Think about it for a minute: Google knows our deepest secrets because we search with INTENTION - and in realtime, and often even in real-place (i.e. when using mobile devices) - for the things that matter to us - whether it is an upcoming trip or a disease that we are suffering from, or vexing problem we may have. Google knows all that stuff, and keeps it in their records (unless we take steps to delete it all... allegedly). Facebook, on the other hand, just knows what we SAY, what we share, what we purport to LIKE. That's also quite deep but... there is a big difference. Your thoughs? Browse my Privacy to Publicy links to read more
"Em uma sociedade cada vez mais conectada pela internet, ganham força a
colaboração e a troca de ideias como motores da inovação. Soluções
adotadas até recentemente já não se aplicam mais. Quem alerta para essa
mudança são dois estudiosos das transformações que a tecnologia vem
impondo: o norte-americano Steven Johnson, professor da Universidade de
Nova York e autor do best seller De onde vêm as boas ideias — a história
natural da inovação, e o alemão Gerd Leonhard, fundador do instituto
Green Futurist, também autor de obras como The Future Of Content, entre
outras.
A dupla de pensadores do futuro estará participando do 5º Congresso
Internacional de Inovação, promovido pela Fiergs, nos próximos dias 30 e
31, em Porto Alegre (informações e inscrições no site
www.fiergs.org.br/inovacao2012 ). Johnson e Leonhard anteciparam algumas
das ideias que discutirão no evento em entrevistas concedidas por
e-mail a Zero Hora. Confira os principais trechos.
Gerd Leonhard — Fundador do instituto Green Futurist
ZH – Como o uso cada vez maior das redes sociais está mudando a forma
como as pessoas interagem entre si e se relacionam com as empresas,
enquanto consumidores?
Gerd Leonhard – Estamos nos tornando uma sociedade conectada. Em
alguns casos, tanto “compartilhamento” e transparência poderá acabar com
nossa privacidade, mas, de uma maneira geral, esta nova era traz mais
benefícios. Consequências claras disso são um aumento radical do poder
dos consumidores, maior transparência política e declínio da corrupção,
marketing mais honesto e publicidade mais útil. Deveríamos, aliás,
descartar o termo mídias sociais porque não se trata apenas de mídia,
mas de algo que chamo de Social OS (sistema operacional social). Cada
empresa ou governo deverá se tornar conectado, aberto, transparente e
engajado. Caso contrário, iremos ignorá-los.
ZH – Alguns críticos dizem que a internet tornou disponível um grande
volume de informação, mas o uso que se faz desse conhecimento é
superficial. O senhor concorda?
Leonhard – Em 1971, Marshall McLuhan disse que a aldeia global não é
“quieta e harmoniosa”, mas tem dose considerável de barulho e caos. Não é
questão de overdose de informação, mas de filtro. É aí que os
jornalistas entram: não basta só conteúdo, é preciso contexto. Não se
trata só de volume, mas de dar relevância aos fatos.
ZH – A internet já transformou a indústria musical e agora está
mudando o cinema, a TV e o mercado literário. As corporações ligadas a
esses ramos, porém, parecem não estar faturando como antes. As empresas
terão de se habituar a ganhar menos nesta nova realidade?
Leonhard – Na era dos monopólios, as empresas estavam habituadas a
margens de lucro fantásticas porque os consumidores não tinham escolha.
De agora em diante, os preços por unidade de conteúdo estão caindo, em
alguns casos, até 90% – veja o Netflix (serviço de vídeos online) x
DVDs. As boas notícias são que mais pessoas podem ser alcançadas por
meios digitais, os custos de distribuição são menores e a publicidade
está se tornando digital rapidamente – nos próximos três a cinco anos,
veremos 50% dos orçamentos publicitários – globalmente, uns US$ 600
bilhões – migrarem para meios digitais, móveis e sociais. Há grandes
oportunidades, mas nada será como era 10 anos atrás.
ZH – Atualmente, a Apple é considerada a mais criativa e valiosa empresa do mundo. Essa posição conseguirá ser mantida?
Leonhard – Sou fã da Apple, mas essa visão de mundo extremamente
centrada e controlada que a empresa tem não se sustentará. Eles terão
mais uns bons cinco anos – a genialidade de Steve Jobs continuará a
impulsioná-los nesse período. Startups surgem em toda parte, e a próxima
Apple deverá começar a aparecer já em 2013.
ZH – Há quem aposte que o próximo grande embate no setor de tecnologia será entre Google e Facebook. Quem vencerá essa briga?
Leonhard – Há espaço suficiente para cinco ou seis Googles e
Facebooks, assim, como hoje existe espaço para DHL, Fedex e outras
empresas de correspondência. À medida em que o mundo está se tornando
hiperconectado, será mais importante quais problemas as grandes
companhias poderão resolver do que quanto elas irão faturar no próximo
trimestre.
I was interviewed before my presentation at IAB NL's Mobile Inspiration Congress (see the PDF here), by Joris Heukelom (chairman of IAN Netherlands and Owner of MakerStreet). A good summary on many of the key issues that will impact the future of advertising, mobile and social.
Please join me for this debate - should be great fun. Andrew Keen - often called the Anti-Christ of Silicon Valley - is a long-time colleague of mine and even though we don't agree on a lot of things he puts forth about in his 2 most recent books (The Cult of the Amateur, and the newest Digital Vertigo) I respect his work a lot - don't miss this; sparks are sure to fly.
Attendance is limited to 100 people so sign up early (and be sure to log-in at least 20 mins before showtime:)
Fri, Oct 26, 2012 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM CEST i.e. 12 noon EST, 9am PST, 11 pm Sinagpore etc
Gerd Leonhard aka MediaFuturist is a futurist, keynote speaker,
author and CEO of TheFuturesAgency, based in Switzerland. He is (mostly)
a proponent of what he calls 'The Networked Society', the SoLoMo
internet (social, local, mobile) and freemium business models; and
foresees great opportunities in the global empowerment of creators and
consumers powered by digital technology. His latest book is 'the future
of content and can be found on Amazon see http://www.gerd.fm/focbook
Andrew and Gerd will present some of their key insights for approx.
10-15 minutes each, and will then debate the most crucial issues such as
what privacy means in a connected world, whether 'the crowds' are
actually being empowered or not, what the future role of social media
will be, what the true meaning of a networked society is, and what the
media landscape will look like, in the future.
Get ready for some serious sparring - which will also involve the
participants, both via messages and chat as well as via audio
intervention (upon invitation only).
This seminar will be recorded - please be aware of this fact if you
are invited to speak during the session. You can view some of the
previous recordings here: http://gerd.fm/youtubewebi
This session is limited to 100 people so please sign up early; most
importantly please log-in at least 30 mins prior to the starting time.
More about Andrew:
http://www.ajkeen.com/bio/
https://twitter.com/ajkeen
"Andrew Keen has found the off switch for Silicon Valley's reality
distortion field. With a cold eye and a cutting wit, he reveals the
grandiose claims of our new digital plutocrats to be little more than
self-serving cant. Digital Vertigo provides a timely and welcome reminder that having substance is more important than being transparent. -- Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
More about Gerd
Leonhard http://www.gerdfuturist.com ... the canvas:)
CEO www.thefuturesagency.com
The Future of Business blog http://www.futureof.biz/
Videos: http://www.youtube.com/gleonhard
http://www.twitter.com/gleonhard
http://about.me/mediafuturist
This is the complete (and non-dubbed) video of my presentation on the Future of Mobile & Apps: Futurist Keynote Speaker Gerd Leonhard in Moscow (ENGLISH) (by gleonhard) at the NextGreatApp event in Moscow, May 24, 2012; presented by Sberbank see http://digitaloctober.com/event/next_great_app for more details. Topics include the future of apps, commerce, mobile and social. The PDF with the slides can be downloaded here: http://db.tt/a4acS8D5 please enjoy and share:)
The Future of Business & Communications. Social. Local. Mobile. Cloud. And why Data is the New Oil. Futurist and CEO of TheFuturesAgency Gerd Leonhard was the keynote speaker at the Olavstoppen POL conference on May 3rd 2012 in Stavanger, Norway.
This is a new video with a short and to-the-point interview produced by marketing magazine The Drum at Digital London, see http://www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2012/03/31/video-futures-agency-ceo-gerd-leonha... about the future of social media and how it will impact us. Most important message: in a digital society, you can't FORCE people to pay, you can only ATTRACT them to pay. Original video is at http://youtu.be/2jT6NcKmoM0 - thanks to everyone at Drum Magazine for making this available.
A few days ago, I did a fairly lengthy and deep skype interview with Toronto-based Marie Germain from Branding 2.0 (see her Twitter channel here), touching on many issues including the future of commerce, selling, marketing and branding, so-called social media (I much prefer the term Social OS), current issues in technology and the Internet (such as SOPA - the deeply disturbing but nevertheless impending U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act), and media / content trends.
There are some quite juicy snippets in this interview, such as:
"In an truly digital society we probably don't need marketing as we know it"
"We are moving from a society, and an economy, based on EGOsystems to a society that is based on ECOsystems (i.e. INTERDEPENDENCE)"
"The old days of commerce were based on handcuffing consumers, now it's all about attraction, engagement and conversations (being a magnet rather than using handcuffs)"
This video uses an interesting format in that it is based on an audio track that was recorded on the phone, and superimposes some related images over it. Interesting. If you just want the audio track, here it is:
From the TribeRadio Youtube post: "World-renown futurist, Gerd Leonhard, in this interview speaks of the very serious challenges businesses and brands face; he offers solutions. On a more sombre note he exposes the ploys of controllers on internet freedom, SOPA to be clear. The Wall Street Journal acknowledges Gerd as one of the leading media futurists in the world. Powerful! Incisive! Gerd is simply delicious to the ears. Keynote Speaker, Founder of The Futures Agency, Advisor to top corporations and governments, author of five books, "The Future of Music", "Music 2.0", "The End of Control", "Friction is Fiction" and "The Future of Content". Gerd's background is in music; however, today he is a top game-changer, inspiring entrepreneurship and guiding us into a prodigious digital world. To reach the Host of Tribe Radio, Marie Germain: at her blog, http://Branding20.wordpress.com or her biz site, http://MarieGermain.com..."
Be sure to check out the other audio / video interviews on here channel as well, including Jeffrey Hayzlett ('Running the Gauntlet' book, former CMO of Kodak).
A very meaty slideshow covering a huge number of key trends (see below... yes, it's a bit of overkill) and a pretty cool video - well worth checking out!
Access Everywhere 9. Electric Fleets 1 0. Leadership Shakeups 4 1. Rooftop Farming 6 3. Tokyo Sky Tree 8 2. Album Evolution 0. Facebook’s IPO 2 1. Lighter Cars 4 2. Roots Revival 6 4. Tom Daley 8 3. All Things Military- 1. Facial Recognition 2 2. Loosecubes 4 3. Scooter Surge 6 5. Toys for Tablets 8 Inspired Fury 3. Lytro 4 4. Screened Dining 6 6. TV Commerce 8 4. Antique Eats 2. Fat Taxes 2 4. Marques Toliver 4 5. Screened Shopping 6 7. “Ultra” 8 5. Anywhere, Any-Way 3. Flipped Classrooms 2 5. Mobile Security 4 6. Senior Cohousing 6 8. Unwrapping the 8 Shopping 4. Floating Yoga 2 Process 6. Motivational Objects 4 7. Silence 6 6. App Overload 5. For-Profit Chains, 2 9. Vdio 8 7. Mushrooms as 4 8. Silicon Valley Siblings 6 7. Apps for an Nonprofit Stores Functional Food 0. Video-grams 9 Aging World 9. Smaller SKUs 6 6. Fuel From Waste 2 8. Mushrooms Go Green 4 1. Virtual Fitting Rooms 9 8. The Attention 0. Smart Clothing 7 7. Garden Camping 2 9. Myanmar 4 2. Voice-Based 9 Economy 1. Smarter Check-ins 7 8. Gen Z 2 0. Nadine Ponce 5 Microblogging 9. Batuka 2. Social Seating 7 9. Gesture Recognition 2 1. Olympics’ New Sport 5 3. Voice Control 9 0. Benefit Corporations1 3. Solar Gets Simpler 7 0. Healthy Vending 3 2. Online Lives, in Print 5 4. Web Chat Everywhere 9 1. Book Club 2.01 Machines 4. Spiking Food Prices 7 3. P-to-P Experiences 5 5. Wii U 9 2. BYOD (Bring Your 1 1. Heirloom Everything 3 5. Split-Personality 7 Own Device) 4. The Personal Retailer 5 Smartphones 6. Women-Only Hotel 9 2. The Hobbit 3 Floors 3. Cloud Security1 5. Play as a Competitive 5 6. Stationery 7 3. Honey 3 Advantage 7. Your Public Story 9 4. Crowdsourced 1 7. Stripped-Down 7 Commutes 4. Hydration Stations 3 6. Pluerry 5 Products/Services 8. YouTube, the New 9 5. Indian E-commerce 3 Boob Tube 5. Crowdsourced 1 7. Public Bookshelves 5 8. Sundance London 7 Learning 6. Inhaling 3 9. Zimbabwe 9 8. Rainwater Harvesting 5 9. Sustainable Palm Oil 7 6. Curbing Food Waste1 7. Internet-Enabled Cars 3 1 00. Zink 9. Remaking “Made in 5 0. Tablets Replace Paper 8 7. Danger Zone Travel1 8. iTV 3 China” 1. Tap-and-Pay Incentives 8 8. Digital-Into-Physical 1 9. LCD Art 3 0. Rolling Stones’ 50th 6 Postcards 2. A Titanic Anniversary
RCR Wireless has collected some good snippets from my talk at the Mobile Marketing Association Forum in Sao Paulo, yesterday (download the 15MB high.res pdf here):
"Futurist and author Gerd Leonhard explained during a keynote address today at the Mobile Marketing Association Forum in São Paulo that customer trust was vital. “If we don’t trust Google, Twitter, Facebook, we leave them and they will die,” Leonard said. However, the key pillar to a solid strategy of mobile marketing is a focus on content. “Advertising is becoming content, marketing is curation, mobile is empowerment, brands are publishers, marketers become storytellers and consumers are participants,” explained Leonhard.
The future passes through the end of “mass-anything” and marketing has been dramatically impacted by the increased role of technology. “There is no difference between online and offline. Disconnected screens will be the exception, they will disappear,” said Leonhard. With all devices connected, network traffic will explode. All of this will culminate in changing how companies approach their mobile strategy. The point is how they will interact with customers. “If you want to succeed you have to give them control, as much as you can. Customers will love you,” Leonhard said, adding that empowerment, participation and engagement are the key points..."
See the Twitter buzz from the event, during my talk
This is a good one - loads of information in here, and pretty well recorded. More details and PDF with all slides, here. Enjoy and spread the word. Subscribe to my video RSS feed, here, if you want (download all videos directly to iTunes, watch on your iPod etc).
Here is a video interview with me, recorded at one of the nicest hotels I have ever been at, the fabulous Lydmar in Stockholm (in September 2010). Sounds Like Branding presents Heartbeats In Conversation With, a series of short conversations on relevant topics for marketing and communication; first out is a conversation between Heartbeats’ CEO Jakob Lusensky and me. The video is subtitled (in English) because the background noise is fairly loud (sorry about that). Jakob and me covered quite a few topics here, from the rise of the connected, digital, mobile economy, the future of advertising and the current status of the advertising industry, to the shift from buying copies of content to just having access to media as a service, and the future of TV.
"This guest post was written by media futurist Gerd Leonhard. Named "one of the leading Media Futurists in the World" by The Wall Street Journal, Gerd works as a futurist in the media, telecom, technology and communication industries. He is also an author, blogger, keynote speaker and strategist and is the CEO of TheFuturesAgency and a visiting professor at the Fundacao Dom Cabral in Sao Paulo / Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
With the explosive growth of the Internet, mobile devices and social networking, a connected world is indeed a very different world. Just witness the meteoric rise of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and the demise of the recorded music industry as we knew it. I would go so far as to argue the only reason advertising in its pre-Web 2.0 form (a global business worth approx. $400 billion per year) ever existed was simply because we were not yet truly connected as today's mobile, social and real-time Internet did not yet exist.
Now that it exists, most of us will no longer tolerate interruptions, meaningless pitches, garish popups, Las Vegas-style skyscraper ads or junk email. We are looking for truly personalized offers, real meaning, solid relevance, timeliness, and yes, transparency and truthfulness. In other words, we will be looking for merit and values that are geared 100% towards us, not to everybody else, or someone else. Think micro-sprinkler systems, not fire hoses; droplets of expression, not spigots of noise exploding off empowered consumers (many of which in fact loath that very term).
Clearly, if brands and their marketers, ads and messages do not provide real value (remember: only time is a truly scarce value now), we will quickly lock them out of our lives and put them on the 'infinitely ignored' list. One might therefore argue that advertising is indeed becoming content (contvertising, anyone?), since relevant and desired, opted-in and followed content is usually quite valuable to us as we spend time on it, while irrelevant messages that encourage us to purchase items we don't even need are just noise. And the Internet has been so fabulously great at increasing the noise level that the time has come to turn that noise into meaning, to take the firehose of data and turn it into a clever sprinkler system.
The key question for marketers, as ever, is: how can you cut the noise, how can you be relevant, be truly wanted, make a better match, and benefit from meaningful connections? How can you turn the act of selling into content, into engagement, into mutual appreciation? Is that even possible? This is where we get to the enormous value of Data.
According to an April 2010 Wired.com post and a related IDC study, the total universe of information available to us already amounts to 800.000 petabytes of data. If you stored all of this data on DVDs the stack would reach from the Earth to the moon and back! By 2020 the digital universe will total 35 zettabytes, or 44 times more than in 2009, keeping in mind that an estimated 75% of all data is already generated by the users themselves.
This makes total sense when you think about it: forwarding a link, rating a site, commenting on a blog, twittering, sharing bookmarks, allowing cookies on your computer, sharing your location, logging into websites, liking something on Facebook -- everywhere we go, everything we do, every move we make around the Net (and soon, elsewhere, as well) -- creates click-trails, leaves digital breadcrumbs, produces data exhaust, and creates what I like to call meta-content, i.e. content around content.
Now, just imagine faster mobile Internet access at a much lower cost (or even free, courtesy of Google and O3B); much cheaper, yet more powerful and smart, mobile devices, connected devices that are not phones or computers but things, objects and products; BRIC+Africa coming online at a furious pace; and computing shifting from tethered computers and mouse clicking to tablets, touch-screens and finger-sweeping, and from downloading to cloud-tapping, which without a doubt will generate seriously more data than ever before, and at an increasing faster rate. The mind boggles (and possibly recoils) over the possibilities and over the huge challenges that these changes will pose, as well. But no matter what one's concerns may be, I think we can safely state that data is indeed the new oil, a metaphor that originated not with me but most likely with the ANA's Michael Palmer and Clive Humby.
Whoever gets to sift through this data, slice and dice it, move it around, make it useful, clear its legal and fair use, and just make sense of it all, is probably going to be more powerful than Shell, Exxon or Mobil have ever been (BigG and BigF emerge as distinct options here). This will, of course, require very careful and sensitive fine-tuning, with utmost attention to giving full control to the user, period. Regulation will be required but should, in my view, not be hastened; however, something that we must certainly come to grips with is that privacy will become something that we must act on to get back, rather than attain or retain by mere default. Those shiny new and very powerful tools of sharing and self-publishing do require that we accept and handle new responsibilities, as well - now that all of us can easily and constantly connect, we also need to learn new limits, new do's and don'ts - and the purveyors of this new power need to help us rather than merely seduce us.
The bottom line is that the data that all of us are increasingly generating and constantly spreading as most of us are switching to an always-on mode, will be at the core of all future success in marketing, branding and advertising -- and for that alone it's roughly worth $1 trillion, already (counting advertising spend, marketing and communication budgets, data-mining etc).
In a truly connected world, i.e. within the next few years, marketers will need constant and deep access to that data, in all its various forms and levels of permissions, because without this data their efforts will be utterly useless to the people formerly known as consumers ( today's users, followers, friends and participants). If the future TV does not know a fair bit about who we are, where we are, what we have watched, for how long, who we have shared shows with, what we have commented on, how we rate things; or if - worst case - we decide to just pay a bit more and keep our click-trails and our data off the grid (yes: Think The Matrix), then the marketers' job will become a lot harder, if not impossible. Matches can't be made, relationships can't be forced, brands can't be followed, connections are interrupted. Yelling is dead, and engagement needs permission - a tough but extremely rewarding challenge.
Getting too little or bad data -- or not understanding it-- will literally mean running out of gas in the middle of the desert. Therefore, the mission is to keep it all fueled up. And just like oil, there will be a myriad of issues (hopefully, not wars) that will arise with the responsible and fair practices of drilling, pumping, shipping, refining and dispensing of data. But without a doubt these issues will be solved in due course because this Data-Oil is very potent and because the responsible use of it will light up so many households that sufficient incentive for problem-solving exists. Telecom companies and mobile operators will want in on this game, as well - after all, it's their networks that make this all work (for now).
My prediction is that we will see a huge influx of companies dealing with the various aspects of data drilling, shipping, refining and remixing, and that the next Exxon or Mobil may well be a data-slicing company. Agencies, marketers and brands need to embrace the challenges and experiment: Get into the new Data-Oil ecosystem. "
Posted in Strategy on November 8, 2010 DDB BlogStrategyNovember 8, 2010
A short, new video of an interview with me, kindly produced and provided by mycustomer.com, recorded after a recent keynote engagement at the Tradedoubler conference in London, September 23, 2010, containing some useful nuggets on the future of marketing and advertising - take a look and let me know how you like it.
Keynote Speaker, Think-Tank Leader, Futurist, Author & Strategist, Idea Curator, some say Iconoclast | Heretic, CEO TheFuturesAgency, Visiting Prof FDC Brazil, Green Futurist
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