next09

Crowdsourcing Creativity seems to be an irritating issue, at least for agencies whose traditional value promise is based on their own creative staff that cannot easily be replaced by a crowd of creatives from the outside. So the typical question that always comes to mind is who can be trusted. Katarina Skoberne from OpenAd and Ross Kimbarovsky of crowdSPRING both sat on a panel at next09, presenting their different approaches to the same problem.

And while OpenAd and crowdSPRING didn't chose the same route to solve the problem of trust, they share the conviction to trust the network. Typically, their clients get to chose from a lot of creative work done by many different people, giving them the chance to pick what they like and think works best for their needs. So it's not the question whether they trust the notorious design student or not, but the networks, processes and platforms Katarina and Ross have built.

Crowdsourcing Creativity has the disruptive potential to be a game changer for the agency business. So if you happen to be a creative or agency worker, you better watch this video, check out both sites and prepare for the inevitable future.

Tim Leberecht of frog design just came up with three more rules for the chief meaning officer, bringing their number to a total of ten. As he spoke at next09 some weeks ago, he had just seven rules. Watch the video here.

Seriously, Tim wrote an extensive and thoughtful essay on his topic. Clearly a must-read for everyone in this space of (social media) marketing.

We live in times of major uncertainty. The doom and gloom of the economic crisis, the deterioration of mass markets, the pervasiveness of the digital lifestyle, and the fragmentation of traditional societal institutions are not only inducing anxiety but also inspiring a search for simplicity and noneconomic value systems. Consumption-driven wealth and status are being replaced by identity, belonging, and a strong desire to contribute to -- or to experience -- something "meaningful" rather than to acquire more things. Trust and reputation are no longer enablers for the exchange of goods, services, and information, they are replacements for them. Values are the new value. Meaning is succeeding customer satisfaction. "The job of leadership today is not just to make money. It's to make meaning," writes management consultant John Hagel.

This new cultural climate presents a historic opportunity for brands to transform themselves into arbiters of meaning. When your brand is a vector, your base becomes a movement -- as we learned from Barack Obama's presidential campaign. A "meaning surplus" will become imperative: Only businesses that give more than they take will be able to create sustained brand loyalty. Out: bottom-line pragmatists and financial wizards. In: philosophers, ethicists, and social entrepreneurs.

Although all corporate functions are affected by this path-finding moment, marketing is best positioned to lead the transformation. Effort is required to move beyond simply connecting products and customers with the goal of facilitating transactions. Marketing must now create "meaning" through actions and interactions. What is needed is the marketer as chief meaning officer -- someone who negotiates a "New Deal," a new social contract between brands, their stakeholders, and society at large.

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Picture: design mind

The interactive age has brought us a bunch of new organisational trends and hot topics for discussion. So these days, everybody is talking about ideas like user-centric design, crowdsourcing, user-driven companies or even the wisdom of crowds. While CRM is getting tired, VRM strives to be the next cool interactive thing.

This changes the perspective from traditional company-focused to consumer-focused. In his talk at next09, Lee Bryant from Headshift walked us through the implications of this shift. Axel Bruns summed it up like this:

Perhaps there's a need to return to the idea of corporate organisations with a social mission - restoring an understanding of social responsibility which has all but disappeared from the corporate world in recent decades, in favour of plundering available resources. The current financial crisis is caused in good part by the failure to balance profit motives and social responsibilities, of course.

So, for a company to be user-driven, it must also be people-driven - and this needs to be represented not least also in the company's internal organisational structure. A company cannot just be soft on the outside, and hard on the inside; change for the better must start with the company's own employees - they must be allowed to be human, too, and to engage with customers. There must be consistant values throughout the business.

What, then, will the successful companies of the future look like? They'll need to be very keenly aware of the ecosystem within which they operate; they need to create a shared meaning and purpose; and they need to trust their network to be able to support them. Some of this is starting to happen externally, around companies - but crucially, it must also happen within them.

So what should companies do? In the words of Ton Zijlstra:

Companies need to ask themselves whether their goal is pure profit maximisation in the short-term, leading to pillage and plunder attitudes, or sustainable income by real value creation over the long term. If the latter, companies need to find balance between respect, social status and profit. If you opt for profit in the short-term it will cost you your respect and social status, which in turn will come back to hurt the company itself. Large companies as Unilever started out with social and profit goals. Banking was a respected profession serving communities until they descended to plunder (I think it started with the introduction of financial derivatives in the mid 1980's, when financial investment products became completely disconnected from underlying companies and their value/values). Bankers may be rich now, but not respected or with highly regarded social status.

The slides of Lee's talk can be found at SlideShare.

Tim Leberecht of frog design was supposed to speak about "The Shrinking Brand - Marketing in a Small World". In fact, this is what it still reads on the official conference programme.

But after listening to Jeff Jarvis' keynote on "The Great Restructuring," Umair Haque's pledge for "Constructive Capitalism," and Andrew Keen's rebuttal of both, he felt the need to change the focus of his talk and approach it from a broader view. So he came up with the "Seven Rules of the Chief Meaning Officer". His key points, in a nutshell:

As brands face an unprecedented level of competition, transparency, and consumer empowerment on the social web, 'meaning' is becoming the new powerful currency that connects brands with their brandholders in the 'share economy.'

The new marketing leader, the Chief Meaning Officer, is a strategic activist, social media entrepreneur, constant innovator, and integrator. The Chief Meaning Officer has the potential to transform business through meaningful marketing - marketing that consistently creates added social value, not as an afterthought but a sine qua non.

While marketing has always been the art of turning friends into customers and customers into friends, it is now the art of finding, befriending, and activating the like-minded for a common cause, for the common good - and for profit. Brands that have a reason to exist, an argument to win, will be more appealing than ever.

The Seven Rules:
1. Listen and converse (and converge)
2. Atomize your brand
3. Activate your customers
4. Think and act like a media company
5. Give more than you take
6. Be the change
7. Be yourself

In the spirit of transparency he preaches, Tim put the slides for his talk on SlideShare. Please don't forget to rate his talk at SpeakerRate.