Technology, Transcendence, and Personal Introspection

It is not often that a person has an opportunity to see themselves for who they truly are.  That sort of brutally honest introspection has been a state of mind that cultures, religions, and civilizations have sought out for as long as we’ve had the state of mind to ask the question, “Why?”  Historically this has been a mostly transcendent concept…you only achieve this esoteric* state when you are totally “centered” or spiritually aligned with some deity.  As it turns out, there’s a pretty good opportunity for people to achieve an honest view of themselves and it is a man-made opportunity.  It is your digital fingerprint.

We live in an era of digitization.  The Internet has become a hub of incredible amounts of information – so much information that we haven’t even figured out how to effectively use it to our advantage, yet.  Can I throw in a “big data” reference here to help my blog’s SEO?  Millions of people continue to digitize more pieces of their lives.  Where have they been?  Where are they now?  What does it look like?  What did they eat, buy, or dislike?  All of this information we contribute to a sea of 1’s and 0’s becomes our digital fingerprint.  It is our identity according to the web.

By contributing to the digital abyss, a person is actually simplifying their humanity to an algorithm.  Unlike a philosophical or spiritual idea, an algorithm can be quantified.  It can be interpreted.  It can be solved.  That means you become a math problem, albeit an incredibly and increasingly complicated one.  Using this information to understand you, and probably more accurately, the collective average of all of the “you’s” of the world, is the desire of “big data” miners.  They seek your true self so they can achieve their goals, whether to sell you a product, govern your nation, or save your life.

We volunteer our digital being to capitalism and there are plenty of benefits to that, like increased economic efficiency and new social connection.  However, there’s a huge benefit that I would argue most people completely overlook.  You’ve created a mathematical version of yourself.  You can use that to see yourself for who you truly are, and actually in terms you can understand without kicking the bucket and without taking LSD**.  It may not be the same kind of transcendence I imagine you would achieve in the afterlife (if you believe in that), but it’s much deeper than simply looking into a piece of reflective glass.

Has anyone ever tried to shelter you from the risk that you take by sharing your life on Facebook?  If you are anywhere around my age, I can’t see how you haven’t experienced this (unless you aren’t on Facebook).  Many people fear this era of digitization, and rightfully so for a lot of reasons.  It’s scary.  You can get yourself into trouble.  You can lose a job, a friend, or love.  People are right to take caution about what they contribute online, but not because it’s some new technology that is out to get you.  It’s because the online world is just like the offline world in the sense that if you are a jerk, no one will like you.

When we created the social web we created this new toy that no one really knew how to play with.  For some reason a lot of people really freaked – and many still are freaking.  I’m willing to bet the vast majority of sane people would never walk up to their favorite athlete on the street and tell them how much they hate them because they lost the game.  Yet, have you watched Twitter after a team blows a big game?  The things people will say are insane.  Attacks on family?  Death threats?  Why is it ok (in their minds) for Twitter, but not in person?  I’ll exclude the argument that in person, a professional athlete could seriously put the hurt on you.  I believe it’s because people are brought up to accommodate for social norms that insist you quell these unreasonable feelings.  Since you subconsciously learn to tuck them away, you rarely get to experience them.  That means you rarely get the opportunity to process how your often unreasonable impulses make you feel so that you can learn to become a better person.

The Internet gives us a perceived, though varying level of anonymity that makes us comfortable facing these feelings, often for the first time.  You face them, even if you don’t actually contribute a reflection of those feelings.  Have you ever typed an email or a Facebook status, then decided to delete it before you press “Enter”?  The way I see it, that counts.  People have never had their feelings and experiences reduced to such simplicity that they can acknowledge them appropriately.  If you ask me, it’s a truly rare opportunity that some people are better at ceasing than others.  Some people handle this quite well.  Others do not.  For those people, there is now a digitally stored record of their significant personal flaws.

This isn’t a completely bad thing, though.  Even prior to understanding that, yes, what you contribute to the internet is a reflection of you, contributions were made.  Very few people have a digital fingerprint that they are 100% happy with.  What you have is an honest view of yourself.  This is who you are, because you probably digitized yourself honestly.  You’ll be very proud of some things, much less of others.  The same is true of “real world” experiences.  Your digital self has a potentially infinite life, which can be reduced to a lower common denominator.  That means you can can conceivably see yourself and who you are. 

Unfortunately, this is an era of transition, and not everyone will understand how a person’s maturity level will be honestly narrated on the web.  My contributions when I was 18 were a reflection of my lack of maturity then.  That’s life.  Yet, many people will see something from a different part of your life and make their judgment, like it or not.  When your life is digital, you face the same challenges as you did when it was analog, its just easier to look backwards – computers have better memories than people do.  The web doesn’t store context nearly as well as it stores content, though.  I believe that as our society grows in acceptance of a social web, we will eventually acknowledge that no one’s digital fingerprint is perfect.  Even when we get to that societal understanding, it won’t reduce the importance of seeing yourself as you are.  I encourage everyone to take a holistic look at your digital fingerprint and ask yourself what it says about you.  Are you close-minded?  Are you encouraging?  Are you happy?  How would you feel as a consumer of your content?  Your answers may be quite telling.

The saying goes that you are your own worst critic, and I think you should be, given this opportunity to feasibly analyze yourself with quantifiable accuracy.  If you ignore it, you are turning your back on something that people have spent eternities devoting their lives to seeking in different ways.  To be clear, I mean not to belittle my God or yours.  Nor do I mean to inflate the importance of what the Internet really is…a really complicated toy.  On the other hand, the web is there and it sure knows a ton about you.  I do mean to suggest that our digital selves are the closest we’ve ever come to the concept of true, scalable introspection.  We can use the brutally honest data about ourselves to create better versions of ourselves.  I think that deserves some respect.

* Yeah, I used the word “esoteric”, and yeah, I had to look up the definition to make sure I had it right.  For what it’s worth, I did have it right the first time.

** I liked Roger Sterling quite a bit more before he dropped acid and “figured it all out”.

The Broader Context Around Web Experience Management

There is much to be gained by taking a step back to examine the broader stage on which some movement is insisting upon itself.  Its often a step never taken, resulting in tunnel vision that at a minimum, hinders innovation, but in the worst cases can cripple companies, industries, and civilizations.  Am I getting too dramatic?  Jim Collins describes the value of this “zooming out” quite well in his newest book Great By Choice.  In extremely short summary, he states that the most successful leaders have the ability to zoom in to intensely understand their domain and equally to zoom out to understand the environment in which that domain exists.  Like all of Collins’ arguments, the suggestion is backed by carefully analyzed empirical data.  I recommend the book.

I spend a lot of my time exploring the web experience management domain.  I read blog posts and publications, often write about connected topics, and spend my work days implementing Adobe’s WEM solution for clients.  I wouldn’t be taking Collins’ advice seriously if were to avoid “zooming out” from my own day-to-day.  So, I’ll attempt to analyze and discuss what I feel is the broader context surrounding the Web Experience Management movement.

This article does a nice job introduction you to the concept of WEM, specifically with the opening few sentences.

In today’s challenging business climate, organizations must accomplish more online than ever. Consumers now increasingly expect rich, highly-relevant content as well as immersive community features from the websites they visit, even as meeting key business goals such as controlling costs and driving revenue has become more essential than ever. Accordingly, business must meet new demands for increased scale, scope, and speed online.

In my words, the ultimate goal of a successful web experience management solution is to enable your brand or company (depending on definition) to scale positive, individual interactions.  This goal begs the question: why is it important to scale those interactions?   What are the forces that inspire companies to spend millions if not billions of dollars to accomplish this goal?  I believe the WEM movement is part of a general shift from the traditional, one-size-fits-all business strategies of past text book fame to a consumer-driven personalization model.*

You can see examples of this “shift to personalization” all over business – more specifically, in mostly unregulated industries where there has been less policy friction.  Take the music industry, for instance.**  There was a time where music was blasted out to the masses.  You either paid to watch a live show or tuned into your radio.  In either case, the goal of media companies was to crank out a product that maximally satisfied the population as a whole.  Fast-forward to 2012 and it’s a totally different story.  Technology has enabled a new active consumption of music that gives every consumer a personalized experience, meaning everyone’s music experience is carefully tailored to their specific liking.  Some companies embraced this shift towards individualization (even encouraged it) and have been quite successful.  Others have attempted to fight it and are they doomed to failure.

The sociological shift to personalization created new opportunities for companies entering new markets (Apple) and startups ceasing a new market share (Spotify, Pandora, etc.).  These companies were the ones who could “zoom out” and see that consumers were developing a new expectation that they receive individualized products.  Once they identified this phenomenon, they embraced it.  They didn’t resist it.  They found ways to successfully and legally monetize the fully-customized, “Napster model” of music.  There is a reason Generation Y is probably more inclined to associate the name Steve Jobs with music than David Geffen.  iAssume you understand why.

Why all the sudden do consumers demand personalized experiences?  What changed after hundreds of years of commerce where bulk interaction was sufficient?  Humans have always been self-centered beings.  Its our nature, regardless of how well some can resist the urge.  We want the world to revolve around ourselves, so we seek out opportunities for becoming that center of orbit.  It’s why we want a trusted confidant in our doctor or a waiter who will tell us what to order.  It’s why “have it your way” was such a successful slogan.  We have always craved these personal experiences, but only as isolated incidents that were difficult to scale and had no real bearing on the core values of an organization.  There was never a need to structure a company’s business model around ego stroking.  Then the Internet happened, and it inflated everyone’s natural urges to self-serve.

The ability to share our opinions and experiences was once limited to our finite social circles and geographic constraints.  There were few people or organizations (really just the mass media companies) who had the facilities to distribute a message on a mass scale.  That isn’t the case anymore.  Now I can write this blog post and potentially share my views with all of the two billion people on the internet.  The fact is, I won’t even come close to that in terms of actual readership, but it doesn’t matter.  Now that we have access to a platform of mass distribution we view ourselves as every bit as significant as NBC, The New York Times, or CNN.  The Internet is giving the people of the world a skewed perception of power, which has inflated our self importance.  As a result, where we once simply appreciate personalized interactions, we now expect (even demand) them.  We believe, deep down, that we are privileged to this kind of experience.***  That sociological shift will continue to accelerate as the next generation, who were practically playing Angry Birds in the womb, grow up and take control of the world.

The Internet has also become a really cheap vehicle for delivering information.  For the last twenty years many companies (dare I say, most?) have turned to the web as their primary means of communication with consumers.  Still working with the old school, one-size-fits-all mentality and a general lack of understanding of how to use this new technology, these companies posted a lot of really bad, really complicated information.  Because it is so cheap to distribute information on the web, it has typically been excusable to distribute information that is minimally effective.  Often companies lack the understanding to even assess that their content is simply not helping.  But hey!  They had a website, right?

This was all and good when nobody knew any better (consumer or enterprise).  That isn’t the case anymore.  Now the Internet is fast, ubiquitously accessible, and much more well understood.  Coupled with this new demand for personalization, it means the ball is in the enterprise’s court.  It’s time to deliver delightful, personal web experiences.  Some companies are starting to figure it out, so the bar is on the rise.  Hence this new Web Experience Management movement that looks to do a few things…

• Align your brand with your technology using effective Digital Asset Management and better brand development workflows.
• Understand the perception of your brand and your web experiences, mostly driven by new options available with analytics platforms.  The advantage to everything being digital is that it is also measurable.
• Alignment of once-siloed technologies.  Your website, CRM platform, and Facebook page are all trying to help you achieve your goals.  WEM is bringing these technologies together for better insight.
• Probably most important of all…Provide your customers (or those who you are trying to make into customers) with the kind of personalized, wonderful experience that exceeds their expectations.  If you have people voluntarily championing your brand, you are doing something right.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this.  To me, WEM is just a targeted marketing-technology offshoot of a larger sociological phenomenon.  Understanding why these new WEM concepts are important helps to make you ask the right kinds of questions.  Companies aren’t dumping millions of dollars into these technologies on a whim.  As it continues I believe we’ll work through an accelerated Darwinist phase where certain companies learn fast what works and what doesn’t. That really translates to truly understanding consumers.  Companies who don’t get it, will perish.  If you ask me, it’s going to be a hell of a ride.

* I started to really think about this after a discussion session for school about the state of healthcare and a shift to personalization. Much of the discussion was around Dr. Eric Topol’s book The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Healthcare. I’ve ordered that book and am excited to read it, but here’s a good video interview with Topol that summarizes his ideas.

** Not that the music industry is the only one clearly capitulating to the shift to personalization. Its just an example that many people can identify with.

*** I don’t really think any of this is a bad thing…I simply mean to point out that its different than before. Discussing the impact of this on our society is a whole different post for a different day.

Google Can Go Ahead and Augment My Reality

Google has a video floating around the internet about augmented reality glasses they’ve got in their development lab.  It’s just a concept video (they don’t make that particularly obvious), but it demonstrates some pretty cool ideas.  I leave you to the video to get the details.  I encourage you to watch it.

Could this be our future?

Maybe this is the sci-fi loving kid in me coming out, but I get pretty excited about this kind of technology.  I get excited about mobile technology too, and today, you see a lot of hype about mobile this and that.  It’s because our mobile devices enable a level or relevance and convenience that we’ve never experienced before.  Because we’ve never seen it before, it is so incredible to us.  Really think about it though…

How convenient is your mobile phone?  You have to carry it around in your pocket, giving you that is-that-a-brick-in-your-pocket-or-are-you-just-happy-to-see-me look.  You have to hold it up to use it.  You have to learn how manipulate the screen with unnatural finger gestures.  Ok, so maybe this stuff isn’t that bad, but just because it is new and exciting now, doesn’t mean it’s the best thing we can come up with.  Someday we will snicker at the memory of having to swipe the screens of our phones.  I like the Project Glass video, because it begs the question, “How can we do this stuff better than we are doing it today?”

The video speaks for itself, so I’m not going to go into the details about why this technology is interesting or what it means for you.  You can figure it out.  I actually wanted to comment on an NPR article, “Google’s New Glasses and the War on Serendipity,” that followed up shortly after this video went viral.  My friend pointed my attention to the article.  I encourage you to read it, but the basic gist is that technology like this will break down the real social interaction between people.  The writer, Linda Holmes, discusses how creating the completely efficient person (with technology) removes the possibility of serendipitous moments that make life interesting and satisfying…

No, it’s creepy because it seems designed to eliminate all the parts of life that are effectively games of chance. It’s designed to make you 100 percent efficient — and therefore about half as happy.

Granted, there are games of chance we could all stand not to play — I have this thought every day when I cross Massachusetts Avenue at rush hour, because wow, people cannot drive. But an element of chance carries with it the possibility of serendipitous blasts of good fortune, both big and small, that you never thought to seek out. Convenience is one thing, but I’m not looking for technology to reduce risk to the point where nothing can ever happen to me except the things I’ve already thought of.

First let me say, that I agree with an attention issue she describes in a part of the article I’ve not quoted.  It will be annoying when people are too busy watching the Twitter notifications to look you in the eyes when talking or to not walk into you on street.  We’d clearly have to establish some new social rules.

I disagree with basically the rest of the article though, which describes how by creating a hyper-efficient person, you remove the possibility of chance.  That person won’t get lost trying to take an alternate route somewhere and discover a new favorite restaurant as an example.  I just can’t help but think that Holmes is oversimplifying the entire idea and making it absolution.

There is no such thing as perfect efficiency.  I don’t care how earth-shattering a technology is.  Whatever efficiencies it creates, it will introduce its own inefficiencies.  We can see this in countless examples throughout history.  Take automobiles for instance, which are arguably one of the most culturally impactful inventions of the past few centuries.  They drastically improved how we get from point A to B.  What used to be a long, treacherous covered wagon journey, now takes a few hours in a climate-controlled environment.  They made travel efficient.  But automobiles created inefficiencies as well…ever been stuck in a traffic jam or been in a car accident?  No one had that problem in 1850.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume perfect efficiency is achievable.  Holmes insists this will remove the possibility of the kinds of serendipitous experiences that make life interesting and fulfilling.  I disagree with that as well.  I’m a strong supporter of the social cohesion the social web provides us (though I agree it shouldn’t be our only or primary social context).  I believe that the interactions and relevant information that we can scale on the web create new possibilities for serendipitous experiences.  I interact with people on Twitter all over the world whom I’ve never met in person.  I share information and opinions on my blog and others’ blogs (via commenting).  I’m able to stay in touch with people I haven’t seen for years on Facebook.  Without the social network of the Internet, none of that would have ever been possible.  My social interactions would be seriously limited to my own geographical constraints.  How’s that for limiting serendipity?

Often times criticism about technologies like Google’s web-connected eyeglasses is about fear of what that technology means.  These Google glasses would probably change the world if they were scaled to the masses.  That is kind of scary.  It doesn’t mean it’s wrong.  Had people stopped trying new ideas for fear of what they could mean, we wouldn’t have the Internet or the  United States and we’d still be reading about how the universe orbits the earth.  I believe Holmes’ criticism (though partially valid) is simply fear of not being caught up in the magic of a John Cusak movie.  I get it, but it shouldn’t stop Google from moving forward.

Men’s Health: Effective Cross-Platform Interaction

I’m a fan and regular reader of Men’s Health magazine.  I find it a good, mature mix of health, life and woman-related tips.  Aside from the subject matter of their magazine, I’ve also admired how well they manage cross-platform content delivery.  It’s so much more than just a magazine.  They use an array of different technology platforms and strategies to complement and supplement their primary product: the magazine subscription.

First and foremost, their print publication is the home base for their content.  In addition to that, they have MensHealth.com, which has a sampling of the magazine content for free.  In fact, the site itself is pretty darn valuable without the magazine subscription, but after referencing it a few times, I determined it was time to subscribe.  I wasn’t in the meeting room, but I’m pretty confident that was the point.  Men’s Health uses Twitter and Facebook accounts associated with the personas in the magazine (more on that later).  They take advantage of email marketing, by which you can subscribe to different newsletters that focus on more specific topics: weight loss, fitness, style, etc.  They’ve also recently launched an iPad version of the magazine (again…more on that later).

Such a complicated cross-platform media campaign has a lot of places where it could go wrong.  Here are some examples of where I think they got it right:

• Men’s Health has done a great job building personas.  There is Jimmy the Bartender, the local barkeep who always has great advice on friends, work, and women.  There is Dan Abrams, your on call attorney for explaining if the guy you hit with your bike can sue you.  There is Naomi, the attractive, guy-friendly girl with advice for dating and sex, dubbed “the girl next door”.  All of their personas are well thought-out and have a specific purpose.  MH understands that different men have varying levels of interest in different topics, so these personas give them the opportunity to kind of pick and choose.  The real underlying value-add is that these personas are people, even if their characters aren’t completely real.  As a reader, I trust a person more than I trust a periodical title.  Having a face and a name adds validation to the content.
• MH effectively takes these personas and translates that into consistent social media use.  Just like how we men have varying preferences on types of content, we have variance in how we ant to consume the content.  I can follow Jimmy on Facebook or Twitter, or I can subscribe to his email list.  Regardless, it is convenient for me to hear what he has to say, because he is sharing his message consistently across a few mediums.  That allows me to choose, which makes me a happy camper.
• Men’s Health’s content complements itself.  There is stuff on the website you can’t get in the magazine and vice versa.  There is stuff on the iPad app (I think) that you can’t get anywhere else.  Unlike with the other platforms, I can interact with the personas on social media sites, and yes, they do respond to questions and comments.  There is a little something extra with each method of content consumption, but they all integrate quite effectively. 
• The content is good.  It amazes me that this priority is lost so often.  All of this technology integration and cross-platform distribution would be useless if the content was crap.  It’s quite obvious that MH takes a great deal of care to make sure that what they share is helpful, credible, and understandable.  To me, it stands out against other men’s magazines in this regard.  Remember, it doesn’t matter how cool your content distribution or flashy your user experience is if your content is just not good.  Please read that sentence a few more times before moving on.  Thanks.

In spite of all of this, I wouldn’t feel like myself without sticking a little criticism jab into this Men’s Health love-fest.  There is one gaffe in this mostly successful cross-platform media effort, and that is their iPad app.  Surprisingly (and despite what they initially promised), a subscription to the print magazine will not get you access to the subscription-based iPad app.  I understand that the iPad subscription is more money, assumedly because the content is richer and more engaging.  I accept that.  But if I have to switch my subscription and pay the difference, that is fine.  I’m not allowed do that, though.  Now I’m stuck in a situation where I would prefer the iPad app, but I’m locked into a one-year subscription to the print magazine.

I’ve noticed in the iTunes store that this same complaint has caused many users to rate the iPad application poorly.  The comments are largely negative and all related to this issue.  I have no data to back this up, but I have to believe that bad ratings in the iTunes store can tie directly to a low subscription rate.  I’m sure they had their reasons for doing this, but to the outside viewer (a.k.a. the reader) Men’s Health really flubbed up.  It makes me wonder about their commitment to tablet content, which makes me question if I should pay more for what should be a better product.  Consider that a lesson learned.  If you can’t completely devote to a new channel for content distribution, don’t do it.  Halfway won’t cut it.  People will notice.

Tablet-related criticism aside, Men’s Health got it right most of the time.  Each one of my above bullets is a concept that could help to improve the content marketing and customer interaction efforts of any organization.  This is true even if your content isn’t the end-game product for your brand (like with a periodical).  Conceptually these concepts are simple.  In practice they are difficult.  Men’s Health can serve as a successful example to look to and learn from.  How can they help your organization?

Content First. Experience Second.

We’re really starting to get this internet thing figured out as far as programming goes.  I was just watching a set of videos of Douglas Crockford from Yahoo! lecturing about JavaScript (highly recommended, by the way).  They were only a couple years old, yet it was noticeable how far we’ve come in those few years.  We’ve built some really cool technologies that enable organizations to easily deliver really cool web experiences.  We’ve come a long way from waiting five minutes for the Flash-based landing page to load and navigation sidebars using HTML frames.

Before I get to it, know that I don’t mean to discredit UX designers.  I know some very talented, professional people with that title.  In fact I would hope/think many of them would agree with me when I say that the term comes with some baggage.  By that I mean it seems that for too many people and organizations, UX has become more about the interaction experience (movement, attractive layout, etc.) and less about the content.  In my opinion, this is a problem.

Like it or not, your content is the most important aspect of everything you do online to support your business (whatever that is), but it’s an abstract idea.  Your “content” may be your product listings.  It may be industry information and opinions.  It may be dirty jokes fired off via a Twitter account.  Whatever content means to you, in the vast majority of cases, that content is what the people want.  If you don’t give the people what they want, you become irrelevant.  Nobody wants that.  Actually you don’t want that.  People don’t really care all that much, which is why they will quickly move on to someone with the right content.  I’m fickle and impatient.  Deal with it.

Let me ask a few questions.  Would you open up an glamorous (read expensive) Manhattan store before you knew what you were selling in there?  Would you put together a team without knowing what sport you are going to play?  Would you open a restaurant without putting together a menu of your best dishes?  So then why would you start with a really cool design full of Lorem Ipsums?  I liken that kind of strategy to Clark Griswold’s Christmas turkey…

If this turkey tastes half as good as it looks, we’re in for a real treat.

Your content is what will differentiate you.  Your “experience” will just make it more comfortable for me to consume what differentiates you.  They are both important.  Content is more important.

Take a look at HBO.com.  Their brand is all about media, specifically video.  Their site is an excellent example of how you can take content first and then build it into an engaging user experience.  It’s obvious that they’ve put some serious thought into what they want on their site, which clearly supports two primary goals: attract new subscribers and engage existing ones.  They do the former with reviews, video clips, and information about subscribing.  They do the later with a community forum, full episode videos (HBO Go), and personalized content for account subscribers.  Then the sugar on top…it’s a really engaging, interesting website.  I checked that site out and compared it to the websites of similar brands: Showtime and Cinemax.  Of the three, there is only one that I remember having visited after a day or so.  It’s HBO.

On the other hand, check out the official website for the cult-classic film, Donnie Darko.  Its intent is to take you through an abstract online journey where you investigate mystery that is the movie…I think.  The interactivity is pretty cool and when it launched it was ahead of its time.  But, as a big fan of the movie, I once spent like two hours on the site trying to figure out where it went and ended up disappointed and lost.  Donnie Darko is one of those movies that will leave you scratching your head until after a few views.  The production company had a real opportunity to continue the viewer’s experience with their story for long after the time they spent watching the film.  I wanted to understand more about a complicated story.  I was excited to dig deeper on the site.  Swing and a miss.

The web is built on content.  It’s the only reason the web exists.  HTML, the building block of the modern internet, is a markup language specifically designed for structuring content according to a standard.  The bells and whistles available today have made a lot of people kind of forget about that.  I know first hand how difficult it is to design with content in mind, but it’s an ideal worth striving for.  It’s the difference between the woman you marry and the one you hit on at the bar.  They’re both good looking, but only one has the substance to create a lasting relationship.  Only one makes you truly happy.  When it comes to building a lasting brand that helps your organization reach its goals, which one do you want to be?

*****

I recently just finished Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson, which was my main inspiration for this post.  It’s an excellent, practical book about how to construct a content strategy from the ground up.  Not up for an entire book?  Here’s a good article by her that summarizes her ideas.  Enjoy.

What Don Draper Can Teach You About Content Marketing

Don Draper, main character from the television show Mad Men, is kind of a jerk.  But setting aside his severe personal issues, he’s one hell of a marketer.  Now, I get that he’s not a real person.  It’s easy to be great at your job when your world is scripted by a set of very creative writers.  All the same, I think there is a lesson that can be learned by watching what exactly Don Draper does.

Don Draper is the creative director at the fictitious Sterling-Cooper ad agency, in Manhattan.

Draper understands that to market effectively means to connect with people.  Back in the 60’s the effectiveness of that connection was quite a bit simpler, but despite the complexities of today’s internet-driven, high-pressure world, the basics are the same.  When companies market, they do so with one goal (or a small set of goals) in mind: convert sales, increase reader subscriptions, etc.  Marketing and more specifically, content, is the primary vehicle by which those conversions occur.

As shown in the video clip above and all the other times he finds himself in a meeting room with execs who don’t get it, Draper focuses on understanding the true needs of the customer.  Women aren’t looking for a new color of lipstick; they are looking for something that makes them unique.  People aren’t buying an airline ticket; they are buying a ticket to an unforgettable experience.  It kind of sounds like marketing mumbo-jumbo, but’ I think it’s spot on.  Customers don’t want to be sold to, they want to be helped.  In fact, Draper has said almost exactly that a number of times on the show.

We’ve learned to tolerate a lot of really crappy content in our journey to be helped, because adoption of the internet was so much faster than our ability to figure out how to use it effectively and then develop the technology accordingly.  I bet if Don Draper were around today, he’d look at the millions of brochureware, poorly worded, poorly designed, ineffective websites in the world today and he’d have something snarky to say about it.  For some reason organizations have learned to just put stuff online because it’s there.  What sense does that make?  How many other parts of your business operate under the concept of “well, I guess we should just do it”?

When developing content, think about why you are developing it.  It should have purpose.  It should align with your business strategy and should be tied to a specific goal.  Are you trying to sell?  Are you trying to inform?  Can you even answer that question?  If you can’t immediately come up with the primary way the pieces of your content align with your business strategy, then I’m betting the consumers of that content cannot either.  It only takes a few seconds for me to look at your website, get lost in the haze, and move onto your competitor.  I will too, and so will hundreds, thousands, millions of others.  That means missed opportunities and often, lost revenue.

Don Draper knows that people can tell when they are being sold to.  Nothing is different about the real and modern world.  People know when content is just there for the sake of its existence.  I’m pretty easy to figure out.  Don’t tell me something because you can say it.  Tell me something, because I want to hear it.

Disclaimer: I’m a little behind on Mad Men.  I just recently got into it and started to watch it on Netflix.  I’m halfway through Season 4 and trying to get caught up before the new one starts in a week or two.  Don’t spoil it for me.  That being said, it’s my favorite show on TV right now.  If you haven’t seen it and have Netflix, start watching.

Moving to a Model of Active Media Consumption

I was discussing Spotify with one of my coworkers after having posted it about it a short time ago.  We talked about how different it is consuming music, now.  I wanted to share some the ideas we discussed, because I think it serves as a good follow-up for my previous post about how we now experience music.

When I was trying to listen to music at work the other day (on Spotify), I realized I was having a hard time deciding what to play.  There are literally hundreds of bands and musicians that I enjoy listening to, yet I couldn’t seem to come up with a single one specifically.  This in spite of the fact that I have literally all music at my disposal.  I realized the problem.  I am programmed to select my choice of music based on what I have in my collection.  I need that restriction; that limitation.  I have to have a boundary of “this is what I have to choose from”, because without it, the choice is too overwhelming.

Ok…so maybe overwhelming is a little extreme.  After all, it is an insignificant choice that won’t even make a footnote in the novel of my life.  All the same, the choice is unmistakenly more difficult to make when I don’t have a limitation guiding that choice.  I am a slave to that limitation and for now, I’m not very good at living outside that box.  I need a radio dial to scan, a cable guide to browse, and an iTunes library to click through.  I need a specific choice to make one for myself.  For the time being, I am a passive consumer of media.

Active media consumption is the emerging model for media consumption, where we have to make our choices without someone providing our options to us.  Music is just one example.  Netflix uses this model for television and movie consumption.*  To a certain extent, Amazon has done the same for books.  Even traditional broadcasting companies are jumping on board by allowing you to watch new episodes of many shows online or through an iPad app almost immediately after they first air.  We’re still in transition to this new media model, but you can clearly see it happening every year.

The impact this will have on digital marketing and content delivery will be significant.  Passive media consumption (i.e. you tell me what I want to watch) has given broadcasters, media creators, and marketers an opportunity to be a little lazy.  The fact that people sit through commercials, watch a mediocre television show, or listen to a song they don’t love has been taken for granted.  You just have to be interesting enough for me to not want to make the effort to browse for something else.  Striving for “just good enough” is not much of an ambitious business model and the “good enough” bar is rising quickly.

We are becoming active media consumers; a trend driven by the new channels for media that are emerging every year.  We are learning to make our choices based on nothing but what we truly desire.  The next generation will never even know a time when they were limited by what was on or what they had in their CD case.  It means that the world will no longer sit through a crappy TV show or its commercials, just because they are on.  We’ll only consume the media that is worth our time.

The media that is worth my time is media with which I have an emotional bond.  It is relevant to me.  It is for me, just like it is for everyone else who explicitly chooses to consume it.  In order to be successful marketing to an empowered society of active consumers, this is the kind of content that you must focus on creating.  Some day (maybe sooner than you think), it’ll be the only content that really matters.  It’ll be the only content that enables organizations to achieve their goals.

* Their library is technically limited, but conceptually that is the model.

A Generation Experiencing Music in a Digital Age

Like many people, I’ve spent the last few years experimenting with ways to consume digital music.  It started for me like it did for many…with Napster.  Then in college I received an iPod and learned how to download MP3s from BearShare and myTunes Redux.  I’ve used Pandora on and off since it first gained popularity.  I now use Amazon Cloud Drive to store and stream my MP3 collection.  Today, after hearing many good things about it, I decided to give Spotify a try*.

While enjoying Sigh No More by Mumford and Sons (an album I’ve wanted to hear, but haven’t purchased) I started to reflect on the digitization of music.  It wasn’t so much a reflection on the economic implications of electronic music, whether the RIAA’s lawsuits are justified, or whether iTunes purchases are worth really the cost.  It was more experiential than that.  I realized that the concept of a music collection in the truest definition of the word “collection” has all but gone away for many people.  That’s something I’ve not quite prepared myself to give up.

Based on absolutely no real empirical or scientific evidence, I would say that most fans of music begin their relationship with it during adolescence.  Whether it was listening to The Beatles on vinyl, Van Halen on cassette, or Green Day on compact disc (that was me), many people have fond memories of their high school years when they discovered their favorite music.  For my friends and me it was even more than a passive interest; it was a hobby.  We would discover new bands (big and small), burn CD’s for one another, tape music videos on MTV2**.  A lot of the fun was building, sharing, and talking about your music collection.  For me, it was a possession that I viewed as a reflection of my identity.

The joy of building a collection was something incidental, that grew out of the necessity for the music (the content) to be transferred/sold via some medium.  Cassette, vinyl records, or tapes weren’t invented specifically to be collected, but they ended up that way.  At that point, delivering music on physical media was how record companies could monetize musical talent.  In the 90’s, technology started to catch up and things started changing.  Napster and Pandora (and many other platforms over the years) chipped away at that necessity for a physical medium.  The music became what it was; just content.  It could be downloaded and transferred to your iPod, your hard drive, or your car stereo***.

When I look back at those first few years playing with digital music, I realized that we still treated the music as if it were a collection of physical things.  We stored and cataloged our MP3s just as if they were stacked on a CD rack.  The entire user experience of iTunes and the concept of the iTunes store are still based upon that concept.  You possess a collection (now virtual) of albums and songs.  They are yours.  My generation was caught in the space between the listeners of CDs and tapes and the emerging generation of streamers.  This is how we consumed our music during the start of the shift to digitization.

I mentioned Spotify because, like Pandora, LastFM, iHeartRadio, and many others, it has completely flipped the “collection” paradigm on its head.  If I sign up for Spotify I have unlimited access to any music I can think of.  Instead of purchasing (or downloading illegally) music collection piece by piece, I can just pay a small monthly fee to opt into a shared collection that includes all music.  My music collection now literally contains millions upon millions of songs.  Imagine how long that would have taken to download on Napster through a 56k dial-up modem****! 

I still have my music collection.  I rarely add to it anymore, but stashed away on Amazon Cloud Drive, I have the thirty-some gigabytes of music that I’ve acquired over the last decade or so.  I don’t always listen to it, but the fact that I can now stream my collection has breathed some life into it.  I still keep my jacket full of CDs in my car, too.  I use it even less, but can’t let it go either.  There’s just something about the experience of collecting that music.  It took a lot of work and a lot of love to build that collection, because it was such an inefficient process.  But, it was a lot of fun.

It makes me wonder what a generation who will only know the streaming model will do.  How will they bond with friends as they collect and share music?  Will they at all?  It would make me sad to think that my future children would never get to experience music discovery in the way I did.  Maybe the desire to collect music will never go away.  Spotify has the collecting and sharing concepts kind of built into it (probably to satisfy people like me).  Maybe instead of going away, it will just change with the times.  Maybe it’s just getting so much easier to collect and share that I can’t quite fathom it.

I know I’ll continue to grow with the times.  Music is fun.  Technology is fun.  When they intertwine it’s even better, and I like to tinker with the new Pandoras and Spotifys of the world.  I expect that someday (maybe not too far off), something like Spotify will be my primary or only way to consume music.  But despite all of that, I still fully expect my child to ask me what the booklet full of shiny circles is, because I won’t let it go.  My generation is the last to really appreciate a collection of music as a tangible, physical thing.  That means a lot to us.  It means a lot to me.

*So far, it’s pretty awesome.  You should try it if you haven’t.
**Because MTV stopped playing videos other than the 60 minutes of TRL in the afternoon
***Maybe even someday, straight to your brain.
****If your dad keeps picking up the phone and kicking you offline, it’ll take even longer.

The New Challenge of Digital Marketing

Today, the people in charge of generating demand for products and services have an interesting challenge on their plate.  I’ll use the term “marketer” for them, but I admit you could make an argument that the term isn’t totally sufficient.  Marketers of old had a much simpler world in which to operate.  They had billboards.  They had radio and television ads.  They had pages in magazines.  They had a portfolio of options for trying to generate demand for their products, yet they didn’t face the same challenge of the marketers of 2012.

So what’s different today?  We still have billboards, televisions, radios, and magazines (and all the other channels we’ve always had).  These channels haven’t changed much.  Sure, TV turned colorful and then high definition, but really has it changed?  What changed everything was the adoption of the internet, and with that came a whole new set of marketing channels: websites, internet banners, social networks, etc.  It wasn’t just the addition of more marketing channels, though.  These ones are different.

I like to call old school marketing “spray and pray” (that’s not a term I made up).  You blast messages out to the public.  You try your best to target that content to the people you think want to hear it, but really it’s about bulk.  Get as many people to hear the message as possible, understanding that only a small percentage will convert to sales.  The knowledge you have about those people and their opinion of your product or your marketing efforts are basically good guesses.  Sometimes they are pretty bad guesses.

These new marketing channels change all of that.  These marketing channels are inbound; not just outbound.  Each one of your Facebook fans has already volunteered their age, sex, interests, etc.  Everyone who visits your website and signs up for the email newsletter opts in and probably gives you the information about themselves that you want (within reason).  You can also track when they clicked on what.  There is still interpretation of data to figure out your customers, but what used to be guessing is now statistical analysis.  There are plenty of these new inbound marketing channels, and some organizations have been very effective utilizing them.  This is where we are today.

I promised you that I would mention a challenge for marketers, so here it is…

Today we have all these fancy, new inbound marketing channels, but it is extremely difficult to reconcile them.  How do you know that the person who “liked” a post you put on Facebook is the same person who follows you on Twitter, visited your website 12 times (and looked at one specific product), and also happens to work for a company from which you have four contacts in your CRM system?  My guess is that you probably don’t and if you did you’d have some pretty good insight into how to turn them into a customer.

I rant about being able to maintain a consistent customer experience across all channels.  If you look at past posts, I promise you’ll find some of that.  This domain is where the ability to build that context breaks down.  This is the new challenge for digital marketers.  Being able reconcile a single context for the people with whom you interact, enables you to build accurate augmentation of data (see analytics).  This data gives you a picture of to whom you’re selling and of to whom you only think you’re selling.  It enables your organization to convert interactions into revenue at a higher rate than spraying and praying.

This is what marketers face today.  The companies that are able to use technology to reconcile marketing channels will be more successful than those who cannot.  In ten years, if you aren’t doing it (and well), you won’t even be in business.  Even better, the companies who can include outbound (a.k.a. old school) marketing within that reconciliation, will be positioned to blow their competitors away.  I’m excited.  Are you?

Kudos to Columbus Fish Market

My wife and I recently went to dinner at Columbus Fish Market in Grandview (near downtown).  I believe it is still a Cameron Mitchell restaurant and I had been to another one in Cleveland (it’s called Mitchell’s Fish Market there).  It’s a nice place.  It’s a fancy dinner place.  It’s on the pricier side and they fly in fresh fish every day.  In my trips to the Cleveland restaurant my experience had generally been good, so I expected about the same here.  My experience wasn’t bad, but it warrants a story all the same.

Our dinner was fine.  The food was decent for the most part.  The sides weren’t much to write about, but we weren’t there for the sides, after all.  The service was good enough to not warrant a complaint, but not great.  The only real mistakes we had were from the bar.  My wife had to return a Mojito that tasted like Triple Sec (it shouldn’t).  Then her replacement drink, a vodka-club soda, was either vodka-water or vodka-flat-club-soda.  But things happen.

I had made our reservation with Open Table.  By the way, if you don’t use it, I recommend it.  Open Table sends you a survey for feedback after your visit.  I filled it out and basically wrote exactly what you just read.  I expected that to be the end of it.  Again, let me stress that I was in no way angry, disappointed or unhappy with my experience…just wasn’t wowed.

Then I received an email from Columbus Fish Market apologizing for my less than stellar experience.  They asked if it would be alright for a manager to call me to talk about it.  Kudo #1, because they asked first via email, which was not intrusive.  I agreed and did receive a call a short time later.  The manager had a very specific conversation with me about exactly what wasn’t perfect.  I made a point to say that I am not unhappy with the experience.  He made a point to say that it’s not good enough for him.  Kudo #2.  Then he apologized for the fourth or fifth time and said he would like to invite us back so that they can try again to give us an excellent experience.  I received a gift card for the restaurant about a week later.  Kudo #3.

This is exactly how every company should handle their customer experience management.  I was delighted to find out that a manager at the exact restaurant I visited cared this much.  Honestly, that would have been enough for me without the gift card.  They key isn’t that they handed out freebies.  The key is that they convinced me that as a company they are absolutely committed to giving me the best experience with their product possible.  Handing out gift cards may not be scalable, but that kind of attitude is.

Kudos, Columbus Fish Market.  I’ll see you soon.