pay for play

Some of these discussions around "earned media" vs "paid-for media" remind me of sex (I'm a man, everything reminds me of sex).

• Earned media is presented as inherently better than the paid-for kind at a moral level (as opposed to just a financial one) in much the same way that "earned" sex is inherently better than the paid-for kind*.
• Men who pay for sex do not necessarily do so out of desperation. They may want sex but not a relationship. Is deceiving someone that you want a relationship with them when really all you are after is the sex more moral than paying some for it? Isn't a honest transaction better than a fraudulent relationship?
• A lot of earned media seems to consist of stressed journos recycling press releases - like a relationship where one partner trades security for sexually satisfying the other?
  
• As the cliche goes "You always pay for sex". What are your actual costs with with not seeking paid-for advertising?
  

*I don't particularly want to get into arguments about the morality (or otherwise) of prostitution but it exists in many cultures and it seems to fulfill a basic human need. However it doesn't seem like an appealing career choice.

has marketing eaten social software?

First off, let me say some nice things about the people that put on the Social Media Club in Sydney. They volunteer their time. They put on very professional events that attract a lot of people. They are kind to animals and help old ladies across the road. The first session was especially good because they had a bloke from a marketing agency and they also had Leslie Nasser - who is not a marketing guy but did something cool online.

Now I am not a marketing guy. But I am interested in social software (blogs, wikis, Twitter, etc) and I am interested in people who are doing cool stuff online (regardless of who they work for). And I don't feel there's anything at the Social Media Club for people who aren't in PR or marketing agencies. Now that may be who its intended audience, in which case they ought to change the name to make that clear - the "Social Media for Marketers Club" is nicely unambiguous.

However if it does go down that path then it risks being less interesting as a result. It's like a "Television Club" that only discusses ads or a "Telephone Club" that focuses on call centres. There is a whole world out there and there are plenty of people in it who aren't after a "social media expert" title.

So I'd encourage the organisers to broaden the kind of presentations they have and possibly experiment with the format as well. One or two people on stage separated from everyone else feels very traditional, very old media (as another Gavin mentioned). How could it be done differently?

intelligent design?

Intelligent Design is best understood as a failure of the imagination. We look at the world and see something with order. Jungles with thousands of species existing in equilibrium. Coral reefs, polar icecaps, rolling hills. The idea that is could have been shaped by forces without intention is ridiculous to us. Someone must have built it. Someone like us but bigger.

Because order only comes from intention, doesn't it? The world is a machine, fashioned by the Great Engineer.

Could the tents of Organizational Design be a similar failure of the imagination? Are our organizations more like machines or jungles?

social software measurement as asymmetric warfare

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the Sydney Social Media Club where there was much discussion of measurement by Paull, Jye & Matt.

After the event, I was pondering this well-known story:

Two campers are walking through the forest when they suddenly encounter a grizzly bear. The bear rears up on his hind legs and lets out a terrifying roar. Both campers are frozen in their tracks. The first camper whispers, "I'm sure glad I wore my running shoes today." "It doesn't matter what kind of shoes you're wearing, you're not gonna outrun that bear," replies the second. "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun YOU," he answers.

When you are asked to demonstrate the ROI of social software, all you have to do is prove that SM delivers the benefits of traditional media at a lower cost - because it seems that most marketing is a cost of doing business rather than a generator of sustainable growth.

There's a problem here however: What if it doesn't? If you compare Twitter to TV using TV's metrics then TV is probably going to win. TV's metrics have coevolved with the medium over decades. It's a fixed match. TV is wearing the running shoes and you're looking like a tasty snack for a Mr Grizzly. Julian does some very interesting crunching of Twitter reach numbers and concludes: Knowing this is great for planning but who is going to take back a reduced number when traditional media agencies are still talking inflated reach into the 100,000s?

In making this move, I would suggest that the SM crowd risk doing a Mullah Nasrudin:

Nasrudin found a weary falcon sitting one day on his window-sill. He had never seen a bird like this before. "You poor thing", he said, "how ever were you allowed to get into this state?" He clipped the falcon’s talons and cut its beak straight, and trimmed its feathers. "Now you look more like a bird", said Nasrudin.*

Even by calling it "social media", we clip its talons. As this article by Malcolm Gladwell explains, if you are a David and you play by Goliath's rules then you then he will squash you. If you are engaged in an asymmetric struggle then you need to choose your turf and your weapons - not let them be chosen for you.

Some hypotheses (which may well be wrong because I don't work in marketing):

• Social software is that it allows you to do multiple things at once - customer service AND promotion AND sales AND research. Organisation with a combined approach to selling, marketing & service would be more open to social software plays that offer an integrated approach to the customer (not that are necessarily many of those about).
  
• Social software is speed. Measures around "time-to-market" and "response time" become critical here (which are more associated with new product development & customer service than advertising).
• Social software is cheap (unless someone is greedy) - "cost per message" anyone? This means that you can run multiple experiments in a short period of time at low cost. Iterating TV spots is not cheap.
• Social software is interactive - you'd expect that cross-selling/up-selling metrics might be relevant here.
  

Of course, these measures don't help you persuade people that Twitter is better at TV's job than TV is - but should you be trying to do that in the first place?

There are two other riffs in my head:

• Marketing & media as ecology (with prey, predators, parasites, symbionts).
• Measurement as social proof.

But those will be other blog posts.

*Thanks to Dave for introducing me to this story.

Story Week Tuesday: Little Triggers

So we looked at how people responded to a story told by Obama back in StoryWeek. What did people think about Tuesday's story? Here's a quick recap:

... we organised a workshop, it was really high pressure and done at very short notice. It ended up being a success, but the CEO was there, and I thought it was one of those things where the team had all sort of pulled together, and it could of fallen over, but it didn't. At the end of the workshop, it had all gone well, there was a perfect window there for the CEO to come up to the team and say "Good job". I don't know the CEO at all, but it was a perfect opportunity for him to go and get some easy PR, or even at least say good stuff, and pass it on. But he just left. I mean, he may have had a thousand other things to do, but it was one of those things.

So how did this score?



Well overall it wasn't as memorable as the Obama story - although people did find it more believable. However as with Obama, there was a definite split in terms of who found this story memorable. For Obama it was country of origin. For this story is was around gender.


The ratings given by men (n=27) & women (n = 24) are almost mirror images of each other. Which is interesting because we know that the CEO is a man but we don't know the gender of the storyteller or any of the other characters. For women this story is far more memorable. Why*? Is it because women have been in this situation more often? Is it because they empathize with the characters more? What do you think?

BTW the Wordle clouds are here and here if you are interested.

*More women gave the Obama story 6 out of 6 for memorability but the other pattern of responses wasn't as stark as this.

gigadread

Katie Chatfield recently asked Where did the future go?

She was following up on Bruce Sterling's closing speech at Reboot 11 - Sterling also runs a blog on related topics courtesy of Wired.

Some reflections & responses:

• The talk was a half-digested stream of ideas - some awesome, some dumb, some both.
• Many of themes that BS touches upon mirror the obsessions of early 90s CCRU (incl. Mark K-punk Fisher & Steve Hyperdub Goodman). Cybergothic, inhuman technology, undead capitalism, the swarm. CCRU's ideas were heavily influenced by Deluze & Guattari, Jungle and the writings of... cyberpunk authors such as Bruce Sterling.
• "High-Tech Gothic" is a great phrase but it applies more to system than to individuals. Zombie banks. The financial system as out-of-control Frankenstein's monster. Financiers as parasitic vampires. Capitalism has reached its Gothic phase. It is epitomised not by Steve Jobs but by Dow Jones Index or a CDO contract sitting in someone's email - something that may once have had its origins in human behaviour & needs but no longer "human" or "alive" in any meaningful sense.
• "Dark euphoria" is another great phrase but it feels wrong. We're not entering a period of euphoria or depression but dysphoria. You can try to cushion the dread rush with shopping at the endless sales ("For a limitless time only") or alcohol or religion (Islamic, Christian, Environmental) but it just won't go away.
• Gen X are not goths - but I can see how we may look that way to Baby Boomers who salved their dread of nuclear war with the bounty of consumer culture. What happens when the cure becomes the new disease?
• "Favela Chic"is a great way of both celebrating & critiquing "open source" culture. Everybody code before the police come! No civil rights. No protection.
• The "great grandfather" crack is misplaced. Consuming less than we do now does not make us dead. It just makes us thinner. Bruce Sterling or Mr Creosote?
• The final point about keeping a small amount of good stuff and getting rid of the rest is a very sensible idea of which I am a massive fan.

marrickville week (4)

Source: ABS Census Data

marrickville week (3)

Source: yewenyi


Source: OZinOH


Source: lucid7

marrickville week (2)

Source: Marrickville Image Library

marrickville week (1)

This is the street where I live now. On the downside, there is no baker's cart plying its wares every morning. On the upside, I don't have to shovel up the horse dung from the baker's cart every morning.

Source: Marrickville Image Library

man week (6): little acts

Men like doing stuff. We are creatures of action. However in my case, "stuff" consists of sitting in front of the TV promising to fix the busted tap in the laundry (I will, I will).

So with all this Man Week stuff, I'm curious as to how this all plays out into action. We bare our souls and have our group hug and it's all like an episode of Thirtysomething but online.

So I'm interested in what happens next. Not big things. Just little things. I can think of a few off the bat.

man week (5): brutal

Man Week is leading to some darned interesting blogging. One theme that crops is violence. Mostly men being violent to each other via bullying (the issue of men being violent to women crops up less in the writing so far). And it's true. Men - esp. young men - are brutal. And this cuts both ways - the most frequent victims of violence are also young men. This happens at all levels of intensity. I have never murdered anyone. I was bullied at school and I also bullied others. I still feel I am a very angry man but not an especially violent one*.

So if my child is a son, what can I do? I think role modelling is really important. But what does that mean? I can't see myself beating people up in front of him. How I control my temper is going to be important. As will be my assertiveness. One of the most painful lessons in life for me has been the need to meet conflict directly rather than avoid it. I would rather he learned that lesson early.

But beyond that I'm not sure. Mark Pollard mentions martial arts and I would love a son to take up one of these sports - because they are about control & discipline**.

Any ideas bloggerati?


Source: Economist

*We all have emotional motors that power us though our lives. I would like to say I am driven by a desire to better the world or by an ambition to be the best at whatever I do but if I'm honest with myself it's just non-specific rage - as destructive as it is creative. My tombstone will probably have "What are you looking at, breather?" carved on it.

**May be we should bring back national service. And the death penalty. Hang on...

Man Tag

• Oscar Nicholson
• Zac Martin
• Luke Naismith
  

man week (4): gay

I'm not gay. I checked when I was about 20*. All the stuff above the waist on the other person was fine but there was some extra equipment down there that seemed a little superfluous. I think the technical term may be "cock block".

Reflecting on this experience makes me wonder how difficult it must be for a closeted gay man trying to fit in. Going through the motions. Doing something that's not quite right.

For a few years I was a volunteer at the Ankali Project where I was often "token straight guy". One thing that I think separates gay men from straight men is that you have to choose who you are. Now I don't mean that people "choose" their sexuality because I don't think that's true. Rather being straight is the default option in our society. Coming out as gay requires that you set yourself apart. You have to make a choice about your identity and how you present that publically.

Beyond all that Queer Eye for the Straight Guy interior design stuff, I think that's a key lesson straight men can learn from our non-straight brethren. Understand that you own who you are and that default behaviours are not the only way of being a man.

*At the time I thought I might be uncomfortable with my sexuality. It was more a case of being uncomfortable with myself.

Man Tag

• Daniel Oyston
• Stuart French
• Mal Damkar
  

man week (3): bodies

It's still Man Week. I'm struggling a bit. I don't want to turn this blog into some pale imitation of All Men Are Liars. So each day will be a brief vignette. Make of them what you will.

I once considered becoming a masseur. So I spoke to this guy that was quite experienced in the industry and was connected to a yoga studio I was involved with. He was a big guy. Brick s***-house. Tats. Very macho. Ex-motor mechanic. He had been a petrolhead who loved to strip down & rebuild cars. He'd got bored with that game and decided to do something else with his hands. Massage, obviously. Another set of machines to fix. The switch from mechanic to masseur made complete sense to me.

He said it was a tough game for straight guy. Straight men don't necessarily want other straight men touching them. And if women interpreted any move as being sleazy your name would be mud. But many of his clients valued his strength. They weren't going to get some light backrub. Their muscles were going to be well and truly moved.

Man Tag

• Scott Drummond
• Jye Smith
• Julian Cole
  

man week (2): being a dad

So Mark Pollard has written most excellently about being a Dad. And as it's Man Week it would be churlish not to write about my own experiences of impending fatherhood.

Basically it's all a bit scary. And oddly detached. The Mum, she's feeling it. That child is an overpowering biological reality for her. For the Dad, not so much. Not our insides being rearranged by a baby. Not our hormones driven from pillar to post by a new life.

For men it's all a little more... conceptual. They say the two events that propel you into adulthood are the death of a parent and the birth of a child. And they are right.

So that's it. You are a grown-up. Which frankly isn't so terrible. I've been a grown up for a long time. Not a particularly successful grown up but an adult nonetheless. And I'm ready to be old. Because the older you get, the less you have to worry about what other people think. I now have the freedom to be an embarrassing Dad. Uncool in every way.

My child has given me this wonderful gift: adulthood. A role of both short-term necessity and ultimate obsolescence. I need not be the oldest teenager in town. Call that music? Hah!

Thank you.

Man Tags

• Geoff Brown
• James Dellow
• Cory Banks

Come on lads. Blog it like you mean it.

do i think you're sexy?

Gav starts talking (un)sexy:

But let me tell you a little secret. This sort of social media (and almost every aspect of social media) is just not sexy. It doesn’t have the glitz and glamour or even the spotlights of advertising; and there’s not the breathtaking scale of large format outdoor advertising.

Now let me share something with you here that I have mentioned before. There are two kinds of sexy in the world.

The first is simply being desirable. Being the bright, young, slinky, shiny thing. And here Gav is right. I don't think social software is that bright or shiny or slinky.

But the second kind of sexy is slightly different, less discussed but far more important. It's all about making others feel desirable. Healthy sexual relationships are built on mutual desire and it's terribly important for all of us to feel desired*. Some of the most charismatic people I have met make you feel like you are at the centre of their attention. Can this be faked & abused? Of course. But its power cannot be denied.

And this is where social software can be sexy. Because by listening to people, by making them feel wanted and important, we make others feel sexy. Of course we can finish this process by either discarding our conquests or trying to develop something deeper. The choice is open but it has consequences.

Given the choice between being desired and making others feel desirable, I would always go for the latter (but then with a face like mine I would say that).

Go forth and make the world a sexier place.

*Coincidentally I was going to do a session about this at BarCamp Sydney 5 but I had to have a little nap instead. The doctor has told me that I can't have too much excitement.

man week (1): having a dad

I have just been informed that its Man Week by both Gav Heaton & Mark Pollard. Obviously my testosterone-fuelled machismo has conditioned a Pavlovian response to the term "man" with the linked term "Matt Moore" in their minds (in a purely heterosexual way of course). So this week I will blogging about being a man.

Let's cut to the chase. I'm not actually that comfortable with some aspects of being a man in either English or Australian culture. The blokey, beery, laddish stereotype that some men espouse ain't me. I tried it when I was younger but I was a total failure at being a lad. "Cor, er, look at the, er, tits on that. Anyone read the Times Literary Supplement this week?"

I don't like sport. My Mum is more of a sports fan than I am. Please don't make me watch the footie*. Please don't ask me what team I support. Because then I'll have to break your clumsy yet charming attempts at male-bonding & socialising by telling you the truth.

A big reason behind this is probably my Dad. If you're going to write about being a man, you have to write a little about fathers.

Papa was a rolling stone. Wherever he laid his hat was his home. And when he died, all he left us was alone.

My Dad isn't a rolling stone. He's a very gentle man with a very warped sense of humour (something inherited by both my brother & I) who takes his responsibilities seriously. He is happy with his homebrew, his cycling, my Mum & writing puppet shows for the local church. Despite a spell being a stoker in the navy, he's not especially macho. Nor is he especially interested in sport.

According to all those dramas about men in traumatic relationships with their fathers, where that which needs to be said remains unsaid, I should have terrible difficulty relating to him. But I'm not sure I do. We are different people but we share so much. I have grown to appreciate everything he's done. I think this is true of many father/son relationships (another, fictional Gavin & his Dad come to mind). Many of us do want our Dads to be proud of us. And I hope that many of them are.

A brief intermission from Tricky:

...strong enough to take a life.
Are you strong enough to take care of one?

Now that's something I could sign up to. More on this tomorrow...

*I don't mind being at a footie match but that's mostly because I want to watch the crowd and sense the collective waves of emotion that roil around the stadium. It's like being in a psychic washing machine.

Man Tag

I would like to invite the following to discourse on manliness on their blogs.

• Gav Heaton
• Mark Pollard
• Brad Hinton

There will be 3 more invites per day this week. Gird your blogging loins gentlemen.

Ma

Pots are formed from clay,

but the empty space between it

is the essence of the pot. - Lao Tse

Listening is only partially about what is said. What is unsaid is often more important. This is one important reason why machines struggle to interpret human speech. They can only work with what is there.

The concept of "negative space" is used in painting to describe the spaces between objects. It's important. The objects and the space in which they sit are closely related. You might call "negative space" by another name: "context".

I had the same experience again in a very different context this morning in a hospice sitting with a friend who is dying and talking to her son. Bizarrely about sport: the England game last night, the Lions Tour, 2020 world series and Andy Murray. Although our topic was carefully chosen to keep us away from the theme of impending death I couldn't help noticing how aligned the themes we spoke of were with the figure in the bed alongside us - metaphors about mental strength, injury, weakness letting go. - Further & Faster

And then I stumbled over the concept of "Ma". Gap. Pause. Lacuna. Space. Betweenness. Our interactions and our lives are full of Ma*. Are you listening hard enough to the spaces?

*As I write there's some dub reggae on the radio - a music built on the use of space (to build intensity, a dub producer subtracts rather than adds sounds).

i'm not a racist but...

Whenever some starts a sentence with "I'm not a racist but...", you know this conversation is not going to go somewhere pleasant.

So are Australians racist?

Well of course we are. Human beings are probably hard-wired to be prejudiced to those outside their social group. I am a racist. I try not to be. I do not think that prejudices based on race are good thing or to be cultivated but nevertheless I probably exhibit them to a degree.

So are Australians (and esp. white Australians) more racist than other countries?

That's a little harder to decide. Thankfully Andrew Leigh* & co at ANU have done some experiments on this involving CV applications, return to sender letters and reaction times (full report here).

So when it comes to wrongly addressed letters, Australians are not that racist. The reaction times stuff is a little ambiguous but (and this is the part of the research that caught the news headlines) if you want to get an entry-level job in data entry, sales or waiting and you are Chinese or Middle-Eastern then you may need to change your name** if you want to get more call backs. There's so much in this study that I could write about I'll let you read it instead.

In international comparisons, Australians appear to exhibit "CV Prejudice" at similar levels to Swedes (in their attitudes to Arabs & Africans) and Americans (in their attitudes to African-Americans). N.B. This is just one behavioural test. It's not like there's an international racism index - altho that may be something to consider...

This once again reminds of my great good fortune in matters of birth. Ain't nothing like being a white, middle-class male to put a smile on your face!

*Prof Leigh's work has kept on appearing on my radar over the last few years. I'd definitely subscribe to his blog.

**There's some interesting additional stuff in there about what qualifies as a good CV when applying for jobs in different categories too.

statswatch: no recession?

The Australian Jan-Mar GDP figures came out last week and they were positive. Just. So we are not in recession - officially. There was talk of the role that consumer spending & exports played in keeping the economy buoyant.

What got less attention was what was going on with imports.



As this handy little graph from the ABS indicates, much of the good news in the Q1 data came from imports decreasing drastically. In other words, Australians were buying less from overseas - probably because the AU$ hasn't been doing so crash hot.



The AU$ has been doing considerably better since. Which is great if you want to go on a holiday abroad - but less good if you are an exporter. In fact the trade figures for April came out the next day - and weren't so promising: imports are continuing to go down but exports are decreasing faster.

Last month's employment figures were actually good - more people in jobs. Yay! Let's hope that the numbers for May on Thursday keep the good news coming.