A presentation on the future opportunities in media, turning threats into insights into opportunities.

The presentation future media – no more middle men, is an accumulation of a range of relevant thoughts from this blog, put into system.

It’s built as a master slide set (to pick and sort from), but I tried to ad some structure to it by identifying six major “forces” affecting media, and then a short final chapter summarizing a suggested future mindset.

I’ve also chosen to ad a lot of the explanatory text – not just the headlines – into the slides this time, hopefully this will create more context for the people reading the thing online.

Find individual slides available for download under a CC license on my flickr.com account everything new is dangerous.

Find the presentation below, or on my slideshare account slideshare.net/helgetenno.

Mobile is at the forefront of representing a completely new way of thinking about marketing.

But in order to understand this we need to look beyond the SMS and the text voting, and start exploring the real potential of the platform.

Since the Mobile Abilities Map pdf, published two weeks ago, has received a great deal of interest. I thought it would be a good resource to readers if I collected and published my inspiration and ideas to each topic. Hopefully getting some inspirational juice flowing.

- I’ve added links to each resource on slides where this was possible.

I hope people appreciate the presentation, and continue sharing great links on their own blogs (and link back here) or in the comments section on this blog.

Every traditional marketing campaign is a customer purchase, that is no revelation: ROI and CPC, CPM, CPA are all standards. But I suggest there is something wrong with that mindset. In fact, with the uncertainty of the future of media, everything might be wrong with that mindset.

Display advertising might still be around at the end of 2010, but what is the gain from buying 30 seconds from about 0,001% of viewers when your competition is racking up thousands of engaged participants and members?

This is not an argument against the format, it’s not the format that’s the problem. Its the alternatives, the future of media, and your competition.

(And the reason I’m saying end of 2010 is because media is changing, FAST, including their business model. And the outcome is highly uncertain.)

There is one more thing, of great importance and huge interest:

People will gladly spend a minute of their day composing and publishing their own version of the brand story, but they won’t give five seconds of their time to listen to the company tell their version of it.

I’ve put together a list for 2009/2010:

1. People talk. They don’t want to be interrupted, but they do want their conversations to be ignited and more valuable.

2. Earned media is becoming more and more important in the mechanics of the marketing eco-system. People don’t share stuff because they notice it, they share stuff because it’s valuable.

3. People are not on one platform, they switch between several – all the time. Only people building things for platforms care about platforms. Our activities need to give the participant the opportunity to choose how and where to participate.

4. People will share their version of a brand’s story with other people, but they don’t care to listen to the brand’s own story.

5. People are more valuable owning and using your product than thinking about buying it.

6. In the words of Kevin Slavin: “People will watch a TV program once, maybe twice, but they will play chess an hundred or maybe a thousand times”. Where would you grow your most important relationships?

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.

Digital is by some perceived as “marketing on sale”, maybe due to it’s lack of tangibility, “newness” or failing ability to show it’s potential as the common way of perceiving new stuff is through the lens of old stuff.

But online marketing seems to finally be outgrowing the display/message based advertising frame- and mindset. Starting to see an increased focus on deliberate, value adding services, accessibility and social interaction. In this context digital will and should become the most important interface between brands and participants and ergo the willingness to increase investment should hopefully be inevitable.

Digital marketing and advertising, and by that I mean EVERYTHING digital, should be your most expensive endeavor, and the reason is it’s abilities.

This is a short “Only in Digital” abilities list:

In the traditional brand and communication mindset brands have been thought that they are unwanted and intrusive, but this is not true. Brands and products create immense value in peoples lives, with digital they have been given the opportunity to add to this value through meaningful and deliberate action.

This is an invitation to start believing in your brand communications again…

A lot of intense activity the last couple of weeks, with presentations and alterations has produced a new updated edition of the presentation The New Brand Landscape.

A lot of old stuff for old readers, but hopefully I’ve managed to add some fresh stuff. For new readers who might not have seen the first edition this hopefully will present some valuable and inspiring thoughts.

The New Brand Landscape 2 tries to explain some of the most important changes in digital media, it’s effects and the new opportunities for marketers.

Just wanted to link to the presentation on Nike+ by Michael Tchao, General Manager of Nike Techlab, from Picinic 08′.

For anyone certain that the Nike+ case isn’t relevant to smaller, non-global brands. These 23 minutes will hopefully change your mind, as Michael discloses a lot of the thoughts and ideas that in the end led to the Nike+ phenomenon.

Michael Tchao at PICNIC08: Commercial Collaborations: Tools, Things and Toys from PICNICCrossmediaweek on Vimeo.

Understanding collaboration through the lens of Itay Talgam and a collection of the worlds foremost conductors.

The best event I attended last year was the Picnic Conference 08′ in Amsterdam. Filled with interesting people and invaluable insights. Now they finally put the presentations from the main hall up on Vimeo, and I recommend most of them :o) – Thanks to Putting People First for “finding them”.

I’ve picked out Itay Talgam’s presentation on Conducting Creativity as my favorite, not necessarily because it contains a lot of relevant technical stuff or hands out project experiences. It doesn’t, Itay’s focuses on putting great conductors into context under the goal of teaching his listeners about creative collaboration.

This ads to the content on this blog, because.. carrying on the theme from some of the previous posts; in order to see solutions we need to understand humans, and the interaction between them.

This would have to go without saying when we’re trying to figure out the drivers and incentives for collaboration, community and participation. And is essential in order to understand what this would mean to your company and the amount of control one protects or releases to the public.

The talk creates a beautiful and valuable perspective, touching on a range of different features related to collaboration and creativity. And… it was the only presentation I can remember that got an almost never ending standing ovation!

Here is a selection of three quotes by Itam, or him quoting others, all found in the presentation:

“It’s not only about personal style, this is a part of it, and I think an interesting part. but it’s about creating a certain set of culture that enables certain modes of collaboration between people”

“Without order nothing can exist, without chaos nothing can grow”

“The worst damage I can do to my organization is to give them a very clear indication. Why? Because that creates a one on one relations between me and the players. Which makes the ignore the ensemble and work directly with me”

Have a look at Picinic’s Vimeopage for more videos from Picnic 08′.

Itay Talgam at PICNIC08: Conducting Creativity from PICNICCrossmediaweek on Vimeo.