Christopher Carfi

Supernova_wharton_2 A bunch of notable stuff hitting the radar in advance of Supernova2007, which is happening here in San Francisco in June. Just learned about two aspects of the conference week that looked especially interesting.

Challenge Tracks – The Supernova team has been putting together a number of interesting conversations around "challenges" to either conventional wisdom or current hype. These include:

Challenge Track: Markets & Relationships—Finding the ‘Individual’ Point of View

Relationships are becoming the new marketing. Now that we have expanded
people’s networks through technology and ready access to information,
they are self-organizing in ways that allow them to leverage their
relationships as never before. They are inventing new products and
media. And they are demanding that business relate to them on their
terms.

Many terms are being used to talk about the newly empowered
“individual”: engagement, attention, community, authenticity, and
trust. Yet buzzwords alone provide little insight. This Challenge
Track will assemble a variety of business disciplines to cut through
the confusion, and examine key market issues from the individual’s
point of view. It will feature five sessions:

Session I: Introduction to the new Relationship Economy

Session II: Relate: Markets are Conversations, Part 2

Session III: Reach: The new role of Advertising

Session IV: Research & Measure: It’s about more than Metrics

Session V: Where’s the Innovation?: Examples and Implications of the Relationship Economy

Challenge: Virtual Life or Virtual Hype?

Do most people really want to be immersed in 3D virtual worlds? And
what are the real business benefits of these massively multiplayer
environments? This session will examine which activities will migrate
to virtual environments, and when physical forms will continue to
dominate.

Challenge: Web Tools—Collaboration and Disruption in the Enterprise

How can businesses take advantage of the open, networked, user-centric
innovations that power so much of the new activity on the public Web?
What are the tools that promote real efficiency and group
participation, and how will they change the way organizations behave?

Also, the Supernova team has set up an Open Space day that is going to get the kindling going for the rest of the week (it’s limited to 200 folks, and it is only $25 to attend the open space, so get on the list soon if’n you’re going). From the site:

The Supernova Open Space Workshop is an open forum on the social, moral, technical, and strategic questions impacting the increasingly connected world in which we live. Discussions about topics like user control, neutrality, identity and open standards are setting the stage for future policies and economic decisions. Come to this event to learn more, participate in the community and shape the future of the New Network.

The Supernova Open Space Workshop is run on Open Space practices and principles. There are no pre-scheduled presentations, no keynotes, no panels. Instead, topics for discussion, questions are posed and presentations are offered up by participants when the workshop convenes, and scheduled the day it happens. Participants in the workshop need not be attending Supernova, although all Supernova attendees are welcomed and encouraged to participate. We hope to find ways to pull some of the insights from the Open Space Workshop into the more traditionally structured days of Supernova.

Check it out.

May 20, 2007

Maker Faire 2007

Had a blast at Maker Faire today. A few pics below, and more photos here.

Steampunk Robot

Robot Hockey

Giant-Sized, Working Game of Mousetrap!

May 18, 2007

Michael Clarke At The 30…At the 20…He’s at the 10…

Michael Clarke at Green Tea Ice Cream takes the The Customer Owns Your Brand post and runs way downfield with it. Great post. Read the whole thing. Clarke:

"The argument (roughly that customers own your brand, that on a
socially networked planet, you cannot control their understanding of
what your brand is and that you have no choice but to engage in a
direct, multiple-levelled conversation with those pesky individuals you
expect to GIVE YOU MONEY!) isn’t new but his expression of it is
direct, devastatingly illustrated and distils the nuggets of wisdom you
might normally find spread thinly across several books-worth of popular
online marketing platitudes (you know the kind of book I mean) into a
single gnarly post.

Again, this isn’t new – most famously, Intel applied this very strategy back in the mid-nineties during the Pentium floating point debacle. Andy Grove spun it out into one of those books
which illustrates how a) a PR disaster was turned around by a (then)
unusual act of honesty on the part of a chip manufacturer and b) how
the whole mess pushed Intel into the business of being a consumer brand
– a service company. Grove calls those moments in a company’s life
strategic inflexion points (see short portrait at Thinking Managers)
(guilty confession – it’s one of the more over-used phrases in my
vocabulary). Still, Intel was arguably in a position to have toughed it
out if they wanted to. Now, that isn’t an option. Here are three recent
demonstrations."

Go there to see the excellent examples he gives from Sony, Digg and Flickr.

May 17, 2007

You Don’t Own Your Brand — Your Customer Does

The nice folks over at the Washington D.C. chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA-DC) asked me to provide my perspective on how “traditional” marketing is changing as a result of social media. It really is incredible where technology has come these days, check out this duplicator for an example of one of your options! Both these methods used together would be excellent for the marketing industry as a whole. But anyway that’s by the by, let’s really get into this topic.

—

You Don’t Own Your Brand —
Your Customer Does
by Christopher F. Carfi, CEO
of Cerado, Inc. (http://www.cerado.com)

Brand (n.)

1. A trademark or distinctive name identifying a product or a manufacturer.
2. A mark indicating identity or ownership, burned on the hide of an animal
with a hot iron.

(source: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth
Edition. http://www.answers.com/topic/brand
)

We marketers like to delude ourselves. We delude ourselves into believing
that if we can distill the meaning of a product or service to its very essence,
that if we can determine the perfect message and imagery, then the market will
internalize those things for which the brand “stands” (and perhaps
look a little less closely at the actual product or service to which the brand
has been applied). That’s what we do. We create “brands”
that will resonate in the market. If you’re looking to get your brand out there a little more with branded items, look into these promotional products design company.

But a “market” is not an undifferentiated mass of consumers[1] with
upturned gullets interested in gobbling up our marketing messages. A
“market” is actually a place. When you hear the word
market, think “bazaar,” not “customer segment.”

Some of the historically great “brands” are learning this the hard
way. Let’s look at Sony, for example. Some estimates state that
Sony is going to lose up to $1 billion dollars on creating and marketing its
new PS3 gaming console in its first year[2]. One BILLION dollars.
With that kind of money, they should be able to ensure that the
“branding” in the market is perfect, right?

Not even close.

Wikipedia defines “social media” as “the online tools and
platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and
perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms,
including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs,
message boards, podcasts, wikis and vlogs.”[3]

The ease of access to social media has flattened and democratized the
market/bazaar. Instead of those with the loudest megaphones and billion
dollar marketing budgets running roughshod over customers, we, the customers,
now have the ability to critique, to talk back and to connect with each others
and share stories and opinions. What does this mean for marketing?
It means that the old, top-down hierarchy of searing brands into the consumer
psyche is done. Over. Finished. It means that businesses have to engage with their consumers, building their brands on the ideas of their customers and their experiences. To achieve this there are now social media tools, such as this instagram bot and other automation tools, in order to help these businesses grow through social media and the engagement with their customers.

Let’s look at a tangible example. In the wake of the PS3 launch, an individual only known by the
online handle of “heavyarms117”? posted a video to YouTube entitled “How To Kill
A Brand”[4] (based on the song “How To Save A Life,” by The Fray). Here’??s the first verse:

Step 1, you make your console
cost the most,
You beat your chest and proudly boast,
Despite no good exclusive games
You make a bunch of ridiculous claims,

Then ignore our need to play online
Don’t make it fun like Xbox Live
Use Blue Ray, which I don’t need
Now you’re getting your ass kicked by the Wii

Sony, you went wrong, with your PS3
I’ll just keep playing my 360
Hope this song has helped, you understand
Now you know, How You Killed Your Brand…

Simple. To the
point. And devastating. As of this writing, the video has been
viewed 1,419,639 times, and generated over 12,000 comments. What was the cost to produce it? Minimal. The cost was some basic editing equipment that comes with every laptop
and a few hours of time.

1.4 million connected customers versus a
top-down, billion dollar budget? I’??ll
take the customer in that race every time.

So, if the customer is truly in
control of the brand, what can we as marketers do?

If the customer truly is in control as a result of the advent of social
media, the most important thing to do is to actually engage in transparent,
authentic conversation. Anything less
eventually ends up with a situation similar to the one in which we currently
see Sony and other brands. This means
listening in the blogosphere, and taking the pure, raw customer feedback that
is out there and bringing it back into the organization. It means creating social networks and online
communities where customers can engage with your organization and each other. It means acting not as teflon-covered
representatives of the organization, but instead engaging in natural exchanges
as the human beings that we are.

“But what if the customer is critical, or says bad things about us?” It’??s happening already on the over 70
million blogs online, and between the hundreds of millions of members of
existing online social networks. And
when it does happen, a marketer’s best bet is not to go into “spin”?
mode, but instead to address the issue directly. If there is no issue, or the facts surrounding the conversation
are incorrect, then correct them factually. However, if there actually is an issue, address it, and state
what is going to be done, and by when. For example:

1) Say what happened – State the case,
tell what happened, explain what the situation was. Don’t spin, don’t make excuses. Just state the facts.

2) Say what you’re going
to do about it â?? Inform customers about the short term fix. How are
you going to put out the fire?

3) Plan for Murphy
– Ok, the immediate crisis is over. What are you going to do to make sure this
doesn’t happen again

4) Report back –
Let the customers know what’s going on. Was the short term fix applied? Are the
long-term changes happening?

Following this simple process can avert the firestorms that erupt online
when an organization decides to batten down the hatches and ignore whatâ??s
actually being said about them via social media.

And so, here we are today. We’??ve
created an entire industry based on marketing via top-down methods, based on
the broadcast models of TV and print that have served marketing well for the
past fifty years. But things have
changed, radically and quickly. Customers are turning off the TV and putting down the newspaper and
getting their information about brands not from our billboards and glossy
collateral, but instead from their trusted colleagues online.

Even those colleagues only known online as “?heavyarms117.”?

[1] – “one who consumes”

[2] – http://www.ps3focus.com/archives/167

[3] – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

[4] – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R98qC0fd_1w

May 15, 2007

JPG Magazine Founders Powazek and Champ Out

Derek Powazek: “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about community-building, it’s this: Do Not Lie. People are too smart and well-connected to believe a lie anymore. So, with that in mind, the story I’m about to tell is absolutely true as I experienced it.

Issue 10 will be the last one that Heather and I will have a hand in. We are no longer working for JPG Magazine or 8020 Publishing.

Why? The reasons are complicated, and the purpose of this post is not to air dirty laundry – it’s just to let the community know why the founders of JPG are no longer there. We owe you that much.”

May 11, 2007

What Do You Want To Ask Doug Engelbart?

(NOTE: If you have questions you’d like to ask Doug Engelbart, please leave them in the comments below and I’ll ask them to him next Tuesday.)

Next Tuesday, I’m going to be sitting down for a conversation with Doug Engelbart leading up to his presentation at MIT on May 17th, entitled “The Augmentation of our Collective IQ.” The audio of the conversation will be made available as a podcast. (Immeasurable thanks to Mei Lin Fung for setting this up.)

Doug is a legend of the industry. Just the first paragraph of his Wikipedia entry is filled with a compendium of the contributions he’s made:

“Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart (born January 30, 1925 in Oregon) is an American inventor of Swedish and Norwegian descent. He is best known for inventing the computer mouse (in a joint effort with Bill English); as a pioneer of human-computer interaction whose team developed hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to GUIs; and as a committed and vocal proponent of the development and use of computers and networks to help cope with the world’s increasingly more urgent and complex problems (which Horst W. J. Rittel and others since have called wicked problems).”

Doug’s current research is focused around the idea of “Collective IQ.” A bit more on that front:

“Today, his contributions are more widely recognized, but for decades the technologies he invented and demonstrated were largely ignored or misunderstood. And even now, with PC’s and the World Wide Web as direct descendants of his pioneering work, these technologies have not had nearly the transformative effect that Dr. Engelbart had hoped.

Until recently most of his inventions, as the industry gradually adopted them, were built into stand-alone computers. But from the beginning Dr. Engelbart conceived his techniques with networked computers in mind. His motivating concept, still largely untested today, was that information technologies could serve as the connective tissue between people and information.

The result, he said, would be an exponential increase in what he calls an organization’s “collective I.Q.,” which would in turn supercharge a group’s ability to improve itself over time.

In essence, Dr. Engelbart’s theory separates work into three categories. A-work, as he calls it, is the primary mission of an organization, like building cars or operating a health care system. B-work involves ways of improving A-work, and it is likely to be basically the same among similar organizations, be they auto makers or hospitals.

C-work, in turn, is about improving the improvement process itself. Although an auto maker might be loath to share information about B-work with its competitors, Dr. Engelbart’s hypothesis is that much good could come from their sharing information about C-work — about how to improve the process of recording and responding to consumer complaints, for example, which might enhance processes all the way down the line.

And that exercise might be equally valuable to a software company, a car maker or a bookstore — resulting in what he calls “high-performance organizations” that are much more capable of improving their work processes quickly and effectively.”

What questions would you like to ask Doug about Collective IQ, or anything else?

May 11, 2007

Social Media Goes From Theory To Practice

Just got this fantastic note from Wayne Thompson, who is the director of research at Technology Evaluation. Wayne was one of the 20+ participants at the San Francisco stop of the Social Media and CRM 2.0 workshop series.

Wayne writes:

“Chris-

Thanks again for having me at the CRM 2.0 workshop. I can’t believe how much I learned in those two days. The presentations were outstanding, and the interactions with you, Paul, and the other attendees greatly stimulated my thinking.

Here is a link to my first podcast http://pmwarstories.com/

Let me know what you think.

Consider me another convert in the Church of CRM 2.0.
Wayne”

(Wayne, thanks for the good words and you’re very welcome! Thank you for spending the time with us. The podcast sounds great. We’re actually featuring it in the Naples session today. Nice job!)

I have to say…it’s highly gratifying to see people like Wayne grabbing a hold of the reins and going from student to trailblazer in such short order. Now go check out his podcast, Project Management War Stories.

May 5, 2007

Turnabout Is Fair Play

Dave Winer:

“Not only do companies go global easily, their customers do too.

Now we all have much better information, when we need it, to make a decision about who to do business with.

Marketwatch: “Eateries see reviewers at every table.”

Businesses that really think of the customer will be rewarded, and those that fake it, will fail to compete.

If you don’t want your customers to find out that you mistreat customers, then don’t mistreat customers.

Don’t expect them to suffer sliently. That worked in the last century, it doesn’t work in this one.”