CrapHammer

Rethinking Digital and Social Marketing for the Arts

Or the five hardest questions I've ever been asked.

Rethinking Digital and Social Marketing for the Arts

The presentation that I gave today to the International Society for the Performing Arts.

Planningness 2010 Recap: Made By Many on Making Things

I'm kicking off my recap of PlanningNess 2010 with a deck by the Made by Many folks.

I've seen a lot of talk about agile and scrum.  And frankly, it's usually just someone spouting a lot of buzz words and urging agencies need to adapt.  But its generally someone from the outside without a lot of credibility on how to improve what we do.

But I've clearly never seen Made by Many talk about it.  And there are few agencies on this planet I hold in higher esteem.  And true to form, I found their presentation deck insightful, inspiring and dead on as to where we need to get to.

So many gems in here!  How about a dozen user testing and engagement tools we could be all be using in our project development processes?  God I love these guys.  I think I want to have their baby.  Shit.

How to really make something

View more presentations from Made by Many.

What we REALLY know

Fuck.  Fuck.  Fuck.

I can't say any more or less at this point about the following presentation.

Other than to say it is filled with more nuggets per pound than anything I've read in the past 2 years.

The Real Life Social Network v2

View more documents from Paul Adams.

Wearing my creative briefs

A member of my team was questioning the creative brief.

She then began interviewing some people internally about what works and doesn't.

It's now blown out into a cool little investigation.

And she's not alone.

Dare put up a great deck on how to properly use the brief.

Creative Brief Workshop

I have to wonder if the problem is really how to best use a brief.

Is it really that "simple"?

Gareth Kay has one of the best slideshares on the digital creative brief I've ever seen.

I'd go so far as to say he believes the brief is broken.

I have to wonder if he is on to something.

The brief in the post digital age

What do you think of the creative brief?  Is it broken?  It is just misused?

(H/T to Paul for the slideshare finds!)

Connecting more than information...

Brilliant video: an anthopological introduction to YouTube.

For anyone looking to understand the growth and role of YouTube (and other social media technologies) in our world today.  From the guy who brought us "The machine is using us" video and one of the earliest to run a digital ethnography study of YouTube.

"I think of [media] as mediating human relationships... when media changed, human relationships changed..."

Hat Tip: Johnnie Moore

Live from AdAge San Francisco 2008

Now blogging and tweeting live from AdAge San Francisco.

Follow all of us bloggers on site with this one tweetscan link: 
http://tweetscan.com/index.php?s=%23adtech&u=

Refresh the page every once in a while and get the latest dirt from all the bloggers on site.

The most amazing thing so far was the Director of Nestle Consumer Services talking about Gerber's idea submission site for customers and how each submission goes straight to a patent lawyer.  Wow.  Mom's likely think they are sending in helpful advice and Nestle is just mining for patentable ideas.  No one else sees them.

Naked 3 Minutes, Episode 1

I'm back.  New job is crazy but I'm starting to find my footing and some time to participate once again.  Way behind on my reading.  So rather than give you all some reading, I thought I would take my first stab at a naked show.

Apologies for all the "ums" and "ahhs", but hey, I'm naked.  I think I deserve some leeway.  ;)

[embedded naked video below]

Craphammer Naked 3 Minutes, episode 1 from craphammer on Vimeo.

Exposing Marketing in the Conversation Age
http://www.onedegree.ca/
Wonderful new design to One Degree (one of the top 10 marketing blogs in Canada according [to] Marketing Magazine.)  Be sure to check out Kate's wonderful post on twitter and microblogging.  Perfect for client-side and agency-side marketers alike.

Exposing the Future
http://tinyurl.com/32sadb
Communities Dominate Brands and their ten predictions for 2008.  Here's some wonderful quotes from their document.  Alan Moore and Tomi Ahonen have created one of the most impressive sources of emerging mobile trends and data on the web.  And if you haven't read "Communities Dominate Brands" yet, then it's time to go sit in the corner.

Exposing her Marketing Brain
http://leighhimel.blogspot.com/
Taking risks is par for the course for Leigh Himel.  I'd like to call specific attention to her An Ecosystem Approach to Marketing in the Digital Age.  Brilliant application of not just system thinking, but environmental assessment criteria to communications.  Give us part two, Leigh!

Most Exposed Blogger (this week)
Connie Reece:  http://www.everydotconnects.com/
Frozen Pea Fund:  http://frozenpeafund.com/
Her ability to extend her persona into the digital world is amazing to behold.  And her work to support Susan Reynolds with the Frozen Pea Fund is both inspiring and empowering.  They have raised well over $3500 to support Breast Cancer research and I encourage everyone to participate.

(Note:  I'm looking for a logo and music for this crazy little "show".  Feeling creative?  Fire it my way.  I'll use it.)

Shifting Spheres of Influence

So, while I was in Florida I realized that I had mistakenly set a post up to publish while I was away without ever finishing said post.  Pretty brilliant, eh?

So here is the re-post as I was meaning to make it.

"Social networking is not a platform, it’s not a destination, it’s a behaviour."

Katie is speaking out against this tendency of brands to worry about how they can get their brand into facebook or myspace rather than really leverage this emerging phenomenon.

I couldn't agree more.  But let's break it down a bit.

Social Networking and this whole Age of Conversation has taken the continuing fragmentation of media and made it non-linear.  If we thought the media world was fragmented before, we now have an unlimited number of forever forming and reforming communities within just one social networking site, let alone all of them combined.

Being on YouTube or Facebook doesn't guarantee viewership.  It's the same with every social networking site.  Understanding and engaging the communities within and outside of these social networking sites that matters.

So this raises a number of questions.

• How are people using these tools?
• How do different communities use the same tools?
• How do we identify the behaviors of people and communities we desire to interact with?

But as I sat and thought about this some more, I was taken back to an old associate, Stuart MacDonald, and a phrase he used to love to drop like a bomb in any meeting. 

"Where's the value?"

Consuming media is wonderful.  But it is a subset of activity that I participate in when I log into my personal spaces.  I am also looking to create media, build relationships and have conversations.   Ironically, these other activities generally result in my consuming media.  Only the media I'm consuming is directed and positioned by how the community and those I'm interacting with perceive its value.

• So is it really just a challenge of seeding as many "new media" firms would have us believe?
• How should we segment or target our engagements in a non-linear environment? (who should we engage?)
• What should we measure? (so we actually understand the value we are creating/participating in)

I'm going to go out on a limb.  What if it is all about behavior?  Could I not maximize my reach within twitter by looking to engage with all of the people on twitter that are speaking on a topic of interest to the engagement or campaign in question?  And then follow this activity into other platforms?

Calling it a "Conversation Age" is great, but we can't personally engage in a conversation with every person, customer or prospect.  And if this phenomenon is truly non-linear in nature, then that means we can't identify it in simple variables.  We would have to apply the principles of chaos to marketing.

That means it can't be seen when looking at the number of visitors to a site, the number of conversation online, views of our media or even reach or brand equity measurements. These are the individual data points and alone they tell us a misleading story.  We would have to be looking for patterns of engagement.  Ways that these (or other variables) interact and present emerging patterns.  Ultimate success would be when these patterns are stable yet non-linear in nature.  Continuing to morph and adjust as they interact with emerging communities online.

Is system thinking coming to Marketing?

Take away the porn!

I've been tagged.  Net Neutrality in Canada is an issue.  One that has been quiet for too long.

Mark asks... "[W]hat about the thousands of bloggers who benefit from the free, open and un-throttled internet we’ve become accustomed to?"

Here is a news piece on it.

And here is my old post from our friend the Ninja.

But I think we are taking the wrong tact here.  Someone just has to launch a scare campaign that the big bad internet providers are going to take away our PORN and I'm sure we will get the public outcry we are all looking for.  ;)

Peer to Peer Television

Joost rocks and I've taken WAY too long to post about it.

The idea is to legitimize Peer to Peer.  The way Skype did to free peer-to-peer phone services.  And it's by the same two dudes.  The content is legitimate in that it is from a central source as opposed to user generated or stolen content like on YouTube or other peer to peer services.  I watched the funniest music video yesterday by Basement Jaxx titled "Oh My Gosh."

The question is, if Rogers and Bell can limit the sites on their networks (see net neutrality, above) then what is to stop them from blocking the ports required by Joost?

TheGoodBlogs

I love TheGoodBlogs.  Vernon has done an amazing job.  You may have noticed a little widget on the right side of my blog.  Okay.  I have a lot of widgets.  Here it is to the left.

TheGoodBlogs take my stories and shares them on all the other blogs in my group (Marketing) that have deployed the TGB widget.  In turn, I showcase the stories from other bloggers on my blog.

You may have notice that one of the items in the widget has an orange dot next to it.  This is because I have launched my own personalized "channel".  And I've put the blogs I read a lot in this slot.  So I'm even able to control who I syndicate.  Brilliant.

Tags: netneutrality, canada, swarm-it, TGB, thegoodblogs, joost, p2p

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It's a potluck blog-dinner!

Think sex sells?

brandsizzle would disagree.

Now run, don't walk to this article at the Brand Builder blog. Back to the basics, baby.  A wonderful reminder  during the Holiday blitz that it's about inspiring dreams in our consumers.

Course, my dreams tend to be about sex...

Think you know how a 20-year old relates to technology?

Gavin over at Servant of Chaos wrote an article titled "Life beings at 40 -- Second Life at 20".  He raises the issue of a growing generation gap in how we use and view technology.  But he does so with poetic brilliance.  Take the following quote:

"We are not of the present because our victories are already in the past."

I dream of writing this well.  Keep it coming, Gavin.

Wrap it up

That's all I have.  What are you bringing to the potluck?

Image Credit: eleuki

Tags: technology, social media, generation gap