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Entries categorized "Future of PR & Communications"
November 15, 2012
October 23, 2012
On tour in Brazil October 30 to November 12: Porto Alegre, Rio, Sao Paulo
I will be spending 2 weeks in Brazil, doing 5 speaking gigs, some workshops and many other meetings and get-togethers - really look forward to this!
Meet me in Porto Alegre BRAZIL at the Congress of Innovation Oct 30 / 31, or in Rio Nov 1-4, or Sao Paulo Nov 5-12:)) Some Context is here (Zerohora Newspaper). Don't miss this event on Nov 5 at the Museum of Sound in Sao Paulo; and if you are into advertising and marketing join me for the APG's annual convention in Sao Paulo on Nov 12 (see video below). Ping me if you want to meet up!
*** You can download some of my essays in Portuguese as well as some recent press coverage here (public dropbox folder) ****
From Zerohora: (english-kinda translation by Google here)
"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.
June 15, 2012
May 09, 2012
New video: the future of Business and Communications (from Olavstoppen event in Stavanger May 3, 2012)
This is the complete video of my keynote at the Olavstoppen POL2012 event in Stavanger / Norway, on The Future of Business and Communications; May 3, 2012. You can download the PDF with the slides I used (low res version, creative commons licensed): Download Future of Business Olavstoppen Gerd Leonhard Keynote Public (6MB). Most high-res versions of my presentations can be found at Slideshare. You can download the video via this link (or add the file to your dropbox).
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.
April 28, 2012
New video: the future of business and the global shift to a networked society (HBR Poland Keynote)
This is the complete (approx 80 minutes) video of my keynote at the HBR Poland conference in Warszawa March 16 2012. The slides are sometimes a bit hard to see as the video zooms back and forth so if desired you can download the complete PDF (high-res, 26MB) with my slides via http://db.tt/JmKiJyQh (creative commons non-commercial attribiution licensed, as always).
Topic: "The future of business: how to benefit from the global shift to a networked society"
The Internet, or to be more precise, the mobile and social 'Internet 2.0' that has exploded in the past 2 years, is dramatically changing the way we find and are found, how we relate to our customers (and vice versa), and by extension how we buy and sell. In a networked society, the-people-formerly-known-as-consumers are becoming more powerful by the minute; transparency rules and more often than not, interaction comes before transaction and attention is the currency. In this digital world, data is indeed the new oil, brands are publishers, and ecommerce almost entirely becomes mobile and social - and this has significant impact on B2B sectors, as well. Gerd will share his foresights on where things are headed in the next 3 years, provide examples of best practices and illustrate the biggest opportunities and how to prepare for them. The future of business is interdependent, real-time, social, local and mobile - get ready.
March 31, 2012
New video interview: the future of social media, paid content, data-oil, marketing and communications
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.
October 24, 2011
Announcing my new Kindle book "The Future of Content"
Today is a very big day for me. My new Kindle book "The Future of Content" just went online at Amazon, and is already gaining a lot of traction. You can view a very short video greeting about the book on my GerdTube channel (Youtube:)
Of course I would be very happy if you would consider buying the book for yourself (only $3.90, Kindle-only) but beyond that it would be really great if you could help me spread the word via rating and / or 'liking' the book on the Amazon.com page, tweeting about it or just forwarding this mail to some friends that may be interested.
As you probably know, I have published my last 3 books as free pdfs (which are quite popular) but really wanted to try something new with this book; after all reading on the Kindle is a much better experience than reading a PDF, and thus is, to quote Kevin Kelly, one of those "New Generatives" :)
"The future of content" will also be available in dead-tree-versions aka print, via my Lulu store, soon - please stay tuned. Happy reading!
Gerd Leonhard
(Media Futurist and CEO of The Futures Agency),
Basel / Switzerland
http://twitter.com/#!/gleonhard
My public Amazon / Kindle profile
(sharing all my book highlights there)
Update October 25 2011: this nice review may be helpful:
Increases brain power for content creators, October 25, 2011This review is from: The Future of Content (Kindle Edition)
"I challenge you to expand your brain and read this book. What Gerd Leonhard is always doing is informing the global brain (or the collective brain) in ways that help us all get where we're trying to go. He builds the buildings in front of us.
This collection points toward several compelling answers for content creators. As a writer who is already swimming in the changing currents of "content," I found it intensely informative. Leonhard shores up my courage to continue embracing a digital world without DRM, and ebook prices "for the masses." He makes the all-important concept of curation crystal clear. If you are providing any kind of content in print or on the web, it's relevant. If you want to stay on the front edge of content creation and publishing, it's basic. I'm making this book mandatory reading for my epublishing circles"
Amazon Kindle German Store
Amazon Kindle French Store
Amazon Kindle UK Store
ABOUT "THE FUTURE OF CONTENT"
Futurist Gerd Leonhard has been writing about the future of content i.e. music, film, TV, books, newspapers, games etc, since 1998. He has published 4 books on this topic, 2 of them on music (The Future of Music, with David Kusek, and Music 2.0). For the past 10 years Leonhard has been deeply involved with many clients in various sectors of the content industry, in something like 17 countries, and it’s been a great experience, he says. “I have learned a lot, I have listened a lot, I have talked even more (most likely:) and I think I have grown to really understand the issues that face the content industries - and the creators, themselves - in the switch from physical to digital media.”
This Kindle book is a highly curated collection of the most important essays and blog posts Leonhard has written on this topic, and even though some of it was written as far back as 2007 - “I believe it still holds water years later. I have tried to only include the pieces that have real teeth. Please note that the original date of each piece is shown here in order to allow for contextual orientation.” Leonhard’s intent to publish this via the amazing Amazon Kindle platform, exclusively, and at a very low price, is to make these ideas and concepts as widely available as possible while still trying to be an example of what digital, paperless distribution can look like, going forward.
October 19, 2011
Mobile advertising must be content-based (review of my talk at MMA Forum in Sao Paulo
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
September 17, 2011
The future of communications and conversation (video with fellow futurist Glen Hiemstra)
This is from 2007 but still quite useful, I think - hope you like it, as well. Find out more about Glen, here
September 02, 2011
Personal branding in the digital age: new video
This video is part of a new series of 5-7 minute videos I recorded here in Basel, Switzerland in July. This episode shows about how I use social networks and mobile-optimized platforms / apps to spread the word about what I do. I also provide a few examples of the most efficient and viral online branding concepts that I have tried during the past decade. You can download this video if you go to my GerdTube.net video channel (on Blip.tv) or just subscribe to my video podcasts in iTunes.
August 02, 2011
New video: "Friction is Fiction" explained
This video summarizes the key messages of my 2009 book "Friction is fiction" (free PDF). The bottom line is that in a networked and digital society we can no longer merely rely on FRICTION i.e. planned hurdles and carefully placed obstactles to enforce payments or otherwise get paid for something. Most traditional friction points - whether in media / content, communications / marketing or business and commerce - can now be easily bypassed (see free music streaming vs itunes, Youtube / Netflix vs cable-tv, whatsapp vs sms etc), and this trend will only accelerate. IMHO I think it will suit us better to get used to it now, i.e. we may want to lessen our dependence on friction and increase our efforts to monetize based on radical user empowerment. Think Zappos not Barnes & Noble. Be sure to watch this related video recorded at TedXWarwick on the same topic.
April 08, 2011
Some of my best interviews and related media coverage of my work (PDFs)
Epoca Brazil, on Facebook (Portuguese) April 2011: Download Epoca Brazil Gerd
HSM Magazine, Brazil (Portuguese) June 2010: Download HSM gerd
eComm conference / blog interview on Telemedia (Sept 2009): EComm-Interview
DDB strategy blog guest post: Data is the new Oil (Nov 2010): The Future
Enjoy and feel free to spread or repost anywhere.
February 09, 2011
New video: my talk at MidemNet Academy 2011 on Innovation: music industry learnings from other industries
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).
December 30, 2010
The Wikileads debate: Jaron Lanier's TheAtlantic piece (and some responses)
Recently, I have been thinking a lot about what my position on Wikileaks i.e. Cablegate should be. Some of the best - and also most thought-provoking - insights have come from a recent, hotly contested piece on TheAtlantic.com, written by computer scientist, virtual reality pioneer and musician Jaron Lanier (who I have met once or twice in the past).
I am not sure I agree with everything that Jaron says (in fact, I don't - I hope to publish my own take on these issues soon) but he makes some very valid points about openness and the future of the Internet that I think really merit our consideration and made me think, so I figured I should share them with you (all snippets are quotes from his piece, highlights are mine):
- "The Internet can and must be redesigned to reflect a more moderate and realistically human-centered philosophy...openness in itself, as the prime driver of events, doesn't lead to achievement or creativity.
- A sufficiently copious flood of data creates an illusion of omniscience, and that illusion can make you stupid. Another way to put this is that a lot of information made available over the internet encourages players to think as if they had a God's eye view, looking down on the whole system.
- To me, both right wing extremist leaks and Wikileaks are for the most part resurrections of old-fashioned vigilantism...vigilantism has always eroded trust and civility, but what's new online is the sterile imprimatur of a digital ideology that claims to offer automatic betterment. But if there's one lesson of history, it is that seeking power doesn't change the world. You need to change yourself along with the world. Civil disobedience is a spiritual discipline as much as anything else.
- You need to have a private sphere to be a person, or for that matter for anything creative to happen in any domain. This is the principle I described as "encapsulation" in You Are Not a Gadget.
- Imagine openness extrapolated to an extreme. What if we come to be able to read each other's thoughts? Then there would be no thoughts. Your head has to be different from mine if you are to be a person with something to say to me.
- I used to think that an open world would favor the honest and the true, and disfavor the schemers and the scammers. In moderation this idea has some value, but if privacy were to be vanquished, people would initially become dull, then incompetent, and then cease to exist. Hidden in the idea of radical openness is an allegiance to machines instead of people.
- I bring this up to say that asking whether secrets in the abstract are good or bad is ridiculous. A huge flow of data that one doesn't know how to interpret in context is either useless or worse than useless, if you let it impress you too much. A contextualized flow of data that answers a question you know how to ask can be invaluable. If we want to understand all the sides of an argument, we have to do more than copy files.
- Random leaking is no substitute for focused digging. The "everything must be free and open" ideal has nearly bankrupted the overseas news bureaus.
- Anarchy and dictatorship are entwined in eternal resonance. One never exists for long without turning to the other, and then back again. The only way out is structure, also known as democracy.
- We sanction secretive spheres in order to have our civilian sphere. We furthermore structure democracy so that the secretive spheres are contained and accountable to the civilian sphere, though that's not easy.
- There is certainly an ever-present danger of betrayal. Too much power can accrue to those we have sanctioned to hold confidences, and thus we find that keeping a democracy alive is hard, imperfect, and infuriating work. The flip side of responsibly held secrets, however, is trust.
- A perfectly open world, without secrets, would be a world without the need for trust, and therefore a world without trust. What a sad sterile place that would be: A perfect world for machines"
As an interesting antidote to Jaron, here is a response by Zeynep Tufekci (see her tweets here and her bio here) also via TheAtlantic.com, and my favorite quotes from that piece:
- "Lanier thus conflates the right to privacy of persons with the privilege of non-disclosure that states may sometimes exercise. Raising personhood in this context is irrelevant and dangerous.
- "I give you private information about corporations for free," SNL's Assange quipped, "And I'm a villain. Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he's the Man of the Year."
- In my talk about Wikileaks at the Personal Democracy Forum recently, I emphasized that we should not see information by itself as a change agent and that a glut of information, especially without context and political leverage, may not result in meaningful change. That, however, is not an argument for less information.
- During these past weeks, rather than a nerd takeover, I saw the crumbling of the facade of a flat, equal, open Internet and the revelation of an Internet which has corporate power occupying its key crossroads, ever-so-sensitive to any whiff of displeasure by the state. I saw an Internet in danger of becoming merely an interactive version of the television in terms of effective freedom of speech. Remember, the Internet did not create freedom of speech; in theory, we always had freedom of speech--it's just that it often went along with the freedom to be ignored. People had no access to the infrastructure to be heard. Until the Internet, the right to be heard was in most cases reserved to the governments, deep pockets, and corporate media. Before the Internet, trees fell in lonely forests.
- The real cause for concern is the emergence of an Internet in which arbitrary Terms-of-Service can be selectively employed by large corporations to boot content they dislike. What is worrisome is an Internet in which it is very easy to marginalize and choke information.
- What the Wikileaks furor shows us is that a dissent tax is emerging on the Internet.
- We don't have sufficiently-developed laws protecting us as our commons have moved to privately-owned spaces on the Internet. Lanier misses the fact that this is an issue of design, motive and choice.
- I reiterate that one does not need to be a fan of Wikileaks to reject the notion that rather than demand increased transparency and disclosure from institutions with power, we should trust them because trust is a human value. Going back to my starting point, it appears that Lanier is once again conflating human-to-human relations and human-institution relations and suggesting that the same principles should apply to them. A world in which humans don't trust each other is indeed cold and inhumane. A world in which we trust powerful institutions merely on principle is one where we abdicate our responsibilities as citizens and human beings..."
So what do you think? Please comment below.
Update: check out this video: journalist John Pilger in conversation with Julian Assange
November 24, 2010
New video: Heartbeats in Conversation with me (future of branding, advertising & media)
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.
Gerd Leonhard
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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