What we’re good at

If I stop and think for a minute about the things that I’m really good at, it gives me a valuable insight about how to succeed in startup land. I’ve generally spent countless hours failing again and again. The two things I do well (Surfing and Public speaking) I’ve invested thousands of hours into – I’ve had wipe outs galore…. been hurt (Surfing) and embarrassed (public speaking) but took the lessons and tried again – from the start. Each learning involved a new event to iterate from – rather than fixing the broken one in action.

The problem with startups is that we don’t fail as quick. A quick failure might take a year or two. So our learning curve is very slow. The more I think about it, the more I think we need to have the guts to shut up shop and start again. It feels like we should think in weeks or months rather than years. Or maybe have 3 month windows to determine startup traction. Especially the web based ones, where the world moves in triple time.

I’m not saying this is true for all startups, it’s just what I’m thinking lately. It reminds me of some of the real big winners in web land. And they all won very very quickly…. This blog post isn’t so much an answer… but more a postulation that staying the course might not be the right path in technology fields.

Over to you.

Theatre at Transaction – Der Raum

Recently I ended up at a bar late at night. It’s a revered place called De Raum. It’s been well covered on the web so I’m not going to give a review of it here. What I will do instead is tell you the story of the ‘Teachers Reserve’. And how this business justifies an ultra price premium.

I asked the bar tender for something sweet, to help take the edge off after a heavy day – something night cap-ish. He said;

“I know just the thing. The Teachers Reserve. For those moments when you’ve done all you can, when the days been hard, and it’s time to reflect, quietly and possibly have a conversation in your own head. It’s not exactly social, but poignant.”

He then made up the drink and presented it in a manner which will make sense when you see the photo essay below. He furtively passed me the book, while he looked in the other direction – as if to say: ‘let this be our little secret’.

Classic theatre at transaction. I was delighted, and I didn’t mind paying the $25 for it.

Pop culture knowledge

Pop culture knowledge used to be about knowing who was atop of the leader board:

1. the top of the billboard chart
2. the number 1 movie
3. the best selling pair of jeans
4. the best selling athletic shoe
5. the best picture at the Academy awards
6. the most popular celebrity endorser
7. … popularity contest X

This knowledge was a quick reference asset. It was worth keeping tabs on.

Pop culture has changed.

Now it’s about knowing what’s coming next. Knowing who’s already here is of little value. Anyone can find that out in a moments notice, it’s public and omnipresent on the web. Knowing who or what will be hot 6 months from now is where the currency is.  And that takes constant assessment and curation of the content. That is an art in itself.

If money didn’t exist

If money didn’t exist what would we do differently? Let me first remind us what this would mean.

In this imaginary moneyless it would mean: That we all had enough to eat. That we all had a place to live. That we all have equal access to healthcare and education. That we wouldn’t get paid for our work. That no-one gets paid for the work they do, in dollars at least.

It means that we do in during the day has an entirely different perspective. In this imaginary world it make sense that we choose our line of work carefully. The work itself, becomes the thing that matters.

It turns out that this is also the best approach for a world that does actually have money.

60 seconds on the web

The world moves fast. When we we’re unconnected the speed of change went unnoticed. Now that we all have digital footprints, we can track all that happens. This amazing and statistically rich infographic is solid reminder of the world we live in. It’s also very cool that most of these business are startups that aren’t even teenagers yet. I’ve pulled out the numbers and got the pic below.

60 seconds on the web:

• 12,000+ new ads posted on Craigslist
• 370,000+ minutes of voice calls on Skype
• 98,000+ tweets
• 320+ new twitter accounts
• 100+ new Linkedin accounts
• 6,600+ photos uploaded to Flickr
• 50+ wordpress CMS downloads & 125+ plugins
• 695,000 facebook status updates, 80,000 wall posts and 510,040 comments
• 1,700 firefox downloads
• 694,445 google searches
• 168 million emails sent (of which 92% is spam)
• 60+ new blogs & 1500+ new blog posts
• 70+ new domains are registered
• 600+ new Youtube videos are uploaded. 25+ hours in duration
• 150+ questions are asked in Question forums
• 13,000+ iPhone apps are downloaded
• 20,000 new posts on Tumblr.
• I new definition added to Urban Dictionary 
• 1,600+ reads on Scribd.

And here is what it looks like:

Creative & Media agency landscape

I was recently asked some questions about changes afoot in the creative, technology and media space. I provide a written response to specific questions and so thought it was worth sharing here on startup blog. Would love to hear your thoughts and retorts.  Steve.

Q1: Who is better positioned for the future – creative agencies or media agencies?

Neither creative nor media agencies are better placed for the future in the new digital world. The reality is it is up for grabs for those who innovate more strongly around it. In reality we’ll probably see the most innovative media and creative shops bubble up to the top. It won’t be one cohort versus another – it’s more a race for the future and the winners will be those who resource around it the best. One of the interesting factors is that both media and creative agencies share the same clients, so the opportunity to win in the space is pretty much equal. Neither has a real advantage over the other. One thing that may occur is that both starting to enter each other’s space. We’ve already seen this in other areas influenced by technology and we need to learn from it: computer companies entering phones (Apple), web companies entering hardware (Google), software / web are entering music. So it is all up for grabs. When any industry goes through a dramatic change – who serves which markets usually changes as well. Who would have thought that Apple would be the world biggest music retailer today back in 1999?

The planning model of media buying and creative development is very quickly converging and moving to much shorter, and sometimes ‘immediate’, timelines. So they can’t live on islands – they either need to collaborate much more closely, or even start doing each others role. Probably the later. The market now demands it.

One thing is for sure, it is an area that we need to invest in the human capital to win in the space – it’s different to the old days in pitching for business, which used to be win the pitch, then gather the resources. Now we need to have the resources on hand, with proof of expertise or we can’t win the pitch.

Q2: How is social community management being handled within the creative agencies?

This is an interesting question. Often we create and curate the community conversation for the brands for which we work. But there is an interesting dilemma, in that managing a community requires and deep understanding of the real issues in the actual business, and the ability to answer information / requests etc in real time. This then creates an imperative on social media management: either the agency needs to be totally entrusted as part of the client’s company (seen as a total team member to speak on their behalf) or it won’t be effective. The old model of creating communications for the brand / company is being challenged because of the ‘real time’ element needed. We are now seeing a change, we (the agency) are ‘teaching’ the client how to operate in the social media environment – so that they can do it themselves. The rules and tools keep changing, so great agencies need to constantly educate their clients how to play in the space, who are often too busy dealing with their business issues to be at the forefront of thinking in this arena.  The agency is the thought leader in social / digital thinking and passes that on so that the client can engage the community with the ‘inside information’ that they need. Some of the best examples of this include the use of Twitter accounts by brands which are managed by internal ‘Community Managers’ – which is the fastest growing role in client side marketing departments. In fact, the best examples of social community engagement come from startups. They aren’t scared of their customers and the truth like big companies are. Big companies need to learn from the small and nimble when it comes to new media best practice.

Q3: With regards to security, how will recent attacks against Google, Sony, and Epsilon impact the industry? Is encoding enough or do we have to de-couple data warehouses and the Internet?

This is interesting, because in a pre-digital world security issues are usually isolated geographically. For the first time in history, we see wide reaching implications of security breaches. I think we do need to see more de-coupling of data storage and the internet – but more importantly than that we need governments to speed up the legislation process and take ‘data crime’ more seriously. We need to see evidence in market of governments and global representative bodies taking punitive measures against security breaches and hacking. We also need to see a more serious effort from governments to ensure companies protect user data better.

In some ways this a cultural shift required by governments and business. It’s akin to the challenge faced by woman in the workforce in the 1970′s and racial equality some years before that. We need to redefine how to protect people, privacy and security both culturally and legislatively.

Q4: Innovation is outpacing industry and education. Where will the next generation of marketing professionals come from?

No doubt education is struggling to keep up with the rate of change. We’ve seen Harvard dropouts re-define our future more than once – initially with the desktop computer revolution, and now with the social connection revolution. So it’s clear the system needs revised. The current education system is designed for the industrial era (which is coming to a close). Current students will be competing for jobs that don’t exist yet so it’s very hard to structure education around this. Once thing for sure is that the system needs to change structurally – especially in the later years of education. In a mobile world our children don’t need to remember anything. So education must change from memory to creativity. We’ve outsourced data storage the the microchip and the web. Education needs to be about linking seemingly disparate ideas to create new meaning and commercial solutions, regardless of the industry we work in. Education needs to be less linear, and more like the mashups we see in emerging startups and the technology field. It’s hard to learn from tools like text books which have long lead times – and educators need to redefine the tools of education, like we’ve seen with TED talks, live stream interactive educational sessions – utilising fast tools to educate. We need more cross fertilised thinking across disciplines.

The net result of all this is that I think more marketing professionals will emerge from non traditional communications areas. Like startups, technology, biology and finance.

Q5: As media agencies rush to launch ad exchange platforms and DSPs, what will happen to the traditional agency models of yesterday?  What will exchanges do to the digital agency’s bottom line?

One thing for sure is that there will be less wastage than what we have seen in traditional media. Instead of using demographic data to guess who our audience is – we move to actual data so we communicate with our exact audience. Exchanges which help us do this (both from new media, like Google & Facebook, to digital and media agencies) will improve profitability for everyone. If anything it will put an emphasis again on creative and remove the focus and excess expenditure on media as part of the advertising and promotion mix of clients. If clients can use things like DSPs and exchanges to communicate directly with their audience, more money is available for creative development and specific messages. We can move from a macro campaign emphasis to a micro-effort for sub segments and create messages with more meaning.

Q6: Engagement – Once you have identified your target audience what then?  What makes your marketing strategies effective and why.

I think the major shift is that once we used to “inform and persuade” – now “converse and solve”. What brands need to do is have an open conversation with their audience, and co-create the solutions with them. Instead of working in the bunker on a new launch, and conducting market research it’s going to be more about crowd sourcing and getting brand enthusiasts to become evangelists and part of the design process. Consumers need to be engaged much earlier in the process – while new services and products and being created – not just at the promotional end. Brands that do this have a higher probability of success in market and will develop advanced brand and loyal brand communities.

Q7: SOLOMO – Have we finally heard enough about Social Media to put in back into the “toolbox of options” where it belongs.  Is this really the year of mobile?  Will Android kill the traditional handset manufacturer?

It’s more than the year of the mobile, rather the decade of the mobile. Everything is about live information, no matter where we are. We need to remember that every screen we interact with these days is web enabled, wherever we happen to be: in an airport, in a shopping centre, using an Ipad in a restaurant or retail outlet. So it’s all about human movement, and providing real time augmented data wherever we go. By definition, this means that all technology is going mobile – regardless of technology type.  It needs to be to react to the user needs regardless of where they are and these needs go beyond their smart phone. Just look at the number of people at airports using iPads, instead of laptops and mobiles.

The other thing with SOMOLO (SOcial, LOcal, MObile) is that we should add ME to the acronym. It should be SOMOLOME.  It’s about providing personal data, the ‘me’ – we have to know people’s preference and only serve up data / information / augmentation and options that are relevant. It’s imperative we do this in a permission-based marketing environment. Unless it is personal, it is an interruption, and interruption is not acceptable in a connected economy. Users expect we know exactly what they want – they demand it.

I don’t think Android will kill the traditional handset manufacturer, but it will mean that handset manufacturers need to make a decision on whether or not they want to develop hardware and operating platforms. It’s almost back to the future (like what happened in the personal computer market in the 1980′s) where we will see a splitting of the market into software and hardware producers. Although they’ll be exceptions of people doing both like Apple. It feels a bit like android is the new PC (Microsoft) and apple is the new Apple – quite ironic. The potential 3rd platform is the Windows 7 / Nokia.

One thing for sure, is that change is happening quicker, and often in ways we never saw coming.

Change the currency

I heard a great little story today about how to overcome barriers when pitching business, changing minds or influencing in general.

Changing worldviews is hard, often impossible. But there are two possible routes we can take when trying:

Route (A) We can try and change peoples view on a topic- change the unchangeable.

Route (B) We can change the currency. - This route is invariably more successful because it re-directs peoples perspective.

Car sales people do it all the time. Once the negotiation is close to reaching a stale mate on price, they then bring in the optional extras: Items removed from price. Although they do have a value, it changes the view point of the negotiation. It’s a change in currency. And the discussions can progress to a close.

When trying to reach an agreement, or change a mindset, we need to re-invent the currency of what is being discussed.

Then & Now

Then: Buy, Accummulate, Compete, Isolate, Control, Influence, Secret, Closed.

Now: Share, Experience, Collaborate, Expose, Let go, Co-opt, Public, Open.

 

Loyalty Schemes Vs Gamification

In many ways Gamification is an evolution of the long lived Loyalty Scheme. But so much better, and the evidence exists even at the simplest level – the words themselves.

Loyalty Scheme: Firstly the word loyalty seems very one way. It was / is as if the company expects us to be loyal to them. And although one might argue that loyalty is a two way street, the second word of the phrase is the giveaway – ‘Scheme’. Yep, sounds like some kind of a trick to me. A scheme to make us believe we are getting a good deal, when in truth we are just a number on some kind of cost / benefit analysis spreadsheet. Intuitively, schemes feel like there is a winner and a loser.

Gamificiation: Games are fun. We spend most of our childhood playing them and find as many excuses as possible to play them as adults. ‘Who wants to come to the football this Friday night?’ A game needs at least two willing parties or organisations to play. Sometimes we can collaborate and form teams and clubs and divisions and theme songs and have awards nights and weekend getaways. We can celebrate wins together and lament the losses, either way we like to return to the game and try and win, or even better our own score, although it’s collaborative, it’s also personal. The game is the ‘thing’, not the result of it. Games contrive all of the important human emotions that make our hearts beat.

Play is human. Great games even turn into industries.

Yep, it feels to me that gamification facilitated via Moore’s law is here to stay.

Bees can’t fly

A popular story in science folklore is that the aerodynamics of bees suggest that they should not be able to fly. It was hotly debated in at a time when human flight via aircraft was being mastered (around the 1930′s). Because physicists and aerodynamic specialists had started to develop theory of ‘predictable flight’ with machinery, they believed their knowledge applied to all forms of flight.

(Hand drawn by Sarah Cameron)

Of course bees do fly. A bee is very small. And, at that size, air acts as a much more viscous fluid than it does for airplanes and helicopters. So the laws of aerodynamics are quite different for bees and other insects. But it took some time before this was understood and that new theoretical models were developed relative to the size of the thing of flight.

The point for entrepreneurs is important, especially at a time when technology is challenging existing business models. So the next time someone tries to put the kybosh on your new idea or startup remember that based on yesterdays knowledge, bees can’t fly.