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Food Is The Next Fashion

 
Chef Tory McPhail, Commander’s Palace, and Andy Ford, talk about The Food Channel Gulf Tour, enjoying an Abita, a local beer brand.

There’s a very enlightening article you might want to read on fashion that sets out just how quickly the lines are disappearing between editorial content and paid advertising. The article states that as more branded fashion content appears on the web, “editorial is the new advertising.”

You can understand how fashion is leading the way. People have always loved fashion. They are fascinated by what’s in, what’s out, the international influences, the everyday sources of inspiration from the street up, and the excitement of the runways as the big fashion brands expose their latest creations. Now fashion is leading the way into transmedia by creating fashion content and telling stories that become part of the conversation in social media. The “sell” is more believable than advertising because the information is disseminated in a more entertaining and comfortable context—one the viewer chooses.

As brands unobtrusively become a natural part of the stories, the editorial takes over the selling job once dominated by advertising.

To my way of thinking, food fits this same formula—which explains how food is rapidly moving toward the same position fashion is pioneering. Like fashion, food is very much on the minds of people. Next to what they wear, what they eat is vitally important to people every day. Various foods become fashionable and then fall from grace, international influences create new categories, hot young chefs inspire consumer trends, and big brands introduce their creations at annual events.

Food is the ultimate social currency and connects naturally with the new social patterns, connections, and conversations.

You really don’t have to look very far to see how food is becoming the next fashion. Cable TV is highly populated with “chef” programs and competitions. Food magazines and travel books are filled with feature articles about food and food trends that give people much to try and even more to talk about.

Our own Food Channel is breaking new ground in transmedia branded editorial.

When banner ads stop, the advertising stops—but that’s not the case with branded editorial. It has a life of its own. The story travels into the conversations of the people who find it interesting. It moves from branded to earned media. As the story gets passed along, the featured brand becomes part of the lives of the people it touches. They eat it up. As a food brand, isn’t that what you want?

That’s it, from the edge of the world,

Bob

The Living Textbook—Life Gets Thrilling Again.

 

 

When you stop learning you may not die, but you do stop living…or, stated another way thanks to a once-popular song, “Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.” Learning is, for many people, the thrill of life. It keeps old people young, and it turns eager young learners into creative, productive, and “lively” adults.

Sadly for young people, the outdated textbook approach to learning is just not cutting it anymore. It’s BOR-ING!

With TV, videos, 3D games, texting, mobile phones, YouTube, and Facebook available, opening up a big old text book with static photos, mountains of words, deadly graphs, and one-way messaging seems like entering an oppressive child labor camp. It’s just not thrilling; in fact, it’s a turnoff.

And what about adults? Magazines are our textbooks. We turn to our favorite magazine to find out what’s new in the world, especially the worlds that most interest us. Are magazines flourishing? Are they as thrilling as they once were? Some are, but for most people they simply aren’t. Magazines haven’t kept pace with the Internet and all the various mediums I listed above that vie for our attention just like they do for our young people.

The fast-forward technology of the iPad is ushering in both a revolutionary approach to magazines and a simple way to breath the life back into learning.

What would a living magazine or a living textbook look like? Wired magazine gives you a firsthand look, using a video demonstration that shows you how its magazine will look once in the new digital format is finished. Wired is working with Adobe to make its print magazine “come alive” with click-on short films, 360° spin-around graphics, and the ability to dig deep or skim the surface of each article—all with the touch screen magic of the iPad. You really should click here to see what Wired is developing. The magazine says it, and I believe it; it will revolutionize the magazine industry.

Welcome to the Living Textbook.

Once you see what can be done to bring a magazine to life, it’s easy to imagine how that same approach will turn textbooks into wonderful, amazing interactive learning devices that have all the “wow factor” of the iPad. Imagine a textbook that comes alive with video, images, and interactivity. Imagine something that keeps up with you as you grow through life, because it is growing too.

It’s a fact; by the time a published textbook hits a student’s desk, many times the information is already dated. With a living textbook, anytime something new happens it can be updated with new material, lectures, and demonstrations from around the world. New information and new links can take you down amazing rabbit holes or lead you directly to the answer you’re looking for.

If that sounds exiting, imagine how much more inviting learning will become when textbooks are alive, constantly grabbing your attention, responding to your touch, and anticipating your learning needs even before you know what they are.

By the way, these textbooks are already becoming available, more all the time. Leading textbook publishers have made arrangements with ScrollMotion to bring interactive, multimedia-friendly textbooks to the iPad. If you click here, you can see another great example of how the future is already upon us. It’s a demonstration of how newer, more interactive learning is being promoted on something called enTourage eDGe. It’s a handy device that turns an e-reader into a total media tool.

In our work here with The Food Channel® and CultureWaves®, we’re combining the ever-changing “living” information we’re gathering daily with a recipe database that can be personalized and added to over the years—and we’re turning the results into a living textbook on food and cooking. It’s new publishing at its best: active, demonstrable with video, and highly social with the ability to take feedback and respond in real time. Yes, even cookbooks are coming alive, and that, hopefully, means our next generation will learn to cook.

That’s it, from the edge of the world,

Bob

Careering

Everybody’s talking about jobs, and, of course, as we’re digging out of this recession, everybody should be; but what you don’t hear is people talking about careers.

Maybe that’s because the word “career” has turned into a noun instead of the active word it started out as. Or maybe it’s just because too many people have stopped thinking they have a career ahead of them and have settled for trying to land, or hold on to, something with a false sense of security called a job.

As a verb, “career” possesses a very times-appropriate attitude.

Career literally means moving swiftly in an uncontrolled way in a specific direction. Or as one dictionary defines it, to lurch rapidly onward. When you think of your career as a verb instead of a noun, it describes how you should proceed—always moving, never stopping, never settling in, and always defining your tasks at hand in terms of aiming for a moving target called the future. That’s what I call “careering.”

When you see a person careering, he or she is usually moving in full gear at full speed.

You can observe this type of individual in every age category, at every level of society, at every pay scale. For instance, you can spot a person careering when you walk into a McDonald’s. That energetic, motivated person taking your order with a smile, swiftly processing it, getting it right, then serving it efficiently back to you, well, she probably has her eyes on the manager’s job. And if he’s stopped careering, before he realizes it, she’ll have it.

Even in these times, low-level jobs are plentiful (if you want to work) and careers are hard to find...but they are out there, everywhere, in this new high-tech, high-challenge, and high-reward world.

Changing times have a way of leveling the playing field, and winning requires more imagination and grit than money, connections, relationships, or tenure—and this is my point—it takes career-minded will and determination, not jobs-minded tentativeness. It takes careering.

Even in a time when new worlds are destroying traditional jobs, where high-tech communication media is replacing buggy-whip industries such as newspapers and network TV, opportunity is not lacking; not if you’re careering.

That’s it, from the edge of the world,

Bob

Photo Source: Palomar.edu 

The Rise of the Human

 

There was a time, not too long ago, when it was feared that computers would win a technological victory over humans and rule with cold, formulaic precision. But humans, being what they are, didn’t let it happen. Humans became creative with the technology—they used it for their own purpose—and that behavior is now reshaping business intelligence and launching a new age.

The Industrial Age is history. The Information Age is not far behind.

Structure is making way for the unstructured. The certainty of 2 + 2 = 4 is giving way to any number of answers. And before artificial intelligence can even be fully realized, human intelligence is trampling it into submission.

If the introduction of the Apple iPad (pictured above) does to media what the iPod did to music—which many predict—human beings are going to win again. It has the potential to make human life more unstructured, less binding, totally media-centric, and fully connected. It’s a tool that will yank people forward away from informational formulas and into the communication crossroads that business simply cannot ignore.

In an article by Brooke Alker titled, “The Next-Generation of Business Intelligence”, he makes the case that structured, internal data can take a business only so far today, and that it must be augmented by evidence from “the most unstructured corners of the Web.” He sees the semantic web filling in the gaps in business intelligence by putting human contribution squarely in the position of helping to forecast the future.

Foresight never comes from what has happened, it springs from what is happening right now, every minute, from every aspect of life.

Business is learning more each day that people are not that easy to control. Formulas, survey data, statistics, predictive calculations—while they all have value, the new business model must allow “life” to have a prominent place in the decision process.

When I refer to “life,” I’m talking about how people direct their lives based on their time, their money, and—most important—their love of what they choose to do. Human desire trumps just about every other aspect of human life as far as dictating behavior, defining human truth, and discovering signposts for the future. If you know peoples’ passions, observe their behavior, and listen to what they’re talking about—you’ll get a peek at what to expect. No 2 + 2 = 4 thinking will ever be as revealing as the human exceptions that prove 2 + 2 = 5.

What the pundits are calling Semantic Intelligence, we call Human Intelligence—the secret to why CultureWaves^® is so distinctly different from other intelligence gathering.

I’m often asked, what makes CultureWaves so different? My simple answer is: it’s because we give people the “WHY.” We go to the busy corners of the web where people are congregating; we listen to their conversations; and we report back on their behavior. We have people tagging this “life” through the use of human need-states, emotional attachments, and their own individual thinking. The results form human truths and human intelligence—factors that make business intelligence smarter because it’s based on what’s happening now, not what has happened. It extracts rich meaning and adds new relevance.

People have pirated technology. Their love of individuality and communication is now taking over business in the same way.

When people started building their own web sites in order to share life—their photos, their videos, and their comments—they didn’t do it to start businesses. They did it to communicate. Now business is following their lead as it enters the world of social media thus creating the dawn of the Communications Age. This dramatic shift is why the “life” aspect of CultureWaves is so valuable. It looks at life and applies it to business instead of the other way around. That “other way” was the way it used to work in the Information Age. Do you see that age disappearing? You should. In many ways…it’s already gone.

That’s it, from the edge of the world,

Bob

Note: “The Next-Generation of Business Intelligence” by Brooke Aker can be found at http://soa.sys-con.com/node/892846. Published December 21, 2009. Copyright © 2009 SYS-CON Media, Inc.

Image: Please click here for the link to the image at Reuters.com.

Are You Willing to Explore Life and Exploit What You Find?

I’m talking about the digital life that explores the future needs of the marketplace. If you exploit those needs, you can create, sustain, and grow a business.

 

Sounds simple, right? Yes, it is simple—but absolutely not easy.

 

In life’s new digital age, digital agencies and traditional agencies alike are missing the mark.

 

The new digital agencies are great at overwhelming their clients with all the wonderful creative bells and whistles to dazzle and entertain. They will explore possibilities until you stop them. But they have difficulty making it all happen in a way that makes sense.

 

The traditional agencies, on the other hand, are not as good at exploring what can be done on the web—but, if a client has an idea or a direction, they are adept at exploiting it. They always have been. They did it with radio and television, and they are doing it with the web. Where they fall short is in pushing the boundaries of exploration.

 

I’m an explorer who likes to exploit. And I think the answer to the inadequacies both of digital and traditional agencies is to explore AND exploit.

 

It’s time to turn curiosity about what comes next into real action. Explore first, then make it happen. Clients are demanding leadership. They’re not quite sure of exactly what they need, but they do know for certain that they need something.

 

The solution, as I see it, is to help clients change their cultures.

 

If you can help them see why they need to make the transition from buying an audience to earning an audience, you’ll set them on the new course. They will soon learn that they need to give to get; that they need to go from monologue to dialogue; and that, in the new web and digital age, it’s all about becoming a publisher.

 

“Okay, that’s a great theory. Can you show me what you’ve done?”

 

That’s a question I’m very happy to answer. To see all this theory put into action, just click through to The Food Channel®.

 

We pioneered this site for the food industry, to give everyone an example of what I mean by being in the publishing business. It’s a site dedicated to “All things food.” It’s a living, instantly changing, extremely generous site that gives people a reason to come back to it several times a day. It’s a dialogue site that covers events, offers videos, provides recipes, gives people a virtual water cooler for hanging out, and even puts forth perspectives both on the consumer and the business sides of food. It’s an ongoing story that gets fed daily. It’s simple, transparent, and all about people and food; and, if you use a little imagination, it could be about cars, or home improvement, or travel, or just about anything.

 

New dialogue sites such as The Food Channel are the future—not only of communications, but also of business as a whole.

 

I don’t have to show you articles to spell this out for you, although I have them; you can find them in any major publication that is analyzing the advertising and communication industry. All signs are pointing to the way we’ve decided to go.

 

We’re exploring life like the new digital agencies, and exploiting it with a well-thought-out marketing plan like a traditional agency would.

 

It takes wild creativity and sound discipline to make it in the new communication world. It’s what life is telling us it needs.

 

That’s it, from the edge of the world,

 

Bob

 

Note: this entry is a response to the article “Why Digital Agencies Aren’t Ready to Lead,” published in Advertising Age® and written by Ana Andjelic. In the article, Ana Andjelic comments on organizational theorist James March’s exploration vs. exploitation dichotomy. Her article was originally published on her blog, i [love] marketing.

 

 

Image: Lewis and Clark West to the Pacific by Frank R. "Bob" Davenport. Photo and copyright held by the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Inc.

Ten Million Town Criers

There used to be a town crier in every town. His occupation grew out of the fact that in medieval England people couldn’t read and write. His job was to ring a bell and shout the news, literally, once or sometimes twice a day. Some criers were women. Having a loud voice was more important than your gender.

As people learned to read and write, and as printing presses became both smaller and more available, newspapers rose to prominence. But putting out a newspaper was a big effort, and many times the “news” lagged weeks or even months behind the events that shaped the news.

All of this took a sharp jump forward during the start of the American Revolution when Thomas Paine utilized a powerful new weapon to spread his views. He employed (drum roll) the pamphlet. At that time, his quick-press pronouncements were as immediate as a town crier and were a precursor to today’s blogs. They were self-published and extremely effective. Several of them swiftly changed the course of history.

You may be familiar with these words from The Crisis, published December 23, 1776, at a point when the revolution teetered between success and failure.

“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

And think about these pointed and clearly revolutionary words from Common Sense, a document that is credited with sparking the dissent that spawned the American Revolution.

“Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.”

I wonder how popular Thomas Paine would be today on a cable network? Or talk radio? Or how many people would follow his blog, or his Twitter page?

Today everyone who has a blog, or a Twitter page, or one of the many other social networking sites, has a “street corner” where he or she can shout out news and views as they see it. So we now have a million, or 10 million, or perhaps 50 million town criers all over the internet. The newspapers and network media are being left behind, just as they were by Paine’s innovative pamphlets.

People are not waiting for our doddering and dusty old media to inform them. They’re doing their own investigative journalism. The young couple who exposed ACORN through their use of a hidden camera are the newest town criers on the scene; and they are doing more than shouting out the news. They are actually releasing hard evidence and plastering it all over YouTube, Twitter, and other social media. They are the Thomas Paines of the day—and their power of persuasion is just beginning to show its face and its force.

When CNN can’t bring us the immediate news in Iran during a scandalous election and the ensuing demonstrations—but Twitter can—you know “news reporting” is experiencing a seismic shift.

Our gathering of evidence and behavior in CultureWaves® through our Neemee™ software reminds me a little of the brave new reporters on YouTube and Twitter. Our collectors of behavior from life don’t expect it to drop in their laps, they’re going out and getting it themselves. And they are sharing it everyday—like 10 million town criers all shouting at once.

It’s something I’m proud to be a part of, and somewhat humbled by. Now if I could only write like Thomas Paine.

That’s it, from the edge of the world,

Bob

To see the ACORN video on YouTube, click here.

 

Image: Town Crier, Provincetown, Massachusetts; from a 1909 postcard published by Provincetown Advocate, Provincetown, Massachusetts. Please click here for the source.

Voice Search—The New Oral You

Does it ever annoy you to see people, mostly young people, endlessly text messaging?

Or, do you find it frustrating typing info into your cell phone, or punching with your stylist, or wearing your fingers to the bone searching the Internet?

Well, all of that is changing with the new Google voice search and the even more advanced Vlingo voice recognition and processing application.

Those text maniacs are now able to voice enter their message and have it appear on their screen so they can correct it before they send it. Which means they will now annoy you by forcing you to listen to such mundane entries like, “Where are you?” and “I’m at home.” And, of course, you’ll be hearing other people searching the web, asking directions, researching where to go to dinner, and publicly displaying much other information that now remains, gratefully, in the private realm. And, you better get used to it because private is going public in the voice search age. All because it’s easier to speak than type, and easer to talk than write. The quality of the thoughts we’ll be hearing will be subject to how much thinking people actually do before they speak. Which, when you think about it, is always the case.

One blogger, Jan Chipchase, points out that voice search and recognition is going to be a boon to illiterates who will use it everywhere. He says, “You might think that mainstream voice search will be restricted to places where you have a degree of privacy, like say a car or home—but there are a number of reasons why that's not going to be the case: the first is that to some of the world's 800+million illiterate people, voice is the enabler—it opens up a new window to the world…”

He goes on to say that it will be a new way for people to expose themselves to others and I think he’s absolutely right. The world will become one big reality TV show with everyone spouting out their private lives as they search, socialize, and project all by voice. People will boast about their plans, flatter, criticize, chastise, and make verbal mistakes right in front of people that they would never do otherwise.

We already have books on tape so you can listen instead of read, one can only imagine what it will be like when you can just talk instead of write. It will make the office environment quite different. Will we all wear earplugs? And I can’t help but wonder, are there people who can’t read and write who are latent geniuses? Will they surface as people who can think but have never been able to get their thoughts down on paper or screen? Will text-messaging fiends drive each other crazy with their chatter? It’s all part of the new, improved louder world we’re entering now—with ears wide open.

That’s it, from the edge of the world,

Bob

For a little diversion, check out what the BBC is doing with voice and instrument sound. To visit their website, just click here.

Make your next thought better than your last.

The first thought.

Whether you believe in evolution, or intelligent design, or creation by an uncreated god—think about this.

What was it like to have the first thought? When those synapses crackled for the first time, did somebody, whoever it was, think “me,” “there is a me,” “me cold,” “me hungry,” “me want self-actualization”? Obviously, that last thought came later, and even today doesn’t come that often. But I’ll wager that soon after beings started to think, the ones who developed a capacity to think better, did better.

And that’s all we’re trying to help you do with neemee™. Only instead of being in a jungle, or a garden, or wherever that first thought came, we’re helping you think where you live today—firmly planted in the information age on the brink of an evolutionary revolution some people are calling Web 3.0.

But that is getting ahead of things.

Right now we have Web 1.0 and, for some, Web 2.0. And we have our hands full. Google. Yahoo. Facebook. MySpace. YouTube. 3D. Virtual Reality. Everything is mutating like an out-of-control virus in a Petri dish. The culture is growing wild, and you have to make a choice. Run and hide? Or inoculate yourself by injecting some of that virus right into your veins?

It’s never good to run and hide from technology.

The Boomer Generation comprises about 85% of decision makers in the business population. They understand Web 1.0 as a search device that can direct them to just about anything they want. That is, if they know what they want. (Remember, “me hungry.”) The basic bookmarking tool based on algorithms works for them. It’s like a phone book, or a fancy way of finding anything in the “library” of knowledge. Yet most of the “run and hide” Boomers are overwhelmed by the data, can’t find any real meaning in it, don’t get the social networking thing, see it as a kid toy, and have no idea how to make money with it.

The NetGenners (internet generation) simply don’t know anything else. They’ve either grown up with the web or embraced it as the boat carrying them through a monstrous sea change to an unknown shore. These are the tech-savvy, and they see the web as a magical doorway in a whole new expanding world of delights that come to them wherever they are. (Quite a difference.) One of the most amazing things about this group is that they can be any age. They don’t fear the web, they drink it in, and they are being trained to think in a whole new way.

SOS For SEOs

Aren’t we all looking for the Can’t Fail Café? And aren’t way too many SEO executives sitting in the Disaster Diner wondering how they got there?

Recently I read an article on SEO BLOG entitled “Top Ten Reasons Why SEOs Fail on Social Media” The SOS message came through loud and quite clear to me. I agree with the author wholeheartedly—the problem with most search engine optimizers is that they are stuck spinning their wheels in SEO 1.O while the web is now in 2.0 and quickly heading into 3.0. The author’s 10 points revolve around the notion that social networking is advancing at a rate that is leaving all the old practices of Web 1.0 in the dust. An SEO stuck in the past handles social bookmarking like web directories, treats content like filler with no real commitment to community management, or just simply refuses to share. Those three major sins alone doom many SEOs to failure simply because they create yesterday’s newspaper, and even today’s newspaper is worthless to a person living in Web 2.0 and itching for 3.0.

The search engine of the future, which is what we’re developing with neemee™, is one that will be powered by human perspectives not mathematical algorithms.

Neemee is already a creative search engine that allows you to browse with heart, soul, and passion—and soon you’ll be able to tap into a social network completely dedicated to open-source sharing and collaboration. We’re not there yet; we need to add social networking and functions for chat and other sharing. We’ll also need to move quickly to 3D and advance toward the other kindling fires sparking Web 3.0.

It’s like the semantic web has a boat design blueprint and we have a boat built and on a shakedown cruise.

Welcome to "Tiser" Mania

The Advertiser versus the Microtiser™ is turning out to be one of the biggest battles for dominance since the dinosaur versus the mammal.  And the climate change seems to be in favor of the little guy once again. It’s a battle for relevance, size, scope, and status quo—and past supremacy holds very little sway.

The national election is bringing statisticians out of the woodwork to disseminate and interpret as much data as they can get their hands on, no matter what the margin of error is or how ultimately relevant it turns out to be. The blogger on the fringe is stealing the life breath from the big mammoths such as the New York Times and Washington Post. This massive surge of individual perspective gains relevance as representative of larger views.

Statistical data is not the Tyrannosaurus Rex it once was. We’re finding the art side, the evidence of the individual, is gaining importance as the emerging pesky, warm-blooded threat to the big guy.

The graphic at the top of this page was taken from the Presidential Watch O8 website and represents, as they say, “the ultimate set of tools to see, hear, and feel what citizens and supporters are saying on the Internet about the 2008 presidential elections.” Just by clicking on any one of the virtual communities, big or small, you can instantly get an update on that community’s take on the elections. What looks like a universe somewhere in space is really a universe inside the Internet—and it is constantly in a state of flux, just like life here on earth. It’s a massive amount of evidence, some of it backed up by statistics, much of it opinion and observation placed there based on the everyday life of an individual. It is an amazing map of the macro and the micro. And when you travel from one place to the other, your behavioral breadcrumbs allow your every move to be tracked and recorded.

Is That a Behavioral Target on Your Back?

Behavioral targeting isn’t new, but it’s now getting ready to ramp up in ways that are causing both controversy and reason to celebrate.

With the recent speech (and subsequent reversal) given by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO and founder, it seems the battle is heating up over the economical and ethical issues of behavioral targeting.

But my question isn’t whether behavioral targeting can or should be used, to a greater or lesser degree, it will be—my question is, and it’s a valuable one, who knows what the drivers are that dictate the behavior? Who knows the need states, the human truths, and the cultural shifts behind the behavior that everyone is trying to target? That evidence—and the insights that ensue—combined with behavioral targeting is a very potent mixture. When you combine the behavioral insights of CultureWaves™ with the behavioral touch points of Facebook, you could very well have the origin and the output you need for new success in the new world of one-on-one marketing.

Why do I say that? Well, for one thing, I believe behavioral evidence and observation is far more valuable and believable than survey data. People can hide what they think by telling you what they suppose you want to hear. They can tell you things they don’t really believe out of frustration or fear. And sometimes, more often than not, they really don’t know what they think deep down at their core. That premise is the foundational belief behind CultureWaves, our behavioral gathering system.

People can’t hide what they do. Actions always speak volumes—many times at high volume. How people act tells you loud and clear what they are thinking.

From Walkman to Infoman

Man used to walk from place to place, and in between, he just walked. The Walkman changed all that. In 1979 Sony gave people a taste of what it would be like to walk, or run, or sit with music wherever they were at the time. The age of plugging our ears and blocking out the rest of the world had begun.

The Walkman revolutionized the portability and personalization of music.

Entertainment became an accessory, as personal as a purse or a wallet. We were freed from having to go to a radio or tape player or recording device. And like all freedom, once the genie was out of the bottle we kept wishing for more.

Now the iPhone is making all information come to us.

To get to the internet, to see every photo we have, to watch videos or live broadcasts, make calls, take email, send text messages, access the Library of Congress, to get real-time information to anyone anywhere at anytime—literally every bit of content you can think of is right at hand. (There are probably some things you can do with an iPhone that I haven’t imagined. By the way, if you think of some, send them to me.)

Domesticated Uncertainty

Life is uncertain at best; at worst it is downright terrifying. Especially if it’s your job to decide what new course your business should take. And as you know, if you are a CEO or marketing director, it is that wild uncertainty that makes your business life so exciting, sometimes too much so, and so difficult to tame.

In his book The Black Swan—The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Nicholas Taleb details his position that uncertainty is something we should embrace; that preparedness, not predictability, is what we should seek; and that we can deal with almost anything if we’re willing to calculate the consequences. (At least that’s my take on the book. I highly recommend you read it and draw your own conclusions.)

The symbolic lesson of the black swan (and the central theme of the book) comes from the bird itself. As the author notes in the first sentence of his book, “people believed all swans were white until black swans were discovered in Australia.” Empirical evidence had only confirmed the existence of white swans; therefore, a black swan was outside the realm of fact, and thus highly improbable. An artist may have thought of one, and even painted one, but no scientist had ever seen one.

The black swan event, as he describes it, is that highly improbably massive event, like the attack of 9/11, or any severe stock market crash, or when a turkey finds out in surprising and deadly fashion that Thanksgiving has come. These black swan events are generally impossible to predict and extremely impossible to prevent.

Mr. Talib sums up the significance of the black swan lesson with the following statement: “It illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experiences and the fragility of our knowledge.”

When I came upon that statement, I realized that Taleb was describing the need for exactly what we are addressing with CultureWaves™. 

CultureWaves is designed as a continuous process for taming wild, random and often-unmanageable information in an uncertain world. As we collect tangible evidence and observations from human experience and then connect it through something we call intuitive science, we are preparing people and companies to deal more effectively with uncertainty and to be more confident in making decisions. 

The Green Movement Is Branching Out

Ever since Adam and Eve got kicked out of the garden for misbehaving, or so the story goes, humans have been scratching out their existence at the expense of the earth. Exploitation didn’t take its toll until recently. If you ran out of something, you either moved on or paid someone to bring you more. Whoever thought there would ever be a shortage of timber? The rain forest was considered no different than the forest that covered what’s now known as New York City. Cut it down, bring in the cement trucks, progress will solve everything. And it still might. Or it might not.

The question of whether progress could or can solve our environmental problems became a giant concern when acid rain, the hole in the ozone, and global warming started to gain traction. The green movement started to move. It picked up momentum with Earth Day, angry protests, The Green Party, Ralph Nader, and now almost every Hollywood star and news outlet rushing to center stage to elbow their way into the green spotlight. 

In 2004 we saw a shift in how products were being sold and proposed a concept we called “GREEN HOT”: The Return to Nature by Force.

We saw tangible evidence that products would soon have to be positioned as being better for the planet, or at least capable of making a significantly smaller impact on the grid. We saw early evidence that the masses were starting to give a damn. And what we know is that when the masses start caring, they start voting for or against a product with their dollars. And at that point, companies take notice and either change or die.

We called it GREEN HOT while it was still only warm, but now everybody knows it’s about as hot as you can get. Just a few years ago, Al Gore or no Al Gore, a documentary on global warming would have struggled to draw even a small crowd; this year it got an academy award. 

There’s no real controversy about whether green is hot; the real question here is why—and what will the next evolution be?

Watch the CultureWaves™!

Each culture wave is the result of sifting through ever-changing patterns of life and linking them together in unexpected ways. Because it reflects the changing nature of life, a culture wave is never static. It lives, matures, or dies based on the cultural behavior it represents. That is why it is so important to watch how each wave changes over time.

We’ve been tracking our own take on what’s happening in the culture for almost three years now and currently are monitoring more than 34 different waves. It’s fascinating to me to see that some of what’s showing up as mainstream CultureWaves™ today surfaced back then as subtle shifts in cultural behavior. 

I thought you might like to take a peak at a sample of our mainstreaming, growing, and emerging CultureWaves. Each wave is accompanied by a quote illustrating the human truth that it represents. If these CultureWaves give you ideas, well, they should.  Mainstreaming and growing waves tell you what’s happening now; but the new ones, the emerging waves, have the potential of giving you a glimpse into the future. And that’s always worth a look.

These waves have tremendous societal impact on culture in the marketplace. If you see something that intrigues you, or want to know more, contact me. I’d love to hear which waves catch your attention.

1. CLOCKLESS

Hyper-life consumers find 24-hour solutions.

You respond when your body calls out, especially when it’s hungry, wants entertainment, or desires to buy. Our 24/7 society is subject to spur-of-the moment gratifications that can be satisfied instantly. And it’s made possible because of cell phones, pagers, computers, and other mobile devices that get us what we want even as we run to our next commitment.

“I want what I want when I want it!”

2. SENSORY APPEAL

Targeting the senses with new textures, colors, tastes, and sounds.

Activating the senses is becoming more and more ubiquitous. Our bodies create emotions based on reaction to sensory stimulus and seek enjoyment in the results. As a result, we are constantly looking for new ways to be stimulated.

“I’ll take the one that appeals to all my senses.”

3. BODY WARRANTY

Pushing our body beyond its limits.

Where’s a Fountain of Youth when you need one? If we can’t get it through magic, we get it through technology. When you connect the desire for immortality with the pervasive ability of technology to improve the body’s performance, you can see why people are demanding more out of their bodies.

“I want more out of my body than ever before.”

4. GREEN HOT

The return to nature by force.

Environmentalism isn’t just for tree huggers anymore. Large numbers of people are rallying to influence the good health of the planet. Their passion drives them to embrace perceptual concepts such as Healthy, Organic, Whole, and Sourced. This “green is good” ethos is shifting how companies are acting and investing.

“I’m not asking you to go green; I’m telling you.”

The Right-Brained Explosion

Get ready for the big blast. Those fine-arts students who society has traditionally shunned as either too weird or too spacey to take seriously in business are now being recruited and given positions that rival their MBA counterparts.

The Wall Street days of the ’80s and the Total Quality Management days of the ’90s are shifting to a new Age of Creativity based on a hunger for insights and innovation. Harvard, Northwestern, Stanford and other business schools can give us left-brained managers, but those with the ability to see, feel and find the insights for propelling companies into the future are a new breed, and harder to find. Perhaps this is why pundits are now calling the MFA the new MBA—because the new creatives see possibilities faster. Artists are taught to juxtapose and try things before they decide. They are willing to experiment and wait for the “aha” moment to hit.

The Digital Natives — Connected? Or Addicted?

Wireless signs of the times—like the one you see here—are cropping up all over the country, but nowhere are they more prevalent than at our college campuses. This one from Rutgers University lets students know they can escape the confines of their dorm room and tap into the internet anytime, almost anywhere.

The term “digital natives” has been around for a number of years and is credited to Marc Prensky from his article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” written in 2001. It defines “digital natives” as the first generation of people who “perceive technology as their friend and rely on it to study, work, play, relax and communicate.” The fact is, more of our young people under 25 can’t get along without technology, and if they can’t have a wireless connection, they feel deprived.

In an October ’06 USA TODAY article by Sharon Jayon, she quotes A.J. Hunter, a Ball State University student, as saying, “I can’t even think of when I use it and when I don’t. It’s such a part of life.” This second nature quality to wireless technology is making it not only a part of life, but also something students simply cannot live without.

Creativity Reigns

Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage,” and 400 years later that stage is completely accessible for anyone to step onto and be creative simply by connecting to the Internet.

“This wide and universal theatre”—Shakespeare’s description of life—is bursting with grassroots creativity and bringing audience-created content to a seemingly bottomless pit of demand. The Internet opened the door wide for people to play a new game of self-expression, and it is quickly making stars out of some of its players.

In an article titled “Moguls of New Media” in the July 29 Wall Street Journal, it states, “As videos, blogs, and webpages created by amateurs remake the entertainment landscape, unknown directors, writers and producers are being catapulted into positions of enormous influence.”

A self-made celebrity on MySpace now has a million “friends” and is capturing $5,000 per appearance at promotional events.

An art student from Iceland picked up a camera one year ago and has now, through exposure of her work on Flickr, just been hired by Toyota to do a photo shoot.

A 20-year-old young woman who posted dozens of her own homemade videos on YouTube has become so popular, she recently signed a TV and Internet development deal with NBC talk-show host Carson Daly.

To me what's so obviously proven by these examples is exactly what's so phenomenal about the Internet—the spotlight is always on, and there is always room on stage.

The Flip That Will Fuel the Future

The world is being rocked today by a seismic shift created by life forces all converging into a new way of looking at things.

Design, technology, entertainment, and well-being are all converging at record speeds to influence our culture, our markets, our businesses, and our lives in ways we’ve never experienced before. And it’s all happening in real time, from moment-to-moment from person-to-person, with intimacy never before possible.

The fact that communities can be formed on the Web overnight to react either to world events or simply to a new product introduction is an amazing phenomenon. This and other radical cultural evolutions must be harnessed if a company hopes to survive with any consistent measure of future success.

Right now, today, most companies have their eyes trained on exactly the wrong thing. They are fixated on their equity when they should be focused on the insights that will drive their futures.

Clash? or Cash?

Ever since someone decided to buy a loaf of bread rather than raising the wheat and baking it, culture and marketing have been giving each other clues to success. But anyone who’s ever launched a new product knows, if you’re not in tune with the culture, if you clash—you lose. Nothing is more of a moving target than American culture. Of course when you catch a wave, the payoff can be big.

I see our culture as a shape-shifting steady ebb and flow of old and new, established tradition and rebellion, facts and new facts, emotional ties and passionate breaks from the past.

In today’s marketing world it is vitally important to constantly be updated on what’s happening in the world—to make sure what you’re doing is going to catch that next big wave. With the need for speed in creating multimedia plans, including mass, B2B, and one-to-one communications, there’s no such thing as a slow build. You must be able to grab an emerging trend, figure out how it connects to your consumer, and then ride the build in the culture and the marketplace. When it reaches the mainstream the gold rush is over. You don’t want to be the last miner in the mine.

The Future Has a Ring Tone

Recently I learned something that should be an eye opener for every ad agency creative, executive, planner, and owner. The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences created an Emmy category for “outstanding original programming for computers, cellphones, and other handheld devices.” We’ve known for awhile now that programming is moving from on-the-clock to on-demand viewing, and that the computer is becoming the new TV, but now it appears that video is about to jump right into our pockets. And the move is being fueled by the fat cats in the mainline media industry who hope to get fatter.

You can read all about it in USA TODAY in Kevin Maney’s column from April 12. In it Maney says, “this might be the most experimental time in media history,” and I have to say I agree with him. It’s as if the industry were crawling out of the primordial media mud, growing legs, and running like crazy in every direction imaginable.

Look Ma, No Keyboard!

From desktop to laptop to the ultimate in convenience—Microsoft just recently introduced the world’s first ultracompact computer that not only runs windows XP, but also fits easily in one hand and operates completely by touch screen.

Two models from two manufacturers are set to hit stores this spring, and according to Microsoft, they’ll both be about an inch thick and weigh less than 2½ pounds. Basically that means the whole computer is about the size of a large paperback book.

To me this marks the next big shift in computer usage. Right now, carting your laptop around seems so formal in comparison. If you’re on a plane, in the airport, or even just around the house on weekends, flipping open the screen and keyboarding in what you need to do will start to seem tedious and ancient as soon as people get a chance to experience the convenience and almost casual ease of this device. I haven’t tried one yet, but if it’s all it’s cracked up to be, I can see it shelving your laptop next to your cassette tapes.

Home Cooking Makes a Comeback!

How would you like to walk into a place where you could whip up enough meals for your family for 2 weeks and walk away from the mess? Everything is ready to prep; all ingredients are fresh, chopped, and ready to go into the recipes you choose—a perfect do-it-yourself kitchen where all the hard work is done for you. Or, if you’re feeling a little more like taking a risk, how would you like to start a business based on the concept I’ve just described?

The Easy Meal Prep Association is a Web site dedicated to helping people get started in a new kind of business that is catching on fast. According to its figures, there are already 217 kitchen prep companies with 566 outlets all over the country. Supermarket News, in a November 21, 2005, article by Maria Tortoreto, estimates that by the end of this year that number will reach between 1,200 and 1,500 stores. One is definitely coming to your neighborhood.

When It Comes to Shopping, Women Have No Equals

Equality of the sexes stops when it comes to shopping. Being a man, I know that’s true—and I’m perfectly fine with it. I absolutely know I don’t have the patience or the desire to shop ’til I drop. I’m somehow different. And now one woman has given me some insight into just how different we men are.

In an Advertising Age article (November 14, 2005), Marti Barletta lays out some very important information for marketers—and husbands—on just how women reach a buying decision and why it can take a lot longer for women to make up their minds.

It’s not because women are indecisive, an age-old stereotype. It’s because they look at making a buying decision very differently from the average male.

According to Ms. Barletta, “men are looking for a good solution, something that fulfills their top two or three criteria. They shop by a process of elimination and like to get their shopping done quickly so they can move on to other activities. Women, on the other hand, are seeking the perfect answer—the optimal solution. When they shop, it’s a process that begins with a broad survey of all available options.” This can lead to traveling from store to store or checking out multiple brands.

Whittling the Challenge Down to Size

You would have to be oblivious to the daily business news not to be aware of China’s explosive economic growth. The relaxation of investment laws, the insatiable desire for technology, inexpensive labor, and an urban market with developing Western tastes are fueling great demand for multinational brands, which now compete with local brands throughout China.

Doing business in China may seem like a daunting challenge, like the proverbial task of trying to eat an elephant—doable only if you take it one bite at a time. The reality is that China is now becoming susceptible to the same kind of marketing “bites” deployed in the U.S.A., where each planned effort targets a particular consumer group with specific needs.

Marketing in China is a matter of understanding the market. China is no longer a one-size-fits-all market. Differentiation and market segmentation are taking hold in what used to be a very monolithic market. What people eat, wear, and drive differ greatly from north to south, east to west, rich to poor, young to old, city to countryside.

Buzz Is the Buzz

In the last 30 days both Adweek and Advertising Age presented special sections featuring Word-Of-Mouth (WOM) or Buzz Marketing. This pollination of prospective buyers through swarms of paid citizen agents is taking on more and more importance and getting more organized all the time.

There is even a Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) with hundreds of marketers, agencies, and research companies as members. And, according to the Ad Age article on November 28, the member marketers are big. The list includes DuPont, Best Buy Co., and SC Johnson. Dell, the article states, has created a position for its own “word-of-mouth marketing manager.”

Unlike the happy circumstance in the mid-eighties that created buzz around Michael Jordon’s refusal to stop wearing his NBA-league-banned Nike’s, this new wave of buzz is organized down to staging events, giving products to people who agree to promote them, and paying people to mention or push products on their personal blogs. (DuPont? Best Buy? Nike? Are you getting the hint here?) This formalizing of the process is a way of making happen what used to happen naturally.

Hairball Management

As the CEO of an independent advertising agency, the toughest corporate malady I fight every year is the organization’s hairball. It just seems that no matter what we do, the agency body starts to sputter and cough if we don’t apply some preventative medicine. It has to be done. Because as any cat owner will tell you, if the hairball gets big enough the cat will suffer.

By “hairball” I mean structural tangle—all the balled-up process confusion that can occur naturally in the course of a year or sometimes during a phase the company is going through.

In our agency, the problem, as I’ve observed it, usually occurs because of growth. We, like most businesses, outgrow our structure and then get bogged down in trying to live in the past—something I believe is unhealthy and downright detrimental.

Someone once put the need to manage healthy growth this way: “How big do you have to be before you get bad?” I’ve asked myself that many times about our place; but for 2006 I think the following question is more appropriate: “If we’re so good how come we’re not growing?”

I think it’s a hairball problem.

Bloggers Beware

There’s a battle brewing that could punish and control bloggers in ways that would never be tolerated  by the traditional big-media “free press”.

It’s all part of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance law. 

As Ryan Sager says in his Oct. 14 column in the New York Post, “The FEC has ruled that big-media companies like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fox News, CNN, CBS, etc. enjoy what's called a "press exemption" from McCain-Feingold — allowing them to support or attack candidates without being prosecuted for making illegal corporate campaign contributions. But it has yet to grant any such protection to blogs and other Web sites not considered part of the traditional media.”

That means if you organize a blog to serve a political party and oppose another, you do not quality for a “freedom of press” exception and can be prosecuted under McCain-Feingold. Which to me seems absolutely criminal. This goes against something as basic as our country’s fundamental right of free speech.  Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and others pioneered the use of the press to secure freedom for us all, even those who would attack our freedom.  Blogs are just a modern form of that right of the individual to gather support through the use of “published” opinion.  The fact that the media giants have an exemption to McCain-Feingold and individuals do not seems antithetical to the fundamental bedrock of our rebellion against the rule of kings.

“Doctor! Doctor! My Owner’s Glucose Level Just Plummeted!”

It won’t be long before your cell phone will not only play music, download video, and keep your calendar, but also will automatically call your doctor when your glucose level falls or your heart medication needs changing. And in a cardiac emergency it will call an ambulance perhaps before you know you need one.

Everyone is talking about how much more fun cell phones are going to be for mobile entertainment, but in the October 3 issue of Ad Age an article by Mya Frazier reports on the evolution of cell phones into the world of preventative medicine. “The ubiquitous, often annoying cell-phone is going to do something indisputably good: save lives via medical monitoring.” Frazier goes on to report that CardioNet, a San Diego-based medical technology firm, and Qualcomm, the $6 billion maker of digital wireless products, have already combined resources to develop a device that monitors patients’ health and sends text messages to their doctors. The next step is to reintroduce the device with cell phone capabilities early next year.

Deluded? Or Just What We Need.

Can Yankelovich be right about the 16- to 25-year-old “Echo Generation”?  Are they really more ready than previous generations to be the business owners they say they want to be? Or are they just fooling themselves with self-gratifying daydreams of being rich someday?

In my early 20s when I decided to start my own business, the rap on young people was that we were all draft-dodging, antigovernment hippies protesting the war and running around high on drugs. Well, not all of us were…and some wound up converting into entrepreneurs and solid business leaders. A couple of the party animals named Clinton and Bush wound up running the country. I’m part of the “Baby Boomers,” that big bulge in the demographic boa constrictor, the kids that grew up in the ’50s on peacetime and happily-ever-after television.