Web 2.0, Media 2.0 and Agency 2.0 – What Do You Mean?

I wrote about Media 2.0 a few weeks ago and I want to write more on this subject. I have been meeting with a lot of senior executives and clients these days and when I ask people what is Web 2.0, some are quick to list an inventory of tools (trust me, we have numerous debates on this among ourselves before we started idea couture and we were beating it to death on what is Web 2.0). I answered that these are only enablers, Web 2.0 or Media 2.0 is about emerging consumer/ cultural practices. Rather than saying Ajax or consumer generated content, we must start with understanding the underlying forces shaping the new media landscape which fuels Web 2.0. What does the new media landscape looks like? Media executives please read on.

Let’s start with better understanding the nature of our relationship with media is that “peer2peer networking”, “personalization” and “participatory” culture. Some think that Web 2.0 is sometimes misleading as that implies that the whole of the web has changed, the way a 2.0 service pack package replaces its 1.0 predecessor, but that's not really the case here. Some simply refers Web 2.0 to the Web's usability and the technologies behind it. This so-called new version is defined by blogs, social networking sites, wikis and RSS feeds etc. In contrast to Web 1.0, where users were largely restricted to simply reading web pages, Web 2.0 makes for interactions. Consider this metaphor: instead of just reading a book, the reader is helping to write it. Some will doodle on it and resell it. Some might tear off pages and bind them together as an art book.

Some executives will ask "what does this has to do with my company?

Many executives might be tempted to think that 2.0 won't affect their companies, other than a few angry customers posting their videos on YouTube . Indeed, Forrester Research, Inc. in March this year polled 119 CIOs at firms with 500 or more employees and found that a lack of current need stopped them from Web 2.0 adoption 47% of the time. A little more than half of these CIOs were most likely to view social networking and blogs as unnecessary. Think about it…. “A lack of current need?”  Come on, what are these people thinking? They need a little imagination. This ad helps.

Media 2.0 is the number one driver of Web 2.0, it is about “innovation” that happens as a result of “convergence”. We are seeing a period of prolonged and profound technological change. New media are created, distributed, adopted, adapted, remixed, redistributed and absorbed into the culture at rapid pace. And that’s causing headache for all media executives. Everyone wants to know what’s next and what to do to prosper or survive this change.

Looking back at the last 200 years or so, the shift from orality to literacy, the rise of print culture, and the emergence of modern mass media during the last 100 years represent important paradigm shifts in the way we communicated and expressed our ideas. Generally a burst of technological change was followed by a period of adjustment. So Print 1.0 to Print 2.0 etc. The explosion of new technologies at the end of the 19th century started a period of profound self-consciousness which the sociologist called modernism.

This modernism is impacting all institutions (marketers and media owners), it is constantly reshaping all modes of artistic expression (24/7 and global), and is sparkling a series of intellectual breakthroughs of which the full extent of the impact is still unknown. If anything, the rate of technological and cultural change has accelerated and social networks are evolving into new entities. It is breeding a new generation of subculturalist. Many of these are the new creative classes of our societies. For the last ten years, my job required me to analyze the impact of these trends on business. I’ll be honest; it has not been an easy one.

The very nature of the digital space is the ability for brands to speak with – not to, but with -- the micro communities and individuals themselves. In the digital world, marketing will be about finding them, excites them, engages them, empowers them and builds relationship with them. Advertising over the past two decades has provided more and more production spectacle, more and more belly laughs but less and less relevance and information. Because information is core of digital, digital marketing will soon enough fill the vacuum. That's Agency 2.0.

According to ZenithOptimedia $10.5 billion will be spent on display, including video, but $14 billion will be spent on search for 2007. Why? Simply because search is contextual, measurable and information rich. As digital advertising itself becomes more targeted and measurable, it will be best deployed as a sort of street signage -- posted on extremely vertical social networks or served based on user profiles -- directing the audience to where the real information is: brand or third-party websites, or embedded in highly utilitarian content. That’s why we will see over 75% of all ads will be digital in 2-3 years. Case in point, the $500 million mkt budget Microsoft allocated to the introduction of its new Vista OS, 30% went online. Imagine, if all marketers decided to follow Microsoft and spend 30% of their budgets on digital tomorrow? This would be Madison Avenue’s worst nightmare.

The birth of new media technologies sparks social and aesthetic experimentation and as a result we see an ever-expanding menu of cultural choices, from devices to storages. How exciting? Because these emerging media and technologies have lowered or removed many barriers to entry into the cultural marketplace, everyone can easily participate much like everyone can be a merchant with eBay. The cultural marketplace is now opened for anyone and anywhere in the world as long you have a computer and a connection. It is no longer headquartered in Madison Avenue. This grand utopian movement of our contemporary age is headquartered in Silicon Valley, and is now around the world, I've met smart Indian, Brits, Dutch, French, Chinese, Korean entrepreneurs joining this march seeing the great seduction is actually a fusion of two historical movements: the counter-cultural utopianism of the '60s and the techno-economic utopianism of the '90s. This seduction is known to to the world as the Web 2.0.

The rapid diversification of cultural production inspires a diversity of aesthetic (we have seen that in graphic design) responses, as it gets taken up and deployed by different communities or users. Such transformations broaden the means of self and collective expression. Social networks then become storage of collective meanings. In a previous post, I wrote about the relentless commodification (and virtualization) of all areas of social life, and there is a lot of opportunities for brands to play a role. Unfortunately, not many marketers get this.

The birth of new media technologies sparks social and aesthetic experimentation and as a result we see an ever-expanding menu of cultural choices, from devices to storages. How exciting? Because these emerging media and technologies have lowered or removed many barriers to entry into the cultural marketplace, everyone can easily participate much like everyone can be a merchant with eBay. The cultural marketplace is now opened for anyone and anywhere in the world as long you have a computer and a connection. It is no longer headquartered in Madison Avenue.

So what is the new role of brands here?

Every bite of image, sound, story, brand, and relationship will play itself out across the broadest possible range of media (fixed and portable) channels and remixed by different people. What’s going on now is consumers are exercising their newfound power that empowers them to shape and control the flow of media in their lives; they want the media they want when they want it and where they want it.

The mass media era pushed amateur cultural production underground, in the form sub-cultures niche music and publications, though it were never totally destroyed by the rise of mass media. The web has brought this layer of amateur production back to the surface, providing an infrastructure where amateurs can share what they created with each other: this ability to share media has helped to motivate media production, resulting in a massive explosion of grassroots movement from expression to taste-making. So the "big media"--the Hollywood studios, the major record labels and international publishing houses--now represent the enemies of the Media 2.0 movement. In Marxist terms, the traditional media had become the exploitative "bourgeoisie," and citizen media, those heroic bloggers and podcasters, were the "proletariat". Welcome to the world of Web 2.0. Your thoughts please.

Comments

[Rory MacDonald]

Isn’t what you are talking about ‘free culture’ (in the FSF sense of free software as opposed to open source)? Sir Tim Berners-Lee (who apparently detests the term web 2.0) and Richard Stallman have created a cultural revolution based on freedom, openness and collaboration. This has begun with the geeks, but people like Jimmy Wales (and Idris in what you are doing with the course here) are taking it a lot further.

YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, are a tiny commercial frameworks for what is happening, the real undercurrent is creative freedom, sharing, copyleft licensing and remix culture. And this has a lot further to go.

Take the example of music: Already the roots of modern popular music are dropping out of copyright. Much to the annoyance of poor Mr McCartney, the early Beatles stuff hasn’t go long to go. After this, the whole cycle of modern pop culture will gradually become free (as in speech, not as in beer). As it does, my prediction is that free culture will start to produce/remix something far stronger than legacy music corporations can achieve with what they continue to cling on to in copyright. Add to this the fact the DRM is never going to work we will see free music culture emerge. New bands will release material under copyleft licensing, because otherwise they well simply be a part of tired old establishment whose creativity is audited on a quarterly basis by Ernst and Young.

Enough pseudo-futurology, what of the brand? I agree wholeheartedly with Idris that in this new creative anarchy the brand has a new and even more important role to play than before. Within free culture, you don’t look to extract every last drop of value from what you have done by shackling your creation down, you let it go free to become something even greater: “The first ideas can sometimes be really good—but the more ideas build upon each other, the better the chances of ending up with something wonderful.” Idris Mootee – What I learned in design school.

The originator must trade off the kudos of what they have created and what this says about their ability to create. This is personal brand. For some this will be sufficient for them to trade off, but maintaining personal brand commercially in the long term will be too great a risk for large organisations (this is where the whole brand architecture thing will come into its own).

But in a culture of asymmetric mass media (I would like a creative commons attribution license on that phrase;-), where everyone really is famous for fifteen minutes, people are going to need signposts, stalwarts. Brands will no longer create and push content, meaning, image, identity, they will become aggregators. Those ad agencies stuck in the 1980s & 90s are stitched. The cliched creatives are going to have to share their charlie with the whole world, which isn’t going to leave them very much.

The new brand will be about aggregation, reading the zeitgeist, building a living force which, by directing people to the right content, attracts not-only the right customers, but draws-in and draws-on the right participants/creators to live and perpetuate the brand.

The professional creative isn’t dead any more than the professional journalist, musician, designer…..
They just have a lot more direct competition from strong amateurs and the barriers to cross from amateur to professional will be non-existent. Pure meritocracy.

In all of this, the role of the brand agency becomes peripheral, but none the less vital. It is about fine tuning the meaning, sailing it like a good helmsman, gently directing it by working with the far greater forces of nature whilst barely touching the tiller. Constantly looking out to the horizon to avoid rocks and read the weather coming towards you. And making miniscule adjustments to the rigging to ensure the boat has winning speed.

[Salim]

Rory's comment is very true. "Within free culture, you don’t look to extract every last drop of value from what you have done by shackling your creation down, you let it go free to become something even greater". I think marketers need to print and frame and hang this in their office. At least for the next 10 years. Good stuff.

[Morgan Gerard]

Rory nails one of the core topics - if not the core aspiration – that many under this Idris Umbrella have been discussing in respect to the changing brand-scape: creative anarchy, co-creation, free culture, the democratization of media.

I'd like to endorse Rory's future vision as one that could transform the human production-consumption equation, but as someone deep into niche publishing for 20+ years, I’m not totally waving my pom-poms over how great it is that everybody has access to a voice, thanks to Web 2.0. His view that “the barriers to cross from amateur to professional will be non-existent” excites me, irks me and scares me.

It excites me because I know how thrilling it is to make friends from far away, have your opinions heard, get feedback on and engage in what is (or you think is) building a community. Happy = a 16-year old zine publisher getting mail every week from hardcore punk kids in Poland, Brazil and Peoria, Illinois.

It irks me because the barriers between amateur and pro were never truly there in the first place. You just had to know where to look. Yes, the speed of response is now near instant (as opposed to the time it took mail to arrive from Warsaw to Toronto in 1984), but subcultures have always had media for fan/amateur voices to interact. Why? Because we were so committed to promoting the passions (and brands) that we thought would transform the world. Much of the amateur voice we talk about here seems so dedicated to the trivial and, well, amateurish. But, hey, that’s mainstream, right?

That scares me, especially if the future is 30-second videos of dudes igniting their armpit hair or Johnny Fairplay taking a face-plant from Danny Bonaduce. I like stupid and extreme as much as the next guy (hell, I rented Shocking Asia back in the day and I think Georges St. Pierre is a Canadian hero). And I know that a next auteur could emerge from here. But media democratization has an ugly side (citizen journalists with no training or accountability, BS on Wiki to keep content in line with brand promises, the total Jackass-ization of America) that might make us all pine for the days of professional barriers. You know, back in the pre-phone-episode days when the Big Screen meant theatres, not TV.

In the end, I agree with Rory: building and managing a brand will take more strategy than ever because of the need to guide companies away from the junk floating on the commercial sea and towards harbours of quality content that best suit their brand vision. As consumers increasingly curate their brand identities, so too will companies have to pick and click with the right content partners. As a result, those with brands in their hands will have to become expert Editors of Culture.

And don’t count out Madison Avenue, major record labels, Hollywood studios and those Internet-tech pioneers the pornographers quite yet. All revolutions and the revolutionaries behind them end up making concessions to the old guard at some point (or, worse yet, becoming the old guard themselves). Keep a side-bet or two on the old-school pros. History, skills and deep pockets still got game.

[Brian Reich]

Yes, yes - exactly, it is not about the tools/technology, it is about how people get and share information, create and modify. These forces have always been around, always driven innovation and community.

I wrote a book about this, comes out in November.

http://www.amazon.com/Media-Rules-Mastering-Technology-Audience/dp/0470108886/ref=sr_1_1/002-0879754-1791210?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188137303&sr=8-1

Let's talk more. Would love to connect.

[André Galhardo]

AGENCY NAME HERE
Agency 2.0

How many weeks until we see this tagline?

Ad people hate to think.
They love to see layouts - the more, the better.

[Flavio Azevedo]

Rory´s text has already been bookmarked into my collection.

Really, we are about to enter a next level in the game.

Sure there will be great gains and also terrible not yet predicted losses. Web 2.0 technology is accessible to all sorts.

But what amazes me the most, which in my opinion will occur for the first time in history (here we go...), is not about the individual.

For the first time we will have a media that can trully materialize the collective mind.

A global mind has emerged. Brought to you by the internet. Books, newspapers, radio, TV, all of those weren´t able to promote this.

What is the world thinking right now? You can have a good checking Google searches. And that´s only the start.

Will the collective mind improve life standards around the world? Or probably can it save us from destruction (global warming...) ?

Will it create a new Illuminism and a new elite?

Or will it of more immediate use to eveil forces around the globe?

I think Stanley Kubrick would like to se this. Can our collective mind do better than 2001´s HAL?

Brands should be aware that this is not only a media. This is a global stage as well as an individual tool.

[Bart]

"What is the world thinking right now? You can have a good checking Google searches. And that´s only the start."

I don't know if you know the work of Jonathan Harris, but his Ted talk was amazing, but what's even more amazing is his collective emotion application: We feel fine and his modern mythology program: Universe.

[Bart]

Another thought: why do all these big brands keep adding (crossmedial) social platforms? In recent months, I've seen big brands like Nike, The Northface, the Dutch national commitee, Heineken, et al. open up campaigns around 'their' new social networks.

They still act like they own the place and keep wondering why users don't use their designated platform to share videos, messages, etc, etc. A good example of oldschool companies working in a newschool world. I wonder when they'll learn to use the defacto standards (youtube, jaiku, flickr, etc, etc).

[Bart]

Oops. Dutch national commitee = Dutch national olympic commitee..

[Flavio Azevedo]

Amazing presentation by Jonathan Harris, Bart.

Big companies still don´t see how sophisticated and yet simple the web can be.

I just found another estimulating evidence of intelligence. The collective mind is already being used on a daily people by this guy...

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/15-07/ff_humancomp