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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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< 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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

media file 10.15.08: Pixar’s secret to sustainable success

How Pixar fosters collective creativity

On the Harvard Business site, Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull describes the creative process the organization has used to produce its sustained track record of technological and artistic breakthroughs. Core to this process is the insight that sustainable innovation is not a product of individual genius, but instead an outgrowth of an organizational culture that supports great people and encourages them to support one another so the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts. Says Catmull, this kind of environment catalyzes a vibrant community where talented people are loyal to one another and their collective work, everyone feels that they are part of something extraordinary, and their passion and accomplishments make the community a magnet for other talented people.

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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 communications and business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious. We publish media file links as we discover them.

Please suggest links to include in the database, and please also send your comments on how to make this resource more useful for you.

more media file links for October 15, 2008:

Shaping strategy in a world of constant disruption

On the Harvard Business site, Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation executives John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison discuss “shaping strategies”: broad-based initiatives that mobilize the global ecosystem of a market and transform it, via a positive, galvanizing message that promises benefits to all who participate. Today’s global digital infrastructure makes shaping strategies both more necessary and powerful than ever before, by constantly shifting the terms of competition and creating openings for innovators to disrupt markets through relatively small actions and investments that produce disproportionately large impact. Shaping strategies uniquely provide the incentives and capability for large-scale distributed innovation involving partners, competitors, suppliers, and customers.

Cognition announces “world’s largest semantic map”

ReadWriteWeb reports that natural language search firm Cognition Technologies has released what it claims to be the world’s largest semantic map of the English language. More than double the size of previous computational dictionaries, the technology could permit the development both of new semantic web applications for vertical markets and of broad-based semantic search engines to compete against Google in consumer search.

Is Facebook’s redesign killing Facebook apps?

Silicon Alley Reporter posts data from independent Facebook developers that suggests that the Q3 2008 Facebook redesign is driving a drop in usage of third-party plug-in applications.

Facebook redesign isn’t a disaster for every developer: Some are seeing traffic boom

Silicon Alley Reporter continues its analysis of the Q3 2008 Facebook redesign with news that some Facebook developers are experiencing significant post-redesign spikes in traffic. A unifying theme: Winning applications give users a reason to interact with them regularly.

Jimmy Wales: Make your brands authentic

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales confides to Adweek his secrets to the top-ranked site’s success, and the way those insights are being transferred to Wikia, Wales’ for-profit, ad-driven wiki and search project. At the top of his list: “People love building things with their friends and people they share an interest with.”

Innovations in storytelling: Using comics for journalism

On MediaShift Idea Lab, journalist Chris O’Brien explores the recent trend of using the comic book art form to convey news and business information. Examples include a project by USA Today and its Pop Candy blog; a story about the 2008 financial crisis published in Toronto’s The Globe and Mail newspaper; and Google’s introduction of its Chrome browser. These projects demonstrate that innovation in communications does not simply involve the embrace of digital tools, but must also include the embrace of new communications strategies and techniques.

2007 media revenues slow to lowest rate since 2001

Revenue growth among the top 100 media companies slowed to 4.6 percent in 2007, the lowest annual rate since 2001, reports Advertising Age. Total revenues among these firms reached over $299 billion. Digital media led all sectors with a 10.8 percent increase; newspapers turned in the worst performance, with a 6.8 percent decline. Cable and satellite providers earned 31.0 percent share of revenues, making this the largest sector measured. Cable networks came in second, with 13.4 percent share.

media file 10.6.08: Philips reinvents itself as a design-driven social enterprise

Philips: Philanthropy by design

Businessweek reports on Amsterdam-based Royal Philips Electronics’ efforts to transform itself from from a high-volume electronics maker into a design-led health, lifestyle, and technology company. Its core strategy: “social innovation”--developing culturally relevant solutions to critical social and environmental problems in emerging markets, in partnership with local nongovernmental organizations that can help facilitate their adoption. Among its first efforts in this space: A clean indoor wood-burning stove that reduces smoke inhalation and is easier to maintain than its traditional predecessor.

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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 communications and business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious. We publish media file links as we discover them.

Please suggest links to include in the database, and please also send your comments on how to make this resource more useful for you.

more media file links for October 6, 2008:

The real value of intangibles

On the strategy+business site, business guru Denise Caruso questions why the contemporary corporation’s greatest source of value--its intellectual property, software investments, staff and managerial expertise, market research, advertising, business processes, organizational structures, and the like--show up on its books, not as real assets, but as potential liabilities and risk factors. The solution to this problem, Caruso writes, is to revise FASB rules to reflect the fact that intangible assets now account for up to 90 percent of a 21st century corporation’s market worth.

The faith-based corporation

Google employees joke that the search giant is a “faith-based initiative,” but they mean it. Google is at the head of a trend called “organizational sacralization,” described in a new research paper on the topic reviewed on the Knowledge@W.P. Carey site. The term refers to the adoption of social-purpose business strategies that galvanize an organization’s stakeholders around the idea that the enterprise is working for a greater good. These strategies can confer significant competitive advantage, the paper asserts, but they also run the risk of serious backlash if stakeholders determine that the organization has committed “sacrilege” by violating its own espoused ideals.

Want to be the next Google? Create enduring values

VentureBeat columnist Bernard Moon compares Google’s founding principles to those of Sony, launched almost fifty years earlier. According to Moon, both companies grounded themselves in a set of core social values that, through strong leadership, translated into tangible behavior and results.

Seventh Generation launches open media marketing campaign

ClickZ reports that green home products marketer Seventh Generation has launched an open media marketing campaign designed to reach parents concerned about product safety and the environment. The campaign is built around a microsite that provides information about Seventh Generation product ingredients and offers users a downloadable desktop and mobile widget that they can employ while shopping to look up health and environmental impact information about ingredients found commonly on consumer product labels. Third parties can add content to the widget’s database.

Agenda for a green recovery

The Center for American Progress announces a report with the Political Economy Research Institute, an economic think tank, entitled “Green Recovery.” In it, the authors advocate a $100 billion, two-year investment program in green technologies, generating 2 million private-sector jobs.

Money to grow on

What is an “investment”? For private foundations and nonprofit social enterprises, that question can get tricky. On Stanford Social Innovation Review, Bridgespan Group partner William Foster says that the nonprofit sector could benefit by adopting the for-profit sector’s attitude toward outside money--whatever its source--viewing it as “growth capital” that strengthens the enterprise’s capacity to sustainably increase impact.

Understanding social entrepreneurs

On the Skoll Foundation’s Social Edge site, author Paul Light posts several excerpts from his new book, “The Search for Social Entrepreneurship,” and related research. Light asks: Do social entrepreneurs really think differently from other high achievers? Are their ideas always radical? Can they create opportunities for change where none exist? Do their organizations have to be new?

media file 9.2.08: Defining “social enterprise 2.0”

Enterprise 2.0: The Nature of the Firm

ReadWriteWeb says that the social web is destined to fundamentally restructure the way business is done--with consequences deep and wide for any for-profit or non-profit enterprise. A next generation of enterprises has emerged that is focusing on two main objectives: how to organize global scarcity into new, socially responsible markets; and how to organize business innovations into accessible solutions to today’s global social problems.

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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 communications and business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious. We publish media file links as we discover them.

Please suggest links to include in the database, and please also send your comments on how to make this resource more useful for you.

more media file links for September 2, 2008:

Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey Results

The McKinsey Quarterly reports on its second annual executive survey on the use of web 2.0 technologies within the enterprise. While only 21 percent of executives polled were satisfied with their web 2.0 investments, respondents who did report high satisfaction stated that their organizations were leveraging these investments to change management practices, flatten organizational structures, involve customers in product development, and tap the external expertise of suppliers and partners.

Investor Advocates Creating Issue-Specific Networks

In a quest for greater effectiveness, the corporate social responsibility movement is starting to adopt the tools and strategies of the social web, says CSRwire. Investors, activists, trade associations, and NGOs are banding together into issue-specific social networks that share research, strategies, and best practices openly with each other and invite comment from all stakeholders. This “Open SRI” model is expected to lead to new online advocacy resources involving mashups of previously proprietary data sets.

Google ally T-Mobile looks poised to compete with Apple’s App Store

VentureBeat says that cellular phone carrier T-Mobile is adopting an open software model for its next generation mobile web phones. According to the post, this move will spur a new wave of VC investment in the mobile social web.

Cut your legal fees using Y Combinator’s funding documents

Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator has adopted an “open source” strategy of placing its library of standard deal documents into the public domain, writes VentureBeat. The firm believes that this step will increase the number of fundable startups overall, and will attract the best startups to itself.

Uh-oh, Where Did Those Newspaper Web Ads Go?

Although newspaper sites are expected to post double-digit advertising growth overall in 2008, some major publishers are experiencing online revenue declines for the first time, a worrying trend for an industry that is in transition from print from web. What separates winners from losers? According to Advertising Age, the strongest organizations are furthest along in an building online advertiser base independent from print, whereas the weakest organizations still rely heavily on upselling print customers to the web.

Yet Another Cool Digital Newspaper Product: The Wall Street Journal, For Free, On Your BlackBerry

Silicon Alley Insider enthuses over the new Wall Street Journal Mobile Reader for the BlackBerry device, suggesting that innovative applications like this, arriving even without a revenue model, represent the kind of thinking that could eventually put the newspaper industry back on track.

Social Networks Get Down to Business

Business-to-business ad spending on online social networks is starting to heat up, according to eMarketer. The market research firm announced a new report forecasting that b2b ad spending will rise from $15 million in 2007 to $210 million in 2012. According to the report, the audience for business social networks is exploding, including broad-based professional sites like LinkedIn, but also vertical sites geared toward IT professionals, lawyers, and other professional groups, as well as horizontal consumer sites like Facebook, which is experiencing big growth in usage by business executives.

What’s the Future of Brand Journalism? Collision Content

For companies focused on the social web, “brand journalism” (journalism-like content created by for-profit and non-profit enterprises) poses some special risks. Advertising Age offers a guide to risk mitigation in an environment where brand is decidedly not in control.