A decade of digital: 10 things for 2010

Faris Yakob is the chief innovation officer, MDC Partners, holding company of ad agencies including Crispin Porter + Bogusky and kirshenbaum bond senecal + partners and the former EVP Chief Technology Strategist at McCann Erickson NY. Campaign Brief had the pleasure of meeting Faris in Las Vegas at the judging of last year’s London International Awards where he was the inaugural President of the jury for The NEW Category. This year he will return to again head the NEW Category judging. Faris regularly writes about brands, media, communications, technology and that for a number of publications including the Fast Company, Contagious Magazine, and Forbes. He writes a blog called Talent Imitates, Genius Steals, which Campaign named one of the top ten advertising blogs in the UK, came second in the Best Blog Category at the British Interactive Media Awards, and has been nominated as one of the ten ‘Best blogs to follow’ by Mashable. www.farisyakob.com

This is an article he recently wrote for the Marketing Society in the UK.

A decade of digital: 10 things for 2010

A decade has flown by since Y2K arrived without a bug and digital marketing has grown up alongside it.

The emergence of a new media system is typified by a period of transposition, where the behavioural grammar of the previous system remains dominant. The first television shows were radio shows with people talking directly into camera. The first films were stageplays that had been filmed. And the first marketing forays online took what we knew about media and branding from broadcast media and applied it to a whole new space.

But digital is different…

Digital is not a channel. It’s a suite of platforms, channels and tactics that will, ultimately subsume its parents entirely.

Digital marketing is not simply a new place to disperse persuasivesymbols, but the emergence of any entirely new behavioural grammar, ascompanies and their customer begin to engage with each other inentirely new ways in entirely new spaces, where everyone has an equalvoice.

In the spirit of which, here are ten behaviours that will hopefullyhelp the century grow into a surly adolescent, and then mature adult.

1. Earn your own attention

The internet is the great dis-intermediator – it connects everything toeverything else – so companies can communicate directly with customers,bypassing the traditional media traditionally used. However, thisopportunity brings with it a new set of challenges. Previously massmedia aggregated attention and brands bought it. To earn your ownattention you have to do things, create content, that people elect tospend time with.

2. Stop saying viral

‘Viral’ was the magic bullet of digital marketing – the panacea thatsaved us from fragmented media and disaffected consumers. But the viralmetaphor is unhelpful. It suggests that we can create something that isself-propagating, when in fact what we mean is that lots of people havechosen to pass something around, for their own social reasons. Focusingon those reasons is much more helpful than asking for a ‘viral’ forthere is no such thing.

3. Be nice or leave

Social media is going to get more and more important – it presents anentirely new way for companies and customers to interact and comes withmany specific challenges and opportunities. The grammar of social mediais different from the grammar of commercial media. The rules, themotivations, the etiquette are all social. So learn to be nice orleave. Stop thinking like a company and act like a person.

4. Socialise your mainstream media

People need things to talk about, and often those things appear inother media. In fact, social media breathes life back into the idea ofwatercooler moments, as backchannels on twitter allow people to discusswhat they are watching in real time. Ensuring that your mainstreammedia feeds and feeds off social is best practice from here on in.

5. Decrease the latency in the system

There is a correlation between the amount of time it takes forinformation to be transmitted, the amount of time it takes to have aneffect, and the corresponding cultural decay rate. The real-time web oftwitter and facebook has brought the cultural latency rate down toalmost zero. In response, companies must act faster, responding in realtime, to keep apace with its customers.

6. Abundance is more interesting than scarcity

Media used to be relatively scarce, which is why we have traditionallycompressed things down into the smallest possible units, propositionsand 30 second parables. Online, media is not scarce – it is practicallyinfinite. In response companies can create vast reams of content andlet it sit online forever until customers find their way to – acomplete inversion of the current model of commercial content creation.New Balance launched its 365 range with 365 short films.

7. The audience, isn’t

The one-way direction of mass media led us to think about customerslike Victorian children: seen and not heard. Digital culture isintrinsically participatory so, if we want people to engage with us, weshould do things that give them a role. It can be as simple as votingor as complex as Nike Plus. People tend to be more interested in thingsthat involve them, vain as we are.

8. Ideas that create content

Historically we have used content to create relationships withconsumers, to express our offers and create premium prices points. In aworld where the tools of creativity and capture become more democraticeveryday, where a generation has grown up that demands to be heard, weshould be creating ideas that create content, rather than ideas thatare content.

9. Be useful for where they are

The promise of location-based marketing is upon us, as foursquare turnsa game for geeks into a platform for loyalty programmes for Starbucks.The dangers are obvious – spamming people with offers as they walk by astore – but the possibilities are endless. The key thing is geotility -making your product, or service or content, useful for wherever theyare.

10. Be awesome

In digital spaces, nothing stirs the soul and opens the wallet likeawe. Be it Kobe jumping over a speeding car or a system that pulls datafrom your car and tells you how to drive more efficiently, things thatmake your jaw drop are the very stuff of marketing. Indeed, a study ofthe New York Times most emailed articles revealed that readers wantedto share articles that inspired awe. So do something awesome and it mayjust go ‘viral’ [just don’t call it that].