Communities Dominate Brands

Nobody is as clever as everybody

Here we are quoted in Spanish, so for our Spanish readers somethng that may be of interest to you

And Communities Domiinate Brands was mentioned at a marketing conference in Munich this morning, with a vid of me speaking. God knows where that came from.

And I know this because we live in a superconnected and networked world.

Journalism Leaders Forum - come and join the discussion

I have been invited onto a panel and discussion at the Journalism Leaders Forum

I will sitting alongside Heather Hopkins, VP for research for Hitwise, and Jane Singer, the new Johnston Press Chair of Digital Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, in a discussion chaired by Mark Tungate, author of Media Monoliths: How Great Media Brands Thrive and Survive

The event, which forms part of the Winter residential week programme for participants in the Department of Journalism's || Journalism Leaders Programme , is open to all - practitioners, academics, would-be journalists and others who are interested in the challenges of leading journalism in a digital age. To attend this free programme at 6pm on Tuesday, February 6th, in Greenbank Lecture Theatre in Preston - as well as the network reception from 5:30pm - please RSVP to [email protected].

You can post your questions and comments on this site, or you can view the live Webcast by logging in as a guest at: http://breeze01.uclan.ac.uk/journalismleadersforum . Online participants will be able to post questions to panellists in a chat room

Your under 10 year old: not hand-me-down, but new cameraphone? Yes KDDI Japan innovates

I'm chairing at the annual big 3G telecoms conference in Tokyo and my presentation today was on mobile phone user interface and design (with related iPhone comments of course).

What I love about this annual "must-do" 3G event by MarcusEvans in Tokyo, is that for the 3G/mobile telecoms world, this is really where the coolest and newest stuff happens and is shown. Inspite of where South Korea is pulling ahead of Japan in multiplayer gaming, broadband internet, digital TV etc, and even on 3G to a slight degree - the allure and reputatlon of Japan - where 3G was first launched commercially over five years ago in October 2001 - so that all other country representatives speaking here are also at their very best to show "they too" can match Japan.

I'll do a blog about the event and its cool stuff later (am still here in Tokyo and posting from the hotel at night after a long day). The one story I HAVE to write about, tonight, is the kids' phone by KDDI the second largest operator in Japan.

Yes many know that in Scandinavia the majority of the 6-9 year olds have mobile phones, and in Europe rapidly that segment is the biggest growth target. But for children under 10, in almost all cases the subscription may be new, but the phone is a hand-me-down phone from a parent or elder sibling. Or if a new phone, it would be the absolute cheapest phone on the market. It isn't until the children at mid-teens who tend to pick and select their phones by features and functions.

So here in Japan, the second largest mobile operator, KDDI, has made a revolutionary offering. They developed a line of childrens' phones, with those aimed at the youngest being targeted at the under 10 year olds. And yes, these new phones are cameraphones (with flash...)

A definite moronic marketing move, you might say. Or is it.

Let me show what these phones will do. First, they are honest childrens phones. With bright basic colours, greens, blues, reds, yellows. Bright! With strong cases to handle the inevitable drops from pockets. With rounded edges. Childlike in outward appearance. Flip-phones to protect the colour screens.

But yes, open up the flip phone and now you see this is really for young kids. You get cute animal screen greetings of random type. Open it now, you see a giraffe. Close it and open again, see a horse. Close and open, see a butterfly, etc. Really cute stuff for young kids.

Then the user interface. An icon-driven interface, but cute, bubbly icons to phone calls, messages, camera function, ring tones, etc. Again very colourful, appealing to young kids.

But what of the camera. What parent in their right mind buys a new cameraphone for their "rug-rats?" Ha-ha, here is the brilliance of KDDI understanding this market. For this age, you don't sell the phone (and service) to the kid, but to the parent. What is the biggest worry of a parent giving a new phone to a young kid. Its that the kid gets BULLIED and the phone is stolen. Lose money and traumatize the child.

Not with this childrens' phone. It has a built-in alarm. One that is viciously loud. But better than that - when that alarm is sounded, the phone camera takes a picture ! Yes, that is why the flash, because the target may be attempting to bully (or rob) the child in a dark alleyway. And yes - the best part - when the alarm goes off, the childrens' phone - and KDDI - immediately send a picture message to the parent. If the child is in trouble, just take out the phone, sound the alarm, point the camera at the bully, and your PARENTS immediately see who is attempting to bully the child.

BRILLIANT !

What is the cost of adding a secure feeling to your child? What is the cost of YOU being secure that your child has real-time video protection? Now the cost of a cheap VGA-picture quality cameraphone on a simple basic phone - yes being a new handset - is irrelevant. EVERY parent in the industrialized world, who can afford a new phone for themselves, can also afford this childrens phone to their child.

I have been pushing the "segmentation" message at the mobile telecoms industry for years, including in the global bestselling telecoms book 3G Marketing (into its second printing). But even I was not thinking that the sub-10 year old segment could sustain the market opportunity of new phones (especially new CAMERAphones). Again I have been proven wrong. And yes, of course this kind of innovation, like iMode on DoCoMo in 1999, like cameraphones on J-Phone in 2001, like Location-based maps on KDDI in 2002, like 3G on DoCoMo in 2003, like FeliCa on all three Japanese networks, etc etc etc, again we find the innovations in Japan.

Your child? Of course you'll get a cameraphone to your child too. Now it only takes some time for this innovation to spread around the world. I think KDDI has approximately half a year head-start until its local rivals release similar services and phones.

I love it how this industry continuously surprises us!

TV joining the P2P revolution

Joost is the latest big idea from Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Kazaa and Skype. Just as Skype shook up the telecom industry, slashing the price for international calls by routing them over the internet, they are convinced that Joost will do the same for television

Says the Guardian . The end of TV as we know it

Once downloaded to your computer, Joost looks very much like a digital TV service, with a "near-DVD quality" full-screen picture and a familiar-looking electronic programme guide. But bring up the stylish overlaid menus and the internet style features become apparent. You can navigate channels in the same way as you might toggle between internet bookmarks. You can also skip through programmes in the same way as you would using Windows Media Player, and move around the schedule at will.

Joost also lets you construct your own channels. So if you are interested in motoring, it will pull together all the available car content and "schedule" it into a bespoke channel for you. You can chat to other users watching the same channel, have a news ticker running along the bottom of the screen, or access online content provided by the broadcaster.

The goal, says de Wahl, is to tap into the communal aspects of watching television as well as the personalisation offered by the internet, and marry the power of channels to showcase content with the on-demand convenience of downloads. But it's what's under the bonnet that is really impressive, he says, claiming that Joost has a three-year lead on potential rivals.

And Joost CEO Fredrik de Wahl says

I haven't seen anyone who has fundamentally redesigned what they do and integrated the content-owner needs or the advertiser needs or the viewer's needs into one platform. We're unique in that we get what viewers want - the end-user attraction, the simplicity of use.

We know that many media companies, news, broadcast etc., are starting to think about how they redefine themselves to the digital age and what that means. However my advice - don't wait too long to address these issues otherwise you will be obsolete. It not a tweak, its structural. I like what de Wahl says because, it address the dual need of user experience and better value to advertisers.

Markets are conversations said Doc Searls, and I agree - humans are highly social and the technology is going to the very heart of human nature. Linear broadcast and the TV schedule like the industrial revolution was an abberation.

Compare that to Duncan's darkest hour

Could the future of news be hyper-local?

In the old model, free papers had to have circulations of about 400,000 to work, City AM has shown that it can be done with about 100,000. The question is whether you can do it with 25,000?

Mused former Daily Express editor and Financial Times executive Richard Addis

You could have a couple of local columnists and lots of content from pressure groups or local people who have got something to say. You get your customers working for you. They are your journalists and you have a couple of people editing it

Is the hyper-local news model the solution for future news organizations? Many news organizations and executives, alongside Addis, believe so. Johnston Press launched about 50 community newsletters last year; publishing group Archant’s regional papers have launched even smaller papers.

News that's right up your street, but stops at the corner

Peugeot does engagement marketing with SMS and WAP

Peugeot has been active in the space of mobile marketing since the launch of their 1007. Now with their latest car, the 207, they went all out and designed a big integrated engagement marketing campaign, where a key feature was SMS and a 24 hour free test drive. Their ad agency was Marvelous Mobile and the actual story is reported in the current edition of Mobile Marketing Magazine entitled Peugeot 207 - Using Mobile to Drive Test Drives. Read some of the results:

The results of the campaign were impressive. One in two people who interacted with the campaign ordered a test drive. One in five visited the WAP site, and one in eight ordered a brochure. The average dwell time on the WAP site was 20 pages. Interestingly, the conversion of a prospect from visiting the WAP site to downloading the JAVA brochure or booking a test drive was around 30% higher than for the Internet. Not surprisingly, Peugeot plans to use mobile as a key element in future launches.

Very interesting. This year, 2007, will be the breakthrough for marketing in mobile. Alan and I've been talking about the "Flower Diagramme" as on the cover of our book and its Four C's. We also discuss the mobile emerging as the newest mass media (the seventh mass media) and have discussed that many times at this blogsite. Keep your eyes on this story...

The future of the Press is... errr...Free?

the free newspaper war continues with Associated's London Lite closing November's 30,000 copy gap between it and News International's the London Paper to just 10,000 copies in December. The 50p Evening Standard is still losing sales in the wake of all this competition, but last year's price-cutting promotions are clouding accurate year-on-year comparisons: the paper is clearly still losing sales, but not on the scale of the horrifying 18% drop that the topline ABCs suggest.

Smacks of desperation

Yet the issue is not simply about free versus paid. It is also about cut-price campaigns and added-value promotions, with covermounts and giveaways having been a major factor behind many of the national newspaper circulation swings seen in 2006

4% the fall in newspaper sales between July and December 2006

There are some very good points made here about the changing nature of news and information and consumption

the newspaper business model is changing at both ends at once. The future may not be free, but free is playing a major part in shaping the future and the future is in the hands of the consumer.

In that regard, here is one last and scary statistic. The broadcast regulator Ofcom recently reported that only 25 viewers complained about the screening of pictures of Saddam Hussein's execution - itself an example of "people's journalism" with some of the photos being captured on a mobile phone. By contrast, over 1,000 complaints were sparked by viewer anger over the eviction process on Channel 4's Big Brother. Giving the consumer power over the editorial product is just as explosive and unsettling as giving the editorial product away free.

Revenues rise while sales continue to slide

This is what Rupert Murdoch had to say Big media vs. The people. Rupert tells it how it is

Like many of you, I’m a digital immigrant. I wasn’t weaned on the web, nor coddled on a computer. Instead, I grew up in a highly centralized world where news and information were tightly controlled by a few proprietors, who deemed to tell us what we could and should know. My two young daughters, on the other hand, will be digital natives....

The peculiar challenge then, is for us digital immigrants – many of whom are in positions to determine how news is assembled and disseminated -- to apply a digital mindset to a set of challenges that we unfortunately have limited to no first-hand experience dealing with.

We need to realize that the next generation of people accessing news and information, whether from newspapers or any other source, have a different set of expectations about the kind of news they will get, including when and how they will get it, where they will get it from, and who they will get it from.

What is happening right before us is, in short, a revolution in the way young people are accessing news. They don’t want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don’t want to rely on a God-like figure from above to tell them what’s important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don’t want news presented as gospel.

Instead, they want their news on demand, when it works for them. They want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it. They want to question, to probe, to offer a different angle.

In the face of this revolution, however, we’ve been slow to react. We’ve sat by and watched while our newspapers have gradually lost circulation. Where four out of every five Americans in 1964 read a paper every day, today, only half do. Among just younger readers, the numbers are even worse, as I’ve just shown.

There are a number of reasons for our inertness in the face of this advance. First, for centuries, newspapers as a medium enjoyed a virtual information monopoly – roughly from the birth of the printing press to the rise of radio. We never had a reason to second-guess what we were doing. Second, even after the advent of television, a slow but steady decline in readership was masked by population growth that kept circulations reasonably intact. Third, even after absolute circulations started to decline in the 1990s, profitability did not.

But those days are gone. The trends are against us.

So unless we awaken to these changes, and adapt quickly, we will, as an industry, be relegated to the status of also-rans or, worse, many of us will disappear altogether.

We have not, as an industry, embraced digital technology and the Internet in the way … or to the extent … that we should, and must....

I venture to say that not one newspaper represented in this room lacks a website. Yet how many of us can honestly say that we are taking maximum advantage of those websites to serve our readers, to strengthen our businesses, or to meet head-on what readers increasingly say is important to them in receiving their news?

The challenge, however, is to deliver that news in ways consumers want to receive it. Before we can apply our competitive advantages, we have to free our minds of our prejudices and predispositions, and start thinking like our newest consumers. In short, we have to answer this fundamental question: What do we – a bunch of digital immigrants -- need to do to be relevant to the digital natives?

But our internet site will have to do still more to be competitive. For some, it may have to become the place for conversation. The digital native doesn’t send a letter to the editor anymore. She goes online, and starts a blog. We need to be the destination for those bloggers. We need to encourage readers to think of the web as the place to go to engage our reporters and editors in more extended discussions about the way a particular story was reported or researched or presented.

At the same time, we may want to experiment with the concept of using bloggers to supplement our daily coverage of news on the net. There are of course inherent risks in this strategy -- chief among them maintaining our standards for accuracy and reliability. Plainly, we can’t vouch for the quality of people who aren’t regularly employed by us – and bloggers could only add to the work done by our reporters, not replace them. But they may still serve a valuable purpose; broadening our coverage of the news; giving us new and fresh perspectives to issues; deepening our relationship to the communities we serve. So long as our readers understand the distinction between bloggers and our journalists, and so long as proper safeguards are utilized, this might be an idea worth exploring.

More to read on news media at CDB blog

Who needs Jade Goody, when you have Greg vs. Tessa

Emily Bell writes about the political machinations that led to the then Director General, Greg Dyke being forced to resign from the BBC...

After finally learning about Dyke, we want the floodgates open In the media and in government there is a predilection for rattling on about clarity, openness and accountability. No wonder then we all got so very excited about the series of unfortunate incidents that culminated in the Hutton report. Despite many fine words it is a shame it took a Freedom of Information request from the Guardian to secure the minutes of key meetings that led to the governors of the BBC accepting the resignation of the then director general Greg Dyke and chairman Gavyn Davies. Not too many people would argue that we have a right to know what really happens when two publicly-funded bodies fall out with such terrible results.

The point is who is serving who here - where does accountability stop and start? Two public bodies and it takes a Freedom of Information request to get the information we want.

Bell then says

If only this incident were to set a precedent for how the relationship between the government and BBC should be conducted - with full public scrutiny. If this were the case we would be in for a treat with the paper trail relating to licence fee renewal.

The world is in need of greater transparency, not more smoke screens. And in a world where we are becoming more and more inclined to find the truth for ourselves. Any institution seen to subvert truth and transparency will inevitably suffer

TWiki: An Enterprise Collaboration Platform

TWiki.org , a virtual open source software community consisting of 26,700 members, 4,000 contributors, and an estimated 2 million enterprise users, today announced version 4.1 of its popular TWiki enterprise wiki software. Code-named Edinburgh, TWiki release 4.1 features enhanced application extensions to enable knowledge workers to create "Situational Applications" that include spreadsheet functions, dynamic tables, slide shows, and Web 2.0 user interfaces. Available free of charge, TWiki 4.1 can be downloaded from http://twiki.org/.

Situational Applications are enterprise software programs, created in short timeframes and with limited budgets, for small groups with specific needs. Created by users themselves, Situational Applications are often implemented without formal support from the IT organization. Accordingly, the Situational Application development process relaxes or omits many of the design, planning, scalability, and integration requirements associated with traditional enterprise software projects.

"One key objectives of the TWiki enterprise wiki platform is to enable each user to contribute to the company's collective knowledge and become a full participant in the application creation process. With streamlined support for third-party Plugins, enhanced search capabilities, and improvements to TWiki's AJAX-based user interface, TWiki 4.1 represents a significant milestone toward the achievement of that goal," said Peter Thoeny, the TWiki founder who has managed the open-source project since inception.

"My hat is off to the TWiki open source community. Through intense global cooperation, they continue to churn out innovative solutions that enable millions of enterprise workers to become full participants in the social software movement," added Bart Decrem, a long-time open source leader who's worked on GNOME, Mozilla, and was most recently the founder of Flock.

Via PressZoom

Product development - A new collaborative model

In a recent post on his venerable Web 2.0 blog, Dion Hinchcliffe analyzes an emerging user-centric product development model (dubbed “Product Development 2.0).

Already adopted by an number of notable start-ups and a few forward-thinking traditional companies, Product Development 2.0 (PD2.0) is “a concept that embodies the use of Web 2.0 concepts such as harnessing collective intelligence, users as co-creators, and turning applications into platforms”. The basic principle of PD2.0 is to “leverag[e] mass user contributions, provid[e] open architectures for others to build on as they like, and even hand[…] control over key product decisions directly to users.” Hinchcliffe believes that “[t]he reasoning behind doing this is simple: Satisfied customers have always been essential to having the most successful business, both online and offline.

via the the strategyst