Here is the process, step by step.

Absolutely!

This is what happens when marketers try to be trendy these days. The result is the most ill-considered banking product ever devised.

...a National Australia Bank (NAB) Visa Mini - confoundingly counter-intuitively, this card’s most notable feature is that it’s about half the size of a conventional credit card. Apparently this distinction alone will irresistibly and relentlessly reel in the target demographic - fashion conscious twenty-somethings (I think that might include me!) - but NAB has other slick devices in store to simultaneously deliver a KO in the coolness heavyweight championship of the banking world whilst obfuscating the somewhat steep interest rate levied on any transactions billed.

Well, perhaps all could be forgiven if the cool level was sufficient. But not when combined with plain dumb.

Why not hang your Visa Mini on your mobile phone using the purpose-built attachment, o budding sophisticate? Does it look cool, and it is also great for the person who finds your misplaced Nokia; if they exhaust your mobile credit telephoning Siberian astrologers, they’ll be thanking their lucky stars because instant replenishment is quite literally on hand! Now that is convenience.

and,

For the truly elite - the style aristocracy - why not subtly incorporate the Visa Mini into a piece of bespoke jewellery, like so? Yes, it probably would require less effort to don a prominent sign displaying “ROB ME” painted in large flourescent letters and then wander down the darkest, dodgiest backstreet alley in an effort to discover a smackhead suffering profound withdrawal symptoms so you can shove your Visa Mini between his chattering teeth. But that’s simply not how they do it in Europe, philistine.

or it just plain don’t work!

...what if the cardholder wishes to transact via an automatic teller machine or a manual imprint device or a vertical-loading swiper unsuited to such generation-NEXT Mini cards? Oh ye of little faith, those clever folk at NAB and Visa are one step ahead of the likes of you and I. If you are one of the select fashionistas who manages to successfully obtain a Visa Mini card, you will also receive a Visa Mini Companion Card, known in-house as Visa non-Mini Mini, which financially functions identically to your Mini card as it is linked to the same credit account. Instantly, it should be obvious to all that the inclusion of this extra card represents rare value - two cards from just one application! - but do not neglect to observe that the Companion Card has also been ingeniously designed to share the exact same dimensions of a conventional bank card!

Interestingly, there is a comment by a reader on one of the product review sites, which rings a bit, well, shall we say false. I just wonder to what extent Ms Caroline Liang’s summer job is related to marketing… But let’s not dwell on the detail. Let’s go for the big picture.

This is where marketers ‘lose it’. Blinded by the number of trends and deafened by the noise of the mouse-clicking, iPod-carrying, mobile-wielding Generation XYZ, their unerring instincts tell them that combining all that with a financial product AND accessories is a sure way to grab that desirable ‘demographic’. Based on their fundamental misunderstanding of who creates and ‘provides’ for a growing number of ‘consumers’, their fate is looking less inspiring than this accesorising suggestions for the Visa Mini.

We like conformity. Sadly, sometimes we confuse it with teamwork. Or much worse, we assume noncomformity to be anti-team and disloyal. The Road to Ruin. This, despite all superficial commitments to the valiant efforts of the Myerses and Briggses and Belbins of this world telling us that diverse balanced teams are good.

In something approaching real tragedy, many organisations go through a painful process of attracting and hiring people with a difference to make a difference; then spend forever driving the difference out of the person. Immensely frustrating for all concerned. Blogs can help prevent this.

We should stop thinking of blogs as just individual soapboxes, it may be the way we learnt about them, but it’s not the way we’re going to learn from them.

They’re very powerful conversation enablers; they help people express care and concern and dissent in non-threatening ways; they help avoid mutual-admiration-society selection bias; they build trust amongst teams; they exposes heresies and cancers; they prevent me (and people like me) from believing in our own propaganda.

Blogs are but one tool in helping us with those selections.

One tool. An important tool. One we did not have before.

Cass R. Sunstein in Why Societies Need Dissent

via JP

I came across this gem earlier today and a classic example of what Jackie and I call ‘re-inventing the bandwagon’…

Eight O’Clock Coffee Co. is energizing coffee drinkers and its brand with a new blog that invites customers to share their gripes and thoughts about life, work and coffee.

The blog, called The Grind, follows the storyline of a working mother of two who writes about her daily life, and invites visitors to share their own experiences. The first blog entry begins with a quick recap of the weekend and talks about the blogger’s boss, nicknamed "Snobicus," and asks advice on how the blogger can break the ice with the chilly boss.

The goal is to connect consumers to the brand in an interactive format, said Jeff Maloy, Eight O’Clock senior brand manager. The blog will run for six to eight weeks.

This is so bad. How shall I count the ways?

• Working mother of two - what’s her name or is this just a target demographic that came highest? Doubt it so please, enlighten us… Hang on, I got it. Her name is Eight O’Clock Coffee, it sayz on the blog - posted by Eight O’clock Coffee.
• Interactive format - comments are good, but no need to asnwer every crank in the comments section, especially it is the first comment on the first post and the answer is the second post on the blog. Or is it someone from the agency who set up the blog trying to ‘crank up’ (sorry) the new interactive engine of the Eight O’Clock Coffee Co? Oh way, I can download a coupon and watch two TV spots. I take it all back...
• What’s with the blogger.com used as blogging platform? It sucks. Really. The worst comments facility ever, even some more benighted blogger.com users use Haloscan to get away from indigenous comments (dis)functionality. But I digress.
• The blog will run 6-8 weeks? That’s marketing-campaign mindset talking. Sigh.

Perhaps time to be constructive? A coffee blog I want to see tells me about coffee, its history, flavours, pictures, coffee-making tips (OK, there are some on the Grind blog buried at the bottom in small print), baristas, growers, geeky facts about espresso machines etc etc  - themes and topics abound.

And then there is the Ristretto Roasters weblog, set up by Jackie Danicki and run by Nancy Rommelmann, the founder of Ristretto Roasters, an artisanal coffee roasting company with its own café in Portland, OR. I know which blog I’d rather read.

Update: Just noticed that the article in PROMO magazine says that Eight O’ Clock handles the Web site and blog in-house. I take a shot at the imaginary agency back. It still leaves plenty to gripe about…

cross-posted from Media Influencer

We have to recognize the role of the consumer as creator. That’s the first time this has happened in history.

-Ajaz Ahmed, AKQA, Red Herring article

First recognise that they are not ‘consumers’! 

This has to be blogged…

#

The one and only Hugh MacLeod.

Last week I was at an Engagement Alliance event, What My Space means, which took place at a rather cool location, the Charlotte street hotel’s screening room (as in private cinema) - from 2 to 6pm. There was an excellent and varied line up of speakers (yes, yes, I was speaking) and I thoroughly enjoyed the event. There vibe was different, somehow more intimate and relaxed. Congratulations to Jackie for organising it all.

I spoke about social networking and My Space in that context.  I have been travelling and only had a chance to post my notes now.

Social networking and concept of community, powerful enough for corporations and businesses to notice.

I define community as a network with a purpose, theme, topic and with specific motivations behind individuals participation. Not just a fuzzy notion of a collective space, this may sustain the community but not kick-start it. So we have music, dogs (Dogster), teenage angst (MySpace) dating and socialising.

The blogosphere was the original social network, open and mutating. Several times the landscape shifted – political blogging, metablogging, business, marketing, PR, academic blogs etc.

I talked about three aspects of social networks – the physical or ‘geographical’ aspect; the human aspect and the business dimension.

1. The sheer scale of the social networking phenomenon is has taken us by surprise. Online has been bridging physical locations. Technology makes it easier to do certain things – connect & publish and communicate on an unprecedented scale. This scale may be changing certain human and social behaviour – we have increased capacity to maintain large social networks. It is said that a human mind cannot handle more than 150 people as contacts at a given time.  Social networking online may be increasing this limit or helping to reach this limit faster for more individuals. Similar to mobile phone – we are able to do more, have more meetings and conversations, managing to squeeze in more as ad hoc become a modus operandi.
2. Human aspect – social networks are a very non-commercial and non-rational space. Emotional and oddly intimate – aspect of human psyche usually capture and catered for by families, tribes and religions. Another thing that is changing within this space is the nature of authority. Quote about checking out peoples MySpace pages to find out more about them. Teenagers are able to create their identity; they understand the discrepancy between the image and reality – learning out to filter out. Credibility and authority emerging differently, not through ‘certification’ by a third party.
3. Business dimension – this fundamentally non-commercial space in contrast with the manner it is done (i.e. emotional and social) is fulfilling a market function when it comes to communication and information. As a place for conversations, it is where the demand side is supplying itself (Doc Searls), the media and marketing are not the sole sources of information. Also, the distinction between consumers – producers – distributors/agents/publicists is blurred. “Artists have become their own agents, musicians their own record labels, and video makers their own broadcasters. And everyone on Bebo and MySpace and Facebook has become their own publicist, shouting Me Me Me.

Finally, disruption is never expected/anticipated and cannot be prepared for in detail/specifics and using the old models to monetise social networking may be counterproductive. This is because the internet and online treats any control or censorship as damage and re-routes around it.

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Alec Muffet has an interesting article about the clash between the human nature and the manner in which companies try ‘secure’ their networks. He says:

… the reflex I have seen in some City institutions which try to ban iPods, USB sticks and the like, from trading floors and other sensitive environments.

That won’t work - as JP [Rangaswami] approximately put it, if you want [me] to do that, you’ll need to give me the privileges to stop-search the employees and go through their briefcases, pockets, and check what their phone can do; the result will be oppressive chaos.

The proper response is one of embrace and control, that if employees are going to make use of whatever technology [USB, iPod, WWW, Instant Messenger, 802.11, ...], some facility needs to be made to filter and sanitycheck the means to which it can be put, and that you make the means and constraint transparent and well-advertised to your employees.

In short: be fair, and be wise. It might cost a little more in the short term, but will retain respect, employees and be more effective than the “ban everything” approach.

Amen to that.

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This kind of advertising works for me!

via Samizdata.net

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Last Wednesday came and went. I was good fun, both during the day and evening. Days before the conference were busy and Lloyd managed to do three podcasts with speakers - Euan Semple, Lee Bryant and me.

Jackie Danicki took some good notes and reproduce them in a meaningful way on her blog. Lloyd Davis has blogged on the conference blog about his impressions from Open Space session and put some pictures on Flickr. For more, there’s Technorati.

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When we heard that Shel Israel is coming to London to speak at the Content 2.0, Jackie and I thought of getting a few like-minded people to meet him and have a… conversation with one of the authors of Naked Conversations. And a drink or two, or three.

The party will take place on June 5th (Monday), in a private house where many a blogger bash has succesfully taken place. We do not mean to exclude but the number are limited, for obvious reasons. Jackie’s organisational genius is just the thing to make it a fun evening, so if you want to join us email her at dynamist at gmail dot com. 

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As creative as your organization may be, the community at large will always be more creative.
- RedMonk analyst Stephen O’Grady in From Web page to Web platform

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The Blogs & Social Media Forum takes place on Wednesday 17 May at the Hilton London Metropole Hotel (£350).  This is an event designed to bring social media closer to businesses. I have been working with VNU to make the conference a bit less formal and more involved for the delegates. It is still difficult as experimenting with formats is all very well but for the need to make it commercial viable interferes.

There will be no powerpoints (or very few, I hope), the sessions are short, focusing on case studies and the panels conversational rather a series of presentations. We are trying to get the speakers down from their ‘elevated position’ and the main afternoon session is ‘Open Space’ with the panelists and a few other speakers going into a huddle with the delegates.

I find that the most interesting conversations at conferences happen during the coffee breaks and the open space is an attempt to bring the coffee break style of interaction to the main auditorium. Lloyd Davis and Johnnie Moore are going to facilitate this session, as open doesn’t mean unstructured. It means that the structure is invisible and far more flexible as the power to determine the topics and lead the discussion falls on the audience. Lloyd and I went to check out the venue, Hilton Metropole today to see if we can arrange the rather formal settings into something a bit more relaxed. I am hoping that we can get the panelists and speakers away from tables, breaking down the division as far as possible. Whilst still fulfilling the purpose of the conference – inform, share knowledge, discuss and further understanding of social media in business [end of a serious business voice]. This is the official blurb:

Examining the impact of wikis, blogs & RSS, this one day forum will combine expert industry insight from leading thinkers in the field of social media technologies with real life case studies.  The programme offers an unrivalled learning experience addressing the following challenges:

The speakers will be a mixture of old and new, hoping to provide a balance between the bigger picture and the practical applications.

• Christopher Barger, Blogger-in-Chief, IBM
• JP Rangaswami, Global CIO, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein
• Raymond C. Jordan, Vice President, Public Affairs & Corporate Communications, Johnson & Johnson
• Adriana Cronin Lukas, Partner, Big Blog Company
• Jeff Clavier, Managing Partner, SoftTech VC
• Euan Semple, Independent Consultant and ex-Head of Knowledge Management at the BBC
• Ben Hammersley, Journalist for British Press (The Times, The Guardian and The Observer), and the Author of Content Syndication with RSS
• Jaap Favier, Vice President, Research Director, Forrester Research
• Jackie Danicki, Founder, Engagement Alliance
• Jason Korman, CEO, Stormhoek Wine
• Alec Muffet, Principal Engineer, Sun Microsystems
• Lloyd Davis, Perfect Path Consulting, UK
• Johnnie Moore, Johnniemoore.com
• Loic Le Meur, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Six Apart, France
• Ruth Ward, Head of Knowledge Systems and Development, Allen & Overy

The full details of the programme are here. I look forward to seeing you there.

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... that is how an FT article about social networking and media in workplace begins. I do not normally link to subscription sources but this article was too good to miss and I’ll quote the bits that make the main points.

The next wave in office productivity, represented by wikis (editable websites), blogs and other social networking technologies, is here. Experts say these tools will transform the way work is done by encouraging new types of collaboration.

This is a point I have been making for some time. It’s difficult to demonstrate the benefits of wikis and blogs (and tagging) to companies who operate on measurement and metrics only. The thing about the whole Web 2.0 (before it became an annoying buzzword) is that you cannot foresee what impact the activity of many individuals will have on the network and its dynamics. Many people doing their own ‘thing’ - blogging, organising events via wikis, uploading photos, bookmarking web pages, aggregating their knowledge, etc, give rise to phenomena that leave most business types scratching their heads, wondering what it all means. Well, it’s the emergent, stupid. Nobody could have predicted or planned or justified something like Wikipedia before it happened. As for business applications, the trick is to provide clear parameters to avoid unacceptable risks.

The article mentions some respectable companies such as Google and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein as believers in the brave new world of wikis and blogs.

Every Google employee can create a blog and contribute to the company’s internal wikis. Social technologies play an essential role in keeping the creative juices flowing and also help Google keep track of its rapidly growing numbers of ideas, projects and employees.

....

More than 450 DrKW employees have internal blogs and the bank has built an internal wiki with more than 2,000 pages which is used by a quarter of its workforce. After just six months, the traffic on the wiki exceeds that on the entire DrKW intranet.

This is what JP Rangaswami says about his experience with blogs and wikis within DrKW:

We recognised early on that these tools would allow us to collaborate more effectively than existing technologies… Using wikis is much more participative and non-threatening, as people can see what other people have suggested…

And most importantly:

Is blogging a good use of company time? They are going to have these conversations anyway – in the lift, for example – and if the topic is boring, people lose interest. It is self-policing.

Indeed, you won’t get the creativity, collaboration and innovation that most businesses profess to want without letting individual employees assert and reclaim their sense of identity and value. And this cannot happen if you box them in metrics, return and objectives that do not take into account the emergent impact of social media and tools.

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Social software is the experimental wing of political philsophy, a discipline that doesn’t realize it has an experimental wing. We are literally encoding the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of expression in our tools. We need to have conversations about the explicit goals of what it is that we’re supporting and what we are trying to do, because that conversation matters. Because we have short-term goals and the cliff-face of annoyance comes in quickly when we let users talk to each other. But we also need to get it right in the long term because society needs us to get it right. I think having the language to talk about this is the right place to start.
- Nat’s notes on Tim O’Reily’s blog on Clay Shirky’s talk at ETech.

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I am organising a NYC geek dinner for 23rd March as the last one was hugely enjoyable (at least for me!). Details are on this wiki, so please sign up, if you are in the area and feel like meeting up.

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Rachel tells the world about the new Guiness Blog.

She gives some interesting background to trying to get a major brand management company to introduce blogs. Thumbs up to the effort, I know it wasn’t easy:

It’s been a long journey from idea to reality for this site; long and varied conversations with the legal teams to ensure that a site would comply with our Marketing Code and allow the brand team to have a conversation with their consumers that would follow the principles in the document.

On a different note, Rachel mentions that she is with her old company for another two week and will be setting out as a freelance project manager. Well, we hope to use her expertise extensively in the immediate future and, in fact, can’t wait.

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Clive Davis is trying to strike a balance but blogs still come on top in his Times article:

Ultimately, however, I remain optimistic. For one thing, conservative bloggers still tend to be more tolerant of dissent than their left-wing counterparts, many of whom are about as much fun as superannuated members of the Militant Tendency. More importantly, if American bloggers often take a superficial view of Europe (we all sit on street corners begging, apparently) Europeans must take some of the blame. There simply aren’t enough of us out there working the internet. For some reason, the habit still hasn’t fully taken root on this side of the pond. Which means that, unless we rise to the challenge, the stereotypes will only get worse. Pardon my franglais, but the time has come to say “Aux keyboards, citoyens!”

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We are looking for several people who can work with the Big Blog Company. We have been bringing blogging to businesses in the UK for the last two years as a small team of dedicated and by now weathered professional bloggers, who need more bodies to capture the demand coming our way.

Two ‘blogging experts’ i.e. people with considerable blogging experience of their own and with understanding of the blogosphere, with its network and social dimension.

1. The focus is on communications and interaction as relevant to businesses and their audiences rather than just blogging. We need bloggers who would like to make a living from their experience of running their own blog and interacting with other bloggers. The job is not writing and blogging for clients but demonstrating and explaining the practice and to some extent the theory behind the dynamics of the blogosphere to them and assisting them with applications of that to their businesses.
2. Technology skills are welcome but people skills are more important. We supply much of the knowledge, so there will be much to take in at the start. The Big Blog Company has extensive experience in promoting blogging in the UK and we have developed several principles that are the core of our expertise. Of course, own input is welcome and an open mind essential.
3. The ‘blogging experts’ would work on development of new services as well as on particular projects and be integral part of the company. The job comes with a monthly retainer as we will need continuous focus on development and looking after clients. For more specific and clearly defined projects, there will be payment on top of the retainer to be agreed on a case per case basis as we need to have flexibility to price projects strategically rather than be locked to a particular formula.

• need to be articulate, be able to present and deal with clients (i.e. patient)
• have their own blog(s), or familiar with running one, for at least a year
• based in London

We are also looking for two people to work on project by project basis - a code assistant and a supplemental tech/design operative, based anywhere but ideally in London. There is an option of a retainer with flexible pricing for specific projects or straightforward fixed fees/prices, depending on the individual situation and preferences.

The code assistant should be:

1. Efficient in HTML/XHTML and CSS in order to work out advanced mock-ups that we will provide, understand them quickly and ‘translate’ them into actual code - in the most effective and accurate way (under our guidance and with the help of our specifications of course).
2. Ideally, we’re looking for somebody who can look at the mock-up, and perceive the most efficient underlying HTML/CSS structure, with as little explanation as possible - although we will provide instructions. However, it will just make things much easier if he/she can look at the mock-up and have a feel for how the code should be structured.
3. He/she should also be able to manage gracefully - again, with our input if needed and under our supervision - the slight inevitable differences that exist between the graphical mock-up and the final display in the browser(s) window, in compliance with the original design. In any case, we will handle and provide each and every graphic element to be part of the design, and we will manage as needed any subsequent editing or addition of graphics all along the development process. Therefore, he/she doesn’t really need to be a Photoshop guru, as we will spare him/her image editing work.
4. A reasonable understanding of PHP and Javascript, in order to painlessly implement scripting within the (X)HTML code he/she will produce. We’re open to any kind of proposition as far as scripted features and solutions are concerned, but this is not something he/she should have to worry about on a regular basis, as we will provide the said scripts, and the instructions to implement them.
5. An understanding of the CMS(s) we will be using and coding for. His/her expertise on both points 1 and 2 should be enough for him/her to learn quickly whatever software we are (or will be) using, but any preliminary knowledge of the way most CMS templates are usually structured will be a definite plus.
6. Flexible enough to adapt and produce code according to our guidelines and conventions (for the most part, we’re following XHTML recommendations: all tags and attributes in lowercase, quotes around attributes’ values, closing tags, etc.).

   Ideally, we would favour somebody who codes ‘by hand’ (the ‘Notepad School’ as opposed to the Dreamweaver one) but ultimately, we’ll leave it to him/her, as far as he/she can provide us with clean and optimized code, that complies with our specifications.

   Having said that, I know that (somewhere between) 80 to 90% of the people out there surf the web with various flavours of Internet Explorer. I have no intention to lecture them, snub them or Javascript-Alert them to change their browser. Consequently, the policy is fairly simple: We stick to the aforementioned standards up to the point where it makes no sense to stick to them, and we expect the same from our code assistant.

   We’re looking for a pragmatic professional with a solid sense of reality and who understands that between ‘standards’ for a happy few percent of users and Word crippled HatcheTML there is a quite wide and acceptable margin of operation.

7. Any delivered code has to be rigorously and intelligibly commented, as our code assistant shall always keep in mind that somebody may have to (will) work on the code he/she produces in the future, and should be able to do so as painlessly and quickly as possible.

   In the same spirit, strict naming conventions will be used consistently for files, directories/site structure, templates and CSS selectors. We’ll expect him/her to follow them conscientiously.


In a more general way, we’re truly looking for an assistant. He/She will specifically code what we will design, and therefore will only have to care about his/her code.

To that end, he/she will have to work in close collaboration with the Head of the Design Department (of which we have none, the department, not the Head, of course).

We’re also looking for a supplemental Tech/Design operative who should retain most of the requisite aspects for our code assistant, with the following additions and/or differences:

1. Ideally, we’re looking for somebody who would be able to manage both design and coding aspects of a project, albeit with a stronger emphasis (and expertise) on coding. Let’s say two third web developer, one third web designer. He/she can code (X)HTML/CSS in his/her sleep and is at an advanced level at least in PHP/Javascript (any extra competencies/mastered languages are of course welcome). A strong understanding of the Dark Mysteries of MySQL wouldn’t hurt as well.
2. On design considerations: It’s definitely okay if he/she is not the Next Big Thing on the art/graphic design field as far as he/she is able to produce good looking, elegant and professional blog/website designs—with our input when or if needed. Maybe not a graphic design pro (remember that’s just one third) but at least an ‘enlightened amateur’.

   On the technical side of graphics, my policy is: When it comes to graphics optimization, broadband doesn’t exist. If we can gain that extra 0.2 Kb on a .gif or a .jpg simply by moving the cursor one notch down while maintaining top visual quality, then go for it. There’s no such thing as a small gain.

3. Although he/she will regularly answer to both the Design and the Sales department and get their validation all along the development process, he/she should be able to manage the project(s) in a fairly independent way. He/she will have to conceive and design, make structural and aesthetical decisions and create the final product.
4. Independent doesn’t mean ‘loner’, so he/she should be able to work with the other members of the Design Dept. whenever a project requests it - and in full awareness of #6, par. 2nd and 3rd of course. Ahem.
5. He she will be a ‘self-maintained cutting edge pro’ in his/her field. Additionally, we do hope he/she’ll never hesitate to share the relevant part of the knowledge he/she’ll gain that way, in order for all of us to move forward and stay ahead of the curve.
6. Generally speaking, we’re indeed looking for a web developer with a strong emphasis on design, able to work in parallel with other on separate projects.

Want work with us? E-mail adriana at bigblog dot net.

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This morning I found an email from Dennis Howlett whom I finally got to meet at Les Blogs 2.0 last month, recommending something called goowy as a new email client. The invitation was to set up an account and then let him know what I think. I like Dennis and know he gets involved in interesting ventures, and the way the invite was worded I thought he was somehow involved in this project. Also, as it was an early morning email-check (having gone to be at 3am the night before), I wasn’t thinking about matters too much and proceeded with setting up the email to test it.

First of all, it’s built in Flash, which is pretty but a bit of an overkill to say the least. But perhaps mainstream users like a graphically designed interface, so be it. Not everybody has to be a fan of gmail style simplicity. I moved on.

Secondly, when you sign up, you get to import all your contacts from your main email client. I use gmail and the import was smooth and effortless. Too effortless in fact, as I was clicking through the steps, there was a line at the bottom of the (visible) screen with a box checked, which only flashed before my eyes, as I was clicking ‘continue’. It said ‘send invitation to goowy to your contacts’ or words to that effect. With horror I watched as responses (mostly out of office replies) started piling in into my new shiny inbox. You may say that I should have been more careful about proceeding to the next stage in the set up but you’d be wrong. I was setting up a simple email client, which is something I do all the time, when testing various new applications coming out of the blogosphere.

This is the real killer and the message is - You. Do. NOT. Check. Anything. Intrusive. By. Default. For. The. User!!! I am now incredibly pissed off at goowy for effectively spamming all my contacts. I did send an unhappy email to comments@goowy.com and I know I’ll be watching the fallout from this with growing unease. David appeared on my IM asking about goowy already as he received invitations from two of his contacts. He commiserated while I was fuming, offering the opinion that they don’t deserve to stay in business… And in true blogosphere fashion, he already blogged about it. I second that and may you burn in spam hell, goowy.

And now, what do I do? Send a link to this post to all my contacts? Groan.

cross-posted from Media Influencer

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If Shakespeare had been a weblogger, Romeo would find Juliet after she took poison and would have been so overcome with emotion he would have blogged about finding Juliet dead and would have taken so long that Juliet would have awoken and Romeo wouldn’t have killed himself, and they would have married and had kids and his and her weblogs… and everything.
-Shelley Powers quoted in the Carnival of Capitalists (for the week of December 26, 2005)

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Robert X. Cringley does his end of the year act when he recognises… all that is twisted and unholy in the world of high tech. Welcome to the third annual GUI Awards, for Greed, Underhandedness, and Imbecility.

I think my favourite winner is the “I’m With Stupid” Award:

… is a tie between Sony BMG Entertainment and First4Internet, which made the CD copy protection technology that turned consumer’s PCs into hackers’ playthings. Even more stupid: Sony BMG issued a “fix” that made things worse. As part of their award, executives from both firms will be locked in a soundproof vault and forced to listen to Celine Dion until their ears bleed.

Other good ones are the “Drop Those PowerPoints and Nobody Gets Hurt” Award goes to Cisco Systems (Profile, Products, Articles).

At last summer’s Black Hat conference, Cisco did everything it could to prevent security consultant Mike Lynn from spilling the beans about holes in its IOS (Internetwork Operating System) software, save for a) putting a ball gag in his mouth, or b) fixing the damned flaws.

and The “We’d Show You, But Then We’d Have to Kill You” Award, which goes to SCO

...which finally submitted evidence in its nearly three-year-old copyright infringement case against IBM (Profile, Products, Articles), but asked the judge to seal the files so only he could see them. I understand the evidence is so terrifying it has been known to drive grown men insane (although not insane enough to hold on to their SCO stock).

Good show although I hope next year won’t have that many contenders. Right, as if.

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It’s increasingly difficult to play the stealth game. Too many consumers and bloggers have high-tech surveillance tools at their disposal to out folks that try to trick the system. You can only run away from your reputation for so long in the age of bloggers.
Pete Blackshaw in Blogger Thwarts PriceRitePhoto ID Change

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I have been travelling in the US for the last week or so. It has been an interesting time for me as the experience of talking to people in America about what I do is vastly different from doing the same in the UK. To sum up, in the US people tend to first make an effort to understand what I am talking about, then ask how much? and how would you go about it technically? and what’s next? In the UK, it’s more like, hm, that’s fascinating, but… and start coming up with reasons why it’s not going to work or pointing out (correctly) that it’s going to be difficult to get paid for it.

When I set up the Big Blog Company, with Perry and David, I knew that the UK was way behind but saw it as potentially a lot more sophisticated market. With the experience of the last two years of banging the head against the wall and then going to the US, I expect to fall flat on my face any moment, as there is no wall. Go figure.

Yes, things are moving in the UK but, God, could they have been a lot further, if not for the resistance (relative to the US) to new approaches and lack of willingness to pay for knowledge. The Brits are scroungers when it comes to paying for expertise, they like to get things for free under the guise of deciding whether to buy or not. I wonder whether this is why decision making process takes six times longer than anywhere else in the developed world.

I am writing this in the States, about to get on the plane and by the time I get back, I’ll probably eat my own words. I know that there is much creativity in the UK and interesting things are and will be happening in my area of expertise. And the UK is where I have spent two years trying to get things moving, not only for blogging but for its wider applications. It would be rewarding to start seeing some serious impact. 

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For those who haven’t heard yet, there is the second Les Blogs conference planned for 5-6th December in Paris. Organised by Loic Le Meur of Six Apart for very good reasons , it promises to follow up on the concepts and blog geekfest that the first one was. And jolly nice that was.

I will be speaking on a panel about how blogging is affecting corporations together with Philippe Borremans of IBM, Belgium, Georges-Edouard Dias of L’Oreal, France, Michel-Edouard Leclerc, France and Martin Varsavsky of Fon. You can see the full programme here and the conference wiki is also worth a look. I look forward to seeing you there.

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I am seeing more and more articles like this one by Chris Cooper of CNET news.com, in fact, a deluge in the last few weeks.  First, some interesting facts:

• The latest statistics out of the Audit Bureau of Circulations find that newspaper circulation dropped 2.6 percent in the six months that ended in September.

• A new Pew survey reports that 48 percent of blog creators are under 30 and 39 percent of them have college or graduate degrees.

And then the confession of a journalist hack:

I grew up with newspapers--starting as a 13-year-old delivery boy for the Long Island Press in Queens, New York, and then in my first professional gigs. What’s more, I’ve been reading the print edition of The New York Times all my adult life and can’t imagine ever straying from that daily routine. But I’m a dinosaur, part of a shrinking generation of daily print newspaper readers who likely will disappear in a few decades. And we’re being replaced by folks who “consume media” through the use of RSS feeders, Web portals and blogs.

He spells out the frustrations that those of us who have been blogging about this for the last 2-3 years (eons in blogosphere time).

By now, I thought this old media-new media debate was history. Wishful thinking. Some of the most respected print journalists around still treat blogs as if they were lab specimens--at best interesting oddities but clearly not something to cuddle up to for very long.

In the midst of much talk and analysing of this new trend or other, in this industry or maket, there is only one trends as far as I am concerned. The individual (user, customers, readers, anything BUT consumers) is able to do things that used to be possible only for large organisations - ability to create, acquire and distribute information, knowledge and content and potentially command a large albeit distributed audience. An emergent effect of that is the ability to build experise, thought leadership, a brand even, without the backing of instituations. And although this empowerment is centered on the individual, it is very much embedded in a network and its social dimension.

But there’s a shift under way in which authority is being transferred to authors with no accountability other than to themselves and their readership. Does it matter? Should it matter? The mainstream media can look down its nose at the blogosphere, but the numbers tell a different story. More people than ever are reading blogs because of shared affinities and it’s coming at the expense of print newspapers.

There is a still a huge gap between those of us who have been saying this for years and the MSM that think they just discovered a new trend and at the current rate, they are going to be last to understand the profound changes in its own backyard.

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We don’t know who your editors are. All our lives we read stuff written by people we don’t know that’s edited by people we don’t know, who might have an agenda.
- Yahoo COO, Dan Rosensweig, addressing the traditional media, quoted in All the news that’s fit to blog

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Online Information 2005, a leading conference and exhibition for online content and information management solutions, taking place from 29 November - 1 December 2005 in London, has a blog. I have been advising on the whole day track about blogs, RSS and wikis and suggested that a blog is in order as in this day and age, there is no excuse for not having one for such purpose. 

It was intended to become a dedicated space for interaction between the speakers and the delegates. The idea is to start shifting communication online before the conference so the communication between the speakers and delegates develops ahead of the event, and in full public view. Whether we can manage that in the remaining time, it’s not certain. But it’s a good start and I am glad I was able to be part of the process. I do believe that it makes sense to start the conversation way before the actual event and make use of the ‘expensive’ time that is spent in the physical space in the most valuable way. One of those is to make sure that static information that can be exchanged or received in beforehand, does not clutter the conference itself.

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Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Lee Daley talks about how technology impacts advertising.

We’re going to have to get the consumers to opt in to the advertising experience. Interactive television, in actual fact, will probably be the greatest opportunity to overcome the threat of the PVR, but I think that consumers may end up paying for the advertising because they will opt in to content for longer, they will opt in to a truly interactive relationship through the television medium.

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David Sinclair reports in The Times:

A reluctant rock band leapt straight to the top of the charts yesterday, propelled to unexpected stardom by a DIY marketing campaign on the internet.

To music promoters they are the proof of two troubling new phenomena — acts successfully promoting themselves to the big time via a website and fans swapping their songs on internet forums.

This morning music PRs were adjusting themselves to a brave new world where emerging bands can market their product successfully before choosing a record label.

Imagine how famous they would be if they had a blog as well!

cross-posted from Media Influencer

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Jon Lund, whom I take to task (in the spirit of friendly exchange of opinions) over his interpretation of my ‘message’ at an IAA event last week in the post below, has come up with more thoughts on the subject of marketing and where it’s (or should be) heading.

Traditionally marketing has been seen as the skill of creating first Attention, then Interest, Desire and Action – as known in the AIDA model. Some ten years ago, however, something happened. Under the “I am not a consumer"-heading, “consumers” started reacting against the direct call for action – reclaiming their right to decide for themselves what to do and when to do it. In effect the Action-part af the AIDA lost much of its meaning: Hence - I’d suggest - AIDA lost its “A”, now simply crying out “AID”.

He also sees the desire of users to interact and to be part of the content production as great news.

Instead of regretting that advertising today has limited opportunities of controlling the choice of consumers, marketers today are confronted with vast opportunities of resources only waiting to be awoken in consumers. Opportunities marketers can take advantage of, by entering the new sphere of market-"conversations". Conversations – or dialogue – in the true sense of the word, where both parties are allowed to unfold and expressing themselves.

Sounds good. But why on earth would I want to interact with marketers?! If anything, I’d like to interact with the guy who know something about cars or makes wine or
or beautiful jewellery. So give people a story and a reason to interact with marketers and they just might. Or not.

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I was rather surprised to see this as a heading to a post describing my talk at the IAA Interactive European Forum last Thursday. This is what Jon Lund thinks I believe:

Is there money in blogs? Not in the advertising sense! That was the message from Adriana Cronin-Lukas, CEO at The Big Blog Company. To her, the blogosphere is a place for conversations - and a sphere where commercial messages are not really wellcome.

and

While agreeing complety with Adriana that corporate blogs gives great opportuinies for establishing a conversation with customers, and poses great threats as well if you havn’t grasped the basic idea, I’m not really comfortable with the “this is business and this is personal conversation” thing, that seems to run underneath Adrianas presentation.

Hm, I can attest that this is not my message. I’d like to turn tables on this interpretation of my argument. Jon’s distinction between business and personal conversation is precisely the kind of false dichotomy that I am fighting. As far as I am concerned that there should be no ‘commercial messages’ in the world where the eyeball can turn them off and even talk back the ‘messages’ are intrusive and annoying. Markets are conversations.

So blogs are ideal for marketing, but the kind that appears to leave the advertising and marketing industry out of the loop. This is because they are the one who perpetuate the distinction between ‘personal’ and ‘commercial’, both concepts needed a closer examination anyway. Very few of the blogs I read for my work are personal, in fact, I can’t think of any really. But all of them have a human authentic voice, simply because they are written by a human being not trying to be a brand or a commercial message. There is a distinction between human, personal and intimate and you can have a formal interaction with a human being, without the edifice of a commercial ‘constructed’ identity. None of this is new, again Cluetrain Manifesto has made this point ad nauseam.

As for advertising on blogs, I never said that this should not be done. True, I do not like it but at the same time I do not begrudge the revenue bloggers who attract large audiences can get from the eyeballs. Who am I to tell them how to interact with their audience?! What I usually point out though, is that ads are a channel format, designed to be produced as some content, packaged and then pushed through a pipeline directed at the appropriate demographic of eyeballs. Blogs are a network format, the content is not finished or packaged and they are connected creatures that distribute information not via pipelines and channels but via many-to-many and one-to-one overlapping networks. So I merely point out the clash and try to give a hint to advertisers that perhaps the best way to approach the blogosphere is not to litter it with the blog equivalent of banner ads.

One thing I noticed about the advertising and marketing industry is the sense of detachment on their part from the ‘consumer’. (I have started to use the word ‘audience’ where they talk about ‘consumers’ to try to undermine this but it’s a long slog.) Hence the use of the word consumer-generate media - it seems that as long as it’s got the ‘consumer’ bit in it, it can be categories and therefore it’s not threatening. I am remined of one of my favourite quotes.

That’s the big thing for me with advertising. There’s something really creepy - in a dirty trenchcoat and mismatched socks way - about people who are willing to expertly manipulate others, but not come talk to them as though they were human.

The recent Cillit Bang affair certainly confirms that. My message to the audience at IAA event was that there is a way forward but they have to respect the audience, the medium and the etiquette. Just like with any social interaction that you participate in.

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Communities Dominate Brands could be mistaken for a book which is just about the shape of things to come. And whilst it does indeed have a lot to say about the future, the really interesting thing about this book is that it is about the reality of brands and markets right now in 2005.

The fact much of what Tomi and Alan have to say is controversial and counter-intuitive to branding strategists and marketing insiders is just a measure of the seismic nature of the changes being wrought by the ‘Connected Revolution’.  The world is not just changing, it has already changed and many of the axioms and practices which underpin how entire industries operate are now little more than a form of ‘phantom limb syndrome’.

This book is not just an essay about understanding how the convergence of many technologies has changed everything, it is nothing less than a survival guide which I would urge people in businesses of all sizes to read from cover to cover if they want prosper in a world in which the balance of power on so many levels has shifted in favour of the digitally empowered individual and the affinity groups they form. These communities really do dominate brands.  Get used to it.

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Reading this article in MediaPost made me exclaim - They never learn, do they!

Podcasting, simply put, is just another way to distribute content to consumers. As with all new digital sub-channels, the hype for podcasting can be overwhelming.

Perhaps I am still on the roll from the Cillit Bang affair, but what is it about the media types that they have to use such langague?

We are embracing the change and seeking viable new ways to reach and influence these consumers…

... the golden opportunity for marketers - the opportunity to deepen relationships between consumers and your brand or product.

Deepen relationship between consumers and a product?! People do not usually have relationships with inanimate objects (unless it’s computers, obviously, or other items around which many a ‘premium content’ website has been built) but with other people (or their pets). One can talk about a following, enthusiasts or fans etc but do not pretend that I am ‘relating’ to a brand or a product, especially one that thinks of me as a consumer.

My gripe is not just about the choice of words such as content, consumers, ‘reach and influence’, consume content etc, but about the original point behind the article - looking how to insert advertising in podcasts, although the conclusion gives us breathing space before there will be ads in podcasts.

Although podcasts do represent great opportunities for marketers to deepen relationships with consumers, they do not yet represent viable advertising opportunities for most. Ads within podcasts are innately low engagement ads, even less so than pre-roll and in-stream audio or video. The net result is that the brand impact is more passive than that of other, more engaging forms of digital media.

Obviously engagement in adspeak stands for I push something at you that you can click on, basically meaning the same as interactive that has got worn out about 5 years ago.

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Tom receives an apology from the team who handle Cillit Bang, although he wasn’t sure at first as the email domain is different. But then the first commenter pointed out it is from a PR agency specialising in handling PR crisis. Marvellous!.

He posts in full on his blog. Let me count the ways that raise my heckles about it.

The posting on 30th September was unplanned and an error of judgement and we unequivocally apologise for this. We recognise that it was inappropriate in context.

So the ‘posting’ was unplanned. Does that mean that every posting a brand would use on its blog (fictional or real) has to be planned?! Whatever happened to markets are conversation… And in any case, the ‘error of judgement’ happened in a comment on Tom’s blog, not in a posting. But let’s not dwell on detail when we have bigger fish to fry.

The Barry Scott character has appeared in a number of spoof websites and weblogs, created by people unconnected to the Reckitt Benckiser brand. The weblog posting on your site was not endorsed by Reckitt Benckiser or any of the advertising agencies that are mentioned and was a one off error from which lessons have been learnt. We are sorry for any offence it has unwittingly caused.

Oh dear. So to quote, Jamie, another commenter (some good stuff in Tom’s comments section):

The say it was an error of judgement, it wasn’t done by them, and they’ve learnt lessons.

We recognise that it was inappropriate in context.

I’d ask them to explain in which context it would be appropriate - and for a years supply of cleaning products.

I think I can follow Jamie’s logic just fine - this seems like an old PR habit of never saying sorry, with the new mantra ‘admit you are wrong’ and the world will forgive you. Or something. Either way, it’s not pretty communicated in a robot-like style.

And finally, they offer a personal apology, which is good, so why is the email signed by “Cillit Bang Team”, not by a name of the person writing the apology?

And really finally, let’s not forget the whole issue with fake blog characters and clumsy attempts by advertising/marketing/branding/PR companies trying to control this ‘blog thing’, shall we?

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Tom Coates on a new low for marketers, brands and advertising agencies in their clumsy attempts to co-opt the blogosphere for their ‘targetted campaigns’.

A ‘viral marketer’ used Tom’s post about his estranged father, a deeply personal topic, to leave ‘personal’ and sympathetic comment under the name of one Barry Scott. Nice, apart from the fact that Barry Scott is a fake character from a blog called Barry Scott Here (no google juice for that blog but Tom links to him in his post), a marketing vehicle for Cillit Bang products. In the words of Jon Stewart, one could say: It was definitely viral, I felt nauseous afterwards. Tom has done some good detective work, digging out names such as Young & Rubicam, Partners J. Walter Thompson, Reckitt Benckiser.

There are some pretty damning comments as well. The brand gets it, the industry gets it:

On one level it’s simply an addition to the constant irratation of comment spam. On another it just adds to the continuing irritation of advertising in general leeching off communities (or in adspeak, target groups) to market products that by their very nature are tired and lacking in imagination and forward thinking - I don’t have the facts but I can imagine that this particular product won’t go on to win any environmental awards. And no, their ads are not ironic, they’re just annoying. And that’s plain and simple annoying, not even discuss it down the pub annoying.

And…

Holy crap. This is just insane. At what point does it seem like anything resembling a good idea to get your brand associated with an apparent willingness to make capital like this? If it isn’t somebody spoofing, somebody has really lost control of their marketing plan.

Another commenter, Will Rowan sums it up well:

All “Barry” has done is brought the same ethics as work just fine in other marcomms channels, and used them online. Where, imho, they don’t work. At all. You need to be a whole lot smarter than this to make a commercial blog work for your brand.

You can see the blogosphere fall-out here. Also, Niall Cook has a punchy message:

Let this be a lesson to anyone who thinks that fake blogs can be used as a front to engage with the rest of the blogosphere.

They can’t. Period.

And a useful graph to show to those who needs to see the damage. There is much I need to add to this, other than I am not surprised by this. In the last six months I have been approached by several (large) advertising and media agencies to talk to them about blogs for their clients and very quickly concluded that they are simply not my market. There is nothing that will jerk most of them out of their, we-are-the-ministry-of-fun-co-opting-the-next-’cool’-thing-and-selling-it-to-clients-for-much-money attitude. Nowadays, I just tell them that my aim is to tell their clients how to do this for themselves, with authentic voice, for a fraction of their budgets. If they don’t balk, then we talk.