iCitizen Wrapup from Columbus

iCitizen Video from Mark Hillman on Vimeo.

Day 2 of iCitizen kicked off with a slightly homespun look at what exactly we've gotten ourselves into here!? Check out Mark's video of an apparent 'conference crasher' trying to take it all in above.

Casual chats with hosts of the social media cafe (featuring lattes and laptops loaded with dummy accounts and personal tours of all the hottest social apps) reminded us just how new all this really is: Digital-savvy marketers had been sneaking out mid-presentation during Day 1 to ask just what the presenters and audience were talking about. What is Twitter? Lemonade? Kaboodle? And, importantly, can I check my email before I go back in??

Over in the blogger bailiwick*, Holly, Karen, David and I were doing about what you'd expect: taking ourselves too seriously, engaging in a little snark, and representing real iCitizens amongst all the talk about people like us...

See pics from iCitizen
Read Karen's live blog
See the Twitter stream

(*gross misuse of a word for the sake of alliteration)

Onto coverage of today's presenters:

Doc Searls—Harvard Fellow at the Berkman Center, Coauthor, The Cluetrain Manifesto

Jump back 5 years. If around that time, someone had started talking about carrying all your music, pictures, and movies on a device that both fit in your pocket and worked as a cell phone, limited-use computer and general personal planner.... well, that person would probably have received a similar response to what Doc Searls got at iCitizen today: sounds intriguing, but what, what?

Doc talked about "vendor relationship manangement." It's what's needed when the "attention economy" makes a decision to act or buy and - thus - becomes the "intention economy." And, has something to do with using your data & personal and logical preferences to define rather than accommodate how you'll buy / share your information / relate to the companies you do business with. Everything from owning your own healthcare data to setting your own privacy expectations to pre-defining how much you'll pay for the exact thing that you really want.

I mentioned the response to a theoretical iPhone 5 years ago because what hangs in the balance for Doc's theory is what "thing" will make his idea concrete and easy vs. wildly theoretical and seeming like a massive-new-responsibility-and-time-investment-this-convenience-girl- wants-nothing-in-the-world-to-do-with.

Check out Andrea's coverage for more background.

Twittering:

• Doc calls Web "the Net." Love the anachronisms when digital adopters talk 'what's coming'


• Doc talks about approach - "we list all the things we think are true that no one's talking about" So us.


• Key driver of open source, not just anyone can create and use, but anyone can IMPROVE IT.


• Attention economy has evolved to intention economy on the live Web ... what you get when a customers mind is made up.


• Attention economy until point of decision then intention economy. Using car rental as example of industry without intention.


• What could car rental do if it knew customer intention. If it stopped "trap and hold" tactics like "car you want or similar"


• Want to express logical and personal preferences, like no ads when calling tech support or will pay for faster service


• Doc's point seems to be: smartest people about the right experience are your customers, not your employees or competitiros.


• Doc pokes at a big box retailer for saying they want to "own the customer." Another term for owning humans? Slavery. Why do we talk that way? Because we're too busy talking to ourselves and not our customers.


• Doc must be part of RenGen. So far referenced Rousseau, Whitman, Marx ... waiting for the test at this point


• Doc unfinished biz of Cluetrain is Vendor Relationship Mgt - control by customers who are in free markets & engaging with vendors


• VRM is not necessarily social because social makes assumption we have power in numbers. We have power as individuals, not from vendors who want to leverage our mass.


• In identity world, cards /prices/ rels not issued to you. You issue your own card / intention / "RFP" http://snurl.com/29x75


• Doc's VRM sounds way hard. I don't want to manage my relationship with Target or write a RFP for a blender. I don't have an acquisition dept.


• In simplest form, Doc's ideas seem like convenience of Canada's Airmiles. www.airmiles.ca - all data in one place for one purpose / reward


• Bigger than that Doc's approach seems so high engagement and limited in audience ... but says something will come along to make it simple


• Kind of scares me that I can't get on board with this. Newest ideas coming from oldest guy in room. 30-somethings snarking.

Doc is joined by a panel talking about personal data portability:

Rooley Eliezerov—President and Cofounder, Gigya
Bill Washburn—Executive Director, Open ID
Kelly O'Neill—Commerce Product Marketing Director, ATG

Twittering:

• Aside: Can I say how impressed I am by how many women are speaking at iCitizen? Largely due to Resource's leaders, but clients, too


• Reality check from   Kelly: It's important to understand your purchase process and how much engagement / consideration / relationship it will support


• Bill: OpenID is a movement that comes out of the idea that there's far too much pain around user name / password pairs.


• Bill: OpenID can also potentially insure that you're not a machine / spam, creates access


• Bill: Bigger issue than people who don't have access to the Internet is people who choose not to access. They think of it as just a big arcade. We need to build trust.


• Doc: Any attempt to regulate things we don't understand is dangerous


• Cool Deborah Schultz just showed up with a powerstrip and a laptop. Love the community power share.

Panel: Have Phone, Will Travel Panel
John Harrobin—SVP of Marketing and Digital Media, Verizon
Will Hodgman—CEO, M:Metrics
Riccardo Spina—Senior Director of Digital Media, Integrated Marketing, Wal-Mart

After the fact, I noticed that there had been no discussion of proximity SMS marketing among this group... would have been interesting to talk about that sort of push / experience content in terms of iCitizen engagement.

Twittering:

• John launched cellfire. Waiting for that channel to get big. But, might not work wth expectations retail has for coupons (they assume medium impressions, low redemption ... what happens to the bottom line when coupons get convenient?)


• Wal-Mart guy is unexpectedly chic. Great lime-rimmed glasses and matching polo. Stripey socks? Of course. (Direct tweet revealed: he's a former Resource creative director ... no wonder the on-brand gear)


• Will says used to buy "FSIs and yidda-yadda, hooda-hooda." Reeeeeally?


• Riccardo talking about Wal-Mart secret item holiday event. Tested before, on, after Black Friday. Clues via text.


• Riccardo: Mobile initiative ran under radar until WSJ picked it up then a little top-down panic about what did we do?


• Riccardo: People find what they need


• John: Think about text messaging. You only have 160 characters. Have to triple tap to get a letter. And you have to pay for it. If you were to put that through any market research industry, they would say that would never succeed. Today our customers exchange 150 billion messages a year. People tried it and we made it addictive.

Listening to Riccardo reminds me to get back to the argument that, for retailers, you don't have to wait to adopt technology until it's ubiquitous. Tools (like RSS, text) don't have to be for EVERYONE. Rather, they cost-effectively reach people already using them and build relevancy and personalization.

Avinash Kaushik—Analytics Evangelist, Google

Avinash talked about metrics beyond / before the purchase. Calls them "microconversions" - all those valuable behaviors consumers exhibit - and that we should support and track - that aren't buying.

He's one of those presenters who makes everyone giggle and poke their neighbor and generally remember the clever phrasings as much as the content. So, if this Twittering isn't as meaty, don't count it against the presenter, attribute it to my general tendency toward shiny object syndrome.

Twittering:

• Avinash calls online marketing faith-based behavior. Because we have all this data, but don’t understand the ‘whys’


• Google analytics uses indexes and visual intelligence ... clarity without "thinking"


• Online buying isn't "one night stand" - takes 3, 4, more visits to make a purchase


• Just takes fundemental Qs to uncover insights
  • Why are you here
  
  
  • Were you able to complete task you came here to do
  
  
  • If not, why not?


• Example: a pharma site had 90% bounce rate. The call to action and content was perfectly aimed at "buy." But the actual reason people visited was research: where is the product made, how much does it cost, etc. They bounced because they couldn't find what they wanted


• Most decisions made by HIPPOs – highest paid person's opinion. Furthest removed from customer


• All the tools I showed you today are free. The insignts have to come from you.


• Personalization is identifying insights and needs among microsegments

Last panel: Who Keeps Moving the Goalpost? Identifying relevant metrics...
Dr. Robert Leone—Professor, Texas Christian University
Pete Blackshaw—CMO, Nielsen Online
Steve Kahn—VP of Internet Marketing, DSW
Paul Horstmeier—VP of HP.com, Hewlett-Packard

Twittering:

• Paul: I've seen metrics so abused by marketers; I think we do ourselves a huge disservice


• Surprised to hear from retailers that there are people in their organizations who should want online metrics, but don't. Isn't retail addicted to numbers of just about any kind?


• Paul: Challenge is metrics to analytics to consulting. Translate it to something stakeholders would care about. Relevance.


• Dr Bob: Social media is silver bullet. Something in all the metrics talk made me miss what we're shooting...


• Dr Bob: Every media writer has a cheat sheet of bloggers they use to inform coverage. Creates echoing effect. How do all connect?

To wrapup:

Thank you to Holly, Nancy, Kelly and the whole Resource crew for doing / showing (not just telling) by including real iCitizens in the conference. For me, it was a great opportunity to be in a room with savvy marketers from truly ubiquitous consumer brands who get that this "social media" phenom has reached critical mass and is an essential part of reputation management and marketing (not just the stuff of "geeks".)

Oh, and can I say - AWESOME how many people read and recognize Advergirl. Who knew everyone from the team at Resource to an exec at Coke would haunt these pages? Love that!

Finally, in closing, I can only say one thing: let's all please come together and find examples of iCitizen impact BEYOND JEFF JARVIS! David Griner got Jarvis Bingo today when he was the first to hear the FOURTH speaker lean on the Dell Hell story.

Advergirl out.

Comments

[Tom O'Brien]

Thanks for the wrapup - good stuff. My iCitizen wrapup is here:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/5fofys

TO'B

[Doc Searls]

Thanks for such a good report, and for paying such close attention. Nice critique as well. As I say here...

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/2008/05/23/vrm-linkli

... we have to make VRM something that makes life easier, not harder. In fact, it must make life so much easier that we have no choice about using it. That's why I said it had to be "an invention that mothers necessity". Tall order. Help is welcome, too.

[Doc Searls]

Thanks for such a good report, and for paying such close attention. Nice critique as well. As I say here...

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/2008/05/23/vrm-linkli

... we have to make VRM something that makes life easier, not harder. In fact, it must make life so much easier that we have no choice about using it. That's why I said it had to be "an invention that mothers necessity". Tall order. Help is welcome, too.

[Nancy Kramer]

Thanks for such a fabulous compilation of the 1.5 days. Reading the post makes me tired all over again. So glad you could join us.
/nk

[Nancy Kramer]

Thanks for such a fabulous compilation of the 1.5 days. Reading the post makes me tired all over again. So glad you could join us.
/nk

[Patricia Martin]

Avergirl-
Whew! What comprehensive coverage! I lapped it up. I am honored that you think Doc has RenGen tendencies!
Patricia Martin

[Andrea Hill]

I miss airmiles!! (I grew up in the great white north). We have so many fragmented rewards programs here they basically become useless. Airmiles was the definitive program there, and had legitimate value for the consumer.

Great wrap-up, thanks so much for pulling this all together!