dealing with digital disruption

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In the early 2000s I was on a conference panel in Cambridge. A discussion began about the growing threat of spam with the the prevailing argument being “At this rate, email will be unusable in five years time“.

Sitting here in 2009, spam volumes have never been higher, but my gmail account gets maybe one false positive a month. Email remains quite usable.

This is what I call the horse-shit fallacy.

This is not simply a pejorative term, but is based on (possibly apocryphal) tales of London in the late 19th century. Apparently, the volume of, um, little horse presents on the streets was a growing concern and doom-mongerers voiced that “at the current rate” in 20 years time we’ll be three feet deep in the stuff.

Of course this didn’t happen, and it never would. The reason being simply (and what I argued at that spam panel) that we’d never let it. Life is not linear, and successful marketing is predicated on solving problems. Although I had no idea how spam would be dealt with, I trusted that someone would fix it. In this case, it was Google.

Extrapolating the past to create a projection of the future is endemic in our culture and only serves to immobilise innovation and limit thinking.

Don’t believe the hype. Listen out for that phrase “at this rate…” and give it a dollop of what it deserves.

Photo by Pleple2000

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If you’re a regular reader of RSS feeds, you’ll know they’re the easiest way to enjoy a sumptuous spread of blogs. And though I rarely visit my favourite websites, I never miss an article.

I use Google Reader and it’s the first (and often only) page I check on the web. There are good offline readers (eg, Vienna for the mac) but Reader is web-based and thus syncs across all your home/work computers. There are also a growing number of iPhone apps (Byline being the best to date) which let you continue reading on the move or when offline (eg, on the tube).

It takes a while to find the right feeds for you, but I’ve put together a selection of my favourites in the tech/marketing/thinky space. Right-click here and save this file. You can then easily import this ‘opml’ file into Reader (settings>import>).

Do let me know your suggestions for great sites/feeds I’m missing. Thanks.

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I’ve mentioned before how Nine Inch Nails are heading the pack for bands (and brands) in turning forces usually seen as disruptive to their advantage.

Well, they’re at it again. As reported by the splendid (and often outlandish) B3ta newsletter:

we have to salute former Nine Inch Nails drummer Josh Freese. You can download his album for $7, but the more money you pay the more additional goodies he’ll throw in. For $50 he’ll call you up and thank you personally. For $1000 the extras include him coming round your house and doing your laundry.

The full list is here. Whether this is a genuine offer or just some guff to get people talking, it works and it’s marvellous.

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Google’s amazing Street View coming to the UK is impressive enough, but you gotta love the little touches to make it even more talkable – as the BBC report:

hidden among the images is the popular children’s book character Wally – of striped-jumper Where’s Wally? fame – in one UK location.

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I was doodling around this morning looking at slo-mo camera geekery when I stumbled upon this extraordinary bit of film, shot at 5,000+ frames per second:

Having seen this on a tech site, I didn’t know I was watching an ad. So when the boy appeared I instinctively had a “What?!? No……” reaction.

Had I seen it in a regular ad break, I think it would have been less surprising/impactful. Does marketing work better or worse when people aren’t expecting it?

And is that a good thing?

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Publicity for the Watchmen movie is in full swing. I enjoyed the spoof news wrap around Metro this morning, but even more the free sheet of blood-splattered smiley stickers I was handed at Charing X.

Simple, iconic and highly viral.

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Businesses are all getting to grips with the sensitive and tricky task of dealing with the wonderful world of bloggers. Most companies are extremely careful to be respectful of this emerging news channel.

Which is what makes Ryanair’s position on dealing with bloggers, given to Travolution and  reported in the Guardian, so extraordinary

“Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion. It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again.

“Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel.”

While this will doubtless cause much shocked Twittering, you have to admire Ryanair’s clear, if blunt, stance. It’s absolutely in line with their no-frills, low-cost positioning.

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As Twitter is invaded by the masses and loses its cool, experienced users are parading their know-how by littering tweets with increasingly arcane codes: RT for re-tweet of course, L: for location and # for hash-tagging a post with a topical or popular word – #iphone or #lost for example.

Some of this is the simple fun of working within short sentences – the Twitter equivalent of OMG! txt spk – but I think hashtags mean something more.

Hashtags allow people to join a virtual club easily and temporarily. And to leave it just as quickly. People can just dive into a conversation, make a pithy observation about the #brits and dive right out again. No need to subscribe to an email list, no forms to fill in, no facebook group to join. It can be a no-complications, one-tweet stand.

They are perfectly suited for an world where attention is ever-more scarce and people are wary of sharing personal data. But they’re also wonderful fun – the ideas flitting in and out of existence in perfect harmony with their true value and popularity.

They’re hashmemes if you like.

Right now #oscars is in vogue but once the red carpet is rolled back up, it’ll disappear as a living idea until the next time enough of us shine a torch on it.

Hashtags.org allows anyone to see what’s hot at any moment, and even includes graphs describing most hashmemes’ beautifully short lifespans.

Marketers have to work pretty hard to jump on such fast-moving bandwagons. Indeed the only way to do it is to keep running. Only if you’re already up to speed with the conversation can you expect your brand to contribute something useful and credible.