(I fixed my blog, finally, after a malicious piece of nasty code had crept its way into my broken WordPress site. Now it is better(yay!) and I want to talk about some of the things that I have been reading lately and thinking about thanks to my clients and colleagues. This post moves around and is primarily focused on Marketing(because you haven’t read enough about lately), but on a macro level, it is about learning from the principles of the web and what that means for your business. The traits of the web; being open, flexible, self correcting and constantly evolving share the best traits that make up us, as humans, and in that respect, any organism.)
How can competition and fear of failure drive us to do great things? What can Tools of War teach us about marketing?
In reading the Wizards Stay Up Late, I was struck by the ability for brilliant people to rally together, in a time of war, to innovate and get out of trouble, using the magic(Wizardry) of digital on the problems of the analog world. The work by ARPA and how racing the Russians in a PR war to the moon and over nuclear weapons, led to the web and some of the more advanced technologies that our global economy now operates on.
Specifically, Paul Baran’s ‘Packets’ story of how a protocol was created that led to the World Wide Web. From Wikipedia: Packet switching is a digital network communications method that groups all transmitted data, irrespective of content, type, or structure into suitably-sized blocks, called packets. The network over which packets are transmitted is a shared network which routes each packet independently from all others and allocates transmission resources as needed. The principal goals of packet switching are to optimize utilization of available link capacity, minimise response times and increase the robustness of communication. When traversing network adapters, switches and other network nodes, packets are buffered and queued, resulting in variable delay and throughput, depending on the traffic load in the network..
To summarize, Baran understood, before anyone else, that the most efficient and safest way move data on a network was to break the data into packets, that could find their way to end points faster and then reassemble on the other end. A similar analogy is how you would move a house across the country. You disassemble, ship in bunches or packets and reassemble when you got it to the final destination.
Seamless transmission of digital bits and distributed nodes, led to the creation of the Web and the ability for the web to live on, regardless of a certain node getting knocked out, and it is still the underlying architecture/ideology that we all work off today. The genius of packet switching also led to Baran understand the need for a distributed(not centralized or decentralized) network that the packets could travel on in the most efficient and safe way to build a safe and scalable ecosystem(Image):
What does this mean for marketing? Baran and ARPA were looking to achieve greater national security and trying also finding a better way for groups of like minds to communicate together. Switch out ‘National Security’ for Building a Better Brand and ‘Like Minds’ for a Brand’s customers, prospects & vendors and most marketing managers are modern day ARPA employees…… So how can you take your online marketing strategy and turn it into packets? How can you diversify your offerings into a distributed network, in the event that if a node goes out or a sleeper cell wakes up, the rest of the network(your Brand, your Platform) can stay up and scale. How can you diversify your investment in a way that allows you to have conversations to scale with your customers while also not over-investing in any single node?
Much of this is being played out in Social Media or what I like to call as a broader term, in Publishing. The ability to connect with others, with packets of information, across a larger network and find the Holy Grail of having Conversations to Scale with your Customers. A protocol where by you can interact with a consumer on any front and you can assemble the pieces to get them the information they need to have a better experience with your brand.
In order for you to take on this distributed network model online, you need to become a Publisher. Constantly iterating and Publishing, and pushing out different packets across the web.
How to get started? The key is to first understand how “Publishing” is changing, and how it is different online. In order to follow this publishing and packets model it is important to think about the very concept of what constitutes “media and publishing” and how it has evolved due to two massive change agents on the web.
(Battelle Quote)The first is search(ie. Google), which made nearly every “piece” of media available and findable. That revolution began in 2001-2, and continues to this day. And we’re now in the midst of the second change, Social Media. We are today with Social Media where we where with search nearly ten years ago. Social Media is media that any consumer can create, share, and communicate around, and quite often, it’s directly related and/or concerned with a particular brand. Creating and cultivating an ecosystem where customers, prospects, vendors, and employees are engaged (and feel listened to) allows your core business to become a learning organism, one that is far more closely linked to its core customers. Consumer insights, product development, customer relations and service – all of these functions become integrated into this brand community.
Once you run your business as a distributed network & publishing platform that provides value to your customers and prospects online, your business itself will become an ongoing collaboration between your company, your customers, and your partners. This shift begins with a publishing platform-driven, distributed approach to marketing.
As a recent NYT article on Nike noted:
“…Behind the shift is a fundamental change in Nike’s view of the role of advertising. No longer are ads primarily meant to grab a person’s attention while they’re trying to do something else — like reading an article. Nike executives say that much of the company’s future advertising spending will take the form of services for consumers, like workout advice, online communities and local sports competitions.”
The best companies are starting to do this…… Zappos over Foot Locker, Starwood over a traditional travel agency, Kashi over other Kellogg’s Brands, & the U.S. Federal Government over 20th century Governments.
21st Century economics, the Web and competition is forcing us to rewrite the rules of business. The best way to deal with these changing times, is to understand the principles of the Web and how it can help us evolve.
James–The “distributed model” is absolutely vital for marketers today. (For publishers, too. I’d argue that traditional publishers, including most online publishers, still take a centralized approach.) Whereas ARPA eschewed centralized and decentralized approaches in the name of defense, though, it’s all about offense for marketers. Let customers share your story — your brand assets — with their friends and colleagues without requiring them to first visit your destination site, and imagine how much more quickly you’ll disseminate that story.
Where Wizards Stay Up Late is indeed a great book, and not one I’d expect many advertisers or marketers to be familiar with. In my case I was reading more to familiarize myself with the cultural and historical underpinings of the web that I was introduced to in the form of a Netscape Navigator browser.