Recently in Advertising and digital marcomms Category

I recently had a QA on Linkedin with a guy who asked:

Community-based websites: the effectiveness of engagement and Interaction? There is still a real opportunity for them to be a leader using a community-based solution. How long will these community-based solutions continue to be effective?

Since about 2005 I've been getting a steadily increasing demand for sites that build, support or promote community. I was surprised by the above question as it was beginning to feel like pretty much every brand out their had gotten on the bus with varying degrees of commitment and success.

So I thought I'd drop my answer in hear for safekeeping:

If you rephrase your question slightly:

"What can my client do with interactive technologies to increase value co-creation and engagement?"

If the creation of social capital and the building of a value co-creation network become core business objectives then the worth of community-based efforts becomes self-evident.

A community can rally around an issue (changing legislation, agreeing safety standards for toys) or a task (designing the Lego Mindstorm, pushing GM towards sustainability) and collectively generate solutions. The alternative is a network of business development types driving around the country in cars. I gotta say, I like the website option better.

Please take note of Stephen's point about commitment. A thriving community does require investment in capital, in time, in risk management. Make sure you factor these issues into your planing.

> B to B is typically not a great area for community

I just wanted to add a comment about Tom's point above.

I have recently implemented "group pages" that allow insurance advisers to ask each other questions in a private, branded area. The service is hosted by the underwriting insurance company.

Here's what the value-map looks like:

1 - Each advisor builds her knowledge and feels more competent as a result of participating (similar to what we are doing here)

2 - The system reduces the number of calls to the underwriters which means they get more done in a day (their days become more valuable)

Created social capital:

The partner advisers deepen their engagement with the underwriting company. The experience of dealing with this company as opposed to one that doesn't provide this service is such that over time the business relationship is stronger (ie sales increase)

It's always worth trying to quantify this value when deciding what to build.

Experience value-mapping

I'm developing a methodology to map the co-creation of value by customers onto the traditional human-centred design assets we already use. I'm not sure where that's going to end up. Should I start another agency? (still a little sobered after the Pumpernickle experience) or do i just use this as a consultant, bringing the techniques to my day-to-day work?

In the meantime, feel free to ring me on 07515 661655 if you're a product owner and are trying to understand how value co-creation can impact your business requirement choices.

Just saw Tim's piece on the Glasshouse blog on Orange Rockcorps and understanding the value of the social capital.

From there I had a quick look around and wow, quite a lot of negative opinion out there and a surprisingly downbeat response to the Orange rockcorps thing over at brandrepublic:

This is incredibly lame. The Orange 'I Am' campaign just limps from bad to worse. Busta Rhymes? What year are we in? 1999? I can't remember the last campaign from Fallon that was any good.

I guess there's a gap between the original and the Orange "I am" branded version? This is how the rc site describes the initiative:

RockCorps harnesses the power of music to inspire volunteering. We produce concerts for which the only way in is to volunteer 4 hours at a project we organize with non-profit partners. You can't win a ticket; you can't buy a ticket; you have to earn a ticket to a concert that becomes a celebration of giving back.

Tim reckons

If the company makes it work, it's the energy and community productivity generated that will constitute the value of the initiative; not the SMS bundles sold. The number of hours donated, or playgrounds renovated is a wholly inadequate proxy for the social capital generated by a campaign like this...

read Tim's whole post over at Glasshouse Partnership

Well I don't want to offend church-goers but this really got me: ascii-art messages from Dog in the source code. It's like playing the LP backwards but for my source-code generation :-)

How cool is that?

Well it used to be Big Oil or Big Business but we really are seeing the emergence of Big Copyright

Ohna's award-winning short film has been pulled by Google because of an automated copyright alert. This smells exactly the same as Google's ongoing mistreatment of the little guy. The same rules apply: justice cannot be applied by formula or filter. Unless each case is handled (note 'hand' as in 'human') individually by a trained adjudicator a never ending stream of injustice ensues.

I suggest Google work out how to pay for this adjudication service soon as sooner or later they're going to need a new business model...

Ohna reports:

Yesterday our short film SON was taken off YouTube's screening room because someone at Paramount Pictures copyright police company decided that maybe we had used some footage from Son Of Rambow. Whoever made this decision had obviously not watched the film as SON is obviously all original footage and in fact the only ressemblance to Paramount's film is the word SON in the title and the fact that there is a young boy in the cast. Despite the obvious blunder Paramount are making no effort to remedy the situation by removing their notice from YouTube and by doing so are damaging our reputation and possibly causing us loss of income.

The woman could use some words of support. Go comment on her post

And if you are aware of similar events, make you register each and every case with the EFF's chilling effects website.

So Charlotte wants me to spread the web2 love re ex-classmate Dirk Blackman's new production Outlander and why not? (that's our in-house Viking Haldane on the big-boy climbing frame over there on the left for our family readers)

As Eva Metalios puts it:

Subject: Fw: Dirk needs our help
Hey all -
After working in the Sisyphean task of being a writer in LA for over two decades, and the three year odyssey that OUTLANDER took to actually be made, the movie our friend Dirk Blackman (Columbia class of '85) authored with his partner and the project's director Howard McCain, is coming out. It is a sci-fi take on the Beowulf legend, nach.

C'mon, we are talking Dirk here. This is not
your daddy's Viking movie.

And Charlotte makes the point

Douglas,
the Norway thing, the Columbia thing, the media thing...

Well, yes, she's got a point I guess (and only Charlotte and my mother can get away with calling me Douglas).

The Norway thing huh? well we named our boy Haldane in an attempt to ping him into investigating his Norse roots... He is named after King Healfdene (lit. "half-dane") whose name has survived from myth into modern Danish under the popular form Halfdan

I initially wanted to call Hal Healfdene but worrying got the better of me and in the end I didn't want to relive a boy named Sue so tried to anglicise it some. We could have gone with Haldan, also in use in modern Danish but in the end we settled on Haldane (also good because it's a Scottish name).

Oh, right, back to the link love;-)

• the Morwen character is in development here: G4 video
• Healfdene Goguen is as far as I can tell the only man online to sport the BW original spelling
• and here's another site about Outlander
• here's the trailer on Youtube

Judging from the amount of traffic already generated, Dirk's project doesn't need any help but I liked Eva's closer make the Weinstein Company to feel the noise. Take that Harvey!

I've been trying to get Nick interested in personal branding after listening to @garyvee at Seed3. Gary made a bunch of interesting points and got me thinking about how Nick should develop on her work so far as a journalist. The woman has huge amounts of life experience and when fueled, can tell many an exotic tale of Argentinean vineyards, Tuscan raw-food cooking or tea tasting in the Indian Ocean...

Tim says

...and translate it into an action model for your personal bottom line--how your brand will generate personal wealth ( Me Inc. ) and how you will create social impact ( Me.org )...

Which really resonated... Does Nick settle on a business partner or employer who can work with her to create value using whatever existing methods they might have in place and picking and choosing from a small selection of Nicki's mojo as required?

Or does she choose to leverage her whole experience and develop on her own, working to distribute her mojo-assets socially to a large audience?

I can't help thinking that option one sounds like a bit of a waste...