Archive for February, 2009

What I’m Reading – February 27, 2009

27 Feb, 2009

pirate bay cartoon

26 Feb, 2009

What I’m Reading – February 25, 2009

25 Feb, 2009

the hours of discovery

24 Feb, 2009 • posts i've written • 2 comments

The internet never closes. It never shutters its doors to load the shelves full of content again. And for that matter, the internet operates outside of traditional timezones, too. But I’ve noticed certain behaviors amongst myself and my friends and followers. I’m particularly interested in the hours of before we all slink into bed. Those hours we meander. Those hours we discover.

Here are some random links I got some tweeps to send tonight:

My followers are mostly from the US, so that does help create these shared hours. Interestingly enough, I’m building a secret little project (codename: AYSS) that operates on discovery and mystery. It’s a system that requires involvement to play, so I’ve gotten a fair amount of feedback asking for more ways to lurk. After tonight, I’m curious about only making that content available during a brief window late in the evening. I want to catch people during this time of invested browsing.

just putting it out there

24 Feb, 2009 • posts i've written • 3 comments

I need new experiences to stay creative. I need to talk to new people, with new ideas, new challenges, and new questions.

I’m speaking at SXSWi on a panel entitled, Location, Location, Location: The Future of Mobile Advertising on Tuesday, March 17th at 3:30pm. I know many of my readers, friends, and followers are attending SXSW, and I think it would be a terrible waste of time if we didn’t meet up in person. I’ll be flying in late in the evening of March 12th, and out on the 18th. Leave me a comment here, or find me on your favorite network, and let’s connect and make sure we grab a beer in Austin.

Speaking of speaking, I’d love to do more of that. Right now I get the odd request here and there, but if you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to change the world. Give me an opportunity to come spread my gospel. I’m also just nice and cuddly, too.

running to catch up

24 Feb, 2009 • posts i've written • No comments

Turns out Recovery.gov, the Obama administration’s project to account how taxpayer money is spent, is built on Drupal. Drupal is an open-source, free, content management and publishing system.

So yes, the government, that bloated thing that sucks up our paychecks, just built an incredibly complex site on top of a free piece of existing software, at a rapid pace. Which means the government, that incredibly slow and bloated bureaucracy, just demonstrated itself both smarter and quicker than most Fortune 500 companies.

Here’s a rule of thumb for ’09: if you’re behind the pace of the government in terms of basic social technology adoption, you better catch up.

the science of cute

23 Feb, 2009

What I’m Reading – February 23, 2009

23 Feb, 2009

what’s the point?

22 Feb, 2009 • posts i've written • 4 comments

Mike just wrote an excellent post about measurement.

As budgets shrink and companies demand closer accounting of every penny they spend, “measurement” has suddenly become the hot new industry buzz word. Clients are demanding a new level of accountability from their digital agencies, and it’s long overdue.

The implications of this shift, though, go well beyond a renewed interest in metrics that the client should have been getting all along. Clients are also seeking a greater level of detail in statistics across all marketing disciplines and executions. More granular statistics can uncover a world of new insights about a brand’s health online. Best of all, tracking these additional metrics over time can give brands an incredibly deep and well-rounded long-term perspective on their overall success.

I foresee a giant tsunami wave on the horizon of back lash against social media. It’s become such an incestuous industry (and it smells a bit too much like the PR industry, for me). Accountability is the only way to survive. Undercurrent is pushing hard to lead the charge on digital metrics. We’re working with software firms, talking to major platforms, and bringing global brands together to track and measure like never before. More on that later.

But we also have to ask the question, “Why?” Why are we compiling this massive backlog of data? Nothing turns my knob like a good spreadsheet, but what’s the point? It’s impossible to connect your Facebook fan page back to your sales data, just as it’s impossible to account total sales with views of your :30 spot. We don’t know exactly how advertising works. We just know that if you do a shit ton of it, people do start to buy your product more. No matter how much data we compile, we’ll never understand, with certainty, why our products are purchased.

The problem is that consumption and culture are inextricably linked. Consumption is culture and culture is consumption. And for that reason, you have to set objectives to work against beyond selling more product. You should be asking yourself questions like, what defines culture for my audience? How is culture communicated, distorted, remixed, and made whole again for them? Where does it take place? Where do I fit in? You have to build metrics off having an impact in the places culture is communicated and defined for your audiences.

I said in a recent slideshare, a dollar spent on fans is a dollar spent on R&D, recruitment, loyalty, and longevity. It’s time to define objectives in those terms, too. You should set an objective for product innovation, hiring, share of wallet, and long term value. The more actions beyond sales we can define, the more actionable we can make our data and analysis.

quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

22 Feb, 2009 • posts i've written • 3 comments

watchmen-minutemen

(roughly translates to “who watches the watchmen?”)

I admit, I’m a late entrant into the fan world of The Watchmen. I bought the graphic novel on Saturday and finished it this evening; and like everyone else that loved it on first pass, I’ll be re-reading it after I finish this post. I became so fascinated with the novel because of how well it’s being marketed online. Whomever is responsible, (surely fans and the studio), the full effort deserves careful study. Bits of content are continually floating out into the ether for fans to pick up, string together, and tell their own stories. And the film has relied heavily on fans to tell their friends the story behind the fragments. Eric, I owe it to you as well for pushing me to read the graphic novel and helping me to assemble the pieces. This is the perfect intersection of propagation planning and fan passion. I think it’s interesting that when first announced, many die-hard fans were against the movie, but I’m seeing more and more positive sentiment for the film these days.

I thought I’d help push you along now, dear reader, by assembling some of the pieces I’ve found. Please read the graphic novel (in all bookstores right now) and add anything you find to the comments of this post.

And for my RSS readers, you should really click through to see the embedded player with loads of video content.

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