Uneven Distribution.

I prefer a bit of chaos.

July 21st, 2010

A few people today linked me to this video on Flipboard. It’s the next big thing, the ‘reason I finally want an iPad’.

But I’ve got a problem with it. And actually, I have a problem with almost all of these 3rd generation social apps.*

For the guy in the video, I’m sure that’s a totally rad app. It pulls in all the interesting content from his super interesting friends. And when he runs out of super interesting content from his super interesting friends, he can start browsing the broader app content, like finding out all the news about what amazing thing Apple is doing next. He can even share content back out to his amazing friends!

But I don’t know anyone like that guy in the video. People have boring friends, and exciting friends. They have different social circles, and stuff is shared differently in those social circles. Every person that I’m connected to on any social network participates at a different rate, in a different way. But I know who, and what, is important to me.

Social networks online are just like social networks offline. They’re utterly chaotic, unpredictable, disorganised, and constantly changing shape. And much of the innovation that’s happening in social media at the moment seems to be around attempting to control that chaos. This control comes from creating code that apparently analyses and optimises my connections and their shared content, presenting me with the sterilised, iPad-friendly view of my world.

Admittedly, I’ll be giving Flipboard a go. But the next awesome thing in social media for me, won’t be about streamlining, simplifying or automating. I’m not sure what it will be, but lately I’ve been feeling that perhaps, deep down, I’d prefer a little bit of oldschool chaos.

* I just made that term up, admittedly. But if you think about it, the simple act of connecting online was the 1st generation social apps (email, IRC, IM). 2nd generation apps then, were platforms that utilised the social graph to make connections and share content (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter). 3rd generation social apps then, are the layers that are being built to sit over the top of the 2nd generation. There’s a general concensus that no one wants to re-build their social network connections, so all 3rd generation social apps are simply layering on top. Most are trying to simplify, or somehow automate discovery.

Ad:Tech session: Your Campaign is Irrelevant.

March 17th, 2010

I just finished up my session at Ad:Tech. It was a great session with Dale Cohen from Bigpond, Julian Peterson of TimeOut, and moderated by Tony Palmer of C4. Our topic was “Your Campaign is Irrelevant”, and we framed the discussion around five key questions. We didn’t want this to be a bunch of guys sitting around agreeing with each other, so we all purposely took a fairly radical stance to flare up a bit of debate. I put together a few notes before the session, so thought I’d post them up here for a bit of discussion. Obviously they’re not fully formed ideas, so apologies for not fleshing them out a bit more.

1. Do marketers take advantage of publishers deep knowledge of their audience to ensure their campaign is relevant?

Where once the broadcasters, media and creative didn’t need to share the same insights (because they really didn’t need to), we now should. And as a creative agency, it usually feels a long way between us and the publishers.

We’re getting better at leveraging the knowledge about audiences. Either through closer relationships with our media agencies, or just by sidestepping them altogether and working closely with publishers.

I want to be wary of accepting that publishers actually have such deep knowledge as well. Yes they have audience data, but that doesn’t mean it’s accurate. Without the feedback mechanisms inherent in social technology, publishers need to push forward on getting better and better at knowing their audience.

The onus should not on creative agencies to be pushing publishers (and media) to help us leverage this knowledge. Publishers should be fighting to stay relevant, as digital progresses we have more and more options for how to answer a client’s brief that don’t involve traditional paid media.

2. Are you wasting your money by driving irrelevant traffic to crap websites?

The days of cookie cutter digital strategy are well and truly over. Most digital marketers now are clear about their goals, which has helped overcome the days of tumbleweed microsites.

Platforms are now a key outcome of a campaign, and the reason ‘campaign thinking’ needs to die. Long term platforms are about building an audience for engagement. On this point I’m not sure the value that publisher partnerships really provide. We can build our own platforms or utilise existing ones that aren’t campaign-timed, but I’m yet to see a publisher offer a great solution for ongoing engagement post-campaign.

It’s about moving from interruption based to interaction based. Campaigns running through traditional online models just don’t do this. Publishers offer the same old display formats, and they’re interruption based. Even the innovation evident in the past 12 months has simply increased interuption.

3. So what happens when your campaign is over?

If it’s a publisher partnership, you’ve got nothing. We shouldn’t be ending campaigns, simply changing the frequency or type of communication. Every brand needs to be always on, because the consumer is always there. This is as much a client issue as anything else, but it’s the role of all stakeholders to make this happen.

At this point of the conversation I gave the example of Best Job in The World being a failure in this respect. As I said it I could just picture the comments being taken utterly out of context, but thought it was a point worth making.

With the benefit of hindsight, Tourism Queensland didn’t leverage the huge audience they had anywhere near as well as they could have. They didn’t create a platform to utilise once the campaign was over. The idea could have expanded into other markets (Best Job in Brazil), or more likely just get more granular (Best Pub in the World, Best Beach in the World, Best View in the World).

4. Will brands become publishers and will publishers become irrelevant?

The consumer doesn’t care who the publisher is. So why would I waste money putting my brand on your website when I can just build my own destination? The one answer to that is that brands aren’t willing to outfail each other. Platforms like the ones P&G and Disney own were most often acquired once they had reached a critical mass. For every BabyCentre that gets acquired by a multinational, there’s a hundred similar sites that have failed.

Again, publishers need to be fighting to stay relevant, providing real and useful data about their audience, and offering real value.

The description of a publisher needs to change. Publishers as they stand will become irrelevant, and in their place creative agencies will be leveraging Foursquare or Hulu or other location/social based services. As long as publishers think they are simply competing with other large content providers, they aren’t playing in the right field.

Publishers have their audience because of content. That content is enabled because advertisers put  ads on there. If the publishers can’t move with technology, they will become irrelevant.

5. Is technology the answer to the next big idea?

Technology isn’t the answer, but it is crucial for any big idea to succeed.

You can get caught up in technology, otherwise you will end up creating a great idea that is only relevant and works for 5% of the country. Technology shouldn’t be used until it has reached the level of habit within the audience. Not even ubiquity, but habit.

As a creative agency, we’ve stopped making ads and started solving problems. Technology is often at the heart of this, and this is the reason that everyone involved in this process (creative and media agencies, publishers and clients) all need to be working together better and innovating together.