blur Marketing took the FT Digital Media conference social.
blur’s Crowds and clouds jazzed things up at the eventful conference and ricocheted speakers perspectives across the Twittersphere and social networks.
The marketing services industry is changing. Big agencies are getting it from all sides.
Google has eroded their media buying divisions. Social media is challenging their PR departments, while YouTube is confusing the hell out of TV advertising production. And mobile marketing – well that’s a whole new game of tennis.
Direct marketing has gone digital and the Amazon rainforest has finally had its revenge. While Facebook could turn the existing concept of marketing and advertising on its head – making word of mouth, referral and subtle the future. That’s not exactly WPP for profits.
Mean time new trends such as Crowdsourcing mix guerrilla marketing with the Web on a scale never seen before so radically altering the very way in which brands interact with consumers and suppliers. There may be no turning back. Market research will become the preserve of Twitter tools and Web based data and conversation mining rather than research firms.
These trends and the digital revolution supporting them mean brands are increasingly going marketing DIY, while a whole legion of empowered, digital, micro agencies and freelancers are gnawing at big agency like shoals of locusts. Small is beautiful. Innovation necessitates it. And marketing campaigns ARE innovation – one after the other.
It may mean that the very concept of ‘agency’ fundamentally alters. Meta, virtual agencies such as blur Marketing, as massive clusters of independent creative folk and nano agencies could be the future.
Moving together, in legion, digitally synchronized – almost real time – like a massive shoal of fish united by Web Crowd platforms with cloud based account, project and campaign management systems binding them together, providing brands with the power of big, as clouds of the ’small’. Thinking, behaving, being like the Crowd they all serve, supported by social, digital, crowd and loud. Tomorrow’s agency – today. The future WPP. The people’s agency. The rain forests friend.
blur Marketing has just launched the all new, dancing and singing blur-Marketing.com.
Check in. ‘Need a (marketing) campaign?’
We redisigned blur Marketing’s Facebook fan page. Here’s how you can improve yours.
Use this great article on creating the perfect Facebook Fan page. We followed the step by step guide so check how it looks on our beloved blur Marketing fan page.
Using ‘image real estate optimization’ we developed a custom badge for the page.
We also found the Static FBML application handy. The article focuses on how to use it to create an html powered, custom tab for your page.
We chose to make this our default welcome message for the fan page. Take a look.
Give it a go and share your experience.
“I don’t have enough time for twitter, Facebook or blogging.” What if it paid back 200% of your time invested?
Photo by Marchin Chady via Flickr
‘Not having enough time for social media’ sounds like the title of a summer song. You listen to it again and again, without asking yourself why.
Maybe we should question harder where our precious time needs to go. Getting comfy with social networks is a great start. A stimulus for getting more familiar with the ’social Net’ could be the fact that it pays back if done properly. With astonishing results in some instances.
But why do only a few manage to get breakthrough results?
There are 2 reasons:
1. They know how to use the tools.
2. They know that only a few have succeeded to date.
On the latter have a look at some success stories and at 300 social media campaign case studies, you’ll be amazed.
The crowd is flexing its muscles. Take a look at these terrific projects.
We’re constantly amazed by what collectives of talented individuals can now achieve so we banged together this video assemblage for a visual share on how crowds are changing the rules forever.
10. I’ve Got Nothing – a crowdsourced song.
Just hit the UK music charts. A remarkable success.
9. The Eternal Moonwalk
The best tribute fans could give to the King of Pop.
8. The Crowdsourced Haircut
Aka “How to get a free haircut in San Francisco”.
7. The Amplichoir
Read more
Have you looked into Facebook Advertising to promote your business?
Photo by ugo90 via Flickr
There is an untold story about Facebook Ads. While most businesses are focusing on Google Adwords for PPC, truth is that those experiencing Facebook are getting positive results.
Seomoz.org recently looked at the benefits of ‘in-depth’ targeting and re-published Nielsen’s interesting statistics about ads:
Source: Social Networking’s New Global Footprint
News is that as the 300 million active user network evolves, so does its advertising.
The improved social advertising platform now allows businesses to push their message even further. Inside Facebook published a great report on the new social functionalities.
If you want to start looking into the possibilities of advertising at Facebook here are 5 resources to get you started:
- Advertising On Facebook
- What I’ve Learned about Facebook Advertising by Spending $1,000
- Tips For Small Business Advertising On Facebook
- Facebook Advertising – Tips to Startups/Small Businesses
- Watch Out Google, Facebook Is Gaining in PPC
We take a fairtrade approach to managing our crowds.
We also understand what its like for people going out on their own and devised bulletproof processes to make sure that your rights as an independent contractor are taken care of.
Mainly to avoid the following:
Photo by Deemonita via Flickr
We were avidly re-reading this article from March about the future of PR by Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research.
We felt a bit of an issue with the use of the word ‘agency’. We feel that the future (or the present of blur Marketing) is actually communities representing communities.
The assumption that a traditional (or even connected) agency may represent the diversity of a community is not relevant anymore. We feel that the open source movement and focused crowdsourcing enable a bulletproof distributed agency approach. The best way to represent a community.
Our community of freelancers really gets it because it’s a community itself. As simple as that.
blur Designs traveled over to the trendy Shoreditch House last night to see their latest Human Brand project, Rabia. Here she is singing ‘Fronting’.
It was a great gig and the crowd loved her. blur Designs is onto the next stage of Rabia’s Human Brand, watch this space!
Mashable’s Brandon Mendelson posted an interesting collection of tips on how to grow your crowd. At blur Marketing growing crowds is not only critical to what we do, but also central to how we engage with our clients.
Photo by ppdigital via Flickr
We enjoy reading this and participated in the discussion. How are you going about building your crowd?
At blur Group we talk about our passion for focused crowds. When we look at other crowdsourcing initiatives such as Threadless or Wikipedia we are all impressed by the number of people participating and joining every day. But these are large, one off projects and supporting crowds.
Photo by Ma1974 via Flickr
Does Size matter though? Well for initiatives such as the above, probably. But how can you get crowds to work on more complex projects and make sure deadlines are regularly met, and how do you make sure the crowd will deliver repetitively and with quality ? These are issues a number of freelancing communities struggle with.
So let’s go small! At blur Marketing by cherry picking the best of breed we believe we can keep quality high, we make sure we can anticipate deadlines and mix and match freelancers to optimize the results for more complex projects.
But let’s define small. The largest digital agencies we are aware of rely on 10/15 staff (including receptionists and assistants). We have already reached the 30 person mark and are growing exponentially with just the best. Both clients and agencies are taking note. How’s that!
Photo by boskizzi via Flickr
Building our crowd is a fundamental daily activity of blur Marketing.
Identifying a focused crowd of talented people is no easy task.
Talent is sometimes present in the so called amateur, which is increasingly beating the professional. We are currently building an army of talented marketing people, regardless of their status to take over Goliath.
Have a look at them on our community page or if you’d like to become one send a message to julius@blurgroup.com
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Entrepreneurs chat at the latest blur’d event about why they became Entrepreneurs and what their biggest issue is right now.
Check out – http://innovatrs.com
The definition of Fairtrade is clear: “Fairtrade is a strategy for poverty alleviation and sustainable development. Its purpose is to create opportunities for producers and workers who have been economically disadvantaged or marginalized by the conventional trading system. If fair access to markets under better trade conditions would help them to overcome barriers to development, they can join Fairtrade.”
But we believe that the future of Faitrade goes beyond developing countries and includes many other kinds of workers; full time, freelance, part time and including artists, musicians, actors, writers, marketing consultants, designers and more. As a leader in Crowdsourcing we think that it can offer a better deal for most constituents of worker and knowledge producer – and a better contract, one not shackled by the constraints of permanent employ. For instance, b-uncut artists take a commission of 80% when their art is sold through the b-uncut Gallery, not the standard 50% offered by traditional gallery’s.
The Fairtrade movement has done a great deal for farmers and workers in the Third World. Its time to widen the initiative and improve the deal and conditions for all workers, be they creatives, artists, knowledge workers, factory employees or engineers. In the US, UK, France, Japan, Australia, Brazil, India or wherever. Crowdsourced together – unfettered and untethered. That is the future of Fairtrade.
It’s the buzz word of the moment. Some see it as an opportunity, others as a threat. Some think they are experts, others actually are. Truth is that little is known about Social Media.
We are all learning about how masses use media, but mostly we are gaining knowledge about ourselves. Because Social Media is about us and our insatiable need of being social, mostly enabled by meaningful and relevant conversations.
Fact is that the increasing fragmentation of social networks and fast paced technology development raises doubts and questions. We summed up some of the questions we ask our clients when they get in touch with blur Marketing.
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We want your answers, either by commenting below or by showing up in London at our monthly Meetup.
Let’s talk about it, let’s start our rewarding conversation.
Crowdsourcing has become an increasingly accepted term with examples bandied about such as Google using the analysis of Web links to crowdsource their search engine, Wikipedia crowdsourcing the planet to build the largest encyclopedia and Threadless crowdsourcing approaching a million people to design t-shirts. But what is the future of crowdsourcing? Well, we think it’s the power of small. We believe that small, niche, highly managed crowds organized in the right way will become virtual organizations. Why not build a marketing agency solely by crowdsourcing and remotely managing marketing professionals/consultants. Why not crowdsource writers and editors to build a next generation publishing company, artists to develop a new generation art market.
The key, we believe, is small, targeted, niche crowds attacking niche issues head on and repeatedly. There will always be a place for big crowds tackling one or two big problems – but this needs to be complemented with specialist crowds attacking specialist issues one after the other much as any agency, research centre or organization does today. The benefit of doing it with a managed crowd instead of legions of full time employees is lower cost, greater flexibility, a more international approach and the greater, larger collective intelligence. Indeed, it may be that the most successful, best managed, niche crowds will become the organization of tomorrow.
We have powerful ideas in mind for September. We are aiming to expose pressing business issues and get fellow entrepreneurs to help.
We feel it would be disconnected from our way of doing things if you were not involved in the process.
We want your opinion and our next event is about that, brainstorming on our September blur’d meetup.
Format will be as usual: relevant peers, intimate environment, great food and drinks (complimentary Prosecco will be available for a limited time).
So come along, relax, mingle with cool entrepreneurs and shape tomorrows ventures today – from the grass roots up.
RSVP here
As blur Group gets more of a following we increasingly get asked why what we are doing is important. It is both a fundamental and complex question to answer. I have spent the last ten years building large communities and marketplaces on the Web – consumer facing, business facing and some that mash both up. The thinking until now has been all about how you scale communities and marketplaces – how you reach critical mass. How you monetize the masses.
We believe that the new wave in community building is about the power of small – the beauty of boutique and about quality more than quantity. Our crowds (communities) are small, focused and valuable. We spend more time managing and filtering our communities than recruiting for them. And our recruitment is rifle shot, not scatter gun. Organic, not viral.
But then we have to, because blur Group is a leader in crowdsourcing – and crowdsourcing is all about monetizing the individual and combined outputs of the crowd. Not cashing in on the crowd itself – quite the opposite. We know that quality crowds equal quality outputs and we will only succeed through quality outputs, whether they come from artists or entrepreneurs or marketers. We work tirelessly with our crowds, supported by social media and community platforms, to help them earn a better living and make a bigger difference – whether they be dedicated, part time or freelance.
Some believe we have figured out how to scale services based businesses, others feel that we might have the secret to Web 2.0 marketplaces and some even think we are quietly and innocently changing the way business is done. Us, we just think we are blur, reinventing tomorrow, today.
At blur we are committed in providing spaces for people to gather and start compelling projects. Our online communities revolve around this concept.
We considered to push the idea forward.
We started blur’d, a London Meetup for Entrepreneurs, Digital Directors and Innovation Officers. We thought it was a great idea to offer an offline space with reduced noise, to facilitate meaningful conversations.
We had our first night on the 30th of June. Have a look at the response and come join our tribe.
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At blur Group we really believe in doing things differently. It’s not only a nice statement, it’s a fact.
Our company website runs on Wordpress
Our Intranet is a Ning website, where you can join and mingle with the team.
Our initiatives are crowdsourced, but we are more than just a marketplace. We think that crowdsourcing means great quality and we feel that empowering talented people is the greatest reward for the company.
We definitely prefer Rap over a traditional Polka.
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blur Group is hosting the first in a series of entrepreneur meetups in London tomorrow night, June 30th. blur’d Meetups are designed for interesting entrepreneurs launching or running somewhat disruptive and innovative ventures. blur’d also lets in select digital directors and innovation officers from large companies. They plan to do monthly, invitation only get togethers in cool venues around Notting Hill and Kensington.
There will be at least one celebrity entrepreneur at each event.
If you’re up for it register at meetup.com/blurdup – and if your profile is interesting we’ll invite you.
