Online Marketing Theory: A Look at Clay Shirky and Chris Anderson's Ideas

monique@boxcarmarketing.comYou should follow me on twitter @boxcarmarketing

Online Marketing: Clay Shirkyby Monique Sherrett

monique@boxcarmarketing.comtwitter: @boxcarmarketing

What is online marketing?

• Conversation

• Collaboration

• Community

Clay Shirky writer, consultant and teacher on the social &

economic effects of internet technologies

It’s not the tools, it’s how we use them

Our Behaviour Is Different Today Than It Was Yesterday

There are 4 Revolutions in Social History

• The introduction of the printing press (changes reading and writing)

• The telegraph and the telephone (changes communication)

• Recorded media (changes music, records, radio)

• The harnessing of broadcast media (changes how we view images + sound)

We Are Now Living Through a 5th Revolution: The internet revolution

This revolution is a combination of the 4 previous revolutions.

• Printing Press: The web brings us Movable Type, Wordpress, ExpressionEngine, Blogspot and many other digital printing presses that allow anyone to become a publisher.

• Phone: VOIP, voice over internet protocal, allows for companies like Skype to bring us telephone and teleconferencing.

• Recorded Media: MP3s, RealPlayer and others brought us streaming audio, podcasts and peer-to-peer "le exchange.

• Broadcast Media: And the web is images, video, text and sound.

Key Points

1. Sharing

2. Conversation

3. Collaboration

4. Collective Action

Freedom of the Press, Freedom of Speech & Freedom of Assembly

• Think of delicious.com and other social bookmarking tools like StumbleUpon, Google Bookmarks

• Social bookmarking is an example of how we do something for ourselves that bene!ts the group.

• By social bookmarking, we have an easy way to see our bookmarked webpages from any computer. If we make the list publicly available, then we help others "lter for good content based on the wisdom of the crowd. i.e., if more people bookmarked this article vs. that article, then I’ll check out this one "rst.

• Tagging allows us to see the commonalities, which means tagging becomes a platform for organization.

1. Sharing

• Example HDR photos: Totally lovely, difficult to produce. In the real world, it used to take 7 years for a technique like that to move into the hands of the masses. With tools like Flickr for online photo sharing, it now takes 3 months.

• Online, groups get better together.

• Comment "elds, like tags, are a platform for organization. Threaded conversations are communication and sharing.

2. Conversation

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/953669278/sizes/s/in/photostream/

• Shirky uses the example of Aeqisub, which is a group dedicated to captioning Japanese anime and bringing it to the US.

• Another example of collaboration is Wikipedia, where there are 175 different language groups working to add, re"ne and update wikipedia. In some cases, Wikipedia is the only encyclopedia in that language.

• Both are examples of individuals synching with the group.

3. Collaboration

Photo Source: http://www.$ickr.com/photos/mikeeperez/2453225976/sizes/m/in/photostream/

• The hardest to get going. Creating a movement.

• Collective Action is where the fate of the group as a whole is more important than that of individuals.

• Protesters leverage attention online to affect social change, political change.

• Same with Bloggers. We are experiencing an era where people like to produce and share as much as they consume (if not more).

• Kiva.org or the Zombie Walk would be good examples.

4. Collective Action

Shirky points out that in highly democratic environments, new tools are used for entertainment. Whereas in low democratic environments, new tools are a potent element used for collective action.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wigwam/1460462925/sizes/l/in/photostream/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/irisheyes/5417964426/sizes/o/in/photostream/

The Culture of the Web

Practice

Source: Darren Barefoothttp://www.flickr.com/photos/dbarefoot/1814873464/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Points to Remember

• Revolutions happen, and will continue to happen

• The tools don’t change the game, our behaviour changes the game

• Understanding behaviour (or the motivating factors) of why people do certain things is more important than understanding how the tool works

• Conversation, collaboration and community are the fundamentals of online marketing

Did you watch the Shirky video?

The Long TailChris Anderson

• With the web, the cost of reaching customers has fallen dramatically.

• More choice in the market significantly changes consumption patterns.

The Theory of the Long Tail

• We’ve moved from consuming a small number of hits and bestsellers to a large number of niche products.

• Example: Amazon and iTunes

• Source: http://www.novelr.com/2008/02/08/the-long-tail-and-online-"ction-how-to-get-read

• Democratization of the tools for production

• Democratization of distribution

• The ability to connect supply with demand

The Cost of Reaching Consumers Has Dropped because of 3 Factors:

• Personal computers, the internet and cheap technology have given the majority of people access to tools of production:

• Blogging software like WordPress is free.

• Video and music production software is cheap - iMovie and GarageBand come pre-installed on macs.

• Production costs are no longer a major barrier to entry.

Democratization: Tools of Production

• With the web, anyone can distribute – there are no geographical limits and no costs of physical shelf space or warehousing.

Democratization of Distribution

• In the past, we found products through mass media (TV, radio, newspapers and magazines).

• We are in a period of transition, where we now also finding products by searching online and reading peer reviews.

• The web allows us to find niche goods that are tailored to our personal tastes and areas of interest.

The Ability to Connect Supply With Demand

• The examples of Amazon and iTunes shows us that customers have more and more products to choose from.

• Just 25 years ago there were, GUESS HOW MANY

• Running shoe styles

• Over-the-counter pain relievers

• Soft drink brands

• Types of milk

• Choices on a McDonald's menu

What the Long Tail Means for Marketing

• As marketers, we need to "nd ways to stand out. But how?

• The media landscape has changed. It’s more fragmented. There are more tv channels, more radio channels, more magazines, more news sources … This means that as marketers we can’t depend on “mass media” because it’s not reaching the same “mass audience”.

• Audience attention is fragmented.

What the Long Tail Means for Marketing

• There are 2 ways to think about the Long Tail.

• What it tell us about the market (number of products, choice architecture)

• What it tells us about marketing (mass market vs. niche markets)

• Chris Anderson’s “long tail” theory urges publishers to forget hit-making and instead to take advantage of the near-zero cost of digital distribution to try and make money from selling small numbers of a lot of different titles.

• How do I take my book or magazine content and sell it in all different channels?

• If I can’t sell exactly the same thing offline as online, because we’ve trained people to think that things online are free, then what can I get them to pay for?

• Or, how do I just communicate to my audience in all the places where they are, rather than forcing them to come to my channel, my newspaper, my website?

With the Long Tail, Publishers Should Be Asking Themselves:

What’s Fascinating about Google, Amazon, Net$ix, iTunes

• Their business model is the clue to how customers behave in markets of infinite choice.

• Those companies are at the head because they’ve build business models based on availability, trusted sources, !ltering, searchability and discovery. Those players have the attention because they’re using technology that responds to what users want to do.

• People no longer only buy what’s available. They buy what they want. And if they can’t "nd exactly what they want right away, there’s the internet—someone, somewhere is offering exactly what they want.

Next StepsReadings

• Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger and Rick Levine, "The Cluetrain Manifesto," http://www.cluetrain.com/ Just the 95 Theses!

• Kelly Mooney and Nita Rollins, Open Brand

Online Marketing Theory: A Look at Clay Shirky and Chris Anderson's Ideas

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