Deep transformation of advertising

It's just amazing to see how sites like YouTube, Revver and DailyMotion are being used to disseminate commercial or political communications. This is a very deep transformation of marketing resulting from:

1. the massive penetration of broadband connectivity



2. a strong adoption of technologies making multimedia possible on the web



3. improved user education on software tools made to facilitate production, dissemination and reuse of digital content



4. a culture of personal independence in which the audience will allocate attention only on its own terms



5. the public's awareness of traditional marketing tactics and methods, leading to great mistrust of traditional media at least when it comes to commercial communications (I believe mistrust is also starting to affect the news and political communications)

On making projections

Excellent post on Guy Kawasaki's blog, giving a dozen very good tips about business planning for start-ups as a contribution to avoiding yet another bubble. Several of those points apply both for companies that are suitable for VC funding and for companies that are not. Interestingly the author considers a company to be a "VC deal" if it can reach big sales in a matter of 5 years and to Kawasaki that means breaking the 100 million dollar limit within 5 years. I don't know whether this limit has any special meaning for a VC but I can imagine it dramatically simplifies the way they analyse and navigate the world of venturing. Interesting read for a couple of my customers.

Interactive is the name of the game

Failing to take into account the imperative for interactivity in marketing initiatives is a big mistake today. At a time when people are taking things into their own hands, deciding what content they will "consume", when they will do so and how they will eventually reuse said content, no consumer brand can afford to build rigid marketing plans that involve only top-down communication. The "coke and mentos" phenomenon is a good testimony to the fact that things are changing fast in this space.

 
   
 
   

To a certain extent, companies that do understand that "interactive is the name of the game" stand to win big time. An example? Google would be one excellent example: everything they do is open and interactive from communication to APIs, to testing of their tools by the community... which of course makes it possible for them to carefully choose what is neither interactive nor public. A few years ago, when the Internet was still recovering from the wounds inflicted by the 2000-2001 debacle, many people were willing to bet that Yahoo! was right to try to transform itself into a more traditional media company... The tide has turned for good I think.

The power of enthusiasm

Seth Godin has a post about the impact of enthusiasm. He claims that enthusiasm makes a great impact and improves an experience in business. While I agree with him that it is far more pleasant to be dealing with people who are passionate about what they do, I believe it is fundamental to choose the context and the audience in which it is OK to be enthusiastic.

Who has not seen an enthusiastic business person becoming a nuisance simply because the audience is not ready to follow or the context is not appropriate? In fact, more than a choice of context, enthusiasm is something you share with your business partners, so if you want to play by this tune the key is to be able to adjust yourself to the mood and style of your counterpart(s) and to help them make the transition from the state in which they are to a state in which they can actually take your enthusiasm...

Of course, a prerequisite for being credible as an enthusiastic business person is to actually be passionate about what you do, to be committed to your projects... Which brings us to the importance of actually doing something one likes rather than something that has the only virtue of being acceptable to a social group (especially if the social group is overly conservative - if Picasso had listened to conservative types quite a few works of art would not be around for us to enjoy them).

Doing something with passion in business is another way of saying that you are actually pursuing a business quest.

Business Ready Web

A few years back visionnaries told us about the way the web would influence business in all of its dimensions from customer facing functions to the farthest reaches of its back-end operations.

Limited penetration of the high-bandwidth connections, poor understanding of the Internet, lack of user education and lack of readiness of technologies enabling true interactivity contributed a lot to the demise of a large number of companies of the first wave of the web. In the process we all learned a lot; that was the first time R&D
was being carried out at such a scale in the open waters of the
Internet. Now the drive for having economically viable
applications is strong despite the tendency of a number of players to
support questionable positions like "features are more important than
the business model"...

Notice this: while a few years ago the first articles on "Journal du Net" in France would deal with some technical topic, today 3 articles out of 3 featured on its front page actually deal with marketing issues, from the web seen as a media platform to projects of well-known brands like Perrier to include new forms of marketing in their plans... which is excellent news for a couple of my customers like for example BuzzParadise and Jamendo.

Simple communication - Why a New York Dollar is Worth only 76.2 Cents

Every year, UBS publishes a report on wages and prices worldwide, which gives a good idea of the disposable income people have in different cities of the world and studies a handful of interesting indicators. Their approach is very statitstical and I guess that makes it more difficult to exploit for many people. The NY Magazine does something similar, possibly less scientific but far more understandable for the average reader. I think it's an example of good communication and good pedagogy. Einstein used to say that things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler... this looks like an application of his position.

== Why a New York Dollar is Worth only 76.2 Cents

Based on a few scientifically imprecise calculations, a New York dollar would lag somewhere behind a Canadian buck. Here’s why...

read more | digg story

No asshole

Some business people (conservative types) tend to look at non-standard ways of doing as suspicious and sometimes well worth their disdain. My professional path being fairly non-standard, I occasionally face disdainful arrogance, which I use as means to work on my equanimity... Now I have a very official and quite academic way of characterizing this type of behaviour as being only a manifestation of what Stanford Professor Bob Sutton calls "the asshole rule".

Guy Kawasaki provides quite a few very interesting comments on the book and on the necessity to resist asshole behavior both as a victim and as a perpetrator of such behavior...