Online news, breaking news, feature stories and more…

Weblog by Kevin, with current reports and pictures,
including coverage of…

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 Standard Edition . Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 enables developers and administrators to achieve increased operational efficiency in software test and development, legacy line-of-business application migration, and serv…

As for the reactions of marketers…well, it’s a very different world from the one they’re used to. And thank God for that! Either marketing as a discipline will adapt, or else the things it teaches us that remain relevant to the world will be absorbed into other disciplines.

Brand meaning isn’t as important as it used to be…it’s MORE important than it used to be. But marketing can no longer get by just by _pushing_ the brand. They have to _live_ the brand. And everyone in the company has to do likewise, or else it’s going to fail. If they’re lucky, the marketing folks can _define_ the message, but the mainstreaming of social software means that they can no longer _control_ it.

In an emergent environment like social software, is there a need for aesthetic judgement and, if there is (I personally think so) how are the values of good and bad created and exercised? Are they determined by the number of connections you have in a c…

On the other hand, if a firm’s representative–preferably someone who was involved in development or otherwise had personal ownership of the product–explicitly entered such a forum, under her own name and affiliation, and engaged users with some degree of apparent sincerity, that might work.

I saw one incident where a political blogger went off on an unrelated rant about a bad experience he’d had in his software job trying to tell Microsoft about a flaw in one of their products. A middle-manager type at Microsoft happened to read the blog or got referred to it, and was able to explain why things happened the way they did and how the company rectified the situation. It dramatically changed the emotional resonance of the story from “clueless bureaucratic monolith screws up” to “savvy and dedicated techies clean up a mess.”

I’ve been involved the last few years in exploring the capabilities of emergent systems and in particular their relation to aesthetics, both in the practical sense (beauty vs. ugly) and in the theoretical realm (good vs. bad). I think that the latter will have the most effect on the acceptance of emergent systems, especially by traditional establishments like media, business, government, etc. and this is why:

In an emergent environment like social software, is there a need for aesthetic judgement and, if there is (I personally think so) how are the values of good and bad created and exercised? Are they determined by the number of connections you have in a community (as in Friendster), or by the quality or diversity of those connections? If it is quality or diversity, then how are those measured and compared so that someone can arrive at an aesthetic judgement? Do they need to be measured or compared at all?

I firmly believe that we are witnessing the emergence of emergent systems such as social software, which you mentioned in the post. I also firmly believe that it is in the questions – the unknown, or “unknowledge” as the EAD06 conference put it – that real power and opportunity reside. In terms of marketing, this is completely opposite to the current model. Perhaps for marketers to change, they must learn how to manage their company’s reputation, rather than image. Perhaps in the near future the phrase “meeting our numbers” will mean achieving positive rankings across most social software programs.

It is interesting to note that a corporation by law and definition is seen as a singular entity, as an individual person. Would it be crazy to posit, then, that this person could be an entry in Friendster, or other such network? This reminds me of Kevin Roberts Love Marks website, where people submit and rate brands. There is a wealth of opportunity in this arena, and marketers need to be bold and go in that direction, or else you are going to see a lot more art directors and graphic designers fill the vacancy.