I will be curating 10 great blogposts each week. Published at Publishzer obviously! Below is the first one for this year!
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
Thursday, December 15, 2011
The Demographics of Cool
Last week Harward Business Review had an article titled "The Demographics of Cool". It talks well about the waves that really make some products to become cool and how the message is distributed. Basically the question is about the fact that no longer can advertising lecture or dictate to customers; marketing to the group conversation must be seamlessly incorporated. Basically social media enhances the fact that once in the hands of the tastemakers, consumers gravitates en masse to the seller's offerings. Below is a video with more about this in the form of an interview.
This demographics of cool is a devolution away from segmentation of smart cross-cultural or multicultural marketing strategy. As a society, the western cultures are more and more melted culturally, and the meaningful identity is changing according to the situation you are at the moment. The categories are not relevant anymore and the identity is evermore complex.
Still, the demographics of cool is more than just trying to define a new meaning for demographics. Steve Stoute is arguing that out of hip-hop, a new culture has emerged, one "shared mental complexion" that no demographics can capture. Age, race and income don't matter. Only the mind-set matters. 34-old Indian bluecollar worker, 16-year old high school kid from the UK and 45-year old whitecollar from Japan worker are all the same demographics. In the modern world, urban has nothing to with place or race and everything to with attitude.
These consumers, choose what becomes cool and, more crucially, decide when something isn't cool anymore. Remember the champage Cristal's fall from grace, just because Jay-Z said so? When the importance is the psychologic, the demographic data and quantitative research become meaningless. Because when you define a market by how people in it think, not by who's in it, the definition process is far mor complex and expensive.
Just think of the Apple iPod's now-iconic silhouetted hipsters sporting white earbuds, striking poses. You can't tell if those silhouettes are 18 or 34 years old, rich or poor, black, white or asian, from Helsinki or from Tokyo. All you know for sure is that they're cool!
This demographics of cool is a devolution away from segmentation of smart cross-cultural or multicultural marketing strategy. As a society, the western cultures are more and more melted culturally, and the meaningful identity is changing according to the situation you are at the moment. The categories are not relevant anymore and the identity is evermore complex.
Still, the demographics of cool is more than just trying to define a new meaning for demographics. Steve Stoute is arguing that out of hip-hop, a new culture has emerged, one "shared mental complexion" that no demographics can capture. Age, race and income don't matter. Only the mind-set matters. 34-old Indian bluecollar worker, 16-year old high school kid from the UK and 45-year old whitecollar from Japan worker are all the same demographics. In the modern world, urban has nothing to with place or race and everything to with attitude.
These consumers, choose what becomes cool and, more crucially, decide when something isn't cool anymore. Remember the champage Cristal's fall from grace, just because Jay-Z said so? When the importance is the psychologic, the demographic data and quantitative research become meaningless. Because when you define a market by how people in it think, not by who's in it, the definition process is far mor complex and expensive.
Just think of the Apple iPod's now-iconic silhouetted hipsters sporting white earbuds, striking poses. You can't tell if those silhouettes are 18 or 34 years old, rich or poor, black, white or asian, from Helsinki or from Tokyo. All you know for sure is that they're cool!
Thursday, December 08, 2011
Christmas Calendar is Here!
Publishzer is going to publish a Christmas calendar for this festive season 2011. The calendar will be in finnish, as it is a testbed for some advertising features and the results will be published on January. I strongly believe that this kind of advertising will be highly valuable, as part of the content.
In the calendar, you'll find a magazine for each day leading to Christmas eve. There will be videos, photos, christmasrecipes and gift ideas. So go and check it out AND please follow the calendar facebook page.
Below is embedded the latest calendar, updated daily:
In the calendar, you'll find a magazine for each day leading to Christmas eve. There will be videos, photos, christmasrecipes and gift ideas. So go and check it out AND please follow the calendar facebook page.
Below is embedded the latest calendar, updated daily:
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
Are kids more tech savvy than parents?
Most, meaning 90%, of the parents think that they are more internet-savvy than their kids. But are they? In this video Lydia Leavitt and Leila Makki went out to find out.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Think About Your Metadata
This time I wanted to get a bit more relaxed from all the deep thoughts on the change of the digital media. I thought to give a little update on what we worked on lately. This category feature on Publishzer is not much obviously, but I would recommend thinking about categories and other metadata from early on.
Why? Metadata (metacontent) is traditionally found in the card catalogs of libraries. As information has become increasingly digital, metadata is also used to describe digital data using metadata standards specific to a particular discipline. By describing the contents and context of data files, the quality of the original data/files is greatly increased. That's why!
This sunday was another hackday for our team. We decided to focus on category feature. Now you can categorize your mags, which helps others to find them when we get all the social elements ready. Go creating some mags and register at publishzer.com
...and you can also define the magazine into subcategories. Helping readers to find it even better.
Happy Publishzing!
Why? Metadata (metacontent) is traditionally found in the card catalogs of libraries. As information has become increasingly digital, metadata is also used to describe digital data using metadata standards specific to a particular discipline. By describing the contents and context of data files, the quality of the original data/files is greatly increased. That's why!
This sunday was another hackday for our team. We decided to focus on category feature. Now you can categorize your mags, which helps others to find them when we get all the social elements ready. Go creating some mags and register at publishzer.com
...and you can also define the magazine into subcategories. Helping readers to find it even better.
Happy Publishzing!
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Social Curation and Evening at REVS Fashion Mag Launch Party
Yesterday I spent an nice evening first at BonnierDevCamp talking about Social Curation. There is more about it in this blog, but I thought to share the slides I used. My focus was five points to cover the current change in the media industry and what opportunities social curation brings. I'm happy that the 30min talk turned into a discussion with active interaction with the hackers. I all up for you guys hacking the media into the digital future.
The five points were:
1. Media is under digital revolution and will follow the fate of music.
2. Social Curation's value is in filtering out noise to focus on niche interestgroups.
3. Enabling readers to use their own voice has huge advertising opportunities.
4. Through these bloggers have opportunity to become a shaping force in the media industry.
5. Mobile is the most personal device and therefore very good for media consumption.
Also after the break you find a nice picture of REVS magazine launch party. It a rather artistic magazine coming out from few of my friends. Nice picture and all, but I see them having hard time making this into a business...well it is very artistic.
Bonnier Lounge
Revs visuals
The five points were:
1. Media is under digital revolution and will follow the fate of music.
2. Social Curation's value is in filtering out noise to focus on niche interestgroups.
3. Enabling readers to use their own voice has huge advertising opportunities.
4. Through these bloggers have opportunity to become a shaping force in the media industry.
5. Mobile is the most personal device and therefore very good for media consumption.
Also after the break you find a nice picture of REVS magazine launch party. It a rather artistic magazine coming out from few of my friends. Nice picture and all, but I see them having hard time making this into a business...well it is very artistic.
Social Curation and Mobile
View more presentations from Teppo Hudson.
Bonnier Lounge
Revs visuals
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Searching the soul of
Last week, me and Helene have been touring the Golden Triangle area of India. This means basically the cities of Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. These are the monumental and historical part of the old Mughal empire and Rajastan Maharajas. Words cannot describe the awesomeness of grand buildings like Taj Mahal or the colors and tastes of Jaipur's local markets.
(photo by Helene Auramo)
However, the trip has made me think a lot about the essence our actions. Ayurveda treatments been part of our trip with both purchasing natural food supplements and having an insanely great Ayurveda massage that still after two days is energising my body. India overall is so much about balance in yourself and the surroundng ecosystems.
As well as looking for personal balance, the same balance is important for companies. Publishzer is all about high ambitions and willingness to change the world. Still this has to come with balanced methods, respecting especially the blogging communities. We have pinpointed the principles to the following ones:
- Empathy, the intimate connection with the feelings of the users and customers. We want know their feelings better than anyone else
- Halo, the signals that the company emits. People form opinions from the first moments, and therefore designs has to be perfect.
- Focus, we must concentrate the limited resources to the businesses we are best of, and eliminate unimportant opportunities. Learn to say no.
With these principles, nothing is impossible.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Publishzer about to launch
We are finalizing the first release of Publishzer.com - I am just embedding a couple of magazines here, but if you wish to read more about it go for the Publishzer Story.
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Magazines are losing the publishing war to bloggers
Digitalisation hit first on the music publishing business. Currently similar impact is happening in the magazine publishing industry. The main reason for a distruptive change is that consumer are receiving and subsequently increasingly expecting to have content for free. For example, many bloggers do write and publish content online that include faster and even more relevant info than most printed magazines. My personal interest is in how can these bloggers get paid and be brilliant. Is there an answer to this in the disruptive changes on the markets?
The internet is a double sided sword, well, is if you look at it from the traditional publishing point of view. It has never been easier to reach large numbers of readers, but these readers have never felt more entitled to be informed and entertained for free. The market for books is continually shifting beneath our feet, and nobody knows what the business of publishing will look like a decade from now. Still many authors and publishers are still pretending that the Internet doesn’t exist. Some will surely see their careers suffer as a result. One fact now seems undeniable: The future of the written word is (mostly or entirely) digital.
Still, consuming blog content is more popular than ever. For example fashion blogs gather followers like fireflies, most of the are still run by individuals, not media companies. If added the average 5€ each click through is of value to eCommerce stores, the average 10.000 readers a mid-range blogger has, in a month, could earn substantial income for him/her. There however, are no polished processes and most of income is of low-engagement banner ads and endorsements. Beside a gallup involving 17.000 social media users concluded that "brand-sponsored social media initiatives have very little impact on consumer decision making. Nor do they drive prospective customers to consider trying a brand or recommending a brand to others in their social network".
Digital publishing is gathering some success in small printing of €1.99 stories, something similar as selling single songs rather than a full album. However, these third party objectives are gathering much less engagement than subjective blog posts where the blogger is the objective. The amount of engagement bloggers drive is about 10-20 times higher than advertising, based on the same gallup above.
The internet is a double sided sword, well, is if you look at it from the traditional publishing point of view. It has never been easier to reach large numbers of readers, but these readers have never felt more entitled to be informed and entertained for free. The market for books is continually shifting beneath our feet, and nobody knows what the business of publishing will look like a decade from now. Still many authors and publishers are still pretending that the Internet doesn’t exist. Some will surely see their careers suffer as a result. One fact now seems undeniable: The future of the written word is (mostly or entirely) digital.
I'm not a businessman, I'm the business, man! (Jay-Z)
Still, consuming blog content is more popular than ever. For example fashion blogs gather followers like fireflies, most of the are still run by individuals, not media companies. If added the average 5€ each click through is of value to eCommerce stores, the average 10.000 readers a mid-range blogger has, in a month, could earn substantial income for him/her. There however, are no polished processes and most of income is of low-engagement banner ads and endorsements. Beside a gallup involving 17.000 social media users concluded that "brand-sponsored social media initiatives have very little impact on consumer decision making. Nor do they drive prospective customers to consider trying a brand or recommending a brand to others in their social network".
Digital publishing is gathering some success in small printing of €1.99 stories, something similar as selling single songs rather than a full album. However, these third party objectives are gathering much less engagement than subjective blog posts where the blogger is the objective. The amount of engagement bloggers drive is about 10-20 times higher than advertising, based on the same gallup above.
So my argument is that rather than relying on producing magazines and hit ebooks (which thou are interesting from content point of view, but not from business point of view), magazine publishing should enable bloggers to earn revenue from issues that they are passionate about. Revenue could come from brands that wish to be included in this passionate conversation by providing content to reference, analyse or just do some shout-out. Results would be much more focused and much higher engangement, and would result in a better service for readers. Afterall, we all loath banner ads, right?
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Digital is either Global or Hyperlocal
(This is an excerpt from an essay for the Community Media Expert Meeting's whitelabel)
Filtering is not a new phenomenon as news agencies have done this since the beginning of media. The difference is that now “we all can be small news agencies” and curate the most intersting content we find. Content is global and there is infinite amount of it, enabling easy cross-referencing and such.
This development requires media to look at their operations as global. National level is diminishing and readers are increasingly gaining influences from the global community through the networked societies. This will obviously be a long transition, but when national borders used to regulate the flow of cultural phenomenoms, today’s flow of information has no borders. Therefore cultures are most likely going to go global, and media will as well as an important mediator of it.
However, as the media will go global beyond national borders, it is fragmenting into niches. As the post modern society tends to categories everything in order to be functional, so will the cultural interests be categoriest. For example teenagers will listen a certain kind of music of their niche, not just from the national level, but from the certain niche on the global level. The media that will be able to focus on these niches will gain most viewerships from the fans. More than from the general focused media, because of the stronger community ties, feeling of belonging and enjoyment through sharing of similar ideas.
Beside cultural, this feeling of belonging on communities can be seen in the idea of hyperlocal. Media that focuses on cities, on the neighbourhoods or on the certain streets, will most likely gain interest of the locals regardles of their cultural interest. Locals are a part a community that is not bound by culture, but by physical location. News of what happens on your street is always interesting.
So, media organisations will face options to choose global niches, where viewers are bound by cultural interests, or hyperlocal communities, where viewers are bound by interest of their physical location. Communities, cultural or physical, are the most important aspect as no viewer will be interested of information on which they cannot relate to.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Eric Ries & The Greatest Book Launch Ever?
Eric Ries is going to have a busy one next week as he launches his book, The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation To Create Radically Successful Businesses. The book is brilliant I believe (haven't read it yet), not just for the content is contains, but also for the incredibly innovative way it has been launched. Eris is giving away great stuff to people who buy the book, stuff that
the people that are likely to read it will really like. If that works,
it will hit the Amazon and other best seller lists and this will mean it
will be bought by people who wouldn’t normally know about it.
Because of the launch promotion bonuses, minimum tier one gets $246 (retail) worth of bonuses for a $14.50 book. And it piles up the more you order. Pretty nice. This bundle is 100% stuff I think you will really use. No phony discounts. No free trials.
This really is genius in two way. a) The more books you buy, the more valuable the rewards and b) it is restricted to one week to boost the sales to the bestseller list, which if achieved will push the sales even further. Oh, and the time limit is from 12th September through 19th September.
Go Eric! Love your thoughs and would love to see your book go bestseller. Below is a video we shot when Eric Ries visited Helsinki in 2009. Most likely the content of the book is similar to this.
Because of the launch promotion bonuses, minimum tier one gets $246 (retail) worth of bonuses for a $14.50 book. And it piles up the more you order. Pretty nice. This bundle is 100% stuff I think you will really use. No phony discounts. No free trials.
This really is genius in two way. a) The more books you buy, the more valuable the rewards and b) it is restricted to one week to boost the sales to the bestseller list, which if achieved will push the sales even further. Oh, and the time limit is from 12th September through 19th September.
Go Eric! Love your thoughs and would love to see your book go bestseller. Below is a video we shot when Eric Ries visited Helsinki in 2009. Most likely the content of the book is similar to this.
Monday, September 05, 2011
Customer Development is everything thinks Steve Blank
Business
Watch Top Gun. And you understand how it feels to run a startup. I really loved this analogue by Steve Blank during his lecture today.
Think how the fighter pilot operates in the cockpit: OODA loop. OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. This concept is basically a strategic level mindset in military operations, and can easily be applied to understand startup leadership. It is a rather complex system of decision making and imagine you have to do all those decision while flying mach 2.1, and you have only split seconds to react. That's how it feels.
The quest for a business model
In a scalable startup (for more on different type of startups here), the founding team is in a search for a repeatable and scalable business model. That is very different from actual execution in a company. The main difference with startups and corporations are that, in the latter one, the executive management already knows the business model because it has already been found. The startup phase should be temporary during the project's transformation into a company, and the sole purpose should be to understand the metrix needed to make reliable decisions.
Unlike in a corporation, the only accounting needed in a startup are a) burnrate and b) how much is left at the bank. Nothing else. Profitability or such do not matter until the startup team has verified the business model. When the model is verified, the company will actually deliver a valid value proposition for the their customer segments.
Do the customer development
Please, do not waste time on business plans. No business plan will ever stand the test of an initial customer encounter. This is often the first fatal flaw. The second flaw is to think all the imaginable features should be in the product. Learn to go lean and have just minimal viable feature set to test your assumptions. If your assumptions are correct, you should have no problems to add revenue to pay for the future development. If not, it is time to go back to the drawing board and tweak the model a bit.
Steve Blank thinks that many startups fail because they found no customers. Not because they could not deliver what the technical feature set failed. The startups just ended up building "a house where nobody wanted to live". So like the fighter pilots in "Top Gun", the startup founders have to move fast with limited resources. They have to do decision calls with limited amount of data. Essentially the thrills come through those decisions made blindly, with gut feelings. Just remember, your gut feeling will only emerge by talking to the customers and developing from there.
Most importantly, remember to find and document "what have we learned about customers and what is our story". That is what makes headlines.
Watch Top Gun. And you understand how it feels to run a startup. I really loved this analogue by Steve Blank during his lecture today.
Think how the fighter pilot operates in the cockpit: OODA loop. OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. This concept is basically a strategic level mindset in military operations, and can easily be applied to understand startup leadership. It is a rather complex system of decision making and imagine you have to do all those decision while flying mach 2.1, and you have only split seconds to react. That's how it feels.
The quest for a business model
In a scalable startup (for more on different type of startups here), the founding team is in a search for a repeatable and scalable business model. That is very different from actual execution in a company. The main difference with startups and corporations are that, in the latter one, the executive management already knows the business model because it has already been found. The startup phase should be temporary during the project's transformation into a company, and the sole purpose should be to understand the metrix needed to make reliable decisions.
Unlike in a corporation, the only accounting needed in a startup are a) burnrate and b) how much is left at the bank. Nothing else. Profitability or such do not matter until the startup team has verified the business model. When the model is verified, the company will actually deliver a valid value proposition for the their customer segments.
Do the customer development
Please, do not waste time on business plans. No business plan will ever stand the test of an initial customer encounter. This is often the first fatal flaw. The second flaw is to think all the imaginable features should be in the product. Learn to go lean and have just minimal viable feature set to test your assumptions. If your assumptions are correct, you should have no problems to add revenue to pay for the future development. If not, it is time to go back to the drawing board and tweak the model a bit.
Steve Blank thinks that many startups fail because they found no customers. Not because they could not deliver what the technical feature set failed. The startups just ended up building "a house where nobody wanted to live". So like the fighter pilots in "Top Gun", the startup founders have to move fast with limited resources. They have to do decision calls with limited amount of data. Essentially the thrills come through those decisions made blindly, with gut feelings. Just remember, your gut feeling will only emerge by talking to the customers and developing from there.
Most importantly, remember to find and document "what have we learned about customers and what is our story". That is what makes headlines.
Friday, September 02, 2011
Flow Festival 2011 feeling
I went to Flow Festival 2011, this came out. Just one on the series, more of which can be found at Stadi.TV
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Rush only to have a great product
Business
"What are you waiting for?" That is something many pro-entrepreneur individuals say when you have an idea or would like something to be better. I completely agree, that yea "What are you waiting for!". Just do it. After that, everybody starts talking you should go lean, fail fast and learn while doing it. This way there might be better chance to find a fit for the market and start collecting those dimes worth more than variable costs per unit sold.
Therefore, just as an idea: When you start your business, there is an immense rush to get stuff done. It stresses you out in the nights, gets you a positive rush the next and anxiety the day you look into the business' bank account. And the latter one is the one you are rushing for.
Be the first in the market...er...not
Be the first in what you do? Well, I don't think so. You might have heard the praises for blue ocean strategy. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue ocean as a strategy is correct, but it often is mixed with the idea of being the first.
It is true that you have many advantages if you execute an blue ocean strategy. But the advantage does not come from being the first.
The gold rush
So, what is the key when you go out and start your business? I would argue that is it the rush to have a great product. You are definitely in a rush, especially every time you look into your bank account. Eric Ries argues that an entrepreneur’s greatest advantage is their obscurity. If your first product sucks, at least not too many people will know about it. But that is the best time to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them to make the product better.
Therefore, the rush is to have a great product that creates a blue ocean before you run out of money.
"What are you waiting for?" That is something many pro-entrepreneur individuals say when you have an idea or would like something to be better. I completely agree, that yea "What are you waiting for!". Just do it. After that, everybody starts talking you should go lean, fail fast and learn while doing it. This way there might be better chance to find a fit for the market and start collecting those dimes worth more than variable costs per unit sold.
Therefore, just as an idea: When you start your business, there is an immense rush to get stuff done. It stresses you out in the nights, gets you a positive rush the next and anxiety the day you look into the business' bank account. And the latter one is the one you are rushing for.
Be the first in the market...er...not
Be the first in what you do? Well, I don't think so. You might have heard the praises for blue ocean strategy. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue ocean as a strategy is correct, but it often is mixed with the idea of being the first.
It is true that you have many advantages if you execute an blue ocean strategy. But the advantage does not come from being the first.
The gold rush
So, what is the key when you go out and start your business? I would argue that is it the rush to have a great product. You are definitely in a rush, especially every time you look into your bank account. Eric Ries argues that an entrepreneur’s greatest advantage is their obscurity. If your first product sucks, at least not too many people will know about it. But that is the best time to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them to make the product better.
Therefore, the rush is to have a great product that creates a blue ocean before you run out of money.
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