@saneel and @shaunabe present at Social Media Week 2012

This morning, I had the privilege of co-presenting with Shaun Abrahamson, the CEO of Mutopo and active member of the Labs community. We’ve been discussing how companies inspire their customers to give them so much more than a purchase. Today, we presented the culmination of thinking* both Mutopo and BBH Labs have been doing about this topic. It covers what can reasonably be earned from customers (media can feel trivial in comparison), and what ambitious companies are offering in return across various social media platforms. Just to prove we really get it, we made our entire presentation a collection of examples and case studies. Now that’s earning value, isn’t it?

Click the image above to watch a video of the presentation. The slides can be found here.

*Thanks to @jrafferty & @nalaisadog for their help with content and design, respectively

‘The future… doesn’t arrive all at once.’
—Sid Mead, futurist, visionary, creator of Bladerunner

Booting up a PC

When we first boot up a PC, we take a step back in time.

The very first instructions that a PC executes when powered up are, in computing terms, ancient history. Called the Instruction Set, they were etched into the modern PC’s chip by its distant ancestor decades ago, like hieroglyphics on a pyramid chamber wall. And like hieroglyphics, they are understood by the very few.

The next step a PC takes is to invoke its Microcode. Microcode is fascinating. When a PC first flips on, it is phenomenally stupid. It has no memory, no instructions to execute and isn’t even aware of what devices it is connected to.

It’s a little like the film Memento. The computer wakes with no memory and a few arcane instructions written onto its hand. These very few instructions tell it how to follow more instructions, and so on until the computer gradually becomes less stupid. It all starts with these microscopically small lines of code invoking the 1978 Instruction Set.

The majority of the Microcode is written by the designers and engineers of the chip. So the PC starts to run code from a chip designed a few years ago, but running an instruction set from a time where Jimmy Carter is one year in, the Berlin wall is yet to come down, no-one has heard of the internet, and MC Hammer is 10 years away from being famous.

Forward to the BIOS

So the modern Microcode tells the PC to load the BIOS. Suddenly we leap forward in time to 2005, in the case of my home PC, to when the BIOS was written.

Invoking the BIOS is a little like putting the PC into a coma state.
The basic things like breathing and heart rate get started but that is all. In other words, there’s power on in the basement but nothing on in the control room. The BIOS also tells the PC where its arms and legs are (or where its keyboard and screen are), and how much memory it has and so on.

Back to DOS

Then the BIOS tells the PC to load DOS. Now we really jump back. Suddenly it’s 1982, I am 12 and Spandau Ballet’s ‘True’ is top of the charts.

Actually DOS was written way back in the seventies and changed very little after about 1995. It’s a quick simple language that allows the PC to load a modern operating system like Windows 7. Hence its original name ‘QDOS’ which stood for ‘Quick and Dirty Operating System.’ That lasted until Bill Gates acquired it for Microsoft, and changed the letter ‘D’ to mean ‘Disk,’ presumably for commercial reasons.

So DOS loads, sets a few environment variables, loads whatever version of Windows, and we’re transported to somewhere in the aughties. It’s taken us 45 seconds to come 30 years. But it’s not over yet.

Forward to Windows

Windows 7 is itself a mishmash of inherited components, device drivers and other stuff. Some parts of it are very modern. Other parts are years old.

For example, if you’re unlucky enough to use Explorer 6 as your browser, you’re basically using a badly restored antique which has been nailed to another badly restored antique. Explorer 6 is a kludge of old browser code, tacked-on components and obsolete modules. Firefox, Chrome and the new Explorers were all rewritten from the ground up, but still have to navigate an internet that was designed decades ago.

Back to the internet

No matter which browser you use, you are using a system running on TCP/IP which was designed in the early 70‘s and perfected in 1983, accessing a modern webpage which contains a markup language first designed in 1990, plus CSS first introduced in 1994, and javascript (1994).

It’s a veritable UN-building’s-worth of mismatching languages, out of date protocols, and well-meaning inefficiency.

Why?

So it begs the question, how on earth could our most advanced technology actually be such a shockingly complex, inefficient system?

The answer lies in how new technology arrives.

People often think new technology replaces the old. In reality it rarely does. To Sid Mead’s point, the problem is that it arrives, but not all at once.

New technology has– to some extent– to be compatible with the past. So rather than replace it, it often lays over the old system and encapsulates it. In doing this, it has a firm foundation but it also means it inherits some of the characteristics of the old technology.

It’s exactly the same process with trees. Every year a ‘new’ tree encapsulates the old tree like an overcoat, yet it relies on the old tree to support this new layer. Every knot, branch and imperfection is reproduced by each successive layer.

This process of encapsulation is prevalent everywhere in technology. The question of what encapsulates what is absolutely essential to the growth and/or failure of a technology.

When a technology is encapsulated by another, it stops or slows in development. The technology dies or becomes fossilized. We move on. This is because the ‘new technology’ layer requires that nothing changes in the old layer, in case it stops functioning.

When Windows 3.0 arrived it wasn’t really a new operating system. It was basically still using DOS commands, but had a cosmetic layer of graphics over the top. Windows was pulling the levers, but the work was still being done by DOS behind the curtain.

But the moment this happened, DOS became fossilized. DOS couldn’t change significantly because it had become encapsulated in Windows. Windows developed, DOS remained still. We moved on.

Nowadays the players have changed but the game is the same. There is a belief that the browser and cloud will encapsulate desktop software as in Chromebooks. There is also a belief that social media will be encapsulated into search, as +1 recently showed. Perhaps paid media will be encapsulated by social media. I don’t have the answers. But the overall dynamics of the marketplace are clear.

Life is a layer

This process of reiterative encapsulation is so pervading, it can even describe our life and place in the universe. The fact that 98% of our DNA seems to have no function, seems to point to a similar process going on in human development.

Just like the inner older rings in a tree, we are the product of our latest layer of DNA technology, but the old stuff still remains. The term ‘Junk DNA’ is a little misleading because in the same way the old layers of tree are vitally important to the current tree, this ‘Junk’ has made us what we are. It’s not Junk. Perhaps they are just old layers of code.

So, here’s the point: life is a layer. All life on earth can be seen as a string of encapsulations. Elements were encapsulated into compounds, and those compounds became encapsulated into more complex compounds, then proteins became encapsulated into DNA, DNA into cells, cells became encapsulated into multicellular life and these life forms began a highly accelerated form of adaptive encapsulation called evolution.

Given the scale of all these events, it’s difficult to state conclusively that humans are the last stage of this.

It is clear that something is going on here. It’s tempting to think we are slowly arranging ourselves into something more complex, wonderful and greater than our sum. But it is equally difficult to imagine that we would be able to see it, in the same way that an individual cell cannot comprehend it is part of a Jellyfish.

But, if one could view the world with different eyes, say eyes that respond to the entire electromagnetic spectrum. You would see biological life in all its exotic complexity – but you would also see a huge, highly complex global brain of electrical connections spanning the earth like silk filaments, encapsulating the thoughts and activities of the creatures that live in it.

The observer might well conclude that this Being, and not the Human Being, is the real life on Earth.

Image by Eistean, via Flickr

I suspect innovation, or more specifically, how we deliver it, is a topic that’ll continue to cause debate in any creative industry worth its salt, for the simple reason that innovation isn’t an ‘add-on to what we all do, it is the decades-old bedrock of our existence: asking audiences to see their world in new ways, seeking new routes to communicate, shining a light on invention. We may embrace co-creation and recombinant culture, but our industry still worships at the altar of originality. Who of us doesn’t want to do ground-breaking stuff? Inevitably, it follows that the very idea of “innovation transcending functional expertise“ can feel like a total anathema.

Certainly, my immediate response to the questions about Chief Innovation Officers and agency labs is pretty simple: in most cases, I wouldn’t appoint someone to the job.

I say this for three reasons:

a. Few agencies aspire to operate close enough to the “bleeding edge” to justify the cost.
b. As others have commented in the past, the hiring of a CIO all too often represents an abdication of a management team’s responsibility to lead change.
c. It’s a tight rope walk of a job. Incredibly easy to slip off.

And yet…for the people with the appetite to try it, here are a couple of thoughts on why, when and how we *might* make it work:

1. Start by picking your company carefully.

Oddly, it’s at the extreme ends of the spectrum of corporate health that this role may be most useful: at the hellish end where a company is wallowing in a stagnant backwater, the short term appointment a CIO could help signal a fresh agenda. At the opposite end, when an agency has grown too big to sit around one table yet retains a forward-looking culture, a CIO can play a powerful, much more strategic role. More on this below.

2. Demonstrate the value of exploring the ‘edges’.

Make sure everyone around you (that’s the whole agency, not just management) are on board with the commercial and creative advantage your role can bring. Summarised, the task is to explore and exploit the opportunities at the “edges” of your business, as described in a related FT.com article from earlier this year:

“Edges could involve new product introductions, expansion into new markets, or the launch of entirely new business propositions…the edges of companies are generally more open to change and the adoption of new technologies, because they face more unmet needs and fewer established routines. The people who are attracted to edges tend to be less risk-averse, as well….Longer term, edge initiatives have the potential to become the new core of the enterprise.”

3. Think while you make, make while you think

We all need time to reflect, but you can’t begin to prove the real value (to yourself, to anyone around you) described above if you’re not getting your hands dirty. To quote Alan Wolk commenting on Ben’s post, “working on real projects and helping introduce new ideas into agency culture” is a given. Be a thinker AND a maker.

4. Don’t buy “innovation is the CEO’s job” for a second

It’s also the CEO’s job to take ultimate responsibility for the financial performance of the business, but very few companies would question the need for a CFO. CIO is still a new role so it’s under particular scrutiny. The challenge for any CEO is running a core business whilst staying abreast of change that’s constant and shows no sign of slowing down. Having a scout – or a team of scouts -ahead of the wagons simply lends foresight.

5. Be a muscle, not a limb.

You will spend a large proportion of your time on the outside of the agency, seeking out the new. In doing this, keep in mind you are at the service of the agency and its clients, not an entirely separate enterprise. You’ll find you automatically look at the world through a “will this be useful to us commercially and creatively in future?” lens, versus disappearing entirely from view.

6. Face income.

This is the ultimate test of value: will a client pay for it, now or later? At Labs we have a foot in both camps. Experimenting with some stuff than frankly we barely understand AND working with fee-paying clients in areas that are still emerging but with strong indications they will make a return.

7. Be generous.

Give everything you learn away. Other people will make it better or think of something you didn’t imagine. You will be repaid tenfold down the road.

8. Stay weird.

If there aren’t a couple of people looking at you askance about the more experimental stuff you’re doing and thinking, you’re probably not doing it right. Part of this is about immersing yourself in a very diverse set of external influences, see point 9.

9. Head out into the wild.

We are herd animals, we like hanging out together, swapping stories. So let’s do that. But also let’s make sure we spend time outside the industry. Some of the most outstanding sources of stimuli, the innovation that is inventing new categories, melting down old industries and rebuilding them, is happening well outside the area code of adland. Work with start ups, look at the spaces between industries, beg, borrow or steal a ticket to an event no-one else you know is heading to, examine the unlikeliest of sources, study markets in growth.

Back to the questions of agency labs or Chief Innovation Officers – do we really need ‘em? My answer now is “Yes, if your agency is wholeheartedly committed to being ahead of the curve”. Agencies must answer that question first.

Author: Greg Andersen (@gandersen), CEO, BBH New York

In the last couple of weeks I’ve read two specific articles that made me really stop and think about our future as a creative industry. The first was the March 26th New York Times article “In a New Web World, No Application is an Island”. It paints a picture of a silky smooth, boundary-less web full of open and interconnected apps thanks largely to HTML5. The creative palate and resulting experiences made possible by the likes of HTML5 are truly thrilling. The second article was “Nine jobs that humans may lose to robots”. On the list are occupations you’d expect to see left to machines, like soldiers and astronauts. But taking a step back and considering the all the advances in marketing technology I can’t help but wonder if advertising people, including creatives, will be appearing on that list when the article is inevitably written again in a few years time.

To be clear, this isn’t an anti-technology rant. That would be odd on the BBH Labs blog and flies straight into the face of tons of BBH work and investments within the agency. Rather, it is one guy’s view of a potential future brought on by a lot of very well intentioned innovations and advances, marked in my mind by said excitement around HTML5.

On the surface, what HTML5 offers to creativity and brand experiences is nothing short of amazing. Things like immediate video playback and better video tagging and search-ability will help to further accelerate content adoption and open exciting new creative uses of video. It also means that it will be easier to connect specific video content to other related content like articles, photos, data, etc. In short, HTML5 will make for brand experiences that can go both broader and deeper while maintaining a high quality user experience. Done well, these experiences will be good enough to be searched for and sought out…even if they are really just marketing.

Another positive side of HTML5 is its openness; providing the ability to create vastly better experiences on the free range of the web not penned in by walled garden technology companies. But this also means an incredible open flow of MUCH richer user data around preferences and behaviors. In itself, that’s not a big deal. Agencies and marketers and media owners constantly seek out better information to make better things and better decisions. But marketing is now also swamped with new marketing technologies to take advantage of this data. Coupled with tools for behavioral targeting, tools for social media monitoring, tools for conversion optimization, tools for automated bid optimization, tools for CRM marketing automation and tools that make it much easier for rich creative automation… I wonder what the role for us humans really is.

The best brands and their creativity make people both do and feel. To accomplish that we must not lose humanity in marketing creativity regardless of what is possible technologically. Human creativity is a special thing and when applied to brands there is still something oddly reassuring knowing that behind most any piece of brand communication there is a human engaging another human through a discourse of persuasion.

Asimov’s First Law states “a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” Man, I hope he was talking about advertising people.

I recently spoke to Miami Ad School students in Brooklyn via Steve Peck, one of the creatives at BBH New York, who teaches a class on Digital Product Development. There’s been a clear shift toward digital product development at agencies in recent years and it seems to be the work we respect most of one another if award shows are any indication (and I’m not sure they are).

However, what I find most intriguing about the future of product development at agencies is the intersection with collaboration. I continue to believe that serving as a scaffolding for customers to engage with brands beyond transactions is a huge opportunity for agencies, and that we’ve only scratched the surface thus far. If agencies want to develop digital products (even when they are simply extensions or features of the analog products created by our clients) and customers want to co-create with brands, the opportunity is compounded. After all, creating digital things is what most collaboration tools at large are built to do. Looking at things from this perspective makes the future of agencies seem bright, especially when one witnesses first hand what students like those at Miami Ad School are capable of.

Below is a copy of my presentation (special thanks to Brian Moore, a Media Designer here at BBH that helped design it, and whose transitions are unfortunately lost via slideshare).

The question-and-answer site Quora is a big deal. It has some powerful supporters, with early content posted by a diverse group of digerati from Steve Case to Robert Scoble. It’s the talk of the media (see Google Trend of the word Quora).  There are weekly articles on how Quora will be bigger than Twitter.

So, I guess it was inevitable that I’d hate it. To clarify, it’s not that I don’t like Quora. It’s that I hate it and want it wiped off the face of the earth. In a missionary effort to reach those few that are yet to form an opinion on this site equivalent of an Uwe Boll movie, I offer the following 3 reasons to resist boarding this bandwagon.

It’s spam.

This site diabolically infects those with the largest spam potential. I guess when a site is launched by the former head of Facebook Connect, it’s inevitable. By launching after Facebook established critical mass and Twitter became a big deal, Quora made a splash in the saturated question-and-answer site category. So, giving people the opportunity to be in the spotlight with their answer to an already-answered question is an ingenious way to drive audience and usage by appealing to ego. And I don’t even mind ego-stroking. I just don’t want to be repeatedly spammed across my various feeds as people whose content I otherwise love and trust fall victim to name-in-lights syndrome. Then again, if I could convince people I invented tape, it might be worth it….

There are dozens of Quoras about what Quora is.

OK, so maybe #Twitter was a trending topic on Twitter the first 6 months. But those conversations were focused primarily on usage and innovation with the platform. The Quora self-referential conversations are literally people scratching their heads looking for value. There’s no better sign that the emperor has no clothes people. But until we admit it, we’ll just keep tweeting how awesome he looks in that special toga (author’s note: this has nothing to do with how awesome I think the hashtag #emperorsclothes would be, promise).

Quora is attempting to differentiate itself via answer quality.

This is defended through its use of Facebook Connect (real people!) and an interest graph (curated topics!). Here’s the thing about quality: it’s inversely related to scale on the web. Generally, users or an algorithm are required to remove the noise. Last I looked, countless services already do this. They go by ticker symbols like GOOG, have David Fincher movies made about them, or add a new user every second (most of whom request a professional recommendation after a single meeting together).

So, let’s sit this Quora thing out. We were able to resist Google Wave and Ping. Let’s make it three in a row that we tried and let pass quietly. This isn’t to say I don’t respect the effort or experimentation of any company trying something new (Google & Apple are incredible at innovation investment). In Quora’s case, I just think if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it via my newsfeed.

Now world, if you’re not on board, pretty please give me a heads-up that I’m taking on a lost cause.

Then I can start a new Quora-related Quora: “How can I get a job at Quora?”

{Update: I’ve agreed to write a follow-up post to either eat my words or discuss what I got right after some, ahem, encouragement from readers. So keep an eye out!}

{Update #2: We asked Leslie Barry to elaborate on his comment below and he’s posted a rebuttal, explaining the unique value of Quora I’ve neglected in the post above.}

Since launch they’ve been approached by both clients and talent and, inevitably, as they started work on live projects (including clients with food products and online services, not to mention a pitch for a large software company’s NPD launch), one of the toughest questions facing any agency arose: when were they going to find time to do the work brilliantly AND keep scouting for new business? Clearly a conventional solution wasn’t going to cut it at Agency Nil, which is when they came up with this ultra simple, ultra ‘on brand’ idea:

Agency Nil announces their Spotter Program

Catching up again with Agency Nil’s founders, they explained the concept a little more:

“If a person connects Agency Nil with a business that would be interested in our services and they become a client within a year, Agency Nil will give the person who refers them 10% of the first payment they receive (from $100 to $100,000 or more…).  This person is called an Agency Nil Spotter.  All it takes to become one is an email to Agency Nil introducing the potential client (with the client cc’d, of course). Then the Spotter’s referral is documented.  When Agency Nil get paid, the Spotter gets paid. Simple.”

We love the idea of an agency experimenting with new business in this way.  A smart move that painlessly exploits an era where networking and sharing useful information has never been easier.  What’s more, it’s in keeping with the spirit of their launch which, as they put it at the time: “It’s a win/win.  And that’s the kind of business we like to be in.” Agency Nil also draw attention to the fact they’re putting into practice a simple way for talented individuals to profit from their connections: “Isn’t it about time people started to get rewarded for the networks they’ve built?”

Of course this isn’t the first time an agency has used crowd sourcing to find prospective marketing clients.  Who knows, will people really refer a hot prospect?  How reliable will the connections be?  Will it tend to be for small projects only, or will Agency Nil land a multi-million dollar account this way?  They may hit some bumps in the road along the way, but to us this approach looks like a natural next step for them and a dead simple, innovative solution to an age old problem. So again, we say hats off to Agency Nil and good luck.

If you want to sign-up as an Agency Nil Spotter, send an email to Spotter@AgencyNil.com.

Launched last month under their Puffin label, We Make Stories is the latest in a long line of digital publishing innovations masterminded by Jeremy Ettinghausen (@jeremyet), Penguin’s Digital Publisher.  This is the second piece we’ve done in recent months looking at the publishing industry as a whole.  Back in May we wrote about the transformational change going on at TMG in the UK (also check out the ever brilliant Nieman Lab for a far deeper examination of journalism in this respect).  Why are we so interested in what’s going on here? In short, we’re witnessing a radical re-shaping of an industry we believe we can learn a lot from. An industry which – aside from its sheer cultural importance in the first place – has been experimenting with new creative & organisational solutions for some time now.

The launch of the new service from Penguin was a good excuse to catch up with Jeremy and find out what he’s learned from this and other past projects, as well as ask him to share his thoughts on the future of digital publishing, the struggle to monetise content & services online, the impact of the web on storytelling and finally, what role he sees for brands in this space.  So just a couple of meaty topics then…

Before we get much further, a recap on some of the interactive projects Jeremy’s been responsible for during his 12 years at Penguin, which include an early foray into Second Life and the insanely audacious wikinovel project, A Million Penguins:

And, more recently, the award winning digital fiction project We Tell Stories:

The 21 Steps by Charles Cumming, a story you follow as it unfolds across a map of the world

Which brings us to Penguin’s latest interactive project, We Make Stories.  The service strikes us as a wonderfully designed, useful tool to help children create, print and share their own stories in different forms. If you want to know more about the site, check out the Penguin blog on the subject and the site itself. It also includes some tips on storytelling that wannabee grown-up writers might do well to read.

Labs: On your blog you describe WMS as part of a experimental new approach for Penguin, the creation of a publishing service versus conventional content. Could you tell us a little more about that?

JE: I guess my interest in creating services comes from all the debate about the falling price of digital content. At Penguin we spend a lot of time discussing what we can charge for content – whether it’s for ebooks, iphone applications, or print titles. I’ve also been thinking about the music business – how sales of music have become a loss leader for other music services such as concerts, merchandise and access to artists. So I’ve been thinking about what our expertise is as publishers, and whether it is transferable from content into services that people might pay for. What do we know that we can sell, and who can we sell it to?

Labs: Where did the idea come from?

JE: It is a cliche but the idea came from watching my children, particularly my son and his (obsessive) computer use. I tried to get him creating a comic using comiclife which is an excellent and really sophisticated tool to create comic books. This gave me the idea to produce similar storymaking tools specifically designed for young readers and writers. When I started looking I couldn’t believe that there was nothing similar out there.

We Make Stories: Ettinghausen's 'research assistant' shows him how it's done

Labs: What about the behind-the-scenes practicalities of producing a project like this?

JE: We started seriously thinking about the site nearly a year ago and spent a few months finding developers who shared our ideas about how the site might work. We’ve actually used four different developers to build the various tools which has been a challenge, but has given each of the tools their own identity. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about user experience, particularly with the audience the site has aimed at. There is a huge range of abilities and experience in the target age group (6-12 year olds) and we’ve been conscious about creating tools that are child-appropriate but also sophisticated enough for children who have grown up gaming to enjoy. It’s been a really interesting process – happily I have a tester at home who has provided me with unfiltered feedback at every step of the way!

Labs: What would you have done differently with the site, knowing what you know now?  Do you have any plans to develop the site further?

JE: We are making some tweaks to the site – nothing major, but adding a walkthrough video so people can see what they are paying for in advance and being a little more blatant about the fact that it is not a free service. If all goes well, I’d love to add further tools (perhaps looking at sponsored tools) and make it a deeper and richer experience.

Labs: There’s a huge amount of discussion and opinion at the moment about the ‘free economy’: the expectation that services and content online should be provided free, with monetisation occurring when you offer an upgraded experience in some way. Did you consider offering a free version of WMS?

JE: With the budget we had we didn’t really have the option to offer a free version and add enough material to make a premium version worth paying for. We are looking at how we might offer schools a free trial. One of the things about the site is that we are not using it as a stealth marketing route to sell books – it’s about selling a service, not selling books. If we didn’t charge for it there would be no business justification for it to exist.

Labs: What about the criticism that Penguin is getting children to write stories to which Penguin then owns the publishing rights?

JE: We have to include legal language in the terms and conditions which allows us to reproduce, transmit, publish and display the stories, but the children retain ownership of copyright and other rights in the material they have created.

Labs: How have/will you judge success?  How is the site doing so far?

JE: So far so good – unlike previous projects I’ve been involved in (http://wetellstories.co.uk and http://amillionpenguins.com) wemakestories can be judged by sales and revenue, not simply traffic and attention. I’m discovering that money is a very focussing force.

Labs: What do you see as the key emerging trends in the publishing industry? Where do you see publishing in 18-36 months’ time?

JE: It’s been an interesting year in digital publishing and I don’t see the converging pressures on publishers easing at any point soon. There are going to be all sorts of channels for us to try and reach readers and one of the challenges is choosing which channels to go down and what deals we should strike. I think everyone is scared of doing a deal now that comes back to bite us in the ass 18months from now, which probably makes publishers look more luddite than they really are.

Labs: Technology seems to have had an explosive impact on the industry.  In terms of hardware like Kindle, through to the fact there are so many new ways to tell stories: cross-platform, interactive etc How would you describe technology’s impact on storytelling?

Labs: Do you think interactive storytelling improves the reader experience?

JE: I’m going to link these two questions together because I think that technology is not simply impacting on the way that readers interact with stories, but on the way that people interact with content. I was struck by the comments of Fred Wilson when the Kindle first launched “I don’t want to consume media that I can’t interact with,” he wrote. “When I come into contact with media, I want to do something with it. Tag it, post it, reply to it, comment on it, favorite it, share it, gift it, quote it, whatever … When are people going to understand that digital media, be it a book, a song, a film, an article, or whatever else, is not passive media. That was analog’s gig.” So I think that the change in reader expectation is the significant thing, not that we can tell stories across different platforms. The great web movement is towards openness and collaboration – printed, single authored books, by their very nature, are closed. This is something that will undoubtedly change as books and stories move online.

Labs: You seem to embrace ‘remix culture’ pretty fearlessly.  How have you navigated copyright issues with previous projects?

JE: By being open and transparent about the fact that we are experimenting and don’t know all the answers.

Labs: Looking to the future, what are you excited by?

JE: Whilst not a gamer I think games are really interesting and I’m looking forward to seeing how we can make books and the reading experience more playful and game-like. Levelling-up would make most experiences more interesting.

Labs: Do you see a role for brands working with Penguin in future?

JE: Definitely – we love partnerships that can bring us and our authors to a new potential audience. We’ve already worked with some awesome partners and since, as a general trade publisher, we publish for every age-group and demographic there are spaces around the Penguin list for all sorts of relationships.

Labs: What advice would you offer a brand looking to partner a publisher?

JE: As with any other partnership – everyone’s got to have a win. For Penguin the wins have historically been the ability to reach (and sell books to) a new or clearly defined audience. But cash also works.

Labs: Penguin has a longstanding, much celebrated heritage of great design.  Again, recently we’ve seen some stunning limited edition collections.  Not to mention the Flickr sets dedicated to vintage Penguin bookcover design… Is design something you see as key to Penguin’s future?

JE: Definitely – there is so much competition out there for people’s attention and their money. So everything we sell should be remarkable, both in terms of content and as a product. We’re really flattered when we see people using Penguin’s iconographic design creatively, like this and this – it’s a lovely position to be in.

Labs: Could you tell us a little bit about what your job involves?

JE: As Digital Publisher at Penguin Books I am responsible for examining and developing new methods, technologies and business opportunities for Penguin to promote, sell and distribute the works of our authors. A proportion of my job is focussed on ebooks and working with sales teams to make sure that the right books are getting to the right channels. But as our definitions of book and story and indeed author stretch, and the variety of channels grows, so does the opportunity to spend time doing creative digital publishing and inventing new forms.

Labs: What’s been  your proudest achievement at Penguin?

JE: Probably We Tell Stories winning the best in show at the SXSW Interactive awards. I’m also perversely proud of producing the wikinovel A Million Penguins, described on several blogs as ‘the worst novel ever’.

Labs: What persuaded you to get into publishing in the first place?

JE: It was as an accident – I went to journalism school, learned to type and got a job at Penguin as a temporary secretary. I realised that publishing was full of smart interesting people who didn’t mind me reading books at my desk, and that was that.

Labs: Finally, which other publishers (companies, individuals) do you admire most and why?

JE: Harlequin (in the US) – out of all publishers they seem to be the most reader focussed.

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To conclude, lots to chew on here, but our initial thoughts in terms of the implications for brands and marketing are as follows -

1. Marketing as Service, Service as Marketing. Tangible services and products you can share, discuss, review are marketing and PR platforms in their own right. Obvious conclusion no.1: think about how your marketing campaign is helping people do stuff better, quicker; would they pay for the privilege? Conclusion no.2: think about talkability at the outset when you’re designing new services.  Conclusion no.3: brands need to do more to explore their own territories in this respect: create platforms, partnerships etc.  We’re seeing more and more brands behaving like this, but it still feels like early days.

2. Commercial accountability only gets more important, not less. Whether it’s the economy or the nature of interactions on the web, nowadays there is both more pressure & more opportunity to create and measure direct commercial impact.  Or put another way, more pressure to demonstrate the value of brands as intangible assets.

3. Experimental thinking is nothing without experimental doing. And the importance of a company culture that encourages this.  Was the wiki novel (the sheer audacity of which we love) a failure or a success?  Discuss. Okay, so we’ve revealed our bias already – but at the very least it laid the ground for future Penguin projects that perhaps have been deemed ‘successful’ in the more conventional sense of the word.

4. If It’s Digital, It Must Be Interactive. In a wholly digitised future, is there any room for content you can’t interact with, content you can only passively consume (in other words, get with the program or die with analogue?) OR conversely, in future will there be secret libraries with zero connectivity where nostalgic readers can go sit, smell the pages of old books and read in Zen-like contemplation?

5. The Rise and Rise of Game Culture. Because games are by their very nature interactive…Jeremy is not alone in being excited by how gaming can invigorate storytelling, often blending real and virtual worlds.  The likes of Campfire already do this with considerable style (their Frenzied Waters work out earlier this month just one recent example), with Mike Monello also drawing our attention to The Hidden Park iPhone app with his comment on our recent Foursquare Town Holler post.

As always, please let us know what you think.  In the meantime, a big thank you to Jeremy for the interview. In his own words: “I guess I feel strongly that in good times, experimentation is a luxury and in bad times perhaps it’s a necessity.”  Amen to that.

Before we go much further, it’s worth saying what this isn’t about: it’s not another essay on the accelerating declines in the newspaper industry’s circulation figures and ad revenues, as much as these may form the backdrop, even the driving need behind the changes at TMG. Instead, the starting point here is the premise that adland still needs media and media needs adland, no question.  And, equally importantly, all of us need to find forward-looking ways to accelerate our own response to the change going on around us. Listening to what they had to say, the relevance for any commercial creative business hit home hard. Here then is an unapologetically positive attempt to capture the implications of what we heard: what can we learn from one media brand’s story?

1. THE POWER OF A PILOT STUDY: ‘PROJECT VICTORIA’

Small, nimble, under the radar, with permission to fail: Will Lewis took a team of just seven, each with different skills and experience, out of Canary Wharf to Victoria and set up a separate unit to experiment with new ways of working. For five months they worked with just a dozen journalists to create the first 4 pages of the newspaper and a dummy website, each and every day.  And just about every day they deliberately trialled different ways to deliver it: from different seating arrangements to different processes and responsibilities.

Section editors sit in conference (at centre, surrounded by overhead TV screens)

Today, editors for each of the paper’s sections meet at a central table three times a day for conference, with their individual teams working in spokes fanning out from that hub, reflecting the layout they found worked best in the pilot.  Obviously this alone wouldn’t have transformed their output, but it has cut down unnecessary lines of communication and created greater cohesion across platforms.

Above all, the pilot allowed the team running it to find out as much about what wouldn’t work, as what would.  A controlled environment where several different approaches were tried out meant failure was an (acceptable) option.

2. INTEGRATED STORIES NEED INTEGRATED LEADERSHIP

In terms of responsibilities, there is no complex matrix system separating channel expertise from editorial expertise. Instead, an audience-driven approach gives each section editor responsibility for how their stories play out across ALL media. And as a general rule, a story is given equal prominence whichever platform it appears on.  Regular conferences ensure if a story crosses sections of the paper this is spotted early and priorities get agreed.

The implications here suggest themselves: telling a story in a multi-channel world is probably done faster and better by a multi-discipline team sitting together, with one point of sign-off.

3. HAVE SIMPLE, TANGIBLE GOALS (and, like it or loathe it, some independent auditing)

Project Victoria’s aims were straightforward: could they move to a model where more content was produced, more often, by fewer people (from “11 pairs of eyes to 3-4 pairs”), across more platforms (print, online, audio and video)? Whilst maintaining the quality of journalism? Without increasing errors?  Without driving people into the ground?  Independent auditing proved they could.  In fact, the net result was more content, of equal if not higher quality, for less. And intense though ‘intra-day’ (versus the old once a day, 9pm deadline) submissions may have been, people actually enjoyed it.  At the root of this was a simple realisation that is particularly telling for any creative business: they needed more content creators and less people handling it.

4. HAVE BUY-IN FROM THE VERY TOP

With a business as steeped in tradition as the newspaper industry, instigating change would have ground to a halt if it hadn’t been for the support and conviction of the proprietors and the likes of TMG CEO Murdoch MacLennan.  Deeper within the organisation, people’s jobs depended – or appeared to depend – on the status quo staying exactly that, the status quo.  Even passive obstruction (the most lethal) at that level could have easily derailed the project without support right at the top of the company.  It goes without saying the same applies to any organisation facing this degree of change.

5. MAKE IT PERSONAL

When they moved from pilot to roll-out (a program lasting a phenomenal 18 weeks, training 25 people a week) the going in point was that an integrated, multi-platform approach was not about killing the newspaper off, but about protecting and growing it for the future. It was even pointed out that the web gave the Telegraph a stronger international presence in markets where the paper could not be physically printed. Yet they soon realised people needed to know why it was important to them personally. Saving an industry is not enough. With TMG staff there were a number of positive things to choose from, some of which might be reframed for anyone working in a creative business: you could now be a journalist across 3-4 different media, not just one; working to intra-day deadlines is higher intensity, yes, but it doesn’t mean longer hours; the quality of journalism is improved by more information and a greater choice of stories and, within reason, a faster pace of working sharpens the output, rather than weakening it.

6. TELL PEOPLE ONCE. THEN TELL THEM AGAIN. AND AGAIN (…AND THEN ONE MORE TIME)

A very simple point and one we’ve all heard before, but yet still nearly always overlooked.  In short, when we’re bored of talking about what needs to change and why, others may just about be starting to listen and taking an interest.  Experiment with different ways (large groups, one-on-one etc) to do this.  Accept not everyone will embrace change at the same speed.  Some people may never get it, whilst others may take a while to do so.

7. GIVE MORE TIME & FOCUS TO THE PLANNING PHASE

In terms of delivering a story, it may come as a surprise (it did to us) to hear over half the paper is made up of set pieces that are completely possible to plan for.  In fact meticulous planning is increasingly an absolute necessity.

The web has both exacerbated the need for planning and provided the tools to do so. First, the web is key to story building & fuelling: online publishing means more content, starting much earlier and lasting longer.  Inevitably, this dictates that a plan is in place guiding what content is released, when and how it unfolds over time.

Second, the web can be key to story ownership, in turn helping to drive actual newspaper sales (with the recent MP expenses scandal the media and associated parties were directed initially to Telegraph.co.uk to ‘prove’ the story was live & legitimate in order to engender a response, which was then used to deliver the story in full most publicly via the paper).

The parallels & implications for our industry here seem particularly significant – sure, a lot about a brand story cannot be controlled in the way it used to be (nor should we try), but this provided a timely reminder that we can and should plan the steps we can control.  Without doubt, this also hints at the opportunities to fuel & curate brand stories in closer partnership with media owners.

8. STAY IN PERMANENT BETA

TMG live the spirit of this in a number of ways.  Their innovation Lab has partnerships with Google, Apple and Adobe with whom they develop new and experimental outputs, with a focus on rapid prototyping & delivery (concept to delivery in 6 weeks).  By way of example, they were the first publisher to launch a Google Android app.

TMG are also focused on what needs to change next within the organisation, which they’ve identified as getting editorial & commercial to work hand in hand.  Nancy Cruickshank stresses that a renewed focus on audience and tangible metrics will contribute to resolving what might otherwise be a predictable tension between the two.  Tough as it may be, this is where it gets really interesting. Above and beyond e-commerce (easy because it is measurable; plus reader offers, products & services are unsurprisingly strong sources of revenue), TMG see connecting buyers and sellers through content as the Holy Grail.  Indeed, people may come to the Telegraph site to read news stories, “but when we can move them to do stuff too, it actually improves the reader experience”.  Which is where brands looking for new, more effective ways to connect with their audiences come in.  Although – perhaps inevitably – this is also when concerns around brand integration versus journalistic integrity get voiced, a well thought-through partnership with the right brand has the potential to drive far greater value for all concerned.  Interestingly, on the other side of the Atlantic, the New York Times R&D Lab is pursuing new types of technology-driven innovation with equal vigour, the Nieman Journalism Lab describing recently how “In the (NY) Times R&D Lab, the future of news is the future of advertising.”

By the end of the visit, the overwhelming sense we’re left with is of an organisation that understands change is the new steady state.  Rather than resisting change, better to lean into it, plan for it, even enjoy it.  And on that note, I leave the final word to Chris Lloyd, Assistant Managing Editor at TMG and one of the original team of seven:

“It never really stops.  Don’t let a stagnant state set in.  Keep moving, keep changing.”

Our thanks to the Telegraph Media Group, in particular: Chris Lloyd, Rhidian Wynn-Davies, Murdoch MacLennan & Nancy Cruickshank