The power of collective intelligence

Yahoo music ratings, Google PageRank, MySpace friends, Netflex user reviews – these are all manifestations of the wisdom of the crowd. Millions of regular people are the new tastemakers. Some of them act as individuals, others are parts of groups organised around shared interests, and still others are simply herds of consumers automatically tracked by software watching their every behaviour. For the first time in history, we’re able to measure the consumption patterns, inclinations and tastes of an entire market of consumers in real time and just as quickly adjust to the market to reflect them. These new tastemakers aren’t a super-elite of people cooler than us, they are us

We are leaving the Information Age and entering the Recommendation Age. Today information is ridiculously easy to get you practically trip over it on the street. Information gathering is no longer the issue – making smart decisions based on the information is now the trick .

Now here's a true story you will find very interesting!

When we started Interactive Marketing we were introduced to Alvin Toffler who, when hearing of what we were doing simply said "Persevere but remember vested interests will be against you".

Was he ever right!

We were confident that what we were proposing would be more effective and we would be giving clients the very communication programme they needed, that we borrowed three and a half million dollars from venture capitalists.

Our pitch to Clients was beguiling and had never been heard before: "you pay nothing to come into the programme. However, you agree to accept the findings of a stringent purchase study, to be conducted by the independent Market Research Corporation of America.

Based on those findings would you then pay us a fifteen per cent commission on the incremental increases in sales produced."

The Clients fell about laughing, they had never had such an offer from any of their advertising agencies. "Where do we sign?"

We mail delivered nineteen million copies of Shopper’s Voice. Because it was mail delivered we could have Test and Control cells as next door neighbours, thus allowing us to measure changes in behaviour and actual purchase amongst those who had received the program – Test and those who had not – Control.

Obviously Control was exposed to everything else the featured brands were involved in. MRCA are on record as saying, "It was the (then) most precise purchase study ever carried out by us."

To get a perspective, no advertising campaign had ever had such a high degree of accountability put behind it after just one exposure and to this day still hasn’t.

To cut a long story short, when we presented the increase in sales figures to Colgate Palmolive, we said that the results indicated a fee of seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars based upon the agreed MRCA formulae. All Colgate could say to us as they handed us the cheque, "Could we redefine the rules of this game please?"

The figure arrived at was due to the results gained from a double page interactive spread inside our Shopper’s Voice Magazine. But interactive in our terms is where the communication process became two way not based upon any electronic gizmo! The recipients were, for the first time in any advertising context, given the opportunity to be involved with the brands and be part of the communication process.

Colgate had never experienced such a result from all their billions of dollars invested in conventional advertising and they directed us to their advertising agency.

In hindsight, it is amusing to recall the many, many excuses they made not to use us and they stifled the idea. And in those days if the agency said no, very often the client accepted their judgement.

Why did they bring down the portcullis? Well you can draw your own conclusions but in our mind it was a fear that here was an idea better and more cost effective than anything they were capable of doing. It was outside of their control and, God forbid, it would make their contribution ACCOUNTABLE!

Every day you're exposed to more than four hours of media.

Every day you're exposed to more than four hours of media. Most of it is

optimized to interrupt what you're doing. And it's getting increasingly harder

and harder to find a little peace and quiet. The ironic thing is that marketers

have responded to this problem with the single worst cure possible. To deal with

the clutter and the diminished effectiveness of Interruption Marketing, they're

interrupting us even more!

Interactive Communication, properly executed, changes all that, just one exposure to an Interactive "Event" is more effective and accountable that "Frequency" in Advertising terms!

Negative consumer attitudes toward advertising...

 ... "remain the single biggest barrier to improving return on investment for marketing spending. Until we get better at engaging consumers, they're going to continue to push back and resist what advertisers are trying to deliver to them.

CONSUMERS AND ADVERTISING!

Consumers are quite aware that advertising is propaganda, and compensate for

that fact when assimilating its messages -- just as they compensate for the

perceived biases of the media to which they attend. The great socioeconomic

transformations of recent years -- the acceptance of Japanese cars, the advent

of the personal computer, the rise of VCRs -- were accomplished with little

advertising support. "Time and time again," James Norris wrote, nearly half a

century after Borden, "advertising has proven powerless to instigate, to sustain

or to reverse trends in public opinion or fashions of consumption."

Broken advertising and marketing!

We live in a world of broken advertising and marketing models. To understand why advertising and marketing leaders cannot easily fix the sputtering advertising and marketing systems , you have to realize that the economic models on which the United States, Europe and China relied are collapsing. The models differ, but the breakdowns are occurring simultaneously and feed on each other. The result is that the advertising and marketing recovery flags, while pessimism and uncertainty mount.

However you can solve most of your marketing and advertising needs by turning to interactive communication, properly executed, then, in one flash you can be highly successful again!

CONGRATULATIONS! YOUR BRAND IS ABOUT TO BECOME OBSOLETE

Blockbuster had it all figured out. Kodak was America's favorite company. Tower Records was the

 place to be. Cunard was the fastest way to travel. Alas, no more. Each of these companies were

blindsided by innovation. In the blink of an eye, their entire reason for being disappeared into thin air.

Every day companies new and old, small and large, start down the path to obsolescence. Some have

no idea that they are in trouble, others are fully aware and are begging for help. It's a challenge that

can only be addressed by changing culture and behavior, and by a mix of traditional and Interactive

thinking.

1)Identify the opportunity (brand, consumer, behavior, competition)

2)Convince the right people that they have a problem (get thee to

the CEO)

3)Build things for consumers and internal audiences (useful things)

Interactive Communication, properly executed will train people to think differently about how they

approach problems, to look at fixing the big picture instead of tactical problems, and to

see the opportunity in change

Want to discover more? Contact paulashby40@yahoo.com