In the 60s you had few media choices. We then had an explosion of channels and 20 years later, the splinternet arrived.
But is history is repeating itself?
The faster users, helped by increasingly sophisticated search and filters, pick up on the few, truly brilliant bits of media trending on any particular day, the faster other content is ignored. In other words, instead of being centralied in media channels, power now lies in ideas.
I was talking to a friend who runs a startup technology company. A web2.0 application, which frankly needs some work - both in its functionality and look and feel.
He's a wealthy guy and he knows a thing or too about business but he's never run a tech startup. We got talking about his marketing strategy and he told me in some detail the number of people he had working on this project and that, what he would be spending on PPC, this much on below the line etc.
He was making the classic start up error. Spending on marketing instead of your product. Having got out of beta, it is so tempting to start spending on "marketing" - the analytics suddenly look good, the investors are pleased something is happening
And then.....
Nothing.
Takes a lot of courage to continue to look honestly at your product, your technical development plans and your internal systems. To listen to your customers and address their concerns.
Money spent on developing your product is never wasted. Cash spent on old skool marketing too early often makes the directors and shareholders feel better in the short term but rarely produces the long term users and revenue it was designed to.
Occurred to me, as it has other people, see here, that the type of person who takes the lead in generating content, blogging and the online world isn't necessarily reflective of society as a whole.
My wondering is, if we don't understand and take account of any built in bias, what impact could that have long term in the way we ask brands to engage in the online space?
Would sections of society become left out of the virtual world? Would the participatory nature of the blogging community, like open source software development, somehow skew everyone's perception of the real world?
To be crude to prove a point. If ultimately all off line research were discarded in favour of data from "pure" customer sentiment online. What general biases would start to emerge?
Could it be, that in the future we will have a sense of the way certain groups of bloggers think, as we do now with the leanings of the printed media - or would a general viewpoint emerge? Would we find "most" online reaction more left wing, more green, more anti big business than our conventional media. I suspect so.
The argument against, would suggest as more of the population engage and generate content, then any early leanings one way or the other will soon disappear. But it would be foolish to ignore the possibility, certainly in the short term.
I'm reminded of the 3 personality types profiled in the Tipping Point - mavens, connectors and salesmen. In the real world Gladwell assumes all 3 personality types interact, to generate a tipping phenomena. But what would happen if we were to profile 1000 bloggers and find a disproportionate number of them were salesmen? What would that do to an ideas ability to "tip" online?
Perhaps there is a large chunk of research or book I've missed. If not this would be a fascinating area of study for a brand or institution.
The cynic in me is hearing the words but barely able to believe it. Bush has to NATIONALIZE a financial institution - WTF???
The US state. The home of the "free" market whose central tenant is the belief the market can solve all ills has to nationalize a bank.
Tee, hee....
Anyway, we digress.
Driving away from one of the most bone crushingly awful christenings I've yet to have the displeasure of attending. Complete with music on CD introduction and a call to renounce the devil (for thoughts on organised religion Richard Dawkins pretty much covers it here.) a random and wandering thought struck me.
Does the relative speed at which the religion "brand" blew up, have any implications for the online world today?
Premise 1: Organized religion is a brand. Not a new idea, but one that bears repeating. In a nutshell - a lot of people spent a lot of money (and time, nearly 2000 years) associating the image of a cross with meaning to convince people to swap their hard earned cash for forgiveness.
Premise 2: Religion brand was chugging along very nicely for most of its 2000 year period, "saving" souls and generally doing (cough) good works - and making a tidy pile of $$ by the by, when a young, biologist called Darwin (or rather Spencer - lets not go there) pulls the pieces of a very ancient jigsaw puzzle together and points out (in the absence on Mendelian genetics - which in itself is extraordinary) that it looks very much like a gradual evolution of species might have occurred, and this could possibly have taken place without "you know who" - with the beard - upstairs.
Premise 3: Religion brand, within the space of 200 years (10% of its overall lifetime) collapses. Almost overnight organized god bothering goes into terminal decline and is reduced to absurd, toe curlingly embarrassing rituals like the one I just attended.
The relative speed with which the wheels came off the religious brand cart is in itself surprising.
Even more interesting. As the wheels flew off, the disintegration process seems to have accelerated. Can we learn anything from this?
For as long as modern brands have been around we (brand) tell you (the consumer) what messages and concepts to associate with our name.
But now, and only just very recently, that concept has been turned on its head. Now we (consumers) are telling you (brand) what messages and concepts we'll associate with your brand. We’ll let you participate in the conversation, you can direct and suggest, but ultimately we're going to make the decision.
My sense is that we're reaching a tipping point. A point where ideas of community, free thinking and participation that were bubbling in the online world for 15 years, start to coalesce and take shape.
The birth of the Internet was the Darwin moment for brands where overnight, the status quo blew up. In relative terms then brands might need to change very fast, very soon.
Of course large, abrupt change isn't always welcome. If we draw on another 18th century political theorists Edmund Burke would be worried. He was all about gradual change. Darwin could be seen to harness some of his thoughts in his own theory. For Burke only gradual, non cataclysmic, calm, measured change would do.
Are more turbulent times around the corner for brands?
Feels like it and I guess at heart I'm with Edmund, that's probably why I am so fascinated by what is happening with them online and why I probably shouldn't be laughing as Bush Nationalizes banks.....
14 years ago, as a young record company exec I tried to convince my MD we should build a website. It was hard, there was no obvious reason for it.
Pretty soon everyone needed a website to tell a global audience about themselves.
14 years on and with (most) of the world understanding the basic utlity of a website the game has moved on.
The web isn't about telling people anything. Users of your product or service can very well find out the warts and all story about you, far quicker and more easily than you could, or should provide it. The game is now about listening to what people are saying about you. Shaping your brand around the the conversations you and they create.
In many ways, this (web 2.0 for want of a better way of describing it) is a much harder sell than 14 years ago. A website is a mouth piece. An electronic billboard. Nothing more. Listening to your customers often involves the reinvention of a business model. Profound change in pretty much every department of a business, from HR through to product development. In tough economic times many large household names could become extinct in the next 5 years.
Early adopter brands and companies who have twigged this of course are already stealing a march on their competition - see Dell, LG and Avis for some impressive growth figures even in a difficult economy.
Are Avis or Dell's products really that much better than the competition? - or are people starting to base their purchasing decisions on the views of an online audience and their own perception of how a brand seems to care about its customers?
I own a Dell computer and walk past an Avis forecourt with an Aston to hire every morning - I know what I believe.
I wonder how long it'll take to convince the rest of the online world to start listening....
