Re: What My Kids Tell Me About The Future of Media

Alan Moore — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:17:54 -0000

Really fascinating, you might be interested in our book and blog communities Dominate Brands http://www.communities-dominate.blogs.com

I am not sure newsprint has got it figured out yet. There is a great deal of infrastructure problems that allows them to respond in the manner they would prefer I think.

The big threat to TV is the financing of TV with advertising $$$ and if the model of mobile advertising takes off, which I think it will, the cannibalisation will come from TV spend. Many commercial TV networks and production houses find this a significant challenge.

But my kids do the same things as yours, its real and its here to stay.

My son would often put on a film lets say Jurassic Park and use that as the soundscape and backdrop to his creative play. Fascinating. All my kids have laptops and often we find them spending 2 hours watching you tube in hysterics.

With books read Henry Jenkins book on Convergence Culture - its very good and also the Televsion will be revolutionized, can't remember the author. He talks about Harry Potter and Fan Fiction.

Re: The failings of that community thing

Alan Moore — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 09:48:53 -0000

Hello Jake.

From corner store to community, that is in my book a paradigm shift. And as a very good friend of mine and ex global marketing director of a big company said to me today, "You (SMLXL) are trying to break a paradigm and mental model of what marketing is. That being my speciality.

I think this whole area is emergent, Doc Searls has been at it hammer and tongs for a while, though there are increasing numbers who think as we do.

How do you get 'died in the wool' retail CEO's or marketing people to get their heads round this is a big issue?

I am still grappling with that one.

And the frustration is the whole thing/experience could be richer and more meaningful for all.

We are in a transition stage from industrial mindset to something other and why I felt compelled to write the book communiites dominate brands.

Its a multifacted issue and requires an holistic approach, as communities are equaly made the same way.

therin lies the challenge

Re: Post Of The Month - Oct 08 - I Won!

Alan Moore — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:33:34 -0000

Congratulations J.Mac and greetings from the Red Sea -

Re: You Need To Buy This Book: Social Media Marketing

Alan Moore — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:50:05 -0000

Dear JMac - thank you very much for reviewing the book.

Kind regards

Alan Moore
smlxl

Re: Video Diary: Vikki Chowney talks about the Nokia E75 and Samsung NC10 on O2

Alan Moore — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 04:26:02 -0000

wicked Vikki

Re: Brands Matter More Than Ever In Media and Technology

Alan Moore — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 23:09:32 -0000

Dear Scott,

You might be interested in what we have to say over at Communities Dominate Brands

Communities Dominate Brands

For example Why is mobile social networking worth $3.45b?

Re: The 4Cs Social Media Framework

Alan Moore — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:34:00 -0000

The 4C's are: Commerce, Culture, Community, Connectivity

http://smlxtralarge.com/?s=commerce+culture+com...

From Communities Dominate Brands [Futuretext 2005]

THE FOUR C'S

As part of our research and exploring how the combinations of business, the media, culture, customer behaviour and technology are creating such dramatic change. We arrived at a concept that Axel Chaldecott and Alan Moore have described as the 4 C’s. These are: Commerce, Culture, Community and Connectivity.

Our theory is that the once separate provinces of innovation and technology, business and economic activity, culture and communities are pulling and converging into one another, in increasingly intimate and more powerful combinations. In fact we believe they are inseperable. Understanding the 4C's means that one can start to realize more differentiated routes to market, more compelling ways to engage ones customers and deliver organic growth.

Commerce

The driving engine for most human activity is the desire for gain. Commerce is based on this principle. Businesses expect to make a profit, and in the long run to bring greater economic value to their owners. Commerce had evolved over the millennia mostly independent of Culture, Connectivity and Community. Commerce existed in a mostly one-directional relationship with its customers. The power of commercial enterprises grew greatly with industrialisation at the expense of the opposite number Community.

Now community, connectivity and culture are embedded into commerce in a multitude of ways. They offer gateways to commercial success if addressed properly within the context of that particular business. If we think about the retailer WH Smith, as we have identified there are many ways in which it could redefine its role for its customers and this redefinition is based entirely on the 4C’s.

Community

Communities are beginning to materialse as an economic and socio-economic force. Only over the past 10 years or so have we witnessed the rise of community. It has been a move back to localism, to friends and colleagues as frameworks for authoritative advice, and the age of the Do-It-Yourself demographic where communities can and will rapidly form around a collective agenda.

As political and religious institutions become less dominant, as society becomes less rigid, we seek other bodies to belong to. These communities are more vibrant, more vocal, more dynamic, more connected and are often collected around a single issue. These communities can be global, national and local. Communities such as book clubs, anti-petrol price rise demonstrators, the truth detectors of the blogosphere, the 26,000 online news contributors to the Korean paper OH myNews, will counteract and balance against the interests of pure Commerce or become drivers of it.

Technology via the internet, or the mobile phone, makes these communities highly informed, these communities feed off information, analyze that information – from collective points of view and determine action and then redistribute to their network.

Commerce and Community moving closer

Our recent past has been 200 years of an industrial age, mindset and order. This is no longer true, and we are emerging into a knowledge and service driven economy. Many industries have become highly saturated and differentiation is becoming increasingly difficult. On top of that industries have fragmented – creating even greater competition.

Businesses have several communities that they can co-operate with; their own business community, we are already seeing the rise of joint business ventures, and societal communities. Generating win – win initiatives is the way forward for companies if they want to grow and survive.

Businesses success requires greater agility, and greater quantities of creativity. It requires commerce to understand the importance of the rise social networks as the efficacy of its traditional business model comes under threat.

Commerce via various channels has converged with culture, in a realisation that we just don’t shop the way we used to. Customers can no longer be identified by consumption alone. This process is turning retailing into a part of the entertainment industry, the entertainment industry into retailing.

Commerce has to understand the other 3C’s if what it makes and what it produces is to have any chance of success in the market place. Ebay has demonstrated the powerful business model of connecting many to many as opposed to one to many. And generating a powerful trading community in the process.

Culture

There was a time when culture was considered a semi-autonomous and fringe element of the economy. During the middle ages there were a few artists who sculpted and painted, often paid for by the church or royalty. Before newspapers there was little mainstream literature or media. Today culture has become a major element of the global economy, from TV and radio, to movies, music, print media, books, videogames etc etc etc. Culture still has attributes to it that are business-like (a newspaper has to sell copies, a TV show has to generate an audience to sell advertisements) but Culture has also still today elements that are Community-directed. Many artists are "struggling" and holding onto a second job simply for the love of their artform, wanting to make a small contribution to culture, even if their dancing or acting or writing or musician career will never hit the big time and provide a full-time employment.

Connectivity

Three hundred years ago people were connected almost exclusively to those people they met on a regular basis. The family, the people at work, and perhaps the people on Sunday at church. A formal postal system started to expand connectivity beyond these contacts and the rolling out of steamship and railroad connections two centuries ago allowed people to maintain connections to friends and family even in other countries. But it was not until the widespread adoption of the telephone that enabled connectivity on a global level. And only with the advent of the internet did it become practical for the average person to regularly communicate with friends on other continents.

Culture and Connectivity coming closer

Culture is significant as a catalyst for connectivity. We want to talk about what we saw on TV, what we read in the newspaper, what we heard on the radio. Connectivity is significant in the spread of culture. Printing presses allowed book authors and press columnists to spread their thoughts. Radio broadcasting, motion pictures and music recordings from about a century ago, dramatically expanded the ability for culture to be spread. Television fifty years later further enhanced the reach of culture. Many might argue that there is a dilution of talent, that as we get ever more channels, the quality of culture diminishes to the point of approaching zero - witness current quality of "reality shows" on TV. Still, when considering in contrast, Connectivity and Culture support each other, act as opposites.

As culture converges into the marketplace, the concept of rigid institutions, industry sectors ring-fenced from each other becomes seemingly antiquated. Our age is one in which science, economics, and politics challenge the notion of fixed categories, perceived oppositions, and impermeable boundaries. Successful brands and business ideas have to become part of popular culture and live within the daily vernacular, and be identified as bringing something positive into public consciousness rather than something that does not contribute a positive effect.

Convergence in the 4 C's

Culture can gain from - and many purists might argue is damaged by Commerce. Commerce certainly can gain from Culture as we see from the various popular culture icons being recruited to endorse various products and services. Commerce can gain dramatically from Connectivity as it broadens the reach of Commerce. Because of Connectivity we can buy electical goods made in Korea etc. Obviously many Connectivity organisations benefit from Commerce, the global telecommunications industry alone delivers close to 4 percent of the global GDP.

Communities can gain from Culture, bringing purpose and enlightenment to Communities. Culture can gain from Communities by expanding the reach of Culture. Technology is changing the capability as to how, what, where and with whom we consume culture. We are able to gather and find the things that are important to us in ways never before possible. This is part changes culture and gives greater importance to community and the connectivity of those communities.

Set the controls for the heart of the 4C’s

At the very centre of the "flower" model as we call it, is its heart, where Commerce, Culture, Community and Connectivity meet. Connectivity provides companies for the very first time the opportunity to generate two-way flows of information, feedback and engagement. Connectivity provides the opportunity for brands to create powerful pull mechanisms to their offerings and for customers to self segment themselves.

Connectivity, enables via the internet and the mobile phone to identify who are prolific connectors and networks that could be key distribution point to viral contagion and sharing of word of mouth messaging. Connectivity alone is not enough, there must be good content (Culture) and a population of interest (Community). If this can be combined with a genuine business enterprise (Commerce) the sweet spot is achieved.

In this book we have illustrated pioneering examples of where this convergence of the Four C's is happening. The community of amateur journalists on the OhMyNews service in Korea is one such example. The 24,000 members of the amateur journalists use connectivity to create culture, and are paid for their contribution, hence commerce.