Lingolook

It’s not every day I choose to rat on a colleague. Nor is it a practice I’m particularly comfortable with, yet there’s something about the way this episode demonstrates how some agencies boast unrealistic claims of starting (or igniting) conversation with all its connotations of immediacy, transparency and honesty that just pissies me off.

Two days ago, I received a Google alert for the keywords “Acer Gemstone Blue”. There have been so many of these of late I’ll admit to no longer giving them more than a quick glance but this time rather than seeing a re-hash of my own writing, I saw the title “Ugly Aspirations”.

Click.

The site I’m now on is part of Publicis, a London-based agency which, by its own claims, is “Part of the 4th largest communication network, spanning 104 countries and all 5 continents” and whose mission is to …”Ignite Conversations with ideas so infectious that consumers adopt them as their own and pass them on”.

Even better, is this:
“Our Values: Lionhearted
We are fearless, proud and honest: we always do the right thing, for the greater good of our clients, brands and colleagues
We work with total openness and co-operation: we are all on the same side; we behave like friends.”

Wow! An agency I’d be proud to work with.

But back to the article.

Not a long one, but written to dismantle everything my colleagues and I put into the Acer Gemstone Blue launch campaign. That in itself is not a bad thing, I love constructive criticism and am always ready to learn.

But alas there’s nothing constructive about it. It’s just a low-handed attack on the work of a competitor (note their client list includes HP and their case study post proudly shows off their efforts.

OK. While I’m the first to welcome advice, I’m also not afraid of defending my work, which is what I did.

After two whole days, my comment is still “awaiting moderation”. So much for the immediacy and transparency of conversation.

You want to ignite a conversation? Then you’re starting a debate and you’d better invite the accused along or at least be prepared to hear him out.

You want to prove you know what Messrs. Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger were getting at in their original masterpiece? Then you’d better be ready to stand by what you publish (which brings into question the very 1.0, command-and-control practice of moderation).

You want to sell your clients on Web 2.0 (conversations)? Then you’d better look it up before you attempt to score a few cheap points at someone else’s expense.

It’s not my business to police the web and name and shame those who breach my own self-appointed laws and standards but this is a blatant example of an agency that either a) doesn’t get it, or b) thinks it’s clever enough to get away with not honouring its own mission and values.

Either way that damages both their and my reputation.

Maybe I don’t want to work with them after all.

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Don’t always take this route to express what’s going on my end but this is exception to the rule is truly worth it.

I can’t resist a song plug and this morning the very first thing I read on Twitter was a mention for “A Beautiful World” by Tim Myers from Meg Fowler.

What a beautiful song! The melody, the lyrics and most of all the vibes. They all align just right and make this my own personal candidate for the song that best represents what social media should be about.

Maybe it’s me going all soppy. Maybe I’m tired of fighting corporate resistance to the changes social media will inevitably force on them. Maybe if we could get 100 CEOs to listen, the transition would be just a little smoother…

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Yesterday I had proof that more is better.

That promoting yourself horizontally is more effective than doing it vertically.

And that the thicker you spread yourself, the wider your reach.

We all have our Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts, Flickr accounts, we have Squidoo lenses StumbleUpon pages, we share our del.icio.us pages and the younger amongst you might even have MySpace pages (mine’s neglected). This week I finally got myself on Friendfeed although I’m a little lost on that one.

The one I had left for dead was LinkedIn. It seemed a little too staid for my tastes. Almost 1.0 in its formality.

With LinkedIn, you link with people you actually have a working relationship with, so the big players in “real life” have a natural advantage as they simply have more clout here.

Because of this, and because I was focused on other areas of connectivity, I had been ignoring LinkedIn for long enough for my Pro account to expire.

Then two days ago, I updated it and within 24 hours, I was contacted by none other than the offices of Leo Burnett in Turin.

Just goes to prove that the thicker you spread yourself, the tastier you are.

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So here we are at last.

Just a few more miles and this leg of the journey will be over. A few more twists and turns and the road will open up. A slight reprieve before it closes in on the biggest junction of my life.

There are only two choices: left or right. Both will take me on a journey of discovery. I’ll see the world no matter which way I turn, but I’ll see it from different points of view.

One then, excludes the other.

Turn left, and join the ranks. Promotion awaits with all the rewards and satisfaction that working for a big brand can bring. Daddy brings home the trophy of success, and the family celebrates this newfound stability with a sumptuous meal and smiles all round.

Turn right and I’m on my own. A lone voice with no safety net, no support and certainly no guarantees. My family depends solely on me so the risks and consequences of failure are unthinkable.

Left is the obvious choice. I have put in ten years of sheer hard work to get to where I am today. I have a voice that counts in my corner of the world and my craft is appreciated and promoted by the corridors of power.

So why am I even considering right?

I have the Cluetrain Manifesto to thank for that.

One year ago, there was no right. There was no left either, as there was no choice.

One career, one strategy, one result.

Then the Cluetrain arrived and opened my eyes like a new religion.

I had felt the tremors of change underfoot, I had read about it while trying to deepen the consciousness of my profession, and I had even sampled its power on two occasions and in quick succession. But before Cluetrain, I had never really understood it.

As the saying goes, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

The Cluetrain hit me head on. I was ready for it before I even knew what it was about and once on board, everything about me changed.

And now my dear friend Richard has dragged me into this new meme, and I have to explain what the Cluetrain is and whether it’s had an impact on my professional outlook. Me?

Let’s start with question 1.

1) What does the Cluetrain manifesto mean to you? How has the book and theses influenced or not influenced you?

My answer to this question is not difficult to surmise, given the way I started this post. For me, the Cluetrain was the precursor to the events that are beginning to engulf me. But whereas before they were impossible to comprehend, now they are impossible to ignore.

It is, of course, about connections, dialogue and transparency.

It’s as much about getting inside the hearts and minds of customers as it is getting inside the hearts of businesses. It’s about breaking down corporate walls that serve no other purpose than to protect the status quo. It’s about a change in attitude that affects us in equal measure whether we are marketers or customers.

The Cluetrain Manifesto starts off with a statement that more or less sums up the entire philosophy, a phrase that succinctly pinpoints which side of the fence you’re on with the precision and real time accuracy of military grade GPS positioning systems:

“A powerful global conversation has begun.”

You’re either participating or you’re not.

Every single word of this phrase is key to understanding the true meaning of the Manifesto.

“Powerful”

Thanks to the time-honoured practice of command and control, companies have stopped listening to customers and in doing so have chosen to ignore the force, wisdom and power of the many.

Now that customers have the technology they need to interact with each other, their numbers, opinions and voices have suddenly started to count.

Even the Buddhist concept of Itai Doshin (many in body, one in mind) is built on this principle and was used to great effect by Nicherin Daishonin in the 13th Century.

“If itai doshin prevails among the people, they will achieve all their goals…”

Translation: Ignore your customers at your own peril.

“Global”

It’s bigger than you think. Everywhere people rediscover the value of their own voices, conversations will emerge. “Everywhere” on the web is not geographical, nor is it temporal. Everywhere on the web is technological so the more ways people discover to communicate their opinions, the faster their message will spread and louder their voices will resonate.

Translation: You haven’t got it covered anymore. It’s out of your control.

“Conversation”

This is the biggest word in the opening sentence and not just by size. It gives cause for existence for the first two.

As the Cluetrain makes painfully clear, marketing departments were introduced to bridge the gap between mass products and mass markets and in doing so, wiped out conversations between producers and their customers and replaced them with alienation and mystery.

Now customers have a voice, the official version of business as usual can finally be debunked in full view of everybody.

Translation: The true you is out in the open. Are you ashamed of it?

“has begun”

This is in the present perfect. i.e. it started at some point in the past and is still continuing in the present.

Translation: There’s nothing you can do about it, except join in. You can’t ignore it forever no matter how much fear you have of engaging your customers in real dialogue. The longer you wait, the bigger the gap between you and your company’s chances of survival.

In short, and in answer to question 1:

• It’s a measure of how afraid companies are of change.
• It’s an indication of how far they still have to go.
• It’s the reason companies “get it”, or not.
• It’s the reason I’m turning right.

2) Which companies have best implemented the Cluetrain Manifesto in your opinion and how were they effective?

Like Richard I am not in a position to give any real answer to this. Yet the one thing I do know, which won’t surprise any of you, is that the number of those that haven’t implemented it far outweigh those that have.

Having said that, I also don’t think that the Cluetrain Manifesto is something you simply slot in to a business model. Each company has it’s own take on how much they are prepared to let go and my feeling here is the bigger their exposure to risk, the shorter the leash on transparency.

Many of the companies in my own area act as if it’s in the interests of everyone to keep things as they are. After all, millions of dollars worth of marketing processes have been painstakingly put in place and the system can’t justify a reversal in policy just because Joe Public wants a say in things.

I know it’s unfair and I know it’s not correct but until Joe Public makes a large enough fuss so that the company panics into a response, the shift isn’t going to happen.

Dell backed its way out of a very ugly situation thanks to a change in mindset and was advised extremely well by those behind its digital media arm. Yet I can’t help feeling that others are waiting for a similar catastrophic reason to get involved, as if it were Plan B or even C on their crisis management policy rather than an opportunity to rekindle all the trust and loyalty squandered over the years through command and control policies.

The other hole in the system comes from the companies who should be advising big corporations to give it a go. Again, in my experience, there are often more important and more lucrative things on the table. Balancing a shift in approach, commitment and transparency with the laws of diminishing returns on the significant investments needed to keep a social media presence afloat isn’t something they have the balls to push through right now.

Perhaps the market isn’t ready for it just yet. Perhaps Joe Public isn’t ready to take on the liberties offered to him by the Cluetrain Manifesto, no matter how ideologically sound it may be. I don’t think this is it.

In my experience, the few of us who get it don’t have the necessary influence to bring its principles to the discussion table, no matter how hard we try and for how long.

As it turns out, fear runs at very high levels.

In the unofficial blog I created to test the conversational water for Acer, TheAcerGuy, I have tried to apply the Cluetrain principles from the start, only publishing reviews of Acer products written by genuine customers, who are given full control over their message and a semi-official platform upon which their voices can be published, whether they are helping, complaining, gloating or venting.

Once over the initial and understandable fear of losing objectivity, this approach has turned out to be the single most intelligent thing I have so far done with the site.

Yet no matter how good the reviews, I cannot convince any of my superiors to see the immense value in this approach.

Again, another reason I’m turning right.

3) In thesis 57, the Cluetrain manifesto states, “smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.” In light of that thesis, is encouraging employees to use social media and blogging a good idea? Is it really effective, when an employee is encouraged but not directed?

Again, my response to this question is based entirely on what my limited experience has taught me.

In the IT world, there are two approaches to corporate blogging: indirect and full on.

HP has, at last count, 66 blogs (http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/blogs/bloggers.html) and all of them without exception have this footer:

“Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors, not of HP and may not have been reviewed in advance by HP.”

Over at Dell, there is just one blog, and no footer.

On the contrary there is a single page dedicated to underlining the commitment to standing behind the conversations http://direct2dell.com/one2one/about.aspx

Both companies’ blogs contain articles by people trained to stick by the corporate message, but one of them puts the interests of the company first, so that you read the blog through a sort of legal filter that at a moment’s notice would distance itself from a perilous comment to save the integrity of the company.

Meanwhile the other stands by what it says. Everything there is on the record and policy.

I know which approach I trust more.

4) How can a company encourage employees to use social media, and empower them to answer customer questions and learn from customers?

By understanding that respect, trust and loyalty are the greatest assets a company possesses, and that through these core values, a company builds a reputation for excellence and permission to engage its customers.

By building an environment that promotes these values among its employees before anything else.

By carefully explaining the opportunities and implications of social media to its employees with regular updates and raining sessions.

By showing trust in its employees by allowing them to engage freely in answering customer questions.

By standing by its employees if the conversation becomes negative.

From a concierge of a downtown hotel to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, if there’s love, then that will come through in the conversation.

5) Do all employees want to talk with customers? If not what percentage want to internetwork and converse?

Again, I am not the right person to answer this question but I have an observation. From my own conversations, I have found people willing to talk from the most unlikely situations and reluctance from the most obvious.

Current thinking says that people in command should do the talking but that’s not the case.

I have college students willing to answer on behalf of a client, support staff from a repair center in the middle of nowhere desperate to change the way they talk to customers and managers who like the idea but don’t have the clout (or the balls) to start.

Not everyone can hold a conversation. Not everyone should. It would be nice if all CEOs had mega-personalities but as so often happens this is hardly ever the case.

I believe that companies should listen to themselves before launching an online presence and allow anyone on the payroll to have a say if they want to. If they’re honest, they only have to gain from the experience.

Now that I’ve answred all five questions it was supposed to be my turn to nominate another five people to do the same. Cluetrain doesn’t follow rules and besides, there is only one person I want to hear from regarding Cluetrain, and she needs no introduction from me. So over to you Valeria Maltoni.

I am going to be keeping my eye on this meme, especially as Groundswell seems to be gaining momentum. In the meantime, if you’re interested in reading more on this subject and how it’s affected people like me and businesses like your clients’, you couldn’t go far wrong with these:

Cluetrainings - Doc Searls - Here are the slides from the Cluetrain @ 10 talk I gave at There’sa New Conversation, in New York last month and a video of the talk… Cluetrain at 10 - The Cluetrain Manifesto is all about fundamental changes that we are living and experiencing… Approaching 10 Years After Cluetrain, Most Still Don’t Get It - Is it really the 10th anniversary of The Cluetrain Manifesto…? 2 On Cluetrain At 10 - Phil Gomes and Richard Binhammer have both answered the five questions I asked them in my post related to the critique the cluetrain manifesto…. After 10 years, most still don’t get it - the Cluetrain Manifesto … - Let’s take a couple of minutes to talk about The Cluetrain Manifesto because many of my readers are new to social media marketing… The Cluetrain Manifesto at 10 - Dell’s Richard Binhammer was kind enough to ping me in a meme going around about The Cluetrain Manifesto as it approaches its 10th anniversary… Cluetrain, 10 years after - In Forrester’s Josh Bernoff / Charlene Li blog, on how Lego changed by engaging with AFOLs (Adult Fans Of Lego, sometimes referred to as ALE: Adult Lego Enthusiasts). … Cluetrain Revisited: Doc Searls, still radical 10 years later … - Doc Searls started his talk at the Cluetrain @ 10 event talking about the genesis of The Cluetrain Manifesto… After 10 years, most still don’t get it - the Cluetrain Manifesto … - There are some people with very strong voices & Valeria Maltoni has one that’s worth listening to… The Cluetrain Manifesto Conversation - If The Cluetrain Manifesto is still news after 10 years from its publication, the conversation that ensued has evolved… Have You Heard of Cluetrain? - Just under 10 years ago a website then book was released called The Cluetrain Manifesto. I did a quickie poll on Twitter and found around half of people questioned had heard of it. Today I want to repeat the experiment here. …

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Not having time to blog, and by that I mean reading or writing, must be one of the hardest things any “serious” blogger has to deal with.

There’s always an excuse. Work. Family. Holidays (what are those?)… Mine’s the first.

This week (and from the looks of things the best part of next week is going to be the same too) has been mad. In at the office at 5.30/6am out at 8pm (just to show the kids I’m still alive) and then continuing into the night on my notebook.

Sure I’ve been following events. I even managed to write a few articles over on The Acer Guy but nothing remotely “strategic”.

Having said that, I am falling for the webcast spell. Caught it off Justin really, but Scoble does his thing sooo very well. I’d like to do some live Acer podcasts in future. Have to see how PodTech works.

My 5 minutes are up…

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There are moments when you look up, notice the time and make some quick realizations.

I’m not talking about life-changing inspirational realizations but that sudden computation that triggers your brain into realizing that you haven’t eaten lunch and it’s nearly dinner time.

I guess that’s what happens when you’re out of the groove. Or at least it certainly appears to be that way for those of us trying to get out of theirs.

Free time becomes time spent planning, creating, writing, re-writing and, occasionally, eating.

I have listened to Rich Schefren tell me that I have to get out of my own way but unfortunately, when you’re at the beginning of whatever enterprise you’re trying to build, the plain and simple truth is that you are very much in charge of everything.

That doesn’t mean you should give up, but excuses are easy to find as you’ve got a million things to do and quite literally an excuse for each of them.

I just knuckled down and got on with it. I planned, I wrote and re-wrote and after six months (yes that long) had no fewer than 3 presentations ready to propose yesterday.

Like most “creatives” the fun lies in pondering over the details and the really, dirty, grubby part comes when you have to “sell” your phantasmagorical idea to someone with less than 1% of your super-human “vision”.

That moment for me came yesterday and was, effectively, the first day of the rest of my career. Dirty, exhausting and most definitely uphill but well worth the effort.

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So it’s 2007 and this copywriter’s back with an identity crisis.

The title of this blog is quite apt at the moment as I appear to be transforming into a strategist. Words are no longer the end of a means but a means to an end.

I see them as part of a bigger strategy now, combining the dynamism and appeal of past media with a strategic function within the new.

Let me clarify this thought. In a recent post, Shel describes the opening chapter of his new book under the premise “…that human nature stays the same even as technology makes worlds bigger”.

I guess that’s progress. When you’re on the receiving end, your core opinions remain the same, yet those in charge of producing content that arrives to your door/inbox whatever have an underlying responsibility to their clients/employers to adapt to the needs and expectations of new media.

Recently over on Eric Klintz’s Marketing Excellence blog, he fired a warning shot over his online competitors’ bows to see what would happen. Under the title of The Corporate Blogging War Has Officially Started, Eric said that this was “the first time that all three of us – Dell, IBM and HP – have engaged in a competitive dialogue through blogs. Corporate blogging is clearly taking on a new dimension in 07. Companies are watching what their competitors are doing and commenting on blogs”.

Personally – and I need no disclaimer here – I think Eric pulled a fast one. I think he had a jab at Dell as Dell’s blog is on a roll and Klintz wanted a piece of it. Robert Scoble-Wan Kenobi thinks Dell are corporate superstars at the moment and when you’re at the top, you’re easy to knock.

There is unsurprisingly very little “conversation” going on in any of the leading IT companies’ blogs. Apart from replies, constructive criticism and so on, the content is never “startling”.

But just how on earth could this be otherwise?

Blogs by definition deliver fresh web content.

That’s why the search engines love them and why blog flames shine like a strip of burning magnesium. They’re hot! hot! hot!

What’s hot about a corporation going about its 9-5?

OK Dell had their fair share of heat over the battery disaster but short of that, there’s precious little worth fighting over, let alone full scale blogging warfare.

What they’re doing right, is adapting the conversation, identifying it with their chosen Blogmaster (Lionel rules!) and making it relevant and personal.

By its very nature a corporation talking to independent bloggers is going to be a little unnatural, but Dell’s careful use of their own blog as a way of drip-feeding the world with their thoughts, progress and, why not, apologies, is truly remarkable.

I have read many a PR company harp on about how corporate blogs should be free and independent but I think this is a major misjudgment on their part. A corporate blog needs to be a place where conversations relay the underlying values of the company at its heart. They need to be dependable, constant and coherent year in year out.

Blogging superstars, influencers and sneezers will always exist and it’s these guys and girls who shoulder the responsibility of continuing the debate, not the corporations.

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What a week-end.

It’s all coming together now. Keyword density, proximity and prominence, Wordtracker, SEO Elite, rotating banners, merchant accounts… this stuff’s a nightmare!

But the book’s just too exciting to put down.

The thing about SEO is that it’s the most complex thing I’ve ever come across, spanning everything from graphics to site structure.

And like everything I’ve done before, SEO has its own, specific set of instruments.

Right now I’m sifting through the myriad of programs available online to add what I hope are the right ones to my arsenal.

Next up is to draw an operational to-do list that works for each and every project I do from day 1.

Once I’ve done that, I might just be able to get started with those 10 projects that brought me here in the first place.

Here’s to late nights then…

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It’s been a while, and I apologize to myself for lacking the discipline (spelt: energy) to keep the thoughts flowing.

There’s quite a lot in the air at the moment.

More than anything else, I’ve discovered there’s a back-end to copywriting. And like an iceberg, there’s more to what you don’t see than what you do.

I’m speaking about search engine optimization, and it’s fascinating. I’m learning terms like latent semantic indexing, prominence, proximity and stop words.

I had no idea…

I’m learning a language that goes beyond selling content, it changes the position of sites that speak it in a way that actively brings them closer to the people looking for them.

I apologize if this sounds lame, but like I said I had no idea. The world was flat before this, now it can bent anyway I want it.

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I’ve just had a thought.

It came to me while reading the December 2006 CAR magazine.

In the bulletin section there was a pretty alarming article about the envoronmental impact that undoes just about everything I’ve ever understood about eco-friendly automobiles.

I can’t find the report on the magazine’s website but I did find it here.

Normally, we’re led to believe that a car is green by looking at it’s fuel consumption and emissions. However, Oregon-based CNW Marketing Research took a step back and looked at it globally. What they discovered was in my mind astonishing in its obviousness.

If you look beyond fuel consumption and take into consideration a car’s “dust to dust” environmental impact, factoring in fuel consumption, factory manufacturing costs, parts manufacturing costs, plus the energy used in R&D, the energy used by the workers communiting to the factories, the car’s recylability and it’s durability, the traditional references are turned on their heads.

By way of illustration, the greenest car available in the UK is, according the Greenpeace, the automotive incarnation of Beelzebub, the Jeep Wrangler 4×4.

The previous envoronmental champion, the hybrid Toyota Prius, has a “dust to dust” energy cost five times higher than the second-place Toyota Yaris.

Art Spinella, president of CNW, sums it up quite nicely. “If a consumer is concerned about fuel economy, it is perfectly logical to consider buying high fuel economy vehicles such as hybrids, but if the concern is the broader issues such as environmental impact of energy usage, some vehicles with good economy actually cost society more than conventional or even larger models over their lifetime. Basing purchasing decisions solely on fuel economy does not get to the heart of the energy usage issue”.

How painfully obvious is all this?

How much does discovering a truth that exposes our short-sightedness for what it is burn our pride and uproot our intelligence?

Couldn’t see the woods for the trees?

Winning the battle but losing the war?

Taking an even bigger step backwards, it made me wonder if this oversight also applies to marketing.

For example, how often consumers fed solutions that resolve the problem but neglect the cause? How many products and ideas (and remedies for that matter) have been introduced that do nothing more than smear away the stains left by the previous mistake?

In my own little world of IT solutions, I can’t help thinking if there’s a bigger picture we’re missing.

The fact that Greenpeace is putting pressure on electronics manufacturers into making their products more environmentally friendly is a case in point.

How much of the efficiency comes from the machine itself?
- If manufacturers busy making computers work faster forget that humans have to live with the consequences.

Does the pursuit of increased efficiency/performance in one area damage another?
- I’m thinking of the Sony battery disaster but I’m sure there are other more distant relationships.

How much human-involvement is missing from the equation?
- Is technology improving yet becoming so complicated in the process that we as humans are being blinded by it? If SatNavs and GPS phones take away our ability to “see” where we’re going, and SMS text-messaging is undoing one of civilised man’s key qualities (literacy), just how much is technology driving us towards a catatonic state of high-tech dependency?

Breaking down the barriers between people and technology might not be a bad thing, as long as we don’t put up others along the way.

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