We all need to wake up to this blurring between producers and consumers, I include customers in this too. If we had woken up, we’d within our businesses be creating platforms to encourage participation and creation whether online, or call me old fashioned, face to face.

We are possibly witnessing the democratisation of creativity. Communities of people connected around your brands wanting to get involved in how you shape the future of your businesses. If you’re scared by that, you need to ask why?

There are some scathing examples of forerunner industries on how not to do it. Consider the music industry. Pioneers at one end of the scale, taking advantage of technology by creating and remixing existing music to equal quality in a back bedroom. At the other end, instead of trying to build new business models around the freedom of creativity and digital content, business is backlashing big time by suing its customers. A lost opportunity.

Prosumers are not going away. Their contribution to our business is becoming fundamental. Co-creating with customers is extremely powerful. The solutions are likely to be better, the end product more aligned with customer need, and to be honest, it will probably be more inspiring than we could have ever created on our own. It also brings us closer to our fans, followers and audience.

But, it will demand a different way of doing business, new rules and a new set of challenges. Prosumers aren’t just buying our products anymore, they are making them in a fertile ground of innovation. This is more significant than gaining customer feedback, listening to our consumers, pulling focus groups together, customised solutions or design competitions. Its about customers being genuinely involved in co-creating products, marketing, human resource activity at a peer to peer level. If we sincerely want to be around in 10 years time, we need to learn new ways of leading these kinds of communities. And, if we don’t create and engage with these communities of prosumers, they will invent around us.

How we innovate and invent is set to change too. With the advent of globalisation and technology, its easier to find someone, somewhere in the world who can solve your problem right now.  The traditional models are evaporating. No longer will we expect to innovate solely on an internal basis. Its just too expensive, narrow minded and loses you a whole bunch of chances.

We are well past the Issac Newton days of solving problems way ahead of the questions and just not telling anybody about them. Innovation has become collaborative. Technology develops at such a speed, organisations and individuals can longer keep up. That combined with the fact that most of us can’t attract and retain the best people in the world makes sole innovation almost null and void.

Thinking that you have all the answers and spending years developing the ‘great idea’ is a little egocentric and albeit gone. Someone has already sorted it. Peer production, open source communities, customer cocreation are all about harnessing the opportunities that bound in from several places. I call it the liquidity of innovation.

Just look at the examples of www.innocentive.com and www.yet2.com in house innovation is no longer enough, we can’t keep up. Our organisations need to turn innovation on its head. Research and development departments in the past were rewarded for getting patents, in the future it will be about assembling the best team to solve the problem.

By not pursuing a solution to our own innovation problems, we are losing out on an abundance of opportunities. Thats one of the reasons why communities and being close to our customers and people is going to be so damn important in the future. As well as being connected across the world too. Most of us act locally which is important, too many of us act multi nationally and not enough globally!

A delegate on a seminar I recently delivered asked how ‘new marketing’ works on what traditional marketing was good at; reinforcing the fact that, we the customer, had made the right decision. He used Audi as an example. It was a thought provoking question and it really got me thinking.

After some deliberation, I think we are moving away from this approach. As customers we are so much more confident now borne out of how product/service savvy we have become. Those campaigns built around patronising communication, them versus us, broadcast, 1950’s methods are just too conventional. Devised to make the insecure buyer feel better about themselves.

Marketing between 1946 – 1999 didn’t change much. It predisposed that, we the customer, weren’t that intelligent and were quite hard of hearing too, that’s why they have been shouting so much! We weren’t hard of hearing, we just couldn’t hear anything above the all the other noise around. It was all based on the fact we didn’t know much and were ill informed.

Thrust yourself forward to the 21st century and its changed. Too well informed, secure buyers who know a thing or two about our product and our competitors. We know we are making the right decision now simply because we have asked our peers, looked at independent reviews and the world has become more transparent. That on top of moving from the mindless to the mindful consumer, is making purchasing decisions less based on what the company says and more centred on our peers feedback. That’s why sales in the traditional sense is broken.

If I buy an Audi its because its a bloomin’ good car not because I want to reinforce my status in society through material. Or, as Phil Rees of www.defacethis.co.uk said “Fewer & fewer insecure buyers in the world now, people to people recommendation is literally at everyone’s fingertips.” In the future, we won’t waste our company’s money on reinforcing our customers decisions after purchase, it will be focused on adding more value at the design stage.

Social media so called because of how it connects people and allows people to share information and ideas. But actually, social media is more fundamental than that. Its social because its helping shape the cultures of the future, its enabling engagement and its aiding collaboration on unprecedented levels.

It’s effect on the continuum of change ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous. In the future, it will assist in the overthrow of governments, research and development activity that creates amazing products and currently, its helping me meet someone in my home city I have never met before.

To critiscise it is natural, to ignore it is futile but it will, itself need to change too. There will come a point, perhaps a Malcolm Gladwell tipping point, where social media must turn into social business on a more larger scale. There are case studies. Dell reckons its generated $3 million just via Twitter. Gavin Sheppard at www.devonshiretea.com recently said to me that its the best marketing decision he ever made joining Twitter because its bringing results.

It’s truly fab connecting with people, its amazing sharing ideas but its hard work, even daunting sometimes. Social media maybe a more effective way of marketing and removed some cash spend but it adds huge pressure to your time. At some point, even us fans, followers and early adopters are going to have to turn those connections into some kind of business. And that’s where we have to claw back the control, take a hold of social media/business, grab it by the horns and decide how we are going to make it work. That’s our role social media/business can’t do it for us, its really a question of time management and influencing your followers.

At the moment it gives us connections, reach and spreadability, in the future we need to start turning that into long term relationships, robust communities and cash.

Had an amazing two hours with some incredible business people last night. Sometimes, my job really is the best in the world. I’ll be posting a series of blogs over the next few weeks to reinforce the discussions we had at Exeter Innovation Centre but its best described by Phil Rees in his lovely post:

http://deface.posterous.com/marketing-is-dead-0

The Dead Poet’s Society scene could not explain any better what has happened to marketing overnight!

This isn’t contradicting yesterday’s post, far from it. If you don’t like people, then the future is going to be hellish difficult for you. Even if you love being amongst people, you’re going to have to shift your thinking considerably. Being with people who inspire you and make you smile are critically important. How you converse with people will mean a change of position:

Involvement to participation

Communication to conversation

Customers to community

Ownership to sharing

Control to collaboration

The future will demand being intimate with people internally in your organisation as well as externally. A delegate on a workshop I delivered recently said “I’m not sure I want to get as close to my plumber as my wife.” Perhaps, but he has missed the point. If the plumber is building a community of followers who love what he does, he’s going to have to get close to you somehow!

Yes in a people to people environment you need to avoid people! Well, people who play it safe. Who don’t share ideas. Those that won’t collaborate and people who talk about customers as if they were just a transaction.

Avoid people who tell you to shout. Who talk about marketing! Run fast from anyone who thinks they own you. Become adept at picking out those that just detract rather than add value. Make a hasty escape from people who only see the money. Turn the other way if someone’s ego is the size of a small country and never engage with anyone who is talking at you.

It’s not about being rude and ignorant, manners cost nothing. Just learn to avoid and get rid of them fast and in a smart way. There are other people to converse with that are so much more inspiring!

Hmmm…. your customers are creating the market place now not you. Give us choice and we will take it! Look at us has been replaced with look at what we are doing. The big question; is your marketing designed for a static world or an ever changing one?

Markets will always outperform individual businesses, they also learn a lot faster and are better connected than  business too. If you’re marketing ain’t broken, its about time you asked yourself why? As Jeff Jarvis said “The mass market is dead. It committed suicide. Google just handed it the gun.”

Most companies, for the last 10 years, have taken the easy way out to market their brands, they have essentially bought customers. Sadly, its cost more and more and had less and less impact. In the past it was about driving traffic to your business, now its about loyalty.

Remember this equation; Feeling valued = loyalty + commitment

Most of us are still acting as if what we do is scarce. Shouting isn’t going to get you heard above the crowd, not when everyone else if shouting too. Now really is the time to tear up the marketing you have been doing in the past. Measure its return on investment and, then when you’ve picked yourself up off the floor, go and find some other way of connecting with your customers.

In October I had to queue to get into the Likeminds Conference in Exeter. This time I was one of the many getting kicked out by Scott Gould at the end of the night!

Well they went and did again didn’t they? The organisers, speakers and delegates raised the bar without creating one! “People to people” was the focus of this full day conference which threw up just as many questions as answers, but that’s the point.

There were particular vibrant and engaging presentations from Jonathan Akwue, Joanne Jacobs, Olivier Blanchard and the irrepressible Chris Brogan. Even the thought of Chris stood on stage in his Superman underpants did nothing to dissuade the audience (sorry you needed to be in the room to get that one!)

There was nothing irksome about the day. Superbly organised with a truly community feel, we all felt a little bit human again. The key lightbulb moments;

1. “When you give people a voice, you have to be prepared for what they are going to say.” Jonathan Akwue. That one  is for all you leaders out there!

2. “Understand, participate and then lead.” John Bell. Yep you got to eat an elephant in bite sized chunks.

3. “Having a prescence in social media is worthless unless you do something with it.” Olivier Blanchard. You know sometimes a blinding flash of the obvious is so bloomin’ powerful.

4. “You have to make people feel special.” Chris Brogan. Many of us commented we did feel special!

The buzz in the room was inspiring and so positive, there were obviously no Daily Mail readers in sight! People talk a lot about the social media hype. I’m curious to what they mean by that. Social media for many businesses is the Titanic’s iceberg and its no good re arranging the deckchairs on the old ship anymore. Its a difficult time for many companies. But, perhaps by humanising the relationships we have with people, we can actually thrive.

This conference showed that even in six months not just the technology has moved on, but so has our thinking. It can’t be taken as a token gesture, its serious stuff and it has serious implications. Miss the next one? Er no!

Some people, in fact more than we would like to admit, are underestimating the scale and the power of non financial motivations. This is also true of freedom to express oneself too. I recently had a delegate offer ” why on earth would my employees want to express themselves?”

The web is not a separate world, so far in the distant, too difficult to reach and understand. It really isn’t Jupiter. It’s actually just a different one that is presenting a different set of rules, a change in the way we do things and allowing us to connect in a way we have never experienced before. It’s unprecedented.

A lot of us are having to unlearn things, lots of things. For those of you who think the web is isolating and responsible for a generation of people who don’t communicate with each other, think about this; all of us watching the Winter Olympics around the world at the moment, in our own living rooms, passive, one way, broadcast stuff, now who’s isolated?