WE LOOKED AT
SOCIAL MEDIA’S ROLE
IN DIGITAL SERVICES.
YOU WON’T BELIEVE
WHAT 5 THINGS
HAPPENED NEXT!
@andywhitlock cobbled this together for Social Media Week Barcelona, Feb 2014

I’ve added comments like this
To help explain things in my absence
But the whole thing slaloms
around a bit anyway…
N.b.

Andy Whitlock
I work here…

Things people use repeatedly
Digital products & services
And we’re focussed on making:

THE RIGHT SERVICE CAN
TRANSFORM A MARKET
We believe…

Don’t really *do* social media
Aren’t a marketing company
Important to mention at a social
media conference.
But I should say that we…

DIGITAL
MARKETING
DIGITAL
PRODUCTS/
SERVICES
I do come from a marketing
background though

DIGITAL
MARKETING
DIGITAL
PRODUCTS/
SERVICES
X SOCIAL MEDIA
So I’m going to look at social
media with this transition in mind

First, some things we’ve made recently…

Pouch: a new way to pay

Hackaball: A new way to play

ITV: A new way to consume news

Skype in the Classroom: A new way to teach

All this has been quite a change for me
DIGITAL
MARKETING
DIGITAL
PRODUCTS/
SERVICES

Me, 2012

“I’m… bleeding”

PRODUCT MINDSET
= MARKETING MINDSET
In a nutshell…
An observation that I’ve reduced to a single graph…

But, this one important difference changes everything
Different risks surface different needs
And different needs require new processes

INTUITION EVIDENCE
SUPPLIERS PARTNERS
COMMITTING ADAPTING
DIFFERENT METHODOLOGY

SHARABLE USABLE
ATTENTION HABIT
FAME LONGEVITY
DIFFERENT GOALS

MARKETING LOVES NOISE
And here’s one reason why…
We know that…

POTENTIAL
We get super-excited by

POTENTIAL
THINK BIG
Which makes us

POTENTIAL
THINK BIG
MORE IS BETTER
And we start believing

http://2absg.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/firework1.jpg
MORE

http://2absg.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/firework1.jpg
MORE SHARING
WITH MORE PEOPLE
MORE OFTEN
MORE EASILY

When I think of ‘social media’ I usually think of this
http://www.tokeofthetown.com/

Not cannabis. This is a reference to the
legalisation of cannabis in Colorado, which led
to the following tweet…
When I think of ‘social media’ I usually think of this
http://www.tokeofthetown.com/

Here’s another..

Being talked about is awesome
And we know ‘engagement’ is valuable…
Achieving fame with 140 ch is intoxicating

WHAT’S THE VALUE OF A ‘LIKE’??
PLEASE TELL ME!!
Although we don’t always know *how* valuable…

ONE RULE DOES
NOT FIT ALL
I.e. Don’t let the temptation of noise make you lazy
More noise isn’t always better
Basically,

Automatic ‘activity posts’ remind
us how unnatural this can be

Which results in. Well, this.

image credit:
“I just ran 5.22km with Nike +”
A bit robotic isn’t it.
Whose voice is this?

And does everyone need to know?
Maybe just your running mates?

USERS DON’T ALWAYS
WANT TO SHARE
Also…

At MxM we do loads of user testing
And we hear this a LOT…

We created an app for Swisscom and got told…

“I don’t want everyone
to see my pictures”

We created a <secret music thing> for <secret company> and got told…

“I don’t want people to
know what I’m listening to”

We developed a mobile wallet for Weve…

Who wants to go where?
Lunch Club
Bryon
Stuart Eccles
Join
Chilango’s
Mike Shaw, Julian James + 4 others
Join
Send a reminder text to your friends
Subway
Andy Whitlock, Adam Morris
Join
…we toyed with a feature to
agree where to go for lunch
and we got told…

“I don’t like my colleagues”

“I don’t like my colleagues”
“I don’t want people to know
where I’m going for lunch”

NOISE = SALES
And here’s another thing:

This is a side project of mine: $1 stories
about worse ways to spend a dollar…

For fun, I mapped the stories onto popular
subway routes, based on reading time…

It got sent around a LOT…

…and even got onto:

3m people
It reached approximately…
So, guess how much I made in book sales?

£0.00

£0.00
I’ll share my theory in a moment, but first…

A different kind of example:
An egg-timer we made at Poke that finds a Youtube
video to match the cooking time of your egg

People are still talking about it, four years after we made it.
But that’s not the weirdest part…….

It stopped
working 3
years ago!

It stopped
working 3
years ago!
But people talk about it anyway.
Why?…

THE SOCIAL VALUE IS DETACHED
FROM THE PRODUCT VALUE

THE SOCIAL VALUE IS DETACHED
FROM THE PRODUCT VALUE
Its social currency is not reliant on the product being useful
And this loose tie makes social ‘noise’ almost useless for sales

So the social currency here had nothing to do
with whether these were good stories

Noise is more useful if it’s connected to product value

A much-shared diagram…

That became a product:

EXHAUST VS VEHICLES
(because I haven’t used enough metaphors yet…)
Let’s talk…

Digital trails/footprints are sometimes referred to as ‘digital exhaust’
But exhaust is the unpleasant experience for those left behind
http://www.junoandjove.com/

http://theflyingtortoise.blogspot.co.uk/
Much more fun if everyone gets a lift

http://dragonlaffs.com/2013/01/26/dragon-laffs-1309/
Even more fun if you have to improvise.

Platforms are ‘vehicles’. And the
possibilities are exciting and more inclusive.

PRODUCT STORY
Stories are often wrapped
around products
Mostly by separate
teams/companies

PRODUCT STORY
But when this is your
only responsibility…
it naturally
becomes detached.

PRODUCT STORY
Similarly, if this
is your focus…
Noise is still important,
product people

VEHICLE/
PLATFORM
PRODUCT
Platforms for endless
new products…
That’s what excites me

STORYPRODUCT
VEHICLE/
PLATFORM
And it’s from those products that
more relevant stories can emerge
Kickstarter is just one example

OK, one last (relevant) side project of mine…

I respect things like this…
But they’re not very inclusive.

Guilty Pledgers is a fundraising Spotify app

Guests can sign into fundraising parties at
guiltypledgers.com…

And pledge to charity to add to the playlist

We considered the sharable
moments carefully
Something with a story in it

And we reserved some moments to be
shared at the party host’s discretion…
Rather than try to automate it

MY SONG!MY PARTYFUNDRAISING
APP
But really the point is this:
A vehicle that makes products which generate stories

I said this at the start…
So I should at wrap up with five things…

1. SERVICES REQUIRE A LONG-TERM VIEW
What I learned…

1. SERVICES REQUIRE A LONG-TERM VIEW
2.‘MORE IS BETTER’ = TOO SIMPLISTIC
What I learned…

1. SERVICES REQUIRE A LONG-TERM VIEW
2.‘MORE IS BETTER’ = TOO SIMPLISTIC
3. SIMILAR TECH OFFERS DIFFERENT VALUE
What I learned…

1. SERVICES REQUIRE A LONG-TERM VIEW
2.‘MORE IS BETTER’ = TOO SIMPLISTIC
3. SIMILAR TECH OFFERS DIFFERENT VALUE
4. UNDERSTAND THE NUANCES OF EACH
What I learned…

1. SERVICES REQUIRE A LONG-TERM VIEW
2.‘MORE IS BETTER’ = TOO SIMPLISTIC
3. SIMILAR TECH OFFERS DIFFERENT VALUE
4. UNDERSTAND THE NUANCES OF EACH
5. PLAN HOLISTICALLY (PLATFORM + STORIES)
What I learned…

1. SERVICES REQUIRE A LONG-TERM VIEW
2.‘MORE IS BETTER’ = TOO SIMPLISTIC
3. SIMILAR TECH OFFERS DIFFERENT VALUE
4. UNDERSTAND THE NUANCES OF EACH
5. PLAN HOLISTICALLY (PLATFORM + STORIES)
What I learned…
This deserves more explanation, but
there’s only so much you’ll read ;)

@ANDYWHITLOCK
MADEBYMANY.COM