Silent Signal 1/2012 by Vapa Media

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1 2012

Silent Signal

O@9L K 9DD L@AK 9:GML7 The Silent Signal trend report discusses the digital revolution and the multiplicity of consequences it has for the lives of companies, consumers and media.Â The report, scheduled to appear three times a year, consists of expert articles by top actors of digitalism, marketing, advertising and communication both from Finland and abroad. The Silent Signal trend report is published by Vapa Media in order to inspire discussion around the central functions of the web and in order to further collective thinking. You are welcome to take part in the conversation on the Facebook page of the report.

L@= 9ML@GJK G> L@= KAD=FL KA?F9D )'*()*2 Ida Hakola & Ilona Hiila are the founding partners of content agency Vapa Media and the first heralds of content strategy in Finland. This duo believes that web contents will play an ever-larger role in the success of the web-oriented everyday life of companies. Rachel Lovinger is the leading content strategist of Razorfish Ltd., one of the leading digital media agencies in the world. Lovinger, with over ten years of digital publishing, websites and content strategy under her belt, is one of the international pioneers of content thinking. Kaj Storbacka is a professor of business economy, an author and the founding partner of Vectia Ltd.; he is currently a visiting professor at the University of Auckland Business School. In Finland, Storbacka is known as a top expert of his field and the consultant to call when the business economy is facing changes. Â Emma Storbacka is a management consultant, specializing in the effects of the social media and its potential for business development. Currently she works for Capgemini Consulting and authors the blog Social as Usual. Emma is writing the article in a joint effort with her father, Kaj. Perttu Tolvanen is one of the few Finnish CMS experts and the editor-in-chief of the well-known Vierityspalkki.fi. Tolvanen believes that web publication problems stem not so much from the CMS but more from the cultural changes taking place.

Henri Weijo is a researcher of consumerism and urban culture, working on his dissertation in the Department of Marketing at the Aalto University. The keywords for Weijoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research are urban culture, consumer habits, media, politics and brands.

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The Silent Signal

What’s all this about?

The authors of The Silent Signal trend report 1/2012

The Silent Signal, No. 1: Of Contents and Commitment Ida Hakola & Ilona Hiila, Vapa Media

Content Strategy: Why Now? Rachel Lovinger, Razorfish Ltd

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The age of reciprocity – and the end of firms, customers and consumers Kaj Storbacka, Vectia Emma Storbacka, CapGemini Consulting

Don’t Let the Tech Get in the Way of Content Renewal! Perttu Tolvanen, Projekti55

What Sort of Content Do Communities Form Around? Henri Weijo, Aalto-yliopisto

About the report and the publisher

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The Silent Signal

The Silent Signal, part 1: Of content and gaining commitment The world keeps turning and changing. But how should companies change when faced with digitalization?

Ida Hakola & Ilona Hiila Vapa Media Oy

The guest writers of the report work in the fields of media, marketing, technology and business – or sometimes in the core of societal research. The first Silent Signal tunes in to analyze the changes digitalization has brought to the everyday of companies and audiences.

This report brings some of the top experts of the field onto the center stage. The title of the report, The Silent Signal, refers to the nature of the change taking place, and the pressure of being the guiding oracles in your field, which has been built on those developing the web protocols of companies. This report offers tools for creating change for those everyday oracles.

9 K@A>L AF ;MKLGE=JK@AH The change digitalization has brought affects consumers, companies and societies – and above all, the ways in which they communicate with each other. At the same time, the changes give birth to new ways of understanding business and the market in which companies do business. As digitalization changes the nature and distribution of the resources we work with, the models of earning and ways of confronting the client also change. A professor of marketing, writer and founding partner of Vectia, Kaj Storbacka, shares his visions of

ou are now holding the first The Silent Signal trend report – either in you hands or on your screen. The idea of this publication was born in the conference room of the content agency Vapa Media in the spring of 2011. We wished to raise more coherent, guided and and clear discussion regarding the state of flux of the web and communication in general.

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the end of customership and consumership as we know it along with the management consultant of CapGemini Emma Storbacka on pages 18–23. 9 K@A>L AF ;GEEMF9DALQ Also the giants have heard the frail signal. The Coca-Cola Company published a video in January 2012 where they open up the company’s future strategy. According to the video, Coca-Cola’s marketing will rely heavily on the web and contents in the future. The goal is to get people to commit to the company in a way that is not possible anymore through mere marketing and communication. The next decade shall be the era of commitment in the web. In that situation, how do you gain the commitment of your clients and how do you get them to create content related to the brand? Consumer researcher Henri Weijo unravels the problématique behind brand communities and content production on the pages 28–33 of this report. 9 K@A>L AF O=:H9?= HJGB=;LK The change also affects some actors in negative ways. Not every service provider has begun inner development on their methods; instead, old ways of action are offered for the changed field of the web. The next phase will be to see how old partnerships measure up in the world of today. Now if ever we need smart web design, fresh ideas and their flexible realizations.

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Changes become topical issues when a company sets out to renew its website. Functions that used to be located under a single system have scattered into social media and the publication methods must be chosen according to what sort of action is in question. CMS consultant and the editor-in-chief of Vierityspalkki.fi Perttu Tolvanen writes about webpage makeovers and the choice of technological solutions on pages 24–27. The readers will have access to five theses to bear in mind when executing a webpage makeover.

” Alongside the technical and graphical experts, we are now witnessing the birth of an actor who has previously been missing from web planning: the content expert or the content strategist.” 9 K@A>L AF ;GFL=FL HD9FFAF? Even though the signal of change might still be a quiet one, the needs for planning new kinds of web action grow constantly. Alongside the technical and graphical experts, we are now witnessing the birth of an actor who has previously been missing from web planning: the content expert or the content strategist. Someone who plans, manages and develops a company’s communication on different web platforms.

Content strategy is a trend of web being that was born in the United States and has seen growth in recent years. One of the pioneers of the field is the leading content strategist of Razorfish, Rachel Lovinger; in this report, she writes about why content strategy has got people talking around the world right now. You can familiarize yourself with content strategy and Lovinger’s thoughts on pages 10–17. 9 K@A>L AF L@= E=KK9?= The most important signal of the years to follow will be about a change in message. The core of companies’ action in the web will move from static being to active sharing of stories and listening to their clients. In a world bloated with information, the only message that can reach your audience is the kind they want to hear. We hope that the articles in this report bring up messages that are useful to you. Tell us your opinion, ideas for improvement and feel free to suggest experts who might interest us at: facebook.com/hiljainensignaali Ida Hakola & Ilona Hiila Vapa Media Ltd.

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“Digitalization changes consumerism, commitment, web planning & business. How to get companies on board?”

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Content Strategy: Why Now? Content Strategy is a concept that has been around for a long time, but it is relatively new in the interactive industry. In the past few years, Web Content Strategy has exploded onto the scene as one of the new, interesting voices that must be heard. Since content itself certainly isn’t new, let’s take a closer look at why this is happening now.

O@=J= O= N= ;GE= >JGE efore we talk about why content strategy seems so important right now, and where it is headed, let’s take a quick look at how we got to this point. O@9L AK ;GFL=FL KLJ9L=?Q7 First, some of you may be wondering “What exactly is Content Strategy?” One of the most frequently quoted definitions is by Kristina Halvorson: “Content Strategy plans for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content.” That’s pretty accurate, but may leave some people wondering about the details. Content Strategists are responsible for many different content-related activities and deliverables. We could be asked to do literally anything related to content. I have done everything from copyediting to writing a script for a video demo to creating taxonomies and content models, and a wide range of activi-

ties in between. Generally we’re more likely to do content planning activities than content creation activities – writing guidelines for authors rather than writing the content itself. Another major aspect of content strategy work is that it is interdisciplinary. We work with designers, writers, information architects, marketing departments, developers, search professionals, social media experts, etc. Even if there aren’t people with the title “Content Strategist” in your organization, one of these people has usually been doing some aspects of content strategy work without even knowing it. Now that it is officially a practice we can start applying more standards and processes to the work of content strategy, regardless of our title.

Rachel Lovinger Razorfish Ltd.

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@GO <A< O= ?=L 9K 9 ?JGMH! @=J=7 As I mentioned, Content Strategy is not a new concept. If you search for “content strategy” on Google and constrain it to a specific date range, you’ll see that there were mentions prior to 2000, but not many (about 880). From 2001 until 2008 the number of results increased along a nice steady curve showing exponential growth. And then something happened that completely threw off the trajectory of the curve. It leapt from 286,000 results in 2008 to 4,210,000 results in 2009. So what happened in 2009? A real community of content strategy practitioners was born. Two events announced its arrival.

First, in March 2009, there was a Content Strategy Consortium. This one day event at the beginning of the IA Summit was organized by Kristina Halvorson and Karen McGrane. They invited 20 people in the field to spend an entire day speaking together, talking about content strategy. Each person spoke for 15 minutes, or led a group discussion. We talked about different aspects of our work and what we should do to develop the practice and the community. I was in that consortium, and one of the most amazing things about the experience was learning that there were other people in the world who were practicing Content Strategy! I had never met any, aside from the ones that I already worked with at Razorfish. We left feeling inspired and motivated to keep this connection going, and expand it to the rest of the world where we were certain there must be many other

content strategists (even some who didn’t yet know that that’s what they were). Most of us were already on Twitter, several of the attendees started blogs that very week, and the word started to spread. Other likeminded people started to join in the conversation. The second thing that happened, later that year, was the release of Kristina Halvorson’s book, Content Strategy for the Web. In addition to being a useful reference for new practitioners, this book was also an incredible tool for evangelism. Many of us were still finding ourselves having to justify our role in projects, and the very existence of such a book helped legitimize us. On top of that, it was a short book and easy to understand, so you could actually give it to your boss or your stakeholders and say “Read this and you’ll understand why Content Strategy is important.”

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http://www.richardingram.co.uk/2010/08/approaches-to-web-content-strategy/ http://www.richardingram.co.uk/2011/09/content-strategys-well-trodden-paths/

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Over the next few years the Content Strategy community grew like crazy. Discussions bloomed on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Groups. Local Meetups started all over the US, and in many other countries throughout the world. Two new conferences focused exclusively on Content Strategy. CS Forum took place in Paris (2010) and London (2011) and later this year will take place in Cape Town. In 2011 Kristina Halvorson’s company Brain Traffic started a conference called Confab, which will take place again this year. Other conferences, such as SXSW, An Event Apart, Web Content, and Webstock have an increasing representation of content strategy topics. And there have also been many more blogs, books, an online publication called ContentsMagazine.com, and even some college courses. @GO <A< O= 9K AF<ANA<M9DK! ?=L @=J=7 That explains how we, as a group, got to where we are today, but how do individual people get into this practice? Let me start with my own story. Currently I’m an Associate Content Strategy Director at Razorfish in New York. I have been there for almost six years. As with many people now doing Content Strategy, I didn’t set out to be in this field. Prior to starting my job at

Razorfish, I didn’t even know this field existed. I studied interactive media. Then I worked as a web developer for a major entertainment publication, where a lot of my work was focused on the Content Management System. While the editors were thinking about the handful of content that would go on the home page, I was thinking about how we could make the best use of the other 10,000 articles in our archive. We had editorial people who planned and created the content, business people who made deals for special sponsorships and rich media advertisements, and technical people who managed the systems that deployed the content and ads. But something was missing. There were gaps in the way we worked together, and sometimes it seemed like we weren’t all speaking the same language. I often found myself helping the developers understand the editorial vision, helping the business people understand whether the ad deals they were selling could be supported by our systems, and helping the editors understand the technical capabilities and limitations of the publishing system. When I saw a job opening for a role called “Senior Content Strategist,” I realized that that was what I had already been doing for several years. There is no single path to becoming a content strategist. People come to this field from many

backgrounds, and as a result they tend to focus on different aspects of Content Strategy. Richard Ingram, a writer and content strategist with a talent for creating infographics, speculated that there were three main approaches: Technical, Editorial, and Web Planning & Strategy. He created a diagram1 illustrating how various roles and activities fit into each of these approaches. Last year he decided to back up his speculation with research. He posted a survey asking Content Strategists to provide information about their background: their job title 5 years ago, 10 years ago, and what they studied in college. From the 265 responses, he plotted the paths towards six different areas of content strategy2. There are two important learnings from this research. One is that there is no set path to becoming a content strategist. Everyone brings different experiences and knowledge, and that is what makes it a really robust discipline (as long as we keep learning from each other, and don’t just stay in our comfort zones). The second important point is that you don’t have to have “Content Strategist” in your title in order to do content strategy.

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bound to be a lot of junk content lingering around. “ROT” stands for “Redundant, Outdated, Trivial” – important criteria for evaluating content. O@Q ;GFL=FL KLJ9L=?Q E9LL=JK Some businesses and organizations have been online for over 15 years. Some enterprise systems go back even further than that. We are rapidly digitizing older materials and bringing them online as well. That’s a lot of content – text, images, video, audio, documents, comments, email, etc. But we don’t usually have people whose job it is to make sure that we optimize the way we create, find, and use that content. Not just on the days leading up to launch, but for the full life of a project. That’s why we need Content Strategy. Let’s take a look at some of the key ways that Content Strategy can add value to a digital initiative. ;D=9JAF? GML L@= JGL After so many years of creating digital content – often in a disorganized way – there’s

Content Strategy includes guidelines to help content owners evaluate their content so they can get rid of or update the stuff that’s no longer useful. In addition to ROT, this can include criteria such as content quality or accessibility. To make sure that ROT doesn’t creep back in, a good content strategy should also include guidelines for creation of new content that’s relevant and onbrand. Periodic review of content that could become stale will also help. =N=JQGF= K 9 HM:DAK@=J Companies that weren’t traditionally in the business of creating content are now discovering that being online means sourcing or writing articles, creating videos, seeding social media campaigns, monitoring communities, and performing a whole range of activities that they were never equipped to

do. Often these responsibilities get dumped on someone who already has a full-time job (typically in marketing or communications) and may not have the time or experience to fulfill these new duties. Content Strategy can help these organizations establish editorial capabilities. This includes defining the messaging goals – what do they want to say to their audience? From there they must choose the appropriate formats and channels for connecting with the audience they want to reach. Once they have established an editorial strategy, they should identify organizational and operational changes that need to take place to support the creation and governance of content. This way, even if the work ultimately falls on people who already have other work to do, there are at least structures in place to support them in their new tasks.

HJAFL AK <=9< Companies that do have a history of creating content, primarily publishers, are in a panic

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”The focus should be on giving people the content they want, answering questions, and encouraging fans to become brand advocates.”

because audiences are increasingly turning to digital content and this threatens to make their print products obsolete. At the same time, audiences are more dispersed because there are so many sources of information and entertainment competing for their attention. This is damaging to both sales-based and advertising-based business models. Content Strategy can help publishers adapt to this new landscape. They can figure out ways to use the rich content that publishers are already creating to build new, engaging digital experiences. This can include new marketing approaches, new products, and new ways to connect with their audience, as well as innovative ways to support new business models in the digital realm. <AKJMHLAN= H=JKGF9D L=;@FGDG?Q Many people have computers at home, as well as at work or school. But digital experiences are no longer limited to the computer. We read on our tablets, upload photos from our phones, stream online videos directly to

our televisions, and ask our cars to play songs from our personal music libraries. People are engaging with content on many different devices, but no organization can afford to support all the necessary formats and delivery methods if the content has to be produced and published separately for each platform. Content Strategy can help optimize systems and processes to streamline the delivery of content to multiple platforms at once. But that doesn’t mean deploying the exact same content to each type of device. It’s important to think about the type of experience that would be most appealing to a user in each case, and deliver the content that supports that experience. L@= M:AIMALGMK ;GFK=JN9LAGF Even on the computer, people are engaging with content in many ways and in many channels. We might watch a TV show online, share a link to it on a social site, Tweet about it, check in to GetGlue and receive a sticker, read an episode summary, or talk

about it on forums. Real serious fans might enter an official contest, engage with characters from the show on social networks, or create their own fan art. Most of these interactions are not taking place on an official brand website. You can no longer expect to exert control over the online conversation about your brand, but you can (and should) be a part of it. Content Strategy can help identify where and how your audience is talking about your brand online, and how you can engage them more effectively. This can include taking action to counteract negative sentiment. But mostly the focus should be on giving people the content they want, answering questions, and encouraging fans to become brand advocates.

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O@=J= O= J= @=9<=< Now that the industry is starting to recognize the value of the Content Strategy discipline, here are some trends that we should keep an eye on. Increased content strategy collaboration Look for greater alignment between content strategy, social media, search, marketing, analytics and technology. This should include both integrated processes within organizations and the development of commercial tools that facilitate coordination of content activities. Structured data Content creators will be adding more structured metadata to their content to facilitate development of dynamic, cross-platform, cross-channel, ad-ready content products. Semantic Technology. Älykkäät järjestelmät ja työkalut tulevat ntelligent systems and tools will make use of both structured and unstructured content to connect people to the content they

are looking for more effectively and to automatically create deep connections to highly targeted related content and advertising. Finely tuned semantic analytics tools will gather metrics on both publisher and usergenerated content. Globalization/Localization In order to increase a brand’s reach, content will need to be translated and localized. This creates new challenges, but also a lot of additional opportunities. Multiplatform publishing Tools are already starting to emerge to help facilitate content creation for multiple platforms at once, but they’re still too limited. Market demand will have to push further development.

One thing is clear, Content Strategy has arrived and it’s a discipline that will continue to develop and grow. But why now? Taking a look at where we have come from, it is clear that many of us were already doing Content Strategy without even knowing it. Now we are just giving more structure to our work. It is work that matters because almost everything we do online involves content, and, increasingly, we are connected to each other and to the world through our digital devices. Content Strategy is going to help us make sense of this digital world.

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“What is content strategy, what value does it offer to companies and how is it done? Points of view from the big world.”

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The Silent Signal

The Â age Â of Â reciprocity Â â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Â and Â the Â end Â of Â ÂżUPV FXVWRPHUV DQG FRQVXPHUV The digital revolution brings with it many changes to how firms and individuals go about their daily practices. The cumulative effect of the changes is a complete re-definition of roles. No longer does it make sense to think in terms of firms and customers, where firms produce something that customers consume. Instead, we have to start to view all actors in value creating networks as equal. Every actor in a network makes their resources available in a reciprocal process, where value is created as actors exchange service for service.

The Â key Â drivers Â of Â change

Kaj Storbacka Vectia Ltd. Emma Storbacka CapGemini Consulting

ur path towards the age of reciprocity opens up interesting new opportunities, driven by the ability to dramatically increase resource density for any given actor, active in any place at any given time, and the increased importance of co-creation in all aspects of the business process. The outcome of these changes is the new role of the customer â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a change from being a passive recipient towards being an active player on the scene. <A?AL9DAR9LAGF <JAN=K <=FKALQ Digitalization means that resources are dematerialized through the separation of information from the physical world. These dematerialized resources can easily be moved about, creating an opportunity to quickly re-assemble them in setups that make them valuable to various actors. The key proposition is that resources are available for customers â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;any time, any placeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. As a result, we see new business models, such as Google. Comparing the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;googlingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; practice with the practices used for finding information 30 years ago illustrated the practical meaning of

digitalization. The improved availability of information resources helps actors to integrate these resources in any relevant practice at any time. Another opportunity that digitalization allows is the compression of more tasks into the same time and space unit, known as multi-tasking. As a result, all actors have the opportunity to become more effective, i.e. to achieve their goals faster, with smaller costs. Richard Normann suggests that density would be a good measure of value. He proposes that density expresses the degree to which resources are mobilized for a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;time/ space/actorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; unit. Greater density of resources, relevant to a specific actor, time, situation, and space combination, corresponds to more value. The downside of digitalization is the abundance of resources. All these resource are not relevant to all actors in all situations. Adding resources that are not relevant will lead to value destruction; this could be a diagnosis of marketingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s contemporary sickness. It is important to realize that density also relates to various forms of socio-cultural re-

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sources such as meanings, designs or symbols. For example, the aesthetics of laptops, phones and music players produced by Apple seem to increase the density of meanings (and, hence, create value) for customers using them in their everyday practices. This highlights the role of design: i.e. firms can help actors navigate in the stormy waters created by the explosion of resource availability by designing the actorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; experience. The abundance of resources leads to a stronger emphasis on customization and relevance. This triggers the need for aggregation and content curation, i.e. ways to filter and curate the unlimited information and resources available. Out of the vast amount of material, only input that is relevant and

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meaningful adds value. From a network perspective it becomes obvious that the more actors there are in your network that are using the same piece of information, the denser it is, and the more likely it is to be of value also to you. >JGE HJGH9?9F<9 LG ;GFN=JK9LAGF % ;G%9ML@GJ% AF? G> E=9FAF?K Much of marketing and brand-building investments are still allocated according to the uni-directional paradigm of sending messages to a supposedly passive audience. And this goes on although we know that this paradigm is fast becoming obsolete. The notion of the customer as an active and engaged actor has great relevance. In order

to create dialogue and learning, business models and marketing initiatives should be designed to facilitate participation from all the relevant actors in the network. In the age of reciprocity brands become dynamic, social processes and customers have to be approached in a different way than before. The meanings attached to a brand are located in the minds of the wider community of market actors. This means that the brand is a shared reality, dynamically con-

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structed through social interaction. The role of the brand is to support the co-authoring of relevant meanings. In order for market actors to be able to coauthor meanings that are relevant either to them as individuals or as a part of a community, the firm has to accept many brand expressions. The firm cannot be a brand police, aiming at controlling the visual expressions of its brand. The most important thing is consistency in thought, not consistency in style. Actors take part in marketing by sharing new meanings with fellow actors in their community. This sharing of meanings is increasingly being conducted through presence in social media channels. But in order to take advantage of social media, firms must ensure the authenticity of the brand. Customers will not agree to be intermediaries of ignorant and superficial messages. As a result of liberated sharing of contacts, insight and information in social networks, actors will also take on different roles. Their interest in engaging in various forms of co-

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creation will depend on the role they are taking. To illustrate, consider a business manager who is networking online. He is engaged in multiple networks at the same time, with potentially very different outcomes; as an industry expert; a purchaser, or a seller of goods or services; an employer; an employee; a jobseeker; a university alumni; a follower of a certain sports team or organization, and not to forget – a friend or a family member. Previously invisible ties are now made visible by social networking platforms, and a more holistic view of this person is made available. As not only the social ties of individuals, but also of corporations are becoming increasingly transparent, the same holds true for any setting. Labeling actors in your network will give a one-sided view of reality, and the actor’s potential value adding capacity may be overlooked. L@= =F< G> ;MKLGE=JK 9F< ;GFKME=JK The idea of reciprocal value co-creation in a network requires us not only to be freed from a customer relationship perspective but also from the provider-customer notion. We need to stop thinking in terms of businessto-consumers, or business-to-business, and take an actor-to-actor perspective. All actors in the value-creating network are resource integrators that interact in a longitudinal process of value co-creation. Firms do not exist in order to distribute value along a value chain, but rather to engage in

value creating processes. Thus, market actors are not to be viewed as extensions of firms’ production processes - firms have to view themselves as a part of a network of various actors and their value creating processes. In the A2A view, actors are involved in a spectrum of co-creation forms, such as coconception of ideas, co-design of services and goods, co-production, co-promotion, co-pricing, co-distribution, co-consumption, co-maintenance, and co-disposal. All of these forms of value co-creation will require different resource configurations among various actors.

Building a platform for reciprocity

ow is a firm, wanting to embrace the reciprocity logic, supposed to act? There is obviously no simple answer to this, but some issues seem pertinent to success. Firms need to figure out how to deal with the growing amount of data that is generated in the interaction with other actors. Additionally, the role of learning will become increasingly important: how can the firm learn from other actors in the market and how can these learnings be applied in improved practices? Finally, firms need to reorganize themselves in order to allow for a more effective cross-functional co-operation.

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<=9DAF? OAL@ <9L9 A key implication of digitalization is the explosive growth of data availability. Every touch point with any actor in the value network creates a data point, and this data can be used to deepen our understanding of how value can be created. This data can be anything from communication with an actor (or independent of the actor) on more informal channels such as social media, to analyzing the point-of-sale data of every customer to identify purchase patterns. A recent McKinsey Quarterly article used the term ‘big data’ to illustrate the fact that firms are faced with the task to work out how to make the best use of this new resource. The fact is that there is now so much data available that there is speculation about whether it would be possible to replace some management activities by a better analysis of data, which would be fed back to the operations. At the same time is seems evident that though there is no lack of data, there is a major lack of the deep analytical skills required in order to prune insight out of the data. Nowhere is this lack more evident than in the present day marketing departments. Most people that choose a marketing career seem to do this because they dislike the analytical side of many other possible business careers. This leads to management practices that are less informed by data and effectively driven at its best by intuition and at its worst by copying.

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Firms wanting to prosper in the age of reciprocity need to invest in hiring people who can jumpstart the development of a better ability to deal with big data. The data available gives tremendous insight into the minds of customers, the market in general, and even ”Firms have to view themselves as a part of a network of various actors and their value creating processes.”

partners and suppliers, but the challenge lies in finding the needle in the haystack. Many technology providers have already jumped on the challenge, and we will see a growth of data mining tools incorporating elements of statistics, machine learning and artificial intelligence in the coming years. D=9JFAF? LG D=9JF In the age of reciprocity firms need to improve their learning abilities in order to accelerate their learning. The ‘new normal’ will continue to be a process of swift and dynamic changes and firms wanting to exploit these dynamics have to be able to modify their business model and operations quickly. The process of market learning or market sensing has traditionally been built on the assumption that the market is given and that

the objective of the firm is to learn ‘about the market’, i.e., identify opportunities as precursors of business development. In the age of reciprocity firms, however, need to realize that there are no given markets ‘out there’ waiting to be shared. Instead, firms will need to apply market-driving strategies, i.e. make their subjective market definition and then engage other actors in processes aimed at influencing their view of the market. A contemporary example of a market in the making is the mobile payment market, with the big credit companies, as well as Google, Apple and PayPal lining up to have their solution become the de facto standard. The result is a fragmented market of different technologies and platforms, awaiting the real break-through of the de facto standard to-be and postponing any major return on investments made. A zero-sum game caused by the fear of being the first one out, and by that giving the other players the advantage of learning from your expensive mistakes. To avoid this kind of stalled development, actors wanting to influence the becoming of markets, hence, have to focus on learning ‘with the market’. Learning with the market means that the learning should happen not only inside the firms, but by a number of

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market actors as a group, aiming at shared meanings. This requires a totally new level of openness and transparency that many organizations will find difficult to accept. You cannot learn with the market if you want to control the outcome of the learning process. Instead, you have to accept uncertainty of outcomes and be ready to adjust your business models based on the learning. New business models and new revenue streams can be created faster by combining forces, joining alliances and benefitting from the other powerful players in the network. KE9K@AF? KADGK Reciprocity cannot be delegated to any specific function â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it has to be a firm-wide initiative crossing functional boundaries and smashing existing silo thinking. Creating a business model that can be adapted swiftly to new situations requires the active involvement of marketing, product management, operations management and support func-

tions. Marketing cannot proclaim that the firm is ready for reciprocity if the value of reciprocity is not fully understood by other functions. And operations need to inform marketing about what kinds of promises are possible to be delivered, before the firm engages with customers and other actors. The outcome of this will relate to managing the firm by processes rather than by functions. Cross-functional process development will alleviate the problems that stem from silo-based thinking. However, it will require systematic application of modular thinking in order to enable the flexibility of the processes. Flexibility is needed when coping with rapid changes caused by reciprocally aligning around value creating opportunities, identified together with other market actors.

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“The challenges of the age of reciprocity: managing large data, learning to learn again and destroying silos.”

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Don’t let the tech get in the way of content renewal!

Perttu Tolvanen projekti55

There has always been a strong technological streak into designing and implementing web communications. Sometimes the discussion centers around understanding html, other times it is flash animations, and on some days it is a question of programming languages and content management systems. Many web communication experts have developed themselves into quite the IT-nerds along the years. Many things have changed as time has passed; at least web communicators usually don’t need to do any actual coding anymore. Knowing the tools and the technology is, however, of growing importance in 2012. Many things are nowadays better solved by trying for yourself and doing some finding out rather than writing emails to the service provider and asking them to “fix it”. I have listed here five points of view you would do well to keep in mind when your organization is about to undertake a webpage renewal. )& L@= EG<=JF O=:H9?= ;GFL=FL E9F9?=E=FL KQKL=E ;GFKAKLK G> K=N=J9D <A>>=J=FL HA=;=K Especially with webpages, the abilities of the service providers have just about plummeted in recent years when compared to the solutions that can be acquired as third party services from the web. There is absolutely no sense in asking your

IT service provider to “code your own solution” for something like showing videos on your website. Services that are a bit like “YouTube for companies”, like Vimeo Pro, solve the challenge of saving and publishing videos much better than any CMS function right now. The same kind of development has been observed before in newsletters, web analytics tools, forms and commentary functions. Also, the control and observation of, and multi-channel publishing in social media are now advancing to a direction where the CMSs are in risk of getting left behind. *& QGM EMKLF L O9AL 9JGMF< >GJ L@= J=F=O9D G> QGMJ ;EK You can’t help but wonder at how much time many web communicators use to study the different traits of CMS’s and simply wait for “that big CMS reform” to take place. For many of us, CMS has become “the magic key to paradise” and we keep on waiting for that new CMS like rainfall in times of drought. I’ve often heard the words: “As soon as we get rid of this current CMS, then…” Everything will change for the better? Web communication will suddenly become multi-channeled and have a bigger impact? No, it won’t. CMSs have naturally developed along the years but not dramatically so – working the web hasn’t become a simple thing. On the contrary. There are more and more different possibilities, different channels, different forms of media and different

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chances to participate in web communication. Content management systems only determine how easy and light it is to alter your webpage and to create content on it. A CMS that fits its purpose will certainly make the work of content creators more effective, but unless there are dozens of full-time content creators in the organization, even the userfriendliest of tools on the market won’t help you achieve major differences in effectiveness compared to your competitors.

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of CMS during conceptual and content-based renewals. Simply changing the CMS technology without renewing the website itself makes about as much sense as changing the structural points of a house without making any changes with the structures of its walls. Rather than performing a complete makeover ”The important thing is to put time and effort into pieces of content, the publication of which should be made as easy as possible with the right tools!”

+& >JGE D=9<AF? QGMJ GOF O=:KAL= LG D=9<AF? QGMJ O=: HJ=K=F;= Web communicators should, instead of worrying about the CMS, focus more on what gets published on their website, what purpose the various social media tools are used for and if, for example, videos can be published through some third party service. These are examples of key questions in modern web communications. Leading your organization’s web presence is more and more a task of maneuvering a whole, consisting of several small pieces. Progress needs to be made constantly and it can be made simultaneously on many different fields. Improving your own webpage should only be one small part of the whole.

on your website, you should more likely consider small development steps or perhaps just changes in content. As a rule of thumb, your website should undergo a complete makeover every five to seven years – and then you’d better really put time and effort into it. There are several possibilities for the constant updating that takes place between major changes. These are usually also easier to justify and budget when presenting them to the management – and you don’t always need to have a project of “everything must go”.

,& O@=F QGM <=;A<= LG E9C= E9BGJ ;@9F?=K3 QGM < :=LL=J <G AL O=DD Switching from one CMS to another is always a major project and should never be approached as “just changing the technical system”. It is sensible to always conduct a change

-& ;@GGK= LGGDK 9;;GJ<AF? LG O@9L QGMJ G:B=;LAN= AK CMSs are nowadays specialized in different tasks. One is good for controlling product information, another makes for a great web store platform, a third one is meant for event

organization. You should pick the CMS that is best suited for what you do in the web. Nowadays, this sort of “right tools for the right job” thinking takes an ever more important role in the ability expectations of web communicators. CMSs are just one of the tools and channels that web communicators must constantly choose from. When working with a whole, built out of several parts, it is good to keep in mind that you shouldn’t get stuck on making a single choice for too long. The choice needs to made reasonably fast and with determination. After that, you need to focus on piloting and content work. The ultimate purpose of web communication, after all, is the creation of contents that have an impact and making sure they are within the reach of the recipients. In 2012, this calls for more and more smart choices of tools, but don’t get stuck too long on one choice you make. The important thing is to put time and effort into those pieces of content, the publication of which should be made as easy as possible with the right tools!

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“Effective web communication demands more and more successful choices of tools.”

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What kind of content do communities form around?

Henri Weijo Aalto University

ll sorts of content-producing web communities have gained a position similar to the Holy Grail in the discussions of marketing experts. A living and content-producing community is seen as a sign of the magnetism of the brand and as a prime example of successfully reaching the digital consumer who has by now been estranged from advertising. It is no wonder then that marketers hope to build such communities at whatever cost so that “our” brand will receive the right kind of “buzz”. Marketers have, however, been confronted with the difficulty of this task, as many online platforms that were meant to house such communities have been left with nothing but an empty space. What went wrong? In my opinion the problem is that this far companies have aimed their marketing action at communities and creating them, but not in making the brand itself more worthy of a community. The current thinking in companies is quite clearly visible in the tactics they use in their attempt to get communities to create content: kick-starting a campaign where there will be a prize of some sort, raffled off to the consumers that create content. I’m not saying these sorts of actions don’t have their time and place since they can be seen as having a positive effect on sales and brand memorability. These campaigns become troublesome when they want to be

seen as an evidence of the brand’s pull: in campaigns like these people are not activated by the brand but by the temptation of winning the prize. This is evident when looking at how quickly the content creation comes to an end after the campaign is finished. D=9JFAF? >JGE HJ=NAGMK ;GEEMFALA=K Marketing experts should view the problem from a new perspective and ask themselves the question: why do some brands inspire consumers to produce brand-identifiable content in different online environments without asking for anything in return? To answer this question, it is useful for us to observe the history of content-producing communities and think about what sort of content these communities have most likely formed around. If we were to divide the heretofore history of modern content-producing communities into three separate waves1, our era would only be the third one. The digital revolution with its various online environments (blogs, forums, Facebook, etc.) and especially its user-friendly content creation tools (Photoshop, Final Cut, smartphones, etc.) didn’t exactly create content-producing consumer communities but lowered the threshold of participation and brought them more visibly to the reach of the common consumer. Since as early as the 1960s there has been significant academic research among other things on the Star Trek fan magazines (fan-

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Content producing communities per se have of course existed for ages. A typical example for the Finns is Kalevala and its various poems which spread and took shape as inherited knowledge between different communities. Here I’m referencing to the so-called modern communities of the postmodern consumer society. These communities differ in their form in relevant ways: they’re often temporary, they cross geographical boundaries, they’re overlapping and heterogenous. Such communities are a remarkably newer phenomenon. 1

zines) of those days. In the fanzines, “Trekkies” switched alternative fates for their favourite characters (so-called fan fiction). Following this first wave, the second wave started to form around the early 1990s as similar communities moved with the birth of the internet onto digital and, in the beginning, very modest environments. Many of these communities can be described, due to their topics of interest, slightly crassly as “nerd communities”. The

description is not without some grounds since the most industrious of the original content creators were the communities formed around sci-fi, fantasy and soap operas. This nerd label has perhaps been a contributing reason as to why all that could have been learned from these communities was not taken to heart. The early web adopters’ communities were seen as a result of the members’ nerdiness and not as a result of the topics themselves. Many expected that as the rest of the populace would find their

way online, similarly vibrant communities would sprout around other areas of interest. These expectations were not met; even today the liveliest content -creating communities are circled around the nerd-labeled popular culture. Why?

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in sci-fi and fantasy the use of archetypes is common as stories taking place in alien environments are made more reader-friendly by shifting the characters towards certain familiar archetypes. A major reason for this is that this kind of popular culture is heavily centered around storytelling, in which the characters represent various archetypes or myths. Archetypes are sorts of basic cultural elements, simplified truths that form the background of why the characters act the way they do. As Joseph Campbell proposed in his famous The Hero’s Journey, the characters are usually globally known: the hero, the mother figure, the prankster, the rebel and so forth. Myths are already a bit more refined than archetypes: characters that resolve a cultural contradiction between different roles and in most cases are bound to a certain time. Especially

The culture research guru Grant McCracken said in his blog in 2009 that we as consumers have become so good at reading culture that many things in stories can be left unsaid. The viewers need only be given slight hints with view angles, use of sound, choice of dress and other familiar storytelling tools and we have already caught up with the story: there’s the plot villain, that one’s the hero, there’s the comic sidekick and that is the woman the hero is going to fall in love with. The same skill of cultural reading has since refined and found new shapes in digital environments. Henry Jenkins said in his book

Convergence Culture (2006) that the characters of these new innovative, digital worlds need not be made familiar to the viewer: more likely, we need to be reminded where we recognize them from. We are able to read the actions and motives of these characters and when necessary, create more of the story without too much underlining. The content creation of communities is more or less based on this ability to combine old and familiar things in new and current ways. :MAD<AF? L@= :J9F< GF L@= ;GEEMFALA=K L=JEK Logically, the next question by marketers is if the brand can be a similar incentive for content creation as these characters so loved by the nerd communities. In light of the most recent brand personality research literature you could say yes, but it will mean altering the way we understand brand personality. For the most part, personalities of brands have fit well on the traditional continuum of

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”It is high time for the quakes of the digital revolution to become visible through clear changes in company brand strategies and QRW PHUHO\ DV VXSHU¿FLDO WDFWLFDO WULFNV ´

quality vs. inexpensiveness. For a long time, this was the only “acceptable” division for brand personalities. With time, brands have taken on considerably more depth. Already twenty years ago brand researcher Jennifer Aaker suggested that the personalities of the most successful brands can be ranked in five different dimensions: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness. This sort of brand caricaturing is, however, still rather one-sided. The most recent brand literature has paid more attention to the ability of the brands to represent archetypes and myths or at the very least act as backdrops in stories that include these archetypes. This sort of approach has not really been justified with digitalism or giving birth to communality, but I dare say that specifically in the age of digitalism the archetype and myth thinking will be in its most beneficial. Douglas Holt’s How Brands Become Icons and Margaret Mark’s and Carol Pearson’s The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes are perhaps the best known works of this movement. Both books suggest that brands can only be interesting if they can, in charismatic and dynamic ways, represent those mythical characters and archetypes that speak to us. Many organizations have

already begun consciously building their brands towards this: Nike has told the myth of an individual exceeding his or her boundaries for years and both Harley Davidson and Apple are in their own ways rebels in our culture. Worth noting here is, of course, that especially Harley Davidson and Apple fans have for long already been quite productive content creators online. As I proposed above, these are by their nature the sorts of brands that consumers can grasp and with which they are willing to produce content of their own. Let us look at some examples. Two of the most popular ad campaigns in recent years, both of which happened to be the campaigns that generated most interest and action in the content creating communities: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like by Old Spice and The Most Interesting Man in the World by Dos Equis. In the Old Spice campaign you saw an ironically modernized (even gigolo-ish) version of a dream man or lover who spoke about fulfilling female fantasies. The Dos Equis character was in many ways identical to the Old Spice one, except much more restrained and more suave. Both were made into countless remixes, parodies and copies in both video and picture formats. Even though in these remixes the plot or the idea was completely different from the original, they stayed almost uniformly loyal to their role model’s

behavior and parlance. This proves right the statements of McCracken and Jenkins: the characters of Old Spice and Dos Equis are so familiar to us that we can with ease improvise our own stories based on the material they give to us. Branding based on archetypes and myths does not, of course, fit with all companies. A brand personality similar to Old Spice or Dos Equis wouldn’t necessarily go well with, for example, a B2B-brand working in heavy industry. Brand building that makes its foundation on archetypes is also considerably harder than the traditional brand thinking: it’s easier to communicate about the quality of the brand than play with cultural meanings that shift constantly as times change. Because of this, the success of the aforementioned campaigns has been difficult to reproduce; their realizations with all their charisma hit the jackpot. Despite this, investing in such brand building would definitely be profitable. In any case, it is high time for the quakes of the digital revolution to become visible through clear changes in company brand strategies and not merely as superficial tactical tricks.

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“What should the brand managers interested in content-producing consumers learn from nerds?”

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The Silent Signal

9:GML L@= LJ=F< J=HGJL ”At first, only the most observant will detect the soundwaves rippling in the air.” The Silent Signal trend report gathers the whispers under one title and presents fresh expert perspectives on the effect digitalization has on consumerism, citizenship and companies. The report, scheduled to appear three times a year, consists of different expert articles by top actors of digitalism, marketing, advertising and communication both from Finland and abroad. The report seeks to create discussion and be the voice for the latest points of view. The first part of The Silent Signal will be published in February 2012. The report is free of charge and free to use, except for commercial purposes. Regarding the use of the report, the terms of the Creative Commons license apply. Please remember to make correct references (Vapa Media, The Silent Signal trend report) and provide a link to the original report whenever you use or cite the contents of the report. The report is available for download in Finnish at www.hiljainensignaali.fi and in English at www. silentsignal.fi. Join the conversation: write and comment on the changes taking place on the Facebook-page of the report at facebook.com/hiljainensignaali or comment via a tweet #silentsignal ! There you will also find additional information on the authors and their backgrounds. This report would not have been possible without the help of Matti Oksanen, Jyri Rasinmäki, Tuomas Mäkinen, Jani Hellström, Janne Melajoki, all the article authors and the active web public so interested in content. Thank you so much, all of you! Contact: Ilona Hiila Vapa Media Oy Tel. +358 40 1467144 Email: ilona.hiila@vapamedia.fi twitter.com/IlonaHiila

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9:GML L@= HM:DAK@=J2 The Silent Signal â&#x20AC;&#x201C;trend report is published by the content agency Vapa Media. Vapa Media is Finlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first agency specialized in the development and design of web content. We believe in meaningful content and in its power to attract attention. We create content strategies for companies and organizations and help various actors define what platforms, messages and content solutions to use in order to best reach their clients on the web. In addition to this, we also do client-oriented website design for companies: we conceptualize websites and social media functions that offer interesting content to target audiences. We also offer content creation on several media from web videos to producing texts. Vapa Media is publishing this report to inspire discussion around the central functions of the web and in order to further our collective thinking. Vapa Media: vapamedia.fi facebook.com/vapamedia twitter.com/VapaMedia slideshare.net/VapaMedia Contact: Ida Hakola Vapa Media Oy Tel. +358 50 5394912 Email: ida.hakola@vapamedia.fi twitter.com/IdaHakola Matti Oksanen Vapa Media Oy Tel. +358 50 3878303 Email: matti.oksanen@vapamedia.fi