Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

N Building from Alexander Reeder on Vimeo.

Life gives You…
12 Month of Happiness,
52 Weeks of Fun,
365 Days Success,
8760 Hours Good Health,
52600 Minutes Good Luck,
3153600 Seconds of Joy…and that’s all!

Amazing Picture by http://www.flickr.com/photos/altus/

The difficulties experienced by the press and the old media in general are only the tip of the iceberg. These medias are declining in terms of audience because of the sudden intrusion of the digital era, they are inevitably going to carry other actors in the value chain with them, including tradional advertising/communication agencies.

But the scenario is always the same ; before reacting, the press groups didn’t see that their audiences were migrating to the Internet, then they realized, but too late. It’s the same attitude that prevails in big advertising agencies, but here, the managers have a real strategic vision (LOL !). They pick up, without really knowing why, the UGC and WEB 2.0 trends to give the impression that the agency is plugged into the moving world. An unreasonable wish but lacking managerial substance.

And yet, the reality goes beyond fiction :

So far this year (in US):
105 newspapers have been shuttered
10,000 newspaper jobs have been lost.
Print ad sales fell 30% in Q1 ‘09.
23 of the top 25 newspapers reported circulation declines between 7% and 20%
Source Business Alley Insider

And the analysis by Victoria Marchand on CannesLions2009

Despite a galaxy of VIPs (Eric Schmidt from Google, Steve Balmer from Microsoft, Spike Lee, David Plouffe the guru of the Obama campaign) this 56th edition was the image of a dying industry that can’t seem to revitalize itself. The digital revolution really did bring the advertising agencies to their knees and it’s not viral campaigns that will save them. Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP, asked corporate marketing managers “what’s next” ; no one was able to articulate a coherent idea. The only certainty, the Cannes Festival is a masterpiece in peril.

Too many Lions given out, too many categories, less recorded work (how can you pay 800$ for a campaign that didn’t produce much more ?), an outdated Palais des Festivals without wifi, a prohibitive hosting cost controlled by the organisers. Same report for the participants, of the 10 000 expected, only 4 000 made the trip.

And in the press room, the few journalists from media who still agreed to the trip doubted that they would be able to come back next year. A total crisis !

Why is this management worn down?
Mainly due to wanting to saving their careers; in the press like in the advertising agencies, it’s preferable to secure one’s career as opposed to imagining new strategies or bringing added value to the agency’s clients. This weighs down innovation, business culture and blocks creativity.

This is why they have missed out on the Internet generation !

"Twitter and Internet absolutely changes the media landscape”. The managers of media agencies must be aware, like those of the press, that the digital era is here. Today information is a free commodity and advertising will be also, sooner or later.

I’m sure that this title is provocative, but Adage published an article that doesn’t leave any doubt about the traditional advertising agencies chronicle lack of understanding of new media. Extract:

As Twitter moves into the business mainstream — nearing some 35 million unique global visitors, according to ComScore — it’s increasingly clear that one community has yet to fully embrace the social-networking tool du jour: agencies.

The irony is that the same people clients hire to erect communications and social-media strategies often appear uncomfortable using Twitter themselves.

“Publicis’ VivaKi is marginally better than some others in that it tries to attach a face to its Twitter feed, but the person who oversees the account ( @VivaKi) identifies herself simply as "Stephanie" — surely not what you’d expect from a company that earlier this year partnered with media owners to build a "Social Media Marketplace”

…If one analyses the approach and the philosophy of Vivaki, it is clear that this entity is on a social and collaborative trend???? Our approach to creating loyal brands we call "active branding".

It brings together:

· new ways of listening harder to customers for actionable insights
· ideas that earn customer engagement through valuable and motivating experiences
· new ways of being responsive to customers across channels and over time
· collaborative creativity that includes media and technology at its core
· new practices for content creation and digital production
· new data analytics, tools, and operations to support and measure more dynamic customer interaction and content distribution
· a large network of diverse international talent, allowing us to design global client teams that are both agile and effective

Nice approach ! on paper…

Beethoven – Piano sonata op 111 movt 2 (1) – Annie Fischer

The border that separates real and digital advertising is getting smaller every day. My prediction is that we are going to move toward a complete transformation of advertising’s operating mode, which today is based on a service model.

Born in the 50’s, this concept had its hour of glory with television and ruled for half a century until the birth of digital advertising and marketing in 1995.

This new form of advertising on the Internet opened new opportunities which Google knew how to take advantage of by attracting small advertisers who could not afford costly agency services. It’s the first major disintermediation that has taken place.

Stock exchange history, despite the drop in stocks of 2008, shows that Google’s capitalization is, today, without contest. The price on 19 August at $140.55B, largely exceeds that of main advertising agencies all together with a service-based business model.

As I have often written in this blog, innovation and new business models are ignored by the big advertising agencies. Their innovation cycle is practically non-existent and they, like all other traditional media, are driving towards an extinction phase. In effect, traditional advertising is unpopular, it doesn’t bring any value to consumers, it only brings value to agencies and the media, eventually to brands…..

By taking into account these parameters, and as the graphic below explains, today the innovation cycle is favorable to a complete redefinition of the advertising model. Like in the 50’s, the agencies knew how to take advantage of the television media, it is now time to build a new advertising model.

The XXXXX project has the code name “Posterity” and is based on the assessment that an advertiser does not bet on the creativity of an agency but more on that of individuals. This project is in production phase; I am available for investors, or all other entities to launch a concept that will revolutionize the advertising world and will be the second disintermediation, after Google’s.

Social Optimisation (SO)! A new trend is taking shape : advertising without advertising ! WIth a question, is advertising going to become free ? What you need to know is that you will no longer need to pay for media, but rather use social network resources because we are media!

A lot of writing has been done on the subject but which touches more upon the tools and technologies without giving details on the real means and methodologies of tapping qualitfied traffic using SO.

Certain observers even predict a fundamental change in the SEO industry (Search Engine Optimization).

SO could take over known referencing practices within 1 year and create new specialized businesses and a new profession (SO expert). Why? Because SO integrates the referencing and the SEM in a single tool.

That being said, SO doesn’t have anything in common with SEO. SEO is a closed universe of Google and other search engine’s algorithms, which explains the success of SEM (Search Engine Marketing) which allows a greater freedom of action.

SO is a disruptive model that doesn’t follow the rules of traditional communication and even less so with SEO. To get a good ROIM (Return On Intelligence Marketing) the perception of this type of communication must be changed, and usual routines and words avoided such as « Social Media, viral, Buzz ».

SO is a form of digital advertising, with a difference – it’s free….well nearly, because only the SO experts will need to be paid.

Today I am going to focus on Twitter, which, in my opinion, offers greater efficiency in this area than Facebook. This model, organised in 5 main principals, is applicable for all types of online commerce and services. For example : Twitter.com/mybrand, Twitter.com/products, services, promotions, etc…,Twitter.com/support

Principal 1: Competition
Follow all of your direct or indirect competitors. Two big advantages, you could follow their communications on Twitter and they will know that you follow them…If they have the «Social new generation» spirit, they will follow you too…if they don’t, they won’t be a competitor for long… Because of this, and if you are a serious competitor, you are also going to influence their communication.
Update : Pepsi et Coke :Coke was first to say a "gracious (but competitive) hello" to Pepsi and follow its rival. Later Pepsi responded with its own greeting, tweeting "Can rivals and tweeps coexist? We’re willing to find out" Both are now following each other. You know what they say about keeping your friends close and enemies closer. (source Adage).

Principal 2 : The influencers
Numerous sites give the ranking by category of Twitter influencers, often based on the number of followers. Choose those who communicate the most often in your area of activity.

Principal 3 : The Ecosytem
These are the actors that gravitate around your activity, banks, financing, partners, valuechain, recruitment, etc….Here also, it is advisable to follow the main actors in order to show them that you are active and that exchanges are possible very easily within your ecosystem.

Principal 4 : The vertical news
One of the advantages of Twitter is to relay real time information in your area of activity, coming from journalistic, economic or UGC sources.

Principal 5 : The Long Tail
Once the 4 preceeding principals are operational, you are going to naturally attract the long tail of prospects and clients, that is to say, a potential of several million users who will see your communications via the decoupling of intermediaries that you have put in place.

To finish, the most important action, once these steps are put in place, is to have the Twitter accounts managed by an internal or external SO expert. The role of the SO expert will consist of monitoring this new form of advertising communication in real time, reacting to the offer and the demand:

The heart of SO : The RT function “retweet” should be used generously, do not hesitate to RT your competitors when they are speaking about general subjects that interest your followers. On the other hand, have yourself retweeted with quality content produced by an SO expert. However, avoid direct messages which are associated with Spam.

The time has come, therefore, to broadcast your promotions but in an appropriate manner :

1- Two to three tweets out of 10 are reserved for promotion (product promo couponing)

2- Adapt a persuasive and non-intrusive language, the promotions must be in line with your non-promotional tweets.

3- Make the tiny urls arrive on pages that correspond exactly to the Tweet content, already true for SEM.

In conclusion, the success of SO campaigns is going to depend on parameters that must be well managed, but with a great advantage which is that there are no CPC or CPM costs and the performance can go beyond those of SEO and SEM strategies, all while adding an informative and captivating dimension. The tracking of links and other statistics is done with the same tools (for ex : Google Analytics and bit.ly), but also linked to internal ERP or CRM.

It’s a big revolution! read: Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business and Free: The Future of a Radical Price  de Chris Anderson.

Perhaps the future of digital advertising and marketing is to be free ? where one no longer relies on limited paid media in order to find an audience, but rather through millions of free medias.

The current economic crisis is far from being a simple recession, but a longlasting crisis which political leaders struggle to measure. Businesses must focus on the basics and find other ways to generate revenues. Today traditional businesses, which we call «brick and mortar», evade new business models that could generate new revenues.

These new models are directly inspired from the Direct Economy where freedom of action is left to the consumers. Processes exist already through services like Business Model Design which are directly exploitable, high quality references. Traditional companies need only to draw from these models in order to reinforce their positioning in a market that is completely ignored today; “The cycle of the flow of products and services”.

Ebay is the champion of financial flows that circulate between consumers by taking a commission for each transaction. On the contrary, Nokia and other mobile phone producers absolutely do not benefit from the flows that their clients could generate by selling their phone second hand…nonetheless, dozens of players do so outside of the control of Nokia, who is closed in a unidirectional BtoC revenue model.

And Nokia, like thousands of other mass consumption product brands, and even luxury brands, deprive themselves of millions of $ in commissions turnover from financial flows exchanged between their clients. They therefore don’t give themselves any way to pursue the virtuous chain of the «products and services lifecycle», which is so natural.

Because of this, today this turnover of several million $ is captured by other players who have a place in the CtoC market, developed unbeknownst to the large brands.

As a traditional response to the pursuit of the lifecyle of a product, businesses attempt to give a second life with adaptations or development of the product for other countries. Instead they should exploit UNDER THEIR BRAND platforms for exchange without thinking about cannibalisation problems, which in any case, will happen sooner or later. To do this they should acquire/create technical solutions and online services in order to propose to consumers to continue the exchange of products to empty unsold stocks .

The model CtoC which adds the marketplace dimension

This model is quickly integrated into a business’ organisation because it is fed by the consumers and does not require many internal resources. In addition, the products sold are more accessible to consumer’s budgets in times of crisis.

Many informed observers today attempt to redefine new approaches in face of the crisis, like Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, who was passing through Geneva. I was able to listen to him speak at a conference of the International University in Geneva. Although of very high quality, these approaches remain fundamentally academic and do not bring concrete answers to the pressing need of finding new sources of revenue.

To learn more, contact-me here.