Month: May 2007

When I first heard about Geert Desager’s experiment I wondered whether it would work. I liked the idea and I liked the title and I liked the passion behind the project, but I felt like I was still grasping for the through line … for a story that I could sink my teeth into. I suppose it didn’t help that the work was being done for Microsoft, raising my eyebrows and activating a strong in-built scepticism.

As a piece of technology marketing, this is a nice change of pace (plenty of lessons for other technology mass marketers). The story is framed as a breakup in the relationship between advertiser and consumer … and by exposing the way that we, as marketers, aggregate, segment and analyse data, it is easy to see where the disconnects between brand and consumers lie. It also provides, by comparison, a clear reason as to why "social" marketing has has such a positive adoption across the consumer landscape.

Social marketing brings brands and consumers together in a relationship in a way that harkens back to the local-shop ethos. And as markets and marketing has evolved, the one-to-one relationships that once were possible have proven to be unsustainable. Geert’s movie brings the nature of this relationship back into focus — showing that where there once was love there is now only suspicion, impatience and scant regard. So will this effort bring back the love for Microsoft? Perhaps not straight away … but at least we are talking …

Ripples 246_4613
Originally uploaded by feersumendjinn.

I remember when David Armano first started talking about the circles of influence and how that spread and developed quickly into follow-on posts, presentations and so on. It was a fascinating demonstration of HOW influence actually does work. But equally interesting was the manner in which the comments came back from David’s original post and how those, in turn, influenced the evolution of his thinking.

Karl Long had left a comment explaining that the problem he had with ripples was that they disappeared. The fact that I am writing this now shows that blog ripples can last quite some time. I remember thinking at the time that there must be a more chaotic element at work and that the best of plans could easily be disrupted.

Enter Scott Monty. He has a great post on "accidental influentials" where he discusses new research by Duncan Watkins at Columbia University (check out the links to the audio — episode 29). This research is interesting because it does, in part, challenge the way that Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Points occur. Rather than social networks being activated by influential individuals, the research suggests that the activation can start anywhere and with anyone. Such a random/chaotic potential certainly appeals to me.

For brands and marketers working in social media, this has interesting implications. While the influencers will have an impact on the VELOCITY with which an idea/communication will spread, the idea does not have to be seeded or start with a particular person. So rather than seeking out the influencers, we should focus our times on ENABLING execution — providing the tools and content in an easy-to-use format that puts the brand back in the hands of consumers. In this instance, I would go so far as to suggest that Digg and its ilk are also influencers.

So then, coming back to David’s ripple diagram … influencers become more like acceleration touch points. If the message/idea is a stone skimming across the surface of the blogosphere, then it doesn’t matter where the stone comes from … but how fast it moves across the network depends on the influencers.