10 ideas for the new decade
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DIGITALVISIONS10 IDEAS FOR THE NEW DECADE
“The bigger opportunity for clients, we believe, is to identify the global
societal and technological trends that are reshaping how we think, act
and buy - and to pivot into them early. Trends today tend to develop
more slowly and are harder to see, allowing clients to take a more
thoughtful, thorough and systematic approach.” - Steve Rubel
During the last decade, we’ve seen social and digital
media move from being purely the domain of tech-savvy
types into a mainstream phenomenon. All you need to
do is consider one statistic: Twitter was mentioned on
television nearly 20,000 times in 2009, according to
SnapStream. As a result, companies are investing in it
and – slowly – seeing results.
Given the hype, much attention has turned to guessing
what will become “the next Twitter.” It’s ample fodder
for tech and marketing pundits, the media and clients
- especially at the beginning of a new year and a new
decade.
However, in many ways this is the wrong question to ask.
Where once it was hard to sleuth out emerging platforms
like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook before they grew, now
they just seem to surface out of nowhere. You’ll know the
next Twitter when you see it.
The bigger opportunity for clients, we believe, is to identify
the global societal and technological trends that are
reshaping how we think, act and buy - and to pivot into
them early. Trends today tend to develop more slowly
and are harder to see, allowing clients to take a more
thoughtful, thorough and systematic approach.
Introduction
In the following pages you will find 10 essays on such
trends written by some of the smartest thinkers in digital
marketing. These ideas, when looked at together, reveal
four key themes:
• The shift to digital technologies by both consumers
and marketers is now global and pervasive across all
aspects of our life and growing daily.
• Our engagement with each other is migrating rapidly
from computer to handset.
• Companies (and organized interests) are just
beginning to wake up to the engagement imperative
- and how to fund and develop it over time.
• And finally, the future is about carefully using the data
people generate to make smarter decisions, while
adhering to concerns over privacy.
We hope you enjoy our 10 ideas for the new decade. We
welcome you to challenge us on our thinking. After all,
that’s the only way we can grow.
Steve Rubel
Senior Vice President, Director of Insights
steve.rubel@edelman.com
January 4, 2010
New York, NY
For all the hoopla around the explosion of social media, one
would think the industry would have developed, agreed upon
and socialized a standardized approach to measuring its impact.
Yes, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has agreed upon core
metrics that quantify things like friends and followers. Yes, there
have been countless blog posts and conference panels on the
topic. However, as one client so rightly expressed last fall, when
you strip away the hype, what we’ve nailed is how to measure
outputs, not outcomes.
Proving – and perhaps more importantly, being able to predict
with a fair degree of accuracy – the return of each client’s
investment in the social space is the only thing standing between
the discipline being a drop in the ad budget bucket and 20
percent or more of any brand’s total communications spending.
The pundits out there will no doubt take issue with my claim
that this isn’t already possible and being done. To some degree,
they’re right. The basic toolset required to get us to ROI exists
and is being effectively deployed by a handful of companies.
Intuit and Lego are two prime examples, but they’re the
exceptions. We need new rules.
I believe that there are three essential elements missing: a CRM
mindset regarding media spend and content development; a
Back to Reality
By Rick Murray
President, Edelman Digital
commitment to funding meaningful social media measurement;
and the fact that Facebook (with its 350+ million citizens) remains
a largely closed environment. It’s up to agencies to drive the first
and brands to drive the second.
What Facebook ultimately does is anyone’s guess, but there are
countless geek entrepreneurs out there who claim to have found
workarounds. If I were Facebook’s CEO for a day, I’d take one
look at my balance sheet, steal a quick glance at Google’s and
opt for opening up.
Now, back to reality.
Yes, social media has gone from sideline novelty to cultural
ubiquity. We’re now about to see it become a business driver.
Money flows to things that produce results. And we can prove it.
Over the last two years, businesses have tightened belts, cut
spending and some have gone out of business altogether due to
the economy. But there is another threat that many organizations
face which will likely remain, even as the cycle of recession
begins to fade - disruption. Many business models are simply not
disruption proof.
The media industry has been turned upside down partially as
a result of technologies which empower anyone to act like a
journalist. Newspapers have seen their classified cash cows
cannibalized by free or low-cost services such as Craigslist.
Web designers who once charged premium fees for their
services now compete with Wordpress or other do-it-yourself
services.
The music industry has been upended, with record stores going
out of business as a result of the iTunes ecosystem and digital
file swapping.
The advertising industry has been thrown into chaos by
technology which empowers the consumers to skip over ads
and demand value in place of messaging.
Disruption fueled by technology, such as a younger generation
that lives more digitally, and other global trends will force
businesses to re-assess how they spend media dollars and
influence the creation of new products and services. This will
gradually trickle down into every facet of an organization, forcing
changes in job descriptions, demands and skills. In an effort to
become a disruption-proof business, brands and organizations
Disruptive-Proof Businesses
By David Armano
Senior Vice President, Edelman Digital
will need to become more connected and in tune with their
customers, employees and partners than ever before.
Disruption-proof businesses will need to become better at
predicting possible outcomes and adapting quickly to changes
in their environment before their business models become
disrupted. Listening tools and “real-time” focus groups on
social networks will make meaning from the data. These will
become increasingly essential for enabling an organization to
stay informed, while internally they will improve how their own
employees share information and collaborate.
In 2010 and beyond, technologies and the human behavior it
influences will continue to disrupt — but organizations who learn
to adapt quickly will thrive.
This is the year when businesses finally take social media beyond
just one-time marketing programs and campaigns and up-level
their involvement toward a more sustained, serious relationship.
In short, we’re moving up from flirting to going steady.
In our love lives, relationships are a lot of work - keeping
them alive and meaningful are even more so. Much the same,
corporations, large and small, are seeing value in reshaping how
marketing dollars are being allocated by reversing the model
they’ve become used to – a start-and-stop campaign approach
– to one that’s on all the time.
Note that this does not mean that campaigns are dead. They will
live on as part of a more fluid engagement structure.
Let’s look at it another way:
Some guys like to seduce a new girl every night at their local
bar. It may be fun for them, but the drinks get pretty expensive.
Relationships are more meaningful and more cost-effective in
the long-run because the “maintenance” costs are easier on the
wallet than a series of seduction tactics (I’ll leave it to authors
Levitt and Dubner to elaborate on the analogy in their next book,
Super-Duper Freakonomics.)
A campaign model in the social space is the same. Often it ends
up leaving customers, fans or advocates in what I call the Valley
The Valley of Abandonment
By Sylvain Perron
General Manager, Edelman Digital Canada
of Abandonment. The problem is that a company has to later
invest more in re-engaging stakeholders, and the cost here
ends up being higher than if they had simply kept the
conversation going.
Savvy Fortune 500 companies are starting to fill in the Valley of
Abandonment with ongoing engagement programs that touch
an alphabet soup of departments such as HR, PR, CSR, CRM,
customer service, operations and marketing.
Take Best Buy, for example. Its Twelpforce program has
unleashed more than 2,000 employees on Twitter, enabling
them to offer tech support to customers around the clock and
in the open. Best Buy doesn’t stop there – the company’s Loop
marketplace also crowdsources operational improvement ideas
from employees and gets them funded.
Best Buy is a prime example of a company that has
wholeheartedly embraced ongoing social media engagement in
its operational DNA. Look for others to do the same in 2010.
Over the past decade, we’ve seen an evolution in social
networking platforms. They have progressed from tools for finite,
asynchronous communications with acquaintances (Classmates.
com), to one-to-one and broadcast messaging (MySpace),
to real-time interactions and now constant updates (Twitter,
Facebook). All the while, we’ve also seen an explosion in mobile
processing power and mass-market penetration of smartphones
equipped with GPS (Global Positioning System.)
Until very recently, however, these were disconnected events.
Social networking services had not harnessed the power of
location-based services in a way that truly resonated with
consumers. Loopt, Brightkite, Whrrl and Buzzd all tried, but they
were unable to reach critical mass. Arguably, they were too early.
However, another key reason these services did not catch on
was that they lacked an essential element: fun. Enter Foursquare,
which launched in early 2009.
Foursquare allows a user to import his/her friends from a variety
of existing networks, including Facebook, Twitter and Gmail. In
addition to providing the ability to “alert” friends to one’s current
location via a special mobile application, Foursquare introduced
the concept of earning a variety of badges for behaviors. Users
can enter new locations manually and share tips (such as
“order the Pei King Duck”). Moreover, regulars at certain venues,
restaurants, pubs, or other retail locations can earn the title
of Mayor.
This added gaming element seems to be the missing link that
mobile social networking needed to catch on with consumers.
Location, Location, Location
By Michael Wiley
Managing Director, Midwest, Edelman Digital
Foursquare has experienced dramatic growth last year and is
now available worldwide.
So what does this mean for business?
At its simplest level, Foursquare gives businesses a way to
recognize and reward their best customers through loyalty
programs. More than 200 companies are offering promotions
to Foursquare users.
Foursquare also is an opportunity for broader consumer
engagement and sentiment tracking. While the level of data
currently available within the site is still relatively modest, as the
service grows it is sure to evolve as a real-time decision support
tool. For example, if a user finds himself wandering through
a relatively unfamiliar neighborhood after dinner, he/she can
immediately query other venues in the neighborhood when in the
mood for a coffee or after-dinner drink.
In the new year, user-generated content will help guide more
of our decisions, putting even more emphasis on the need for
distributed businesses like retailers, in particular, to focus on
positive customer experience.
After years of hype, massive consumer adoption of social media
is giving marketers a reason to get excited about Asia’s mobile
Internet prospects for 2010.
Micro-blogging services like Twitter evolved from a niche tool
into a key brand marketing vehicle. Meanwhile, social networking
growth (and not just Facebook) has been phenomenal.
However, it’s mobile that’s the shining star.
A desire for access is accelerating the sales of smartphones.
According to Pyramid Research, smartphones will climb from
16 percent of global handset sales in 2009 to 37 percent by
2014 – with China expected to become the number one market
this year.
In Japan, 70 percent of Mixi users already access the social
network via mobile devices. Twitter Japan is seeing similar results
as it rolls out its platform and paid-for service model.
The iPhone was a game-changer for China. This was not
because it was a big seller - it wasn’t. What the iPhone did was
create major consumer demand for mobile Internet access and
related services/devices. Dopod, Meizu and many other local
manufacturers were spurred to release products to meet this
demand. Even handheld gaming units (akin to the iPod Touch)
Asian Mobile Marketing Goes Off the Hook
By John Kerr
Director, Southeast Asia
are coming equipped or are being hacked and fitted with SIM
cards for mobile Internet access.
Finally, the intersection between social networking, gaming
and mobile is also fueling growth. Local social networks such
as Cyworld (Korea), Mixi and RenRen.com (China) have been
battling to hatch the next big casual gaming phenomenon to
Asia’s highly sought-after youth market. The ongoing roll-out of
3G wireless across Asia will only drive increased demand in 2010
for mobile Internet among the masses.
However, with all the growth, what’s key here is that marketing
on people’s handsets requires a different psychology.
In order to relevantly engage with customers, Asian marketers
must innately understand how the convergence of social media,
mobile broadband access and smartphone usage alters the local
market information landscape. This includes where people get
their content, how they want to consume it and how they share
it. Success will require deep research, insight and tenacity, but
the potential rewards are huge.
It’s time to get going – the big mobile show may finally be here.
The media used to be our most credible source of information.
It was the only way companies could deliver a message without
the hard-sell of an ad. Readers automatically trusted the news
since journalists often just corroborate our own world views.
But the Web has brought new ways of communicating. Anyone
with a cell phone and an Internet connection can produce news,
even become relevant and trustful. More importantly, Twitter
and live streaming tools like Qik turned communication into
something unfettered and instantaneous. Web time is “real time”
– and more and more it’s the traditional “trusted” media that are
slow to react.
With each major news event there are millions who are
experiencing their “Kanye West moment” for the first time; when
we realize that the more authoritative sources we once trusted
are sometimes too slow.
When West, a rapper, jumped onstage during the MTV Video
Music Awards and interrupted singer Taylor Swift’s acceptance
speech, the reaction was immediate. There were more than
5,000 tweets in the first five seconds. As the show went
on, more than 50,000 people published about the incident,
according to MTV.
My own “Kanye moment” came during the aftermath of the
Air France AF447 crash off the coast of Brazil. Edelman Brazil
posted on Twitter all the statements put out by the airliner and
monitored the web to measure the repercussion. Hours later,
there were already more than 1,000 re-tweets (people spreading
the news via their own Twitter accounts). A community opened
Be Now or You Will Be Never
By Thiane Loureiro
Regional Director, Edelman Digital Latin America
on Orkut, Brazil’s largest social network, and grew to more than
5,000 members, and more than 500 blogs re-published news
from online portals.
It is almost impossible to control the velocity and reach of news
these days. Events, TV shows, movie premieres, accidents,
scandals, elections – they are all commented on by people
online. As communicators, we need to be prepared to address
issues and react quickly and intelligently.
Habits are evolving. We first replaced our local morning paper
with online news sites like the New York Times or aggregators
like the Yahoo home page. But now another shift is underway.
Our first login is an early morning look at Twitter or Facebook via
mobile phones. We now learn about breaking news stories like
increased violence in Iran or Tiger’s indiscretions first from our
friends’ Tweets and status posts – not from Matt Lauer.
The data illustrates the trend. Akamai, which analyzes Internet
traffic, says usage starts to rocket at around 6 a.m. on the
East Coast. The most trafficked hours are between 8 a.m.
and 11 a.m. Verizon Wireless reported that the number of text
messages sent between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. jumped by 50
percent in July 2009, compared with a year earlier.
Journalists too are starting their day with social media.
Mashable’s study on journalists’ social media habits found that
the pros use social media as “personal news aggregator[s].”
At the crack of dawn, they check their Facebook and Twitter
accounts to see what stories friends and other media are posting
and which topics they are discussing.
The New Morning Paper
By Cricket Wardein
Executive Vice President, Managing Director,
Edelman Digital West
Is it ironic that even when we aren’t quite ready to grumble up
a “good morning” to our families, we are ready to join our social
party online for the hottest news? That’s what’s on my mind as
we start 2010.
The web is nothing if not infinitely complex. Every time you
peel back a layer or explore something new, you find a whole
community, with complexity and dynamics all its own.
At the same time, Google has become everyone’s “home page.”
Google accounts for nearly nine out of every 10 searches, from
basic factoids to new products and emerging communities.
To connect with people successfully online, we must embrace
both the “convergence” of search as well as the “divergence”
of the modern Web and understand how they complement
each other.
The way forward is simpler than we might think at first. By
pursuing a strategy of dispersing our web presence, we can
also improve performance in Google and therefore address
convergence, too.
Consider this: social networks like Facebook, Flickr and
YouTube are really “mini webs” unto themselves. So, just
as you have a traditional Website to ensure a basic Web
presence – and hopefully a good deal more – you can also
have a presence in online communities, or what we also refer
to as “digital embassies.”
Establishing “digital embassies” like this has direct online visibility
benefits. For example, cross linking between your embassies can
improve your search results, thereby raising your profile
and generating more conversation about your brand, issue
or product.
Converging Divergence
By Marshall Manson
Director of Digital Strategy, Edelman Europe
“The Media is Dying” is a popular Twitter channel that tracks
layoffs and the financial struggles battering traditional news
media. The tweets read like epitaphs, whether it’s impending
doom at The Associated Press; London’s Observer, the world’s
oldest Sunday paper, closing; or the Tribune Company shrinking
papers to save on newsprint.
The reality is, however, that while news became bigger than ever
this past decade, journalism got smaller. “Content” replaced
stories; aggregators replaced reporters; and being first replaced
being accurate.
Yet the tide is turning. In 2010, journalism strikes back.
According to a study by the National Newspaper Association, 86
million Americans still read local newspapers every week, and 60
percent say the newspaper is their primary source of information
about their community.
Local news is the accelerator that will ignite journalism’s
resurgence. People will support it, and advertisers will pay for it.
ESPN didn’t launch a Los Angeles-focused web site because of
Kobe Bryant, but because there are millions of advertising dollars
up for grabs.
The news industry layoffs put well-trained journalists on the
market. These seasoned reporters, joined by younger J-school
grads with Flip cameras and iPhones, are already reshaping the
media landscape.
Journalism Strikes Back
Former Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter Jerry Lower took a loan
against his house to start The Coastal Star, an offline and online
newspaper serving the Delray Beach area. His paper is turning a
profit, as is Health News Florida, a niche news site run by former
Orlando Sentinel reporter Carol Gentry.
Pierre Omidyar, an investor who backed early citizen journalism
startups Backfence and Bayosphere, is launching a non-profit
news service in Hawaii staffed with professional journalists. Think
of it as a “public radio” model that requires reporters to rely on
their communities for stories and financial support.
The Chicago Tribune has also gone “hyper local.” ChicagoNow is
a blog hub with more than 120 local bloggers who are experts in
the minutia of daily civic life that only a taxpaying resident could
love. The bloggers are paid five dollars per 1,000 page views and
are encouraged to comment and interact with the community.
The long-term viability of these ventures depends on making the
stories unique. News site “pay walls” won’t matter if consumers
can find the same information somewhere else for free.
Actually, people don’t find news anymore so much as news finds
them, via customized “streams” on computers, mobile phones,
e-readers and other devices.
Look for traditional news organizations to get into those
streams and stock them with fresh stories (and learn how to
By Gary Goldhammer
Senior Vice President, Digital Strategy & Development
get paid for doing so). And look for more journalists to serve
as news “curators,” like Robert Quigley of the Austin-American
Statesman, who uses Twitter to find the best local information to
share with readers.
Finally, let’s not forget citizen journalists. One only needs to
remember the iconic images of the London Underground
bombings in 2005, the first-hand reports of the Virginia Tech
massacre in 2007, or the tweets about the Iranian elections in
2009 to be convinced of their lasting impact.
Citizen journalism will continue to be effective and necessary,
but individuals don’t need to learn how to be journalists for the
profession to survive. Instead, journalists this year will learn how
to become better citizens, re-connect with their communities and
earn back the public’s trust.
Last year, according to former Amazon.com Chief Scientist
Andreas Weigend, more data was generated by individuals than
in the entire history of mankind through 2008. However, you ain’t
seen nothing yet. Just wait until you see how we use it.
With the dawn of the new year, we’re entering the Data Decade.
We’re in the early days of a massive trend where content,
people, products and services find us via our personal and
aggregate data footprints, rather than our seeking them out.
Already, this is changing the way we live, work and play; and it
holds huge promise in making marketing communications far
more efficient and effective.
But before we can look forward, it’s important to consider the
brief 15-year history of the consumer Internet and the two trends
that preceded the Data Decade.
The 1990s were all about browsing. In the dial-up days, we
would navigate from site to site - either to fulfill a certain goal or
just for serendipity (remember “surfing” the Web?) Thinker Om
Malik calls this The Destination Web Era.
With the rise of Google, however, that all changed. In the 2000s,
millions ditched their bookmarks in favor of just “Googling.”
Search became an integral part of our global culture.
The browse and search paradigms have a flaw in that they are
both driven by intent. We need to know what we want. However,
we often don’t know what we don’t know. But that’s going
to change.
The Data Decade
As millions of us enter text in little white boxes - be it on Amazon,
Google, Twitter Facebook or elsewhere - the machines are
building vast data warehouses that recognize patterns. This
means high-value information is surfaced before we even ask.
“Google’s true holy grail is understanding, anticipating and
serving our intent,” pundit Jeff Jarvis wrote in the Guardian.
Machines are already subconsciously helping us make decisions.
The experience is entirely personal. No two people see the
same web.
Mint.com offers advice on saving money based on others’ input.
Google serves up personalized search results based on previous
queries. And there’s more. The International Herald Tribune noted
that many are taking to “self-tracking.”
“Bedposted.com” quantifies your sexual encounters. Kibotzer.
com quantifies your progress toward goals like losing weight.
Withings, a French firm, says it makes “a Wi-Fi-enabled weighing
scale that sends readings to your computer to be graphed.”
Journalists are getting into the act as well. AOL, Demand Media
and Associated Content are building out giant networks of sites
that automatically assign content to writers based on their search
keyword popularity - yes, our data footprints. In some cases, this
totals 4,000 new items per day.
By Steve Rubel
Senior Vice President, Director of Insights
In short, everything is becoming measurable and annotated.
The war for attention is being shaped by machines. Therefore,
the solution for marketing communications professionals, just like
in the Terminator movies, is to fight machines with machines.
What does this mean?
First, we all need to become more data driven. Marketing is still
far too rooted in creative hunches. We need to adopt some of
the mentality that pervades cultures like Google and Facebook.
Every decision and program should be based on data and facts,
while respecting consumer privacy.
Second, professionals at every level need a do-it-yourself
mentality when it comes to research. Many tools for gathering
incredible data, research and insights are free and easy to use.
Finally, every program should be considered a work-in-progress.
Launch early and iterate often based on the data. Marketing is
in perpetual beta, and data is our constant companion.
Edelman250 Hudson StreetNew York, New York10013
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