By Will McInnes

MeasurementCamp tomorrow, Dare, London

Hello peeps, just a quick and final reminder that MeasurementCamp is happening tomorrow at digital agency Dare's HQ - details on this blog post from top MeasurementCamper Helen Lawrence / @helenium.

- Photos of MeasurementCamp
- Twitter buzz

See you there!

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What is this MeasurementCamp you speak of?

It's a free-to-attend, open event where people from across many different industries get together to discuss the hows and whys of measuring social media.

We meet monthly at a friendly, informal host venue to chew the digital shizzle and make tiny steps and share insights and ideas.

Purpose

* The purpose of this initiative is to create a set of open source resources which allow interested parties to measure their social media communications online and offline.
* These resources may be information in the form of guides, a framework, suggested units of measurement, icons, basic software or tools, or other stuff entirely.
* They may not be measuring devices themselves - our purpose is to develop clarity around 'what' to measure rather than 'how'.
* We are not aiming to develop a 'one-size fits all' approach. The development of the project is based on an understanding that measures will vary greatly on a client-by-client basis and the network in which we are communicating/participating.

Manifesto

1. We believe that social media are about relationships and language. This makes conversations difficult to 'measure' by existing metrics [1]
2. We believe that nonetheless measurement is important and we strive to find clarity in and derive better insights from the work that we do
3. We believe that technologies to measure will probably be proprietary but that to use these technologies effectively we as a community can help one another to develop understanding and resources to fill the yawning gaps in our own education and knowledge
4. We believe that whatever we produce together should be freely available for others to use and improve, and that together we are stronger than apart
5. We believe that whilst every case is different and unique, there are benefits to common standards and approaches around the world and across regional boundaries

Thoughts on online advertising and the new age

Advertising is as wedded to its old structures and modes as music is: both, equally flawed and ill-suited to life today.

Advertising is the worst, least, laziest option available to any brand today. It requires the least thought (although ironically, often the most investment).

Most attempts to update advertising are no better than 'crap marketing' - think of 'me me me' type content streamed into a widget that no-one installs.

And the most persistent attempts to update online advertising are - rightly or wrongly - seen as privacy invading pernicious 'trust us' type technologies.

The solution needs to start from consumers needs and brands needs today, not lazy old ways of yesterday clumsily shoehorned into todays' online world. To not be reconfigured, but to be started again.

The future of online advertising will be:
- decentralised
- empower consumers before and above brands
- helpful

I don't hear that from innovators in online advertising today. Am I wrong?

Avoid risk - sprint towards the online people monster

The most frequently cited reason for not starting to learn, experiment and invest in social media initiatives is ‘risk’, I am told. 

‘Risk’. Oooh, the thrill of the danger, those hushed tones. ‘We’re safe, we avoid these risks’. What misplaced cowardly fearful reactionary bollocks. Medieval logic applied to contemporary culture – ‘stay away, pestilent creature, nay! Nay! Get back foul beastie from whence thee came!’ Crapola.

This is not second hand knowledge: I’m told this by senior business, marketing and PR people at conferences, at executive briefings and in training rooms, at client meetings, and this is backed up through anecdotes from my peers scattered through the industry. This risk is often most pressingly felt and feared one step removed, by the marketer’s boss, by the CEO, the FD, the invisible other person.

This is fear of risk by doing something is deeply, deeply perverse and flawed.

As a marketing community we need to reconsider and then communicate and persuade the business world of the real risks that come with experimenting in social media, and quickly.

In the stable times of yesterday, ah…those halcyon days the rules were known and appreciated, when business was fair, we could re-employ and re-use a known marketing formulae, working with a proven and stable business value chain, it was textbook stuff.

But safe marketing isn’t like safe home security measures – you can’t lock up the doors and windows and be safe by staying in and blanketing yourself to the wilds of the night outside. Do that, and you’re fucked.

Safe marketing is the same as it ever was: it is actually about embracing and managing risk. Risk is what fuels great marketing.

It isn’t about staying indoors – it’s about deciding when to venture out and how, it’s about taking risks, being bold and judging and evaluating and learning and evolving and LEARNING (again!), learning faster than competitors.

Many people believe that the marketing landscape, the fundamental rules of the jungle, are entirely different to how they once were during those halcyon days. I agree in the most part. In fact, sharing that belief has been my job and my mission for the last few years. Yes we do have a new book of philosophies, a new humility and authenticity to find and unlock in our communications, a new value chain, new business models and marketing techniques in the networked world.

But I fundamentally believe that marketing is an evolutionary activity, one that builds on great ideas, and that the core risks we face today in digital social media are exactly the same as they ever were with every other form of change in media creation, communication and consumption.

So what were the risks then, in the good ol’ days?

1.    Failing to meet our consumers needs
2.    Failing to communicate to consumers how their needs will be met by our offer
3.    Not doing either of these well enough to stand out and be chosen over our competitors

And in detailed, straightforward terms, how did these risks manifest themselves?

1.    By being slow to innovate
2.    By being crap at identifying and then meeting needs
3.    By having awful, ineffective communications
4.    By being forgettable, uninspiring, useless, unremarkable

The risks [cue arm-waving and air-punching big shouty body language] are the same today as they ever have been.

And the perversity is quite simply that by avoiding the 'risks' of social media by waiting, by ignoring or denying, is to actually inflame and exaggerate these risks.

To ask ‘can you provide a case study of someone else in our industry sector who has done this exact same proposed activity’ is an analogue for ‘I don’t want to lead, I want to wait ‘til the opportunity has mostly passed and by the way I have no marketing balls, no guts and am actually a lily-livered goat herd better suited to managing a crazy golf course on Bournemouth seafront than a multi-squillion pound marketing P&L’.

You cannot hide from social media – that increases risk, this thing that scares you so. To truly manage risk you can only embrace the new and learn-by-doing.

As with every other disruptive innovation in communications, the best way to avoid risk in this new changed jungle is to run towards the disruption, to sprint right at the monster disrupting our old media channels, and to throw our marketing-selves headlong into the gaping toothy maw of the online people monster.

Stop hiding, start learning, evolve, win. Don't you think?