DIGITALVISIONSTEN 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