Greg Verdino

Get (and give) the gift of good ideas courtesy of McGraw-Hill

My friends at McGraw-Hill are giving the gift of good ideas this holiday season -- in the form of a free e-book highlighting smart thinking for 2011. They've tapped their stable of business authors (including me) to deliver a hearty batch of practical, thought-provoking, useful and insightful notions on leadership, management (not the same thing as leadership, people), innovation, the economy and micromarketing.

It's free but like lots of great gifts, you'll have to unwrap it first.

Visit McGraw-Hill's sign-up page, drop in your name and email, then you can download your free copy of McGraw-Hill Professional's What's Next 2011: Leading Minds in Business on the People, Trends, and Challenges Ahead.

Like what you see? Feel free to share with all your colleagues.

The social media deadzone: why only tools focus on tools

 

This morning I happened across the above graphic in an older Center Networks post and it triggered a quick thought on a familiar theme.

I have often chided marketers for focusing too much on specific tools, platforms, sites and shiny objects. You know what I'm talking about. Your boss meanders into your office and casually asks you about some sexy social media thang that they saw mentioned in this morning's Wall Street Journal or the latest issue of BloombergWeek. Or your agency arrives to present -- iPhones, Androids and tablets in hand -- and they're all atwitter with talk about some cool thing that every marketers must do this year: mobile, social, mobile social, augmented reality, QR codes, skywriting, ironic-retro slam dance marketing or whatever.

But it's often even worse than that: the directive to innovate comes not within the context of some larger, perhaps more sustainable trend (we need to think about what the emergence of a realtime web will mean for how we connect with customers) but within the lack-of-context of some specific tool (Mike from product management says he wants a million Twitter followers by Thursday.)

Two weeks later, you have a program in market. Three weeks after that, the one trick pony on which you've placed your bets is headed to the glue factory -- they've been bought and rolled into something else, they've changed their business model, they're out of business. Two weeks after that, you're embarrassed to have your Second Life avatar name on your business card.

Sound even vaguely familiar?

So back to the image at the top of the post. We've all seen those swanky Web 2.0 logo collages. I've used one in a post or two on this blog. Hey, I've even seen one big digital agency (not naming names) throw an animated version in a PowerPoint to impress a client with how tuned-into social media they are (um, yeah). As you can probably tell, the version above is a bit different.

In May 2009, blogger and Guardian reporter Meg Pickard took one of the original logo collages from 2006 and marked it up to highlight the companies that had been acquired (see the minty fresh green kisses) and those that have bit the dust (note the lovely lavender hugs) to give a sense of how much this rapidly evolving space can -- and has -- changed in just a few short years. Now, acquisition isn't necessarily a bad thing (YouTube, Blogger, last.fm are still doing just fine) but bouncing your final round of payroll checks certainly is. And although I'm too lazy (did I say lazy, I meant busy busy busy) to do the work, I suspect a 2010 version would have plenty more lavendar Xs on it. Of course, it would also have a host of new logos that our ancient ancestors had never seen way back in 2006.

Why do I like Meg's interpretation of the logo collage so much? Because it is a clear visual reminder that the tools themselves don't matter and that putting emphasis on of-the-moment buzzy media darlings may be fun but might not get you very far.

If you're a marketer, odds are good you've placed some bad bets over the past couple of years -- maybe you were rock-solid-sure that Revver (remember them? no? hmmm...) would be the video platform of choice for generations to come, only to lose the community of branded content watchers you'd amassed over there when YouTube drove them into the dirt. Perhaps your friendly neighborhood social media guru convinced you that Plurk or Jaiku was the right microblogging platform for your company because that Twitter thing was 'so last year'. Maybe you spent a couple of years of your life at a web start-up that never quite made it to the next round (I know I did) or worked for a company headquartered in Second Life. :-)   

Making mistakes is not only natural but necessary. We don't have the luxury of waiting for this whole social media thing to shake out. We need to innovate. We need to have a sense (clear or otherwise) of where we think media and marketing might be headed next. We need to move forward because we can't go back to the bad-old-days of spray and pray interruption advertising. But motivation matters more than innovation.

We have an obligation (to ourselves, if to nobody else) to exercise a bit of restraint when it comes to chasing shiny objects. Our current crop of objects are shiny enough and most marketers haven't figured out how to make the most of them (pimp). 

We need to stay focused on what matters for our businesses: meeting objectives and beating goals (not to mention serving customers better than ever before) by using the right combination of approaches. We need to put strategy first (pimping again.)

And when we do place bets on new tools, we need to do so with one eye focused on lessons learned. For example, a marked up collage for 2015 just might show Facebook or Twitter logos behind Xs or Os. Future Us might be embarrassed by how excited Current Us were about Foursquare or Gowalla when we see them labeled as dead. But if, rather than getting hyped up on the tools themselves, we went into each experiment focused on:

(1) what will this allow us to accomplish today -- real objectives people, not dopey crap like 'get a million fans or followers', or even dopier crap like 'check off that geolocation box on our innovation checklist' -- and...

(2) what lessons will we take away from this for tomorrow -- will we know more about how to foster community, will we better understand our customers and what they expect out of their relationship with our company, will we have established any baseline practices for realtime engagement or right-time-right-place delivery of information...

then at least we will have achieved something...

At least that's what I think... How about you?

Drop a comment. Or if you'd rather discuss it with me live, tune in for a free Powered webinar tomorrow (January 28th, 2010 at 2pm Central) where I'll talk about the importance of putting strategy before tactics and some of my colleagues will discuss their takes on what 2010 holds in store for marketers (P-to-the-power-of-IMP).

Turn skeptics into advocates at Blog World Expo

 

Tomorrow morning I hop a plane to Las Vegas where, on Saturday afternoon, I'll be speaking at Blog World & New Media Expo. In my session -- From Skeptic to Advocate: Making the Business Case for Social Media -- I'll take a practical look at a variety of different ways to get a reluctant client or boss to say "yes" to social media. No theory here -- the entire presentation is based on personal observations and real approaches that I've used to get potential clients over the hump and on the road to social media greatness.

From Skeptic to Advocate is a "Lightning Round" presentation and the format is kinda unique: I'll present solo for 30 minutes in a room and then move to a table on the Exhibit Hall floor for an interactive "Ask the Expert" Q&A session with anyone who wants to pick my brain (presumably about my presentation topic, but I'll be happy to discuss pretty much anything related to social media, marketing or haberdashery.)

The details, for those of you interested in attending:

Lightning Round Presentation:
Saturday, October 17, 2009
12:45 - 1:15 pm
Room 222

Ask the Expert Roundtable Q&A:
Following the presentation
2:00 - 2:30 pm
Look for the assigned table on the LVCC Exhibit Hall floor

As I generally do before speaking at a conference, I thought I'd preview my slides right here. You'll note that they're pretty bare bones -- an intro, a few provocative statements, some iconic images, and that's about it. The real meat is in the voice over and -- more importantly -- I hope we'll spend most of the 30 minutes allotted for presentation having a discussion about the topic instead.

From Skeptic To Advocate

View more documents from Greg Verdino.

Although I'll be in Vegas for several days, I will only be at Blog World for my speaking slot -- I'm happy to catch up with anyone who is interested in meeting during that time, but don't expect to see me walking the trade show floor or raging at the parties.  So if you'd like to say hey you'll want to catch my session. This isn't a ploy to fill the room (although I've got nothing against full rooms) -- I'm just mixing business and pleasure and plan to use the rest of the trip for a li'l bit o' r&r.

Microsoft shows us 2019 in under two minutes

Love 'em or hate 'em in the present, you've gotta admit that Microsoft does a pretty good job of envisioning the future.  At last week's Wharton Business Technology Conference, Microsoft Business Division president Stephen Elop presented a video demonstration of how we might be interacting with technology (and one another) ten years from now.  As you might guess, we can expect lots of cool touch-interactive surfaces, digital paper and plenty of seamless connectivity.

<p>&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-GB&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:a517b260-bb6b-48b9-87ac-8e2743a28ec5&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;showPlaylist=true&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;from=shared&quot; target=&quot;_new&quot; title=&quot;Future Vision Montage&quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Video: Future Vision Montage&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

[Click through to watch the video.]

More coverage at PSFK and I Started Something.

Hey chicken, where's your head?

No doubt, you're familiar with the phrase "running around like a chicken with its head cut off."  In fact, if you work in media, marketing, advertising, PR or (let's face facts) just about any industry at all you're more than just familiar with the phrase -- you might be a living embodiment of it.

For the past few years, we ran around trying to get ahead of the proverbial topple of "old marketing" and get up to speed on all of the new media goodies we now had at our disposal -- from web video to social media, and everything in between.  Sadly, for many this amounted to little more than a series of pointless sprints across the shifting sands of early adoption.  We'd read an article about some hot new Web 2.0 tactic or catch wind that a key competitor was trying something "innovative," and we were off and running.  But rarely did we look where we were going, or even look around to figure out where we were starting out.  I can't even count the number of times I ranted (on this blog) or advised clients to slow down and take a more measured, more strategic approach to new marketing -- not to the detriment of progress, but for the betterment of the business.

And now we've got the current round of economic woes to deal with as well.  They're certainly cause for concern.  Budgets are being slashed, people are losing their jobs, entire companies are going out of business.  Scary times.   Client-side marketers are scrambling to cut-cut-cut-cut-cut.  All of those experimental tactics that they couldn't wait to try before the recession are now being left on the cutting room floor.  If you're an agency-side marketer (whether traditional, digital, social or PR) you're probably so afraid of being slashed along with those cutting-floor-things that you're killing yourself to over-service your clients for less money than they paid you last year.  

I get it... Times are tough, and we all need to do what we need to do in order to survive.

But here's the sad truth about chickens with their heads cut off -- they can run around all they want; they're still gonna die.

The good news is that you're (probably) smarter than a chicken.  If you're really smart (and the company you work for is smart too), you probably already had a hard times plan in place long before the economy took a downward turn.  You exercised a bit of foresight and managed to keep your neck away from the blade -- maybe you had a few feathers plucked but at least you still have your head.

Now might be a good time to use it.  Stop running around in a state of panic.  There is plenty of chaos already (in the world, in your industry, probably in your company as well) -- nobody needs you to create more chaos.  But others can probably use your help in creating order. 

Try this:

• Take a deep breath.
• Think about what needs to get done.
• Come up with a reasonable plan to do it.
• And then do it... and do it well.

As I read those four sentences, they seem laughably simple.  But is there really any other way?  Has there really ever been any other way?

OK - end of rant... :-)

First look at v-shopping powered by web.alive

During the Lenovo-hosted Ultimate Blogger Party at CES, I had a chance to visit Lenovo's eLounge, an online store built on a new 3D virtual world platform called web.alive.  web.alive is a project of the innovation lab at Nortel and it looks like an interesting offering for corporations seeking a smart, secure, scalable solution (say that five times, fast) for integrating virtual world technologies into their digital mix.

Nortel's web.alive uses Epic Games' UNREAL Engine -- the technology under the hood of many of the most sophisticated video games on the market -- but applies it to power several practical business applications.  web.alive is optimized for corporate collaboration, distance learning and assisted/social shopping.  Lenovo eLounge uses the technology to offer buyers an immersive shopping experience that allows for real time interactions among shoppers and between shoppers and Lenovo staff.

This seems like a future-leaning (but not surprising) experiment by Lenovo, but the platform itself caught my attention more than the fact that a technology manufacturer is piloting virtual shopping.

web.alive offers all the standard virtual world stuff (customizable 3D environments, personalized avatars, etc.) but improves upon the old school Second Life model (zomg, did I really just write that?) in a number of key ways. 

For starters, it's web-based and requires little more than a browser and a relatively light plug-in -- and it ran smoothly and without any hiccups on hotel broadband.  This stands in stark contrast to the buggy, laggy Second Life experience we all grew used to.  Being web-based also means that it can be integrated with a company's existing web commerce back-end.  As I navigated through eLounge, I could not only interact with the virtual objects, but pull up the real world product specs and add items to a traditional shopping cart.  SL can make browser calls and launch traditional web pages, but web.alive presents the (up to date and accurate) information within the same browser running the virtual environment. 

web.alive is also secure, allowing users to be authenticated.  Using linkages to corporate databases, registration systems and even traditional social networks like Facebook allow visitors to acertain that the avatar they're chatting with are really the people they claim to be.  While anonymity is sometimes seen as a key advantage of virtual worlds (you can be who you want to be, rather than just who you are), anonymity in a virtual business setting can be problematic.

And then there's voice.  The PC speakers were turned down and the music was turned up at the party, but apparently web.alive offers high quality voice chat, a feature that never really took off in the text chat-reliant Second Life community.

Overall, I liked what I saw -- especially in light of the fact that web.live is new and Lenovo is the first enterprise client to roll out a pilot.  It will be interesting to see how the enterprise virtual worlds space evolves and how web.alive matures.  Will technologies like web.alive represent the future of online shopping?  How about a viable platform for online collaboration and company-to-company interaction, particularly during tough times when travel budgets are strapped?

Let me know your thoughts on the promise of enterprise-class virtual world technologies.

Want '09 predictions? How about 50 of them?

Yep, it's that time of year again -- time for the marketing bloggerati to polish up their crystal balls and make some bold statements about what you can expect in the coming year.  And you, faithful readers, scour the web looking for even just a few useful nuggets from your favorite bloggers and industry pundits.

Well, this year Peter Kim has done everyone the favor of gathering 2009 predictions from some of the sharpest minds in marketing and social media, and pulling them together in a single eBook that contains 50 or so clear-eyed, thought provoking ideas about what the next 12 months hold for media, marketing and the web.

As one of the contributors, I've had the opportunity to read everyone's predictions and can say for sure that you'll want to download a copy right away.  Lots and lots of good stuff -- from a great cross-section of the blogging community, representing a variety of different points of view.

If you want a flavor for what the eBook has to offer, check out these thought starters from Pete's 14 Nostadami (Pete himself contributes an intro and some takeaways rather than his own predictions.)

• "Although it is now cheaper to launch an initiative leveraging Web 2.0 technology - it requires qualified and passionate people to make them successful." - David Armano
• "You may not always start the year as a leader, but you can certainly finish it that way." - Rohit Bhargava
• "Intimacy touches emotion; emotion powers conversation." - Pete Blackshaw
• "Doors are going to close all over the social web. Why? Because the money didn't come the way people thought it would." - Chris Brogan
• "The tipping point has not only *not* been reached, but could still tilt *away* from Social Media." - Todd Defren
• "There's a lot of fixing that needs to be done." - Jason Falls
• "Dwindling budgets suddenly make low-cost social media look like the pretty girl at the ball." - Ann Handley
• "We're going to develop a set of better metrics to help guide, direct and validate 'commitment'." - Joseph Jaffe
• "The movement is rooted in a desire to have quality, not quantity, as people cocoon in the face of the economic crisis." - Charlene Li
• "After a pre-qualifying wrestling match..." - Ben McConnell
• "These will be cumulative events and interactions that will build brand loyalty for the companies that pay attention to them." - Scott Monty
• "The recession will force revenue results out of social technologies." - Jeremiah Owyang
• "Companies that focus on earning love will thrive during hard times, and kick ass when good times return." - Andy Sernovitz
• "Suddenly, being Facebook friends with your mom will seem less ridiculous than following 4,000 strangers on Twitter." - Greg Verdino

But these 14 soundbites only hint at the smart ideas contained in the full eBook -- so be sure to download the complete thang.

As for me, I'll most likely expand on some of my own predictions right here on my blog over the coming few weeks.  In the meantime, I'm sure Pete and the other authors would love to hear your feedback.  Feel free to drop a comment here or any any of the contributors' own blogs.

Verdino Live: fall & winter 2008/2009

Even though the RSS Calendar widget in my sidebar always displays my upcoming speaking engagements, I like to let my readers know where I'll be presenting.  As always, I hope that some of you can find the time (and money) to attend an event or two.  With that said, my Fall and Winter speaking schedule is already pretty busy with conference appearances in New York, Florida and India, and a couple of webcast presentations on the interwebz.

Here are the details for five upcoming gigs.

___________________________________________

iMedia Financial Marketing Summit
October 21st, 2008
New York, NY

Fellow crayonista Adam Broitman and I will be spinning heads and cracking skulls (bald and otherwise) when we take on Geary Interactive in an 'agency shoot out' mock pitch competition at iMedia's day-long financial marketing conference.
___________________________________________

Marketing 2.0
Digital Transformation: Niche to Mainstream
November 14th, 2008
Mumbai, India

I'll deliver the opening keynote at this CMO summit designed to help global marketers understand how to make digital and emerging channels a core part of their communications mix.  This will be my first trip to India and I'm looking forward to speaking with 100 or so senior marketers about how the world is changing and what digital marketing trends they need to understand and tap into.  No website for this one yet, but you can download the agenda: Download 9dot9_DigitalTransformation.pdf
___________________________________________

Beyond Analog: Today's Digital Marketing World
December 3rd, 008
December 10th, 2008
AMA Members Only Webinars

Two identical live online events featuring Diva Marketing's Toby Bloomberg, Digitas' Julie Fleischer and me, talking about the future of digital advertising and the importance of a wide variety of new channels.  These webinars are being held in conjunction with the American Marketing Association's upcoming MPlanet conference and I'll be speaking specifically about gaming and virtual worlds.  The events aren't promoted on the AMA site yet, but if you join the association before October 31st you'll get comped the webinar registration fee as an added bonus.
___________________________________________

MPlanet: Navigating the New Marketsphere
January 26th, 2008
Orlando, FL

My 2009 speaking calendar kicks-off with the American Marketing Association's MPlanet conference, where I'll be running four workshops on "Gaming, Virtual Worlds, and Life After Second Life" during the pre-conference Digital Marketing Lab.  The lab looks to be a bootcamp for senior marketing execs, designed to prep them for the heady stuff that will follow during the main conference program.  The AMA wins an award for Most Bad-Ass Speaker Bio Page.

___________________________________________

That's all for now but stay tuned -- or keep your eye on my RSS Calendar -- for updates.

My IMS08 session: r u ready? (new video)

Inbound Marketing Summit has just released a fully produced video of my r u ready? presentation.  Aside from making it painfully clear that I blinked and said 'ummmm' way too many times -- and convincing me that I really need to do something about my double chin -- it does a good job of capturing how the voice and the slides work together.

[Feed and email readers can click through to watch in the embedded player or visit the Inbound Marketing's blip.tv channel to watch it there.]

If you like my session and check out all of the conference presentations, you can find them in IMS08's blip.tv archive.  Enjoy.

Saving humankind, MMORPG-style

Let's say, hypothetically, that this is the year 2019 and that today's big news story is that the Global Extinction Awareness System, a supercomputer devoted to forecasting precisely when any given species is likely to give up the ghost, has predicted that Homo Sapiens will go extinct by 2042.  Let's also say, hypothetically, that you and a whole bunch of 2019-ers actually give a crap, and are ready and willing to band together to make sure that humans have the opportunity to stick around a bit longer than that.

That's the premise of a new online role playing game called Superstruct, slated to launch on September 22, in which players will be tasked with solving a series of super-threats that threaten the longevity of the human race.  The threats may sound familiar to those of us living in 2008 - disease, global warming, IT espionage, scarcity of resources and more -- but come 2019 they are amped up to near cataclysmic proportions.

Coming on the heels of the highly anticipated Spore, Superstruct seems like nothing more than a sinister twist.  Rather than creating novel lifeforms from scratch, you're trying to prevent the extinction of a lifeform you already know all to well (people.)

But here's the rub. This game doesn't come from EA or any of the other usual suspects.  It's being released by the Institute for the Future, a think tank of visionaries and smarties that earn their dough by helping members and clients understand what's coming next and what to do about it.

Superstruct is the first in a series of "Massively Multi-Player Forecasting Games," through which IFTF hopes to tap into the wisdom of crowds for some creative ideas about how to solve some of the biggest challenges facing our planet.  Here's how IFTF describes the program:

"Superstruct is about building a better, stronger future. It’s about inventing new ways to organize the human race and augment our collective human potential.

With Superstruct IFTF introduces a revolutionary new forecasting tool: Massively Multiplayer Forecasting Games (MMFGs). MMFGs are collaborative, open source simulations of a possible future. Each MMFG focuses on a unique set of “future parameters,” which we cull from IFTF’s forecast research. These parameters define a future scenario: a specific combination of transformative events, technologies, discoveries and social phenomenon that are likely to develop in the next 10 to 25 years. We then open up the future to the public, so that players can document their personal reactions to the scenario. Players are encouraged to “imagine out loud” how their families, their local communities, their professions, or their extended social networks might respond to the game scenarios. They build websites from the future, keep blogs from the future, upload podcasts from the future, make videos from the future, develop research wikis from the future, and host discussion forums from the future. In short, they persuasively record, discuss, and debate the details of how they imagine their own personal futures might play out within the game parameters. In Superstruct, we’ll show you the world as it might look in 2019—and you’ll show us what it’s like to live there."

Pretty noble goals, if you ask me.  But this is also an impressive attempt to crowdsource futurism, turn to the masses for creative and compelling solutions to far-reaching issues, and get lots of web citizens thinking about how they can take personal responsibility for making the world a better place to live. 

Or come 2042, just a place to live at all...

If Superstruct sounds interesting to you, you can learn more, try your hand at a trial mission, see how others have responded to the trial mission, or get an alert when gameplay begins on the 22nd.

(Triple tip to PSFK, O'Reilly Radar and Discover.)