October 2006 Archives
Why the future of marketing isn't advertising, but rather product development.
One of the things I've been saying for a while now is that there's a big opportunity for marketing agencies to enter the product development cycle earlier. The end goal would be to bake the marketing right into the product. To me it's a very design-centric way of approaching business where you declare that all touch-points create the overall brand experience and therefore each must live up to the same high standards.
The few companies who do a good job with this are the usual suspects: Apple, Google, Jet Blue to name three. Each has a very unique identity, but more importantly they all realize that something like packaging can play just as large a role in your opinion as the actual product. What they do, then, is build things that make it impossible to separate the marketing from the product.
And that, I believe, should be the goal.
It seems that Jeff Hicks, CEO of Crispin+Porter agrees with me. He was quoted in a DM News article saying, "We think the future of advertising is great products that have marketing embedded in them."
Preach on Jeff. When you embed marketing into the product not only do you give the customer something better, but you also save yourself money on advertising. That's because great experiences are contagious and contagious marketing leads to viral results.
It's actually funny what a simple idea all of this is. Hicks is quoted as saying it's the role of the agency to create "content so valuable and useful that [consumers] wouldn’t want to live without it." Like the engagement debate, much of it is common sense. With that said, though, sometimes it is the most simple that is the most difficult to implement, which brings me to a question: How will companies handle this in the way they're currently structured?
Part of baking marketing into products is about collaboration. Design, engineering, marketing and sales need to be working together to achieve lofty status like the companies I listed. Problem is at the moment, most organizations are not structured to handle that kind of collaboration. Silos do a pretty good job at stopping that.
While this doesn't answer the question, one cause of this is digital technology. As I wrote a few weeks ago, "In an analog world, silos were mostly okay, information couldn't really move across disciplines anyway. But in a digital world, where all information is made up of the same ones and zeros, those walls don't work so well." (For those playing along at home, this is also a hint about some of my thoughts to the ambiguity question.)
Bottom line is the industry is poised to redefine itself and maybe the opportunity is even bigger than just products: Could agencies also build capability for general change management and restructuring?
Leave a Comment
How does a perfect duality like binary code create the ambiguity brought on by the internet?
There's been a question floating around in my mind for the last few weeks and I'm really curious whether anyone has any thoughts.
I believe there is more ambiguity in our world than there ever was and I've got a few reasons why:
- We are living in the information age. No one person has enough time to read everything (even in their particular field). As a result, there are more generalists.
- The internet has given people access to an almost infinite number of opinions and ideas. There are any number of variations on any topic and whether someone actually consumes them or not, the awareness of multiple viewpoints is very important. In a way it legitimizes ambiguity.
- Digital technology has allowed us to change our definition of both space and time. When you pick up the phone to call customer service you could easily be talking to the other side of the world. In many ways, physical proximity no longer matters as much as it once did.
All three of those things, I believe, can eventually be tracked back to digital technology. Whether it's used as a tool for research, distribution or communication, it has fundamentally altered almost every aspect of modern life.
Especially lately, this has manifested itself for me in a desire to move away from dualities (whether it's right/wrong, good/bad, either/or). The problem is a label like that is often defined by the other side (good by bad, for example), rather than its own unique set of values. Take politics for instance, simply labeling a terrorist as 'bad', hardly speaks to the nuances of terrorism and I believe leads to an un-winnable war where a country tries to use hierarchical and rational techniques to fight an enemy who is subscribing to neither (they are organized in a non-linear fashion and motivated by faith).
Now onto my question. If you buy into what I've said so far then you believe digital technology has played a major part in the greying of the world. How then do you explain the the underlying code is binary? How did this pure duality lead to an age so rich in ambiguity?
Please help me out with this one.
Leave a Comment
What seperates humans and computers is the ability to curate rather than filter.
Don't mean to hang on the word tip for another entry, but this is something I've been thinking a lot about lately.
For a while we've been talking about what all these bloggers and companies are doing online as 'filtering': They are helping bring news I want to me without all the other stuff. In fact, that's how I thought of myself, especially the sidenotes (for those that don't visit the site, they're on the homepage), which are just links to other places that I think are interesting. I've talked about it a fair amount in the past, even suggesting in an iMedia article that marketers need to become filters for consumers.
While I don't deny the value in filtering, I've decided that from here on out I've got a new word.
Curation.
The word suggests I'm actively looking after what I put out there for you guys, rather than just passively filtering by something like title or category.
What's really interesting to me about this idea is that I think it's what separates humans from computers: In the future computers will filter and humans will curate. While the computer will help and be fairly accurate, it won't know the audience well enough to recommend a far out story that doesn't fit in the algorithm.
So, welcome to NoahBrier.com: Carefully Curated Since 2004
Leave a Comment
I have this strange thing that keeps happening to me and I need a word to describe it to people.
I've got a couple posts brewing at the moment (one about amibguity and its relationship to binary code and another about The Starbucks Asthetic and theories on theories). Until I get a chance to write them, though, I've got a question.
I keep having this thing happen to me where I'll read an article or someone will tell me something and I will appreciate it then, but not as fully as I should. Then, as time goes on, I'll find myself quoting it constantly or applying the theory everywhere and I'll have to go back and examine or reread a few months later.
Anyone have a word for this? I really need one.
If not, how about making one up?
Leave a Comment
Let's figure out what we're really talking about here: Audience size or the influence you have over them.
David Armano was kind enough to invite me to a presentation he gave at Digitas about the success of his blog. It was fascinating to be in the audience for a presentation by a blogger to his company about how to build something organically. David had lots of interesting points, especially the idea that once you've experienced the kind of authenticity you do in this online world, it's hard to go back to the bullshit of corporate communication.
One point I did take slight issue with was his depiction of how influence ripples in the blogosphere.
My question, which I also asked David, was whether what he was depicting was really influence or reach? What I was seeing was the sources with the largest reach spreading the widest. David's response was quite thoughtful. He suggested that what he was showing was the combination of reach and influence: A rare occurrence that is the holy grail of media.
The issue I have is that the wonder of the internet to me is the ability to have low-reach, high-influence. In an old media world, such a thing is not overly scalable, but online its an efficient and very real occurrence.
While I don't have the reach of the New York Times, for a small group of people on a small number of subjects, I am more influential (as scary as that may be). In the same way, I read the blogs of many people who are not widely read. Their ideas are what draw me to them, not the size of their audience.
As CK kept repeating, "it's about deep, not wide."
For someone like myself, there's no incentive to trying to appeal to a broader audience. People come here for a very specific reason and if I tried to write on more general things I'd probably attract no one at all.
Before I conclude, let me address one last thing. The question that always comes up with blogs is "how do you monetize?". I think the answer comes in the value of niche. "Imagine going into a room and asking everyone who's visited Yahoo! to raise their hand. Everyone in the room would have their arm in the air I assume. Now ask who's visited NoahBrier.com. Pretend one other person raises their hand. (Come on . . . use your imagination here!) The odds that you have something to talk about with that one other person in the room is far higher than you having something to talk about with everyone in the room."
This is not a brand new idea, niche publications have been doing it for years. But now that the cost of entry has dropped so low, it's awfully easy to enter a new niche and build an audience.
I guess what I'm saying is that a super-targeted audience who listens and thinks about what you say is the influence I want.
So thanks for being that.
PS David: Thanks so much for the invite, I really enjoyed the presentation and am in no way attacking you. Just bringing up some friendly debate.
Leave a Comment
Likeminds on both coasts now have an opportunity to enjoy the goodness of likemind.
This is an extra special likemind announcement: For the first time likemind will be in two cities on the same day. Both NY and SF likeminds will have a chance to sit around, drink coffee and chat with other interesting folks.
Background for those who haven't been: Piers and I started it about four months ago as a way for likeminds to meet. There's no structure or moderator, just a bunch of people chatting about whatever with whoever they want. Special thanks to Tad and Mark who will be playing the part of Piers and I in SF.
Without any further ado, here's the info:
likemind.ny
when: friday, october 20 at 8am (EST)
where: sNice, 45 Eighth Avenue, at West 4th Street, NYC (GOOGLE MAPS)
likemind.sf
when: friday, october 20 at 8am (PST)
where: Cafe Madeline, 300 California Street, at Battery, SF (GOOGLE MAPS)
Once again, if you're interested all you've got to do is show up. You can get more info and sign up to stay informed at likemind.us. I hope to see some of you there.
Leave a Comment
Famous people complain about the lack of privacy, but ultimately that's also what makes them famous.
Maxim is not a magazine I frequently read, but I was given a copy recently and I opened it up today. Inside is an interview with Vannessa Minnillo who apparently is someone I'm supposed to know. What caught my attention in the interview was a question about privacy. Maxim asked Minnillo, "Do you miss your privacy?" To which she responded:
I don’t have a private life. People don’t realize how powerful the media is. It’s a beast. It’s there to build you up and take you down. It’s kind of bittersweet, you know. Like right now we’re doing an interview for a magazine that I love. You need to do press, but you don’t ask for it to take over your life. I understand that when I go to work, the paparazzi will be there. But I don’t understand why they need to be down my back when I go out of my apartment at midnight to get some ice cream. She went to Baskin Robbins and got two scoops of mint chocolate chip! Dunt dun duh!
That got me thinking, why not just hire your own press person and photographer to follow you around and document your entire life? You can then either post it all for free online for the newspapers and magazines to use or you might even be able to charge usage rights. By giving away all your privacy you get it back.
If all the information was out there for the public it would be hard for untrue stories to emerge. Anyone would be able to just log on and fact check. In theory, this would lead to fewer if any paparazzi following celebrities around because there would be no money to be made off the photos (remember, they're all available for public and media use online).
Now the side effect of this might be that celebrities would get less coverage, which they claim they want. Problem is, attention is central to a celebrity's success: The more of it they receive, the more of they are worth.
The flip side is that this information could be made available to the general public, allowing anyone to come along for the ride. Problem is, part of what makes celebrities such a hot topic is the exoticism. If everything was out there and easy to get to, it might make their life a lot less interesting. All of a sudden we'd realize that they have to go to the grocery store and wipe their kids ass instead of sitting around all day drinking Cristal.
So we're back to square one.
Thanks to Noah for some thoughts.
Leave a Comment
It's 40-freaking-2 degrees in New York City and I've got links pouring out of me.
It's Friday and it's been a while since I pumped you chock full of links. So how about it? (As usual in no order.)
- Techdirt announces the Techdirt Insight Community. "Companies sign up to engage the Techdirt Insight Community to raise issues, get feedback, test ideas, review products, make strategy suggestions, help with purchasing decisions or any number of other services that require a dedicated group of experts." I really like ideas like this. Find a way to tap into your audience and provide a service that benefits all parties involved.
- PhotoJojo's "How to Take a Photo a Day and See Your Life in a Whole New Way". They even covered my one a day photos, saying, "In a more self-reflective variation, our pal Noah takes a photo a day using the webcam built into his MacBook." In case you were wondering, those are the photos on the homepage.
- Bruce Schneir on "Screening People with Clearances". Mostly about a specific security situation, but it also speaks to some larger issues: "Security is a trade-off. We don't have infinite dollars to spend on security. We need to choose where to spend our money, and we're best off if we spend it in ways that give us the most security for our dollar."
- Aaron Swartz on "The Awfulness of College Lectures". Having seen a fair amount of academic presentations lately, they're not any better. I have so little patience for people that don't care about the audience's engagement level. Tell a story, bring the audience into your world. It's not that foreign a concept.
- Avram Miller on Everything. This is from 1999, but it says a lot of what everyone else is talking about right now. Headings include "Deals are not about money." "Goodbye, company. Hello value." "Give up control. (Guess what? You already have." and "Intuition rules." There's some pretty amazing wisdom in there.
- Scott Berkun on "Why innovation efforts fail". Scott is working on a book on innovation and he's pulled together some of the worst offenders for ruining innovation. In an effort to avoid complete negativity, though, he also includes innovation efforts that work.
- Susan Mernit on "What Google didn't buy". Mainly, the New York Times.
- TheGoogleCache on "Should I Make a Flash Site?" The best flowchart I've ever seen.
- "20 Smart Companies to Start Now". Some business bigwigs (Howard Schultz, Steve Case, etc.) give up their venture ideas and offer up money to build their ideas.
- Sony's ex-chairman on why Sony went down the tubes. "Mr Idei also cast doubt on whether it had ever been a good idea for Sony to get involved in Hollywood through its acquisition of Columbia pictures in 1989. 'The mistake was to buy the company,' he said." Strong words.
- Finally, a question from abstract dynamics: "Why is it that anytime you read about the advertising or video game industry, both of which are massive profitable and pretty much icons of our culture, they always claim to be struggling? Are industries based upon rapid fire information inherantly less stable than ones based on selling material goods?" Anyone have any ideas?
That's all for now minus one reminder: We've announced the next likemind.ny date for October 20. It'll be at 8am again at sNice. All the info at likemind.us.
Have a good weekend.
Leave a Comment
With two Noahs in NYC, it's time for the first ever Noahup.
In celebration of the other Noah being in New York City, we thought we'd throw what we were calling a Noahup (Noah + Meetup).
Plan is we go to a bar and invite everyone we know to come along and chill, because two Noahs are better than one.
So, the plan is this:
Date: Tuesday, October 17
Time: 7pm
Location: Dusk (147 W 24th St - Between 6th and 7th)
So if you feel like coming out and having a drink with 2 Noahs (and hopefully lots of other interesting people), come on over.
Leave a Comment
Thinking about just what inspiration means and how to become more inspirable.
For a while now Piers has been asking people what inspires them. We were talking about it today and I had a few thoughts that felt worth sharing.
I can't answer the inspiration question well because I'm inspired by almost everything. I read as much as I can and try to always keep my eyes and ears open. I spend every day trying to consume as much as possible with the sole purpose of filing in away for a rainy day. The other day I went to SFMOMA and was inspired by the card that went along with the Duchamp fountain. Today in a brainstorm I was inspired by the Powers of Ten video and this afternoon during a conversation I was inspired by a recent post by Scott Berkun titled "Why Innovation Efforts Fail". For those keeping score, that's one piece of art, one video and one blog entry.
Ultimately my belief is that anything can be inspiring. thoughtless acts is a book on intuitive design. It includes pictures of things like people tying a tea bag around the handle of a cup to keep it from falling in or a woman sticking a pencil in her hair. The message is that people are finding innovative solutions to problems all the time and, as a designer, all you need to do is open your eyes to be inspired by them.
So when I think about inspiration, I think about understanding that anything can be inspiration. Most of us grow up believing that learning must be boring. A teacher must stand in front of the class and teach at us or history must come through some incredibly dry textbook. That's not true, though. We get so much more out of those times when we're engaged in an activity. Look at the detective work people put into spoiling Survivor or the research they do to prepare for a fantasy football draft. By being engaged we are more inspirable.
I've mentioned it a ton of times around here, but I believe the most important lesson of the internet is as a metaphor for our brains. Both are networks. My take on inspiration is to try and feed my brain as much information as possible and then figure out how it connects when the time comes. Often the biggest innovations come from connecting the most seemingly distant ideas. In the end, though, the best I can do to work towards that is keep my senses open to all possibilities.
Leave a Comment
Digital technology is forcing us to rethink everything, especially the structure of organizations.
About three weeks ago I was at an event throw by David Berkowitz and the good people at 360i. Not surprisingly, one of the most impactful presentations of the day came from Google. It was on digital asset management and the basic crux was to forget about 'campaigns.' The idea is that on Google a lead is a lead. Doesn't matter whether it comes in March or November, it's still worth the same amount of money. Marketers should end the campaign mindset and just make all their assets digital and marketable all the time.
Obviously this is in Google's best interest, but it also makes a lot of sense. As long as the system's fairly efficient at weeding out non-lead clicks, then it should be no-brainer to run advertising all year long, especially if you're a manufacturer who sells via the web.
Now for the issue: Companies still work on quarterly budgets. Thinking of working towards an indefinite ending is not really an idea many people understand. In this case, I ultimately see the structure of the organization as holding itself back from doing what's best for the business.
Let me give one more example: Blogging. I was at OMMA a few weeks ago and during one of the talks an audience member asked who should own the company's blog? I think it was Rohit Bhargava who said it should be whoever is most passionate. Blogs are an interesting problem for an organization. For one, they do not subscribe to the command and control ideology so many corporate communication departments use. Secondly, blogs cut across the silos. It's a communication/product/sales/marketing initiative. That leads to 'ownership' questions.
Ultimately, digitalness is at the core of the whole debate. In an analog world, silos were mostly okay, information couldn't really move across disciplines anyway. But in a digital world, where all information is made up of the same ones and zeros, those walls don't work so well.
This is bigger than just business, look at terrorism: The perfect example of a networked architecture fighting a more traditional hierarchical one. Just ask the United States army and they'll tell you it doesn't work so well.
Look at schools. Here they are broadcasting at students used to engaging with media. The system simply wasn't built to deal with a wired world and America's children are suffering as a result.
Bottom line is we are living in a very different world than we did fifty years ago and structures built then are going to be forced to change.
Leave a Comment
Three months ago I asked if anyone wanted to meet up. Turns out it taught me an incredible lesson.
Three months ago I wrote the most important thing I've written on this website (and maybe ever). Funny enough it was probably the shortest entry I ever wrote and definitely not the most insightful. It didn't get any comments, either, but that doesn't matter.
In fact, for the hell of it, here's the entry in it's entirety:
Lately I've had a desire to meet some people from the blog world in person. So, if you're a reader of this blog and live or are visiting the NYC area, drop me a line and we'll get coffee or a drink.
That's all for now. Talk to you later.
50 words.
The lesson I learned from that entry is simple and something that will stick with me forever.
The only thing keeping you from meeting interesting people is you.
It's pretty simple, really. Since that day I've been proactive. I've reached out to interesting people, inviting them to a coffee or something similar.
Out of that 50 word entry grew likemind, an idea much bigger than I could have ever imagined.
The bottom line is that there's a world of people out there feeling exactly the same as you. They're worried about looking odd or sounding like a stalker if they send an email to their favorite blogger/author/artist. But chances are, the person on the other end will be more honored than anything else to know someone is paying attention.
With that I'm adding the following line to my about page: If you want to chat or meet up sometime around New York City, please just send me an email. Don't worry, I promise I won't think you're weird or anything like that. In fact, I do the same thing all the time.
I'm thinking maybe all people need to motivate them is reassurance that it's okay to reach out.
Leave a Comment
Someone doesn't want to admit you're a designer/journalist/musician/artist.
By Noah Brier and Charles Gallant
Rock and roll is not music. How could it be? You've got a bunch of kids with shaggy hair playing instruments with no real musical knowledge. They don't even know scales! Hell, most of them probably can't read music! They're making noise, not music.
Or so the story goes.
Now let's try it from the design perspective:
The consequence of your design democracy is an ugly spectacle of deep purples and electric organges. It's a culture of me-me-me: my hideously personalized car, my hideously personalized sofa, my hideously personalized house. If we care about maintaining an aesthetic of public space, design should be left to professionals. Let people pour their uniqueness inwardly -- but don't let them clutter up the physical world.
That's straight out of Fast Company.
Pardon my French, but it all sounds like a bunch of elitist bullshit. Today everyone's got access to the tools that before only a select few could play with. Anyone can be a designer, a musician or an astronaut.
That scares and angers professionals.
Think about it. How would you feel if you went through four years of intense musical training and the people getting the fame and money spent all that time smoking pot and drinking Jack Daniels.
There's never been a time in history when it was easier to just hack something together. (I think that's paraphrasing something Henry Jenkins said.) Calling design 'bad' or music 'crappy' is a subjective judgement. 'Bad' design can be good. Just look at the filmmakers behind lonelygirl15: When it was time to build a Myspace page for their faux-15-year-old they intentionally gave it a 'Myspace' look. They knew their context and built something that could really have been produced by a 15-year-old girl in her bedroom.
The design represents the content. It presents the content. It is the content. If I'm a 9-year-old with a 'crappy' website, my design will probably scream "A 9-year-Old made this!!!" What those pompous musicians/designers need to get over is that some people are actually looking for a 9-year-old's content. They'd prefer a universe where people wanted things that looked pretty, but sometimes people just want something that 'is what it is.' Something accessible. Something that's all there on the table. Easy to swallow.
Design is a communication tool. Getting your point across should always be the ultimate goal. Sure I can make comments on the how much something adheres to traditional design rules. But at the end of the day it sure sounds like a bunch of classically trained musicians with their tux stuck up their ass complaining about the kids and their rock and roll.
Leave a Comment
The advertising industry is very broken.
One of the cliches of advertising is that half of the money is wasted but no one knows which half. The line is always good for a chuckle at industry functions, but it's not funny. What kind of industry is built on inefficiency that extreme?
I expect the 50 percent number is low. For all but consumer packaged goods, I bet it's more like 90 percent (even that's probably low). So how did this happen?
I'm going to try to answer that question with a story. The other day I was at OMMA listening to Chuck Porter speak. Of course, he talked about all the great work Crispin Porter + Bogusky had done for the likes of Volkswagen, Coca Cola and, of course, Burger King. For those that aren't in the marketing industry, Crispin Porter is behind the famous Subservient Chicken. He talked about the tens of millions who came to the site and how long they stuck around, but the most telling detail was what he didn't say. Porter never talked about the effect the campaign had on sales of chicken sandwiches at Burger King.
It's possible that Subservient Chicken did effect sales and there seems to be some anecdotal evidence that it did. Clearly, however, the campaign didn't move the needle enough to blow anyone away. Sure the site didn't cost that much, but the bigger issue is that advertising is given a free pass on this kind of stuff. Rather than worrying about sales or customer satisfaction, agencies worry about things like awareness.
Clearly there are a lot of factors that lead to this, but I think the biggest is the misconception that more leads are better. It's in an advertising agencies best interest to speak to as wide an audience as possible for two reasons: One, a lot of agencies are doing the media buying as well and the bigger the audience, the bigger the buy. The second reason is about results, it's much easier to claim success when you've got 'big' numbers to back it up. We work in an industry where 10 million visitors sounds a lot better than 10,000, even if the latter happens to be extremely targeted.
An even bigger issue, though, is that marketing is focused on customer acquisition, not customer service. I know the reason for this, but it's still a problem. The thing is, the best kind of 'advertising' is word of mouth. Why do you think advertising agencies don't advertise?
Companies should be spending money on creating great experiences for their current customers. Take that $150,000 for a (cheap) commercial and buy yourself three more call center managers. Get marketing to write the manuals. Go above and beyond what people expect and they'll do all the marketing you need.
Before I finish, let me leave you with a story I read over at Web Strategy by Jeremiah about a company called Steel Pixel. After writing on his blog about a friend's bad experiences at Dreamhost, the Steel Pixel guys left this comment:
Jeremiah,
I am sorry to hear that your friend is having such a tough time with hosting. We (The Web 2.0 Show podcast guys) run a hosting business and we would like to invite both you an'd Andy to give it a try (two months free). We would like to also offer a 10% discount to all your blog readers, they can just use the discount code "switch" when they sign up.
We try to keep a very human feel to our hosting, we use IM and campfire to allow real time chat with customers. We don''t really spend money on advertising because we feel the dollars a customer spends with us should improve the services we provide them. We are very much a fan of "Creating passionate users" :) . You can read more on our ideas at our blog.
They can afford to that because they don't need a huge audience to be successful, they run a fairly low-margin business and understand their target audience well enough to know that if they provide a great experience they'll have their name passed around. Sure, every business can't pull this off, but I think many could.
Just remember: It's better to be efficient than extensive.
[Editor's Note: If the Steel Pixel guys read this, I'd love to hear about how your approach has worked thus far. I'd love to interview you if you wouldn't mind.]
Update (10/3/06): I'm not completely sure I agree with this whole piece anymore. I don't think I presented advertising in a completely fair light. There is a whole other side that should be addressed about brand recognition, employee morale and investor relations that more traditional advertising can help with. After saying that, though, I still believe that it's possible to build a profitible business by means other than advertising. It may not be a billion dollar business, but it could be a million dollar one.
Leave a Comment
Hi, I'm 
![drinking Jack Daniels](http://blogs.prisacom.com/rollingstone/wp-content/subidas/Slash.jpg"){kind=link}