blurry

I did a presentation for a media owner last week and I thought I'd share a few charts etc. It wasn't a ton of new thinking, more of a restatement of some of the things I've been thinking about recently. And an attempt to share with them some of the things that advertisers are thinking about so they can prepare themselves. The summary would be: this is a difficult and blurry time for brands, media owners etc. They're used to living in a world of quite crisp lines but those lines are getting less clear. The best response, it seems to me, is to forget about the increasingly suspect goal of 'message delivery' and try and get more interesting, more useful or ideally, both. (Huge simplification I know). And I finished off by suggesting that brands could do well to learn from some of the behaviours that web 2.0 businesses exhibit, particuarly the idea of being 'always in beta'.

I don't think this is especially contentious. Lines are blurring everywhere. The line between customers and employees is blurring. The line between public and private is blurring.

The lines between media types are blurring, and the lines around media authority. Here on the public twitter feed you can see that the BBC's 'at least 40 people die in attacks across Iraq' is nested neatly beside Gretchin's 'getting some water'. That equality of media status doesn't exist in all places, but it's starting to blur. And the line between those who have media power and those who don't is blurring.

Allied to that is a blurring around what we're willing to pay for and what we expect for free, what we value and what we don't, and how we're willing to pay for things. Where do we want to see ads and where don't we?

And a blurring of the lines between advertising/branding and editorial/content. It's happening in dead tree media and it's certainly happening online. That hard and fast line between the two is getting rubbed out, never mind blurred. Brands are realising they have the opportunity to bypass media-owners and talk directly to their customers.

This is therefore a time of fear and opportunity for brand owners. Some are excited by the blur, realising there's all sorts of stuff possible now, some are paralyzed by the contradictions and uncertainties of this blurry world. (see also Grant McCracken on cloudiness.)

A lot of brands are realising this means they have to get interesting. ie they have to create stuff that people actually want to engage with, stuff that people will want to watch over and above any other conveniently accessible choice. This means abandoning the usual reductionist, bash-them-over-the-head-with-a-simple-message approach because it's simply not financially effective to spend the kind of media money that will let you do that. Or even if it is now, it won't be soon. This means being willing to embrace negative emotion, being willing to tell people incomplete stories, being willing to give them room to think and realising that the most interesting communications are sometimes contradictory. I've talked about this a lot before so I won't bang on about it again here. But I learned my lesson on this when we did the Honda work.

And then the other thing brands are starting to think about is: can we spend what would once have been marketing/advertising money on things that promote and enchance the brand by being useful to people? As in Branded Utility. This has obviously always been a good idea, but it's more necessary then ever now, and it's more possible than ever. The low cost of making digital stuff means brands can offer all sorts of gifts and services to their customers that enhance the brand, improve the product/service and provide new news to people. This is another well-discussed area. So, again, I won't bang on about it too much.

This final bit is probably a bit less formed in my head, but I think there's something here. Many web2.0 businesses talk about the idea of being 'always in beta' and I think it's a good way for brands to think too, because it might help them develop some of the habits they'll need to operate in a blurry, unpredictable world. I'm not suggesting that there's necessarily a literal parallel and that every brand in the world needs to start treating 'the web as a platform'. But I think there are some interesting characteristics worth noticing:

1. A constant stream of ideas, bundled together by a common brand/business purpose.

(Can you bundle a stream? Probably not, but you know what I mean.) The business environment these brands live in mean they can't simply do a big idea. They have to keep innovating in order to stay relevant and interesting. The old software model of a big upgrade every couple of years is being replaced by a stream of little enhancements and fixes. I suspect the same will soon be true for brands. The old model of a big launch of a big idea followed by cut-downs of said big idea to deliver mind-numbing levels of repetition simply won't survive contact with the contemporary media landscape. And a key characteristic of a brand that's likely to survive the modern world will be creative fecundity, the ability to just keep having new ideas and to keep putting them out in the world. My favourite example of this is the way Ze Frank keeps generating new stuff, and, especially, the philosophy he espouses here.

One of the other interesting characteristics about always being in beta is accepting that mistakes are going to happen. And preparing for them. And thinking about, maybe, trying to turn them into opportunities. Flickr's attempt to turn a 'we're down' message into fun probably annoyed some people but I liked it are clearly so did lots of other people. When you're moving at the speed that the modern world demands mistakes are inevitable. Being surprised by them shouldn't be. Mistakes are also when the veneer tends to slip, if there is a veneer. The authentic voice of a brand or organisation is exposed when something goes wrong, if it's not the same as the voice you normally speak with people will notice.

3. Building with your community

I guess a key idea behind web2.0 is that it's the community of users that provide the value. And that's increasingly true for brands. I don't think anyone would argue with that. My favourite examples are the Fiskateers and the Air Force One.

And that's it. As I say not a lot of new stuff, but I just thought I'd share. And I have some spare badges if anyone would like one.

Comments

[Bob]

You're right, not much news but an interesting post regardless.

About the community building and the speaking direct to your customers: the downside of this development is of course that more and more parts of our lives are becoming influenced by commerce. And the blurring of all these lines makes it a heck of a lot harder to tell when someone's trying to sell us stuff.

So these are the things that are going on, but I wonder if we should be 100% happy about it...

[dave e]

Russell, as the media owner you presented to, thanks again. Witty, challenging and informative. Your 'always in beta' bit it spot on: as a media owner we need to learn from our mistakes, listen to our audience and our advertisers and constantly adapt.
You left us all looking and thinking about our work in a different way and I can't think of a better compliment. Thanks again.

[Tim]

a few views from a member of your audience...
aside from the brilliant delivery I found it very helpful to have a crystalisation of the thoughts that are occupying lots of minds. Things you mentioned that i've ruminated on since are:
the thought that in the clamour for engagement we need to remember that most of us only want to enagage with just a few brands. what does this mean for the communications from the endless brands that we spend shedloads on but don't really want to be a part of our lives?
and the blurring of editorial and commercial lines. it's very easy for us to get over pre-occupied with the sanctity of commercial free journalism and programming but how many people who consume it really care ? and is there any such thing in the first place in a world where PR and product placement agencies are relentlessly working to influence those who produce what we read watch and listen to? love to know if there's any research into this.and it would be very interesting to start engaging journalist colleagues in this debate

[Diego Rodriguez]

Great post -- thanks for bringing all this stuff together in one place.

And the zefrank video is fantastic.

[Chris Baylis]

Thanks for that Russell - as always your wise words help gel the half formed thoughts that rattle around my brain. I like this thinking compared to the 'Big Idea' mantra being constantly churned out by the traditional agencies like BBH (last weeks campaign) - 'we have the ideas around here and we tell you what to think and do, so there' (not a direct quote) - just the same joke told over and over in a slightly different way. They're not in Beta, they're Alpha and they want everyone to know it.

[Chris Baylis]

Thanks for that Russell - as always your wise words help gel the half formed thoughts that rattle around my brain. I like this thinking compared to the 'Big Idea' mantra being constantly churned out by the traditional agencies like BBH (last weeks campaign) - 'we have the ideas around here and we tell you what to think and do, so there' (not a direct quote) - just the same joke told over and over in a slightly different way. They're not in Beta, they're Alpha and they want everyone to know it.

[dan burgess]

can i have an always in beta badge?

[Iain Tait]

We were talking to someone the other day about brands that are genuinely creative and imaginitive online - and strangely Amazon came up (again) as being someone who really lives the notion of perpetual beta. At least they do in the US.

As my colleague Tom neatly put it, they make lots of small bets at once and aren't afraid to lose a couple. And it's true. It's the willingness to make a couple of small (calculated risk) mistakes that really sorts out the people who just talk about this stuff and acually do it. Most brands (and agencies) find it hard to buy (and sell) potential failures...

[Erik Larsson]

Any idea of where I can get ahold of that board you're using in the first image? A friend here in Barcelona has a restaurant and I think he could make good use of one of those boards to put up the menu. Thanks.

[Marco]

"Always on beta" could be a good definition for a life-attitude too.

The ability, disposability, or excitement to accept risk.

Could brands changes be just a reflection of people changes?

[hugh macleod]

Thanks for that. London-wise, you and Mark Earls are indeed the Bee's Knees.