everlastingNow

i’m suddenly surrounded by a gaggle of ‘recovering reporters.’ at least that’s what they call themselves these days and i’m beginning to feel at home (for the first time in a long time). for years i’ve been imploring my clients to fundamentally reorganize and set themselves up as their own version of a publishing organization. meanwhile the publishing industry crumbled around us. it appears this predisposition is now channeling its way by virtue of circumstance into my own experience. a bunch of forty-something guys are now in and out of my office on a regular basis. they use bigger words than i do, spout random philosophy on the fly, and write constantly… as if in the air, just by talking to each other, before the typing begins.

these are the people. the ones who fell out of the old machine and needed to find homes in a new one. we haven’t arranged them fully just yet, but i can feel it forming around me. i couldn’t be happier. i am after all, i am myself a recovering english major.

these outstanding minds are finding their way into new situations all over the place, not just in my business. they’re too smart not to. and the business ‘leaders’ with their upside-down financial models are losing these intellectual capitalists in droves. and losing their shirts in the process. i’m told tribune and others are all but done, short of full liquidation which’ll be a fall-out that washes across us all in what will seem to be fear and upset, but more accurately a rebirth.

one brilliant ‘recovering reporter’ asked me the other day, “what happens when the AP goes under?” i said i didn’t know and didn’t understand why it would. better understanding his point, that in the not-too-distant-future there wouldn’t be anyone ready and able to buy legitimate content (newspapers and other bankrupt patrons), it began to become clear. so i rejoined his question. “the internet shrinks, that’s what happens,” he finished.

no fodder for bloggers to riff on. pundits without fuel for their complaints. and, as i heard recently in a conference for media publishers, a halcyon time for corruption in government. bloggers and twitterers and facebookers are pundits in an ever-expanding economy of opinion, which i would have to predict is the largest bubble we haven’t seen yet. and no one’s really addressing it because we so love to hear ourselves talk. it’s freedom for the ‘common man’, right ashton?

the last papers are trying to organize with each other in order to begin charging for their content online, unraveling one of the most ridiculous business models ever rushed into online: free content for everyone! yay! and 40% margins demanded by shareholders. that didn’t work, but maybe it was just them. well, except for the music industry’s attempt to stop the free flow of music earlier on. oh, and tv trying to control channel distribution… and, well, radio and movies and magazines and books… oh my.

the internet, the Great Leveler, continues to pull business models down. fighting it, we generate fad-based businesses instead (facebook and twitter) and we continue to commit the same sins we did in 1999/2000, minus the foosball tables and in-house baristas. only ten years later, here we are still running at falsely contrived models like youtube (losing money by the bucket-load), facebook (continuing to eat VC cash, most recently contributed by a russian contingent), twitter (still ‘figuring out its business model’ while turning away buckets of cash from it’s false-economy cousin), and the list goes on. meanwhile, those who actually produce wander the planet in search of a safe place to ply their trade.

get ready for a return to news guilds, bands of not-for-profit investigative reporting organizations, a total fragmentation of what we once knew as the newspaper/publishing/media industries. and keep an eye out for the smartest new models rising, like Monocle (www.monocle.com). there is hope. we’ll just have to be a little patient. or, write our way to our own new destiny.

excellent interview presented on The Marketing Fresh Peel last week (april 21). in it, chris wilson interviews author and thought leader Marty Neumeier on his new book ‘The Designful Company.’ in it, the author presents great, unapologetic opinions of companies who are ‘designful’ in culture and action (the obvious, like nike and apple) and the not-so-designful but still deified (coke, microsoft, for instance). one piece of this conversation leaps out at me though. it’s a spot-on definition of design and its role in an organization:

We need to get past our view of the designer as a shaper of objects. The dictionary defines a designer as someone who plans an artifact or system of artifacts—in other words, the “posters and toasters” of the 20th century. This is too narrow. I prefer Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon’s definition: “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” In this definition, design is a way of thinking, and anyone in the company can be a designer, including the CEO.

Design thinking is about refusing to accept the easy answer. It’s about imagining new possibilities that weren’t on the table before, and prototyping those possibilities so they can be tested. It’s the difference between “deciding” the way forward and “designing” the way forward. Deciding only works in a stable market where innovation is a low priority.

imagine the new company culture, no matter the company, defined around design thinking like this. it’s probably this country’s number one advantage (if our only real advantage) culturally going forward. we should be celebrating this concept in every concept and company.

and we should debate vigorously how we create cultures within companies that allow for this. equal parts tension and inspiration, freedom and process, democracy and dictatorship. can they live in harmony? i think so. you just have to have designers who are articulate enough and business savvy enough to have the hard conversations along the way. at the same time, you have to have a management team who understands that design is a process that takes time and space. all families should live together and learn from each other every minute of every day.

the result is a company that evolves in harmony with its market, not the lumbering frankensteins that so many of us still are today.

thanks to jeff leitner for pointing this article out…

an exploration of designing moments

 

please let us know what you think about leadership in the design of moment

we’re in a moment that allows for tremendous change. to the dismay of some, it’s in fact demanded of us–how we work, who we work with, and the principles that guide us. having created a platform for new agency/creative thought, i have been speaking on the topic throughout the year. creatives are our new leadership and they don’t seem to fully know it yet.  in anticipation of some of the speeches i’m delivering and as a baseline for shared thought already presented, i have recorded an audio version of this presentation to get the core concepts out. the piece is included here and i welcome any insight or feedback on the topics established. there’s a lot more work to be done and we’re well into it now. as we have pieces and parts to share, i’ll continue getting them out here. for the more traditional impact to my own business, we’ll put out missives at manifest digital’s site proper.

a recent post on The Beast from Mark McKinnon is one of many growing voices fighting off the stupidity of incessent twittering. and he’s right. the irony is, twitter will die the exact opposite death as SecondLife… burn out from too much activity, but vacuous experience. ok, wait, that is the same death. nevermind.

the field is open for someone, anyone, to make a ‘deck’ that is useful to the common man and allows broadcast through blog, email, twitter, or ‘insert next thing here’ so that the next big thing isn’t another technology or trick. it’s the meaningful experience. it’s connecting with people in a meanginful way. the final frontier, as always, is defining and designing the best human experience. eager to see what starts flying back. and, hoping twitter is already hard at work building a business on top of its engine because even they know they’ve already become commoditized. and the last thing we need is to fall back to the debate about which 140 character message-slinger is the right one to standardize on…

it’s always fun to see an old model applied in a new way, dragging its legacy label along with it. we’ve waited patiently (a little sadistically) as tv content carriers have struggled with online distribution issues. they have repeatedly erred on using the web only as a promotion or tease vehicle, constantly trying to drive us back to our glowing boxes in the family room. hulu, however, has proven that we can cut the cord. tivo taught us not to be beholden to the time. and webisodes (i.e., web-only content) generally sucks.

As reported in AdAge today, Time-Warner’s Jeff Bewke’s has laid out a vision that should work… and should have enough momentum behind it to shove it through. it’s simple, really. let’s all admit that subscription tv is something we’ve acclimated to… WAY back in the 80’s for goodness sake. now, let’s also admit that the web is just another vehicle for the same channels. and, in break-through thinking, the same subscriptions should hold true. people will pay. and whatever misses might leak through (just like jumping cable subscriptions from your neighbor’s box back in the day) will be a small hitch amidst a far more engaged and willing audience. and eventually even those gaps will be filled. give us what we want WHERE we want it AND when we want it. imagine that. an old media conglomerate coming through with business-minded new media thinking.

thanks, jeff. i’m here to cheer you on and anyone else willing to apply a new model to an old industry in the interest of making future sense of our confused current world. yet another little piece of the economy that can now calm down :o)…

we’ve been social animals since we were crawling around in caves. i feel like i have to keep saying it as much to remind myself as my clients. what we’re doing now online is nothing new or different, and in fact is probably less/worse than what it could be.

having had some fairly lengthy discussions on the topic with a good friend, Jeff Leitner, we’re finding common threads to follow in a purposeful way. we’ll be publishing on our efforts in the near future. one of our early discussions spawned the thought of a split in social groups and what could be two archetypes: messy versus clean. our labels are admittedly self-serving as they reflect our bias/perspective. we don’t like the ‘messy’ groups and we do like the ‘clean.’ hence the implied judgment in the labels. that said, take a look at group definition from the perspective of a cause strategist.

recommendations on better defining these social aggregates and what it could mean for online strategies is likely a rich field to mine.

the interaction’09 conference sponsored by the IxDA was held this year in vancouver. it was a tremendous experience on a number of levels and our ability to sponsor was an honor. part of that sponsorship gave us the opportunity to speak to the attendees on the final day for breakfast (and they had to listen because we were buyin the bacon and eggs ;o). this is currently one of my favorite topics to speak on… the fact that we are in a moment of great change and one that should include strong leadership from the design community in order to redefine the world we are in. great design minds have often stepped to the fore to guide us, one of my favorites being Daniel Burnham in the late 1800’s. his leadership after the great chicago fire helped to redefine our city and provide a focus for one of the greatest world-wide events at the time, the World’s Colombian Exposition. it was held only twenty years after 1/3 of the city of chicago was leveled.

we are amazing beings, capable of reinventing ourselves and the structures that guide us when all else appears lost. we are in a moment now where things appear scary and lost. they aren’t. instead, we are in a moment of tremendous change and we need to take the reigns and make that change happen purposefully, artfully, elegantly… so that the world we create on the other side is one of transparency, authenticity, and amazing opportunity going forward.

i’ll continue refining and redesigning this particular speach, but hope you enjoy its current incarnation as delivered at the interaction’09 conference.

best,
–jim

Jim Jacoby, manifest Founder and CXO, Presents “UX Designers as Business Leaders” from manifest on Vimeo.

someone worked their brain real hard over at frogloop (a non-profit communications and marketing blog). they’ve built a tool that helps measure the cost/benefit of ’social media marketing.’ at first blush, it’s enough to make your head spin. upon further review, it’s exactly the kind of pragmatic, honest assessment that needs to be done on any marketing effort. the fact is, ’social media marketing’ hype is another marketer’s false dream of a magic bullet (if not the news media’s misdirected reporting on the same).

at any rate, check it out. it’s worth a hard look (and the hard work) if you’re going to begin employing these techniques on your own behalf or on behalf of a client. give yourself some honest accountability against which your efforts can be judged. makes down-stream decisions a lot easier, whether you like the outcome or not…

all call it out when i do it, but can’t help it. got a kind mention in one of the local chicago trades, ReelChicago, this week…

a colleague brought a great article to my attention. as recently seen in AdAge, Brad Jakeman (CCO at Activision), talks about how marketers need to think of themselves as content producers. i continue to thit the same topic with our clients. you have to shift your model, no matter the business you are in, to act more like a publisher. i continue to be amazed at the irony of publishing businesses in chapter 11 when so many traditional businesses need to be adopting everything they have been great at for the last 50 years.

Brad says…

Media is giving us an enormous ability, and more and more channels, to reach consumers. The irony is that in an environment where there are more and more channels to reach the consumer, it’s never been harder than it is right now to engage the consumer. The step before consumer action, which we all hope to get, is consumer engagement. And consumer engagement is driven by innovative, fantastic content that stands out from the rest, captures the consumer imagination and differentiates the brand.

We are living in an age of content, and if advertisers and marketers start thinking of themselves as content producers that are tasked with engaging consumers around their brand, that is a much more enlightened view than people who think of themselves as disseminators of the information that the company wants consumers to learn about their brand. If you’re creating amazing content, consumers will find you and they will engage with you. The “Bike Hero” viral video (spoof on “Guitar Hero” last year) got over 2 million hits and had people spend like four minutes watching it. That’s the new model — it’s creating compelling content that draws consumers to you as opposed to crappy content that you push out and impose on broad-scale media.

the result, you have to be as broad as you need to be. immediately after you take your shot, every communication you’ve sent needs to be laser-guided so it reaches its mark in a meaningful way. the further away you are, the broader your blast, but the less likely you can pull you individual pellets on-course.  a matter of relevance and understanding the customer. perhaps there’s another dimension worth considering in addition to how compelling your content is (which i’d certainly be selling if i were in the video game business and had that strong advantage). the other consideration is proximity to the customer, the closer you are (the better you understand each other) the more likely you are to serve up the right content at the right time.