...is generally easier said than done.

How Did We Get Here?

Firstly, it’s worth reminding ourselves how quickly this global conversation has evolved.  Only five years ago, the sight of their customers spilling out onto the open web and talking about their lives and more importantly their views on products and services came as a shock to big brands.  Such people were, initially, dismissed as mad or irrelevant.  For example, six years ago, the BBC noted that, 'there is a perception that bloggers are sad, joyless people in their underwear who sit in front of their computers all day'.  The idea that people could collaboratively write an online encyclopedia was thought to be - at best - bizarre.  Social networks were seen as outposts of the brain dead, depraved and even the dangerous. And Tweeters were initially open to ridicule by the great and the good.

However, that gradually changed over time.  The blogosphere became a professional space for informed and often erudite discourse, Wikipedia became an online Britannica, social networks grew into multi-gazillion dollar businesses and Twitter developed into a global information network of such standing that many of the world’s most influential people signed up.  

Social Experiments

During that time, many different experiments were conducted by corporations trying to lever their brands into the conversation and to gain some valuable relevancy and buzz.  Many of these approaches were greeted with the sound of silence, others were attacked as irrelevant or worse, and a few have been judged as credible and gathered that elusive – and commercially valuable – social currency. 

However, the global conversation remains a tricky area for big brands where the gap between success and humiliating public failure is small.  For many, the resulting high-wire act can just seem too risky to make it worthwhile.  The DNA of the marketing industry is about command-and-control, reach-and-frequency and the delivery of big concepts, not a chat over the garden fence with whoever might happen to show up on the day.

What's The Problem?

So why is it so difficult for brands to take part in conversational spaces that are becoming such a normal part of everyday life?

Part of the difficulty is that the online conversational environment itself is changing so quickly.  For a good while, conversations were in nerdy forums or restricted to comments on the bottom of blog posts.  However, slowly the conversation broke out of these niche areas thanks to, among other innovations, Facebook’s newsfeed, Twitter’s growth and YouTube’s webcam culture.  The rise of the smart phone extended the reach of conversational spaces still further creating always-on, personalised digital grapevines.  Today, the global conversational environment remains in a state of rapid flux as networked media becomes more sophisticated and prevalent.  For example, many new devices have conversational features baked-in and new innovations allow people to use non-verbal ways of signaling to others – just as they do in real-life.

Additionally, it can be very difficult for a brand or corporation to identify what is and what is not a credible conversation for it to initiate or join.  It's just too easy to assume that because it seemed like a valid subject for an advertising or PR campaign it will also be credible in a conversational space.  'Of course people will want to chat about the effectiveness of our corporate social responsibility programme - they loved the TV ad!'  This particular aspect can be really challenging in a world where many share the view that you can only invest in what you can measure.  A view which can lead to brands initiating conversations about unique selling points, product extensions or category insights which for the general public carry all the allure of an invitation to an internal brand positioning meeting.  In reality, sometimes the best way to join a conversation isn’t to actually say anything at all but simply to help others speak and interact with one another - but that doesn't fit very well in a KPI.

Finally, there is the additional dimension of how a brand approaches and deals with people beyond an initial conversation and into more meaningful interaction with their online identities.  This aspect is - maybe - the one going through the greatest transformation currently as people’s online identities become an increasingly important part of their overall personas.  Which means there's more scope for brands to take that initial conversation with consumers (aka people) further.  However, there's also means there's more opportunity for them to get it horribly wrong - both at a micro and a macro level.

The Conversation Grows

Not that long ago I used to have conversations with marketing executives about whether social networks were just a fad, or not. No one talks about that today. The global conversation looks set to become bigger, more influential and more sophisticated which means it’s likely to maintain its allure for brands. However, whether people are listening to brands or care about what they say is maybe the real question - and the real challenge.

Want To Know More...?

One of the digital strategy sessions I run for clients looks at some of the issues involved for brands wanting to join the global conversation. It's usually a provocative subject and there’s no shortage of thorny issues that arise. The session is called ‘Brand Conversations – Is Anyone Listening? (And If So Do They Care?)’ and I’m doing one for the IPA on February 6th as part of its Energiser programme. If the ever-changing swirl of the global conversation and networked media is of interest to you, then sign-up and come along. Alternatively, drop me a line and we can organise a bespoke session for you and your team.

‘Fail-Fast’ is a software development mantra that has slowly permeated into other areas of the commercial world.  However, it doesn’t translate to mainstream marketing – yet.  The term is bandied around a good deal these days but basically refers to a project management style where, instead of excessive pre-planning, an idea is quickly put into practice and monitored closely.  The focus is on the continuous examination of performance and smart, speedy reaction to the marketplace.  In light of poor results, the aim is to iterate, change direction (sometimes euphemistically known as ‘pivoting’) or kill off the project altogether.  Thereby preventing long, drawn-out 'zombie' projects that suck up valuable resources before anyone notices they have joined the walking dead.  Crucially, to work effectively Fail-Fast requires an environment of constant, real-time feedback loops - which is exactly what you get when launching new initiatives, for example applications, onto the web or into purely digital media.  However, most brand marketing environments don’t look anything like this.  They remain approximations of what might be happening, in contrast to networked and digital media that show what is actually happening.  For instance, in the UK, the audience, cost and efficacy of TV advertising is determined by the British Audience Research Board (BARB) and its Television Measurement Service which is a panel composed of 5,100 homes.  Far from being a software-driven mirror of actual events, BARB's panel doesn’t measure...

...many aspects of today's TV environment.  Viewers' behaviour such as fast forwarding or rewinding live or recorded content goes unseen, leaving too many data blind spots for Fail-Fast to work.

Over time, this is all likely to change as an increasing range of media, including TV, is drawn into the networked world.  Such developments will extend the crucial data rich environments and live feedback loops that make Fail-Fast thrive.  Increasingly perfect market information will allow computing power to deliver different TV ads to different people depending upon their individual behaviour - just as occurs online today.  The long-held dreams of brand owners everywhere, such as personalised TV commercials and more complete audience information, can then become a reality.  (Not something everyone is happy about).

In the meantime many companies and brands are trying to work around the gaps.  For example, in categories where the point-of-sale is only a click away, TV commercials can be judged partly on their ability to drive online traffic and lifetime value.  A client of mine said he rejected any BARB-based audience figures and preferred to negotiate with media owners on the ability of the TV programme to deliver traffic to his website because that was his only retail outlet.  He wasn't quite operating a Fail-Fast approach but he had created a feedback loop based on his own data that meant he could Fail a little Faster.

Within the sphere of media and marketing, clients and brands are struggling to meet their long-term requirements for business value - be that sales, loyalty, differentiation or share – due to more fluid, unpredictable networked media environments.  Such concerns can make Fail-Fast can sound like an enticing, albeit contrarian, starting point.  However, to be really effective, the approach requires a near perfect level of data about the marketplace.  Until mainstream media is more fully drawn into the networked environment and greater levels of consumer activity are tracked in real-time, the required Big Data and essential feedback loops simply won't exist.  Which means, for the moment, outside of digital, Fail-Fast is more likely to just mean Fast-Fail.

...the YouTube logo changed recently and the dropping of the famous ‘Broadcast Yourself’ tagline is a big clue as to where it's headed.  In short, Google’s vast video channel is becoming a professional broadcasting service.  Indeed, with cash-to-burn, Mountain View has just spent $100m on original programming in the US to create one hundred new channels.  Messrs Brin & Page are also trialling live formats and even sports rights; supposedly the last bastions of proper, 'grown-up' broadcasters.  All of which will go some way to remedy the achilles heel of Google TV's first outing ie no one would give it any content

That's not to say that regular mainstream TV is about to disappear.  In networked media, progress is rarely binary (ironically).  However, the range of televisual choice looks set to explode as technology super-predators try to disrupt the cable TV industry by unbundling the five hundred channel packages that have kept the cash pumps primed for so long.  Just as happened in the music industry (RIP) when Steve Jobs spotted that people were fed up with the CD album format.

Furthemore, this isn’t just a US market matter.  Ofcom’s communications report in August of this year reported that one million connected TVs were sold in the UK last year, and any pre-Christmas trip to the electronics aisle will show you that ‘connected’ is soon going to be the only televisual option.  

In fact, YouTube has been operating a movie channel in the UK since 2010.  However, Web TV in the UK is not all about Google - far from it.  Netflix, the US monster that now has more subscribers than Comcast, will be arriving on UK shores in 2012, offering unlimited TV consumption for about five quid per month.  Then there's Sky's own online TV service, SkyGo, that books the UK's most successful TV business a ringside seat in the next big digitally-driven bust-up.  Not forgetting YouView, the connected son of Freeview that is still forecasting a launch next year.  Or Microsoft which is making TV programming available to UK residents via their XBox.  Along with a wide range of web-enabled televisions.  All of which offer different services and packages but share the common characteristic of serving up online video in a TV environment.  Meanwhile, Ofcom’s communications report this year noted that, ‘over four in ten (41%) homes are watching services such as BBC iPlayer, 4oD and ITV Player.’

As ever, when considering the bewildering speed of changes occurring as the world switches from broadcast to a network model, the real question to ask is – so what?  Brands can just switch their advertising spend to the most popular channels, right?  It’s just about eyeballs, eh?  John Lewis doesn’t care where I saw its teary ad as long as I see it, huh?  And so what if people end up choosing to tune into YouTube rather than ITV?  It’s just another channel for the negotiating teams at GroupM, Zenith and OMD to beat up on behalf of their clients, no?  

Maybe.  Maybe not.

The truth is that no one really knows what impact the disruption of the TV industry as it stands will have.  Other than that disruption of the status quo normally means a lot of, er, disruption.  For marketers and brands, the current priority remains staying on top of the change and, as ever, trying to understand what it means for the interaction of their brands with their consumers.  So what are the areas to focus on?

Clearly media planning is going to become even more complex that it is now.  For example, to what degree is my experience of watching the John Lewis ad on YouTube, a low-cost distribution channel, and burning through the pricey X-Factor ad break representative?  Or has the role of TV changed?  Do you need the big TV ‘event’ to generate the buzz, in the same way that you need TV ratings to unlock priceless shelf space at UK multiples?

Additionally, it's not clear that the big media investment houses, such as Mindshare, will be able to exert the same influence over the new television players, as they have done over little old ITV.  For Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and IBM, TV advertising schekels aren't a vital source of existing revenue that keeps shareholders happy.  It's an opportunity for the future into which they can fire gazillions of dollars of free cash flow (aka spare dosh) to ensure they get a slice of the future pie.

Then there are the implications of the technology itself, offering new services and experiences. What will the effects be when apps are widely available on television?  When the majority of people’s TV viewing becomes personalised?  When conversational backchannels appear as part of every programme?  Or when the TV is connected to other devices in the home, that are used for complementary activities, including shopping?

No one really knows the answers to these questions but that doesn't stop us observing trends and shaping views.  As Ty Braswell notes: ‘For the $500+ billion global TV business, I think the messy roller coaster ride is just beginning.’ And, as of next year, the UK looks to be right on board for the ride.

‘Big Data’ is the phrase of the moment in tech circles which probably means it will be appearing on the to-do lists of marketing folk soon.  The expression refers mainly to the oceans of information being poured continuously onto the open web and social networks by ever more connected consumers (aka people).  This tsunami comes in the shape of comments, images, scans, tweets, likes, views, posts, videos and a kaleidoscope of other digital expressions.  However, whilst people's everyday lives are providing a big piece of the pie, the scope of Big Data goes much further.  Less obvious but just as vast are the intelligence flows that stem from our web browsing behaviour or location signals from smartphones.  Other component parts include corporations publishing market information , governments opening up public data for others to use, or vast social platforms that encourage smart developers to weave new applications and services.  The result is a share-and-compare economy where people, companies and organisations trade digital views, opinions and information in order to help make decisions - commercial or otherwise.  As ever, this creates challenges and opportunities for marketing and brand folk.  But there’s no shortage...

...of suppliers, including IBM, Adobe and Accenture bombarding the fabled C-Suite with offers of help. All of these technology giants are offering services that gather and make sense of the data being created within networked media oceans, thereby improving decisions about marketing strategy, and throwing light on the most famous dilemma in advertising.  

In reality, despite the buzz, it’s early days.  However, whilst still a distant rumble, there seems little doubt that Big Data will be one of the next mega-waves to crash onto the shores of the marketing industry creating a new set of difficulties to navigate, not to mention new super-competitors to battle.  This is because more and more media, including TV, is gradually becoming software driven and subsequently being drawn into the Big Data explosion.

Last week’s Campaign Magazine gave a taster of the impact this new wave of digital technology may have.  IBM, a $200bn top-predator from the technology sector, had a full-page advertisement promoting its survey of 1700 CMOs who describe their priorities being less about creativity and more about getting to grips with a world of Big Data.  Meanwhile, in the same edition, Claire Beale, the magazine's editor, commented that she found IBM's findings, 'depressing,' and that, 'creativity defies data'.  However, the reality is that this data-driven world is shaping up and will be the new reality sooner than might seem likely.  And while fantastic creative thinking is always going to be a vital aspect of brand strategy, Chairmen and shareholders are just as excited by data that helps work out where their money is going.

...big brands and the marketing industry.  Despite experiencing constant shifts in the environment in which they operate brands assume that such change is going to somehow be ringfenced – despite evidence to the contrary.  So, for instance, whilst it's now accepted that large parts of consumers’ media consumption and their resulting behaviour have changed for good, a belief endures that some aspects of the marketing mix will remain untouched.  For example, the current received wisdom is that software may radically change the way we consume news, go shopping, or keep in touch with friends, but TV will stay largely unchanged.  This complacent viewpoint ignores recent lessons about the way in which networked media undermines and reshapes whole industries, allowing powerful new players to get a foothold.

For a long time the music industry held a similarly relaxed outlook; that people will always want to listen to great music and musicians and that was that.  Which of course was true.  However, the assumption underlying this view was that the Big Labels owned and controlled the industry and could set their lawyers on any newcomers looking to upset their gilded apple cart.  The truth was that while people do indeed care about music, no one cares about the industry that runs it.  So when Napster appeared, unbundled the product and gave people what they wanted all hell broke loose.  Which created enough space for Steve Jobs to enter the market, build on what Sean Fanning had started, and eventually take control of the whole industry by developing a massive distribution platform that now sets market prices.

Likewise, the myopic view that big-changes-are-coming-everywhere-except-here, as described by Andreessen, was prevalent in the telecomms market.  However, then Skype came along and used the same technology as Fanning to route around a whole industry, allowing people to miss out the carriers’ networks completely.

Correspondingly complacent attitudes were held by phone handset manufacturers, most notably Nokia, which - again - assumed they were the natural gatekeepers to the marketplace.  But then Apple changed the game by offering genuine mobile web access through the iPhone. And Nokia began to smoulder.

Today, it seems that the Grand Fromages of the TV industry are in an all too familiar position.  They believe they are in control of a marketplace that will remain unaffected by the surge of networked media that is transforming the world around them.  So industry bodies such as BARB and Thinkbox, entirely missing or choosing to avoid the point, continue to publish data about how much people love the TV industry when in fact the figures only show how much people like watching great content on a big screen.  

In the same way that consumers continue to enjoy music, chat with friends and choose the latest cool phone, people will keep on relaxing in front of the TV with their favourite films, drama, sport and news.  However, in the deeper waters technology super-predators, attracted by the familiar scent of complacency, are circling the TV industry sizing up the juiciest of media prey, waiting for the tides of networked media to give them their first real bite.  Perhaps Ofcom's report in August that one million connected televisions were sold in the UK last year might prove to be the sea change for which they've been waiting.

As digital tectonic plates continue to shift and once separate media sectors merge onto a single global platform, the terrain for brands and marketing definitions remain in a state of flux.  Just take a few recent examples.  Last week Facebook indicated it’s no longer a social network but a 'platform', while Twitter reconfirmed it’s dropping the social tag in favour of a new guise as an 'information network'.  Leaving some questioning, if even Facebook and Twitter are dropping the label, what ‘social’ actually means in context of marketing; other than the constant buzz of a global bazaar.  Additionally, big technology players are constantly redefining themselves and their markets.  Amazon, the one-time online book shop, confirmed it is going into direct competition with Apple, the one-time desktop computing manufacturer, with the launch of the Fire tablet.  The reason being that both increasingly seek to extend their credentials as global media players offering music, TV and films.  Meanwhile, Google, the one-time search business, has bought Motorola, the one-time handset manufacturer, to bolster its own planned entry into the world's TV markets; whilst simultaneously becoming an alternative to a credit card provider by launching Google Wallet.  Elsewhere, Hulu, an online television service that was established by the US TV networks as a defensive strategy to see off Google’s YouTube, is being sold off because it success is undermining the revenue model of the owners' traditional businesses.  (Ironically, the possible buyers include Google, Amazon and Yahoo).  Even the idea of images and photographs is being redefined as demonstrated by the plight of Kodak, one of the...

...world’s best-known brands.  Today, the company continues its descent into an abyss that appeared when its main product was added as a feature on the iPhone.  A problem that was compounded by Facebook creating a distribution platform to which people will upload seventy billion images this year alone.

Welcome to the world of networked media, where definitions no longer apply.  Struggling CMOs, and increasingly CIOs, attempt to keep track of what’s happening, possibly hoping for a slowdown in the rate of change so they can pause for breath.  However, there’s no sign of that occurring as the speed at which all media is drawn onto a single digital platform continues.

Just consider TV.  Everyone still loves the goggle-box and there’s no doubt its popularity endures. However, as the variety of offerings within the TV ecosystem grows, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to talk about TV as a single entity.  In August, Ofcom reported that one million connected TVs were sold in the UK last year, with Samsung being the main innovator in the area.  Meanwhile, the new YouView platform is being prepared for a launch during 2012.  The service will supercede the hugely popular Freeview and make smartphone-style applications on TV sets the standard.  

As traditional definitions creak, many big brands seek solace in better media metrics. However, the very nature of such information is being redefined.  Media delivered over the web and through new digital channels is less about working out what people have done and more about what they are doing, or going to do.  Networked media means individuals are providing more real-time signals about their lives through their interaction online with one another and with digital media in its kaleidoscope of forms.  This tsunami of information, much of which is being collected and responded to in real-time bears no resemblance to the world of rearview-looking data panels such as BARB.  Technology companies are focusing on aggregated user behaviour patterns in the real-world to predict individuals next steps and guide their purchases.  And it's working.  Netflix, the US streaming video service, reports that sixty per cent of its sales are generated by algorithms while Amazon states that twenty to thirty per cent of its colossal revenues are driven in the same manner.

As the networked media world continues to drive this dizzying pace of change, brands become more important for individuals seeking value, quality and service.  However, for marketing folk trying to keep themselves in front of bargain-hungry consumers the job isn't made easier by definitions being in a constant state of flux.  Media-planning becomes less like the strategic battleground of old where the biggest guns win and more like a digital garden where traditional vines blend to create strange new fruit that quickly take grip blurring expectations and the best laid plans.  However, those who pay attention, avoid following the latest fads and resist lazy thinking will find these new species provide plenty of opportunity, even if they are a little hard to define.

Historically, different types of media were independent from one other and there weren’t really any links between them. However, as all media, including TV, gradually becomes networked onto a single digital platform, the links between them are becoming very real, very varied and very valuable. Today, consumers (aka people) can easily switch from one type of digital media to another, and equally easily to an e-commerce checkout. The result is that the consumer path-to-purchase, that for a long time used to look a fairly simple flowchart driven by Yes/No decisions, now resembles a bowl of spaghetti, such is the choice of routes through the new media ecosystem. Hyperlinks were the first example of valuable connections between different types of media giving consumers the opportunity to follow their own paths of interest. When reading a physical paper the only way to follow-up on an issue or offer was to rip out the article or coupon and file it away. As newspapers became networked this behaviour changed and people could immediately click-through an article or promotion to find out more.  Today, as increasing amounts of media becomes...

...networked the range of links is expanding rapidly as consumers appetite for joined-up experiences grows.

Beyond hyperlinks search has become one very significant way in which people create links between media. When watching a TV ad at home most people won’t worry about trying to spot the relevant URL, even if it is included. They will just bang some vaguely related keywords into a search engine in the hope of trying to quickly link what they have just seen to some sort of associated interactive experience - even if that's a competitor’s website.  Of course, many brands now recognise and seek to drive this behaviour.  The unique and memorable Aleksandr Orlov is partly there to usher TV viewers onto the web.

In recent years, social media has created a booming share-and-compare economy, where people share aspects of their lives online and compare what they are offered back.  This new sphere of traded opinion is now vast with Twitter alone delivering 350 billion tweets per day.  This megatrend means friends and family have become some of the most valuable links of all.  Should someone I know and trust post a video into their Facebook stream, I'm very likely to at least notice it, and in doing so am relying on them to help me find helpful links from the firehose of information coming my way.

Another major factor driving the variety and sophistication of links between media is the growing range of networked devices (aka groovyware) that people can access. Smartphones, for example, let people link media in innovative ways, such as QR codes. In many countries these little chequered squares have become everyday tools for people to take a quick snap-shot from a print media advertisement or outdoor poster and then jump directly to a website or online shopping basket. However, in other markets QR codes remain baffling, which may explain the appearance of more intuitive visual search tools such as Google Goggles.

Despite these huge trends driving media into a single networked ocean, many parts of the mainstream industry stubbornly hang onto their island mentality.  However, while the reluctance of traditional media to recognise the value of links with digital media is well-documented, there’s a good deal of reticence among Silicon Valley's tech-driven bucks to recognise the value of the old guard. Eric Schmidt famously commented that the day Google ran a television ad would be the day that hell freezes over, such was his scepticism of traditional media's value.  Then in February of last year, one day before Google ran its first Superbowl spot, the Mountain View boss tweeted that that chilly day had come. This year he has been explaining how effective that advertisement was, and that it drove huge amounts of consumers to try out Google services, particularly mobile devices, thereby immediately paying for itself through increased search activity.

Another example of technology players underestimating the power of links with traditional media is the evolution of Foursquare.  In its early days the location-based social network stood alone and could feel like a community of people involved in a strange mass-stalking experiment. However, as it has started to create links with other media its value has become clear. Today, the service is a helpful way for people to link promotions in traditional media with a physical retail experience. The service has even partnered with American Express so that a Foursquare check-in automatically adds discounts and promotions to a linked Amex account.

As investment pours into the networked TV ecosystem the ways to link television content with other media also becomes more varied. IntoNow, quickly snapped up by Yahoo, is a service that lets people point their iPad at a TV screen to find out more about the programme they are watching. The service then lets people ‘check-in’ to that show, share their comments with friends and even pick up points for registering their viewing of commercials, thereby linking TV commercials with the first steps along a brand's path-to-purchase.

Even more ambitious and far-reaching is Bluefin, developed by a team from MIT. This massive system tracks all US TV signals and monitors social media platforms to find out what people are saying about programmes in real-time. The ambition of Bluefin is justified as the links it creates are of enormous value for brands trying to rationalise their media investment in the US TV industry’s $60bn annual marketplace. It’s a service that makes BARB’s UK reporting panel of five thousand homes look like something from the dark ages.

Historically, the only links between media were those created by brands and creative agencies using integrated communications techniques, so that a message on one medium would enforce a message on another. However, despite their efforts, integrated campaigns rarely went much further than a tiny URL shown at the end of a TV spot. The reality was these links were only as strong as the connections between the different agencies working on the campaign (ie not strong at all).

Today, as all media is slowly drawn onto the web, very real and varied links between media are being created using increasingly sophisticated technology. Brands that fail to recognise the high-value of these connections risk consumers creating links on their behalf, often in unhelpful ways, or just being ignored. In the era of networked media, links mean business.

...that it sits on a single technological platform – the desktop and mobile web. Which means that the world of brands, marketing and media is becoming one vast ocean, not a series of loosely connected rivers.

However, the players within the marketing industry still sit in their individual bunkers, launching bombs at one another and decrying each others’ effectiveness. Meanwhile the world’s giant technology companies are building vast platforms that are changing the way consumers (aka people) lead their lives, make purchasing decisions and find brands and services they can trust.  

Megabrands remain concerned with the issues they’ve always prioritised. Namely, the consumer and their ability to reach them in effective ways. That means swimming in the new networked media waters that their customers increasingly occupy. Doing so requires a clear vision of what this new ocean looks like and effective radar to charter the new waters.

However, the marketing industry remains trapped in its siloes, like soldiers hiding in the jungle, unaware that the war has ended and the world has moved on.

What's the ‘New Normal’ for global brands?  By which I mean that following the collapse of global finance, the ensuing reshuffle of the world’s powerhouse economies and rapid growth of vast technological platforms, what do global brands care about and to which companies and sectors are they turning for assistance? I keep returning to three thoughts. Firstly, that corporations and brand-owners’ aims haven’t really changed a great deal. They want the same business outcomes, such as awareness, sales, loyalty and product differentiation, that create and support Mega-Brands and the shareholder dividends that follow. Secondly, media and marketing remains in the throes of huge waves of what the economist Joseph Schumpeter alluringly called ‘creative destruction’; the painful process by which one economic order is gradually replaced by another.  In the context of media and marketing, creative destruction has come in the form of digital IP technology breaking open the barriers between previously separate industries to create a single global platform upon which vast new networked media oceans surge.  Finally, most global corporates have been quietly shifting their investments into fast-growing markets for years. Now, as growth falters in Europe and the US, these booming economies seem to promise a golden future. Many such as Brazil, India, China and Indonesia see the creative destruction of technology, media and telecomms as a welcome opportunity. They invest enthusiastically in new...  

In other words, while Mega-Brands still want to reach the same sunny commercial destinations the waters they must navigate have become murky and unpredictable, as the tectonic plates that shape media and marketing continue to drift.

The response from some brands to this turmoil seems to be to wait it out until the seas calm, waters clear and navigable routes become more visible.  The difficulty with that approach is that plotting a course through these wild new networked media oceans isn't about to become any easier. More likely, perhaps, is that these waves of creative destruction are, in fact, the New Normal.  

Connectivity Expands The Mind

Which begs the question, what's driving this constant change and flux?  ‘It’s the technology stupid’, right?  Well yes, but that's only one side of the story.  There is no doubt that the development of the Internet, Web, broadband, open source, mobile IP and Moore’s Law have blown apart the barriers between TV, telecoms, Hollywood, software, retail, web services, publishing, gaming and even finance.  However, it’s the role of consumers (aka people) that is determining which way the tides flow.  

The range of expression for this freedom is almost as varied and distinctive as the technologies that power it along. From micro-blogging and hobby forums, to online communities and social networks, to video-sharing and online gaming, to commercial marketplaces and peer-to-peer file sharing, to militant subcultures such as the ‘hacktivist’ group Anonymous and controversial whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. Each reflects a different aspect of this new pioneering global spirit.

All of which has given a seismic jolt to the world’s top corporate super-predators. Slowly, Mega-Brands have realised that consumers (aka people), who use to operate alone and maintain predictable habits, behave differently in networked media oceans.  Massive, dynamic groups of consumers range across vast areas like giant schools of fish exploring new territories and exchanging real-time information as they go.

This means many established marketing techniques such as targeting are rendered increasingly redundant. By the time the research has established what’s happening consumers have moved on leaving brands firing messages into empty, silent waters. Furthermore, this modern consumer behaviour creates opportunities for new breeds of data-driven companies, such as real-time media bidding and retargeting providers, frequently backed by the deep pockets of Silicon Valley's Sand Hill Road.

The Music Industry - A Canary In The Mine

So, where did this all begin?  Big Music was one of the first sectors to be hit by IP-driven waves of creative destruction that dragged it from its cosy backwater into unchartered networked media oceans. The industry was subsequently torn up by technology super-predators that have come to view the whole music sector like a ‘feature’ or promotional tactic for their own cloud-based streaming services or to help sell more groovyware.

For example, Apple took a big bite out of the music business and in 2001 created iTunes.  Less than a decade later the service was delivering twenty-five per cent of all music sales in the US and sixty-nine per cent of digital sales, helping to turn Steve Job’s company into one of the most valuable in the world.  The music industry’s weakened position was recently put in perspective by music journalist Wayne Rosso who noted that, 'Larry, Serge and Eric could buy the entire music industry with their personal money'.

It seems that Big Music’s problem was not taking the powers of creative destruction and newly emboldened customers seriously.  Edgar Bronfman Jr., boss of Warner Music, earlier this year commented that, ‘the consumer has won,' revealing a warped complacency that networked media’s super-predators can smell from hundreds of miles away - like blood in the water.  The battles that rage in media and marketing today are driven by an undercurrent of fear at following in the footsteps of Big Music.

That said, there are still numerous examples of companies that refused to believe these forces of IP-driven creative destruction would affect them.  Nokia chose to ignore the strategic threats that much of the telecomms world spotted.  The company used to rule its own very large and valuable territory until the launch of the iPhone dragged it into the wider networked media ocean where it has been all but gobbled up by top-feeder Microsoft.  Today, Nokia is worth thirty-two per cent of what it was worth five years ago, with much of that demise down to the iPhone’s launch in 2007.

Creative Destruction Hits TV

What's happening right now?  The waves of creative destruction are currently being felt most acutely within TV. ‘We know that Apple has destroyed the music business – in terms of pricing – and if we don't take control, they'll do the same thing on the video side’, said Jeff Zucker, the then boss of NBC Universal in 2007. Zucker has since lost his job but today his words seem prophetic, as the TV and video industry does its best to fight off the attentions of new streaming companies such as Hulu and Netflix - the current darlings of the networked media world.  However, establishing a new food chain in such a valuable industry is far from straightforward.

Hulu’s relationship with its old-guard owners, including Comcast, GE, NewsCorp and Disney has become increasingly dysfunctional. The web TV service was launched to help defeat the YouTube powerhouse but its success has become a problem as it threatens to undermine the business model of its parental shareholders.  

Meanwhile, Netflix recently announced it has more subscribers in the US than Comcast the largest cable provider.  A fact that Netflix founder Reed Hastings seems all too aware puts him in direct competition with the old school; a fight that, for now, he seems keen to avoid.  

In the meantime, YouTube itself is trying to turn from a platform for consumer-generated media to a one-stop video portal, possibly to give the flagging Google TV project a shot in the arm.  While in the UK, YouView aims to bring apps to mainstream TV next year.

An Unpredictable Environment

So what's next?  Microsoft’s recent purchase of Skype was a reminder of the unpredictable nature of IP-driven creative destruction and the uncertain climate it creates for the rest of the media and marketing world.  No one really saw Redmond's move into a VoIP service coming and many remain confused by the deal.  However, whatever the rationale, Microsoft now competes on multiple fronts within the new networked media oceans including enterprise, gaming, social networking, cloud computing, creative services, news, search, display, mobile and now telecomms. This reflects Steve Ballmer’s belief that, ‘all marketing will be digital and all digital will be marketing’, a view that he seems prepared to bet the company’s $50bn war chest on.

It’s possible that the world of finance will be the next Mega-Biz to feel the undertow of networked media.  Early web pioneers such as PayPal and Zopa have recently been joined, and in some cases overtaken, by a new wave of innovators.  Facebook, well-known as having a population bigger than most countries, has effectively created its own currency in the shape of Facebook Credits; tokens that can be bought online as well as off-the-shelf in high-street retailers. Square, the brainchild of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, that allows anyone with a smartphone to take credit card payments, has been successful enough to attract investment from Visa.  Whereas in China the Q Coin, a currency used on the giant social QQ network, has caught the eye of the Chinese government as it's increasingly used for off-line (tax-free) transactions.

In the world of corporate finance, SecondMarket Holdings Inc, the shadow market for pivate company share dealing, is a tiddler challenging the whales of the giant capital markets.  But it's caused enough ripples to find itself in conversation with the SEC. Meanwhile, the seed capital arena has seen the arrival of Kickstarter, a service that facilitates 'crowdfunding' and, in just two years, has raised $40m for 20,000 projects.

Then there’s BitCoin, an open source, peer-to-peer service, designed by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, that further blurs the lines between real-world and digital currencies.  While still very much on the bleeding-edge one of its lead engineers, Gavin Andresen, was recently invited along to the CIA to demonstrate how the ‘cryptocurrency’ works, instantly providing the spook-type credibility that money, virtual or otherwise, just can’t buy.

The Mad Men Adapt To New Waters

In the meantime, Mega-Brands can only sit back and try and make sense of these titanic battles and the changes they bring to the markets in which they operate. For the most part global brands still choose to largely concentrate their financial firepower within the world’s largest advertising networks: WPP, Publicis, IPG and Omnicom. Relationships that continue to ensure the Mad Men remain major players in the new networked media oceans. Additionally, the networks have focused on their strengths as media brokers, creative branding gurus and consumer insight specialists, whilst trying to get the measure of the sleek new technology predators that have appeared in their territories during the last decade.

For instance, Sir Martin Sorrell, Grand Fromage at WPP, likes to point out that his company is Google’s biggest customer and therefore, presumably, enjoys leverage with Messrs Page and Brin that his clients can never achieve on their own. An approach that has served his company well when dealing with the big TV networks over previous decades.

However, even the bosses of the big four networks must wonder if they can hold out against the powerful predators that dominate the new networked media oceans. The brutal reality of their respective financial positions is remarkable.  

When Google continues to pull in roughly $9bn of ad revenues each quarter, Apple can generate $6bn dollars of profit in the same period and a newcomer like Facebook can snaffle up $3.5bn dollars of Mega-Brand budgets in a single year, Messers Sorrell, Wren, Levy and Roth, once the super-predators of their industry, must now get used to being relative small fry.  The advertising companies have valuations of between $5bn and $15bn which hardly makes them minnows. However, the technology companies with which they now share their food chain measure their worth in hundreds of billions of dollars and boast annual growth figures of twenty-five per cent.

Navigating Networked Media Oceans

In recent years, innovations such as blogging, Second Life, Skype, digital identities, social networks, virtual goods, app markets, location services, QR codes, smartphones, streaming video and groovyware like Kinect have been seen as weird and wonderful innovations that emerge from the web.  However, in reality they are all just small examples of the creative destruction unleashed as the world’s media, technology and telecomms industries are drawn onto a single intertwined IP platform, a platform that itself continues to evolve and become more powerful.

The implications for brands as they adopt to this pace of technological change, as well as a more globalised world with powerful new economies, are to say the very least far-reaching.  Tides of creative destruction that are drawing whole industries into these networked media oceans may be the New Normal for many years to come. Far from being phased by this new environment, consumers (aka people) embrace the freedom, convenience and choice networked media provides and enthusiastically push the boundaries.

The brands that establish the best fleets, skippers and navigational intelligence are likely to be the winners, positioning themselves to ride these constant waves of change.  Others will be swamped, swallowed up by networked media super-predators or, worst of all, ignored as the giant shoals of consumers that they once used to shoot in a barrel disappear into vast murky waters, never to be seen again.

...the rise of Second Life.  The fact that the online virtual world was largely populated by people who wanted to get away from the excessive branding and commercial bias of the real world, was not a barrier to brands who saw it as a good place to set up shop.  Literally in some cases.  Nor did it matter that these people, broadly ubergeeks, were not likely to be customers for those brands.  Finally, it didn’t even matter that most people couldn’t access Second Life at all, as it required double-fast broadband and a super-computer to manage the whizzy 3D graphics.  The only thing that mattered was that it was growing quickly.

That said, I do understand how highly intelligent marketing folk find themselves on that ledge in the first place.  There is a real Siren's-call quality to the web and digital wizadry for marketers and it’s easy to end up trashed on the rocks.  Matters are complicated by it not being easy to sort the signal from the noise.  It’s often tricky to tell which new web service, application or online trend is going to succeed.  Until it succeeds.  And once Silicon Valley's Hype Cycle begins, driven by the gazillions of dollars that Sand Hill Road seems to be able to find regardless of global economic conditions and the media gets on board, it becomes very difficult to ignore the latest fad.

As one of my most web-savvy, bottom-line focused clients puts it: ‘You don’t know if Facebook is going to take over from Google and it probably won’t. However, if it does and you’re not on board, you’ve got some tough questions to answer.’ What begins as an attempt to hedge against the possible explosion of a new online service becomes a shop in Second Life being attacked by the Second Life Liberation Army.

Now that the digital world is becoming more integrated with the mainstream it’s easier to bring the web’s wonderful new tools and opportunities within an organisation’s overall strategic decision-making.  One aspect of that is using networked media within the marketing mix, rather than as a novel adjunct.  And that starts by taking a step back from the ledge.

A few years ago I sat in the office of a much-admired Digital Creative Director when a call came through from the mega-media shop that his agency was linked with via its global network.  When the DCD saw the number flash up his shoulders slumped and he rushed around to find someone to answer the call and say he wasn’t available. He then switched his mobile off and we sped from the building for a long lunch, over which he explained his reaction.  For the best part of five years he’d been taking those calls and a pattern had been established that he could no longer bear.  It went something along the lines of the media powerhouse explaining they’d had a terrific brief from a client at MegaCorp and it needed some digital input.  However, it would then emerge that the brief had already been answered and the client had bought a concept in the shape of an above-the-line campaign.  So the digital agency was actually being brought into the process a few months after the brief had landed and was being asked to provide a digital execution of a TV spot.  “Sometimes they just say, ‘make it go viral’”, said the DCD with the look of someone who’s been given a plate of old mutton and asked to give it a lamb makeover.  I was reminded of this conversation a few weeks ago whilst talking to a creative team from a widely-regarded digital agency, also associated with a large parent network. One of them half-joked that...

Plus ça change it seems.

Now while it’s very easy to paint the mega-media powerhouses and large above-the-line creative agencies as the bad guys in all of this, it’s too simplistic to do so.  Often the client wants his agencies to work in this way to simplify all the reporting procedures and billing structures.  And for many large brand owners the above-the-line aspect of the marketing programme remains the most valuable part of the mix to get right.  That groovy, feelgood TV spot or shiny outdoor 48-sheet is what they are going to use in key parts of their business.  For instance, when convincing a multiple retailer to give them that oh-so-valuable extra four inches of shelf space in its 2000 national superstores.  Or to their old-school chairman at the end of the year in a brand performance review.

And where that’s true for a national campaign it’s even more pressing for a global product launch, extension or promotion where the client's appetite for the simplicity of The Big Idea, or reductive thinking that above-the-line agencies do so well, becomes even more acute.

However, the problem is that in this status quo no one is really getting what they want.

The brand manager can’t experiment too much with funky new digital channels.  He is caught between the rock of his Chairman’s shareholders and their forensic analysis of excitements such as dividend yield and the hardboiled place of the nation’s category buyers at Tescos et al; individuals who are very happy to see the new creative for the latest campaign, but only in the context of its contribution to their Gross Margin.  Which normally translates into above-the-line media spend.

So the brand owners are forced to keep shelling out on above-the-line media and its shaky metric models, and can never quite get to the sunny uplands where beautiful creative treatments combine with the ruthless efficiency of digital channels and every buck knows its bang.

Furthermore, consumers (aka people) find their attention is fought over to such a degree that they may as well as stand in a room of people all shouting a brand or product name through a loudhailer, most of which they will never have an interest in buying.  So they resort to the modern equivalent of ear defenders, in the shape of PVRs, ad blockers, paid streaming services, social networks and DVD boxed sets.

Meanwhile, the poor old agency networks and their constituent parts are required to come up with The Big Idea that can be used in seventy-eight global territories, whilst magically disseminating itself across the world for free via the web.

And somewhere in this media and marketing war of attrition, an above-the-line agency that has spent five months getting global buy-in from a valued client, emails a brief to a digital agency that, however well-crafted, will probably sound a lot like, ‘We have a new brief. Please make it go viral.'  At which point the digital agency boss tells his PA he’s going out for a long lunch.

So what to do?  As with so many of these issues, I think the answers may lie buried within the thorny and toxic world of agency ego, status and calcified vested interest.

When chatting around the issue with the aforementioned digital creative team, I commented that surely we’ve now reached a point where we can recognise the respective strengths of traditional and digital channels and each can be used to make the other more effective.  Or in other words TV (however you take it) remains a great way to drive awareness of a product, service or brand, whilst digital and networked media help create personal relevance and that all-important path-to-purchase.  Can't we just take the ingredients and tweak the recipe so it’s a little tastier for the modern palette I suggested, whilst trying not to sound too naive.

‘They won't let that happen because then it wouldn’t be their idea,’ replied one of the digital creatives about the above-the-line agency.  And therein, I suspect, lies the rub.

The media and marketing industry is generally a sink-or-swim, take-no-prisoners, eat-what-you-kill business where clients and agency Grand Fromages can make a gold-plated career from being associated with a particularly successful campaign. This creates a ruthlessly competitive environment where the creative tensions required to come up with genuinely excellent, provocative and stirring ideas create a hothouse.  But one in which the acquisition of Silver, Gold, Yellow or Black awards is what really counts.  And, together with brands' thirst for simplicity in a complicated world, those awards require and drive clear ownership of The Big Idea.

So in an age where its never been easier to share with the world, the siloes of the marketing industry encourage its brightest folk to keep their wonderful ideas tightly clasped to their chests. And until that changes, the advertising business will remain vulnerable. In the emerging world of networked media the sleek technology-driven super-predators can’t release their new schemes fast enough. Which leaves them well-positioned to snaffle up media budgets while the agency teams are avoiding each other's calls.