Making sens of these turbulent times

Oct 12

I prefer John Grant to Rupert Murdoch

So there is this emphatic and dramatic oracle of Rupert Murdoch at the World Media Summit :

“The Philistine phase of the digital age is almost over. The aggregators and the plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid-for content, it will be the content creators, the people in this hall, who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph”.

And there is this subtle and honnest feeling on the role of copying in the evolution of ideas and life by John Grant (the one of the Green Manifesto) :

“Postmodernism was the artistic and philosophical climax of a reaction to and against this mechanistic trend. It was fundamentally about recovering subjectivity, even within a world of mechanical reproduction. I say ‘was’ because it seems we may be moving past this. Towards something like a new folk culture. Partly through a dawning awareness of the damage done by our split with nature (and human nature and community). It’s not all about slow food and handiworks either. Folk culture is flourishing in web 2.0 where self made media and the ability to share good content bypass the old media pyramid schemes, that replicated content to make money. That is for me, as one subjective observer, the implication of No Ghost Just a Shell. It is actually about reanimation; a coming back to life”.

Via Simon Kemp and Neil Perkin.

Jul 15

Guardian Media Top 100 joins other studies of Dinosaurs...by Alan Patrick

Funnily enough, I know something of what I speak (for a change, I hear you cry ). The talk I gave at the Media Futures conference was directly on this topic, and how the Meedja is entering a 3-5 year “Creative Destruction” period which promises to shake it to its core. We have actually done quite a lot of research and scenario planning on this (that is an in-post plug for our services, by the way) but the diagram above illustrates the point. We are moving into Pirate World, where freebooters and cut-throats of every ilk will be busy dismembering these large cumbersome beasties. And I don’t just mean Olde Media - Web 1.0 companies are also under threat, as Google is finding with its core search market coming under attack.

Just as with the 15 year old Morgan Stanley analyst’s work, the data is all out there - you just have to look at it without due prejudice or undue preconceived opinion. It is, as they say, what it is.

Here’s a prediction - that over the next 3 years, the changes in this landscape will be the most momentous that the Media industry has ever seen, and that - let me put a number on it - about 2/3rds - of these people won’t be here in 2012 (more if the BBC loses its special funding streams). Inclusion in this list may well be akin to being featured as a Great Company in “In Search of Excellence” (most hit the skids within a few years of the book coming out)

For more insights, read Alan Patrick “The Future Of Online Video” .

Jun 23

Ethan Bauley at his best :

Citing Wired, Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet

“Zuckerberg doesn’t pull any punches, describing Google as “a top-down way” of organizing the Web that results in an impersonal experience that stifles online activity. “You have a bunch of machines and algorithms going out and crawling the Web and bringing information back,” he says. “That only gets stuff that is publicly available to everyone. And it doesn’t give people the control that they need to be really comfortable.” Instead, he says, Internet users will share more data when they are allowed to decide which information they make public and which they keep private. “No one wants to live in a surveillance society,” Zuckerberg adds, “which, if you take that to its extreme, could be where Google is going.”

—    
Ethan comments:

“This is one of the most ironic thought patterns EVER” .

I couldn’t agree more :-)

Each time i read, hear, watch Mark Zuckerberg I can help but remember this extract of The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoyevsky :

Shigalov (Zuckerrov?) went on.

“Dedicating my energies to the study of the social organisation which is in the future to replace the present condition of things, I’ve come to the conviction that all makers of social systems from ancient times up to the present year, 187-, have been dreamers, tellers of fairy-tales, fools who contradicted themselves, who understood nothing of natural science and the strange animal called man. Plato, Rousseau, Fourier, columns of aluminium, are only fit for sparrows and not for human society. But, now that we are all at last preparing to act, a new form of social organisation is essential. In order to avoid further uncertainty, I propose my own system of world-organisation. Here it is.” He tapped the notebook. “I wanted to expound my views to the meeting in the most concise form possible, but I see that I should need to add a great many verbal explanations, and so the whole exposition would occupy at least ten evenings, one for each of my chapters.” (There was the sound of laughter.) “I must add, besides, that my system is not yet complete.” (Laughter again.) “I am perplexed by my own data and my conclusion is a direct contradiction of the original idea with which I start. Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism. I will add, however, that there can be no solution of the social problem but mine.”

The Possessed, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, originally posted as comment on Ethan Bauley’s blog.

Wired, Ethan Bauley, and Dostoyevsky are higly recommended !

Jun 18

[video]

Jun 09

Research Note: On Selling Out (The So-Called Fansumer) by Umair Haque

Quote from Umair Haque’s Research Note: On Selling Out (The So-Called Fansumer), posted on november 2007:

“The word consumer is nasty enough - with all the implications of helplessness and the assumption of stupidity it carries.

Fansumer, I think, is even worse - as this commenter points out.

It utterly - and completely - misses the point of connected consumption.

Consumers connect with each other - not with brands.

Which brings us to a set of deeper issues. There are foundational problems with the concepts execs are using to make sense of the next mediaconomy.

Here’s what happens when we think about “engagement”: we think consumers want to be fansumers, on the assumption that they wanna connect with brands. Here’s what happens when we think about “relevance”: we bombard consumers with ads on the assumption that it will be good for them.

Neither is true. There is, as I’ve pointed out before, an existence proof confirming this: if consumers loved brands, no one would have to advertise. If consumers loved ads, firms wouldn’t have to pay for them. If consumers trusted firms, brands wouldn’t exist.

What do those simple economic truths tell us?

There are no fansumers. There are people who love products. But very rarely will they want to be pimped out and put to work on Facebook’s (or anyone else’s) digital streetcorner.

And those who want to - well, those are exactly the guys you don’t want talking about you and your brands: classic adverse selection”.

Consumers connect with each other - not with brands

If consumers trusted firms, brands wouldn’t exist

(The hypothetical Fansumers) are exactly the guys you don’t want talking about you and your brands: classic adverse selection

Via Taylor Davidson.

Jun 05

[video]

Jun 03

Is there a light for the publishing industry?

Brian Morrissey has just written a nice post quoted Fred Wilson and his ideas to save the NYT. It’s radical (stop printing, kill the sports and business sections, concentrate on political and world affairs)

The underlying idea is to focus on core advantage and brings people undeniable good content. For Brian Morrissey this shift would involve with drastic cuts in the staff.

A recent success in the french press magazine brings some light in this futur graveyard. XXI (launched one year ago) decided to adopt a very simple strategy : do the opposite from what your competitors does.

Be different, (whereas your competitors only seek differenciation) create original content, be a singular and honest voice. Charge for this content.

Focus on the print edition

• make a beautiful object
• use the website to promote the printed edition and give visibilty to the different stakeholders (for example your distributors)

Choose an original distribution channel : the booksellers. And empower them to build the brand.

Control the costs, with a light organization.     

The result is impressive : very good (aka thoughtful stuff and long articles) content, embedded in a beautiful design, with very talented and well-paid journalists.

Numbers of sold issues: 44.000 (jan. 08), 31.000 (apr. 08), 27.000 (jul. 08), 37.000 (oct. 2008) and 44 000 estimate for the last issue (jan. 09).

2 252 people have subscribed (60 euros) without neither e-mailing nor reduction and the subscription rythme has doubled since september 2008.

Gross sales for 2008 : 1, 98 millions euros with 800 000 euros in net incomes.

The breakthrough for an issue is 31 000 sold with 47 000 printed.

Unsold issues represent 18% of the total printed.

Press costs represent 28% of the fixed costs, organization costs 21%, reportage and coverage costs 34%, layout and illustration 13%, shipping costs 34%, marketing, 4%

They raised 450 000 euros and spend 250 000 for the prepartion til the launch of the first issue.

Big thank you to Alain Joannes for these informations.

Tyler Brûlé, with Monocle, has adopted a very similar strategy with an even more original business model. They set up a weekly podcast. Monocle is also becoming a lifestyle brand, selling products that match with the content of the magazine.

It can’t be THE solution for all the press industry (and newspapers have different challenges to face), but it shows that media brand with a very strong sens of purpose can emerge very quickcly and successfully.

May 18

Unmarketing And The Webful Brand by Stowe Boyd

“When people retreat from mass belonging to social belonging, their motivations are less oriented toward self-identity based on affiliation with mass markers in mass markets. They shift toward social identity, where its most important that those that ‘know me’ in my social networks ‘know me’ based on what I am doing, what I care about, what I am trying to accomplish, and who I affiliate with in those efforts.

In this world, a company’s name or product marks can’t be just an industrial warranty, or a feather in your hair. For brands to be social, they have to seem more like people and less like a corporate artifact. Specifically, real people will have to front for the brand or company, and they — and their actions — will define the relevance and influence of that product line or company. Like tags, the company or product will become defined by what it is associated with, and those that are involved in the activities that they are linked to.

So those companies that work to understand this tectonic shift — from mass markets to social unmarkets — will rethink their marketing, and after that headshift will approach their interaction with Edglings very, very differently.

I call this webfulness, based loosely on the idea of mindfulness”.

May 13

In his post Twitter Link Page, Fred Wilson explains :

“The fact is that twitter has become the best source of links for me and, at times, I am too busy to go through my entire feed and just want the links. Now I can do that. Thanks to everyone who hacked something together based on my tweet. If I’ve left anyone out, please leave a link to your app in the comments and I’ll revise this post to include it as well”.

I feel the same and i’ve opted for Tweetsip (better solution?) to build my own Techmeme.

Yes this is just part of the solution. And we need a one stop shop to aggregate all our links, adding value with social tags. And yes it won’t be enough.

In his post, A Personal API could be a modularized, standardized interface for collaboration, Taylor Davidson explains,

…when I talk about “personal APIs” I’m not only talking about accessing or receiving content, I’m also talking about delivering content and context to people; using the term API is a conceptual approach to thinking about how we can “scale” our time, thoughts and value stored inside ourselves to deliver more (quantity) and deeper (quality) interactions to other people; how can we reduce inter-personal transaction costs of interactions to deliver more value?

I see that like a city, where i could find for example, the “social net” block, stop at “the game theory corner”, and climb to “the marketing floor”. Here, i could find all the compelling content relative to my problematic and might help to design the building adding my thoughts. This “work in progress” architecture would need rules to help the building growing straight.

Apr 10

It seems that consumers evolve faster than "big guns" executives....

So we know that the web has dramatically affected the way communication must operate and crate new (old?) values for consumers (who are no longeur passive zombies, but rather “creative” prosumers)

We know that to some degrees, dumb consumption confiscated part of the libido (life intinct), at the expense of creative, life-producing drives.

We know that new media, social capital, social media etc. help to recover this creative part.

What we don’t kow is the time it will take to see change become mainstream.

An article in the FT, “New’ US shopper to emerge from crisis”, may help and give some hope ;-)

A Citigroup report, for example, argues that US consumers are shifting towards “conscientious consumption”, embracing a “thriftiness” focused on value and quality, not quantity.

Euro RSCG, the global advertising group, says a recent survey of 500 people in the US, the UK and France pointed to a shift to “value” combined with a desire for “voluntary simplicity”. And consumer anthropologists suggest Americans will seek to “un-stuff” their lives, and focus more on the community.

Andrew Benett, of Euro RSCG Worldwide, says the changes are likely to be long-lasting. “I don’t think we are going to go back to the behaviours of the past, which were about excess and not thinking things through…we have moved on as consumers.”

(…)

The behavioural changes have included cutting back on “aspirational” luxury shopping. People are using cash and debit cards more than credit, while favouring lower-cost stores such as Wal-Mart and Costco. At supermarkets, well-known national brands have lost ground to retailers’ lower-cost own-brand products.

Joan Lewis, head of consumer and market research at Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest consumer products company, says there is a remarkable consistency in these shifts, in both developed and developing markets. “We think that many of these changes we have seen will remain for a long time,” she says.

(…)

Ed Kerschner, chief investment strategist at Citi Global Wealth Management, says the US has passed an “inflection” point, marking the end of an acceptance of conspicuous consumption that he traces back to the Reagan presidency of the early 1980s. The end of easy access to consumer credit will, he argues, lead to “thriftiness” focused on “value”, rather than “frugality” focused on low prices.

It seems that consumers evolve faster than “big guns” executives….