A few years ago, Duncan Watts — a network-theory pioneer at Yahoo! Research — wanted to test a theory. He ran a series of tests to see if popular music could be made popular again or if the original success was just plain luck. Watts wondered, can you browbeat people into thinking something is popular when it isn’t? (Sounds like some advertising out there.)

Watts partnered with Matthew Salganik to come up with the right experiment to sort this all out. Their concept? To lie.

They tested some popular music with a sample group that was not familiar with the songs and asked them for their ratings. They then inverted those ratings so that the worst was the best and the best was now the worst, and gave the songs, complete with false ratings, to a different group.

The unsuspecting new group was duped into believing the original ratings were accurate and snubbed the fake-low ranking ones. Apparently, flat-out lying works!

Not so fast.

Over time, the previously top-ranked songs crept back up the charts amongst second group and the previously lower-ranked ones dropped. However, despite the fact that the “good” music eventually did rise to the top, people participating  in this topsy-turvy experiment ended up consuming less of everything.

Astroturfing (fake grassroots) is the worst crime you can commit in social marketing. Although lying in this space may get you a short-term gain, the long-term forecast is lower sales and probably (hopefully) a damaged reputation.

• Learn more about this experiment here.
• Image source
• Hat tip

Tags: advertising, astroturfing, market research, music case study, music industry, music research, radical trust

In order for recording artists and music producers to fully commit to trust, they must let go of the Loudness War.

Loudness War Background:

The loudness wars refers to the practice in modern audio production where a severe decrease in the dynamic range, leads to obnoxious levels of average loudness. I’m referring to the audio we hear in movies, commercials and 99% of modern music.  Dynamic range is the differences between peaks (or the loudest parts) compared to the quietest parts. The best produced modern music has a wide dynamic range of 10 or 20 or more decibels. Meaning there is a very large spectrum of volume choices for an artist mixing the elements of a song together. When things are louder in a mix (considered as a ratio to the things that are quiet) they are said to be upfront or “in your face.” The simplest way to feature an element, like a lead vocal, is to turn it up. But if the average loudness of the soundtrack is so close to the peak level that, in some cases they are almost the same, how do you feature that vocal? And what does that sound like when the dynamic range is less than 3 decibels? Short answer: Like Crap. Slightly longer answer: Like a wall of sound where everything is mashed together competing to be louder but nothing is. Bob Dylan describe the phenomenon as sounding “Like static.”

I used to rant about how the loudness wars was just another way corporations were ruining music and society. So I became an independent music producer and opened a recording studio focused on developing indie artists. I figured I would lead, or join, a revolt against loudness from the indie trenches. But then I learned a sad fact, the loudness wars are embraced by the indie music community. Indies are just as likely to leverage loudness as Universal or EMI.

What exactly is Leveraging Loudness?

Its using digital audio production tools (like limiting and audio compression), to “artificially embed” a recording with hyped up average loudness, because you think it will help you capture the attention of the average music consumer. Basically, you slap people in the face with your music! Confront them with it! And you defiantly make sure that your song is louder than everyone Else’s or you think you won’t stand out. You won’t get discovered!

The Loudness Wars is deeply rooted in Trust issues.

When loudness is leveraged it robs the listener of the choice to turn it up and hear it loud. The music maker says to the music listener, you are going to get it loud weather you like it or not. It says, I don’t trust that you will pay close enough attention to my art. I don’t trust you will appreciate it. I don’t trust that you understand subtlety. The loudness wars has brought about the loss of subtly in music. Boom! But more than that a brick wall of loudness is being built between artist and fan. Isn’t social media, community building, radical trust, Direct-to-Fan about tearing down walls?

The solution lies within you

This is where I re-adapt 4 of the 6 principles of Radical Trust in an effort to provide a solution to the loudness wars for indie and mainstream music brands alike:

You must radically trust that your fans:

1.    are best equipped to determine their own volume needs, and left to their own devices are best equipped to set their stereo’s volume control for optimum rocking out.

2.    would rather be communicated with through artistry, subtlety, maybe sometimes even complexity, than relentlessly attacked with sonic bulldozers.

3.    require freedom of expression, but often require guidelines to create expressions within. Allow them uncompressed versions of your music to mix they way they want to hear it.

4.    (This one is the hardest) People are inherently good, and don’t require punishment by sound pressure level.

Why are artists afraid to reject loudness?

The common fear is that your music won’t stand up against the music of other artists in your genre. But again this is showing a basic distrust that the fans of the genre are unsophisticated and will only like music that sounds as close to what they already listen to. Not true. The most common thing music fans say they are looking for in new music is innovation. No one is looking for loudness.

Leveraging loudness in an effort to stand out, but actually results in a very generic sound. You want to stand out but you end up blending into obscurity.

Finally…Trust Thyself

Trust that your music is good enough that it does not need any help from loudness. Create something beautiful and stay away from the manipulative practice of leveraging loudness. Be true to the art. Its a leap of faith…its Radical Trust.

Tags: euphonic sound, James Pew, loudness wars, radical trust

RIP: A Remix Manifesto

Larry Lessig:

“Corporations are completely taking over our culture and telling us that we can only consume it. We are saying no! We want to actually create with it, respond to it, take it and mutilate it, cut it up … There is no way to kill this technology, you can only criminalize its use. If this is a crime, we have a whole generation of criminals”

They want you to help make this film. You can do this in several ways. Go to Open Source Cinema to find out how to remix footage, add your own stuff and see what others are doing. You can also help create the soundtrack for the film at CC Mixter.

Even if you’re not tech savvy, there are ways for you to participate: by commenting on the video blog or making your voice heard at one of the many public screenings.

From the film. Chapter 2: Copyright vs Copyleft

A remixers manifesto

1. Culture always builds on the past
2. The past always tries to control the future
3. Our Future is becoming less free
4. To build free societies, you must limit control of the past

RIP Blog. RIP Facebook. RIP Twitter. RIP Website. RIP Copyright.

You may also want to check out:

Tracey Refragmented open-source/film re-mixing
TED TALK Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law.
CreativeCommons.org mark your work with the freedoms you want it to carry.
Wiki Media Commons A database of freely usable media files.
Internet Archive: A digital library of cultural artifacts
Q [Listen] CBC, Jian Gomeshi
Search Engine [Listen] CBC Podcast “… you HAVE to go see.”

Hat-tip Mitch

Tags: Add new tag, anthropology, cinema, copywrite, cory doctorow, crowdsourcing, culture jamming, documentary, film, Girl Talk, lessig, mashup, mashups, movies, open source, Open Source Cinema, radical trust, remix, Remix Manifesto

According to the book “Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)” by Tom Vanderbilt, “Caution: Children Playing” signs have not been shown to reduce speeding or accidents. The evidence is so compelling that most traffic departments don’t plant the signs voluntarily.

Yet these signs are nearly as ubiquitous as, well, children playing. Most of them find life via frustrated neighbourhood committees who lobby city governments to reduce speeding on their streets. Sadly, there’s the rare occasion when a futile “Children Playing” sign marks the spot where a child was killed by a motor vehicle.

I wonder if “Child Killed Ahead” might be more persuasive in slowing traffic down.

There are also signs that warn of deer, moose, camels, elephants, etc, crossing ahead. Again, studies show that these signs, no matter where you are in the world, do not alter driver behaviour.

Vanderbilt writes:

“A Colorado trial featured a special animated deer sign (no it wasn’t Bambi). Researchers presumed that the animated sign would draw more attention and heighten driver awareness. For a few weeks, it was turned away from the road, then turned back. There were actually more deer killed when the sign was activated than when it was not, even though fewer deer had crossed. The researchers then went so far as to place a deer carcass next to the animated sign – only then did the drivers finally slow.”

How does this relate to social media and trust? “Children Playing” and “Deer Crossing” signs may warn of what might happen, but people are more likely to react to what is happening.

Talking about the “conversation” on your corporate blog or via your twitter account, etc, may be good for identifying the possibility of connections, but to earn attention you actually have to play in this space and (forgive the metaphor) place your carcass where people can see it.  You need more than a sign post that talks about what you can do in social media. You need to demonstrate that you are capable and competent in the subject matter you represent. In order to earn attention, you have to read more posts than you write and leave more comments on other blogs than you receive on your own. It seems pretty straight forward, but there are very few examples of this actually happening.

There are a growing number of abandoned corporate blogs on the web today.  Perhaps they thought that simply launching a blog was enough to put towards their share of the conversation when in fact, all they really contributed was another sign for people to ignore.

Tags: corporate blogging, marketing, marketing metaphors, radical trust, roadsigns, social media, tom vanderbilt, traffic

Consistency and trust continue to challenge corporate communicators in the social media space. As Sr. Counselor with Hill & Knowlton Canada, I worked with the digital team to create a concept for corporate social media communications.  This concept illustrates a consistent, consolidated approach to integrated social media communications.

Dubbed “The Social Media Platform,” the model below has helped many H&K clients understand the holistic processes, documents, protocols, reporting and metric calibrations required to insightfully build and evolve social media programs over time.

(download PDF version)

This platform allows for idea generation from all areas of an organization to pass through certain filters to ensure investment in the right program executions with built-in measurements and a proven ROI. As this approach continues to mature, we’re finding this simple model goes a long way to establish clear goals, better results and informed learning for future ideation and program creation. Most importantly, this effort cumulatively builds brand trust and credibility in a relativity volatile and inconsistent conversation landscape.

Related Posts: David Jones’ H&K’s Social Media Reporting Template

Tags: advertising, canadian marketing, collin douma, corporate communications, david jones, hill and knowlton, marketing, PR, radical trust, social media, Social Media Principles, social media process, strategy

It’s been 28 months since I started blogging about radical trust and social media. The following is a compilation of hard lessons I learned and attitudes I needed to adjust to understand the potential of this extraordinary media.

28 months later, there’s so much more to learn.

“Social Media is a cultural revolution, not a commerce one.” (ref)

“Put Your Mouth Where Your Money Is” (ref)

“Credibility is earned by character, not wealth.” (ref)

“Conversation is the dominant media in spend and effectiveness.” (ref)

“Think locally, act globally.” (ref)

“Connecting People is never a bad thing.” (ref)

“Consumers are people and people are inherently good.” (ref)

“Quality media – awareness and endorsement all wrapped up in a message of support.” (ref)

“Astroturfing makes baby flying spaghetti monster weep meatballs.” (ref)
“The form is the function, the content is the brand, the medium is the message.” (ref)

“If you want to change the way the world sees your organization, you first have to change the way your organization sees the world.” (ref)

“How will you ever fill the needs of your consumers by saying what you want to hear.” (ref)

“If you want to play in their space, you better be ready to listen.” (ref)

“Social Media may not sustain the big agencies of Madison Ave, but at least it’s sustainable.” (ref)

“The fight is over, but you can still decide if you win or lose.” (ref)

“Social media is the way I make my living, radical trust is the way I aspire to live.” (ref)

“Start by listening.” (ref)

“Awareness is not your problem… credibility is.” (ref)

“The conversation can be deafening.” (ref)

“Good conversation can be traced to antiquity, if not on record, then surely in humanity’s demonstrated ability to convey its dreams.” (ref)

“Most asked questions; 2006-What is social media? 2007-How can we participate in social media? 2008-How will we succeed in social media?” (ref)

“Expect new bridges to be built between marketing and PR.” (ref)

“People are not mediums for our messaging – agencies and their clients are the mediums for people’s needs.” (ref)

“Bloggers don’t want a pat on the head, they want respect.” (ref)

“We can’t ignore the most credible of all reporters… the enthusiasts of your message.” (ref)

“Be honest, keep it simple, keep it clear and put their needs first… that’s all the spin you need.” (ref)

“A neighborhood of empty houses does not make a community; it’s the people who live there that do. “ (ref)

“The hardest part in the development of an online community is earning credibility.” (ref)

“Infinite remixability, maximum viral capability and the ability to respond in other channels makes this an extraordinary medium in my books.” (ref)

“Social Media is not a business risk, it is a business reality.” (ref)

“The greater the number of proscriptions, the more people’s sense of personal responsibility dwindles.” (ref)

“Social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Flickr are largely run on ego.” (ref)

“How can you determine the potential of tomorrow when you can’t even predict the potential of your next 3 emails?” (ref)

“Social Media is born, it takes a community to raise a child.” (ref)

“We have entered the age of dialogue.” (ref)

“Your strategy must focus on credibility for any measure of success to be achieved.” (ref)

“If your product or service fails, disappoints or inconveniences the customer in any way, count on them to say something negative.” (ref)

“Your brand needs an immune system.” (ref)

“Not everything in social media needs to be a blog, podcast, forum, or place to house an asset uploader. In fact, this is much more about attitude than it is about technology.” (ref)

“Once the novelty wears off, there had better be some substance for connecting if you expect people to remain engaged.” (ref)

“When rights are liberated, companies may find a new relevance which seemed unattainable before. Being relevant in the era of choice IS the new brand equity.” (ref)

“Given a long enough timeframe … all mass ads will be targeted to individuals.” (ref)

“The notion that everybody is a pirate is false.” (ref)

“In the future everything (ad related) will be permission-based” (ref)

“Mass advertising is no longer about impressions, it is about engagement.” (ref)

“Consumers have no reason to trust you.” (ref)

“That we use marketing terms like “conquest and loyalty” should be an indication as to why we’ve never earned trust in the first place.” (ref)

“Lately, advertisers sound more like vikings then they do business partners.” (ref)

“Enable communication rather than create it. That is the message.” (ref)

“Housing all of these mediums proves the internet to be the lead medium of mass persuasion because it is the only true medium of mass communication.” (ref)

“SocialMedia is perhaps the most important democratic tool since the ballet box.” (ref)

“If your company is not trusting, your consumers will make decisions for themselves and you are out of control.” (ref)

Tags: advertising, anthropology, collin douma, marketing, PR, quotes on trust, radical trust, social media, Web 2.0, WOM

When I worked in mass advertising, I asked the CEO of an ad agency to recommend the best book on strategy in advertising. Without missing a beat he replied, “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu.

During my read, I recognized many parallels between advertising and war, not the smallest of which was the lexicon. The following is a list of words that are used as often in the war room of the Pentagon as they are in the boardrooms of Madison Ave.

Target Base
Tactical execution
Strategic intelligence advantage
Propaganda
Conquest
Loyalty
Domination Strategy
Convert a hostile audience
Rifle Precision

Although there are many great lessons to be learned from The Art of War
(plus several insightful gems on motivation and the human condition), the heart of the metaphor we’re exploring today situates the customer as the enemy.

Friends, your customer is not your enemy.

No one wants to be conquered. Nobody wants to be hit with rifle blast precision. We are not a hostile audience to convert. Please don’t consider my family for your tactical execution.

Advertisers need to adopt a new lexicon in order to wrap their heads around the idea that they no longer control the media.

War is over, if you want it.

Tags: advertising, collin douma, marketing, morihei ueshiba, radical trust, Social media strategy, sun tzu, the art of peace, the art of war

Welcome to the first of radical trust’s series on “Best Practices for Facebook Fan Pages”.

Every Facebook Page is a unique experience where users can become more deeply connected with your business or brand as they would a friend or family member. This first of several posts will deal with understanding the Facebook fan page user types.

Facebook is a platform for communication. Although many users have joined brand pages advocating various messages, the average Facebook user doesn’t want content pushed to them, particularly contests or other promotional programs that don’t speak to their overall enthusiasm for a brand. These types of promotions can be supported on the Facebook Fan Page, but should not be the primary focus and should be housed in other digital arenas.

Successful communities on Facebook offer an attitude of openness, transparency and enthusiasm – not a technology platform for advertising.

The following outlines 3 fan types  who participate in Facebook’s “Fan Pages”.

#1 The Enthusiast: Representing the greatest number (85-90%) of participants, the Brand Enthusiast is simply a person who wants the Facebook equivalent of a “bumper sticker” on their profile. Since they make up the bulk of the community, attracting them to join is a very important objective. They are enthusiasts of a brand and they want the world to know it.  It’s wise to encourage this consumer to participate more in the group, but be careful not to over “spam” them because it’s just as easy to leave a page as it is to join. A bulky enthusiast population promotes community vitality.

#2 The Advocate: The next largest group (5-10%) of participants represents the people who will continually update content on the page by simple “acknowledgements”. These people consume the content and post messages on the wall, provide feedback on message boards and comment on content. It’s important that you give as many places for the Advocate to participate as possible. The reason this is so important is twofold:

• The more participation you initiate from a Brand Advocate, the more vibrant the community becomes. They feed the “ego” of the person who provided the original content (Brand Influencer), and often encourages them to produce more content.

• Every time a person participates in any way on the Page, their personal “news feed” broadcasts their action, thereby promoting the brand to their entire network.

#3 The Influencer: Representing the smallest group is the Brand Influencer at about 1%. This active community member provides all the advocacy and enthusiasm of the other group members, but is also active in original content creation. These “uploaders” are very important in the long-term health of the community.

Many companies make the mistake of assuming the primary role of Brand Influencer in their community over the long term. It’s important to assume this role to establish momentum, but over time, if no brand influencers self-identify and no user-generated content is contributed, the community will begin to suffer credibility issues and lose its vibrancy.

For a global Facebook population breakdown, visit this post where I break down the population of each country with numbers current to August, 2008.

More posts from this Facebook Series:
Best Practices for Facebook: Global vs. Regional Pages
Facebook Population, A Global Breakdown

Tags: best facebook pages, collin douma, facebook, facebook fan pages, facebook strategy, Fan Pages, online community, radical trust, social media, social media best practices

When eBay founder Pierre Omidyar was asked what the most significant lesson he had learned from his peer-to-peer auction site, he replied, “…that 135 million people have learned they can trust a complete stranger”.

The story goes that Pierre sat down over a long holiday weekend about 13 years ago to write the original computer code to help his fiancee trade PEZ candy dispensers. This turned out to be a fabricated PR story to get some media play in 1997.

Despite the faux pas, eBay managed to survive the dotcom burst of the late 90s and even amassed an estimated $7.7 billion net worth for Omidyar. I wonder if he’d have been so lucky under the watchful and critical eye of the blogsphere nowadays with a stunt like that.

Still, the trust goes on … along with those pesky spam emails I get everyday telling me I’ve won an auction I haven’t entered, or sold something I haven’t listed. Designed to look exactly like real messages you might
receive from eBay, the less savvy consumer might assume a mistake has been made and naively click the link only to find out later they’d been duped.

eBay has built such a robust trust network that even with totally baloney PR, massive market corrections and hundreds of millions of malicious phishing emails, the company still ticks. I’m amazed.

But, as Omidyar put it himself, the biggest lesson from eBay is that we trust each other and maybe that’s the secret.

Tags: collin douma, ebay, online auctions, peer to peer, Pierre Omidyar, radical trust, social media, social networking, trust

Joe Jaffe got a book cover and many of us got link love, but was the 2k bloggers list really worth it?

In late 2006, a colleague invited me to join a compiled list of over 2000 bloggers. The purpose of this opt-in list was not clear, nor was any sort of strategy beyond gathering a pool 2000 bloggers. Why 2000? Why asap? I signed up with the hope that a purpose would appear and it only took a few days for the list to close. In the end, there were bloggers from all corners of the world; discussing subjects of all sorts.

The project authors compiled the group into a list and the flurry began. Many of the people on the list blogged about the list, each time linking to 2000 blogs. There were even several blog widgets in operation, acting as random windows to the 2k bloggers. The best insights offered on the follow-up posts were things like, “hey, I’m on there” and, “this is so much fun”. Admittedly, it was fun. To be grouped with other people and united by a medium is great! But in the end, it wasn’t much more than being listed in a phone book, or… I suppose… Google… but without all of that useful stuff, like an index to find a particular blogger or subject, or some sort of search.

Don’t get me wrong, I love random things… but here was my concern: not only did 2000 others join the list, they wrote about the list and included a link to my blog and 1999 others.

It wasn’t long before my Technorati ranks went through the roof. At the peak, my blog had reached the top 26,000 blogs on the web! I was getting link love and everybody else was too. But the truth was, I wasn’t sure how I was really doing in the rankings because I knew that most of these people were not reading my blog, participating in the dialogue, or even visiting my landing page. So was this Technorati ranking legitimate? It might have been a technical wet dream, but it left me feeling a little empty, wondering if I had effectively wiped out any sort of legitimate ranking for Radical Trust.

Before the 2k list, I was hovering between 85-100k on Technorati. After about six months, the 2k meme links disappeared from my rankings and since then I’ve dropped back to around 100k in Technorati and have stayed there since. Although my monthly traffic has increased considerably since then, I wonder if that has more to do with all of my posts and hard earned readership, and less to do with being listed amongst a couple of thousand random bloggers.

Technorati noticed this spike in many blogs and put a quick end to it. The 2kBlogger project was pulled off the web, the meme came to a close and it was over.

My take away? It is good for the ego to get those kinds of results from Technorati and other blog ranking software, but it isn’t sustainable. We can work on a system to make it sustainable, but then we would be living some sort of “inflated” link-baiting lie, leaving us with no more influence in our particular subject matter than we had before.

I’m glad I participated in the 2k blog list for this lesson alone, but I believe that influence is earned in this space, and the more link-baiting you do, the more time you spend managing the lie than you do trying to
understand the topic you blog about.

2k bloggers, I love you all, and thanks for the ride. Please tell us: What did you get out of the 2k blogger list? Have you been wrapped up in some sort of authority ranking scheme? Tell us about it!

Tags: 2k bloggers, authenticity, avatar, blog rankings, blogosphere, collin douma, ego searching, joseph jaffe, link baiting, link strategy, meme, presence, profile increase, radical trust, rankings, seo, technorati