I'm working with the entrepreneur Thomas Bjelkeman and some very high profile development organisations on a project to speed up water and sanitation implementation in the developing world through an open source content venture.
I wanted to develop a truly open source marketing and communications strategy as part of this process. Now being able to create a working approach would be quite a big deal and has been something I've been pondering for some time. James Governor was his usual font of connections and steered me to the guys at Collaborative Marketing and the Cluetrain Manifesto. The osaa, which is working to devise an open industry analyst model was also a great help, but I'm all ears on other sources of insight.
Here's my contribution to the pot.
Why open source marketing changes everything
Why open source marketing changes everything
Traditional marketing and communications has worked upon the assumption that there are limited channels to market. Any organisation wishing to promote itself must compete to take up limited– or deliberately constrained – space such as advertisements in newspapers or magazines or profile in editorial articles in those same media. Similarly conferences and events are built around a limited number of speaker slots or a constraint on exhibition space.
In the media, a relatively small number of individuals have for many years controlled and influenced access to the space on their pages, itself restricted by the cost and constraints of the conventional printing process.
An entire industry – of journalists acting as gatekeepers, of advertising sales executives funding the operation through demand management, of public relations advisors deriving earnings from being well connected and able to package a story in the 'right' way has grown around the basic constraint that there is only so much space in which to report stories or advertise.
A major change is going on today driven by the rise of a much broader range of commentary and commentators, and a fragmentation of where people look for information and inspiration. This is driven by user participation online and the explosion in blogging and 'pro-amateur' journalism, research and collaboration.
Over time this will change, for example, the fundamental nature of public relations. For years, PR campaigns have managed the presentation of a story into 'news', presenting companies, products and services as something that is happening that day, when the reality is their period of relevance is much longer. Packaging a launch suddenly creates a constraint - the products are deemed new and therefore quickly become deemed old.
Of course, real news is different - Concorde crashing into a hotel in Paris was news, Kate Moss being arrested on drugs charges was news, the Asian tsunami devastating millions of lives was news. Each of these things happened and was reported on.
The mistake made by many today is thinking their product or service is a news story -or indeed thinking their product or service is the story at all. Essentially it's not. The story is the context, how it is changing and how various products and services, including yours, fit into and help to shape this context.
Of course it can be made into news with enough marketing investment, or if you have the control and showmanship of Apple's Steve Jobs. But that is hard to do - and isn't usually unnecessary.
If viewed from this perspective, and rethought under open source principles, public relations can create an ongoing and expanding eco-system of supporters that would be charged with connecting your story to a wide range of contexts. A major part of the exercise would be to make people feel part of the venture and its aims, and to feel they can make individual and group contributions.
A project focused on development is a perfect place to pioneer open source marketing and public relations. Media cannot penalise the team for refusing to offer 'exclusives', one of the mainstays of story presentation today that wins over one supporter at the expense of many others.
Likewise, such a development project has the ability to attract a large number of pro-amateur supporters, who will consider their participation to be a valuable piece of work experience that helps to further their professional prospects. It allows them to work directly, without complex command and control NGO baggage, on development projects that would otherwise only be given to a small number of overworked staff and volunteers working in the press office of conventional charity marketing departments.
How such marketing will work
At a technical level, projects will follow the following open principles (adapted from the osaa):
• IP licensing: publish at least some of its marketing intellectual property under a creative commons or other re-use license.
• Collaborates openly with other marketing teams and individuals, leading to joint and/or derivative deliverables.
• Is both a consumer and producer of content that is shared (i.e. genuinely participates in a two way manner), and has a culture of clear attribution.
• Makes a substantial proportion of its output, including contacts and campaign details, available to all third parties.
• Has clear mechanisms for gathering/inviting feedback from those that matter, i.e. professional and pro-amateur media, other development communications professionals, resource-rich and resource-poor partners and patrons / funders / sponsors.
• Transparency of funding.
At a practical level, this will mean the following:
• The vast majority of a project's communications strategy, tactical plans and timelines will be published openly online and available to view by anyone within the community system (such as a wiki).
• New content will be posted online as soon as it is available and will not be given in advance to marketing staff. Any participant in the marketing community can take that content and reuse it, provided they respect basic guidelines on reuse and reporting.
• The community is open and welcoming to new community members and participants are actively encouraged to link to or reuse our content.
• News updates and case study content will be presented via a community blog, which will also feature analysis on related partners. The team will work actively to encourage links to and from other members of the eco-system.
• Particular efforts will be made to report on and provide input / context for articles written by blog writers (both professional and pro-amateur) covering information technology, paths to adoption, water and sanitation, local, regional and global development / aid issues, etc.
Love to hear your views, improvements, ideas. Posted by Mark Charmer, 11 January 07
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