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Posted by Matthew Quint
I want to highlight a good article posted last week by one our BRITE ‘09 attendees, Abby Strunk, the Director of Marketing and Communications for BBYO, Inc., a non-profit Jewish youth organization. (We are glad you found value in the conference, Abby). In describing her marketing efforts at BBYO, Abby writes about the trends she heard this year while attending BRITE ’09 and other business and marketing conferences. A common message formed around the idea that a brand's success will rely, more and more, on inspiring its audience to become “evangelists” for the brand. What is striking is the realization she came to from listening to various marketing gurus and the efforts of major brands (with their major marketing budgets).
Participating in the conferences referenced earlier is an interesting experience. I have the thrill of Interacting with experts like marketing powerhouses Seth Godin (author of The Purple Cow and Tribes) and Jeff Jarvis (author of What Would Google Do?) and big brands like McDonald’s and American Express with multi-million dollar advertising budgets. While intimidating, I couldn’t help but to feel that we were the lucky ones. We – a Jewish non-profit – had something that some of the world’s best known brands were desperately trying to obtain. We actually have a community of people who have a deep passion and affinity for our “product” – an audience that is willing to take decisive action on behalf of the brand because they want to. The evangelism is authentic. Stories and case studies from big brands tend to dominate the media, so it is refreshing to see Abby remind us that organizations and brands of all sizes need to adapt to the changes being created by our digital culture. And that, in fact, these changes can be encouraging to smaller players since the closer connections they and their stakeholders have with each other may bring them proportionally greater benefits. Be brave enough to relinquish control of your brand. Put control in the hands of your community. They will reward you by moving your mission forward.
Right on, Abby!
Posted by David Rogers
 Quick question:
Is the use of twitter, IM, and Wikipedia during a meeting…
a) An aid to enrich the conversation?
b) Better than just doodling on paper?
c) Likely to prevent you from engaging fully?
d) Rude? I read two fascinating posts this week on the impact of continuous partial attention in our lives. I highly suggest both, however you answered the question above. In "The Myth of MultiTasking", Adam Singer gives a passionate and thoughtful argument that slipping into a habit of constant digital multi-tasking can stymie creativity, deep thinking, and quality work. "Twitter, email, phone calls, instant messages, web browsing – they are all distractions and ultimately collateral tasks… Unfortunately focusing is a lost art, especially in my generation [Gen Y]… We grew up working on projects and studying while browsing the web, eating dinner, and talking with our peers. I only learned self-discipline later in life, but I had to unlearn the habits I acquired growing up multitasking"
Adam doesn’t address the potential benefits of multi-tasking for some kinds of work, or stages of the creative process. But he makes an eloquent plea for the value of an intent focus, undistracted by urgencies of the moment, to the kind of work that for many of us "leads to productivity, fulfillment and ultimately happiness." As someone engaged in writing a book, I share his need for long blocks of uninterrupted time. In "I Want My Cyborg Life," danah boyd offers a revealing counterpoint. She relates a story of being rebuked for her use of her laptop in the audience at an academic conference in Italy (on Modernity 2.0, of all things). Boyd details how her use of Twitter, blogging, and Wikipedia during presentations enriches her understanding and participation: "During the talk, I had looked up six different concepts he had introduced (thank you Wikipedia), scanned two of the speakers' papers to try to grok what on earth he was talking about, and used Babelfish to translate the Italian conversations taking place on Twitter and FriendFeed in attempt to understand what was being said. Of course, I had also looked up half the people in the room (including the condescending man next to me) and posted a tweet of my own."
Boyd, and others in her comments, describe using the mobile web in the classroom, in museum galleries, and at dinner parties, to expand on and enliven their daily experiences. But, as reported in recent MSM articles, there are many others who are offended when a Blackberry or iPhone is enlisted during a meeting. What's the difference between the two camps? Theories in boyd's discussants include: sex (men can't multitask), culture (Italians don't get it), and age (some people are dinosaurs). My guess is none of these. I have a strong feeling that whether continuous partial attention is a boon for us (like for boyd), or a lodestone (like for Singer), will depend to a fair degree on our neurology. I was not surprised to read in her follow up comments that boyd is ADHD. "Just because I might appear to look like I'm paying attention to one thread does not mean that I actually am. I learned to perform attention in high school. But, as an adult, I'm more interested in learning than in performing… [As a lecturer] I find it really disconcerting when people are actually looking at me."
As someone with attention issues in my family, I immediately recognized her experience. And as a parent, I echo her question to teachers: "How can we embrace those who learn best when they have an outlet for their questions and thoughts?"
Social norms of whether public digital multi-tasking is appropriate will be shaped by culture, and these norms will be in flux over the next 10 years. But as they shift, we should keep in mind that what works for one person does not work for everyone else. Some of us will work very well with a split screen in our mind, but others will thrive best when they unplug for solitude. -David
Posted by David Rogers
I recently had the pleasure to host a webinar for the FASTforward Blog on the subject of integrating social media into business processes and the design of customer experiences. My panelists spoke from a wealth of experience leading major social media projects at Dell and Best Buy:
Click on the links below to access the full recording of our 60 minute conversation – you can play it in place or download it as a podcast.
Posted by David Rogers
- Repeat after me: "SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT JUST FOR KIDS." Read this data on Twitter's demographics & growth: http://tr.im/irJu
- Latest use of social media (Twitter) to organize political protest in an autocracy: Moldova http://bit.ly/odP5M
*For more links, follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/david_rogers
Posted by David Rogers
I'm still energized from last week's BRITE-Asia '09 conference at Singapore Management University. It was exciting to spend the day discussing the impact of digital media on business from an Asian perspective, and to find people grappling with many of the same challenges and questions as in the U.S.
Provost Rajendra K Srivastava started the day with an argument for the enduring value of brands. He deftly showed how stock market performance during the global crash of October 2008 demonstrated the ROI of brand building in terms of risk management. The market capitalization of high-brand-value companies fared about 5% better in the crash than that of less-branded companies (controlling for external factors like industry and size). (Raj's talk was featured in an article by Channel NewsAsia.) Dennis P. Susay, Merrill Lynch's head of branding for the Pacific Rim, talked about the importance to brands of first-mover, highly-visible, game-changing innovation. Cases such as the iPhone, VW Touareg, and diabetes LifeScan, showed the importance of customer insight and meaning, and the power of collaborating with other companies. He stressed that while service innovation is costly, it is harder for competitors to duplicate, offering sustainable advantage. Overall, innovation offers brands a chance to make an impact when they can "prove it in a big way." I spoke on the rising power of customer networks and their impact on brands and business models. I spoke on why I use Twitter; why even the Taliban are addicted to the Internet; and why 3 million fans "friended" a Coca-Cola page on Facebook which the company had not made. To adapt to customer networks, marketers must stop seeing themselves as the sole source of their brands. They also need to stop chasing today's latest technology fad, and focus more closely on user behavior. I showed cases of how companies such as Nike, Dell, and Procter & Gamble are using innovation to engage customer networks and energize them as advocates for brands. (My talk was covered in a ZDNet Asia article.) Schmitt spoke about the need for big thinking in business to drive innovation, and used Odysseus' Trojan Horse as a metaphor for the power of big ideas in strategy. Drawing on recent brain science, he explained how creativity arises in the mind from the synthesis of previously unconnected ideas. Business cases from Apple to Dubai to Audi to Dove illustrated various techniques for generating innovative ideas. The value of benchmarking innovations from outside your industry was explained, and the importance of leadership to sustaining Big Think, and not falling prey to the syndrome of one great idea that is never extended (the VW Beetle, or the Motorola Razr). Kentaro Kimura, of creative agency Hakuhodo Kettle, presented his vision of how to "boil the world" for clients with media neutral, creative advertising. The key of his work lies in finding the unique + universal "moment" for brands – from a GPS device to skin care to a warm Japanese bun. Kentaro's speech was pure performance art, with wacky music, disarming examples, and a virtual dialogue with his agency back in Tokyo. To me, it showed that sometimes the great ideas you need won't come from the crowd; and even in a social media age, you still need your own vision to promote your brand. Gavin Coombes, CEO of FutureBrand AsiaPacific, offered sage advice on "being digital by being human." In an era of increasing transparency, traditional smoke and mirrors marketing will not work. Marketers need to shift their goal from control to influence. Brands need to open, honest, and utilitarian, to engage today's connected, mobile, personalized consumers. With benchmarks such as Google, Amazon, and brand Obama, Gavin spoke about the benefits of open source beer, why social networking started before the moon landing, and why banks can't run ads with the words "trust" or "stability" anymore. Dae Ryun Chang, director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Korea's Yonsei University, turned the discussion to the meaning of digital media in Asia. He detailed the three key demand-drivers of an Asian "we-me" culture that combines perfunctory collectivism with repressed individualism. He showed how company's like Tudou.com (China's YouTube), Tencent QQ (the world's biggest IM and social networking service) and India's Idea Cellular are connecting with Asian consumers. And he presented research showing that best branding impact for Asian consumers is elicited by a combination of touchpoints across both mobile and desktop Internet. John Davis and Jin Han, directors of the Center on Global Brand Leadership at SMU led two boisterous panel discussions with the speakers and audience. Among the topics and questions:
- Giving up on "controlling" your brand conversation
- Social media is not just for losers
- When offering customization works, and when it doesn't
- Different goals and different ROI on social media
- Use of social media by B2B companies, non-profits, and social enterprise
- The perils of "lame innovation" (look, we added music to our phone!)
- Who has delayed the convergence of TV and internet (our "Tom Cruise on Oprah" moment)
- Why break-through innovation rarely comes from legacy institutions
- Why social media will never capture the breadth of audience that mass media once had, but why mass media are losing more of their breadth every day as well. (In the future, will new brands just not be quite as big?)
The BRITE-Asia '09 conference was a terrific event. Many thanks to John, Jin, and Cara Toh for all their great organizing.
Posted by David Rogers
- What is Facebook Connect and How Does It Help Users Connect?: 5 Examples on iPhone Apps http://ping.fm/Tzl8U
- Customers Have a Say in Marketing, Too http://is.gd/pRRl
- (VIDEO) Bill O'Reilly is afraid that Twitter may kill his business: http://is.gd/pQJO
- Fred Wilson on why he deleted all but 56 of his Facebook "friends." http://snipr.com/edulj
- Emerging Models for Journalism in a Post-Newspaper World (Yochai Benkler in the New Republic) http://bit.ly/x8WFw
- Judges Declare Mistrials Because of Jurors' Use of Smartphones. Could you resist checking the web from the dock? (NYTimes) http://is.gd/nKg
*For more links, follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/david_rogers
Posted by David Rogers
Today Apple offered a sneak preview of the iPhone 3.0 operating system. This will be the next mobile computing OS for over 30 millions users of the iPhone and iPod touch worldwide. (Judging by my commute, 1 million of them ride the NY subways.) USER INTERFACE The new OS will offer a host of improvements for user interface and the core applications that come with your iPhone:
Copy/Paste: finally! Finally!! Finally!!! (Just yesterday, a family member asked "The one thing I haven't figured out is… how do I copy and paste on this thing?") With double-tapping and dragging, users will be able to copy, paste, and cut both within, and between programs (including 3rd party apps). Read something, highlight a paragraph, copy the text, open an email, and paste it in… ouala!- Global search: search your emails, search your calendar, even use Spotlight to search all your apps
- Push: for the Blackberry enviers, push notifications finally arrive. Expected to save battery life.
- Landscape Mode: the widescreen keyboard layout will now be available in all app's (not just the Safari browser)
- Undo: shake your iThing to retract that last hasty command
- Calendar synch: will now use CalDav (a widely supported open standard useful for sharing calendars) and subscriptions support for .ics formatted calendars. Spouses with different work calendar systems can get back in synch again!
- Messages: new application for MMS will allow forwarding and deleting of individual messages
- Voice Memos: new app for recording audio files with the built-in microphone will allow you to edit, trim, and share audio memos
- More features, including: shake to shuffle, Stereo Bluetooth support, YouTube accounts and subscriptions, synch Notes to your computer, Wi-Fi auto login (yes!), encrypted profiles, auto-fills, VPN on demand, parental controls, and more.
DEVELOPER COMMUNITY But the real impact of the iPhone 3.0 OS will be in how the developer community uses it to create new app's for the iPhone ecosystem. They've already created 25,000 third-party applications for the iPhone App Store – with 800 million apps downloaded to date. That open approach to innovation led the iPhone App Store to win this year's BRITE Big Think Audience Award (narrowly edging out Twitter). The online nomination read: This storefront for third party applications turned an "MP3 player plus 2nd-tier Blackberry" into a lifestyle-altering mobile computing device. Open source developers added games, maps, productivity tools, books, RSS feeds… but also applications that never existed before, because they'd make no sense for a large computer (identify that song on the radio, get food advice while shopping in the grocery). The Google phone and Blackberry are both rushing to emulate, with their own app stores. The mobile computing revolution has begun. The iPhone 3.0 OS brings three huge breakthrough's for developers of third party apps:
1. New open APIs
2. Work with other devices
3. New business model for apps OPEN APIs The new version of the iPhone software development kit (SDK) will provide developers over 1000 new APIs. (Those who heard Aaron Cohen and Yaron Samid's talk at BRITE '09 this month understand the importance of open API's as catalysts for innovation.) These open APIs include access to the iPod Library, proximity sensor, audio recorder, the battery, data detectors, text-selection, and more. The countless possible innovations include:
- customizing music: e.g. game can also play music from the user's iPod library (choose your own soundtrack for Sims 3.0)
- scaling video: an ESPN native app will automatically scale video quality to provide users with the best quality for their connection
- embed maps in app's: the heart of the Maps application is being turned into an API so that developers can embed Maps into their applications
- Bluetooth p2p location: will allow auto-location of devices in the same general area without having to use WiFi
WORK WITH OTHER DEVICES 
IPhones communicate synch with your computer, but so far not with much else. The Nike Plus platform (linking a joggers iPod to their running shoe and to an online community) has shown the exciting potential of building a bridge from your mobile computing device to other devices. But that was developed as part of a special partnership between Nike and Apple.
Now, third party developers will be able to create applications that work directly with other accessories, and can "talk" to them through the iPhone dock. This could include a digital equalizer app for a stereo, a channel-changer app for your television, or even an app to communicate with medical devices. Anita Mathew of LifeScan showed off an application for diabetes management – which would allow users to check their blood sugar and transmit the data from their insulin meter to the iPhone (via the iPhone Dock Connector or BlueTooth). Gizmodo reported how she described "…the scenario of a 15-year old with diabetes who tests herself 6 times a day and injects insulin many times a day. The insulin meter can transmit her glucose reading to the iPhone. She can then track her diet and how much insulin she needs after a particular meal... With the iPhone app, she can then let her parents know that she’s OK by sending them a message directly through the app that has her glucose level and how she feels." NEW BUSINESS MODEL FOR APP'S Equally important, the iPhone 3.0 0S will open up new options for 3rd party developers to capture revenue for their innovations. For the first time, users will be able to make app purchases from within the app itself (rather than going back to the iTunes App Store). This opens up a variety of new business models, based on selling new content within an application. Paid content subscriptions are possible. Add on selling could include a game where if you finish the first 10 levels, you can purchase the next 10 without leaving play. Content can be sold in bundles, like a City Guides app selling "City Packs" of customized cities. More business models will doubtless emerge from the developers. START YOUR ENGINES The new OS will be available to users in summer 2009 (free for iPhone owners, $9.95 to iTouch users). It is being released in beta to developers today, so they can start creating new app's to take advantage of the upgrade. Thanks to Apple Insider which captured live blogging of the announcement by ArsTechnica, Engadget, and Gizmodo, and to Gizmodo for the above photos.
Posted by David Rogers
- Despite Recession, More Than 50% of Marketers Increase Spending on Social Media http://snipurl.com/dxhza
- Pope Proclaims He Should Have Checked the Internet http://is.gd/n749
- Give your video content away for free? Uncensored Interview just did w/a Creative Commons license http://is.gd/n2Ns (Marisa Bangash, BRITE speaker)
- When Skittles Met Twitter http://tinyurl.com/d4tez4 (as discussed at BRITE 09)
- The Amazon Kindle is the Great White Hope for Monetizing Print Media (BRITE speaker Steve Rubel) http://ff.im/-1qa5W
- Bad news on the Ad Efficiency of Print Media (from BRITE speaker Jeff Jarvis) http://ginx.com/-Th1J
- Craiglist's Craig Newmark on Government 2.0 and the Lessons for Business 2.0 (good citizen service = customer service) http://tinyurl.com/b62ljn
*For more links, follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/david_rogers
Posted by David Rogers
- How to Present While People are Twittering http://bit.ly/tweet_preso
- Thoughts on the Boxee-Hulu drama (by BRITE speaker Yaron Samid) http://bit.ly/PyyPq
- Digital Engagement--Adding Value to Fans and Advertisers (BRITE speaker Lisa Hsia, Bravo TV) http://is.gd/iuNx
- Promoting Your Best Side in Google Search Results http://bit.ly/FRKG
- It costs the New York Times Twice as Much to Print Itself Per Year than it Would to Send Each Subscriber a Free Kindle http://is.gd/hQX2
- CEOs Slashing Ad Budgets... but 62% Forecast Spending Growth on Digital in 2009 http://is.gd/id51
*For more links, follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/david_rogers
Posted by Matthew Quint
 Back in June 2006, Jeff
Howe, a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, coined the term
"crowdsoucring" to describe how the spread of technology and the
Internet were giving amateur content producers greater power in the
marketplace. As he stated in the influential article, "...smart companies
in industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals and television discover ways to
tap the latent talent of the crowd. The labor isn't always free, but it costs a
lot less than paying traditional employees. It's not outsourcing; it's
crowdsourcing."
After writing the article, Howe began his own blog to promote an open
discussion about the impacts of this phenomenon. And this past summer he
further fleshed out these ideas in his highly-praised book, Crowdsourcing:
Why the power of the crowd is driving the future of business. (With a
nod to the modern day effects on book publishing, I've noticed that it has its own video trailer on YouTube.)
We are so pleased that Jeff Howe will be speak during the first day of the
BRITE '09 conference, as part of a theme of "Crowdsourcing, Tribes,
and Online Communities."
While reading The New York Times this past weekend, I saw that William Safire highlighted the term and its
interesting origins in his "On Language" column noting that, "Last week, the word passed the million-hits
mark on Google." Safire describes his own experience of
crowdsourcing for several decades via the "Phrasedick Brigade" that
sometimes sources word origins for his column.
Looking back even further to another influential journalist, Herodotus notes in his History of
the Persian Wars the following Babylonian custom, "They have no
physicians, but when a man is ill, they lay him in the public square, and the
passers-by come up to him, and if they have ever had his disease themselves or
have known anyone who has suffered from it, they give him advice, recommending
him to do whatever they found good in their own case, or in the case known to
them; and no one is allowed to pass the sick man in silence without asking him
what his ailment is."
Clearly, the eagerness of the crowd to participate in useful content
development has always been there. Now the tools exist to allow this urge
to make a measurable market impact.
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