The Twitterverse, by Brian Solis and Jess3. If it doesn't make you dizzy, it's pretty cool. Reminds me of Overdrive Interactive's similar social media infographic. Voila, "The Twitterverse" in living color!
A quick tour through the Waltham Museum of Industry yesterday provided a quick refresher course in New England's deep heritage of innovation, a history that is as old as industrialization itself. I come from the Merrimack Valley and my family grew up in the shadow of the Lawrence textile mills, just down the river from Lawrence's sister city, Lowell, Mass., with its similar industrial and technological pedigree. These cities -- and many others in Mass. and New England -- were the birthplace of modern-day America, the cradle of a somewhat more peaceful second American revolution. (Note the use of the phrase "somewhat more peaceful"...especially today, as the country once again chooses up sides in the union vs. non-union battle. But I digress...) Like the star outfielder who knows nothing about Jackie Robinson, it's sometimes possible for entrepreneurs to forget the innovators, risk takers and visionaries who effectively set the table for them by building a culture that prizes continuous improvement. After all, entrepreneurial passion can be all-encompassing and the burning desire to change the world, fast, can cause your garden variety visionary to toss out his or her mental rearview mirror. That's understandable, for the most part, but our innovation DNA is strong here and the need to build, better and breakthrough is bred in the bone here in New England. The innovators path is a long trail. As we create new markers along the way, let's bear in mind that we are extending a tradition that began with a blast of steam long ago.
I'm the parent of kids who attend public schools in Massachusetts (high school and middle school). As a result of that happy credential, I was invited to spend a day in a local high school to observe a range of classes and to talk with several teachers. First of all, I want to say that it was one of the best days of my career -- incredibly informative and inspiring -- and I am deeply thankful to the administrators, teachers and students who were responsible for creating that feeling. I also want to caveat the heck out of what follows because I know I'm using a sample size of one school in one town. Among the swarm of thoughts and ideas I had as I closed my observation day was the uneven application of technology across the spectrum of student-levels (remedial to AP) and subjects. I've noted this anecdotally via my kids' school experiences over the last ten+ years. They've never had a single, unified Web-based portal to receive and submit assignments, access textbook content, research projects, labs and essays, or communicate with teachers. Certainly there are a couple of portals used in a couple of classes but again there has never been a mandated method or commonality across their full educational technology experience (they've been in the same school system since first grade). This has always vaguely bugged me but the issue fell into stark relief when I saw this environment in person during a full day of classes.
The experiences ran from teacher's using "state of the 70s" overhead projectors and nothing else (as if the PC had yet to be invented) to others using educationally focused social media portals and mobile technology to communicate with their students -- both in class and outside. I can't really say the use of tech broke along the teachers' generational lines, nor can I say that the most advanced classes used the most advanced technology. I also have zero proof that the use of technology helps or hinders learning -- that's not my point. Again, it was the unevenness of the application of technology -- the lack of standardization within one school and school system -- that struck me most.
Over the course of my communications career, I've worked with companies whose specialties were technology or products designed to aid learning in the K-12 grades. Some of these were specifically built to match regional curricula or statewide standardized testing mandates, while others had more general education applications. Without making claims for one product or system over the other, I know there is strong and competitive market in educational technology. If a school plans on deploying some form of technology, I think it would be less confusing and more efficient for students to use a common platform or portal in every class and early in the K-12 spectrum.
Again, this is the result of only one day of observation in one school system, so who knows if my opinion here is borne out across the state or elsewhere. But, this was one of the singular impressions with which I left.
I'd be very interested in the thoughts and observations of others, especially parents with school-aged kids.
I believe that one of life's few remaining truths is that truth is dead. I've not read "1984" in years - I've been enjoying Mr. Blair's less iconic works recently -- but my daughter is working on it in her high school English class. Her very creative teacher has pulled a few "learning pranks" to illustrate the premise that he who controls the communication conduits controls what is accepted by most as "the truth." Technology has driven the massive proliferation of new communications conduits proliferate and has also guaranteed that access to them is universally available. As a result, the degree of relativism in public discussion (and I use discussion very loosely here) continues to grow and the idea of what constitutes truth becomes infinitely expandable. Now, perspective is truth. Context is truth. Volume is validation. Watching the US punch itself stupid in the last election cycle -- a process whose rhetorical violence is sure to accelerate in the next presidential campaign -- and observing the circular firing squad reportage and response on the WikiLeaks phenomenon, as well as the "Zuckerman Agonistes" of the last several months, highlights this eye-of-the-beholder notion fairly effectively. So, what is the lesson for the communications industry here ? Who owns the "truth" of our companies and clients now? How do we communicate effectively when our carefully crafted strategy, our brilliantly drawn messaging and our tactical excellence can be blown out of the water by any digital narcissist with self-esteem issues and a Twitter account?
Deploying new talent and cutting edge tools are part of the discussion but not central to the issue and, to me, seem like treating symptoms and not the condition. The answer is evolving, quite clearly, but I do know that when all truth is debatable it's an issue that transcends marketing and communications.
Another tweet surfaced recently from a journo (@dannysullivan) decrying the utter criminality of public relations people who send inappropriate, off-target, undifferentiated, and just pure lazy pitches to media members (and here we use the broadest possible definition of “media member” to include all traditional, electronic and social content creators or aggregators who collect and disseminate data in order to inform a public). I’m really bloody tired of this – and no, I don’t mean the media complaints. This type of witless and lazy excuse for a PR program has to stop. Not only is its detrimental to our profession – a profession that should thrive on its credibility – but it’s also less effective than using the old “message in a bottle” routine, minus the romance and adventure. Gentle readers, this is by no means a new beef. It’s been a valid and persistent complaint since I got started in the communications business way back in the decade that started with an “8.” But “spray and pray” still lives, sadly. You won’t find too many PR pros who don’t understand the notion behind customized pitches, relationship development, story creation and context-setting but when it comes down to the bitter end, we often do the wrong thing for all the wrong reasons. When we cut corners like crazy it reflects poorly on the individual, the profession and the clients and companies who pay our salaries or retainers.
So here are a few ideas on how to fix the problem:
PR AGENCIES
- Create a true apprentice program. Get your entry-level staff joined at the hip with your most experienced people. Have a defined curriculum and set schedules. Don’t shove your newbies into the big game until they’ve been well schooled by the vets.
- Keep your most experienced people engaged in the day-to-day work. Sure, successful business development is critical to an agency’s health, but too often experienced PR pros “graduate” from account work and spend their mid- and later careers pitching business exclusively.
- Stand up to your clients. Educate as much as you serve. Push back and stand your ground when you think you’re being held to unreasonable or wrongheaded expectations.
IN-HOUSE PR TEAMS
- Use your experience and deliver your advice confidently. Stop the “go along to get along” thing. It’s embarrassing to you as a professional and not particularly helpful to your company.
- Understand that you have an obligation to teach your colleagues what PR is and what it is not, with particular emphasis on the how it fits into the marketing mix and beyond to deliver a company-wide public image creation and maintenance campaign.
- Believe that PR’s best and most effective attribute is a level of credibility in communications that is impossible with any paid-media placement program.
COLLEGE STUDENTS
- Take more liberal arts or science courses. In fact, take more journalism courses than PR courses.
- Be a student of context and connections, not marketing. You’ll figure out the how-to junk during your apprenticeship (see above).
- Take some psychology and philosophy classes. Learn about the need for humans to connect on ground that is meaningful to them, not just to you or the person signing your paycheck.
Bang in your comments below. I'd love to hear more ideas on how to save the PR profession from ignominous professional "shrinkage."
This week Google announced (or discussed... the talk from Google rarely rises to the traditional definition of "announcement") its effort to develop cars that drive themselves, as well as its intention to fund massive offshore wind power projects. The company's acknowledged eclecticism when it comes to investment, product creation and business development seems to me to indicate that it is quickly moving well beyond it's Internet Dominator role to act as a generalized technological and financial fulcrum for a host unrelated projects. Actually, the term "unrelated" sounds unfairly negative. It looks to me that all of Google's extra-search work, from Android to offshore wind to Google.org, is easily accommodated by a shared vision from Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt and the people they've selected to run and grow Google. I've been picking through Google's site lately -- looking at all of that "Corporate Information" and background text that most Google users never see -- and it's amazing to me that despite the temptation to paint Google as a case study in corporate ADD, its broad mission and expansive vision really does seem more galvanizing that distracting. Reading Google's Ten Things it becomes clear that clarity is not necessarily a virtue -- that Google's business model has no stated end point or grandiose ultimate goal. The company exists only to continually expand the reach of what's possible via innovation and a culture that values and nurtures it.
So, is Google more of a process...a mind set...an ecosystem? Does it function more like the most modern manifestation of Berkshire Hathaway -- staggering share price included -- but even more wildly eclectic? I'd love to be able to take some serious time for myself and try to concoct a mission statement, positioning platform and elevator pitch for Google that a) was comprehensive enough to do the business justice, b) was specific enough to make the vision seem real to a rank outsider, and c) was credible! That would be one hell of a project. The challenge would be to get through a solid first draft before "Google Space" launches and "Google Food" rumors start to bubble.
It's rare that I walk out of an industry confab with a feeling of intellectual exhaustion -- the pleasant kind of tired one gets from having one's brain stretched and mind challenged by a slate of excellent speakers, engaging topics, and new connections. Inbound Marketing Summit 2010 did that for me this year and, as such, joins a very short list of top-quality events collected over the last 20+ years. The best way to get a sense of the proceedings at IMS10 is to take a look at the archived video on The Pulse Network and pick through the Twitter stream generated from this year's get-together on October 6 and 7 at Gillette Stadium. I felt that three themes were particularly central at this year's event:
- The primacy of relationship development, individualization and maintainance
- The undisputed fact that content rocks, and great content rocks hardest
- The so-old-school notion that lists are kind of a big deal. The quality of your contacts is critical to creating a measurable ROI
Though I am bereft of the need to pathologically overshare -- as one presenter did by displaying pictures of herself, her sister and her mother...topless -- I did want to call out a few of my personal faves from the 21 or so hours spent camped out at Randy Moss' erstwhile office:
Though the highlights are listed in no particular order, Scott Stratten's (@unmarketing) day one closing butt-rocker of a keynote sits at the top of my list. My all-time list, as a matter of fact. Again, I drink the Kool Aid for no man, but as of this week I'll travel to see this brilliant loony anytime.
It was also astonishing how well the US military came off as exemplars of current enlightened marketing practice. Dramatically counter to the service branches' reputations for crushing bureaucracy, we heard about effective, human-scale and bullshit-free communications work from the Army, Marines and Air Force. The standout was USAF Capt. Nathan Broshear's talk which kicked off with an All-airman-produced video of the USAF working in Haiti that was moving to the point of tears, without being maudlin -- would have made Old Joe Stalin envious of America, and a little verklempt. The core of Nathan's pitch on the need for genuine relationship development and his analysis of the media relations philosophy of General Petreus ("does the reporter tell the truth, do they provide context") was a nice "grounding" moment that said more about approach and attitude than tools and networks.
John Jantsch, the brains behind Duct Tape Marketing, kicked things off with a simple and resonant definition of marketing: Marketing is the process of getting someone to know, like and trust you. Relationship development, first and foremost.
The idea that inbound marketing starts with the heart and head before reaching the mouth and fingertips, was a frequent theme. David Meerman Scott, always a favorite even in his Grateful Dead garb, said it well when talking about real-time marketing: “Social media are the tools, real time is the mind set.”
Day Two also saw a great and much-needed global perspective on social media and international markets from Patrick Attalah of the 90:10 Group.
Despite protestations of limited public speaking skills as a "code jockey," Dharmesh Shah delivered a smart and snappy talk about the evolution of the Inbound Marketing concept since he and Brian Halligan published their book, Inbound Marketing, in 2009. Dharmesh could have comfortably filled an hour with his perspective and observations and the crowd would have asked for more.
In all, two days that passed a little too quickly but with plenty of time to network and talk over the material and the state-of-play in marketing this year. Again, as a marketing pro who has sat through plenty of these things in the past and who walks in with a pretty thin set of expectations about the value thereof, I was fully impressed and thankful for IMS10. And the few times things lagged we had the #bannedsessions hashtag to keep us giggling like a bunch of sixth-graders. I'll be interested to see what New Marketing Labs has in store down the road -- they've set a high bar for themselves and that's fantastic.
For a full recap of the Inbound Marketing Summit 2010 proceedings, I refer you to the posts on the BostonInnovation blog that are worth bookmarking as well as the video on The Pulse Network.
A quick video link here. I'll do more of a wrap up on IMS10 later in the week, but suffice to say it was one of the best conferences I've attended. Meanwhile, here's a vid of the purported world record for most people shooting video at once under the guidance of video maven Steve Garfield. And I'm taking his advice to start shooting more video -- with luck I'll be able to fill out that sorely under-used YouTube account.
In my years as a PR agency exec, I pitched and was pitched by hundreds of early stage, high-growth companies, from start-ups still in the garage to those further up the corporate lifecycle curve. I’ve seen some good ideas but I’ve seen precious few really good businesses. I think part of the reason for this is that I’ve met even fewer entrepreneurs or executives who could convince me that they had a genuine passion for the mission of their organization. To be sure, I’ve seen plenty of people positively brimming with passion for a quick exit by flipping their technological house of cards to the next greater fool. However, it was rare to encounter a client or prospect from whom I could feel the genuine electricity for an idea that only true passion can generate. In the intervening time, acres of pages both paper and digital have been devoted to the criticality of passion in successful entrepreneurship, to the point that I felt that mouthing the words “I have a passion for…” became a mere check box for the nascent entrepreneur. As a result, my “combat stance” has evolved over time to be one of hard-earned cynicism for all declarations of executive and corporate “passion.” My natural skepticism has dissipated in the last few months, however, as I’ve encountered more founders, executives and individuals -- young and “seasoned” -- in whom the sense of passion for their mission is palpable. I’ve met and worked with Silicon Valley social media founders who give off none of the Bubble Bandit funk of their forbearers. I’ve been impressed with the creativity and commitment of the overwhelming majority of the young companies represented in the 2010 MassChallenge. I’ve gotten to know a few established companies here in Boston whose successes result from an organization-wide commitment to a common mission. And I’ve reconnected with former colleagues who seem to have found their lives’ mission in nonprofit work, here and abroad. Very few of these people have actually had to say the words “I have a passion for...” You just know by sitting with them for thirty minutes – thirty highly energizing minutes.
Maybe I’m just getting more trusting as I see more companies appear and thrive that genuinely do change the way we live. Maybe it’s because the stakes for which we play today seem more rational in scope, more elementally human-scaled. Maybe it’s the era in which we live today – a natural evolution in the technology industry from an engineering-focused nerdocracy through the gold rush insanity of the Internet Bubble to the hands-across-the-universe openness of the hyper social present.
I really have no idea whether the change is coming from outside or internally. It doesn’t matter, though, as I have experienced a clear shift in outlook lately as a result of these new relationships and re-introductions. Today, I can feel their passion and totally believe in it. The energy is transferable, and I know I can invest a high level of trust in folks like these with the confidence that the investment will be repaid through their impact on the world in general and mine in particular.
[*Title mashup with apologies to The Clash …WWJSD, right?]
As mentioned at the outset of this blog, readers can expect the occasional post on topics that have nothing to do with marketing or business. I'm very please to devote some space here to a recent discovery, The New England Online Film Festival. The Online Film Festival is hosted for the second year by Newenglandfilm.com, an online resource and magazine for all things relevant to the film and video production industry in New England. I strongly encourage you to hit the above link between now and October 15 for a chance to see 19 short films by New England film makers in genres such as animation, comedy, drama, documentary and experimental. Also included on the site are several interviews with the directors, producers and writers of the films that provide some insight into the film maker's mind and methods, as well as a genuine feel for the enormous challenges facing the no-budget local artist. I stumbled on the New England Online Film Festival and have since spent the better part of a couple of days viewing the short films. Many of them are tremendous and delivered a real revelation to someone like me who is not involved in the local film industry, but simply loves movies. I encourage anyone with an interest in film, visual communications and support for local artists to check out the film fest. Feel free to post your reactions or faves in the comment section here. Or, if you are part of the local film industry, please weigh in with some thoughts and pointers to additional online or local film fests.