Right under your nose

About a month ago one of my favorite bloggers (Mitch Joel), wrote a post entitled "Four Current Trends That Will Change Marketing Forever.  The four trends that Mitch mentioned were: touch, analytics, one-line, and location aware. It was a pretty good post and I agreed with much of his analysis. I did have some disagreements, but that conversation is for another day.

As he always does, he poses a question at the end of his posts. Now as can sometimes be the case, the responses can be just as interesting, if not more so, than the article itself (so I often make it a point to read through his comments). His ending question on this particular post was:

What current trends do you think will become business and marketing standards going forward?   

As I was perusing through his responses, I wasn't seeing any remarks about the trends that I was having conversations with my colleagues about. In a way I was thinking "how could you miss these trends?" Then again, as can often be the case, things that seem obvious to you, aren't to others.

On occasion, I'll leave a reply at the end of his posts. So on this one in particular, I did leave a comment about my thoughts on the matter. So I responded with the insights below and the trends that I think are hiding in plain sight:

• Business in a customer world vs. a consumer world. Some folks may simply say the two are the same, but I would argue the opposite. When you differentiate between the two, the very idea of what marketing is begins to change. My good friend Mike Bonifer did an awesome post on it here. http://www.gamechangers.com/index.html/archives/1713

• Marketing the context instead of the content. As is evident with YouTube and twitter (or any "social media" platform) any Tom, Dick and Harry can create content. It's understanding and knowing how to present context first, then creating content that enables what you are doing to really become powerful. It's just like when you take a quote out of context, it can mean something totally different than what its intent was. Context is king. Not content. A brief talk on it here .

• Marketing as narrative. Andy Warhol blurred the lines between fine art and pop art (positioning himself as an icon of the 20th century). With the digital landscape exploding left and right, the demarcation between business and social/cultural continues to shift as well. How does "marketing," as a business word, continue to survive in a world constantly being changed by social technology that's creating a brave new "interactive" landscape? Marketing (as the idea currently exists) is limited in a dynamic multi-channel world. Narrative identification is not. It allows much more agility in an ever-changing marketplace. Identifying a narrative allows a brand and its customers to discover vs. pushing a message about what the market wants (or thinks we want) and then marketing that.

Now from where I sit, customer vs. consumer, context and narrative aren't super secretive, hard to get to, hiding in the corner of a dark cave, ideas. They're pretty common concepts, and even obvious on some levels. But depending on who you're talking to, that may not be true. Things can often and simply, be hiding right underneath your nose.

Paradigm Shift

As a company, Cnvrgnc could only exist in the 21st Century. The market is shifting from a place where certain ideas that were held true in 1970, 1990 or even as recently as 2005, simply don't anymore. 

From where we sit, at this moment in time, a business landscape has emerged where concepts, conversations and strategies, at the intersection of business, technology and culture, is allowing unique insights into where the world is. These factors will help you in making optimum decisions on how to execute on your plans to create breakthrough ideas, that will build a more interesting, and hopefully more prosperous tomorrow.

Ideas and concepts such as value, competitive advantage, business model, revenue stream, marketing, advertising, and brands are still relevant and important terms. Yet how we go about understanding them, what they look like and how to put them into play, will look radically different 10 years from now than they did 10 years ago. 

Below is a pretty cool and simple, yet clear way of showing what's been going on in the last handful of years in which we've been witnessing  changes in how the market lives, breathes, and nourishes itself. 

Enjoy. . .

(Fresh) food for thought

Now I'll be honest, I've never, ever been a health food Nazi. I grew up happily chowing down on happy meals just as much as I devoured the delicious fruits from the plumb trees, a peach and an apricot tree (as well as the occasional carrots and radishes) that grew in our backyard as a kid.

As the years went on I enjoyed both delicious home cooked meals, prepared by my mom, as well as the occasional trip to a Denny's, a Burger King, and Carl's Jr (maaan. . .I use to looove their Bacon Western Cheeseburgers!)

Heading off to college, eating mom's cooking (of course) was scaled back to holidays and summertime. Cafeteria food became the norm as well as many, many trips to the Taco Bell and the McDonalds up the road from campus.

When I graduated from college, I spent a couple of years overseas (with the Peace Corps). With the tasting of a variety of foods, it became apparent to me that certain foods where I lived and travelled (Ovamboland and Southern Africa), just tasted more delicious than what I ate back home. I didn't really get heavy into looking "deeper" into this.  I just thought to myself: different part of the world, food will taste different.

Fast forward to now. As an entrepreneur I am daily striving to make an impact. I am constantly participating in productive conversations about the role of the local and global citizen in a networked world where conversations about what we eat and drink, the very things that sustain us, should be just as much a part of our daily dialogue as net profits, the digital landscape or the hottest new pop artist on the planet.   

Right now, as older, industrial age ideas deteriorate, we are in a space where fresh ideas, with promise, can become king. And in my opinion, conversations about fresh food is an awesome place to start. . .

Will Allen was recently named in Time Magazine as one of the 100 people who most affect our world.

 See Jamie Oliver's TED presentation here

X marks the box

Hey folks let me ask you an age old question:

What's the shortest distance between two points?

(I'm thinking we all know the answer to this one. . . )

Well today, it seems that the distance between customers and the product, definitely isn't about shortness. Matter of fact, it's a winding, meandering and zig zagging line (with lots of "play" added to the mix) that's actually becoming the best distance between where your brand is and where your audience is hanging out.  

According to two advertising gurus and a future forecaster playing games (i.e. a fun experience that entertains) may be an ingredient to consider in your business recipes for tasty dishes you might serve to your patrons.  

Now why do I say that?

Well about 2 years ago, while doing research for a client project, I ran across the MIT Convergenc Culture Consurtium website. In reading about their work this description about Convergence Culture stuck with me:

Convergence describes a process rather than an endpoint...It represents a tectonic shift that has altered the relationship between existing technologies, industries, markets, genres and audiences. As advertisers look for new ways to engage audiences, content creators search for new audiences, and audiences seek new ways to connect with culture, the nature of what counts as entertainment, advertising, and culture are rapidly changing. We are seeing the blurring of aesthetic and technological distinctions between media platforms, of 'advertising' and 'content,' and of 'creator and 'consumer.

As I read this in 2008, with the digital media landscape (Youtube, Digg, Flikr, Blogs, etc) exploding all over the place, this, to me, was significant. The three areas that Convergence Culture focuses on are:

• Transmedia entertainment - describes the flow of stories, images, characters, and information across various media platforms.

• Participatory culture - describes new ways consumers interact with media content, media producers, and each other as they explore the resources available to them across the media landscape. 

• Experiential Marketing - looks at developing novel brand extensions  and refers to key ways to capitalize on participatory culture and a transmediated media environment.

So when a good friend of mine, last week, sent me the video below, it was like X marks the box! I'm always looking for kick ass, digital treasure [links] that are cool examples of what's next. . .

An awesome transmedia case study. Enjoy!

Playing games. . . is serious business!

In October of last year I was chosen to be a presenter at the 2009 Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit organized by Innovation Philadelphia. I was amped, as I had the opportunity to discuss the goals and vision of our company with a national and international audience.

As I perused through the conference site to see who else would be presenting, I saw that Jane McGonigal would be speaking as a plenary speaker. At the time I didn't know who she was but with a little research I discovered that she was named "Top 35 innovators changing the world through technology" in the MIT Review as well as being named "Top 100 Creative People in Business" by Fast Company in 2009, in addition to slew of other accolades.  I was definitely excited by the opportunity to hang out and chat with her and learn more about her work.  Unfortunately she became sick a few days before the event and had to conduct her presentation via skype from her home in San Francisco (which actually ended up being very cool).

Ever since then I have made it a point to stay abreast of her work in game design and also to tune into conversations around games and business.  So in my  last post Lee Clow and Alex Bogusky were talking  about the intersection of games, storytelling and brands and it made me immediately think about Jane's work.

About a month back I saw that she unveiled at this year's TED conference her most recent gaming effort: Evoke. 

Evoke is a 10 week crash course in changing the world (talk about ambitious). The goal of the social network game is to help empower young people all over the world, and especially young people in Africa, to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems.

I love what she is involved with. Definitely check out more of her work.

Enjoy the video!

EVOKE trailer (a new online game) from Alchemy on Vimeo.