TheWayoftheWeb

Jame Oliver by Vic on Flickr (CC licence)

As I’ve said before, I don’t watch much broadcast television these days, but I made an effort to catch Jamie’s Ministry of Food after seeing some of the trailers and the fact it was flagged by Mark Earls.

And I’m glad I did, because it’s probably the first time the principles of community marketing (See also Word of Mouth marketing etc), have been played out on national television! If you’ve been looking for an effective case study, this is definitely one to watch.

The premise is simple. To try and get the people of Rotherham to start cooking helthy food rather than living on takeaways. But rather than an advertising campaign, the plan was to teach 8 people how to cook on the understanding they’d pass the recipes to 2 more people. And in 15 steps, they’d reach the 260,000 population of Rotherham.

As Mark says, it’s a template for HERD marketing:

1. focus on what you can do not what you can say
2. …on what you can give folk out there to do…
3. …that they can do with each other
4. …oh, and make it highly visible and oh, yes fun

But there’s even more that I picked up on. One of the things Jamie started by saying was that he had to listen to start with. Sound familiar?

He also picked a woman who had undermined his School Dinners campaign by taking chip shop orders through the school fence, and picked her out as a key influencer . Time will tell whether he picked the right influencer!

And he’s already worrying about the speed and scalability of the approach (Shel Isreal on scalability). He can see the positive effect he’s had on the 8 people he’s engaged, and the fact they’ve already ahd improvements to the way they live and act. But he’s got three months to transform a whole town. Sounds like the dilemma of showing a Return on Investment!

And finally there’s the fact he’s attempting to do something positive with this approach. Something that various people within the social media wrld have worried isn’t happening because most people are aiming for fame within the media/marketing/online sphere – and outside of it, things aren’t being affected by the new ways of marketing, communicating and conversing. (I’m struggling to find the appropriate link right now, so will add it later!)

If nothing else, it prompted me to exorcise some blog guilt. I’ve been tackling reports, budgets and plans, and I’m up to my neck in data and Excel spreadsheets, hence the slight lack of posts. But hopefully things should be more consistent again now.

This really is an open question, because I understand that outside my network, and even within it, my job title can influence how I’m perceived. And within large companies there can be a need for infrastructure.

Do job titles matter any more? (Pic: Russell Davies on Flickr)

But at the same time, in my formal paid career I’ve been a: Freelance writer, Editorial Assistant, Reporter, Products Editor, Web Producer, Webcast Presenter, Community Marketing Manager. In my informal career I’ve been a: Freelance Journalist, Contributor, Writer, DJ, Blogger, Publisher, Editor.

Does my role as Editor for an online magazine with a small readership mean more on face value than Web Producer on the leading title within a global marketplace? What about the period as Web Producer that I essentially ran the site, compared to the times as Editor when I was pretty much absent?

You could actually sum up all those roles in two lines:

• I create content: text, audio, video.
• I distribute content, mainly socially, but with some knowledge of SEO and traditional marketing.

But then you have the other things I contribute. I’m hugely interested in not only looking at emerging technology, but spreading that knowledge throughout my network, and spotting where there are opportunities to use it within whichever company I’m working for. And I seem to have developed an enjoyment and small skill at building networks of people who are incredibly knowledgeable and talented in various areas related to my work and interests.

• Maven/Connector (Not keen on those terms, but two words for four lines!)

So how much do any of those titles on my CV matter then three lines, links to my work, and knowledge of me via my network can tell you a lot more? Does Community Marketing Manager (Strategy,Technology,Tactics across 9 brands) get confused with the now more common term of Community Manager (focused on managing one community)

So does someone’s title affect the way you look at them? Do they still have a place in small companies, or in larger infrastructures? Or is this a time when structures like Gore (makers of Gore-Tex etc) make sense? From the link:

‘There are no traditional organizational charts, no chains of command, nor predetermined channels of communication.

Instead, we communicate directly with each other and are accountable to fellow members of our multi-disciplined teams. We encourage hands-on innovation, involving those closest to a project in decision making. Teams organize around opportunities and leaders emerge. This unique kind of corporate structure has proven to be a significant contributor to associate satisfaction and retention.

Associates (not employees) are hired for general work areas. With the guidance of their sponsors (not bosses) and a growing understanding of opportunities and team objectives, associates commit to projects that match their skills. All of this takes place in an environment that combines freedom with cooperation and autonomy with synergy.”

Is that what all companies should be modeling themselves on?

Writing about how the election coverage on Twitter and C-Span points to the future of media coverage, I came up with a little gem that I thought might be worth repeating for any of you who don’t crossover to my microblogging blog, 140char.com:

‘aggregation of sources of information provides a starting point for a media company to add its own expertise and reason to provide something of value.‘

That’s it really. A mainstream media source can’t just aggregate content. Anyone can do that and the winners are decided by those who obtain a reasonable community and audience. And there’s already plenty of people out there, from Yahoo Buzz to Digg, to Mixx, to Sphinn, to microblogging.com.

But by aggregating and adding interpretation, it not only creates dynamic changing content, but actually opens up and highlights the expertise that a good journalist can bring on top of raw information. One of the mistakes we’ve continued to make in mainstream media is to underplay how good many journalists are at going beyond raw data, and the myraid ways in which they add value to it.

I’ve long believed it, but not managed to sum it up quite so succinctly before. And it’s not a new idea for plenty of notable people, e.g. Scott Karp, Jay Rosen, Pat Thornton (still no relation!), Howard Owens, Jeff Jarvis, David Cushman. And there are many, many more people I could name, and I’m sure that’s just a small proportion of a collective wisdom which suggests numbers and expertise big enough to hopefully break out of the social media echo chamber. And we can see it with the adoption in growing ways by a small number of titles (I mentioned the LA Times and The Guardian, here). Now we’re adding C-Span to the list.

And as a cat owner who converted from only ever wanted dogs as a pet, I couldn’t help myself from sharing this before I leave work.