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Media Hacking
Social Media, communications and how the game is changing
Clueless marketing
Tom Hespos discuss another member of the Coalition of the Clueless:
One of the challenges I face in pitching Conversational Marketing to clients is the notion of finding bloggers who will take up the task of blogging about the client’s business. Paramount is lucky to find not one, but several. And what does it do? Piss one off to the point of getting two key ones (and probably more to follow) to boycott coverage of Paramount’s upcoming (Name of Movie Removed by SB) flick.
Its ironic that they didn’t learn from LOTR (including some of their mistakes).
When you engage a community, especially a leader in a community, you strengthen the ties between yourself and that tribe/culture/group/pod/whatever. Would it hurt to seed this guy with some behind the scenes stuff (photos, maybe a visit to the set, a frickin tshirt?). Those photos were going to get out there anyway. So instead of someone who thinks enough of your crap to write about it and drive FREE PR, you piss off a whole bunch of people.
I disagree with Tom that the marketers at Paramount dont get it. I have had, lots of clients who get-it. I bet the guys and gals at Paramount who are responsible for promoting this movie (which I will not mention to avoid giving them any google-love) got up this morning, saw the news and vomited all over their Wheaties.
I have a theory that every big organization (corporation, non-profit, federal agency) has a guy I call Oscar. Sometimes he is in legal, sometimes marketing, sometimes PR. Oscar is the guy who kills good ideas from the internal and agency folks. He is the guy who sends an email with one line “this wont work – lets go with what we know”. Oscar gets paid to make sure things happen, not innovate. Oscar is the champion of the status quo. He is dismissive of the ‘kids’ (referring to the 20-something to 80-somethings who blog, visit these sites, proudly call themselves fan-boys, etc). Oscar sucks.
Paramount (thanks to Oscar) is taking us for granted because, even if they shut him down, his audience will see the movie anyway.
Maybe even grab a bittorrent of it. 🙂
Exxxxccccceeeeleent
Civility and Responsibility in the conversation
I will be posting a consolidated wrap-up of Gnomedex 2006 later (as soon as I can get links to the mp3 and video files for the conference) but for now…
2 things have happened post-gnomedex that need to be pointed out above all the news (how big Second Life is getting) and non-news (the discussion over Sen Edwards going to Gnomedex).
1. Dave and Blake and Us and Firefox and Gnomedex
During Blake‘s discussion on the bottom-up marketing of Firefox on Saturday, Dave asked a great question about what Mozilla would do to represent/support/show the love to users. Blake was taken aback, Dave pressed the issue, the crowd got snippy and disagreed with Dave with a couple of rounds of applause (which I think was against the rules). The discussion topic was how they spread Firefox through the community. Blake should have laid down the law (like Niall did at Bloggercon the weekend before) as the discussion leader and continued talking about Firefox marketing. Instead there was some energy-sapping back and forth between Dave and Blake and the crowd and it ended on a down note (we didnt get to spend all of the limited discussion time on FF marketing).
Dave talks today about how he and Blake kept the conversation going.
Anyway, the tale has a happy ending, imho. We’re going to work on this stuff, to help make Firefox stronger, and in the process make the users stronger, to set an example for how software can be responsive to the needs of the users.
There was miscommunication all around (Dave, Blake, Us) – but it is being addressed. This is an indirect example of Mike Arrington’s discussion at Bloggercon about civility in the blogosphere. They are working it out. I think it would have been great if Blake kept us on track with his discussion and then there was an immediate breakout discussion to discuss Dave’s question (a suggestion I am making in my freedback to CP on this years Gnomedex). Kudos to Dave and Blake keeping the conversation going (instead of festering or letting a flamewar start).
2. Scoble Banned From Second Life.
So Robert Scoble, ex-Microsoft geek blogger and new member of the Podtech team, was recording a podcast during the lunch break on Day 1 of Gnomedex in the Bay room. (I was having lunch with some guys from McGraw Hill, Yahoo, MS, and USTA at the time). During Scoble’s podcast, his son was building some objects in Second Life. Scoble is a huge fan of Second Life and has blogged and podcasted about it frequently (see TWIT or Scoble‘s blog).
Now in the past the guys from Linden Labs have let Scoble know that kids under 18 are not allowed in the main part of SL. He has let his son use his account (under his supervision) in the past. There is a Second Life for 13-17 year olds, but it is moderated for content (the main part of SL has areas with content and action that could best be described as adults-only). Linden has the rules in place because of the threats of lawsuits.
So while his son was using Scobles account during the podcast, Beth from SL basically let them know they were in trouble and Scoble’s account was going to be cancelled (he had been warned before).
What did Scoble do? Did he complain? Did he start a “boycott SL”? Did he give Beth crap for calling him on it?
Nope – he recorded a discussion with her immediately after his podcast finished. Then he blogged the following:
Anyway, it’s a good lesson for Patrick to learn. There are consequences for breaking the rules. “It’s your fault,” Patrick just said, in defense. I did tell him to do it on stage. But, even that’s a good lesson for him to learn. If his friends tell him to break a real law, that won’t be an excuse in front of the judge.
Maryam tells him “that’s a lesson for you, Daddy’s not always right.”
No, I’m not. So, now what? We have to apologize to Linden Labs and appeal their decision and promise not to break the rules anymore.
He didn’t blame Linden Labs. He didn’t cry or complain. He got caught, discussed it with the crowd (and Beth), and admitted he screwed up (publicly). Scoble has invested tons of personal capital in Second Life (through his use of the service and unpaid evangelism) as well as paying over $100 bucks for objects within the second life environment. He stood up and admitted he made a mistake – setting a great example in the process.
Take-aways?
- Sometimes the blogosphere is less of a conversation and more like a really big and loud family dinner (where not everyone in the family gets along, or listens and someone screwed up and sat aunt Sally next to uncle Jimmy)
- Cool people are working out issues and working on new things
- SL has rules and enforces them
- Personal responsibility isn’t dead (especially at the Scoble house).
Gnomedex – Ethan
boundaries between fans and presentation/music
How do fans interact
how to give power back
2 spaces – stage and audience space – existed since greek times
power of fan, power of audience
participatory culture
REM – SD 2003 – estab norms of space
fans determin the set list
bands control over the audience becomes complicated
audience organzied by another algo – profiles in range of clusters to go see who to go meet
discussion board going on thru sms
henry jenkins – aprticipatory cultuere
where there is no diff fro mthe fan and the band
hier of control breaking – artifacts of culture (Mp3s movies) and discourse (board, blogs) – never happened before
implications of media give more weght to what is being said
settled in their own hierarchies
author subj to the qual or representation in the internet age
onus of authoritative voice – ceases for content providers and now sits with the audience
fleetwood mac – end to end didnt listen to users
now – producers and consumers are a lot closer
headautomatica.com
diff between consume an dproduce has been reduced and the barriers are completely gone
A Gnomedex post without a title
social discovery
social and information
what can i learn from my friends
ltting friends share knowledge with one abnnother
Gnomedex – Steve Gilmor
Attention – getting thru the pile of bullshit and getting to what has meaning
will make an announcement about something in the attention arena – will move forward now
attention records – records clickstream – contribute it to hd or service of choise
3 or 4 of them out there
omidyar network funded – gilmore took opp to resign and as pres to start up gesturebank
root.net – root markets – and gesturebank teaming to create something that inc. – the attention operating system
we own our info – period
users in control
any pub who fights it will be demolished
ask has resp to its clients and customers – but if they donw
an open pool of metadata
give someone who contributes the ability to leverage that info
driver of attention economy is affinity groups
blogosphere is an affinity group – some pol, some tech, etc
within that – google and all are already monetizing
how do you make money ? choice? open or closed – not sure that works (sean)
page view model is being replaced
every lead is crap
aarp has cred because of the size of its userbase – its affinity group
we have a lot of clout in this environment
Gnomedex – Marc Canter
Open Standards how do we evolve – what is a standard – how do we acknowledge super geek – innercore nerds influence early adopters have something to do with the software – build influence RSS day ackn the fact that RSS was open standard that is why we are here so with rss what we do withother things not about big or small – about open and close 80s – apple vs MS – who are you aligned with GYMA (Google, Yahoo, MS, AOL and Fox)
the power is with us
gnomedex is inncore nerds
OPEN ID
cant argue against open or closed
what should be sanitized – the line drawn for services that are maintained for their own
where do we share features and call our own
every vendor needs way to differentiate
for the end users – at what point is it appropriate to be standards based, and yet at what point can we be unique to differentiate
getting in and out – portability for my data
FOAF – friend of a friend – file format or data struct
format – sharing standards but then stealing it
calendars – how to get the standards to be simple to integrate – standards comm keep adding features
real value in the data or the services?
ecopsystems and portals/ways to make money – business model for what they want to do
no proprietary file format – using standards – if people care join cal connect .org
attention and monetizing, and management – wittness in 6 months the evolution of the attention standard – makingthings available in attention.xml right?
attention economy – next big thing
for marc all about open standards
canter wants pickets when people close things up
being closed is the opposite of open
social capital person invewsts in friendships are thiers – by myspace not supporting export delet that –
what about publishers?
canter – provide compelling experiences to users
exp around it – digital lifestyle aggg – portal – if 5 pubs send out the same stuff
how do you make the economic case – do something with the open standards?
show how elegantly to move
all about the end user experience
if your clients are in the chess game – see 5, 7, 12, 25 moves ahead
inc leverage game off y and a saying they want to be open, MS swaying, google throuwing shit in the wind
giant dinos – innovative small companies are pushing process forward
open standards the bridges and causeways that interconnect these islands
80s – sw corp would have mult prod, mult features – during the bubble – all told it was ok to go pub with 1 or 2 fetures
hack up a few features – lots of small products, not products, small sets of features – standards to interconnect the pieces off the puzzle – making archipelagos –
room for small guys and we are waiting for the big guys to crush us
GNomedex – Steve Rubell
How we can all become part of the conversation – because some companies are afraid of the conversation world is flat – value created thru collab and connecting bloggers, podcasters, startups – how to connect
Jim Podcasting news – mktg goes from speaking to an audience to listeneing
How does PR and Marketing speak better?
folks – trarget better
pubs – dont complain so much
ultimately they want to build a relationship – build value
we knw we have to think about motivations and what you want – diff thoughts are valueable
honest conversation – no marketing hacks – sunshine up ass – let people talk to folks at the company
Southwest is doing it right
Passionate about Toilet Paper
pARTICIPATion – utility vs passion
PR people think advertising is busted
control is the universal lang all marketers speak
not us vs them
cant just push ideas – many years of pushing and pushin on consumers
tod cochrane (geek news central) – talks to marketing folks and works with sponsires – some getit and some dont
ongoing battle
losen up and let us talk
2 points – wrner – no one is passionate about toilet paper – look at reviews for tp in amazon – people are passionate about everything
advertising in the way of high quality content
experiment – some time in the past amazon did tv ads – decided tv costs a ton of money
giving money back to customers is more effective
get involved in marketing
job search engine – talk to bloggers to judge the products – think about marketing as their program
hacking marketing and getting people in the process
character blogs are crappy
way to hide behind a genuine conversation
marketers need to learn about the communites they are entering
Gnomedex John Edwards
Here to meet and listen to us
way to bring whole country in and engage
where we need to go – how do we make tech beneficial
strong on net neutrality
what we are doing is important – selfishly to the political process
changes we are clreating have potential to change democracy
meaningful dialog – potential
belives what we are doing is important
where are we today – where going – how do we manage how we go forward
Wisdom of Crowds – need to read it James Surweicki
red diaper baby – all about pols with balls
Edwards – we (Dems) need to have balls and stand for something
Tom from Pandora – need to have a human voice –
Edwards – conditioned that normal real authentic needs you to shed the conditioning – safe zone – plastic, say the safe things over and over
next pres of the US will most likely to be the cand who doesnt sound like a POL
Shannon – focus on national things
strikes that dems if they want to be successful they gotta focus local
how do you as Pol create vibrant local bases
digital bedouins – how do they get and keep engaged
republicans do a good job with language – Framing – George Lakoff
presidential elections – not driven by language
people who decide election – its all about moderation
Gnomedex 2006 – Dave Dederer
Guitarist and vocalist for THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES
Now doing PR for non-profits (Pyramid communications)
With Guitar – Playing some velvet underground (started with Kum-Bay-Ya)
Junkies skulking in the shadows – like web2.0 business – lots of money but no clear way to do it
quiick sketch
explain business model in clear manner
draw a contrast from business to music business
manager – 20-25%
business manager – 20%
lawyer 5%
publicist – 4k per month
marketing – 4k/mo
touring – easiet to control revenue
revenues, corporate gigs
your recordings
publishing income (writing the songs)mechanical royalties, folio publishing
performance income
merchandise – anything not music – large part of profit off of merch
integrating advertisers into site (not just cpm) – dogster and catster.com
Dave – iTunes is hugely successful for them
notin the music business anymore – music is a piece of it
what will bridge the gap
hands on with marekting and promotion
how can we help music people get it – whats the end game?
Shannon – music is microcommunity world
small passionate communites that are not geo but cenereed on passion
podcast hotel
Corey from IODA – big deal for mech publishing
dist to ituenss napster rhapsody
buy links with music file on the blog post – IODA pushes it through promonet
eventful – pushing fans and artists together
digital music distro – live performance and events
increase upside for artists
nobody wants to put their balls into one vice
apple vert integrated – transititonal step
music – online – is at 1/2 % of potential
music – is it a democratized industry
Warner Bros guy – relationship with artists can be closer
net – better platform for fanaticism
great session