Here’s a post announcing the schedule going live – companies fill up fast, and the only way to ensure you’ll get in is to get a VIP or Reserved ticket. But if you can’t pop for the $90 (Reserved) or $295 (VIP, including kickoff party), never fear. NewCos are always free to the public after Reserved and VIPs pick their schedules.
(image) On the eve of our third annual P&G Signal (a private event I’ve produced for P&G these past few years) comes this piece in HBR: The Content Marketing Revolution. Just this morning I was reflecting on the speed with which the idea that “all brands are publishers” has moved from evangelical blog post to standard business practice – less than four years since we officially canonized it at FM, and about seven since I first began writing about “conversational marketing” in earnest on this site.
The HBR post notes “Nine out of ten organizations are now marketing with content – that is, going beyond the traditional sales pitches and instead enhancing brands by publishing (or passing along) relevant information, ideas, and entertainment that customers will value. The success of content marketing has radicalized the way companies communicate.”
That’s quite a shift in what is, by the standards of media and marketing, a very, very short time. Back in 2007 (!) I wrote a post that pointed to early examples of content marketing in a social and digital context, and offered a framework for why this nascent movement made sense. In it, I said:
Marketers are realizing that while it’s fine to advertise in traditional ways (Hey! This movie is about to open! Hey! Check out the cool new car/product, etc.), it’s now an option to begin a dialog with the folks who you hope are noticing your ads. In fact, it might even be a great experience for all involved. Brands might hear criticisms that are valid, and have the chance, through conversations with customers, to address those critiques. Customers have the chance to give their input on new versions of products, ask questions, learn more – in other words, have a dialog.
And in the end, isn’t having a dialog with your customers what business, and brands, are supposed to be about?
We’re still early in the shift to conversational marketing, and not all brands are excellent at it. But even the most traditional brands are now deeply engaged in figuring out how to be part of conversations that matter to them. And that’s a very good thing. Content marketing has birthed native advertising, which has given new life to independent publications like Quartz and Vox. And it’s become the lifeblood of massive platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. In short, content marketing is working.
Sure, there are as many examples of flat footed or poorly thought-out executions as there are screaming successes, but again, we’re just getting started. Brands are finding their voice, and we, their audiences, will determine the value they add by our response to what they have to say.
The past week brought fresh revelations about how the NSA targets US citizens, and new insights on the founders of Google, the history of technology, and ongoing stories from Facebook and the EU. To the links….
In NSA-intercepted data, those not targeted far outnumber the foreigners who are – The Washington Post – This is a long-ish read, but please, if you read only one story, read this one. The details are important, and most likely will be the basis of alot of debate yet to come about Snowden’s impact.
Betting on the Ponies: non-Unicorn Investing – Reaction Wheel – Investor Jerry Neumann writes a fine overview of his philosophy on investing, and why it makes no sense whatsoever to chase the best in field.
Read MoreI also got to help interview David Medine, who chairs the privacy task force for the Obama Administration:
And Ro Khanna, who is running for Congress in the heart of Silicon Valley:
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Once upon a time, print was a vibrant medium, a platform where entrepreneurial voices created new forms of value, over and over again. I’ll admit it was my native platform, at least for a while – Wired and The Industry Standard were print-driven companies, though they both innovated online, and the same could be said for Make, which I helped early in its life. By the time I started Federated, a decidedly online company, the time of print as a potent cultural force was over. New voices – the same voices that might have created magazines 20 years ago, now find new platforms, be they websites (a waning form in itself), or more likely, corporate-owned platforms like iOS, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, and Vine.
Now, I’m acutely aware of how impolitic it is to defend print these days. But my goal here is not to defend print, nor to bury it. Rather, it’s to point out some key aspects of print that our industry still has yet to recapture in digital form. As we abandoned print, we also abandoned a few critical characteristics of the medium, elements I think we need to identify and re-integrate into whatever future publications we create. So forthwith, some Thinking Out Loud…
Let’s start with form. If nothing else, print forced form onto our ideas of what a media product might be. Print took a certain form – a magazine was bound words on paper, a newspaper, folded newsprint. This form gave readers a consistent and understandable product – it began with the cover or front page, it ended, well, at the last page. It started, it had a middle, it had an end. A well-executed print product was complete – a formed object – something that most online publications and apps, with some notable exceptions, seem never to be.
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This past week in tech brought Google’s I/O developer conference, and with it lots of debate on the culture of the Valley, the future of links in the mobile world, the end of the Internet (again), and the death of the IPO. To the (dead? resurgent?) links:
Inside the Mirrortocracy – Carlos Buenos From time to time a commentator hits the mark when it comes to the Valley’s culture. This piece resonated for many last week – and sparked a renewed debate about whether the Valley is too insular.
Read MoreOf the two, Google has been the most open to the “webification” of apps, encouraging deep links and building connective tissue between apps and actions into its Android OS. Given Google’s roots in the link-driven HTML web, this is of course not surprising.
Last week’s I/O included news that Google is now actively encouraging developer’s use of deep links in apps. This is a very important next step. Watch this space.
Read MoreA fascinating week of links, starting with a blast from the past (see above), but the real meat of the week came in the debates around some of the Valley’s most scared cows. For more, read on….
Tech Time Warp of the Week: Watch IBM Warn Us About Glassholes 10 Years Ago- Wired I am particularly enamored with “Park Bench” – if I saw a guy doing what this guy is doing in public, I’d throw something at him. I recall seeing this way back when it first came out, and I hated him then. Now it’s insufferable.
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Lots of advertising news in this issue of Signal, as the bi-annual IAB report shows strong gains (YAY, Internet!). To the links:
Internet Ads Surge 19% in Just One Year – WSJ That’s strong growth for an industry working on its 21st year. (IAB report)
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