From The Rooftops

Saying It with Meaning: the Internet of Things

Back when we lived in small villages with rich oral traditions and long cultural memories it was relatively easy for the story—and meaning—of a house, horse or hero to persist and develop generationally. It should come as no surprise, then, that our jetsetting, transmedia’d, mobile, modern lives have kind of interrupted those patterns (and…yeah, we don’t ride horses so often anymore). It’s hard to pass down a long local legend about a subdivision neighborhood that’s only ten years old, or for a product that will be thrown out by month’s end. This doesn’t mean that we don’t have stories and resources for conveying these stories, it means that there has been a shift regarding what the objects are and the ways in which the stories could be told. Perhaps we’re too busy playing around on our smartphones to stop and listen to as many long, rambling stories as we used …or maybe we just need to find a way to add smartphones (and the internet) into the equation?

coming to a tweet near you?

Indeed, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that we are coming up with new methods of storytelling and collective histories that are …well…. transmedia’d, mobile and modern. We are, after all, fundamentally social beings with an inquisitive streak that predates opposable thumbs. What are we doing now that we possess not only opposable thumbs but touchscreen mobile devices? The same thing we’ve been doing all along: interacting with our world through our social structures and the technological means by which such undertakings can be facilitated. Or, to make it sound less intimidating: we do stuff in our world; utilizing people and things as needed.

What’s interesting to me is to see the latest iterations of the “utilizing people and things as needed” part. This is because the social web is allowing an unprecedented confluence of people, things and worlds—stories, about real things, unfolding in real time, across a digital ecosystem that permits the democratic, horizontal and interactive production of content and correspondence. Instead of relying upon DJs and evening news producers for determining what we hear and how, we have things like Last.fm that bring us closer to a network-based musical listening experience and Youtube playlists, enabling users to tell a certain story by preparing a particular sequence of videos for others to view (and comment upon/respond to, accordingly).

This development—the streamlined horizontal addition of one’s own narrative or storytelling touches to things and ideas—is now being carried over to the analog world and it has important implications for the relationship between someone and the brands and people with whom they interact. While there are many facets of this (which I will surely continue to explore in subsequent posts), I wanted to take a moment to make an initial look at one in particular: the “Internet of Things”.

You can think of the Internet of Things as the inclusion of real-world objects to the internet, by virtue of physical sensors, QR codes and RFID tags. I’ll not talk too long on the basics of it and will instead steer you to ReadWriteWeb’s excellent (and persistent) coverage of the emergence of the Internet of Things. Allow me to summarize, as simply as possible, why this is an awesome development for brand strategy: imagine.the.storytelling.potential.

As brand strategists and marketers we always talk about fostering a close relationship between people and the brands they love—this adds a whole new dimension (namely, the 3^rd dimension) to such efforts and smart brands will start playing in this space to find out just how it might be utilized by their users. While I envision there being a certain time and place for proprietary Internet of Things uses (see my previous gushing about Icebreaker’s “baacode” as a quasi-Internet-of-Things program), my sense is that much of this will (hopefully) follow the adage that “information wants to be free” and barriers will come down in favor of a ubiquitous and usable interface that crosses brand lines and product categories. A cool new contender: Itizen.

Describing itself as “a place to tell, share & follow the life stories of interesting things,” I think it has a lot of potential. It’s simple: you put one of Itizen’s TRACKit tags (available in stick-on or sew-on, depending upon the nature of the object) on whatever you want, then you register the code on the website and share its story. What it is, why it’s meaningful, where it’s been, and so on. Cool. Fascinating. Powerful.

I first heard about this kind of idea from the founder of Re-Shirt and love how it does more than just share things or even stories—it shares meaning. An opportunity for self-expression, cultivating connections between people on a very deep level: the little bits of life that are interesting and beautiful—(some of) the things that make life worth living. It’s an amazing step back to where we began: passing down stories of the valuable things in our lives, just with a new twist: a digital invitation to put your voice into the story as well.

What are your thoughts? Are people going to get burned out on all of this “sociality”? Do I have the wrong read on the “information wants to be free” thing? What are some of the neatest applications of the Internet of Things that you’ve come across or seen on the horizon? Let me know!

-          Caleb

PS – for a great thought experiment regarding products and “sociality” as a factor of the Internet of Things, look here.

Social Media as a Factor of Branding

Everything new is old again.

Sometimes it seems that many social media “gurus” spend their time convincing companies that the web 2.0 world is entirely new and that the entire rulebook needs to be thrown out in favor of … well… more consultation from social media gurus. I don’t think this is necessarily so. To be sure, the internet and social media have forever changed the ways in which we interact with one another, brands and information itself. But I think it’s overstating the case to assert that nothing will ever be the same. Many things are the same, how we interact with them is different. People valuing an organization with integrity? The same. Customers appreciating a brand that goes out of its way to take care of them? The same. Individuals trying to find ways to share and learn more about the products they care about? The same.

For a great glimpse into the way the internet has changed things, I’d highly recommend reading The Long Tail by Chris Anderson (editor of Wired) and Wikinomics by Don Tapscott—these books do a great job of discussing how things have changed, while demonstrating that much of the values and interests (saving money, connecting with people, sharing information, etc.) that have been revolutionized by the internet are not new in and of themselves. Existing business leaders need to learn about these changes, but they can rest assured that brand-based thinking and authenticity are at least as valuable in the digital age as they have ever been.

This was on display as I recently had the pleasure of leading a seminar for the Sustainable Business Network of Portland on marketing and social media. It was a refreshing opportunity to go beyond the usual “Social Media 101” and take a deeper dive into tools, implementation and a couple case studies. I wanted to further the level of discourse concerning the use of social media among local businesses, without making it seem overly complex or foreign. Many of the attendees have been successful business owners for longer than I’ve been able to drive a car; they have marketing savvy and, as SBNP members, are deeply committed to local commerce—they’ve been around for a long time and they have a great story of authenticity to share. None of those things need to change, their brand-thinking just needs to be adapted to a new model of social interaction and information flow.

So many business leaders feel threatened by the social web and it’s all for naught. Businesses have always had to be mindful of where they advertise their product and how—of what people think about them and why. You need to understand your brand, your customer and how and where they interact. My seminar attendees seemed to resonate with the message that these same considerations still apply, it’s just that some of the answers have changed. To put it another way, as long as you ‘let the brand drive’ your marketing considerations, you will still be fine navigating the modern business landscape; it’s just that some of the destinations and travel partners are more fast-paced, democratic and diverse. Instead of an in-person opportunity for a few friendly sentences with your favorite patrons you might be conversing with hashtags and blog comments, but the basics of branding and a concern for your customer still remain— some things never go out of fashion.

- Caleb

Making Value: Brands and Social Media

Lately I’ve had several organizations seeking out help with their “social media strategy.” As I spend more and more time explaining these things I’ve started to initiate the process by asking a series of questions: who is your customer? who is your brand? where do they meet? why?

Ultimately this hinges upon one observation: we seek out and sustain connections in the social web in order to create value. This is an oft-stated thesis, but an important one nonetheless. My goal today is to briefly introduce how and why this is and how it relates to brands.

a glimpse at life in the Clif Bar breakroom

In the brand strategy world we often encourage a client to “let the brand drive the decision process.” This brand-based thinking is also very useful in the social media world. If your brand makes rubber gaskets for industrial widgets it’s probably more important that you have a solid blog (and Twitter account) that enables you to discuss industry trends/topics related to your customers and their up- and downstream needs than for you to have a Foursquare mayorship incentive or a Facebook page with giveaways. If your washer brand is based upon integrity, quality, service and price and your customers are industrial widget makers, then you’ll probably want to use your social web presence to enhance their experience of you and your brand: respond promptly to customer input, share behind the scenes content that enhances your brand and its story. Use it as a means of differentiation: put up that funny photo of the time the account manager’s dog got into the breakroom leftovers. Have your senior product designer put up a technical blog post that shares R&D information about how and why the new line of washers is superior to the competition. Post a write-up of the company’s Relay For Life team. Don’t try to get Justin Bieber to tweet about your product. The supply chain manager mightn’t care if you have a Facebook “like” button on your homepage, but you might build a closer connection with them if they come across the Relay For Life post and see that there are people behind the email addresses with which they interact. Whatever you do, make sure it’s valuable: simultaneously in service to the brand and the customer’s needs.

Seeing as it’s the social web, there is even more potential for socially-oriented brands. If you have a brand that cultivates supporters, this is a great way to solidify that relationship and turn them into evangelists. Again, this is done by utilizing your social media efforts to be valuable. Give them a behind-the-scenes peek at the brand they love. Save them time and money. Share content they care about. Give them something exclusive that rewards them for reaching out to your brand. Be fun. The tricky part is understanding how customer needs and expectations interface with the brand. There is no ready solution to this challenge—no “app for that”—only active listening and earnest interaction. That being said, the process is moved along greatly if you make sure to “let the brand drive the decision.” As someone who loves consumer insights and digital ethnography, I speak from experience when I say that there is MUCH that can be learned about your business by working with the people who evangelize it. They are, after all, the very reason you do what you do. They love what you stand for—the way you make them feel—talk with them about it. Find out what more can be done.

There are several factors that you must keep in mind when constructing a social media strategy. A few important ones:

• Objectives – what is your desired outcome? (and don’t just say “more money!”) More brand impressions? A 10% increase in sales of product X over the next 60 days? More followers on Twitter? More blog comments? Improved clickthrough from the point of first contact to the product page? More positive ratings on Yelp? The first mistake that brands make is to step into the social web without a coherent strategy and set of desired outcomes. Make a strategic plan and work from there. Revisit it frequently. Make mistakes, own up to them, learn, improve.
• Available resources—Be honest with yourself: do you have 5 hours a week to do all the requisite legwork to keep a sustained and engaging presence online? 10 hours? 1 hour? Your social media strategy is better served by 2 hours of precise, effective and well-aligned efforts than 5 disoriented hours of standing in front of a “firehose” of digital information. Many organizations are tempted to hand it all off to a “Social Media Intern,” but I’ve always encouraged a reexamination of this. Would you leave an intern in charge of your press releases, customer service calls, sales generation, media relations, copywriting and branding? Of course not. The social web calls for strategic thinking and execution. Invite all the appropriate parties to the table for strategic planning and work from there. If you have an intern and you think you need to spend 20 hours/week executing this plan, you need to involve them in the whole process. Find someone who has what it takes to be a director-of-social-media-in-training and groom them for the big time. If you treat the social efforts as being that thing that the intern does between getting the mail and replacing the coffee filter, you’re going to get what you paid for.
• Creativity—One of the things that I love about the social web is how much room there is for innovation. It’s wide open, folks; you can do more than just self-promote and give away swag—take this as an opportunity to refine and demonstrate your brand promise and identity. A couple examples of interesting (though not necessarily recommended) initiatives:
  • Skittles changed the front page of their website to simply display any and all tweets that had “Skittles” in the title. …with interesting results.
  • Air New Zealand asked trivia questions about New Zealand and got over 4,000,000 organic brand impressions.
  • Jimmy Choo’s exclusive and high-end Foursquare treasure hunt encouraged fans to seek out destinations that were a part of the fashion scene.

OMG, I'm FAMOUS!

These campaigns all come back to that recurring theme of value as a factor of branding. Skittles, who for so long encouraged us to do the impossible act of tasting rainbows, opened their front door and enabled us to do the impossible: instantly find ourselves on the front page of Skittles.com. Jimmy Choo offered a way for high-end customers who care about fashion to use their smartphones to more readily hone their visibility on that very scene, all by virtue of being encouraged to interact with a brand that thrives in the space.

You can see how this value-building process is delicate: it would make little sense for an elite, niche brand like Jimmy Choo to open up their front page to a Twitter search, and Skittles would be tremendously off-brand if they were to send you on a treasure hunt among fancy shops selling $200 T-shirts. A brand must first understand their customer and how their customer wants to interact, then brainstorm–come up with a fun, surprising and meaningful way to make that happen. Try it. Don’t worry about figuring out if you’re doing it right; you’ll know because they’ll tell you.

- Caleb

Adobe v Apple (via Caesar)

I recently came across a blog post by Olivier Blanchard that combined two of my abiding passions: marketing/business and ancient Roman history. Blanchard drew 10 business/marketing/leadership/etc. insights out of the legendary personality of Roman General and Dictator Julius Caesar. As someone who also follows the tech world, I found a valuable tie-in to the recent goings-on in the Apple vs. Adobe saga and I shared a comment to that effect. This matter, however, has still got me thinking about the future of the web and how simple and shrewd Adobe’s response seems to be.

For those who need some background on the whole Apple vs. Adobe matter, you might want to go here. Back? Alright, good. Clever, eh? Adobe got tons of positive publicity for their response and we can see why: it’s simple, fun and speaks to much of the criticism that is increasingly being leveled at Apple for, among other things, their heavy-handed approach to controlling the app store and the way in which users (and developers) can engage content.

Here is the very clever (fake) response that was crafted by @issaco:

Adobe is in a weaker position: their product, Flash, is at the heart of this controversy and in the opinion of many people, it was/is always a little too buggy and resource-intensive. …but it is widely used and incredibly flexible—it served an important need to the internet at a certain time and place. I don’t think I’m going far out on a limb to say that Flash is in a tight spot with the popularity of iPads and iPhones making web designers think twice about resorting to Flash for their websites, not to mention the 400 pound (it’s not 800 pounds yet, but it’s growing) gorilla on the horizon: HTML5. Adobe has even gone so far as to acknowledge this business threat in recent SEC filings, as discussed by engadget.

Because of this, it’s wise for Adobe to take a conciliatory open market tone, since it gives them a position from which they can either graciously bow out if and when HTML5 renders it nearly obsolete, or a means to reassert themselves (however unlikely) after winning a fair fight against yet another contender.

Here is my comment:

A key point that I’ve always taken away from Caesar’s savvy political (PR) toolkit is: to play for keeps but, nonetheless, be gracious with your competitors.

Over the course of Caesar’s military career and political ascendancy he made a great effort to be (or at least appear) a magnanimous victor. Throughout his military conquests the leaders of the losing army (or even the Senate!) would often expect to receive very harsh treatment (death, torture, expulsion from Rome, etc.) and, with the exception of his triumphal celebration over his defeat of fellow Romans, Caesar usually responded with open arms and fraternal love. This beneficence was received by the public as being indicative of a strong leader who was generous to a fault. In those bloody times they ate it up…

Let’s apply this for a moment: Look at Adobe’s recent response to all of the vitriol it has been receiving from Steve Jobs and Apple. They got tons of positive press and, on a certain level, affection from the tech world for responding to Apple’s hostility with a more cooperative and open message. With public sentiment as on-edge about tech firms having a distinct shortage of old-fashioned probity (for instance: Facebook overstepping its boundaries, Google inadvertently(?!) retaining user information, Apple refusing to sell a disabled woman an iPad when she only had cash, etc.), this was a smart move on Adobe’s part, and a welcome departure.

Ultimately, Caesar’s shrewdness and ability to curry public favor in the face of hostile challenges was, I believe, one of the many lessons that he passed on to Octavian and allowed Augustus to steer Rome out of the civil wars and (for better or worse) onto the track of Imperial rule that would ultimately see it conquer much of the known world. While this one kerfluffle won’t be garnering any triumphal arches for Adobe, it is certainly a move to be studied and celebrated.

Alright, yes, I did just compare the tension between Adobe and Apple to the epic civil war that surrounded the demise of the Roman Republic … overdramatic? Certainly. A good excuse to pull out my pleasure reading in the name of “work”? Damn straight. I think there are some merits to this, though, if only to give me cause to share the back and forth and allow us to revel in a smart response on Adobe’s part and a brilliant (fake) rebuttal.

But you can see why this matters. In their open letter on the matter, Adobe’s co-founders, Chuck Geschke and John Warnock write:

Adobe’s business philosophy is based on a premise that, in an open market, the best products will win in the end — and the best way to compete is to create the best technology and innovate faster than your competitors.

Many generals (and business leaders) understand this fundamental dynamic: be the best and the fastest, or be done. With HTML5’s writing on the walls, this statement allows Adobe to subtly acknowledge that Flash mightn’t be the best product any more, but restating that the decision is for the market to make, not Steve Jobs. Just as Caesar often made broad gestures appealing to the will of the people, Adobe’s shrewd efforts have effectively tried to extract the (sizable) challenges facing Flash from the heavy-handed ‘technocratic’ knockout punch that Steve Jobs keeps trying to lay upon them. Though I don’t envy their position, they are wise to shift the field of battle such that the decision is placed back in front of a public who is feeling increasingly wary of their tech decisions being made for them. -Caleb