Signal to Noise in Design

I have a high school reunion coming up, so I’m paying more attention to, and spending more time on, my health and fitness.  My workload has been (thankfully) significant, and as a result the pressure on my time is at record highs.

I try to remain abreast.  No high school humor intended.  I have for years been tweaking google alerts, RSS feeds in my reader, Twitter lists and searches and groups — all to try to instrument the flow of information which is overwhelming, growing, and, in my opinion, 99.99999% (that’s five nines for you carrier-grade readers) junk.  Crap.  S#!t.

When I started my business (and no longer had corporate IT support), I became a much more frequent user of the online forum.  Specifically, for annoying Windows XP problems, or issues arising within my temperamental home backup server.  I was blown away by the number of cloned support sites there are — loaded up with stolen junk just to create a content farm which SEO bots will favor in order to drive advertising clicks.  Blown away, and profoundly disappointed.  I felt a lot like you do after you pass through a flea market.  Just a little grimy from the overwhelming quantity of bogus product.

The rates at which information is being created (or in too many cases, duplicated, stolen, reused, plagiarized) is phenomenal.  We are creating so much digital information that the shrinking percentage of content which we actually print is still driving growth in our global consumption of paper.  Though we print less as an overall percentage of the content we interact with over time, print growth is outstripping those “performance improvements.”

There’s hypocrisy in here somewhere.  On our naive and idealist side, we love the idea of information being free, thanks to the internet.  Access may not be free, but it is relatively cheap (at least for us in developed regions).  But what Frankenstein have we created?  Content is stolen willy-nilly.  We spend otherwise quality innovation cycles trying to find ways to automate ad clicks and to generate more and more spam.

How many snake oil emails have you received this week, offering to generate you $6723 per week while you channel-surf from the couch using the new app there is for that?  I rarely applaud Microsoft, but was thrilled to hear they had “decapitated” the Rustock botnet.  A significant victory in the #signal2noise campaign trail.

For my part, I’m going to use the #signal2noise hashtag and do my darndest to identify both the sublime and the ridiculous on the signal to noise front.  Today I tweeted about Joe Roy’s blog, because Joe is “teaching me how to fish.”  His plain guidance on straight talk helps me use fewer words to express my thoughts.

Are you willing to join this crusade?  I’ll be looking for your tweets and comments and posts…

Twitter’s Black Friday Signals an Exit Strategy
I don’t vouch for the quality of twitip’s analysis, but it certainly seems plausible to me.

In sum, @nealwiser believes that Twitter, having announced intentions to bar third-party Twitter clients (such as Tweetdeck and Seesmic, which I and squillions of others use daily, is on a path to shore up its valuation.

Seen from another angle, it represents Twitter’s first move to close ranks, and cut off the ecosystem, and all the investment of time and energy that has been expended to make the platform the phenomenon it is today.

Either way, a sad day in the industry.

Coca Cola and Pepsi Logo

Originally uploaded by Stefan M Nilsson

This is slightly manipulative, since Coke has played lots of games with its logos as well, but the point is great at least at a branding 101 level.

I like this definition of a brand: “an enduring promise of value.” This infographic clearly illustrates the power of the word “enduring” in that phrase.

Enjoy!

Are you a marketer in a small technology company?  It’s been hard work being a smaller vendor in a competitive market space these past few years, eh?

In more robust economic times, small company agility can be a valuable marketing tool: “We can deliver new features faster than larger, more sluggish vendors.”  But as sales cycles have been drawn out and big wins harder to close, the bigger players have had a whole lot more stored fat to draw energy from.

Opportunities do present themselves, even in the most difficult of times, however, if you are tuned in to you competitors and looking for those weaknesses in the defense to take advantage of.

One of my favorite tactics is to spring into action when a competitor gets acquired by one of the big players — such as IBM, Oracle, HP or Microsoft.  When a small, agile company gets absorbed by an industry giant, the smaller vendor’s customers who may have been perfectly happy with their vendor have to ask themselves some questions:

1. Is the acquiring company going to modify the acquired company’s roadmap?  (Probably)
2. Will the acquired company be forced to integrate with some other offerings in the acquiring company’s portfolio? (Probably)
3. Will execution lag while the regulatory aspect of an acquisition takes place and decisions about organization and potential “resource optimizations” are investigated?  (ABSOLUTELY)

A client company executed this tactic recently — and the results were immediate and (predictably) positive.  RSD issued a press release in response to the news that IBM intended to acquire PSS Systems.  PSS Atlas competes with one of RSD’s latest offerings from their RSD GLASS Information Governance suite.  The basic concept was simple: PSS Atlas customers will need to have an answer to management’s obvious question: “Is the IBM acquisition a good thing, or a bad thing?”  Raise doubt in the PSS Atlas customer’s mind by presenting an offer: “For the amount you are paying PSS in maintenance, we’ll convert you to our competitive offering, RSD GLASS Mosaic.”  A simple and clear alternative to the path into IBM’s software portfolio, and an opportunity for RSD to upsell the balance of their Information Governance solution.

Not only did the story get wings in the Twittersphere and over LinkedIn, but more importantly it generated an emotional response from the PSS Systems CEO, @dee_dray.  “Ignore false rumors from RSD. Atlas will continue to be info governance hub for all data sources & types + enterprise execution scale.”  And of course, that generated a host of retweets — all to the benefit of RSD’s disruptive tactic.

Chalk this one up for RSD!

Autumn in Harrisville, NH

Here we are in the first few days of autumn, 2010.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is running as far and fast from The Social Network as he can, and counteracting all of this imminent negative buzz with a gift of 100 million goal units (par value, $1) to Newark, New Jersey schools.

I called it “Tulip Time” for social media back in July.  Crazy hype.  Murky thinking.  Bad decision-making.  Errors.  Noise.

The pendulum on all of this craziness is shifting.  Is sanity to be restored to marketing as a profession, career, and strategic business function?

In Bloomberg Businessweek yesterday, another voice of reason, a little more clear light.  Well done, Greg Verdino, whoever you are.

What do you think?

I was reading an interesting post on PR[squared] about the usefulness of the web, web apps, iPhone and Android apps, and so on.  A key data point came from Pinch Media , citing the extremely short half-life of most downloaded smartphone apps.

Usage of free applications drops to less than 5% in less than 30 days.

After 30 days: 5% of downloaded apps are used!

As we move forward to Web n.0 (does yours go to 11?), I am stunned daily to see how much digital waste we are creating.  The digital landfill is cheap storage and disposable electronic devices.  But surely there is enormous waste of human productivity.

We download dozens (hundreds?) of applications for our smart phones, and never use them.  We generate (as I am doing here) millions of pages of content for consumption via the web — and an enormous percentage of it is “dreck” — pure unmitigated crap.

But it represents human effort to create, distribute and support those bits… a huge percentage of which is useless from a practical standpoint within days.  Doesn’t that bother you?

Shouldn’t we have higher standards of productivity, or at least usefulness, for the output of our labors?  Shouldn’t we demand more quality in all of these areas, and set standards for the improvement of our utilization of these digital assets?

What if Apple were to announce that if iPhone applications were not at 20% utilization 30 days after download, the providers would be given reduced rankings suffer reduced distribution of their gadgets or widgets?

What if Google said they would no longer index content that hasn’t had a visitor within the last 12 months?

Of course neither of these things will happen, but if we don’t impose higher quality standards on our digital output, something will have to be done.  Or we’ll start contracting diseases from the inhalation of all the web dust.

Charles de Gaulle Airport

As I’ve often written here, I’ve been fortunate as an independent consultant.  I have been kept both busy and challenged throughout the “interesting times,” in the Chinese sense, of the last two years.

Along the way, I made the decision that I wanted to remain independent  — alone.  I don’t want to build another marketing services firm; I’m happy the way things are.

And I am beginning to figure out why I like it this way.

First, all of my client time is spent doing actual work.  I don’t have to spend time distributing and delegating.  I don’t have to spend (much) time on business development or marketing.  Time spent translates directly into durable deliverables which help clients drive business forward.  Whether it’s a white paper for content syndication, or the agenda, venue and content for a three-day sales meeting in two languages, I get to leave fingerprints all over the place.

Second, I can move into and become part of my clients’ teams much more easily this way.  Agency teams (to this day) roll up in multiples of four; they are counting and tracking time to the six-minute block across multiple hourly rates; the whole experience tends to reek of overhead.  A loner can be where he or she needs to be.  Get out quickly if that’s wise.  Far easier to demonstrate value for the client.

Oddly, it’s by being a lone wolf that I can quickly become embedded within the client organization and team.  I do a lot of work as part-time CMO. My effectiveness is defined by moving in, getting to know the business, the team and their skills, and getting a detailed action plan in place — ASAP.  But as a contract consultant, who can be sacrificed swiftly should business conditions require, I’ve got to remain agile.  It’s a strange balance to learn, but it’s extremely energizing.

How do you keep your balance?

When I became a corporate “outsider,” almost three years ago, I felt that marketing as a business function was changing fundamentally.  I plunged into research mode to learn how the “old media” (print publications, radio, network & cable TV, with staff writers employed by giant media companies) were giving way to the “new” (citizen publishers producing content on the web for free).

I launched my consulting business by exploiting social networks, this blog, and free content (see Resources) in order to stimulate my network and tease out interest in project work ranging from part-time-CMO to white papers.  It worked.

I also witnessed “tulip mania” as self-styled (and genuine) experts emerged and captured the attention of almost everyone on a marketing career path.  For a time during 2009 old media events (conferences) were popping up left right and center headlined by new media gurus extolling one of the movement’s foundation principles: Give, give, give… listen, listen, listen… engage… and in the end you will be rewarded a hundredfold with opportunity (and, presumably, filthy lucre).  Become known as a source of quality content, and customers will beat a path to your door.

A couple of months ago, I spotted an ad on Facebook which quoted social media beacon Chris Brogan’s daily rate at something in excess of $20,000.  The offer was to gain all of that wisdom by joining a new community featuring Chris, Darren Rowse, and Brian Clarke — known as Third Tribe Marketing — for a mere $97 initial payment, followed by $47 per month.  As their blogs, collectively, have over 300,000 readers, even using the old school marketing yield on direct mail of 2%, that’s a neat $3 million (with an M) per annum!  Now that’s capitalism for you.  My guess is they timed that initiative just right.

Go for the promotional material on the website if you wish (after all, they’re amongst the best at web copy writing), but let’s be clear: as well as these guys have been doing living off the “give it away for free” model, these leading lights have clearly seen an opportunity to do business one $500-per-year subscription at a time.  Perhaps, like Lebron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh — it’s not about their ego or the money — they just want to win the new media world championship.  Time will tell.

Another recent observation: though the new media mantra of “inbound marketing” (nowhere more religiously observed than at Hubspot) poo poos the old-school outbound tactics of telemarketing and direct mail, I know many of us with marketing in our online profiles were bombarded with offers to sign up for the April Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco — notably as the conference’s dates were drawing perilously near.

So should this mini-bubble burst, should the petals drop from the precious tulips (and I believe it/they will), what can we take away?

First, it is true that the media have irreversibly changed. The problem is, the changes are not that dramatic, nor are the implications that difficult to understand.  There isn’t a huge amount of magic; no need for wizards; no new secret handshakes and shibboleths for the elite of this new marketing paradigm.  Brands are their own publishers, and they are largely in control of their own media.  A capability once outsourced to one or more agencies has moved in house, and media costs are heading toward zero.  That’s about it.  I speak to groups of young entrepreneurs from time to time… and after two hours of very high level teaching, they are off and running and becoming their own content foundries.

Psst… guess what… it’s not really that hard to figure this stuff out!

Second, brands (and marketing professionals in particular) need to take much more seriously the content responsibility with which they are now saddled.  We used to talk about a people to programs ratio of 40:60.  Leverage in marketing meant distributing costs 40% in human resource costs, and 60% in media and external programs designed to “drive the fish to the nets.”  Today companies need to invest much more heavily in the creation, curation, and distribution of content — using human beings to do so.  Marketing departments will be moving discretionary spend (which is easy to cut in case of a revenue shortfall) to personnel expense (which is difficult to cut, at least for most sentient humans).

Finally, marketing needs to attack with every fiber in its being the “signal-to-noise ratio” problem which all of this new media and social networking technology has created.  Zero barriers to entry for publishing and vastly expanding user-generated content volume conspire to create a polluted information environment which makes the BP Deepwater Horizon mess look like “On Golden Pond.”  In addition to relentless promotion of our own messages and achievements, we are going to have to exhibit leadership in filtering the extremely high volume of extremely low value information, and continuously enhance our web sites to make them more like museums, libraries, and exhibits — destinations for quality, creativity, and clarity — and less like cheesy storefronts.  Content curation solutions, like the one just launched by HiveFire, may be extremely valuable in attacking this enormous challenge.

What do you think?

I had the great pleasure and distinct honor to give a talk to about 200 students of photography a couple of weeks ago — out in Turner’s Falls at the Hallmark Institute of Photography.

I was invited by an old friend, John Nordell, who is an artist and photojournalist, and also an instructor at Hallmark.  He writes a great blog on the creative process, called Create Look Enjoy, and you can see a great variety of his work at JohnNordell.com.

My purpose was to impress upon these budding entrepreneurs (most will be going into business on their own, others joining established pros as assistants) why the outbound marketing era is over; the importance of embracing the techniques of inbound marketing; and to get “unbound” — to begin NOW to get their brand-building efforts going.

What a great time… and what an amazingly gratifying set of responses from the students!

During my talk (a link to the slides is below), I told some stories from my own experience with social media.  How I got my first really big consulting gig through my blog and Facebook within about ten days, how one of my amateur photos is on exhibit at Arizona State University thanks to Flickr.  I wonder if  Woody Allen knew how much marketing and the media would change when he wrote, “80 percent of success is showing up.”

What a thrill to hear from Tanisha Stephens, who shared the following on Facebook after my talk:

Yesterday @ school we had a guest lecturer by the name of Tim Dempsey, who talked about the importance of social media and the positive impact it can have on your business. Today we had a class(w/ John Nordell) on social media in relation to gaining business exposure through sites like FaceBook, Twitter, & Flickr. Because I believed every word of what they said, I now have this FaceBook account !

Tanisha started her Facebook page… Tanisha Stephens Photography… the very next day.

But she didn’t stop there.  She started reaching out to build her network, and posted an offer to kick start her business when she graduates this Spring:  Here’s her promotion piece, which was featured only on her Facebook page:

Tanisha's Promo Piece

Hi Tim, I didn’t get a chance to speak to you personally after you spoke, but I want to say thank you. Since you were here, I have really taken advantage of the benefits of social media. I’ve planned a photo shoot in my hometown in Alabama for the end of this month & without any advertising other than facebook and I booked all 32 of the appointments I had available in less than a week. I printed flyers that my parents were supposed to put around town for people who aren’t on facebook, but at this point there is no need for that, because I already have a waiting list. I went from about 200 friends when you were here to over 700 friends today. I started a fan page and have 400+ fans. You were 100% on point and I thank you so much for coming and sharing this knowledge.

There’s not much more rewarding than having this kind of impact on a young entrepreneur!

Here are the slides… and don’t hesitate to contact me if you’d like me to speak to YOUR group of budding businesspeople.

I Love Boobies Bracelet

I love clever marketing — campaigns that gently walk the line between the clean-cut and cool.  Slogans that have you laughing a bit but remind you of an important issue or problem or opportunity.  I think of the “I ♥ Boobies / (keep a breast)” program as clearly in this category.  Right at the edge; funny; provocative.

However, education administrators see things differently.  School administrations around the country are banning the wristbands which are sold to raise funds to educate young women about the importance of early detection of breast cancer.  Out, out naughty teens and your filthy slogans!

Educators see things differently in South Hadley Massachusetts, as well.  In South Hadley, a remarkably large group of misguided and apparently unobserved punks (nine have been indicted at this writing), hectored, harassed, and hassled young Phoebe Prince with absolute freedom until, tragically, the object of their ridicule took her own life.

Hypocrisy is always worth calling out for scrutiny.  I find it astounding that our culture has reached a point where educators — adults responsible for how we shape and teach our youth — can see fit to ban perfectly harmless slogans in favor of a good cause, while in the very same news cycle they are revealed to be oblivious (and so far free of any retribution or legal responsibility) to the presence of evil in teenage form among them in a small New England high school.

Whither common sense?