CorporatePR

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.

An Abundance of "Free" Thinking

Two recent blog posts on the subject of "free" have recently received much attention: Better than Free by Kevin Kelly and Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business by Chris Anderson. Both are works in advance of upcoming books by the respective writers.  The two articles examine the concept of free in different ways: Kelly by looking at value propositions and Anderson, who looks at business models.  Both posts have generated a myriad of comments and commentary in other posts.

The basic premise of both articles is that anything that touches the web gets pulled into an inexorable cycle that brings its cost to consumers to, essentially (if not actually), free.  This is driven both by decreasing unit costs of technology and psychological behaviors of consumers that show "free" is a whole different ball game than "low-cost".  One recent study demonstrates that to consumers, "free" equals a perceived higher benefit.  Whether this is actually the case or not in the long run when trade offs are accounted for is besides the point.  At the point of sale (maybe we should say, point of decision) free is irresistibly attractive.

Kelly's article offers eight attributes of things you can sell, which cannot be copied, his formula for success.  He calls them "generative values" (more on that in a moment).  Anderson offers six categories of the "priceless economy."  Together, the articles offer an interesting roadmap for people seeking to make money online in an environment where the pressures point to free.  And yet, there is a problem, which commenters brought up in both cases (and Kelly addresses in a later post): while "free" is good for consumers, and large companies flush with cash, it isn't so good for unfunded companies or for the creators in the long tail, who are trying to make a living.  In fact, this problem may actively destroy innovation, as people accept products and services that are "good enough" and free vs. paying for something better.  More optimistic people see this process and call it a cycle, where truly innovative ideas will eventually rise to the top again as people get tired of mediocrity.

The angle I want to think from for these two articles is scarcity vs. abundance and their relative values.  I think there are underlying problems around these issues in both articles.  In traditional economics scarcity = value. The rise of the digital world and the pressures towards free have led, in part, to economists starting to think about economies of abundance.  Kelly is one writer who has been trying to think about this for quite some time.  The key question here is how can something be abundant, yet still valuable?  Or, to put it another way, can you have an abundance of uniqueness, with "unique" keeping its value (which we have usually thought of as coming from its scarcity)?  We will get to that question in a bit.  First, let's look at scarcity.

Anderson writes,

"There is, presumably, a limited supply of reputation and attention in the world at any point in time.  These are the new scarcities -- that the world of free exists mostly to acquire these valuable assets for the sake of a business model to be identified later."

I find the disclaimer, "presumably" very interesting here.  It questions whether, in fact, there truly is a "limited supply" of reputation or attention.  Is there really a static pool of reputation in the world that we apportion out in different "slices of pie"?  It seems a bit foolish when you think about it that way.  In a globalizing world, the pie keeps getting bigger.  And given how difficult it is to really define and measure reputation today, I'd hesitate to make any type of categorical assertion about the amount of reputation in the world.  So let's assume, rather than it being limited, that, at the moment, it is unknown, even, if not limitless in the end, far more available than Anderson supposes (even with his disclaimer). That brings us to attention.  In this case, he has a stronger argument.  Clearly, each individual human has only a certain amount of attention, as he/she has only a certain number of hours in the day.  Time is the limiting factor here.  And certainly demands on our attention seem to increase every day.  Yet, at the same time, there are more and more technologies that enable us to better manage what we actually pay attention to (RSS feeds, recommendation engines, friend recommendations, etc.) For the lucky ones who can afford to, they can hire people to help filter attention demands.  Attention is perhaps a more limited factor, but, still, it seems to me that we can handle more and more demands moving forward.  Where does this bring us, then, when we consider his six categories of the "priceless economy"?:  Freemium, Advertising, Cross-subsidies, Zero marginal cost, Labor exchange, Gift economy?

Honestly, I am not completely sure.  What if we consider reputation as abundantly available (with a lot of hard work) and attention more abundant than we have assumed (if bounded)?  Does it even make sense to think about this in terms of "priceless economy" or do we need to broaden out the economy we are describing? Does it create another economy that falls between "free" (with all its hidden "costs") and "pay"?  Maybe it has more to do with a sharing/barter/gift economy, and Anderson's last two categories actually need to be seriously rethought? (Much of what I have read about gift economies seems far too simplistic to me.)

This brings us back to Kelly's piece.  I think his eight generative values have potential to help us think about abundance economies, which I think could revolve around affect.  First, let's look at his term "generative values".  He defines a generative value as:

"a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured.  A generative thing cannot be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced.  It is generated uniquely in place, over time.  In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold." 

As I often like to do, I went back to the dictionary to think about "generative" and "value".  First the latter (I paraphrase): "an intrinsically desirable quality."  By using the adjective "generative", Kelly is adding power, the power to "generate, originate, produce or reproduce." Later, he states that his definition does not include reproduction (in fact, is expressly contra reproduction, which is problematic given his choice of word implies reproduction from the beginning). Of course, generative is linked to generate, which has as its ancient root the Latin for descent or birth.  What is interesting, is that there is another word that descends from the same Latin root, which Kelly introduces later in the piece: generous. Meaning "magnanimous or kindly", which nicely clicks with the theme of affect I alluded to above, it also means "liberal in giving" or "marked by abundance or ample proportions, copious." We are back to abundance, instead of scarcity! It is easy to get tripped up by Kelly's thought of generative values as unique, which in our common usage, means scarce. Yet, this assumption doesn't need to hold. To my thought, Kelly's argument is that uniqueness can be abundant and still retain its value.  This "abundance of uniqueness" idea runs square against the "scarce is valuable" meme of traditional economics.

So what are Kelly's eight generative values?  Immediacy, Personalization, Interpretation, Authenticity, Accessibility, Embodiment, Patronage, and Findability.  As a reminder, Kelly is offering these things as values that, when attached to products and services, will promote people paying for those products and services, versus demanding them for free. What I'd like to do is take just a quick look at how affect underlies them, as I think this is a key need in a movement towards thinking the value of abundance.

Immediacy is defined by Kelly as "getting a copy delivered...the moment it is released, or even better, produced - by its creators." He offers beta copies of software as an example, and emphasizes how this brings fans into the "generative process itself."  His follow up piece to this article, 1,000 True Fans, explains further how creators can work directly with fans to make a living.  The affect that underlies immediacy is, for one, trust.  Not the least of which is the trust that your mistakes will not destroy your reputation, but rather, your learning from them, your accepting advice from others, will enhance your reputation.

Personalization, remarks Kelly, "...requires an ongoing conversation between the creator and consumer..." the creation of a relationship.  Trust and the twin gifts of time and attention are clearly important here.

Interpretation relies on "support and guidance", not necessarily given by the creator him or herself, but from somone who has invested their own time and effort to understand something, then wants to share that understanding with others (sharing being the key word here).

Authenticity is more problematic to me, as Kelly identifies it with digital watermarks and signature technology.  It is proof that something is original/unique/rare.  He ends his discussion, however with the words, "for those who care."  I know, certainly, that there are many who do care, but I also question the assumption that copies are somehow "valueless" (more on that another time).  I am not sure that there is true affect underlying this particular definition of authenticity.  Of course, if you think about authenticity in other ways, as honesty or truthfulness in sharing, that obviously is something we desire in abundance.

Accessibility refers to having other manage our digital archives for us, for which we happily pay them.  I am unsure this even belongs on Kelly's list as I suspect as digital management tools get better, we'll stop outsourcing this to humans.  And there is no affect here, in the sense that I am looking for it.

Embodiment means that people will pay for the book itself, or to have a human come and talk to them in their office, for example.  The first may be more of a generational/technology thing, but the second will remain important for far longer.  Seeing, touching, feeling, smelling another human is an intrinsic part of the human experience.  While virtual presence is a wonderful thing, it will always be worth the premium to have the actual person close to you -- at least until we all become posthuman.

Patronage, where "...audiences WANT to pay creators. Fans like to reward artists...with the tokens of their appreciation, because it allows them to connect."  While we may not have the intrinsic talent to create something, we can feel part of creation by supporting it financially.  This has a wide variety of underlying affective traits, some of which are even problematic from an aesthetic viewpoint (but I won't get into that now). 

Findability leads Kelly to claim that "creators need aggregators...for the distribution of the users' attention back to the works."  Like Accessibility above, a good portion of this problem can be solved in the long run by technology, but people passing along word of their likes and dislikes to friends, to their network, will remain a significant (and affective-ridden) portion of findability.

To reiterate: While Anderson relies (however tentatively) on a scarcity of reputation and attention, Kelly is trying to think about an economy of abundance, or generosity: 

"...these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can't be replicated with a click of the mouse."

Whether or not there are actually eight generative values, in terms of affect, Kelly's effort to describe how uniqueness can be abundant, and valuable, is a good step towards thinking about economies of abundance.  I wonder if it would be useful, however, to start from how a generosity of affective traits might create value(s). In the way these eight values are written by Kelly, it almost seems like affect came after vs. before.  For example, we could do a thought experiment where we considered what might be possible with an abundance of trust, or an abundance of attention devoted to a topic.  At the very least, we need to more clearly define what an abundance of uniqueness might look like or how it could be defined in terms of value.

When it comes to thinking about scarcity and abundance, I think there remain problems that need to be thought through carefully, such as that concerning reproductions and copies.  The problem is not a clear cut as Kelly glosses it.  Furthermore, I think that if we think about generosity and affect much more directly than Kelly has done, we will probably uncover more generative values, or at the least more ideas about how to apply them. If we pursue the thinking of an abundance of uniqueness, in conjunction with thinking about gift economies that I proposed above, I suspect we'll discover a wealth of new ideas.  I look forward to participating.

The Question Concerning Social Networks: Existence or Meaning?

Over the past couple of weeks I have been bookmarking (del.icio.us/ealbrycht/socialnetwork) and reading a variety of articles and posts about social networks, with an emphasis on corporate or white label ones.  There is a wealth of material out there; Jeremiah Owyang tracks this area closely for Forrester, for one. What I thought I'd do is synthesize here what, in my opinion, is some of the more interesting advice and thoughts out there.  This isn't a "10 steps to successful social networking" article, but rather an introduction to some ideas about how to approach corporate social networks.

Today, I think that public social networks are pretty primitive things.  I don't like the walled gardens, and the awkwardness of profile and friending processes are laughable.  In the end, for the most part, these different social networks have become cages for pieces of my identity, which then stagnate as I forget about them.  Because once you've built your little home, there is nothing much else to do other than add old high school classmates that find you or join groups that I, invariably, never really do anything with.  I simply cannot imagine that translating this type of environment into a corporate garden would be successful.  And yet, I don't deny that the basic concept of social networking represents a potentially powerful tool for organizations.

From conversations I have had with people, reading I have done, and my own personal experiences, I don't think people will join and participate in brand communities sponsored by organizations, just because they are asked. Nor do I think that they will do it for earning promotional bonuses (free products etc.). For particularly high profile brands there might be some initial buzz value, but I don't think it will last.  Nor do I think that entertainment alone will keep people around.  You can give them games to play and contests to win, but in the end, that will fall flat.  So why do people join social networks?  What is a commonality among successful ones (public or private)?  I think it is that the networks are about something concrete.

There is a wonderful post from a couple of years ago on the concept of object-centered sociality that states "The fallacy is to think that social networks are just made up of people.  They're not; social networks consist of people who are connected by a shared object."  These shared objects can be jobs, dates, photos etc.  Flickr is a social network based on photos.  Del.icio.us is based on URLs.  Upcoming.org is based on events. LinkedIn on jobs. [Examples all from post].  I look at a successful corporate social network, that of Nestle Purina: petcentric.  At its core, it is about people's pets, not the brand.  Brilliant.

This post suggests that, "When it becomes easy to create digital instances of the object, online services for networking on, through, and around that object will emerge too."  Organizations need to ask themselves:  what is their object?

Francois Gossieaux has written recently about "interrupt marketing" and how it doesn't work in social networking.  He states, "It doesn't matter how a person feels about your product; it matters how they feel about themselves in the context of your product."  I would broaden that, saying, "It matters how they feel about themselves and their relationships (perhaps "emotional connection" is a better phrase) with their objects in the context of your product."

Once you know your object, and you have determined that there isn't already a strong social network in place around it (if there is, it is probably better to join and participate in some way vs. trying to create a new one), what kind of social network do you construct?  What kind of activities do you offer?  What do you want people to DO on your network?  If an important aspect of your social network is to market to its users, that marketing has to use some kind of contextual technology that inserts itself into the action stream, into what the people are doing.  Search ads work because people are looking for something, as Alexander van Elsas reminds us, then admonishes us: "There is no room for advertisement when people interact." 

So, what could you do on a corporate social network?  Obviously providing forms of interaction (chat, forums, photo sharing, etc.) are good bets. There are plenty of tips and tool articles out there that can help with that (see my del.icio.us feed).  I have stated before that companies should ask for contributions (ideas, etc.) and demonstrate they have listened. This quote comes from a profile of Communispace in the Boston Globe a couple of years ago:  "Consumers also participate in the online communities because it gives them a feeling of power.  They seem to love the idea of being consulted, and love even more the notion that they are being listened to."  And later in the same article, "The experience of being heard is so rare."

Remember, the activities you provide have to be appropriate to the context, to the object, and to the action stream.  Petcentric, with its "pet" object relies heavily on photo sharing and videos.  Of course!  Pets are cute, people are proud of them, they want to share/brag.  What is your organization's "pet"?  (Perhaps you can think about it another way.  What is unique about your product?  Is there anything that has an almost cult-like status or following?  It could even be an "alternative" use.) 

Another hurdle you will have to leap comes once you have a network and participants in place: participation inequality, which states that 90% of users are lurkers, 9% contribute a little and 1% contribute most. (Whether or not these are the exact figures, I think the basic idea is sound.) This means that for the organization, "Implementation efforts need to consciously manage participation and activity to compensate for a smaller population."  This same conclusion can be read from a different context described by Kevin Kelly in The Bottom is Not Enough.  He writes, arguing for some form of editorial control or leadership: "The reason every bottom-up crowd-source hive-mind needs some top-down control is because of time. The bottom runs on a different time scale than our instant culture."  He continues,

"The systems we keep will be hybrid creations. They will have a strong rootstock of peer-to-peer generation, grafted below highly refined strains of controlling functions.  Sturdy, robust foundations of user-made content and crowd-sourced innovation will feed very small slivers of leadership agility. Pure plays of 100% smart mobs or 100% smart elites will be rare.

The real art of business and organizations in the network economy will not be in harnessing the crowd of "everybody" (simple!) but in finding the appropriate hybrid mix of bottom and top for each niche, at the right time. The mix of control/no-control will shift as a system grows and matures. "

Perhaps the very core of the issue is a choice between existence and meaning. (I was inspired by this quote about social networks, "The existence of relationships is replacing the meaning of relationships.")  The first is relatively easy to create, but the second, quite difficult.  The question is: How can we create a social network that becomes a frequent/habitual part of someone's practices of meaning creation (for his/her life)?  Clearly, SuperSliderFunWalls aren't the answer here.  Then, the community manager comes into play, seeking to nurture meaning for all participants, which will require very special skills. (Here's a hint.)

I will be watching this space in the coming months, sharing further thoughts with you as they take shape.  As always, I welcome your comments and ideas.

Don't Become a "Walking Dead" Brand: Listen, Acknowledge, Demonstrate

The more I look at corporate social media (or conversational marketing) efforts (to use an umbrella term(s)), the more I think three things must happen: listen, acknowledge, demonstrate.

First: A company must listen to what its customers are saying.  Whether that is within a branded social network constructed by the company itself or among the forest of social media tools that currently exists, it is a foundational skill.

Second: The listeners at the company should acknowledge what they hear.  They can do this through engaging with the conversations via their own tools (blog, website, etc.) or by participating in the blogs, communities etc. where the conversations are taking place.  It may be as simple as a "thank you for your advice".

Third:  Companies must demonstrate that they have heard what their customers are saying.  This means making changes to their practices, products and/or services if they need to.  If you have introduced a new product based on customer advice, let them know!  If you have changed the way your call center works, communicate this.  And so on.

Many companies are already doing the first, and a growing number the second.  I think a bare handful are doing the third.  We have to beware here of a crisis of expectations.  Once companies acknowledge they are listening, I think the clock has started ticking on a deadline: the proof that they did indeed, listen, is expected.  If you don't demonstrate, you will destroy the goodwill you have so painstakingly created.

I twittered this quote from Heraclitus today, and am repeating here for your reading pleasure: "Those unmindful when they hear, for all they make of their intelligence, may be regarded as the walking dead."

Update 2/21: Here is a good example of what I am talking about from the point of view of a community manager. Hat tip: Jeremiah Owyang.

The Infrastructure of Relationships

It seems I am going back to basics these days, reexamining the words we use to describe the practice of communications.  Today, I found myself thinking about trust and relationships.  This was sparked by my reading of a recent paper on Trust and PR Practice by Brad L. Rawlins. It is an interesting and useful article, particularly for its review of the literature of trust and its role in relationship building, a primary goal of public relations.  It got me thinking about relationships, however, as it didn't really address the content of them:  Who is involved in a relationship?  Is it only people? Or is there truly an ability to have a relationship with an abstraction, such as a brand or corporation?  What would "relationship" look like at this abstracted level and what could PR do here? 

I followed a trail of breadcrumbs at the Institute for Public Relations website, which has lots of good research.  Clicking on "Relationships" I found a number of articles, mostly about measurement. One was particularly interesting, by Elizabeth Dougall, Tracking Organization-Public Relationships Over Time: A Framework for Longitudinal Research.  In her review of the literature about measuring relationships, she identifies a weakness: measurement of relationships usually is based on the perspectives of the people involved.  But the question is, can relationships be measured as an entity in itself (abstraction or not)?  It seems it can, primarily through looking at the formalization of structures, the intensity of flows (information and resources), standardization and outcomes (effectiveness, reciprocity). Dougall's paper actually looks at corporate conflict with activist groups, and she identifies "relationship-signaling statements" as part of analyzing the flows.

This helped me think again about my questions above.  Perhaps there are two layers to relationships and PR needs to address both:  the personal side and the infrastructural side.  But before I get to that, I have to backtrack a bit.  One thing that neither Dougall's nor Rawlin's paper offered was a definition of relationship.  So, I headed over to my usual first source, the Mirriam-Webster Online Dictionary.  Here's what I found: relationship -- "the relation connecting or binding participants in a relationship."  Also, "a state of affairs existing between those having relations or dealings." Finally, "a passionate attachment."  Obviously, I had to look at the word relation in order to make any sense of this.  There are two definitions of relation I like:  "the attitude or stance which two or more persons or groups assume toward one another" and "the state of being mutually or reciprocally interested (as in social or commercial matters)."  And interested:  "having the attention engaged" or "being affected or involved."

Let's synthesize a bit: A relationship is a state of affairs connecting or binding mutually or reciprocally interested (affected/involved) people/groups.  The "state of affairs" is the structure and processes (flows).  Mutual/reciprocal interest ties us back to trust: 

"Trust is one party’s willingness—shown by intention and behavior—to be vulnerable to another party based on confidence developed cognitively and affectively that the latter party is (a) benevolent, (b) reliable, (c) competent, (d) honest, and (e) open." [Link]

Trust has also been identified as a key factor in persuasion, along with competence and goodwill. (I have previously written about how social media can help to foster trust, as it is particularly good (structurally) for creating goodwill.)

If the job of public relations is to foster trusted relationships, there is certainly a variety of best practices out there that can be followed.  These practices work both from a mass communications level (competence, trust) and on a more individual/networked communications level -- where social media tactics tend to play out (competence, trust and goodwill).  It doesn't seem, however, that these tactics really get at how to foster trusted relationships at the infrastructure level.

This is where I think the tools of social media can really help.  I think that particularly in the area of information and resource flows, social media can amp up the intensity, both in terms of more channels as well as more "buzz" or conversations.  By identifying and open new channels of communication between an organization and its publics, for example, particularly for mutual influence and mutual exchange -- communication that moves in both directions -- we can potentially impact the level of trust on both sides of the communications.  This is without even considering the content of the channels themselves.  We also need to better identify the signs of relationships at the infrastructural level, so we can more accurately identify and measure them, as well as trace them backwards to the individuals or groups involved.

Perhaps that is a good research project for someone: putting some rigorous thought into the infrastructure of relationships in a world of social media, and the impact on organizational trust.  Perhaps then we can betting figure out what PR can accomplish at the abstraction layer.

What is Control and Does a Company Have Any?

I offered my two cents in a debate about influence and control between Mike Driehorst and Geoff Livingston.  Entering these types of religious debates is always interesting, because one's contribution or position can be so easily misconstrued. However, I think it is important to try to start questioning what the words we use mean, because I think there are some serious miscommunication happening because we aren't clear in how we define words. What is influence? What is control?  I tried to parse this a bit in a comment to Mike's post.  After reading other comments and Geoff's post, I thought it would be useful to offer what I think about control.

I think the context of all of this debate is this:  What does a company actually CONTROL?  Is is the brand? The messages?  Most people who are writing and blogging about social media in a corporate context believe a company does NOT control its brand or messages. I am one of them!  However, there are some things that companies DO control, and Mike was trying to get to that, starting with the fact that if a company didn't exist, there would be nothing to control, so that the company at the VERY least, has control over its first existence.  But what happens after that?

Let's back up for a moment. There are good reasons to conflate control and influence, because they are so intertwined.  Can we really say that any decision that anyone makes has not been influenced by anyone (or anything) else, even it is is an authoritarian command?  And yet, for the purposes of the arguments we are making in social media marketing, it would behoove us to try to separate the two, if only to clear up fuzzy thinking which, in my opinion, is creating arguments where there doesn't really need to be any.

Looking at the definitions of influence and control we can immediately see the problem. The definition of control, from Mirriam Webster Online:  (transitive verb): to exercise restraining or directing influence over : regulate b: to have power over : rule.   If we are trying to differentiate control from influence, this definition doesn't really help.  Obviously in this case, you could argue the company itself cannot have singular control because clearly other audiences offer directing influence.

The noun control is equally as fuzzy: 1 a: an act or instance of controlling; also : power or authority to guide or manage. The introduction of authority is interesting, which is power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior.  But again, it still conflates influence and command.

Things are a bit clearer when we look at the definition of influence.  According to the dictionary it is: the act or power of producing an effect without apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of command or the power or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways.  In my opinion, it is the indirect or intangible that separates out influence from control.

What if we defined control as the ability to make a decision about corporate actions?  What then would be under a company's control? Off the top of my head, I came up with this list:

1)  Whether the company exists or not
2)  The ability to sign a contract (employment, partnership, real estate, financial)
3)  The ability to pay a bill or salary
4)  The ability to decide what products will be produced at what quantities
5)  What official corporate collateral, image will look like:  logo, signs, annual report, brochures, website (unless they have turned their website into a wiki, which is unlikely for the vast majority at this point)

Now, I am not saying that any of these items can't be influenced by outside parties.  Of course they will be.  The very definition of decision admits this (a determination arrived at after consideration).  Yet only official corporate representatives can actually make the decisions that put these things into play.  They can choose to ignore influence (particularly in #5), which may even result in the company failing.  These people who "actually make the decisions" do indeed have control, as we have defined it.

In this case, the company does not control the brand or the messages, for example.  They can only influence. And this has always ever been the case.

Let me know if you think this helps!