Social Mission Control
The real deal in big brands associating with social systems: PepsiCo’s global head of digital Bonin Bough on “how leadership in social is the new ownership,” as ownership goes away in a Facebook transparent world.
Bonin is clearly helping this global brand become “digitally fit.” Literally, digital experts vanish when whole companies become d-fit.
Love the NASA or Situation Room concept of having a veritable ‘Today Show’ live set or Gatorade Mission Control for all employees to experience daily as they walk into work. Talk about proactive social engagement.
New Medici Innovator Series: Brian Reich
I initially met Brian Reich when he featured my alma mater, Participant Media, in his book Media Rules! On a consulting basis, Brian worked with a number of the non-profits that partnered with Participant/TakePart including “Live Earth.” Today, he’s the SVP and Global Editor at Edelman, where he provides editorial vision and strategy for the company (and teaches at Columbia).
His bio in brief: Author. Sports fan. Media junkie. To quote Brian, he “spends most of my time thinking about the impact technology is having on our society.”
Brian connects with the New Medici perspective of different verticals redefining culture; specifically the role of tech on media influence, consumption and societal change. Like Sean Parker, Brian’s a “cultural engineer” caught in the open position of being a multi-vertical marketer and editor. Media + Lifestyle (and Technology)…
- What is an “innovator” in your words? A “game changer”?
Someone who pushes the boundaries of what is possible – by asking tough questions, trying new things, not being afraid to shake things up.
- How do you get inspired on a daily basis? What media do you consume? Environment? Tools?
I read. I watch. I consume a ton of media – a dozen newspapers, a bunch of magazines, thousands of blogs. I am constantly consuming media, looking around, absorbing the world in which I live and trying to make sense of it – find the context, connect what’s happening to what needs to be done. A partial media list: Wall Street Journal. New York Times. Washington Post. Seattle Times. LA Times. Boston Globe. Chicago Tribune. Politico. Denver Post. Miami Herald. Dallas Morning News. Sports Illustrated. GQ. Vanity Fair. New Yorker. Time. Newsweek. New Republic. Wired. Fast Company. In Style. Sports Illustrated. ESPN The Magazine. 1000+ Blogs. Twitter. Facebook. Sesame Street. Dinosaur Train. Word World. Criminal Minds. Oprah. Modern Family. SportsCenter. 16 & Pregnant. Friday Night Lights. 30 Rock. Fresh Air. Slate’s Hang Up And Listen. This American Life. PolitOptics. Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. Books. Ads.
Vanity Fair: Tech Has Disrupted the “Establishment List”
Vanity Fair does an excellent job in redefining the new vanguard of media in their annual “New Establishment” List.
With much smaller hype than their patrician traditional media peers, the list of late has become a Silicon Valley hitlist. What will be interesting is seeing which Hollywood media elites (think the annual Sun Valley media retreats) can earn back their relevance on the list.
With cross media investment groups somewhat the rage, think The Raine Group, which we will analyze, and others where talent agencies are bridging tech with content, it’s time to see who can scale media best.
Not an easy bargain when you listen to the backchannel on the Hulu sale – minus the great UX (user experience) that Hulu provides – but rather that big tech is interested as it’s so hard to procure studio library relationships that innovate at scale.
So, for those tech visionaries who can communicate, i.e., distribute, in content, let’s see who your “bridge” team is in 2012. The list below with some commentary after the companies:
1. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook – could own the #1 spot for several years to come; now needs to bring content and brands in with further immersion; think fan stratification fwiw, and create tiers of users who influence online.
2. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google – like the new – is it new? – management as they’re taking big risks that feed into Android, YouTube, Google+. Especially excited for games – finding a new medium between console and social…
3. Jeff Bezos, Amazon – I buy 70% (okay 80%) of all my retail at Amazon. Would they, should they compete with Apple Stores in retail as they expand the Kindle. Love to see them also become a bigger media machine with Hulu acquisition.
The rest of the top 50 after the jump…
New Medici Innovator Series: Robert Tercek
With a company name like New Medici, you pretty much have to celebrate the renaissance in innovation.
Our tagline being “Media + Lifestyle Innovation,” we created a hit list of the modern day innovators who speak to us on these fronts. Who disrupts our waking digital sheep sleep?
For our inaugural run, we’ll do a multi-post from celebrated innovator, Robert Tercek, “one of the world’s most prolific creators of interactive content” and a media class act or “multiplatform-hyphenate,” as we like to call him.
His background: MTV, Sony, OWN, Royal Society for the Arts and one-time label: “TV Anarchist.”
But first, the New Medici Innovator questions asked of all:
- What is an “innovator” in your words? A “game changer”?
- How do you get inspired on a daily basis? What media do you consume? Environment? Tools?
- What in your background helped makes you an innovator?
- The biggest mistake innovators make?
- The one question you ask yourself before launching a new project?
- Three other contemporary innovators you speak to regularly? Why do you consider them innovative?
- If you had $10 million right now, what would you build and why?
- What’s the one question you’re never asked that you have an answer to…?
The first of Robert’s answers after the jump… Read more >>
TEDxTercek: Reclaiming Personal Narrative via Social Media
Via TEDxMarin, Robert Tercek is a master of digging beneath the surface of media. His recent TEDx talk about story expression and acknowledgment or validation on a global level is a must-view.
“For the past 60 years, we’ve outsourced our storytelling through professional media” … and now it’s time for us to do it via social media… “It’s like a great lover, and why we’re falling out of love with television.”
Can Data Save the Studios in the Age of Social Media?
By Nick DeMartino - Warner’s acquisition of Flixster is Hollywood’s savviest move yet to survive a wrenching transition into the age of social media.
It’s not just that Flixster is the leading social movie site on the iOS, Android and Blackberry mobile platforms with 35 million downloads to date – or that its sister site, review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, attracts 12 million monthly visitors – or that Flixster powers Facebook’s Movies app, also the market leader.
No, this is about more than traffic and traction. It is about data. Data is the secret sauce of social media that will empower Hollywood to take control of its own business, rather than to cede it to intermediaries, e.g., the disruptors from Silicon Valley.
With this deal, Warner gains direct access to millions of movie fans, and to the data generated by their social interactions around movies – both essential ingredients to build a direct-to-consumer movie business owned and operated by Hollywood.
All this, at less than the cost of a single comic-book movie!
Social media fosters a flood of consumer interaction and generates massive streams of data, enriching companies that collect the data, and penalizing those who don’t.
This is a very different model than Hollywood (or anyone else) has ever known. It’s worth billions, because data can be tracked, measured, mined, parsed and monetized in countless inventive ways. All of which are counter to Hollywood’s old model.
To wit: Studios have been wholesalers who sell to retailers, not end-users, e.g., individual humans. Hollywood’s biggest customers have been theatre chains, TV and cable networks, and big-box stores – and now digital distributors like Netflix, iTunes, and Amazon. All of which have been very busy building a consumer ecosystem powered by data.
To reach customers directly, studios will have to build new businesses to distribute movies and leverage behavioral data. Which means Hollywood must compete with the best-in-class e-retailers like Amazon and Apple. Are they up to this daunting task? Studios have tried before, and failed. (WB’s Entertaindom and NewsCorp’s MySpace debacle come to mind.) Read more >>
Infographic: Real Cost of Going Social
While there are still companies that hold back on social, the network effect that happens when people share content, the sheer content management ease of use and low customer acquisition costs are simply overpowering arguments.
With an “are you crazy?” quote from Seth Godin to kick it off, the infographic below reveals the resource costs, “if you build it, they will come” fallacy on cost-free social advertising and a real-world breakdown or anatomy of a social campaign.
Social budget/ROI example: $52k for a social media strategist, $93.6k for a community manager (well paid imho), $15-30k for a micro-site, $20k for a mobile app (too cheap imho…). The ROI benefits: 85% customer engagement, 65% direct customer communications, 60% speed of feedback, 48% brand building and 42% market research. With Twitter, a 43% ROI, the monthly value of a follower is $2.38 and cost per follower: $1.67. Low CPA (cost per acquisition), indeed.
New Medici Advisory
New Medici is a next generation media strategy + lifestyle network working with studios, consumer brands and social media startups. On a go-to-market basis, New Medici models new digital businesses, providing product strategy, social marketing and distribution. Links: Media Strategy | Social Strategy
SXSW in Illustration
Returning from Austin this week, the number of great social contacts made alongside great food, cinema and musical events is put in some “relief,” so to speak with OgilvyNotes.
Ogilvy teamed up with some quality illustrators to record the seminars as infographics (one of our favorite ways of conveying information). Given that each keynote or panel went about an hour – making it an artistic challenge to keep up with the fast-talking social experts – here’s our early favorites from SXSW 2011:
More after the jump! Read more >>
Jack Dorsey’s Circular Focus in Square
Following Vanity Fair’s Sean Parker sketch, Jack Dorsey of Twitter and now Square makes the editorial cut under David Kirkpatrick’s steel pen. The focus on both is primarily their focus and their market timing.
While Parker carries a precise gut instinct for the right opportunities, Dorsey employs a predictive ability towards where community needs lie.
Intriguing about both is their singular or circular focus. Having worked with Jeff Skoll, dined with Larry Page and met Zuckerberg at a Google Zeitgeist conference – I notice the clean lines of their expression mimic the intensity of their entrepreneurial passions.
Theirs is a cleanness of personality; an ability to concentrate on one thing above all others, which is ironically anti-social given their social projects.
Also ironic, Parker had to convince Zuckerberg to think big on Facebook, and Dorsey’s direction has been for purity of the product design of Twitter and now Square, a plug-in to smartphones and tablets for credit card transactions.
Peter Thiel—the billionaire hedge-fund manager and co-founder of PayPal, who became Thefacebook’s first investor—says that around that time “Sean consistently argued that Facebook was going to be really big. If Mark ever had any second thoughts, Sean was the one who cut that off.”
Via the Dorsey VF piece, “Twitter Was Act One,” there’s definitely a management learning curve, which has put Jack Dorsey into a better stead.
More control over his products is also what connects these digital characters. Call it a focused ownership and particular attention to detail, like another chief innovator: Steve Jobs. Read more >>
Netflix’s Rise, Infographic Style
Via NYT’s DealB%k, a great Online MBA Program infographic on Netflix’s meteoric growth in the DVD and VOD space – chasing Blockbuster then moving past their brick-and-mortar storefronts into how the movie service eats into the pay tv and cable models.
With strong leadership, a great recommendation engine and a service which is considered a “utility” by many, Netflix will need to move internationally and optimize for the social networks to stay ahead of the Amazon Prime VOD bundle.
In the Name of Social: Ron Conway
Ron Conway, the top Silicon Valley (SV) Angel, has the Midas touch when it comes to getting into accelerated startups. His prolific track record and venture rolodex is difficult to challenge. The critical thinking on top of research points to social commerce via mobile/location-based as being a highlight of this early decade.
Last year, Techcrunch published SV Angels’ (Ron’s company’s) Megatrends slide, but also have a look at his O2O (offline activity to online shopping) and his investment list via Business Insider. Must-read innovative exercise…
Groupon: Start in Physical, Get to Digital
Groupon is on an incredible tear, so we’re not buying the “inevitable fall” question in today’s infographic). We’ve recently started helping the daily deal company navigate the M&E space – and their phenomenal growth is well-timed to reinvigorate social commerce across most verticals. On background: thePoint.com first landed on our ‘social good’ radar at Participant)
With Amazon’s relationship with LivingSocial and xxx hundred copycats (remind any of the early Facebook, niche social network days?), it will be very interesting to see Groupon grow beyond daily emails into other discounted merch models.
One potential trend, companies like Groupon, Netflix and Amazon are smartly rooting themselves in physical goods, but as with Amazon and Netflix, will eventually scale to soft, aka digital, goods: hosting, streaming movies, email packages and the like.
Once you presumably own a category, it then becomes time to optimize customer relationships and these three have established their user experience satisfaction levels well. Simple, easy and physical product-based moves to digital products very easily.
An Appocalyptic Tableaux: A Tale of Too Many Tablets
115 million tablets will be sold by 2014 according to the infographic below. 66.5% growth year over year.
Fascinating to think that while just about everyone (and their child) has a cell phone these days, that we’ll all soon have “x” tablets by household.
As the steady stream of upgrade/next-generation iPads arrive, year after year, expect each family to have two then three tablets lying around the house. Think of them as “media coasters.”
We’ll go from 65 apps per device to 650 apps without sweating the micro-transactions.
A peek into the Orwellian iPad-diction of society: The hand-me-down 4G generation will quickly see kids getting the short end of the digital stick; instead of a laptop, they’ll get the tablet and learn to type book reports on touch screens.
The adults will also go tablet for home use, putting much less time on their work laptops, eventually leaving them at the office. Office IT budgets will skyrocket down.
With all email and personal media (music/movies/photos) in the cloud, bluetooth keyboards and mice will fold up into the tablets for the workhorses (voiceover INPUT will be de rigueur), while most will dialog via 140-count (and briefer) communiqués.
Shorter but more frequent individual output will be swallowed by longer and more frequent input, aka consumption. Twitter will be eclipsed by a shorter version of itself; bit.ly will become a real-time and timed-out, unique symbol.
Eventually, we’ll “share” more via links we “like” than actually sharing original ideas. Curation will become less about the “best content channels,” and more about the “opinion channels.” Colbert copycats and O’Reilly orifices.
New Medici 2011 Predictions
- Cords will be cut – cable and satellite companies will have to package internet bandwidth with channel programming to keep sub fees north of $100. Cable and other triple players will move to provide bandwidth to all devices – think Mifi for everything as an upsell with loss of cable. In 2012, all television programming will be available day and date via web/mobile.
- Netflix will double (or more) its sub base with streaming model, and become an even higher value acquisition target; it now currently needs to figure out social media to close all gaps with Amazon.
- Resurfacing of digital media IPOs (or accretive acquisitions): think Spotify with US penetration, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon, Flipboard and possibly Pandora.
- Music and media discovery will be most valuable digital utility, with people programming their lives – and transparently tracking their consumption (personal CRM or our “time clock” theory), which will be shared, of course, via social media.
- 3D will rise at home, decrease in theaters – more television programming and surplus of high quality 3DTVs with many ITV channels also moving into 3D to differentiate.
- Apple will ditch optical drives on all but highest end laptops (wireless/Bluetooth SuperDrives to follow; Apple to move into 5TB home networks servers and own cloud ecosystem) and desktops. iPad 2 with 3G/4G package will sell 1.5x original unit and knock out all touch players save Android. iPad 2 will merge video UGC with ARG successfully, e.g., users will connect via video conference to engage with branded content. Video conferences will become programming when edited right.
- Film studios will drift away from traditional sequels/remakes and renaissance with new franchises – think next Harry Potter, Dark Knight, Hangover.
- Ad agencies and major lifestyle/consumer brands will dive into social media acquisitions, create more innovation incubators and buy consumer content/video sites to roll-up audiences. Think Y Combinator owned by Adidas. Similarly, talent agencies will launch incubators to find next production/distribution efficiencies and create more and more backend strategies versus faltering pay or play.
- In the gaming world, “Angry Birds” success will be remodeled (usually badly), but will also create new initiatives to merchandise media on a 360 level, i.e., games, films, tv will finally leverage their assets fully outside of release windows. Pop-up events will be “demanded” as exclusive media and merch will be next big thing.
- Digital content will become vastly more personalized. Once discovered (see #4), smartly aggregated and tied into social (e.g., Flipboard), users will start visiting fewer and fewer niche sites, plus heavy Facebook…
Branded/Social Engagement: Embracing New Economic Models
From my former boss and mentor, Jon Feltheimer, CEO of Lionsgate, speaking at MIPCOM.
I especially liked his paragraph below – which I’ve sliced up – as branded and social engagement is where audiences now permanently live; whether consumers “own” legacy technology or “rent” the next-generation digital devices…:
We need to create new relationships, relationships with people who install telephone lines and build mobile networks, relationships with people like billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, 26 years old, who connects millions of people through bits and bytes.
Ironic that tv networks have since been surpassed by social “networks,” where the direct to consumer, or network effect, moves the needle faster to the right than any and all traditional marketing and distribution means. Read more >>
Social Media Next Video
More video from the iHollywood Social Media Next conference – from my two panels that night:
Facebook: Transparency and Personality
The New Yorker puts together a great “Letters From” series, and Facebook’s press team is smart to begin promoting a POV (“Letters from Palo Alto”) from Zuckerberg and others (Vanity Fair’s “With a Little Help From His Friends” piece on former Facebook President Sean Parker written by Facebook Effect writer David Kirkpatrick).
Whether these personality pieces are timed to upstage (or upstate) Sony’s “The Social Network” film is an interesting question, but more importantly it reveals individual depth on the 21st century’s next media king: Mark Zuckerberg. (Of added note, Zuck is #1 on Vanity Fair’s top 100 media power list). Read more >>