marginally subversive

More on Choosing (RED)

And I am indeed proud of DELL and of MICROSOFT.  They have collaborated to create a product that is specifically going to be aligned with the goals of (RED).  I think it's a great opportunity for people to make a difference.

Here is a photo that I picked up from Steve Clayton's blog.

Ain't she a beauty?

I would definitely buy one when they hit the shores of Singapore.

My iPhone dreams?  What are iPhones again?

The Devil Wears Prada and the Stock Market

My friends are probably going to sigh yet again because for some reason, I am writing about  The Devil Wears Prada yet again.  Well, I honestly think that there is some "wisdom" (OK, wisdom is too big a word) in the movie that could potentially be applied to the changing sentiments of Wall Street.

These are lines from the movie's 'devil' played by Meryl Streep:

You can see beyond what people want, and what they need and you can choose for yourself.

Guess what I think:  I think that those who are going to survive the downtrends in the global markets are those who will be able to see what people want, what they need, what their short-term and long-term fears are, what their aspirations are, what drives them and what disappoints them.

And choose.

The market is supposedly rational.  The movements of Wall Street and of other exchanges around the world are supposedly rational.  We are supposedly trading in a rational world.

But we're not trading in a rational world.

A rational world would be one that allowed everyone - every stakeholder - access to perfect and full information.

One could argue that the internet has allowed access to more information - and that is true.  As I type this, I can the ticker of the NYSE go up and down on my screen.  I also see a stream of news coming in.

Surely, there is more information available - timely information.

But perfect and 'full' information?  I don't think they are.

Now more than ever, corporate people - being people - are more wary about what they say and do because it could spread like wildfire thanks to the internet.

 

So who will profit from this mess?

Those who can see into the fears, dreams, aspirations, motivations, drivers, dampeners, souls, and hearts of investors - and choose and play.

Do I sleep with my phone? No.

Steve Clayton asks in his blog, Geek In Disguise, "Do you sleep with your phone?"

As a matter of fact, I do.

(OK.  Before you start thinking funny things about "sleeping with", I literally mean sleeping.  Not the figuratively "sleeping with".  Perv.  Haha.  Hey - new job!  Gotta make an impression.)

Beside my bed is a low table that has 2 mobile phones - a Samsung, fitted with a SIM card that allows me to communicate with my partner through SMS and phone calls cheaply, and a Nokia E90, which I use for work (it gets synced with my schedules and tasks from Outlook(R), as well as files when I don't feel like bringing home the laptop).

Both phones try - and that's the operative word - try to wake me up at 6am so I can go to the gym at 7am or at least swim.  That's in theory.  It doesn't work.

But they do sleep beside me.

In addition to these two phones, one more gadget sleeps with me, an iPod.  I am still waiting for Zune to reach Singapore's shores - or at least for someone amongst my team to go to Redmond so they can buy me one (hopefully, for free!).

I am still learning Espanol.  And I am still really bad at it.  I am still trying to get through the tenses - as well as beefing up my, well, slang vocabulary.  I can carry on a "formal conversation" - specifically about wine, countries, nationalities, and order perhaps a nice paella in the restaurante.  But not present.

The goal:  Be able to present a plan in Spanish at the end of the year 2008.

Anyway, I digress:  I use the iPod for my Spanish lessons.  I learned in college that the brain doesn't stop learning even when we sleep.  It still is open to stimulus - and I guess, it worked:  I aced my Chem, Physics, Psych, and History courses by listening to my recorded voice whilst I slept.  I am guessing that it should work again now.

The MacBookPro that I bought 6 months ago - and for clarity's sake, 4 months before my current company (guess which one?) agreed to take me on board - is also by my bedside.  I use Word for Mac 2004 - and I use it mainly as a journal.  Excel?  Checking stocks and balancing cheques.  So far, I have not used PowerPoint - it reminds me so much of work I can't seem to bear looking at a PowerPoint slide at 11pm!

So - nope, I just don't sleep with my phone - I sleep with 2 phones, an iPod (which I hope will be a Zune soon), and the MacBookPro and Word for Mac 2004. 

It's an orgy of technology before I sleep.

And just for the record:  I cannot live without my phones.  Take away everything else - but not the two phones.

TIME Magazine 5th October 1981

I just found out (by chance) that all the articles that TIME has ever written is now archived digitally and are now available for anyone to search.  Since I recently joined Microsoft, I figured it might be interesting when was the first time Microsoft was ever mentioned in a TIME article. 

And here it is:  TIME 5th October 1981.  In an article entitled Software for the Masses, which talks about the then emergence of software as a "mass product".  Here is the snippet on where Microsoft was mentioned:

Microsoft. Best known for its version of the program-writing language, BASIC which has sold more than 500,000 copies so far, Microsoft (projected 1981 sales: $14 million) was founded in 1975 by William Gates, then an 18-year-old Harvard student. Gates now oversees a staff of 96 at the firm's headquarters in Bellevue, Wash. Growth has come so fast that Gates has not yet found time to finish his degree at Harvard.

Things have surely changed.  Microsoft is no longer just known for its program-writing language (which I had to do a crash course in when I was a Computing Sciences student at the Ateneo de Manila University).  Its Windows OS, Office productivity software, XBOX360, MSN and Windows Live services online, and other services are now amongst the building blocks of our digital lives.

I also managed to find the first time that Bill Gates was featured in the cover.  This (I hope) will lead you to the first time that Bill Gates was on the cover of TIME magazine's 16th April 1984 issue.

Look at that - it's still a 5.25in disc.

I remember my travails with the 5.25in disc.  For some reason, I had a love-hate relationship with the 5.25in disc:  I loved them (and I stored in them my thesis, my reports, my overnight cases, my BASIC, Turbo Pascal, and Turbo C programs, and my readings) - but they hated me (these disks always malfunctioned - gets erased, gets scratched, become unreadable, get folded - in the most inopportune time).

Ahh... memories of years - well, two decades ago!

I am being nostalgic, I know.  But the move of TIME to put their library of articles online - and covers - is I think very helpful to researchers and students who are trying to trace how things have evolved across time.

I remember my Uni-days when I had to look at microfiche upon microfiche of newspaper and magazine articles to complete an assignment in Political Science or in History or even Psychology.  This move is really good and I think it's an amazing move.

(And thank God, they're not charging for it!)

I am easily excitable, I know.  Perhaps, even naive.  (Who knows, tomorrow I might get an email asking me to remove the cover down since it's a property of TIME... Please don't sue me... :))

But I think this is exactly what the digital world is supposed to be:  information accessibility that defies time and space.  Imagine our great grandchildren being able to access news about our lives now (and well, not that there's much good news to harp about) and compare it with theirs (ad perhaps, they'd feel better instantly).

Gosh.  The good old days.

If you want to look for more TIME covers, here is the link.

Strategic Planning, Insights and All That...: An Attempt to Define the Nebulous

I was asked a question by someone on "how to be a good strategic planner".  I am not certain why I was asked that question - because I have not been really a strategic planner in the traditional sense of the word (i.e., working with creative teams and brand-client teams to come up with positioning statements for brands).

Nevertheless, I ventured into providing some answers.

I think that being a good strategic planner requires first and foremost, curiosity about the humanity that is behind the term "consumer".  I believe that when we plan marketing campaigns and advertising projects, we immediately put on our 'marketeers' hats', which is a bit constricting.  With marketing hats, we start thinking of people as "consumers", "buyers", and "audiences", rather than "people who have needs".  I believe that the first thing we need to do is to understand - deeply - the human behind the terms "consumer", "buyer", "audience".

Understanding and unlocking this makes our jobs a lot easier - and our communications campaign a lot more aligned with what exactly people need.

Now that's easier said that done. 

A good friend of mine, who used to work with me in Vietnam and who has now moved to Bangkok, thinks that "insight is the most overused word in the marketing communications industry".  And it is true.  Information is often mistaken as insights.  Charts, advanced and basic stats, percentages, and competitive benchmarks are all considered as "insights".  In my worldview, insights do not come from a single chart or a single statistical test or a complex process - but rather from the agglomeration of all things that we know and have uncovered about the faces behind the labels "consumers", "audiences", and "buyers".

An insight, sometimes, is mistaken to be something that is supposed to be new - and differentiating.  I don't think that insights need to be always original or new - in fact, some of the best insights that I have come across in my dealings with research agencies and consultancies are a reiteration of what we already know:  that people drink certain brand of soft-drinks because everybody else drinks that brand.  That people want choices - even if those choices need not be exercised by them.

These are nothing new - and not groundbreaking.  But they are reiterations of the human condition.

And as long as it is rooted in the human condition - the humanity that lies behind the labels "consumers", "audiences", and "buyers" - I believe it is an insight.

And insight comes from asking questions.

The most important question I think is not "What's the observation?  What did you observe?  What are the measurements?  How high, how low?"  I believe that to arrive at an insight, the most important question is "So what?", which can be broken down into

• Given these N-number of things that we already know from different sources, what ties them all up together? 
• What is the common theme?  What is the underlying story?  What does it mean to the business?  What does it mean to the brand?
• What is the underlying human truth that can encompass all these observations?  How can we leverage this deep human truth to drive our business?  To drive connections with brands?
• What is different then?  Why is it different?  How can this difference be important/detrimental?

The other thing that agencies and clients are most wont to do is saying "But is it actionable?", which suggests that there are actionable insights and non-actionable (worthless) insight.  I believe that no such distinction between actionable (and therefore, "worthy") and non-actionable ("worthless") insight exists.

All insights - since they are based on human truths - have a potential to be actionable.

What makes an insight "non-actionable or worthless" is the lack of creativity and openness in either the client or the agency-side to act on it.  It takes will to create something out of insights.  In fact, it may take more than a department to make an insight truly actionable.  Some insights - if not most - demand that Marketeers go beyond their comfort-zones bound by the marketing department, and involve others - R&D, customer service, corporate communications, sales teams, the senior management team - in transforming insights into action-steps.

An insight - because it is based on human truth - have the potential to create a difference - but it will take guts to make it a reality.

Do insights change across time?  Tricky question.  Here are my thoughts:  Insights do not change immediately across time because they are based on human truths, the human condition.  What changes is how these human truths expressed by consumers.

Here's an example:  Because of advances in communications effects measurements, we are now able to say that "word of mouth and peer recommendations are amongst the most influential sources of information".  Is that an insight?  Yes.  Is it new?  No.  It's been there forever - we've always known that if Person A hears from her friend, Person B, that "Brand M sucks", chances are Person A will believe Person B and assimilate that "Brand M sucks" and consider it in her next purchase decision.

Has it changed across time?  The insight that peer recommendations are influential is as true now as it was back then - when neighbors talked to each other about their experiences on childcare, laundry bars, medicine, and a whole gamut of products.  It's always been a truth - a characteristic of our humanness (our humanity) - to believe our friends more than that celebrity with glowing skin on TV that a certain facial care product works.

What has changed however, is the medium through which these peer recommendations are made - and the definition of what a "peer" is.  These days, "peers and acquaintances" are no longer just people you know personally and people you've met in person.  They could be in your Facebook community or MySpace followeres or Friendster rolodex.  They could be email pals or part of a discussion forum.

The manifestation of what a "peer" is has changed - but not the power of the peer.  The insight remains - but the manifestation and its speed changed.

There is the danger of course, of being too reliant and too stubborn about an "insight" uncovered aeons ago.  Because humans change and evolve in response to the changes in their environment, it is necessary to continually check the insight.  Human truths also do change - in the same way that demographics change and evolve across time.

The challenge is to know when to update - or even discard - an insight and replace it with a new one.  It is not something easily done again because it entails a return to discarding our marketeers' hats and be a curious soul about our people - the people who are "consumers and buyers and audiences".

I know I kind of veered away from the original question:  "How to be a good strategic planner".  But the role of the strategist is in fact this:  to continuously look at the human truths that lie behind or beneath the terms "buyer, consumer, audience" (and therefore insights) and weave them into one coherent strategy that would make that human truth be expressed, communicated, and delivered to those with whom the brand will make highest probability of success.

Privacy - Is it changing?

The issues that Facebook faced the last few weeks of 2007 have seemed to resurrect - or perhaps, inflame is the better word - the issue of privacy.  But I don't think it's merely all about privacy:  it's about reading the fine print. 

I know, I know - Facebook should have had done something about it by clearly informing its users to do something about it.

But I think that the issue points to something bigger - our evolving concept of privacy and our personal bubble.

Our personal bubble in the physical space, I believe remains - we still maintain a certain distance in the urinals (for men) and in buses and trains.  We don't want anyone's skin touching our skin in the subway or in the bus.  Even if it were accidental, we are very protective of it.

As this is happening, we are also beginning to strengthen that bubble - adding layers and layers of protection to this 'physical' space around us:  through iPods and MP3 players, through ear-phones, through PSPs and mobile phone texting whilst inside the bus.

Not only are we now concerned about being touched by another stranger - we are also building walls around us though these gadgets.

That's how we establish our sense of privacy in the offline world.

However, in the online world, we seem to act differently:  We join a social network (e.g., Facebook) that updates all our friends and colleagues what we are doing.  We write a blog and post our photos online - sometimes restricted to a few of our network, but most of the time, open to the public.  We follow people on Twitter - and we personally update what we re doing on Twitter.  We allow people to create RSS feeds of our blogs - our lives.  We publish to the world our Amazon wishlists - and identify ourselves as part of a 'fan-group' of brands, politicans, services, and other things - again on social-networks.  We make recommendations about books that we loved - and hated.  We make recommendations about movies that we hated.  We converse - video to video - on YouTube.

All these in full view of the world.

Sure.  We don't give our social security numbers and other personal details.

But it seems that our concept of privacy online has evolved.

Seth Godin, in one of his blog entries, suggests that it is because we are anonymous online.

But the thing is, all these have made us less anonymous online.

We are raising our hands to be identified as fans of such and such personality or brand.  We are identifying ourselves to be interested in this or that service.  We are airing our views online more than ever.

We are less anonymous.

By our own choosing.

And with that choice came, I believe, a change in the concept of what is private in the digital world.

Sure, credit cards and social security and financial records will still remain private.  But employment history, dating history, so-called social timelines in Facebook, friends and cluster of friends... all these are no longer as private as they were before.  Because we choose it to be so.

Am I reading it incorrectly - or are we also changing our views of what private is private.

Digital M&A Trends for 2008 from AdAge: Are Ad Companies Listening?

Advertising Age comes up with a view on Digital M&A Trends for 2008 in 2008 and I wonder how many of the ad companies which AdAge caters to as its primary audiences are going to heed. 

Amongst the trends that they are seeing for the coming year concerns something that I have been trying to champion:  analytics.

In one of its predictions, AdAge says that "Analytics will be hot - and expensive".  It further says that "as more marketers laser in on return on investments, expect the value of firms such as Web Trends, CoreMetrics, and Omniture... to rise".

Which to me is interesting.

Is 2008 the year when clients are actually going to wake up to the reality and the importance of analytics in their marketing campaigns?

I do hope so.

AdAge is also saying that "tech companies, ad agencies, and ad networks are all coming together".  I think it is inevitable as I have mentioned in my earlier blog entries (and in a presentation I made to my former agency's leadership team).  I think that 2008 will indeed be that year - BUT I don't think that it will be something that ad agencies will initiate:  they are well too protective of their "creative departments" and "strategic planning" departments and disciplines.  I think that it will be tech companies who will lead this. 

The possible acquirers?  Microsoft, Google, Yahoo (if they finally get their act together.)  Their targets?  IPG, Havas, and a slew of other smaller ad companies with respectable global networks (or at least, significant presence in Asia).

What else is there in 2008?  Size will still matter - WPP is thought by AdAge to continue its dominance in terms of heft, market cap, and revenues.  It is also potentially going to be gobbling up more companies in the upcoming year.  Will other holding companies following suit?  I think Publicis will - and Omnicom.

What's missing in the predictions of AdAge though is the emergence of Southeast Asia and India.  I think that the attention that has been given China (which will continue well into 2008 because of the Olympics) is too much. I believe that Southeast Asia - with its growing economies, such as Vietnam's and Malaysia's, and stable business environment (as in Singapore) - will figure prominently in 2008.  The markets in Southeast Asia and that of India have been growing steadily - and are being overshadowed by the continued spotlight on China.

Ready, Set, Go for 2008: BusinessWeek's Innovation Predictions for 2008

BusinessWeek came up with their innovation predictions for 2008 here. 

Their first prediction is "Innovation Consolidation", which will see the big consultancy firms acquiring companies that are known to be in the "innovation business" (such as Ideo and Jump) to "to bolster [their] innovation practice".  Is it likely?  I think so.  Considering that McKinsey, BCG, and Bain are all moving into areas that are traditionally beyond their expertise (e.g., marketing communications and marketing ROI), it is very probable that they would also look at developing expertise in these areas.

Related to this is the trend that sees the transformation of B-schools into D-schools, as well as the real emergence of the "experience-focused" customer. 

"Identity" replaces "experience" as the next big concept in design and media thinking. People create their own identities interacting with products and services. The notion of a consumer experience is a more passive way of thinking. It's so 20th century. Identity gets the buzz in '08.

One prediction that I thought was very interesting was the idea of "unfriend me". 

Who you're friends with becomes more important than how many friends you have. Exclusivity and privacy replace open community in social media. People move to gated networks from Facebook and MySpace (NWS), fleeing the commercialization of their personal information and relationships.

... which personally is true for me.  I have started "faceslamming" (to use a term that I got from reading Wired's December issue) and "unfriending" people.  I think we're far too connected these days - and such is the power of technology now that I can be found by classmates from high school and from university.  I don't really want all my friends to know what I have been up to, really.  I think this is going to be our alternative to privacy - or perhaps a new definition of what privacy online is going to be: a selective announcement of who we are, what we have been doing, and what we are planning to do.

BusinessWeek also thinks that Kindle of Amazon is going to catch fire.  As an avid book-reader, I am not sure about this.  As far as I am concerned, I still like the idea of having books in my library - although the thought of having too many books does cross my mind.  (I am a nomad.)

For the most part, I would say it's going to be an exciting 2008 for all tech companies and marketing companies (which pretty much is every company).

One thing's for sure:  it's not business as usual next year.

Randomness, Causation, and Analytics: Confusion...

This is from one of my favorite websites, Data Mining and Predictive Analytics: Random things...  The writer writes about randomness - and two of the books that I have read, Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "Fooled by Randomness" and "The Black Swan".  Here's a snippet:

I personally don't agree philosophically with the role of randomness. (I would prefer to say that many outcomes are unexplained then say randomness is the "reason" or "cause"--randomness does nothing itself, it is our way of saying "I don't know why" or "it is too hard to figure out why").

The writer also suggests some ways around it:

The solution? One great help in overcoming these problems is through sampling--the train/test/validate subset method, or by resampling methods (like bootstrapping). But having the mindset of skepticism about models helps tremendously in digging to ensure the models truly are predictive and not just a random matching of the patterns of interest.

To which I agree.

There must be some explanation for things that are happening around us.  There are "black swans" that are very unlikely to happen, but when they happen, result to catastrophic results.  But these, too, could be managed if one were to expand his/her horizons and be truly duly-diligent (and well, border on paranoia).

However, there is something that is confusing me a bit:  Is it really possible for us to predict with absolute certainty that we can predict the future?  Is it really possible for us to measure every single thing - and thereby explain every single thing that we encounter in the "real world"?

A part of me wants to say "yes".  Yet still, a part of me wants to say "no".

There are a lot of techniques out there that can minimize projections and come up with models that could even model these errors and the likelihood of these errors.  But are we ever really going to be certain?  Are we ever going to be absolutely certain?

My Ten Most Favorite Digital Things...: Part 2

This is part two of my ten most favorite digital things.  In the first part, I listed down in no particular order five digital things that I really loved.  I had the Yahoo finance pages with the advanced charting techniques, the Windows Live Services, my MacBookPro and OSX Leopard, my Nokia E90 phone, and the New Outlook and OneNote 2007 - all of which I really loved and enjoyed using.

Now, I am off to name the second set of the digital things that I really love - and I start off with...

Number 6:   C++. I know, I know.  It's not really something that I am good at - and it's not even something that I can see me using in the next couple of years.  But I am hinging on the possibility that with the more information coming my way - in the form of usage patterns, raw data on how people are using information on the net and how they are interacting with different sites - I think C++ will come in handy.  I have finished the first five chapters of my book - and am now into learning more about classes and objects.

Now some will probably say that C++ is too old - and that there are far too many other, more important and more up-to-date programming languages.  But for some reason, I have some affinity with C++.  It's probably because it's easy to understand - and from what I gathered, Office was built on C++.  (I could be wrong - don't shoot me!)

So I think that C++ will remain to be one of my favorite things - even if its applicability remains to be seen.  At least, I will have learned something.

7.  XLSTAT and XLMINER

I have personal subscriptions to XLSTAT and XLMINER - and when embedded into the new Excel 2007, XLSTAT becomes a real power-house.  I have not tried XLMINER on Excel 2007 - but the ability of Excel 2007 to manage so many rows and columns makes it easier for me to analyze different sets of data.  Back then, with Excel 2003 which I think accommodates only about 255 columns, I had to break down all my files into different sheets.

These days, I work and run my XLSTAT with ease on big files.

XLMINER, which still runs on my Office 2003 at my old personal PC, is still a gem.  Its neural networking capabilities, logistic regression, and classification routines are simply good and easy to navigate.  It's one helluva of tool that every data miner should have in their PC.  And I would gladly recommend it to someone interested in the field of datamining. 

My only gripe with XLMINER?  It can't manage much of the qualitative variables - or at least, I have not unlocked how to use qualitative variables just yet.  But all in all:  thumbs-up to both software programs.

8.  Apple Airport

I bought it, unboxed it, fired up the Mac, and set it up - all within 15 minutes.  Me the klutz when it comes to wires and setting up things managed to get it running.  And yes, it's now linking two personal laptops and two mobile phones in my apartment.

9.  Live.Com

Friends have been encouraging me to use Google Reader - but for some reason, I find it too ... blah.  Perhaps, it's just my personality.  I need some colors, some photos, some life in my news reader.  And Live.Com gives me that.

It allows me to customize my site (yes, I know - iGoogle does the same thing - but still... it's... bland!)  I like Live.Com:  it's now the default home-page on my laptop both at home and at work.  It summarizes the days news for me in various tabs - and the good thing about it:  I can preview the contents of the different subscriptions I have (and I have lots!).  If indeed the abstracts of the things I read intrigue me, then I would go off and read them.

10.  Lifehack.Org

OK.  I am one who does not really want to be told.  But seriously, LifeHack.Org gives me so many ideas on so many things.  Some of the articles I really like - like the latest entry on what to do if you're not really celebrating Christmas.  Others are way-off my field, I guess.  But that's the beauty of LifeHack.Org - it touches on things that are important to you directly, on things that may not necessarily be important to you now but could possibly be in the future.  My Del.Icio.Us account is full of LifeHack.Org tags.

I don't think any other website has been as cool LifeHack.Org.

Additional Stuff that I really liked...

I know the title says 10, but I need to mention two other services that I really liked:  LinkedIn.Com and PickTheBrain.Com.  You are probably very familiar with LinkedIn.Com - and if you are not, better go to LinkedIn.Com now and create your own profile.  I think of the different networking sites that I have joined, LinkedIn.Com perhaps was the most profitable in terms of generating "returns" on my efforts.  I have had several  requests for interviews and consulting projects through LinkedIn - all of which I had to turn down due to some reason or another. 

PickTheBrain.Com is rather a different breed.  It's more of the personal-development site, minus the preaching.  I am too hard-headed to be preached to - and I guess too cynical to even consider the "field" or the "spirituality that surrounds us all".  But PickTheBrain.Com is quite interesting as it focuses on achieving balance.  Their latest entry as of this writing talks about Self-Actualization and exercising, which I thought made sense.

I am sure there will be more useful stuff coming around and bubbling up in the near future.

My needs?  They're very simple, really.  Anything that would get me going and make me more efficient in managing my life and achieving that balance between work and personal life - that's good with me.  (Oh, Facebook is cool - but for now, I guess I don't really see the value in it for me save for wasting some time in the office when there's a lull in between projects - or mass-broadcasting everybody to leave me alone as I am trying to beat a deadline.)

That's it for now!