10 golden principles of successful web apps

13 Apr, 2010 • posts i've written • 1 comment

Drop what you’re doing and watch Fred Wilson‘s talk at the Future of Web Apps conference.

There are too many people playing in digital marketing today that don’t understand how to develop for the web. Up your game, people. Learn how to program. Get interested in how things are made and how people interact with applications. Do all of this before you pitch another half-cocked idea to your client. Please?

Full transcript of the speech here.

Wilson’s Ten Golden Principles:

1. Speed
2. Instant Utility
3. Software is Media
4. Less is More
5. Make it Programmable
6. Make it Personal
7. RESTful
8. Discoverabilty
9. Clean
10. Playful

today’s tomes

18 Jan, 2010 • posts i've written • 1 comment

Two slideshares that were shared with me over the weekend deserve some or more of your continuous partial attention. They’re both weighty in length, but more importantly, in insights and value.

First up, Norwegian strategist Helge Tennø created an expanded deck of some earlier trend work he had put together. But what resulted is more an ultimate primer on working in and respecting the digital space for what it really is – a communications platform. The recent earthquake in Haiti and the use of digital technologies to collect information and call people to action has been a perfect example of the true power/purpose of digital. By the way, if you’re not reading Helge’s blog, you’re absolutely missing out on some damn fine strategy thinking. A favorite phrase, paraphrased, “search is no longer the most important word on the internet, share is.”

Next up, BBH Labs shared Morgan Stanley’s Mobile Internet Report which is a 92 slide summary of a 1,000 slide deck. The deck is chock-full, and I so hardly find an excuse to say chock-full, of data and insights – and it’s fantastic to see a financial analysis mindset applied to the space.

appearing to speak to no one

12 Oct, 2009 • posts i've written • No comments

photo credit

“I found myself arguing that what we want is the mesmerizing and the place we find the mesmerizing is not the show that has “something for everyone.” It’s in the show that is unbelievably particular, that appears to speak to no one at all.“

Grant’s post nicely sums up how we’ve been advising our clients on digital for the last year or two; interesting to see it applied now to TV.

The web is a novelty generator (many many small passionate groups loosely connected); and by spreading novelty and being rewarded for it (RT’s, friends, followers), we’ve learned the behavior of looking for and sharing that novelty. If it smells like we’ve seen it before, we ignore it. If it’s completely novel, there’s some value in applying our attention.

fans: the rising tide

08 Jul, 2009 • posts i've written • No comments

Plenty of brilliant folks have carried the banner of fans long before I jumped in – and I’m beginning to see more mainstream (or simply more popular) voices echo the sentiment: fans are the future of digital marketing.

Two posts on fans today, the first from Seth Godin, asks “how big is the gap between customer and die-hard fan? In other words, between engaging and loving, between attending and craving?” (alright that one might be less about fans, and more in the normal Seth vein of saying ‘you could go status-quo, or you could be super awesome fantastic’)

The second post, from MediaPost, really hits the goomba on the head:

What makes top brands so valuable? It’s not just that they sell a lot of volume. The most valuable consumer brands are successful because of the relationships they form with their customers.

And while ‘relationship’ is the promise of the social Web, most brands have missed the boat when it comes to their social marketing initiatives. Instead of investing in relationships, brands have largely invested in a token presence on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. It’s no wonder they haven’t seen an ROI.

….

It’s clear why this matters to brands and should matter to you: your biggest fans are your most valuable and authentic social marketing vehicle. If you invest in a true relationship with them, you’ll be able to move and react quickly to their ever-changing needs, and even ask them for help. It doesn’t take much to keep them happy – just creating a special and honored place and engaging in honest dialogue. When you invite them in, you unleash their willingness and desire to recruit other fans that will gush and rave online with them.

Well said.

an existing business model for digital agencies

13 May, 2009 • posts i've written • 10 comments

Mike just wrote a post on a new business model for digital agencies that’s getting a ton of great feedback.

Here’s Mike’s basic idea:

I want to see a new digital agency model that sells a package of 100 small digital experiences, that can each be executed quickly and cheaply, instead of selling the 1 big digital experience.

When this agency pitches clients, you don’t pitch one big idea, you pitch the first 10 small ideas. You say these are the first 10 ideas we’re going to build, and there are 90 more where that came from. For $500,000, we will concept and execute 100 ideas over 10 weeks. These ideas will each be designed to spread your message, attract the attention of your desired audience, build relationships, and compel action, if applicable.

It’s a brave idea, but one I think would be impossible to scale. When you have 5 clients, you’re expected to dream up and build fifty fairly unique ideas per week. With the way design and development is often highly fractured in most agencies, the time it would take to communicate a vision (even for the slimmest experience) would halt this kind of rapid process. Also, the output here would create 100 floating corpses by the end of the 10 weeks; there’s no demand on continual refinement and evolution, something that is absolutely necessary for building interactions, engagement, and ultimately relationships. (I’ve learned this bit the hard way)

Even though I take issue with Mike’s plan, I agree with the spirit of the idea. Agencies should be creating more. The relationship between agency and brand should extract the full talent of the creative team for the price being paid – which almost never happens. Hungry agencies charge too little for brilliant execution and lazy agencies charge too much for mediocre drivel. Meanwhile, the talent of the best people is being wasted.

Here’s the good news: there is an existing business model for digital agencies that rocks – it’s the model of building your own brands and products. Companies like Coudal Partners in Chicago, and Anomaly here in NYC, are practiced at testing the mettle of their own ideas by actually launching them.

Layer Tennis, by Coudal, is a perfect example to dissect. Layer Tennis is basically two designers passing back and forth a Photoshop file in 15 minute intervals, trying to one up each other. That’s how it started anyway. It has since grown a bit in terms of media (now there’s animation, too), and it has certainly become a big draw for the design audience every Friday. Layer Tennis seemed like a good idea, so Jim and the crew just did it. Adobe took notice and brought some advertising/sponsorship dollars to the table. (Any of Anomaly’s projects are great case studies, too)

A lot of agencies seem to be adopting this practice, and I’m happy to see it. When the vision for something comes from within an agency, I trust the care and feeding of that idea to the originator for as long as possible. Layer Tennis could have been ruined if it had been handed off directly to Adobe from day one.

Thoughts? leave em below. Also, drop a line on any project you’re currently incubating.

fans: rise of the machines

13 May, 2009 • posts i've written • 1 comment

You see those trending topics on Twitter? Those are fans talking about things they love, to their friends, and anyone else that will listen.

Oprah mentions Twitter and registrations surge. That’s not the power of Twitter, that’s the power of Oprah’s fan community. CNN and Ashton go at it for new followers. Again, that wasn’t Twitter, it wasn’t a virus, it was fans acting on a leader’s nudge, and to connect to each other to share information and social currency.

You don’t scan your tweets every day because of Twitter either. You’re looking for people you know, friends, and also people you’re a fan of. Twitter can connect anyone: you to Ashton, Ashton to your third grade english teacher, and so on. Twitter is a bit of technology that better enables what fans want and need to do: connect with each other, express their fandom/define their identity, gather information, and feel more connected to what they love.

Fandom makes or breaks technology. Meetup.com took off because fans of beanie babies needed a place to swap and collect. Friendster cracked down on fakesters and it reduced a way fans could engage. Facebook is the center of a brand’s digital world because users can now ‘fan’ things.

Still think focusing on fans is too narrow? Or do you mean, ‘we just don’t have any fans?’ Those are two separate things: one is bullshit, the other is fixable. One is kidding yourself, the other is killing yourself (or at least resigning yourself to a slow extinction, better hope for no meteor showers). Brands should be out there courting and supporting these vocal fan communities. They’re right there, they aren’t hiding; in fact they’re doing very much the opposite.

fans are the future of digital marketing

29 Apr, 2009 • posts i've written • 10 comments

Thanks to everyone that commented and shared my posts last week. I hope I sparked a few thoughts.

Now here it is, my fan week round-up…

Today, brands must learn how to earn fans. This begins with courting existing communities to earn (not fabricate) credibility. After that, brands must provide the means to connect fans and give them something to do. After all, a dollar spent on fans is a dollar spent on R&D, retention, recruitment, loyalty and longevity.

- a week dedicated to fans and the future of marketing

here’s my rule of thumb for the question, “is it worthy of earning fans?” How many existing communities can you identify as being ‘courtable’ and demonstrate fandom? As Henry puts it, communities aren’t created, they’re courted. And if everything new is constructed from bits and pieces of pre-existing stuff (as Faris says), then you should be able to measure anything new by investigating which communities could be courted based on the stuff inside your new product or show.

- fans: will we earn any?

The mantra of web 2.0 has always been, “ask not what your users can do for you, ask what you can do for your users.” Mike Arauz, a fellow Strategist at Undercurrent, likes to say, “if I choose to tell my friend about your brand, it’s not because I like your brand, but rather because I like my friend.” So the mantra of our brave new world might be, “ask not what people can do for you, ask what you can do for their friends.”

- fans: will they go along for the ride?

When I urge clients to look more closely at niche fan communities, I’m urging them to study the actions and social norms within these groups in order to identify any lead user behaviors that could go mainstream. Fans are creating unanticipated connections between technology, social groups, and media that will reward our attention. And the pace of the web demands we stay focused on centers of innovation, and more often, fan communities represent the undersea chimneys which give life to the next evolution of species.

- fans: lead users

Fan communities are indeed “self-organizing groups focused around the collective production, debate, and circulation of meanings, interpretations, and fantasies in response to various artifacts of contemporary popular culture.” Moreover, fan communities mobilize around unanswered questions.

Advertising is made for people who care… to pay attention. Fans care. Fans pay attention. But most messaging doesn’t create the tension that activates full fan communities. We’re still stuck on saturating a crowd of unwilling participants instead of mobilizing a community to create and spread a conversation.

- fans: mobilize a conversation

Images from my posts: (click the image to read the full post)

Quotes from more brilliant women and men: (click the image to read the full post)

And finally, if you’re interested in more fandom, get to know Joshua Green:

fans: our song

20 Apr, 2009 • posts i've written • No comments

How do we separate out the positive evaluation of the “poacher” among academics and the negative assessment of “infringers” within the media industry? Both terms read the relationship in antagonistic or destructive rather than constructive terms. Instead, the Convergence Culture Consortium encourages a new model which emphasizes fans’ emotional capital, a term borrowed from a talk by Coca-Cola CEO Steven Heyer. We might think of emotional capital as the affective investments consumers make in favored cultural materials. For example, when a young couple says, “They are playing our song,” the “our” in that sentence is important: it describes an emotional relationship to the music which grew out of their unique memories and interpretations. For most people, the song remains in the background; for them, the song takes on special significance in their lives. The song becomes their emotional capital.

- Sam Ford with Jenkins, H., McCracken, G., Shahani, P., Askwith, I., Long, G., & Vedrashko, I. (2006) Fanning the Audience’s Flames: Ten Ways to Embrace and Cultivate Fan Communities.

Part of my week of posts dedicated to fans and the future of digital marketing. Tell your friends.

what i do

30 Mar, 2009 • posts i've written • 15 comments

I’m always searching for a jargon-free sentence to use when someone asks, “what do you do?” This is the best I’ve come up with so far. What do you think?