Influential Marketing Blog

The Five Branches Of Government 2.0

Earlier this week I had the privilege of moderating at panel at the Ogilvy offices in Washington DC all about defining and exploring Government 2.0 (watch the livestream archive online). The panelists featured several visionary minds and leading thinkings in the world of Government 2.0, including:

- Alex Howard, O’Reilly Media
- Gwynne Kostin, U.S. General Services Administration
- Micah Sifry, Personal Democracy Forum
- Ari Melber, The Nation
- Mark Murray, NBC News

In our conversation, the topics ranged from defining the buzzword of "Gov2.0" to some leading case studies today of how social media and the web is being used by government agencies, to the potential risks and complications of all this evolution from a privacy or accessibility point of view. One of the biggest visions ifor what Government 2.0 could be has come from Tim O'Reilly who shared his ideas of "government as a platform" - but one of the most considered definitions of Government 2.0 I uncovered comes from a dedicated discussion thread on the popular social network GovLoop for those interested in the evolution of Government*:

"Government 2.0 is the socialization and commoditization of government processes, services and data."

Through our panel discussion, the big theme that came through for me was that the government workers, contractors and thought leaders who live and breathe in this world of Government 2.0 every day are often tackling very different categories of issues.

As I took notes from the conversation and spoke to some of the attendees afterwards, I started thinking in terms of the different emerging "branches" on this tree of Government 2.0 - and how they might be defined based on the examples that people spoke about as well as what I have seen in my work with clients in this area. This post is an attempt to share how I thought about that framework, and I'm interested to hear your thoughts (particularly if you work in the sector) on whether this works or feels too simplistic or incomplete. 

1. Campaigning 2.0 - With an election looming, it sometimes may feel that this category gets the most attention. Campaigning 2.0 is about using social media and online collaborative tools to organize people around a campaign to get someone into an elected position. The Obama campaign turned many people's heads in terms of how to build a brand and use these tools effectively around something as pivotal as an election for the US President, and today we see new stories every day about how other candidates are using tools like Meetup, FourSquare, Twitter, Facebook and others to motivate their supporters and try to win elections.
2. Open Data 2.0 - Moving from campaigning to actually governing, this is the category of work that Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra often speaks about - relating to the big challenges of getting various government agencies to begin to have their huge databases share information with one another, as well as publishing government data on open standards so that third parties and the private sector can start to build useful applications and tools on top of this data. This category captures the millions of dollars of investment on the IT infrastructure and the cloud that are being made to improve these systems and increase their efficiency and utility. More and more this focus will allow for innovative sites and tools like Pillbox from the NIH which help anyone to identify unknown pills.
3. Collaboration 2.0 - Some (including myself) could argue that this aspect of Government 2.0 has the most potential to have a big impact in terms of creating cultural change within America. GovLoop currently allows government employees to have conversations with others in the government outside of their agencies and fields of expertise. NASA is one agency that has used social tools to allow a highly engaged citizen population to do everything from experience missions in real time to aid the underlying mission of the agency by sharing their computer processing power. As platforms become open and people use them to share their knowledge, this collaboration will lead to greater and greater innovation and engagement from the citizenry of the country with government in all the areas they are most passionate about.
4. Services 2.0 - Alternately described as the "e-government" or "ecommerce" aspect of Government 2.0, this category would describe all the initiatives to let people complete the logistical tasks that they need to engage with government on in an easier and more interactive way. This is everything from e-filing your taxes to renewing your driver's license online. These services are a vital part of what government offers to citizens, and are often the most visible area to the average citizen of how Gov 2.0 can affect their daily life.
5. Security 2.0 - Though some see this category as opposite to opening up data (#2), there is no denying that there is and will continue to be a huge focus in Government 2.0 on using technology to improve our nation's security, whether through highly debated "big brother" style monitoring or new platforms and tools to handle legal and illegal immigration issues.  Broadly speaking, some of the innovative use of these tools by the US Military that we know about (such as the DoD Social Media Hub), as well as what we don't yet know about could fit into this category as well.

In putting this list together, I was tempted to note down entire categories for industries such as Healthcare or Education. Upon further thought, I think that each of these industries will have (and has already had) innovation in several of the areas I shared above, so I resisted creating entire categories for them. What do you think of this structure? Does it help to describe and explain the state of work in Government 2.0 today, or just introduce another layer of buzzwords to an already confusing category? Let me know what you think or suggest another link that covers this question and I'll add it to the list below.

*Note: Thanks to Adriel Hampton for pointing out in a comment that this definition of Gov 2.0 originally came from a Gartner report by Andrea DiMaio.

Related Articles & Additional Thinking 

• Kety Esquivel: Gov 2.0 at Ogilvy DC (huffingtonpost.com)
• Alex Howard: Making sense of Gov2.0, Open Government and We Government at Ogilvy (gov20.govfresh.com)

How To Replace A Social Media Super Star

Yesterday's NY Times featured a cover story about an increasingly common problem of turnover that many Broadway musical productions are facing. As more and more of these shows feature recognizable star actors as headliners like The Producers with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, they run into the inevitable problem of trying to keep the production going without the stars who have become "irreplaceable" in their roles.

Some shows manage to keep up the buzz by replacing one star with another, while others fail because the show was too closely bonded with the actors who brought it to life. I started thinking about this distinction because it is a challenge that keeps many organizations awake at night when considering their efforts in social media as well.

To use social media effectively, you often need to foster the individual talents of employees who have a natural ability to use these tools and may be actively using them in their own personal lives. These are the individuals who frequently start social media innovation within the companies where they work. So what happens when they leave?

Having seen this happen at several organizations, there are a few case studies that I would point to as demonstrating the 3 different ways that companies can deal with this situation of having a vocal and public social media figure leaving their organization for any reason.

1. The Handover - This is the ideal case where the branded efforts on behalf of the company can be handed over to another individual within the company. It is how Boeing chose to deal with popular CMO blogger Randy Baseler retiring when he handed over his blog called Randy's Journal to the new CMO, Randy Tinseth (who also incidentally happened to be named Randy). A more recent example is how Comcast has continued the @comcastcares http://twitter.com/comcastcares Twitter handle with a new voice behind it (Bill Gerth) because the original creator, my friend Frank Eliason, has moved on to a new job working with Citibank.
2. The Farewell - A technique most commonly seen in the world of media is simply shutting down a blog when a popular blogger leaves an organization for any reason. There have been numerous journalists who chose (or were compelled to) shut down their blogs when they left the organization they wrote for. On the corporate side, the most recognizable example is likely how Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun, wrote a farewell post and shut down his personal blog when Sun was acquired by Oracle. 
3. The Springboard - The less common alternative that I have not seen as frequently is a third option that involves taking inspiration from the individual who is leaving, but to continue their work through a related but separate initiative. This could mean starting a new blog to take over for a popular older one, or rebranding or changing an existing blog to evolve to the next level after the original author departs.

Each of these are valid ways to deal with the challenge of having a social media super star leave your organization. More importantly, don't let a fear of this situation keep you from embracing the emerging stars and "accidental spokespeople" within your organization who have a genuine passion and desire to share their insights with the world. They can be one of your best assets - and it's not the end of the world in case they do eventually decide to leave.

How A Portuguese Singer Got 20 Million Views On YouTube

Ana Free is a singer and songwriter from Portugal who started her career with a simple idea. For the past three years she has been recording herself in locations ranging from her bedroom to regional concert stages singing cover versions of popular songs and her own original compositions accompanied by just her guitar and posting those videos on YouTube. Alone, that doesn't seem like anything countless other singers might have tried to do, right?

The difference is that this collection of simple videos on YouTube has gathered more than 20 million views and brought this relatively unknown singer fans from around the world - including more than 20,000 on Facebook. She was recently featured in a music video from the band Hands On Approach and self released her own album last year on CD Baby.

In a world where the music industry seems to face a new struggle almost every month and many in the music industry fear that the next generation of consumers are growing up with a perception that music is something that they should not have to pay for - what could Ana Free teach us about marketing, engagement and the potential future for up and coming musicians around the world? Here are a few lessons:

1. Share your beginnings. One of the most powerful things about Ana's story is that you can see the whole history of it on YouTube. All of her videos (including her first video) are available on her channel and watching them gives you the sense that you are seeing a talented musician mature with each video - and offers a personal connection to her story because you get to see it evolve.
2. Be authentic. A common theme in her videos is the authenticity with which they are recorded. She sings to her cat, shows outtakes from recording sessions and sometimes forgets the words to songs. All of these pieces are captured on video and give the viewer a sense that they are seeing some real and unscripted - a welcome change to all the overly produced and narcissistically perfected music videos available online today.
3. Use a common language. By starting with doing cover songs that people would recognize, Ana uses the common language of popular songs to introduce herself and her style to her audience. While she does have original songs, if she only had those, her views and audience would likely be far smaller. Singing songs from other artists is a simple way to reduce the barriers that may exist for people to engage with her music.
4. Find complimentary partners. At several points, Ana partners with other musicians who themselves have large and active YouTube audiences like Maria Zouroudis. These duets allow her to engage another audience outside of her own and introduce herself to music fans who will likely enjoy her music as well because it is a similar style to the other musicians who she partners with.
5. Ask for help from your community. When Ana finally released her own album, all the videos in her channel used tagging and links to drive viewers of any video to listen to her music and get a copy of it. She also posted a video asking for help in promoting the album and spreading the world. By integrating this promotion with all her existing videos and directly asking for help, she is engaging the community which has supported her over 3 years and asks them to take the next step by talking about her new album and recommending it to others.

Why Case Studies Are Overrated

There is a misguided search that almost everyone working in marketing around the world seems to be on. It involves seeking a golden example or case study that lays out perfectly how to achieve success with social media and be effective. In their minds, this case study would create the perfect argument for ROI, and offer a formula that could be duplicated by nearly any organization no matter their industry or audience or objectives. Perhaps most importantly, it would be a story they could easily share with their bosses or managers or clients to help make the case for using social media more easily. You can't blame them for trying ... the only problem is that this story doesn't exist.

The search for the perfect case study for permission to innovate is like spending your life trying to find a guy named George to marry because your best friend is happily married to a guy named George. Your objective may be the same as your friend (to get married), but the path you take will always be different. We would never dream of using this flawed logic in our personal lives, and yet in marketing it seems we seek it all the time. It is why business schools are filled with case studies and every discussion most anyone has about social media or trying anything innovative in marketing involves the same fateful question from someone in the decision making chain: "show me a case study where this has been done before."

This is a problem for three obvious reasons:

1. What has worked for another organization will not work exactly the same for yours.
2. No case study will ever address EXACTLY the same unique challenge your brand is facing.
3. Many brands don't readily publish case studies for the world to consume anyway.

The biggest change you can make is to stop waiting for the golden case study and focus instead on the quality of your strategy and ideas. The reason an idea and program works is not because you have some proof point from another company to point to in order to justify it. Ideas and campaigns and marketing works because it is based on an insight and motivates people to feel what you want them to feel and act the way you want them to act.

Case studies are great to learn from, but if they are the only way you can get permission to use social media or do something innovative, then you are on the path to failure before you even start.

How Algorithms Could Finally Revolutionize Social Media Marketing

It is nearly the anniversary of the closing of a 3 year quest you may have heard of. The Netflix Prize was a $1m contest launched by the popular video rental service to improve their movie recommendation engine by a specific algorithmic percentage. The challenge was open to any and all mathematics and University teams and was finally awarded on September 21, 2009 to a team that submitted their winning entry just 24 minutes before the closing of the contest.

What does a prize to solve a longstanding mathematical challenge mean for the future of marketing? More than you might think. Algorithms are at the heart of something that has long been promised by the social web but never quite delivered ... a truly personalized online experience. A social network, for example, that can learn your likes and dislikes so well that it can predict what you will want before you even look for it. Such a system and experience has long been visualized in science fiction, but our reality has been 20 million search results for any search and illogically served banner advertising that promises deals on airfare to Turkey when you actually just want a Thanksgiving recipe.

The solution to this challenge was always to build smarter algorithms, and one way to do that is by having learning systems where they get better and smarter the more you train them through your behaviours. Of course, this requires users to spend some time inputting data in order to make the systems better. Time was the barrier. Luckily, there are a few models for getting users past this barrier which mean that these algorithms now may finally be able to achieve what people have hoped they might for years:

1. Integration with existing behaviours and platforms. If you are a Gmail user, you may have noticed their new Beta feature of the "Priority Inbox" which promises to help organize your inbox by learning which emails you might consider a priority. Using simple logic like highlighting those emails which you open and respond to most frequently, the system will learn over time based only on your hitting a button next to emails to indicate whether others like them should or should not be considered priorities. By integrating with a utility that a large number of people user already, this system makes it more likely that you will take the time to train the system to get usage out of it.
2. Using gaming techniques to encourage engagement. Hunch is one of several increasingly popular sites that helps to personalize recommendations on things you may like. By having people answer questions in a quiz-like format, they create an engaging way for you to train the system through an activity that feels more like a game than a cold form that you check boxes in to describe yourself and your views. Then product recommendations with links are shared alongside your content and you can choose to click on them and follow through to purchase something.

When you have systems like this that make it acceptable and even commonplace for users to take the time to train their algorithms about themselves and their behaviours, then you start to see the vast possibilities for targeting and serving more relevant marketing to people online. This is not about finding your target audience for a product or service message. This is about being able to finally customize a message to what someone may want or respond to before they even click a link or type a term into a search engine.