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A word about 2010: “client”

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:59:48 +0000

The Client will drive the conversation in 2010.
And the message remains critical.

With the continued rise of social media, a sluggish global economy, and a shrinking media landscape clients will soon be taking the “private-label content” route.

Like never before, business influencers will shape trends directly, connecting with audiences across multiple platforms. It’s the Great Content Migration of 2010, where the message bypasses normal means and leaves for good its dependence on traditional media to be heard.

But those who establish the trends are also extremely busy people. Because they lack time to cultivate and capture their fantastic thinking in columns, articles, speeches, and other forms of content, they are going to need help to position themselves and their brands/organizations.

Private label content will be huge in 2010, as organizations begin to add their own, self-published ideas [and venues] to marketing strategies. Whoever can adapt fastest to take advantage of compelling private label content will benefit. This move toward DIY content in organizations will last beyond the current economic moment.

FG Squared: all-new site

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:20:05 +0000

I’m delighted to report that my clients/colleagues/pals at FG2 have relaunched the company site — a project many months in the making, and a site I helped to devise and write.

Words, Weblogs: Bring it, people

Wed, 13 May 2009 20:41:49 +0000

“Content strategy?” Just write as well as you can.
Words matter and life’s short. Be clear, descriptive and confident online.

I toiled countless hours — running from side to side, scouring the Series of Tubes, and at last ascending the mountaintop — to learn all regarding ‘content’ and ’strategy’ for company blogs.

Here’s what I brought back.

Content = words.
Strategy = Make the words as interesting as you possibly can.

Observe, listen, respond
Before you set out to blog for your organization, first identify influencers out there in the greater world who already are writing on the topics you care about. Subscribe to their feeds, read them regularly and begin commenting on their sites. Commenting elsewhere first will stir your creative juices, build awareness and credibility and will give you a stronger idea toward your own weblog commentary.

The writing: Passion & opinion
Write to your passions and not to an egg timer. In other words, emphasize quality comment, regarding areas you are most passionate about, over rigidly scheduled topics or timing. Stay with the things you’ve got a definite point of view about and the timing and routine of the writing, and new ideas, will begin to click.

Be honest
Write with confidence and do not hesitate to give bold opinion, in your voice. Anticipate the predictable take on a subject, and then resist that angle. The key to effective persuasive comment is not in “making the novel familiar” (a new idea or product is introduced into the ongoing conversation), but rather in “making the familiar novel.”

Man bites dog
One of my favorite scribes, Tom Junod, advises, “Identify the cliché for the given story… and refuse to write it.” Instead take the item or trend that everyone’s discussing and turn it on its ear! Executed well, this is precisely how you will build an audience. Use action verbs, use large metaphors (large is smart — people always can relate to The Titanic), free associate, challenge the reader… all in your voice.

Kill jargon
For the love of Pete… Suppress every urge to write about “solutions.” (Every urge!) Direct all your writing so your mother will understand all of it. Instead, be descriptive. Tell stories. Resist the herd opinion, to find the angle on the topic that is uniquely yours… A wise man once said, “The acceptance of an idea is dependent on how it’s presented.”

Be smart
Try not to mix business with pleasure in your online writing. That includes the public and traceable current social media darlings Twitter and Facebook. The rule of thumb is: separate accounts for separate personas, but even then be mindful of confidentiality. (I found a helpful WSJ blurb on this.)

No ghosting
Yes, the hired writer just wrote that. True connection demands that your ideas truly be your ideas. That said: the process can result always in your own voice and still be a shared process. What this means is, you are permitted to a) have a great idea or the makings of one, b) be swamped, and c) hand off (either out loud or in print) your passionate thoughts or a partial-to-full list of your main points, which then can d) be “riffed upon” / examined, drafted and e) returned to you for f) further revision and quick, ultimate, glorious approval and publication. Include time in your schedule for content and soon the words and ideas will flow.

Patience, persistence
For the blog and its entries, real-life connection and relationships will develop over time. Since the idea of a professional blog is an online extension of relationship building (people exchanging tips, interesting commentary and noteworthy content), the key is to do this expecting nothing in return as the audience finds it way to you. Reaching the right people is important (and will happen), but what you say to them is equally, if not vastly more, important.

Be concise…This is the web, after all.
I’ve gone on long enough.

Virtual highball: corporate social networking

Sat, 09 May 2009 04:01:15 +0000

Corporate Social Networking Quickens Connections, Collaboration

“Facebook at work” trend creates efficiencies, new connections

Back in the early 1960s, product managers in skinny ties and shirtsleeves put workers into teams using the cutting-edge technologies of the day: the switchboard gal, the IBM Selectric and the memorandum. Forty years later, the wireless age makes connecting people who work in the same organization far quicker and more efficient, right?

In many ways, today it’s the same old story. Sharing knowledge can often be as unreliable or incompatible as the whitewall tire-sized rolodex of the Brylcreem-ed boss of yesteryear.

Only connect

Putting Alice from Account Services together with Stanley from Creative can be far more difficult now – given that Alice is in the Manila office and has never before heard of Stanley or laid eyes on his Chicago colleagues.

Like the company men (and women) of the Dictaphone era, today’s workers build networks on relationships, trust and word of mouth. Connecting today may be technically easier, but how do we achieve actual collaboration? In the modern multinational corporate environment, what can hasten meaningful input in which we truly connect with those who possess the information and know-how critical to our work?

Enter the corporate social network

Web 2.0 – the rise of user-driven online products or services such as YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia – is evolving to address the needs of the modern workplace. Companies are beginning to build internal social networks, accessible by employees, which let workers share information and collaborate in integrated ways that can enhance collaboration by orders of magnitude.

A 2007 McKinsey survey confirms the corporate world’s widespread interest in bringing to the corporate environment online social networks and other user-driven collaborative tools (peer to peer networks, blogs, podcasting, etc.) In fact, three out of four executives surveyed said they’re now committing resources to collaborative technologies such as P2P networking, social networks and Web services. (Many reported that they should have acted on this sooner.)

Faster Connections

With the enterprise social network, internal working relationships you might not have otherwise been able to cultivate are only a few mouse-clicks away.

And that’s not all. The network also can:

• Broaden word of mouth sources and “kitchen cabinet” expertise. The corporate social network helps users find common sources and contacts so they can approach one another, tap expertise and cut costs (or time).

• Tap specific user(s) and datapoints. Social networks let users track what each is doing. Networking software weighs messages and documents, ranking and evaluating (and protecting) information instrumental to success.

• Identify experts. Need someone who’s fluent in German and also understands aerodynamics? Based on profiles users complete detailing their background and job descriptions the network lets the user gather likely names of those who might work together in the future.

• Blog. Companies using blogs are finding that the sites help link networks of people and even regional offices in “town square”-style ways. Rather than use e-mail or v-mail, they may use blogs to share information about clients or business solutions. Posting to a blog instead of sending a large email thread taps the collective network on their own time, in a more easily digestible format than email or even Powerpoint can.

• Enliven information/bring relevance. Functioning as a single repository of information, corporate Wikipedia sites – which are open for revision and updating by every employee — exist to aid workers in capturing essentials as well as adapting within the organization. User-controlled corporate blogs and wikis will depend, however, on enthusiastic core audiences who’ll move the needle. Managers must learn to identify and cultivate these core contributors.

Sudden Impact

Connecting users who would otherwise perhaps never (or not as quickly) meet elsewhere, Facebook, Myspace and other social networking tools are a success in the consumer space.

No one gets this more than the generation of Twentysomething’s, raised on social networking and now entering the workforce. Thus being able to rapidly define who’s working on what, to share vital information or identify specific expertise, is critical.

For Ogilvy, the WPP Group brand colossus, widespread internal use of social networking has resulted in improved customer development and retention, and increased internal “sharing.”

Ogilvy created an online, real-time knowledge-sharing and collaboration tool accessible from anywhere on Earth. The branding giant uses collaborative workspaces to capture information as it’s created, and “many-to-many” collaboration to share ideas across communities and a social network base integrated into the enterprise.

The result: Ogilvy has increased its customer profitability — by making it easier to sell more services at a lower cost basis — and has measurably increased consumer loyalty, through better/more frequent updating during global campaigns. By demonstrating its nimbleness in client/partner collaboration, the firm also sharpened its competitive edge.

Mobile Strength

The enterprise social network also can build better communications within sales and marketing, a channel that doesn’t always flow properly.

Based on roles and geography, a socially-networked sales force can see specific information and be totally informed before they ever set foot in the client’s lobby.

Imagine a sales rep who’s on the move. She’s in a cab in New York with her boss, who’s asking questions about a specific client contact, Chris Porter, whom they’re en route to visit. Checking her Blackberry, she can instantly tap relevant documents and e-mail threads.

As the cab is still rolling, she’s able to return several vital pieces of helpful information (e.g., Mr. Porter, who has a high-school age son and who loves Tiger Woods, served as a project manager two years previously and has specific experience regarding what she and her boss are pitching) from within the organization’s internal social network.

In a world where marketing is putting things into system, before she goes to that customer she can also uncover valuable data such as whether the client’s just had a support incident, or whether her own firm’s European team is pitching something to this client, or maybe is delivering pricing tomorrow. From all this she and her boss can augment their pitch, or ‘stay in line’ and not say the wrong thing.

Tied to the company’s other great tools, the social network can provide very quick ways of finding information that normally would be lost. Also, the sales pro can, say, instantly locate a white paper to use as a leave-behind.

A worker can post a question via an e-mail alias to a set of experts who can not only rapidly post a response but can also publish a topical FAQ to the internal Wiki on the subject or to the related competitor or database files.

This grassroots approach can be powerful. If you win a client or otherwise have important internal news you can go edit the Wiki. Useful e-mail, press releases and marketing information that would previously sit in people’s hard drives or on some share drive can be pushed via RSS subscription or notifications that speed information to wherever the employee happens to be.

Kicking It, New School

Portals, instant messaging group discussions and tagging: This is not your father’s workplace. In point of fact, it’s more like your young nephew’s.

The old-school method of collaboration — steakhouses and three-martini lunches – is a long time gone.

Instead, in our casual chinos and our pencil skirts, today we’re grabbing our organic fare on the fly. From the checkout line, we’re checking email or texting. As we walk back to the office we’re pinging the company intranet to check out an executive blog or maybe subscribe to a company RSS feed.

From tapping the collective employee talent and knowledge base to creating groups around clients that very likely never would have existed otherwise, user-driven social networks let employees stand at the center of some pretty powerful technology.

It’s secure and private and not only does social networking behind the firewall save time and money in assembling the talent and knowledge necessary for a given endeavor, it has the potential to connect people and ideas such that work quality skyrockets, creativity soars and worker loyalty and involvement with the task or organization become a more enriching experience.

The Hotel Yearbook 2009

Sat, 09 May 2009 02:12:06 +0000

Hotel Yearbook 2009

What should the worldwide hotel industry be expecting during this moment of economic retrenchment? From seizing opportunity in crisis to the war for talent, The Hotel Yearbook 2009 (for which I served as editor) is a forum where the world’s leading industry experts analyze the year to come.

The future according to Trek

Sat, 09 May 2009 02:11:30 +0000

When the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling team “turned green,” its website, The Paceline, did also. It was a pleasure to edit and publish this bicycling advocacy presentation, originally a speech presented by Trek president John Burke.

Trek’s John Burke: Advocacy Is the Future

The world keeps spinning and with it obesity is on the rise, traffic congestion keeps getting worse and the number of megacities (population 10 million or more) has exploded.

Trek Bicycle Corporation’s president John Burke believes the bicycle is the solution—if leaders in his industry are willing to shift their focus toward advocacy.

In April [2007], John told industry leaders attending a Taiwan conference that the bike truly can be a solution for these vexing issues, as well as pollution and rising energy costs.

Among John’s major points:

The world is getting fatter. The 1960 average weight of an American child between ages 6 and 11 was 63 pounds; today it’s 74 pounds. Over the same span, both US men and women’s averages have gained the same amount: 24 pounds.
Traffic: This global scourge continues to dump fuel, pollute our skies and cut productivity. In 2003, traffic congestion delayed people world wide for 7 billion hours and wasted 5 billion gallons of fuel.
Urbanization: For the first time in human history, more people are living in cities than in the rural areas, and the rate of urbanization is increasing. In 1950, the world had just 2 “megacities” with populations in excess of 10 million. Today, there are at least 20. There are over 200 cities in China with a population over one million. The United Nations estimates that about 180,000 people are added to the urban population every day. By 2050, an estimated two-thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas.

The bicycle can contribute – and in places like the Netherlands, London, Boulder, Colo. and Portland, Ore., already is serving — to solving these problems.

Fitness/Health: Calories burned per hour: Bicycling = 500-700; Driving = 5-20.
Environment: Percent share of urban air pollution: The car =60-70; The bicycle = 0
Congestion: Half of all car trips taken are less than 2 miles long; commuting by bike in a major city like London can drop travel time by nearly 50 percent

While a bike-friendly environment exists in the aforementioned markets (and others), the US lags behind much of the world in bicycle commuter percentage.

John Burke views this as his industry greatest opportunity. His message to his peers: It’s our responsibility to promote these important issues – a long-term effort requiring planning and resources. Success-story examples are out there and countless urban programs are already underway in small towns and major megacities.

Creating a bicycle friendly world, John believes, is within everyone’s grasp. But we must all do more.

Vignette: Target controls arsenal

Sat, 09 May 2009 00:43:15 +0000

I helped Vignette produce a series of articles surrounding customer experience management and enterprise social networking. This one covers the intrigue of persona shifting.

CSE: The Paceline

Fri, 08 May 2009 16:52:26 +0000

As managing editor for The Paceline, I worked alongside Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team management, sportswriters, entertainment media, advocacy groups, team partners, and the athletes themselves. I posted this “fan’s notes” on the Saturday prior the ‘07 Tour de France.

Tour Week Has Arrived
–by Stuart Wade

Conditional apologies to Dakar, The Iditarod and Dean Karnazes’ “Outlook” calendar aside, it’s just seven days until the world’s toughest sporting event. And regardless of your stance on the sport’s recent stumbles, follies and outright embarrassments, plenty of reasons still exist to love its signature event.

New at ThePaceline

You may already be aware that, back in May, Paceline TV became a free product. Well, as The Paceline gears up for next Saturday, I wanted to take a moment to let readers know what else has been going on around these parts.

Later this week, the team will announce a major “green” initiative including a large Paceline area devoted to awareness of the issue. While the immediate goal will be offsetting team carbon emissions (from support vehicles), awareness of the global issue is really the paramount long-term aim, with the team showing the way forward for the sport to embrace its inherent green-ness. Beginning in London, you’ll see green color accents on the riders’ helmets shorts and jerseys, as well as on the team cars.

And here at the Paceline, you’ll be seeing the color green as well. We’ll roll out The GreenSpace, a sitelet devoted to the teams efforts, green issues and news surrounding (and extending beyond) our sport, our sponsor partners’ green activities and much more.

New to Paceline visitors also will be:

A news ticker/scroller feature allowing for more breaking news content
Exclusive writings from some well-known voices in cycling and sports
Frequent podcasts and first-person postings by members of the Team Discovery Channel family
Fan forums & fan-generated image galleries

…And a little something we like to call, The Disco Dream Ride. More on that later. As always, we do our thing with you in mind

Now without further ado…

Reasons to Still Love the Tour de France

Phil Liggett. It begins and ends with the dulcet tones of That Voice that ushers so many of us through the month of July. Throw in the OLN/VS. theme music and you’ve got yourself an annual “goosebumps” scenario.
The Devil. Every sport has its self-appointed, unsanctioned mascot. The Devil is about as authentic-looking (I suppose) as they come. And if he’s pointing his pitchfork and leaping up and down, you know it’s a Big Time Tour Moment. Also on the podium for this category is the Longhorn Helmet Dude, immortalized in a 2005 image of the peloton coming around a curve. Led by the Blue Train, nearly all the front riders are sneaking a peak and smiling at this Norse-inspired Lance Fanatic.
Large-scale, personalized messages to the riders painted right onto the street. Look, this is a family website, but anyone who saw the “Rip their —- off, Lance” message painstakingly seared into the Alpe d’Huez asphalt in ’05 would agree — this is an annual tradition involving the slo-mo button on your TIVO.
The way Bob Roll pronounces, ‘tuhr DAY france’. OK, some might argue this — along with the wild hand gesticulations and turns of Roll-ian phrase — isn’t a reason to LOVE the Tour. But I beg to differ. Roll, Bob, roll.
Mountain-stage frenzy. The mixture of suspense, fear, mob behavior, cowbells, honking horns, ass-hauling motos and team cars, the tiny crevices of crazed supporters that somehow part just in time for the rider to squirt through, polkadots and Basque orange, and the solo fan w/flag who decides to haul ass alongside favorite rider… Actually, I kinda hate this tradition. No, it’s uniquely TdF, and the still thrilling, still-fresh memories of Lance’s results in these stages more than makes up for the anxiety of merely watching from the comfort of home.
Two US-specific items. I am a huge fan of several American sports and a smattering of others. 1) Stateside, the Tour fills an otherwise dormant, between-seasons July period of Nothing But Baseball. 2) Waking up early on the weekend to watch the stage means all is right with the world.
The list is endless. Sunflower fields… Podium girls… Farmers or chambers of commerce who “spell stuff out” in rocks, or their village’s main product such as hay or corn… The tourism shots of picturesque cities and villages… Some dude on his farm riding a horse alongside the peloton…
…Lauding the lantern rouge… Spectacular turns of event such as Dave Z’s fall in ’05, or Rasmussen keeps falling in the TT or George winning the stage(!) or Lance passing Ulrich on the TT… Crazy sprint finishes… Hometown boys riding at the front of the peloton… Escapes that just…might…make…it…all…the…way!

One week to go.

Corporate microsites

Fri, 08 May 2009 21:05:10 +0000

With my stellar AMD teammates, I managed the organization’s first microsites [sadly, all now defunct] promoting the company’s technology partnerships in F1, cycling, and NASCAR. Springbox designed and co-wrote these superb sites.

Q&A: Chris Fowler

Fri, 08 May 2009 21:00:18 +0000

I interviewed ESPN’s Chris Fowler during the first weekend of the 2007 Tour de France.

QA with Chris Fowler: A UK Weekend Like No Other

ESPN’s Chris Fowler has been in London covering Wimbledon. A longtime friend of Lance’s and of Postal/Discovery, Chris checked in with The Paceline in the early evening Saturday (London time).

Q. The Tour de France began today in London on a weekend in which Venus Williams took the Wimbledon ladies’ final here today, and the men go tomorrow. Also on Sunday, the Formula 1 British Grand Prix gets underway with Brit rookie sensation Lewis Hamilton leading the Drivers standings. What’s it been like there?

Chris Fowler: It’s been an unprecedented sports weekend for London. I think it might be the craziest collision of differing cultures and different kinds of sports in any one city ever.

You definitely felt an extremely high curiosity factor for the Tour. There is a hardcore group of cycling fans here like in any large city, but this event cut way across that, not just with locals but it also clearly brought in a lot of people from all over Europe. Whereas Wimbledon is distinctly English and F1 here is mainly a celebration of national phenom Lewis Hamilton – who is becoming the Lance of F1 – it’s clearly more of a more global thing with the Tour.

Q. And London did what it does best—rolled out the red carpet?

CF: Absolutely. I think the enthusiasm for the Tour de France here is real. The London Times put out a 16-page Tour guide in anticipation that people are going to follow the event more this year. The Tour’s arrival here is a result of the mayor (Ken Livingstone) making cycling a much larger urban priority too. The Tour is here because of a request by the mayor in his broader goal more to get people riding bicycles in the city–something that plays well alongside Discovery’s own recent green commitment.

Another important thing to remember is people here were assuming that today would be a “one-off.” I think that will change. On the second anniversary of 7/7 here and with the recent bomb scares, this city turned out. The people of London have an amazing resolve here to go on with their lives and not be affected, to not be intimidated. You know, a week ago there was a real sense of unease.

But today it’s celebratory and you really do feel the vibe with everybody and the organizers. Paris in its own way is picturesque but London just might be the only other city that can fill monuments and can stand up to Paris as a Tour host city. I’ve taken many a run of the Serpentine in Hyde Park and this is one of the few cities that can and does match Paris for scenery.

Q. This is a heck of a dress rehearsal for the 2012 London Olympic Games.

CF: It’s made all the more amazing because tonight at Wembley Stadium there’ll be 100,000 people for Live Earth a week ago it was the Diana concert and so you really get the sense of London being the epicenter this weekend.

And even with a niche sport that normally would dominate media here — something traditional in its own right like the Henley Regatta (the crew event on the Thames aso taking place now) for example — there’s been just an amazing one-after-another roster of goings-on that you really can’t ignore. It’s actually kind of too muchat once, but the Tour’s clearly stood out and taken its rightful place in this lineup of happenings.

Q. You’ve been immersed in Wimbledon, but even so what things have you been hearing there regarding the state of cycling?

CF: Its not really what fans of the sport want to hear, but there’s understandably been a tremendous amount of coverage regarding the topic and certainly locally, too, on the signing of the UCI pledge. But the spectacle of the prologue brought everything back to what this sport is about. Today was a reminder about everything you love about the Tour de France.

Q. They love their Formula 1 in Britain and of course Stateside we get a real sense of the British-based relevance of Wimbledon. But how has the collision of the three camps – the competing personalities and stories of tennis and F1 and cycling – how has it been?

CF: First let me say that these three events have pushed soccer to the back of the sporting section. It’s hard for me to explain how hard that is to achieve – even with soccer in off-season.

The Lewis Hamilton story is a sensation, and because here’s a homegrown superstar who has burst onto the scene, it’s been F1 first and Wimbledon second. Now the Nadal-Federer men’s Wimbledon final will certainly generate excitement with the Tour following close behind tennis.

The Tour has come a close third here, with the tabloid media not paying very much attention. But the more prestigious broadsheet media – they are much more into it, same as say the way the New York Times covers cycling but not so much for the NY Post.

It was an absolutely perfect day here today after a truly horrendous ten days of torrential rains, flooding and serious damage, almost a mini-Katrina in the North here. And so a day like this had all the makings of a turnaround and crowds like we saw – cycling veterans were saying they’d never seen crowds at the Tour like there were here today.

It went off perfectly and people here were surprising into it, this despite the lack of a local hero in the end. With David Millar and with Bradley Wiggins really having a terrific showing, everything combined to bring together a nation. You know, this country’s like everybody else –they want to cheer on their own and Wiggins was feted without getting on podium.

With the Tour prologue today, you really get the sense of having been present for something special in this city. Expectations have been surpassed and the people have really whet their appetite for this Tour and hopefully many more to come.