12/02/2024 08:38:00 AM 
We have 5 tickets left for tomorrow's event!!!
The recent blog post on "Why agencies need labs" forced me to re-think the idea of our "Meet the Makers" conference in NYC on December 3rd.
It struck me that conference is the wrong term, it smacks of the past, boredom, lack of interaction, stale sandwiches, poor lighting and a lousy venue.
"Lab for the Day" is much better term and truer to what we plan to deliver.
Inside the corporate world, the mind is somewhat constrained by the realities of the endless "to do" list- space for thinking and inspiration is sometimes hard to come by.
Our "lab" is a chance to change that.
To explain more, our lab is about "Making" and is designed to provide inspiration from the makers themselves, those who have work directly with them and is all about about the act of making. The "lab" seeks to provide some rules, tools and instruction sets on how to "make" good things.
And in true lab style, we will be conducting a number of experiments.
Here are the key themes and speaker specifics.
Making and Re-Making Brands
Ashley Alsup, has spent time making-over Burger King at CPB and has some interesting thoughts on why corporate America needs to re-make itself and how to do it.
Mark Barden of Eat Big Fish is going to do an experiment with the audience to get them to help him think and re-think about a brand he's personally involved with.
Real Makers and Creators
Scott Belsky, the founder of Behance, recently wrote the best-seller, "Making Ideas Happen", is going to tell us how we can all have best sellers.
Jim Wexler makes games for a living, he's going to be talking about the ingredients for good games and talk about how and why games are going invade and become a much bigger part of our lives.
Thomas Callahan left his job in the corporate art world to make bikes by hand going to tell us what he does and why he does it.
Time Magazine was one of the first magazines to re-make itself for the iPad, the most intriguing new media platform for years. Time's DW Pine is going to tell us how they did it with considerable constraints and what they are learning about how to evolve the experience.
For another take on the future of magazine publishing, Sarah Rich is going to be sharing lessons from the 48 hour magazine project, Longshot, which she describes as follows..
In May 2010, we conducted a two-day media experiment. 8,000 people signed up, 1,500 submissions came in, 35 editors selected 70 pieces to fill a 60-page magazine.
People liked it. We broke our distributor's sales records, received positive reviews in The New York Times, PBS, and the Village Voice, and won a Knight-Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism. Here, we present selected work from the print edition of Issue Zero.
Frank Rose has spent the last two and a half years researching the past, present and future of storytelling for his new book, "The Art of Immersion". He's talked to James Cameron, the creators of Lost , the people behind Tron Legacy, and many others, about the evolving process of storytelling and what it's going to take to tell a compelling story in the C21st.
Gary Hirsch gets people "out of their shells" for a living and inspires them to develop great ideas with others. He's going to lead an experiment to get us to create a character, one of the most critical components of any story.
Creative Output and Opportunity
Finally, Piers Fawkes of PSFK is going to challenge the audience to create compelling ideas for a fascinating project for the United Nations.
We believe it will be a fascinating day and a "lab" in the true sense of the word.
If you are interested in registering for the few remaining places, you can find out more here.
We are thankful for the support of our media sponsor, PSFK
Posted by Ed Cotton
12/02/2024 12:29:12 AM
A few days back, Nick Denton of Gawker fame issued a new proclamation to the world which identified 7 key drivers that will define the future of their media brand.
1. The power of the scoop- getting a big story first can change your brand
2. Aggregate or die- you've got to be out there on Twitter and Facebook
3. Demonstrate a rounded personality- more than the gutter
4. The web is a visual medium
5. The growth of video ads- that's where the money is
6. Appointment programing- TV gets tune-in impact
7. Gawker is a branding vehicle- it's a way to sell yourselves to advertisers
Denton concluded..
If the model sounds like TV, that is no accident. There is no future in low-end web advertising, at least not for a media company with any aspirations. We will offer a larger canvas for both our editors and advertisers; and pair their offerings in the way that the web has so far failed and TV has done so well."
It seems amazing that after decades of the internet trying so hard to become a new medium, it's turning into the media that once was its supposed enemy.
The big question here is if all media companies with any aspiration want to be like TV- what do TV companies want to be when they finally grow up?
Posted by Ed Cotton
12/01/2024 07:52:34 AM (2)
(2) 
The latest Wired has a great piece by Matt Schwartz on what he terms "retail hacking".
He describes a confluence of forces that have given rise to the emergence of consumers who will devote hours to hacking the system to get deals and how this world has been made accessible to masses of consumers through the efforts of new players like Groupon and Living Social.
Groupon's genius, is to to take the time consuming and previously unattractive world of coupon shopping from the striving fringes of culture and make it mainstream cool. Getting a deal on Groupon is nothing to be ashamed of, instead, it's something you brag about. This is the reason Goggle is so interested in buying Groupon for billions of dollars.
Schwartz describes the emergence of the new deal-driven consumer- "the retail hacker".
"Take a step back, though, and what Groupon represents is something far bigger. It’s the mainstreaming of a new current in American consumerism, an attitude born of the Internet’s DIY ethos and nurtured by the hard economic times. One might call it retail hacking: the reconception of shopping as not just a full-time job but a contact sport, a scrum in which consumers increasingly refuse to buy on the terms dictated to them. A whole network of so-called deal-hunting sites, each with a large and devoted community, has sprung up for users to trade inside tips about little-known bargains; the largest of these sites, SlickDeals, has more than 700,000 registered members.
In this passionate consumer underground, techniques for chiseling a few percentage points (or more) off a sticker price can quickly spread to millions of shoppers. The process of selling a DVD player or even a new razor to the growing ranks of self-educated buyers is becoming as tortuous as selling them a new car. GetHuman.com, a continuously updated list of direct customer service lines and telephone-prompt guides, is undermining the ability of companies to resolve calls with automated systems. Consumers who have learned to haggle on prices at large chain stores—Target, Home Depot, Best Buy, and more—share their stories and methods on sites like the Consumerist, a blog that has become a hub for retail hackers. When Ely Rosenstock, a 29-year-old social media consultant from New York, wanted to cancel his Verizon service and buy the new iPhone, he found a loophole that let him leave his two-year contract with no termination fee; after he made this argument stick with Verizon customer service, he posted a detailed how-to video on YouTube that has been viewed more than 180,000 times."
The article implies that the way we think about selling, about deals and about pricing probably all needs to change. The forces of Web 3.0, "The Crowd", consumer empowerment and frugality are all coming together to create a radically new environment.
This is an environment that's forcing both brands and retailers to think differently about how they sell.
Posted by Ed Cotton
12/01/2024 07:16:58 AM
While there have been a few promising innovators in the field of financial services, like Mint and some peer to peer lenders, nothing has really shaken the industry out of its lethargy and done something to meet the real needs of consumers.
BankSimple could be about to change that. Instead of trying to work outside the system and bring something new to the table, BankSimple is using existing financial players to provide the basic banking services, but is using its skills to provide a radically new customer service experience on top.
The company clearly believes and understands that consumers are looking for something new.
"BankSimple will be a worry-free alternative to traditional personal banking. No surprise fees and the customer service you deserve. And that's just the beginning."
The company seems to determined to provide consumers with a simple way to manage and understand their finances- with interesting tools to help people know how much money they have to spend, set saving goals, etc.
They also intend to explore new ideas, like couples sharing accounts and friends joining together for transactions.
Hopefully, BankSimple will also be able to use its rich dataset to encourage its FDIC approved partners to provide more innovative financial services products.
If they can succeed by combining excellent customer service through the innovative application of tools and user interface with new products, the banking establishment could well have something to worry about.
The company plans to launch in 2011.
One group of consumers who might find BankSimple highly attractive are "the first time defaulters" that Deloitte identified in a recent study.
This group, which represents 11% of the banking population are people who've been hit by a negative credit situation, in the last two years, for the first time in their lives.
This group has a very bad impression of banks.
- 41% of the 5,000-odd survey respondents rated their interaction with their lenders "poor"
- 43% doubted the banks' "willingness to listen to my concerns."
- Two-thirds said they are unlikely to borrow again from the same institution in the future.
If BankSimple can find these people, it would be a nice base to build from, but it's going to have to find not just deliver excellence through UI, but actively "listen" to these customers concerns and provide solutions.
Posted by Ed Cotton
11/23/2010 11:44:00 AM
John Cassidy's piece for the New Yorker, "What Good is Wall Street?" is a fascinating look at the current state of investment banking in the US. It shows the power of the financial sector and hints at the issues around reform with the thoughts of academics and the perspective of those inside the business that they already do good and should be commended for the good they do.
The startling rise of finance as a massive contributor to US corporate profits was highlighted in this piece...
"Since 1980, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of people employed in finance, broadly defined, has shot up from roughly five million to more than seven and a half million. During the same period, the profitability of the financial sector has increased greatly relative to other industries. Think of all the profits produced by businesses operating in the U.S. as a cake. Twenty-five years ago, the slice taken by financial firms was about a seventh of the whole. Last year, it was more than a quarter. (In 2006, at the peak of the boom, it was about a third.) In other words, during a period in which American companies have created iPhones, Home Depot, and Lipitor, the best place to work has been in an industry that doesn’t design, build, or sell a single tangible thing.
While the industry hasn't made anything tangible, it can be argued that its been dangerously creative in its attempts to develop new forms of assets.
Posted by Ed Cotton
11/23/2010 08:25:28 AM
Mark Pincus, the founder of Zynga, recently announced to The Daily Telegraph that he wants Zynga to become a verb.
"I want people to ‘Zynga’ each other and for the word to become completely aligned with gaming."
This is quite a big shift from where he's been and where gaming has been traditionally. Like record labels, gaming brands have had a tough time trying to create strong parent brands, only Rockstar and EA have managed to do it.
It's likely that many of the million of Farmville players don't even know Zynga is behind the game and even if they do, they aren't likely to substitute Zynga for Farmville anytime soon.
It's also somewhat arrogant to believe that Zynga will eclipse all other gaming brands in other categories and seems unlikely that the brand will dominate the social gaming sphere for ever.
However, stranger things have happened and maybe Pincus is planning an advertising onslaught with a global television campaign supported by online takeovers, spectacular billboards and events. Who knows? But Zynga's going to have to do something radical, if it wants that verb status.
Posted by Ed Cotton
11/23/2010 08:06:51 AM
There are a couple of interesting examples of the emergence of Twitter as a tool for creative collaboration.
Mike Skinner- a UK musician and the man behind The Streets, is actively using Twitter as a tool for song ideas and inspiration as The Guardian reports.
"The new Streets website - which is more of a blog, really - principally contains odd videos of swans dying and badly edited pieces about why Skinner doesn't like owning a phone. But it's also become a dumping ground for ideas - many of which have started out in the minds of Streets fans, not Skinner's.
Skinner, you see, has taken to replying to his followers' tweets in the form of a video blog. Some of these tweets have become songs, the most recent being Cinema Barz, which was posted last Tuesday, the result of Skinner answering followers @shetlandshaun, @bec_brough and @glory55, and incorporating their call and responses into the song.
It's likely just a way to pass the time, but it shows Skinner isn't using Twitter as an extension of ye olde subscription list, a platform from which to shout information. Skinner isn't just telling fans what he's up to; he's effectively writing music with them, including them in the creative process and creating an ephemeral rehearsal room of sorts. Admittedly, he's the keyholder - but it's an open-door policy. It's obvious the internet is what really excites him these days - on Sunday, when @clairethornhill asked if he thought he should be included in the "walk of stars" in Birmingham, he replied, "yes, but I want one in cyberspace first"."
Then there's Tim Burton, who's encouraging Twitter followers to contribute and add story ideas that build on each other. It's a technique favored by artists and called-"Exquisite Corpse". This is an idea that's designed to support his art show, rather than lead to the creation of an entirely new Burton product.
Twitter clearly has a "plasticine" like property which is it's appeal- it allows users to configure and construct ideas around the parameters of the technology.
This is the stuff that makes great brands, but one critical component here is that the brand gets out there and showcases this stuff and in so doing, encourages others to participate.
The opportunity for Twitter to become a very interesting creative platform, but it's going to require awareness and understanding.
11/22/2010 01:51:59 PM (1)
(1) 
"Yes, we don't have the layers of management approval! We don't pass things up and down the chain. The team working on the product development makes the decisions. If there's a problem or if they think it merits it then they will talk to Mark [Zuckerberg] directly. We try to do a good job of setting out the context of the task and release people to get on and do it. People are pushing new features and code to the site every day. It's really about trying to remove barriers and reduce friction in development."
Mike Schroepfer- VP Engineering, Facebook (from an interview in The Guardian)
Posted by Ed Cotton
11/22/2010 10:19:28 AM
According to a recent survey from Booz Allen Hamilton, frugality is here to stay, at least for a while.
"..companies need to work to understand the essence of these changes by consumer segment, and adjust offerings accordingly. Reverting to business as usual is not an option because many of the self-reported changes in consumer behavior, even among wealthy consumers, appear to be sticky. The frugal consumer is here to stay."
BAH found spending on categories like consumer electronics and apparel and shoes to be significantly impacted.
65% of consumers stated they spent less on consumer electronics in the past 12 months and 21% expected to spend even less in the next 12.
For apparel and shoes- 55% of consumers stated they spent less over the past 12 months and 21% plan to spend even less in 2011.
The consultants suggest in their report some kind of explosion in the usage of online retail; with many consumers flocking online for the first time in many categories and others using it as a strategic tool to research their purchases.
Posted by Ed Cotton
11/22/2010 09:31:38 AM
This weekend in NYC, there was a "Pop-Up Flea Market".
It was an idea that combines the notion of temporary space with the opportunity to seemingly purchase low cost/used items.
The reality was somewhat different- it was a pop-up store for men's apparel and footwear and featured a mix of small hand crafted brands with big brands like Levi's and LL Bean.
It was a microcosm of the problem that big brands have when trying to be small.
Of course, they wanted to be present in the company of small, hand crafted brands, but they were anything, but the disconnect was obvious, not just in the way they displayed their merchandise- more money/investment and marketing, but also with the staff- on one side owners and craftsmen who made the stuff and the other, hired guns and marketing people.
There's no way of faking this stuff- if you want to be a part of the small batch/hand crafted movement you can just do it by association, you've got to really do it.
It's clear that consumers understand the difference between fake and real in this case and only the genuine article will suffice.
Brands trying to operate in this space, need to do it with a degree of authenticity and since the consumer seems to be crying out for products that are crafted and often made by hand in the US, what's stopping you from really doing it?
Think of a near world future where the big brands have an ecosystem of premium sub-brand partners who are supported and funded by the parent, but act nothing like it. They are allowed to craft and create autonomously, but the linkage and reference points are known and made clear to consumers.
Posted by Ed Cotton