Out of the wilderness into Spannerworks/iCrossing

At the tail end of last year I stopped doing the London commute and said goodbye to my new friends at Headshift. Whilst I enjoyed the company of the people and the buzz of the social software/enterprise 2 thang it proved too much. I missed reading stories to the girls at bedtime and hated standing from London Bridge to Haywards Heath more often than not (if I could get on the bloody train in the first place!).

Fortunately, a good contact of mine, Ray Richards at Spannerworks, phoned me in November and asked what I was up to. His timing couldn’t have been better. Having spent a couple of months in a consulting capacity at Spannerworks, working with Ray and helping my good friend Antony Mayfield develop the Content and Media offering I jumped at the chance to get more deeply involved at the turn of the year.

I did read John Batelle’s book in October last year which was typically freerange of me and thankfully it served to confirm much of my thinking about the evolution of search as a marketing framework and the success of Spannerworks and where it’s heading.

Here’s the five reasons for joining Spannerworks:

1. The people. I’ve known Arjo Ghosh the founder since about 2001 and have always thought him to be a man of integrity, incredibly smart and focused on growing a great company. I’ve known Ray for a similar period of time, and his decision to join Spannerworks full-time five years ago confirmed many instincts about the company. When Antony Mayfield joined Spannerworks, another penny dropped. To be working with these dudes is great. They’re sound and going places. As I gradually get to know the other members of the team – now around 60, I can sense purpose and a very positive attitude to learning and growing.

2. The challenge. So far I’ve been extremely freerange in my work with involvement in projects spanning brand and product development, social media research and consultancy and an emerging focus as a client partner feeding all of the above. This is great as there’s nothing better than a mix of challenges that draw on my strengths and experience.

3. The tie-up with iCrossing. Creating a global digital marketing organisation of the future is a very interesting thing to be involved in. I completely subscribe to the Jeff Herzog (the founder of iCrossing) view of search marketing turning advertising on it’s head.

To quote Jeff:

“The interactive capability of the internet has turned the traditional advertising model of blasting out messages to the masses on its head. Today, the customer seeks the business – where and when they want – ushering in a new generation of media and advertising.”

4. Technologies
There’s some tools emerging at Spannerworks that make me smile. Having been part of the team that made AOL a huge success in the UK in the late ’90s and a pioneer in open source with Getfrank, (even if Charlie Leadbeater refers to me as Frank Byford ) I like to think that I can spot useful tools for communication every now and then.

5. Brighton (and beyond)
All of the above happening and I’m in Brighton. Yes, the home of the football team I’ve supported all my life, where I can walk to work and all that. But even better, there is a now a work-related beyond as Spannerworks begins it’s overseas expansion.

Bring it on.

ps: Haven’t been posting much recently as the last couple of weeks have been all about getting the brand integration and website ready. A remarkable story in it’s own right given the timescales.

On parenting, violence and the need for the genuine progress indicator

More evidence of the need for a Genuine Progress Indicator after another terrible week for children.

My belief in the need for more meaningful measures of progress has been further illustrated this week by the UNICEF report on Children’s Lifestyles and by today’s horrific news of ‘parents’ goading their 2 and 3 year old children to fight and filming themselves laughing and joking whilst the youngest was visibily distressed during this awful event.

On the latter point, I stopped eating my dinner tonight at 8pm after hearing the news on Radio 4. My wife turned the radio off after the final headline about a man raping his 2 year old niece. We both sat in silence. Sarah couldn’t hold back the tears. Having just put our beautiful, happy, daughters to bed we were speechless.

What is going on in this country? Don’t get me started.. Fortunately the wisdom of the young was acknowledged by The Independent in response to the UNICEF report by a teenager:

“The richer we become as a society, the less mature young people need to be. Too many people expect the good things but don’t want to take responsibility.”

As Sarah said, some people view children as commodities, or lifestyle accessories.

Paul Kelbie in The Independent went on to report:

“Unicef said that, compared to Holland and Sweden which came out as top places to be a child, most British children feel unloved and unsupported by a society which regards them more as a burden rather than as a valuable investment. “There is not enough to do for teenagers when they leave school. There’s no jobs and no prospects for most people,” said Ciaran McIntyre.
“Most people don’t want to live like this but they just can’t see a way out. There needs to be more help to give more people the confidence to get out there and prove to themselves they can make a better life.”

Not surprisingly, those at the top of GDP figures, the US and the UK (5th) were at the bottom of the UNICEF table. Why is this? Could be something to do with a particular attitude to violence: one that starts at the top with the perpetual fighting of wars and a lack of support for human and in particular (children’s rights) in order to support the overall growth obsession.

Rant over, I still feel sick.

From the World Bank:

Total GDP 2005
(millions of US dollars)

1 United States 12,455,068
2 Japan 4,505,912
3 Germany 2,781,900
4 China 2,228,862
5 United Kingdom 2,192,553
16 Netherlands 594,755
20 Sweden 354,115

LINKS:

UNICEF: Report Card 7, Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries
BBC News story
Independent
Full GDP list

Openness: Jobs makes the case for scrapping DRM

Apple’s Steve Jobs calls for Europeans to lobby the big 4 music labels to scrap DRM.

Put simply, he states, 97% of music is sold DRM free. Only 3% of music on iPods (the only source for which he has accurate data) is bought from the iTunes store.

In an interesting piece he explains why (and how) Apple has evolved the iPod/iTunes success and dissects the reasons why DRM is held as necessary by the major labels.

That figure, 97% is huge and to me represents a reasonable assessment of those of us that are lucky enough to be early adopters in numerical terms. Makes me think that the old school (major labels) really must believe that we are influential. As Jobs suggests, innovation is what it’s all about and protecting crap systems is an expensive waste of time that the labels must scrap if they want us, the early adopters to give them any attention down the line. There’s a big battle to be fought yet however. Openness though, it’s a recurring theme.

On Technorati and Ogilvy alliance

Big news of the last twenty-four hours for me is the tie-up between Technorati and Ogilvy. Many questions arise as to to why Technorati has chosen to go this route. But first here’s the quote from Technorati:

Ogilvy creatives and account teams will use Technorati’s conversational marketing products to build relationships between brands and conversations relevant to those brands. This will result in the the creation of destination sites, new forms of advertising and communities of interest.

For bloggers and other citizen media creators it means new forms of distribution and awareness as brands increasingly enter the web as media sites and hubs of live web conversation. As we developed this product line it was clear that the best way to advance the state of the art was to show some of the worlds best creatives on what was possible and then work with them and major brands on how to build sites and advertising that reflect the conversations and passions of each brand’s identity.

In a period where marketing is daring to shift from traditional to social media, and from one-way communication to relationships, we are extremely excited about helping Ogilvy’s clients to innovate on the Live Web. A genuine conversation beats mass communication any day– and thats an arena Ogivly and Technorati are working together to advance.

Stay tuned for more exciting developments from the citizen marketing front, and don’t be surprised when you start to see our little green talk-bubble popping up on your favorite popular brand websites.

First question is why Ogilvy or any so-called creative agency for that matter? I thought Technorati could be the Google of the blog world if it played it’s cards right. That is, blogging is a manifestation of human interests that cut across the commercial, private and public spheres. Is this not a step into the centre-ground of the commercial sphere too soon? (Centre-ground being the space between digital and old-school advertising/media). Perhaps I misjudged their idea of the big idea – ie commoditising conversation. Silly old idealistic me.

Or, second, given the debate about the future of advertising in the UK does this alliance open up a tacit acceptance of a new basis for collaboration between media/tech/creative businesses that get networks over channels as the key organinsing principle in the future of media?

Or thirdly, will this move encourage others to create more enlightened and thus open models of ‘conversation marketing’ services to deliver linkage and thus value between people, brands and conversation? Personally the idea of myfavouritebrand.com with a ‘conversation station’ with a nice green bubble provided by Technorati sucks big time. It’s about as authentic as a focus group.

Or finally, am I missing the point entirely?

Any thoughts?