Opening 'big picture' thoughts from Mark Earls

1. Some thoughts on the Landscape (DRAFT)
New media, same as the old media?
That great populist scourge of the ad business of the Mad Man
era, Marshall Macluhan, is once supposed to have observed that
we tend to see new technologies through the lens of that which the
new will eventually replace.
This certainly seems to have some traction in the world of
advertising and marketing: TV was first understood by many of our
predecessors as radio-with-pictures; Direct Marketing as
advertising but more precise and measurable; Mobile ditto but with
real-world relevance bundled for free (see ESOOU website).
This is the central problem that the advertising industry has to
face, if it is to deal with the challenges presented by the industry -
unless we understand how different this kind of technology is and
how it already has and will continue to change the landscape
within which business and marketing and advertising in particular
are operating, we will
Social Media?
The truth is though that the new technologies - the things we
normally call “social media” - are a very different kind of thing from
those with which we have lived and in which we have worked for a
number of generations. Imagining that they are (as for example,
the DCMS/BERR interim report on Digital Britain suggests) is a
fundamental error
First, these technologies are not built, used or adopted primarily for
brands’ benefits - your mobile phone is not a device whose primary
purpose is to connect brands or other content providers to you; no,
it is primarily a means for you to connect with your peers - your
family, friends and colleagues. This is the social bit.
Second, the technologies are not “media” in the sense we have
traditionally understood the term - they are not best understood as
“information transmission channels” for us to fill. One senior US
senator caused much mirth in 2008 by referring to the Internet as a
tangle of “tubes”. These technologies are not channels for the
advertising industry to fill but - primarily, at least - a means to for
people to connect with other people.

2. Connectedness has turned out to be the natural state of things in
the modern world. We are connected to each other in ways that
our great-grandparents’ generation would have struggled to
imagine; indeed, many of today’s grandparents have similar
problems envisaging the degree of connectedness
A decade ago, precious few of us sent SMS messages; today,
between us, we Brits alone account for more than 5BN a month.
While some may still talk of the Web as a ‘place’ or a broadcasting
system, its prime use in the UK is “social networking” - that is,
interacting with other individuals. As Sociologist Frank Furedi
points out, our kids are now tied by a “digital leash”, when previous
generations were forced to learn about the world by running free.
Connectedness is characteristic of the modern world. And it is
connectedness (not flash animation or Facebook widgets or high-
speed broadband) that is changing everything.
Emergent Stuff
Complexity theory makes much of ‘emergence”: that is, the
unforeseen and (largely) unpredictable phenomena that arise from
the interaction of agents within a system. It’s the stuff that happens
without it being obviously planned in: like the patterns of birds
flocking together (http://www.red3d/cwr/boids/) when all any
individual bird is programmed to do is keep up, keep going and
don’t bump!
The point about connectedness in human populations is that it
fundamentally changes things in ways that neither the inventors
nor vendors of a technology nor its adopters can envisage ahead
of time.
Here is some of the more important emergent stuff that this kind of
connective technology seems to generate:
1. Connectedness also allows us to outsource difficult decisions
to our peers (when lots of choices are available, doing what other
folk are doing makes a lot of sense). This ‘copying’ has long been
a feature of consumer markets (see Duncan Watts and Matt
Salganik’s music download experiments for one example) and
gives rise to the signature Long Tail (link) distribution in so many

3. consumer markets - this distribution is characteristic of a certain
kind of copying (Bentley Earls Admap October 09). The point being
that unless you are able to see what those around you are doing
and thinking, it’s hard to copy; connectedness removes this barrier.
2. Connectedness forces transparency in politics & business:
when we can check other people’s opinions easily (e.g. through
using Tripadvisor), we can sidestep what authorities and brands
want to tell us (and want us to avoid knowing). This is also why
governments in a number of countries (including most recently
India) restrict the publication of opinion polls during critical parts of
elections as they are deemed to distract individual voters from
making independent decisions. Equally, the same phenomenon
encourages us to look to each other rather than to business,
brands, politicians and traditional authority figures: many sources
(e.g. Edelman Trust Barometer) demonstrate the acceleration of
this in recent years - well before the Economic Crisis.
3. Connectedness changes power relationships: CK Prahalad’s
prescient “The Future of Competition” describes how a pacemaker
manufacturer has had to change with the advent of the internet:.
Previously, they contended themselves with dealing only with the
medical professionals; patients were grateful for what they were
given. Now - as every GP knows - patients come armed to the
teeth with information garnered from other individuals, from patient
groups, from online advice pages (both scientifically sound and
those at the outer ends of quackery).
(One emblematic example is described in HERD: how - thanks to
this kind of connection - the view that the MMR vaccine is a causal
factor in the onset of autism among British children spread through
the UK population, to such an extent that we are now suffering a
near epidemic of serious childhood diseases long effectively
eradicated from the British population)
4. Connectedness encourages self-organisation and
collaboration. As Clay Shirky points out, one of the most
interesting and useful emerging phenomena emerging in the
connected age is the degree to which it seems to encourage self-
organisation and collaboration. From Wikipedia to the more
challenging programmes of games companies like Electronic Arts
(much of 3D Sims was built by gamers rather than the company)

4. or the Mindstorms programme that has reinvented Lego -
collaboration becomes easier with connection (Shirky talks of the
plummeting cost of collaboration). However, that is not to say that
collaboration and co-operation are new phenomena (Charles
Leadbetter’s We-Think points out the roots of this in the early
industrial revolution and Prof Dirk Helbing’s recent work suggests
that co-operation will emerge in human populations in even the
most unlikely circumstances. The point in both cases being that
connection makes it easier and more likely.
5. Connectedness is also responsible for less positive social
changes. It is important not to become to too idealistic: for all the
positive results of connection - for the public at least - b some of
the things emerging are far from being so. By this we don’t just
mean the explosion of Gillian McKeith-type quackery, which can
undermine public health programmes, but at the most fundamental
level, universally available connectedness can actually make
social dislocation worse (as much as it might improve things). If we
are free to be able to spend our lives exclusively in the company of
others like us (as many disadvantaged kids do), then these
individuals not only become more isolated from the rest of the
population but - as Bill Bishop’s Big Sort suggests - group effects
like the “risky shift” can take hold and make the members of such
isolated groups even more extreme in views and opinions. The net
effect is a reduction in what is called “social capital” and our
shared public lives.
The point here is not to scaremonger - as Andrew Keen might - but
to recognise that is that connected technologies are fundamentally
disruptive: they are changing the landscape for us all, in every
aspect of our lives - sometimes for good, sometimes less so.
Unless we marketing and advertising folk get our heads around the
ways in which the landscape in which we operate is being changed
by the simple fact of universal connection, we will struggle. As the
Cluetrain Manifesto puts it,
“there’s a new conversation between and among your market and
your workers. It's making them smarter and it's enabling them to
discover their human voices.
You have two choices. You can continue to lock yourself behind
facile corporate words and happytalk brochures. Or you can join

5. the conversation.”

6. the conversation.”