Don’t outsource your soul. Build soul mates instead.

The following essay was featured in Campaign Magazine’s annual Power Essays supplement here in the Middle East. Excuse the lack of hyperlinks, but it was written for analog media .

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Throughout the last 12 years on the client side of things, I’ve always been amazed at how many companies outsource their “soul” by assigning critical customer facing tasks to external agencies and consultants. Customer service and call centers are operated by external providers with heavy cost reduction pressure on them. Social media presences are managed by social media agencies because brands are afraid they don’t understand the “social space”. Creative agencies are used on a case-by-case basis to communicate (and often dictate) the brand essence of the company.  SEO & SEM tasks are outsourced to media or specialist agencies with no client interest of delving into the topic. The list goes on…

This needs to change. The Internet has brought along some major disruptions to the media landscape, along with it a fundamental shift in control. Brands are no longer able to control the message across the touch points, but rather live in a scenario in which the brand perception is a hybrid between company and customer perspectives. Customers are more in charge than ever before and the traditional media landscape (as it used to stand) simply no longer exists. Before the Internet, mass media dominated the audiences. This led to corporate ways of working in which the brand used mass media to broadcast its message and the “conversations” were outsourced to agencies behind a phone line or repair centre to deal with. In today’s time and age, these “conversations” and their amplification possibility has caused this shift in control. It is now more important than ever, to engage in these conversations, co-create value with customers and fuel your brand presence through advocacy, not mass communication.

In marketing and advertising, the old broadcast paradigm still seems to hold many corporations down. Most of the marketing budgets are placed on bought media and the conversational marketing costs are always questioned. Mass media still prevails, merely because of engrained habits, but also due to the same paradox in which brands outsource their souls by replacing time with money. In today’s time and age, time cannot be replaced in the manner it was replaced during the “mad men” times. Time is the “new money” as brands need to take the responsibility and accountability of interacting with its customers. Social media and community managers are often the core voice of the company towards customers. Call and customer service centres are not merely “cost centres”, they can become significant profit centres when positioned and managed properly.

Advertising is also evolving. Going from seasonal campaigns only, into continuous engagement and “always on” marketing efforts, allows brands to deepen their relationships with customers. These kinds of changes require brands to rethink their strategies but also their budgets. The notion of human media becomes a cornerstone of an engagement platform. Instead of funnelling money to outside agencies and bought media, brands should first look at investing the proper amounts of resources to handle their customer facing engagement roles.  Once these roles exists, brands will get much more mileage from the creative and media agencies as the same co-creation principle applies just as much in a client – agency relationship, as it does with end customers. This calls for brave CMO’s and marketing managers.

Why is it so easy for brands to invest hundreds of thousands of Dirham’s into TV advertising, while hiring a few full time social media managers seems to require more approvals, amendments and bureaucracy than passing a new law in the UN? The reason is simple. In most companies, human media is still perceived as a non-working cost from a financial perspective. Marketing headcounts are kept low, because most of the actual work is done by agencies and over 70% of the budgets go to bought media on various channels (aka working media). With the emergence of digital channels, all of this has changed. 70% of your budgets should not be going into bought media alone. By investing more time and money into your creative/brand, you ensure you give your brand presence a continuous voice. Hiring internal resources to manage your “always on” performance media and social presences, is just as much working media, than buying TV spots.  By having this human media inside your organization, you ensure that you have accountability as well as a proper workflow of knowledge gathering and sharing. Continuous engagement strategies stride on co-created value with the customers. Co-created value fuels advocacy and advocacy fuels positive WOM or earned media. This is like steroids for any brand.

The marketing organization of the future is one that understands the importance of its human media as well as the importance of cultivating conversations with customers. In-house conversational marketing teams will become more and more popular as they end up driving cost efficiency as well as a whole new degree of accountability and customer engagement.  External resources are not seen as agencies, but rather soul mates. With the digital revolution that the Internet has provided us, customer-facing roles and channels have grown and the need for continuous dialogue, interaction and engagement become a standard part of how brands interact in this space. Customer engagement is much more conversation driven, in which dialogue and engagement begins to provide a shift away from a bought media and broadcast driven marketing alone. Internal creative agencies, customer service centres, community managers and brand architect’s begin to drive a fundamental transformation in the industry. An industry fuelled by your soul: the human media. Don’t outsource your soul.

The leadership generation gap and the impact of the changing landscape

A great article by Didier Marlier from the Enabler’s Network got me thinking about the impact of technology to overall leadership styles needed to stride in this modern time and age. Didier kindly asked me to elaborate these thoughts a little further and the post below can also be found from his Enabler’s Network blog.

 John Maeda often talks about creative leadership vs authoritarian leadership. In many ways, these 2 leadership types or styles stem back to the early days of culture and are described on many levels by cross cultural experts like Trompenaars, Hofstede and Edward T. Hall , as power distance. In certain cultures, leaders were considered as “demi gods” who had absolute power and were never to be questioned. In other cultures, leaders were chosen through a collectivist approach in which the overall community assigned their leader but also played a part in the overall decision making.

In business, the traditional leadership styles of the “authoritarian leadership camp” have been dominant throughout the century. This has been the preferred school of thought and used as the nucleus of management education for decades. As societies and cultural landscapes evolve, so do the technological enablers around us. Whether it’s the emergence of radio broadcasts, TV, the internet or mobile communication, these have profound impacts on societies as well as overall cultural norms. These technological disruptions are also forming interesting paradigm shifts within societies, allowing us to witness an interesting generation shift in not only societies, but also in how the notion of a leader is shaping and evolving.

Authoritarian leadership relies strongly on avoiding mistakes. This kind of leadership strides and continues to be relevant in certain circumstances. For example, the military or car factories rely on everyone playing exactly their part in the picture, responsibility is divided in vertical hierarchy and “the parts of the machinery” are expected to perform (and stick to) their task. The leader is the person who asserts his power, accountability and possesses all the answers. It is very much about being in control and managing through authority. There is a striking resemblance between traditional media and authoritarian leadership. It is very much about the brand broadcasting (and controlling) the message across the numerous media touch points. In this scenario, then brand is in control and the message is very much crafted from a company perspective. However, as we all know the media industry in undergoing a massive transformation. The emergence of the internet has led us to scenarios in which brands are no longer able to control the message, consumers are more and more in control and successful brands are those who are capable of adding value to their customer through serving their social practices. These disruptions cause for a fundamental rethink on engagement strategies, and leadership.

Creative leadership stems from a different set of values. It bubbles from uncertainty, from creativity and experimentation. These types of characteristics coincide with the way in which the overall internet landscape has come to being. When thinking about the overall evolution of the internet, it has always been one that supported open standards and information sharing. Where in the past good business ideas were kept secret, these days they are shared openly across virtual networks in hope of recognition and collective assurance, acceptance and collaboration. Because the internet landscape is evolving so rapidly, it becomes more and more difficult for anyone to really become a guru in this space. Previous titles and merits are important, but being successful in this space requires people to go through a continuous rebirth of knowledge, just as a Phoenix bird goes through a rebirth every thousand years (except internet cycles are probably closer to 1 year instead of 1000 years). Relying on legacy and a “what has worked in the past, will work again” mentality is detrimental in the online space.

This is where I believe the fundamental generation gap in leadership is coming to life. It is not a generation gap that is related to age, but to mind set. Your personal equity as a leader relies on your ability to deal with ambiguity, uncertainty and a rapidly changing landscape. You need to prove yourself every day, not only to yourself but especially to your team. As it is impossible to be an expert in everything, you become more dependent on your network and in the end, what you know becomes irrelevant. It’s important to know, “who knows” and that the person “who knows”, respects you and shares your vision. Creative leadership strides in the digital era, not only because it shares common characteristics to the evolution of the web, but also because it shares many of the same values that enabled the internet to become what it is today. The true power of creative leadership is that it creates a following which is based on mutual goals, a shared vision that unites people not only from a rational perspective, but also from a heart and “gut” perspective.

Just as brands need to rethink their engagement strategies with their consumers, overall leadership practices need to live up to the changing times. Is your mind, heart and “gut” ready?

Clicks meet bricks

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to take part in the MENA Cristal Awards in Mzaar Kfardebian, Lebanon. As a Finn, it was fascinating to take a 3 hour flight from Dubai and be in a chalet type environment with a view of the ski slopes from your hotel window. If you ever have a chance to visit Lebanon, check out the Intercontinental in Mzaar. In any case, enough of the tourist guide stuff

The reason for my visit was to participate in the MENA Cristals, which represents the “cannes lions” for the MENA region. It was fascinating to take part in the seminars as well as see the work that was rewarded along the way. I was particularly impressed with the quality and innovative work that FP7 from Bahrain had conducted. Check out some of their work here .

One of the most interesting sessions I had the chance to join, was a presentation from JCDecaux, where mr Decaux himself gave an overview about his company’s ambitions to transform outdoor media to the next level. What struck me during his presentation was yet again a notion of the silo approach many of our media channels are taking when expanding their reach. For sure, with the urbanization of societies and the increase in flight traffic, outdoor media plays an important role in the overall media landscape. However, instead of seeing other channels (such as digital) as competition, I’m surprised how little companies like JCDecaux are embracing digital capabilities to drive a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Digital is seen as a separate medium, when it should be seen as the future of ALL media. I’m not saying this because I happen to work in the digital field. I’m saying this because technology is enabling more and more media channels to become measurable as well as targeted. Think of outdoor and digital capabilities from a different angle:

The cost of changing outdoor ads as well as printing ridiculous amounts of paper must be substantial costs for the company (and the environment). This analog form of media is static and is usually changed on a monthly basic, due to its logistical challenges. Think about combining the best of both worlds. Why are companies like JCDecaux not working with digital media agencies and providers to bring digital media types of advertising features into the outdoor networks of this world? Most outdoor ads are situated in either urban environments which are monitored (just ask Banksy how many CCTV’s there are in London), or in locations that cannot easily be reached by pedestrians (or better said, graffiti artists). What better locations to explore possibilities of utilizing digital screen technologies that are coming cheaper by the day, along with environmentally friendly solar powered solutions that could either power the wireless connectivity needed, or the screens themselves? As an example of solar efficiency, I recently met with a telecoms network engineer who mentioned that solar powered base stations are already in use across some markets around the world. The picture starts to look a little different. When there’s technology that enables and there’s a will for change, the benefits begin to emerge. Think of a digital ad network that is located in physical spaces. That’s the future, but the future is more and more here.

Instead of brands booking a billboard for 1 month, they can decide to book “the afternoon traffic”, or “the morning show”. Opportunities for targeting explode exponentially. Media providers cash in because they can run multiple flights a day, instead of risking their employees losing a leg when changing the paper print from a 10 meter high billboard every month. Again, the fundamental issue in this picture is that each media provider is stuck in their own silo. While JCDecaux is building their outdoor “empire” and Yahoo! (or any other digital media outlet) is expanding their digital footprint, they are not seeing the benefits they could yield by partnering to bring the best of both worlds into the picture. What if a digital media provider would bring in their ad serving capabilities, knowledge and infrastructure into the mix, while JCDecaux would continue to leverage their understanding of the efficiency of outdoor placements, physical formats and locations? In my opinion: a scenario where clicks will start to meet bricks.  (and yield a heck of a lot or ROI & efficiency).

Own, bought & earned media evolves

The definition “own, bought and earned media” has become a popular description for the different media “types” that brands operate in as well as deal with. This terminology originated from within Nokia and quickly started to pick up pace across the industry. It did a great job in illustrating the emergence and importance of brand properties that resided within as well as outside the control of the company. This form of thinking has large implications on how brands need to revisit their media mix as well as their overall planning and budgeting logic.

As the digital landscape continues to shape the way consumers and brands interact, a further evolution of this “media trinity” might be welcomed. Own/Bought/Earned (OBE) gives a good overview, but there are a few dimensions that perhaps need to be called out more prominently in order to bring a holistic view to the picture. McKinsley recently took a stab at this by introducing “sold” & “hijacked” media into the mix. I’ve been working on something similar during the last few years, with one important additional “enabler dimension” i think the McKinsey model fails to point out. Human.

OBE evolves

OWN media.

Own media is the foundation of any brand. One could say that it consists of all the outlets a brand has in its control. These extend across multiple online properties, (both fixed and mobile) as well as different functional presences related to care, sales, comms/pr, marketing as well as human resources. In addition to digital channels, own media extends to physical spaces such as retail and care outlets as well as the product a brand itself is selling.

BOUGHT media

Bought media is quite self explanatory and consists of the presences/visibility a brand acquires through monetary exchanges with the media owners. These range across digital and physical spaces and are unified by the same principle: a brand pays (or bids) for having their product or marketing message displayed across a particular advertising real estate.

EARNED media

Earned media is a consequence of what a brand does, not something that a brand can buy or control. It is fueled by consumer satisfaction and advocacy, thus becoming a powerful vehicle to those brands that have earned their space in their advocate’s hearts. The biggest misconception I often run into, is that many marketers interpret earned media as having a Facebook page. A Facebook presence is own media, just as their .com or .mobi corporate sites are. Earned media is unprompted and driven entirely by sources that are not controlled by the brand. Brands can facilitate the dissemination of content by creating social features to their own media as well as engaging in conversations with its customers, but in the end, earned media is an end result delivered by the customer.

BURNED media

Just as great brands strive on the earned customer advocacy, modern digital channels make it increasingly easier for consumers to voice their negative brand experiences. Burned media consists of consumers that are voicing their frustrations about a bad experience they have had with a brand. This is also a consequence of what a brand does, not something a brand can pay to avoid. In this light, it becomes increasingly important to have the care and PR teams involved in crafting overall engagement strategies as well as frameworks that enable brands to quickly react to negative WOM as well as proper empowerment that enables community managers and care agents to solve any issues that are emerging.

TRADED media

In today’s age of collaboration, it becomes more and more evident that brands cannot do everything on their own. Collaboration amongst brands is needed and healthy ecosystems encourage a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” mentality. Many brands fail to leverage the value of their own media and go out paying for media, when they could achieve more through clever partnerships where media is traded, or by allowing 3^rd parties with no conflicting interests to buy real estate on the brands own web sites.

HUMAN media

Perhaps the biggest media evolution we have witnessed in the past years, has been the shift from broadcast media to conversational media. Along this chain of thought, a fundamental piece must also evolve. Conversations cannot be automated, they need a human interface that can understand the human emotions as well as cultural contexts that a particular engagement unfolds around. The earned and burned media streams unfold around conversations that need human interpretation as well as interaction to solve. The media mix that a brand evaluates, needs to start taking the core asset of any company = the people, into account. In the past, media was paid. In today’s world, it’s a combination of time and money, controlled and non-controlled spaces as well as an industry that’s still trying to find the right balance for shifting budgets (and people) accordingly.

Personal development – the “ME” mindmap

Ok. You’ve run into this blog post. You’re busy. There’s a deadline for your report around the corner and you’re rushing along to get through your day. Stop. Just stop for 5 minutes and read through this post. Why? Because it might (just barely) fundamentally shift your outlook on life as well as how you plan for the future.

In today’s hectic living environment, we get squeezed with constant deadlines, action items, duties and commitments. Years seem to go by and we often don’t take the needed time to reflect what it really is we want from life. We daydream about winning the lottery, we make promises on new year’s eve about starting from a clean sheet of paper and being better human beings. Then we go back into the same rabbit hole we came from. Daydreaming and sporadic new years resolutions are not about personal development. Personal development is a mindset and a series of ongoing behaviors that yield positive results over time.

Let’s try something out. Take out a piece of paper and a pen. Go on, try it out, i know it’s analog media, but it’s cool to get your hands “dirty” sometimes. Set? Ok. Now draw a circle to the middle of the page and write your name into the middle. This exercise is all about you, and the more you invest into it, the more YOU will benefit from it.

Cool. Now draw a line from the circle and label it “dreams & aspirations”. These can be work or personal related and they can branch out to as many layers as you feel are needed. Think about what you really want from life, work, health, wealth etc. Think short term, long term the full spectrum.The most important thing is to just embark on that journey of reflection and pursuit of happiness.

Next, draw another line to the circle and label it “strengths and skills”. You can either list down what YOUR core skills and strengths are, or list down what skills and strengths are needed to ACHIEVE the dreams and aspirations. Again, you can do this from a work perspective, life perspective or even as a reflection of your current golf skills. You decide.

Great. Now draw a third line and label it “my learning path”. This is not about listing what you are bad at, but more to list what are areas that you would like to learn more about or develop yourself within. Also think about how your learning path will help you develop the skills and strengths you need in order to achieve your dreams and aspirations.

Time for another line. Label it as “network”. In today’s world, the importance of your network is invaluable. Tools like LinkedIN and Xing help us connect business contacts, while Facebook is more about friends and acquaintances. For the sake of this exercise, think of your network in the context of your dreams and aspirations. List down as many names as you want, but please also take some time to profile these contacts to different tiers. For ex. Bob from ad agency: Can help me to cost efficiently setup my startup’s website. Linda from university: Expert on the Chinese market, good contact to help us expand our business there etc. Once you get into the habit of doing this, start keeping a constant diary of the people you meet, work and play with and list down the context around your relationship. This will become an extremely valuable asset for yourself. However, please also remember that you need to “give love to get love”, and the relationships you build and maintain, need to go both ways. Nobody appreciates a free rider.

Ok, last line and then you’re set. Label this as “lifeline/CV”. We often only update our CV’s when changing jobs and too often we don’t even remember most of the stuff we’ve learned along the way. When you consistently document what you have been learning and achieving, you begin to realize all the progress (or lack of progress) you’ve made in the past years. It’s not really about keeping your CV fresh, but more a tool for you to really keep track of how you are developing as a human being.

These are 5 simple dimensions of your “ME” mind map, that will enable you to identify your dreams and aspirations, weigh your skills and strengths against these, as well as identify how you will need to develop yourself and what kind of network you will need to build around you. Lastly, by documenting your lifeline progress, you will be able to measure how well you are making progress. There are some quite nice tools available for doing this digitally, a simple Google search will get you along really well.

Now back to the rabbit hole

PS. Below you can find the slideset on Slideshare

Happy 101010

UI, AI, IQ and last (but not least) EQ

There are several “forces” that come to play when building an online presence. When your lifeline depends on the awareness, engagement and retention of your online offering, it becomes crucial to find that silver bullet that will bring your consumers back for more. I’ve been thinking about these “forces” lately, and a few in particular come to mind.

UI

There’s no doubt that the UI of a website plays a critical role in the overall experience a visitor has to your website. UI defines the ease of use, as well as the discovery of the core elements an online presence wants to present to the user. A good UI might be web based (as the Google presences mostly are), or a combination of an application and cloud (as for ex iTunes would be). Whatever the case, the UI serves as a gateway to the experience and aims at delivering the core proposition an online presence may have. Often brands might have a killer idea, but lose their consumers due to bad web design, information architecture and navigation.

AI

A website should be like a machine that learns more and more about you as an individual. Gaming companies know the depths of AI, but these same principles can and should apply to the “regular” online presence. Your metrics should reveal the recency and frequency of your visitors and your CRM tools should enable you to profile your consumer base in order to provide (and learn to provide) the right information as well as context sought to by the individual consumer. A search engine that not only provides information on an overall algorithm but also through user specific cookies, starts to takes steps into this direction.

IQ

Despite all the automated tools that are available, nothing beats the context and creativity that a human brain can bring to the picture in any given context. You can get the best “social media listening platforms” to crawl the web, but unless you have a human interface to validate and extract meaning from the data, we’re not full realizing the potential of what can be done. It’s like an autopilot on an airplane. Automated tools can “run the business” to a certain point, but they are not programmed to think about exceptional circumstances yet alone to spot areas of development that need creativity. Social features on a website play a critical role in giving the right context to the information presentation. A tool can ping for overall volumes of discussions around a certain topic, but nothing beats a human-to-human recommendation/like around particular topic. Social features on a site can enable the value creation of IQ, but the source is always human, not machine. The machine is merely a smartly programmed intermediary that allows human-to-human value creation to come to life.

EQ

The last dimension, (yet the most fascinating in my opinion) is about EQ. In traditional business environments, I would dare to say that overall quantitative values derived from sheer IQ, still prevail. EQ is a topic covered in management courses as a “later thing in Moslew’s hierarchy of needs” but in the end, the hard numbers and quantitative data prevails (as a generic opinion). The Internet possesses an entirely new playing ground for anthropologists. Derived meaning from a web presence is bound to certain natural characteristics a human being has. Traditional advertisers have investigated these cross cultural differences for decades, but it always surprises me how little cross cultural thinking is being placed on modern web presences built across the Internet. Most of these cultural “clicks” can be derived from simple listening to consumer’s feedback and behaviors as well as simply having the courage to seeing the “niche as the new norm”. I currently live in the UAE and have found it surprising how few of the multinational brands take into account the local traditions that impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The UAE is a Muslim country. Now we live the period of Ramadan, a holy month for Muslims across the world. Yet, few brands have the flexibility (or courage) to reach out the their consumer base to participate from an “EQ” perspective. These “soft” values will play an increasingly important part for online presences as despite the globalization of the economy, people still identify themselves by whom they are not. Culture plays a big role in the identities of human beings as well as their buying behaviors. In the end, it is said that a purchase decision is very often emotional, not rational. EQ is all about the sphere of emotions that impact a human beings perception on life. Brand should be thinking about this in significance.

Very few brands have gotten this equation of UI, AI, IQ and EQ right. Does any particular example spring to your mind?

Conversations are the new conversion

It is often stated that marketing is part art and part science. This is just as true within the digital environment. With modern web technologies and their ease of use and access, aficionados of both camps can easily go wild in pursuing their passions, whether artistic or scientific. Throughout my working years, i’ve had the chance to meet both types, in good and in bad. Creative agencies have presented us concepts involving  rockets, bellydancers and a midget (don’t ask), while in other occasions  i’ve sat in meetings for hours observing data obsessed people convinced that everything can be explained through numbers.

Marketers often rely on the purchase funnel data as a source for measuring the overall performance of a particular intiative. This way of measuring provides an overall view of the volumes and conversion rates across the different stages from awareness down to actual conversion to sales.  A while back, Forrester released a revised version of this funnel and highlighted it’s distinct nature within the digital landscape. What is quite evident is that the purchase funnel in the digital landscape needs a re-think as brands can no longer control all media touch points.  Fundamentally, it marks a significant shift in where value is created. The linear purchase funnel assumes that the value exchange happens in the actual point of purchase, in which money is exchanged for a product that adds value to the consumer. Broadcast media delivers the high level message of why the product adds value and the consumer goes and buys. (you can have any color car, as long as its black…)

Technology has fundamentally disrupted this chain as consumers are increasingly in control and have more access (and voice) than ever before. Smart brands embrace the notion of co-creating social practices with customers and listen carefully to when these come to life in specific usage contexts of a particular product. These conversational conversions are the future for brand success as they are fueled through advocacy. Conversations are thus the new conversion metric smart brands will start to measure.

Together with the search  & social team at Nokia (Dan, JP, Anssi) as well as friends on the agency side (Teemu/Esko) + (one self employed social guru), we got together to put some thoughts down on the topic. These can be seen in the slideshare below. We’re now spreading the message across the company and tweaking it as we go so all thoughts are more than welcome. We’re tired of broadcasting, we’re tired of shouting. We wanna listen, we wanna co-create social practices. We don’t have all the answers, but we’re determined to make this come to life. Together with you.

Social Location Optimization

It’s been exciting to witness the impact that the Internet has had on media as well as consumer journeys. A large part of my time at work goes into defining the ultimate mix of activities/investments behind own, bought and earned media (from a digital perspective). From a search perspective, own/bought/earned media can be defined as SEM (paid/performance media), SEO (own media optimization) and SMO (earned/social media optimization). All of these activities, in my opinion, are working media. Recent studies have shown that 80% of internet sessions start with a search of some kind. Searching as such has undergone a huge transformation, evolving from the “linear” search engine search triggered by a particular need, to “real time web” searches/feeds, which instantaneously tap into your own social networks and contact base. Depending on the industry (physical goods), percentages of consumers referring to online sources at some stage of their purchase decision, can be as high as 91%. If nearly 80% of these internet sessions start with a search of some kind, capitalizing “on the search window” becomes immensely important. However, albeit being interesting and extremely relevant within digital environments, it got me and some colleagues thinking further about the whole relevance that ties everything back to the “real world”.

My point being: SEM, SEO and to some degree even SMO are practices that emerge from the world of the PC based Internet. PC’s don’t know exactly where you are, who you are and what friends are around you. From a business perspective, you’re trying to capitalize on overall traffic interested in your brand based on keywords, but you can’t filter it down to a time/context specific grid. It’s challenging to sell a product online that a consumer needs at 8:45 Pm in West Helsinki. (Finnish stores stop selling beer after 9pm) Mobile devices allow you to do this. This brings along an entirely different type of ecosystem for brands to optimize against. A consumer searching for Adidas sneakers in downtown Manhattan, becomes a “golden lead” for any retailer that happens to operate a shoe business within that proximity area. Your virtual experience leads to a physical experience, which we all know is much more personal, intimate and (yes), social. Brands start seeing direct correlations between digital media and its attribution to physical sales. A topic argued over in several instances and forums.

While efficient SEM/SEO/SMO allows you to grasp the global internet population around the topic, you can’t tie it to an instant need that is time/context sensitive. Mobile devices will bring along an entirely new kind of media practice, which one could label as social location optimization, or as SLO just to add another abbreviation

Built to live, not to die

Built to live not to die

Just over a year ago, I met some creative minds from Isobar, one of  Nokia’s digital agencies. One of their strategic leads used the term “built to live” in his presentation, to describe the right kind of presence that brands should have when going online. Around a coffee table discussion, we would all agree that you can’t just “copy->paste->print->web”, but sadly enough, that is often the case.

Since the birth of the internet, companies of all sizes have been entering this exciting  “always on” media with different levels of  “corporate ambitions”.  This new environment forced companies to re-think their definitions of media, but also brought more fundamental questions to the core attributes of the brand itself.

Although technological innovation has accelerated insurmountably in the last 10 years, i feel there are still certain building blocks that remain relatively unchanged, when it comes to a successful brand presence on the Web. I’ve taken a stab at defining these in more detail below.

Meaningfulness

In the digital space, the experience IS the brand. Edward T. Hall, a non-verbal communication genious once said that verbal communication (in terms of words) accounts to only a fraction of the actual meaning delivered in a conversation. All the non-verbal ques such as gestures, tone of voice, bodylanguage and cultural/social context comprise of the largest part of the deciphered message. Analog brands are used to talking at consumers. Brands in the digital space are the brand they express through their actions. A great creative mind at N2 Helsinki, recently made the comment on how brands used to be the the visual objects that talked down to consumers. In this time and age, brands in the digital space are equal to any personal brand. Barriers are broken, people have the power and successful brands need to be “good people” if they want to succeed.

In practice, this implies that corporations need to think about the meaningfulness of their brand in the digital space. Meaning is derived from values, self-esteem, character and composure; all attributes that can be found (in one form or another), in the brand guidelines of the company. The interpretation/implementation of these guidelines, is what often goes wrong. Analog brands PRESENT the brand. Digital brands ARE the brand and deliver on the brand promise through good behavior and useful doing.

Sustainability

Another cornerstone for success in the digital space is built around the notion of continuity. John Willshire created a great presentation in which he referred to advertising as being like “fireworks”. They come in a nice package and you just light them up and shoot them off to the sky. You get a lot of reach and at best, people say “WOW! Nice firework” and then return to whatever they were doing. Bonfires are social gatherings. People are at the heart of them and the process takes time/effort, but the fire can be infinitely re-ignited from the burning coals in the fireplace. Fireworks are just as common in the digital environment. Campaigns are in essence “built to die” as they have a window of 2-3 months after which they are taken down and planning starts for the next “firework”. Good brands think about continuity and sustainability in their marketing efforts. Ask yourself, what’s the “red thread” between the communication streams i’m creating. Do i just shoot off fireworks or do i build bonfires and actively participate in them?

With such great web 2.0 tools available, there shouldn’t be an excuse for shooting fireworks. Stop replacing time with money, hire some community managers and social media optimizers and start building a sustainable presence for your brand. Your advocates will love you for it.

Scalability

Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, establishing a scalable presence on the web takes time as well as “machinery”. When i refer to scalability, i mean 2 different things:  platform & presence. Platform scalability in terms of using technology that is easy to use, deploy, expand and build upon. A few months ago, i had the privilege to meet Raanan Bar-Cohen from Automattic, the company responsible (amongst many things) of keeping this blog up and running. Raanan mentioned how the core of WordPress is only a few megs and how everything else can easily be built onto plug-ins, thus allowing easy customization that can be scaled when new platform releases come out.

Although scalability from a platform perspective is important, it’s the presence side that i feel is even more vital. Many of the platform related scalability issues fail when the web presence is treated as an end destination. In today’s web, there is no end destination. Consumers navigate through purchase funnels that are not linear, and investing in brand presence scalability should have an emphasis on expanding the brand’s presence across the internet. In practice, it means leveraging both man & machine. “Machine” in terms of mechanical SEO, SMO, SEM, and “man” in terms of active community, content, editorial and analytics management.

Measurability

A digital marketing manager cannot have the excuse of saying “50% of my advertising works, i just don’t know which 50%”. Investing and using measurement tools as a standard indicator of the performance of your web presence is critical. Often marketing managers get caught up with the “key selling points”, “tone of voice”, “messaging strategy”, “visual language” and “creative concept”. In many cases, you can just let the data tell you the truth as a large part of digital marketing really begins once the campaign or initiative is out there. You can even see this in the way internet services are brought out to the market. They are often released as closed alphas, then expanded into invitation only betas until expanding to the “final version”. Similarily, marketing managers obviously need to think about the concept and strategic intent of the initiative, but significant effort should also be placed into the actual “tweak it as you go” initiatives. AB testing, weekly/daily paid media optimization, changes in ad copy, reactive spin-offs generated through consumer responses etc etc. This obviously requires investing in the right measurement tools and training your staff to make use of them and have the flexibility to react rapidly to changes.

In the end, many of these streams and thoughts are very straight forward and simple to implement within any corporation where there is the desire to do so. Having the desire and courage to do the right things is the final (and often) most challenging piece