Herd - the hidden truth about who we are

Nigel Hollis and JFK

 

Picked up something from the twitterstream this morning that seems to have got a few chums excited.

Nigel Hollis - chief adresearch guru at Millward Brown - has been musing on the relative roles of Mass & Social Media and whether on

Here's the tricky bit of his post

"All of this leads me to believe that social media is no way for a mass market brand to disrupt the status quo. It is simply an additional means to communicate and engage your loyal customers"

Well, sort of.

On the one hand, it's true that i. few mass market brands have (YET!) entirely switched their marketing budgets to Social Media and ii. as Faris points out the whole SM game tends to deliver slower changes in outcome than most heroic marketers would like (it's no easy quick fix for sure).

On the other hand, I suspect what lies behind Nigel's comments is this:

He still sees Mass Media as tools to do something to/send messages to/persuade etc audience members and Social Media as just a smaller scale and geekier version of the same kind of thing.

The point being (again) that SM is not really "media" in the sense that he thinks Mass Media are (nor indeed is mass media really as Neil et al have been pointing out): it's a different kind of thing.

And that different kind of thing seeks to create (or rather, stimulate or catylise) change in an entirely different way, by open up and humanising the business.

To paraphrase JFK, it's not what Social Media can do for you but what it can do to you and your business.

Memories of the future (1) Cinema with the backchannel built-in

I've managed to largely stay offline for much of the last month - off the blog at least.

But in the last day or so, I've been pondering a few things that seem to point up likely directions

Not that these thoughts are in any way predictions (precise and definite singularities)

Rather - as Swedish neuroscientist David Ingvar might suggest - they seem to represent pre-echoes of how things might well turn out...

So here's my first one:

 
Earlier this year, I was invited to a private screening of "Oy Calcutta!" - a fascinating documentary by young film-maker Saul Abraham about his grandfather's return trip from North London to the Jewish enclave in Calcutta he had left half a century previously.

What struck me strongly was not so much the quality of the film-making (excellent btw so watch that name) but rather the experience of watching a movie with the back-channel on: on the one hand, the key characters were known to many in the room, indeed, most of them were actually sat in the audience; on the other, the audience plain refused to adopt the expected passivity - they talked all the way through the movie, questioning and debating what they saw on screen.

My point here is not really about the movies or entertainment in the broader sense either - I'll be honest, I've seen better movies this year and I'm sure you have, too - but I've not had a more powerful and distinctive experience as this of what living with the backchannel is like.

I've talked and written before about how the connectedness which dominates our age encourages the backchannel to expand and spread into every corner of our lives* and I'm sure many readers will have experienced the joy of presenting to an audience when the twitterfeed on the screen behind you reveals all too clearly what your audience is saying to itself as you speak, but all too often we understand this idea of the backchannel in the context of marketing.

The truth is it's going to leach into every aspect of our lives - with some really interesting consequences all round. And not just for film makers (or marketing bods)!

*I'm sure you've heard the same old case studies from social media experts, so I won't repeat them here

IPA Social Principles (01) UPDATE

[For the full back story go here but for those who can't be bothered read on]

You'll no doubt have read here or elsewhere stuff around the IPA social conversation - a response by a bunch of us interested parties to the IPA's original attempt at getting to grips with the Social Thing.

We've talked and shared and now we're hoping to stimulate the conversation further (and more importantly wider) by posting our ideas about what the social revolution really means

While on October 6th, there's a realworld event in Belgrave Square, we hope that the conversation proper starts today: each of us involved is posting a principle that we find useful for folk to do with what they will (knowing that they will or won't, if you see what I mean - that being the nature of the social thing). 

Here's mine (revised following suggestions: Download People not consumers3

The IPA site is here  but these are where you'll find the other principles

1. People not consumers – Mark Earls
2. Social agenda not business agenda – Le’Nise Brothers
3. Continuous conversation not campaigning – John V Willshire
4. Long term impacts not quick fixes – Faris Yakob
5. Marketing with people not to people – Katy Lindemann
6. Being authentic not persuasive – Neil Perkin
7. Perpetual beta – Jamie Coomber
8. Technology changes, people don’t – Amelia Torode
9. Change will never be this slow again – Graeme Wood
10. Measurement – Asi Sharabi

Please join in. As Katy puts it:

These ten principles are just a starting point; provokers of conversation, thoughts, ideas… an invitation to you (yes, YOU) to join in. Why? Our aim with this project is to move the debate beyond simply the theoretical, and into the practical; examples of approaches that have worked, and which have not. What does success look like? What do you need to do first?

We believe that by sharing information and case studies around ’social communications’ we will all, from the largest agency to the nimblest freelancer, from the most traditional client to the youngest start-up, benefit from this open source of knowledge.

So please join the debate by leaving your thoughts around the principle I’m writing about in the comments below - and go see what the others have to say.

UPDATE 1. Fantastic night - our intent of  making it a conversation seems to have paid off. Go join the facebook group to continue the conversation.

UPDATE 2. Here's Campaign's write up of the night, featuring the lovely AmeliaDownload Social

Thank you for coming

Yesterday, we trekked to the British Museum to see their fab Montezuma exhibit. And today I get this.

It's not tricky.

It's not something you should have to think hard about.

It's plain courtesy. Good manners, as Sair says. And you can (as in this case) get a machine to do it for you.

So why can't most businesses be bothered?

Too concerned with themselves. And the money thing. Just not human enough...(more on that shortly)

The big picture of social stuff

If you're in the UK social media world you may remember the broohaha surrounding the IPA's social media report earlier this year (like the stuff about it being a closed/finite report and it costing £75 and all that)...

Well a bunch of us who are already working the space have been having an alternative conversation about what to do to move things on a bit in a more Socially appropriate way and this is a collation of our "big picture" introduction that I've pulled together. Download IPA SocialBIGPICTURESeptdraft

It's intended as a description of how the landscape has been changed by connective technology and (more importantly) our adoption of it...the central point being I guess, that SM is not just another medium to sit alongside the others (it's not our medium anyway); it just changes the map completely.

Much of it you may have heard before - much of it I hope you'd agree with, but the point is to articulate how we see things.

Of course, as you'd expect, the text is provisional, open to change and...well, make of it what you will if you find it useful. Just please let me know what you think...