WE LOOKED AT SOCIAL MEDIA’S ROLE IN DIGITAL SERVICES. YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT 5 THINGS HAPPENED NEXT!

@andywhitlock cobbled this together for Social Media Week Barcelona, Feb 2014

I’ve added comments like this

To help explain things in my absence

But the whole thing slaloms around a bit anyway…

N.b.

Andy Whitlock

I work here…

Things people use repeatedly

Digital products & services

And we’re focussed on making:

THE RIGHT SERVICE CAN TRANSFORM A MARKET

We believe…

Don’t really *do* social media

Aren’t a marketing company

Important to mention at a social media conference.

But I should say that we…

DIGITAL MARKETING

DIGITAL PRODUCTS/

SERVICES

I do come from a marketing background though

DIGITAL MARKETING

DIGITAL PRODUCTS/

SERVICES

X SOCIAL MEDIA

So I’m going to look at social

media with this transition in mind

First, some things we’ve made recently…

Pouch: a new way to pay

Hackaball: A new way to play

ITV: A new way to consume news

Skype in the Classroom: A new way to teach

All this has been quite a change for me

DIGITAL MARKETING

DIGITAL PRODUCTS/

SERVICES

Me, 2012

“I’m… bleeding”

PRODUCT MINDSET = MARKETING MINDSET

In a nutshell…

An observation that I’ve reduced to a single graph…

But, this one important difference changes everything

Different risks surface different needs

And different needs require new processes

INTUITION EVIDENCE SUPPLIERS PARTNERS COMMITTING ADAPTING

DIFFERENT METHODOLOGY

SHARABLE USABLE ATTENTION HABIT FAME LONGEVITY

DIFFERENT GOALS

MARKETING LOVES NOISE

And here’s one reason why…

We know that…

POTENTIALWe get super-excited by

POTENTIAL

THINK BIGWhich makes us

POTENTIAL

THINK BIG

MORE IS BETTER

And we start believing

http://2absg.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/firework1.jpgMORE

http://2absg.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/firework1.jpg

MORE SHARING

WITH MORE PEOPLE

MORE OFTEN

MORE EASILY

When I think of ‘social media’ I usually think of this

http://www.tokeofthetown.com/

Not cannabis. This is a reference to the

legalisation of cannabis in Colorado, which led

to the following tweet…

When I think of ‘social media’ I usually think of this

http://www.tokeofthetown.com/

Here’s another..

Being talked about is awesome

And we know ‘engagement’ is valuable…

Achieving fame with 140 ch is intoxicating

WHAT’S THE VALUE OF A ‘LIKE’??PLEASE TELL ME!!

Although we don’t always know *how* valuable…

ONE RULE DOES NOT FIT ALL

I.e. Don’t let the temptation of noise make you lazy

More noise isn’t always better

Basically,

Automatic ‘activity posts’ remind

us how unnatural this can be

Which results in. Well, this.

image credit:

“I just ran 5.22km with Nike +”

A bit robotic isn’t it.

Whose voice is this?

And does everyone need to know?

Maybe just your running mates?

USERS DON’T ALWAYS WANT TO SHARE

Also…

At MxM we do loads of user testing

And we hear this a LOT…

We created an app for Swisscom and got told…

“I don’t want everyone to see my pictures”

We created a <secret music thing> for <secret company> and got told…

“I don’t want people to know what I’m listening to”

We developed a mobile wallet for Weve…

Who wants to go where?

Lunch Club

Bryon Stuart Eccles

Join

Chilango’s Mike Shaw, Julian James + 4 others

Join

Send a reminder text to your friends

Subway Andy Whitlock, Adam Morris

Join

…we toyed with a feature to agree where to go for lunch

and we got told…

“I don’t like my colleagues”

“I don’t like my colleagues”

“I don’t want people to know where I’m going for lunch”

NOISE = SALES

And here’s another thing:

This is a side project of mine: $1 stories

about worse ways to spend a dollar…

For fun, I mapped the stories onto popular

subway routes, based on reading time…

It got sent around a LOT…

…and even got onto:

3m peopleIt reached approximately…

So, guess how much I made in book sales?

£0.00

£0.00I’ll share my theory in a moment, but first…

A different kind of example:

An egg-timer we made at Poke that finds a Youtube

video to match the cooking time of your egg

People are still talking about it, four years after we made it.

But that’s not the weirdest part…….

It stopped working 3 years ago!

It stopped working 3 years ago!

But people talk about it anyway.

Why?…

THE SOCIAL VALUE IS DETACHED FROM THE PRODUCT VALUE

THE SOCIAL VALUE IS DETACHED FROM THE PRODUCT VALUE

Its social currency is not reliant on the product being useful

And this loose tie makes social ‘noise’ almost useless for sales

So the social currency here had nothing to do

with whether these were good stories

Noise is more useful if it’s connected to product value

A much-shared diagram…

That became a product:

EXHAUST VS VEHICLES

(because I haven’t used enough metaphors yet…)

Let’s talk…

Digital trails/footprints are sometimes referred to as ‘digital exhaust’

But exhaust is the unpleasant experience for those left behindhttp

://w

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juno

andj

ove.

com

/

http://theflyingtortoise.blogspot.co.uk/

Much more fun if everyone gets a lift

http://dragonlaffs.com/2013/01/26/dragon-laffs-1309/

Even more fun if you have to improvise.

Platforms are ‘vehicles’. And the

possibilities are exciting and more inclusive.

PRODUCT STORY

Stories are often wrapped around products

Mostly by separate teams/companies

PRODUCT STORY

But when this is your only responsibility…

it naturally becomes detached.

PRODUCT STORY

Similarly, if this is your focus…

Noise is still important, product people

VEHICLE/ PLATFORM

PRODUCT

Platforms for endless new products…

That’s what excites me

STORYPRODUCTVEHICLE/ PLATFORM

And it’s from those products that

more relevant stories can emerge

Kickstarter is just one example

OK, one last (relevant) side project of mine…

I respect things like this…

But they’re not very inclusive.

Guilty Pledgers is a fundraising Spotify app

Guests can sign into fundraising parties at

guiltypledgers.com…

And pledge to charity to add to the playlist

We considered the sharable

moments carefully

Something with a story in it

And we reserved some moments to be

shared at the party host’s discretion…

Rather than try to automate it

MY SONG!MY PARTYFUNDRAISING APP

But really the point is this:

A vehicle that makes products which generate stories

I said this at the start…

So I should at wrap up with five things…

1. SERVICES REQUIRE A LONG-TERM VIEW

What I learned…

1. SERVICES REQUIRE A LONG-TERM VIEW

2.‘MORE IS BETTER’ = TOO SIMPLISTIC

What I learned…

1. SERVICES REQUIRE A LONG-TERM VIEW

2.‘MORE IS BETTER’ = TOO SIMPLISTIC

3. SIMILAR TECH OFFERS DIFFERENT VALUE

What I learned…

1. SERVICES REQUIRE A LONG-TERM VIEW

2.‘MORE IS BETTER’ = TOO SIMPLISTIC

3. SIMILAR TECH OFFERS DIFFERENT VALUE

4. UNDERSTAND THE NUANCES OF EACH

What I learned…

1. SERVICES REQUIRE A LONG-TERM VIEW

2.‘MORE IS BETTER’ = TOO SIMPLISTIC

3. SIMILAR TECH OFFERS DIFFERENT VALUE

4. UNDERSTAND THE NUANCES OF EACH

5. PLAN HOLISTICALLY (PLATFORM + STORIES)

What I learned…

1. SERVICES REQUIRE A LONG-TERM VIEW

2.‘MORE IS BETTER’ = TOO SIMPLISTIC

3. SIMILAR TECH OFFERS DIFFERENT VALUE

4. UNDERSTAND THE NUANCES OF EACH

5. PLAN HOLISTICALLY (PLATFORM + STORIES)

What I learned…

This deserves more explanation, but

there’s only so much you’ll read ;)

@ANDYWHITLOCK

MADEBYMANY.COM