See http://www.ukaop.org.uk/digitalshowcase/dennispaullomaxtoptipsforproduct.html

At the Online Publishers Association London 2007 Forum last week (8th March) they left the best for last, with Wolfgang Grulke - futurist, author and adviser to the world’s top firms through his firm FutureWorld International - ending the day with an inspiring but frightening look into the future, asking one important question for your business – is your product at the end of its life-cycle?

20/20 vision, 20/20 hindsight

Grulke basically uses shock and awe tactics on companies who have failed to grasp the concept that their product has reached the end of its life-cycle. His predictions on how the world will change between now and the year 2020 takes its base from history and the changes occurring between 1970 and the present day. It’s not just about technological change, but changing consumer behaviour and culture.

Your product may be popular with its current purchasers, but will the next generation feel the same? Scary but thought provoking stuff, which really hits home on the importance of keeping your company on its toes.

Changing culture

Grulke talked about how attitudes and values have changed between generations and how this has spawned companies that match the generation’s ethos and culture. The Silent Generation(born 1925-1942) would have paid a parking fine, no questions asked. They were the children of a recession, so think government is a Good Thing – the only generation from which a US president has never been elected.

Next came the Baby Boomers, (born 1946-1964), who question authority, did the whole Woodstock thing, and if given a parking fine would Stick it to the Man – and were at the forefront of civil rights. Their children were Generation X (born 1961-1981), born into a turbulent economy – cynical, with no trust in traditional values and a lack of beliefs.

And the companies these different generations spawned?

• Silent Generation: IBM
• Baby Boomers: Microsoft
• Generation X: Google

Sell the product or the attitude?

Marketing has changed to match the cultural differences between generations. Grulke showed the famous x box advert, Cradle to the Grave. Anybody viewers who are not Generation X (or Y) may ask “where’s the product?”. We used to market products, now we market attitudes.

The rise of User Generated Content, Grulke postulates, is very much tied to the growth of the prosumer.

Changing technology

Grulke compares the situation “Big Media” finds itself in similar to a bar-room brawl - you don’t know where the next punch is coming from, everybody’s a competitor, and the guy you’re fighting with next minute smashes a bottle over your noggin the next. Carolyn McCall reached a similar conclusion at last year’s AOP conference. Your competitors aren’t who you thought they were. If you are the CEO of an answering machine manufacturer, should you be looking at other answering machine manufacturers, or at the free voice mail that comes with every mobile phone these days?

Death to the washing machine

Grulke often tells anecdotes during his presentation as if from the mouth of the future consumer.

Granddad, Mummy says that you used to have these big boxes in your kitchen called “Washing Machines”. Did you really used to pour boiling water on your clothes and then cover them in nasty chemicals? Didn’t it ruin your clothes? And Daddy said the box used to walk around the kitchen on its own!

What was he on about? Sonic cleaning. In the future you will just hang your clothes back in the wardrobe and sonic cleaning technology will shake the dirt from your clothes as soon as you close the door, with technofibres un-creasing them, ready for you to wear the next time you open the door. This technology is a reality, now. But rumour has it a company is buying up all the patents in this area. And it’s not a washing machine company – it’s Unilever. Of course, since when have the Chinese cared about patents…

Another great anecdote is the legend that Sony invented the iPod four of five years before Apple. Sony they held on the the technology in fear that it would completely destroy the market for the Walkman. “They were right, it did.” Of course, it was Apple, not Sony who did the killing…

Print yourself something nice, dear

If you’re thinking the makers of washing powder are in for a hard time, then what about retailers? 3D printing technology is also a reality. You can buy one that ‘prints’ plastic models for $40,000. Sure, they take a whole day to do it right now, but look at how fast ink-jet printers are compared to five years ago? Apparently a university recently printed a fully wearable dress, and in China they have printed a working mobile phone – plastic case, electronics and all. [I'll dig out some links to evidence later.]

Imagine what this means for retailers? It’s not that far away from Star Trek style ‘replicator‘ technology. Go to a website, download the design for a new pair of shoes, stick in the leather cartridge and print yourself something to go with the new dress you printed earlier.

Hanging on

Grulke seemed to suggest that you can can almost smell when an industry or a company is hanging on to a product line. They’ll talk about gaining market share, brand loyalty and difficult trading conditions. They’ll do research which will confirm that the people who buy their product really does love them and wants more – but what about the next generation? Do they get it?

Our grandparents loved wearing hats with their suits – and I’m sure hat companies’ surveys showed strong brand loyalty and love of their products – but how many people do you see wearing trilbies these days? And how many hatting companies are there now? (I should know, I’m from Stockport…).

They may be able to show a recent upwards trend on the sales chart. But Grulke suggests that:

Even a dead cat bounces when it falls from a great height…

So what’s the solution? Grulke says that companies must “ride the technological tsunami” - that is to embrace change and not shy away from it. Following the cannibalisation metaphor, his advice was:

Eat yourself before someone else does.

So what will be your competitive advantage in the future?

According to Grulke, people will not be your greatest asset. Instead, it will all be about:

• Skills, not knowledge
• Attitude, not experience
• Leadership, not management
• Relationships, not people

His final prediction is that nearly everything will be commoditised, particularly infrastructure. (The scary part of this prediction is that he thinks China will automate their industry and agriculture, thus making 300 million jobless..)

To compete in a world where everything is a commodity, his advice to companies is:

Don’t compete. Find the white-space.

And don’t be afraid. “Search for the hero inside yourself”. If you need help, go buy his book…

Going Mobile: An International Study of Content Use and Advertising on the Mobile Web

Depending on whether your glass is half full or half empty, the results of this survey show that either there is a massive opportunity in mobile that just requires a change in customer behaviour, or it’s a total waste of time for most markets and demographics. Mine is half empty right now…

The ownership and usage gap

The survey results show that in the EU, 77% of people own a web-enabled mobile phone, but only 31% have ever used that feature. Of those that had not, just 18% said they would use mobile web in the next 12 months. This drops to just 15% for low-income groups. Mid and high income groups were 22% and 29% respectively.

The most likely users of the mobile web were young males with a high income. So the least likely are older females on low incomes. Given that’s my target market at the moment, I think my policy of “lah lah lah, I’m not listening” on mobile is the right one!

Usage growth

As for those that did use the mobile web were asked how their usage would change over the next 12 months. 20% said they would use it more, 63% said they would use it the same amount and 11% said they would use it less – so that’s some net growth, albeit small. Oh, and only 25% who use the mobile web are actually satisfied by the service. The main gripe is speed.

So those numbers aren’t great, but there’s some growth and maybe it just needs to reach tipping point before it takes off properly. But the other question everybody wants to know is once people are using it in earnest, will we as publishers be able to make any money out of it?

Monetisation

Well, interestingly 37% said they would be happy to watch adverts on their phones in return for free content. So what content is working? In the UK it’s weather, sports, stock quotes and news – no surprises there really. Up to 40% of people will actually bother to register or personalise (kind of necessary for weather and stock quotes…) which is encouraging – but only 11% actually pay for this content. Thank God that people are working hard to figure out the mobile ad market…

It’s better in Asia

If you’re in developed Asia you’re likely to fair much better – 90% of people own a web enabled phone and of these an incredible 89% have used it as well!

UPDATE:

The full report has now been published on the web, which includes a slide which (I swear) was not shown at the presentation on Thursday, breaking down ownership and usage by country. This shows that the UK is leading mobile web take-up with 76% owning a web-enabled phone and 54% having used it. This is a bit more promising! However the usage is still being driven by young high-income males, with penetration being much less for older low-income females.

Here are the notes from Peter’s presentation on Intent Driven Media.

How content was from Gutenberg to 2001

• One to many publishing.
• Reader makes a choice based on brand.
• Publisher controls timing, coverage, audience access to information and vendor access to audience.

Then Search happens

• Impatient readers expect to be in control
• Every page is now a front door

  • You should be getting at least 50% of your traffic from search engines.

• The first five seconds are crucial!
  • A reader comes in from a search engine into an article page.
  • They will decide whether this page is for them within five seconds, before pressing the back button.
• The first sentence sells your article and keeps them on the page.
• Magazine and newspaper writers assume people want to read their article – online you have to assume they don’t – hence no puns, plays on words or in-jokes.
• Users will scroll down to your content, so they probably won’t even see your logo – convey your brand with colours etc.
• You need to sell them the next click, so put related articles near the middle or top of the article. About.com got a 15% CTR when they did this.

Five corner-stones of successful content

1. Relevance – Readers are looking for complete solutions.
2. Resonance – Expertise is relative – they are looking for the like-minded, pro or otherwise.
3. Specificity – The specific always drives off the general.
4. Speed – Readers need the content on demand.
5. Comprehensive – Readers want the full story, so they value input from peers.

So a mix of content is required, from broad to narrow; from small audiences (long-tail) to large audiences (mass) – delivered from a range of sources, from editorial content , blogs, UGC, Forums and ratings, reviews and comments . For example narrow content might be a search for gardeners in my area, whereas broad content might be an article about gardening trends.

Tips for monetisation success

• Metrics drive innovation.
  • You can pretty much test everything on the web.
  • The ability to learn and to iterate is your competitive advantage.
• Web development and design is a process, not an event.
  • The first day after a redesign is the worst.
  • The day you stop tweaking a website is the day it dies.
• Make informed decisions, understand costs and benefits.

Focus on three simple things:

1. The cost of audience acquisition
   • Don’t make a net loss in driving traffic.
   • Consider PPC as a cost-of-sale rather than marketing.
   • Your online audience should be a superset, rather than a subset, of your print audience!
2. The cost of content creation.
3. Your rate of monetisation – ie yields.
   • And it’s not just about ads!

“This is the age of atomised information bound by reader interest.” (as visualised by Digg Swarm).

Rayport suggested the key to sucess is to focus on:

1. Building volume through aggregation.
2. Building margins through engagement.

The key differences between traditional and new media in the Web 2.0 world are:

• Community is the new engine of content creation.
• Social networks are the new distribution channels.
• Social intelligence is the new editorial filter.
• Tools & applications are the new editorial bundles.
• Multi-platform development is the new publishing.
• Video is the new lingua franca of online content.

Five strategies for success

1. Own the audience – overwhelm the microcosm.
   • Shock and awe with content abundance.
   • Target on
     • Location (eg xianei.com – china).
     • Interest (eg bebo.com – music).
     • Identity (eg femail.co.uk – female) .
     • Condition (eg theknot.com – getting married – used by 85% of US weddings).
2. Claim the community – ensure membership has its rewards.
   • Create communities of conviction, reward loyalties.
3. Work the web – let the outside in, and the inside out.
   • Adopt open-source thinking and leverage network effects.
   • Let the outside in: allow content from the web into your site, eg widgets, rss, etc. Why not include your competitor’s news on your site? They’ll only go back to Google to get it. Progressive insurance even shows competitor’s prices even if they beat theirs – builds trust, gives confidence, increased conversions.
   • Let the inside out: Allow syndication of your content and brand through rss, widgets, open APIs etc. Set your content free. 60% of YouTube streams are on third-party sites – let your users do your marketing for you.
4. Design for the occasion – customise interfaces for context.
   • Take the form-factor into account, eg web browser vs mobile phone
5. Integrate the experience – multi-channel, multi-platform.
   • eg Pop Idol is across TV, internet, phone, etc.

User (or pro) generated content

Rayport posulates that there are different types of ‘user generated content’ – and even different types of professionally generated content are emerging. Each piece of content may be created by a professional or an amateur, and that person may be acting like a professional or acting like an amateur.

For example:

• Amateurs acting like amateurs: Star Wars Kid and Numa Numa;
• Amateurs acting like professionals: Ask A Ninja and ZeFrank: The Show;
• Professionals acting like amateurs: lonelygirl15 and the Mentos/Diet Coke videos;
• Professionals acting like professionals: OK Go, Jeff Jarvis or Beppe Grillo.

The conference, and the OPA, is mostly aimed at traditional media companies who are already embracing online and who want to find out what’s working for other people and also do a bit of networking – so it was right up my alley. It’s a nice change from most events about online for print publishers, which seem to be pitched at those who are struggling to ‘get it’.

Day One:

Staying Competitive in the Digital Era

Jeffrey Rayport of Marketspace kicked the conference off with a presentation verging on an attempt at stand-up comedy, entitled Staying Competitive in the Digital Era. Despite the comedy, he made some fantastic points about how traditional media companies need to change their thinking- community is the new content creation engine, social networks the new distribution channels, social intelligence the new editorial filter, tools and appliances the new editorial bundles, and multi-platform development is the new publishing.

Rayport also suggested five strategies for success: own the audience, claim the community, work the web, design for the occasion, and integrate the experience. I particularly liked his explanation of working the web – letting the inside out, and the outside in. He finished with a hypothesis about content creation – that there are either amateurs or professionals who are either acting like amateurs or acting like professionals – from Numa Numa to Lonelygirl15. For more on all this, see the full notes.

Web Video Panel

Next came a panel discussion on the subject of web video. I didn’t really take much away from this and I found most of the panel sessions a bit disappointing.

SkyBlog / SkyRock – The French mySpace

After a networking coffee break, Pierre Bellanger from French pirate radio station turned website SkyBlog (the French myspace), talked about what Web 2.0 meant for them. Most of the talk was a little hard to understand with the thick accent, and what I did hear I felt was mostly irrelevant to the audience. However Bellanger made a couple of points well worth quoting:

Andy Warhol said everybody would have 15 minutes of fame. But on a social network, everybody is famous for 15 people.

On why moderation is necessary, and who boundaries actually help a community to thrive:

Cars go faster because they have brakes.

Starbucks’ Marketing Innovations

Next up was Anne Saunders, Senior Vice President of Global Brand Strategy at Starbucks with a slick presentation about how Starbucks never spend money on TV advertising, that it’s all about the brand and the service, and how everybody loves them. When she asked if anybody had any questions, I almost said “so where does the web come into this?” but refrained… The only remotely web orientated bit was when she had a slide about their store finderon their website. Hmm, innovative stuff.

The Yahoo Roasting

During lunch, Dominique Vidal,  Regional VP at Yahoo Europe, was pretty much roasted by Larry Kramer of CBS with a bit of help from the audience. Vidal was forced to admit that Yahoo does compete with traditional publishers – which made the usual spiel about how publishers should partner with Yahoo sound a bit odd. But that’s the ‘net for you – everybody is a partner and a competitor at the same time. He was seriously thrown to the lions. Perhaps he should have asked Anne from Starbucks for some roasting tips…

Web 2.0 and The Guardian

After lunch Carolyn McCall, CEO of the Guardian Media Group was joined by her editor of The Guardian newspaper, Alan Rusbridger, to talk about their experiences of taking a traditional media company through the digital transition. They thought their switch to Berliner format was the “hardest thing they’d ever done”, until they tried to go from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. Being a trust, they’ve got some serious money to spend and are currently investing £15m in a redesign of Guardian Unlimited…

International Mobile Study

Next came the results of an OPA commissioned survey conducted by TNS on the subject of mobile web usage called Going Mobile: An International Study of Content Use and Advertising on the Mobile Web. The presentation was quite graph and stats heavy as you might expect. I have a full write-up on the results here, and there has also been some press coverage which were slightly more upbeat than I thought TNS had conveyed. The bottom line was that there is a long way to go before Mobile Internet goes mainstream.

The Mobile Platform Panel

Following a second networking coffee break came another disappointing panel discussion about the Mobile Platform. I was impressed with Simon Thompson, European marketing director at Motorola, but it was otherwise a pretty dry affair. Thompson constantly corrected anybody who said ‘mobile device’, explaining that they are ‘mobile PHONES’. Despite all the bells and whistles, the function driving the usage is the phone.

The only useful snippet of info I took from the session was Graeme Oxby, marketing director at mobile operator Three commenting that 50% of video clips downloaded on their network were viewed at home, and that the concept that people will watch clips at the bus stop is a total fallacy. Thompson quipped that in the UK they’d probably get mugged for starters! Oxby himself said he tended to watch the ITV news on his phone in the kitchen rather than try and get his kids to change the TV channel…

Staying Relevant – the Business of Advertising

Bob Greenberg, CEO of ad agency R/GA finished the day with a presentation about how advertising has changed as technology has improved. Having started out in film production, Greenberg postulated that he’s had to reinvent his company every 7 years. It was a fairly interesting talk, including a funny video clip of his 89 year old Mom saying she didn’t have a clue what he did for a living, “Something on the Internet?”.

He showcased some interesting things they’d been doing with Nike and Apple, called Nike+, and that they’ve just launched a ‘new breed’ of e-commerce store for Nike, which is a full Flash experience. He claims that despite the flash it is accessible, usable, and even has SEO – I’ll believe that when I see it, and it feels a bit sluggish to me. One memorable quote from the session was:

It’s not just about getting consumers’ attention – it’s about giving them some attention as well.

Day Two

Discussion: Staying Competitive

Jeffrey Rayport of Marketspace was back again to start the half-day, starting a ‘lively discussion’ about competitive strategy. Unfortunately it just turned into an argument between Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine and Michael Zimbalist of The New York Times basically about user generated content and blogs. Zimbalist felt that such content did not have a place within their quality media environment, and Jarvis being a blogger obviously took the other stance. It wasn’t a particularly great debate.

Intent Driven (aka Agile) Media

Luckily the next session on Intent Driven Media from Peter Horan, CEO of IAC (aka Ask.com) was a real gem with lots to take away, so was deserving of a full write-up.  Horan talked about the impact of search on media, explained how the first five seconds of a user’s visit are crucial, suggested five corner-stones of successful content and finished on some great tips on monitisation. Well worth a read. It was also interesting to hear about IAC’s experiences with some of their fantastic daughter companies such as TripAdvisor and About.com.

A Walk on the Leading Edge

Another mediocre panel session, this time supposedly talking about emerging technologies and new companies, but to be honest it was totally forgettable.

The Age of Entwined Media

After a short break, James Spanfeller, president and CEO of Forbes.com, took to the stage with a presentation entitled “think big” – but he didn’t really demonstrate any big thinking. Their best innovation to date was doing blogs and podcasts.

But to be fair, they did have some good points about leveraging the power of your brand – they are launching sister sites including Forbes Traveller, Forbes Autos and also local language sites such as Forbes.pl. Despite a mostly dull talk, there were a couple of nuggets that caused the ears to prick up:

• Forbes.com add 3,000(!) stories per day to their site(s).
• They had 10m unique users in 2005, which grew to 16m in 2006.
• They sell ads on “targeted reach, mass targetability” – ie no waste.
• They guarantee their advertising. If you spend over $150k over 60 days on forbes.com, they will measure brand awareness before and after using an independent company and if it hasn’t increased they will refund your money. This has apparently been very successful, even when clients have had awful creative.

The Media Investment Landscape

The penultimate slot was a dreaded panel session, but this one wasn’t too bad. No real surprises – just a bunch of venture capitalists talking about how they wished the IPO market would come back, as getting flipped by a big media company is just too rare an event…

One of the panelists was Tony Askew, MD of Reed Elsevier Investments, which is a cunning way for Reed to do relatively risky ventures that the parent company wouldn’t normally get into, such as web start-ups.  They spend 40% of their fund on digital projects.

One decent quote, basically about network effects and traffic acquisition costs was

The trick is to get users to do your marketing for you. It’s very difficult to make a profit if you have to pay to acquire users.

(sorry, I didn’t note who to attribute them to)

Lessons from the Future

They definitely left the best for last with this presentation from Wolfgang Grulke- futurist, author and adviser to the world’s top firms through his firm FutureWorld International. Again, this session entitled Lessons from the Future – 20/20 vision, 20/20 hindsight, was well worthy of a full write-up.

Grulke basically uses shock and awe tactics on companies who have failed to grasp the concept that their product has reached the end of its life-cycle. His predictions on how the world will change between now and the year 2020 takes its base from history and the changes occurring between 1970 and the present day. It’s not just about technological change, but changing consumer behaviour.

Your product may be popular with its current purchasers, but will the next generation feel the same? Scary but thought provoking stuff, which really hits home on the importance of keeping your company on its toes.