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John Battelle

Decloaking dinosaurs

by nick on August 21, 2010

I met someone this week that thinks they were burgled because they tweeted that they were away from home (i.e. London, when their location says Brighton). Such scare stories are only more likely as location-based services begin to make traction.

Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Loopt, Yelp etc are still in their relevant infancies but with Facebook launching Places and smartphone take-up sky rocketing, these services/games are going to thrive. They’re not there yet simply because the reason for broadcasting isn’t compelling enough.

Somewhat negatively for a social media darling, Chris Brogan wrote recently, “I’m just not always keen on decloaking for social-only reasons.” I wouldn’t if I was him either; with 146,000 Twitter followers he’s going to be mobbed and spammed big time.

Users are struggling to find a real value in location at the moment but with generation Y willing to publish everything about themselves, I can’t imagine decloaking and revealing location being a worry for them. It’s more likely the opposite as they ‘like’ and ‘check in’ at bars, cafes, clubs, shops and places all over world.

As usual, John Battelle voices the clearest business connect, “…location aware services are not yet a cultural habit, in particular ambient ones. But it won’t be long before we assume that our public presence is, in effect, a search, one for which we will expect a response from any number of potential respondents.”

There are some clever early adopters though. Example: Daily Candy will point you to ‘current local happenings like designer sales, spa deals, and underground concerts,’ as you travel around New York, but we’ve not really seen anything yet.

So marketers will create places pages inside Facebook and scramble to offer you discounts to broadcast you’re in the cinema, coffee shop or wine bar. And, inevitably, the privacy debate will become mainstream news (read ACLU’s concerns).

Location is marketing’s unconquered frontier (and privacy the debate to come). But not for much longer.

Photo credit: Kerryvaugan

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Defending social media attacks

by nick on April 28, 2010

Nestle are used to their fair share of bad press; students the world over have seen to that. But March 2010 is when they will go into social media case study history.

For anyone who’s not read the full saga, here’s the short version: a video was staged which drew a play on eating Kit-Kat and orangutans’ fingers. Nestle had the video taken down but, of course, it reappeared. They chased it around the ‘net like a drunk trying to bath a cat and made life pretty miserable for themselves by fumbling over logo violations when Greenpeace were organised.

I’m struggling here between ethics and communication tactics. If you make a bad product – deem that as you will – then, with or without a great web interaction, you deserve to be called on it. But, lets assume you aren’t evil personified and you deserve your place in the world of commerce, what do you do when attacked online?

Despite what some experts portray, social media isn’t always a simple mirror, signal, manoeuvre affair. On top of the immense variables, there is the fear of inflaming situations, adding sugar to the fermenting jar that forums and blog comments can become. I don’t believe there is a definitive three, five or ten-point plan. Social media has only one absolute for all organisations: listening. If it’s nothing else for you, it’s an opportunity to listen.

That said, Seth Godin believes he’s got an answer: brands in public. He launched this aggregator back in September last year.

Strangely for a Godin fanboy I wasn’t convinced at launch. And after six months or so I can’t say I’m overly impressed with their client list – no Coke, no Cisco, no Microsoft, all of whom are being critiqued hugely online. If anything, is this not a $400/month garden where a bad ‘vibe’ can grow? From a brand manager’s standpoint, doesn’t she prefer any negatives to be disparate across the web, rather than collate neatly in one screenshot? Of course, the positives mentioned online will also look more powerful together.

Which brings us right back to our variables problem: join in and risk inflaming the situation or enter and solve problems with a swath of your service sword? The trouble is unless the Nestles of the world truly engage (as in adopt some of their philosophies, ecological or otherwise) with the likes of Greenpeace, they’re likely to find hugging a tree has morphed into overtaking a Facebook wall as the militant tool of choice.

But don’t be frozen by fear. The wonderful John Battelle at Federated Media recently wrote, “…all of our customers are already operating in social media. You can’t pretend otherwise. And it’s better to engage, make mistakes, admit those mistakes, and move on, than to not engage at all. I call this “conversational judo,” and suggest we all practice it, daily. Twice on Sunday, perhaps….”

Touché.

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The holy trinity of business

by nick on September 19, 2009

ipodadJohn Battelle recently said, ‘Marketing is now like moving quicksilver. The marketer is the publisher and visa versa; the consumer is now both… that we should rethink, ‘our brand in the market’ as, ‘our conversation with the market.’

I’d like to chirp a complimentary point about synergy with product (otherwise it’s all about the sell and very little about substance). As I see it marketing, branding and product are now *more* than joined at the hip. They’re our own holy trinity of business.

All three are separate but suddenly they’re one and the same. They’re more than interlinked – they are each other. If marketing was a message or a story about a product/service, it has now become the book itself.

Simple example: the iPod was an instant phenomenon because of the product and how it made people feel, not because of its raw above-the-line marketing efforts. Great products and services are a conversation starter for me, how about you?

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