Gabba. Create Conversation.

Somebody quoted me a few weeks ago when I said, flippantly, that Facebook is the biggest data capture con going. So true. But my god, it is difficult as a marketeer not to be utterly in love with the opportunities that mapping the social graph presents.

But how do those social ads work? On what basis are ads shown to you and why?

This handy little video by Facebook tells all…

Digital Marketing Guidelines

As many of you know, Thinking Digital begins next week with another amazing lineup of interesting and inspirational speakers.

This year, we are all very fortunate (and I do mean fortunate, given his schedule!) to have Brian Solis speak. What’s just as exciting however is that Gabba are getting involved to bring you an exclusive lunch with Brian taking place on Wednesday 26th May at 1pm.

There are only 30 places available and you can win one of TWO through this blog.

Here’s the event from the Codeworks email:

Social Media Café with Brian Solis: this lunch is being sponsored by an old friend to Thinking Digital, Paul Fabretti & his new social media advisory firm, Gabba. Brian Solis will be leading the lunch to talk about some of the insights to his brand new book, Engage. If you’ve not heard of Brian, he is a Silicon Valley legend in social media, brand development and marketing. His A-list clients range from blue chips like Microsoft to Hollywood stars like Ashton Kutcher, whose also written the foreword to his new book.

Food aside, as the description says, Brian will be giving some insights from his new book Engage and yours truly will be hoping to get the chance to ask Brian some questions…which is where you come in.

Places are STRICTLY limited to 30 but I have 2 tickets secured for the lunch which you can win through this blog and this blog alone.

So, what do you need to do?

Simply leave a question in the comments section below for Brian and RT the post using #TDlunch

I’ll be selecting 2 WINNERS, one from the comments section below and one from all the retweets.

(I don’t want you not to take part just because you don’t want to ask him a question!)

I’ll be selecting both winners AT RANDOM at 6pm on Monday evening and posting the winners back on the blog within minutes. I’ll drop you a line shortly afterwards by however you have entered.

In the meantime, the comment box is below and the hashtag is #TDlunch

Enjoy and see all of you on Tuesday!

Debbie Weil (if you don’t know who she is, I haven’t got enough time to tell you but go here and here to find out more!) posted the following question which has really resonated with me:

Is Corporate Blogging the Hub of Social Media Marketing?

Debbie’s question is a really pertinent one as we see more and more casual, almost meaningless social gestures creeping into our online world. Friending, poking, liking, rating, status updates and even Twitter with its 140 characters are all quick and simple ways for us to communicate but do any of them add any real value to interactions with customers?

Whilst many firms set out with the very best of intentions of engaging customers with their social media strategy, where is the real “meat” in the conversation.

As I often do, ask yourself, how would you interact with someone if they only spoke in 140 characters or sentences with limited meaning, or who simply gave you a thumbs up or down in response to a question you may ask?

Out of principle, we in “the profession” are obliged (and 99% of the time are correct) to say that no social media strategy should proceed without beforehand, monitoring the landscape. That seems to be the “proper” and sometimes obvious way to get things moving. We then move to discuss the idea that no channel has the right to be used without evidence that there is a need for the brand to communicate in that way to customers.

The reality is though (and this is through a lot of experience!) that at the heart of any good social media strategy DOES lie a blog – whether with a corporate hat on or a marketing-led branding/engagement one.

The blog, for me, is the way to get to the heart of what social media is all about – people. It is the only way of giving the brand a voice, a means to communicate in a way that the stuffy website or social channels will not let them and a way to to show consumers that the brand really does give a sh1t.

Many have postulated that blogging is dead with the growth of the status update and twitter, but I’m utterly unconvinced.

What are your thoughts? Can you think of other ways that brands can engage in meaningful conversations with customers yet still make it a quick and easy thing to do?

A few months ago, I approached Brian to see if we could bring Techset to the UK. We (me and Herb) tried our best, but time, financial conditions and erm, the impending arrival of Fabretti 2.0 meant that we couldn’t quite make it happen. This time around anyway…

Fortunately, Brian has agreed to attend TD2010 and speak, but all our efforts have not been for nought…there will be more…so come back for more on the announcement soon and be quick on the button.

Nuff said.

Never one to be shy of an opinion, I had the opportunity to help utalkmarketing’s Clark out with a bit of opinion about whether or not the politicians were really seizing the opportunities that social technologies represent. With tonight’s second election debate I thought it might be useful to read.

The Con’s “crowdsource everything” approach (to policy as well as its “marketing”), does, I feel, miss the point and is somewhat symptomatic of all party’s approach to social channels. The “if we ask people, we are seen to be caring” mentality just isn’t a strong enough justification for our time – at least not without us seeing some evidence of something happening, even if, at this stage, these are only public lobbying.

As I say in the piece below, brands find it hard enough to find a way of moving us away from our friends and social networking activities and they are constantly trying to get our attention. Why would an MP who at best, is sporadic in his use of social networking, going to be any different?

Anyway, enough about me…on to Clark’s piece:

November 4, 2008 was a momentous day for global politics. Not only did it see the election of America’s first black president, Barack Obama, but the day was also heralded as a victory for social media.Never before in an election contest had the platform played such a critical role with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and bloggers all contributing to Obama’s success.
Now, almost 18 months later, commentators have been predicting that social media will play a leading role in the UK general election race, being dubbed ‘the digital election’.But despite identifying the importance of the platform some time ago (Labour appointed a Twitter Tsar back in August 2009) and setting up branded feeds little more seems to have been actioned.In a bid to engage with voters and generate debate, Facebook, even set up its own Democracy UK page. But buy-in has been somewhat disappointing for this (just 16,000 fans) and across the board generally for all parties in the UK.
Barack Obama has over 8 million fans on Facebook. Compare that to David Cameron’s 21,000 and the Conservative Party’s 34,000. Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg fare equally poorly on 5,000 with their parties having 15,000 and 13,000 fans respectively. On YouTube, TheUKLabourParty has received 261,000 channel views, placing it ahead of WebCameronUK with its189,000 channel views and LibDem 96,164.But considering the millions of users on the site it’s a somewhat poor performance and is in part due to mixed levels of commitment from the major parties towards social media.
E-mail marketing services company, Return Path, recently found that every major UK political party was promoting its social media presence on the homepage of their websites (apart from Labour and the SNP); yet only the Conservatives and the BNP were incorporating social media links into their email messages.The company warned that parties that don’t incorporate social media links in their emails are missing a trick, and depriving themselves of a quick and easy way to grow their communities online and dominate debate online. It advised that parties should be including ‘forward-to-a-friend’ links in their emails, as a natural grassroots method of spreading the word about party activity and getting others to sign up to the email programme.
However, so far none of the major parties have followed this advice.“Our study showed the Conservatives were by far the strongest party in their email communications,“ said Margaret Farmakis, Return Path’s senior director of response consulting, who lead the research.“They took the least time to engage with new subscribers; sent messages at the promised frequency; and incorporated social media within their messages. If they were judged purely on the superiority of their email strategy, they’d win by a landslide.”In recent weeks, the parties’ social media activity has been stepped up with the Liberal Democrats have releasing a new ‘Labservative’ viral (28,000 views).Meanwhile, yesterday (April 13, 2010) Labour launched a new online drive to promote its manifesto to the masses.
The Green Party has also been tapping into the platform in a bid to maximise its limited budget releasing an advert that can be personalised and passed on.But without a pro-active towards social media for any reasonable length of time, is it a case of too little too late? Or is it a case that the population is too apathetic to care?A former political communications consultant and strategist, now operating as a Director at Octave Online Communications, Paul McGarrity, said that while it can be tempting to talk of the ‘digital election’, the race will be won on a few core fundamentals which have more to do ‘the message’ rather than ‘the medium’.“’Election 2010′ is a classic PR battle. The party to convince voters that they are ‘best placed to safeguard the economy’ will win,” he told UTalkMarketing.“’Getting the vote out’ then becomes the second dominant factor – elections are won by parties who get their supporters to the polls.“I believe the role of social media and internet marketing will be critically important for persuading the public on the issues that matter and mobilizing voter turn-out.
It’s still early days, so expect more election activity through social media closer to May 6.”However, director of social at digital marketing agency Tribal DDB, Allan Blair, warned that parties were missing a trick.“You only need to spend a short amount of time on Twitter to realise that there is a significant amount of conversation in social media about the election, but very little of this is happen in the political parties official spaces,” he added. “This is because the major political parties are not really grasping the true power of social. They have made the classic mistake a lot of brands make in treating social as just another broadcast medium to ‘get their message across’.
”Blair went on to say, “Social is without doubt a great way to share information and content but the real value is in the conversations people are having, with each other and with brands and organisations. “While social media worked spectacularly well for Obama, the social expert was of the opinion that it was unfair to make comparisons between the current UK election and Obama’s presidential campaign, due to different cultural circumstances.“Obama was perhaps the most remarkable US presidential candidate ever, coming at the end of a very long term for one of the most controversial and unpopular presidents of all time, Bush,” said Blair.
“Obama offered something completely new and different to the people of the US and found it easy to broadcast and ignite people’s passion for his campaign across all media channels. His popularity also meant that people wanted to discuss what he was doing and actively show that they were supporting him, social media became the natural place for people to do this.”He concluded, “In the UK the Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem candidates are coming into an election mired in general mistrust for politicians and a belief that none of the major parties really stand for anything different.
They need to be listening, joining and starting conversations people want to be involved in. “If the political parties want to tap into these conversations then they need to start thinking about how they move on from just asking their fans to do things with their content (“share this manifesto”, “watch this video” or “tell us what you think about this policy”) to integrating into real conversations people are having in a genuine and transparent way… something a lot of politicians aren’t used to.
Paul Fabretti, co-founder of social media agency Gabba, agreed that there seemed to be a general lack of interest in what MP’s had to say on social media channels in the UK as a result of the onset of ‘Friend Fatigue’.
“Brands find it hard enough to penetrate social networks and these are typically brands that we actively consume and have a degree of affinity for. There is just not space for an MP and his ‘message’ in our personal networks and we certainly do not want to be seen to converse with him,” he added.“Social technologies are a great way to get across the different values of an individual, brand, or political party, yet only at the election do we actually see any of the parties actively doing anything with their channels.
Fabretti continued, “How can it be reversed? It’s too late now. The time has passed; there has been too little action and listening in between party political broadcasts for anything meaningful to happen.“Hugh Mcleod of Gapingvoid fame has a very simple lesson to teach MP’s: ‘If you talked to people the way advertiser’s talked to them, they’d punch you in the face’. Politician’s need to realise that they need to talk to people on the public’s level and do so on an ongoing basis.
Lack of communication has certainly been a problem, but so has sloppy CRM. Commercial director at digital agency, Jigsaw, David Balko complained that the Conservatives still sent him communications addressed to his partner Amanda, despite flagging up this fault twice.“In the UK, ambivalence towards the parties, their message and their antiquated approach to electioneering will ultimately keep the public interest in them low,” he added.
They simply don’t ‘do’ conversations in the way that they could on Facebook etc.”As election trail rolls on, perhaps it’s the politicians’ wives that might turn out to be ‘secret weapons’. After all Sarah Brown, has more than one million followers on Twitter.This, according to Group Account Director at immediate future, Niall O’Malley, illustrates how politics and social media are coming together.
In a way, the US election was predestined to be a case study for people power – with many different sections of society being united under one candidate. The UK election is fragmented in comparison and no one party has settled on a consistent message,” he added.
Without a coherent ‘battle cry’ from any of the major candidates it is no wonder that the UK electorate is still apathetic both in the offline and online world.”
At the moment the parties are hoping that a message broadcast to the masses will spark online conversations and it doesn’t work like that. Essentially, they have to get to better at small talk to create that connection. Unfortunately, with the election weeks away, it is unlikely things will turn around.”So would it be unfair to call this the UK’s first digital election with so little uptake?Not according to managing director at Uniquedigital, James Briscoe, so said the measure had to be set beyond how many fans a party has on Facebook.
Perhaps the hype has set very high expectations of what a ‘digital election’ means but there is a lot of activity taking place that was unheard of in 2005 election: Digital Q&A happening on Facebook and YouTube following televised debates, parties communicating with voters by email, Labour’s Stiletto Socialist blogger, Sarah Brown constantly tweeting and loads of party supporter blogs,” he added. “Conservatives were definitely the ‘earlier adopters’ with lots of activity a long time before campaigning season; Webcameron, myconservatives.com, and despite labour and Lib Dems improving they still seem to have slickest strategy out of the main parties.”
Briscoe went on to say that a search for ‘Nick Clegg’ and ‘Gordon Brown’ on Google brought to light some nice pieces of PPC activity from the Conservatives, nicely targeted with tailored messaging. “Away from what the parties themselves are doing it has never been easier to find out more about party policies and manifestos than in 2010.
It feels like there are a million blogs that you can follow, easy access to policies and manifestos, along with tools to help you vote – see ‘Vote Match’ on Telegraph.co.uk,” he added.“Ultimately the usual social media rules that we discuss all the time with our clients apply to this election. Be authentic – there is no point in trying to make Gordon Brown ‘cool’; blogs are public property – don’t do a Stuart McLennan; and social is ‘always on’ – keep up the conversations.”Whether the parties do keep up the conversations post Election Day remains to be seen.

6 months ago, we launched Gabba, Manchester’s first dedicated social media agency, with a view to doing the social media “thang”, but in a way that was strategic, considered yet innovative and which created lasting value for clients and their customers too.

Hugh even did a Cube Grenade for us, of which we are very grateful and proud!

Any fool can use social technologies to create “PR” stunts, but not many seem to be able to translate this new social landscape into something we call actionable insights – actions and recommendations that can make a real difference to a client’s business, whatever and wherever this may be.

In just this short space of time, we now have a client list that would be the envy of ANY agency, proud to count people like Microsoft, The NHS, 4 Police Forces (GMP, Merseyside, Cheshire and Cambridgeshire), Parasol/Clearsky, The English Provender Co. (and through close and trusted partners), a luxury car maker and vacuum cleaner company amongst our clients. (just so you know, we’ve also got some fantastic new opportunities just around the corner for some very, very well known brands, clubs and celebrities!)

But with all this work, comes a need to maintain our innovation and deliver excellence, both in the quality of what we do and the level of service we would expect ourselves. Which is where YOU come in.

We have a growing and incredibly talented team already but we need more! Click to find out what’s on offer:

What you are like:

• You live and breathe social media, it’s not just something you do once you turn up at work
• You are into everything that’s new and shiny, but you know that everything has its place
• You accept that sometimes, social media doesn’t have all the answers (but importantly, you’re not afraid to admit it)
• You’ve probably got a few year’s experience behind you (ideally a minimum of 4 or 5), probably in an agency, so you understand how to listen and understand what matters to the client
• With this experience you understand the important of quality and timeliness in your work
• You are inquisitive, innovative and analytical – you always question why and want to do something new
• You might be able to speak another European language (Klingon not required at this stage thanks)
• You can read and write beyond well beyond just your name

What you will be doing:

• Living the dream (ok, sort of)
• Working with, and managing the expectations of, our many clients
• Messing around on the web looking for new and shiny things (definitely) and keeping us ahead of the curve
• Using the very latest and most sophisticated conversation monitoring tools around
• Providing clients with strategic counsel either face to face or through reports
• Cooking up (sometimes) wild social media ideas, but more often than not, social media strategies which deliver on both the client’s and customer’s needs and requirements
• Performing or helping others perform social media outreach activity

What we can give you:

• A forward-thinking working environment – we know we are doing things differently, we want to make it easy for you to break rules too
• The time and freedom to be creative
• The chance to do some truly awesome work for some truly awesome clients (which I can guarantee will be the envy of your current agency!)
• A relaxed but hard-working environment – did you ever work at your best when you were scared every time your boss turned up?! We do what we need to, to get things done though.
• A good salary which reflects the value you can bring to our business
• A pretty decent (if I do say so myself) office in the Northern Quarter of Manchester City Centre
• A really, really good chance for progression. We’re small, but growing quickly. You will have a chance to really influence the future direction of the business – and you’ll be hitting the ground running!

We’re looking for you now, you might be looking now. We need to talk. Now.

If you fancy a natter, send me an email to p (dot) fabretti (at) letsgabba (dot) com, or follow our Twitter account on @letsgabba.

Me old mucker Wadds pointed me to this piece by his PiC, Steve Earls about the 3 key things that PR agencies need to think about if they are going to make money in this changing media landscape. Wadds and Steve know what they are talking about, they have made a great job of running smart, successful pr agencies, so these are very relevant points. I’m paraphrasing what Steve has written, so in brief:

1. The money must be there – if you are going to develop staff, training costs. If you are going to bring more experience in, that costs more. Obvious but there must be cash there for the business to be able to sustain the pay for good staff. (this ties in with point 3).
2. Agencies must benchmark better – Generic phrases around pay like “in the upper quartile”, “better than average” are fast-losing credibility amongst staff, who, if they are switched on, are building their personal brands and making them liable to poaching.
3. If your specialism is media-linked, watch it erode – as current specialisms become mainstream, watch your earning potential decline.

This last point is an especially pertinent one for gabba (my social media agency) and one which we have struggled with positioning ourselves appropriately/sensitively. What we do is very much social media. Sure we build things for clients when its appropriate, but a digital and/or seo agency we are not.

However, we are acutely aware that the root of what we do is pr, only our pr is done online, one to several thousand, using different tools and “techniques” to the conventional world. But as social media evolves, it naturally becomes integrated into digital strategy – touching way more parts of the business than simply the website alone. So who handles this relationship? The PR agency? The marketing department, communications department, customer services…perhaps a social media team…

So where does that leave the PR agency? 3 years ago when we developed a social media press release tool called PressRoom, we introduced it to PR agencies whose lack of online awareness was astoundingly low. Whilst we would never have expected everybody to instantly get it, we would certainly have expected many to understand the context or purpose of the tool.

The gulf between what clients have expected of their PR agency in terms of guidance in this new space and their ability to deliver those skills remains enormous, hence the frequency of deals (partnerships and acquisitions) to get these skills on board quickly and the flurry of activity (and equally paying of generous salaries) to acquire digital specialists who can bring these skills to the pr agency. The reality is though in many of these cases is that these specialists are exactly that – a team of one trying to battle against in some cases, ranks and decades of status quo account management and delivery.

PR agencies will only get skilled up for this new space when the people doing the “standard” give a stuff enough to realise that online is part of their job and not that of the new guy or gal who has digital in their title.

So, going back to Steve’s original point 3, where this leaves the specialist (agency), one might look at the many types of agencies that exist already and have done for years and we see that there IS in fact space for specialist agencies. They just need to know more than their clients, be more adaptable to changing requirements, have proven experience/credibility in the space and be at least one step ahead of clients who are adapting to these new channels and ways of communicating. Let’s take a quick look at some scenarios:

• Digital agencies constantly develop new ideas with new technologies that ClientCo can neither justify investing in or are skilled enough to develop in.
• SEO agencies can deliver a level of skills and results through a wide range of activities that (arguably) few client companies either have the resources to deliver or the budget to achieve the same results.
• PR agencies have the press contacts and relationships that ClientCo does not have the time or resources to develop.

All of these agencies deliver an often exemplary service specialism in their own right yet they comfortably fit into ClientCo’s digital strategy, so I ask myself why wouldn’t social media agencies do the same?

The faster we grow, the more bogged down I get in the practical stuff. Tactical ideas and implementation, strategy, problem solving, running a business, recruitment…you get the idea. You’re probably no different.

Yet every now and then I always take tie to take stock. What is gabba doing? Why are we doing it? Why are we different? What are our values? How long will the website look like a dogs dinner? You’re probably no different.

But one thing that I always refer back to is The Cluetrain Manifesto, for me, one of the most important and influential pieces of writing about this whole thang. So it is admittedly, more theory than practical but its principles remain true today.

Markets are conversations.

Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.

People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.

These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.

There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.

What’s happening to markets is also happening among employees. A metaphysical construct called “The Company” is the only thing standing between the two.

Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.

Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves.

Companies that don’t realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.

Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.

Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.

Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.

Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.

Companies attempting to “position” themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually cares about.

Bombastic boasts—”We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ”—do not constitute a position.

Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.

By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep markets at bay.

Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the market might see what’s really going on inside the company.

Elvis said it best: “We can’t go on together with suspicious minds.”

Brand loyalty is the corporate version of going steady, but the breakup is inevitable—and coming fast. Because they are networked, smart markets are able to renegotiate relationships with blinding speed.

Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own “downsizing initiatives” taught us to ask the question: “Loyalty? What’s that?”

Smart markets will find suppliers who speak their own language.

Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It can’t be “picked up” at some tony conference.

To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.

But first, they must belong to a community.

Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.

If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no market.

Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about human concerns.

The community of discourse is the market.

Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.

Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against their own market and workforce.

As with networked markets, people are also talking to each other directlyinside the company—and not just about rules and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.

Such conversations are taking place today on corporate intranets. But only when the conditions are right.

Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other corporate information that workers are doing their best to ignore.

Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate conversation.

A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.

While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to “improve” or control these networked conversations.

When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked marketplace.

Org charts worked in an older economy where plans could be fully understood from atop steep management pyramids and detailed work orders could be handed down from on high.

Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.

Command-and-control management styles both derive from and reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of paranoia.

Paranoia kills conversation. That’s its point. But lack of open conversation kills companies.

There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One with the market.

In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete notions of command and control.

As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in internetworked markets.

These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other’s voices.

Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.

If willingness to get out of the way is taken as a measure of IQ, then very few companies have yet wised up.

However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now online perceive companies as little more than quaint legal fictions that are actively preventing these conversations from intersecting.

This is suicidal. Markets want to talk to companies.

Sadly, the part of the company a networked market wants to talk to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of language that rings false—and often is.

Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.

De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We want to talk toyou.

We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.

We’re also the workers who make your companies go. We want to talk to customers directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into a script.

As markets, as workers, both of us are sick to death of getting our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless annual reports and third-hand market research studies to introduce us to each other?

As markets, as workers, we wonder why you’re not listening. You seem to be speaking a different language.

The inflated self-important jargon you sling around—in the press, at your conferences—what’s that got to do with us?

Maybe you’re impressing your investors. Maybe you’re impressing Wall Street. You’re not impressing us.

If you don’t impress us, your investors are going to take a bath. Don’t they understand this? If they did, they wouldn’t let you talk that way.

Your tired notions of “the market” make our eyes glaze over. We don’t recognize ourselves in your projections—perhaps because we know we’re already elsewhere.

We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are creating it.

You’re invited, but it’s our world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!

We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.

If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it something interesting for a change.

We’ve got some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some better service. Stuff we’d be willing to pay for. Got a minute?

You’re too busy “doing business” to answer our email? Oh gosh, sorry, gee, we’ll come back later. Maybe.

You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.

We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic self-involvement, join the party.

Don’t worry, you can still make money. That is, as long as it’s not the only thing on your mind.

Have you noticed that, in itself, money is kind of one-dimensional and boring? What else can we talk about?

Your product broke. Why? We’d like to ask the guy who made it. Your corporate strategy makes no sense. We’d like to have a chat with your CEO. What do you mean she’s not in?

We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.

We know some people from your company. They’re pretty cool online. Do you have any more like that you’re hiding? Can they come out and play?

When we have questions we turn to each other for answers. If you didn’t have such a tight rein on “your people” maybe they’d be among the people we’d turn to.

When we’re not busy being your “target market,” many of us are your people. We’d rather be talking to friends online than watching the clock. That would get your name around better than your entire million dollar web site. But you tell us speaking to the market is Marketing’s job.

We’d like it if you got what’s going on here. That’d be real nice. But it would be a big mistake to think we’re holding our breath.

We have better things to do than worry about whether you’ll change in time to get our business. Business is only a part of our lives. It seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?

We have real power and we know it. If you don’t quite see the light, some other outfit will come along that’s more attentive, more interesting, more fun to play with.

Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more interesting than most trade shows, more entertaining than any TV sitcom, and certainly more true-to-life than the corporate web sites we’ve been seeing.

Our allegiance is to ourselves—our friends, our new allies and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Companies that have no part in this world, also have no future.

Companies are spending billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can’t they hear this market timebomb ticking? The stakes are even higher.

We’re both inside companies and outside them. The boundaries that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but they’re really just an annoyance. We know they’re coming down. We’re going to work from both sides to take them down.

To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.

We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.

Now that all of us have much more experience than when this came out, perhaps we should all look, reflect and see if we can identify more closely with the 95 theses to see if we have learned anything, or indeed what else we have left to learn:

gabba, is all about creating conversation for our clients.exactly the kind of things that cube grenades do. As a social object, they fit the bill perfectly. Nothing creates conversations better than social objects.

But we’re not about the kind of meaningless conversation that SEO agencies create when they advocate that they build a blog for SERP visibility, not the kind of meaningless presences without purposes that digital agencies create as an add-on to their website design, and certainly NOT the kind of tacky pr stunt conversations that pr agencies that don’t even use You Tube and Flickr develop.

No, this is about one thing – developing ways and means for clients to hold sustained, meaningful and mutually beneficial conversations with customers (whomever they may be).

Will the tools that we use to begin and maintain these conversations be the same in two year’s time Probably not.

Will the description or name of what we do be the same in two year’s time? Probably not.

Will the need to sustain meaningful conversations with customers exist in two year’s time? Almost definitely.

So, here’s hoping that we will create many conversations with you in the future!

Check us out here or on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/letsgabba