The Communication Movement

My good friend and co-conspirator in the Eighth Mass Media, Jonathan Macdonald, launches phase two of his Every Single One of Us; Communication Movement initiative today.
Go take a look with my hearty recommendation. There's a wealth of resource and inspiration available there for all to share.
Join in, you just might be part of something big.

Here's the Press Release:

An industry movement entitled EverySingleOneOfUs (www.everysingleoneofus.com) launches today as a grassroots resource, aggregating knowledge, and authorizing best practice and methodologies that ensure optimal mobile advertising user experience.

Founded by Jonathan MacDonald, who was previously a Chairman of the Music Industries Association, Commercial Director of Ministry of Sound, and Sales Director at the advertisingfunded mobile network Blyk, the effort unites a cross-section of mobile operators, mobile companies and big-name brands to educate the market and encourage discussions about emerging business models, industry issues and areas of growth that will help companies, stakeholders and shareholders engage with potential consumers and ultimately drive mobile advertising revenues and positive results.

The success of mobile advertising and subsidized models based on delivery of content, applications and services, is dependent upon the willingness of participants to accept advertising on their mobile devices. Whilst recent research, including a 2007 survey by Generator Research, confirms that over half of mobile users (61% US and 72% UK) are interested in mobile advertising, there is a catch: Mobile advertising must be relevant and genuinely useful.

Ultimately, users demand advertising that relates to their interests and is tailored to their specific needs. Anything else will be perceived as ‘spam’, which degrades the experience, increases the likelihood of churn, and breeds a distinct lack of trust.

“I created this movement as a collaborative project for us all to grow the industry together,” said Jonathan MacDonald, Founder of EverySingleOneOfUs.
“The promised land of ‘upward curve revenue’ from mobile is unlikely to happen without a catalyst. This catalyst can only come, in my opinion, by working together in the interests of citizens rather than the protective interests of various elements of the value chain.

The EverySingleOneOfUs movement uses state-of-the-art tools to map out structure and progress, such as ‘Personal Brain’ (www.thebrain.com), and cutting edge publishing platforms to ensure clarity, access and freedom of expression.”

The inspiration for the EverySingleOneOfUs movement comes from The Communication Ideal (Vol 1), a comprehensive and collaborative online publication authored by MacDonald, drawing on the passions and pragmatism of a loose group of contributors -- ranging from senior executives at mobile networks such as Carl Taylor, Director of Applications & Services, Hutchinson Whampoa, through to renowned bloggers/research analysts including Peggy Anne Salz, Founder of MSearchGroove, and thought leaders like best-selling author and independent consultant Tomi Ahonen - to identify and differentiate the shortcomings in mobile advertising approaches, more specifically the industry's blanket assumptions about user behaviour, from the positive opportunities and potentials for growth.

Based on these insights, MacDonald has connected with a wider network of professionals and practitioners to develop No Way Back From Here (Vol 2) – a collaborative effort to provide players in the evolving mobile advertising ecosystem with a realistic roadmap to change.

More importantly, this second volume – which is a work in progress - will guide the future work of EverySingleOneOfUs worldwide.

The first phase will kick off with Mobile Advertising U.K., an ambitious and far-reaching research project which will be endorsed by industry associations in early 2009. Drawing from primary research, in-depth interviews with 25+ mobile executives, agencies and mobile networks, as well as an online consumer survey, Mobile Advertising U.K. will expertly document the state of the mobile advertising industry in the U.K., and shed important light on industry obstacles and opportunities.

To an extent, Mobile Advertising U.K. will follow the blueprint of Mobile Advertising Netherlands, a mobile advertising research project spearheaded by AENEUS Strategy Consulting and Management and sponsored by some 20+ companies including GroupM, a leading media investment management operation; telecom vendor Alcatel-Lucent; mobile operators and service providers Vodafone, T-Mobile, KPN, and Blyk; and full-service media agencies Starcom, Marvellous, MADS Mediacom Mindshare, and Mediaedge:CIA.

MacDonald also states: “The research project stage will conclude by the end of Q1 2009 and will be complemented by a range of conferences, seminars and master-classes from the world’s thought leaders and industry heads. Together we can mature this industry in a positive and productive way, and the angle we approach this from is firmly biased towards the best interests of the citizens of the world – every single one of us.”

To learn more now, visit www.everysingleoneofus.com.

Connecting the dots. Creating change

Take this (via Mark Earls)

"What can we do, what do we need to do, to improve our differentiation?”

And add this. (via Neil Perkin)

"Everyone sat inside... organisations has the leverage to transform the model of the business they are in. When they try, the temptation is for the business to wrap such ideas in short-term ROI, judge it by existing rules, implement it through an existing structure, make it fit an existing process. You don't manage innovation. You need to get the organisation, with all that process, all that hierarchy, all those assumptions, out of the way

Sprinkle in some of this. (Via Chris Carfi)

"There is a transformational thought, a "transforming idea," and a point at which the group "gets it" and starts to gel in the new world."

And... do not relax.

Aww shucks!

I've been overwhelmed by the many very kind emails, tweets and comments following my announcement yesterday of my departure from Bauer and my arrival at Brando Digital.
So many wonderful people saying so much that is positive and encouraging. But none can top this.
Jonathan Macdonald. Simply - and truly - thank you. Wow. :-)

Best Practice in Social Media? Best practice being human

The estimable Neil Perkin just tagged me as part of a 'Best Practice in Social Media' meme.
Trouble is Neil has said much of what I would have.

Actually, that's not a problem - it's a great thing that so many of us are converging around similar conclusions: Seth Godin, David Armano, Mark Earls, Jackie Danicki, Alan Moore, Euan Semple and seminally Doc Searls and the rest of the Cluetrain gang, to name but a few...

So yes I'll agree with Neil, once again, that human interactions are critical. (Image by dotbenjamin via flickr)

They are exemplified in notions such as P2PR, Lean-Too Marketing, The Intention Economy (which Doc was referring to more than two years ago, so I'm a late comer on that!) and summed up as best as I know how in this slidedeck:

Adapting Brands To The Networked World

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: internet network)

If you want a case study; try this. The slidedeck above also refers to some great examples of the use of social media.

Quick guide? Well I wrote this for 'how to blog'. Seems much of it is appropriate to all social media.


Time to tag: I nominate: Neville, Christopher, David, Mark and Jonathan
Dan was already tagged by Neil! This meme was started by Mitch.

Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media: Download and share

I'm off for a little R&R. So I thought I'd leave you something chunky to download, read and digest while I'm gone.
 Tomi Ahonen (of Communities Dominate Brands) is about to publish his sixth book - Mobile As Seventh of the Mass Media.
Regular readers of this blog will know we're fans of the concept (originally worked up by Tomi and his co-author on CDB, Alan Moore).
Jonathan Macdonald and I are now pushing the idea into what the Eighth Mass Media can become.

But right now you can download a free 30-page excerpt of Mobile As Seventh of the Mass Media in advance of publication. And, should it tempt you to buy (it will, particularly if the mobile space and digital convergence fascinate you) you can pre-order here.

Tomi says: "Here is the pdf file of the book, Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media. It includes the Foreword by Pekka Ala-Pietila (CEO of Blyk and past president Nokia), the Introduction Chapter, one of the case studies (Flirtomatic) and the fourth chapter, Mobile as 7th Mass Media, as well as the index of the 18 chapters and 16 case studies.

You may freely quote from this document, and you may freely forward it. I am shortly going to launch a blogsite for the book as well, so there will be a place to collect the feedback, news and developments in the 7th Media space. If you blog about the book, I would appreciate it if you could include a mention of the futuretext.com website where potential buyers can already order the book today, before it appears on Amazon in a couple of weeks.

So that's the deal. Enjoy. (Image by Norma1 via flickr)


Pleased to say I'm co-hosting a two-day course at Oxford University on the subject (Mobile As The 7th Mass Media)  with Tomi this winter. Check here for dates when confirmed.

And I'll be presenting on The Eighth Mass Media at WidgetWeb Expo in London in October (6-7) and at Mobile Content (also in London) in November. Tomi and Jonathan Macdonald are also on the bill of the latter. Unmissable really ;-)

Now, where's that suntan lotion...

Blogs dead? Who cares? Ubiquity of Connectivity is what matters

The eighth mass media is not about tools. I care little who says blogging is dead or who claims microblogging is the next big thing.

The eighth mass media is where:
we are the connections and the way the connections are made; beyond silos. It needs tools but it isn't made by them.

It's the direction we're headed in. The sixth and seventh medias (internet and mobile) are helping us on our way.

How we choose to connect, in which silo or with which tools, is less important than that we do connect - and, crucially, as widely and instantly as possible. Blogs are quite good for this. They are considerably less silo'd than your average (what we traditionally think of) social network. Don't write them off just yet.

More importantly Hugh refers us to one of Clay Shirky's more oft-repeated lines (my emphasis):

"Yes, again, it's all about what Clay Shirky said four years ago, in a wonderful interview he did for Gothamist:

"So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this -- the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast."

Amen to that. We all have cheap, rapid, easy ways of sharing our metadata. That's what publishing has become. Publishing for all. Advertising for all.

We can all share content. Content is the conversation starter, conversation is where ideas turn into action, action is where value is created.

Now we can all share in sharing this. We can all share ourselves.

That is what changes everything.

In some ways the eighth mass media is also the first (as J_Mac pointed out in a comment on the original post).

Alan Moore and Tomi Ahonen's work on Mobile as the 7th mass media lists them thus:
1. Print
2. Recordings
3. Radio
4. Cinema
5. TV
6. Internet
7. Mobile

The eighth is where we are moving towards: We are the eighth mass media. But we were of course always the first, too.

The difference between the pre-mass information age and the post mass broadcast age is speed of transmission and scale of spread both enabled by the ubiquity of connectivity.

We need the sixth and seventh mass medias to enable the eighth.