The iPad app shows an exact copy of the newspaper

I recently installed the De Standaard iPad app (De Standaard is a Belgian quality newspaper). I was disappointed the iPad app showed the exact image of their printed newspaper with some navigation elements. But – apart from a number of navigation issues – it turned out to be a pretty good reading experience. The reason? Page layout! Page layout gives structure to page, it shows the relationship between articles and their relative importance. This helps users to navigate and to scan pages or the whole paper. In news sites there is little hierarchy or relationship between articles. Clicking on a certain headline may lead to a 5-line gossip story or a 3 page interview. You couldn’t tell until you click.

If rich the page layouts of newspapers and magazines are so important for the reading experience, why don’t we use them for websites, instead of the current restrictive templates? Well, our Content Management Systems (CMSs) are not up to that task. The philosophy behind CMSs is that content and layout should be strictly separated. For a good reasons: if content and layout are mixed up, the content cannot be reused in another format. Therefore the content is stored in a database and when a user opens a page in his web browser, the content is poured into a fixed lay-out, called a template. If a user wants to open the same page on a mobile device, the content stays the same but it is poured into a different template to accomodate to the different screen size and the capabilities of the device. To create a rich lay-out, you could create a different template for each page, but the creation of templates is hell. Most templates require meticulous manual editing to be compatible with all current browser versions. On top of that I doubt that many web designers who have been focussing on navigation and usability for years are able to step out of the template paradigm. So readers end up with the lowest common denominator: a template that works for any piece of content in any browser version.

In the past we hardly noticed the need for rich and sophisticated layouts, because we were still impressed with the advantages of digital media: we could save, bookmark, search, share and have it anywhere at anytime. But now readers see how magazine and newspaper publishers are offering superior reading experiences on the iPad. The noble craft of lay-out is being reinvented for screens. Very soon readers may demand the same reading experience from websites.

CMS developers, graphic software manufacturers and graphic designers, you might want to talk. Your end-users are getting bored with the uniform and crude web templates.

I spend my first week sailing in the Netherlands. In the marina of Yerseke I found a KPN hotspot. I got myself a 24,95€ subscription for a week. But the quality was terrible: the connection was slow and I had to stay outside to keep my connection alive – which isn’t very pleasant when it is raining. I don’t mind paying for stuff, but then it has got to work in a reasonable way.

The second week of my vacation I was in the south of France. There I discovered FON. Fon claims to be the world’s largest WiFi community. The idea is that all Fon members – called Foneros – create a public hotspot with their Fon Wifi router. Other Fon members can access the Fon hotspots for free, while non-members can buy passes for as little as 3 € per day. I like the idea of individuals sharing their WiFi connection in an organized way, but as the quality of service depends on the proximity to the router, there is no guaranteed service level. And again I had to hang out of the 2nd floor window to keep my connection up.
Fon is a great idea, but it requires a massive amount of users.

This experience got me a little worried. I’ve made myself dependent on internet services to do basically anything, but we’re still far from global reliable internet access. And wasn’t really planning to stay at home to have access.

The most interesting speech I heared today was about the Consumer Commerce Barometer. This is a global research project of IAB Europe, TNS Infratest and Google to quantify the role of online in the consumer journey from research to purchase.
The result of this research is the website http://www.consumerbarometer.eu/ which features a searchable database with data from 27 countries, over 30 verticals, over 40 questions about the purchase cycle, gender and age groups. I haven’t played with it yet, but at first sight this is a very valuable source of information on consumer behavior.

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Changes in media consumption require changes in content creation and publishing

Many advertisers and even agencies still rely on campaign bursts: buying a big share of voice for a limited period of time. But in digital communication there is so much competition for attention that an advertiser cannot just buy attention alone. An advertiser must deserve attention. This can be achieved by offering valuable and relevant content to the audience and by deploying it on the right touch points (channels). This doesn’t work in bursts, it is a continuous exercise in gathering content, turning it into relevant stories, adapting the format to the touchpoint in mind, publishing it and maintaining the conversation.

An excellent example of content marketing is the Dutch retail chain Albert Heijn. They publish high quality content on food, wine, household tips and utilities such as shopping aids on paper, web, mobile and social platforms. Another classical example in the FMCG market is Starbucks. Starbucks publishes a lot of content and stories about social responsibility on the web and social media. Content marketing also exists in the B2B market. McKinsey Quarterly for example is an on- and offline business magazine of McKinsey & Company.

Albert Heijn's publishes content on all sorts of digital platforms

Content marketing governance

Many companies realize that they need to think in terms of continuous content creation and publishing, but don’t know how to set up their organization structure and processes (content marketing governance) to accommodate for this change. Little research has been done in this field and Duval Guillaume Modem started with explorative research on this subject.

Our research focussed on a number of aspects related to content marketing governance:

• Hivemindedness: the degree to which content creation and publishing is an individual business as opposed to a company wide effort
• Organization structure: who coordinates the process, ranging from complete freedom to complete control or somewhere in between
• Barriers to content marketing
• The role of the advertising agency

Hivemindedness

Hivemindedness is the degree to which content creation and publishing is an individual business as opposed to a company wide effort. We asked the companies in our survey to rate their hivemindedness:

• Minimal: Mostly an individual initiative with minimal investment and little interest from within the organization.
• Slight: Few people involved with very small investment. Not really a lot of interest from within the company.
• Moderate: Several people involved and reasonable investment. There is some interest from within the company.
• Considerable: A lot of people involved combined with considerable investment. There is a high level of interest within the company.

The results show that there is at least awareness by a small number of people within the organizations. In 40% of the responding companies there is a moderate to considerable degree of hivemindedness.

Organization structure

We asked the companies in our survey to choose between 4 organization models.

• Tire: Complete freedom. Each department, group or individual within the company can create and publish their own content. Channels can also be chosen freely.
• Tower: Complete control. 1 person or team is responsible for online communication. Other departments, groups or individuals are not allowed to publish online content.
• Hub and spoke geared to internal efficiency: Various departments, groups and/or individuals can create and publish their own online content and select the appropriate channels. However, before being published online the content has to pass through one or more central hubs. The hub has both a controlling and a facilitating function. This system is optimized for maximum efficiency in internal operations.
• Hub and spoke geared to external realities: The organization structure is the same a the model above, but the process is slightly different. This system is geared to external realities, that means that the process is adapted depending on the external stakeholders involved. For example different departments or specialists may be involved depending on the content or the target audience.

The blue bars indicate the current organization model while the red bars indicate the desired model. Having an idealistic view on the internet as being a self-regulating haven for freedom of speech, my initial thought was that companies would evolve from towers (complete control) to tires (complete freedom) but the results show that the most immature companies are actually tires and that the most mature companies deploy a hub and spokes model geared to their stakeholders.
This is not only reflected in the fact that 60% of the respondents would like to move towards a hub and spokes model, we also found evidence in the barriers (next paragraph) and in how companies who act as references in content marketing are organized (such as Starbucks, Toyota, Dell): people throughout the organization are stimulated to create content and a small team of content/conversation managers will publish it and respond to reactions.

Barriers

We asked the companies in our survey which of two barriers they faced:

• Fear of losing control over publications issued by various departments
• Lack of understanding and/or interest from top management

We mapped the results on the organization models and found out that the tires (complete freedom) were having the most fear and the hub and spokes the least. The fact that the hub and spokes model is able to deal with its barriers better shows that this model is more mature than the others.

The role of the agency

Finally we asked the companies what tasks they want to give to their advertising agency in the content marketing process.

The respondents were less likely to source content production to their agency. The majority would rather use their agency as a monitoring body for content published by the company and user generated content and even more as a consultant for designing the content management structure, selecting the appropriate channels and selecting the appropriate content.

These results support the vision of Duval Guillaume Modem that digital agencies are evolving from web builders over content producers to creators of platforms that create value in the long term. The agency’s role is to create and deploy content marketing platforms and to hand them over to clients after the start-up stage. While content creation and publishing is performed by the advertiser, the agency’s role is to monitor, measure and improve the platform on a continuous basis.

Summary

• Changing behavior in media consumption requires brands to sell content rather than products or services. Advertisers must become publishers.
• Know why: advertisers must offer valuable and relevant content
• Know how: advertisers must choose the right channels, the right format, the right frequency
• To support this, advertisers need content marketing governance. The most mature organizations have:
  • Involvement from the top to stress the importance and supply the necessary resources
  • Involvement from the bottom to generate content
  • Supporting organization structure: hub and spokes model
  • Supporting processes to engage with the audience: publish + listen

It’s been a while since I got excited about a piece of technology. I used to get excited anytime I would unpack a new computer, I’d be configuring the thing and installing software all night. The last time I did that was a couple years ago when I installed Ubuntu on a laptop. After that I would ask other people to install my new computers.

Yesterday I got to borrow an iPad for a couple of hours. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but  after a few strokes I felt like a child with a new toy. I tried all the applications, played games, messed with the settings, I went through the office to show off to everyone. I let a number of female colleagues play with it – the iPad that is – and they felt from charmed to excited. You can tell when a new technology  will be successful by having women test it. Geeks will love any new technology, but if women like it, you’re good.

All of Duval Guillaume (my employer) is skiing this weekend in Les Menuires – France, so I have better thing to do than writing. But I see my colleagues posting all sorts of videos and I thought this video is appropriate.

YouTube Contest Challenges Users To Make A ‘Good’ Video

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This week’s conversations where dominated by the iPad, tablets and other e-readers. This week Apple’s iPad became available for pre-order. According to some sources 90.000 units were pre-ordered in a couple of hours. The iPad seems to answer a consumer need. A number of manufactureres are launching similar devices or upgrading their existent ones: Amazon’s Kindle is getting a better browser, HP will be launching it’s Slate soon (contrary to the iPad, the Slate will support Adobe Flash). Barnes & Nobles is not taking sides. Its strategy is to provide books anywhere, anytime. besides it’s own Nook e-reader, the company is developing an iPad application. CrunchGear has a nice overview of the current state of tablet-like devices. All the iPad commotion has sparked the creativity of Dorito’s ad agency. Watch the iPad parody video below.

Another hot topic is location based services. FourSquare and Gowalla are the two hottest location based social networks at this moment. Here is a nice side-by-side comparison of the two services. Under pressure of these newcomers FaceBook and Twitter are updating their feature list. FaceBook is about to launch a new tool to share your location. Twitter is enabling geolocated tweets. The new feature allows you to see where tweets are coming from on Google Maps.
You may ask why location matters so much. TheNextWeb made an overview of location based revenue models.

And last but not least Google is about to leave China over censorship issues. The company will close its search engine, but not the rest of its operations.

Videos

Links

http://mashable.com/2010/03/12/ipad-preorder-numbers/

http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/03/amazon-is-building-a-better-browser-for-kindle/

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/hp-slate-strikes-at-the-ipad/

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/03/12/e-book-readers-will-secondary-features-win-consumers-hearts-or-leave-them-cold/

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/

http://mashable.com/2010/03/11/barnes-and-noble-ipad/

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/14/foursquare-gowalla-location-war/

http://thenextweb.com/location/2010/03/10/tips-trips-side-side-comparison-gowalla-foursquare-updates/

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/03/09/location-sharing-coming-facebook-month-big/

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/03/11/twitter-turns-tweet-location-mapping-tweets-twittercom/

http://thenextweb.com/location/2010/03/08/revenue-models-location/

http://mashable.com/2010/03/13/google-china-decision/

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Youtube launched a new service: auto-caption for videos. It uses speech recognition to transcribe videos. A translation service translates the subtitles. Watch the video below and be amazed. Our kids will laugh at us for all the efforts we’ve put into learning foreign languages.

Apple is cleaning up the iPhone’s app store. After banning apps containing sexual content (bikinis are considered as sexual content by Apple), Apple has now removed a number of apps that scan WIFI networks. Apple is being criticized because they remove the apps without any notice to the developers.

Adobe’s Flash Player is under fire too. Apple doesn’t implement Adobe’s Flash player on the iPhone and the iPad. This has lead Virgin Airlines not to use Flash on its website.
For as long as I remember, Flash has been the most popular (and often only decent) way to get rich media and video in your browser. HTML5 is supposed to provide rich media features, but the standard isn’t finished yet and not all browsers support it fully. Internet Explorer 8 doesn’t support the rich media features. And since IE8 is still very popular, we’re not ditching Flash yet. But it seems IE9 will have strong support for HTML5.
I’m very curious about where this goes, but we recently compared Flash and HTML5 and the main problems for HTML5 are the lack of support by all popular browsers and performance. We’re not burying Flash yet.

Comedian Conan O’ Brian has started using twitter. He has only posted 12 tweets and has more than 500.000 followers already. Check his page for stuff like this:

This is only my 5th tweet and I’m already exhausted. My God, how does Ashton do it?

Videos

Links

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRS8MkLhQmM

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/22/itunes-promotes-sports-illustrated-sexy-swimsuit-app/

http://mashable.com/2010/03/05/wi-fi-stumblers-app-store

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/04/tonchidot-sekai/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/02/virgin_america_html_flash/

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/03/04/internet-explorer-9-html5-compatible-microsoft-joining-antiflash-movement/

http://twitter.com/ConanOBrien/

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On March 1st, Google will stop its support for Internet Explorer 6, followed by Youtube on March 13th. I know a lot of developers who are desperately waiting for the end of the browser from hell. IE6 is hated by developers because it takes all kinds of CSS and scripting hacks to make it work. People who can’t wait for its death, can already bury IE6 at http://ie6funeral.com/

And finally a not so remarkable evolution. At the Dutch interactive Spin Awards a huge shift in popular categories has happened according to a post on dutchcowboys.nl. The old time popular “Best website” is passed by “Best online campaign”, “Best content” and “Best use of media”. This shows that websites are becoming less important in the digital ecosystem. According to this interesting post by Paul Gillin, we are evolving to a site-less web, where information no longer needs a homepage to reach an audience.

Links

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/26/microsoft-google-antitrust/

http://thenextweb.com/eu/2010/02/24/eu-probe-google-complaints-internet-companies/

http://thenextweb.com/eu/2010/02/24/google-executives-convicted-italy-handicapped-teenager-video-google-furious/

http://ie6funeral.com/

http://www.spinawards.nl/

http://www.dutchcowboys.nl/events/19087

http://gillin.com/blog/2010/02/welcome-to-the-site-less-web/

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I believe there are ways to create a win-win situation for the brand and the distribution. Brands can sell direct to customers online, but instead of direct shipping, customers pick up their goods at one of the brand’s retailers. The consumer gets the convenience of online shopping and the service and personal contact of a retailer. The brand can deploy an online sales and CRM platform, the retailer can still offer his added value and contribute to the customer loyalty.
This will not work for any type of goods, but for small furniture, consumer electronics, equipment, etc. it would.

About a year ago I bought a new car. I wanted to buy it online, but found out that I couldn’t. I knew the make, the model, the color, the options, the interior and last but not least the wheel caps, I wanted. So why would I go to a showroom? For a test drive? Maybe. To make my choice? No, in a showroom they will not have the exact configuration that I would want and every brand has an online car configurator. To negotiate? No, online platforms have proven to be a much more effective marketplace.

Is their a market for online new car sales? A 2008 Dutch study by Opel, shows that 26% of women would buy a car online. They would rather not go to a dealer because they don’t like to negotiate and they don’t like car salesmen. (read about the study, in Dutch)

So apparently there is a need, but brands don’t seem to respond to it. I did a quick check on the official sites of many popular car brands in Belgium (Alfa Romeo, Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Citroën, Dacia, Daihatsu, Fiat, Ford, Honda, Kia, Land Rover, Lexus, Mazda, Mercedes, Mitsubishi, Opel, Peugeot, Renault, Saab, Skoda, Smart, Subaru, Suzuki, Toyota, Volkswagen, Volvo). None offer online sales. Only brands from the Volkswagen group (VW, Audi, Skoda) have an e-shop for accessories. All brands have a car configurator and some brands will let you request a quote at a dealer of your choice.

Why not add a next step and let the market do its job by comparing quotes from the dealers. And why not add a next step to that and let consumers order online? I guess because price transparency lowers prices. Anyway, the graph below shows how this could work.