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Deep down I’m a numbers guy.
When Fight does something in the world (either for ourselves or for our clients), I want to know what happened, and, to me, that means numbers.
What I can’t get my head around (through no shortage of banging my head on it) is why there aren’t any basic numbers around stuff we do on Twitter.
I’m not looking for anything particularly complicated, and maybe that’s the problem. I just want Impressions and Reach. But I’ll be darned if I can find them anywhere.
Impressions – Impressions is the number of time that your message was seen by a person. It doesn’t matter if it’s the same person seeing it over and over, or if it’s one unique person for each time the message is viewed. For this reason (among others), I’m actually not a big fan of this metric, but it’s simple, and it has equivalents across all kinds of media.
On Twitter that would be (for any given tweet), the number of people who follow you directly, plus the number of people who follow lists that you are on, plus the number of people who follow anyone who retweets (either in the traditional or new fangled way) your tweet, plus the number of people who follow lists that your retweeters are on.
This will give you an idea of how many people could have seen your message (not all of them did, of course, and others will see your tweet without following anyone (like, through search, or the like)).
Reach – This is the total number of individuals that saw your message. It removes any times where a person saw your message more than once. In the Twitter world, you would keep track of every unique individual you run into when counting impressions.
Reach is especially handy when applied to Twitter as a person who follows you directly might also follow, for example, a list that someone who retweeted your message was on.
More than abstract measures of “Klout” or the like, these numbers tell you what actually happened when you tweeted something, which is the gateway to understanding which things that you tweet are resonating with your audience, and which are not.
But the trouble is, I can’t find them anywhere – at least not calculated like I would. And beyond these are yet more interesting metrics that could be generated, but aren’t (again, as far as I can find) and a whole awesome concept of Twitter-based CRM that I’ve yet to stumble on (though, admittedly, I haven’t looked recently).
Am I just digging in the wrong place here? Do tools exist that measure this and I’m just missing them (@twitalyzer? @webtrends? Speak up if I’m missing it)?
Can anyone help a numbers guy out here?
By: Dave Allen
The 11,500 year old Gobekli Tepe temple near Sanliurfa, Turkey. [photo: Berthold Steinhilber]
“Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase.” – The Long Now Foundation.
We no longer consider the future. We apparently don’t have time for that. The Long Now Foundation and its 10,000 Year Clock project should at least make us find the time to again consider the future.
As Michael Chabon wrote about the Clock in his wonderful book of essays, Manhood For Amateurs, “…the Clock may accomplish its greatest task before it is ever finished, perhaps without ever being built at all. The point of the Clock Of The Long Now is not to measure out the passage into their unknown future of the race of creatures that built it. The point of the Clock is to revive and restore the whole idea of the Future, to get us thinking about the Future again, to the same degree we used to, if not in quite the same way, and to reintroduce the idea that we don’t just bequeath the future – though we do, whether we think about it or not.”
How many of us even consider the future of 500 years from now, of only about 6 future generations of our families from today? And then consider 10,000 years. As Chabon points out, that’s about as long a time span as separates us from the first makers of pottery….11,500 years ago some people built the Gobekli Tepe temple near Sanliurfa, Turkey.
We all have, and have had, the future in our hands – just yesterday for instance – yet by definition the future doesn’t exist. Some of you reading this post, when you consider technology and how we now expect new developments in technology to bring us the “future,” may consider the iPad the future; it’s coming soon after all. And with that example, let’s consider the outpouring of rage from the Flash developer community over the iPad’s lack of Flash… they chose to ignore that the iPad will change the way people interact with computers in the future, instead they got all hysterical over the lack of a multimedia platform on the device; short term thinking in other words.
It’s interesting to note that one of the Long Now’s founding board members, Brian Eno, seemed to suggest that the lack of long term future thinking was an American problem. When he moved to New York City, he found that “here” and “now” meant “this room” and “this five minutes” as opposed to the larger here and longer now that he was used to in England. Because of that, he wanted the Long Now foundation to focus on stretching out what people consider as now.
I’m not sure what year it was when Eno considered the “here and now” issue, but I don’t actually believe it’s an American problem, it’s a global problem. We can see it when humans get all worked up about saving the Earth, without realizing that humans haven’t been on Earth long enough for the planet to care. We may or may not be destroying the atmosphere via global warming, but either way, when the Earth is truly done with us it will rid itself of us. We may not be around to witness the Clock Of The Long Now in 10,000 years; we need to be ok with that.
Here’s the Long Now guidelines for a long-lived, long-valuable institution:
Serve the long view
Foster responsibility
Reward patience
Mine mythic depth
Ally with competition
Take no sides
Leverage longevity
And here’s some food for thought; the Future, as considered over just the last few decades, was not all shiny bright advances in technology that improved our lives. It also brought the fear of Armageddon, of destruction by nuclear weapons. Chabon again – “…the Future…can be unremittingly and wryly bleak..”
By: Dave Allen
You may or may not know that in February, Fight kicked off its 30 Coffees project. 30 coffees is an idea conjured up by Fight partner, Rob Shields, and at its heart it’s a simple social web exercise. As Rob said at the beginning – “Fight has an awesome community of supporters, so we thought: Who better to turn to to help us make a good thing better? We believe that Fight is a different kind of company from other marketing strategy firms, and we’d like to get some practice talking about ourselves to people in the business, marketing, and agency worlds so that when we talk to potential clients we can really shine.”
I have already met with 16 people since we started, and along the way the concept became elastic enough to include meetings I have had with some of the heads of Portland’s advertising and marketing agencies. It’s been a fascinating discussion, and I stress the word discussion as this was never intended to be an opportunity to pitch people, it is intended to help Fight form its own internal and external narrative. The feedback from the talks has been extremely useful. And more importantly, by the end of the project [it looks like it may run over a bit because of scheduling plus my speaking engagement at SXSW,] I am certain we will have honed our story along with our elevator pitch, and have them nailed down. 14 more to go and then I will be writing up the whole endeavor very soon…
I wish to say thanks to the first set of participants. I’ve included their Twitter accounts where possible, so if you use Twitter I encourage you to follow these good people:
Erik Johnson
David Burn @davidburn
Brandon Schoessler @transport_1
Denny Mcentire @dfatouchi
Dian Crawford @diancrawford
Aaron Day
Jennifer Day-Burget @portlandwater
Jennie Fitzhugh @sasquatcha
Stephen Landau @stlandau
Ed Borasky @znmeb
Bryan Rhoads @bryanrhoads
Jay Cosnett @jaycosnett
Amanda Bernard
Jim Woolfrey @informative
Charlie Quirk @CharlieQuirk
Emanuel Brown @emanuelbrown
And honorable mentions to the following for being involved, somewhat unwittingly!
Ashly Stewart @AshlyStewart
David Ewald @motorcoatdave
Justin Yeun @jyuen
Rebecca Armstrong @rebeccamary
Arve Overland @ArveOverland
Jerry Ketel @JerryKetel
Dennis Hahn
By: Dave Allen
This is the unedited version of an interview I did for the SXSW edition of the Austin Chronicle with Audra Schroeder.
Audra: With technology getting smaller and more integrated, eventually devices like the iPhone are going to be the size of a contact (let’s call it the iEye?) and perhaps we just place it in our eye and we’re online. Or an mp3 player chip placed in our ear that lets us control what music we listen to. We’ll adapt because we’ll be the machine.
Audra: With this current need for people to constantly be in touch, wouldn’t that be the ultimate, if we became the device, if no other technology outside of us was needed? How much would that change the dynamic? Does that sound crazy?
DA: Simply put – technology only shortens the distance between us. These tools, such as Twitter, Facebook, texting etc, are just that, tools. Anthropology shows that the there is an innate human need to be part of a tribe and to remain in touch. This confusion over technology’s role in society really muddies the water. The iPad for instance was roundly panned by developers and those that wanted it to have Flash in its OS. Those folks misunderstood that Apple is providing a device that creates a cultural shift in how people will approach and use such a device. Those suffering from the “Curse of Knowledge” will remain disappointed.
Here’s my thoughts on Anthropology and Technology
Audra: Can you tell me a little about what Fight’s mission is? And why it was started?
DA: Fight was formed by three partners who have spent many combined years in the advertising industry. We had come to the realization that the web, or online advertising, was an increasingly difficult medium for advertising companies to understand. The web is malleable, asymmetrical and doesn’t play nice like TV. There are no one-to-many controlled channels on the web so brands and agencies don’t understand why they can’t get attention. Advertising is based on the concept of controlled messaging – think TV, Print, Radio – and also on the Big Idea and executing on that. Fight is about ensuring the Big Idea is the Right Idea and also about showing real dollar ROI for our business clients.
Audra: What’s the problem with bands having just a Myspace or using Facebook?
DA: There is no problem with that as long as bands and musicians understand that a MySpace page or a video on YouTube, is just a tactic. It’s not strategy. A strategy might be “We should acquire 1,000 true fans who always buy whatever we have to sell.” Goal: Attract and retain 1,000 true fans. Tactic: Interact with them on the Social Web – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace. Listen and learn what they want from you – it might be a free download or two, discount show tickets, cheap merchandise etc – then give it to them. Test and analyze different methods and see what works.
Audra: Do you envision one day having a sort of streamlined global network for music?
DA: Not really. I’m more interested in learning how an 8 year old girl today wants to access music. Currently I see record companies and musicians simply messing around with almost identical models, trying to replace the dollars that they were used to earning through music sales. For instance, Spotify is not a game changer. It’s more of the same. Ask young people what they want, then give it to them. McDonalds discovered that offering more healthy food and fresh espresso at reasonable prices worked really well, so they broke their own mould and pursued that avenue to great success. By the way, one of the executives from Spotify is giving a speech at SXSW – I predict that whatever he says will be championed by those who are desperately looking for help. They will hang on his every word and begin talking about how Spotify will save music….
Audra: There was a Brian Eno quote I wrote down after reading an interview in the Observer last month: “The record age was just a blip.”
DA: Here’s Eno’s quote – “The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you’d be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history’s moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it.”
I agree with him. The record companies traded in CDs, they gave music videos for free to Viacom for its MTV program, Viacom made millions of dollars from that deal. Now everything has changed and those assets are of little value in an always-on, Internet society.
Audra: Do you see CDs being phased out soon?
DA: No, CDs are still popular. Remember, CDs were supposed to make vinyl extinct and that never happened.
Audra: What do you think of the idea of the “celestial jukebox”?
DA: To me, that was a term that was being bandied about back in 1998 when I was General Manager at EMusic.com – It didn’t get very far did it? I think that Apple, with its acquisition of LaLa, will come close to offering up the original promise of the Celestial Jukebox. Accessing your own music collection via the ‘Cloud’ will be a game changer because of mobile ubiquity and the iTunes app ubiquity. Apple remains a trusted company that people evangelize, so they will trust their music collections with them. And remember, mobile is bigger in the rest of the world outside the USA.
Audra: As a musician that was recording in the “record age,” do you think in 2010 it’s sort of pointless for musicians to keep releasing physical product?
DA: I think it’s completely pointless to simply release a CD. Think of that 8 year old girl I mentioned earlier – does she want a CD? I doubt it. So what’s required is first and foremost the release of music as an “event.” Do not follow the traditional, worn out methods. Reinvent the idea of what a release of an “album” should now be. Cirque De Soleil is a far cry from Barnum & Bailey’s…
Here’s my thoughts on doing things differently.
Audra: Where do you see major labels going? What about “indie” labels?
DA: I’m not one who tries to predict where any company might be in the future. I’d prefer to envision, on my own, what the “music business” could look like in 2020. As a society we have forgotten to think about the future, and that is our loss. We have become obsessed with short-sightedly hoping that the next gadget or application will better our lives and our experiences. The music industry is especially guilty of this. We need more forward thinking people running record companies who can embrace the long term. One’s who are willing to take more risks and bet on a future that is determined by research and deep analysis of how people want to access music…
Audra: There’s a music panel called “How Will We Listen to Music in 2020?” Any ideas, theories, wishes?
DA: See my answer above..
By: Dave Allen
I recently posted to this blog, an interview I did with SXSW Magazine – SXSWorld which resulted in a very interesting comments thread, wherein I was called out by a couple of people over what they perceived as a lack of new ideas from me regarding musicians and their utilization of the web. I don’t mind being challenged over my ideas, after all this is a forum for discussing ideas and what I learn here can be applied, not only to more posts on the subject, but also to my panel at SXSW this year. The only problem I had with the comments is that I couldn’t help but feel I was being asked to provide tactics that might lead to success for some musicians on the web, whereas I was attempting to discuss web strategy – two very different approaches basically.
Fortunately Justin Spohn, one of my business partners here at Fight, bailed me out by saying this – “The first thing I think it’s important to note is that at Fight, we almost never have blanket recommendations for anything when it comes to tactical recommendations, and I fear that may be part of the frustration I’m hearing.” In other words, what’s your strategy and can we help you with that?
And it is the frustrations of musicians that I would love to help alleviate. Unfortunately I doubt that I can assuage all musician’s frustrations along with their doubts about embracing a new way of thinking about selling music. As Justin says above, we are not in the business of simply providing tactics, but I did think it may be useful to offer up some info of how a couple of bands I admire are working their way through the new paradigm.
Last week I met with the Portland-by-way-of-San Francisco musician and artist, Holcombe Waller. We had a lively discussion about the challenges that all creative people in the arts now face, the least of which being one’s ability to gain attention and traction in a world of high-speed communications and online hyperactivity.
So what is Holcombe up to? Well, he’s not in the least bit perturbed by the ever changing cultural landscape. He has set out to win, and along the way he’d like to make a difference and also be brilliant. We discussed the 1000 True Fans model which Holcombe has essentially embraced. We agreed on many things so I’m not going to go into detail about his hard work, [we definitely agreed that hard work and talent are two very important prerequisites for achieving success these days], I will simply give you the links to his ambitious project.
First, Holcombe has a web site with his own URL. That’s important especially in a world of real time search and especially in light ofGoogle Music search – you want your own URL to appear in search results so that your fans can respond to any calls to actions there, not your MySpace page.
You will notice when you land on Holcombe’s site that he is very clearly calling out his current project, one that he is funding through his Kickstarter site. This is where Holcombe’s 1000 True Fans can pledge money to help him reach his financial goal. He has also been very smart and created a Facebook fan page where he continues to further press his campaign. He has currently garnered 54% of his stated goal.
Meanwhile last week I received a great email from Lauren who fronts one of my favorite bands, Ume, [pronounced ooo-may] who are based in Austin. I met her and the band last year at SXSW and became a sort of advisor, sharing ideas with them whenever they felt that they’d hit a roadblock or perhaps had been offered a “deal that just sounds too good to be true.” Basically they’ve been out on the road as often as possible building a fan base and capitalizing on it. You’ll see from Lauren’s email below that they had the guts to turn down offers when ever they felt that it just wasn’t right for them.
“Hi Dave,
Hope you’re doing awesome and super excited to hang at SXSW! Reading your recent blogs, I wanted to give you a little update on us and hopefully [get] a little encouragement.
We had 5 record label offers this year and did not take one. While I was flattered by Joan Jett’s offer, it was a career crusher that claimed a piece of EVERYTHING and I continually heard your voice advising against it.
As you might know, our EP landed at #57 on WOXY’s best of 09 list. Last night, as I skimmed this list I noticed every record ranked above us was released by a label. “See,” I said at first, “every band that’s breaking has a label.” But then I realized that our name made this list and we really are doing-it-ourselves!
We are trying to work outside the – sign me/book me/manage me/make me – box. What I’m finding difficult is that those inside this box don’t want to leave.
For example, we met several major booking agents this year, all of whom want to work with us “when we get a label.” The biggest influx of traffic we received was when there was a false rumor that Sub-Pop and Matador were in a bidding war for us. Magazines, publicists, the manager of MGMT, Atlantic Records, A&R guys, blogs, and lawyers – all contacted us within a week because of this made-up rumor about “the labels interested in Ume” circulating the internet. Ha!
The point is not that we “need” these people. We sold-out of the first pressing of the EP and played 70 out-of-town shows last year without a label or booking agent. The challenge – but not the barrier – is we still don’t have the financial means to record and we’re still averaging a $50-$100 pay-out at packed shows (while bands on these bills with agents/managers/labels are averaging $2,000). We almost went broke on this tour, but were sustainable because I had a line awaiting me at the merch table after shows.
Yet, our fan-base is still growing, we own everything we do, and we’re learning the importance of being patient. Oh, and we’ve written a lot of new music and now are just looking for ways to get it into ears…”
Although it’s clear that Ume have not been able to raise the money to make a new record yet, [Lauren, use Kickstarter...] they remain completely independent and in control of their career. The challenges they face come from the industry itself – agents who won’t book a band without a label, or a label that wants too much control of a band’s copyrights. Those folks are guilty of having their heads in the sand, not just when it comes to a great band like Ume, but because they are missing a chance to take a risk that may successfully change the way they do business in future. There will be many, many hard working bands coming up in the future, who have completely different mind sets and who have a real understanding of what works when it comes to getting their music into their fans hands. Who will be the right partners for these young musicians?
Meanwhile – The Music Industry’s Demographic Problem.
By: Dave Allen
“If one factors in all the world wars, diseases, poverty, illiteracy, and natural disasters, a well-designed hangtag is silly. But I don’t think the responsibility for the visual environment of our society is silly or trivial, and collectively, that is our charge.” – Paula Scher: “The Devaluation of Design by the Design Community: I Have Seen the Enemy and He Is Us”
“Designers who win awards for edgy design they did for a friend’s business, with a print run of one hundred or something like that? They’ve got no art director, no creative director, no client’s representative, no agency person. Where’s the obstacle to good design there? But take something like a cheese. When I see a really good package for a cheese, I know what that designer went through to get there. It makes me want to fall on my knees and kiss that designer’s feet, that cheese.” – Ernesto Aparicio.
An interview by Paula Scher with Josh Berta of Pr*tty Sh*tty:
Scher: I use a couple quotes of yours to sum up some of my own motivations and philosophy behind this blog. When I contacted you about this interview, you said those quotes were never more true than now. Why is that?
Berta: Many talented young designers today have abandoned their roles as improvers of the general visual environment. Many only want to work on cultural work, or not-for-profit work, or on projects they perceive as “good-for-society” which may have a high profile within the design milieu, but don’t really reach ordinary people. These designers are afraid to get involved in mainstream packaging, promotion or corporate work. They forget that these are the products and messages that most people really encounter in their daily lives, that these products and services are at the heart of the American condition, and that there is responsibility for us as designers, always, to raise the expectation of what design can be. We are responsible for that daily experience. These “ivory tower designers” leave the job to others (ad agencies, schlock shops, etc.) who are simply doing it for the money, and are often cynical about the outcome.
Scher: What do you think has perpetuated that pattern?
Berta: I think the design community has caused it. The “First Things First” manifesto inspired a lot of young people to move away from corporate branding, advertising, promotion, packaging (except for books and magazines, as if they are somehow more noble). If “responsible” designers who care about society and our environment refuse to work on branding, advertising, promotion and packaging, then just consider, who will? This line of design-thinking has been perpetuated in so many design schools and grad programs and it is perpetuated by the AIGA and other design organizations. It’s easy to inspire young designers this way as it creates a real calling for them: “down with corporate America”, etc.
But, ultimately, it creates a design society where it is OK for designers to
abandon most of American communication.
Good God!
Read the rest of this interview here.
By: Dave Allen
At last count, if I’m correct, I’ve attended the SXSW Conference at least 17 times, and on many of those visits I have been very grateful for the opportunity to speak on a panel. When Brian Zisk, a co-founder of the SanFran MusicTech conference, invited me to speak again on a panel in December, and also to join him on his panel at this year’s SXSW, I gave pause. 17 years is a long time, therefore that begs the question – what has all the talking, presenting, networking and mingling at SXSW achieved for the music industry/community at large? The answer to that is simple – it’s hard to know what, if anything, changed and even harder to quantify. Yet change came along anyway.
In that 17 year timeframe we all saw the rise of the more public face of the Internet, the nascent World Wide Web. And as Chris Anderson of Wired points out, “… the Internet is the once-a-century invention. The Web is just one application upon it. There are, and will be, others.” For music, as we know, this was a serious game changer. The labels blinked. Some musicians learned to use the web well and at SXSW in March 2007 David Byrne warned record labels that they must act very quickly and adapt much faster to the web’s promise. He predicted that by 2012, sales of music as downloads or through streaming services would strip the sales of CDs. He was very prescient.
I share his views but I also now lay the blame at the feet of the musicians themselves. There is so much more they could be doing if they fully embraced the social web with a strong, well planned digital strategy. Or, as I put it in this essay – Dear Musicians, Please Be Brilliant or Get Out of The Way.
What follows here is the full version of an interview I gave for SXSWorld Magazine. An edited version appears in the print and online magazine on page 58. The discussion centered around our company Fight and its approach to brand strategy and iterative marketing. Our ideas would work just as well for bands and labels. After all, they are brands too.
For the layman, how would you describe what your company does, and how it functions in relation to the changing online and media landscape?
Fight is a brand strategy company that works with clients to help them align their brand strategy both online and off. For too long, advertising agencies have been struggling with the asymmetrical online world. It puzzles them because they consider the web like TV, as if it has multiple channels. They see the web as packed with eyeballs all wanting to see their clients messages – that is totally untrue. Getting attention online is the key. One-way, controlled messaging is not the answer.
Fight approaches this problem by working with companies, setting realistic goals and targets, then moving ahead in iterative steps to see what is working. If all is well, we move to the second stage of the campaign – based on results. If something isn’t working we move back to the previous phase. We continue testing and analyzing throughout the campaign. The old adage of “build it and they will come” doesn’t work on the web. We want to show results and actual $$ ROI for our clients.
How does the social-networking aspect fit into this, and how can musicians make better use of it?
What needs pointing out is that “social media” is just an idea. [Edit: I prefer to use the term, Social Web] The term “social media” feels like it was dreamed up by marketers, who, believing the web is like TV, wanted to create “channels” to reach people online. Remember, as Chris Anderson of Wired wrote in a Tweet recently “the Internet is one of those ‘once in a century’ inventions and the web is just an application that sits on the Internet. There are, and will be other applications.”
Social networks are simply places where people gather online. Anthropology takes care of the need for humans to be constantly in touch, technology just shortens the distance between us via, say, the web or mobile devices. Therefore, I’d argue, that bands need an online digital strategy worked out in advance. Having a MySpace page or Facebook fan page is not a digital strategy for musicians. Now that Google has delivered Google Music Search and Twitter provides real time search, I argue that musicians must now have their own url. If they did, then they would benefit from those searches by having their url come up in the results. If they don’t then their MySpace url will come up first. A digital strategy would ensure that the intended actions of a fan landing on the musician’s web page might include buying some music, a T-shirt or signing up to an email list. If you are just one of millions of bands on MySpace I’d say those are difficult result to achieve. All those social network tools should simply be used as part of a strong digital/online strategy.
How does your background as a musician and [former] label owner influence the way you approach these issues now?
I developed my thoughts and ideas about online music distribution over the last 15 years. I reached my current phase of thoughts and ideas after attending SXSW 2009 and realizing that musicians were using the web because of its zero barrier-to-entry model, but I felt they weren’t using it wisely. That was when I wrote “The End of The Recording Album As The Organizing Principle”
In your SanFranMusicTech essay, you lay much of the responsibility for the current state of the music industry on musicians, rather than record companies, for not taking better advantage of the branding and social-networking opportunities available to them. Could you expand on this a bit, and on what musicians can do to function more efficiently in the current climate? Should artists be focusing more on building and developing their brand, rather than focusing on record sales?
I’m not sure that you’ve grasped the big idea behind the essay. I’m not saying that musicians should necessarily be using the web for branding and social networking opportunities, I’m saying that merely releasing a CD in 2010 will be a bad idea. The web should be used as one part of musician’s strategies for the music-release-as-an-event idea. Big thinking is required and unfortunately the thinking still remains small and cloistered around the old way of releasing a CD, as part of a release/reviews/tour campaign that is still a label mindset. The web isn’t suited to a ‘campaign’ strategy. Labels will argue “oh, but we use the web by posting videos to YouTube and getting MP3s to music blogs” but that is small potatoes I think. I know it’s a cliché, but Radiohead and NIN gave everyone pointers to how it can be done. Embracing those ideas is now up to musicians. If they don’t start to embrace bigger thinking, then musicians will definitely not make a living from their recorded works.
What are your goals and objectives for your SXSW appearance this year, and what issues do you plan to address?
I believe I have attended SXSW at least 15 times and I have been fortunate enough to have been asked to speak on panels for many of those visits. I always look forward to SXSW [especially now, as it has expanded into the Interactive world] and I arrive expecting to learn something new, which does happen occasionally. One example was being able to sit in and hear Clay Shirky remind a panel of journalists, book publishers and newspaper folks that “the internet is the largest group of people who care about reading and writing ever assembled in history…”
That phrase of his could also be paraphrased as “the internet is the largest group of people who care about music ever assembled in history…” When musicians, labels and others paint music downloading as ‘piracy,’ ’stealing’ or ‘illegal’ they are creating a “Fog of War” that is intended to serve one purpose that can be summed up as – We don’t understand how music lovers want to access music, nor do we understand how an eight year old girl today will want to access her music in future. Therefore we will continue to speak out in media catch phrases, instead of doing deep research that will allow us to understand, via real data, how better to serve new generations of music fans.
My goal? That’s easy. I would love nothing more than to have a forward-thinking record label or band manager hire Fight, to help them be successful in a shifting online music world. Talk is cheap, action is required based on real information.
By: Dave Allen
In the early stages of the 30 Coffees in 30 Days rollout, AdPulp’s David Burn joined the fray and the result was a well-rounded discussion of how Fight approaches Iterative Marketing. David wrote up his thoughts afterwards and posted them to AdPulp. Here’s an extract:
“Dave Allen, a partner in Fight–the strategic marketing firm he launched last year with Justin Spohn and Rob Shields–is holding court. He asked me to join him in order to practice his agency’s pitch. I said yes because I like Dave, he promised me beer(s) and I’m curious about Fight’s strategy-is-all business model.
Allen says he, and his partners, are frustrated by traditional advertising, and undue reliance on the big idea. “Fight is a right idea company,” he says. Allen adds that the big idea is a Hail Mary, every time.
Fight’s response to the rise of the Internet and the profound impact it has had on not only marketing, but culture, is something called “iterative marketing.” Iterative means “steps.” Thus, an iterative marketing strategy is built on many little steps, versus one big idea.”
Read the whole article here.
Related post by Fight partner Rob Shields
By: justin
The story goes like this: an article on ReadWriteWeb about the Facebook/AOL partnership was getting a lot of comments from readers complaining about how “The new facebook sucks…” and “please give me back the old facebook login this is crazy…” Basically, people were coming to the ReadWriteWeb article and thinking this was the login screen for Facebook.
At Fight, we spend a lot of time thinking about how people use the web. So when I first read about this on daring fireball it sparked a pretty good conversation about the difference between the web and the internet, how people think about both, and about the systems that have been created for people access them.
As Gruber points out, a logical assumption here is that people are not saving “facebook.com” as a bookmark, or even typing it into their address bar, but instead typing “Facebook Login” into a search field and clicking the first link, which for a while was this article.
I relayed this story to Rob who felt the whole thing seemed a little fishy. Believing there might be a different explanation for what was going on, he started looking into it. Typing variations of “Facebook Login” into Google, he followed those top links and found an almost identical set of comments on those sites as well. Clearly, Gruber is correct on what’s happening and I think it’s a fascinating insight into the way most people conceptualize their computers.
It points not just to a break down of how people understand the web/website/browser model, but in a lot of ways how they relate to their computer as an object. Among other things, Rob pointed out, it’s interesting that people are not searching for a place (“facebook”) but rather, looking to take an action (“facebook login”). This lead to a long conversation about whose role it is to fix this, if it’s something that needs to be fixing at all.
One personal insight I took away from this little anecdote though is a new view on something that has historically bothered me: brands that take a website and turn it into an iPhone app for no clear reason. Turns out, they may have unknowingly been onto something. Rather than trying to “fix” the existing model, it may be that “objectizing” elements of the web is the right answer. For people using a Facebook application on an iPad, for example, the level of conceptual understanding at issue here wouldn’t be an issue. Rather than needing to understand the concept of an application (the browser) that one uses to render documents (html pages) that are fed from servers, which you then “bookmark” for future reference; people may be better served by having an object on their desktop that represents these web apps. This concept obviously doesn’t address general browsing, but all this leaves me thinking more about how much people need the web versus how much they need internet connected systems. It also makes me think the insistence from people the something like the iPad breaks down too many of the established computer interaction models may be putting far too much stock in any of these models in the first place.
For something as ubiquitous as the web has become in our lives, it’s always good to remember that for a lot of people, this all makes about as much sense as our cars. There is an expectation that we can put the key in, and the car will start and as long as that happens, everything is fine. Once that system breaks down though, even just a little, we’re right back in the wilderness.
P.S. If you’ve arrived here looking for the login to Facebook – thats here.
While it’s only officially day 1 of our 30 coffees in 30 days extravaganza, we’ve already gained valuable insight that I thought were worth sharing.
While talking with Chris Robson and Scott Laing at Parametric Marketing, Scott mentioned that a hurdle that they faced (when working for a company that they both worked at before Parametric) was how to describe themselves to potential clients.
They thought of themselves as something new in the world (as does Fight), and so described themselves as “nots” compared to other companies that they might be compared to. They were “not company A” or “not company B”. They were, in fact, new and better than those companies.
The trouble was that few companies had budgets for “not” companies. They didn’t fit anywhere that people were familiar with, and people had trouble getting their heads around the company. Ultimately, they started talking about themselves as “like company A plus new, better things”.
The metaphor that occurred to me was an idea of goats versus dragons. Let’s say that a company wants to buy a goat; they’ve been buying goats for a long time. They know what a goat is, and what kinds of things a goat represents. They have annual budgets for goats because goats are understood organization wide.
Let’s say that you have something new in the market: a cow. But the idea of “cow” is brand new. No one knows what being a cow means. The word “cow” is something that your company made up (or is in use in the industry but not by many people). So to help people understand how new this thing is, you describe it like it’s a dragon. It’s not at all like a goat. It’s something new entirely.
You probably already get where I’m going here. People don’t know how to relate to the dragon. They don’t have budgets for dragons. They don’t have infrastructure that supports dragons. Many people are going to be scared by the radical concept that a dragon represents; it’s potentially dangerous. Others are going to feel pretty confident that your dragon doesn’t exist at all. It’s something that you made up just to sound new. Maybe, they’ll think, you have a goat dressed up like a dog, but it’s really a goat after all.
The challenge is to position yourself as a goat plus. Something that fits all of their needs, AND MORE. Something they understand, BUT BETTER. Something they have budget for, BUT MORE VALUABLE.
A cow is like a goat, but bigger. It’s like a goat, but produces more meat. It’s like a goat but easier to manage. It’s a goat plus.
So, this is one of our challenges. We think of Fight like a dragon, but we need to find a way to describe it as a goat plus. It’s something we’ll be noodling on and trying out in our 30 coffees. If you know something about Fight and how we could talk about ourselves in a more goat plus sort of way, let us know. If you’ve started your own thing and have tackled this issue, we’d love to hear it. And if you’re starting a new thing, and are having the same problem, we’d love to hear that too. Maybe we can help each other out.
