2007 Shop.org Keynotes

Kelly Mooney Keynote: The Open Brand

2007-09-26T19:39:00.000-07:00

The opening keynote was again given by Kelly Mooney, President and CEO of Resource Interactive. Known for her well-produced presentations, Kelly gave a fast-paced presentation on the Open Brand. She pointed out that over 1.5 billion pages of content are created each year by consumers. As a result, this proliferation of user-generated content is fundamentally changing the traditional relationship between brands and their customers. She implores the audience to begin thinking about transforming their brands to open brands.

What is an Open Brand?
The best way to think about an open brand is to contrast with a closed brand. A closed brand has these characteristics:

Target consumers
Monologue
Is about creating awareness
Push
Guided communication
Top down
Created by marketers
Brand managers

In contrast, open brands have these characteristics:

Fosters community
Dialogue
Is about creating engagement
Pull
Open communication
Bottom up
Created by consumers
Brand stewards

As an example, she points to George Lucas and his Star Wars brand. Lucas was notorious for controlling his brand very tightly and making sure his assets were licensed under strict guidelines. If you tried talking about his brand in any unacceptable fashion, cease and decist letters would start appearing in your mailbox. Over time, however, he discovered that his brand was simply becoming less relevant to his audience. He then decided to open his brand by letting people access--for free--much of his library of digital Star Wars assets including clips from his films. The web community took those assets and started to create cool mashups and other creations that brought the Star Wars brand back to life. In the process, Lucas was able to increase revenue, ROI, R&D insights, and relevance for his portfolio of brands.

The OPEN Brand moniker also serves as a nice acronym for what it means:

On-demand: people want things NOW

Personal: people demand relationships with real people

Engaging: people want to interact have dialogue with others

Networked: people like to influence others

In 2002, eCommerce was about researching, shopping, and self-service. In 2007, eCommerce is much more about social, web-empowered consumers who are creating, sharing, and influencing others. People are not just consumers, they're also content providers who are influencing others on what to buy and from whom. 86% of people online claim to have contributed content--whether that's in reviews, blogs, discussion boards, YouTube movies, or in newer web 2.0 formats.

Why are people doing all this?

Mooney segments the motivations of all these users generating content into four reasons:

Competence (74% of all). These are people who are learning the new skills of web 2.0 technology and want to show they can use it. They think it's fun and cool. These are people who tag, digg, add things to delicious, or are Flikr users
Collectivism (16%). These are individuals who built a fan base around a particular niche or area of expertise. She gives an example of the Harry Potter enthusiast who accumulated an audience of over 27 million users to his blog. Or the 80-year old British storyteller who built a regular audience of 40,000 subscribers to his YouTube movies.
Influencer/motivator (7%). These are people like power reviewers (Harriet Klauser on Amazon) or eBay pundit Marcia Collier who are individuals who influence millions of others
Celebrity-seekers (3%). These are folks looking for recognitition and notoriety such as Ask a Gay Man or Ze Frank, who created the Dance Teaching video on YouTube that's generated millions of downloads.

So what should we do with our brands?

Instead of the traditional purchase funnel (build awareness, trial, purchase), we need a different paradigm:

Listen and learn-->monitor what the web community is saying about your brand. Understand their shared passions
Build relationships, not just awareness-->literally enlist the services of those blogging about you
Facilitate participation-->provide tools that help your audience create, share, and influence
Support purchase-->accommodate multiple purchase modes
Re-engage and empower-->invite consumers to participate in purchase CSIs.

Think of the world on two axes: consumption <--> production and anonymous <--> notoriety. Using the OPEN acronym, Mooney gives examples of how companies are becoming more open brands.

On-demand: Google Checkout; Amazon tag searches; Travelocity's travel booking via email; Like.com's price range searches; mobile ratings and reviews

Personal: TripAdvisor's real customer pictures of hotels; ATG's click to chat or talk; Gymboree's personalized search pages; Zafu's personal fitting

Engaging: InStyle provides audience five ways to get the content (e.g. RSS feeds, blogs, emails, etc.); Coca-Cola's customizable widgets for MySpace pages;

Networked: Netflix's friend recommendations; People's Choice Awards; Lemonade.com; the Member's Project by Amercian Express

To recap, Mooney concludes with a strategic framework that measures how well a company is employing Open brand techniques and how these are contributing to business objectives.

David Weinberger: Everything is Miscellaneous

2007-09-26T18:21:00.000-07:00

David Weinberger is a columnist and NPR Commentator. He gave a very interesting presentation on how Web 2.0 is fundamentally changing the way we organize information. He starts with the premise that user-generated content (what you're reading right now) is the new broadcast medium.

The Internet has overtruned an ancient assumption: that the more complex an endeavor, the more control you need. In the "old" world, if you wanted to build the Hoover Dam, it takes a lot of engineers, managers, project managers, etc. to make that happen. But the Web is arguably the most complex system man has ever created and yet there's not a single person who manages it. If you need management, it doesn't scale.

He eloquently pointed out the difference between Permission Free Zone vs. Fort Business. Businesses exert power by controlling the information. By controlling the data, we control the message. This process is known as marketing. But in the world of the Web, there are no secrets. It's hard to control data. Information wants to be free. Therefore, the old techniques of marketing simply don't work any more.

So how did markets in ancient times become marketing in more modern times? Because of the Industrial Revolution, which allows for the interchangeability of goods, workers, and customers. Someone described customers as those who "consume messages and crap out cash."

Ironically, though, there is no market for messages. People don't want to be marketed to. That's why we use war terms to describe marketing. Targets. Campaigns. Penetration. We segment based on messages, not real markets. Marketing segments are artificial constructs based on the message we want to push, not on what people necessarily want.

Instead, we need to move to market conversations. To illustrate, go to kenmore.com. The front page is filled with marketing-talk on why its products are so great, etc. But compare that marketing speak with the review from Jim, who describes the pluses and minuses of Kenmore washers. Jim is MUCH more credible than Kenmore, even though Jim's review is filled with typos and grammar mistakes.

How did this change in authority happen? In the world of atoms, things must be organized in certain ways because things need to stay apart. In this physical world, one person defines the ordering type--> the process of taxonomy and classification. This simple limitation means that who controls the information is very powerful. For example, the editor of the New York Times exerts power by deciding what to put on the front page. But who says his decision of what's important is important to me? They also tried to control data by relegating their most popular articles and columnists behind the Times Select subscription wall. Well, just this week, the NY Times ended Times Select because people simply won't pay for that service and the Times was losing its influence because of that fact.

But in a digital world, data and meta data are interchangeable. It's one leaf on many branches. In a physical store, there's only one shelf on which the digital camera can sit. But in a digital store, you can find that camera in an infinite number of bins. It's the difference between tagging vs. taxonomy.

This messiness is a virtue because you can have multiple layers that allow consumers to organize. In the digital world, there's no difference between data and meta data. Meta data is stuff you know. "Herman Melville" Data is the stuff you're looking for "picture of Herman Melville". Meta data is a lever for getting the data but people have different meta data layers.

Also in the digital world, the order of information is unowned. In the real world, you can't go into a store and filter all their products by size. Online, customers own the organization. Therefore, don't limit information, include everything. It's impossible to know what people are interested in; you can't predict their interest, you can only help them discover it. Don't decide for the customer what they want.

With Web 2.0, there's actually a joy in "complexifying" Just look at the amount of content on blogs and discussion boards that a simple :30 second speech by President Bush created. We flock to blogs because we can be as complex and detailed as we want. We aren't limited by space or time.

As for authority and the "truth," market conversations are becoming far better sources of than the source itself. Encyclopedia Brittanica gains its credibility through its editors but Wikipedia gains its credibility by the sheer fact that it readily admits it's fallable. Ability to admit fallability is the touchstone of credibility.

So what to do?

Put consumers in charge. Put reviews on the product page, even if the reviews aren't flattering.
Newegg.com has a category tree, but you can also search by attributes and tags
Allow multi-faceted classification. Let the tree assemble itself dynamically by the consumer.
Let your information be free. Look at the Times Select example.
No dead ends. Put more links from the review to the reviewer.
What's yours is yours. Manufacturers should put in the hard data and specs about their products
But just remember that what we think about you is mainly shaped by us, not the company. Reputation is more important than brand.
To solve the paradox of choice, build the tools that help consumers answer their questions

Donna Hoffman and 10 Trends in eCommerce

2007-09-26T16:36:00.000-07:00

Donna Hoffman is the Co-Director of the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing. She gave an OK presentation of ten key trends influencing eCommmerce. Her first observation was similar to Kelly Mooney's: that customers are now in control and not just passive participants in eCommerce.

She describes Web 2.0 as the web as an operating system. It allows consumers to control their experience. We've moved from rigid navigation to more free control. Web 2.0 is less about web sites and more about smaller web applications that you don't need to install.

Here are the trends. (These are from my notes, so some of them may not be complete.)

Social Networking is the fastest thing growing on the Internet. Web 2.0 will monetize the largest digital marketplaces. It's about bringing the store to the buyers. Which social shopping sites are the most engaging?

ABBA: Atoms to Bits and Bits to Atoms

User generated content. Consumers are passionate about certain things. Allow them to use tools to express that passion. For example, Google Maps mashups; videopinions; Scion customization

Measurable social media optimization. Add Flikr button, RSS feeds, Squidoo, etc. to be more relevant and measure efficacy

Limitless content. The paradox is that it's both easier and harder to find things. Paradox of choice. One potential solution is human-filtered search.

Addressable personalization. Personalized search based on one's search history is coming. But the user loses serendipity of general search.

Control and customization. Why can't a customer be able to hijack a site and manipulate a web site the way they want it? E.g. Greasemonkey allows the Frooglization of Amazon. Believes personalization is more important than customization.

Vulnerability. There's an increasing risk that brands are getting hijacked and consumers aren't that good at knowing when they're getting scammed

Convergence. Apple is a good example of how to combine different digital tools

Augmentable - Convergent augmentation. iTunes impacts iPod; Googlemap street views; social retailing