“It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign.”

Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software movement, in an interview with the Guardian on cloud computing.

Indeed. Digibabble quite often takes the form of the stupid, the inane or the absurd. Most of us can usually spot this sort of nonsense from afar. But there are other strains of digibabble that are more insidious, harder to detect and for all their subtlety can have far greater impact.

In his new book, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, Evgeny Morozov is on the hunt for those who spin the language of technology for, if not nefarious purposes, perhaps their personal agendas, and they certainly do so without a fuller understanding (or perhaps simply a disregard?) for the ethical implications of their actions.

Morozov, the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, a New York Times Notable Book of 2011 and winner of Harvard’s Kennedy School’s 2012 Goldsmith Book Prize is not everyone’s cup of tea, as this parody Twitter account attests. He is ruthless in pursuing those who skirt the moral edges via semantics and Tim O’Reilly, Founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media is his target in The Meme Hustler, this fascinating long read in The Baffler. O’Reilly responds to Morozov via Google+, itself a worthy read as O’Reilly and his supporters hash out the various Morozov attacks.

The Morozov Offensive continues via this Buzzfeed piece which lays out his double-barrelled take-down of “internet-centrism” and “solutionism,” the type of thinking Morozov attributes to “TED talks, certain Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and much of the tech press that covers them.”

But for all his philosophical muscle-flexing and seemingly air-tight arguments, Morozov himself is not beyond reproach. Farhad Manjoo, Slate’s technology columnist and the author of True Enough: Learning To Live in a Post-Fact Society rises to the challenge and engages Morozov in a lively, four-part give and take that brings some balance to the conversation.

The truth, as so often is the case, no doubt lies somewhere in-between. But on some level the truth is secondary, the real value is in the quality of the arguments made on both sides. They lift the debate above the all too common digibabble – and subsequent digibabble masquerading as commentary on the digibabble – and transform it into a deep conversation around the politics of language and the battle to own the semiotics of technological discourse.

Yes, words matter, and no, words don’t matter. Ultimately we live and die by the strength of our ideas, regardless of what we call them. Think what you will of Morozov, he brings up a valid point when he warns that we can’t allow the corruption of words to act as a mitigating factor in which ideas survive and flourish.

* This post first appeared here.

For the video entertainment fans out there, two pieces I wrote that were published this week:

From Host to Hashtag, a look at the 2013 Oscars

First, on PSFK I wrote about the Oscars. I touch on Seth MacFarlane’s effort as host, what some brands did, social media in general, and being a real-time content creator.

Netflix is betting big on binge-viewing.

For FastCoCreate, I took a deep dive look at Netflix and their original content play with House of Cards.

I love my job. I love it because I get to think about what incidents like last night’s might mean. Maybe this one is meaningless, but my hunch is that my friend Grant McCracken would see something interesting in it. Here’s what happened:

My 14-year old son was excitedly showing off a new t-shirt he just acquired:

That’s the shirt, but that’s not my son. My 14-year old doesn’t have tats.

So, kind of an odd shirt, right? Some dude with a full beard and glasses, and the semi-cryptic, pseudo-aspirational ‘achieve.’  The image is a representation of Jack Pattillo, Editor of Achievement Hunter at Rooster Teeth Productions. Yes, I recognize that ‘Editor of Achievement Hunter at Rooster Teeth Productions’ means absolutely nothing to you. Rooster Teeth are one of those companies that didn’t, couldn’t, exist in the previous century.  Their YouTube channel boasts over 3 million subscribers and over 1 billion views!

Rooster Teeth are one of those 21st century companies that is shaping our culture in stealth mode – at least as far as the mainstream understanding of culture goes. But here’s the thing that I really found amazing in talking with my son. As I did a Google search for Jack Patillo his LinkedIn page came up so I clicked on it. As I was looking at it my son noticed the “People Also Viewed” group on the right hand side of Jack’s page. My son pointed to every single person on the list, all Rooster Teeth employee’s, and said, “I know who that is.”

Producers, web designers, VPs, show creators, you name it, my son could have told me all about them. What sort of advantages does this give Rooster Teeth? In building a relationship with their fans, in recruiting talent, in building a larger audience? I’m not sure but when I was my son’s age the only employee at a company that I would have known was Tinker Hatfield, the shoe designer from Nike. Yeah, I was that much of a Nike nut then.

From a marketing perspective I see the vast, yawning cultural chasm between the current C-Suiters and the kids that are my son’s age. Next time you are talking to a brand manager ask them about companies/people like Rooster Teeth, Valve, Tobuscus, Minecraft or Freddie W. My guess is you’ll get blank stares. In the next couple of years you’re going to see an explosion of brands and media companies (there’s a difference?) that will catch those in charge by complete surprise. It’s going to be fun to watch if you’re on the right side of things, but very messy if you’re not.

This is an edited version of last week’s Ignition newsletter, my weekly look at a topic I believe is of interest to marketers. If you’d like to receive this in your email each Monday morning, fill out the form on the right.

 
Adapt or Die. Sounds like something recently uttered by any number of marketing gurus. In fact, attribution is owed to former South African Prime Minister, P.W. Botha. But South Africa’s ability to adapt is a tale for another day. Right now I want to talk about how brands are taking this lesson, as well as academia’s “publish or perish” rule, to heart. If you read Digiday, the headlines this past week told you that change was truly afoot. Here’s a sampling:

How Virgin Mobile Fell in Love with Content
Brands Cozy up to Start-Ups
The Onion’s Quest to Make Brands Funny

Or how about this one from Mashable: New York Times Launches Start-Up Incubator

Those are pretty provocative titles if you ask me. I don’t think they signal acts of desperation, but rather an acknowledgement by brands that cultural and business shifts are happening so quickly, and in ways they are ill-suited to react to, that partnerships are the only way they can maintain their footing. Smart brands are realizing that posting “like this if you think puppy dogs are cute!” as a Facebook status is not going to get the job done. As a result, partnerships with Buzzfeed, The Onion, Funny or Die and Vice make sense. Those content publishers have cracked the code. They understand culture and what type of content people want to engage in, something that the vast majority of brands don’t understand very well.

Start-Ups present brands with an opportunity to inject new ideas and perhaps a needed shot of enthusiasm into the mix. The Mashable piece notes, ”The goal is to seek out new ways of creating, collecting and distributing news and information. The Times says it’s primarily seeking startups focused on mobile, social, video, ad technology, analytics or e-commerce who have raised “at least” seed-stage funding.”

Of course this brings up its own set up problems. Which content providers do I partner with? How do I identify which start-ups to engage? What’s a hackathon?

Great questions and no easy answers. So much of this is still new territory, with numerous players and myriad options. This is where a trusted agency partner can play a vital role. With an intimate understanding of the brand, a history of crafting compelling stories and a knowledge of how to engage with culture (that’s my bit), an agency can identify the right opportunity, collaborate and leverage the partnership for maximum effect.

At Y&R we understand the need for this type of thinking, and the process behind it. Through our Spark Plug program we’ve partnered with a variety of small, innovative companies that create some of the most cutting edge technologies around. We work with them in all sorts of ways to create new and compelling communications solutions for our client partners.

I don’t think you have to be an “edgy” brand to benefit from this sort of thinking either. The key is in understanding things like the media consumption habits of your intended audience or how technology could unlock new functionality in your brand. If the articles linked above and this note have got you thinking, give me a shout and let’s talk about how to find a content partner or host a hackathon.

At some point you recognize the tipping point. You know, when in just about every business conversation you have, someone eventually says the “magic word.” For a long time there it was “viral,” wasn’t it? You just knew at some point somebody would throw that out there. It was usually followed by enthusiastic head nodding by the others involved in the conversation. Now storytelling has become that magic word. Everyone loves to talk about the power of storytelling. It’s fascinating because neither the word, nor the concept, are particularly new to marketing communications. We’ve seen ourselves as storytellers for a very long time, and in fact we’ve been storytellers for a very long time. So, why now do we seem to be talking about storytelling with extra gusto?

There are probably several reasons for this. Perhaps it is in part a reaction to the metrics-driven approach that the marketing industry has been caught in for the last decade or so. Let’s face it, none of us — client-side or agency-side — got into this business because we loved taking statistics courses back in school. Maybe stories are our way of telling the bean counters to back off. Or could it be that the answer is more culturally-driven than that? Maybe this golden age of television we are in (Mad Men, Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones, Homeland, Breaking Bad…) has reminded us how compelling good storytelling can be. A third cause could be that the democratization of storytelling tools has made it easier for anyone, and everyone, to be storytellers. Virtually anyone can be an author, poet or filmmaker today, and share their stories with the world. As a reaction to that, maybe we feel the need to re-establish our role as cultural storytellers by flexing our narrative muscles.

And yet, if you were to watch an evening or two of primetime television, you wouldn’t see much storytelling happening during the commercial breaks. Why is that? At a time when people are less likely to watch commercials than ever, shouldn’t we be trying to make more compelling content? Why is it that T-Mobile spends millions of dollars on ads that feature the same character, yet those ads have absolutely no connection to each other? Why does Progressive feature Flo in every ad, yet we’ve seen no real narrative advancement? With YouTube available to everyone, it’s not as if having a narrative thread would make it impossible for people coming in late to catch up.

How many of you remember the Taster’s Choice (Gold Blend for UK readers) ads? Yeah, these ones. They first ran twenty years ago and I vividly remember them. They captured the imagination of the countries they ran in with their “will they / won’t they?” storyline that lasted for six or seven years and nearly a dozen spots. And they sold product as well.

Today, storytelling seems to be for online only, and then for extended length films rather than episodic storytelling. Sure, we all love Chipotle’s “Back to the Start” piece or Johnnie Walker’s amazing, do-it-all-in-one-take ”The Man Who Walked Around The World” but those seem to be the exceptions.

With all the tools available to marketers, and all the channels through which people are consuming content, I think there is a greater opportunity available to us. But what do I know? I’m certainly no novelist. I don’t own an agency that specializes in innovative storytelling techniques. I don’t run a website that uses novels as a jumping off point for cultural discovery. That’s why I’ve reached out to Jim Othmer, Jeff Gomez and Richard Nash, who, respectively, are all those things. This Thursday, January 31st at 3pm, Othmer, Gomez and Nash will be my guests for IGNITE NYC, Y&R New York’s very own live talk show. Jim, a Global Creative Director at Y&R has written a number of books; Jeff is the CEO of Starlight Runner, a transmedia storytelling agency, and Richard works at Small Demons, a brilliant little website that no description would do justice, so go check it out.

But this show goes up to 11! We’ll also be joined by Y&R planner Matt Colangelo, who has recently put together a report on storytelling, aptly named, The Story Behind Storytelling. He also studied the role that early modernist authors (such as James Joyce and Ezra Pound) had in innovating traditional storytelling techniques while at Oxford. So,yeah, he’s got game.

You can participate by joining the conversation on Twitter, using #YRNYignite.

As an industry, marketing has always been in love with the bright, shiny object. From new channels (radio, TV, online, mobile…) to new strategies (celebrity endorsements, couponing, line extensions…) to new job titles (planners, interactive media buyer, creative culturalists…), the search for the new, for an edge, has always been around. Of course, another time honored industry tradition is to watch from the sidelines and provide withering commentary on the latest innovation. Industry thought leaders love to rubberneck the Gartner Hype Cycle as the latest trend makes its way from the Peak of Inflated Expectations to the Trough of Disillusionment. At that point most move on to the next trend and the process begins anew, with little thought given to the final stages: The Slope of Enlightenment and the Plateau of Productivity. And yet that’s where the real learnings can usually be found. So today I ask you to travel back with me to a time before 2nd Screen, Big Data and Gamification roamed the Earth. Yes, all the way back to 2009 when Crowdsourcing was the hottest GMOOT (Give Me One Of Those) on the block.

Back then it seemed everyone was dying to leverage the wisdom of the crowds. Super Bowl spots, new ice cream flavors, brand logos, you name it and companies were looking to the amateurs to solve the problem. Some understood how to harness this power, most did not, and as a result a lot of the output was forgettable at best, embarrassing and harmful to the brand at worst.  I catalogued much of this with my e-book, Everyone is Illuminated, in early 2010. It includes several of my essays on the topic along with insights and POVs from a whole host of very smart industry pros. Give it a quick read if you have a minute and want to catch up on what was happening back then.

But the question today is, where is crowdsourcing now? Was it a gimmick that was fun for a while, but ultimately discarded in favor of A) the old reliables and/or B) even shinier, newer objects? The short answer is yes, crowdsourcing is worth your time. Why? Because consumers want to hav a deeper involvement with the brands they love and development in analytics and other marketing strategies such as gamification make crowdsourcing even more attractive… if you take the time to do it right.

I won’t speak to the wisdom of crowds, but it’s clear that there is economic power in crowds. Crowdfunding, a subspecies of crowdsourcing, has exploded in the last few years, with sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo playing significant roles in the launch of Generation Start-Up. Others, such as Mutopo, Victors & Spoils and Zooppa have taken on the roles of harnessing the crowds in the service of brands, acting as consultants/agencies/wranglers.

But I think brands, before they enter into this territory, need to understand a key aspect: the difference between a crowd and a tribe. More than mere semantics, this is a fundamental distinction. A crowd gawks at a car accident, congregates behind the woodshop to watch two 8th graders fight, or tunes in to watch a handful of desperate ‘contestants’ sell their dignity for a chance at 15 minutes of fame on a TV game show… and then they disappear as quickly as the came. A tribe, on the other hand, is a group of people with a common cause. They are there for each other. If you are doing things right, your brand will create a tribe of followers who you can activate in support of a variety of executions. That’s the type of crowd you want to cultivate, and cultivating a tribe is no easy thing for most brands. This is where an agency can play a critical role, for in addition to a superior product and visionary mission, brands that tell a compelling story are the ones that develop tribes. And so successful crowdsourcing isn’t achieved by circumventing the traditional ad agency, but rather, it happens with the help of an engaged agency partner.

David Bratvold, founder of The Daily Crowdsource echoes my sentiments: “The world’s largest brands are adopting crowdsourcing. It’s not a tactic where they’re relinquishing their traditional agency model, but rather looking for agencies that can handle both methods.”

And what is the compelling reason why brands (and agencies) should be embracing crowdsourcing? According to Bratvold, “Consumers have long been clamoring for more bi-directional engagement with their favorite brands & crowdsourcing is the perfect way for them to get it.”

I tend to agree with him here. All marketing trends point away from a messaging push and towards a more collaborative, two-way engagement with consumers. And again, to be clear, these messages, this new way of communicating with brands, will still be lead by agencies. More from Bratvold:  ”Agencies have no reason to fear crowdsourcing as long as they find a way to add it to their set of tools. The brands that embrace crowdsourcing properly will succeed in the next decade. The brands that don’t will fall behind. Microsoft knows this. So do Doritos, GE, Kimberly-Clark, Pepsi, & Coca-Cola  - they all know how powerful crowdsourcing is, and it’s slowly becoming more widely used within these organizations.”

I think crowdsourcing can also be enhanced when you look at something like gamification. Smart game design accounts for how all members of a tribe will react to behavioral incentives and keeps all members of the tribe engaged. In some ways, all gamification is crowdsourcing, but not all crowdsourcing uses gamification. Both tactics can be powerful, especially when used in conjunction, but can easily be misused as well. Again, this is where a trusted agency partner plays a key role.

On February 27 & 28, Bratvold and The Daily Crowdsource will be hosting Crowdopolis, a conference showcasing Fortune 500 Corporations using crowdsourcing to out-innovate, out-process, & out-engage their competition. Companies like GE, Microsoft, Walmart, eBay, SAP, NASA & many others are scheduled to be on-hand to lead the discussion. As a special offer to Ignition readers, Bratvold is offering us a 2-for-1 discount for the event. You can register here, be sure to use the promotional code: AgencyYR to receive your discount.  The 2-for-1 promotion ends Jan 28 so book now. The event will be held at:
Metropolitan Pavilion Center
125 W 18th St
New York, NY 10011

I’m going to be in attendance and I hope I see you there.