– pic via the extremely talented Harry Duns

Last October I was fortunate enough to be asked to speak at the fantastic Exeter-based conference, Like Minds.

My topic? The five word of mouth moments of 2011.

Easy, right?

You don’t need me to tell you the first five that spring to mind, so let’s look what happens when you probe a little deeper -

[your comments and feedback, as ever, are welcome]

Oh, and the best thing? I just managed to lay my hands on a ticket to the rather exciting TEDxObserver 2012.

Speakers include one Miss Camila Vellejo.

Amazing.

Note: this is not your average email, but we’ll come to that shortly.

If you’ve not seen the film before (I haven’t), it’s about a teenage girl (the amazing Saoirse Ronan) who has been trained by her ex-CIA father (Eric Bana) to basically be a complete bad-ass. Think Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass [but slightly older and with less pink wig-ness] and you’re probably halfway there.

Anyway, like I said, she’s been trained to be THE PERFECT ASSASSIN and then well, from what I can see from the trailer, Cate Blanchett turns up and the proverbial really hits the fan.

Speaking of which, the trailer is worth a look -

What do you think? I missed this at the cinema as I had only just got back from my mad trip across Siberia, but it does actually look quite good. IMDb gives it a solid 7/10 and, I think I probably will pick this up at some point also.

So, why am I blogging about it? Given that a) I haven’t actually seen it yet and b) although the film looks good, it doesn’t seem to be the kind of epic masterpiece that normally drives me to put e-pen to e-paper.

Well, it’s that email I mentioned at the top. It would seem that HMV and Universal have teamed up to create a rather awesome Foursquare-based treasure hunt across three major cities in the UK (London, Birmingham and Manchester) that kicks off this weekend.

Based around the central themes of the film, each hunt contains six codes that need cracking and from there you end up with six locations that need checking into.

The prize for completing said task? Er.. a weekend in Berlin! Sweet.

If you’re any of the above cities, your orders are available c/o The Galinka Project (but be quick, you only have until Monday). In the meantime, I have codes to crack.

Catch you later.

While it’s easy to give We Are Social (WAS) a right good pasting over their handling of the Eurostar debacle over the weekend – let’s put things into perspective.

For starters: less than 24hrs after the whole thing started playing out, there was a video response from the Eurostar CEO himself, Richard Brown. This is not something to be sniffed at kids.

A video apology, delivered via YouTube, to the LittleBreak website in the form of a blog post. In this day, that is a feat in itself.

How many other CEOs of train operators could you name who would consider doing that (outside of a BBC interview)?  Seriously?

Please do not think for one second that I’m making light of all those people trapped on the train/in the tunnel/in folkestone for God knows how many hours – I’m not.

But look at it like this – if the CEO had put that video up within, say four hours of the incident taking place, how easy would it have been to cry:

“OMG! What is he doing wasting time posting on a blog? He should be out there dedicating his time to getting those people out!”

WAS were originally (I assume), hired to create sales and conversation around ‘little breaks’ – facilitated, naturally, by Eurostar. Note: This would mean working with Eurostar’s Marketing and PR team, not their Customer Care dept. Whether or not the addition of a reactive care stream to We Are Social’s (now ongoing?) brief is the mark of a bad agency remains to be seen.

What isn’t necessary – in my opinion at least – is playing the blame game when it comes to addressing ‘twitter concerns’.

Remember – this happened on a Friday night and played out over the midnight hours. Come Saturday morning, the problem was still going on. I know I (at least try to) take weekends off sometimes, I’m pretty sure others do too. But, when the call came in, the WAS guys got themselves over to Eurostar HQ pronto and were camped out there from midday onwards.

By the end of play, they had that video up.

If care was part of the package then someone SHOULD have been online.
It wasn’t, so there wasn’t.

The end.

Back at the turn of the year, Peter Kim launched his ‘social media predictions for 2009‘. The paper, downloadable in PDF format, featured forward thinking insights from such social web luminaries as Jason Falls, Charlene Li and one of my favourite players in this space, Chris Brogan.

The predictions themselves make for interesting reading and I would (even now), recommend going back and taking a look if you have the opportunity. To cut to the chase though, it was the thoughts from Mr Brogan that stood out the most for me, mainly around his notion of the ‘velvet-rope social network’.

“I believe we’ll have more focused velvet-rope social networks in 2009 where the tools and the goals match verticals instead of the general commons of Facebook.”

Nicely put. At the time I remember agreeing with the idea, but I wasn’t entirely sure about the execution. Chris himself has returned to the subject a number of times on his own blog (often with examples). However, the reason this particular thought came back to me recently was in large part, thanks to Google Wave.

Google Wave is currently in private beta and the invites only started pouring out into the web just under a fortnight ago. With them came the promise of a new dawn in co-working, a new way of true collaboration on a global scale…  A brand new vision of the future.

Except that so far, based on at least 99% of my own experiences at least, no one has found any real use for it.

Well that is until I realised exactly what it is.

Ready?

Google Wave is, to my mind at least, one of Brogan’s new velvet roped social networks.

You open your Wave (this is your network) and invite in whoever you like to join you (as long as they are on Wave). This is, of course absolutely by invitation only. One inside you can chat, share and exchange.. basically do anything you would do normally just within the comfort of the Wave.

As Brogan said: “…the tools and the goals match verticals…”

But there’s more.

The answer? They’re both velvet-rope social networks. Why? Allow me to explain.

Not soon after I started thinking about Google Wave, I realised that another service from the big G shares the same commonalities as the velvet-rope social network: Google Reader.

Google Reader is not too dissimilar. The sharing functionality ‘baked in’ to the UI of the RSS service allows me to one-click push the stories that I’m reading out to my buddies on Google Talk (Google’s Instant Messenger service, aka ‘GTalk’). These stories then appear in my contact’s own Greader – sometimes with an added note from me – and that, is my choice.

I like sharing. I also like, occasionally picking and choosing with whom I share.

Is this the way forward?

Maybe. The point is, Google Reader is cool. I like it. I like sharing stories with my friends and I like them sharing with me. It’s closed (to a point) and I know who I’m sharing with.

Google Wave, while being no replacement for email or IM, is actually really quite useful for actually doing some work. Of the 36 ‘waves’ I have going on at the moment; one is for a specific project, a handful of massive group chats – the IM equivalent of an MMORPG (eesh), – and the rest are along the lines of ‘Is this thing on?’, ‘testing’ and my own favourite, ‘is this actually the future?’

It’s closed, for now. If you have an invite, find the people you want to work with and start a new collaborative project.

Treat it right, and you’ll yield results.
Don’t, and you’ll never see the benefit.

Thanks for stopping by.
-

Additional reading: “What problems does Google Wave solve?” (via Renate Nyborg)

About a month ago I entered into the running to be Lucozade’s Social Media Reporter this Summer, covering each of their ‘Energy Challenges’ as they happen across the globe. Phase one was an initial email pitch that answered the question ‘why should we pick you?’

I threw some words together, detailing some of my social media credentials – or ‘whuffie‘ as my dear friend Vero calls it – and was soon after awarded a place in the next round.

Phase two stepped it up a bit. This time we had to create a ‘multimedia diary’ based around reporting on a physical activity.
The requirements were as follows:

• One two minute video
• Footage of the physical activity
• Interview with the person undertaking the activity
• Piece to camera introducing your diary
• A written blog of no more than 150 – 200 words
• 10 photographs

With that I went off and spent the afternoon at a secret location with my good friend and neighbour, Richard Mills. I think you all know how that turned out.

“James Whatley meets: Richard Mills” got me through into the third and final round; a sit down face to face with the Lucozade team. Two hours later my phone rang.

“Hi James, we’d really like it if you could be the Lucozade Energy Challenge Social Media Reporter…”

That was two weeks ago.

My feet haven’t really touched the ground since.

The Lucozade Challenge is one big competition. You can enter right now. Each week winning a place to on one of the challenges for you and three of your mates.
There are five challenges in total and they are as follows:

1. Sandboarding in Namibia
2. Cattle ranching in Wyoming
3. White water rafting in Zambia
4. Yacht racing in the Caribbean
5. Glacier climbing in the Alps

Over the Summer, I’ll be blogging, tweeting and filming every single one of them… and I cannot wait! 

Thing is, I leave for Namibia on Saturday.

Best pack really…

A few months ago I posted Part One to discuss this question and its relation to the ‘always on’ generation that we seem to live in today. If like many others who find themselves working in this field, you are expected to be on call at every hour of the day…

Well no, let’s stop right there. Is it actually expected?

Or is it the case that you simply feel obliged?
You assume that that the expectation in there, when in fact it isn’t.

See?

I have written at length about the importance of humanity being at the heart of everything you do. The onus being placed on the term ‘being human‘ throughout my work is on purpose people.
The question asked above is not about the duality of Batman’s psyche, moreover about his pig-headedness about asking for help and his lack of self-forgiveness when he gets it wrong.

He is after all only human.
As are we all.

When things got tough the Bat brought in Robin and then soon after that, the Justice League. His skills, unique and awesome on their own, work considerably better when placed into a team of similar, like minded people (sharing an equal goal).

The point is, that developer guy that I mentioned?
He who I quoted way back when:

Sometimes, I find myself stuck in front of the laptop at like 10pm on a Sunday night. The kids are in bed, the wife isn’t far behind and there I am answering customer care questions over Twitter with some guy in Geneva! This isn’t my day job. I’m a developer. My question to you is Sir; when does Batman sleep?

This man, he cared about his company’s brand and (online) reputation so much that he took it upon himself to make things better on his own.

Much like the Caped Crusader, he fixed it himself, working solo and acting independently from his own company’s PR team and, just as Batman did with the Gotham City Police Department (GPD), both sides became infuriated.

However, it is written than the Dark Knight works best when he works with his friend and ‘colleague’, Commissioner Gordon, coordinating strategies that incorporate traditional routes & methods (like the GPD) as well as the new found tools of our erstwhile hero.

More things get done.

When I first started in this job, within weeks I was at loggerheads with the Director of Communications. Our very own Jim Gordon if you will. He wanted to vet every single message and blog post that was to be written and sent out. A stand up argument ensued which ended with me simply saying:

Invent a box of words…
Put in everything I can use and take out everything I can’t.

Then leave the box with me.

It took some time, but we got there in the end.
There are laws and rules as well as traditional ways of enforcing or adhering to them.

However, these days there are ways to play, push up against and generally find new parameters to work within these rules.
Call it operating under the radar if you will.

Batman doesn’t kill.
Something which he is continually pushed on.
He doesn’t go looking for trouble (at least not in the traditional sense of the word), but instead works within rules.
First those he sets himself, then later within those set by others.

It is at this point where our super hero can pause, his allies know his work and can defend it in his absence.
Yes that’s right, his absence.

I started this post with the intention of highlighting the often over-looked ideal of humanity on both sides of the coin.

Corporations can be human but so can consumers.

Yes, it’s great to be on call 24hrs a day, seven days a week, but your customers are not robots. If you don’t get back to them on a Sunday night, they’ll understand.

It’s all well and good being human, but never forget everyone else is too.

Last week ladies and gentlemen, I met Richard Mills.

Richard, or ‘Richie’ as he prefers to be known, is an extreme sportsman of the highest caliber. But, unlike any other extreme sportsman I have met before, Richard is a real live Suburban Warrior.

Adrenalin junkies are not new to me; I’ve leapt from planes, thrown myself down mountains and even taken the odd wake-board ramp from time to time… But Richie Mills? This is a man who takes it to the next level.

Filmed at a secret location in West London, the following video takes place on a normal Monday afternoon. Blindfolded en route, Rich explained to me the level of competition that goes into these kinds of events, his love for the sport and then, we arrived…

Remember one thing folks: Richard Mills is a trained professional.

Do not try this at home.

_____________________

All video shot and filmed on a Nokia N97.
All photos shot and uploaded with a Nokia N95 8GB.

There is a Vimeo version of the video if you’d prefer and also a Flickr Set of all the photos from the day’s activites.

Check it.
Thanks for watching.

But who owns them?

If your idea is shared with another, does that other then co-own it with you?

Your ideas maybe the most valuable things you ever, ever own. Guard them well and be careful with whom you share them with.

Something that maybe so obvious to you may not be as obvious to the next person.
Before opening your mouth next time, take a moment – pause, take a break and think.

How much do you value your time? Your ideas?

Is it the price of a coffee? Lunch? Dinner?
Or is it a day of work, a week maybe?

How much are you worth?

Writing this, as I am currently, in the bar of the ICA – home of the London Social Media Cafe – I am comforted by words of wisdom from my good friend Carl Jeffrey:

“Share your ideas and your dreams, you’ll be surprised how many people come out of the woodwork to help you – but make sure to hold off telling the full story until the end. Remember; genius has limits, stupidity has none.”

It was day two of the conference and Brian Solis was taking us through his presentation on PR 2.0. It would seem that in today’s ’2.0′ environment, that PR was no longer about Public Relations, but Personal Relationships.

Brian’s written and talked extensively about this subject in the past and while I have a great respect for him and his work, this particular session was faltering.

You see, the presentation wasn’t anything new to me. Having studied his work in the past, I was just hearing everything I’d read being spoken back to me.

Admittedly this was not Brian’s fault. He had to speak to the lowest common denominator in the room and he was doing a very good job of it. However, some of the attendees were losing interest. Actually, my good friend and blog designer Vero Pepperrell touched upon this in her most recent post on That Canadian Girl.

Upon her return from the South by South West Interactive (SXSWi) festival, in Austin, Texas – Vero had this to say to the organisers:

Mark panels as Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced on the pocket schedule and ask speakers to stick to that level. The vast majority of panels I attended were far too Beginner level, which sometimes felt like a waste of time. The panelists aren’t necessarily to blame, as they aimed to be as inclusive as possible, but when every panel is lowest-common-denominator, it can be tricky to learn new things.

Good point, well made. So… What’s up with the Batman reference?

Well jumping back to New York for a second, the PR 2.0 session at Web2 was coming to an end and Mr Solis had opened the floor to questions…

A few short ones at first;

- “Should we be using Twitter?” (Yes)
- “What if people start talking back?” (Talk back to them)
- “Can I have a copy of your presentation?” (Yes)

And then this one guy came up to the mic, rather shy fella actually, and quietly told Brian and the audience around him, what he did for a living. This man was a developer who, after spending some time wandering the world wide web, had discovered that people were talking about the company he worked for. Sometimes good, sometimes bad and, being the nice human being that he was, this man decided to do something about it.

At first, starting small; just fixing little bugs here, offering help and guidance there. Soon, word spread that this was the go-to guy online if you had any questions regarding the company he worked for. Again, being the kind man that he was, he found himself answering query after query and question after question, not once being mean or nasty or just plain rude. This man cared:

“Sometimes Brian, I find myself stuck in front of the laptop at like 10pm on a Sunday night. The kids are in bed, the wife isn’t far behind and there I am answering customer care questions over Twitter with some guy in Geneva! This isn’t my day job. I’m a developer. My question to you is sir; when does Batman sleep?”

This prompted a huge round of applause from the majority of the room. Being the face of your brand isn’t supposed to be a 24hr job (is it?), so when are we supposed to take time out? What about those of us to whom this isn’t even their job?

I have answers, mainly through my own experiences.
But first I wanted to ask the question to you, dear reader:

When do you think Batman should sleep?

.

Part 2.

As promised in my last post, this next one is a bit of a biggie. Sitting comfortably?
Then I’ll begin…

Towards the end of last year, around the start of December in fact, I found myself having a conversation with fellow Mobile Industry Review contributor, Jonathan Jensen. He and I were discussing that as we move into 2009, brands should be placing a certain level of importance on engaging with their consumers on an increasingly more conversational level.
The exact words that struck such a chord with Jonathan were as follows:

’2007: Content was King. 2008: Context is King. In 2009? Conversation will be King.’

At this point however, I had to dash off to do a presentation for SpinVox and never got the chance to elaborate on that thought any further.

What I mean is; back in the ‘ring tone & wallpaper’ days of 2005-7 (does anyone below the age of 16 actually use those services anymore?), everywhere you went the mystic phrase was uttered; ‘content is king’

The content in this instance is the aforementioned downloadable premium additions to your handset. During my job at Mobizines (and subsequently Mippin), we were still seeing presentation after presentation and report after report, all supporting (or at least purporting to) this concept – as late as this time last year in fact.

And we lapped it up.

2007 came and went, and ‘sharing’ was set to be the theme for 2008 (thus was my prediction anyway) and you could argue that this was proven to be correct in a number of ways.

In the future, people will look back and say that Facebook was instrumental in introducing Social Media to the masses. It unified communications on a consumer level and gradually allowed people to begin sharing.

Of course, the ‘Content is King’ mantra did not just disappear with the twilight of the year. The legacy lived on, rearing its ugly head once again, this time in the form of Facebook Applications. With only a few exceptions, this first swathe of applications; including Werewolves, Ninjas, Sheep Throwing and more, were soon replaced with some contextual goodness.

The adverts soon followed suit; “Your friend ‘x’ likes this, so you will like it too…”

It’s hardly a trusted referral from a non-branded, independent entity, but it’s not far off.

We’ll come back to this point later as, before we look at trusted referrals, we need to return to content for a moment – and how that lineage spreads into Social Media.

Facebook for example, gives you contextual content from your friends. If you give any content just a smidgen of context, suddenly you’ll find you have the potential for engagement. Facebook, by turning content over to its users, allowed context to become king – almost overnight.

Context gives content meaning, and is at the centre of any Location Based Service actually ever becoming successful. Context also adds to the ambient awareness that Facebook has brought upon us all. Knowing where my friends are and what they are doing is not only easy to implement, but also fantastically simple to engage with. Comment on this, write on that, post it here – Facebook makes it so easy. Some people choose to have a constant stream of ‘noise’ flowing through them at all times, but it’s the content from your friends that is important. That is the context.

As I said in Helsinki;

“YOU are the stream, everything else is just the channel you use to publish your content…”

So that’s the consumers sorted. What about advertising?
For that, I’m going to use another quote;

“A trusted referral from a non-branded independent entity is more powerful than any amount of advertising, marketing or PR.”

- Blake Chandlee, MD Facebook Europe.

For me, this can be simply illustrated as follows: You and I are in a pub, posters surround us for Beer X, but everyone around us is drinking Beer Y.
I ask you which one you’d prefer and you say; “I’ll have what you’re having”.

When you use the same example, but add in the context of Facebook, you find that it becomes;
“Your friend likes this, so you should too.”

Alas, the latter is missing context. The pub example outlined above works because both you and I are there together, and we’re there to drink together, (two words: social objects).

The addition of an advertiser – in this case on Facebook – does not work, as there is no human context involved. It has attempted to do what I like to call ‘content wrapping’ – making an advert that has no relevance to me appear meaningful.

There is a massive difference between “I’ve done this, so you must do it too” and “I’ve done this, I loved it and here’s why you’d love it too”. It is the equivalent of me talking to you as an individual, instead of an advertiser using my profile picture to endorse its brand.

You get my meaning…

In 2008, people and brands began to realise that without context, content is rendered meaningless. Now in 2009, the tide is turning and advertisers are beginning to understand that old school games of ‘scattergun marketing’ just don’t work anymore.

This is nothing new, nor is it by any stretch of the imagination, rocket science. I’ve talked about this before numerous times. However, to give this piece context (see – it is important), I need to re-iterate a couple of things.

In 2008 – the year of sharing – context was most definitely king. Any person’s homepage on Facebook (that most people look at daily) was, and still is, very smart. It displays interesting content created by people you know (which immediately provides context), which was specifically created for you.
If that’s not targeted advertising, I don’t know what is.

Funnily, you know what else it is?

SOCIAL MEDIA

But enough of that. Let’s look forward. To 2009. To the year of CONVERSATION.

At this point it should be noted that these opinions are my own and are based on my personal experiences & knowledge of this particular space, in this particular part of the world.
In other markets, I am well aware that content is still reigning king and that context is quietly plotting its imminent downfall.

In the same way traditional marketing and advertising methods are being scrapped in favour of more intelligent niche or hyper-targeted practices, in this coming year brands will realise the benefit of engaging with their consumer on a more conversational level

Don’t get me wrong, some are doing it already, there are MANY forward-thinking brands out there doing just that.

Last year, when I wrote about being human, I talked about how the guys that will do well in this coming year will the ones that want to have genuine conversations with their consumers.

And I stand by it.