The media and marketing industry has long been guilty of beating consumers (aka people) over the head with commercial brand messages until they pay attention. This mass marketing approach is crudely military with big brands seeking maximium reach and frequency by launching campaigns that seek to cut-through and penetrate. However, modern networked media has put the power back in the hands of individuals who are simply able to turn off, fast-forward, filter out and unsubscribe from irritating ads. This has left brands in a quandary about how to reach consumers and build that illusive equity that encourages shareholders to keep investing their shekels.  However, whilst mass marketing results in the majority of folk covering their ears, the new alternative may leave them looking over their shoulders.  This is because big brands are increasingly focusing on mass-snooping exercises to gather data about individuals in the hope of identifying likely customers.  Clearly, the collection of information about people isn't new. The direct marketing industry has been with us...

...a good while and its focus has always been establishing information at an individual level. And twenty years ago Tesco’s clubcard began a revolution by examining every electronic customer transaction and building detailed profiles of likely future behaviour. Furthermore, a decade back, the Search phenomenon exploded allowing people to flag their purchasing intentions through Google and Yahoo’s indexes - information that was then sold onto brands keen to fulfil the order.

However, today’s world of so-called Big Data, and specifically the explosion of information about individuals' online activity, makes all that has gone before look positively quaint.  Facebook sucks up the identities of one billion individuals around the world.  Mobile groovyware tracks the locations of gazillions of folk as they go about their daily lives. Tracking cookies (that register as spyware in most anti-malware utilities) follow people's online paths. Social 'firehoses' are crunched in real-time to spot insights into people’s dreams and desires. Search engines build profiles of people to personalise results - sometimes before a request is made. Algorthmic machines examine online till rolls. Connected TVs monitor what people are watching and sometimes - even who is watching. Sensors built into everything from cars to domestic devices report back to distant databases.

Digital Trails

The result is rivers of bits and bytes composed of a gazillion individual actions that every second pour into the data centres of the world’s techno super-predators.  All driven forwards by underlying technological developments including powerful open-source developer communities using Hadoop and GitHub, low-cost hardware, and super-cheap storage and memory.

While the growth of this area can be astonishing, what's most interesting is how this information is being used and its implications for the relationship between big brands and customers. A frenzy of analytical services has appeared that slice and dice these digital trails promising brands the answer to every problem they’ve ever had. 

Demand-side platforms, real-time bidding and retargeting systems allow brands to buy audiences rather than media, which is ad speak for following people around the online shopping malls and bombarding them with advertising as they approach the checkout.  Additionally, clever integrated systems are appearing that gather disparate data sources to build pictures of households and what they’re actually doing - rather than what they say they are doing.

In short, we seem to be swapping a world where brands carpet bomb neighbourhoods with commercial messages to one where they hide in their gardens with a pair of binoculars.

The Creepy Line

Consumers (aka people) continue to fight back against mass-snooping by demanding tools to help them hide away.  The scale and prominence of this ongoing battle was highlighted recently when a group of American Congressman lobbied the Federal Trade Commission - no less - about its involvement with WC3’s attempts to standardize Do Not Track (DNT) features on web browsers. 'The legislators said they were concerned that these options for consumers might restrict, ‘the flow of data at the heart of the Internet’s success'.  In a related row, Microsoft found itself the – possibly unlikely – champion of consumer rights when it was targeted by Big Brands about its decision to make DNT the default on the latest version of Explorer.

Meanwhile Google is in a simililarly high-stakes battle with the European Union about what the technology giant's ex-supremo, Eric Schmidt, called the ‘creepy line’ and where it sits. (In reality, the identification of such a distinction is likely to be elusive with so many grey areas appearing, such as the use of anonymised data).  Whereas in the UK, the Government has launched Midata that promises to force companies to disclose the information they hold about their customers.

The temptations for brands to snoop are easy to understand and the industry to help them do so is booming.  Whilst at the moment techniques are largely focused on the online world, it’s not difficult to see how their use will extend in the near future. John Wren, the Uber Grand Fromage at Omnicom recently spoke of his expectation that all media will eventually be bought and sold using such methods. Words which must have sent a shiver through traditional media companies that have historically traded using a good lunch and their own statistical models such as Neilsen’s and BARB’s TV ratings.  These systems rely on extrapolated panel data as oppose to the 'digital exhaust fumes' of real-time behavioural information, and increasingly look like historical artefacts.

A New Consumer Contract

However, brands beware.  It will be vital to take a measured approach if they want to stay on the right side of public opinion.  While most consumers understand the new networked media contract whereby we give up personal information in return for useful or entertaining services, they are highly attuned to companies overstepping the mark.  

When the contract feels right to the consumer, such as is the case with Nike+, the massively popular service that offers jogging goodies in exchange for information about how customers train, it’s a hugely powerful asset.  However, when a brand is just snooping and not offering much back in return the creep factor quickly builds.  Worse still if brands appear to be just snooping without any payback at all.

There’s been much talk recently of CMOs spending more dosh on technology than CIOs.  Part of this expectation is the belief that marketing departments will become data warehouses collecting ever more specific information about people and using powerful Big Data analysis tools to pinpoint likely customers.  However, such mass snooping is likely to just drive people into the arms of new services such as the rapidly-expanding search engine Duck Duck Go that promises to never track its users. Or the Locker Project which aims to help people keep their online data trails private.

Consumers tired of being targeted by Big Brands are unlikely to reward marketers who switch from mass marketing to mass snooping. Only the brands that understand the new networked media contract in its broader sense are likely to prosper. That means marketing folk lifting their heads from analytical dashboards and viewing consumers as individuals - not just digital data trails to be bottled, bought and sold.

Like many independent web workers, I sometimes find it tricky when people ask me what I do professionally. The day-to-day reality is that I research and analyse digital trends that I think are interesting and help like-minded clients work out if and how they are relevant. However, people don't always find that helpful. So sometimes I say that I work with marketeers and brands that feel overwhelmed by technology. Which, I suspect, can sound patronising. But it shouldn't. Feeling overwhelmed is a perfectly understandable reaction as, rather like the rain in the UK at the moment, technological change can seem unrelenting, which for many people is disturbing. I recall a session I ran earlier this year when an executive told me she was worried that the pace of digital change was eventually going to make her redundant. Not because her job was going to disappear but, despite being a smart, accomplished individual she felt she didn't have the time to keep up with the latest bits and bytes. Once again, this is understandable and the individual in question is certainly...

...not alone if my experience is anything to go by. When it comes to the ever-changing web, like the current British weather, it is easy to be left meekly asking - 'when will it end?'. Just as a bright spot appears to offer the hope of respite from chaotic storms, the web and networked media may hold out a period of calm, only for another digital deluge to arrive.

One way to manage these endless online squalls maybe to ignore the technology altogether and focus on the behaviour of the people in the markets that are of interest to you. Not only does this involve less jargon but it may be a more efficient way to work out what is and is not of relevance.  This is particularly true as larger, more sophisticated industries are drawn into networked media. 

For example, recently I’ve been working in connected or smart TV, the latest area to experience the full force of technological change. Many of the tides washing through the business are familiar currents that other industries have been navigating for some time - such as changing purchasing behaviour. 

One of the greatest challenges for TV companies is that their valuable content is being unbundled before their eyes. Cable or satellite packages offering one gazillion channels can feel like a super-comfy duvet under which to hide away on the sofa, until you realise that friends and neighbours are paying less-for-more through an online service. At which point said duvet can feel more like a smothering - and expensive - deadweight.

The difference with the TV business from other industries that have succumbed to digital tides is its sheer size and influence. Cash-bloated, top techno-predators such as Google, when launching an attack on the walls of Pay-TV, and possibly expecting a capitulation such as that which occurred in the newspaper, music, publishing, telephony and photographic industries, have found themselves effortlessly shrugged-off. 

However, there are signs that even TV giants are struggling against the prevailing wind and rain. Despite the odd respite, their defences are being eroded slowly by the weather systems of networked media. And not only are these new fronts more powerful each time they surge but, crucially, they are also being driven by consumers (aka people) keen to find better value and choice.

In such a market, it can be tempting to try and follow every development and forecast the impact of each new application or incremental change.  However, in reality this might simply not be possible, let alone helpful.  A little like predicting the weather, it’s useful to a point and then the data becomes overwhelming.  Which is why it's important to watch users - not just engineers.

Matt Locke, longtime TV-agitator, expresses this very helpfully in his recent post: ‘Behaviours are one of the most important things to track in this fast-changing environment. If you don’t look for new things your audience are learning to do – like contributing to hashtag memes on Twitter, joining campaigns on Facebook, playing online games synced to live broadcasts, or funding projects they love on Kickstarter – then you won’t be able to see how this affects their ‘traditional’ relationship with your tv programme/film/book. Until someone else comes along with a product that ties these new behaviours to your content, and suddenly you’re out of the loop (as the Kindle did for publishers).’

At the moment, the idea that the TV industry may change radically seems strange. However, I am always struck at how fickle people are in their behaviour and attitudes.  A good number of years ago I recall the rolling-eyes and raised-brows at a conference when I showed the attendees Wikipedia. Today, it’s pretty much a first port-of-call for even the most sceptical and crowd-sourcing is acclaimed as progress in some of the most complex markets.  It’s not necessary to understand why and how these new systems work.  It’s enough to see that people like and use them. 

Silicon-Valley’s obsession with the nuances of technological change can sometimes appear to have turned us all into a bunch of widget-obsessed lunatics.  However, the broader view is that markets are being changed not by technology itself, but by the manner in which it changes our behaviour and subsequent commercial choices.  Often in ways that are positive, interesting or even fun.  So next time the latest techno-storm leaves you feeling overwhelmed, try and ignore it and, instead, watch the people around you and how they are coping with the changing elements.

The other day I was chatting to a Digital Grand Fromage (they exist now) in one of the big four ad networks who told me that one problem with today's brand marketers (aka clients) is they don’t like data.  Huh?  Don’t like data?  How can this be I thought?  The marketing industry is utterly obsessed with the stuff; be it GRPs, TRPs, OTS, RPC or the myriad of consumer segmentation schemes, such as TGI. Or the insights garnered from quantitative or qualitative market research about, for instance, awareness and recall. Surely, the marketing business is awash with metrics and measurement.  In fact, I think what this highly-esteemed DGF was talking about was a fear of the type of data produced on the web, by machines, apps, devices and other web wizadry.  Not ‘proper’ media and marketing information like BARB.  At a superficial level this fear of online data is the understandable anxiety felt by brand marketers who, when trying to invest their media megabucks, are interrupted by someone suggesting the use of a webby analytics package.  A kind of ‘dashboard-itis'.  Such dashboards promise to offer huge amounts of business-critical, C-Suite-level insights into ROI delivery.  In reality, they make people want to rush into a dark room and apply wet flannelling to their throbbing brows. Indeed, ongoing exposure to...

However, the fear goes beyond presentational matters.  Today’s networked media environment is chucking out data about consumers that goes right to the heart of many of the assumptions that have driven the marketing industry in the past.

Out Of The Lab

Previously, a lot of marketing data has in fact been a theoretical version of the world that allows brand executives to test their ideas and assumptions.  Which means that like a scientist in a pristine, controlled laboratory, not only can almost nothing go (badly) wrong, but the nature of the experiments can be designed within parameters that are brand-friendly.  

However, the digital data being collected today about consumers (aka people) is of a different type altogether.  In the brand laboratories it was normal, and encouraged, to ask consumers what they wanted, because they were seen as rational individuals who could be popped into an appropriate segment and then analysed over time.  In networked media, the data being gathered about people is recording what they are actually doing.  Be it browsing, buying, watching, commenting, choosing, liking as well as who they know and, increasingly, where they are.

And what is now becoming evident is that comparing the laboratory findings with the digital bits and bytes is like comparing zebras and camels. They’ve both got four legs and like eating grass but the similarities end there.  And it's a stark distinction that is being recognised in a wide range of different places, as the amount of this 'new' data grows.

Word Is Spreading

At James Governor’s most splendid MonkiGras bashola earlier this year (imagine being in GitHub where the entry-level IQ is about 152) Matt LeMay from bit.ly, the URL shortner, brilliantly explained the gulf between the links that people publish themselves, that are mostly erudite, witty and eloquent, and those they actually click on, that are mainly gossipy, fun and frivolous.  Memorably, LeMay described this as kitteh vs chickin; the tension between our egos that want to be seen as adorable and gorgeous and our earthy desires to be entertained and tittilated.  This apparently innocent gap is, in fact, the yawning precipice upon which brand marketeers now teeter.

However, it’s not just Silicon Valley types who have noticed such discrepancies.  Monkchips also points to a paper from the Bank of England, no less, that notes how the type of data available online is, ‘collected as a by-product of normal activity, rather than requiring individuals or firms to respond to survey questions after the event’.  The BofE then explains the benefits of this stating that, ‘this can avoid problems associated with non-response or inaccurate responses. And it also means that information is continually collected on a wider range of issues, rather than just on a few pre-determined questions. As a result, search data can help analyse issues that arise unexpectedly.’

Elsewhere, one of Coke’s top marketing executives, the splendid Jonathan Mildenhall, in a video describing the direction in which the giant brand’s marketing must head, doesn’t pull his punches about 'right' and 'wrong' data. Talking about current research techniques he states that, ‘qualitiative testing is an increasingly outmoded and irrelevant tool’, and with regard to TV commercials, adds that, ‘we must avoid qualitative testing of scripts altogether’.  Indeed, Mildenhall goes as far as calling such techniques, 'the enemy'.  He describes the need to move towards, 'interactive feedback and online consumer dialogue tools', and 'conversational and real-time testing', because, 'working directly with consumers is exciting.'

Changing Face Of Marketing Research

Similar concerns are expressed by the Vice-Chairman of Ogilvy Group, Rory Sutherland, who comments that, 'the other failing of marketing is that it is over-dependent on conventional market research as its sole source of wisdom about human behavior.  It has thus denied itself access to many valuable insights which come from understanding unvoiced, subconscious influences on decision-making.  As David Ogilvy once said, 'The trouble with research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say'.

Sutherland isn't talking about digital data directly but he points to a failing of big brands that the firehose of online bits and bytes is addressing.  Historically, brand marketeers have assumed that if they take the time out to ask innocent bystanders how their wonderful plans for a brand extension of toothpaste can be improved, the least people can do is answer them in an enthusiastic and factual manner.  However, this is a partial view at best.  Much like waterboarding, the average brand research session leaves people happy to spout any old nonsense in order to satisfy the crazies who are demanding real opinion and insight about the rational use of toiletries.

'The reliance on attitudinal data we once had in market research is fading and being replaced by behavioral data,' says Professor Girish Punj from the University of Connecticut School of Business in Storrs.  'What people are buying online and their interactions with call centers. The new phenomenon people are calling 'big data' is 80 or 90 percent of the behavioral kind. This means that some of the attitudinal stuff on which marketing research is based is no longer sufficient for companies to make good decisions based on what their customers do,' he adds.

The Dangers Of Make-Believe

'Big Data' is taking over from 'Social' as the buzzword du jour.  However, just like social, big data means entirely different things to different people.  There isn't a single version or guidebook.

For marketeers, one implication is that the windows of their hermetically-sealed brand laboratories - where control is everything - are cracking.  The result is that a glorious range of street-level cultures, aromas, communities and flavours are wafting into these highly-scrubbed, clinical environments.  The challenge is that these new influences aren't easily bottled and segmented demographically, psychographically or into any other spreadsheet-friendly format.  

However, make no mistake, these exotic new sensations are all raw data about actual, not reported, consumer behaviour.  Brands that abandon their laboratories for the hubbub of the street will benefit from an instant connection with consumers.  Those that don't will increasingly find themselves in a world of make-believe.

...should, ‘not carry on’.  The individual’s intervention developed into an impressive and heartfelt, ten-minute diatribe about everything that was wrong with the web and its procession of shiny baubles.  However, far from derailing matters the passionate outburst served to draw from others their genuine concerns, fears and frustrations.

Another notable moment came when, in front of an audience of about one hundred, a Grand Fromage commented, ‘this is all very well, but how will it help us sell more toilet bleach?’. The GF’s bristling disquiet was palpable, and was followed by a drain-blocking rant that left the room in silence.  In the subsequent coffee break, one of the other attendees sidled over to me and whispered, ‘sorry about that, at least you've seen what we’re dealing with’.  However, the intervention created a great point of focus for the rest of the day, as people unpicked the GF's forthright opinions.

On another occasion in a session for a Government department, the atmosphere remained icy-cold, until one individual explained that she had recently divorced her husband after finding his social networking page was, er, very social indeed.  The room then immediately warmed up as others piled in with anecdotes about how digital bits, bobs and bytes had affected their lives personally and professionally.

Then there was the time that a senior member of a creative team announced to the room that, in his opinion, the web was like a dog who had learned to walk – 'interesting but ultimately pointless'.  The individual's colleagues then piled in and the tone was set for a feisty and provocative day.

The best sessions tend to have a good bit of such grit in them.  I suspect this is because digital and networked media has proliferated to such a degree that it affects almost every aspect of people’s lives.  As a result, understanding its complexities requires an overview of the opportunities but also of the frustrations and anxieties it creates.  Of course, I may well be wrong on that but I’m sure someone will put me right soon!

Last week I was chatting to a Grand Fromage in private equity and he asked me what I do. I explained that my professional role is helping companies with challenges, in all their guises, arising from the ongoing march of networked media.  The GF in question said he found the area exciting and clearly had a sophisticated view so his next questions were very interesting. He asked, 'when will it end?', and will there be a, ‘Y2K moment’?  By which I think he meant will all this techy stuff just stop and leave us sitting around wondering why on earth we’d spent half of our lives typing updates into Twitter.  I know exactly what he means.  I frequently find myself wondering if technology has, finally, hit some plateau and that everything will just calm down a bit; whether Silicon Valley will lay off the macchiatos for a while so we can all take a breath. These questions may be down to the basic human desire for a stable, predictable world.  As they say, no one really likes change.  But change, it would appear, is what we've got. Furthermore, the type of change that can seemingly arrive from nowhere.  Strange new digital gubbins build up a head-of-steam under the radar and then evidently pop-up fully-formed, driving people into odd new Alice-In-Wonderland behaviours.  For example, normal folk become determined to be ‘Mayor’ of their local coffee shop.  But not really - only virtually!  Others start having conversations with, rather than on, their phones.  Or, more fundamentally, strange...

...new politically-driven movements emerge such as Anonymous, Wikileaks or The Pirate Party.  Outfits that seem to operate beyond normal conventions, staying one step ahead of the world’s most heavily-resourced investigative powers.

So, when will it end?

In fact, we’ve lived with this apparently rapid change for a good few years now.  I remember trying to describe Wikipedia to a corporate audience in 2005 - and watching arms cross and eyebrows collectively rise and fall.  And as we stand today there’s no doubt these changes are continuing.  Just look at the myriad of activity in the connected TV space as linear broadcast signals blend with broadband and devices and media stack, mesh and merge.  The result is that the big daddy of media, TV, is being sucked into the networked media ocean, where it will have to fight for its position in commercial food chains as they are brutally realigned.

Or if connected TV doesn’t grab you, how about Bre Pettis' Makerbot and the 3D printing revolution?  Or Linked Data, Dwolla, geo-caching, windows that are also computer screens, Shoemocracy, Kickstarter, SecondMarket, Hadoop, Streeviolence, DuckDuckGo, phone wallets, networked pepper plants, virtual currencies, web apps like Untapped, Twitch.TV or the vast open source coding platform GitHub that's now being used by the UK Government.  Many weird names, many new things.  It never ends.

But perhaps that the point.  Maybe the goalposts have moved for good and our sensibilities about change haven’t quite acclimatised.  In the face of a blizzard of new gizmos, gadgets and online wizadry, it’s very easy to forget that the greatest shift is that large parts of the world’s population have been joined together for the first time - without anyone in total control.  And that process is a continuing, indeed, accelerating one that has created a new status quo.  

So, is asking, 'when will it end?', the wrong question?

Maybe this never-ending stream of new digital oddities is simply the result of a generational shift. Now anyone in the world with access to a connected screen can code, curate, commune or collaborate around their own ideas, passions and beliefs - however peripheral.  All because they want to change something - or just to tinker. Nothing is an outlier if someone, somewhere finds it interesting.  

Governments, corporates and media may wish to put the blinkers back on - but it’s probably too late.  It looks like the shackles are off for good.  In which case, waiting for things to settle down could mean a long wait.  Perhaps the new status quo is people doing stuff they’re into – which is a pretty low barrier to entry.

What if what we are seeing is a kind of cultural big bang where people, for the first time, are expressing their own version of the desires, concerns, cares and hopes that we all share?  Why would we want that to end?  Maybe that's the question we should really be asking.

...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 November 9th as part of its CPD 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.