STRATEGY: WHAT SAY YOU?: What Does The Social Billboard Say?

Strategy: What Say You? with Jay Deragon

A billboard is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertisements to passing pedestrians and drivers. Typically showing large, ostensibly witty slogans, and distinctive visuals, billboards are highly visible in the top designated market areas.

In 1964 the negative impact of the over-proliferation of signage was abundantly evident in Houston, Texas, and motivated Lady Bird Johnson to ask her husband to create a law. At the same time the outdoor advertising industry itself was becoming keenly aware that the existence of too many signs, some literally one in front of the other, was bad for business.

Currently, four states—Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii, and Maine—have prohibited billboards

Do Billboards Belong on the Conversational Highway?

The social web is a highway of conversations. Brands want their billboards on high traffic highways of relevant conversations. Consumers behavior is clearly showing a distaste for “old billboards thrown in the middle of their conversations.”. This is becoming more and more evident with the reduced click-through rates for what has been labeled as “social advertising”. The old advertising methods are being rejected and replaced by an older method that is more human and it’s called a conversation..

Marketers must learn that the best way to get consumer attention is to enable customers to brag about their experience with your brand. The relationships that drive the quality of experience are upstream. Every brand has a system of production, distribution, sales & marketing and customer service. Production is collaboration with suppliers and employees. Distribution is a relationship with channel partners. Sales & marketing is a relational process with markets and customer service is an after the sale relational experience. Everything a business does is relational.

While much is being discussed about “how” brands can effectively engage in conversations a more important yet complex discussion needs to focus on “how” brands could create exceptional customer experiences in which the customer would share with others. The quality of an organizations product or service is directly correlated to the quality of relations which produce the product/service experience with the end customer.

If management cannot foster healthy internal relations, than it is folly to expect healthy customer relations. The old game of slick marketing messages and entertaining ads do not reflect the true customer experience with the product or service. Running ads on blogs and social networks will not capture consumer attention. When a consumer wants to “shop” for something the process usually starts with a referral from a “friend” or a conversation with someone who has experienced your brand. The “friend”, given the reach of the social web, is likely to be an employee, supplier or existing customer.

The social web and all its transparency is not turning up the heat on marketing and advertising methods rather the heat is turning on management. Management may in fact include senior people within the marketing and advertising departments. However unless the organization has a progressive leader, old management methods of the past will only reinforce old marketing and advertising methods that simply will not work in the new economy.

The web presents a new “system” that is ever evolving and creating new dynamics and new rules to old games. The irony of the evolving “system” of the web is that it is largely influenced by the preferences and privileges of people having conversations about everything, everyone and the experiences with anything. The new markets are creating new rules to old games. The new rules are people centric and value driven. The Socialutions lie not within the system of technology rather of the relational system of “people and values”.

Get it? The conversational billboards are loud, bright, connected and extremely the people read them. What will or are the people saying about your business? Check the social billboards and you’ll find out.

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STRATEGY: WHAT SAY YOU?: What Does The Social Billboard Say?

What is An Isoquantic Shift?

Strategy: What Say You? with Jay Deragon

John Sculley, former CEO of Apple, described a new theory of change in 1993, called an "isoquantic shift." This theory, said Sculley, "refers to a significant technological advancement that dramatically changes the way people do things and completely re-orients people's concepts of how things are done. For example, the fractional horsepower electric motor was an isoquantic shift from the centralized steam engines that powered many factories during the 19th century."

Jack Myers says “The introduction of real time audio and video to computer Internet access and the integration of the computer and the television set represent another isoquantic shift. The ability of individuals to interact represents a convergence of the telephone, the computer, the television and high-speed cable and telephone modems, altering the ways in which consumers perceive media.”

“A paradigm shift is merely a restructuring of the patterns that we rely on for our decision-making. Paradigm shifts require changes in traditional behavior because we are required to rethink our assumptions. They reflect a change in how people perceive and react to reality. The transition of audiences from broadcast television to cable TV has been a paradigm shift - a slow change in patternistic behavior. Cable has not radically altered the way advertisers communicate to audiences or the way viewers interact with the medium. Successful managers in the 1980s and 1990s conformed to shifting technological, sociological, and regulatory paradigms. The isoquantic shifts on the
horizon are creating even greater apprehension and anxiety. While change has been continuous, pervasive, and overwhelming, it has rarely been so dramatic that it totally alters the way people do things. The changes we are facing today in business are isoquantic shifts, not simple paradigm shifts.”

Sculley points out that "we have seen an isoquantic shift in the computer industry with the microprocessor. The microprocessor clearly changed the whole concept of what computers were, from a centralized device, to one on every desk, to one you are carrying around with you." Sculley also envisioned the isoquantic shifts affecting the television industry: "We're seeing a new isoquantic shift taking place in this decade that is replacing the old analog communications we have known - digital compression communications. That's a very significant factor for all of us because of the convergence of our respective industries, whether it is computers, communications, or content. They're all coming together."

How Fast Are Things Coming Together?

All this social stuff has accelerated change. Change comes from learning new ways of doing old things and creating new things. The power of conversational rivers about anything and everything is accelerating change. The reason is because we are all learning from each other and the idea exchange has been fueled by social technology which has create new markets of conversations never before experienced or envisioned. The conversations are creating new knowledge which fuels innovation.

The business narrative is full of terms like "momentum", "velocity to market", "dynamic", "production" - all of these are time dependent variables.

Wherever one can observe a high rate of change of knowledge among people, there is innovation happening. If the innovation corresponds to your business plan - you are in luck. If it does not, then you need to change your business plan.

The best policy is that which accommodates what people are going to do naturally. Successful companies will align themselves to what people are doing. People will not necessarily align themselves to what companies are doing. The social web is the medium for Isoquantic shifts which is changing how we the people do things and how business gets things done. The change is swift and the more things change the more things come together.

What say you?

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What is An Isoquantic Shift?

Will Your Community Survive?

Strategy: What Say You? with Jay Deragon

I participate in dozens of "social communities" and enjoy reading others post and getting feedback on my own post. As these "communities grow" sometimes it seems like "the good old boy politics" begins to creep into the fiber of a community only turn the community into an anti-social place where the politics become more important than the open conversations.

It is this very behavior which bloggers have criticized the big brands for yet some community moderators think they are big and begin to create community rules, practices and behavior they learned from the big. By doing so they are planning the demise of the community they've tried to build.

What Is The "Community" Model?

In the early stages of all this social stuff people from different industries or business practices have created aggregated communities. These aggregated communities enable bloggers to add their own blogs to these communities while maintaining their independence and their own blog identity. The typical aggregated community is supported by corporate sponsors who typically major brands are looking to test the waters of "social media" and to attract a specific audience.

These aggregated communities are supported by advertising and sponsorships. The community moderators seek to recruit the "mega bloggers" whom add related content to the community that keeps the community engaged. They also attempt to create a "soft competitiveness" by listing things like "most read authors, highest rated authors or most comments on a particular post". Additionally they enable a feature to list the highest rated post of the week and occasionally highlight "Bloggers of the Week" or best post of the week. The typical community has between 1,000 to 5,000 registered members.

While initially the model may seem logical it is not sustainable for several reasons. These include:

1. Moderation of post begins to get anti-social due to petty politics or favoritism
2. Unless a community has critical mass and grows exponentially on a regular basis, being replaced by brands is inevitable
3. Members are already distracted by invites and involvement in other larger more dominant communities.
4. Community aggregation by the Big is already underway segmented by topics, industry and geography
5. Participants will migrate to the big looking for increased exposure and brand affinity
6. The big will soon provide economic incentive for bloggers to participate, something the smaller communities can not afford.
7. Aggregation will soon move to industry sites or to existing major branded "news" brand that adopt the social practices and want to truly collaborate with the small. i.e. Look at Business Weeks Business Exchange
8. A few of the big brands will finally get it. In getting it they will adopt a more collaborative philosophy and create community models that truly engage the small and provide significant value to emerging markets driven by conversations.
9. The difference between social networks and social media is becoming blurred and subsequently which network you belong to will no longer be relevant rather which community is the preferred community for your profession or for your personal interest.
10. The "mesh" of the old media with the new will accelerate given the "wake up" call sent to the brands and the comprehension of "if you don't engage you'll loose".

Can Existing Communities Still Win?

If you moderate a large community centric to industry or topical matters and have active participation you do indeed have the chance to survive and thrive. The faster growing more vibrant communities will likely be sot out by the major brands aligning themselves with the opportunities created by all this social stuff.

The attraction will be driven by several factors including:

1. # of active participants
2. The community philosophy and quality of content
3. Growth rate of membership
4. Know experts or high profile bloggers whom are active and endorse the community
5. The quality of thinking and innovative approach to engaging community members
6. The systemic understanding of the emerging market of markets created by conversations

On the other hand if your community does not focus on the above six value attributes and then it isn't likely to survive. Attraction and traction comes from doing the right things and doing them right. Both are centric to being social and adding more value than is expected.

What say you?

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Will Your Community Survive?

How Much Evidence Do You Need?

Strategy: What Say You? with Jay Deragon

The mass of evidence builds. The old are now writing about the new. The new are writing about the old that get it. Then there are those writing about why businesses don't get it.

From the WSJ: One of the hot investments for businesses these days is online communities that help customers feel connected to a brand. But most of these efforts produce fancy Web sites that few people ever visit. The problem: Businesses are focusing on the value an online community can provide to themselves, not the community.

David Gammel hits the nail on the head in his post over on High Context Consulting on "Three reasons Branded Online Communities Fail."

• Focusing on the technology over the value of the community to its members;
• Failure to assign experienced staff to develop the community;
• Poor or no metrics for measuring success

The Wall Street Journal article quoted by David says, "Businesses say that their primary objectives are generating word-of-mouth marketing and increasing customer loyalty. Yet the metric that businesses use most often to measure success is the number of visits to the site. Moran points out that there isn’t much of a connection between what businesses want and what they’re measuring. Better metrics might be rankings in Google or the number of inbound links."

The Experience blog says: Social media tools are the building blocks for communities, but communities are more than the sum of their social media parts. If we look to real world communities as a metaphor for virtual ones, social media functions--forums, blogs, micro-blogs, ratings, profiles, friend lists, widgets, collaborative tools, and the like--are the buildings, roads, and utilities, but if no one moves in (or everyone leaves), there is no community. A site rife with Web 2.0 tools that go unused is like a ghost town--empty of life and uninviting to anyone who chances to wander in. As in the real world, a virtual community isn't characterized by its components but by its people.

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO said “One of the things to say,very clearly,is that social networks as a phenomenon are very real.If you are of a certain age,you sort of dismiss this as college kids or teenagers. But it is very real.”

The people wonder what is all the fuss about when fundamentally people have been discussing the human relations since the beginning of time.

Then people move into business roles and somehow think human relations take second seat to making money quick......this mentality has breed short term thinking, cost cutting, cover ups and poor quality products and services needing a defense which takes away energy from building relationships, value and pride in what one does and what a business offers.

Maybe all this social stuff is taking us back to the future when relations meant everything. The question is whether business leaders can transform their thinking and their organizations to be more relational. In other words, "How long will business pretend?" they are social rather than be real about relations.

What say you?

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How Much Evidence Do You Need?

Business 3.0: Enter the social web

Jay Deragon talks about "Revolutionary Changes for Business" in today's

A Relationship Economy With Whom and What...

Business 3.0: Enter the social web

The past business models have been consumed with the end target, economic gains. While applying technology, knowledge and management advances the past business models have left behind the most important element of any business success, relationships.

Business cultures have suppressed employee participation rather the cultures have created an environment which encourages following rather than leading with self expression. Businesses have proclaimed the importance of the customer while creating barriers to customer participation and responsive service. Under the pressure of competition businesses have reacted by the numbers, cutting budgets, while not clearly understanding the root cause of poor performance, poor relations.

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Business 3.0: Enter the social web

Social Web in 2008

What will 2008 Bring?

Author: Jay Deragon

There are many prognostications as to what changes are likely to appear within the social web in 2008.

We’ve reviewed over twenty different opinions from the blogosphere, from financial analysts and the self appointed technological gurus.

It is based on these reviews and our own opinions that we end this year with our own prognosis as to what we are likely to see and experience over the next twelve months.

Our predictions are centered around the rapidly changing dynamics of the social web and the themes that are driving its adoption. These themes include...

See what Jay has to say...

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Social Web in 2008

Why do so many people look for other people to connect with?

Jay Deragon asks...
Have you ever considered why so many people look for other people to connect with?

Think about it for a minute. Over 500 million people are profiled in social networks of one form or another and growing at over 30% a year. There are over 700 different social networks available for anyone to join, besides the closed networks that one has to be invited into to join, serving numerous interest and affinities. Besides social networks we have people search engines, online phone directories, reverse look up and the list of technology that enables us to find people is endless.

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Why do so many people look for other people to connect with?

Doing Business in the Relationship Economy

A 16-Week Blended Learning Experience in Social Networking and Social Media



You’ve heard about The Emergence of the Relationship Economy, and you may even see some indications that it is coming. The media has reported on a variety of indicators and the imminence of this paradigm shift in the way business is done in the networked world.

But are you and your organization positioned and prepared to engage it?

Link to Your World invites you to join with other business leaders in your quest for engaging The Relationship Economy. Our team has designed a thought-provoking, message-retaining program for you to experience and process several of the proven techniques that you will need as you stake your claim. Are you ready?
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Doing Business in the Relationship Economy

Understanding the Dynamics of Social Networks

As social networks grow users tend to “cluster” around affinity activities. topics and users. The cluster effect has historically been applied to urban agglomeration, as most kind of commercial establishments will tend to spontaneously group themselves by category

The cluster effect is similar to (but not the same as) the network effect. It is similar in the sense that the affinity preferences of both the medium and its participants are based on each ones perception of the other rather than the medium simply being the sum of all its participants actions as is usually the case. Thus, by being an effect greater than the sum of its causes, and as it occurs spontaneously, the cluster effect is a usually cited example of emergence.

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Understanding the Dynamics of Social Networks

Strategy: What Say You?

By Jay Deragon, Contributing Writer;

While adoption of entertainment and personal social networking apps have been very strong, business applications have yet to show much traction. Consider the stats: “Superwall” A Facebook App developed by RockYou!

• Concept 6/15/2007
• Design 6/15/2007
• Implementation 6/15/2007 to 6/17/2007
• Deployed 6/18/2007 (4:00 am)
• Advertising 6/18/2007
• 118,000 users 6/19/2007
• 2 million users within 3 weeks...
• Today: 14 million users, 1.2 active daily users.

However an application like Superwall is not considered a business application with utility. The Challenge of Business applications is influenced by several factors including:

Adoption is hard. Only 1 percent of all apps hit 1 million users Business comprehension of the virtual space is limited: Most view the space from an advertising perspective The Space is confusing to the average business executive Where, Why and How should the medium leveraged is unclear Perceptions of the medium are slanted: The word social implies friending, marketing, entertainment etc. A disconnect for business The virtual marketing is shifting quickly: By the week, day and hour. Businesses would rather wait until when and if the space settles down Another critical factor which further confuses the average business executive is one of understanding which networks provides their organizations with the greatest reach to market segments their organizations serve. Additionally the question of “What are people actually doing on social networks?” continues to be asked by many business managers. Nic Brisbourne, of the Equity Kicker addresses this issue in his latest newsletter. He writes: “Regular readers will know I have been pondering the question of what people are actually doing during the hours they spend on social networks each week. Let me paint a picture of what it is that people are spending their time doing, at least as I see it. This has come from reading blogs and research, talking to experts (including entrepreneurs and investors in this space) and looking at my own behavior and that of my friends. It is not definitive and will almost certainly include some of the sorts of generalizations that irritate me when I read them elsewhere.” “My first observation is that there is a flurry of initial activity when any user joins a new network. This covers exploring the site, building up the friends list and developing the profile page. This is pretty similar on all sites, and Danah Boyd describes it well in this essay.” “After the initial burst of activity the average user will settle down to a more consistent pattern of behavior. The average social networker is a member of 3-5 sites and they will split their time across the different properties managing their local network and doing what each site is best for.” “There is one common element to that across all sites - which is profile-hopping, a form of entertainment that could be characterized as gentle voyeurism. Beyond that I think things start to look a bit different depending on which network you are talking about.” “Facebook is mostly about communication - people spend most of their time sending status updates, private messages, writing on people’s walls, poking people and messaging groups to organize events. The photo sharing element shouldn’t be forgotten though.” “Myspace it seems is much more about the music - discovering, consuming and participating as a fan. That said there is a good deal of communication and self expression as well.” “Piczo could be thought of as the opposite to Facebook. The emphasis is squarely on self expression and communication is limited. New users are given a blank page on which to build their profile - no templates for guidance and infinitely more creative options than Facebook. In an effort to provide a safe environment communication is made difficult - there is no search function to find people. If you would like to chat with someone then you need to get their Piczo URL by some means other than Piczo itself - e.g. written on a piece of paper in the playground.” “LinkedIn is mostly about hiring and finding jobs. The dominant use case is working the network to look for a job or find people to hire.” “As a result of these differences (or maybe because of them) the demographic profile of these sites is very different. As these strategies develop these sites might start to become more and more different and therefore to compete less and less.” Given this type of commentary most business executives do not see the need to begin to formulate a strategy for participating within the social medium. Many ask obvious questions such as “What are the measurable benefits for the time, cost and effort to participate within these social mediums?, We don’t want our employees wasting time playing in social networks during business hours”. When the web was first introduced the reactions from business executives was much the same as the current reactions to the social web. How many businesses have a presence on the web? How many businesses use the web for strategic advantages? Is medium of social networks just an evolution of the web with new functions and features? Stepping away from current points of references to the social web and viewing the medium as the means to future opportunities may be a beneficial exercise for businesses. After all, by the time such an exercise could be concluded the social web will have changed substantially. To say the social web is dynamic is an understatement and business owners should make no assumptions about its current state. A virtual strategy will become the pressing need for businesses...as fast as you can click the mouse. What Say You?

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Strategy: What Say You?

Mapping Crowds and Data

from Jay Deragon's blog
Relationship Capital...

The prolific growth of social networks and related activities is creating a rich pool of data for business purposes. For example, Facebook’s Ad Marketing program, which shares news of users’ online purchases, is seen as revealing private information. The purpose of the Facebook ad marketing program is to bring on line advertising to the next level by providing rich targeted data about user preferences and affinities to products and services.

Reactions to the sharing of what is labeled “private information” has created a flurry of opinions within the blogosphere and mostly negative. However, most of what we as individuals do on the web has been mined for years and our “private information” has been exposed for a very long time.

Jay is also a contributing writer for The National Networker. Visit his page titled "What Say You?"

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Mapping Crowds and Data

Leveraging Business Connections

As we continue to study the evolution of the social web for business evidence is all around us. While previously indicating that much of what we had found indicates the early stages of adoption additional evidence is beginning to appear which indicate a much larger comprehension of the opportunities for the social web to add significant value to the “business of business”.One of the benefits of a networked world is that friends, associates and like minded individuals feed one thinking and perspectives with references from around the net. Michael Pokocky was kind enough to send us the reference below:

The December 07 Edition of Scientific America just published an article titled “The Semantic Web In Action: Corporate applications are well under way, and consumer uses are emerging” By Lee Feigenbaum, Ivan Herman, Tonya Hongsermeier, Eric Neumann and Susie Stephens

“Six years ago in this magazine, Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila unveiled a nascent vision of the Semantic Web: a highly interconnected network of data that could be easily accessed and understood by any desktop or handheld machine. They painted a future of intelligent software agents that would head out on the World Wide Web and automatically book flights and hotels for our trips, update our medical records and give us a single, customized answer to a particular question without our having to search for information or pore through results.”

Jay also is a contributing writer to The National Networker. You can visit his page "What Say You?".

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Leveraging Business Connections

Looking from the Outside In

from Jay Deragon's blog

As we examine the possibilities for business to leverage the medium of social networking we find numerous perspective that are limited to obvious silo opportunities.While there are certainly obvious benefits to use social networking for specific business functions the mediums functionality and feature capabilities have the potential to touch and enhance every business process and all relationships across all segments globally.

Businesses are just discovering the systemic nature of the medium and the media continues to drive home the message within business circles. Jennifer LeClaire of TechNewsWorld writes “The phenomenon of social networking for business purposes is a logical extension of personal networking. After all, businesses are merely people linked by common economic purpose, said Barry Kessel, managing director and chief client development officer at global marketing firm Wunderman.”

Jay also writes for The National Networker. You can see him in his "What Say You?" section.

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Looking from the Outside In

Factors of the Relationship Matrix

from the blog corpuz

Factors of the Relationship Matrix

We are entering into a subject matter that is wide and deep. In our initial research we found little reference to a Relationship Matrix in context to the emergence of a networked world other than references to the movie the matrix.

As such this subject matter covers a series of analysis in context to the emergence of the relationship economy. The new economy is being facilitated by convergence of technological mediums aimed at enabling transactions of economic value through relationships.

First the definition of Relationship defined as connection or association; the condition of being related. Second the definition of Matrix defined as something within or from which something else originates, develops, or takes form. And third the definition of Factors defined as elements which actively contribute to the production of a result.

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Factors of the Relationship Matrix

Irresistible Force Meets an Immovable Object

from Jay Deragon's blog
A Relationship Economy With Whom and What...


The subject matter of business uses of the social web and related technologies has been gaining ground throughout traditional as well as new media. As usual there are opposing viewpoints as the the potential impact of the medium on business processes, IT Infrastructures and traditional corporate models as well as sacred budgets for use of technology.

When we step back a little the landscape of opinion becomes clearer. What we’re observing, in all its noise, is the ancient paradox of what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. The irresistible force in this case is the explosive growth of the social networking medium and the never ending introduction of technological innovation and human creativity in adaptation.


You can also catch Jay Deragon's What Say You on TNNW.
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Irresistible Force Meets an Immovable Object

Fad or Revolutionary Change?

from Jay Deragon's blog A Relationship Economy….. With Whom & What

An interesting article appeared in MarketWatch this morning titled: Will the real Steve Ballmer please stand up? Commentary: Why Facebook was worth the bet.

The articles starts out : “On October 1st, in an interview with the London Times, Microsoft’s CEO declared social networking was a fad — the kind that appealed to younger people. He added, “There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years, that’s for sure.

You can also see Jay on

TNNW's "What Say You?"

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Fad or Revolutionary Change?