Media Week

Martin Thomas has got in touch through this blog and seems to have an interesting book on crowd surfing. Just had a chat with him and he has the unenviable challenge of spreading the word of social media through large corporates. Something I have a great deal of experience of too. It can be demoralising and it can be inspiring depending on who you meet.

 Martin writes: 

 'Crowd Surfing looks at consumer empowerment from the perspective of the
corporation. How do companies cope when consumers start playing around
with their brands - making their own versions of ads, posting not
particularly flattering photographs on Flickr - or using social media to
mobilise protests? From a different perspective, how have some companies
managed to successfully harness consumer empowerment, using the crowd to
develop products, fine tune their communication or solve problems? We
have described these successful companies (and their leaders) as Crowd
Surfers.'

There is also a blog of the book www.crowdsurfing.net <http://www.crowdsurfing.net/>
if you are interested in the topic. Looks like it tackles some relevant themes.

Maybe someone would like to share a review with us? I haven't read it yet.

www.itsopen.co.uk

I have decided that I am going to cancel my newspapers. I have the FT/Guardian and The Observer delivered. But why do I need them? First of all there is all that paper to deal with! Is it environmentally acceptable to be knocking off all those trees. And do they have anything to say that I cannot find for free online? No I don't think so. Besides a lot of the coverage is starting to look jaded. Take Mondays for example. Most papers carry the football which happened on Saturday on Monday as if it only just happened! Why? By Monday I have read about it online, I could have seen it on TV, I can watch videos online etc etc. Newspaper sites are getting better. So why bother with the restricted paper versions which have no links, no opportunities to comment etc?

www.itsopen.co.uk

I am beginning to wonder if online brand advertising ever works...I know this is probably a heretical thing to say to Media Week readers. But I think it would be good to open up a debate.I spoke to someone about advertising on facebook for example and they said they never look at the ads. They are too busy doing other things. chatting with their friends etc. Occasionally I notice brand adverts but they are outside of where I am. Or they are just irrelevant. They are not in the conversations. They don't relate to me. They are not a natural part of the blogs etc. I'm wondering if they really work at all. People might think they do. But surely Google ad words is now the most effective way of advertising. There is hardly any branding there.  Does brand really matter online? Does it carry any really weight? I think the key medium online is the people. That is the key medium and companies need to be communicating with people ie their customers, honestly and authentically. Otherwise they will not get anywhere. I think it is so hard for big companies to do this because on the one side they have PR agencies determined to uphold their 'messages' and on the other hand they have ad agencies demanding bigger brand messages. It's very niche online.  Can ad agencies and PR agencies relate to more open conversations with key audiences and provide messages that are highly targetted and highly relevant.

For example take hotel advertising. Who books a holiday now without checking what real people have said first on Trip Adviso? If the reviews of a particular hotel are rubbish, no amount of brand advertising is going to work and no amount of brand advertising is going to change my mind and no amount of PR messages is going to convince me. It has to be different. Someone from the offending hotel itself has to read what has been said. Do something about it and talk honestly to the people about the changes they have made to their hotel etc and demonstrate they are listening. And no agency can actually do that if it is to be meaningful. Either companies ditch agencies altogether and start afresh or agencies need to radically reinvent themselves to remain relevant online.

www.itsopen.co.uk

We've just commissioned some Twitter cartoons from Robert Thompson (Observer, Guardian, Private Eye etc)

 Take a look:

 http://itsopen.co.uk/itsopentwitter-cartoon-exhibition

The likes of Dell and Starbucks are using online ideas platforms in order to get ideas from consumers about how they can improve their services. Some companies are using them internally. They are basically a far more modern, interactive and meaningful upgrade of the suggestions box.

A lot of social media experts are talking about making your customers partners in the development of your business including products. The idea being that agencies no longer own brands in the traditional sense but they are being co-developed through social media with people discussing them and making videos about them etc etc.

The idea of allowing your audience to determine your products is interesting. What if MediaWeek set up a blog and enabled people to decide what went into the next issue? Or what if an ad agency asked different audiences to submit ideas for ads and then enabled audiences to vote on which would should be made? What if restaurants asked customers to create the menu and vote on what they wanted most?

Is this a particularly new idea? Is the notion of 'professional expert' dead? Are we all experts now? Is the crowd wise? Er..not sure on that one.. can think of plenty of stupid things crowds do....

The cheerleaders of social media say it is all about the people taking over and we must listen to them. They know best. But do they? What do people think?

www.itsopen.co.uk

Has Google become too powerful and all knowing? Jeff Jarvis, the famous blogger and Guardian columnist, has brought out a book called 'What Would Google Do?' and says that one reader of his book predicts that we are witnessing the emergence of a new post Capitalist system: Googleism.

See :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/09/google-future-models

However, others are starting to get a bit jittery about the power Google has over our lives. Charlene Li, author of the best-selling 'Groundswell', one of the key books on the emergence of social media, has written about how Google recently failed:

http://blog.altimetergroup.com/2009/02/googles-malware-goof---a-personal-experience-and-perspective.html

For a bit of a laugh I asked one of my friends if he thought Google was God. He thought for a minute, doubtless thinking about its influence, and then said: 'No, it doesn't answer my prayers.' Mind you, I bet there is some kind of online prayer service out there.

www.itsopen.co.uk

Social Media Networks especially Twitter seem to have set up competitions for people claiming how many friends they have.

 I often hear people boasting about how many friends they have on Twitter or on Facebook.

Is this the new sign of status and power? Are we as influential as the number of friends or followers on our social media networks and communities?

 But how genuine are the friends and followers?

 www.itsopen.co.uk

http://twitter.com/itsopen