It's right. When I wake up in the morning it takes time to adjust.
I must be at that dangerous age.
In the absence of anything of any significance to impart on this fine Tuesday, I'm simply posting this superb new direction from Mr Paul Weller. Still rocking and as relevant as ever in 2012.
I learned a little Japanese phrase some time ago. It was described to me as a simple process by which to achieve anything in life or business or whatever.
Kyo-chi-gyo-i. The route to everything.
Kyo is Goal. Chi is Wisdom. Gyo is Action. I is the resulting status.
In business terms Objectives>Insight>Strategy>Results
Starting with the 'why' rather than the 'what' or 'how'.
Yesterday I did a talk for AIMIA, the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association, in Sydney.
The theme of the seminar was to look at 'digital' agencies of the near future, what new skills are needed, new technologies, new philosophies etc.
On the panel session at the end one delegate seemed less than satisfied with my answer to one of his questions.
He asked for our predictions as to what the digital communications/commerce land scape would look like in 5 years time.
I answered by stating that the 'future' will take care of itself based on how we respond to the opportunities right here and now.
Remember, we have several of this countries biggest bricks and mortar retailers who cannot yet even offer a simple online commerce solution, never mind anything else.
The notion of the 'future' is often a cop-out. An excuse to not act now, but to put off acting til later. Later often never comes, because tomorrows future then looks different to today's.
There are only two mistakes one can make in any endeavour; not going all the way, and not starting.
It's a mindset, it's where you're at.
There's no excuse to not start. And Seth agrees.
'If you're in Kibera, are you too far from Silicon Valley to write an app?
If you live in New Zealand, are you too far outside the mainstream music world to perform a hit song?
What about an author who lives 3,000 miles from New York?
The magic of our new form of communication is that it's no longer one-way.
If you consume an app, you can write one.
If you can read a blog, you can publish one.
If you can grab an ebook, you can produce one.
The center has nothing to do with geography any longer.
The center is a state of mind.'
On the off chance that even just one person who may read this is not up to speed with the implications of SOPA and PIPA, and has not been exposed to the clip above; if you are that person then please spend 15mins at some point to watch this video shot during the week at the TED offices.
Clay Shirky explains the real effects and the threat of the proposed legislation.
Of course, the details of the shutting down - and arrest of key staff - of file sharing service Megaupload, by US agents earlier today gives a clear indication of why this is an international issue, not simply US legislation.
'None of the defendants are American citizens, and the site was mainly operated from Hong Kong. But the U.S. government was able to go after them — without SOPA or PIPA in place — because Megaupload used Internet hosting service providers located in Virginia, processed payments using U.S.-based Paypal, and worked with an online advertiser based in California.'
There's also an opinion piece written by Shirky in The Guardian to read from which the below is an excerpt.
'...the law would apply not just to actual copyright violations (the nominal goal of the law) but to any site that was "facilitating the activities" of copyright infringement, a term nowhere defined but vague enough to include mentioning the existence of such sites, which is enough to make them findable. Like a fast-spreading virus, the proposed censorship moves outwards from the domain name system, to include any source of public web content in the US.
If the phrase "any source of public web content" seems like a dry detail, substitute the name of your favourite web publisher: you. The US is, for the moment at least, the world's premier host of sites that support user-generated material – Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Wikipedia, Reddit, on and on. And under the proposed law, every one of those sites would have to take steps to prevent publishers, which is to say people, which is to say you, from helping anyone find out about the existence of sites the US media firms don't like. And since the law doesn't require a private company to provide any advance notice before the blacklisting, these sites will be forced to spy on their users, in advance and all the time, to make sure you are not talking about sites media firms in the US do not want you to talk about, even if you are not a US citizen.
Sopa and Pipa are, quite simply, an attempt to create a privatised form of international censorship, and because the censorship would have to be nearly total to be effective, they would have a profound and chilling effect on any form of public conversation among ordinary citizens. It would render the internet a place where the only content to be seen or heard or read is produced by professionals, with the rest of use relegated to the role of pure consumption.'
Anything that kicks off it's pitch with Cyrus from the Gramercy Riffs, gets my vote.
Part of the Make It Count campaign — Life is a sport. Make it count - the NikeFuelband is a Nike+ extension, a rubber bracelet worn on the wrist during exercise and sports activities to measure 'steps, calories, time & Fuel metric'.
It syncs with your iphone and also integrates with social flavour of the month Path, to journal your daily activity.
HT The Kaiser
This is so much post of the week, and even an early contender for post of the year, that I am simply going to quote it in it's entirity.
From the always wise, and now slimline, Jonathan MacDonald who's recent weight-loss success has also apparent side effect of further sharpening his, already incisive wit and insight...
Tribal wisdom of Dakota Indians: when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, your best strategy is to dismount.
However, in business and in Government, more advanced strategies are often employed such as:
Buying a stronger (and more expensive) whip.
Changing riders.
Appointing a committee to study the horse.
Arranging trips to other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.
Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
Reclassifying the horse as living-impaired.
Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
Harnessing several dead horses together to increase efficiency.
Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horses performance.
Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horses performance.
Declaring that the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than some live horses.
Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
…and of course:
Promoting dead horse to a supervisory position.
I missed this at the end of last year, but it's such a nice simple idea that it's worth a mention, even if I'm late to the party.
Fans of the Vaccines were asked to tag their Instagram photos taken at the summer music festivals with #vaccinesvideo, the pics were then sucked into the vaccinesvideo.com site and then edited together with some band footage to produce the video for their song 'Wetsuit'.
And a top tune it is too, by the way.
Apart from the fact that it's a terrific execution of viral 101 - the fans will share the video with their friends because THEY ARE IN IT, it also tickled my current obsession with situationist ideas, and drew me back to this nugget on ceativity from artist/author/provocateur Jamie Reid.
'...the challenge to the modern artist is not just to create, but to use what has already been created. This would seem to be a reduction or a narrowing of the scope of modern art, but it isn't. To find a way of using what has already been created - and there is a lot of all kinds of things that have been and continue to be created by this wasteful society - to say something that is really new, you have to widen your field of awareness to the point that you can see what is NOT being done, and what COULD BE done, with these creations'
Top marks to Anomaly London for another construire une architecture de l'impossible...
It's up for a One Show Award too, so best of luck.
Contrary to misinformation peddled by many self annointed social media experts there is no 'formula' for viral video success, however there are some recipes that will give a piece of compelling content the very best chance of being spread.
The previously long-lost clip below of Bowie and the Spiders doing 'Jean Genie' on Top of The Pops from 1973 being case in point.
In simple terms the clip contains the main elements the originator needed to ensure at least some spreadability.
1 - It's a piece of content that groups of people with a shared interest want to see, but have not previously had the opportunity to do so.
2 - The provider of the piece of content was, initially, the single source of the content.
3 - The back story to the piece of content was interesting enough to be part of the idea.
So it goes that retired 69 year old ex-BBC cameraman John Henshall had retained a copy of the footage he shot using his own designed Telefex Fisheye lens, while the BBC had wiped the original tapes from 1973 (as was their unfortunate habit back in the day - many hundreds of hours of BBC archive stuff is gone forever).
Henshall found the tapes in a proverbial shoebox in the attic and presented the lost gem to the BBC at the tail end of last year. It was broadcast on Wednesday December 22nd on BBC2, this being the first time it was available to view since the original Top Of The Pops show in 73.
The lessons are clear.
1. Identify the groups of people who are most likely to want to hear/see/spread the idea.
2. Figure out if this is the kind of information these groups are gagging for.
3. Find out what the groups already have and whether the new information plugs a gap that needs filling.
4. If you can answer all of the above get it out there and watch the groups do the heavy lifting.
Notice the use of 'groups' plural. A point to note is that there is not one-single instance of the clip on YouTube, there are several.
The clip was ripped and posted online by many different Bowie fans, each initially serving a small group of other connected fans in the first instance. The clip was then shared from small group to small group via various blogs and Facebook updates and tweets.
Understanding the structure, connectedness and actual needs of the networks in which you want to plant ideas is much more important than looking for individual so-called influencers to repeat a story.
Anway here's Bowie, Mick and the Spiders walking on snow white, in full fisheye glory.
This will most likely be the last message posted here this side of Christmas, so thanks to everyone who's read, shared, commented, tweeted, liked and +1-d throughout the year.
And also thanks to all the rest of the blogosphere and twitterati who's links and thoughts I've waded through and magpied the nuggets.
Three special shout-outs for services beyond the call go to..
Marcus Brown
Mark Earls
and
Johnnie Mooore
I was tempted to post The Fountains of Wayne's 'I want an Alien for Christmas' in honour of the impending 2012 paradigm shift and the mass awakening - all at once - of the entire human race, however that would be a bit too cheerful so I've stuck with tradition and gone with The Fall...
Thanks again for your eyeballs in 2011, see you after the jump.
Eaon
Tweet of the week, and possibly the season itself.
This sums up exactly the problem facing Australian retailers.
The problem being that the vast majority don't even have a scooby what their customers problems really are.
They, in fact, don't have it all wrapped up.
For fuck's sake marketers, NO, I am not "stuck for gift ideas". I am stuck for *time* to shop for my own, superior, ones.
— Reuben (@reubenacciano) December 21, 2011
@reubenacciano stuck for time to shop this Newtonmas? Try our patented time dilator, only available last week from a store relative to you.
— The Garden Doctor (@thegardendr) December 21, 2011
Here’s the thing.
This keeps coming up, so just to be clear on what is and isn’t correct it’s worth considering this.
There's a lot of false assumption and BS that tends to fly about ‘seeding’ and ‘bloggers’ and ‘online pr’ etc with regards to the 'influence' this supposedly has on behaviour.
The alleged ‘influencers’, or ‘the few’ if you’ve read The Tipping Point are documented as consisting of, at most, 10-15% of any given population.
These 'influencers' are the so-called opinion-leaders in any given category or sphere.
These ‘influencers’ are thought to initiate up to, and at most, 25-30% of the conversations about brands in any category or sphere.
While these people do have some influence, granted, it's a danger to overestimate that influence.
The web has thrown up a large number of self-annointed influentials, with large twitter followings or blog readership.
This really the equivalent of celebrity endorsements.
Or like broadcast advertising, and conventional PR (ie 'publicity').
It's useful up to a point, in as much as it can help with 'branding' the thing and contributes to generating awareness and other such high level brand measures.
However, it's the people not recognized as ‘influencers’ - ie the ‘nobodies’ - who will still account for starting 70-80% of the conversations which contain brands. Because the effects of influence only reveal themselves after-the-fact then 'nobodies' can quickly appear to be influencers. Which they are, of course, it's just their influence is nearly impossible to predict in advance.
And a massive chunk of that happens offline, by the way...
So, that 70-80% of conversation that actually has real influence in terms of decision making and adoption of behaviour is originating with us, the ‘nobodies’ and happens with the people we go home to, or work with or socialize with.
Instead of looking to the idea of ‘uber-influencers’ to help our ideas spread we should focus activating small connected groups of close relationships that are connected to the idea in some form, from the outset.
The people who actually influence our behavior are usually the people who are closest to us., both emotionally and by simple geographic proximity.
We’re also know via the sensible end of neuroscience and behavioural/social science that most decisions are made unconsciously, without critical thinking (even though we think we are thinking).
So even getting celebrity tweeters, or mommy bloggers to publish facts or product information en mass would still have limited value.
Don't confuse influence with popularity.
What we need is stories that will spread though small interconnected groups.
If you want a one-two-three in marketing terms, this is about distributing emotional cues as the triggers (orchestrating) and then engaging in the resulting situations (as direct agents) to draw others (spectators) in to become participants.
- See last weeks post on Hurricane Bawbag, for how this works for real.
We 'do' then 'think'.
In reality we are all influencers.
And 'nobodies' are the new 'somebodies', as Guy Kawasaki puts it.
The myth of the uber influencer whom everyone looks up to and follows is just that.
A myth.
For more on this stuff check what KellerFay, the Word of Mouth Research and Consulting Firm, say.
It's well worth having a dig about in here for the nuggets.
kellerfay.com/category/insights/
And also ask Santa to pop 'Grouped' - by ex-Googler and now Facebook Social Researcher, Paul Adams - into your stocking.
The principle hypothesis of Grouped being that the web is being rebuilt around people, and from which I've pulled one or two stats and notes for this post.
It's worth spending the 30mins or so with this talk by Mark Pagel, Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Head of the Evolution Laboratory at the University of Reading.
He has a number of hypotheses around the notion of natural selection in genetics as it sits alongside social learning - the peculiarly human trait.
Pagel points to direct comparison between social learning as driving idea evolution - we copy people that we see as being successful in some way, we copy ideas that seem to be good, and adapt and improve upon them - and then natural selection, having driven genetic evolution in a more random fashion.
This is of course, pretty interesting for the advertiser and marketer in understanding how we make decisions, and also adds another angle to the post-idea world notion we discussed just the other week.
Here's an excerpt from Pagels diatribe.
'Do we know the answers to the most important questions in our lives? Should you buy a particular house? What mortgage product should you have? Should you buy a particular car? Who should you marry? What sort of job should you take? What kind of activities should you do? What kind of holidays should you take? We don't know the answers to most of those things. And if we really were the deeply intelligent and imaginative and innovative species that we thought we were, we might know the answers to those things...
And if we ask ourselves how it is we come across the answers, or acquire the answers to many of those questions, most of us realize that we do what everybody else is doing....
...our capacity for social learning, which is responsible for all of our cumulative cultural adaptation, all of the things we see around us in our everyday lives, has actually promoted a species that isn't so good at innovation...maybe we're not as creative and as imaginative and as innovative as we thought we were, but extraordinarily good at copying and following.'
