‹ richmedium › | social innovation in the global marketplace

media file 6.14.10 | The “Content Graph” and the future of media brands

The “Content Graph” and the future of media brands

On the Publishing 2.0 blog, Scott Karp introduces the concept of the Content Graph--like the Social Graph, a map of relationships that defines one’s “brand strength” relative to the other parties mapped on the graph. Just as on a Social Graph, one is measured by the number and quality of one’s friendships, on a Content Graph, a media brand is measured by the number and quality of its distribution relationships with other media brands on the graph. With Aol and Yahoo both jockeying for leadership in original content, the Content Graph could become an increasingly important metaphor for media brands looking for an opening in a newly promising digital content market. The big dollars in advertising, which are still locked up in traditional media, will start to flow to digital media brands that can demonstrate the distribution reach currently associated with search and social networks, combined with the strong brand equity that consumers still invest in traditional media.

-----

media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports for business and non-profit executives, media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the emergence of social innovation as a driving force reshaping the process of creating value in global markets. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for June 14, 2010:

How a digital-first strategy saved The Atlantic

The Folio site reports on 153-year-old The Atlantic magazine’s remarkable turnaround from a money-losing, declining traditional media enterprise to a growing, profitable digital brand. President Justin Smith cited five keys to its reinvention: creating a clear, compelling brand promise, which catalyzed organizational discipline around a set of specific goals; rallying around a digital-first product strategy, which unlocked resources that were otherwise tied up in the traditional business; launching a marketing services operation to drive digital revenues and differentiate the brand from low-margin ad networks; growing live events as a new profit center; and relentlessly focusing on hiring and retaining top talent. As a result of the overhaul, over $2 million in costs were driven out of the operation, while the organization is on track to sustainable profitability.

The ten keys to successful open innovation culture

The Innovation Tools blog summarizes the 10 essential elements of a successful open innovation culture, as described in a new book by Stefan Lindegaard, the leader of the LinkedIn Open Innovation Discussion Group. Among the key qualities cited: having people with the “soft skills” to effectively manage relationships with customers and partners; being willing to strike a balance between internal and external R&D; accepting the fact that open innovation creates intellectual property issues that the organization must work through internally before engaging with outside entities; and understanding that open innovation requires open communications with both staff and partners. The list grew out of a discussion among group members on the LinkedIn site.

The four types of organizational complexity

While corporate executives readily admit that complexity in the business environment makes it difficult to attain their strategic goals, they tend to think of the problem in terms of institutional complexity: the web of forces within the market that drive and disrupt business performance. Their employees, meanwhile, are likely to to think of the problem in terms of individual complexity: the internal norms and processes that make it hard for them to achieve their goals. McKinsey Quarterly examines the four types of organizational complexity: complexity intrinsic to the business or sector; complexity designed into one’s products or business model; complexity imposed by law, regulators, and NGOs; and unnecessary complexity that arises from misalignment between business goals and processes. Once they understand the kind of complexity they face, executives should eliminate any that doesn’t add value; and channel what’s left to staff with the professional skills to effectively manage it.

Closing the gap between vision and action in corporate sustainability

Has sustainability crossed the chasm from PR to strategy within US corporations? According to a recent Deloitte survey of 48 corporate executives, leaders are interested and involved in sustainability, and see a clear alignment with overall business strategy. But there remains a gap between their vision and the way that sustainability is enabled within their organizations. While many have broadly adopted the “triple bottom line” framework--pursuing performance in the economic, social, and environmental spheres--in practice, most are currently investing in environmental initiatives alone. For those companies taking an integrated approach to sustainability, four key success factors correlate to increased business value: aligning sustainability strategy with business strategy; integrating sustainability across the value chain; structuring non-traditional collaborations and extending existing collaborations; and establishing cross-disciplinary governance to drive performance.

What today’s CEOs can learn from history about socially responsible business

Although the concept of “triple bottom line” business is commonly considered an innovation of the 21st century, former AT&T CEO Leo Hindery, Jr. writes on Bloomberg Businessweek that its origins go back to the World War II era, when executives almost universally embraced the responsibility to balance the diverse interests of all stakeholders--shareholders, employees, partners, customers, and the nation as a whole. This model broke down in the 1980s, and in its place emerged the view that driving shareholder value was the only responsibility of the chief executive. As recent history amply demonstrates, it’s time for a corrective to this mistaken notion, but the business culture of the 1980s is now so fully entrenched in the boardroom that only government can provide the needed incentive for widespread behavioral change. A new tax and regulatory regime is needed to break the spell of “profits above all” and reintroduce the core concept of civic responsibility to the executive suite.

media file 6.7.10 | An environmental movement for the mind

An environmental movement for the mind

On the Adbusters site, environmentalist Bill McKibben turns his attention to an ecological danger that threatens to overtake carbon dioxide pollution or toxic oil spills as the number one environmental problem we face. In fact, it is the source of these problems: the poisoning of our culture by hyper commercialism and the extreme self-absorption it breeds. While throughout the centuries our mental environment has been polluted by church, state, and other institutions, this century presents the first moment in which almost the entirety of our personal and collective experience is mediated for us via for-profit media enterprises. The global consumer monoculture that is arising from this new form of mental pollution is threatening to place basic collective values--such as concern for the impact of one’s actions upon others--on the endangered ideas list.

-----

media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports for business and non-profit executives, media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the emergence of social innovation as a driving force reshaping the process of creating value in global markets. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for June 7, 2010:

How systems thinking can save your company

Corporate executives invariably give lip service to “systems thinking”--the management philosophy, originating in the early 20th century, that views the company as a complex social system and living community. But when push comes to shove, they fall back on even earlier thinking, from the 18th and 19th centuries--the company as a machine, which can be manipulated by optimizing discrete functions without awareness of how a change in one function might ripple through the whole. Such thinking locks in static solutions that can themselves become a source of destabilization, as the company confronts a complex and fast-changing business environment. Systems thinking, authentically applied, can invest a company with the insight to to adapt to unexpected developments, self-correct via trial-and-error learning and experimentation, and gain a detailed, intimate understanding of how the parts of the business fit together as a whole. Management guru Andrea Gabor writes for strategy+business.

The surprise leadership skill that CEOs value most

In a recent survey of 1500 CEOs conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value, creativity was selected as the single most important leadership attribute required for the successful enterprise of the future--not operational effectiveness, discipline, or any other of the characteristics selected in previous studies. Why the surprising shift in attitude? Global complexity, the CEOs said, has changed everything. The interplay of global forces like climate change with international finance, political, and regulatory systems has added a new layer of complexity to such critical issues as supply chain management and even workforce competitiveness. To see this complexity as an opportunity and not a paralyzing threat, today’s new leaders need the capacity, which creativity supplies, to break with existing organizational attitudes and assumptions and instead embrace business models fueled by an ethic of continuous innovation. IBM’s Frank Kern writes for Bloomberg Businessweek.

Scale the impact, not the overhead

Social enterprises have historically focused their social-impact strategies on replication: extending their successful programs into new service areas in a linear fashion, thereby achieving increases in social impact that are tied directly to increases in available resources. Such approaches impose hard limitations on an organization’s ability to achieve its social impact potential, and in many cases simply prove unsustainable. There’s another way, writes Bridgespan Group managing partner Jeffrey Bradach for the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Social enterprises can look to the for-profit sector for scaling strategies that multiply social impact with minimal increases in resources and overhead. Among these strategies: extend program reach via digital networks; build networks of partner organizations; develop talent; and generate demand for new ideas via marketing.

B2B spending on social media set to explode

While business-to-business firms have been late to the party in social media marketing, that’s getting set to change, according to a new report by eMarketer. The reasons are straightforward: B2B marketing is typically much more information-intensive than consumer product marketing, and so therefore it lends itself perfectly to the long-form tools of social media: blogs, podcasts, webinars, online learning communities, etc. Spending is expected to quintuple in the next five years, according to Forrester Research numbers cited in the eMarketer report.

The new Yahoo starting to look like the new AOL

With its $100 million purchase of content aggregator Associated Content, Yahoo has taken a sharp turn in the direction of AOL, which recently underwent a wrenching transformation that turned it from an ailing Internet service provider into a leading digital content company. Similarly, with the Associated Content acquisition, Yahoo is staging itself to move from being an online portal primarily serving other people’s content to becoming the dominant producer of original content for the web. Already, Yahoo serves almost three times the page views of AOL, and 200 times the page views of The New York Times. Business Insider reports.

media file 5.17.10 | The five forces reshaping the global economy

The five forces reshaping the global economy

In the sixth annual McKinsey Global Survey, over 1400 corporate executives from around the world identified the top five forces shaping their organizations’ strategies: (1) the shift in global economic activity from developed to developing countries; (2) the rise of the consumer in emerging markets; (3) increasingly global labor markets; (4) the impact of global digital networks in facilitating the flow of goods, information, and capital; and (5) rising government and stakeholder expectations about the role of business in contributing to the public good. The McKinsey Quarterly reports.

-----

media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports for business and non-profit executives, media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the emergence of social innovation as a driving force reshaping the process of creating value in global markets. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for May 17, 2010:

America’s green innovation problem

It’s received wisdom in many business circles--and the thesis of some bestselling pop business texts--that America can retain its strategic edge in global markets by focusing on innovation, even while manufacturing, customer service, and other core business activities get outsourced to other countries. But if trends in green innovation are any measure, this view will ultimately prove bankrupt--both for the companies that bet on it, and for American society as a whole. Globalization is rapidly overtaking the field of innovation, particularly in green technology, where the Chinese government is exploiting the powerful feedback loops that can be created when innovation, manufacturing, and marketing are advanced in tandem. Left unchallenged, governments pursuing this strategy could end up locking in strategic advantage in key markets--and locking America out. Bloomberg Businessweek reports.

Goldman Sachs and Drucker’s law of innovation

What’s the link between mortgage-backed securities and ATMs? Easy--both are financial market innovations. What’s the difference? One followed the route all successful innovations follow--delivering a product or process that fundamentally improves customers’ lives--while the other exploited innovation solely to the innovator’s advantage. The resulting catastrophe was predictable, writes Drucker Institute Executive Director Rick Wartzman for Bloomberg Businessweek. Peter Drucker himself predicted such a mess in a 1999 essay, where he compared compared derivates and other such financial innovations to the “systems” invented by professional gamblers to beat the house. They almost never work, Drucker observed; but the collateral damage they produce to markets and reputations can be enormous, as Goldman Sachs and others have found out.

Should all corporations adopt the “precautionary principle”?

“First do no harm”--the so-called “precautionary principle” has been a shared human value virtually since the dawn of civilization, and yet contemporary business practice seems to regularly defy it. Is it possible to fundamentally shift this dynamic--to inject the precautionary principle into the DNA of every contemporary corporation, so that episodes like the financial meltdown and the Gulf oil disaster become a thing of the past? On CSRwire, attorney Sanford Lewis explores the new risk-management strategies and innovations in corporate law that promise to make the precautionary principle a bedrock of corporate governance, rather than an afterthought.

If corporations are people, then shouldn’t they act like it?

The recent Supreme Court campaign finance ruling in the Citizens United case effectively conferred the same political free-speech rights on corporations that had previously existed only for individuals. So shouldn’t corporations be held to the same standard of personal responsibility that individuals live by? On the Harvard Business site, corporate sustainability advocate Andrew Winston argues that businesses owe society nothing less--or more--than to live by the Golden Rule: to do unto others as they would have done unto them. This approach is the only one that can effectively balance the environmental, sociological, and stakeholder concerns that are shaping the nature of business in the 21st century. Businesses should adopt this new model for the most selfish of all possible reasons--because it’s the only possible path to corporate sustainability in an era in which all stakeholders have effectively found their voice and are projecting it over the social web.

What do you call the world?

There is a famous story from Zen literature that goes like this:

Teacher A asks Teacher B: “Where do you come from?” (Sometimes a trick question.)

Teacher B replies: “From the south.” (Ah, a safe answer.)

A asks: “How is Zen practice in the South these days?”

B responds: “There lots of discussion.”

A states: “How can all the discussion compare to planting the fields and cooking rice?”

B asks: “What can you do about the world?”

A replies: “What do you call the world?”

media file 2.1.10 | How Ford got social marketing right

How Ford got social marketing right

Marketing guru Grant McCracken drills into Ford Motor’s successful “Fiesta Movement” social marketing campaign to identify the strategic elements that made it click. To jumpstart its efforts to break back into the subcompact market--a space it abandoned in 1997--Ford gave 100 consumers each a Fiesta and asked them to complete a different “mission” every month, and document it in digital media. The campaign produced 6.5 million YouTube views, 50,000 requests for information, and 10,000 sales in its first six days. The secrets: (1) Ford selected “culturally creative” consumers--digital sophisticates with something to say and a track record for saying it well on the social web; (2) it offered a very attractive “fair trade”--a free car in exchange for content; and (3) it asked participants to document experiences where the car was used to advance a social cause or lifelong aspiration, thereby connecting the brand to deep, personal and social values. The Harvard Business site reports.

-----

media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports for business and non-profit executives, media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the emergence of social innovation as a driving force reshaping the process of creating value in global markets. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for 1 February, 2010:

Cars--the next digital platform

Advertising Age blogger Craig Daitch reports on the most compelling spectacle from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show--the sharp elbows flashed by in-vehicle electronics product and service providers attempting to break into the digital media space. Leading the way: Ford Motors’ game-changer, Ford Sync, which the company credits as a major factor in its recent sales uptick.

Bored with your TV? There’s an app for that

The Wall Street Journal reports on the emergence of iPhone-like digital app marketplaces on cable and satellite TV services. Although experimental set-top services like Microsoft’s WebTV failed horribly in the 1990s, thanks to big improvements in the underlying technology, today’s consumers are snapping up digital media service packages that combine phone, Internet, and TV; and a wide array of hardware and software providers are integrating them into next-generation platforms that permit users to wander far beyond TV’s traditional walled gardens. The future portends an explosion of TV-based, free and paid set-top applications that rival anything happening on desktops or mobile phones.

Let your customers sell themselves on you

On the Harvard Business site, MIT research fellow and author Michael Schrage discusses the power of prototyping to advance the adoption of new ideas. Whereas most innovation-driven firms rely on demos, simulations and other kinds of marketing to elicit a “gee-whiz” reaction from customers to their inventions, others put a prototype of the actual product in the customer’s hands, and give them a chance to sell themselves on its merits. The Apple App Store is great example of this kind of prototype-based approach--customers get to play, risk-free, with thousands of different apps; they provide valuable feedback to their developers; and upgrade to the paid version when the value proposition is right. This “sell yourself” sensibility can easily transcend the digital market, finding a home in retail, consumer and professional services, and any other market where playful exploration can speed the adoption of an innovation.

Is your brand a beacon or a spotlight?

Euro RSCG strategic planner Rose Cameron asks this question on the Advertising Age site: Are you shining a spotlight on consumers’ current preoccupations and concerns, or are you projecting a beacon that leads them where they want to go? The difference is huge. Beacon brands take consumers into an emerging future that they desire to embrace. Given a choice, more than 3/4ths of consumers will choose beacon brands over spotlight brands, according to a study conducted by Euro RSCG for the Atlantic Monthly.

Motivation 3.0: Finding satisfaction in a digital age

Advertising Age interviews “A Whole New Mind” author Daniel Pink about his new work, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.” It’s not external rewards and punishments--that is, money, promotions, or the fear of losing those things--that drive today’s key business leaders and employees, but instead the desire to learn, create, and improve our world... what Pink calls autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

media file 7.1.09 | Twitter’s rules for radical innovation

Twitter’s rules for radical innovation

On the Harvard Business site, Havas Media Lab’s Umair Haque describes ten operating principles that make digital phenom Twitter one of the most radical management innovators of 21st century so far. Among these rules: Ideals beat strategies; open beats closed; connection beats transaction; public beats private; and good beats evil.

-----

media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports for business and non-profit executives, media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the emergence of social innovation as a driving force reshaping the process of creating value in global markets. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for July 1, 2009:

Nine tips for jumpstarting innovation

When companies go on the hunt for innovations to drive growth, they often waste time scouring the last place they are likely to find it: their own back yards. Rather than try to dredge up new ideas from the heart of the enterprise, look to its periphery, say researchers John Bessant, Kathrin Moslein, and Bettina von Stamm in this Wall Street Journal report. Among the techniques that organizations can use to spot the future before it emerges: Scenario building; open innovation; tapping expert users; “deep dive” consumer research; creating online learning communities; and more.

Innovation: It takes a village

For organizations struggling to survive, let alone advance, Knowledge@Wharton has some advice: Build an “innovation network.” By tapping the expertise and resources of outside R&D partners, Proctor & Gamble improved its innovation productivity by 60 percent, resulting in over $10 billion in revenues from 400 collaboratively developed new products. Performance like this requires organizations to build new internal capacity to cultivate and manage productive external relationships, while simultaneously strengthening their internal R&D capacity to evaluate and incorporate potentially promising innovations.

AOL: The future of digital content?!!!

You heard it here first: AOL represents the future of successful, sustainable digital content publishing, says Silicon Alley Insider. AOL’s coming divorce from Time Warner will free it to do what it does best: Build flashy, inexpensive content sites around special-interest topics, then plug them into AOL’s online traffic fire hose. It’s a model that represents the digital version of yesterday’s magazine launch--only much cheaper, easier to tweak, and less troubling to kill if things don’t quickly work out. AOL has more than 300 staff members producing such sites and contracts with about the same number of freelancers. In the past six months, the company has hired more than 50 journalists from places such as the Associated Press, Washington Post, and USA Today.

Sorry, there’s no way to save the TV business

On Advertising Age, Internet analyst Henry Blodget explains the coming demise of the TV business--broadcast, network, cable, and satellite--with brutal simplicity. TV execs are reliving the same delusion that newspaper execs held onto through most of the last decade, when revenues were holding up despite dire predictions to the contrary. And the same phenomenon that ultimately doomed the newspaper business is about to visit the TV business: the complete breakdown of every distribution barrier protecting historical margins and profits, and a surge in abundant, accessible, free TV across the global Internet.

It ain’t free--it’s a steal

Trendspotter Malcolm Gladwell takes Wired’s Chris Anderson to task in this New Yorker review of the latter’s book, Free. While Anderson asserts that digital technology inexorably drives all products “made of ideas” to a zero price point, Gladwell comes to a different conclusion: “Information wants to be free” is a useful meme for content distribution powerhouses like Google and Amazon, but it is neither an inevitable outcome nor one supported by trends in industries other than media that are being transformed by digital technology. Case in point: the drug industry, which is using digital technology to produce ever-more specific compounds for increasingly targeted markets, at ever higher price points. Meanwhile, YouTube--the avatar of Free--spends over $260 million annually to license commercial content, essentially to make a market that otherwise does not exist with its free, user-generated fare. In other words, the problem with Free is that consumers know exactly how to value it.

Why media brands stumble globally

Advertising Age explores the reasons why globalization has not yet swept the media market to the same degree as in other digital industries--computers or cell phones, for example. While consumer product firms have a natural disposition toward building consistent brand identities over time while simultaneously tweaking products and pitches to specific markets, media companies either give too little attention to branding (relying instead on a hits-driven marketing strategy) or bring a bias or agenda that doesn’t travel well across borders. To be successful globally, media brands need to develop a broad, international appeal that comes from focusing on shared human and social values; and combine that appeal with content fine-tuned to specific audiences. Among those doing it well: Bloomberg, CNN, People, Thomson Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, and The Economist.

It’s time for a “slow marketing” movement

Think “slow food”: ingredients grown organically and prepared with old-fashioned love, attention, and technique, resulting in undeniably superior appeal, taste, and value. Now think “slow marketing”: brand building that puts the customer first, strives for credibility, and sustains long-term relationships. It’s not a throwback to a time gone by; it’s an approach demanded for success in the digital markets of the future. So writes Nielsen’s Peter Blackshaw in this column for Advertising Age.

media file 6.22.09 | Why nonprofits rule social media

Why nonprofits rule social media

In this Conversation Starter on the Harvard Business site, social media consultant Alexandra Samuel argues that the notable success of nonprofit organizations like Kiva in implementing social media strategies is a natural outgrowth of what the sector does best: build deep and explicitly accountable relationships with stakeholders. Businesses can experience similar success by adopting some nonprofit best practices, including: (1) avoid gimmicks, and instead speak to stakeholders’ core concerns; (2) give clients a high degree of decision-making freedom and control; (3) offer a mix of tangible and social benefits; (4) embrace the stakeholder community’s emergent social values; and (5) innovate within the boundaries of one’s core mission.

-----

media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports for business and non-profit executives, media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the emergence of social innovation as a driving force reshaping the process of creating value in global markets. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for June 22, 2009:

Why social media gimmicks don’t work

A short, sharp reality smackdown from social media guru Andy Sernovitz: Whatever get-rich scheme you are cooking up, forget it. Instead of trying to trick or bribe people into engaging with your product or service, just build a better product and customer experience... and love will follow.

Kiva: When nonprofit is the best business model

Stanford Social Innovation Review profiles Kiva, the groundbreaking peer-to-peer microfinance exchange, to learn how it became one of the fastest growing nonprofits in history. Surprisingly, a great part of its success has to do with its nonprofit status itself: By adopting a business model that maximizes social value and leaves profit on the table, Kiva has managed to attract a range of support services that have lowered its cost of doing business and allowed it to scale rapidly. Likewise, it has dodged the legal and regulatory challenges that would have accompanied any attempt to organize as a for-profit lender. And finally, it has been able to establish a steady, growing stream of capital from a virtual community that supports it precisely because it operates purely from a socially constructive agenda.

Maximizing the (non) profit motive

BusinessWeek covers the emergence of new corporate legal structures designed to make it easier for organizations to blend for-profit business models with socially constructive aims. While the law typically holds that a corporation’s primary responsibility is to maximize shareholder value, these new structures make it possible for a for-profit organization to incorporate a social-purpose agenda directly into its charter, and to behave in other ways that are more common to non-profits--raising money in the form of grants and charitable loans, for example. Likewise, they give non-profits new tools to raise capital and engage in for-profit activities, without having to construct elaborate workarounds.

Crowdsourcing: What it means for innovation

In BusinessWeek, innovation guru John Winsor explores the future of “crowdsourcing”--the practice of engaging individuals outside the traditional supply chain in the process of product and business system innovation. While some analysts fear that crowdsourcing will spell the end of the corporate design firm, and others worry that it will drive down the perceived value of new products and services, still others believe that customer participation and mass collaboration will usher in a new era in which customers become deeply invested in the success of the crowdsourced innovation and the enterprise that stands behind it.

Not all collaborations are created equal

On The Big Shift blog on the Harvard Business site, authors and management consultants John Hegel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison discuss “scalable collaboration”: a form of collaboration that moves beyond feel-good progressivity to a style of organizational behavior that delivers increasing returns over time. Three key traits distinguish collaborative styles that are scalable from those that are not: (1) They produce new knowledge and relationships versus specific solutions and results; (2) they are loosely organized in ways that easily admit new participants; and (3) they are designed to advance the group’s future capacity versus simply to leverage its existing strengths.

Got the old-media blues? There’s an app for that

Advertising Age reports on a new initiative by traditional print media firm Rodale to make digital content pay, via an iPhone app for its Men’s Health magazine brand. Users pay $1.99 for the app, which provides basic workout set instructions along with a system for tracking individual progress. Directly within the app, users can then buy additional workout sets to supplement the base set. This strategy opens up a source of revenue--paid subscriptions--that publishers have historically relied upon but has been hard to come by on the largely free Internet. The in-app purchase option is a feature of the new OS 3 for the iPhone.

welcome to richmedium

< richmedium > | social innovation in the global marketplace explores the business, cultural, and technological forces that are reshaping the process of creating value in global markets, and giving rise to a new strategic framework for designing and scaling media and marketing organizations, nonprofits, and social enterprises.

media file 3.16.09 | In downturn, consumers choose green

Despite economic crisis, consumers value brands’ commitment to social purpose

Marketing communications firm Edelman announces the results of its second annual global study measuring consumer attitudes toward companies and brands that engage in social purpose marketing. According to the study, 68 percent of consumers stated they would remain loyal to a brand during a recession if it supports a good cause. Forty-two percent said that if two products are of the same quality and price, commitment to a social purpose trumps factors like design, innovation, and brand loyalty when choosing one brand over the other. Fifty-two percent stated they would be more likely to recommend a brand that supports a good cause over one that does not, and 54 percent said they would help a brand promote a product if there were a good cause behind it.

-----

media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports for business and non-profit executives, media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for March 16, 2009:

Social innovators can lead through economic crisis

On INSEAD Knowledge: While the international community galvanizes around the financial crisis at the expense of other pressing global concerns, socially innovative businesses have a unique opportunity to fill the gap via money-making enterprises and initiatives that advance the cause of human and environmental sustainability. Social innovators must make sure that the initiative is sustainable and will stand the test of time, even in the face of great economic upheaval, or risk taking a “trust hit” that could undermine its downstream chances for success.

Governing Facebook in an open and transparent way

On The Facebook Blog, founder Mark Zuckerberg announces the publication of two documents intended to shift the social networking site’s relationship with its users: “Facebook Principles,” an open policy framework that the company says will guide its business practices and decision-making; and “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities,” which will replace the site’s existing Terms of Use. Writes Zuckerberg: “Our main goal at Facebook is to help make the world more open and transparent. We believe that if we want to lead the world in this direction, then we must set an example by running our service in this way.”

Reinventing your business model

While fundamental business model innovations fueled the breakout success of Apple’s iPod and led to the market dominance of retail giants Wal-Mart and Target, less than ten percent of innovation investment at global companies is focused on developing new business models. Why? According to innovation specialist Mark Johnson on the Harvard Business site, the reason is that few organizations fully understand their current business model to begin with--the premise behind its development, its natural interdependencies, and its strengths and limitations. So they don’t know when they can leverage their core business and when success requires a new business model.

Assessing innovation metrics

While two-thirds of top executives consider innovation to be one of their top three strategic priorities, few take steps to effectively measure the impact of the overall innovation process on their organization’s value, according to a recent study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Instead, executives focus on relatively simple output metrics, such as increases in revenue, rather than potentially more instructive indicators, such as ROI or net present value of the innovation portfolio.

The music business isn’t dying; the old business model is

TechCrunch covers a talk by Topspin Media CEO Ian Rogers on the future of the music industry. The old hits-driven business model is giving way to a new model that will permit a broad middle class of artists to support themselves by using the web to promote their music, shows, and merchandise. As an example, Rogers cites David Byrne and Brian Eno’s album, “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today,” which was distributed digitally by the artists and in less than two months earned the equivalent of a traditional music label advance.

Hey, magazines: Are you in or are you out?

Ad Age’s Simon Dumenco ponders the magazine industry’s seeming paralysis in the face of digital transition, and asks: Do its leaders have the guts to radically reinvent their business models, or have they given up on publishing, if its future doesn’t include the same high-flying revenues and salaries that defined its recent past?

Foundation starts health policy news service

The New York Times reports on the Kaiser Family Foundation’s launch of a new online health news service, designed to fill a gap in serious health policy news coverage left by the decline of mainstream news organizations. The launch underscores the emergence of so-called “advocacy journalism”: serious, professional journalistic efforts undertaken--mostly online--by nonprofit cause advocacy groups.

media file 12.22.08 | Cause marketing’s black bottom line

Cause marketing can ignite sales, study shows

Communications agency Cone LLC and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business announce the results of a joint consumer behavior study demonstrating that cause-related marketing can boost sales by as much as 74 percent. According to the study, 83 percent of consumers stated that personal relevance is key in supporting a company’s cause-marketing efforts, and 84 percent said that they wanted the opportunity to choose which cause to support.

-----

media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on Delicious, this repository is meant to be a resource for business and non-profit executives, media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for December 22, 2008:

MAC Cosmetics: Tying the cause to the brand

Knowledge@Wharton profiles MAC Cosmetics and its Viva Glam brand, 100 percent of whose sales are donated to global AIDS causes. Since the fund’s inception in 1994, the company has given more than $128 million to various AIDS-related projects. The company attributes its 80 percent employee retention rate to the fund, in a sector where the average retention rate is 30 percent.

Google releases details on Android app revenue model

When Google starts selling Android mobile phone applications next year, what percentage of revenues will it keep for itself? (Hint: Apple keeps 30 percent from the iPhone App Store.) The answer: nothing. Developers will get to keep 70 percent of the take, while the rest will go to carriers. Writes mocoNews: “Over and over, people have pondered what a carrier’s incentive will be to adopt the Android platform. Well, folks, here’s your answer.” Google will earn revenue via advertising.

Why platforms are letting us down... and what they should do about it

ReadWriteWeb analyzes the apparent meltdown of Facebook’s application platform and stall-out of Google’s OpenSocial, and compares them to the raging success of Apple’s iPhone App Store. The key difference between Apple and the also-rans? Apple wired monetization into its platform from the start.

New York Times API goes live: Here’s why it matters

ReadWriteWeb reports on the launch of the New York Times’ application programming interface, a move that permits third-party developers to access the newspaper company’s data for use in new applications, interfaces, and mashups. Big media concerns will need to take similar steps in order to maintain their positions in the emerging digital media market, the report states.

Pearson ups its stake in South African publishing firm

Reuters reports that British publishing firm Pearson Plc has increased its holdings in South Africa’s Maskew Miller Longman from 50 percent to 85 percent, as part of a strategy to secure the pole position in educational publishing on the continent.

Sherman’s Travel: The website that launched a magazine

A red-hot travel site successfully spins off a bimonthly magazine. What does that say about the future of publishing? Advertising Age’s MediaWorks reports.

Why comic books are still alive and kicking

Fortune spies a bright spot in an otherwise dismal old-media landscape: comic books. In the last three years, Marvel Entertainment, the industry’s biggest player, has posted double-digit revenue increases while holding margins at about 40 percent. The key to this enviable performance: Most comic books are still distributed via specialty retail stores, and that constrained supply has helped to perpetuate the image of comic books and graphic novels as a cult phenomenon.

media file 12.1.08 | Digital entrepreneurs should “work on stuff that matters”

Tech guru Tim O’Reilly to next generation: Get serious

The LA Times profiles digital pioneer Tim O’Reilly and his critique of the current crop of digital enterprises. Today’s digital entrepreneurs have cocooned in a “reality bubble” insulated from poverty, disease, global warming, and other problems that are gripping the planet, he argues. They should follow the model of some of the world’s most successful technology companies, including Google and Microsoft, which sprang from their founders’ efforts to “work on stuff that matters.”

-----

media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on Delicious, this repository is meant to be a resource for media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for December 1, 2008:

The bottom billion: A difficult market or a source of innovation?

On the Harvard Business site, Forrester VP Navi Radjou discusses how leading global firms--Microsoft, most notably among them--are treating the world’s most underdeveloped markets as breakthrough business opportunities rather than as occasions to demonstrate corporate social responsibility.

Media zone to open in Abu Dhabi

The Abu Dhabi newspaper The National reports that the government has launched a new media innovation zone in partnership with the BBC, CNN, Reuters, and a number of other leading global media brands. The zone is scheduled to launch in 2009.

National Geographic teams with Abu Dhabi to make movies

The Washington Post reports that the Abu Dhabi government has struck a $100 million deal with the National Geographic Society to create a revolving fund to develop and produce 10 to 15 films over a five-year period. According to Tim Kelly, president of the National Geographic’s global media division, the goal of the pact is to “put money on the screen,” funneling funds to filmmakers all over the world.

NBC relaunches local TV sites as web destinations

MediaPost reports on NBC’s plan to transform its local TV station web sites into broader online communities offering news, information, entertainment, and social media tools. Its new, “Locals Only” sites will feature content from print and online publications, bloggers, and NBC’s local TV stations. The initiative rolls out with revamped sites for Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco.

Mainstream news outlets start linking to other sites

ONTD! The New York Times reports that mainstream media outlets have recently ramped up the number of links they post to content on other sites. They even have a new name for it: “link journalism.” The idea is to produce a new generation of online news media, supported by local, paid product/service directories.

Five web 2.0 businesses for a down economy

Mashable looks at a seriously disrupted, cash starved digital market and asks, “What new opportunities exist here”? Keywords: Coworking spaces, bootstrapping, collaborative tools, idea marketplaces, workforce marketplaces.

Open source is not a business model

ReadWriteWeb reports on a study by The 451 Group showing that most open source vendors make ends meet via proprietary software and services. In this study of 114 vendors, open source is more of a business tactic than a business model.