Financial Bailout: The Wisdom of Crowds

there's no real evidence that one can become expert in something as broad as 'decision making' or 'policy' or 'strategy' . . . And much of what we've seen so far suggests that a large group of diverse individuals will come up with better and more robust forecasts and make more intelligent decisions than even the most skilled 'decision maker.'

James Surowiecki
The Wisdom of Crowds

Modern Marketing

The Modern Marketing paradigm and social media toolsets at our finger tips as citizens and employees of Clear!Blue provides us all with an opportunity to shape the debate currently occurring in the White House and others. With the election just over a month away, people are talking all over the Internet about the pros and cons of each candidate. While the following is my opinion, and yours may differ, last night, I was able to start a conversation through social media. Thanks to the Internet, I made my mark on the debate.

There is panic in the street. Rome is burning and I don't mean the sportscaster Jim Rome. Our financial markets are in disarray and are on the brink of a global catastrophe.

The funny thing about this crisis is that it is more of a crisis of confidence than the typical cash flow crisis that almost all of us have experienced sometime in our lives. Cash is not the problem here; there is plenty of that being hoarded here and there.

The crux of the problem is that institutions that typically freely make loans and take deposits from each other are reluctant ("terrified") to trade amongst themselves and this lack of confidence could bring the economy to its knees if confidence is not restored here in short order.

While lawmakers in Washington are busy trying to protect their fiefdoms and ensure their re-elections, the crisis of confidence is steadfastly eroding options and pushing our economy toward depression, not just the current recession. Washington's inaction and failure to come to a compromise on the financial bailout package yesterday represented a colossal failure of leadership that will be felt for generations to come if something is not done to restore confidence in short order.

The bottom line is that once confidence reaches the tipping point, the domino effect will take hold and there will be no going back.

Step Up

In Bill Abele's words, now is the time for our elected officials to "step up" and selflessly lead. The stock markets 700+ point decline yesterday was a vote by the crowd that the "decision makers" made a grave error yesterday. Unfortunately, the stock market does not have the power to propose legislation in the US Congress. Hopefully, the US Congress is listening and will consider the wisdom of the crowd's vote and craft a solution that helps to maintain and restore confidence.

Individual Solutions

I spent two hours last night creating a blog post detailing my thoughts and opinions on the current financial crisis entitled: Bailout Voted Down: Colossal Failure of Leadership. When I started writing the post, I did not know what I was going to do with it, but figured I could at least get my frustrations off my chest. By the end of the night, I sent the post to the following people 9in additon to posting it on facebook):

• Office of the President
• Senator Levin
• Senator Stabenow
• Congressman Knollenberg
• Board of the Federal Reserve
• Secretary of the Treasury
• Governor Granholm
• Mary Kramer at Crain's
• Matt Roush at Great Lakes IT Report
• Eric Morath at Detroit News
• Free Press - Washington Bureau
• Emailed Numerous Friends

How are you going to change the world today?

Make it a great Tuesday.

Jonathan

The State of the Economy and Global Commodity Pricing

I read this article in the NY Times about how thieves are stealing catalytic converters for the intrinsic value of the precious metals inside, details below, and it made think a few thoughts:

• What is driving these thefts? Economy? Commodity Pricing?
• What are thieves going to think of next to steal, expecially if the economy gets even worse?
• Are commodity prices going to continue to skyrocket? Is this driven be global demand - the China and India effect? A weak dollar? or most likely both.

The price of gold recently hit record highs, crossing the $1,000-an-ounce mark before retreating a bit. Less well publicized has been the fate of the even-more rarefied metals platinum, palladium and rhodium, with platinum hitting recent record highs of more than $2,300 an ounce. People who may have thought their lives had nothing to do with the booming commodities market are finding out the hard way where their connection is — in their car’s exhaust system.

The catalytic converter is made with trace amounts of platinum, palladium and rhodium, which speed chemical reactions and help clean emissions at very high temperatures. Selling stolen converters to scrap yards or recyclers, a thief can net a couple of hundred dollars apiece.

The Power of Collective Intelligence - Thought of the Day

"All of us are smarter than any one of us."

Japanese Proverb

Traditional research, Before the Internet (BI), was often best accomplished by someone who had a wide net of contacts to poll about the topic under investigation. Chip can tell you that companies spend millions of dollars developing managed panels of highly selected individuals to help divine the wisdom of the whole from a small, yet statistically significant, number of individual panel members.

The Internet has begun to disintermediate the stronghold that managed panel and market research companies have on helping companies uncover trends within their target markets. The collaborative power of the Internet and ravenous passion for products, politics and past times that the world of Social Media has brought from the underground to the foreground has made the process of doing primary research virtually effortless by traditional standards.

I am a particularly big fan of social answers networks. I previously wrote about the power of some of the social answer networks (link) the Internet (e.g. http://www.linkedin.com/answers, http://answers.yahoo.com/, http://wiki.answers.com/) and talked about how we have used these tools at home to facilitate the age old problem that “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus.”

If you have a pressing issue or question that is perplexing you, I encourage you to step outside of your comfort zone and try one or all of the aforementioned answer networks. I believe that you will be astounded by the sheer horsepower of the collective network.

A few tips before you get started:

• LinkedIn is best for business questions
• Yahoo! is better for personal issues
• Be very specific about your question. Questions that can be objectively answered get far more responses than open-ended ones.

TOTD has most recently been very focused on the changing nature of the world of marketing and I strongly feel that increased use of the social answers network by the team will help provide some of the answers to the mind-bending issues that we are facing in the marketplace.

Make it a great Wednesday,

Jonathan

Word of the Day - Scotoma

A scotoma (Greek: darkness; plural: "scotomas" or "scotomata") is an area or island of loss or impairment of visual acuity surrounded by a field of normal or relatively well-preserved vision.

Every normal mammalian eye has a scotoma in its field of vision, usually termed its blind spot. The presence of this normal scotoma does not intrude into consciousness because it is very small, but it can be demonstrated to oneself by the simplest of clinical methods (such as the one in the blind spot article).

Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." - Vince Lombardi

I keep getting stumped with questions that I cannot answer and it frustrates me. I am a guy and, as many women can attest to, guys are better at solving problems than listening.

My girlfriend had some questions about how we should handle certain situations in our life. Being the guy that I am, I immediately started trying to find the “right” answer. When I tried to answer with a positive spin, she would play devil’s advocate and gave me all of the reasons that the negative was more plausible and vice versa. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

This conversation was not going as well as I would have liked, so I went to my fall-back plan – the Internet and the world of Social Media. I suggested that she consider posing these questions to a greater audience and maybe we would gain some wisdom that I/we could not come up with on our own.

She is pretty innovative and open to new ideas and immediately went online to Yahoo! Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com) and started tapping into the network. Within 30 minutes of asking her first round of questions, she had 16 answers (25% of the answers were very helpful, 50% neutral, and 25% were not helpful.) After reviewing the answers to the first question, she realized that she needed to refine her question so as to dig deeper into the wisdom of this community of answers. The answers she received helped us come up with a mutually agreeable plan of action and ultimately saved us hundreds of dollars in counseling fees – LOL.

Of course, Yahoo! Answers isn’t an infallible source of infinite wisdom. But, as Vince Lombardi says, a group effort usually leads to better, and more well-rounded, results. And Yahoo! Answers opens you up to a pretty large group.

I told Bill Abele about this experience and he said that he was going home that night to try it out; he was hooked.

The beauty of social media is that the tools are right at our fingertips. We just need to be aware of them and their potential applications and be willing to experiment with them to help create outstanding results.

If you have a question that you can’t answer, consider tapping into the power of the Internet. If you can’t figure out where to go with it, give me a call, and I will help you out.


Have a great Friday,

Jonathan

"Know where to find the information and how to use it - that's the secret of success." - Albert Einstein

This Special Social Media Edition of Thought of the Day is brought to you by Jonathan Smith:

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to realize one of the goals that I set for myself after watching “The Secret.”Dan Mulhern, The First Gentleman of Michigan, invited me to the Governor’s Residence to help him map out the social media and marketing strategy for his book, “Everyday Leadership.”




I originally met Dan through the Leadership Detroit program. He was the facilitator for my classes. I took advantage of an opportunity to speak with Dan about the power of social media and the possibilities for its use in Governor Granholm’s reelection campaign in September 2006. I met with him again in early October 2006 on the election issue for about two hours at Barnes and Noble at Telegraph and Maple, while his State Police escort waited in the car. I could not believe that the First Gentleman was spending this much time with me during the height of the election season. Governor Granholm did not end up implementing a comprehensive social media strategy during her re-election campaign because the timing was too late, but Dan was hooked on the power of the medium.

For some reason, I decided that I wanted to someday get invited to the Governor’s residence, so I added it to my list of goals for 2007. I really hoped that I would be invited for a state dinner... maybe someday.

I was pretty shocked when I got a call from Oralya, Dan’s Scheduler, to see if I could come up on Friday to meet with Dan to help him out with his book. I did not really know what to say, “OOOO.K.” She had to make sure that I was on the list of approved guests and tell the State Police that I was coming. The house was very, very, nice, but you would not know it was the Governor’s Residence but for the fact that there is a security gate at the driveway and a State Trooper greets you at your car.

So what does all this mean for you, me and Clear!Blue.

• It furthers Bill Abele’s Michigan Inititiative – I was able to tell Dan about our involvement with One D, which should grow to more conversation about how Clear!Blue can help improve the state of our state.


• It increases awareness of Clear!Blue's Social Media efforts – I went to Dan not only as a consultant, but as an ambassador of Clear!Blue, and a spokesman for the Clear!Blue way of developing social media strategy.


• It's proof that no matter how far out your goals may be, you can probably will them into reality!

Have a great Friday and weekend!

Jonathan Smith

"The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts. "

~ Malcolm Gladwell, “The Law of a Few," The Tipping Point

Activating a Social Media campaign requires more than the mere creation of a blog, making a post to a message board, or uploading a video on YouTube.Reputation lies at the crux of any successful word-of-mouth campaign, in Social Media or mainstream media.

Many would like to believe that we merely have to “post it on the Internet” and our messages will be magically delivered to our targeted audience. ROFL (Rolling on Floor Laughing). I only wish this were the case, but if it were true we might all be out of a job.

The reality is that any Social Media outreach campaign requires many of the same elements that are required for a successful mainstream media PR campaign:

• Research to determine the most appropriate media targets
• Solid pitch
• Strong ongoing Media Relations strategy

We have a lot of experience pitching and executing Media Relations, but have beenlimited in our knowledge of how to select the right Social Media outlets.

You'll be happy to know that we now have a process in place that is much more sophisticated than "just go out there and post." Our methodology includes collaborating with the Client Service Teams to target appropriate segments, selecting sites with the best online reputation within that target, developing the most strategic way to contact online influencers, and deciding whether we want to coordinate with existing programs/efforts. As you can see, we're taking great care to put the "U" before the "C" in our Social Media efforts, and online reputation plays a huge role in how we determine what sites to pitch. We need to be able to find the people with the “rare set of social gifts” that Gladwell discusses in today's quote.

It is interesting to note that there are a number of objective measures for online reputation. For example:

• http://www.technorati.com/ has an Authority Rating for blogs(Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.)
• http://www.google.com/ invented PageRank™ for websites(PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".)
• http://www.myspace.com/ measures it via the number of Friends(The User's Friends Space contains a count of a user's friends.)
• http://www.ebay.com/ used a Feedback score(Feedback represents your permanent reputation as an eBay member. It’s made up of comments and ratings left by other eBay members you've bought from and sold to. These comments and ratings, along with your overall Feedback Score, are available in your Feedback Profile.)
• http://www.alexa.com/ developed a Traffic Ranking(Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users.)

The point is: We understand that to be successful in the Social Media realm, we need to think about how we are going to tap into the key influencers who are in the best position to help us tell our stories. We've already had some success with this. And, in order to further our success, everyone needs to be thinking about how a Social Media component might enhance their client programs, so that we can work together and make it happen!

So, what will be the next "social epidemic"? Who knows... But, if we stick to our process and aggressively pursue fitting opportunities, we may very well be the "infectors"! Make it a great Friday and weekend,

Jonathan

"The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge."

~ Elbert Hubbard

This Guest Thought of the Day is brought to you by Jonathan Smith. In an effort to open all of our eyes a little wider to the world of Social Media, Jonathan debuts his monthly SoMe message…

A couple of weeks ago, Mary Bester and I attended a Myspace conference at the Townsend Hotel. Sounds like an oxymoron, right? Old-world, somewhat pretentious, 5-star hotel holding a conference for an online forum created by a couple of kids in beat up khakis? Funny thing is, that’s just the point. We no longer live in a world of black and white, where the old-timers hang out at one place and the youngsters another.

We are all online.

And this reality has a huge effect on the way we do business.

The theme of the conference was “Never-Ending Friending.” In Layman’s terms, this is called the ripple effect. As you gain friends on Myspace, your exposure increases exponentially – as each of their friends now has the ability to view your profile. For many niche markets, creating a profile on Myspace is an amazingly efficient way for companies to gain exposure! There were three big take-aways from the conference boasting the ability to unlock the power of this momentum effect.

• Be Friend-worthy
  - Let consumers integrate your brand into their personal story and/or profile


• Be Friendly
  - Encourage Myspacers to invite others to view your profile


• Be willing to help a Friend
  - Programs need to align with passion points and reward the user

What does this mean? Best to explain with an example:

24 Seconds, a sports bar in Berkley has a Myspace Account. Check it out: http://www.myspace.com/24seconds. They list their hours, nightly specials, venue information – they even have pictures of their restaurant and menu…it’s a completely interactive way to virtually visit the bar. To top it off, they have “Myspace Mondays.” They encourage Myspacers to make 24 Seconds a “top friend” and to bring a print-out verifying that they’ve done so on their profile. The reward for the Myspacer? Major discounts! The reward for 24 Seconds? Targeted exposure. All the cool kids will want to be friends with them. They have 831 so far. I think that’s proof enough.

I know, I know. Some of you may be thinking: “Myspace is for kids.” “I don’t have the time or patience to learn how to use this.” The reality is, that way of thinking that way is no longer an option. This is happening. It’s happening now. It’s here to stay. Granted, Myspace is just one of the many Social Media tools, and, in the months to come, we’ll discuss the benefits and weaknesses of others. But, if you haven’t gotten aquainted with Myspace yet, why not start here and now?

So, take a little “SoMe Time” today. You may just surprise yourself and find out that it's "so you"!

Make it a great Wednesday,Jonathan