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July 24, 2008
BANANA and Other Little Known Truths: The Fortune Brainstorm on Technology
I am returning from the Fortune Brainstorm on Technology at Half Moon Bay, California. The general mood was upbeat, with large and small companies reporting good customer demand and ambitious new product pipelines. The technology sector is now playing in so many more sectors, from energy and environment to health (nanotechnology) to Web 2.0 applications to consumer products; it does not rely on the success of enterprise computing.
Here are a few of the most interesting observations from speakers:
1) BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) has replaced NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard)-Howard Morgan, IdeaLab, described local opposition to wind mills, solar mirrors and other alternative energy sources.
2) Locate new global R&D centers near great universities- Sean Maloney, INTEL. You cannot count any longer on immigration of skilled talent to the West. You do better by having a R&D projects focused in one lab than trying to collaborate across borders.
3) Cyber-genic Presidency-Paul Saffo, the futurist, predicts that Obama would offer a wholly different sort of consultation with his constituents via the Web.
4) Cross Platform Marketing-Robert Scoble, Fast Company-When Scoble posts, he also Twitters about his subject and posts on FriendFeed. No wonder, given that 16,000 people follow him on FriendFeed and 30,000 on Twitter. While Scoble is interviewing an executive, he is even getting questions on Twitter from his readers for the interview so that he is listening in a unique manner. Verizon runs ads on Facebook to drive users to its Facebook page, replacing the bizarre ritual of brands asking teens to be their friends.
5) Clients Fear Uncontrolled Editorial Environment-Andrew McLean, MediaEdge-There will be addressable audiences for television. There will be engagement collaboration, not interruptive marketing.
6) It Is All About Creative- Dave Poltrack, CBS-The rate of fast forwarding on DVRs is four times higher on poor advertisements than for engaging ones. The line will blur between content and ads, which we’re seeing with the introduction of product placements in newscasts.
7) Visual Networking—Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco--Communications, computing, content are merging. Video will no longer be passive. Good example is tele-presence, a new generation of virtual meeting service.
8) Technology Accounts for 2% of Carbon Footprint-Jonathan Schwartz, SUN-PCs/printers are the largest part at 50% of total, followed by telecom at 33% and data centers the balance (note this is fastest growing segment, given cooling needs).
9) Separation of Church and State-Cheryl Sandberg, Facebook-She suggested separating your work/volunteer and personal friends lists. Both are valid but should not overlap.
10) Hunker Down for Seven Years—Andrew Braccia of Accel Partners-He said that his companies, shut out of the IPO market for now, are not green-lighting projects over $80 million. The entrepreneurs are reconciled to a longer time frame for monetization.
11) Users Demand Aggregation-Peter Chernin, FOX-He said that his network decided to pair up with NBC to launch HULU because consumers wanted more content in a single place. He noted that traditional media has a long life as long as individual brands have #1 market position.
12) Structured and Unstructured Influencers-Mike Mendenhall, CMO, HP (disclosure: an Edelman client)-It is no longer sufficient to place stories and buy ads in mainstream media. You need to reach out to the passionate consumers, employees and other stakeholders with views that add substance and texture to the conversation. As my friend Paul Bergevin of Intel said, there is a continuum from control to credibility; advertising is the controlled message, PR and social media provide the credibility.
Living in New York City, surrounded by the doom and gloom of the financial services industry, it was a welcome tonic to go the Left Coast, where all things seem possible and even likely. The PR business will play an even more important role in earning tech companies the license to operate as the new product stream moves to confront the most pressing challenges of our society. The jobs of PR tech companies must morph from product publicity to policy development and third party advocacy, as new ground rules are created by government. I would appreciate your views as always.
Posted by Edelman at July 24, 2008 1:02 PM |
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Comments
I was unable to attend the conference myself due to a recent client visit, but am intrigued by the constant emphasis on the evolution of tech products. As the head of a market research team for a consulting and polling firm, I can attest specifically to vast changes in public attitudes towards new products in technology. Certainly as these attitudes and perceptions change, so must the PR strategies that govern these product lines.
Cheers.
Posted by: Jeffrey Klonoski at July 24, 2008 5:13 PM
Was a pleasure meeting you at the show Richard. I agree with your view on technology PR moving away from product publicity towards policy and moving corporate agendas.
Companies like Facebook, Google and Dell don’t need help building publicity for new products (any announcement they make will be greatly publicized).
However, today's global landscape, where brand interaction occurs 24 hours a day, creates new opportunities for PR agencies to assist companies like these in building digital and physical communities of key stakeholders in support of specific campaign goals and issues.
That’s where we can really assist in truly defining each company’s moral purpose and corporate mission.
Posted by: Kyle Austin at July 26, 2008 11:35 AM
Thanks for the Cisco mention! :-) I need to correct the title of number seven though, Vision Networking is actually Visual Networking. I have included a few hyperlinks below for additional information.
Posted by: Johanna Fry, Cisco at July 28, 2008 12:52 PM
KA,
Great to meet you too.
We really do have an interesting opportunity as tech companies move into health, energy, environment.
There must be converged programs for tech boutiques with corporate, CSR, other areas of PR.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Edelman at July 28, 2008 2:24 PM
Interesting post. Thanks.
Re. "The jobs of PR tech companies must morph from product publicity to policy development and third party advocacy, as new ground rules are created by government. I would appreciate your views as always."
I think another developing role for the PR agency is to become a sort of middleware between content sources and the clients who consume them. There is too much relevant content these days (in virtually every domain) and not nearly enough time for any company to either retrieve it OR analyze it.
Things like press clipping services, news aggregators and even RSS and social news sharing - these things are for the most part still very blunt instruments for harnessing content into digestible / actionable views.
It boils down not just to technology alone - but the oversight of human beings to interpret datasets and communicate their meaning / implications to the client. PR is going to require a lot more sophisticated surveillance of the landscapes than previously. And the communications challenges and opportunities should be thought of not just in terms of publicity / credibility -- but also in terms of information management / solid interpretation of very dynamic data.
Posted by: TravisV at July 31, 2008 12:44 PM