Futurist Lab

Every March, from 1997 to 2007, I attended Winter Music Conference in Miami. Now known simply as Miami Music Week, the event has always been on the sunny shores of Miami South Beach dance heaven where DJs and producers the world over gathered to play the best in electronic dance music. In its early days DJs would fly in with crates of vinyl and play on Technics 1200 turntables (now extinct) over large sound systems to open-aired hand-waving crowds. Although the later is still true and the crowds have gotten bigger, technology and innovation have hyper-fueled the scene to be the dominant representation in youth culture as of 2012. The movement even got dubbed a new name (marketing-speak?) known simply as EDM which works well in our acronym-fueled world. EDM is a purely American creation spawned from disco, house, techno and hip-hop. The English, Dutch and Germans made it their own to sell back to Americans eager for a sound they created (sounds a lot like the history of jazz? Where’s Ken Burns when we need him?). In fact house and techno are so American they were created in Chicago and Detroit respectively by midwestern African-Americans hyped by the roboticism and cynicism of alienation from assembly line occupations. Both cities also recognize their creation of something that has had a huge effect on European youth for almost two decades before clued-in “Millenial” Americans realized what they were missing out on.

Chicago recognizes its foundations in House music with a “House Music Week” in the city where many DJs fly in to play in the clubs (along with the original founders of the music) and Detroit is now host to an ultra outdoor weekend massive “Detroit Electronic Music Festival” which has fans and DJs from all over the world flying in to pay homage to the “creation city” of techno. What made such music take off in such popularity circa 2010 in America, when it went mainstream in the rest of the world in the early 90s, probably has much to do with the perfect storm of economic and technological innovation melting with the rapid distribution model that is social media as we know it more than “push marketing” forces or the mainstream press.

In 2008 America suffered a rapid economic meltdown. Many students graduating from college joined unemployment rank and file while also partaking in the social web. It was this mass explosion and chemistry that led to sharing of videos from the UK and Europe of large electronic festivals that had been commonplace in those territories for two decades. Because record labels weren’t necessary to have an EDM hit, producers were quick to use the social web to spread their music no different than how the bandits of the early rave years in ‘91 used white label wax hocked out of the back of a van at gigs did in their era. The results were eerily similar. Songs that radio programmers and MTV ignored for years took off at blitzkrieg pace earning upwards of 61 million views. Many of these songs contained a formula but they had one thing in common. They didn’t rely on traditional models of distribution or influence. They relied on their own group of influencers. They set a tone that most brands try to copy when executing a successful social media campaign for a product. But with EDM, the music and the events were so interesting as a way for younger Americans to meet up and dance in large throngs that it made some brand campaigns look amateur in comparison. Plus EDM had a foundation that was in place for almost two decades that was easily adaptable on social platforms. The early rave scene in America used the early web to launch and promote its events along with guerrilla “word of mouth.” But then, only a few hundred or thousand people in a city were interested in attending such events. Today, with the help of online video and a global community sharing the best music, bedroom DJs remixing songs and posting them for wider distribution, the scene exploded as the social web and the interest in something different from the traditional media was lapped up by jaded “Millenials” who had no trust of larger corporations who had put P2P services out of business and ignored how they shared music. To them, traditional media simply wanted to rid of things it didn’t understand for fear of start-ups not playing by the rules and overtaking their fortune. EDM didn’t follow those rules. It operated as a collective outside of the mainstream allowing it to flourish on its own.

It’s exactly those rules that didn’t allow EDM to catch on in the early 2000s when the music industry and press tried to pass off bands like Chemical Brothers, Underworld and Prodigy as the “next big thing.” It was truly organic this time around and a scene made by the natural economic forces of nature rather than a planned set of actions. It’s these happenings that make such a movement a true culture and one reason EDM will stay on the scene at least for the next decade as something that is relevant and ingrained in American’s DNA. It’s also a true global movement tying people together from different races and uniting people who can identify with music and not a message found in so much American pop music. In addition, with a prolonged recession not forecast to end anytime soon and the OWS movement showing global solidarity, there is no better form of music to enjoy than body and soul music that transcends border nations. Hip hop had gotten too silly, too juvenile to take seriously. Rock was aging and dying by being limited in instrumentation. Indie rock became too white. EDM was an amalgamation of what America looks like and will look like in the future. A body of color where the universal language is the beat and people want to get along because they’re tired of their government telling them they shouldn’t.

My take is Ultra Music Festival, which got 165,000 fans this past weekend, will be superseded in the next year by another festival that will attract upwards of 300,000 and be streamed by over 10 million worldwide on mobile, tablets and laptops. Such is the true power of the EDM nation. That and the ability for artists to produce on the fly, distribute music quickly and play it in a set that same day gives it a competitive advantage in which the traditional music production machine cannot compete. A Fortune 200 company could learn a lot from this scene on the power of being nimble and evolving to growing consumer tastes. Although the scene in the past two years has been dominated by Dutch DJs, much like it’s national football team, that tiny nation can’t carry the global flag forever. I see the UK evolving the music, speeding up the dominant sound of dubstep and electro to a faster bpm with wobbly baselines and reggae influence sneaking back in to create almost a dark ghetto version of dubstep that will be eerily similar to speed garage from the late 90s fused with ravey synth stabs and piano riffs. But ultimately it will be American DJs as more bedroom producers take flight in understanding how powerful this music can be and how easy it is to become part of the scene. Traditional rock required a large barrier of entry to join its ranks. EDM requires a few hundred dollars worth of software and a creative palette. The DJs that can further the sound will lead the new wave as the music becomes brighter, shinier and happier in its ultimate domination of the American aural landscape. From here other innovations that will help its growth will be crowdsourced productions where fans tell a producer what they like most in a track (could you imagine this happening in any other genre?) and collaborative stock (where people invest in the company so they can put on events bypassing corporate behemoths like Live Nation and Wall Street altogether) in companies like Electric Daisy and Ultra Music Festival. Plus location based check-ins will allow fans to download a mix set from a headliner DJ as a token in real time and DJs like Richie Hawtin already allow fans via Twitter to see what tracks he’s playing at a given time at a live event. It’s only a matter of time before someone syncs that to an online store like Beatport where while hearing the track live you can download it at the same time. This is a scene built on open source, remix culture and collaboration. It’s ripe to only grow as these are essentials for any movement to expand.

And through all of this, brands have been slow to pick up any of this trend. Possibly because it is so foreign to them. The same way soccer is to most sports execs. This will only help in EDM’s domination as any sign of selling out to corporate label CEOs or brands will be more of a crippling effect to a DJ/Producer than them simply making tunes, playing gigs and making money the old fashioned way, through live gigs and merchandise deals. Not to say a licensing deal with a brand’s advertising will hurt a producer’s fortune. But the one’s who use alternative business innovation will enhance their career at a much rapid pace than those who rely on an old business model of label, video, marketing, etc. Those who tap into their fans and use UGC will benefit ultimately as there is major distrust of how traditional media works for the people with this group.

The future music model has been here for a few years building on its own without the needs of traditional capital or amplification. Other genres will copy what EDM has laid down as a foundation but because it has led in the creation of this new “always beta” model, it has the ability to benefit the most. The mainstream press has ignored because an exposure to this alternative universe, like that of OWS, may be confirmation that the old way of doing business with traditional concentrated power is no longer viable.

Geoffrey Colon is VP of Social@Ogilvy and writes and curates the Futurist Lab on Tumblr. You can also follow him on Twitter @djgeoffe

By Geoffrey Colon, Vice President, Social@Ogilvy / @djgeoffe / futuristlab.tumblr.com

I read this interesting infographic about analytics released yesterday. Big Data seems to be the term everyone is tossing around as of late. But what is it exactly? And why should social media companies, agencies and businesses pay attention to it?

IBM (cl) just released  the following statistics in March 2012 that included in the past two years we have witnessed the creation of more data than the past history of the world. We’re now talking tera and pentabytes of data. Lots of it. I’m actually creating more data right now come to think of it as I enter this information onto Tumblr.

So why should social media agencies or brands that want to take advantage of content within social pay attention to Big Data? Isn’t that something that only CMOs and CIOs of Fortune 200 companies should care about? Let’s look at how social media functions as of 2012. Right now most agencies and brands are moving into the era of the Community Manager. They’re still behind how consumers behave by almost five years. I still meet many CMOs new to this role and many wonder why they need it all. But once convinced of how human behavior operates in content consumption within social, almost all are quick to green light the hire. The community manager works in creating a content calendar filled with promotional, equity, third-party content and originally produced content with a brand or agency creative team.

The CM probably uses insights in some respect to check on how their content performs. As this is important in performance reporting, these types of analytics remain the main focus. But this analysis is probably overwhelming and doesn’t inform them on future decisions for their brand nor how they will plan content based on consumer need and demand. As a result, I still am witness to too much content being created either strictly for TV or a brand website that has no relevance to an audience in channels like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Tumblr.

As a result, many companies are operating in the social space no differently than a CMO operates at most companies. They have a little bit of research. Maybe some “Consumer Intent Models” but they are making a lot of gut-level decisions on how to communicate and market with their consumer audience. As a result, there is a lot of inefficiency, a lot of work hours, a lot of mistakes and not a ton of return on investment.

Enter the era of Big Data. We’ve known about this for some time. How smarter analytics will help organizations relate to the world. How businesses can adapt to the 2.5 quintillion bytes of data produced every day. Unfortunately many organizations still lean toward the armchair execution that has existed in the recent past within marketing and specifically social. Content calendars will be created, signed off on, posted, and then analyzed by a team not really trained in behavioral economics or mathematics. As a result, poor execution will be practiced and continually repeated.

But what happens if we enter the analysis of Big Data into this equation? What happens if a community manager can work with a Data Scientist to actually see what people are saying, doing, sharing, thinking? And then making appropriate content based on this analysis? How would that affect the content currently being written and created? By using analytics to read trends, social media companies will be able to introduce flexibility to their content creation process. They could adjust the creative output prior to its creation. It’s almost a helping hand within the creative process. You will still need the emotional element attached to messaging. We are human after all. But Big Data can actually let you know what people want to talk about rather than hedging that bet.

Social has always been about tracking patterns across various ecosystems. But that data is not effectively used to build future behavioral models. Social marketing needs to apply insights to every new client engagement. This can help shape content creation in an effective manner that delivers content to the audience based on a behavioral demand model. It helps take social beyond a simple TV model where writers pitch ideas they think the audience wants and becomes an on-demand behavioral content adaption model that serves up content the audience is truly interested in.

Being able to assess, predict and deliver content in social that is then shared and tracked, re-analyzed and used for future creation is the model of the future. For those that adopt this futurist model, they will drive in the pole position. They will create social content that resonates with their advocates who will in turn share this content with their social or interest graphs. This is how Big Data will transform social just like it will transform every other business. And organizations that embrace analytics will outperform their industry peers. The question remains, who will be the first to put Big Data into social media marketing content development and who will still rely on the already outdated solo Community Manager model?

Geoffrey Colon is Vice President of Social@Ogilvy and editor of the Futurist Lab on Tumblr. He also tweets @djgeoffe

Trends Lab Weekly: Your Best Content Strategy is Thought Leadership

By Geoffrey Colon, Vice President, Social@Ogilvy / @djgeoffe / futuristlab.tumblr.com

So many people I have spoken to as of late complain about the term “thought leadership.” They are always asking, “what does it really mean and where does it get you?” B2B companies have known about this terminology for almost two decades and it has led to a lot of their content creation. In the B2B space, companies don’t make on-the-fly purchase decisions. You just can’t when you’re looking to overhaul your server systems at $4 million a pop. So you read up on what experts have to say on the subject. Maybe watch them give a speech or follow their Twitter feed to see what they are curating. These experts have been given names including influencers, champions, advocates, guru or even what I call myself, Subject Matter Expert or SME for short.

Why should your business be doing thought leadership? And who should do it? Well, to say it in short, everyone. Because thought leaders should be your entire organization. Not simply those at the top of the company. The best way for your company to transform is to crowdsource and collaborate as much as possible. Make everyone a part of the process in the new way of thinking about business. The other reason is thought leadership is your best content strategy. People want to feel like a company is larger than simply selling software or soda. They want to identify with it as a transformer of culture or the world at large. So here are five reasons on how to turn thought leadership into content. Have any ideas of your own? Feel free to join the conversation. After all, thought leadership means little if there isn’t a larger conversation around the subject.

1.     There is a lack of thought leadership in the world. Only 30% of companies use it now. That’s a small figure. And of those an even smaller percentage use social to amplify this thinking. So if you write it or video record it, amplify it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, SlideShare, etc. People enjoy this thinking and want to share it.

The largest return that a company can generate comes from not just displaying expertise but having superior services that help your clients. Thought leadership is that inroad to a potential or current client saying, “This is exactly what we want. Thinkers who can also act on that thinking and execute it for us into a meaningful solution.” But they can’t get turned onto this thinking unless they actually see it. And where they see it is on your social channel.

People are drawn into thought leadership because it’s editorial made for sharing. Content comes in all sizes and shapes but if it’s a passive piece of content will it reverberate within your community? Thought leadership looks to get a rise out of people. If it doesn’t it’s not leadership. The reason being is thought leadership is innovative, ahead of the curve and sets a bold new path where no one has gone before. That meets resistance from systems that don’t want to bend to change. And with that resistance comes conversation around the topic. And from conversation, sharing. And from sharing, invitations extending to more people to discuss your POV on the issue, subject, category, product, initiative, etc.

Thought leadership comes in many shapes and sizes. Many think it’s still a boring white paper. But the best is now video sermons, Tweetchats, Q&As, infographics and more. The way you serve up your thought leadership is packaged as content. It’s not simply words on a paper.

You become the conversation piece. Thought leaders don’t simply publish then sit back and move onto the next piece of content creation. Nor do those who consume such content not have an opinion. Content should be engaging. Thought leadership has this built-in so it instigates people to react. It’s a modern day futbol match. There are always two sides. One side may react in many ways generating additional reactive content that keeps your brand or company as the focal centerpiece around the topic. And when people are talking about the topic that you generated within a social environment, you’re creating a level of engagement that equates to a possible advocate and an advocate that equates to a potential lead.

Geoffrey Colon is Vice President of Social@Ogilvy and editor of the Futurist Lab on Tumblr. He also tweets @djgeoffe