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Fight face man, and actual rock star Dave Allen wants to spend 30 minutes with you (and he’ll buy you coffee too!).
Fight has an awesome community of supporters, so we thought: Who better to turn to to help us make a good thing better?
We believe that Fight is a different kind of company from other marketing strategy firms, and we’d like to get some practice talking about ourselves to people in the business, marketing, and agency worlds so that when we talk to potential clients we can really shine.
To help us hone our elevator pitch we’ve set the goal of having Dave give it 30 times in 30 days (an aggressive schedule, and a whole lot of coffee!), starting on February 10th, and ending on March 11th.
If you work for a brand, are in the agency world, are a strategist, planner, marketer, or PR person, we’d deeply appreciate it if you would give Dave 30 minutes of your time (did we mention that he’ll buy you coffee?) to run through our spiel and give us your honest feedback. We’ll be hitting you up with a couple of questions via email afterwards to get your thoughts on a couple of specific topics as well.
This is not a sales pitch…well, it is, but we’re not pitching YOU, so there won’t be any kind of sales pressure.
We’re expecting that this will take 30 minutes altogether, including chit chat, feedback, and answering any questions that you may have. Short enough to fit in to an extended coffee break.
Interested? Reach out to Dave on Twitter, or email Ned (ned.failing@fightpdx.com) and we’ll set up a conversation.
If you want to help us out, but aren’t in the group of people we’re itching to talk to, please pass this message around. Every little bit helps!
We’ll be providing updates on how we’re doing towards our goal. You can follow Dave’s progress on Twitter at @DaveAtFight.
Update: Looks like we’re getting more responses than Dave can handle at the moment (and he’s flying back from New Orleans today), so let’s just reach out to Ned. Thanks!
Update 2: Or feel free to indicate your interest in the comments.
Rob (@RobAtFight)
The Big Idea vs The Right Idea
“The future does not fit in the containers of the past.” – Rishad Tobaccowala
We here at Fight are very pleased to say that we have been invited by Webtrends to both attend their Engage 2010 Conference in New Orleans, as well as make a presentation while we are there. We are very grateful to Webtrends for giving us the chance to discuss how we work with our clients by helping them to understand the digital marketing landscape, while reducing risk and maximizing their project goals and achieving real ROI.
Engage 2010 is now sold out, but for those of you in attendance you will hear from speakers such as Rives, the co-host of Bravo channel’s show Ironic Iconic America and a TED regular, as well as, Stephen Baker, senior writer covering technology for Business Week, True/Slant founder Lewis Dvorkin, and the Huffington Post’s Paul Berry and many more.
At 3PM, on Tuesday, February 2nd, Fight co-founder, Justin Spohn, presents The Evolution Revolution: An Introduction To Iterative Marketing.
Overview:
The digital landscape is one of continual change and has been for more than a decade. Yet, contemporary digital marketing still employs the methods and process of the past. This means that the traditional approach of heavy up front research, long development cycles, and post-launch optimization is no longer sufficient to guarantee success. What’s needed is a method of improving your marketing strategy as you build it.
Taking key elements from extreme programming, iterative marketing is a fairly radical departure from this traditional approach. It is based on an understanding of the nature of the medium, and the opportunities that it provides. Combining it with modern analytics and traditional discovery and research, iterative marketing breaks down the “big idea” approach to marketing into small steps done with a specific purpose, evaluates the results, adapts change to inform the next step, always building, and always learning, with the goal of maximizing business goals.
In this talk, we’ll discuss what iterative marketing is, how it works, and how it’s able to reduce risk while maximizing project goals with an emphasis on real, and measurable, ROI.
Justin and I look forward to meeting you at the event. You can follow us on Twitter here – Justin @adognamedpants and Dave @DaveAtFight. You can also follow Engage 2010 @wtengage and the official hashtag for the event is #wtengage
Dave Allen
Lets get one thing straight: if, after todays press event, you still think the iPad is an oversized iPhone, you’re being stupid.
The iPad is Apple’s reconceptualization of what a computer is to a regular person.
Therein lies the challenge of todays event, and one of Apples two biggest failing with the iPad launch. First off, in the iPad, I feel even more strongly than I did Monday that what Apple has on its hands the 2010 vision of the 1997 iMac, or the 1984 Macintosh. It is basically the computer most people should own. It’s Apple’s first computer in a long time targeted at regular people with average computing needs, and the price really drives that home.
But that was also the first hurdle they needed to get over that they didn’t. Today’s event was the first time in a long time that Apple has launched a product that not just not targeted at core Apple customers (the kind that watch these events), but actually the type of product that the core would be predisposed to both not understand and not like. If you work all day making videos, working as a photographer, making websites or designing products, the current interaction models for computers either works pretty well, or you’ve invested so much time in learning it, that it’s hard to see another vision of a computer. But for most people, the metaphors a lot of us take for granted are not just non-obvious, they’re downright confusing.
As I pointed out Monday, something as seemingly basic as the file system is a total mystery to most people. And forget keyboard commands. For the vast majority of computer users, keyboards are for typing and nothing else. In the iPad, Apple has a product that addresses the idea that in 2010 everyone has – or needs – a computer in their lives, but almost all of the interaction models we have are based 30-year-old concepts of keyboard and mouse as primary input devices. Why? Keyboards are, again, really about making words, and a mouse is a legacy pointing device that is mostly not ideal.
So, Apple has this device, this “new” computer.
This fresh way of seeing the world.
This third option.
And what do they do?
They spend the entire presentation NOT saying that.
This was, without a doubt, the single worst product drop I’ve ever seen from Apple.
I came into this morning so clear on what the iPad could be, and by the time the event was over, all I could think was “Jobs did everything he could to make this sound like a giant iPhone.” In my mind, what he needed to do was come out, explain the issues surrounding computers in 1984 and how the Macintosh overcame them. Talk about the issues facing computers in 1998 and how iMac overcame them. Talk about the issues facing computers in 2010, and then spend the rest of the presentation explaining how this is the new Mac, pounding the message: “if you need a computer for your LIFE, this is the one.” The price should have come much earlier, and should have been much more tied to the product’s reason d’etre. “Thinking about buying that shitty Acer laptop for $700, let me show you this Apple for $500.”
This needed to be an event about the concept of the iPad, not the specific features.
Maybe he’s been pitching to fanboys for too long, I don’t know, but this is most assuredly NOT a spec sheet device. From that point of view, it is basically an over sized iPhone. But in re-concpetualizing the computer, size matters. Simplicity matters. Access to both content and software, easily, matters. iPad is about the computer in your life, just like the Macintosh, just like the iMac, and I feel that Jobs totally failed to bring this concept home.
Literally nothing else mattered…
…and he missed.
He set out to reintroduce a product category – the computer designed for home life – and he failed to bring that single point home.
What makes this critical is that while you can rev the hardware and software feature set, as we saw with the iPhone, you can’t rev whether or not people believe in the idea. The brilliance of the iPhone introduction is that while people could and did rip on the initial features, or lack thereof, every single person knew exactly what the iPhone meant conceptually. That didn’t happen today, and I’m worried it may be fatal. If the average person – not the person who watched today’s event, but the person at whom this device is targeted – can’t understand why this for them, they’re probably not going to come back to it. At the very least, that is a profoundly more steep hill for Apple to climb than explaining or revving the object specifications.
The second huge flaw, and single point that broke my heart about the device itself, is that for everything I just stated above, Apple seems to also view this as an accessory. What this needed to be was a computer. A new, better, more relevant computer, but a computer. That Apple expects people to sync this to another computer is either profoundly short sighted, or just stupid. Neither of which feels like the Apple I know. By positioning the iPad as peripheral, Apple took what should have been a really cheap, amazing computer in a world of terrible cheap computers, and instead positioned it as a really expensive toy.
My mom, my dad, Megan’s mom and step-dad, they all want Apples, but always felt like they were too expensive. To be fair, you have to either buy into the Apple aesthetic or understand computers in a deeper than average way to justify a $999 13 inch MacBook in a world of $700 17 inch Toshiba’s. But with the iPad they have a chance to charge right into that space. It’s the exact same price point, with a totally different, and in my mind, clearly better experience. That concept has been severely damaged by leaving the Mac as the center of the Apple universe. Im guessing that you may not need to sync the iPad, but it says a lot about how Apple will position this and it feels like a terrible choice: it reduces the importance of the device, and again, muddles the ecosystem for the average person.
Anyway, it’s done with now and we’ll see how things shake out. I still love it, and I’ve talked to a number of people who are genuinely excited by it. At the same time, I can’t help but feel that today was a critical day for iPad, and what should have been easy, breakaway slam dunk, instead put up as many obstacles as it took down.
NOTE: This was originally posted on thisisviolence.net
justin
Adam Bartos/Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
“…. in California, rather than having this fantastic notion of what could be, people are now just trying to hang on. It’s such a lowering of ambition and expectation.” – Sam Green.
The Coast of Dystopia.
Sam Green’s, Utopia In Four Movements
Dave Allen
Apple didn’t have to be at CES to own the place, as every other person in attendance seemed to discussing the so-called, and much-anticipated Apple “Tablet.” Beyond that constant chatter and rumor mill there was also the ridiculous excitement surrounding the 3D Televisions. Eric Bee over at Denuo summed up whether there is a “need” for 3D TV quite nicely:
The state of modern technology can be summed up by the TV in my hotel room. It was a 50″ flatscreen LCD, mounted beautifully into a wooden console, but displaying a blocky, stretched standard definition signal. Despite the investment made into purchasing these top-tier TVs, the hotel wasn’t using them to their full, high-definition potential. At CES, one could walk through miles of glistening technology, showcasing 3D images, immersive soundscapes, and internet-enabled everything, but to what purpose? Are consumers so over HDTV that they need a third-dimension? Is the world ready for an internet-enabled alarm clock? If the SD broadcast of ESPN greeting me every morning was any indication, the answer might be no.
Read the full article.
Obviously we’ll see soon enough how the “Tablet” and 3D TVs pan out. Meanwhile, the Green Energy, Smart Power Meter and portable electrons folks had a large spread of products and gadgets in the North Hall at the convention center. Twice has an article on a CES eco tour provided by some of those green companies.
Ampergen, a medium-sized player in the renewables and recharging portable battery business, had a large and varied spread of products, and it seemed each and every booth had many solar-powered devices and portable battery chargers. The companies that created the most buzz were the Energy Management or Smart Meter product companies such as the Best In Show finalist, Control4 and its Energy Management System 100.
The Smart Grid and Smart Meter trend is, pardon the pun, beginning to buzz like a ‘fridge… It’s no surprise that here in the Northwest, in the environmentally-friendly city of Portland, business people are beginning to huddle in local corporate offices to discuss this green trend and its implications for changing people’s behavior when it comes to energy use. Portland’s Mayor Sam Adams is heading to Washington, DC to push an energy-efficiency program that is intended to save energy while creating jobs. The Portland Tribune reports that “Clean Energy Works Portland is in a 500-home pilot phase. It was started last year with $1.1 million in federal stimulus funds. Participating partners include PGE, Pacific Power, Northwest Natural and the Energy Trust.”
The big guys are getting involved too. The Google PowerMeter is a project of Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm. Microsoft has its Hohm Energy Management Tool and now CNet reports that Apple is jumping into energy tracking with a couple of new patents.
As all these players start bringing the products and software applications to market it’s worth asking, what are the implications, and what does a large energy utility look like in the future, as people begin to have more direct control over their energy use?
Dave Allen
Late last year I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Rishad Tobaccowala and Simon Mainwaring give a talk to some of Deb Morrison’s students at the University of Oregon’s White Stag building in Portland, Or. Rishad has a way of explaining himself so thoroughly and incisively that he left me feeling like I was in 3rd grade..
This weekend, I came across an article, Future Moves, that he had written for the Economic Times of India. As usual he has some interesting insights into what we might call our digital future and how it will align with our analog existence. Here’s a couple of his thoughts below. Read the whole article here. I also recommend checking out Denuology.
REAL TIME SOCIAL PLATFORMS
SMS which is still the world’s most used communication medium is a social platform. But with 350 million Facebook users, tens of millions Twitter users and a range of local and international innovations (Google real time search) that combine real time and social we are going to see an explosion in the impact of both word of mouth and real time information . For instance in many ways the best way to keep abreast of the 11/9 terror in Mumbai was twitter and real time live streams. Expect every media company and consumer brand to invest in real time listening and response in 2010.
THE RISE OF THE POST DIGITAL WORLD
The world is going increasingly digital but a) the majority of media and marketing is analog and b) people are analog. Thus it is wrong to become overly hysterical even in advanced digital penetration countries by screaming about “digital at the core” ! What is important is people and their needs and passions at the core and most of us combine the real and virtual worlds in ways that allow us to connect, save money and time and pursue our passions. We use mobile tools to have real world meetings and we enhance real world occasions with digital augmentation. Just like Walmart stores are paying a lot of attention to digital capabilities one can expect digital companies like Amazon to have analog or real world presence . Today besides Kindle you will see Amazon stores and maybe even book stores just like Apple has its online store and its real stores.
Dave Allen
In his post ‘News Orgs Take Social Media Seriously by Hiring Editors to Oversee Efforts‘ Sree Sreenivasan notes …”with interest the rise in the number of journalists with the title of social media editor (or something similar) within news organizations. This signals how seriously media outlets are taking social media, thinking about it strategically and incorporating it into workflows and overall output.”
While this may be true, there are still internal institutional hurdles to get over as noted in this succinct comment on Sreenivasa’s post:
Dave Allen
It all started Thursday morning when I saw this tweet. Describing himself as “In the zone”, the author proceeds to spend three minutes railing against the concept of ROI in web based marketing, claiming that ROI is the tool of the fearful and that key to effective marketing is…something else. This type of proud and boastful ignorance is so common in marketing, it’s almost not worth even responding to, but for some reason, Meerman really got under my skin.
This line of “logic” typically centers around two basic concepts:
1) You can’t measure the ROI of T.V. or Billboards, or any number of other marketing efforts, so why are we worried about it for the web?
2) ROI is outmoded, and what we should be looking at is some “brand new” RO_ fill in the blank. The current favorite is something called “Return on Engagement”. Ugh.
Now, this topic is a big part of why I helped found Fight, so maybe I’m a little more sensitive than others, but this is something that has affected every agency I’ve worked for, and every agency every one of my friends has worked for. My feeling is that as long as we, as an industry, wave our hands at this, we’re just going to keep fighting the battles with our clients that we always have. Until we embrace our role, and benefit, to the business of our clients, we’ll always be the ones with the shrinking budgets, forced to justify everything we do in some sort of aesthetic argument with people who may or may not have any understanding of what we do. Instead of looking at ROI as a limit to creative freedom, we should be embracing it as our single best path forward in expanding that freedom.
Looking at point 1) Can one measure the ROI of a billboard or a T.V. spot? Possibly. I would say probably. But lets say for the sake of argument that we can’t. What does that have to do with anything? Shouldn’t we be measuring the value of our work where ever we can? And besides, the web stands to be possibly the most important marketing tool available precisely because it can be so well measured. I have no idea why we’d ignore such a powerful aspect to this medium.
As for point 2) The fact of the matter is this: Every single thing our clients “invest” (or, for clarification, pay us) in, has some sort of “return”. The fact that aspects of this return may be hard to measure doesn’t mean it’s not there. Without knowing what to measure, and how to measure it though, we’re left just guessing if our work has any value. Worse, we can’t prove its value to our clients. The real problem here arises when agencies fail to ask questions of their clients at the start of projects. Is increased sales the reason your client came to you? Then you better be sure you design a program to increase sales, and then measure your results. Is “engagement” the most important thing to them? Then the return on their investment is a demonstration of increased engagement. Find out how to measure that.
Continuing to ignore the role of ROI in marketing, or worse, couching it in some sort of pseudo-science, is not just a sign of systemic laziness in our industry, it’s keeping us in the backseat when it comes to our role in business when we should helping to lead the way.
NOTE: This was originally posted on thisisviolence.net
justin
Phoenix Forum: Wednesday, January 13, 2010. 4:30pm-7:00pm
At Pinpoint Logic, 1104 NW 15th Avenue Portland, OR 97209
Map this event » Register here.
Strategies for Business Growth During the Recession
Panelists
Dave Allen, Co-Founder at Fight
Ken Westin, Founder and CEO at ActiveTrak, Inc. (also known as GadgetTrak, Inc)
Justin Yuen, President at For My Innovation (FMYI)
International CES Conference, Las Vegas January 7th – 10th 2010
Rethinking the Future of Creative Works: Business and Policy Challenges
January 7th 1:30PM. Room N262, North Hall LVCC
Moderator: Declan McCullagh, Senior Correspondent, CBSNews.com
Panelist(s):
David Allen, Co-Founder Fight, LLC
Jim Griffin, President, Choruss LLC
Michael Robertson, CEO, MP3tunes
Hank Shocklee, Music Producer, Founder of Public Enemy and President, Shocklee
Gigi Sohn, Co-Founder and President, Public Knowledge
Fred von Lohmann, Senior Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Webtrends Engage 2010 New Orleans February 1st – 5th
Sessions & Workshops
Executive Track: Tuesday February 2nd 2:30 – 3:30
An Introduction to Iterative Marketing
Presenter: Justin Spohn, Fight, LLC
SXSW Music and Media Conference 2010
Social Networks and the Future for Musicians. Wednesday March 17th, Time TBD
Moderator: Brian Zisk
Panelists:
Dave Allen, Fight, LLC
Dave Allen
On David Foster Wallace, the Social Web and How We Watch Now
The Most Photographed Barn In America – Credit: Jeff Clow/Flickr
Click image to download PDF
Cheap Holidays In Other People’s Misery
In the past two decades TV viewers in the U.S. stepped up to another level of armchair voyeurism – glueing themselves to the screen as they voraciously gobbled up untold amounts of reality TV garbage. [The Sex Pistols had a great song back in 1977 called Holidays In The Sun which included the lyric - 'Cheap Holidays In Other People's Misery.' I mention it here, as it seems rather fitting.]
As we begin a new decade, 17 years since Wallace wrote that essay, how we “watch” has now changed forever. We view the social web through a TV-shaped monitor but the similarities end right there. 17 years ago, as much as any outgoing, wildly exhibitionist young person would have loved to expose themselves [literally and figuratively] on a reality TV show, they couldn’t. That was because of the walled garden approach those TV show’s producers took – you had to be invited, you had to audition. Now, the simple act of opening your browser means you are unequivocally participating in the social web – a wholly different technology and distribution platform – so hey kids, be our guest, go crazy! And they do.
I am not attempting to make a preemptive strike against TV watching here, nor do I wish to foment a TV versus social web debate – I’m far more interested in exploring the distinct differences in these mediums. The same year that Wallace wrote his essay, saw the debut of the NCSA Mosaic web browser. Marc Andreessen, who led that development team, went on to start Netscape, a company that brought us the browser of the same name, which became enormously popular and accounted for 90% of all web use at its peak. [Source: Wikipedia]
Much has unfolded since, as browser development moved through various iterative stages, yet 17 years later, many brands and their agencies still struggle to fully comprehend the difference between TV advertising and the strategic approach that is required to utilize the social web.
The history of the web is short, and as a modern phenomenon it has a shorter history than TV, although its initial take up rate was almost identical – 10 years to get to 80 million users. [The chart referenced in that link presumes the Internet became public in 1989 so it covers the decade through 1999.] Let’s also remember that before TV, radio was the media of choice for receiving information, so the Internet take up rate in the decade ‘89 – ‘99 is impressive, as it was competing against a modern, built-out version of TV networks and a larger modern radio spectrum, for attention.
The Social Web
If Wallace were still alive today, he would have had an awful lot to say about the explosion of people using the Social Web. Especially when you take into consideration how in his essay, he noted that people held a lot of disdain for TV, yet they were unable to not watch it. He would surely have noted that the rapid rise of social networking was an ironic parallel of being unable to not watch TV, as “Wallace used many forms of irony, focusing on individuals’ continued longing for earnest, unself-conscious experience, and communication in a media-saturated society.”
Wallace wrote almost as if he were writing for the web, especially with his use of extensive footnotes – On the Charlie Rose show in 1997, Wallace claimed that the notes were used to disrupt the linearity of the narrative, to reflect his perception of reality without jumbling the entire structure. He suggested that he could have instead jumbled up the sentences, “but then no one would read it.” [Source: Wikipedia.]
As we now know, the web is anything but linear. What Wallace was attempting to achieve with his literature, the web provides immediately. Vannevar Bush considered this promise, along with an explosion in knowledge, in 1945 when he wrote As We May Think.
The Web Is Just One Application on The Internet
One thing is also certain – the web and TV are two entirely different platform technologies. It feels odd to have to write that sentence, yet here we are on the cusp of 2010 and we still see badly executed brand campaigns online; where those inside the agencies who conceived of their client’s online campaign, appear to be convinced that web users surf the web just as they surf TV channels. They seem to forget, as Wired Editor-In-Chief, Chris Anderson, reminds us, “that the Internet is the once-a-century invention. The Web is just one application upon it. There are, and will be, others.”
Application, medium, platform, there is much that is constantly shifting on the current application medium, the web. And as Marshal McLuhan said – “The medium is an environment that produces effects.” He suggests in a TV medium, that it’s the television circuits, screen etc. that are the ad coaxing us to buy. In 2009 that means it’s the bits, bytes and code that are tantalizing us online…that may be as close to TV as the web gets.
Here’s an extract from an academic paper titled Internet Users and TV Audiences:
“What needs to be considered is how users conceive and use the medium. Because the decision to adopt a medium is dependent on users, not on the functions in the medium, therefore, we need to focus on perceptions and actual uses of it.”
Before embarking on any online effort, clients should be in a position to ask hard questions of their advertising or marketing agency, because what’s being said here, is that strategy should be based on actual user experience, not on presumed or expected use. There is no “build it and they will come” on the web.
We need someone with Wallace’s insightful genius to write E Unibus Plurum; Advertising, Marketing and the Social Web.
(more…)
Dave Allen
