One Word: Networks
Tuesday, February 9, 2010Read Bud Caddell's latest addition to The Library of Agency-of-the-Future-Prognostications: Who says the future needs an advertising agency? Between the post and the 50-some comments it's one of the most clear, comprehensive, and thoughtful summations of the industry's evolution that I've come across.
After I read it, one word was echoing in my brain: Networks.
The difference between what everyone has been doing, and what everyone needs to do is networks. We no longer create messages and experiences for groups of individuals; rather we create integrated experiences across all media environments that are specifically designed to serve and empower networks of connected people.
Bud describes an emerging creative capability that he sees as a viable future service: Platform Builders. I'd go further. I think that all groups of people who come together to offer creative services to companies in order to help those companies communicate with people about their products or services, need to organize their ideas around a deep understanding of the communities of connected individuals who are drawn together by their shared values, goals, and interests.
We've already seen some successful forays into this kind of work. The perennial favorite: Nike+. And everyone's favorite social media success story: Barack Obama's Presidential Campaign.
But, our appreciation of these types of experiences has been limited by our perception of the digital space. We see ideas like this as digital ideas. We see these as good ideas "for digital."
Guess what? Everything is digital. There is no offline.
All experiences now occur in the context of a self-authored digital network of personal relationships.
There is no longer any interaction that an individual may have with a brand, company, product, or service that disconnected from all the people they know, and the people that share their interest in that experience.
Therefore, every creative organization in this business needs to learn how to create integrated experiences across all forms of media that thrive within networks.
This is a much bigger idea than I can cover in this single post. It's exciting to me, though, and I'll be sure to revisit it over the next few weeks and months.
And in the words of Mr. McGuire, "There's a great future in networks. ... Will you think about?"
4 Comments:
Great post Mike. I think this gets to the heart of why the social web is such a fundamental restructuring of how consumers engage with brands and why truly social (or networked) thinking involves so much more than having a Facebook fan page or a Twitter feed. The most resonant part of the post for me was the thought that "There is no longer any interaction that an indvididual may have with a brand, company, product or service that is disconnected from all the people they know". We are entering the age of social search and social consumption and we will make more and more purchase decisions with our friends at our virtual shoulders. For brands to start to genuinely design products, services and campaigns to leverage personal networks-to design against the network rather than the individual is a fundamental, and very exciting, rethink.
Hi Mike
I found your build on Bud's piece interesting as well. I wonder whether the importance you place on the social value of brands and brand experiences is really a matter of substance or mere scale and ubiquity. Many products and brands have for Centuries had social value. In the case of premium or badge brands, the added-value and appeal of these brands has been purely as a result of the conspicuous, social value. As you rightly point out, the opportunity for more and more brands to glean added value and utility in this respect has exploded with the arrival of new media that mean the number and range of people with whom my experience is shared/viewed has grown. But is the basic human motivation different? I just finished watching Rory Sutherland's TED talk and was reminded of the links between social media, social standing and brand marketing. Interested to hear what you think in relation to your networks pov.
Word! Networks. Because I think, and have been thinking for a while, that small is the new big.
Another thing that stood out to me, from a comment, was to "re-frame the business we're/you're in". Re-define it. Expand it. From advertising, for example, to solving problems through ideas. Ideas companies that solve problems, in essence.
If you do that, you have to have thinkers and doers where generalists and a few specialists dig into problems. Are interested in, and fairly knowledgeable about, many things. This combined with an extensive and versatile network of people can become very powerful.
And it's interesting how the digital world, though online networks, has shown us people how many talented and great thinkers in numerous areas there are. And more than ever made us realize that we can cooperate with them in real life. Network with them. But again, I think we are only likely to do this if we adopt a new frame of mind, and definition of what we do.
An ex Sid Lee planner who I met a while ago put it quite well when he explained how many agencies back then (when he was at Sid Lee) were talking about "new ways". But, he said, Sid Lee were the only ones with architects and artist in the building and in their network. So who's more likely to think different?
Nice discussion this.
"Guess what? Everything is digital. There is no offline."
Whoa there. Tiny bit of an overstatement, and oversimplification.
No offense, just had to put that out there.
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