The same can’t be said for my daughters; between the photos, and videos, status updates and general Facebook timeline they will have an almost day-by-day story of their lives from birth through those early years – sure they won’t be able to remember the crying and the laughing that they added but somehow I think this digital memory will help them to ‘remember’.

How will this change their lives? How will this format their vision of family? Digital memory is changing our lives and I can’t help but wonder how it will change theirs.

I appreciate all the emails and questions about what happened to the blog. To be honest, there is just too much going on for me to keep writing at the moment:

1/ Move from Dubai to Paris
2/ Started a new job at Facebook, changing from agency life to a technology provider
3/ A second baby girl !

I do want to come back to this and will do my best in the coming months!

Best,
Lex

A real life example from this week, that shows how much further we really have to go: a group of friends are visiting New York City, where my wife and I both used to live (not together – which is relevant) and wanted a list of restaurants to eat at; really they want to know what to do, but this is a big list, and he is in the food business so the eating part is critical.

Now if you look at the choice process for an individual, the funnel today looks something like this:

• all the restaurants in NYC (& Brooklyn)
• all the restaurant aggregators, services, reviews and guides
• all the online restaurant services
• all the online services that allow you to book electronically (good when your english is limited)
• the actual restaurants that allow you to book electronically

So, the point is that it’s hard to make a choice, even with the tools available and then to act on it; so we tend to give up on this and just ‘ask a friend’. In this case, he asked us for a list (and even to book some of them – which is really a must in NYC). So here is where it’s interesting that my wife and I both lived in NYC at different times – we each have our own top 10 list of restaurants and there are only a few that seem to overlap. So just using a social approach by asking a couple of friends can either lead to another set of massive results or be very inconclusive.

This is where social by design comes in, if I could quickly access a service that combines all of my friends restaurants + ratings for a given city (Zagat.com isn’t Facebook enabled) then I’d save myself a lot of hassle; then add to this the facility to book and confirm reservations (much like OpenTable.com which isn’t Facebook enabled either) then I’d be a happy camper.

I’m not the first to raise this, and TripAdvisor.com has done a great job in the travel business (check out their site when logged in with Facebook) but the point is really that social by design is a must in today’s society of endless choice; drop down menus, categories, meta filters and even natural language analysis just don’t cut the mustard and only our friends can be a real source of trusted information (ref: Nielsen: Global Consumers’ Trust in ‘Earned’ Advertising Grows in Importance).

I’ve added the list (so far) below in case you’re hungry in NYC.

Disclaimer: I work for Facebook and social by design is my life!

Our selection of restaurants in New York City:

1/ Brunch

- Bubby’s Tribeca, (or Brooklyn) 120 Hudson Street, 10013 – owned by stars, a place to be seen

- Clinton Street Baking Company, 4 Clinton Street – great brunch but you need to get there early

2/ Lunch

- Stand (Burger), 24 East 12th Street, 10003 – one of my favourite burgers

- Chipotle (everywhere) , 350 5th Avenue @ 34th Street – this may be a fast food chain, but the best burritos in the world

- Shake Shack, Madison Square Park, 23rd Street & 5th Avenue – a classic even just for the experience

- Union Square Coffee Shop, 29 Union Square West, 10003 – a classic for a drink (or lunch/dinner)

- Fanelli’s Cafe, 94 Prince Street, 10012 – a bit of a tourist trap, but good food

- The Spotted Pig, 314 West 11th Street @ Greenwich St. – West Village style

3/ Dinner

- Peter Luger, 178 Broadway, Brooklyn – real steak in Brooklyn, pay in cash

- Buenos Aires NYC, , 513 East 6th Street (b/w Ave A and Ave B) – one of my favourites

- Novecento, 343 West Broadway, 10013 – another fashion hot spot for meat eaters

- La Esquina, 3 differents restaurants (1) Taco Stand (2) Cafe (3) Brasserie – even reserving is complicated here

- Rosa Mexicano, 9 East 18th Street (b/w 5th Ave & Broadway) – good mexican in the city

- Blue Smoke (Barbecue + Jazz) 116 East 27th Street (b/w Park Ave and Lexington), 10016 – I’m not a jazz fan but the BBQ is good

- Smith & Wollensky, 49th Street & Third Avenue – steak for the serious

- Spice Market, 403 West 13th Street, 10014 (Meat Packing District) – cool place in MPK

- Caracas Arepa Bar, 93 1/2 E. 7th St., New York, NY 10009 – a secret

- Nobu Next Door, 105 Hudson Street – not as pricey as its cousin next door

via Mindflash.

These are some of the same challenges the agencies have already been facing when we talk about integrating the ‘digital’ competence, but I feel that ‘social’ is going to have a broader and deeper reach into these organisations and will require more radical change.

Similarly I would recommend reading the follow up to Rei Inamoto’s (@ReiInamoto) article on “Why Ad Agencies Should Act More Like Tech Startups” – Madison Avenue’s Identity Crisis (and Why Silicon Valley Still needs to learn from the Ad Industry) on Fast Company Co Create as he talks about the same issues and how ad agencies need to learn from Silicon Valley, and vice versa, by bringing in the right people and also changing themselves at the same time.

Hat tip to @LeFreddie for the FastCo article.

One of the major changes in online marketing for 2012 will be the rise of content. A brand’s content strategy will be a key weapon in breaking through the clutter of ‘old school’ advertising, engaging with the consumer and delivering a brand message. But moving from advertising to content will mean major changes for marketers, both in terms of how they think about their strategy, and also how they deliver it with their agencies.

So what are the changes that the agency model needs to take on as we move to a content based approach?

1. Copywriters > Journalists

Copywriters spend most of their time coming up with conceptual ad ideas and short pithy headlines – this is very different from the job of a journalist who researches a topic and delivers a detailed (sometimes long) piece with quality content and factual sources. Copywriters are going to find that this is much more of a marathon than a 100m sprint, and may well put their writing skills to the test.

2. Ad message > Useful content

Similarly, as you move from headlines to content, it’s not enough to catch a consumer’s attention and give them a quick soundbite, now the content has to serve a purpose, we talk about utility of entertainment being the key drivers of value in content – the pressure will be on here. It won’t be enough to disrupt (in fact that might even be the wrong approach), we want to produce content that the consumer wants to read and watch.

3. Campaign approach > Always on

The campaign led approach has been dying for a while, particularly with the advent of social media, when we start to think of things from a content POV, agencies must realise that this is more akin to running a magazine than pushing a complex campaign out the door. When one piece of content is complete and polished, it will be time to move onto the next as it will surely be quicker for the consumer to consume than for the writer to produce!

4. Static > Distributed

The distribution model for content is also a complex one, it won’t be enough to create this content and throw it onto a website, the challenge with content delivery is how to take it to the audience through syndication, search and the social graph; so if you thought the job ended with a polished article or a funny video, you’ll be quickly mistaken – the content strategy challenge is just beginning.

This isn’t the case for 90+% of marketers today, and this is a problem. A small problem today as we rely only slightly on data to make marketing decisions, but a much bigger one tomorrow as marketing evolves, and very soon this will be the elephant in the room that marketers are tripping over themselves to avoid.

The last few years have seen excitement in the marketing world around digital, social, mobile and now with the combination of the three, the buzzword for 2012 is SoLoMo as we start to see real activation of these different elements coming together. But what this means for marketers is an ever increasing number of channels and options as to how they can deliver their message – it is no longer a simple divvy up of the marketing budget between TV and print, or online and offline; suddenly the exploding number of different channels means that managing a marketing budget needs some serious portfolio management skills.

Portfolio management means research, comparative variables, the relationships between channels and an understanding of the ROI of them; this is starting to sound more about numbers and statistics than the traditional approach of making the coolest idea come to life, regardless of the platform on which it resides. If we need to stop using our gut feeling and start being scientific about our approach, we need the skills to be able to understand, analyse and decide on the relative merits and performance of all our options.

Suddenly marketing is having a rude awakening to economic theory, as we look for hard data to give us effective ROI to be able to allocate resources. This is scary for traditional marketers and creative agencies as they still don’t know (or want to know) how to effectively measure the comparative returns on a TV spot versus a coupon promotion via SMS.

So this raises a couple of scary questions for the marketing world:

1. Where is the data and how can we harness it?
2. Who can actually understand and interpret it?
3. How do we apply this new way of thinking to our traditional approach?

The first answer to this is Big Data, building intelligent models that can connect the dots between the multiple marketing data sources we have today:

• Campaign activity and results from services like ExactTarget, data on impressions and clicks from media agencies and redemption of coupons
• Site centric activity and content consumption from WebTrends, SiteCatalyst (and even sometimes Google Analytics)
• Prospect and customer databases with demographic information, and sometimes even business results
• Social buzz, brand WOM and social media activity

The intersection between the social worlds and our existing data sets is where the knowledge and insights will explode; as we start to connect what we know about our prospects and customers with what they express their interests to be on the wider web, we’ll start to develop some real insights that can drive 1-2-1 communication and business in 2012.

The second question is all about skill set, as marketing comes of age, so do its people need to evolve. The application of economic principles need the right people – Who are they? Where are they? McKinsey says that every industry will need these people and there is going to be an ugly rush to bring them on board. To begin with we need people to manage, link and package the data, then we need those who can present it in a meaningful format and finally we need marketers who can tease out the knowledge that lies within it. Just this people challenge is going to be a tall order.

Finally, applying these techniques to existing marketing channels is the true leap of faith – being able to accept that suddenly our best sources of revenue (like TV production) could go out the window may make us need to rethink our advertising agency business model completely. Companies that are nimble and ready for this change – probably those staffed by the Flux Generation – will be best placed to adapt and move with the new marketing models.

Data is coming, big data is coming. We need to learn to understand it, learn to use it and learn to love it!

Links & sources:

McKinsey & Company – Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity

Quaero – Customer Data Management with “Big Data”

John Myers – Big Data Requires Better Decisions

ZDNet – How social media and big data will unleash what we know

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing is coming to life, and 2012 will see an understanding an explosion of content strategies for brands, beyond simple blogs they will start to leverage the value in owned media by creating real content for customers to engage with. More than just advertising messages this will be content that brings a brand into a consumers life and makes a difference. Content will be channel neutral and heavily driven by video as barriers to production are now almost nil.

2. Social Design

Coined by our colleagues at Facebook, the integration of social components in almost everything we do will become prevalent in 2012. Whether it is a marketing conversation, a product launch or the way we cook food at home for our kids – everything will be amplified through the social graph.

3. Mobile (& Tablets)

The desktop will loose out as the de facto connection to the web, and this means additional functionality in terms of location/mobility but also different screen real estate for web marketers to work with, and different types of engagement as users are on the move.

4. Big Data & Analytics

Finally, 2012 will see the coming of age of data and analytics in the marketing world – adding more science to the art of communication and forcing marketers to look at ROI. Check out my post on ‘Learning to love big data‘.

This reminds me very much of some of the internal rules at The Richards Group (an advertising agency in Dallas, TX) where I began my career. Here, Stan Richards the owner and founder put down his methods in a book – The Peaceable Kingdom – and beyond the rules against internal emails, employees were also driven to use the stairs (since we don’t talk in the lifts) and to this end he had an enormous stairwell cut into the building, here he would hold his famous ‘stairwell meetings’ where the whole agency could get together and both see and hear him. There were no doors in the agency and very strict controls on the presentation of materials that went out to clients – I distinctly remember one early meeting with Stan looking at a website and he wanted to know why the html text didn’t have proper kerning…

Crazy controls aside, there is in my opinion far too much time wasted on email but worse than that there is a feeling among the younger generation that their job revolves around their Outlook inbox or their Blackberry – at the end of the day if we think our added value comes through email, then we we become postmen (and women) rather than thinking human beings. I wrote a while back about the dying art of the account exec and I think this is the core of the problem in that the real professionalism has been lost in our business.

Maybe if we can’t send emails then this will put some pressure on employees to start thinking again, or maybe they’ll simply be chatting about what they did last night!