A New 95 Thesis

As a Lutheran, I’m generally protective of the 95 Thesis, the revolutionary arguments put forth by theologian Martin Luther in 1517 that disputed salvation could be purchased. Those thesis points changed the course of Christianity giving birth to the Protestant movement that would usher in a new theory of salvation through faith. Man, Luther said, could converse directly with God.

So, you’ll understand my initial skepticism when I read the Cluetrain Manifesto which posits 95 thesis of an entirely different nature. The book, co written by Rick Levine, Chistopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger puts forth a new concept of business marketing in the internet era. The writers argue, convincingly, that business marketing has devolved back to a conversation between customers and businesses. In this new frontier where users and buyers can discuss, share and openly confront business, understanding how to become part of this conversation is critical for businesses.

The writers make a number of excellent points and the book is a must read for business marketing teams with a web presence and strategy. Some of the advice ranges in practical value. For example, the authors urge businesses to develop a sense of humor while also providing key suggestions for how to avoid web flashes. What comes across very strongly is the sense of genuineness that business must now propagate. Lose the fancy PR horse and pony show. Its about as staid as 19th century verbiage, the writers say. Recognize that people are making fun of you. Don’t end up being the uptight principal with “kick me” taped to your back.

These and other sage –if not harsh- words of advice constitute the book’s opening 95 Thesis. In truth, there is considerable redundancy in the authors’ 95 points. But this is more than made up for in the book’s subsequent chapters where the writers delve into key concepts for understanding how marketing is returning to a conversational state and how businesses can navigate this new territory.

Often, the book’s tone is condescending. I would be a touch offended by some of the language were I the head of PR for one of the companies the writers describe. The book often trivializes the importance of message control and PR management in a way that may persuade some this is nothing more than well worded ranting. In fact, its not, the book is honest and its analysis and predictions are totally believable. How businesses interact with their clients has changed and moved away from the controlled parameters in which PR thrived. Now, business must find a way to reintroduce itself into the ongoing conversations that have taken over.

I suppose its not to different from some of the fundamental lessons from 1517. Its about how conversational transactions empower people. Martin Luther, told us we can converse directly with God. The writers of Cluetrain Manifesto tell us are our conversations will dictate how business engage with us.

Those Bloody Millennials

I'm slightly peeved after reading Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais's book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics. Don't get me wrong, its a fantastic book. In fact, the pair must be engaged in considerable back slapping after their election predictions came true. Much as the book predicted, young Americans, spurred by a web savvy campaign turned out in numbers, not just to vote, but to campaign.

No disputing that. Nor can one dispute the irreversible role played by social networking sites in this wave of civic energy. The authors got that right too.

I guess I'm mostly peeved that someone has finally succeeded in defining a generation convincingly...and I'm too old to be part of it. Let's be honest, that whole "generation X" thing never really made sense. What was supposed to bind us? Grunge music? A modern nihilism? There is a good reason that label didn't stick.

The millennials, on the other hand, make perfect sense. I know it because they are my nieces and nephews. They are, essentially, as described in the book. Their sense of entitlement inspires them. They don't smoke, they recycle, they believe. Its all disconcerting. But, its all true and this book lays it out incontrovertibly.

Is this generation decidedly liberal or did Obama's campaign just gauge them correctly and swing them with more efficiency? A bit of both, the book suggests. This generation is educated. Socially and environmentally conscious and on key issues, more likely to lean left. But its also true that winning them so totally was a result of planning and targeted campaigning.

With more of this generation poised to reach voting age in 2012, Republicans will likely embrace much of the web-driven campaign tactics used effectively by Democrats in 2008. It will be interesting to see what sways the millennials when everyone is talking in their language.

Meanwhile, those of us from less spunky generations can dust off our Nirvana CDs and break out our flannels. Apparently the whole "saving the world" thing was never for us.

Working the Circuit: 1.6 (sans bandwidth)

My hotel in Lusaka has a killer pool. The steaks are ridiculously cheap and the thread count on the bed is, like, two million. But, the internet connection is horrendous. Actually, horrendous is not really accurate. Calling it horrendous suggests the connection actually exists. It took seven tries and two hours to pay my mortgage online. No exaggeration.

So this week, I decided to see what social media platforms work most effectively with low bandwidth connections. The winner? Facebook. I was surprised how quickly my facebook page loaded even when my email seemed difficult to access or when yahoo wouldn't open.

Twitter isn't bad but the constant refreshing necessary while tweeting doesn't really jive with an unstable connection. Myspace was a disaster. Most pages would freeze before fully loading. I asked some of my Zambian friends if any of them Tweet. They looked at my like I had an extra head. But all of them, I realized, are on facebook. Same with my friends in Kenya. In fact, some of my Kenyan friends have taken facebook activity to another level and I know the connection in Kenya isn't much better than it is here.

I'm willing to bet that because of its international appeal, Facebook designs its applications to function in low bandwidth countries.

Now if only my mortgage company would do the same.

Targeted, Measurable and Cheap: Campaigns Online

For everyone who is tired of the painful political campaign ads on TV and Radio, take heart. Thanks to the internet, sitting through Thursday night on NBC during an election season may not necessarily entail endless, trite, disingenuous TV spots involving candidates disparaging one another. Off to the internet they go.

Its really just a matter of money. But there are other reasons. First, the money. Imagine you have a million dollars in your campaign fund. Your campaign manager tells you can run some ads on TV or you can start an online advertising campaign. "TV!" you say. "OK we have just about enough for one spot and we can probably run it, like, once," says your manager. "But if you want to go online, I can make sure your message gets to all our voting groups through a series of targeted ads...and still have enough money to run some radio spots, posters, flyers and get some pins and pens to give away too." You say, "oh."

So thats the money. But there is more. Advertising online makes sense because more and more people are online and more and more people likely to vote are online. Advertising online also makes sense because monitoring and evaluating is so much easier and so much more effective. Trying to monitor the effectiveness of TV ads is more art than science. On the internet, you can find out exactly what ads are being seen, by who, for how long. Even better, you can find out if the add is responsible for drawing people back to your site.

So its cheaper, easier to monitor and lots of voters are trying to see it. No brainer. Thats why you can plan on watching Heros uninterrupted in 2012, if its still on.

I didn't come up with any of this. that honor goes to Julie Barko and a host of other online political campaign experts who contributed to Best Practices for Political Advertising Online, a handbook produced by the George Washington University Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. The handbook explains why advertising online makes sense by explaining how campaigns can get the most out of advertising online.

Working the Circuit: 1.5

Twittering requires a decent amount of self absorption. Perhaps that is stating the obvious. Of course, not all tweets are created equally. Some are purely self absorbed. Others; indirectly so. I will confess that after four weeks of twittering, I am struggling to find any of this platform's redeeming qualities. A number of the people I follow tweet so furiously and without any reflection that I feel as though I were there unhappy sibling. Even worse, the system rewards them for this. Their tweets dominate my home page and crowd out my more lucid tweeters.

What have I gotten out of twitter? Well, I have certainly read a few articles and seen some videos that I would not have otherwise seen. Can I quantify the value of these experiences in any real way? Not really. I have not been persuaded to take action on any issues or sign any petitions.

Frankly, I much prefer facebook. Facebook feels like me. I have my friends, my select issue, my family....in short everything I care about at a pace I can manage. Twitter feels like I'm part of a shouting contest. Enough said on that.

The two campaigns I am comparing are showing their colors. The capital punishment campaign is able to invite me to a number of meetings, protests. I haven't seen that from the Marijuana Policy Project. Perhaps the legality of the latter is a factor. Nevertheless, it does feel like the capital punishment campaign can more easily provide a call to action.

Tech for President

The 2008 presidential elections stand as a watershed in online politics. Even for experts and those close to digital politics, the impact the web on the eventual outcome of those politics was fascinating. Nothing makes this clearer than the existence of techpresident.com. Developed in 2008 to track the online campaigns of presidential campaigns, the website is now a forum for bloggers, experts and those interested in how the internet is reframing politics in America.

The website feels a lot like a running blog with news items, postings and commentary highlighting how the government is using the web. But the site is not just a news site. Its clearly run by those advocating improved government online presence and service delivery. In that regard, its almost a campaign site of its own. New government web-enabled services are trumpeted and users are encouraged to give them a "test drive."

The site also offers a wealth of information and research on the effectiveness of political campaigns. An excellent analysis of Bloomberg's online campaigning during the recent New York mayoral elections is an example. Also, a detailed examination of online chatter during the past week's healthcare legislation is fascinating as well.

Online CRM Feels Good

If facebook and twitter users are today's power consumers, marketers have their work cut out for them. Customer service, which, at least traditionally, lies at the heart of marketing, is driven by the marketers knowledge of the consumer.

Without a clear understanding of what consumers or customers want, their can't really be customer service. Given how much commotion there seems to be around social networking and new media, it's surprising how poorly customer service seems to have made the migration from TRW to the web. Think of all the times you've yelled at Facebook for changing something or the number of times you've had to re-learn an online process for a straight-forward transaction. You are not to blame.


Someone should really begin to push a discussion on how to introduce good old customer service to the web.

That voice is PGgreenblog.

This blog offers some very simple ideas for why customer service is still important and how precisely we should be receiving it on the web. The examples may be laborious (the ritz-carlton story dragged on), but the take-away is solid: There are simple things you can do to keep your online visitors engaged, happy and "return-oriented."

The three golden rules:

Don't promise what you can't do
Keep the ordinary ordinary
Make sure the expereince is consistent (ahem, facebook?)

Lots of other good stuff on the blog and worth checking out. The writing is a bit dodgy at times. I'll confess that I don't like seeing "ya'll" in type. Ever. But if you can get over some of the folksy aliteration, the blog offers some great insight into how and why internet technology and customer relationship management should start tangoing.