Category: Authenticity

Buzz Aldrin Gives No F***s

Authenticity

When you’ve been beyond Earth’s orbit, I expect you have a different view of the world, it’s people and it’s leaders. And as someone who has “the right stuff”, Buzz Aldrin, certainly can lay claim to having firm views and a sharp ability to analyse the data laid out before him.

Here he is providing Marcel Marceau level commentary on a speech by Donald Trump. It seems he has no poker face – and doesn’t care who knows it.

If Only Climate Denialists Checked Their Rage to Read Your Twitter Bio

Authenticity

Humans can be delightful. Whimsical. Entertaining and surprising. But they can also be frustrating. Embarrassing. Comically inept.

And one of the amazing things about humans is that they can be all these things at the same time.

And the fact that humans invented Twitter – and bring it to life each and every day – shows just how creative we can be.

Author, JK Rowling seems to agree, retweeting this stellar conversation between one of my favourite astrophysicists, Katie McGarvey and one of her “fans” (ok, I think Katie may be the only astrophysicist that I have ever met).

Long live Twitter.

When the View from the Penthouse is not What’s Expected

Audience 2.0, Authenticity

It’s not everyday that I notice the tweets from Penthouse Australia in my Twitter feed. But after the marketing industry’s Mumbrella website published this article, it seemed to send the publisher’s Twitter feed viral.

While I only really read the Penthouse tweet stream for the 140 characters, it seems, someone is having way more fun with the brand and its reputation than usual.

penthouseThere is obvious frustration in every tweet, but this serves as a serious lesson for all brands – and not just those using social media in an official or even unofficial capacity. The clear point is that businesses and brands can now be held to account for their actions (or inactions). Sure, taking over an official Twitter account can cause some embarrassment and maybe even brand damage. But there are so many options available for George Costanza would call “the airing of grievances”. It’s no longer a question of whether your brand’s dirty linen will be aired in public. It’s a matter of when.

And with that in mind, business owners, directors and boards should consider updating their mindset, digital practices, approaches and security protocols. Or better yet, understand that we now live in an age of radical transparency, and that “ethical business practices” are the basis of our new social license to operate.

I’m expecting this to be the new case study on brand and crisis management for 2016 marketing conferences. But the question remains – what would you do if your brand was brandjacked?

Disrupting the Music Industry – Vodafone and Spotify buddy-up

Audience 2.0, Authenticity, Disruptive Technology, Marketing, Music

Today’s announcement making Spotify Premium available to Vodafone mobile subscribers amps up the pressure on the music and media industries with more disruption on the horizon.

They say that the number one reason that startups fail is due to distribution. It’s not a poorly designed product, or an inexperienced team or even bad customer experience. The challenge, as it is for any new business, is reaching a market.

Now, it used to be that we knew where to find music – on radio stations, at record bars and on Countdown. As a kid, I’d go and see Mrs Fry at Sandy’s Music in Dee Why (and yes, it is still there). With her son, Nigel, they were the go-to people when it came to new music – from the most interesting punk coming out of the UK through to the emerging Birthday Party more locally, they had their finger on the pulse. They could steer you through both country and western, knew the difference between Boy George and Marilyn and would even keep an autographed single behind the counter for you.

Nigel and Jenny were the central node in a local music marketing network. And each week, they inspired their customers with stories of new music, artists and breakthrough video clips. Their knowledge and passion was extensive and their enthusiasm was contagious. Each person would leave the shop knowing just a little bit more about the music they were about to listen to. In effect, they were creating and cultivating advocates – people who would influence their friends and family through music.

But the shift to digital has transformed this kind of relationship. Our music discovery is no longer curated in the same way by the programming directors, radio hosts or record bar owners. It’s at the mercy of algorithms, networks and big data stores. And it feels like it … but I digress.

Most importantly, we are playing under new rules of distribution. Music needs to find its audience – and increasingly, that audience exists at the end of a data stream. The device that transforms that stream into music is a phone. And this places mobile phone networks in a powerful position.

With the ink now drying on the Vodafone + Spotify partnership, Voda customers will have access to the Spotify Premium package as part of their plan – that’s $11.99 a month in value. And while the deals are not yet up on the website, I’d expect you can chat with customer service about it.

But this is not the end of the line for the music industry. Nor is it for the media industry. After all, disruption also breeds opportunity – and the very thing that made Sandy’s Record Bar popular is still the thing that we crave. And for all the technology under the sun, we haven’t been able to replicate that yet.

Disruption from the Medieval to the Digital World

Analog to Digital, Authenticity, Big Data, Digital Disruption

vatican-libraryOne of the most exciting and interesting projects I came across during my time working with IBM was the digitisation of the Vatican Library. A great humanist project, the Vatican Library was created during the Renaissance when books were literally hand crafted. Scribes, illuminators, binders and printers would work together to create objects that were as beautiful as the content.

It was Nicholas V (1447-1455) who decided that the Latin, Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, which had grown from 350 to around 1,200 from his accession to the time of his death (March 24 1455), should be made available for scholars to read and study.

On his death, Pope Nicholas V (1447-55) gifted his extensive personal library to the Vatican. Containing Latin and Greek codices as well as secret archives of the Popes, these three collections formed the basis of what would become the Palatine Library under Nicholas’ successor, Sixtus IV. A dark and damp space accommodating shelves, desks, benches and a growing collection, the knowledge contained in these spaces soon burst forth.

VaticanLibrary Under successive popes, the collection grew. Sixtus V rebuilt the library, adding frescos, large bright windows and benches. Of course, as was the custom of the time, each volume was held fast by a solid chain. There were strict rules about reading and copying but books were also loaned. The records of these loans are still in existence. They’d make fascinating reading in their own right.

But the flow and accumulation of knowledge could not be stemmed. This new, beautiful library was soon flooded, with books washing out of the main rooms and into hallways and adjoining rooms. The torrent could not be stopped. In fact, it was bolstered by the Pope himself. Pope Clement XI (1700-21), for example, actively acquired manuscripts and volumes from all parts of Asia, effectively establishing the Oriental Collection.

But not all these acquisitions were completely free of drama or controversy. One of Nicholas V’s first contributions to the library was the secret archives of the Vatican. Now covering over 1000 years of history, the Archivum Secretum Vaticanum separately houses  a treasure trove of precious documents on 85km of shelving. Furthermore, some of the acquisitions have raised eyebrows over the centuries:

For example, the first 6 books of the ‘Annals of Tacitus’ were known to have been stolen from the Monastery of Corvey. In the early 16th century Pope Leo was able to acquire them, and fully knew the circumstances. In 1515 he made printed copies of the manuscript, and ‘graciously’ sent a set of the ‘printed’ books, specially bound, to the Abbot of Corvey. [You can now see translations of these on Wikipedia.]

This, of course, raises questions around ownership, copyright and ethics. But it goes deeper – to the root of power, knowledge and human experience. It impacts identity and community and touches our foundational institutions no matter whether they are educational, political or cultural in nature. Understanding the flow of this far reaching impact is how we identify the fact that we are living in a state of disruption. Elizabeth Eisenstein, in her discussion of the impact of the invention of the printing press outlined five impacts of this “new media”:

  1. Experts coming under pressure from new voices who are early adopters of new technology
  2. New organisations emerge to deal with the social, cultural and political changes
  3. There is a struggle to revise the social and legal norms — especially in relation to intellectual property
  4. The concepts of identity and community are transformed and new forms of language come into being
  5. Educators are pressured to prepare their students for the newly emerging world

Today, we face this same torrent of disruption. This time, instead of hard, physical and space-consuming books, the disruption is driven by the accumulation of data. But we don’t have the hand-picked curatorial power of the Vatican Librarians. We don’t have a carefully crafted, focused collection. We have a vast sea of bits and bytes loosely connected by strings of relevance, some social cohesion and meaning and an electricity and data grid that spans the planet.

Eric Schmidt from Google famously stated that we now create as much information in two days as we did from the dawn of civilisation up to 2003. A princely figure worthy of any Pope. The Vatican Library pales by comparison:

In September 2002 the new Periodicals Reading Room, where the most important material is available to readers on open shelves, was opened to the public. At present the Vatican Library preserves over 180,000 manuscripts (including 80,000 archival units), 1,600,000 printed books, over 8,600 incunabula, over 300,000 coins and medals, 150,000 prints, drawings and engravings and over 150,000 photographs.

The Vatican Library was conceived as a vast humanist initiative. And it is one that has stood the test of time. But in this push to digitise every aspect of our lives, I wonder whether we are missing something important. As Ben Kunz suggested, there is somethind deeply personal and decidely human about our relationship to books and knowledge.

After all, our memories are deeply tied up with these dusty old objects that haunt our lives. And no matter how many blog posts or videos we produce, they never have as much impact as a table thumping tome. Just think, for example, how many businesses have disappeared or merged over the last 20 years. How many of them will still be here in 1000? Amazon may rise and fall, but I’d lay money on the fact that the Vatican Library will still be there in 3014.

Why Social Media Has Failed the Federal Election

Authenticity, Big Data, Digital Strategy, Social Media

In the last federal election, social media showed its potential to engage and influence the voting public. We saw some tentative steps into the world of social media – some tweets, Facebook updates and the occasional blog post. And the public – largely ignored in terms of digital citizenry – leapt at the opportunity to not just join the conversation – but enter the debate.

Over time the the #auspol hashtag has become a hot bed of debate, opinion and – in the best tradition of Twitter – trolling. Over the last month alone, the #auspol hashtag has averaged around 20,000 tweets per day from an Australian Twitter population of only 2.1 million. This would indicate a level of intensity worthy of attention – especially given that the next Australian government is likely to be determined not by a popular or even representative vote – but by voters in a handful of marginal electorates.

auspol-tag

In the USA, the Obama campaign set a new standard for the effective use of social media. But while the Obama campaign, with its massive successes, legions of data scientists and programmers, seemed to signal a new way forward for digital citizenry, local efforts have missed the mark, employing immature and simplistic strategies that have failed to either capture the imagination of the public nor engage them in public debate.

In many ways, the social media performance across the election has been almost as lacklustre as the campaigns for the top job itself. As with most failures, the failure of social media to ignite the election has many fathers. Here are a few:

  • Believing that social is like other media: We often say that social media is “conversational”, but this doesn’t stop even experienced marketers from using social media as a form of broadcast media. Take a look, for example, at the following to follower ratio of almost any politician. How many direct conversations take place on their timeline? How engaged are they in conversations that are started by their followers? And how often do they share content that doesn’t directly feature them or their cause? In believing that social is like other media, politicians and their strategists are leaving votes on the table and leaving undecided voters uncared for and unloved.
  • Prioritising celebrity over relevance: While Kevin Rudd has run a largely Presidential style campaign in the media, this is less effective on social media. By contrast, Tony Abbott has presided over a campaign that prioritises a team of stars. But neither of these approaches work online because they tell the story of the team or the leader while ignoring the story of the voter. When you prioritise the celebrity of your participants rather than lionising your constituents, then your digital campaign is bound to fail. (And to be honest, this is a double failure for politicians, because good politicians understand the power of a constituency better than anyone.)
  • Confusing reach with impact: Having a large number of followers does not necessarily translate to votes. Creating reach through social media is just buys you a seat at the table. It allows you to engage in one-on-one conversation at scale. But just as brands learned the hard way, there is very little value in a Like and limited value in an audience you choose not to engage. R “Ray” Wang’s Nine Cs of Engagement should be required reading for any digital strategist – but be warned – it’s an effective framework but it requires considerable creativity and effort to execute.
  • Creating content not context: Sharing links can be useful, but unlikely to generate action unless there’s an acknowledgement of WIIFM (what’s in it for me). Context, however, is vital to providing relevance. Without addressing the context in which politicians operate, they are ignored or deemed irrelevant. This accounts for the significant levels of voter disengagement across the electorate in this election and is reflected well beyond social media in the endless stream of polling and opinion.
  • Preaching to the converted over engaging the convertible: Take a quick look at the last few tweets of your favourite politician. Consider the tone of voice. What is the topic and the language used? Are they pitching to you like they want a job – or are they writing like you know what they are talking about? In short – do they engage you like you’ve made up your mind or not? Almost every social media update has a partisan undertone. There’s a hidden nod or wink that really, you are “one of us”. You are on the team. And all the polling currently indicates that most Australians are fed up with both teams. Social media represents a great opportunity for politicians to “get closer” to the public – yet its execution is pushing voters further away. They’re preaching to the converted rather than seizing the opportunity to engage those who may yet be converted.
  • Facts are boring, engagement is sexy: The emergence of “fact checking” sites and teams has drawn a great deal of attention from the mainstream media. But there has never really been a question around the importance of facts – the question has always revolved around “whose fact is correct” – or can be relied upon. And that comes down to TRUST. In social media, a key determinant of trust is not related to fact but to engagement. And given that the currency of social media is engagement (not the number of “facts” that can be spouted), a great opportunity has been squandered.
  • Data is just data without insight: Much has been made of the use of data science and analytics in the devising of strategy. But there is little evidence that the data is informing or driving the strategy or refining the tactics of the political campaigns. Now, I am a fan of data – but without insight and human analysis – what I call synthalitics – data is not only useless, it’s dangerous and can lead to wrong decisions and worse outcomes.

In many ways, social media had the potential to turn this election on its head. A deeper understanding of the nature of social could, dare I say it, swayed the outcome considerably.

imvotingliberal-topsy

One only has to consider the massive impact that has been achieved through the newsjacking of the @ImVotingLiberal account and hashtag. For an account that has only a few followers, the conversation and engagement has been astounding. Now, imagine if some of the politicians of all persuasions came up with campaigns that engaged voters in this style of creative exchange. Imagine how much more vital, relevant and dare I say FUN would this election have been?

Followup: It seems that the @imvotingliberal account has been suspended.

Creativity and the Practice of Empathy

Authenticity, Conferences, Creativity

I can remember seeing a friend after university holidays – and asking “how was your break?” It’s the natural conversation starter. But when he answered, it was not what I expected. Rather than the polite “great thanks … yours?” response, I was delivered a bombshell. There was no seaside holiday or relaxing overseas trip. There was only unspeakable loss and grief.

A single question had taken us both into an unexpected place. Even today I can still remember feeling my mouth opening and closing, grasping for words that would not come. I didn’t know what to do.

So we went, my friend and I, to site silently in the university cafe. Hours passed, and finally, buzzing from the caffeine, he said goodbye and left.

The following week he thanked me. I hadn’t rushed in to solve his problem. I hadn’t offered advice. I didn’t really DO anything.

This great presentation by Evgenia Grinblo on the practice of empathy reminded me of this story – and of the care that we should take when working with our clients. Don’t rush to conclusions. Don’t think solutions. Sit and figure it out.

Sydney Cycleways Changing the Way We Experience Sydney

Authenticity, Community, Customer Experience, Public Debate

Years ago I did some work in Munich. Our office was in the centre of town and my hotel (if you could call it that) was just outside the central business district – but rather than catching a can each day, I thought I’d try cycling.

At the front of the hotel was a bike rack with bikes that could be hired by the day, hour or week. Once you had setup an online account, the bikes could be unlocked remotely via text message. And the best thing was that you could stop “renting” the bike just by relocking it into one of the many racks scattered throughout the city. It was brilliant and supremely convenient.

But most importantly, it changed the nature of the relationship that I had with the city. Rather than rushing from point A to point B, I was able to breathe in the architecture and style of the city. I could see the people and the way they lived. I felt part of a living landscape – and years later I still feel an affinity with the city.

This is partly why I am so excited to see Sydney’s cycleways threading through the CBD. Sure there are great, environmental reasons why they are a good idea – but beyond this, it is about reimagining and recasting the way we relate to the city. It’s about what it means to live, work and thrive in a city like Sydney.

Over on the SBS Cycling Central site is a great interview with City of Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore. She talks about a grander vision – of a larger cycleway network within the City of Sydney, connecting with other shires across Sydney. But she also talks about what it means to live in a city and how we need to own and design the city that we want to live in. And that is something that we should all share in.

Vera For BBH – How to Get a Job in Advertising

AgencyWorld, Authenticity, Social Media, Storytelling

For the most part, CVs are dreary to write and worse to read. They are uninspiring, linear and don’t lend themselves to the kind of storytelling and experience that capture our passions, skills or abilities. So when I hear of an interesting approach or idea to snaring a job, I love to lend support.

In late 2010, Katherine Liew from Adelaide won an internship with Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore – out innovating thousands of others to become the “world’s coolest intern”.

And when Simon Kemp shared a link to the Vera for BBH campaign, I had to learn more.

Vera4BBH2 Now we all know how hard it can be to land a gig in any agency – but BBH is one that is known for quality work. It attracts the best and brightest. So Vera set her plan in motion – a Facebook page, Twitter account, a slew of content, some seeding and some outreach. Her plan, obviously, was to start a revolution – a pink sheep revolution. As she says on her Facebook page:

Dear BBH,
I have seriously considered jumping through various hoops like a circus animal to get your attention – like the rest of the black sheep wannabes.
For three days, I have tried to think of ideas that will impress you and I have lost much sleep trying to fit in with all your black sheep. Somehow, that didn’t sit right with me. I was looking to fit in and be awesome? It sounded like secondary school all over again.
I’m sorry but I can’t do it. I’ve been the sheep in BRIGHT PINK WOOL for as long as I can remember and I’m slightly worried that my kind are unrepresented in this world.
I guess my question then is, Why aren’t pink sheep being considered for this internship?

And three days into the campaign, Vera has a page launched, some quirky, on-message content and attracted the attention of the local social media crowd in Singapore. 

Vera4BBH

I love that Vera defines herself as different from the oh-so-run-of-the-mill black sheep (after all if one works in advertising one must wear black … note to self: check wardrobe). But the big question – is this enough to get the job?

Here’s hoping so … pledging your first pay cheque to a charity is not a bad way to start a professional career. Passion and purpose. Play to win. Love it.

You Owe the Companies Nothing

Authenticity, Community, Creativity

Stan Johnson shares this great rant from Banksy on advertising and advertisers in our society. It’s a little Cluetrain-esq with a more activist angle.

Take a read.

Does he make a fair point? I’m interested to know your point of view … not because it’s inflammatory or because I have a vested interest. How does it make you feel as a CREATOR of content and a CONSUMER of advertising? How do you reconcile this spectrum – or is there even a need? Do we owe companies nothing – or is there some silent, complicit contract or is is a fabrication?

banksy