After many conversations, articles and researches about Social Media, the conclusion is there’s still an educational and impact gap with regard to Social Media on exec-level which partially is sustained by the overly interest and hype around the phenomenon.As a guide in this article I will refer to an article by eMarketer which is published on the 10th of September. According to the article “Executives and Social Media“, executives value but have concerns towards Social Media.

Social Media benefits the following, according to the white paper from Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law which is used in the eMarketer article:

More than eight in 10 management, marketing and HR executives responding to the July 2009 survey cited relationship- and brand-building as benefits of social media. Execs also considered social media a good tool for recruitment (69%) and customer service (64%), and 46% thought it enhanced employee morale.

These figures aren’t surprising, enhancing one’s brand and engaging with the target groups are one of the first and overarching benefits of Social Media.
The following two graphs from the article are interesting in relation to the abovementioned benefits:

Brand-building and Networking score high, which is not surprising, what is surprising is that Research and Competitive Monitoring are not as much deployed as they should be.
Understanding how target groups behave within the social sphere, understanding how competitors are positioning themselves within Social Media channels and learning from the environment all suffice Brand-Building.
Key fundaments of Social Media are transparency, connectivity/interaction and co-creation, combine this with “the brand is what your target groups think it is” and executives certainly must understand the need and urge to discover and develop Social Media Intelligence as soon as possible. Business and changes arise quicker and faster after each other, correct swift adaptation is key to thrive in the landscape.
Secondly, Social Media is new kind of applications are created, competition is fierce and visible, those who engage in the right and creative way will favor in the mindset.

The reasons “Don’t know enough about it“, “confidentiality/security issues” and “No Need for it” do not sound like reasons why an executive should not strategize and deploy Social Media, it are simply reactions on the new way of conducting business.
Many aspects of Web 2.o are new and the skeptic reactions are natural, but they mustn’t be reasons not to incorporate them in the strategy.
That has to do with the lack of education and insights on Social Media and perhaps the incorrect view executives have on Social Media.
It’s not just a tactic which you could integrate in your marketing mix or not. I don’t understand why the eMarketer article refers to it as a “channel” that is being valued, as it is most definitely not.

Technologies have created a paradigm shift which is overarching and holistic, it changes businesses and how they compete, work together and reach out. Like the 7% of executives which think they have no need for it, it means remaining stuck in conventional processes which ultimately will be replaced by the New as a standard, creating a competitive disadvantage in the long run.
The impact must be emphasized better and clearer. There’s still too much confusion and a narrow scope of what it means and can mean for business.

The question whether executives should or should not use Social Media is of course rhetorical. The answer is a firm Yes, unfortunately it’s not a matter of choice.
The positive side of these developments is that they create a vast amount of new opportunities; new business arises, both on the demand and supply side. One of the big opportunities -which will be analyzed on this blog- is Television 2.0 where a conventional medium is transformed and ’socialized’ in revolutionary ways.
The new economy is unstoppably being shaped and advanced.

What is your opinion? How should executives approach the quest on Social Media?

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Originally published on the Agora Media Group blog by Gianluigi Cuccureddu.

Related posts:

1. 10 reasons why your CEO should embrace Social Media
2. Reflection: “Social media strategies give hope to ad agencies”
3. Social Media Monitoring tools – an evaluation

Nokia has posted a video on Youtube, showing their technology on Augmented Reality.

Nokia is doing interesting things, but this video and their technology on Mixed Reality is way off.

The definition for Mixed Reality (as by Wikipedia), states:
Mixed reality (MR) (encompassing both augmented reality and augmented virtuality) refers to the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualisations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time. A mix of reality, augmented reality, augmented virtuality and virtual reality.

What Nokia does with this product is making information available anywhere, at any time. This is different from enhancing the real world with digital data, where context is key.

Nevertheless, this type of devices certainly has future, enabling information access when the user likes to.
As written in Augmented Reality: Mobile Marketing infusion, Nokia can develop interesting applications for their mobile devices and community and infuse another revenue stream.

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Originally published on the Agora Media Blog by Gianluigi Cuccureddu.

Related posts:

1. Augmented Reality: Mobile Marketing infusion
2. Experience the Augmented Reality wonder!

At one point in the Google Wave Preview video, Lars Rasmussen proposes the question what email would look like if it was invented at this point of time. He continues by telling that there are a million ways to concretize the question and that Google Wave is their attempt.

I must say, it’s an impressive translation of their vision on the question.

On the 30th of September Google Wave will be (semi-) publicly released to world, 100.000 people will get an invite for the next version of the system.

Having the possibility of a sneak peek, test and discover the system in Dev Preview gives a sense of what this platform will mean for communication and collaboration in the 21st century and its Enterprise 2.0.

First of all, to understand what Google Wave is, the three layers of the system as explained on the original post on the Google Blog:

• The Google Wave product (available as a developer preview) is the web application people will use to access and edit waves. It’s an HTML 5 app, built on Google Web Toolkit. It includes a rich text editor and other functions like desktop drag-and-drop (which, for example, lets you drag a set of photos right into a wave).
• Google Wave can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services, and to build new extensions that work inside waves.
• The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves, and includes the “live” concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected instantly across users and services. The protocol is designed for open federation, such that anyone’s Wave services can interoperate with each other and with the Google Wave service. To encourage adoption of the protocol, we intend to open source the code behind Google Wave.

The three layers indicate the ambitions of Wave and its impact on the Internet landscape. The platform and protocol, the open source approach, quick adoption and diffusion will be accomplished and Google Wave applications can be intertwined throughout business.

With communication channels like SMS, IM, microblogging etc, Google Wave perfectly fits in the hyper-responsive and -communicative society we live in, with a real-time touch.

The good thing about Google Wave is that the service does not replace, but complements current used communication channels and systems, like email, IM and microblogging.

Collaborative tools though should be more aware of the system due to the high flexibility and possibilities offered by Google Wave.

Google Wave can be the nexus, the all-in-one communication tool for the company, be it internally and/or externally.

Internally the focus will be on efficiency and relevancy and making sure that the vast amount of information and knowledge is clearly and simply distributed to the right persons.

Externally the focus will be on collaboration, within the perspective and impact of Google Wave, it’s even more important that a company builds communities around the brand, superfast content creation and modification belongs to the possibilities which create an extra challenge of making sure that the brand-portability is in favor of the company.

Prosumerism will be boosted and co-creation gets to the next level.

Transparency is the new marketing, Google Wave offers an interesting product, platform and protocol that infuse transparency, portability and co-creation.

What are your predictions for Google Wave in relation to Enterprise 2.0, the Internet landscape and communication?

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Originally published on the Agora Media Group blog by Gianluigi Cuccureddu.

No related posts.

Dear readers,

As you might have noticed the amount of activity on my personal blog has diminished the last couple of weeks due to the start-up of Agora Media Group, my involvement in it and other business activities.
At Agora Media Group there’s also a blog whwere I will be writing the business focused articles. Have a look at it, for the time being I published my existing articles also there. In the coming weeks I’ll be publishing new articles.

This blog will be personal from now on.

Enjoy both blogs, thank you for reading and conversating!

Related posts:

1. Executives’ approach on Social Media

A new header is placed on the blog.
This time I’ve chosen for the majestic Angkor Wat.

There’s quite a story about the picture which is taken just a couple of days after the tsunami.

In the days after the tsunami we stayed at the well-known backpackers area in Bangkok, Khao San Road, where confusion, chaos and anxiety reigned. Amidst all this, preperations were made for the trip to Cambodia, the surrealistic atmosphere made it all the more strange.
The booked journey to Siem Reap was one of a kind, bumpy sandroads and never before seen simplicity of life.
When entering Siem Reap -where Angkor City is situated closely- the view was all the more unbalanced and ‘plastic’. Huge hotels and wealth amidst local poverty.

Angkor Wat is the monument in the Angkor area. Angkor in Sanskrit means Capital and for that period in History, it’s been said it was the biggest city in the world with an approximate of one million people.
Angkor Wat is the biggest religious building on Earth, the building itself is a representation of Mount Meru, a Hindu and Buddhist sacred mountain where all universes come together.

The visit to Angkor city was astounding and meditative, the structure of the city, the situation of the buildings, all was thought of, we’ve biked with much pleasure and awe through this ancient place of the Eastern world.

I referred to it in one of my past articles “Challenges of tourism: Uluru might be closed“, Angkor city is one of those tourist “attractions” which are in danger of the massive stream of tourists which deteriorate the state of the buildings.
Here’s where the conflict is, on the one side, a money stream is created, on the other side, this short term focus will destroy the entity which creates the money stream. Hopefully a solution is found for this amazing place.

Related posts:

1. Challenges of tourism: Uluru might be closed
2. Nostrum Momentum – Rocca Calascio

Augmented Reality is on the rise and each week Augmented Reality is in the news, but still, for many its unreal, ungraspable and are not in the oppertunity to see in real life any of the futuristic applications of AR which can be seen on many videos on Youtube and Vimeo.

I found this really easy application, which only needs a webcam and Flash and experience yourself the Augmented Reality amazement!

Papervision – Augmented Reality (click the link for the original webpage)

Using a webcam and flash, we’ve taken ‘Proto’ from the desktop to the desk.  A new and exciting way to interact with your flash content.  The possibilities are wide open.

Try it for yourself below:

1. Make sure you download and print out our NEW symbol
2. Allow flash access to your webcam below when it asks (or right click flash and select settings).
3. Point your webcam at the printed symbol, ‘Proto’ will appear on top.

Related posts:

1. Nokia’s misinterpretation of Augmented Reality
2. Augmented Reality: Mobile Marketing infusion

A strategic principle, as defined by Harvard’s article Transforming Corner-Office Strategy into Frontline Action, is:
“A memorable and actionable phrase that distills a company’s corporate strategy into its unique essence and communicates it throughout the organization” and has as goal to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.

I strongly believe that for two reasons, strategic principles will become crucial in todays and future’s business:
* Generation Y
* Collaborative & co-creational economy

Generation Y employees have certain traits that could perfectly benefit strategic principles deployed by their companies.
They want responsibility and involvement in decision making. As described on Wikipedia three core elements that describe the ambitions of Generation Y in the workplace are: Impact, Communication and Flexibility.
A two way understanding (bottom-up and top-down) and benefiting from both its intelligences is the new way according to researches and views of responsible ones.

Impact:
The strong drive to have impact can be encouraged even more by guiding the employees with a strategic principle, creating a more focused, effective and relevant drive.

Communication:
With all the communication tools the employee has, the strategic principle must be spread out, reminding them and -much more important- inspiring them to think about solutions and benefits, achieving impact and influence. Treat it like a mantra which must be communicated throughout the channels.

Flexibility:
Working remotely does not only concern employees, but also freelancers, multinationals with regional offices, companies or projects scattered throughout the globe and outsouring of course. A strategic principle will add clearity by focusing and representing a clear view how that company wants to achieve its competitive advantage. Of course introductions -of whatsoever kind- will allign the person with the objective of their work in agreement with the company, again, a crystal clear strategic principle can work as a mantra, always in mind.
By doing so, the process will be more effective, minimizing loss of time and energy and increasing satisfaction.
Consistency and relevancy are not only key towards the market but also within the organization.

The title not only refers to the new kind of human capital within the economies, but also refers to the open economy where collaboration, end-user innovation, co-creation are some of the key concepts that companies are increasingly benefiting from. As examined in Marketing’s fifth P on steroids, the way business is conducted will change, the complementary or substitutional efforts by the ‘crowd’ should be guided and inspired with the right approach.
Guided empowerment will bring benefits such as clearity, focus and responsibility.

I’ve been introduced to the concept of strategic principles through interesting discussions and since then experimenting with the concept in several occassions, be it executional or determining the principle itself. The process is challenging and hard.
My knowledge and experience on this concept is yet limited, do share your views, experiences, knowledge and opinions to accumulate understanding on this powerful tool!

Related posts:

1. Reflection: “Competitive Advantage Is Fleeting (And It’s Okay to Admit It)”

A diarchy is a form of governing by two rulers, diarchies are known for instance from ancient Sparta and Rome and is one of the oldest types of government.
The Spartan diarchy is suggested to be a solution for: a struggle between two Spartan families or to stay away from an absolutistic ruling.
The distribution of power amongst content and context is meant to prevent a struggle between two forces and meant to avoid focus of attention and power of either content or context exclusively. Emphasis, focus and importance on both intertwined is the key.
When reflecting on diarchies and thinking about it in relation to the current phase of the Internet evolution, not only the Content is King (as often is written), but the Context needs to be acknowledged and treated equally influencing as the second valid King in the diarchal rulership over the Internet and business landscape.

This evolution is certainly not new, business already undergo these transitional phases.
First there was the production oriented era, then the sales oriented era (think of Ford and his quote in his autobiography “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black“). Then came the realization and insight that marketing management was needed to have a clearer understanding of the context (marketing oriented era).
Marketing evolved from inward focus (organization) to outward focus (consumer), this is exactly what the Internet evolution is going through as well and forcing businesses to adapt.

During the infancy phase of the Internet, quality content sufficed to attract visitors, now the amount of content is saturating and solely not sufficient anymore to be distinctive, persuasive and to convert visitors. Think of the many businesses offering the same books and music, the many travel websites offering much of the same and so on.
Here is where context plays and will play an increasingly important role. Depending on the context, the sites can and will be perceived different.

The content defines What is offered, whilst the context defines How / Where / When / Whom it’s offered. Without context, content is just data, in the broadest meaning of the word.
Without context, the content is poorer, less relevant and less qualitative, even if the content intrinsically is, for these reasons one site with the same content can very well work and another site with the same content just can’t.
The context basically is the determinator.
The two diarchies have a symbiotic relationship. they sustain each other, they give meaning and reinforce each other.
Websites, value propositions, e-business must be approached integrally, to create and achieve a long-term recurring relationship. Context creates understanding.

The current state of the Web (2.0) offers new technologies/enablers and at the same time are becoming basic requirements in relation to the context. Some of the oppurtunities I’m talking about are for instance personalization, collaboration and customization.
Mostly personalization and customization advance how, when, where and to whom the content is provided, all in order to reach the right customer at the right time at the right place with the right offer.
Collaboration adds both challenges and oppurtunities to the context, for reasons like co-creation, not being able to steer the process completely, social networks, end-user innovation, open innovation, but necessarily when moving into the outward focus, even more because a business has no choice, the prosumer is becoming part of it.
Is it a technology push or a market demand which is enabling all these oppurtunities?

If we examine the content and context with a top-down approach, ( see also The 3 Fundaments of Online Strategy ), online strategy is part of the marketing strategy and needs to contribute to its overall goals. With regard to the marketing strategy, the context is important to provide and retain the value proposition of products and services (content) to the target audience.
When executing the website-, internet- and social fundaments, the content and context need to be in line with the overarching levels to remain consistent, powerful, relevant and effective to achieve its goals.

Dissected per level:
*On the consumer level: 
Consumers become increasingly demanding and ’spoiled’, companies won’t retain consumers if consumers don’t get what they want. Transparency creates a market space where consumers can hop without hardly any switching costs to another competitor and enjoy increasing bargaining power by consumers. Secondly, segmentation will get better and more granular. Right now, products and services are being pushed to their target audiences without any refinements. Targeted segmentation will be the next level in relevancy from this point of view.

*On the business level:
Business context is dynamic, thanks to the Internet, the oppurtunities are seemingly endless, Flickr adapted its business model from a gaming portal to a photo sharing portal due to input by its target audience and an unfulfilled need which existed amongst them. Markets become saturated and it’s a waste of energy and money to compete in Red Oceans. Products and services can be altered to suffice the new formed context (strategic planning) with the help of your customers! A double-layered meaning of outward focus.

*On the channel level:
Multichannel marketing focuses on integral cross-channel efforts making use of the distinctive advantages of each channel to reach the target audience on their terms in their way. Again, the context is important if it wants to be effective. Effective relates to being not pushy and logical from a buying process point of view.

*On the advertising level:
Online advertising. Time and money are constantly invested to create algorithms and systems to reach consumers effectively and thus as little disruptive as possible and with better relevancy. Behavioral targeting, -re-targeting and contextual advertising are examples of technologies which are being developed to provide relevant advertisements. This counts also for search engine algorithms. Bing call its engine the “decision making” engine, wanting to provide answers instead of results.

*On the website level:
Amazon does a great job in terms of personalization and to present highly effective content to customers, other kinds of technologies are focused on providing users tools to create their own interfaces with the content they want or need at that point of time.

*On the platform level:
Wordpress does well in having developed a system fully focused on bloggers, the complete interface and features are addressed to them.

Throughout the article I’ve referred more often to context than content. Quality content is a condition. As written at the beginning of the article, content and context reinforce each other, but content must have a quality threshold. Nobody wants average content. Furthermore, to have an effective symbiotic relationship between the two, consistency is key. The outcome of the relationship is quality relevance!

Ladies and gentlemen, are we ready to advance into the Internet’s marketing oriented era?

Related posts:

1. The 3 Fundaments of Online Strategy
2. Reflection: “A Checklist to Choose Which Internet Marketing Channel is Right for Your Business”
3. Reflection: “Digital Darwinism”

Article: “Who Finds Twitter More Effective, Advertisers or Consumers?”
Source: eMarketer

The graph on eMarketer shows that both advertisers as the consumers are not perceiving Twitter as effective.
The advertisers’ results: 
“In addition to the 8% of advertisers who said Twitter was very effective for promotion, 50% said it was somewhat effective. More than three in 10 (34%) said it was not very effective and 8% felt it was not effective at all.”
The consumers’ results:
“8% said it was very effective, 42% believed it to be somewhat effective, 31% said it was not very effective and 19% felt it was not at all effective.”

The article concludes that whilst marketers are jumping the bandwagon, consumers lack awareness and acceptance which prevents Twitter from being an effective marketing tool.
Three points need to be considerated regarding the effectiveness and unfamiliarity of Twitter.
* What kind of promotion and marketing is applied in relation to commiting Twitter as a tactic?
This impacts the effectiveness which is researched in the article. If promotional efforts are pushed through the Twitter channel but it aren’t correctly modified for Twitter, the effects are ineffectiveness and create annoyance. If marketers apply old rules for new ways, Twitter won’t become an important channel within the buying cycle.

* Consumers need reasons for using Twitter.
Acceptance and awareness are part of the marketer to establish in the minds and attitudes of their customers and target groups. Acceptance and awareness can be achieved by introducing relevant and unique reasons for customers to use Twitter. Think of “last-second” offers, offers specially for Twitter users (because the real-time reach and spread of the message can be much higher than an email campaign or announcement on the site).
It’s not neccesarly the task of consumers to know all the communication channels. Many don’t know the second-tier social networks as well, does this mean these aren’t important or effective? Does this mean consumers should not be educated? It’s normal that innovators and early adopters are familiar with new applications and the early and late majority isn’t. Target groups are spread amongst the different adoption groups, marketers need to reach them as well.

* How is the Twitter account organized?
From a practicle point of view, if the Twitter account’s purpose is vague, nor the marketing efforts are going to be effective, nor will consumers understand the need and benefit for it. Attention is scarce, consumers are getting more demanding and less patient. The first impression must be good to achieve a positive attitude.

Marketers need to overcome the gap that is created between new channels and their target groups, pro-activeness is needed. If relevant and consistent efforts are exposed through Twitter, the awareness and acceptation will come.
What could marketers do more to fasten the adoption process?

Related posts:

1. Reflection: “Forget Twitter; Your Best Marketing Tool Is the Humble Product Review”
2. Reflection: “Facebook goes after Twitter with public status updates”
3. Reflection: “Tweeting all the way to the bank”

Our family has a long tradition and history of making its own food, beverages and liqour.
Since I was little I can remember my family ’creating’  products like wine, marmalade, sausages, liquor, fresh pasta, sun dried tomatoes, artichokes in oil, all kinds of meat products of lifestock etcetera.
The older generations were basically self-sufficient in their existence and survival. Generation after generation this has lead to an accumulation of knowledge, experience and expertise which is passed on (degressively unfortunately, due to changes in our family structures, jobs/paths and societal environment.)

The interesting thing is that the knowledge is not only focussed on the products themselves, but also Nature, to respect it, understand it and ”cooperate” with it in an integral respectful way.

The first recipe is the well-known Limoncello. Limoncello is served as a digestive, and it is at its best when the bottle is stored in a freezer to be served cold.

Limoncello as described by Wikipedia:
Limoncello is an Italian lemon liqueur mainly produced in Southern Italy, mainly in the region around the Gulf of Naples, the Sorrentine Peninsula and the coast of Amalfi and islands of Procida, Ischia and Capri, but also in Sicily, Sardinia, Menton in France and the Maltese island of Gozo. It is made from lemon rinds (traditionally from the Sorrento lemon, though most lemons will produce satisfactory limoncello), alcohol, water, and sugar. It is bright yellow in color, sweet and lemony, but not sour since it contains no lemon juice.

Under current circumstances, this is one of the things which can be made fairly easy when thinking of space, ingredients, weather etc.

Ingredients for one bottle of Limoncello:
* 6-7 lemons
* 1 liter of pure alcohol
* 800 ml water
* 600 gr sugar

The two challenges with this recipe relate to the lemons and the alcohol.

The lemons must originate from biological cultivation which do not spray the lemons with chemicals!
If you would use lemons from “normal” cultivation which are sprayed with chemicals and you soak them in alchohol, the effects of the chemicals will intensify, so an absolute no-go.

Secondly, finding pure alcohol can be difficult, for instance -as far as we know- it is not sold in the Netherlands and we thus get it from Belgium. I don’t know the regulation in other countries but that’s to you to find out. The alcohol we have has a 94%. The amount of water determines how strong the Limoncello will be in the end, our recipe consists of 800 ml, but you can experiment with less or more water.
From our experience, less than 800 ml water is too strong. With our recipe only the vaporized alchohol gets to your head already.

Procedure:
Remove the peel from the lemon with a sharp knife, make sure you don’t take along the inner -white- substance of the lemon.
Mix the peels of the lemons with one litre of alcohol and let the two mingle for three days. Make sure you have a big enough bottle to pour in all the ingredients you need to mix.

Boil the 800 ml of water and mix the sugar in it. Let the mixture cool down, do not pour directly into the bottle with alcohol and peels as the alchohol will vaporize quickly at high temperatures.
In the meantime, filter the peels of the lemons out of the alcohol.
Pour the water and sugar into the bottle with the filtered alcohol.
Let the bottle of Limoncello rest for a while. When you still see particles of peels, do filter one more time if you want.

Like with every recipe, it gives you only the technicalities, the experience and know-how comes with time.
If you have a different recipe for Limoncello or nice variants on Limoncello, do let me know!

Related posts:

1. Ancient Roman recipe: Mulsum
2. Ancient Roman recipe: Frittata
3. Dolcetto d’Alba – Bricc du Succ