David Cushman

List of lists

Ok, well there’s just two.

I know some people hate this kind of self congratulatory stuff. But for those who like a little context with their blog…

FasterFuture is nestling in the top 30 Marketing blogs in the UK (number 23 at present).

And it’s been named in the top 20 PR blogs on the planet. Which is nice. We’re at number 17.

Someone has to come up with a list of blogs which deal with convergence of marketing/advertising/pr/editorial/production…. er the power of the network and it’s impact. Ok, that may be something of a niche…

Who’s afraid of 2009?

There’s a lot of doom and gloom among the financial soothsayers. Purpose-less business are being put to the sword.
My (Huntingdon, Cambs) High St Woolworths went last week. Which as far as I can think means the only place left where you could buy a cd on Huntingdon High St is WHSmiths.

And you have to fear for the likes of Smiths in the current climate. Like woolies, it lacks a purpose. For me its become a Christmas shop. I visit it once a year.
If smiths stopped selling CDs there would be no where left on the High St to sell them.

And this illustrates the reality and illusion of fear of 2009: Music is being enjoyed as much, if not more than ever. It isn’t music that’s at risk in a recession, it is a business model - one which packages up, stacks on racks and locks out co-creation.

The illusion is that all is at risk. The reality is that business models which don’t fit the networked world are at risk. (image courtesy)

I spent New Years Eve playing Guitar Hero with friends - a glimpse of how new value gets created in a supply web (the artists get paid for their music, and the coders and game designers and interaction designers etc get paid for their contributions.

£300 of console. £175 of game and equipment. Wild guess: more than you’ve spent on CDs or downloads in the last year?

And way more fun.

People playing together co-creating an outcome they want. It’s what multi-player gaming has always been about.

It’s what the business models that need have no fear of 2009 must also be about.

Those that have purpose, those that engage with the power of the network; 2009 - and the future - welcomes them.

Those that persist with the broadcast mindset, with command and control, with centre over edge, those do face a tough 2009 - and no future.

As Christmas 2008 fades into memory, like Scrooge, while there’s life, there’s still time to change. May the ghosts of Woolworths and Zavvi do the trick.

Best not wait for the ghost of Christmas-Yet-To-Come to show your business to its grave.

Big questions for social media strategy

Tom’s updated The Building Blocks of Social Media Strategy diagram after a first round of feedback.

It’s getting nice and simple. You can judge if its getting clearer for that.

I’ve got a few broadbrush questions to throw into the pot. I have in mind some answers - but I’d rather raise them first before joining in with my own responses.

Here’s some things we might consider:

• Let’s think about the actions in each case. Perhaps this will help clarify the language? What is it that must be done to make the strategy reality - element by element?

• And to help that, let’s maybe consider the Purpose of this project. Why are we doing this? What wrong are we trying to correct? Are we fed up of the smoke and mirrors and misdirection that many are using in the name of social media? Are we attempting to invent a language to describe a new set of actions?

• I thought it may be interesting to look at jobs, terms and processes which emerged as a result of the printing press (for a revolution of similar scale to the arrival of the networked world) and map that on to this project? (image courtesy)

For example there were scribes before and printers after. How would those people have started describing what they had to do to fulfil the strategic change? You’ll be able to think of numerous other post-printing press roles and processesn - and results of these. How could that approach apply to mapping social media strategy?

Biggest question really is, ‘the why,’ though.

For example, if this is a project to reassure frightened people the result will be very different from one which is about evangelizing the truth - and different again from one driven by a desire to provide a toolkit for those ready to make fundamental change.

• And then there’s the scope.

Is this a 6-24month transitional model (to help broadcast mindset businesses make their move to the networked world) or a 2-100 year transformational model taking account of the fact that the network will disrupt where-ever it touches and that the eighth mass media is upon us?

Big questions. And perhaps only answered by more than one model?

Seven from around the bend

I’m sorry, but I can’t let a festive season approach without making a few predictions. It’s all that pausing for thought we do at this time of year (that and the fact I’m often asked to do some long range forecasting for company strategists in December!).

Worth trusting? That’s up to you to judge.

So here’s a few. Not to be taken to seriously - more to provoke you into a making a few of your own - crowd-sourcing the future if you like. (Image courtesy)

Of course, you can always back your thoughts with something like hubdub (in fact, I just might).

1. Broadband providers will start trying to differentiate themselves by upload speeds.
Inspired by a lunch with JP Rangaswami. It’s a pet gripe of his that the internet is built all wrong at the point of use - ie it’s a medium for participation yet our download speeds are often 10 times or more faster than our upload speed. So, as we get increasingly creative, and (at least the advertised) download speeds get faster and faster, the key differentiator for ISPs won’t be a free laptop or 24mb, it’ll be how fast I can upload and share my video collection. Watch for the shift this year.

It’s an end to placing value in the ability to broadcast and a start to valueing the network.
2. Expect the same rules to apply for mobile devices. I want my iPhone to upload as fast via 3G and wifi as it can download (actually I want the 3G way faster up and down!!).

3. A daily national newspaper will stop printing (finally). In the UK. The shift to network plus the deepening recession will do for at least one. It’ll attempt to live on online.

4. A large broadcast media (print, radio or TV) company will go bust (not be sold, cos no one is buying). Btw, it won’t be bauer media.

5. There will be a social media backlash.
I do think 2009 is the year a realisation will dawn that social media is less a cause and more a symptom of a changed world.

Having said that, getting a ’social media strategy’ is not only fashionable, it IS all important in taking a business, brand or organisation on its journey to the networked world.

And there aren’t enough people who genuinely understand this seeming chaos to go around.

With so many bandwagon jumpers coming into the field, many a customer will get their fingers burned. Quick tip, avoid those who try to sell you exploitation of social media rather than participation in it.

The good guys will have some damage to repair.

6. Twitter will monetize in a ham-fisted way. Aggrieved participants will form an open-source co-operative version with funding based on the wikipedia model.

7. Microbanking will get Government backing in a response to growing loan-sharking in the worst hit parts of the economy. (kiva.org for the uk?)

That’s enough from me. What do you think 2009 has in store for us?

Perspective

My four year old daughter met an old lady yesterday. Very old. We sang her happy birthday  Happy 103rd birthday.
She was born before the first radio programme was broadcast. She was 13 at the end of the first world war.

Wonder what she’d have predicted for her life back then?
The flu epidemic which killed more than that first world war? The great depression? The rise of Hitler (she is Austrian) and the loss of most of her family in Auschwitz?

A second world war?

A new life in England? The Cold War? Martin Luther King? Jfk?

Another new life in Australia? Deciding to move back to the UK alone at the age of 93?

The Internet?

I wonder which she regards as the most significant event in her life time? (image: 1906 picnic, courtesy)

I wonder what we will in our own?