Motorcycling and the art of social media

August 31, 2009 By Leave a Comment

As someone who combines an obsession with motorcycling with a love of social media marketing and tech, I picked up on a post back in July when Dave Winer met multiple world champion and motorcycling legend Valentino Rossi. One pioneered blogs, RSS, podcasting, and more, and the other has won eight motorcycling world championships, including claiming the last title of the 500cc two-stroke era, the firs of the 990cc MotoGP era, and claiming a title in the year he switched from the all-dominant Honda factory team to the underperforming Yamaha team.

And then during the Indianapolis MotoGP round I spotted a message by Robert Scoble: ‘Just had lunch with the #2 motorcycle rider in the world (Gorge Lorenzo) So young and good looking and popular. Nice to all the fans too.’

Seems like Fiat in the U.S is inviting a few prominent tech people to discover the excitement of motorcycling. But motorcycling should also appeal because it shares a lot of elements with social media marketing and other interests that inspire passion and devotion:

Community: If you park by the side of the road in your car, it’s pretty rare anyone stops to help (unless you’re an attractive lady or own a rare car). The unwritten rule of motorcycling is that you stop for another biker in trouble – and surprisingly this actually happens quite a bit.

Passion: Motorcycling isn’t a cheap or practical method of transport in most of the Western world – it’s for people who want to feel freedom and excitement, and want to be absorbed into that world by reading and watching everything, buying upgrades for their bike, the latest helmets and leathers, matching t-shirts, mugs and anything else they can find. The biggest selling items of memorabilia for Austrain manufacturer KTM? Bright orange, KTM baby dummies (pacifiers).

Tribal: There are countless tribes within motorcycling – by manufacturer (e.g. Harley-Davidson) , by individual model (e.g. GSX-R owners), by location, by sport (MotoGP, World Superbikes, road racing, off-road etc), by budget (e.g extremely low cost ‘rat bikes’), by age (classic collectors). And each has stronger or looser ties with others – and individuals belong to one, or many in self-forming networks of niche interest – just as we see played out on Twitter or Facebook.

It’s extreme: Granted, as an overall group, it’s pretty huge niche. But it still requires road riders to accept that they’re more likely to be injured by a myopic car driver, that spare parts, maintenance and insurance cost far more than cars, and that some people will instantly assume that they’re antisocial and only out to race around at high speed. And that any accident is always the fault of the motorcyclist.

And in a non-Bluetooth enabled crash helmet it’s one of the few times a chronic multi-tasker is totally and utterly focused on one thing – which is why so many world champions admit that they feel ‘flow‘ when it all goes well.

As someone who worked for one of the largest publications in motorcycling, Motorcycle News, for seven years, I spent a lot of time learning about (and working with) online and offline communities on two wheels, and it’s definitely shaped the way I approach all the other communities I’ve worked with since then.

Anyway, if you want to see for yourself, the final laps of the 2009 Catalunya GP are worth watching (Sadly MotoGP have disabled embedding).

And the thing is motorcycling has always been this way…for instance, check out the 1991 Suzuaki GP with one of Rossi’s heroes, Kevin Schwantz:

Incidentally, I’ll keep my diary open for the British MotoGP round just in case, and especially the Isle of Man TT (one of the few events I didn’t get to visit for work…)

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Why the entertainment industry might hate getting social

December 8, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Just a theory, but could it be that the business side of the industry, in control of the finance, business strategy, distribution etc could be worried about letting the inmates take over the asylum?

After all, the creators – the writers, directors,musicians etc seem to have had a rough idea about leading a tribe of passionate people all along.

You may or may not like the films of Kevin Smith, for example, but he knows his audience – he makes films that are comparaitvely cheap to produce, always turn a profit, and generally featured the same characters – in fact his only real failing was with an attempt to go mass market, after which he went back to making films for ‘his’ people.

And he’s not scared to get out and talk to people – averaging 3.63 posts per day on his own message board since May 2004 makes a total of 6082 posts.

Add him to the list that includes Radiohead, Trent Reznor, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon etc. All supported by groups who put the fan into fanatical.

Who else can we add?

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Still kidding yourself that being social is just for ‘the kidz’?

November 25, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I first came across ‘The School of Life‘ via the excellent Mark Earls. It’s apparently ‘ a new cultural enterprise based in central London offering good ideas about everyday living.’ And that includes: ‘ evening and weekend courses, holidays to unexpected locations, stigma-free psychotherapy, secular sermons, conversation meals, a floating faculty of experts and a new kind of literary consultancy service called bibliotherapy.’

There’s also a really interesting School of Life blog, which brought up this gem by Richard Reynolds on Guerilla Gardening.

He writes about solo nocturnal gardening missions to cultivate areas which were being left – and how he’s ended up being invoiced by the local council for gardening work that he actually did! One of the lines that jumped out: ‘A lot has happened since I began guerrilla gardening and it’s all because I blogged about it.’

You can see his own ‘Guerilla Gardening Homepage‘ here. What came across was his surprise at how many people were either doing the same thing individually, or have since got involved. He’s inspiring a tribe, despite the red tape and seemingly idiotic efforts of the local council.

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Will this be the Christmas of the MP3? Or could convergence save record shops?

November 25, 2008 By 2 Comments

With some time to kill before a meeting, I took the chance to browse round the Oxford Street branch of HMV, looking for inspiration for what to buy with a gift voucher I’ve had kicking around, and also to get ideas for Christmas presents.

Aside from reminding me how difficult it can be to find unusual items in even the largest stores (in fact it’s usually easier in the small secondhand record shops I spent much of my music budget in), I also felt something a bit different about the experience. I’m not sure whether it’s the credit crunch, the success of online retailers or the rise of the MP3 but the shop felt slightly emptier than I’d have expected – and the average age seemed slightly older than usual.

The only major exception was the ever-expanding videogames section. Could this be the fact full console games are still viable as a physical product? (Not many options to download a full game, and the filesize would be bigger than the monthly data allowance for a lot of people!) Certainly I got the anecdotal impression that without the videogame section, the average age of the shoppers would be 10 years higher than I’ve ever seen – or maybe I’m just noticing more…

Coincidentally, via PaidContent and Media Guardian comes the news that 32.1 million MP3 players were sold in the UK last year. Jemima Kiss points out, quite rightly, that the title is a bit misleading – 75% of the sales included were MP3 capable mobile phones – but the important point is that 90% of mobiles sold last year were MP3 capable. Whether or not they’re actually being used for MP3 consumption is almost secondary – the point is that a huge mass of people now have the opportunity to be converted at any moment.

I’m not sure that CD player sales dropping to 8 million last year is necessarily related – after all, CD players have been around long enough to have reached saturation point – but if the money drops out of manufacturing CD players, and sales are growing in those little devices that make phonecalls, take pictures and video, surf the web and play MP3s, it’s another challenge to providers and retailers of physical content.

Why would I pust through a packed Oxford Street to experience agoraphobia in a massive store populated by those 10+ years older than me, and then fail to find my ideal purchase without ordering it – particularly when its so closely linked to lifestyle?

Funnily enough, I have seen a packed record shop recently – in Malmo in Sweden. And I wish I’d grabbed a picture, because it wasn’t just records – it was the 50′s style in store cafe.

I realise this has been a bit of a meandering post, but perhaps the takeaway conclusion is this:

Mobile phones are a triumph of convergence to provide value. Convergence is also increasingly happening with living room technology and online applications. Perhaps in a time-starved culture, more retailers need to look at how they could use convergence to build engagement and loyalty in the real world, as much as online? After all, it’s a reason why supermarkets and department stores have continued to have cafes instore. So why can’t record stores look at food and drink, live events, introducing art, photography, specific genre nights, or other ways to hook into the tribes who don’t have a reason to support them anymore?

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