ChaosScenario

Age of Conversation 2: Don't Be The Only One Who Doesn't Get It

Age of Conversation 2: Why Don't They Get It? was officially released yesterday. I bought both a hardcover and an electronic copy, and from that purchase, $16.04 is being donated to Variety, the children's charity.

But that's not why you should buy this book.

Now, you know that as a contributing author, I'm biased, but having read a few essays so far, I know that the quality of thinking and writing is strong.

As a contributing author to the first Age of Conversation (which is still on sale at Amazon), I can say without bias that this version is so much better than the first.

The difference, I think, can be attributed to several factors.

1. A dedicated theme. "Why Don't They Get It," as chosen by the community (including non-authors).
2. Organization. Authors had choice of topics from within that theme. Authors chose between Manifestos, The Accidental Marketer (John Herrington's chapter is in here), A New Brand of Creative (my choice), My Marketing Tragedy, Life in the Conversation Lane, Keeping Secrets, From Conversation to Action, and Business Models. Kudos to Drew and Gavin for stepping it up.
3. Increased effort. Authors (including returning authors) knew the opportunity was serious. They stepped up their game for this one and unleashed their creativity.
4. More perspectives. About 134 more authors this time than last. We're all over the globe, too.

Still unconvinced?
While you're making up your mind, here is some information that may help.

1. Follow AOC2 on Twitter
2. Subscribe to the Official Age of Conversation Blog
3. Listen to the Official Age of Conversation Podcast
4. Meet the authors.
5. Interact with them. Don't be afraid to get in the conversation

Who Are the Authors?

A   Adrian Ho, Aki Spicer, Alex Henault, Amy Jussel, Andrew Odom, Andy Nulman, Andy Sernovitz, Andy Whitlock, Angela Maiers, Ann Handley, Anna Farmery, Armando Alves, Arun Rajagopal, Asi Sharabi

B   Becky Carroll, Becky McCray, Bernie Scheffler, Bill Gammell, Bob LeDrew, Brad Shorr, Brandon Murphy, Branislav Peric, Brent Dixon, Brett Macfarlane, Brian Reich

C   C.C. Chapman, Cam Beck, Casper Willer, Cathleen Rittereiser, Cathryn Hrudicka, Cedric Giorgi, Charles Sipe, Chris Kieff, Chris Cree, Chris Wilson, Christina Kerley (CK), C.B. Whittemore, Chris Brown, Connie Bensen, Connie Reece, Corentin Monot, Craig Wilson

D   Daniel Honigman, Dan Schawbel, Dan Sitter, Daria Radota Rasmussen, Darren Herman, Dave Davison, David Armano, David Berkowitz, David Koopmans, David Meerman Scott, David Petherick, David Reich, David Weinfeld, David Zinger, Deanna Gernert, Deborah Brown, Dennis Price, Derrick Kwa, Dino Demopoulos, Doug Haslam, Doug Meacham, Doug Mitchell, Douglas Hanna, Douglas Karr, Drew McLellan, Duane Brown, Dustin Jacobsen, Dylan Viner

E   Ed Brenegar, Ed Cotton, Efrain Mendicuti, Ellen Weber, Eric Peterson, Eric Nehrlich, Ernie Mosteller

F   Faris Yakob, Fernanda Romano, Francis Anderson

G   Gareth Kay, Gary Cohen, Gaurav Mishra, Gavin Heaton, Geert Desager, George Jenkins, G. Kofi Annan, G.L. Hoffman, Gianandrea Facchini, Gordon Whitehead, Greg Verdino, Gretel Going & Kathryn Fleming

H   Hillel Cooperman, Hugh Weber

J   J. Erik Potter, James G. Lindberg, James Gordon-Macintosh, Jamey Shiels, Jasmin Tragas, Jason Oke, Jay Ehret, Jeanne Dininni, Jeff De Cagna, Jeff Gwynne & Todd Cabral, Jeff Noble, Jeff Wallace, Jennifer Warwick, Jenny Meade, Jeremy Fuksa, Jeremy Heilpern, Jeroen Verkroost, Jessica Hagy, Joanna Young, Joe Pulizzi, John Herrington, John Moore, John Rosen, John Todor, Jon Burg, Jon Swanson, Jonathan Trenn, Jordan Behan, Julie Fleischer, Justin Foster

K   Karl Turley, Kate Trgovac, Katie Chatfield, Katie Konrath, Kenny Lauer, Keri Willenborg, Kevin Jessop, Kristin Gorski

L   Lewis Green, Lois Kelly, Lori Magno, Louise Manning, Luc Debaisieux

M   Mario Vellandi, Mark Blair, Mark Earls, Mark Goren, Mark Hancock, Mark Lewis, Mark McGuinness, Matt Dickman, Matt J. McDonald, Matt Moore, Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Michelle Lamar, Mike Arauz, Mike McAllen, Mike Sansone, Mitch Joel

N   Neil Perkin, Nettie Hartsock, Nick Rice

O   Oleksandr Skorokhod, Ozgur Alaz

P   Paul Chaney, Paul Hebert, Paul Isakson, Paul McEnany, Paul Tedesco, Paul Williams, Pet Campbell, Pete Deutschman, Peter Corbett, Phil Gerbyshak, Phil Lewis, Phil Soden, Piet Wulleman

R   Rachel Steiner, Reginald Adkins, Richard Huntington, Rishi Desai, Robert Hruzek, Roberta Rosenberg, Robyn McMaster, Roger von Oech, Rohit Bhargava, Ron Shevlin, Ryan Barrett, Ryan Karpeles, Ryan Rasmussen

S   Sam Huleatt, Sandy Renshaw, Scott Goodson, Scott Monty, Scott Townsend, Scott White, Sean Howard, Sean Scott, Seni Thomas, Seth Gaffney, Shama Hyder, Sheila Scarborough, Sheryl Steadman, Simon Payn, Sonia Simone, Spike Jones, Sreeraj Menon, Stanley Johnson, Stephen Collins, Stephen Landau, Stephen Smith, Steve Bannister, Steve Hardy, Steve Portigal, Steve Roesler, Steven Verbruggen, Steve Woodruff, Sue Edworthy, Susan Bird, Susan Gunelius, Susan Heywood

T   Tammy Lenski, Terrell Meek, Thomas Clifford, Thomas Knoll, Tim Brunelle, Tim Connor, Tim Jackson, Tim Mannveille, Tim Tyler, Timothy Johnson, Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Toby Bloomberg, Todd Andrlik, Troy Rutter, Troy Worman

U   Uwe Hook

V   Valeria Maltoni, Vandana Ahuja, Vanessa DiMauro, Veronique Rabuteau

W   Wayne Buckhanan, William Azaroff

Y   Yves Van Landeghem

Thanks to the great Kristin Gorski for the author formatting!

- Cam Beck

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What's a Harvard MBA Worth in an Economic Downturn?

According to this millionaire hedge fund guru, not much.

"The low-hanging fruit, ie idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking," he wrote. "These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government," he said.

"All of this behaviour supporting the aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America."

There are a couple ways we could react to this less-than-fond farewell.

Rage. We could mistake his profiting from the collapse of the subprime mortgages as his having caused it, which is not the case. There are at least 5 parties to the mess.

1. The government that encouraged the practice
2. The borrower
3. The lender
4. The seller
5. The buyer

We could also resent how glib he's being, but that's not very productive either. We'll just work up our blood pressure and we'll be no closer to recovery.

Pity. I know. He's a mega millionaire, and I make it a habit to avoid feeling pity for mega millionaires. But think about it. This guy's only 37, but this lifestyle has left his health in shambles. The article doesn't say if he has or had a family, but if he does or did, you can bet the bank that they suffered.

Ambivalence. This is my preferred reaction (only his highly egocentric "farewell, world" letter caught my attention). So he made a bunch of money. Big deal. Good for him, too, for whatever it can buy him (apparently he's partial to pot).

I hope he finds the peace he obviously needs. His response to the stress in his life was more extreme than most of us can afford, but there's a grain of truth to his advice to businesspeople so tied to their jobs that they can't take a 2-week vacation without being glued to their Blackberries.

""Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life." - Cam Beck

Shift from tradition speeds up in downturn

It looks like the shift from traditional marketing is speeding up in the downturn economy. Take a look at these stats from a recent study for Epsilon:

As the overall marketing pool diminishes, the budget for interactive and digital marketing is dramatically increasing, while that for traditional marketing continues to shrink toward interactive, digital marketing:

Interactive/Digital Marketing:

• Decreased... 14%
• Increased... 63%
• Stayed the same... 23%

While Traditional Marketing

• Decreased... 59%
• Increased... 13%
• Stayed the same... 29%

In times of difficulty, it looks like marketers are trying new things. What's also interesting is where, within all the digital tools, marketers are planning on spending their budgets:

CMOs of the biggest brands have been early adopters of new media with social computing and blogs receiving the most interest whereas instant messaging and interactive TV ads were the least popular.

• Social computing (including word of mouth, social networking sites, viral advertising, etc.) was the most popular emerging channel with 42% of marketing executives expressing interest in adding it to their marketing mix.
• Blogs were the second most popular emerging channel: 35% of marketing executives want to pursue blogs and 19% already use blogs
• Almost one-third of CMOs mentioned Podcasting as an area of interest: 31% are interested in adding Podcasting to their marketing mix and 18% already have.
• Mobile devices also elicited interest: 29% are interested in Mobile Devices (Phones/PDAs) and 22% have added them to their marketing mix.

As much as I think this is something most of us have been waiting for, it warrants caution. The models for advertising in all of these areas are very new and frankly unproven. It will require a lot of experimentation. It's also not as simple as placing an ad on a network. It requires creativity beyond the creative ad development. It requires creativity in approach as well as follow up. All of the metrics are different and a change in environment from limited measurement to so much data that it will make your head spin. There will be some failures and expectations that aren't met.

The key to long term success is education. CMOs need to understand, at least at a high level, how these new platforms work. Just passing it off to the team or to the agency will result in mis-communication and disappointment. - Paul Herring

Link to Epsilon study

What "Joe the Plumber" Can Teach Us About Internet Marketing

In last night's debate between Senators Barrack Obama and John McCain, the "undecided voters" were introduced to a person some of us political junkies had known about for several days. Joe Wurzelbacher, a plumber and hopeful entrepreneur, confronted Obama at a campaign stop in Ohio about the higher taxes he'd pay if the Senator from Illinois had his way.

Joe felt cheated. As if he were being punished for having some success in life.

After all, he'd been working about 15 years to get to the point that he could afford to buy a business and improve his family's quality of life only to have someone come in, under threat of penalty and imprisonment, to take away what he earned through his hard work and effort -- not to mention the capital he put at risk.

Obama responded, (paraphrasing) "Well, you'd be taxed more now, but for the 15 years leading up to this point, you'd have been taxed less under my plan. I just wanna spread the wealth."

(Or, as Joe heard it, Obama wants to spread Joe's wealth.)

Now, before you run away, this isn't about Joe's, Obama's, or McCain's politics.

It's about Joe's desire to be free from someone telling him that they're restricting his freedom for his own good. 

It's about the audacity of anyone to suggest that people perched high in their offices (political or corporate), know better than the Joes of the world how their time or the fruits of their labor should be spent.

Sadly, in spite of a wealth of information that should discourage the practice of such tactics, companies still fall victim to the same, navel-gazing mindset -- particularly on the Internet.

• They hide critical information (such as price) because they're afraid the customer might get "sticker shock."
• They force users to complete a form that requires more information than is really needed.
• They bloat a website with marketing fluff instead of clear, concise content germane to the user's task.

The intent of the marketers is not to "punish" their visitors. Quite to the contrary. They covet and need these people as customers. So why do they insist on getting in their way? Don't they know that damages their brand?

They just don't understand what's required of them with respect to visitors who have plenty of options to get their questions answered.

Hint: It usually starts with a Google or Yahoo search.

But the marketplace doesn't succeed or fail on intentions. Its success rests on the the participants' ability to deliver. Since Web users are absolutely ruthless in pursuit of their goals, companies need to check their egos and their fears long enough to get out of their customers' way -- or else they'll be gone before the company even knows what happened. 

And once gone, it will be terribly expensive to get them back. - Cam Beck

70s Advertisers

There were only three networks. It was the era of the three martini lunch, and creepy advertising.

Someone sent me a clip of a Southwest Airlines commercial from the 70s.

The scenes in the airplane creep me out a bit. Look at related videos, I found another for Eastern Airlines that creeped me out even more:

Wow. After getting lost in the woods like that, a trip to a therapist may be a better idea than Disney World.

It's always easy to look back and make fun of the past. What were these advertisers thinking?

- Paul Herring

The Calm After the Storm

When I was a boy, sometime between 7 and 10, I lived with my family in Okinawa, a tiny island located in the Pacific. It seems like we were hit by one or two typhoons (basically a hurricane by another name) every year. Most of them weren't serious. We just bunkered down, lit up the candles, and occasionally toweled up the water coming in under the doors. I used to stare out the window with my two older brothers and count the seconds between the flash of lightning and the thunder that accompanied it.

In our third and final year in Okinawa, we were hit by probably the worst one we'd ever seen since we arrived. I seem to remember it being a category 3, but I wouldn't stake my life on it. The domiciles built for the military were pretty sturdy and we lived on a hill, so we never really worried about the roof crashing in or being overcome by a flood.

When it was over, life continued as normal. There were a few uprooted trees, which at the time I thought was pretty cool, but as it turns out, the worst of the storms didn't signal the end of time.

Later, when we moved back to coastal North Carolina, we encountered the same type of storm once or twice, but afterwards we picked up the pieces and went back to work (or school, as was the case for my brothers and me).

While I was at boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina, Hurricane Andrew (the costliest natural disaster in the U.S. until Katrina) came up the coast caused a bit of a mess, but after it was over... you guessed it... we picked up the pieces and soldiered on.

Of course, I've already documented the plight of my wife's family after Hurricane Rita hit the gulf coast.

As flawed human beings, we have a tendency to look at each crisis as the worst that has ever occurred, and the worst that will ever occur.

These storms taught me, and history has confirmed, that we are resilient. We adapt. We find ways to persevere relying on nothing more than the sweat off our backs and the goodwill of our neighbors. Sure, there are tough times ahead, and after this one is over, there will be more we can look forward to.

They will always seem worse than the ones that came before. But we will get up the next morning, strap on our tool belts and rebuild what had been destroyed. That's what we do. And we will gladly help each other along the way. - Cam Beck

What They Say vs. What They Do

Researchers and media love their surveys. They are relatively easy to set up, and once the data are collected, they have a certain air of authority in them. However, while surveys can be useful, even if performed correctly, they are limited by a number of factors, not the least of which is the survey responders' lack of self-awareness that is required for gathering true insight into their own motivations. It's far more useful -- and often difficult -- to watch their behavior.

Fire the bums!
For instance, recently Rasmussen conducted a poll that concluded that 56% of Americans think we should throw all of Congress out on their ears and bring in new representatives. With an overwhelming incumbency retention rate around 95%, though, we are left to wonder why there is such a disparity.

Coke is it. No, really.
Back in the 80s Coca-Cola panicked when Pepsi started winning blind taste tests, so they tweaked their recipe until their new formula won in the blind taste tests they conducted. They introduced their new formula with much fanfare and a chipper Bill Cosby. Public outcry over this unnecessary change was so great, Coca-Cola had to backtrack -- offering both versions for awhile until they got rid of "New Coke" altogether.

What can we conclude from all of this?

While most people probably don't intentionally lie when they're answering survey questions or participating in a poll, the fact remains that surveys don't necessarily accurately measure the root causes of anything, and they certainly can't accurately predict what is going to happen or what can happen if a company (or a politician, for that matter) provided some actual leadership in its respective category.

It hurts none to ask people what their preferences are, but gaining insight from the answers requires more than reporting the results. First, you don't know that you're asking the right questions. And second, even if you were, the participants of the survey may not be able to think about the questions in the terms that conclusive action requires.

What people do is far more telling than what they say. But whether we conduct a survey, perform a usability test or conduct an ethnographic study, we mustn't be afraid to see what we see. - Cam Beck

Reflections of Our Better Selves

Have you noticed that marketers have a tendency to view customers as they view themselves? Their customers are smarter-than-average, savvy and sophisticated. Half of them have iPhones, and the other half have Blackberries.

In short, their audience projections look more like the how the marketers want themselves to be, not how they really are.

But your customers are like this, too.

Like us, they see the world through their own prisms without as much as the proper vocabulary to describe a worldview different from their own. Even in those extremely rare occasions when they change worldviews, their descriptions of this new perspective to those still in their old worldview come across as nonsense.

The fact remains that we are a diverse people with motivations that defy rational comprehension. But that doesn't change the fact that we wish for ourselves greater achievements -- however we define "achievement."

Our fear often keeps us from achieving it. It is true, as François de la Rochefaucauld said:

"We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears."

Instead of focusing all of our energy on those who meet our vain and selfish criteria for success, if we recognize this aspect of the human condition,  we can help our customers feel as if they can overcome the fears that are preventing them from becoming the people they want to be.

Knowing what your customers want to be, and how you can help them, requires an understanding of both their hopes and fears. Ask them, and then learn how to read between the lines.

What are they telling you? What are they not telling you? How does their actual behavior differ from what they're telling you?

How you choose to apply this advice will vary depending on if your worldview is closer to Hugh Hefner's or James Dobson's. This doesn't negate the premise, though. Rather, it can help us put the debate in perspective in a way that can lead us to identify the consequences of getting it wrong. - Cam Beck

Will traditional marketers ever understand online

Those people who adopt a technology, product or even philosophy have long been identified as early adopters. It's one of those things that's taught in Marketing 101. The early adopters are the first ones to try it, represent a small group of people and generally are considered influencers that the rest of us follow.

Traditional marketers seem yet to embrace the changes that are not only happening in our discipline but also our society. Back in 2000, right after the dot com bust, there were many people who were publicly saying that the internet was a fad. Now days most traditional marketers give it lip service but don't really embrace it. I've encountered my fair share of traditional marketers or public relations experts who feel that the internet or digital solutions are a "channel". They treat it as such not wanting to take the time to understand how their particular audience uses the medium or will in the near future.

I don't think I have to tell anyone who reads this blog how wrong that way of thinking is. What I do wonder, however, is when that way of thinking will stop being part of traditional firms. I think now that most traditional marketers give the changes that the internet has brought to the discipline lip service. To not do so would make them look asleep at the wheel. When the rubber meets the road however, there is still a LOT of these marketers that treat it as a channel. They're not really interested in how relationships are forming online, how early adopters can predict the ways that their audience will behave in the future and how to take advantage of that now. For the most part, they just want a simple tactic or advertising campaign that will complement (but not extend) the offline campaign.

It makes me wonder how much longer these types of firms can hold on to talent. Just like Yahoo! and Microsoft didn't foresee what Google would do, will there be a new type of company that will attract talent and provide a new way for companies to  provide marketing. Or will there be a company or agency that can transform itself?  - Paul Herring

(image courtesy of www.marketinginprogress.com/)