Creating meaningful relationships with clients - or better said: USERS - is not an easy task for many organizations that were built and grown according to the logic of the one-way street called Advertising. If we take Facebook's founding date as the start of the social network phenomenon, social is still only in its childhood, and many organizations and ad-agencies' understanding of it still in diapers. Although most clients understand they have to get onto the social bandwagon, many still rely on their ad agency to figure out in whichever what way to do so, instead of looking at how to incorporate “Meaningful Conversations” with their current and potential customers into their core strategies and product development. This attitude reminds us in more than one way of the early days of Direct Marketing and Sales Promotion, when brands would tie their products to any award that was believed to be attractive to target audiences, relevant or not. Only years later it became obvious that Brands cannot be built through temporarily seducing or co-opting customers with cash, cars or totally irrelevant ties to other brands – so called “borrowed interest” – but only through consistently building brand value by looking after the customer’s interest and offering those products and services he or she wants most. Today, many brands still ignore the fact that their customers can – and will – talk back at them, treating them like some unknown passer-by on a daily commute or, worse, like a homeless person begging for a coin... Those days are over. Brands that wish to survive and thrive in the XXI Century do not only need to talk back, but need to construct “Meaningful Relationships” which cannot be achieved through Advertising alone, but by taking the interlocutor not only seriously but as a friend who has wants & needs that need to be resolved. This is why I believe that two-way conversations must be built into core strategy, products, services, and also why Advertising has – so far – only scored a handful of victories and probably thousands of failures. Here are some thought starters that might get the process flowing… Imagine the Impossible!

1. Netvertising:
Brand Building in
the XXI Century
Thought Starters on how
to turn your PRODUCT into
a SERVICE

2. Facts & Figures
• Years to Reach 50 million Users:
– Radio - 38
– TV - 13
– Internet - 4
– iPod - 3
– iPad - 2
– Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months
– iPhone applications hit 1 billion downloads in 9 months

3. Facts & Figures
• By 2010 Gen Y had outnumbered the Baby Boomers
• 96% of them have joined one or more social networks
• Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…
• Social Media has overtaken PORN as the #1 activity on the Web
• 80% of US companies use LinkedIn as a primary tool to find
employees
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social
media

4. Facts & Figures
• A 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that, on
average, online students outperformed those receiving face-
to-face instruction
• 1 in 6 Higher education students are enrolled in online
curriculums
• A number of US Universities have stopped distributing e-mail
addresses to their new students
• Others disallow PowerPoint, laptops and cell phones in their
classrooms

5. Facts & Figures
• If Facebook were a country it would have the world’s third
largest population, behind China, India and ahead of the UE
• comScore Indicates that Russia has the most engaged social
media audience with visitors spending on average 6.6 hours
and viewing 1.307 pages per month
• The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old
females
• Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears have more Twitter
followers than the entire population of countries like Sweden,
Israel, Ireland, Norway, or Panama.

6. Facts & Figures
• 80% of Twitter usage is outside of Twitter
• Whatever happens in VEGAS stays in YouTube, Flickr, Twitter,
Facebook…
• YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine
• Wikipedia contains well over 27 million articles; 82% of these
are in languages other than English*
• Some studies suggest Wikipedia is more accurate than the
Encyclopedia Britannica…
• If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on
Wikipedia you would make $ 1712,32… PER HOUR
Source: Wikipedia Statistics, 06-2013. http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm

7. Facts & Figures
• The Blogsphere contains well over 200 M. Blogs. If the current
trend continues, this number will roughly double in the next
12 months
• 54% Of bloggers post content or Tweet on a daily basis
• 34% Of bloggers write opinions about products & brands
• 25% Of search results for the world’s Top 20 brands are links
to user-generated content
• Facebook USERS translated the site from English to Spanish
via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks, at cero cost for Facebook
• Windows XP USERS put more than U$ 5 Billion worth of man
hours into beta-testing

8. Facts & Figures
• People care more about how their social graph ranks products
and services than how Google ranks them
• 78% Of consumers trust peer recommendations, only 14%
trust advertising
• 90% Of the people who have some technology to skip TV
commercials, DO skip them
• On-line TV and Movie channel Hulu doubled its number of
subscribers between April and December 2012.
Now totals 3 M.

9. Facts & Figures
• 25% Of Americans say that in the past month they watched a
short video… On their PHONE (2010)
• Amazon reports that in 2012 its Kindle sales overtook printed
books. Sell 114 Kindle books for every 100 printed versions
• Even the largest newspapers are experiencing record declines
in circulation because we no longer search for news
Recently, the New York Times sold off the Boston Globe at a
93% loss (07-2013)
• In the near future, we will no longer search for products and
services; they will come to us through social media
• This means Brands will have to consciously BUILD their
reputation and acceptability, or run the risk to be shut out

10. Facts & Figures
• Author Clay Shirky* calculates the COGNITIVE SURPLUS of the
USA alone at 200 Billion man-hours (spent watching TV)
That is roughly 2.000 times the free time spent on Wikipedia
each year
• More than 2.5 million pieces of content (web links, news
stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on
Facebook. Every DAY
• Successful companies in social media act more like DALE
CARNEGIE and less like MAD MEN: They listen first, sell later…
• Successful companies in social media act more like party
planners, aggregators and content providers than traditional
advertisers
Clay Shirky: Cognitive Surplus. Penguin Group, NY - USA (2010)

11. Follow the Money

12. Follow the Money
• Facebook buys Instagram, the Publicis and Omnicom ad-groups
merge, Dell prepares for buy-out, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos buys
the Washington Post (right: the Watergate guys)
• AppStore cumulative sales up to 2011: 15 Billion; Cumulative
2012: 25 Billion.
Meaning: Apple sold 10 BILLION apps during 2012 alone
• Google launches the Motorola X cell phone (07-2013)
• Adobe goes Cloud, SaaS (Creative Cloud - 2013)

13. Embrace Caos

14. Nothing replaces
Nothing

15. Nothing replaces Nothing
• Radio did not replace Newspapers
• Television did not replace Radio
• Internet did not replace TV
• Home video did not replace Cinema
• E-mail did not replace snail mail
• Texting will not replace E-mail

16. But Something may
displace Something

17. THOUGHT
STARTERS

18. Product as a Service
(PaaS)

19. If my Product/Brand were
a Service
what would it be?

20. Software as a Service
(SaaS)

21. If my Product/Brand were
Software,
what would it do?

22. Social Networking
as a Service (SNaaS)

23. If my Product/Brand were a
Social Network
who would my members be?

24. Blogging as a Service
(BaaS)

25. If my Product/Brand were
a Blog
what would it be about?

26. PRODUCT
DEVELOPMENT

27. Human-Machine
Interface Revolution

28. Human-Machine interface revolution
• Voice
• Touch
• Gestures
• Biometrics

29. Learn to Learn =>
Play to Learn

30. Learn to Learn => Play to learn
• Playing is learning
• Creative process, brain-training
– Inventiveness
– Mental flexibility
– Visualization
– Made in the shade
• Skill acquisition
• Cost effective: high development cost, copy cost
approaches cero

31. REAL
User Experiences

32. REAL User Experiences
• User experiences created around the Brand’s true
personality
• Not “Borrowed Interest”
• Developing experience oriented Products
• Developing experience oriented Services, Apps
• Developing Networked Products

33. The Salesman is
DEAD
Long live the Salesman!

34. Peer influenced Buying Decisions
• 78% of Users trust peer recommendations, only 14%
trust advertising
• Building a network of Influencers, spokesmen
(women) and brand champions is becoming essential

35. Putting
Social Networking
to WORK

36. Putting Social Networking to Work
• User grouping – “Flocking”
• User mobilization – “Crowding”
• User funding – “Crowd Funding”
• User content / Review / Feedback
• Users helping Users
• Sharing (WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, PinIt)
• User containment, crisis control

37. Social Networking
or Social Betworking?

38. Social Networking is completely
unpredictable
Nobody can yet claim to control, predict
results, or even be able to establish
metrics for an on-line campaign, let
alone Social Media

39. Feeding off the Feed

40. Feeding off the Feed
• Create exiting Brand related content
• Look for strategic alliances that build Brand value at
the intersection
• Entice users to co-create
• Motivate users to engage
• Understand SEO
• Use Stats, Data to improve content orientation to
user needs / wants

41. Contribute to Society

42. Contribute to society
• Networked RSE, a two-way street
– Do not tell people what you DO, tell them what
you BELIEVE in
– Give them enticing reasons to believe in YOU
– Look for and build shared value
– Create conditions to allow creation, participation,
collaboration, learning
– Help them to help themselves

43. Contribute to society
• Knowledge sharing, Problem solving
• Open innovation
• Creating useful, involving applications
• Use the Web, learn to co-create
• Co-Create KNOWLEDGE
• Co-create content that is SIGNIFICANT for users, followers
• Do NOT promote yourself, promote LEARNING & SHARING
• On-line video: better than instruction manuals - a faster,
deeper way to learn

44. Ask: What is
IMpossible?

45. Then go out and
DO IT!