Andrew Lark

Calling Image Junkies

Google now enables you to hunt down all those free images faster...

Today, we're launching a feature on Image Search to help you find images that you can use for free, while respecting the wishes of artists and creators. This feature allows you to restrict your Image Search results to images that have been tagged with licenses like Creative Commons, making it easier to discover images from across the web that you can share, use and even modify. Your search will also include works that have been tagged with other licenses, like GNU Free Documentation license, or are in the public domain.

Stunning Billboard

I love creative marketing - especially when it is designed to save lives: The first heavy rains after summer bring the highest death toll on New Zealand roads. To alert people to the dangers of driving in the wet, we created billboards that bleed everytime it rained. This year in Papakura, there were no deaths during the easter period.

 

Hagel Interview

Interesting conversation with John Hagel. I like these points…

• The need to shift from firewall around the company mentality to a modularized firewall around core company IP
• How you cannot participate in knowledge flows for very long if you are only a “taker”
• The importance of face-to-face in building trusted relationships
• The importance of having hyper-local face-to-face components in large online community
• The balance between the need to increase the number of partners we engage with with the need to build deep relationships in order to allow knowledge flow
• The talent Dilbert paradox and how talent is motivated by the talent development
• How you need a high growth strategy to attract and keep talent
• The importance of the “collaboration curve” in scaling the organizational learning, which they described in detail on their new blog - The Big Shift
• The importance for companies to start adopting a federated view/architecture for their online community efforts

Participating vs. Broadcasting

The use of social networks is definitely forking. For some it is about participation. For others, it's about broadcasting.

Put differently, people who are members of online social networks are not so much “networking” as they are “broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,” says Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a polling organisation. Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.

Good read from over at The Economist.

SPINNING THE WEB

Online, the NYTimes story on PR in the Valley is interesting but innocuous. In print it takes a whole new sense of import as it spreads cross the front page of the business section. A couple of observations:

1. PR has and always will be about relationships.
2. It is also about good counsel and strategy - neither of which Wordnik are getting in any kind of an effective dose. Saying that, and having spent more than ten years doling out counsel, clients usually get what they deserve.
3. PR is multidimensional - the Blogeratti and Blogmedia are one of the many "messengers" and mediums available. That Wordnik would pursue such a one dimensional strategy is foolhardy and reflected in their prominence. Again, they are probably getting what they are paying for.
4. Agreed, you'd better be able to plug into the new media elite to get the message out. But if that's all you are planning to do, good luck.
5. Nowhere in the story do we see examples of "influencing the social web". What we see is the age-old techniques employed by flacks of all shapes and sizes - reaching prominent messengers to get the message out. What the savvy are now doing is activating and engaging with communities - that's very different than opening the rolodex and making a few calls.
6. Awareness does not equal action. We need a fundamental shift in our focus from awareness to action. Where awareness isn't activated effectively, businesses starve of traffic and revenue.
7. Successful engagement through the "A List" will make your clients feel great but isn't any kind of predicator of success. In fact, they are largely irrelevant. Scoble makes this point nicely - when he quit Microsoft the news first hot through 15 nobody's at a conference. At the end of the day, the news creates the echo and the social web has democratized distribution. Story over strategic relationships. (his manifesto is still as relevant as ever)

What screams throughout this story is that neither the hacks or flacks necessarily get what the new art of social media relations and community engagement is about. And as Michael rightly points out, you need look no further than the traffic pattern at Wordnik to see this. This is a point reinforced by Margit in the story:

“Few tech companies with absolutely no P.R. have built a user base successfully,” said Margit Wennmachers, a co-founder of OutCast Communications, a P.R. agency in San Francisco that opened in 1997. “They need P.R. to put the booster under that rocket ship.”

Technorati Tags: brooke hammerling,GigaOm,influencers,PR,tech,TechCrunch,TechMeme

Free...

And so the debate rages on Chris Anderson's new book. Looking forward to reading it.

• Here is arguably the best review of the book...
• And Gladwell's critique...
• Preorder here... (ironically, no Kindle edition yet...)
• Chris responds to Malcom here...

The thing that gets me is the notion that "The cost of the building blocks of all electronic activity—storage, processing, and bandwidth—has fallen so far that it is now approaching zero" is a truism. Really?

I pay a small fortune for a DSL line... even more for ATT.. then I'm surrounded by systems, storage, displays, TVs, Kindles... all of them priced in the many hundreds of dollars. Actually, what we have going on here is an attempt by the hardware makers (Amazon Kindle) to subsidize their hardware by dominating the margin in content. They are simply attaching a new profit pool and looking to create a virtuous circle inside the customer relationship - which they now hope to own. Nowhere does "free" feature in this equation.

For the maker, there is no question that the irrevocable march of technology is driving distribution costs down. But rather than pass those costs on to consumers what seems to be happening is that the new entrants are absorbing the prior profit pool.

As much as I am looking forward to the book I'm also fearful I'm going to read another tome by the technology elite who seem to be swimming in free while the rest of us pay. The reality is that a $300+ Kindle + books at $9.95 don't equal free.

Second, "free" is relative and a product going "viral" via it being free is just one strategy. "Coolness, for instance, could also result in a viral swarm. As could word of mouth. Free is absolutely a distribution and marketing strategy but it isn't a business model. That is, unless you plan to make no profit.

Air NZ Does IT Again

Air NZ has developed a real knack for clever PR stunts. The latest is having their staff, covered in nothing but body paint, do the in-flight safety video. Classic.

This year’s cheeky ad campaign and the safety video, “Bare Essentials of Safety,” have brought Air New Zealand a lot of attention that it hopes will put lots of bottoms in seats.

The commercial, “Nothing to Hide,” has been viewed nearly two million times on YouTube — the most-viewed clip ever to come out of New Zealand, Steve Bayliss, the airline’s marketing manager, said by telephone Monday.

Each video took a day to shoot and cost about 10 to 15 percent of the cost of a major brand commercial, Mr. Bayliss estimated, since there were no actors to pay. The Air New Zealand staff members did not receive extra pay, just increased exposure.

What NZ Rugby Needs To Do…

After another sad, but winning, performance this weekend against Italy got me thinking about what NZ rugby needs to do. Before putting fingers to keyboard I stumbled onto this piece from Gregor Paul. It’s pretty much right-on.

Sadly, it will take a couple of years for NZ to fix its problems. Maybe in time for the RWC – but I doubt it. The key tenets:

1. Put serious work into developing at least five players with deep, traditional first five skills. That means getting Colin Slade out from underneath Carter’s shadow now.
2. Restore the core skills of the lock within the S14 franchises. They should be cooked by the time they reach the All Blacks.
3. Lose the fixation with versatility. Why is Toeava playing? “Take Isaia Toeava - he can do everything, Henry even called him "gold" a few weeks ago. But what has Toeava achieved with the All Blacks? What has been his contribution? He's never been able to hold a jersey and the crux of test football is that each position comes with highly specific demands.”
4. Elevate kicking as a priority skill for backs. The big games are decided by the boot, not the ball carrier. That means embracing the drop goal.
5. Sort the damn line-out out. That the All Blacks give up so many line outs is unacceptable. Get back to the fundamentals.
6. Differentiate the loose forwards. We need more punch at blindside. Forget all the No 6s who become No 8s.
7. Back to the damn fundamentals. Why are players are dropping balls all over the field? Unable to catch an up and under? Mis-timing kicks at the line? Come on. These are so called professional players.

Finally, set offensive play now matters more than ever. With all teams deploying a flat defensive line focused only on playing the ball in front of them having a very clear playbook is critical. Sth Africa’s ability to launch plays is incredible and stands them in good stead to for a clean sweep of the tri-nations.

New MEDIA

One of the things I love about blogging is where it intersects with media. As a rugby fanatic you can’t get much better than The Roar. On the one hand you have Spiro Zavos writing magically on the magic game. Then on the other you have terrific blog posts – like this.

OK, the All Blacks lost and deserve the scorn of fans and commentators alike. But at least the reading is good.

Why more old media hasn’t followed this model is beyond me…

Arrington Is Right... So Is The NYT

And the same rule applies to bloggers... before letting the effusive praise flow, tell us whether you got the product as a freebie, loaner or early test drive system with some kind of exclusivity attached. Transparent is transparent and Michael was right to call it.

BTW... two big stories on blogging from today's NYT... one with a monster photo of Brian from Gizmodo. The more interesting piece on blogging was buried over in the Style section and looked at blogs staying alive and blogs dying.

Not all fallow blogs die from lack of reader interest. Some bloggers find themselves too busy — what with, say, homework and swim practice, or perhaps even housework and parenting. Others graduate to more immediate formats, like Twitter and Facebook. And a few — gasp — actually decide to reclaim some smidgen of personal privacy...

... Richard Jalichandra, chief executive of Technorati, said that at any given time there are 7 million to 10 million active blogs on the Internet, but “it’s probably between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs that are generating most of the page views.” He added, “There’s a joke within the blogging community that most blogs have an audience of one.”

Social Communicators

Pepsi is embarking on an interesting experiment with social communicators. I wonder though if outfitting “social communicators” with press passes all you are doing is creating journalists – albeit with a different frame and distribution.

By polluting the social mediaverse with paid commentators will we get less independence, more opacity and increased drivel. My rationale is that folks now feel compelled to write about what they got paid to write about; have to be overtly opaque vs. blindingly transparent'; and have to contextualize in their supporters frame rather than whatever takes their fancy.

I’m not sure what the difference is, or how you move from, impressions to connections when you are in effect paying for the impressions?

Either way, an interesting experiment to watch…

PepsiCo is calling the "open newsroom" experiment an effort to align the brand with the social media space. It is hiring nine people to use blogs, Twitter and Web video to chronicle events from Internet Week, running June 1-8 in New York. The program is open to journalists, students, social media gadflies and anyone with a hankering to report using social media tools.
Their reports will appear on the PepsiCo Content Network. Participants will receive $750.

The "social communicators" will be outfitted with press passes and assigned to cover everything from panels to parties. They will create packages of content including photos, videos and blog posts. PepsiCo is providing tools like Flip video cameras. The company hired former Mediabistro editorial director Dorian Benkoil as editor-in-chief for the site.

The Dell Swarm

Dell is exploiting social networks in a new marketing scheme being tried out in Singapore. If you agree to buy a laptop on Dell Swarm, the discounted price drops as others join your “swarm” and also buy. Here’s how Dell describes it:

• Start by picking the laptop you would like to purchase. Be the first buyer to join a Swarm and you’ll enjoy a price lower than Dell.com’s best discounted price (after cash rebates).
• Join a Swarm after, and you’ll enjoy a new, lower price - as will all previous buyers. To see the range of prices, simply slide the Swarm price bar downwards.
• Once the swarms closes - which is when the limit of 15 buyers or 72 hours is reached, whichever is the earlier, the price is then finalised. This final, lowest price now becomes everyone’s purchase price – including yours!
• To get the maximum discount, grow the Swarm by Sharing with your friends. You can share via Twitter Or post a note on your Facebook® profile and tell all of your friends Point others towards your Swarm using Digg, del.icio.us and other tools. Or simply send your friends an email directly!
• Not ready to buy yet? You can also choose to Follow the Swarm. You’ll then receive updates via email. As well as through free SMS alerts.

We’ve seen this idea on the Web before (e.g., see Group Buying), but it is usually framed as a tool by and for consumers rather than a marketing strategy employed by vendors. This could be a big win for Dell. If it is, others will follow. The penetration of online social networking systems is much greater now and finding ways to exploit them for marketing is irresistible.

From UMBC Equity…

EPIC 2015

Haven't kept up with them but loved the first few... well worth a watch...

How Craigslist is Killing Newspapers

They might be killing them from a revenue standpoint, and I’ll agree that no revenue in any commercial enterprise equals certain death, but isn’t their lack of alignment with what “consumers” actually want killing them more.

"In the world of online classified advertising, Craigslist is by far the most used Web site in the United States," Pew said in the report. "In March 2009, classified sites averaged 53.8 million unique visitors, up 7 percent from February. Craigslist had 42.2 million unique visitors in the month of March."

I want news delivered by people I trust. I only want the news I’m interested in. It would be great if the medium could figure that out in advance. And I want the content to be as multidimensional as possible. Preferably it woulb’t lay in my drive for me to drive over, but come to me where ever I am.

To survive, the medium must change to suit the business model. Physical newspapers will be a rare few. Those in the cloud will continue to proliferate like rabbits.

Note: You can get this and other posts as soon as I, well, post, from over at thedailylark.

The Rise Of The Social Media Specialist

Does your company have a social media specialist?

Seems they are on the rise, reflecting what I said awhile back that social media would become a profession in its own right. As the medium expands, the requisite skills to operate and drive leadership get more complex.

“Twitter has gotten to this place that everyone is interested in it,” said Josh Bernoff, a Forrester analyst and co-author of a book about social technologies. But interest does not equal ability, he said. The qualities that make someone a good social media maven — which include being available round-the-clock to anyone who writes — are different than the skills used by mainstream corporate publicists.

“They are not acting like spokespeople, but real people,” Mr. Bernoff said. “You have to be careful about what you say while, at the same time, be much more personal than the average corporate P.R. guy. You need people who understand the mores and etiquette. Not everyone knows how to do that.”

Note: You can get this and other posts as soon as I, well, post, from over at thedailylark.