CorporatePR

In Defense of Noise

So many of the recent screeds against Twitter deplore its chaos, its triviality, its NOISE. Recently, Maureen Dowd asked, “Is there any thought that doesn’t need to be published?” She thinks that Twitter helps “destroy mystery.”

Since the debut of blogging, it has become common for the literati to deplore the triviality of social media: the burrito lunches, the cat vomit, the rain, the coffee and so on. Whole systems of search and refine, both user created and top-down engineered, have and are emerging to cut out the dross, to help you find the nuggets of gold that will prove the ROI of engaging in social media. I hear PR practitioners deploring the amount of time they have to spend trawling Twitter, looking for the 10 potentially valuable tweets out of a 1000 (work generally relegated to the interns (twinterns).

I acknowledge the sheer and increasing difficulty of following that first rule of social media (endlessly recounted in books, presentations, blogs and so forth): LISTEN (damn it). (Or else.)

And yet, I can't help but think that through our quest to reduce the noise, we are, in fact, getting rid of that which is most important to the formation of a sense of community. I have a hunch that it is exactly from the noise that community arises. That the emotional connections we are making with members of our networks (friends, followers, etc.) come from the noise, not the facts, the links shared, etc. I fear that through cutting down the noise, we are handicapping communications.

I have a lot of work to do to support this argument, work and research that will eventually form the basis of my dissertation.

In my thesis, I wrote:

While it is seductive to think that distributed, many-to-many, loosely coupled web connections foreground a new political power to the people, it is certainly not that simple or straightforward. From the point of view of so-called mass communications, for example, the dualism of command/control vs. distributed/neworked communications conceals the fact that both play the same game, just in a different way. Crucially, in both schemas, technology is used as a means to an end: power. Either in terms of concentration in the hands of a few (e.g., media conglomerates) or via collectivities of individuals that form around certain themes, the underlying goal of both of these schemas is to control the message.

In consideration of Twitter I wrote:

What is significant to me is that the so-called trivial remarks and everyday language of the observation of personal minutia is given the same status or place as directed questions, commands, persuasive attempts, factual discourse, etc. While sometimes jarring, I would argue that this inclusion of so-called trivia in fact plays an important role in the formation of the community itself. Granted, it is a rather amorphous community, with highly permeable borders and “members” which drop in and out, almost at random, yet, if you ask participants, they all confess to feeling part of a strong community, one they are emotionally attached to. I think it is this ability to witness and to attest to the passing of life – the ability to say without expecting response -- that brings in a human authenticity missing from other more constructed and tightly policed (in terms of acceptable topics of discussion) communities. Due to these traits, I think that Twitter represents a hint of what an authentic online, power-sensitive communications environment and practice would look like. (My thesis was a philosophical exploration of what a framework for authentic, power-sensitive communications might look like.)

I think that as organizations seek to nurture community, to create and sustain strong networks, they need to embrace noise, not try to limit it.

This phrase from an essay by Michel Serres (see note 1 below) on noise is very interesting. (To Serres, noise is the foundation of everything – chaos. Information rises from this noise) “Form – information that is phenomenal – arises from chaos – white noise. What is knowable and what is known are born of that unknown.” To Serres, noise is multiplicity – “possibility itself”. Furthermore, “it is not strength, it is the very opposite of power, but is its capacity. This noise is the opening...”

Noise as opening, as possibility, as capacity. This is intriguing. I think we should be careful not to be overzealous in cutting out noise, as we risk cutting out possibility.

This, of course, raises the question of how an organization can be open to the capacity of noise. I think this is one of the big questions we must think about in our quest for more authentic, power-sensitive ways of communicating.

I think a key lies in how we (as users) create meaning. I find the following from an article by William Rasch (see note 2 below) very helpful in thinking about this:

Precisely because we can...never receive a noiseless message, we must use our mediated relation to the text to generate more information than the author or author's original audience could ever have done...The goal of understanding, then, becomes not the elimination of noise, but the exploitation of the difference between noise and code; the construction and reproduction of order out of order and disorder.

And later in the same article he wrote:

Meaning, therefore, 'involves focusing attention on one possibility among many'. It is 'actuality surrounded by possibilities, the structure of meaning is the structure of this differences between actuality and possibility.

I think for organizations this means we must enable choices. How might we encourage users to focus attention on particular possibilities without shutting down choice? Luckily for us, the online system helps us do this via the link. George Landow describes hypertextuality in the following way:

...hypertext does not permit a tyrannical, univocal voice. Rather, the voice is always that distilled from the combined experience of the momentary focus, the lexia [bit of information] one presently reads, and the continually forming narrative of one's reading path. (Hypertext 2.0, 36)

And furthermore,

Hypertext linking situates the present text at the center of the textual universe, thus creating a new kind of hierarchy, in which the power of the center dominates that of the infinite periphery. But because in hypertext the center is always a transient decenterable virtual center – on created, in other words, only by one's act of reading that particular text – it never tyrannizes other aspects of the network in the way a printed text does (85)

Online, it is the person who is navigating information via his or her own path who creates meaning. But more than that, as a participant in social media, this person is also creating content that expresses the (contingent) meaning they have arrived at (at that moment). Wherever we look, wherever we create, at that moment, that content is the center. But we are always aware that an “infinite periphery” awaits, and we can move there with a click, a fingerswipe, etc.

Our question, therefore morphs a bit. How might we gain that center position, however briefly? How might we also increase our presence in the periphery (which may later become center)? (And let us remember, the periphery is noise, the endless possibility that waits for us from the momentary center.)

I think a possible answer lies in context. And our question changes once again. How might we create not only the content of our communications, but also the context? Or rather, as we are not creating in a vacuum here, but in relationship with others, how might we nurture, guide and sustain a rich contextual sphere around our core content?

I asked this question of content and context at the recent PRSA Digital Impact conference of which I was a co-chair. I asked it of Steve Rubel, of Edelman, phrased something like, “I am increasingly convinced PR people need to focus on creating context as well as content, what do you think?” His reply (from my memory) was that PR people should let the audience create the context, not try to do so ourselves. While I certainly agree that the audience creates context, I am not convinced that communications people need to stay away. I think we can, and must, nurture/guide/sustain this contextual sphere. (I am struggling a bit with how to say it, as create really denotes strongly authorship and ownership.)

Now, obviously, I did not convey the complexification of context that I am getting at here in my simple question...so maybe Steve will agree with where I am headed. I welcome his thoughts!

I think we need to think deeply about what this context I am speaking of really is. What is contained in it? How might noise be embraced, not excluded? And isn't context also content? How does context as well as content create meaning?

The more I muse on this the more I realize I have an enormous amount of work to do to understand the distinctions I am trying to tease out here. For those of you who made it this far in my ramblings – thanks! I am very open to hearing what you think, and I'll be back from time to time to share the development of my thoughts.

1. Noise

Author(s): Michel Serres and Lawrence R. Schehr

Source: SubStance, Vol. 12, No. 3, Issue 40: Determinism (1983), pp. 48-4

Published by: University of Wisconsin Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3684255

Accessed: 08/04/2009 06:4

2. Injecting Noise into the System: Hermeneutics and the Necessity of Misunderstanding

Author(s): William Rasch Source: SubStance, Vol. 21, No. 1, Issue 67 (1992), pp. 61-76

Published by: University of Wisconsin Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3685347

Accessed: 08/04/2009 06:52

Reflections on A Year of University Teaching

In October 2007 I faced my first classroom as a teacher.  It was a disaster.  Maybe it was because I taught that class in French, from which I am far from fluent (even further back then).  Maybe it was because the classroom was far too small for the 30-odd student or the too-close projector beaming strong light directly into my retinas (I saw spots for hours yesterday).  Hell, I even forgot to introduce myself!  I left the classroom disheartened at such a poor performance, but determined to improve.  Happily, I have (based on student evaluations!).

This past year has been both frustrating and exhilarating.  I have no training as a teacher; I only know my subject pretty well (public relations/digital communications/marketing etc.).  Happily, my first classes stuck to this core knowledge -- until this past fall when I had to develop two brand new courses in eBusiness and Customer Relationship Management (the second a bit further from my core competency, although I have certainly touched upon it in my career, esp as I worked for vendors and associations in the space).  My greatest difficulties came with trying to deal with challenging student situations from a position of total rook-i-ness, with little administrative support.

Oops - hit publish (Typepad changed its interface!).  More to come...my daughter is waking from her nap.

My Remarks from Today's Connect Conference

I don't usually write out remarks for the speaking that I do, but given I was Skyping in, I thought it best to do so.  Here they are.

Connect Remarks
September 20, 2008

“Engagement” is certainly an important concept today in the fields of marketing and communications.  We seek to encourage it and measure it.  But what is it? What does it mean to engage someone?  The Merriam-Webster Dictionary states that to engage is to attract and hold by influence or power, to induce to participate.  Let's repeat: to engage is to attract, to hold, to induce – but what?  First, attention, then participation.  We do this through influence, through persuasion – the core competencies of PR.  And this is what hasn't changed in the fact of social media.  In traditional communications schemas, influence and persuasion were and remain key.  What has changed is the structure of power that informs how we work with influence and persuasion.  With the movement from command/control models to distributed or networked models, power has increasingly moved towards the consumer.  But not totally, of course.  There still remains the tension between institution and its stakeholders that has to be negotiated everyday by professional communicators.  This has made our jobs more challenging, but has also opened up new opportunities.  Today, I'd like to speak to you about two opportunities I have identified.  The first has to do with persuasion itself.  The second with branding.

Studies have shown that there are three pillars of persuasion: competence (qualification, expertness, intelligence, authoritativeness), trustworthiness (character, sagacity, safety, honesty) and goodwill/intent toward receiver.  I have written that the first two factors of persuasion, competence and trustworthiness, are arguably covered adequately by traditional marketing/communications techniques and tools. However, brochures, ads and press releases are not tools for handling the third factor: goodwill. The latter is handled much better via social media tools like blogs and social networks, for example, because they tend to embrace the human voice, and because built into those tools are mechanisms for communicating understanding, empathy and responsiveness.

So why is goodwill important to persuasion? Because it is a "means of opening communication channels more widely" and is a significant factor in believability/likeability overall. (I am relying here on McCroskey & Teven's article on goodwill.) According to them, there are three elements of goodwill: understanding ("When we see someone exhibiting behaviors which tell us they understand our concerns, we feel closer to them."); empathy ("This involves behaviors indicating that one person not only understands the other's views but accepts them as valid views, even if he or she does not agree with those views.") and responsiveness ("Responsiveness is judged by how quickly one person reacts to the communication of another, how attentive they are to the other, and the degree to which they appear to listen to the other. We tend to see people who behave responsively toward us as caring about us.").

So, what does this means for persuasive communication using social media? Used in conjunction with traditional tools, they can quite possibly increase the persuasive impact of your campaigns. And let's remember, these new tools can also support the first two factors: competence and trustworthiness. I would argue that in order to address the situation we are in with this large degree of lack of trust in institutions, we need to encourage goodwill more than ever before.

The second opportunity I'd like to speak to you about – and I think Dell is well on its way towards doing this – is the opportunity for brands to become media.

What is a brand? It’s a promise: information from a firm promising you a set of costs and benefits from the consumption of a good or service. Brands shape your expected value. The challenge facing brands today is that a brand can no longer be only a symbol or a promise; it has to become much, much more than that. This doesn't mean it stops being a symbol – its shorthand promise will remain important, simply because not every consumer is going to have the time or desire to read and interact with all of the incredibly rich detail located behind the brand. My argument is that brands have to become media itself – the medium or platform on which the symbol is co-created with its consumers.

So what do I mean by media? First, the dictionary definition states that media is “a medium of cultivation, conveyance, or expression”; whereas medium is “the means of effecting or conveying something” (a channel, environment, or mode). Let us define it this way: “media is a platform for shaping expectations.” By platform, I mean a place for the production and distribution of information. I think we can agree that this meets our usual thinking of what media is (a newspaper, TV station, radio station, even social networks). This brings us to a few important questions:

• Who owns the platform?
• Who shapes the expectations?
• In what directions does the information flow?

The answer to these questions are quite important in characterizing the media/medium, because as we have known since Marshall McLuhan, the medium itself is a message (especially about power).

In traditional mass media, publishing companies owned the platform and publishers, editors and journalists shaped the expectations (under the influence of readers, of course, but often not directly). The information, for the most part, flowed outwards to readers, with limited incoming channels for interaction. Brands purchased space/time on these platforms in order to distribute their symbols.

Today anyone can produce and distribute information. Anyone can be media: “a platform for shaping expectations.” This is an important opportunity for brands to become something far more than just a symbol; they can become the means for shaping expectations.  Media is the platform where producers and consumers interact. (Here I am following Umair Haque, director of the Havas Media Lab, definition.)

This brings me to another angle on the story: investment. Haque tells us that traditional branding activities, especially advertising, imposes costs on consumers. Costs of interrupted attention, time spent waiting for a TV show to resume, polluted visual fields in cities and countrysides, and so on. Culturally, consumers are now expressing their increasing resentment of these costs and refusing to pay them (and technology is giving them ever more tools to easily do so). Haque argues that brands today must invest in consumers instead. What does investment mean? First of all, listening. Then thinking about how communications can benefit consumers.

This is a tricky thing for brands, and requires a dramatic shift in thinking. To restate: One cannot think only about how a product or service benefits its users, but how branding activities themselves can be beneficial. As long as the only option for brand awareness to achieve scale was buying space/time on other platforms, their freedom to create new experiences was limited. When a brand is itself a platform, worlds of possibilities open up. Notice I didn't say, “when a brand owns a platform.” It is very important that old ideas of ownership and control don't pollute this framework. Rather, brands must invest in consumers by providing the infrastructure needed for the co-creation of the platform. The development of the expectations, the development of the promise, must come through the relationships being formed on that platform between (co-)producer(s) and consumers. In fact, the answers to the questions stated above become:

• Who owns manages the platform: Everyone
• Who shapes the expectations: Everyone
• In what directions does influence flow: Everywhere

This is engagement.

Let's put it another way: the platform I am speaking about is where value is created. Brands invest in the creation and management (with a light touch) of the platform, thereby “investing” in consumers. The return on this investment is the value that consumers add, by contributing content and ideas, mashing up information – basically by investing their attention and participation. Think about it: the platform receives investment from both sides! The total value created can then be channeled into new products and services. Branding platforms as value generators has a really nice sound to it (and important implications for measuring the impact of branding activities, to say the least).

I've identified two opportunities for a new level of engagement with stakeholders 1) taking full advantage of the pillars of persuasion and 2) brands becoming media themselves.  There are, of course, serious issues that have to be thought through here, such as transparency and objectivity, and I've written about them on my blog if you are interested.  However, I remain convinced that used appropriately, social media tools can help institutions generate new relationships with stakeholders, leading to new levels of value for all concerned.

Brands as Media: Platforms for Value Creation

Back in April I wrote that I thought brands today have an opportunity to become media companies themselves:

What is tremendously interesting here, is that consumer brand companies are finding themselves becoming media companies. Not in the traditional sense of media 1.0, but in media 2.0, or participatory/social media. This shift flies in the face of the old “core competency” business strategy where companies focus on what they do best, shedding or outsourcing the rest. But the shift in technology and audience expectations is driving a major evolution in marketing, which, at least initially, is leading companies to develop, purchase and/or maintain/support media properties, be they online forums, blogs, and social networks. (This is already starting to result in brands competing with traditional media, the very places they have supported by their advertising over the past decades. With large consumer products companies in better financial shape than media companies, this might result in some odd marriages in the next few years.)

Since then, I have been putting a bit of thought into what I meant by that, with a special focus on thinking about what Umair Haque has been writing about branding and media economics.  Let's start with Haque's definition of a brand:

What is a brand? It’s a promise: information from a firm promising you a set of costs and benefits from the consumption of a good or service. Brands shape your expected value.

A lot of people have taken him to task for this definition in the comments to this post and follow-up posts, but I tend to agree with him.  Contrary to what some commenters seem to think, this definition does still keep the idea of social meaning, happy associations etc.  The brand compresses information – it is a symbol – for everything a consumer can expect to achieve when he/she consumes the object the brand represents.  Economically, this can be broken down into costs/benefits (even if we don't usually think about it in that way).

The challenge facing brands today is that a brand can no longer be only a symbol; it has to become much, much more than that.  This doesn't mean it stops being a symbol – its shorthand promise will remain important, simply because not every consumer is going to have the time or desire to read and interact with all of the incredibly rich detail located behind the brand.  My argument is that brands have to become media itself – the medium or platform on which the symbol is co-created with its consumers. 

Let's back up for a minute and look at this from a couple of different directions.

What is media?  The dictionary definition states that it is “a medium of cultivation, conveyance, or expression”; whereas medium is “the means of effecting or conveying something” (a channel, environment, or mode).  Let us define it this way: “media is a platform for shaping expectations.”  By platform, I mean a place for the production and distribution of information.  I think we can agree that this meets our usual thinking of what media is (a newspaper, TV station, radio station, even social networks).  This brings us to a few important questions:

• Who owns the platform?

• Who shapes the expectations?

• In what directions does the information flow?

The answer to these questions are quite important in characterizing the media/medium, because as we have known since Marshall McLuhan, the medium itself is a message (especially about power).

In traditional mass media, publishing companies owned the platform and publishers, editors and journalists shaped the expectations (under the influence of readers, of course, but often not directly).  The information, for the most part, flowed outwards to readers, with limited incoming channels for interaction. Brands purchased space/time on these platforms in order to distribute their symbols.

Today anyone can produce and distribute information.  Anyone can be media: “a platform for shaping expectations.”  This is an important opportunity for brands to become something far more than just a symbol; they can become the means for shaping expectations.  Haque uses Google and Apple as examples of next-generation brands that are doing just this.  Furthermore, he writes that media is a platform where producers and consumers interact.

This brings me to another angle on the story: investment.

Haque tells us that traditional branding activities, especially advertising, imposes costs on consumers.  Costs of interrupted attention, time spent waiting for a TV show to resume, polluted visual fields in cities and countrysides, and so on.  Culturally, consumers are now expressing their increasing resentment of these costs and refusing to pay them (and technology is giving them ever more tools to easily do so).  Haque argues that brands today must invest in consumers instead, using Google's non-ad riddled home page as the primary example of a brand investing in its consumers.  What does investment mean?  First of all, listening.  Then thinking about how communications can benefit consumers.

This is a tricky thing for brands, and requires a dramatic shift in thinking.  To restate: One cannot think only about how a product or service benefits its users, but how branding activities themselves can be beneficial.   As long as the only option for brand awareness to achieve scale was buying space/time on other platforms, their freedom to create new experiences was limited.  When a brand is itself a platform, worlds of possibilities open up.  Notice I didn't say, “when a brand owns a platform.”  It is very important that old ideas of ownership and control don't pollute this framework.  Rather, brands must invest in consumers by providing the infrastructure needed for the co-creation of the platform.  The development of the expectations, the development of the promise, must come through the relationships being formed on that platform between (co-)producer(s) and consumers.  In fact, the answers to the questions stated above become:

• Who owns manages the platform: Everyone

• Who shapes the expectations: Everyone

• In what directions does influence flow: Everywhere

Let's put it another way: the platform is where value is created.  Brands invest in the creation and management (with a light touch) of the platform, thereby “investing” in consumers. The return on this investment is the value that consumers add, by contributing content and ideas, mashing up information – basically by investing their attention.  Think about it: the platform receives investment from both sides!  The total value created can then be channeled into new products and services. Branding platforms as value generators has a really nice sound to it (and important implications for measuring the impact of branding activities, to say the least).

I am comforted by the idea that thinking about brand as media opens up vast new horizons for the practice of marketing, communications, public relations and so on. While some brands may become media companies themselves (as I previously suggested), I am sure this idea will manifest in other ways as well.  I will keep my eye out for  examples of brand platforms as value engines, and welcome any suggestions you may have.

Seminar on Innovation & Branding

I have been asked to teach a seminar on innovation and branding at ISCOM the first week of June.  This is for students pursuing a fifth year (BAC +5) - kind of like a master's degree in the US.  As part of the seminar, teams of students will give an oral presentation.  I am going to ask them to present an analysis of emerging mobile strategies across a couple of countries, with a focus on B2C.

If you have recommended sources or ideas, please drop them into the comments.  Thanks!

Book Review: Groundswell

I reviewed Groundswell, by Forrester analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, (thank you Jeremiah Owyang for offering me a review copy) for two purposes.  The first was in my quest to find a good overall strategy book to use for my upcoming classes in new technologies for PR and marketing.  The second was to, hopefully, learn something new (given I am so immersed in the field of social media, I am always on the quest for new empirical insights vs. the same old rehashed assumptions).  I am happy to inform you that the book is a success on both fronts.  I am indeed going to use it as a core text in my fall classes. On the second point, the book nicely mixes data analysis, case studies and a strong eye for spotting and describing trends.  The result is a refreshingly well written, interesting and fact-based book that doesn't hesitate to make definitive statements while serving as an essential guide for senior managers.

I would say that the authors have demonstrated their ability to listen (they interviewed lots of people for the book) as well as a gift for storytelling.  For example, their description of Dell's movement from Hell to IdeaStorm is great.  I think it is because this and the other case studies in the book tend to revolve around individual people.  From Rick Clancy of Sony, introduced at the beginning of the book, to Bob Pearson and Lionel Menchaca of Dell, and others, we get a glimpse into their thinking, their challenges, their anxieties and their drive.  In other words, we see leaders at work.  The one exception to this -- a case study about an initial failed effort -- remains anonymous, and, quite honestly, fell flat for that reason.  There is real authenticity in their case studies (stories), which is rare in business books. Given that the book is about engaging with people through social technologies, this is a crucial point.

As with most business books, you will find a variety of checklists, such as four "techniques for talking with the groundswell" and five suggestions for "getting started with a community."  While I often find the endless lists of business books boring (who wants to read lists for hours on end?), happily, these steps are nicely rounded out with both context and case study support, and don't simply appear as pompous aphorisms.   

I also found it refreshing that Li and Bernoff are not afraid to take definitive positions.  They baldly state, "Your brand is whatever your customers say it is." and "Strategies based on deception are doomed to failure." and "The groundswell swallows up people who don't have the right approach." There is no hedging or waffling in this book. 

Groundswell is a book about strategy.  You won't find in-depth discussions of the technologies they are introducing, but you will find enough detail to give you both a basic understanding of what it is (blog, wiki, viral video, tags), and, more importantly, what its impact is on traditional institutional power structures.  This is one of the features of the book I really liked.  The clear discussion of how social technologies impact power relationships is quite good. While the authors keep their discussions clear and simple, there is a lot of thought going on underneath (in fact, they have me thinking more deeply about the power shifts they record, but that is a discussion for another time).  That was satisfying to me, as too many business books seem like fast food, quick and easy, but with an empty core.

Finally, they address one of the thorniest issues of social technologies - ROI.  In every section, they attempt to assign real numbers, based on the case studies, as to how ROI was calculated.  While acknowledging the difficulty of measuring engagement, and the lack of professional consensus on measurement techniques as a whole, they do offer useful guidelines and examples. 

Bottom line: This is an excellent strategy primer for senior managers and executives seeking to better understand the changing world of marketing and communications in the face of social technologies (and a serious wake-up call to the reluctant ones among them).  It provides a variety of planning and action-oriented checklists and highlights potential pitfalls. Most importantly, the book is designed to help managers put together a strategy based on people and relationships vs. technology.  In the end, as the authors remind us, it is the relationships that count.

Confronting the Upcoming Challenge in Achieving Brand Awareness in France

I wanted to share with you a document I recently prepared that attempts to both summarize the current challenges facing brand managers in France together with some ideas of how these challenges might be met.  I believe the analysis makes sense for companies in many markets, so thought I would share it with you.   To frame it for you: this paper was written as something that could be taken to a senior executive, so has an overall strategy (vs tactical) approach.  It was inspired, in part, by a final exam question given to students in one of my international PR courses this spring.  As always, I would be interested in your comments.  In the coming weeks I will be digging into some of the ideas contained in this analysis, and will share the results with you.

Confronting the Upcoming Challenge in Achieving Brand Awareness in France

French brand managers are facing a serious problem today:  How does one achieve similar audience reach (as compared to traditional channels, especially TV) on new media/internet platforms for the purpose of brand awareness?  The short answer is, one can't.  As Shelly Palmer, a US-based expert on television advertising said in a recent presentation, nothing beats the scale of TV.  It is the only place one can achieve large audiences presumably watching the same thing at the same time, including ads.  Now we can debate whether people are actually watching the ads, but in terms of traditional measures of reach, TV is the only place to find it.  Given that there may soon be fewer options on French television to purchase ads (all ads may soon be prohibited on French public television), plus an increase the cost of advertising on TV, this means a potentially dramatic cut in brand awareness among target audiences.  As of today, there is no replacement that can deliver reach on the same scale, not even online.

Perhaps – and only perhaps – it might be possible to achieve the same raw numbers by buying ads across an extremely large number of websites, portals and so on.  This is a primary driver behind the proposed buyout of Yahoo by Microsoft.  In Microsoft's public letter to Yahoo, they wrote, “The online advertising market is growing at a very fast pace, from over $40 billion in 2007 to nearly $80 billion by 2010. The resulting benefits of scale along with the associated capital costs for advertising platform providers make this a time of industry consolidation and convergence. Today this market is increasingly dominated by one player [Google]. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a competitive choice while better fulfilling the needs of customers and partners.”

Even if scale in advertising platforms can be reached, there remains the problem of the fragmentation of the brand exposure.  This, combined with a documented lack of success in online ad viewing, means that the raw numbers don't necessarily add up to a similar level of brand exposure quality (to put it awkwardly).  People simply don't have the same reaction to online banner ads as they do to television ads.  The 30-second spot, the core of TV brand advertising, doesn't exist online and probably never will.  There is nothing that replaces it in terms of effectiveness (even if, as we are starting to see today, this effectiveness is declining).

Major consumer brand companies, such as Unilever, Proctor & Gamble (P&G) and J&J are all experimenting with online media, social media and so forth.  There have been both documented successes and failures, and there is much to be learned from them.  But it is clear that the efforts underway are still viewed as relatively experimental at the companies, with executives publicly stating they aren't or cannot measure their success in terms of traditional ROI.  While some of them are indeed achieving the gain of a large “audience” -- and I use that term advisedly – it is through very different mechanisms than advertising.

Clay Shirky wrote back in 2002, that one can't get both scale and interaction online.  “Communities are different than audiences in fundamental human ways, not merely technological ones.  You simply cannot transform an audience into a community with technology, because they assume very different relationships between the sender and receiver of messages.”  If you look at examples of brand “communities” online, it is clear that the difference between those that succeed and those that fail is the human relationship issue.  This is another roadblock to preventing scale along former audience-driven/reach-driven lines.  With the explosion of social networks, it is becoming clear that the only way to achieve scale is to turn over all control of the community to its members, and keep a light touch on the branding lever.  Efforts by J&J, Purina and Pepsi offer examples (Pepsi is in the early stages) of this type of community.

One of the other lessons being learned is that the communities that brands develop really can't be about the brand.  Rather, they are about some kind of “object” to which the brand is related, more or less obliquely.  For example, J&J's Babycenter.com is about sharing information about babies and toddlers for the benefit of, mostly, moms.  Purina's Petcentric.com is about people's pets.  P&G's beinggirl.com is about the issues growing girls face in their lives.

What is tremendously interesting here, is that consumer brand companies are finding themselves becoming media companies.  Not in the traditional sense of media 1.0, but in media 2.0, or participatory/social media.  This shift flies in the face of the old “core competency” business strategy where companies focus on what they do best, shedding or outsourcing the rest.  But the shift in technology and audience expectations is driving a major evolution in marketing, which, at least initially, is leading companies to develop, purchase and/or maintain/support media properties, be they online forums, blogs, and social networks.  (This is already starting to result in brands competing with traditional media, the very places they have supported by their advertising over the past decades.  With large consumer products companies in better financial shape than media companies, this might result in some odd marriages in the next few years.)

There is a very interesting presentation available on the economics of Media 2.0, by Harvard Business Online/Director of the Havas Media Lab's Umair Haque that sheds a light on some of the strategies that media 2.0 companies should pursue.  He identifies three mechanisms that allocate scares attention efficiently, the “holy grail” of media 2.0, and I would argue, marketing:  revelation, aggregation and plasticity.  The first relates to people sharing information, the second to the aggregation of this information into buckets that are more easily digestible (this aggregation happens both automatically and through voting platforms like Digg.com), and the third to the inevitable mashups that occur during this process.  What is interesting, is that the profit here comes at the end of the cycle, not the beginning.  It is after the information is disseminated, commented upon, processed and acted upon that someone is willing to pay money for the results of the “act” or, I would argue, the resulting “object”.

Brands, who can play at all three levels, should especially focus on providing value towards the end of the cycle, where, instead of having people pay for the object with cash, people pay with attention to brand messages. 

As Haque's presentation indicates, the economics of Media 2.0 also tells us that popularity is driven hyperefficiently by quality, not marketing.  This has two major implications.  First, it tells us that niche markets are incredibly valuable and they are winner-take all markets, meaning if you can own it early on, you will totally own it.  In terms of brand communities, for example, it would behoove brands to figure out what their niche is and investing in building objects in that niche.  This is what Petcentric.com has accomplished.  There are other examples, from social networks for skiing to running and so on.  These latter ones aren't owned by brands, but they are increasingly active.  The second implication is that investment has to come in production, not attention.    Brands have to ask themselves where production opportunities lie and move marketing budgets there. (There is a meme online now that products themselves have to have marketing built into them – the iPhone is an example.)  The challenge is, of course, that it takes time to realize audience scale and ROI; we are talking years vs. months.

The new book Groundswell, written by Forrester analysts, states that “Awareness remains crucially important, so don't expect the groundswell to change that part of your marketing.”  In other words, brands will still use traditional marketing techniques, including, especially, the 30-second TV spot.  Which brings us back to the original problem.  If the opportunities to advertise are disappearing due to regulations and cost pressures, where does this leave us?  In an awkward transitional phase where falling brand awareness is a very real possibility.

Another challenge brand managers have to deal with in this changing world is, as alluded to above, the potential for brand fragmentation.  It becomes ever more difficult to express what the brand stands for over the astonishingly wide variety of formats and channels online.  From search ads and banner ads, to Facebook widgets and YouTube video channels, it is easy for brand ablation to occur.  Not only is it difficult to keep brand consistency in terms of look/feel across all these different channels, the very messages of the brand itself will work better in some places and formats than in others.  Success in one place is no guarantee of success in another.  This is, of course, complicated as consumers start talking about and mashing up your brand.  So what stable point remains in all this upheaval?  For one, the product itself.  Quality has to remain consistently high.  And, as I mentioned above, marketing is ideally “built in” to the product itself, so it therefore effortlessly matches the brand messaging.  The second opportunity is working to have a similarly effortless link between the marketing object, which I have mentioned a couple of times, and the brand.  To put it another way, it is as if two products are being produced, the one sold on the market (bought with cash) and the other “sold” to a community (bought with -- or perhaps “traded for “is a better phrase -- attention).

In France, there is another significant challenge, which is the low participation online of key demographics, particularly women between the ages of 25 – 44, according to the social technographics tool provided by Forrester.  Women's participation is below average in all categories of online participation.  What is particularly clear, is that women, for the most part, are not creators, nor are they joiners (which, as Forrester has stated, may mean that the opportunities for joining have been scarce, for example, Facebook has only recently provided a French language interface).  If a brand is seeking to set up a brand community to create new relationships with its customers, particularly around awareness, this is a major challenge.  They cannot simply build a social network and turn it on.  They are going to have to provide large amounts of content up front that women can comment upon and collect.  This is going to require significant time and financial investments. 

The numbers of participants for French women increase for the late teens/early twenties, and for males, across the board, the numbers are higher.  However, as is the trend across Europe and the US, the number of creators remains in the minority.  So even if you are expecting to target teenage males, providing strong community management and content will be critical to success.  At some point, the brand will likely be able to decrease its hands-on participation and/or support in terms of content creation (if they choose to do so), but this is a point probably measured in terms of years.

This double whammy of decreasing opportunity for advertising combined with a relatively low participation rate for new media for key audiences will be a tremendous challenge for brands in France over the next 3-5 years.  There is no easy solution.  A combination of media buys across both traditional and new media will likely not meet raw reach targets, and the results of new media advertising (search and banner, particularly) may not give the hoped for results, given people's resistance to advertising online.  And yet, it is not all bad news, as we know that the effectiveness of social media marketing may be higher than traditional advertising.  The value of the conversation, the value of the engagement (even though this remains difficult to measure today), may result in enough brand awareness and goodwill among engaged audiences that it makes up for the lack of sheer reach in terms of numbers.  At least that is the social media marketing hypothesis, which, while it is as yet unproven on a large scale, offers some impressive results for early experiments. 

Another option for French brands is to think about in-person marketing or event marketing.  While expensive, it might offer a way to bridge the gap over the next few years, particularly in terms of generating awareness.  Sponsoring sports teams, art groups, flash mobs, or school/community events are a few examples. Being physically present among the communities of people you are trying to attract to your online properties may provide the needed impetus for people to join.  It would be ideal to tie offline world activities to the creation of the “object/s” of your online efforts.  In fact, all offline marketing efforts should have a strong connection to online efforts.

Brands in France may be forced to adopt new media strategies and techniques uncomfortably early in the adoption cycle.  In the end, however, most brands will have to move in this direction worldwide given global trends in technology, marketing and so on.  By being forced to move online faster than they would have liked, it might give French brands a competitive advantage (or at least knowledge/practice advantage) in the long term.  Brands will have to learn alongside their customers, which, while it will almost certainly result in some awkward missteps, in the end, it might result in stronger relationships, greater brand loyalty, and increased profits on the bottom line.

A Seemingly Endless Transitionary Phase

That is what my life seems like these days, endless transition (long, personal post/update to follow).  Of course there are a few solidities, most important of which is my husband, my daughter, my big extended family.  But when it comes to my professional life and interests, everything is remarkably fluid right now.  And given my childcare challenges*, the little peep comes first.  I have been extraordinarily lucky to have been able to spend the majority of my time with Ellora during her first (nearly) 15 months.  This choice has had some serious ramifications for my professional and financial trajectory, however.

Several months ago, I indicated I was looking for a full-time position.  Shortly thereafter, I was offered the opportunity to teach a couple of classes at communications school in Paris.  I jumped as I was very interested in actually getting some teaching experience given I am working on my doctorate and my long-term goal is to become a professor.  Having never taught undergraduates, I thought it was probably a good idea to do so before I made any final decisions.  Happily, I loved the experience and the students seemed to like my teaching style, and, more importantly, said they actually learned something.  The school wants me to come back, and I hope to take on more classes this fall.  I think my love affair with teaching is only just beginning, and I am looking forward to continuing it.  I am also networking with other profs and students at PROpenMic and other places in order to improve my performance (god knows this rookie has plenty of room for improvement!).

So what happened to the job search? Well, I interviewed at a few places, but no offers came up.  Quite honestly, I think my background and approaches (not to mention years of working as an independent) just made me a misfit for French teams.  My impression was that they were looking for much more conventional candidates.  (I was talking to large companies, not agencies - I didn't actually pursue much on the agency front.)  I think that the job I would really jump at doesn't exist yet, or if it does, it is probably in the US.  Finally, I didn't end up looking very hard, as something inside of me was just resisting the whole idea of going back to work for the man, or however you want to put it.

When I compare how energized I feel about teaching and how a regular job fills me with trepidation and self-doubt, I think it is pretty clear that I won't be going corporate any time soon.  Luckily, I have some fun projects that are very flexible and help me keep an hand in.

What is also interesting to me is how much my focus has been moving away from PR.  Or perhaps I should say it is broadening.  I am learning about advertising, television and branding, and looking at what the future holds for these things.  I read more on the future of work and video than I do about PR topics.  I haven't shared too much of that here yet, as I am still sorting all my thoughts, but the last few posts on "free" and "relationships" are indicative of what will be forthcoming here. 

Given the constraints on my time, I am blogging much less and participating in fewer conversations around the blogosphere.  I am still listening, and very aware of the latest trends, buzz, brouhahas etc., but unless I have something really substantive to add to the conversation, I simply file and move on.  Given I am in this for the long haul, I suspect my participation will ebb and flow based on what my life is like at any particular phase.

I want to share more about my doctoral work here.  Currently I am mainly reading and thinking.  My subject is, of course, communications, but I am studying philosophy.  Not having a traditional philosophical background, this means I have a lot of catching up to do and a fair amount of uncertainty about what I am thinking about.  I am debating sharing more of my musings here, but given their style is so different from my usual posts, and they often require one to have read the same things I have in order to follow along, I am just not sure if it makes sense or not.  Maybe I should start another blog, but that seems like too much work right now. 

Gosh, I am really rambling along now, aren't I?  I wanted to share these thoughts with you -- particularly for those of you who have been reading me for a long time now -- so you have a better frame in which to interpret my recent and upcoming writings.  I hope you enjoy and/or find provocative and interesting the things I have been writing about and will write about.  I try very hard to say new things, identify hidden assumptions, create new juxtapositions, and clarify distinctions in what I have been recently discovering on the topic of communications.  As always, I hope you continue to participate in the conversations here.  You always add value and spark new trajectories for me.

I also wanted to let you know that I will not be going to the New Communications Forum next week.  I will be very sad to miss seeing my blog buddies, but financial and time considerations have reluctantly led me to this decision.  I am sure you understand that my family must come first. 

*In France, we are experiencing a baby boom.  Municipal daycare is full with waiting lists a year+ long.  And you have to have a traditional full-time position to even qualify.  There are other options, called an assistante maternelle.  But again, it is full-time childcare only, and you have to have a full-time job to qualify.  There is something called a halte garderie, where you can leave your child up to 10-16 hours a week, depending on availability, but it requires reams of paperwork, interviews, more paperwork etc.  GIven the French government lost some critical papers of my husband, we are unable to complete the halte garderie paperwork.  We have been working a year and a half to get the problem fixed, and are probably still 4-6 months away from a finalization.  The private creches are also full, with waiting lists, and we simply cannot afford a full-time nanny (and it is pretty much impossible to get a part-time nanny).  Luckily, my husband's parents live relatively nearby and babysit for me when I have meetings, classes etc.  Otherwise, I do my work during her naptimes, before she wakes up, at night and on the weekends.

The Case of the Disappearing Comments

In a sign of things to come, I fear, a brouhaha has bubbled up over missing comments to a book review I wrote back in 2005 for the New Communications Review.  Author Gerry McKusker first commented to the review, then later sent me an email asking why his original comments to the review were not appearing after the site was redesigned.  Not being responsible for the site myself (I simply write for it from time to time), I passed on the request to the editor, Jen McClure.  Apparently, the issue has not been resolved over the past month since I passed it along.  For this, Gerry has the right to be irritated!

While this is getting resolved (as I am sure it will), I would advise Gerry to write another comment to the post addressing my criticisms.  I have no way of knowing if the original comment still exists in an archive somewhere, so in the interest of time -- even though it might be a bit of a pain in the butt -- I hope Gerry you can re-address the criticisms now, together with an explanation of why you are doing it again.

Why is this a sign of things to come, as I stated above?  Because linkrot and commentrot and trackbackrot are real problems as people move to new blog and publishing platforms over time.  The movement of past content from one to another is far from a seamless process (one reason I stay here on TypePad, I must admit).  The comments and trackbacks can be the trickiest parts. 

So, brilliant tech folks - help solve this problem!  In the meantime, I hope Gerry follows up with a comment to the review.

My Workshop at the New Communications Forum

Yes, this is a bit self-promotional, but I thought I would extend to my readers an invitation to my pre-conference workshop at the New Communications Forum, to be held Tuesday, April 22, in Sonoma, California.  Here's the description:

Tuesday, April 22nd - 8:30am - 12:00pm
Pre-con 1 - Shortcuts to Social Media with Elizabeth Albrycht

While blogs and podcasts are valuable communications tools, there can be challenges to organizations that wish to adopt them for internal and/or external communications. Perhaps your corporate culture isn’t ready to embrace the informal nature of blogs or you simply don’t have the time and/or resources to devote to a blog or podcast. This doesn’t mean, however, that you cannot take advantage of social media. There are a variety of new tools available for communications professionals that provide many of the benefits of participatory communications without the demanding commitments of blogging and podcasting.

This workshop will explain a variety of tools and techniques you can use to take short cuts to the world of social media that will help build the network of relationships your organization will need to be successful in the future. These include microblogging, RSS and emerging “comment platforms” for news, photos, videos and more. Used internally or externally, these tools can help organizations to test the social media waters with fewer risks and time/resource commitments.

You will learn:

- The various ways RSS can be used to facilitate news and information distribution internally and externally

- How emerging Web 2.0 “comment platforms” can be harnessed to advantage in sharing news, photos, video and other media forms with internal and external audiences

- What new collaborative tools can help you test the social media waters, beginning with your communications team

I am, of course, willing to adjust/personalize the topics of discussion within the framework to reflect audience needs/requirements.  Therefore, if you are planning on joining me, please let me know asap and what specific questions you would like me to address.  I also have discounts available on request to the workshop as well as the conference as a whole.  Just leave a comment or contact me via email at ealbrycht at gmail dot com.