We seem to be looking for universal principles, when we should be looking for fragmentation.

It’s quite common when trying to understand something that we try to simplify it, searching for consistencies and core principals. The problem is when we apply the find to other stuff as well as a universal principal for everything similar.

Even though universal laws or guidelines might seem like a good idea, it is often the complete opposite of something useful.

Take the Music Industry as an example. These days they are trying to find the ONE law to rule them all, to solve the problem for both universal, international, national or independent artists and bands – but is there ONE undiscovered answer? Or should there be many?

As we become more insightful and smarter regarding a subject, our articulation of it increases which leads us to discover details that we didn’t know existed to begin with. As a subject gets bigger we also find minute differences and details that make what seemed similar quite opposite.

Ignoring the nuances and fragmentation’s inside a subject as we try to make our ideas accessible to other people through graphs and sound bites :o), makes it easier to get understood, but demands the reader to ask more questions. (which is a good thing)

I hope the people reading this blog understand that I’m not trying to find universal answers. I’m exploring a landscape, square inch by square inch. And one answer might be a good solution to one problem, but might not give a full and complete answer to a lot of other stuff, or even be downright terrible.

Malcolm Gladwell inspired me to start thinking of this whole thing as a giant puzzle:

“We are all collecting small pieces of the same puzzle. One day maybe we’ll get so far that it starts making sense.”

The first ten years of digital was (to a large extent) the same siloed ideas that we’d already been exploiting for decades on other content and messaging transportation infrastructures (media). It was a carbon copy.

It is only in the last 2-4 years something interesting and revolutionary has surfaced through the emergence of social media (the collective exchange of ideas) and digital utilities.

This creates a new currency for marketing online, not replacing traditional advertising / messaging but competing for the same budget and offering a completely different set of returns.

Since posting this presentation two days ago, I’ve added some ideas to it, relating to Time and Direct Relationships.

Apologies for re-posting, but this is the conclusion to my series on the new currency online, with special focus on opportunities for media companies.

- What is value in Everyday Life marketing
- A New Business Model, for content that Grows, Connects and Augments
- The Direct relationship Business

Find the Slideshow below, or here.
(If you have already seen the first version the second one might not cache, there should be a yellow ribbon in the upper left corner if you are watching the updated version).

Jeff Jarvis in this video, from the Nokia Ideas Project, states that since the Internet is a connection machine, anything creating artificial middle men, preventing companies from connecting directly with their participants, will become problematic.

All that is true for the old Attention Web, but the whole problem seems to be turned into an opportunity when we change to the Everyday Life mindset: In which digital media companies become partners with their clients in order to supply a direct relationship with the readers and participants.

As Geoff Northcott of *supercollider pointed out very clearly in his post “visualizing the decline of the destination web, the rise of the social web”, the destination web is on the decline. And if Jaap Favier of Forrester is correct, then the Media Companies that will survive are the ones that create and facilitate arenas for brands to connect with their customers on.

This would give, that in the new perspective of digital media, what Jarvis points out is not a problem, it’s an opportunity. In the Every Day Life mindset, digital media is in the “Creating Direct Relations” business, not in the “messaging” or “middle men” business.

There is a big difference between how the existing media business models work in the old landscape compared to how they will work in the new.

Blindly copying concept from platforms where content actually disappears removes us from the ability to create value in an updated reality where content is stored in the “long here”. Where it isn’t static, but grows, connects and augments.

If media is to take advantage of the opportunities in the Everyday Life marketing landscape we need to shred the idea of short term, Attention Web concepts like clicks, views or time.

Explanation of terms here..

As some of my readers know, I’ve tried the last week to digg up some hopefully interesting or inspiring thoughts on the challenges of the media industry. I believe in the industry, but I also believe it needs to break out of the limitations of their traditional mindset if they are to discover new and innovative opportunities. There is a lot of artificially constructed walls limiting their creativity when it comes to developing new ideas.

Understanding how the concept of time has changed, unlocks a few barriers:

1. There is no time. As I stated in my introduction. Content doesn’t disappear, it gets more valuable. We need to connect companies with this content, help it grown, and build mutual and extended value.

2. Time introduces an artificial constraint into the company / participant relationship that limits the participants opportunity to engage and connect with the companies brand values.

Now it’s artificial in the sense that it is not designed by the value proposition offered by the brand to the customer (summer, Easter or Christmas related products could have done that), but it’s limited by money. To be more correct, it’s limited by the cost of running messages in media.

Now in the Everyday Life marketing landscape the goal is to connect and share values with the participant. Constraints on time creates a problem, best articulated by Amanda Mooney back in January:

“If you’ve only budgeted 2 months to be available to our community, we’re only going to give you 2 seconds of our time … at best.” – Amanda Mooney

As I see it, if Media Companies are to have a role – or get value out of the Everyday Life Marketing potential they need to put aside this limitation, they need to develop products for companies and participants without the constraints of time attached. Not putting clicks or views or days as a business model – but shared value.

Technological and media related innovation is not moving us forward, it’s not really moving us at all, if anything we are expanding. Innovation is extending our opportunities and perspectives, not finding new stuff in order to kill of the old stuff!

- Things don’t die, they reformat.

I believe this means that the opportunities are getting more and richer. Which again gives us a greater chance of finding what’s right for us, not having to force ourselves into available formats because there are no other alternatives.

The problem is that we are too used to having a limited set of opportunities. And since we at the same time are using the wrong analogies to describe media related innovation (“moving forward”). We are creating an atmosphere where we think old stuff needs to die in order to make room for the new stuff.

It couldn’t be more wrong!

We seem to think that the situations is constant, that we need to fill it with certain stuff – stuff that needs to innovate. Not the other way around, that the stuff can stay (almost) constant, but the situation is the one that needs to innovate and change…

Like TV advertising, or the website (Mike has a related discussion here). In the same breath of air we discuss if we do or don’t need them. If they are “excepted standards” or old formats, if they are obsolete? In my opinion it’s not about the objects, it’s about the eco-system.

What we should be working on is the richness, the palette, the opportunities, the reformatting. The chance to choose a tool that fits the person or the company. What we should be embracing is the bouquet, not the flower.

How will brands change their marketing towards customers as our connected lives move from the universal and roomy interfaced libraries of the browsered internet and on to utilities and services on mobile handsets and things?

As Microsoft’s Europe Logs On report states, this scenario might demand our attention sooner than we thought:

“Internet use on PCs will drop from 95% today to only 50% over the next 5 years as other web enabled devices such as IPTV, games consoles and mobile phones become more popular”.

As we all know by now, mobile is not a smaller version of the PC/browser Internet, it’s a completely different platform with it’s own abilities and context for use. As customers increasingly will be more available on these smaller devices and less accessible through the PC’s browser we need to keep up with the development if we want to stay in touch.

But when the arenas where we meet our customers change, we also have to change the way we talk and interact on these devices – to best fit with its abilities. Let’s not make the same mistakes as generations before us, and unimaginatively copy “standards” from existing mediums.

My point in this is that up till now companies’ marketing activities in the digital sphere has been the “universal” approach. Where we view the website as a library filled with information rather than a utility to help people do stuff. This especially forces the design to solve the wrong problem (findability not utility), and puts the focus on availability not activity.

To me the new smaller interfaces and the contexts where they will be used challenges us to think more in micro activities. Identify core services, core activities and core consumers. Finding smaller unique solutions for different situations and different contexts. And moving much of our digital initiatives into micro actions and micro marketing compared to how we do stuff today.

Mobile is all about conversation and collaboration, exchanging ideas and strengthening existing social ties. It’s time the mobile applications took advantage of the inhibit advantages of this arena, not only using it as a transportation device for tools and information between the brand and the participant.

To a large extent mobile applications up til now have concentrated its efforts on streaming or making accessible data or utilities from the company or organization. But this turns mobile into a platform or channel, not an arena for collaboration and “tribing”.

The new iPhone application from NIN is set to inspire us, and change all that…
Via Influx Insights.

I’m wondering if the future gestural interfaces will be brought to us through personal projectors, like the MIT Sixth Sense, or from new “digital” materials with audio visual abilities.

Sixth Sense demonstrates the first:

And this audio speaker found om PSFK and the screen from Sony below demonstrates that the latter is not far away either:

Personally, although Sixth Sense is charming, I put my vote in for the latter.

It’s been the focus on this blog now for some weeks, that in order for the marketers to understand the new marketing landscape one needs to understand that we are no longer interrupters of media channels, but participants adding value to existing conversations and activities.

We are about to do something different – and in this context we have to understand that our goal is to be meaningful and loved, important and anticipated…

Seth Godin wrote a post on his blog today pointing out the same thing, and articulating it in his more direct and down to earth kind of way. Well worth the short read:

“Selfish short-sighted marketers ruined it for all of us. The only way out, I think, is for a few marketers to so overwhelm the market with long-term, generous marketing that we have no choice but to start paying attention again.” – Seth Godin, Poisoning the well.

In this setting, Baker Tweet by poke, posted around the web yesterday, is a brilliant example showing that this mindset isn’t limited to medium sized or large companies, it’s ideas that should affect and inspire everyone.

BakerTweet from BakerTweet on Vimeo.

Our new digital abilities has opened up a whole new kind of marketing. I’ve previously called this both content marketing, situation marketing and even activity based advertising. But have after a rummage through my mac dictionary ended up with the slightly inexplanatory term Context marketing.

Context marketing is two directions of marketing: Collaboration and Utilities, and the convergence of them – which is where all the really juicy stuff happens :o)

I want to try to explain this by adding this slideshow, I find it incredibly difficult to not go into this mumbo jumbo kind of merry go round, so I kept it as short and precise as I could.

To sum it up in one sentence:

“it’s about earning ownership of the experience where your products are used and brands are shaped.”

Hopefully it it presents some valuable ideas, and inspire some new ones. Please let me know.