Joe Trippi, a leading political strategist, spoke at the Mashable Connect 2012 group today about what he calls the Age of Empowerment – where the massive Goliaths of the corporate world are under threat by a flood of “self organized armies of Davids”. We, those in marketing and digital, have been groomed to help companies become Goliath – but what do we, and our clients, do when digital and social forces are working against traditional power structures? According to Trippi, the answer is to help hand out slingshots — like Apple, creating ipads, iphones, etc that help to empower people to go after Goliath, and Goliath – sized problems.
To Trippi, the political power structure that supports this corporate structure has become corroded – across the board, it’s broken, much as before the printing press, disenfranchising the poor and their needs in the favor of those of the rich and the corporations they own. He contends that this situation is unsustainable and beginning to break down.
Read More ›
“When a big company enters social media, it’s like giving birth,” Leslie Berland, SVP of digital partnerships & development at American Express stated.
Berland spoke about “The Digital Transformation of American Express: Social, Local, Mobile & Viral” at Mashable Connect 2012, sharing insights from AmEx social media campaigns and her experience trailblazing in a very large organization.
The AmEx social media team had lofty goals when they started, but Berland shared that the company’s foray into social media started with launching one Twitter account, @AskAmex. The first tweet, 3 weeks in the making, Berland noted, simply stated the purpose of the account and asked, “How can we help you?”
Since then they have scaled their social efforts and are now an innovator in the industry. Through Berland’s leadership, American Express now holds strategic partnerships with all the major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, YouTube and Zynga.
These relationships helped pave the way for future programs and integrations. In November 2010, Berland guided the launch of “Small Business Saturday,” a wildly successful Facebook campaign that quickly garnered 1 million fans and created a movement in the industry that is now in its third year.
And AmEx continues to innovate.
Sonia Sroka, SVP and director of Hispanic marketing, was recently featured in the latest issue of LATINA Style magazine celebrating its 14th annual LATINA Style 50 Awards Ceremony and Diversity Leaders Conference. The awards recognize companies and executive leaders for their commitment to advancing the careers of professional Hispanic woman in their respective companies. Sonia was honored as one of the five Latina Executives of the Year for exuding excellence and leadership at Porter Novelli and in the community.
The article notes that Sonia takes pride in working at Porter Novelli, a company founded by people unafraid to stand up, speak out and fight for things they believed in – especially things that drive social change.
“All people, Latinas or otherwise, do their best when they are in an environment like Porter Novelli has created. One that offers the encouragement, the tools and the opportunity to think big, act big and provoke measurable business change for our clients. Truly great work – transformative work – happens when smart people are allowed to thrive.”
The special issue can be found here.
TEDMED 2012 was an experiment in the “new.” Last year it was held in San Diego with a smaller number of attendees. For 2012, it was a much larger extravaganza in Washington D.C., with a heavier focus on advocacy vs. technology. The reviews from past attendees were mixed – some missed the intimacy of the old format while others celebrated the breadth of speakers and robust networking. For me, the discussion was moot. This was my first TEDMED and it was, undoubtedly, an experience – an opportunity to engage with and connect new ideas, hear from the greats like Edward O. Wilson, see old friends and expand my network. Here’s just some of what I learned and heard:
1) We’re in an arms race with the bugs, and as anyone knows from studying history, no one ever really wins an arms race. Even to keep pace requires exponentially more money, time and innovation. Right now we’re not even keeping pace with the bugs we already figured out how to kill. This year, according to TEDMED speaker Andrew Read, a University of Pennsylvania professor and infectious disease specialist, more than 100,000 will die in the U.S. alone from bacterial infections we could easily treat with antibiotics not 30 years ago. What’s required is a global, coordinated plan to manage microbial evolution, which in and of itself will require new evolutionary science plus the willingness of physicians, patients, regulators and others to prioritize the future effectiveness of the drugs we have now when thinking about how to treat patients with minor infections. We need more investment in research and physician and patient education programs, plus immediate regulatory action. Fortunately, as FDA Commissioner Peggy Hamburg was pleased to announce during the conference, the FDA has just moved to restrict antibiotics use in farm animals to help prevent overuse and the development of microbial resistance. But though the FDA is leading the initiative, already it is under fire for failing to specifically restrict continued use of antibiotic therapies to compensate for overcrowded or unsanitary conditions.
2) Patient engagement leads to improved quality and reduced cost of healthcare. Todd Park, U.S. chief technology officer, called for putting the power of information in consumers’ hands via technology that enables better engagement and collaboration in providing patient care. But the role of the patient in healthcare is still hotly contested; as someone put it, “If patients are customers, does that mean the customer is king, or buyer beware?” Still, the trend is already underway – new networked tools that map health data are already available, and flourishing online health communities are encouraging people to pursue nutrition, fitness and weight loss goals while providing community support.
3) We need to be clear headed about getting in front of the growing prevalence of Alzheimer’s. Look around. Will the people around you reach 80? Will they reach 80 and still remember their children? Gregory Petsko, professor of neurology at Weill Cornell Medical College, says 80 is more feasible than ever these days – there will be 32 million octogenarians in the U.S. by 2050. But 80 without Alzheimer’s disease? The world is looking at having to treat and care for more than 300 million Alzheimer’s disease patients by then. We’re aging and the therapeutic and diagnostic technologies aren’t keeping up with us. In fact, more and more pharmaceutical companies are exiting neuroscience research altogether (let’s hear it for Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, which continues to advance new science and research against Alzheimer’s and other diseases of the brain.) What’s needed is a new way of approaching science – not iteratively but in a way that allows for scientific theory and practice to move forward in a cross-disciplinary and parallel way. Unlocking the mysteries of the mind isn’t easy, and we are running out of time.
4) Imagination is the key to scientific and medical innovation. Edward O. Wilson, research professor emeritus at Harvard and inventor of the field of sociobiology, told us that “in science what is crucial is imagination” and “advances in science rarely come from upstream, but instead they are the product of downstream imagination.” Yet several speakers took issue with how we select for medical and science professionals – valuing deep knowledge and book smarts over imagination and the ability to see the big picture – as well as how science is brought forward in increasingly deep and narrow silos. The prescription is putting greater focus on and incentivizing imaginative, holistic thinking that uncovers unexpected connections across scientific disciplines and enables greater convergence among them.
I’d give my right arm (and, yes I’m right- handed) to see what we’re discussing at TEDMED in another 10 years – which of these problems we’ve solved and which we’ve still barely cracked. Science and technology are increasingly challenging– let’s hope our downstream imagination will enable us to create meaningful – and affordable – solutions from complexity.
I had the pleasure of indulging my inner vaccine geek for three days last week at the World Vaccine Congress, where I was a guest blogger. Everyone who works in health care has a particular “disease passion” (I know, we are strange) and I have always loved working in infectious diseases. To me, the progress we have made against disease through vaccination is nothing short of extraordinary. Some of the highlights from my days are below:
How Do We Make Sure Developing World Vaccines Are Available?
The answer to this question came out of contrasting presentations by the World Bank and MSF (Doctors Without Borders, as it is known in the US). The World Bank presented a pilot case study showing how, by using advanced market commitments (AMC) made by public and private partners, they had been able to get vaccines against pneumococcal disease rapidly and cheaply into developing markets. Unfortunately, they have no other such programs underway. The current economic environment has meant that none of the governments previously involved could commit to the level
Read More ›
Sonia Sroka, SVP and director of Hispanic Marketing, was recently featured in the business section of the Sunday edition of El Diario de Hoy/Today’s Daily, El Salvador’s leading national newspaper. It is one of top 10 newspapers in Latin America and boasts the highest circulation in Central America.
The article notes that Sonia credits her success to the values instilled in her by her parents growing up in El Salvador, which she carried with her on her journey from El Salvador to Los Angeles to New York.
“Now, in a meeting room at Porter Novelli on the 36th floor of Building 7 World Trade Center in Manhattan’s financial heart, the executive [Sonia] exclaims that having been born and lived part of her childhood in El Salvador is the basis of her professional success. In fact, the [civil] war years … and the 1986 earthquake are in her memory with lessons of solidarity and teamwork to succeed.”
The complete article can be found here.
To be at SXSW is to be in a permanent state of FOMO—or Fear Of Missing Out. There are thousands of sessions taking place in dozens of locations around Austin, Texas—and that’s before you factor in the networking breakfasts, late night parties and ambush marketing from guys dressed as sumo wrestlers.
So after five days of dining at an all-you-can-eat buffet of insights, data, best practices, the future of this and the end of that, what were some of the main talking points? I’ve picked out three (with a little help from some other Porter Novelli attendees) we believe marketers will be discussing long after the remnants of the last breakfast taco have been swept from Austin’s streets:
1. Business for good
The topic of better business and social good led to some packed and passionate discussions. One session that inspired a lot of energy was “Don’t just sell things: change the world,” where big beasts from agency life urged businesses to put doing good at the heart of what they do. This is a topic close to Porter Novelli’s heart: When our agency was founded 40 years ago it was to pioneer the idea of social marketing, or using the power of communications to change people’s lives for the better. Fast forward to 2012 and this topic is again back on the agenda, and judging by the way the digerati of SXSW packed in to join the discussion, it’s more relevant than ever. It’s also a hot topic among start-ups, too: Tim O’Reilly’s call to entrepreneurs to create value in more than monetary terms by creating products that benefit their community triggered a lot of excited buzz. So the outtake for brands seems to be: Think about your business for good strategy before some new competitor grabs that space.
2. The intersection of broadcast and social
Broadcasters are looking at how they can increasingly harness social from the start, rather than have it happen around them. Now that we are having a three-screen experience—watching TV, tweeting on our mobile and browsing with a tablet PC all at the same time—they recognize we want to participate in programming. Bravo’s Andy Cohen and Top Chef Head Judge Tom Colicchio described how the show managed to create a newer, deeper, more interesting engagement level with the audience through transmedia storytelling. ABC News digital strategist Soraya Darabi even suggested that social discussions could influence programming directly, like choosing who should present the Oscars. And my colleague Stefan Vadocz got a great video interview with Beverly W. Jackson, director of marketing, strategic alliances and social media for The Recording Academy who organizes the GRAMMY Awards and her advice to focused on delivering consistent results across multiple channels gives an insight for brands on how this is already happening.
3. Brands are getting smarter at involving Gen Y
Some great discussions around the rise of Gen Y took place. Porter Novelli Gen-Y’er Valerie Elston was impressed by how brands like Chevy and GM are bringing people like here into the creative process.Some, like Red Bull, are even sidestepping traditional media altogether and creating their own documentaries around extreme sports events that bring its values to life. This is a group who are super-consumers of social media and have an always-on connection to the Web mainly through mobile devices. To reach them brands can consider different strategies from co-creation to developing content that is so disruptive or engaging, it cuts through this group’s information overload. The key word here, though, is strategy: Activity needs to be on-brand and authentic to strike the right note. Simply jumping onto the latest cool social media service is not enough.
This post originally appeared on CommProBiz on March 19, 2012.
That got your attention, right? Every year, my favorite science fiction author, futurologist and nostalgic thinker Bruce Sterling wraps up #SxSW. Sterling is, along with William Gibson and Pat Cadigan, the very foundation of the cyberpunk movement. “Chairman Bruce” gives the public what it wants: dark thoughts that analyze societies (current and future) with a razor sharp vision dipped in vinegar.
Bruce is brutal. Mankind is abusing the planet on which it lives, climate change hits us now, and we’re all heading towards being old and smelly people in dirty, overcrowded cities, afraid of the lightning skies. Bruce preaches hell and devil, in a completely atheistic way. It doesn’t make it any less scary.
When Sterling shifts his focus towards the Internet, his forward-looking vision got the full attention of the audience. Sterling predicts the failure of what he calls the Stacks: vertically integrated social media. “Stacks try to carve out a piece of internet for themselves, an independent ecosystem with its own rules, and its own operating system. They try to grab us into their walled garden, and try to make the rest of the internet irrelevant for you.”
Sterling refers openly to the big five: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. “They all think they’ll be the one Stack… and render the others irrelevant. And they’ll all be rendered irrelevant. That’s the future of the Stacks.”
Sterling says that people like the Stacks because the Internet scares them, and they feel more comfortable at home within a walled Stack. “Like cattle,” he said: “The Stacks do not care for prosperity, security or well-being of their human users. Except for their shareholders, that is. The internet has users. The Stacks has livestock. The Stacks think you are a dog.”
And once Sterling is on a roll, there is no stopping him. With skill, he shows how all the Stacks want is to become the one and only Stack, buying and annihilating other media. They are playing The Lord of the Stacks. In a friendly, nerdy way. But without any mercy. Sterling does not understand it. Why are we sheep? Why do we bow for young smart people that try to be Napoleon? “What if Mark Zuckerberg trips over a skateboard?”
Sterling says none of the five will succeed in herding us all in, de facto destroying the rest of the internet. Sterling has been right before… very often. I sure hope he is right once again….
It rains emotions here at #SxSW. Collectively, we buried Gowalla earlier this week. Mashable is on the verge of being taken over by aliens, and now, the mother of all wisdom, the notorious, always correct, all-knowing Encyclopedia Britannica throws in the towel. The costly, stately, heavy and brainy brown leather-covered books will be no more. Done. Over. Killed by the raging machine called the internet. Overlord just quietly murdered the library.
Encyclopedia Britannica has been in continuous print since it was first published in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1768. 1768. That is way before Napster and Netscape! But yesterday its management announced that it will pull the plug on the publication of its printed editions. It will, however, continue with digital versions online, available through subscription.
The book lover in me is sad that the 32 volumes of knowledge, more than 37 kilograms of wisdom, will never rest on my bookshelves. But at 1400 Euro ($1,500), the gargantuan print edition did not exactly come cheap. And, truth be told: by the time Encyclopedia Britannica was printed, each edition was by definition outdated.
The silent retreat of Encyclopedia Britannica is clearly another sign of the steady and unstoppable dominance of the digital content era.
I’ll pull a Bruce Sterling on this, and show you the future. Encyclopedia Britannica will not survive, not even on the internet superhighway. Knowledge is just a click away, and internauts hate to pay for content and knowledge that is freely available elsewhere.
Oh, I can hear some die-hards and anglo-nostalgics say that Encyclopedia Britannica was more than books: it was peer reviewed, correct, irreproachable. Only, it was not. Every single test over the last couple of years between the iconic book series and online crowd-sourced info sites (like Wikipedia) has proved disastrous for the paper queen of wisdom.
Yes, some people will subscribe. Yes, money will be generated through some cool-looking apps. But the era of Encyclopedia Britannica is done; it has lived out both its use and its purpose. It went from the emergency room into palliative care.
SXSW Interactive in Austin. It got bigger, way bigger. Close to 20,000 people converged on the Texan city for the high noon of digital, interactive and social media. Professionals brought their most shiny decks, their beta versions, their business cards and their elevator speeches. VCs tried desperately not to look too rich, as they browsed the long hallways, looking for the next Twitter or Foursquare to invest in. #SxSW is business, big business. For start-ups it’s make or break; for investors it is key to jump on the right bandwagon. For existing businesses it is a devil’s dance to look smart, on the ball and on the right track. Maintain momentum. For the ninjas, gurus and rainmakers, it is about self-promotion and selling books. For the countless visitors, it is a big show.
Walk the walk
Agencies and consultants maintain a confident front, but seem a more tense than usual. Interactive and social media shuffled the deck in a big way, and agencies and their clients are still scrambling to reinvent their business, incorporating digital tools and social media. Lines between the classic definitions of news and journalism are blurring quicker than is comfortable for most communication professionals. What is news, who brings it, and controls its authenticity? With citizen journalism, thriving blogger communities and social networks like Twitter beating the traditional news consortia on speed and authenticity, the silent question in Austin: Is journalism dying?
Into hell to regroup
Let’s face it: it is not. While lots of journalists are still moaning because social media just got the net worth of their precious press card down considerably, others are embracing the new toolkit and the new way of working. For the public, there is no difference between a good blogger and a good journalist. A verifiable link on Twitter gives a news story as accurate as a snippet on CNN. Journalism is not dying. It just went public in a big way, turning millions of engaged and highly connected citizens into the game.
Like with noodle soup, the best bits will float on top real soon. Darwin voiced it in a very trendsetting way: It is not the strongest that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most adaptable to change.
The same goes for communication consultants and agencies. The good ones can be seen at #SxSW, working on campaigns where digital and social components are rock-solid embedded in an integrated strategy driven approach.
The cheese has moved
News, messages, communications and journalism moved on into a new space. Your traditional way of thinking about your corporate communications will by no means be able to cope with this dramatically changed set of rules. If your internal and external communication professionals are not ahead of the curve, and adapted to an era where more than ever the public controls your brand, you’re in for a bumpy ride. No one seems to have all the answers ready yet,
Reshuffle, re-align
A plethora of social platforms, applications and tools were presented at SxSW this year, from interactive platforms to –big hit again- location-based community review sites. With this plentitude of platforms, tools and apps to choose from, a broad range of brands is clearly lost on how to do communications effectively. Looking closer, the steering of their communication machine is scattered all over their organogram.
PR departments, a marketing group, advertising studio, internal comms, the digital wizards, the social media team, customer relations, crisis preparedness groups, … in most organizations communications is spread so broad over the place it is not even funny. More intriguing and worrying is the fact that most of these separate communications cells are not even linked to one another, and are not even working along the same strategic lines. Multichannel communications, with multiple strategies, and no central red line is clearly asking for trouble… as the many presentations on successful and disastrous campaign teach.
Integrated Communications
Successful organizations found a way of getting communications out of the highly silo-ed approach, by kicking in internal walls. In these connected times, where communication messages get out at the speed of an angry crowd, the only way to think about comms is in an integrated way. None of the old bubbles can be successful on their own any more. We must integrate high impact tools like online video, multi-screen social TV, community building tools around profile and location; using the Web as a giant CRM tool… the possibilities are endless.
Online communication and offline communications need to be aligned, and integrated in an overall strategic battle plan. Ditto for internal and external communications ditto. For the broad audience, it does not matter if a message comes from marketing or comms: it’s a brand message, so it better be consistent, if not it will just fuel confusion. While SxSW certainly shows the new tools, it will need the better strategists and planners to click them in place in a broader whole.
Integrated communications is one of the big topics this year at #SxSW. It requires internal transparency and focus from all communicators within a company. Once an integrated approach exists, the roll out can be done through a plethora of platforms, vehicles and shiny tools. The better agency will be able to help.
“Communications starts with strategy,” Brian Solis said on Sunday. And he is right. Start with the strategy; forge an integrated way of thinking. Then, only then choose your delivery vehicle.
A communication campaign never starts with an application.
When in doubt: upgrade
While all this sounds extremely serious, it remains a lot of fun for the skilled communicator. There are more possibilities, better measurement tools, high-powered analytics. And communication tools that defy belief.
To show the world that communications still is an exciting art form, Porter Novell opted to work together with rapper Johnny Polygon, and serve clients and prospects with tongue in cheek, two-minute flashback rap of the previous day. A WrapRap. It sounds nice. It looks good. It rhymes well. But think about this: it is a multichannel, community driven, multimedia approach based on social analytics, trend spotting, storytelling and social sharing. Just saying.
###
This post originally appeared on CommProBiz on March 14, 2012.