Archives (page 14 of 43)

14 December 2012 / 0 Comments

Destroying the web

The Internet is the most powerful, flexible and critical infrastructure ever invented. Every aspect of our daily lives is supported by this wondrous invention.

But here's the important thing.

We've passed the point where the fabric of our societies is supported by the Internet – the all pervasive Internet increasingly defines that fabric. Its architecture is becoming our architecture, and that is why any motion to challenge or change the way in which the Internet is governed must be subject to the most critical eye.

I've been on tenterhooks the past fortnight watching the deliberations of WCIT play out – the World Conference on International Telecommunications. WCIT is a UN body that has played a vital role over nearly one and a half centuries coordinating telecoms standards and interoperability and radio spectrum and satellite orbits, and it has tried once again to wrestle Internet governance from the hands of the open community that has shepherded it so beautifully to date. Read more

6 December 2012 / 0 Comments

CIPR TV on journalism, PR and the Leveson Inquiry

I hosted the CIPR TV show on the Leveson Inquiry on Monday. As you may have seen, I wrote about the inquiry for last week's CIPR Friday Roundup, a day after the publication of the inquiry's report – Public relations and the 'ethical vacuum'.

Our guests were Michelle Stanistreet, General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists, and Jane Wilson, CIPR CEO.

30 November 2012 / 0 Comments

Public Relations and the “ethical vacuum”

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

"Too many stories in too many newspapers were the subject of complaints from too many people, with too little in the way of titles taking responsibility." Newspapers have often demonstrated "a significant and reckless disregard for accuracy" and "misrepresentation and embellishment takes place to a degree far greater than could ever be thought of as legitimate or fair comment."

I've just read the Leveson Inquiry, published yesterday and running to nearly two thousand pages. These quotes come from the forty page executive summary. For those of you beyond the UK's shores, the Inquiry is about the freedom of the press in both the positive and negative manifestations of that expression, with a focus on how we can attenuate the negative.

The UK enjoys a pluralistic media of which other countries are rightly envious, and a free press is central to our national identity. The report quotes Sir Winston Churchill: "A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny ... Under dictatorship the press is bound to languish ... But where free institutions are indigenous to the soil and men have the habit of liberty, the press will continue to be the Fourth Estate, the vigilant guardian of the rights of the ordinary citizen."

20 November 2012 / 4 Comments

Content Marketing Show 2012

I've just kicked off Content Marketing Show 2012 here in London. Thanks to Kelvin Newman and his team for the opportunity. Here's my stack.

The Illustrated History of Content

2 November 2012 / 0 Comments

Banking your reputation

[Written for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

Matt Ambrose posts this week about Red Hot Openers that Get Readers Eager for More. So here goes...

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) enables financial institutions worldwide to send and receive information about financial transactions in a secure, standardized and reliable environment.

How am I doing so far Matt? :-)

Seriously, SWIFT matters to you this week. This member owned co-operative is actually at the cutting edge of dealing with your 21st Century currency – your data. And as I posted a month ago, data is this decade's number one revolution.

If you accept that your data is your reputation (credit scoring is over 40 years old), and that your data has value to those who want to understand and serve your needs, then it's a bit of a shocker that in 2012 you don't have much control over it.

24 October 2012 / 2 Comments

Are you a professional or a user?

I've never been fond of the word 'user'? It lacks the caring qualities of a much more appropriate word, customer, and even evokes images of substance abuse.

On making this point, I'm asked what I'd call people benefitting from a service or application without handing over their hard-earned. Well, customers of course. In such situations they're simply paying with a different currency, such as their personal data and/or attention, which the supplier of the service does its utmost to monetize.

But in one instance, I like that evocation of substance abuse. Of addiction. Of misuse.

Do allow me to explain and let's see if I've just been critical of you or a colleague. Please go easy on me if I have, my intentions are honourable.

I had the privilege of speaking with 150 Masters students at Imperial College London yesterday, taking their Technology in Marketing module. All marketing activity in 2012 is underpinned or impacted by technology, and thousands of tech vendors tempt us with thousands of marketing and PR applications, tools and services. And we buy them. Lots of them. The question is, are you a professional or a user?

What's the difference?

5 October 2012 / 1 Comment

Who are you?

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

Identity is not a black and white thing. Sure, at one end of the spectrum anonymity reigns. This is the world of 4chan, the popular image-based bulletin board from which famous memes such as lolcats and Rickrolling emerged. At the other end of the spectrum we have passport border control.

And in between we have many shades of identity.

Nightclub handstamps for example are needed only to ascertain who has already paid. Many a website cookie serves just to determine if you've dropped by before. A supermarket loyalty card serves just to build up an understanding of your shopping habits, and may be associated with a bank card proffered for payment.

OK, so what has this got to do with marketing and public relations?

4 October 2012 / 0 Comments

This decade’s number one revolution

“Data is the new oil." So said Clive Humby back in 2006.

"Data is the new soil" said David McCandless in 2010.

In between, in 2009, Meglena Kuneva, European Consumer Commissioner, said: "Personal data is the new oil of the internet and the new currency of the digital world."

I've long been excited about the advent of big data, and started posting about visualising the stuff back in 2008. If anything distinguishes the modern professional – in marketing, PR, HR, R&D, operations, etc. – from her predecessors, it's the facility to work with data.

I'm asked increasingly often to define big data, in particular how it differs from the normal sized stuff. The technical answer is simply when there's so much of it that traditional data storage and database technologies aren't up to the job. The more interesting answer is this: data helps us answer questions; big data also helps us conceive new questions.

Last week I was invited to the book launch of In Data We Trust (haven't finished it yet), a best-seller last year in the German language. This afternoon I'm meeting up with Doc Searls, author of The Intention Economy (awesome), and thought leader on consumer / citizen data.

Last night I was invited to an event hosted by Gurbaksh Chahal, CEO of RadiumOne and one of those chaps who has difficultly maintaining eye contact during conversation lest he misses something on his smartphone. His company sells a "Dynamic Audience Platform" that "combines first-party social interaction data with our patent pending ShareGraph™ targeting technology and 12 billion daily real-time bidding ad impressions to deliver superior results for the world's leading advertisers."

Got that?

Big data is impacting every aspect of life I can think of. Some might ask "even art?" And I'd say, "of course art!" But perhaps the biggest question remains to be answered – who owns the data?

Does the supermarket own your product buying data, or is that yours? Does the utility company own your customer data, or is that yours? Does your mobile service operator own your location data, or is that yours? Does Google own your search history, or is that yours? Does Facebook own your social graph, or is that yours? Does RadiumOne own your ShareGraph, or is that yours?

Or are there new ownership models?