March 3, 2009

Vega: innovation and brand communities

Had a really cool time again today. PDF (1 MB) of slides here - one day I'll get going with using Slideshow...

Companies/Books mentioned (from what I can remember):
All Marketers are Liars - Sith Seth Godin
10 faces of Innovation - Tom Kelly
IDEO.com
The Cluetrain Manifesto
Bob Garfield - transcript - also updated version here

And apropos the conversation in the lecture around the Dept of Home Affairs as a brand, it could help a lot in re-imagining how that transform that organisational failure.

Posted by sdehaast at 2:32 PM | Comments (0)

November 21, 2006

Google as a frien-emy* of the ad world

I just saw a piece in the NYT about Google and other online players (eBay, Yahoo) starting to take bytes bites out of the traditional ad agency space. I spoke of this in a lecture I gave a couple of months ago.

It's typical bits versus atoms game being played out, and the incumbants are too invested in the status quo to adapt quickly.

“The fox is in the henhouse and it’s going to gobble a good part of this business up before anybody realizes they’re history,” said Gene DeWitt, president of DeWitt Media Solutions.

Innovation is all about disrupting the status quo, and Machiavelli's quote about this is spot on all those centuries ago. And there are so many industries ripe for disruption still. The traditional advertising industry is just one.

The idea behind this new marketing shift is a move away from creating great communication campaigns (in which the agency makes most of its cash by media buying commissions rather than the creative input), but rather to focus on creating awesome experiences anywhere that a customer touches the brand. This extends beyond the product, and Apple exemplifies this design thinking approach.

"Good product design starts from the outside, and works its way inside." - David Carey

Brands that start to co-opt and engage their customers into a co-creation process will end up with i) better products ii) volunteer salesforces and iii) a reduced need to spend on advertising. If you're a brand owner, use that as a platform or conduit to gain insight, to create a space for you to enage customers in a cluetrain-style conversation. A classic example of how this can aid product development (without using expensive focus-group diluted insight) is to see how on Southwest Airlines blog, the CEO posed a simple question and received a ton of responses and followups.

Back to Google:

Google’s name in the ad community frequently brings up visions of doomsday. At an ad design and production conference last month, ad executives mused about how advertising would be different in 2010. Paul Lavoie, chief creative officer of Taxi, an ad and design agency, predicted that Google would be the largest advertising agency by then. The audience laughed, but Mr. Lavoie, reached later, said he was serious.

“Let’s look at the facts: They have the best data to understand consumer habits, they can track your search, they know how much time you spend on certain sites,” Mr. Lavoie said. “They’re doing much more powerful work than some of the work being done by some of the more traditional agencies.”

It doesn't hurt to develop scenarios that can help stress-test your business model against a shifting competitive landscape. One scenario (scarenario?) that's paints a very interesting bits vs atoms picture is Googlezon EPIC 2015

Full article after the jump.

*Google is the “frien-emy,” both the friend and the enemy, said Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the WPP Group...

Just in case this disappears from the open web:

November 21, 2006
Google Mapping an Offline Course
By LOUISE STORY

Major Internet sites are showing a strong and growing interest in the advertising business, and traditional ad firms are starting to get worried.

Google has been leading the way, building on its online ad strength by striking deals to sell advertising in traditional media like newspapers and radio. Meanwhile, eBay is developing an ad-buying system for TV spots for a group of large advertisers like Wal-Mart. And yesterday, Yahoo announced a deal with 176 newspapers that did not include offline ad sales, although newspaper executives did not rule that out.

Ad executives say it is hard to know where Google and the other Internet giants will stop.

“The fox is in the henhouse and it’s going to gobble a good part of this business up before anybody realizes they’re history,” said Gene DeWitt, president of DeWitt Media Solutions.

Traditional media companies are increasingly linking up with the online giants that have been stealing their customers and advertisers. The traditional companies — like newspapers, magazines and television and radio networks — are hoping they can reverse their fortunes and share in some of the Internet success.

The offline ad market, in the meantime, provides the kind of growth opportunity that Internet companies like Google are looking for, stock analysts said.

“What these enterprises clearly need is to identify new marketplaces to expand into to justify their valuations,” said Youssef Squali, the Internet analyst at Jefferies & Company. “And that’s exactly what Google and Yahoo are doing.”

Google executives have made no secret of their ambitions in traditional ad sales, saying they can save marketers money on print, radio and TV spots, while taking a commission in the process. Google is testing ad sales for more than 50 newspapers and plans to make newspaper ad sales a permanent offering sometime next year.

Next month, Google plans to sell radio ads through the online auction system it uses to sell Internet ads. And it has indicated to analysts that it is considering moving into TV and direct-mail ads.

Consumer brand companies have turned to advertising agencies for decades to design their ads and negotiate where and when those ads run. Media buyers at ad firms plan and negotiate ad placement with publications, TV and radio stations and, more recently, Web sites. Placing ads is big business for the media buyers at agencies, because their pay is often based partly on how much the ads cost.

Ad sales in traditional media totaled nearly $150 billion last year. The entire United States ad market, which also includes direct mail, outdoor ads, yellow pages ads and online ads, is worth about $286 billion, according to Robert J. Coen, chief forecaster for Universal McCann, part of the Interpublic Group.

Internet ad revenue have been growing by upward of 30 percent a year — this year about $16 billion will be spent online. But, as Google pointed out in its annual report last year, large advertisers would most likely continue to focus most of their ad budgets on traditional media.

To advertising executives, Google is the “frien-emy,” both the friend and the enemy, said Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the WPP Group, at a recent industry gathering. Agency executives said Google, the friend, could provide agencies and media companies with the technical systems they sorely need to modernize ad buying. Media buyers said better systems could allow them to spend more of their time planning how to better grab consumer attention.

But Google could end up automating so much of the ad-buying process that companies no longer see the need to pay much for media buyers.

Several big advertisers are looking for alternatives. Companies like Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Philips Electronics, Home Depot and Hewlett-Packard hired eBay in May to develop an online marketplace where they can buy offline ads.

The advertisers — who at one point considered working with Google instead — expect to spend about $50 billion on cable network ads to test eBay’s system early next year. They will test other media next.

Yesterday’s announcement from Yahoo that it will sell online ads with 176 newspapers opens the door to offline cooperation as well. Newspapers, in theory, could sell all of their ads through Yahoo’s automated system. In a conference call, one newspaper executive said such an arrangement was a “very real possibility.”

Newspaper executives emphasized that Yahoo was now the “partner of choice” for their companies, which they acknowledged could mean that the newspapers would change their existing relationships with companies like Google and MSN.

Ad executives are not sitting idly by while these tests proceed. Media buying agencies from each of the five largest ad companies have become partners with Hewlett-Packard and the other companies involved in eBay’s test. And agencies, through an industry group, are working to modernize their ad-buying systems, so they can purchase, track and bill clients for ads as efficiently as the large online companies.

Media companies, too, are working to streamline ad sales. The Newspaper Association of America, for example, is discussing providing advertisers a central place to buy ads in different newspapers by building a centralized buying system.

Some media buyers said they would welcome a comprehensive bidding system built by Google or eBay if it brought more transparency to ad-buying. TV networks and publications and networks “are the only ones who know what is going on,” said Steven Farella, chief executive of TargetCast TCM, a media agency.

Greater transparency in media buying, of course, is not desired by all. Some media buyers have long-term relationships with media companies, giving them a competitive advantage that they would rather not lose. Their clients presumably also like the advantage.

But many advertisers want more transparency, said Bob Liodice, chief executive of the Association of National Advertisers, which is supporting eBay’s auction system.

“The ability to get prices out in the open will allow companies to develop an automated process that cuts away the lack of transparency that exists in media buying today,” he said.

Large advertisers have approached Google and Yahoo several times asking that the company expand its systems to sell traditional advertising, said Martin Pyykkonen, senior analyst at Global Crown Capital. “As you look down the road, you can look at them as being advertising agencies of a sort, doing media buying,” Mr. Pyykkonen said.

EBay would not explain how its ad auction would work or say whether buyers and sellers would be able to know how much others were bidding. Hani A. Durzy, an eBay spokesman, said the company would build the auction site to fit its new clients’ specifications. “Media buys are a commodity,” Mr. Durzy said. “They felt that there’s some efficiencies that could be wrung out of the existing system.”

Just what Google or eBay’s systems will save advertisers is the question. Google hopes to one day provide a place where advertisers can buy ads in all types of media, said Tim Armstrong, Google’s vice president for ad sales.

But Google’s vision, he said, does not involve cutting agencies’ media buyers out of the system. Mr. Armstrong said the system Google envisions would enable advertisers to aim at consumers so specifically and in so many complicated forms that media buyers would be needed to navigate the process for advertisers.

Google, in fact, has been holding regular seminars all year to update media buyers on changes in the digital world. Google will work directly with any companies that want to use Google’s systems without an agency, but Mr. Armstrong said he doubted that would occur.

Publications and ad agencies are less afraid of Yahoo than Google, Mr. Squali said. Yahoo considers itself a media company, which gives traditional agencies and media companies a sense of ease, whereas Google has stated a more disruptive goal of making ad buying and selling more efficient, he said.

Google’s name in the ad community frequently brings up visions of doomsday. At an ad design and production conference last month, ad executives mused about how advertising would be different in 2010. Paul Lavoie, chief creative officer of Taxi, an ad and design agency, predicted that Google would be the largest advertising agency by then. The audience laughed, but Mr. Lavoie, reached later, said he was serious.

“Let’s look at the facts: They have the best data to understand consumer habits, they can track your search, they know how much time you spend on certain sites,” Mr. Lavoie said. “They’re doing much more powerful work than some of the work being done by some of the more traditional agencies.”

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by sdehaast at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2006

Vega: The shifts impacting the online branding space

Another lecture done last night, this time a 3 hour session to the part-time students (you know, the ones with day jobs :) As usual I had loads of fun.

Pretty much a meandering stream of consciousness from my side, covering thinking and philosophies ranging from Charlie Munger (Warren Buffet's partner) on the value of having a "latticework of mental models" (found that great perspective here), Machiavelli, the impact of ODM, and of course, my stock standard, ways to see the world using a Marshall McLuhan lens.

Nicholas Negroponte makes an appearance with his "Atoms vs Bits" riff, with the impact of the digital landscape leaving people like Sir Martin Sorrell CEO WPP wondering if Google is a significant threat to their media buy commissions or not.

Of course any discussion of the onlne space is not complete with reference to the Creative Commons (a nonprofit organization that offers flexible copyright licenses for creative works), as well as the Web 2.0 thing and mash-ups. A useful way to understand what's happening is to borrow from Peter Senge's "Component Technologies" and "ensemble" approach. (more here, search for DC-3 on the page).

You can download a Quicktime movie version of my lecture slides here, quite large because it has some video clips and mp3 interviews included. [right-click, save as. 13MB .mov].

Further reference material promised:
Googlezon EPIC 2015
Interview with Ebay's CEO, Meg Whitman - "..brands are quick-drying cement."
The Cluetrain Manifesto - Markets are conversations. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
Transcript of The Chaos Scenario
The Art of Innovation - IDEO book
Sir Martin Sorrell Interview - ..while his agencies and Google were co-existing, the Google could make life difficult for the advertising industry...
Fan-created advertising - Fireflicks
Creative Commons South Africa, ccmixter - Rip.Sample.Mash.Share.
What is Web 2.0. Also here

Posted by sdehaast at 11:27 AM | Comments (1)

April 20, 2006

Vega lecture notes - innovation & branding

Had another super conversation with the honours class at Vega in Cape Town today (apparantly it's called lecturing :) As usual, had loads of fun. Here's a copy of my slideshow [1.5MB .ppt]. Similar to the other presentations from last year.

One idea that cropped up was the around how smart/informed consumers really are; are they sheep being spoon feed the latest trends, music and fashions, or does the connected economy really result in more original consumer demands. Sheep or Ferrets? Any views?

I said something about the Long Tail in looking at the edges/fringes of markets, so guys, check it out here: The original article, and the blog. Fascinating stuff. Guys - you need to get up to speed on this stuff.

Also mentioned was Michael Porter's Competitive Advantage of Nations as a way of explaining Outsourced Design & Manufacturing (ODM). The latter articles can be found on Business Week's website.

Last up are references to Bob Garfield's "Chaos Theory" segment: transcript and podcast. Still don't know what a podcast is? Ask the wiki. What's a wiki? Oh, never mind :)

Thanks guys for the beautiful notebook; Leigh, your design on the cover is stunning.

Posted by sdehaast at 9:14 PM | Comments (0)

October 25, 2005

Vega lecture time again

Had another lecture last night, this time a 3 hour stint. But I had so much fun interacting with the part-time team there the time flew. (Or as Kermit says, time's fun when you're having flies :)

As promised for those in attendance, the slidepack is linked below.

Other links mentioned:
Markets as conversations - The Cluetrain.com
Multiple blog reader - Bloglines
The Googlezon - EPIC2005

(more to come as I remember)

Right-click and save here for my slides [ppt 2.8MB]

Thanks guys, it was fun. Let's continue the conversations.

Below, the full transcript to the audio piece on the fall of advertising.

---

The Chaos Scenario by Bob Garfield, On the Media

http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_040805_chaos.html
more into here

April 8, 2005

BROOKE GLADSTONE: When it comes to media, it's a wonderful world, all right. That's kind of the theme of the show this week - wireless broadband for every Philadelphian, meters to track your every media move, news that comes from who knows where, a trillion colors, a thousand channels, media broken into a million fragments. The age of the mainstream media is passing. The new media order is yet to be born. But what happens in between? Bob Garfield is out this week, but he left us his answer: chaos.

BOB GARFIELD: For the moment, let's call it a hypothetical, but what if network broadcast television, the most powerful communications force in the history of mankind, the opiate of the masses, the home of desperate housewives, were to disappear. [CLIP FROM GHOSTBUSTERS]

DAN AKROYD: Fire and brimstone, coming down from the skies - rivers and seas boiling!

BILL MURRAY: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

BOB GARFIELD: Okay. It would be disruptive. Now, what if TV as we know it were replaced by something really, really cool? [MUSIC]

FEMALE

CHORUS: [SINGING] MEET GEORGE JETSON-

BOB GARFIELD: Let's say it's 2020. George's job at Spacely Sprockets is gone, because digits are the new widgets. Over the air network TV is gone, too, along with program schedules, affiliate stations and Jimmy Kimmel's career. Jane, Judy and Elroy get their entertainment and their news any way they wish - TV, phone, camera, laptop, game console, MP3 player. Satellite radio is a 4 billion dollar, 8-track tape player stored on a high shelf in the garage, pushed aside by podcasting, which is free.

The Super Bowl has survived as the number one pay per view event. Survivor hasn't. You can still see any episode of CSI ever, but not on any advertiser's dime unless you choose for the viewing costs to be subsidized by ads. Yesiree, by George, it's a brave and exciting new world. [MUSIC]

But - it's in the future - which doesn't come till later. So, what if the old model collapsed before the bright, bold Jetsonian future is ready to pick up the pieces? What would it mean for the media business? What would it mean for advertisers? What would it mean for us - TV viewers who have more or less gotten used to plopping on to the couch to watch, say, Fear Factor.

Here's what it would mean. It would mean radical changes in the economy, the culture, and the society itself. And they wouldn't be easy to swallow. [SCENE FROM FEAR FACTOR - HARD TO SWALLOW MOMENT - PLAYS] And, by the way, it's happening right now. We are heading, all of us, into a historically turbulent moment in the history of media, with the very real risk of disruption on a mass scale. Call it the Chaos Scenario.

JIM STENGEL: I truly believe, and I know many of you do, that today's marketing model is broken.

BOB GARFIELD: Okay, maybe that statement didn't sound all that terrifying, except that the speaker was Jim Stengel, global marketing officer of Procter & Gamble, who was telling ad agencies that network television isn't giving P&G its money's worth. When the world's biggest advertiser, and therefore the world's biggest underwriter of media content, is looking elsewhere to spend its 5 and a half billion dollars a year, that makes Madison Avenue and Hollywood shudder.

J. D. LASICA: I think it's an inevitable kind of slow collapse of the entire mass media advertising market.

BOB GARFIELD: J.D. Lasica is president of the Social Media Group Consultancy and author of Darknet: Remixing the Future of Entertainment.

J.D. LASICA: What we're seeing is that not only does television have to re-invent itself from the content point of view; they have to re-invent themselves as an advertising medium.

BOB GARFIELD: The trends are undeniable. According to Nielsen, the network audience has eroded an average of 2 percent a year for a decade, while the US population increased by 30 million. In that span, the advertiser cost of reaching consumers has nearly tripled, assuming, that is, that those consumers armed with remote controls and now TiVo are actually watching the commercials, which, research shows, they usually are not.

These trends are not going to reverse, and the advertisers who pay all the bills are already beginning to flee. Ten years ago, American Express spent 80 percent of its marketing budget on television. Now it spends less than 30 percent.

Then there's the sword of Damocles called Cost. The reality TV fad has enabled networks to cast for hits with cheap programming, but the public is fickle. When the reality craze finally fizzles like the westerns and spy shows of yore, and the advertising pipers have fled, who will pay for all the expensive new tunes?

No wonder network executives speak of selling video on demand reruns over broadband. No wonder Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp retained Mackenzie & Company earlier this year to figure out how to transition to this internet thing, which is something like nailing plywood to the windows after the hurricane makes landfall.

No wonder Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone announced plans to spin off CBS and the company's other broadcast properties lest they drain the rest of Viacom's profitability.

So, yeah - the collapse is under way. But wait - what's that coming? Just over the hill. [COLLAGE WITH MUSIC]

MAN: We're standing outside the Sam Addams Brewery…

WOMAN: It was terrifying.

MAN: I couldn't get into [...?...] the front door. So now I'm coming in through the back.

WOMAN: [SINGING] BAZOOKA! ABINGA! ABANGA! A BIBBITY BOP!

MAN: Okay, we're recording.

WOMAN: Recording? Okay, so today, Hon, we really left the office very early, got in the car, [MUSIC FROM ANOTHER SHOW UNDER] and we're up north…

BOB GARFIELD: Those are excerpts of video logs, or Vlogs, produced by individuals and digitally posted on a website called Unmediated.org. It's one of several sites devoted to generating media content from ordinary citizens. In the end, says co-founder Drazen Pantic, mass media will be overthrown by micromedia.

DRAZEN PANTIC: All of that is happening is a huge proliferation in last two years. It's a huge audience, and we will have zillions of people broadcasting for the audience of ten.

BOB GARFIELD: Or more than ten. Last month, a little girl named Dillon Verdi posted her iMovie on her dad's web page. Another blogger got wind of it and dubbed the 11 year old "the world's youngest vlogger." Within 24 ours, the video had been downloaded 2,000 times.

During the run up to the last election, Jibjab.com repeatedly scored millions of views for its satirical animations, and who can forget the public flogging of Tucker Carlson?

JON STEWART: Now this is theatre. I mean, it's, it's obvious- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

TUCKER CARLSON: It, it- No, no-

JON STEWART: How, how old are you?

TUCKER CARLSON: 35.

JON STEWART: And you wear a bow tie.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I do. I do. I do. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

JON STEWART: So, so this is-

TUCKER CARLSON: No, no - I know, I know, you're…

JEFF JARVIS: So, that episode got - what? 400,000 viewers, maybe, on big, old powerful CNN?

BOB GARFIELD: Jeff Jarvis blogs at BuzzMachine.com.

JEFF JARVIS: Well, that same segment was copied on to the internet, where it got at least 5 million views. So, what's more powerful? The network CNN owns, or the network that no one owns? So now, suddenly, the distribution is exploded. Now, on the internet, we can all swim in the same pool. You and I can create content to swim in the same pool, next to the content created by, you know, Universal or Disney.

BOB GARFIELD: And it is a beautiful thing. The total democratization of media, combined with ultra-targeted ads consumers actually opt to see. We, the people, cease to be demographics. We become individuals again.

DAWN: Hey, it's the Dawn and Drew Show from March 28th, 2005. I'm Dawn Miselli…

DREW: And I'm Drew Domkiss. It's just barely the 28th. We got 5 minutes to midnight.

DAWN: What are you doing up?

DREW: Pshaw! I don't know.

BOB GARFIELD: A young Wisconsin couple can produce a radio show for pennies and deliver it direct to your iPod - a so-called podcast, ultimately competing for audience with, say, On the Media, which costs a comparative fortune. We podcast our show too, which makes us either enlightened participants in the new world order, or buggy whip manufacturers, delivering our goods by truck. But we are not blind, and we can see the text messaging on the wall. We can see that the time Americans spend on line has doubled in the past five years. We can see that broadband penetration has zoomed from 8 percent to 56 percent. We can see that a brave new world of zillion channel digital democracy awaits us all - if only the brave new world were ready. But at the moment, it is a collection of technologies and ideas and vacant lot bandwidth, a digital playground for visionaries and 11 year old girls - a place short on capital resources, technological infrastructure and rules. Never mind dogs and cats living together. Think Yugoslavia.

DRAZEN PANTIC: There is no way to make transition from the previous regime into anything that is different or new or whatever without a period of chaos.

BOB GARFIELD: Unmediated.org's Drazen Pantic, formerly of Belgrade's freedom-fighting radio station B-92, knows whereof he speaks. He eyewitnessed the ultimate fragmentation of a country - first by war and tyranny; then, in the year 2000, by the ascension of democracy. Democracy empowered individuals - a new model! Five years later, unemployment is at Great Depression levels, poverty is the norm, and the prime minister assassinated by the mob - because, Pantic understands, in societies and economies…

DRAZEN PANTIC: New, better thing is not going to be established overnight.

BOB GARFIELD: There are simply too many obstacles. Consider just a few. Though broadband penetration has soared to nearly 60 percent, it's still a long way from universal. Secondly, pending legislation aimed at movie piracy could outlaw the peer-to-peer software that makes citizen video possible. And third, despite the agitation of Procter & Gamble and a few others, says Chris Charron of Forrester Research, certain forces of the status quo will cling to habit and vested interest.

CHRIS CHARRON: Namely networks and ad agencies, who have a lot of stake in the buying and selling of advertising going on as it has for years, so they're not going to be very fast to move to these new forms of media.

BOB GARFIELD: That's why a vast multinational company like American Express finds itself experimenting with sponsored concerts and goofy long form web ads featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Superman. The company no longer sees the value in loading up on network ad spots, but there's no ready supply of other new media marketing opportunities to replace them. Yet, when I asked Chief Marketing Officer John Hayes why so many of his colleagues are still sitting on their hands, he offered some non-responsive answer about the consumer being the boss.

BOB GARFIELD: Would you stop being diplomatic for five seconds? [LAUGHTER] Is the industry ready for the new world order, or is it not?

JOHN HAYES: Well, [LAUGHS] certain, certain parts of it are, and certain parts aren't.

BOB GARFIELD: And what will happen to those who are not?

JOHN HAYES: Well, as in any industry, those who are unprepared for change will, you know, obviously suffer the consequences.

BOB GARFIELD: And most likely, so will you, because the chaos scenario isn't limited to the economic fortunes of Viacom and J. Walter Thompson and Procter & Gamble. If you like to collapse on the sofa and just veg out for an hour of, say, Alias, never mind Nightline - if you don't like to surf for content - if you're in the 44 percent of Americans without a high speed connection - you could be in for a long, tough slog. Om Malik, who writes for Business 2.0, imagines a netcasting universe offering an endless variety of lousy options.

OM MALIK: You can put a lot of bad, you know, video clips you shoot with your camera phone on the web, but how many people want to watch that?

BOB GARFIELD: For the record, there's at least one other doomsday scenario worth considering. It comes from David Poltrack, head of research for CBS, who happens to believe that, over the air network television will thrive for the foreseeable future. However, he warns, woe betide those who would dismantle it, because what is at stake is nothing less than the American way of life.

DAVID POLTRACK: And if, in fact, that current system deteriorates to the point that advertisers and marketers abandon it, I don't see anything that's going to replace it in the entire marketing infrastructure of the country, and the economy is going to be diminished, and that's a lot bigger problem than just a network television problem. [CLIP FROM OH BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? PLAYS]

MAN: We ain't one-at-a-timin' here - we're mass-communicatin'!

MAN: Oh, yes. That's a powerful new force.

BOB GARFIELD: Yep. Like Pappy Daniel in Oh, Brother Where Art Thou? - CBS is enthusiastically embracing 20th Century Technology. The problem is that the micro-communicators aren't much interested in preserving that version of the American way. They are steadfastly fomenting their revolution, already in progress, which in the long run, will benefit George Jetson, Procter & Gamble and everybody else. In the words of Rishad Tobaccowala, president of the media buying firm Starcom IP-

RISHAD TOBACCOWALA: Those who will come to destroy TV will eventually save it. [SPRIGHTLY MUSIC]

CHORUS: [SINGING] JANE, HIS WIFE-

BOB GARFIELD: In the meantime, strap on those gravity shoes, hop on the treadmill, and try to keep your footing, because this voyage to the future is going to be a very rough ride.

GEORGE JETSON: [SHOUTING] Help! Help! Jane, stop this crazy thing! Jane - help - Jaaaaane! [THEME MUSIC UP & UNDER]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Megan Ryan, Tony Field, Jamie York and Mike Vuolo, and edited by me. Dylan Keefe is our technical director and Jennifer Munson our engineer. We had help from Susanna Dillaplane and Nick Gilewicz. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl. Katya Rogers is our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and find free transcripts, MP3 downloads and our podcast at onthemedia.org, and email us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media, from WNYC. Bob Garfield will definitely be back next week. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

copyright 2005 WNYC Radio

Posted by sdehaast at 9:04 AM | Comments (1)

April 15, 2005

Vega lecture links

Here's the promised links and references for further reading...

Keep watching this space as I'll be adding new stuff all the time.

My slideshow

Simple Framing by George Lakoff

Douglas Rushkoff

Googlezon And The Newsmasters EPIC transcript

What is the Meaning of The Medium is the Message?

Folksonomies & Metadata

The Word Lab

Posted by sdehaast at 1:32 PM

My first lecture

I've just finished my first lecture! And I loved it.

I spoke at Vega The Brand Communications School in Cape Town this morning on Trends in Technology and Branding, and it was an opportunity for me to package my thinking about bits vs atoms, media laws, and other ways of seeing the world around us in order to make sense of the change happening in our midst.

The coolest thing about it was the interaction with the Honours students that were present - thanks guys. I really had fun.

Welcome to my world :)

Here's the presentation [1.7 MB ppt] - right click and choose Save As...

Watch this space - maybe a podcast soon.

Posted by sdehaast at 1:18 PM