Communities Dominate Brands

From Utilty to Futility: Demographics in Marketing

Our friend Peggy Ann Salz over at M Search Groove mentioned the diminshing utility of using demographics in marketing segmentation and targeting. I wanted to return to this topic, and argue loud and clear, that the evidence is overwhelming, that we (marketing professional) have experienced in the past few years a total shift where customer demographics have gone from utility to futility. Yes, futility. They are now counter-productive. You, reading this blog, need to start to remove all references to demographics in all of your company marketing.

What is demographics? It is consumer data based on statistics relating to our lives. Our age, our marital status, our address (typically the zip code/postal code) etc.

Demographics were a powerful way to segment and target our marketing in the last century, when we had nothing better. There are often significant statistical correlations with our address or marital status or educational achievement level or our age, to our propensity to spend on a given product or service. For example, a married home-owner with kids, is far more likely to buy home and life insurance than a single young adult or indeed a teenager. Equally a young single adult is more likely to go out partying on the weekends in the hottest clubs with loud music etc. A person with an address on Manhattan's upper East Side is likely to be very wealthy, and ten miles up North still within the city of New York, in the ghettos of the Bronx, the people living there are very likely to be very poor. If you want to promote your newest model BMW or Cadillac Escallade, it made sense to target those in Upper East Side Manhattan rather than those in the poorest neighborhoods of the Bronx.

This was all very advanced marketing in the analog era of the previous century. It was far better than Henry Ford's one car for everybody ("Any color as long as its black" about the Model T Ford, which Henry Ford actually never said.)

For a while early in this decade there were some false promises of a change. Now we know, and the change is total. In the digital interactive age of marketing, wen have seen the total shift of demographics from utility to futility.

FALSE NEGATIVES

Demographics were far better than nothing, but they were also very imprecise. When we had nothing better, it made sense to use demographics in marketing segmentation and targeting. But take me for example. What good does it mean to know that I am a man? If you sell ladies underwear, it is certainly a reasonable assumption to think, that men don't buy your product, so to focus the advertising to women, who are more likely to buy.

But this introduces "false negatives" into your customer prospects database. Tomi is a man, therefore is not customer. Now, what if I am a cross-dresser (a man who likes to dress in womens' clothing)? The demograpic data will not identify that. It is very likely that the cross-dressing man would go to great lengths to hide this tendency. Now, granted, there probably are not very many cross-dressers as a percentage of all men, but even if its one percent or one tenth of one percent, if you target by demographics, your segmentation system excludes real prospects for your business.

Its not the only false negative. It is also possible, that I am in the process of a sex-change operation. Yes, this is probably even more rare, but they do exist. What was accurate once, as a demographic measure, has in reality changed.

But we don't need to be that sensationalist, I just wanted to make a point. In reality, many men buy lingerie to their wives and girl friends as gifts. Why not? if I am excluded as a customer, while the demographic facts are correct, and the analysis fits the majority of my gender, there is a significant size of a demographicminority, which is now locked out, as a false negative.

But note, if you pursue demographics, you are very likely to use proxy data for determining the gender of the prospective customer. Like Mr Charles Smith is very likely a man, yes. So if you are in Finland, and you see Tomi Ahonen as the name, you can rather safely guess, that the person is a man. But what if you are in Japan? Tomi is a woman's name in Japan. Now, if you are in New York, and are of Scandinavian ancestry, you probably would correctly identify me as a man, but if you are of Japanese ancestry, you would almost definitely classify me as a woman.

But wait, the demographic data may be collected accureately, but the entity has changed. The house is in the name of Mr Charles Smith, but he has recently split up with his (non--married) girl friend, and it is now the girl friend who lives in the house, as Mr Smith lives with his new girl friend in Los Angeles, as he waits for his house to be sold. but the behaviour in that address today, is no longer that  fo Mr Smith, it is that of his ex-girlfriend.

The exact same applies to all demographic data. Take age. Yes, we know that the youth tend to party and consume various youth services and products. And yes, on the whole, as we get older, we tend to "mature" and "settle down" and "get a life". Married, kids, home all that. Fine. Obviously there are some who never grow up (more of us among men than women ha-ha). But the more obvious part - a married 39 year old woman, two teenager kids, employed. Suddenly starts to behave exactly like a teenager 19 year old girl, same parties, clubs, nights out, text messages into the wee hours and all that etc.

What happened? She is suddenly single again, probably in the process of going through a divorce or separatation. If your system "discriminates" by age, you are missing this type of customer, totally.

Again, this is not a criticism of classic marketing textbooks. They were right, in the last CENTURY about trying to learn as much about customers as possible and then try to offer them targeted services and products. Today we have something FAR BETTER.

BEHAVIOR BASED SEGMENTATION

The only thing which matters is actual behaviour. How do we act. Not what we say we want, not what we say we would do, but the actual behaviour. And how can we capture that? Only with digital interactive services. And the most complete and rich data we get through engagement marketing methods, the tool which was first described in our book Communities Dominate Brands, the signature book for this blog.

All marketing communications will soon be behaviour based. All of it. Look at Google Ad Words. It is the first mass-market ad system that offer contextual ads. Not based on my demographics (on the whole) but based on what I did just now. If I search Nokia, it will offer me some links to phone websites. if I searched for BMW, I get cars, if I searched for lingerie, I get Victoria's Secret etc. Google does not care whether I am a man or woman searching for lingerie, if they've sold that top spot to VS, I get the Secret there, trying to lure me to visit their site, totally regardless of whether I'm a man or woman, married or single, 18 or 80, college educated or not.

This is only the beginning. You think Google Ad Words is radical, cutting edge? It is not. The internet is the 6th of the mass media. It is better than the first 5 legacy mass media, yes, and the internet has inhereant advantages over TV or radio or print or cinema etc, but mobile is the 7th of the mass media. A far more powerful platform to deliver customer info than the internet. Why? Because mobile can replicate everything that the internet can do, but mobile adds 7 unique elements that the internet cannot replicate. Mobile is a far more compelling mass media channel than the internet. And before you start to argue, Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, the next internet is on mobile. Google CEO Eric Schmidt says the same, the next internet is mobile.  Why did Apple Computer drop "computer" from its corporate name when they announced the iPhone in 2007? Because the future of the PC based internet is mobile.

Understand what I mean. The TV cannot replicate the internet. A newspaper cannot replicate the internet. You cannot do Google Adwords through the cinema screen. But the mobile can replicate  everything that the internet can do. Everything obviously including Google Adwords. Not just as contextual search, but mobile can take the concept much further, like I showed in the Flirtomatic First Face case study as one of 50 case studies in my eBook Tomi Ahonen Pearls Vol 1: Mobile Advertising.

In the future, all marketing communication will be targeted by our actual behaviour, not needlessly limited by any archaic measurements of demographics. Oh, and that zip code based segmentation in New York City? Yes, there are plenty of wealthy people in Manhattan, on the Upper East Side. But there are also individuals living there who can't afford any car, far less a BMW or Escallade, take the live-in maid or au-pair for example. You can have false positives in demographics. And as to the ghetto in the Bronx? yes, it may be a stretch, but there can be drug dealers and pimps and other criminals, living in he ghetto, who have a desire to have their "bling" and be quite capable of making purchases equal to or even exceeding that of millionaries on the Upper East Side. So we get a false negative.

I don't mean these as typical but every lost sale is your marketing actually hurting you, if better methods exist. Now, I am not a cross-dresser nor contemplating a sex-change. But honestly, I am a fan of rap music. I am a 49 year old white dude from Finland. I am TOTALLY off the demographic radar to get any marketing about hiphop music. And I don't dress like them, I don't own a pair of blue jeans and I don't own a pair of flashy tennis shoes. I dress even on casual days in my designer suits and ties (and hats). If your marketing system (segmentation/targeting) makes any assumptoins about me, about my age, my ethnicity etc, it will never know to sell me some new rap music. And if your system makes assumptoins based on what most rap music fans wear, you'll never sell me another Armani or Canali. Or if you are Armani or Canali, and assume something based on my music preference, you miss me again, as a customer.

But if you remove all demogrphic filters, and only measure actual behaviour, you will find that yes,. I do buy designer clothes -suits and ties for men, not teeshirts and jeans, and yes, I do listen to rap music (and buy it), and even occasionally buy some ladies lingerie - as a gift obviously, as if you track that tendency over time, they would be for women of a different size as per my girl friend of that time.

Demographics were a powerful marketing tool in the last century. Now we in marketing need to get rid of that outdated concept, and start to market based on actual behavior. We ahve some rudimenatary methods on the interent to capture customer data. That ability is far more enhanced on mobile. And as we learn to deploy engagement marketing methods, we will get vastly more satisfied customers , as so many of the recent mobile based campaigns have proven, with 30% response rates and above! not click-through rates, response rates.

I am not in any way suggesting "spam" unsolicited unwanted intrusive ads on mobile. That is equally dumb. No, I mean the newest engagement marketing methods, using mobile and the targeted and permission-based advertising. To see more, pick up a copy of my newest hardcover book, Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media.

Value is elusive in a post modern world

At the root of our current national dilemmas is an accepted lack of integrity. We are assaulted on all sides by corruption of such magnitude that it's hard to fathom.

Almost everything and everyone seems to be for sale. Value is assessed solely in terms of dollars. Quality is sacrificed to commerce and truthful communication is supplanted by marketing.

The type of gamesmanship that separates races, genders and ages by "preferences" is a most cynical brand. The integrity and dedication shown by American artists throughout our history provides a most needed and unequivocal counterstatement.

On the eve of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, let's recognize the pernicious effects of separating people by generic categories. In the fields of science and technology, we accept that one generation builds on another.

Wynton Marsalis

Do Communities Dominate personal security of Obama? The Blackberry Battle

Its only days from the inaugration of President Obama. Us technologists have been observing the ongoing "Battle of the Blackberry" to see who wins out. Can the most powerful man on the planet get his way and keep his connectivity. Do Communities Dominate also over his personal sercurity matters? The US President's personal bodyguards, the Secret Service, want to remove the gadget for fears of targeting. Other bureaucrats are also worried about national security matters and the modest secrecy level of the messages on the device. But President-elect Obama said as late as Friday, that he is hopeful he gets to keep his fave gadget.

BLACKBERRY AND NATIONAL SECURITY

First lets examine the consideratoin from the side of message secrecy. Yes, the emails on the Blackberry can be encrycpted, but the standard RIM software is not "military level" secure, so it is quite feasible for terrorists or just curious hackers to break the security on the Blackberry and spy on President Obama's emails and messages. Here I think the President-elect has shown a most remarkable level of calm and control in his two-year journey to the Presidency. He says that he regularly considers all emails he sends on his Blackberry, that they may end up on CNN, and keeps them at the level of communication that is not sensitive. Note how well he kept his campaign decisions such as his choice of VP a secret for example. I am personally not concerned that the Blackberry in the hands of President Obama would bring any remarkable leaks or breaches of national security. It may be different with other members of his staff and cabinet, however, some of whom will not be familiar with the mobile and always-on technologies such as the Blackberry (many of Obama's advisors are much older than he is), so from his administration, that could be a source of some leaks. But I don't see it with the President himself.

I want to make two technologist comments here. First, the Blackberry is a smartphone. So it accepts downloadable applications. I am quite sure, that both RIM the maker of the Blackberry, and various US defense industry IT companies, would be happy to develop a "US President level" secure email and messaging platform, more encrypted than the standard RIM Blackberry service, and yet fully capable to run on a modern high-end Blackberry and let the President have his gadget and its functionality. I would also expect that most companies would love to do this for modest costs, adapting from an already secure messaging platform, if they can then tell the world that its their solution which powers the President's Blackberry. I would guess that application would be very popular among top CEOs in the world, on their communciations.

Secondly the Blackberry is not the only handheld with a full qwerty keyboard and good messaging. While probably no phone is quite as good at it for emails, as the Blackberry, many others are even better at SMS for example (Nokias like their E-Series are typically masters at this. Nokia smartphones run on the Symbian platform) and many similar form-factor smartphones are on the Windows Mobile platform etc. And for the non-technical, the look of a similar form-factor "wide" texting phone with full alphabet keypad, will look exactly like a Blackberry even if it happens to be a Nokia E-61 or say a Samsung i770 which runs Windows Mobile. A partial solution or compromise could be that the President can't have a "RIM Blackberry" handset, but could have another device that is equivalent, allowing real time email, SMS text messaging, IM instant messaging and twittering, in his pocket, and on a good alphabetic keypad. So if the RIM smartphone operating system would happen to pose a problem, there are the rival operating systems from Symbian and Microsoft which would expand the options for a similar device.

BLACKBERRY AND THE PRESIDENT'S LOCATION

The bigger problem comes from pinpointing the President's position. The RIM Blackberry is a smartphone, a mobile phone. It has the same standard technological connectivity of any other mobile phone to the network, via the cellular telecoms infrastructure. What many mobile phone owners do not know, is that numerous times per second, the phone in your pocket transmits to the network your location. It is not only happening when you make or receive calls, nor is it only happening when you send or receive messages. The mobile phone updates continuously its status with the network. All cellular phones operate this way. The only way to hide its location, is to turn it off (or into the "flight safe" mode which disconnects the radio communications).

Back to Barack and his Blackberry. So the network will have to permanently monitor President Obama's Blackberry as it does for the millions of other cellular phones in the Washington DC area. If he wants his connectivity, with it comes location tracking, automatically and irreversably.

PINPOINT THE PRESIDENT

This causes a significant security risk to the President. It is totally possible for some unscrupulous person or persons to infiltrate a telecoms network and then gain access to the control centres of the networks to get real time permanent monitoring of the President's Blackberry. The work requirements of mobile phone networks control staff are nothing like national security classifications. As we do not go anywhere without our phones, so too you can be pretty sure wherever President Obama's Blackberry is, that is where the President is within arm's length of the device. If you want to aim a bomb or rocket or missile or mortar and know where his Blackberry is, this would give a great targeting opportunity to terrorists.

Most of the time, most networks only give an accuracy of 100 meters or so (300 feet) of where a phone is. But this is close enough. You'd pretty well know which hotel or which villa or which palace or which restaurant etc. It does mean that someone has to know the President's personal phone number, but if he is already communicating with his supporters, then the phone number is going to be widely disseminated if he continues on this mode.

SO LETS CREATE FAKE OBAMAS

Ha ha, I am reminded of the stand-in fakes that Saddam Hussein had hired, who would make public appearances on his behalf if he feared being shot at. There are rather easy ways to game the system from the security side if we want to keep the First Phone secret from the network. 

All it needs is for a virtual copy of this phone with some typically not used features as normal people don't need to have multiple phones with the same number. But this is techncially easy, typically done with a technology called a VPN (Virtual Private Network). For all outsiders the phone would seem like the same number, and behave just like a normal Blackberry. But rather than one, there would be for example six "Obama phones" and have all phones copy all incoming messages and incoming calls to each Obama phone. He could place calls or messages out of any one of them, and it would always look and feel the same to the people receiving the calls and messages.

So the President would receive the identical messages at the identical time, to all phones. No matter which phone he uses, he would have access to all incoming messages (and calls). All would ring simultaneously. Then lets say there are 6 such Obama phones, every morning the Secret Service would assign randomly one phone to the President, and the other five Obama phones would go to that day's decoy detail, so five secret service agents would walk around with the Obama phone in their pocket, ignoring the incoming messages and calls. If there were heightened security concerns, such as on foreign travel, the Obama phones could be swapped several times during the day. The phones can even be programmed to send occasional automated messages to random fake phones, so the decoy phones would seem to be used during the day at random moments.

From the point of the network, there would be no way to know which of the six identical phones was with the President, and which were with the decoys. Yes, perhaps if one were to do a deep analysis of the given calls and messages, yes, perhaps one could spot which of the phones was with the President, but this would require a far deeper level of hacking into the network and actively monitoring these phones. So yeah, I think technically, it is moderately easy to create a secure communciation environment around a smartphone like the Blackberry, and also to create ghosts to fool any hackers or spies to not know for sure which phone was with the President at any one point in time.

COMMUNITIES DOMINATE

So why does he want it? The current president didn't have a Blackberry. The previous presidents have managed to live just fine without permanent wireless connectivity to their electorate.

Note first, that communciation is a vital link. Think of the "hot line" the red phone to call directly from the White House to the Kremlin during the cold war? There is inherent value in immediate communications. The US president has 24 hours a day, in his detail, wherever he goes, even while on vacation, the one military escort who carries "the football" or the briefcase with the nuclear launch codes and connectivity to the nuclear missile control. Is it important? Yes. For decades the US President has felt it necessary to have 24 hour connectivity to nuclear weapons, in case of the USA facing a nuclear threat.

There are times when speed of connectivity is important. Well, what of the incoming President? Barack Obama has made his campaign one of the people, to do it together, and to let all participate. Is it not consistent with that philosophy, that the President would also want to remain to be in contact, and permanent connectivity, with the American people? Yes. The fight that President-elect Obama has waged for his Blackberry shows this intent, he wants to remain to be connected. Communities Dominate personal security.

The various Presidential pundits and analysts and experts this past election cycle have said many many times that the President becomes isolated in the White House, and detached from the people who elected the President. This is partly due to constraints in time - the world is full of giant crisis situations from Iraq and Pakistan to Iran and North Korea to Israel and Gaza to gaz with Russia and Ukraine to pirates of the Somalian to obviously the world economic crisis. And he has to run the world's biggest government and most powerful military with bases in dozens of foreign countries and obviously the world's biggest economy.

So the campaigning candidate has a lot of interest - and significant time - to connect and communciate with the electorate. But once in office, the US President is an incredibly stressful and all-consuming job. I do think it is good simply for the healt of the President, that his term is limited to 8 years, it would else kill many Presidents from heart-attacks and stress of the office.

THE APPEAL OF SECRECY

Anyway, part is time. But the other part is the secrecy machine that is government everywhere in every country. Even the US (and other major democracies) have lots of honest real secrets worth keeping (for a real concrete example, the present location of US navy's nuclear missile submarines while on patrol in the oceans of the world; these have to remain hidden and their current location a secret). That then creates a philosophy of secrecy, where official secrets are easily used to hide incompetence, mistakes, and even true abuses of power. The higher the position in the government and the longer the political career, the more there is a tendency to prefer secrecy. VP Dick Cheney was a prime example of extending the secrecy to as many areas as possible. Try to hide as much as possible to avoid scrutiny and public discussion about what the administration was doing.

I am sure - I don't know, I am guessing, but this seems obvious to me - that the fact that outgoing President George W Bush was not using email, was primarily for this reason, to keep things secret. Emails are too easily forwarded. But if something is only said in the Oval office, and there is a leak, then at least they know who were the people who attended the meeting, to discover the leak.

There is another side-effect of the isolation. When the President is cut off from "normal" communication with normal people, he or she becomes dependent on those who advise the President. This includes the cabinet, the bureaucracy and the White House advisors. The President gets a far smaller circle of contacts to give advice, which includes mostly technocrats who can claim long term professional competence in a given area of knowhow (say the regional experts of the former Soviet Republics in the State Department who can talk about the details of Uzbekistan vs Kazakhstan vs Turkmenistan). So there is an assumption that these people "know better." It is far too easy for the advisors to eliminate alternate viewpoints even when holding the best of intentions, simply to try to focus the discussion on given policy to the main points, on a tight agenda of very limited time with the President. All viewpoints are not going to be considered.

ALLOWS INFORMATION MANIPULATION

A far more sinister problem is when some administration advisors decide to exclude valid viewpoints to prevent discussion and take the chance away that their favoured choice is to be selected. Many have suggested that President Bush 2 had been a victim of this kind of manipulation of his information sources by advisors, some of whom have been quite ruthless and unscrupulous (VP Cheney's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted of crimes while in office).

The point is that if you deny the President and his administration of information, it easily leads to group-think, where similar assumptions and beliefs lead to a common view, which seems like a broad consensus but is actually a minority view held by a niche population. Presidents in the past have fallen for this kind of mistakes, from the Bay of Pigs with John F Kennedy to Iraq with Bush 2.

If the President had unfiltered contact to the outside world, it would first of all expose the President to alternate viewpoints, including many which are totally unfeasible, but every so often, may give a fresh idea. Like Alan Moore says, nobody is as clever as everybody. Communities Dominate.

Secondly, if the advisors know that the President gets unfiltered info from the outside, it means that the advisors have to be far more diligent in covering the significant issues truthfully and honestly; it would be a major embarrassment personally for any Presidential advisor if the President asks for missing information in a given briefing, which is something "the general public even knows." ie what is on the blogs for example.

OBAMA BEING DIFFERENT

The Obama campaign was the most transparent and open and inclusive of any in US history. He has said numerous times he wants to continue that when in office. He has said, for example, that all legislation will be put online prior to being decided, and will be open to comments from the public. So the electorate can see what his Administration is doing.

With this, he is now fighting to regain control of his beloved Blackberry. First, it is a great sign that he is willing to fight for this. At least so far, he has not given up on hope that he can remain in contact with the people. But secondly, I think it reflects a difference in the attitude we see with Generation C (Community Generation) and older generations, that they value the connectedness. It is an inherent benefit, there is pure gain out of being connected. Not only being able to call out and send messages, but even more importantly to be "reachable" and be able to be called and to be able to receive messages.

I don't know how much this is also a clever ploy in the balance of power between the incoming administration and the entrenched Washington machine, but if there is a method to this madness, that is also welcome and to be supported. I noticed that for example President Bill Clinton has come on the side of Obama that he wishes Obama wins this battle and gets to keep his Blackberry.

We'll see how it goes. I'm sure we'll know soon enough. But I also think it is funny, that the most powerful man on the planet has to fight for the right to keep his phone. You'd think its his decision and that is it. He'll just sign an executive order saying, the President may use a Blackberry ha-ha.. But clearly its not that cut and dry. Lets see if he gets to keep it. I think his Presidency would gain from Barack Obama being able to continue to be connected.

The power of the Craftsman in modern society

This summer I read an enlightening book called The Craftsman,
by Richard Sennett.

And one I highly recommend. The Craftsman, is an exploration into the idea of craftsmanship, from the basics of technique and personal expression to how craftsmanship might be at the very heart of social good in modern society!

In the New York Times, reviewer Lewis Hyde writes

"Using craftsmen as symbols of the Enlightenment turns out to be part of an argument that Sennett is conducting with one of his teachers, Hannah Arendt. In her own portrait of the human condition, Arendt distinguished between the world of animal needs and a “higher” world of art, politics and philosophy. This division is, for Sennett, a serious philosophical mistake with serious ethical and political consequences. It isn’t only that it demeans those who labor with their hands, but that it fails to recognize one of the foundations of good citizenship and cannot then imagine the kind of democracy in which governance is widely diffused, not given over to expert elites.

For it is Sennett’s contention that “nearly anyone can become a good craftsman” and that “learning to work well enables people to govern themselves and so become good citizens.” This line of thought depends, among other things, upon the Enlightenment assumption that craft abilities are innate and widely distributed, and that, when rightly stimulated and trained, they allow craftsmen to become knowledgeable public persons."

That, in my view is a very powerful and motivating thought, and you could say this is how Barack Obama conducted his presidential campaign and how he is conducting the early phase of his Presidency. Think about what Sennett is saying “nearly anyone can become a good craftsman”, people embrace what they create, and if people are part of shaping civil society, they will contribute more commit more, engage more. There is more context and there is more meaning to do so.

The section that caught my eye today, was Sennett writing about organisations and how and why people will work well.

"The first trouble appears in the attempts of institutions to motivate people to work well. Some efforts to motivate good work for the sake of the group have proved hollow, like the degradation of Marxism in Soviet civil society. Other collective motivations, like those in postwar Japanese factories, have succeeded. Western capitalism has sometimes claimed that individual competition rather than collaboration most effectively motivates people to work well, but in the high-tech realm, it is firms that enable cooperation who have achieved high-quality results."

In supposing that competition between individuals brings out the best in us, and that bringing individual rewards is deeply motivating, we miss the point that collective action brings communal cohesion and a sense of belonging argues Sennett.

And in another extract Sennett refers to Linux. How can quality of knowledge coexist with free and equal exchange in a community? He asks. In Linux, the process of skill evolution is speeded up, change occurs daily, the famous saying is that with many eyes all bugs are shallow. The code says Sennett is constantly evolving, not a finished and fixed object.

We would do better to contrast Linux programmers to a different modern tribe, (different to - sic) those bureaucrats unwilling to make a move until all the goals, procedures, and desired results for a policy have been mapped in advance. This is a closed knowledge-system.

Sennett points out that in the history of handcrafts, closed knowledge-systems have tended towards short lifespans.

Now there's a thought

Some light Christmas reading

Those of you that are wondering what to read over Christmas or to give to loved ones? I suggest that you could do a lot worse than jump over to the SMLXL Library

Particular faves

Digital Korea, by a Mr Ahonen
The Origin of Wealth by Eric Beinhocker
Dancing in the Streets. A history of Collective Joy. Barbara Ehrenreich
Convergence Culture. Henry Jenkins
The Network Society.  Edited by Manuel Castells

jMac launches Every Single One of Us, join it, or at least monitor it..

Our dear friend and colleague, and certainly also a thought-leader in the Communities-Dominate space, Jonathan jMac MacDonald has now launched his Every Single One of Us initiative.

It is brilliant. It is a collaborative effort. Alan and I are joining to support him and many of our friends are already there.

His mission is to make communiation better. He has a clear plan for it. I urge all readers of our blog to go take a look. His ideas may seem radical - if so, all I ask is that you bookmark his page and monitor jMac's progress - this guy worked did magical stuff in so many places in his career - from Ministry of Sound to Blyk - the odds are, that jMac will deliver something quite significant out of this. If you have an interest to read our blog, then you owe it to yourself, to monitor Every Single One Of Us just incase he turns it into something really big.

And for those who are already converted - the regular loyal readers and those who clutch our book Communities Dominate Brands as the map to their careers - you know who you are - then take my word for this. When jMac says, you are welcome to join, in any capacity you want - he means it. Read his comments with that in mind. If we wrote in the book about "the what", this is now the first case of "the how". And you know in your heart, "the why" - so this is how you can get to really participate in changing communication.

Like I said, Alan and I are already signed up to be footsoldiers in the Every Single One Of Us initiative. You should consider joining us.

Someone once told me a story about Herbert Simon

I was in the Hospital Club the other day with J-Mac and Vikki Chowney having a good ol' chinwag and this bloke comes up to me, asked me to write down something that I felt was important to me and then took my photograph.

You can see the result here

Mario the photographer writes

We are all shaped by the things that someone once told us. The words we hear impact on us, whether we want them to or not, and it’s undeniable that they have a power.

Someone Once Told Me is essentially a means for me to practise my photography - and give others the excuse to use their cameras - as well as giving me something to do on my days off as I wander around London, which always feels full of possibilities.

But SOTM is also an attempt to gather and chronicle some of the things that people have heard in their lives, the messages and expressions that have stuck in people's head, for reasons both obvious and odd. Someone told me once that this project was 'photography meets storytelling', which sums it up rather neatly, I think.

Fascinating and thank you Mario

On the journey beyond, or No Way Back From Here says J Mac

I now had 3 days at 2 conferences in London where both Jonathan MacDonald and I spoke (or chaired) here in London and we both observed a palpable energy about this intention to pursue that "army of fanatics" and how comprehensively that will change not only advertising and marketing, but also telecoms and IT, and media, and indeed all of business, and beyond business, into government, education etc.

Jonathan "J Mac" wrote about how this changes his mind-set, and he is shifting gears. For those who know him, he does not mean he is "shifting down" ha-ha (J Mac is incredibly energetic and dynamic, far more so than I am for example, and many say I am quite energetic ha-ha) - no, Jonathan is shifting gears now - upwards. He goes from talking about the "Communication Ideal" in the "Every Single One of Us" thinking. I just blogged about it that it is the natural progression of where our book ended in 2005 and should be read by anyone who liked our book.

But now, he moves beyond. J Mac is working on "volume 2" of the Every Single One of Us thinking. He goes from how to communicate it, to how to do it. He calls it "No Way Back from Here." He blogged about it yesterday (I cannot imagine how he found the time for that), a very revealing posting showing where he feels the "vibe" is in this space.

Meanwhile at the Mobile Content conference yesterday, that I chaired and where J Mac was deliberately set to be the last speaker to close it out (he chaired it on Day 1, when I was the keynote ha-ha, see the parallel), I was asked by several, why no, why here, why us. Why not Silicon Valley, or Finland, or based on my book Digital Korea, why is this sudden leadership into the "army of fanatics" philosophy not emerging out of South Korea. I had some quick responses to that, but am thinking about it, and have a far more complete picture in my mind emerging now. I will blog about it shortly.

If you look at young people - under employment age but already fully literate - and how they interact with technology, and in particular computers and mobile phones, and the internet on both (a revealing statistic of Flirtomatic UK users from the conference yesterday - Flirtomatic has over 1 million users mostly in the UK, with a little over half using mobile and the rest using the internet version, with a youth and young adult -skewing user base. But an "online" survey conducted via mobile only (so obviously these are heavily mobile Flirtomatic users) of 6,000 Flirtomatic registered users, which asked do you use the internet - not if they used Flirtomatic - on their mobile phones - then a totally stunning 85% said yes. If this is out of half a million british users, and a massive sample size of 6,000 (normal Gallup style marketing research surveys have sample sizes typically of 1,000 or so) - they find over 8 in 10 (young) mobile phone users in the UK who access the internet on their mobile.

I do not mean to suggest that 8 in 10 Brits do so. Absolutely not. But I do mean this indicates that of the Flirtomatic (mobile version) user base, which is half a million strong, the vast majority already do.

Sorry about the distraction (oh, and another side note, Flirtomatic CEO, Mark Curtis's book is Distraction, and a brilliant read. Its subtitle is Being Human in a Digital Age, it is very very thought-provoking).

Sorry, yes. But I meant, if you look at young people today - younger than working age, and how they use the internet, mobile, etc - then you see they work and collaborate totally in different ways to their elders.

Totally differently. They know instinctively how to Google and search. They know instinctively how to collaborate in Wikipedia and post their reviews on Amazon and give their mood on Facebook. They do real time commentary on Twitter (I just had a series of 20 or so comments of my Future of Mobile conference presentation Twittered in real time. I read them afterwards and it made for a strange reading of what was on the minds of the audience. Very humbling..)

Now how will this Generation C (Community Generation) behave in the future? How will they work when they graduate and get their first jobs? How will they run companies when they move up the ladder and start to assume control.

They KNOW instinctively, that collaboration - especially in the digital information age - is the natural competitive advantage. They will insist on collaboration. Remember the "bizarre" CEO fifteen years ago who insisted that all executives have to use email, or the CEO ten years ago who insisted all management have to actively use SMS text messaging in internal communications. Their companies achieved competitive advantages over their rivals that in hindsight gave them "insurmountable" leads in productivity, and ceteris paribus (all other things being equal) would propel their company into far better competitive performance than their peers from that time.

Now, lets get back, to our J Mac.

He read our book. He says so everywhere. He then went out and thought about it. He came back, worked in this space - helping launch Blyk - and now is teaching the digital advertising world how this really works - through his current employer Ogilvy One. Fine. But he already wrote one book, and no doubt is collecting his thoughts onto his follow-up volume.

Imagine from an investor's or owner's point of view. If you could have someone like J Mac (or our Alan Moore or say David Cushman or someone else like those, who has actually done it, built successful "Communities Dominate Brands" based businesses and processes) and who then have taken those lessons and pushed this thinking beyond our 2005 book - all while sharing and collaborating with us. Imagine if you could have this talent in your organization, to tap into that ocean of marketing power, that is "an army of fanatics." Your company would shortly become unstoppable.

And army of fanatics. Imagine if you had that? You could not lose. Apple has an army of fanatics with the Macintosh computers. Apple has another army of fanatics with the iPod (with some overlap obviously). Now they launched the iPhone - through their army of fanatics. Of course it became the best-selling smartphone in the USA (where the bulk of that army of fanatics is, obviously). Barack Obama used his army of fanatics to get elected.

This is not just Blyk in the UK. This is an universal trend. But it is a radical innovation in all of business (and government and non-profits - imagine Greenpeace - that is certainly an army of fanatics - and beyond). An army of fanatics is not "only" in the digital space. It is a universal trend in humanity, and only online digital networks will enhance that ability, boost it. Remember that the mobile phone is the ultimate lubricant to this interactivity and collaboration, as Howard Rheingold said, mobile phones amplify the human talents for cooperation. Because we all carry them (not all have laptops) and because we always carry them (even sleep with them) and they are always connected (not like spotty coverage of laptops at some WiFi hotspots).

But yes, a rambling posting. There is a fierce urgency of now. Some companies will "get it" and increasingly they will seek out the best thoughts of the thought-leaders in this space. And then when David and Alan and J Mac (and Tomi) say that wait - there is an even more profound change happening now, beyond just blogging and Twittering and SMS...  That there is a fundamental shift in how some organizations work - they will pay attention. And they will experiment in this space. And their experiments will bear incredible fruits - remember Tohato potato chips campaign from Japan, remember the BMW winter tyres campaign from Germany, remember Obama's campaign from the USA. Its not just here in the UK, it is global.

There is no going back. We have come upon the cliff. We know there is a future and now we are told to take a leap of faith. And the latest to push us to jump is J Mac. He says there is no way back from here. Read it.

Jonathan jMac MacDonald and his Every Single One of Us, the book, the presentation, the movement

Coming soon to a theatre near you: J Mac's Every Single One of Us: The Movie !   

Ok, that one is not yet finalized, haha, but Jonathan MacDonald is one of those likeminded souls who has embarked upon our Communities Dominate journey with a vengeance and is now assuming a clear leadership role into that uncharted future where our blog readers all will instinctively want to go.

Jonathan is obviously our dear friend and was formerly with Blyk and is now with Ogilvy One and has not only fully internalized the philosphies that we discuss in our book - but also become a passionate evangelist for the thinking, and even better than that, he has practised what he now preaches - as Jonathan already said when he worked for Blyk,. that the company was built on the philosophies of our book.

So Monday at the Future of Mobile (FOM) conference in London and again on Tuesday at IIR's Mobile Content conference in London, Jonathan and I happened to speak back-to-back. And I've always loved his entertaining style, his insightful observations and his unrelenting intensity to grab audiences and propel their minds into a new direction with a clarity of purpose. So I was extremely eager to sit back and take in his presentations these past two days. And my expectation level was set very high to begin with. He is a superstar speaker.

And J Mac did not disappoint Monday and again not on Tuesday. But there seems to be an even bigger fire now in our Jonathan. He seems possessed to personally generate the change in the media, advertising, telecoms, IT and financial space. Jonathan preached of the need of brands to create an "army of fanatics". And very doggedly repeated the mantra that we have to create that change now.

The reviews of his two speeches have been unanimously off the charts in praise of his ideas and his style, and also remarkably consistent in all echoing full acceptance to what might be seen as radical philosphies of utterly changing so many legacy industries. Yes, this is now the time and yes, it is needed. The new communication ideal is Jonathan's "Every Single One of Us." To help create those armies of fanatics. And to do it now, before your competitor does it.

So? If you missed the J Mac..  How do you get to sample a piece of this radical thinking?

Well - would you know it, Jonathan MacDonald has written a book - and boy is it good! It is called Every Single One of Us. And best of all, if you're into e-books, the digital version only costs 3 UKP (about 4 Euros or 5 dollars). Hey, you can't beat that..

Honestly, for all who read our book Communities Dominate Brands, and you got to that point at the end of Chapter 14 before the case study, and you felt, I wish there were more chapters to this book - in a very real sense, Jonathan MacDonald's book Every Single One of Us is the natural continuation of where our story ended in 2005. Because Jonathan has been "doing it" on top of what we wrote back then, this is very concretely the next steps.

If you enjoyed our book or this blog, you owe it to yourself to go now and check out Jonathans' book. Don't wait. Its here  (Every Single One of Us)  This is the best book for any marketing, advertising or media professionals today.

More numbers on Obama's online community from CNN today

CNN just reported more numbers on Obama's online contacts. For context, CNN quoted a Pew survey, that this election cycle digital interactive media (internet and mobile combined) had become the most widely used information source - used by 46% of the voters to gather information on the campaign. Cable news came in second, at 39% of voters. Daily newspapers were used by 34% of the electorate, and network TV news was last of the four major groups, used by 29% (obviously multiple sources could be cited at the Pew study, as the totals are far more than 100%).

So yes, the internet and mobile were the most used source for news about the campaign. It does not surprise us and our regular readers, but now we have also concrete numbers.

Now, onto Obama's campaign. CNN reported a moment ago, that on MySpace Obama had 4 times as many friends than McCain, and Obama had 3 million contacts via Facebook. Obama's campaign had 10 million email addresses of his supporters. Bearing in mind that his total voter turnout was about 65 milloin people, this means almost one in six voters had given Obama an email address. This was radically different - and far more powerful - than communicating in old-fashioned ways via phone calls (or snailmail). Because sending emails is free to the campaign; because sending and email news update to the full mailing list can be done by one person in one action, where a call to ten million people would require 10 million individual calls which then mostly would arrive in voicemail (or to use robo-calls, which would not be warmly received as positive campaigning by a candidate). Furthermore on emails, the recepients could receive them at their leisure, and concentrate on the email, rather than be interrupted by a phone call when having dinner etc. And finally, most importantly, the emails could then be forwarded to further Obama supporters..

Same is true of SMS text messaging, and we've learned that the Obama campaign sent regular SMS updates to all who gave mobile numbers. Unfortunately CNN did not report on how many mobile phone numbers the campaign had finally collected.

But yes, this is a very modern and connected President-Elect. Now they've launced their official website and CNN even reported that President Obama will have a tech advisors in the White House, the geek-in-residence if you will, ha-ha.. A very good sign indeed.