Are Brands Fracking The Social Web?
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john v willshire http://smithery.co @willsh 6th March 2013 are brands the social web? http://rivetin.gs/gasland fracking
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A talk I gave on to the brilliant young people currently on the Squared course, about the social web, marketing, and collaborative ways of working around this. Learn more about Squared here - https://plus.google.com/+WeareSquared/posts
Transcript of Are Brands Fracking The Social Web?
john v willshirehttp://smithery.co
@willsh
6th March 2013
are brands
the social web?
http://rivetin.gs/gasland
fracking
https://plus.google.com/+WeareSquared
thoughts on marketing, the social web and collaboration, prepared for...
this isnot astandard“what’s the social web” talk
hopefully it’ll give you interesting ideas to talk to each other about
I’ve also left lots of rabbit holes...
http://rivetin.gs/sennett
here’s a great thing from Monday...
greenpeace home page - 4th March 2013
nobody went to knutsford
see it, of course
but the social web means they didn’t have to
it’s one of the classic social web strategies
those who go
those who know
it made me think about
frackingand not just in the way it was supposed to
“Fracking is an aggressive, invasive technique for extracting valuable raw materials out of hard to reach places” phil adams, Blonde digital
(and Chemical Engineer grad)
http://rivetin.gs/storyfracking
attention is the most valuable raw material there is
are brands fracking the social web?
some context...
I’ve been inadvertently writing this talk for the last five years...
today, i runSmithery
http://rivetin.gs/smithery
for marketing& productinnovation
studio
and productof a generalist
the process
the smitheryprinciple
before this, I worked at PHD Media for seven years as “the excitable scottish innovation one”
...which just became a stick that social and advertising zealots used to beat each other with...
(sorry)
http://rivetin.gs/bonfires
i wrote this in 2009...
http://rivetin.gs/communismy IPA Excellence diploma thesis
maybe this is the start of this talk, back in 2008...
if nothing else, it’s an object lesson in how quickly social web examples date...
“I believe that the future of brand communications lies in
finding a way to become part of communities, and communicate
with them in a way that is shared, participatory and reciprocal”
http://rivetin.gs/communis
me, five years ago
that sounds really annoying
yep, really annoying.
“Our challenge is that people really don’t care” martin Weigel, W+K
http://rivetin.gs/hownowtofailhttp://rivetin.gs/realpeople
so... maybe brands and the social web don’t mix?
what do you mean by... brands?
brandsbe social?
how can
We’re careless in the way we use the word ‘brand’...
...when we mean company, product, service, idea,
strategic advertising....
http://rivetin.gs/bnard
Mark earls
“
”
see, It all gets a bit...
complicated
We need to talk about talking
I’ve been reading a lot of Richard Sennett lately http://rivetin.gs/sennett
three books about the skills peopleneed to sustain everyday life
The Craftsman2008
together2012
with “cities”to follow...
working well cooperation
http://rivetin.gs/craftsman
“an exchange in which the participants benefit from the encounter”
http://rivetin.gs/together
cooperationthe latest book, ‘together’ is about
it contains a very useful way to think about conversation
“when we speak about communication skills, we focus on how to make a clear presentation, to present what we think or feel...”
Richard sennett, Together
ahem
conversation is about listening
marketing folksget that now
( well, for the most part )
but more important than just listening is
listening well
listening carefully produces conversations of two sorts...
the dialectic and the dialogic
“
”Richard sennett, Together
what the f***does that mean?
dialecticfrom work of german philosopher GWF Hegel
the interaction and resolution between multiple ideas
http://rivetin.gs/hegel
dialectic“the verbal play of opposites should gradually build up to a synthesis; the aim is to come eventually to a common understanding”
Richard sennett, Together
dialectic wants consensusA b C D E F G H
bA CD Fe Ge
C ADb G ADf
C ADb ADfg
...no matter how good that
consensus is
C ADb ADfg
http://rivetin.gs/camel
it’s telling that very few crowdsourced “winners” are around for long
dialogicfrom work of russian philosopher Mikhail Baktin
“A discussion that does not resolve itself by finding common ground...”
Richard sennett, Together
http://rivetin.gs/bakhtin
“through the process of exchange people may become more aware of their own views and expand their understanding of one another”
Richard sennett, Together
http://rivetin.gs/enlightenment
in dialogic conversation, ideologies coexist
A
bC
D
E
FG H
they constantly interact and inform each other
A
bC
D
E
FG H
each ideology can hold more salience in certain circumstances
A
bC
D
E
FG H
changes can be made if a strategy does not have the desired effect
A
bC
D
E
FG H
remind you of anything?
this might not just apply to
“conversation”
what if there are dialectic and dialogic structures & cultures too?
are traditional marketing structures likely to be more dialectic?
are social web platforms and
companies more dialogic in
nature?
it would help explain the
culture clash
“if we’re used to seeing the world through a centralized lens, dencentralized organizations don’t make much sense”
http://rivetin.gs/starfish
brands aren’t fracking the social web
but there’s a definite cultural divide at play
competitionsimplicityCompressioncertainty
cooperationcomplexity
fragmentationexperimentation
not either / ora line along which many truths lie
big telly clients are dying!
closed
though to be fair, it’s hard to sell shoes, furniture, books,
clothes, entertainment, cameras, tellys and
stationery on the high street nowadays
isn’t it?
big brand telly stuff works!
"...to have achieved these results is testimony to the strength of the John Lewis brand and the commitment of all our partners to give outstanding service." Andy Street, Jan 2013
social media changes brands forever!
social media burns my eyes
Kingsmill ‘Sandwich confessions’
wow...that makes “scrunch or fold” look classy...
social media burns my eyes
social media changes brands forever!
big telly clients are dying!
big brand telly stuff works!
keep accepting more thanone idea is true
what happenswhen cultures
merge?
social web companiesare heading over here
where the money is
they want to create safe, attractive places for brands to place ads
http://rivetin.gs/youradhere
it’s not necessarily a good thing
it can destroy why the thing was good in the first place
“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads”
Jeff Hammerbacher
””
It can undermine the spirit of the social web
“There's a little meme I've been hearing recently. Columnists repeating it, "Don't read the bottom half of the internet"...”
rob manual
http://rivetin.gs/bottomhalf
it can mean closing down the social web
when eyeballs become dollar signs, things get ugly
“we've abandoned core values that
used to be fundamental to the web world”
http://rivetin.gs/thewebwelost
Anil Dash, “The web we lost”
i fear the day when you look on ifttt and there’s only one channel
http://ifttt.com
marketing must head this wayhead this way a lot more
if we’d still like a decent social web in
ten years that is
how?
let’s start from the dialectic position
The factory makesan end product...
“we have reached the best answer”
We have made a thing, and it is finished
and it was finished efficiently
‘democratising style’ is really just code for squeezing all the costs and selling it cheap
http://rivetin.gs/peterfield
Peter Field
“
”
innovation as incremental improvement
Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes.
Wikipedia
http://rivetin.gs/sixsigma
too much innovation is focussed on cost reduction rather than esteem enhancement
http://rivetin.gs/peterfield
Peter Field
“
”
“A brand is simply a collection of perceptions
in the mind of the consumer”
Paul Feldwick, 1991
http://rivetin.gs/feldwick
“ I don’t think this definition is entirely adequate.” ( )
http://rivetin.gs/farisbrand
faris yakob, 2010
hey, let’s find out what these perceptions are and
put them in an onion...
the brand-as-shape with its lists and diagrams fails to help anyone easily, intuitively and memorably grasp what your brand is all about
http://rivetin.gs/onions
martin weigel
“
”
if your brand is a bit shit, coat it with other stuff too
Oh look, it’s a bruce Lee Nokia N96
then shout at people
transmission model
Prof. Mark Hobart
a mechanical
the infamous
“
”http://rivetin.gs/transmission
metaphor,
this is the
factoryhollow
make brand vaguely interesting& buy loads of media
make product efficiently
competitionsimplicityCompressioncertainty
Frack That
“The Future of advertising 2020” by Mark Earls & John V Willshire
http://rivetin.gs/future2020
I’m really interested in the making of ‘it’ -where the making is part of the story of the ‘it’...
thomas heatherwick
“”
http://rivetin.gs/heatherwick
some quickeconomics
the labour theory of value
http://rivetin.gs/labourtheory
developed by adam smith...
...and later by karl marx
modern economics:
the value of a thing is determined by what one
is willing to give up to obtain the thing
The labour theory of value
the value of something is determined by the labour that went into its production
perhaps there’s a labour theory of
brand value**it might need a better name, mind
Field Notes
£0.99 £3.33per padper pad
“marketing is world building. With unlimited bandwidth we can now show you the world.”
@TobyBarnes
We’d rather buy this world...
...than this world
What if we stitched smaller ideas together to create a longer idea? What if we stitched smaller ideas together to create a longer idea? What if we stitched smaller ideas together to create a longer idea? What if we stitched smaller ideas together to create a longer idea? What if we stitched smaller ideas together to create a longer idea? Gareth Kay What if we stitched smaller ideas together to create a longer idea? What if we stitched smaller ideas together to create a
http://rivetin.gs/thinksmall
maybe Marx was half right...
it’s not about the
meansof production
http://rivetin.gs/sneveoslo
it’s about themeaningin production
and the stories of the things you’ve fracked
Labour theory of brand value:
make everything with the infinite canvas of the internet in mind http://rivetin.gs/legoinside
you can’t build a brand pyramid for that approach
http://rivetin.gs/pyramid
that brand shape would belike a bittorrent file
complex, distributed, moving, uncontrollable...
perhaps it would be impossible to conceive
no, don’t jump...
think like this...
cooperationcomplexity
fragmentationexperimentation
if you create together dialogically...
...you can make dialogical things
cooperationcomplexity
fragmentationexperimentation
so when you work together over the
next few weeks
remember that your ideologies coexist
A
bC
D
E
FG H
you will constantly interact and inform each other
A
bC
D
E
FG H
each ideology will hold more salience in certain circumstances
A
bC
D
E
FG H
if a strategy does not have the desired effect, change tack
A
bC
D
E
FG H
I firmly believe in the demise of the traditional campaign, and the need for constantly innovating stories around a core brand meaning
http://rivetin.gs/peterfield
“
”Peter Field
(who has studied more campaigns than all of us together will ever make)
thank youjohn v willshire
http://smithery.co@willsh
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http://shop.smithery.co
