Nov 26, 2010 | Change, Collaboration, Communication, Social Media, Strategy
I am indebted to Alan Rustbridger, editor of the Guardian newspaper whose recent Andrew Olle lecture articulated many of the challenges facing traditional media owners as the new social media destroys their business model.
Among the gems in this lecture is a list of 15 uses of Twitter, as Alan says, it is far more than useless information on what Twits are having for breakfast, and should be considered for what it can do that has value, rather than just the nonsense accumulating in some places of its ecosystem, it is a disruption of the first order.
Here is an edited version of the list, with a few bits of my own thrown in, it is a fascinating view of a tool many over 50’s see as just a piece of nonsense our kids play with.
- It is an entirely new form of distribution, it may be 140 characters, but the power is in the linkages it can create
- It happens first. Then contributors to twitter, millions of them, have the power to be in the right place at the right time. News of the London bombings a few years back came in first from social media, predominantly twitter.
- It is a search engine, one that uses the algorithms of Google, and adds human curiosity, ingenuity, on top of the maths
- It is an aggregator of information. Set your tweet deck to a subject, and it will assemble the “wisdom of the crowd” to your device
- It is a reporting tool, that can find and communicate and co-ordinate knowledge, insight, and news, almost instantaneously
- It is a marketing tool of great power. Anyone can put a link to their website, alerting the community of followers, and others looking for info on a subject to the post, or information, and then encourage linkages. It is a tool that both drives traffic to a site, and can engage at the same time, the slam dunk of marketing.
- It is a series of parallel conversations, real conversations where you can agree, disagree, bring more information to the table, express ideas, and have views shaped, and it all happens in almost real time.
- It is a place where diverse voices can be heard, a place where the views of those who previously had no hope of being heard have the potential to find an audience
- It has changed the way the written word works. No longer are we as serious as we were in the days of “proper journalism” now we know much better the impact of pictures, humor, and diversity in the way we write
- It is a level playing field, anyone can be heard, no longer do you have to own a printing press or a TV station to get your message out there
- It has redefined what is and what is not news. No longer do we rely on a few editors curating what we see and hear, there are now thousands, millions out there putting stuff out into the ecosystem, and we can pick and choose which bits we pick up
- Twitter has a long attention span, much longer than a newspaper, whose headline today is wrapping paper tomorrow. Twitter can build, and build as more people become engaged, and bring information to the table for consideration, and as an argument evolves, move in directions and into spaces a 24 hour news cycle would never consider.
- It creates communities around thoughts, ideas, and causes.
- It changes our notion of authority, everyone is equal to start off, and it is the value of an idea or view that attracts authority, not the role played in an organisation that gives authority
- It is an agent of change, harnessing the power of collaboration, at potentially lightening speed.
Pretty good for a tool whose only redeeming feature was that is allowed us to find out what some wannabe celeb was doing right now!!
Nov 24, 2010 | Customers, Innovation, Marketing, Strategy
Most new products fail, and most of these failures are almost predictable, particularly in fast moving consumer markets, where the adage that “you need to be prepared to fail often to succeed sometimes” is regularly taken to irresponsible lengths.
Following is a simple 6 point checklist, developed by trial and error over 35 years in FMCG. Failure on any one parameter should be a “whoa” sign to you.
- Is the market real? Will consumers actually but it, and what will they buy it instead of, are there enough potential consumers to make the product viable?
- Does the product deliver superior value in some way to consumers that is visible to them, and capable of being communicated simply and clearly?
- Can the product be competitive in the market?, are the margins satisfactory? Can you afford the brand and channel expenditures? how will the existing category incumbents react, and what is your response?
- Can your business be competitive? Are the processes and infrastructure in place? Do you have the sales force capable of selling?
- What is the Risk/reward profile of the investment for you?
- Is the product and its service infrastructure aligned with your strategy?
Some effort in answering these questions should yield an increase in the success rate, they constitute a good hurdle in the NPD process before you go far past prototyping stages.
When you need a hand, give someone with the necessary experience a call, preferably me, but if not me, someone else you can trust.
Nov 24, 2010 | Change, Communication, Management, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
The power in commercial relationships has shifted dramatically since the net. It has removed the power previously held by companies and institutions and handed it to individuals who choose to use it.
No more can an enterprise afford to ignore or annoy an individual without cause, or even with cause, as the individual now has the capacity to publicly respond with twitter, facebook, linked-in, et al, and have an impact inconceivable just a few years ago.
This is not evolution, it is revolution, as the constraints on the ability to communicate and coalesce around an issue is unprecedented, and represents a fundamental re-ordering of the balance of power. The changes in the external environment are changing much, much quicker than the average organisation is able to change in anticipation, creating a significant short term risk for many of them.
Nov 22, 2010 | Change, Communication, Management, Social Media
Corporations default to functional silos, despite the efforts of most to recognise the horizontal cross functional nature of processes, the things that gets stuff done. This is because in the past, you required hands to move things around, make calls, stuff envelopes, travel, all adding to the cost of completion.
Individuals personal networks tend to also run in silos, the football group, the school friends, workmates, and so on, but the demarcation is a bit more blurred than at work.
Social networking tools have further blurred the demarcation , and networks can go way beyond the face to face relationships of old, and those networks can be leveraged across many tipping points and considerable social energy can be built, simply by harnessing the dynamics of the group.
Corporations are coming around to this self-evident (if you happen to be under 35)fact, but they are largely run by people not engaged with social networks so the evolution is far quicker outside corporations than inside them. Remember the huge embarrassment of Nestle a while ago, in relation to use of non sustainable sources of Palm oil, embarrassment that could have been easily mitigated had someone in a senior position watched their own facebook site, twitter, or even listened to someone who was.
The formation of groups around a question, issue, or cause is suddenly quite easy, and for corporations adds a huge risk to their intangible assets, and they usually are blissfully unaware in the boardroom.
The risk can be mitigated, but it requires individual with the organisational power to cede control of the details of “management” of the on line groups to individuals who are engaged in the processes, as the risks can emerge almost instantly, and requires instant response.
Nov 21, 2010 | Customers, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
As the marginal cost of transactions on the web approaches zero, more and more stuff is “free” . When something is given, the act of giving usually sets up a dynamic of “obligation” on the part of the receiver.
This blog is published on WordPress, for free, the cost to WordPress of hosting my blog, and supplying me with the software is approaching zero.
At some point, I will probably want some features not offered for free. At that time, it is highly unlikely I will go anywhere but the upgrade button on the Blog dashboard, and then Wordpress will generate some revenue, and I will feel I have offered some return for the free use of the software and hosting to this point, as well as not having to climb the barriers to exit.
This dynamic is being repeated everywhere on the web, almost to the point of “free” being the generic price of many services, Wikipedia being the classic.
For marketers, the question is “what is better than free?”, how can we attract customers when free is no longer sufficiently distinctive to be attractive? This goes to the heart of how publishers, of all types, reconstruct their business model to extract a living as their consumer base gets increasingly used to getting their “product” for free.
Nov 16, 2010 | Innovation, Marketing, Strategy
Peter Drucker once said that innovation is the only sustainable competitive advantage, and most who have thought about it would agree.
However, in most situations, this commitment to innovation tends to result in more and more potential products and technical solutions, adding complication and cost to every business process.
By contrast, Apple does the opposite, led by Steve Jobs, Apple ruthlessly eliminates all but a very few, and then ensures that the products left on the list are done remarkably well, and remarkably differently.
In 1998 Jobs reduced the products in Apples inventory from 350 to 10, tough love that has resulted in the resources to redevelop the iPod, iPad, and iPhone, rather than spreading themselves thinly across the many products that they already had, and that beckoned.
To be remarkable, (remarkable is Seth Godin’s term, it works!) Apple has removed features, no buttons on a phone, no dials on an iPod, taking seriously the designers mantra that perfection in design is achieved when there is nothing superfluous to the functionality left to remove, rather than all that can be added has been.
