Availability can not be underestimated, two reasons for this:

1. First, a minor mindset thing:
People want to choose their own arenas, not be forced into one because the company finds it sufficient to only make their stuff available in one place.

2. Then the bigger thing:
The missing link between something being a tool and something changing our behavior is its availability (link):

Clay Shirky’s famous quote:
“A revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new tools, it happens when society adopts new behaviors” – Clay Shirky, Us Now

Which, linked with availability, in a tools and services perspective could give this:

“The goal would be to make the service so easily available that it as a technology becomes invisible but contextually becomes valuable.” – Bridging the gap between technology and behavior

Pushing Shirky a bit, we could say that technology is tools, but services are behaviors. And that tools only become valuable services as they are made available within the context where the person naturally adopts them.

- That in order for people to adopt something within their everyday life, it has to be designed based on human and contextual abilities, not just to fit into technological or informational frameworks.

- Or, that publishing stuff only gives people new tools, but if we make sure the stuff becomes available to the point of becoming invisible it will change peoples behaviors in the situation surrounding the product – and that is the interesting shift when marketing stops demanding exclusive attention and starts becoming valuable (which means shareable).

Which, if I’m right, would also be very close to this; Purple Cow, and this, Baked In.

Now there are two types of availability:

1. Being where the niche is (Jonathan MacDonald). The old saying that everything is only one click away on the Internet is outdated. Today, hiding stuff away behind walls of technology or website cartography is as good as not publishing it at all. We have to make the stuff available so that different people in different contexts find their “natural” way to engage with it and become a part of it. (Tim Brown)

2. Design. At a seminar two years ago the brilliant people at TAT presented some insights into the fact that the visual presentation layers has to be tailored to the activity we want the participant to perform – not the economical preconditions of the technological framework. That design is one very important part of a service’s availability, and should not be underestimated.

(Also supported by Michal Tchao, presenting Nike+ at Picnic08: These things already existed, but we designed it in a whole new way, so that people were able to use it.)

This is what I’m trying to say: Just because the stuff is available on a companies website doesn’t mean people will find it or use it. It needs to become available on platforms and arenas that fit into peoples everyday life. Which means that we need to fragment our marketing much more (“light lots of small fires” – Mark Earls), and tailor it to fit into the participant-product context.

I’ve been invited to do a five minute presentation on Context at Paris 2.0 this Tuesday. Working my way through the script I decided to put the whole thing into the presentation and upload it. Love to get some feedback on this before Tuesday :o) Thank you in advance.

(View slideshow at slideshare.net)

The script:

The immersion of digital stuff, making the accessibility of media-, communication- and social technology almost ubiquitous, has led to a behavioral change in our everyday lives

- (it will mean so more next year, and more the year after that) – Kevin Slavin….

This is interesting, not because we think this means that marketers can reach people all the time, they can’t, but because people can reach marketing all the time, which is much more significant.

Brands now have the opportunity to be reached, by people, when people want to.

This turns marketing up side down….

Marketers used to be the people that reached the people (the customers), now the people (as participants) are the ones who reach marketers.

The great shift is this:
When marketers were controlling the situation, marketing was done blindly through media channels, affecting people’s anticipation of a situation outside the situation itself, manipulating their feelings about it. We were telling people how to feel at a point in time when they didn’t feel anything. (Who cares about shaving while enjoying a 2pm break from boring work routines?)

Today marketing is accessible inside the situations, so the job changes.

When marketing exists inside situations the brand’s own story is irrelevant, the experience itself will always be stronger.

(why would I stop doing what I’m doing just to listen to your version of what I’m experiencing right now?).

Marketers stories become irrelevant inside situations because they are different from peoples own stories.

So marketing changes …

The only reason for people to access marketing inside situations is because they gain something valuable.

And if marketers can’t tell their own story, the goal becomes making the participants story better.

So how do you make it better?

By understanding the context, and adding value to it.

This is the new marketing economy:
The goal of marketing is not to win the battle of stories (as is the case for traditional media marketing), but to understand the abilities, emotions and activities of a situation – the context – and add deliberate value to it. Making it better, becoming indispensible as a value provider, and gaining ownership to people through direct relations with them over time…

To understand this we need to accept that products are worthless. And only become valuable as they are introduced to a situation where they are relevant. That brands aren’t product providers, but value providers, something they have always been – marketing has only spent its time distracting our focus from this and done its most to become unwanted.

Products are worthless:
A toothbrush is worthless outside its context, taking up much needed space in the bathroom, but when it comes to tooth hygiene, it becomes indispensible.

The New Marketing economy says that the context is larger than the product, much larger, and that marketing is about increasing the value of this context – and growing the context itself.

As Whirpool found when they went on to increase their value by launching a podcast about the American family – not talk about their home appliances..

Or Fiat as they use personal environmental initiatives to create value – not brag about their car.

Or Wasa, as they help you get a nutritious breakfast – not sell their delicious bread/cracker things.

Or BakerTweet – making sure you enjoyed the product in its best possible context – when it’s steaming hot…

Brands need to see themselves as value creators, adding value to contexts where their value is appreciated and needed. They need to investigate and explore these contexts, surrounding their brand and products, and take ownership of them.

The next marketing arena isn’t similar formats in similar media, it’s becoming the most valuable brand inside the experience surrounding the product and the brand.

The marketing currency is not about attention, interruption or interest. It’s about creating deliberate value. Building direct relationships and great marketing through connected services, utilities, arenas and stuff.

The new Marketing economy is about understanding context and adding deliberate value…

What are the challenges for FMCG brands in today’s post digital landscape? Especially, how does Digital Media facilitate good marketing opportunities in the Every Day Life?

The five ideas / suggestions presented are the following:

1. Marketing online has to impact how people feel about the brand. (it’s about ideas, not technology).
2. Build direct relations.
3. Be a conscious and active part of the every day life ecosystem – from at home, and out there, to in store.
4. It’s about them, not you – create contextual value.
5. Confusing social media with media.

…

It’s title and content is strongly influenced by the Brand Building in a Recession lecture by Richard Murray at D&AD earlier this year. A much recommended video.

Brand building in a recession: Richard Murray from D&AD on Vimeo.

The relationship between media and social media is like the relationship between egg and eggplant: They share a couple of the same letters, but they are not in the same taxonomy.” – Kevin Slavin, Area/Code

This post is an exploration of a quote by Kevin Slavin from the Storytelling Throwdown panel at the CaT conference in 2009. The reason being that I find the comment so insightful and interesting I felt it deserved some increased attention. (video below)

Traditional media is a battle between stories. Where the reader, viewer or listener is already engaged in a story, the main story, the content. And the goal of the advertising is to create an even more interesting story so that the engagement switches focus. It’s a story competition.

In social media we are not engaging in stories, we are engaging in the exchange of ideas. Be that a conversation between friends, or the need to define ones identity or role in a group by sharing something. Social media is not a competition of stories, it’s a competition for the attention to each other.

In social media the relationships aren’t short, superficial, cliched or stereotypical, quite the opposite. People spend more and more time, delving deeper and deeper in into each other, connecting more and more.

This setting is very difficult to displace with storytelling in its conventional sense. What we need are narratives and systems that engage and work within this context of attention between people. Stories that accelerate or facilitate increased exchange of ideas, increased connections.

Our stories need to increase the social fabric between people, understanding the systems and drivers that come in to play when people connect to each other and help them continue strengthening their relationships.

“One way to think about it. It’s like the relationship between media and social media is like the relationship between egg and eggplant. They share just a couple of letters but they’re not in the same taxonomy. That it’s a fundamentally different experience.

And that it used to be when you where storytelling, that what you were competing for attention against where other stories. It’s sort of a story competition.

And the attention we are competing for now is the attention to each other.

That basically what we are doing during the day these days is spending more and more time, deeper and deeper connected to each other. And that’s very difficult to displace through storytelling in the conventional sense of storytelling. And I think its important to figure out how to think about narratives as systems that can engage that, and can sort of work within that type of attention rather than to pull away from that exclusively.”

- Kevin Slavin, Storytelling Throwdown at CaT

(I’m having trouble with displaying the video due to a security error, please find it here.)

In an epic quote by Clay Shirky there is a missing link; how do we get from one state to the other?

“A revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new tools, it happens when society adopts new behaviors” – Clay Shirky, Us Now

So the question begs: How do we move from things being “a technology“ to being something changing our behavior? The solution could be both interesting (most these things are :o) but also very tangible and applicable for the stuff we do.

Jeffrey Cole of USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future presented some ideas on broadband a couple of years ago. Saying that the effect of broadband has nothing to do with the bandwidth speed, but is related to people being “always on” and with a fixed cost. In other words, our accessibility.

Now broadband was an important enabler for how we changed our use of the Internet, others where wifi, laptops, portable networks. All of them having one thing in common: increased accessibility.

Increasing accessibility to stuff helps us fit it into our everyday life, either by having the opportunity to use it when we want, where we want or how we want. Or by removing a host of rational or irrational barriers to its use (like the sound of a dial-up modem, but not speed).

Putting this into a micro perspective you can say that if you are trying to change the behavior of your customers:

Say you want to ad something to the context surrounding the product in which you wanted the customer to adopt this new service as a part of their behavior and thereby increasing the value the brand is creating.

Then accessibility is a driver for this.

Meaning that hiding stuff away inside “browsered” websites isn’t a god idea, but porting solutions to a range of different platforms, handsets or objects might be a better and smarter way.

The goal would be to make the service so easily accessible that it as a technology becomes invisible but contextually becomes valuable. (Also borrowed and slightly adopted from Shirky).