Agency co-creation: very hard to make it work but that’s where the most value lies

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There’s a great article in the latest issue of B&T Today on how Westpac, one of Australia’s big four banks, is approaching working with its advertising and creative agencies. Here are a few choice excerpts from the article, which is well worth a read in its entirety.

Jee Moon, director of brand and marketing at Westpac [said] that an agency roster based on co-creation, not simply collaboration, is key to establishing and maintaining a strong brand identity.

She added the “one stop shop”, integrated agency model in Australia had “never materialised” and that a rostered agency model based on co-creation in which agencies do not simply coexist but coproduce was key to developing and maintaining a strong brand positioning.

“At Westpac we have moved from a contractual agency model, which we had with the Red House when there was little to bind the agencies together apart from a piece of paper, to a system of collaboration where our partners work together as a community of experts, and are currently striving for a true, co-creation model,” Jee said of her agency partners The Campaign Palace, Yello and Lavender.

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Tools for lifestreaming become available

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I have had extensive media coverage this week for my forecasts for social technologies for 2016. One of the predictions that has attracted the most attention is that lifestreaming will become commonplace. Many of us will capture videos, images, audio of conversations and far more. This may be to record for our own purposes, to share with friends or family, or to provide access to teh world at large.

The underlying technologies to do it are certainly available, including cheap storage. However the practical tools that make it easy are only just now getting onto the market. It is not easy to rig up automated cameras or head-mounted video recorders and automatically synchronize with online systems.

The latest is a tool specifically designed for lifestreaming. New Scientist says:

Worn on a cord around the neck, the camera takes pictures automatically as often as once every 30 seconds. It also uses an accelerometer and light sensors to snap an image when a person enters a new environment, and an infrared sensor to take one when it detects the body heat of a person in front of the wearer. It can fit 30,000 images onto its 1-gigabyte memory.

The Vicon camera will be marketed to researchers initially at around US$820, and be available to consumers next year.

Interestingly, the device has emerged from the Microsoft Sensecam, which has been shown to help people with Alzheimers and dementia to recall the events of the day. This kind of memory aid could be equally as valuable to the rest of us.

Futurist proved correct! …and today describes the extraordinary social technologies of 2016 (release)

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This morning Future Exploration Network issued this press release (excuse the hyperbole :-) ) I have already done several radio interviews on the forecasts in the release with quite a few more radio, newspaper and TV interviews lined up for the next days – the ideas seem to have struck a chord.

Futurist proved correct! …and today describes the extraordinary social technologies of 2016

Seven years ago, in his prescient book Living Networks, global leading futurist Ross Dawson accurately described the networked world of today, anticipating social networks, Twitter, corporate blogging, crowd-sourcing, personalised advertising, virtual personal assistants and much else that is now familiar to us.

Today, he offers insights into the extraordinary world of technology we will experience seven years into the future.

Ross’s forecasts for 2016 include:

• Many people will wear video glasses as they commute and walk around, experiencing new forms of television, news updates, and detailed information about the world around them and people they meet.

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Will Spotify crack open the all-you-can-eat music subscription model?

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Spotify is one of the hottest online music properties of the moment, currently pushing into the US from its home territory of Europe, where it has over 2 million users in the UK and over 4 million users in the continent. Its founder Daniel Ek recently said that it is doubling revenues every month.

The basic model is providing music streaming from a library of more than 5 million songs, through European deals with all the major music labels plus many independents. Ad-supported free subscriptions are available, or full packages for EUR/GBP9.99 or equivalent per month which include ad-free access and the ability to download over 3,000 tracks to your music player to listen to wherever you are.

Early this decade the all-you-can-eat music subscription model was getting some attention. In my 2002 book Living Networks I wrote:

These twin powerful trends of greater access to content, and increased awareness of quality content, can result in greater revenue for these industries, but new business models are required. For example, US music consumers currently spend on average $60 a year on CDs—equivalent to perhaps four albums. If each of those consumers were given the option to pay $10 per month, and in return get all the music they wanted, it is safe to predict that most would take it up, feel they are getting great value, and the industry would double in size.

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Where tablets will fit into the media landscape

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Rumors about the forthcoming Apple tablet are heating up. Gizmodo reports that Apple is in discussions with New York Times and other publishers about putting their content on a new device, with a mooted launch date of January. Wired Gadget Lab says to expect a device running the iPhone operating system, with 5-6 times the resolution of an iPhone screen and 7 times the screen size. Techcrunch suggests that the device’s size will mean an on-screen keyboard can be used for touch-typing.

In considering how tablets from Apple or others will be used as a media device, it is useful to refer to our Future of the Media Lifecycle visual from last year.

Media Lifecyle

Click on the image to download full pdf

This shows the lifecycle of media across home and mobile spaces, including how devices and interfaces facilitate the diffusion and creation of content from mainstream media through social media and life streaming and back again in a never-ending cycle.

As shown in the visual, there are two primary device forms that will be used in mobile media.

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Keynote on Creating the Future of Media including Six Strategic Issues for publishers

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Yesterday I did a keynote for Publishers Australia on Creating the Future of Media, pointing to driving forces, key strategic issues, and action items for media companies today, with Iggy Pintado also presenting on leveraging social media in publishing.

The event attracted more attendees than any similar event organized by Publishers Australia so far, so clearly these issues are at the top of the agenda for the industry.

The slides to my presentation are below. As always, note that these slides are designed to accompany my presentation, NOT to be meaningful as stand-alone information. However many people tell me they still find value in the slides even without being able to attend my keynotes, so feel free to peruse them!

Creating the future of media: Keynote by Ross Dawson

View more presentations from rossdawson.

To complement the slides, here is a brief description of the Six Strategic Issues I covered in the presentation:

1. Scaling

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Video interview on the future of interactive marketing and online business

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In the lead-up to my opening keynote at IPZ2009 Interactive Marketing Summit in Istanbul on 21 October, Turkish crowdsourced site Buzla did a video interview with me.

Click here to go the video interview in English, subtitled in Turkish.

As I explained earlier, the concept was that members of Buzla site spent two weeks submitting questions for me. The most popular questions as voted by the members were then posed to me in the video interview.

Buzlainterview.jpg

Click on the image to go to the video.

Again, I am preceded by the psychedelic teddy bears, which I am growing rather fond ot.

Here were the questions selected by the audience that I responded to in the interview:

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Case study: hitting the Billboard charts by free online streaming of the album

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I notice that Imogen Heap is continuing with the free streaming of her album Ellipse . And no doubt significantly because of the free streaming, Ellipse is charting at #5 on Billboard. It is a glorious album, though I think we can pretty definitely count the free streaming of the album on the web as a very effective strategy. Perhaps it will become commonplace to stream music for free in order to maximize sales.

I’d be keen to know the proportion of sales of this album and the songs on it online versus through CD. It would almost be surprising if she sold much in CDs at all, because her presence is so online..

I notice Imogen on Twitter now has over a million followers.

A bit tangentially, I just found this beautiful video of a beautiful song by Kate Havnevik, who I found through collaborative filtering and Imogen’s music. If you like Imogen you’ll absolutely like the extraordinary Kate. (note that it doesn’t start for 10 seconds)

Updated version of Social Media Strategy Framework

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Our Social Media Strategy Framework released a few months ago has been getting a lot of attention and downloads. Based on the feedback we’ve been getting, one of the things that was missing in the first Beta version was a clearer explanation of the structure of the diagram, which has two simultaneous flows down the left and right sides of the circle.

We have clarified that in this version, indicating that the left side shows the three steps in the process of ENGAGEMENT while the right side shows the three steps in STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT.

For a complete description of the diagram see the launch of the original framework.

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Click on the image to download pdf

This is still a Beta and we will continue to develop this, so please give us your input on how to improve it!

Video of Bruce Sterling keynote on the dawn of the augmented reality industry

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Bruce Sterling , one of the founders of the cyberpunk genre, gave a fabulous keynote on the dawn of the augmented reality industry in Amsterdam when Layar’s Reality Browser was launched a few weeks ago.

Bruce says that augmented reality s a techno-visionary’s dream come true. He’s been following the space since it began at Boeing in 1992 and has been blogging steadily about augmented reality over the last few months. He covers the problems of the space as well as the massive opportunity. Bruce is a fantastic guy to hear from to get some perspective on what will become a massive industry and undoutededly substantially shift how we relate to “reality”.

Video: Bruce Sterling’s Keynote – At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry from Maarten Lens-FitzGerald on Vimeo.