messaging plan and segmentation model.

the semantic mind

Will the semantic web create a semantic mind?

A post from David Armano, an article about predicting divorce and a feature on crime hotspots from hospital inpatients all got me thinking about how the semantic web might change the real - human world - as we're so often told it will.

The semantic web, data visualisation and the objective measurement of subjective phenomena fascinates me - and I began to wonder whether by putting different data sets together, the semantic web might in time, create a collective “semantic mind” – or to put it more simply – make us humans less psychologically dysfunctional, by enabling universal “truths” about the human condition to become more commonly known and understood.

In other words, if data on very subjective experiencing, like relationships and psychological health were made more readily available - might it help people to challenge and change their own, and other people’s behaviors?

Lets take the divorce case as an example.

The research paper I mentioned could predict, with remarkable accuracy, which couples were more likely to be unhappily married based on the language they used. To many psychologist and linguistic experts, this perhaps wouldn’t come as any great shock. But for the majority of people without a training in psychology - they’d miss the clues. More than that. Even if the dysfunctional language hadn’t escaped notice, what mandate would anyone have to intervene? We live in a society world where the private sphere is still almost unchallengeable.

In this case, the computer algorithm has bought an important, but complex psychological phenomena to within the grasp of the “ordinary” person with a web connection. The data has started a conversation (and critically done so in a psychologically “safe” manner, where anyone in distress isn’t being forced to hear it, but is instead introduced to the idea ambiently, and as such is more likely to allow themselves to “hear” the implications for them).

More importantly though, the information has provided concrete evidence of the phenomena of language being a significant factor or indicator of an unhappy marriage. It is there on the web, at the click of a mouse for others to use, reference and interpret. Its core implications can less easily be fudged, greyed out or spun.

In my strand of psychotherapy, it is suggested that as individuals we construct 1 or more “selves” around our core "organism". This organism is the "real" us if you like - the bedrock of our personalities – where our intrinsic value set and personality lie. It is inconsistencies between this organism and our constructed “selves” that create psychological disturbance (so it is thought). Many people believe that as a collective we display many of these same “selves”. It is fascinating to think how many unhelpful, but well established collective “selves” could be examined and broken down, by the use of data in this way.

A cost / benefit analysis on the economic implications of nations turning the other cheek perhaps?A study of adrenalin levels in the blood of delegates at the G20 v. the economic output of the world for the next 12 months?

More on this in later post I think...

how not to do it....the music industry

The trials and tribulations of the traditional record labels and their failure to engage in the digital world hardly require re-examination.

You don't need an MBA to figure out suing your customers and then expecting them to form an orderly queue at the record store is unlikely to produce a long term, mutually profitable relationship.

Present a 15 year old with the choice between an expensive, complicated and legal way of acquiring a product and a free, easy and illegal method and again, you don't have to have a masters in psychology to figure out the route most teenagers will go (and most adults for that matter).

The question is what could a business, that has so obviously got it wrong for so long, do now to turn the ship around?

Well, to begin with they need to understand the problem as it stands today. Unlike 5 years ago most people within music now understand that a 360 degree model is the way forward. There is little debate over the solution itself.

The issue for the record labels is that they are now taking a battering, not just from their customers, but other businesses within the sector, offering artists deals they simply can't compete with.

The labels look like the distinctly uncool dad at the skool disco.

Their only chance in my mind is for them to become a brand. The only value left in their businesses, once the publishing arms have been sold and the glitzy offices have emptied, is the significance and meaning associated with their name.

EMI, Chrysalis, Warners - those names still have meaning, not to their customers, but to the talent.

Hands at EMI and Bronfman at Warners will almost certainly fail. By VC standards Hands is already 6 months late in delivering a working business. The chance for reinvention perhaps is after they have gone and those companies are going cheap.

Join those brands with semantic web technologies which enable the better understanding of customer and talent - add city funding, in the form of tax efficient vehicles like VCT / EIS and you have a model for the future.

what is the semantic web?

Recently the concept of the semantic web has been coming up in conversations - and many people I talk to don't seem to have a grip on exactly what it is.

A "semantic"(or meaning) web is one in which machines "understand" data. Data about data if you like.

Ostensibly, from a business perspective, the semantic web is about data - but it will likely be much more than this as the idea matures. In time, by using a common language (RDF), a technical ecology will evolve where systems and devices of all kinds can share data and come to understand each other more completely. Many people are talking about the semantic web as the world growing a central nervous system.

As a drugs company. I might want to find out why a particular group of people in an area are more susceptible to diabetes.

At the moment, due to the limitations on the amount and type of data I could practically look at, I might confine myself to the obvious - I might look at smoking rates, or lifestyle data.

In a semantic web world - I would instantly be able to pull in a much wider variety of data from different sources - allowing me to see non linear correlations between the disease and factors I could never have assessed before. Perhaps a DTI data set could tell me how many lorries with toxic waste travel on the nearby roads? Is diabetes related to the amount of dog poo in the local park? Perhaps data on the weather could tell me whether there was any link to above average rainfall?
 
At a practical level then, the semantic web is about the format of data. The establishing of a common language and systems to enable people to combine information, cut it how they want, and make it more useful for themselves in the real world.