The model for engagement

“We are seriously under-valuing certain things in advertising,” says Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of Ogilvy Group UK. “We don’t distinguish between what consumers ask for and what they don’t. Instead, we just target people by demographic, which is patently daft.

He went on to say

“A website with 700,000 users isn’t necessarily less powerful than a digital campaign seen by seven million people.

“Those 700,000 users are visiting the site of their own accord, and they are visiting when they have an interest in the content of the site. They are far more susceptible to relevant advertising than a larger group that just fit the target demographic.”

Sutherland likened “old marketing” to ten-pin bowling, with one message looking to “knock down” a large amount of consumers. Modern marketing, according to Sutherland, should follow a pinball analogy, with the message kept high on the agenda by factors other than just a brand’s input.

Sharon Shaw e-commerce manager at Standard Life adds:

"Developing a new digital strategy can be a daunting experience, especially considering the lack of case studies and benchmarks out there," and proposes an Attract, Convert, Support, Extend model.

Well welcome to the real world.

What they are talking about is developing relationships and I am not convinced they are on the right track yet.

Before we attract, there has to be worked through value systems and then, the model is to Listen before anything else.

That is why I believe that the planning model has to start with a proper audit of organisational values, the values of the online community and levels of dissonance.

It is only then that attracting the community is possible.

Just believing that 700,000 web site visitors are all happy campers is nieve and attracting people who don't want to go there is counter-productive.

Why Facebook is so valuable

This video is a visual interpretation of a contribution to For Immediate Release, The Hobson and Holtz Report.

It explores developments in psychology, human evolution and the brain sciences as motives for our use of social media. The would seem to be some very powerful drivers that explain the human need to be online and take part in generating content, sharing it and interacting. Enjoy.

Please feel free to share it from here.

The death of music?

I loved JP Rangaswami's post "Which have eyes, and see not: Musings about the music industry and The Because Effect" in which he shows how copyright and music are parting company.
But there are issues.

First, how can we be sure that people will be tempted to find out about what they desire. How do people find out about Radiohead in the first place?
Its getting harder to help people understand the significance of value systems but there lies the key.

Those people who have or acquire the complementary value systems that makes them scramble for a Led Zepplin gig is the critical issue that PR faces in order that they can attract eyeballs and action.

At the same time, we have to be able to convince clients that this is the way forward.
They have to learn the value of knowledge and those value systems that make it valuable.

It is action on two fronts and requires long and serious and cerebral conversations with leaders in organisations. This is not for a marketing manager attempting to hype the very name of an organisation through the courts. Its far more important.

What is more valueable trust or knowledge?

Slashdot announced today that

"After months of promises to IP-holders, the long-awaited filters system for YouTube has gone online. The new system will make it easier, the company claims, for copyrighted clips to be removed. 'YouTube now needs the cooperation of copyright owners for its filtering system to work, because the technology requires copyright holders to provide copies of the video they want to protect so YouTube can compare those digital files to material being uploaded to its website. This means that movie and TV studios will have to provide decades of copyright material if they don't want it to appear on YouTube, or spend even more time scanning the site for violations.'"

Which, of course is hard work for the copy holders and YouTube.

Why?

Because there are lots of copycat sites like YouTube where the copyright material can go, folk will get fed up with being fed what the studios let them have (Stalin would be proud) and will, eventually punish them and the bright young things will have alternative entertainment anyway.

Its a question of understanding the nature of the value of knowledge.

Knowledge is expensive to produce and has no value at all.

Making available information that some knowledge exists is expensive too and has high cost and low value associated with it.

If a person or organisation has trust assets, people might believe them if they say they have knowledge and should that knowledge be of interest, it may have some value.

What is the most valuable trust or knowledge?

Knowledge in the form of copyright such as films only has value when the recommender makes it so.

'King Kong' is a film. It has value because we trust the view of people who have seen it. Among a trillion films, there will be a need for some very powerful and much trusted recommenders to give king Kong future value. After all, now that films have a 'Long Tail' who has time to see all the movies?

Perhaps the studios and broadcasters will eventually understand that citizen critics are seriously important and will stop the idiocy of trying to protect valueless copyright.

Picture: Wikipedia

Who's Who at the Web 2.0 Summit

The Times has a list of the key players at Web 2.0 Summit in an article today.

This is a major conference and Professor Jonathan Zitrain will be presenting - and as always is controversial arguing that Web 2.0 is potentially a challenge with counterintuitive arguments that Web 2.0 architectures pose distinct problems for competition, innovation, and freedom.

But when you see how much he has in-press, and with whom it makes one wonder how far he will go:

• Internet Law, Foundation Press, with Charles Nesson, Larry Lessig, Terry Fisher, and Yochai Benkler (forthcoming 2006).
• The Generative Internet, 119 Harvard Law Review __ (forthcoming 2006).
• Generativity and Meta-Gatekeeping, 19 Harvard J.L. Tech. __ (forthcoming 2006).

One might start by reading this paper he published with Benjamin Edelman.

Turning a communication channel into a movement

Bloggers unite to tell world how to clean up environment

Organizers of the Oct. 15 U.N.-backed “Blog Action Day” said about 15,800 sites had signed up and were offering ideas to millions of people via blogs, or online diaries, ranging from planting more trees to how to recycle plastics.

“Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future,” according to www.blogactionday.com.

Says Canada's National Post.

The interest in environmental matters has a resonance (a set of values) with a wide audience that seems to want to crusade.

This seems to be another example of the effect of working with the grain of people's values.