As well as being an interesting data set in itself, this New Scientist graphic is a master class in information design. A rich source of facts and a joy to read:
Source: Exploring the Exploding Internet. New Scientist, April 2009
Popularity: 16% [?]
Sergio Zyman, the former Marketing SVP of Coca Cola tells a salutary tale in his book The End of Marketing as We Know It. Coke had a new, feel-good Christmas ad featuring a kid, Santa and a grizzled old baseball player.
Everybody loved it.
The CEO of the company loved it; his wife loved it; Zyman’s neighbour loved; the security guard at the front desk loved it. It was going to win awards.
After two days, Zyman pulled the ad. It was having no impact on sales.
B2B OR NOT B2B?
I often mention this story when interviewing Marketing candidates or discussing Marketing strategies with Clients. It’s the kind of decision that true Marketers dream of making – where creativity, strategy, metrics and market performance meet, to directly impact the revenues of the company and ultimately the share price.
After more than 20 years in the Tech sector, I’ve come across no more than a couple of examples that really make that kind of link between ‘Marketing’ and business results.
B2B Tech Marketing has lost its way. The reason is part geographic, part the mind of the customer, part structural:
Geography: In The Hands of the Gods
Like it or not, the vast majority of tech companies are either American or Asian. So that’s where the big, strategic decisions are taken. The current buzz about the Apple Tablet – a wonderful piece of market destabilization – is a strategic play driven by California.
And that means that an entire company is dependent on the person at the top ‘getting it’. Steve Jobs certainly gets it: that’s why he’s Fortunes’ CEO of the Decade. When you think of great marketing in Tech, it’s always Apple – from design and user interface, through pricing and channel, to communications and impact.
Lou Gestner at IBM is the other great Tech marketer. Who’d have thought that boring Big Blue would create the most memorable campaigns to support its strategic play into services? But Gerstner – dismissed by some as a ‘biscuit salesman’ – brought insight from Nabisco about the importance of communicating during times of great change.
The company is still reaping the benefits of that today, some 7 years after his departure.
The Customer: Just the Facts, Ma’am
B2B customers tend to be better informed than individual consumers. They are specialists in their niches, with a clear grasp of their subject, and the requirement to justify their decisions to their superiors, so facts are imperative. They rarely buy on impulse.
Account managers may have a vital role to play – and even in the ruthlessly logical world of the corporation, relationships do matter – but the imperative is to provide facts to help support a decision, and that’s the role of the Product Manager.
There’s also the issue of credibility. Tech has a sorry history of over-promising and under-delivering, to the point where the trust agreement may have been damaged beyond repair. Vendors want to be cautious because they think that equals credibility.
Structure: Make It and Sell It
In the Tech sector, Philip Kotler’s classical 4P Marketing bundle has divided into two main camps: Product and Place.
All that goes with Product – product management, product development, product marketing – tends to sit in a separate function, reporting along its own line. This is especially true in the software sector, where – in the apocryphal words of Larry Ellison of Oracle- if you not selling it or not making it, what are you doing in my company?
For ‘Place’ read ‘Channel’ which is usually run by the sales function. Channel isn’t a marketing decision; it’s all about sales execution. And no amount of dressing up of the Channel Marketing function can hide the fact that it gets driven as a tactical sales support role, providing sweeteners to distributors, VARS or retailers to shift more units.
(Interestingly, Kotler’s own website has a section on Tech Industries, in which two out of three service offerings are specifically related to the sales function).
MARKETING LITE?
So that leaves Promotion, or, as it’s now known in most Tech circles, Marketing.
Marketing in Tech B2B is about messaging and communicating. It’s about putting tech people on platforms, and about getting column inches in the trade press or tweets in the mediasphere. It is about enabling conversation.
It could be – should be – energising and challenging and setting the agenda. Not just for technical debate, but social, economic, artistic and educational issues. Indeed, there aren’t many aspects of public and private life that technology doesn’t touch.
So why is so much of B2B Tech Marketing so underwhelming?
Because B2B Tech companies are risk averse. Hence, every marketing program from every Tech company is exactly the same. There may be nuances of audience or twists on the Channel programme theme. But at heart, all B2B Tech marketing is a copy of all other Tech marketing. Because it is what is known.
But when everyone is reasonably competent, the playing field is very level, and the view across to the horizon is very bland.
No one puts their head above the parapet, and no one takes a risk.
The role will always be needed – someone has to run the PR agency and create the lead generation programs – but this isn’t big, brave Marketing with big, brave ideas.
LONG LIVE TECH MARKETING
So is this the end of the road for Tech Marketers – to be consigned to a backroom, writing press releases and sending out invitations to seminars?
Only if Marketers let that happen.
The truth is that Marketing has an infinite opportunity to take the reigns and change the game. Because they sit at the heart of a central paradox: the people who run Tech companies don’t understand the beast they have unleashed.
Many senior Tech execs don’t really understand the Web.
Sure, the company has a website, maybe some e-commerce, perhaps the CEO even has a personal LinkedIn account (although not a fair number of the SVPs and CEOs I know). But many still seem to regard it as just a Comms channel - a cheap way of issuing press releases and cutting down on sales collaterals.
So if you’re a Marketing professional in the Tech sector (or anywhere else for that matter), your opportunity is to fill that knowledge gap. We have only scraped the surface of how the websphere impacts our relationship with customers, partners and influencers. What it means to your company and its business model.
Dive deep and drink long. Now is the time for Marketing to reclaim its seat around the table.
Popularity: 36% [?]
Here’s an interesting Euro-election fact (first pointed out by Ben Goldacre on Twitter yesterday): While the BNP took 6.2% of the UK vote, the Pirate Party took 7.0% in Sweden.
Earlier this year the four founders of Pirate Bay (a file-sharing website) were fined £3m and jailed for a year by the Swedish courts. It became a cause celebre, once again bringing the issue of copyright and open access into the public spotlight.
The Pirate Party has obviously benefited from a backlash against the verdict. On its platform to ” fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens’ rights to privacy are respected,” it mobilized the youth vote of Sweden, and will now take its first seat in the European Parliament.
At first pass this looks like a single issue, flash-in-the-pan, of-no-consequence moment-of-madness from a nation that has 200 ways of serving herring. But there’s more to it than that. Watch his Channel 4 report, and listen to musician / producer Alexander Bard:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1184614595?bctid=25698199001
BROUGHT TO BOOK
In his excellent article in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago, Ian Jack proposed that as the publishing world goes into meltdown, we are seeing the return of the gifted amateur. The economics of the £500,000 advance just doesn’t work any more (if it ever did), and it’s time to remind ourselves that Trollope was a postmaster, Eliot was a banker and Angus Wilson worked in the British Museum.
The total access to a distribution mechanism for both writer-and-reader / musician-and-listener has changed the dynamic completely. And with it the economics.
Hardly an earth-shattering insight – the sort of thing that was being predicted by futurists like Paul Saffo and Kevin Kelly in the early 90s. However, while we’ve become used to the technology, I don’t think our mental models of the world have caught up. As Bard points out, there’s a fantastic contradiction between the perceived ‘right’ to download and the dream of having a recording contract.
Even Kelly starts is current homepage telling us that he’s writing a book.
FEEL FREE
This comes in a week when Channel 4 has announced that it will make its entire back catalogue available on the web for free. (So much for artists living off repeat fees.)
And at the end of a month when the Great British Public has risen as one to condemn our MPs for expenses ‘fraud’, while at the same time we’ve been downloading MP3, torrent streams and other file-sharing workarounds. Which under current law, is theft.
These episodes have made me realise that great content on its own doesn’t make money; there must be control of the means of distribution. If I can limit access to something you want, I can charge you for it. That’s why Amazon has developed the Kindle – which will change the game again for book publishers, newspapers and booksellers.
I have no idea how this will play out: I doubt anyone does. The only certainty I can see is that while I write the Great English comic novel, I’m not giving up the day job. Before, during – or after.
Popularity: 43% [?]
So, this is one of 200,000,000 blogs ‘out there’.
Hmm. Feels rather crowed…
Hype or hope: the world will be a different place by the time you get to the end of this video.
Popularity: 7% [?]
There is a new scourge amongst us. A new threat to our health, our emotional state, our well-being.
It has already inflected millions, but as recent sufferer I hope I am not too late to prevent this becoming a pandemic.
For the sake our our families, our friends and our communities.
More potent than any drug, it completely distorts one’s sense of time, place and meaning.
More engulfing than any cult, it demands the sacrifice of all free will.
It creates the most vivid illusion of productivity, while rendering the sufferer incapable of any useful activity.
Indeed, this blog posting was to have been an incisive exploration of UK macro-economic policy and the conflicts caused by over-reliance of the financial sector in a neo-Keynsian world.
But the virus put a stop to that.
It is an invidious infection that, for which there is currently no known cure.
All I can do is plead with you: Just Say No to StumbleUpon.
Popularity: 30% [?]
Do you ever regret something that “seemed like a good idea at the time?”
A few years ago, I signed up to a business contact site called Linked-In. It’s proved to be a very useful tool for keeping up-to-date with the career moves of some of the more distant stars in my personal galaxy.
So far, so good.
Then came Flickr. That started as a place to post some photos, but soon became a virtual photography club, with commentary streams, assignments, links to individual portfolios and more bitchy comments than at a fashion show.
Facebook next. “What on EARTH are you doing signing up to THAT for?’ some of my colleagues asked. But having been convinced by a friend (friend: n: a person who you have met, at least once, in the flesh) that he was using it for serious business purposes in the US, I leapt in. And it’s now the principle way of staying-in-touch with a lot of people in my life; even my wife – and I live with her.
I should have stopped there.
Next was a brief dalliance with Plaxo; then a one night stand with ZoomInfo. I was in danger of going off the railes, and not keeping my relationship commitments.
One of my Linked-In contacts then sent me an invitation to Xing. The name should have been a warning signal: It’s not pronounced ‘zing’, like normal people would assume, but ‘crossing’. ‘Nuff said.
I duly clicked ‘Accept’, given that Linked-In is US-centric, and ‘Xing’ claimed to be more European.
A few weeks later, a previous business partner who I had ‘run into’ on Xing dropped me a line asking if I would give him a reference on ‘Naymz‘.
On the basis that I avoid hairdressers with signs that say ‘Cutz’ or ‘All Tressed Up’ or ‘Get Your Locks Off’, this should have been a ‘No’. Then again, there are exceptions that prove the rule, and I did once get a quick trim at ‘Hairy Poppins’, so I signed up.
IN THE GAME
A wise man once said that life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends entirely on what you put in. Well, like any other club, the same law of nature applied to social networking sites. And putting more in takes time.
The developers of these sites know that, and know that they have to fight for mine. So they’ve created a symbiotic relationship between my presence on-site and my email inbox.
Spam used to be the enemy. Now it’s notifications from Naymz.
Every time someone ‘looks at my profile’, I get a notification. (On no account sign up for one of these things if you have paranoid tendencies; you’ll end up like Robert De Niro in ‘Taxi Driver’)
After receiving 15 of these on Day 2, I thought I’d better check what I had signed-up for. And it’s really rather disturbing.
It describes itself as a ‘Reputation’ site, and depends upon each of the members ‘rating’ the other members. Based upon the comments, your profile ends up with a ‘RepScore’ up to 10. You also get bonus points for completing your personal information. And for having a good picture. And nice teeth.
I’m currently rated an 8. One of the most competent people I have ever worked with is currently rated 2. But she hasn’t given details of her blood group or her bank accounts, so I think she’s being penalised.
Of course, now I’m in the game, and a few people I know have given me a rating, there’s an emotional contact that says that I must do the same for them. And I’m not likely to say ‘s/he’s an untrustworthy, irresponsible idiot’, so I don’t really see the point.
But all this pales into insignificance when compared with the parallel universe that is ‘ecademy‘.
THE FLYING FINN
I think it’s a networking site for the self employed, consultants and owners of small businesses. And having done that, I can see the merit and applaud the intent.
But does ‘Norman’ have to email me every time something happens?
This morning, 8 people have looked at my profile. I then stupidly made the mistake of clicking on links back to a couple of them, and now one has taken me under his wing as his new best friend, and is sending me automated messages sincerely (sic) hoping that we can work together.
The site itself makes on-line stock trading displays look like a masterclass in minimalism. It’s a cacophony of tidbits, with a steady stream of member updates; each time someone, somewhere, changes something, I get to know about it:
- Jaya Ray has started a club;
- Sam Suvanto in Finland has changed his profile;
- Ameen Internet Marketing Guru (for that is his name) has been rated ‘good’ by H K Prabhakat;
- A lady called ‘Cat’, founder of ‘Scambaiting World’, has dropped me a note wanting do business sometime in the future.
And so it goes, and so it goes. Real-time, line-after-line of data points, giving each member their moment of visibility.
Andy Warhol was wrong: fame comes to us all, but it only lasts for 15 seconds.
To get any more than that, you have to commit a lot of time. It’s the unspoken truth of web presence: relationships – in the flesh or through the screen – take effort and commitment because the web eats content. Registering on these sites isn’t enough to get work or stay visible or build a ‘reputation’ – it needs commitment. It needs you to turn up.
Perhaps that’s the next meta-career – the personal networking assistant whose job it is to keep your profile current in the websphere?
Because, if you’re earning a living, there sure isn’t time to do it yourself.
Popularity: 31% [?]
Bill Drummond thinks that we have reached the end of recorded music.
His thinks that ‘real’ music makers are looking for new ways to create and share their work – like his ’17′ project, in which he’s recording 100 choirs of 17 people all singing a single note, which he will play back to them at a one-off, never-to-be repeated event, before destroying the recordings.
Bill Drummond might be mad. And I love him for it.
WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONARE?
To set this in context, he was behind KLF, the acid house group that made a fortune in the early 1990s, then incinerated it to kick off their ‘K Foundation Burn a Million Quid’ tour.
He also considered cutting off his hand at The Brit Awards, but had second thoughts on that one.
Since then, he has popped up (I was about to say ‘on the art scene’, but Drummond really transcends that sort of pigeonhole), acting as one of life’s agents provocateurs, challenging conventional wisdom, posing difficult questions, and generally making people feel uncomfortable.
His latest notion is that recorded music is dead. The more I think about this, sitting at my PC, listening to some easy jazz on Windows Media Player, the more I think he’s onto something. Here’s a summary of the story so far:
1) The most important artist in the history of recorded music is… Enrico Caruso. In his short life (he died aged 48) he made over 220 recordings of tenor arias which meant that his public could now listen to him at home.
While that appears to be stating the blindingly obvious, that’s because we’ve all grown up with it, and assume it to be part of the ‘natural’ state of affairs. In Caruso’s time, that was as significant a leap as powered flight. It changed everything.
He reached an audience with a representation of his work that hitherto had been the preserve of those who could get to La Scala or The Met. It was the beginning of the ‘democratisation’ of music.
In his way, he was the Bill Gates of the early recording industry. Edison and, later, Berliner may have created the hardware platform, but Caruso created the software. What did a member of the gentry want with an ugly wooden box and a great horn stuck on top of it? In itself, they didn’t – but they did want to listen to and to show their friends that they listened to the world’s greatest tenor.
2) The most important day in the history of recorded music is 5 July 1954, when a young truck driver walked into Sun Records to record a couple of songs for his mother. Fooling around between takes, he sang ‘That’s All Right (Mama), and the legend of Elvis Presley was born.
Putting aside Presley’s importance as a cultural icon, his significance in this context is that prior to recording, he had no musical career. He was entirely created by the record industry, a reversal in the relationship between artist and medium.
3) The most important year in the history of recorded music is 1966, when The Beatles and Glenn Gould made the same, paradigm-shifting decision: they would no longer play live:
Classical pianist Gould wanted to concentrate of the Bach canon, and felt that the intimacy of the chamber genre couldn’t be communicated from the concert platform;
For The Beatles, the decision was more complex, but there’s no doubt it was heavily influenced by the fact that the techniques they had started to use on Revolver (tape looping and early sampling) couldn’t be toured. Sgt Peppers would be impossible to perform live.
And so the template changed again. The record (more specifically the album, by now format-of-choice) became an artefact in-and-of itself. Not a device for promoting the live performance, but an artwork that would stand alone.
4) The most important technology in the history of recorded music is the mp3 file. Think about how it is changing our relationship with recorded music:
* The album is redundant: through iTunes, Napster or any other file sharing site (legal or pirate) we can now pick and choose our tracks;
* Music is ubiquitous: we can play it anywhere, any time, in almost any circumstance. Muzak used to be limited to lifts, hotel lobbies and shopping centres. Now we take our own aural wallpaper wherever we go;
* There is no barrier to access: we can now reach any artist, any genre, any song, any composition, any time. And that ease makes us lazy. Music has become background sound, filling the empty spaces of our days, and plastering over the sonic mess of everyday life.
THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED
Drummond points out that before recording technology, music was context-depended: from orchestral compositions for State occasions to folk-songs in the field. Once it could be packaged and transferred into another setting – more importantly, any setting – it started to lose its meaning. Which in turn, diminished its value.
It is the paradox of the democratisation. When something is available all the time, at very little cost, we value it less. This is not an argument for exclusivity; rather it’s just pointing out that when the tap can be turned on at any time, we take water for granted. And with that, the thrill has gone.
The thrill of knowing that your favourite artist’s new record would be released in three months. Saving your pocket money to buy it. Selling stuff at school to make up the difference. The bus trip to town on Saturday. Entering the record shop and seeing its bright cover, smelling the cellophane wrapper, turning it over and reading the track list – the liturgy for the mass that will follow. Handing over the money, receiving the plastic bag and realising that the prize was yours. Cuddling it on the bus ride home, the hero returning from his/her quest. Rushing upstairs to your bedroom, turning on your record player, and then, and then…
The black circle, etched with a fine line that fragmented the light on its surface. Your hand, palm-spread as wide as possible across the underside, balancing it with care so not to mark the surface. Two hands now, fingers either side of the round, lowering it gently into place. Start the turntable. Bend down, eye-level with the needle. Gently lift the arm and …pause…anticipation…will it be as good as…swallow nervously…holding your breath… you drop the needle onto the surface…the speakers ‘bump’ then ‘hiss’ then…it begins. And it’s the best moment of your life. It is glorious.
Today? Point. Click. Type. Listen. Forget.
WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO
Do not think that this is a Luddite’s blast against the new and a return to the ‘good old days’. I love the web to the point of addiction. But there is no doubt that a lot of the ritual has gone, and with it, the magic.
This is what Drummond – with his off-the-wall, left-of-centre performances – is addressing. More specifically, he’s asking us to wake-up. If you’re one of 1700 people to have participated in his choral project, and you know that when you hear it in its full performance, it is the only time it will ever happen and that it will be destroyed immediately after – wouldn’t you pay attention?
Like you did the first time you placed the needle on that album.
The quality of that moment wasn’t in the music itself (the experience is equally relevant to the classical collector, the punk and the Roller’s fan). The quality was in the attention.
In the film Diva, the plot centres on a pirate recording of a operatic soprano who has never made a record. The only way you can experience her voice is to see her live. She believes that scarcity increases the quality of the moment.
That truth and the iPod are not easy bedfellows.
Popularity: 26% [?]
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