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.

Comments

[beats by dre store]

We know there is a future and now we are told to take a leap of faith.

[Monclervest]

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[ノースフェイス]

金正日の教示は、また平和な新しい世界を構築し、世界の人々の間の団結と調和を強化してまいりますと述べた。