...should probably be of concern to you.  However, if you’re betting on the broth then the game is still very much on – with maybe only a few upgrades and tweaks required.

Either way, there can no longer be much doubt about the influence of social media and the like.  I recently was courted by a large financial institution with some completely unintelligible charts that the company assured me confirmed a sunny future outlook for my pension pot.  And then I found this.  When I asked the company in question to explain, the silence was deafening – and the marketing game was over.  I don’t think I’m alone.  As Facebook becomes the fifth most populated populus on the planet, linking everyone with an opinion about the tiniest product choice to everyone else with a view, the sharing-and-comparing of decisive commercial opinion looks set to continue.

What’s the answer?  Well it’s a concept that has become so widely abused that just mentioning it immediately sucks the life from any communication – quite possibly including this one.  Especially when used by people who have clearly only a faint recollection of its actual meaning.  However, it’s something that we all respond to but it cannot be gamed.  Yes – passion. 

It’s why I thought this post from the splendidly named Freddie Laker about the marketing paradox was so spot on. “The 'techies' have done a great job of continuing to innovate and evolve the medium. Now it’s time for marketers to show the same passion for innovation and evolve with the medium, rethink our approaches and be respectful of the most intimate of digital touch points.”  It’s true!  The marketing industry has become so devoid of any real passion that the technology industry is now setting the pace.  The nerds are more creative than the creatives!  The engineers are more inspiring than the art directors!

If genuine passion becomes the main engine behind marketing success in the future, the game has changed outright.  Because however many metrics you throw at campaigns lacking this special sauce, none will stick.  All you’ll be doing is measuring an empty room in a different way.

The Sun’s decision to support the UK Conservative party instead of Gordon Brown’s New Labour is creating plenty of interesting discussion.  Spinmeister Alastair Campbell says The Sun isn’t as important as it once was.  Well, he would say that wouldn’t he?  However, whatever his motivation, he’s right.  Now, there’s nothing I like more than putting my feet up with a bacon sandwich, cup of char and The Currant Bun, but it surely isn’t the massive social and cultural force it was in the eighties.  In 1992, the paper had huge sway and cruelly lampooned Neil Kinnock with this classic front page.  Then followed it up with the famous headline – ‘It Was The Sun Wot Won It!’.  Powered by the vast yet always entertaining ego of Kelvin McKenzie, The Nation’s Favourite reached its highest average sale in the week ending 16 July, 1994, when the daily figure was 4,305,957.  Today, along with all other nationals, The Sun's circulation is greatly diminished.  Although at more than 3 million is still very substantial.  However, in the nineties we weren't all connected up to each other.  There weren't 10-20m Brits active on Facebook (depending on who you believe).  The share-and-compare economy was still restricted to chats over the garden fence.  I’ve long given up on the idea that one media will usurp another.  But I really believe the soup is getting thicker and more interesting.  In 1990, newspapers were opinion and opinion were newspapers.  Today, the mainstream media shrieks out its sensational opinion often highlighting the darkest most gruesome aspects of our generally splendid country.  However, that is then filleted, dissected and reduced down to a more reflective – frequently more positive view – by individuals who comment, link, curate, challenge and question the views of Murdoch & Co.  Far from being the echo chamber that mainstream media often characterizes social and other networked media as, the web is now the way the majority of people filter what’s good and bad.  They listen to their friends and see what they are paying attention to.  So will it be The Sun wot win it for Cameron?  Or will it be up to Facebook to give him the thumbs-up?

...advertising platform providing granular targeting of, you guessed it, people - not pages.  You want to reach females over thirty-five who live in Manchester, watch Eastenders, like dogs and read the Daily Mirror?  No problem, welcome to Facebook Ads.  And note this profile is not a theoretical one taken from the media plan and personified on a mood board.  It's not someone who may or may not be sitting in their front rooms watching a TV show, with the sound down, talking to their friends while they reach for their Freeview FF button.  It's real data.  Data which is reaching an incredible scale with 300 million people signed up making it bigger in populous that most countries in the world.   And make no mistake once people are there - they stick.  Additionally, I would suggest it's the most innovative web service on the planet with its Connect functionality driving forward usage on a massive scale, APIs-galore, corporate brand pages, mobile service, digital gifting and virtual currency. Not to mention its recent purchase of the Friendfeed team, who one can only think are there to help FB out-Twitter Twitter.  Or indeed how its F8 platform drove today's massive growth in applications.  Or the brain drain of engineers from Google who have been hired to understand the mind-blowing amount of data FB is now capturing.  If you need proof just look at how Facebook has become the default, trusted option for the mainstream user to take part in the share-and-compare economy.  As Volgestein notes: "By Facebook's estimates, every month users share 4 billion pieces of information—news stories, status updates, birthday wishes, and so on. They also upload 850 million photos and 8 million videos".  Now there are plenty of good reasons to be concerned about Facebook and its plans.  Ownership of data, visibility of personal information, privacy settings, search functionality, that weird Beacon business and its private ownership base.  However, those things are only of interest to people who study its inner workings for a living and for whom movement in technology trends is akin to the latest football scores on a Saturday afternoon.  No one else cares.  Even if they should.  My buddy Mark doesn't.  He just cares about Facebook because that's where his pals are.  And who can argue with that?

...crave the time to consider strategy and prod powerpoint plans.  And they covet the perceived security of doing so in a black box.  As ever, the answer isn’t to go from one closed extreme to the opposite open end of the spectrum.  It’s about taking the same elements and finding a new blend.

Several client engagements I have worked recently on have been prompted by large corporations being caught out by the need for speed in modern marketplaces.  One media company told me of their horror as they watched a small mistake on their part get picked up by people-powered network news, become part of the mainstream news agenda and travel around the world.  A cycle that fed on itself for a few weeks causing havoc inside the business.  By the time they had cranked up their own internal systems, the feeding frenzy was in full effect.  ‘We didn’t have the opportunity to nip it in the bud,’ my client observed regretfully.

Part of the challenge is that when the marketplace is spinning so fast it’s hard to tell what’s going to grow and what’s going to just drift away.  Everything starts with a single tweet.  No memes look interesting when they begin. They don’t wait for next month’s committee meeting for the permission to grow.  Which is a problem if a brand reaction requires approval from the brand steering group, the minutes of which are reported a week subsequently.

Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to try some new processes that are more in keeping with the pace of today’s networked marketplaces. Instead of the internal ping-pong reporting that drove everything when I was an account executive, the systems that have worked best allow immediate action followed by continuous real-time assessment.  The shift is not unlike the difference that Clay Shirky points to when he describes the need for journalism to move from filter then publish to publish then filter.

And while it may seem scary and difficult, I can report that it’s much more satisfying than adding a response to a month-old blog post.  Better to stutter along in the live conversation meeting new friends as you go than craft the perfect retort, only to discover that everyone has left the party.