The Social Media MBA Blog by Karl Long

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Jun 2, 20061

Advertising 2.0 - How Micromedia Effects Advertising

Paul Beelen, a Spanish language blogger has written a nicely presented whitepaper called Advertising 2.0, which comes nice polished package, making it ideal for the executive in your life that “isnt’ getting it”. It’s essentially a summary of how the rise of “micromedia” ie. blogs, podcasts, vodcasts etc. effect the traditional advertisers of the world. You can download the whitepaper from here. Ironically, i think this would have spread better as an idea if it had come in the form of a blog post, as opposed to a PDF white-paper.

What’s the effect of an advertising campaign, in a world where every consumer has instant access to all hard data about any given product? How can we even reach these consumers in a media landscape that consists of millions of personal blogs, podcasts and time shifted television? What is the role of marketing when consumers are directly connected to almost anybody within the companies they buy from?
Advertising has long been based partially on something called information-asymmetry. The company knows more than the consumer, and uses this information to seduce a target group or to correct a common perception by manipulating a market.
We’ve already seen that consumers are talking about brands and products. The least a company can do is listen to these conversations, treating them as a large, free focus group. In this process, advertising agencies should be a partner to their clients. Monitoring the blogosphere is a new discipline, and right now some Public Relations agencies are adding it to their services. Not only because these conversations will end up affecting advertising effectiveness and content, but also because more and more companies will want to start incorporating micro media in their marketing plans, advertising agencies will have to enter the field of blogs, podcasts and videocasts.

In fact there is a whole company built around this value proposition, the rather 1984′esque umbralistens.com

Jun 1, 20062

Chief Experience Officer at JWT

Adweek reports that Colleen DeCourcy, Organic CCO is off to become the CXO or Chief Experience Officer of JWT. I actually really like how they describe her role:

As chief experience officer, she will work with the shop’s seven executive creative directors to “inspire more integrated, multi-platform storytelling,”

All JWT needs now is a blog… and a redesign of there website, that is so Q3 99.

May I also recommend you check out the blog at Organic Three Minds, it’s an excellent read and there tag line is awesome “making experienced exceptional”. It is a great example of how a professional services company can really showcase some of it’s thinking through a blog and create a place to engage potential clients in a very non-salesy way. Way to go Organic… Call me :-)
Tip Of The Hat

Jun 1, 20060

Marketing 2.0

It’s funny, but even though web2.0 is argued by many to be meaningless hyperbole designed to extract money from VC’s it really has come to encompass several hard to understand concepts. Ideas like ajax, tagging, mashups, all the technologies that make web sites seem more expressive, interconnected, and social. Web 2.0 is certainly not an ideal term, but it has tremendous value as an umbrella term that communicates the general nature of the more connected, more social, more expressive web.

Having an overarching term that encompasses lots of hard to understand concepts is a challenge that marketers are having now in talking about the ‘new’ marketing paradigm of using blogs, viral media, conversational marketing, citizen media, co-creative business models, tagging, podcasts, vodcasts, micromedia, microcontent, Internet PR, and the list goes on.

It is a shame that there is no term currently that encompasses ‘new’ marketing. In fact it seems marketers (including myself) have been busy “branding” our ideas, wonderful ideas, but we are losing an awful lot of power and equity by all trying to coin terms. Tara Hunt has her Pinko Marketing, Hugh Macleod has the Global Microbrand and the Hughtrain, Joseph Jaffe has ‘new’ marketing, Paul Beelen talks about Advertising 2.0, Organic is talking about Agency 2.0 and I also jumped on the bandwagon with the term Micromarketing, and then of course the grandaddy The Cluetrain Manefesto has the…. Cluetrain Manefesto.

Obviously lots of different perspectives, some related to advertising, others branding, marketing, and PR, all with their own spin, and own intelectual rigor, but the similarities, and root philosophies bind all these ideas. IMHO we would have a lot more impact on the marketplace if there was some kind of loose coalition around a concept that was relevant and understandable to business.

Oh and BTW I have “service marked” marketing 2.0 so don’t go putting on any conferences about it.