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Bill and Dave by Michael Malone

Bill and Dave were better known now by their surnames: Hewlett-Packard. It is familiar to consumers as a brand of printer, laptops and digital cameras sold in supermarkets up and down the country. Some may remember that they had a Watergate-type moment recently and a woman CEO who made a dogs dinner of things.

I visited Boeblingen (near Stuttgart) – the European headquarters of Hewlett-Packard in the late 90s and left deeply unimpressed by a large but seemingly directionless technology behemoth. We were on the cusp of the internet, while they were talking about printing brochures on demand. While this was happening the best internet search engine at the time, Alta Vista, had been built by their long time rival Digital Equipment Corporation.

Malone in his book Bill and Dave gave me a better appreciation of Hewlett-Packard. He brings into perspective how important Bill Hewlett and David Packard were to the technology sector and modern business practices.

From a PR perspective, I found facinating the way Bill and David self-consciously built their own personal legends which helped support and extend the HP Way. The company’s culture was built, extended and modified in a deliberate, planned manner unparalleled in any other company. Their culture was what PR people would now call thought leadership – which feels very now given the start of interest around brand purpose.

Bill and Dave wrote the book on corporate reputation without the help of big name agencies and invented the elements as they went along, combined with a wisdom worthy of Solomon. More book reviews here.

August 22, 2007
The Dream Machine by M Mitchel Waldrop

Why did I read The Dream Machine? History is important. It inspires us and it informs us about the present and we can learn about it to shape the future. I was inspired to work in PR for the technology sector by Robert X Cringely’s book Accidential Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can’t Get a Date.

Cringely inspired me with a tale of extraordinary people, strong personalities and a bit of youth rebellion. Cringely touched on the contribution of early pioneers like Doug Engelbert and Bob Metcalfe, but placed most of his emphasis on Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

John Markoff’s What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry covered the earlier generation of innovators in more depth, particularly Engelbart.

The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal tells the story from the point-of-view of J C R Linklder, a polymath who was instrumental in putting in place a lot of the projects and infrastructure that was needed to make the necessary developments. Linklider was a psychologist by training who realised the power and potential of technology way before it was possible.

Waldrop tells the story well, painting Licklider as a human being: a wonderful polymath, parent, researcher and a useless manager. He also paints the broader historical picture taking in ARPA, DEC, Xerox PARC, Al Gore and the Information Superhighway. More technology related posts here.

August 6, 2007
The PowerBook

PR Week (subscription required) published the PowerBook this week, featuring 500 of the most prominent people in PR, it had a selection of questions that painted an interesting portrait of the people listed. BlackBerry’s at the ready, with leisure time facilitated by iPods and TiVo-equipped home entertainment systems, they are used to dining in London’s best restaurants – there wasn’t too many surprises amongst the preferences of the 500.

It also struck me that the same questions could paint an interesting picture of the digital marketing blogosphere. What would my own responses look like?

Name: Ged Carroll

Job: Lead consultant (EMEA), Digital Strategies Group

Address: Waggener Edstrom Worldwide 10 Southampton Street London WC2E 7HA

Telephone: +44 20 7632 3800

Born: 19XX

Home town: That’s a complex question. The place I felt most at home is Hong Kong. I grew up in the north west of England and the ancestral family farm in the west of Ireland. For better or worse, London is where currently where I call home.

Lives: London

Family: No

Best career move: Getting made redundant from my blue-collar job in the oil industry, which set me on my current career path. Little did I know what that would entail.

Which company / brand do you most admire? Rolex

Which business / organisation leader do you most admire? Larry Weber – who was the first agency leader that I worked for. It also reminded me that its disappointing to meet your heroes. He is a lovely, but far from perfect character.

Boss who most inspired you: Cathy Pittham, who was the managing director of the first agency I worked for down in London.

Most essential read: Wired magazine

Most essential viewing / listening: Wall Street Journal Tech News Briefing podcast

Favourite web link: pbs.org/cringely

Favourite gadget: Apple MacBook Pro

Most respected journalist: Robert X. Cringely (aka Mark Stephens)
Most respected politician: A toss up between former president Mary Robinson, Moshe Dayan and Michael Collins (and yes I do know the last two are dead).

What is your favourite place for lunch? Wagamama

Name one thing about yourself that may surprise others: I used to be a shift leader in an oil refinery

Guilty pleasure: too many to mention including vinyl records, streetwear and mechanical watches

Your ideal epitaph: to not have an epitaph, at least not for a good while.

March 31, 2007
Akiba-kei

Akiba-kei – A Japanese word meaning related to Akihabara. Akihabara or ‘Electric Town’ was the place in Tokyo where you could go to get everything from electronic components to new and vintage devices. The electronic component shops inspired generations of budding engineers that went on to work for the likes of Sony and Panasonic. Think of it as Shenzhen’s SEG electronics market (in the SEG Plaza building located in the Huaqiangbei neighbourhood of Futian district, Shenzhen).

Akiba-kei or Akihabara in December 2006

Vintage gadgets were available from high end hi-fi to games consoles. All are very Akiba-kei.

In more recent times it has also evolved to cater for fans of Japanese technology with a raft of computer stores and service providers.

It is also becoming known for catering to other geek consumer tastes including anime, manga and cosplay – think a cuter version of a Star Trek convention. Whether you like anime, manga or dressing up as your favourite character Akiba-kei has something to offer.

Finally there is the maid culture, which is kind of like a fancy dress tea house, often with a specific theme related to anime or manga related culture.

Akiba-kei transcends geography. It now represents a mindset, a culture that has gone around the world, but whose spiritual home in Akiba-kei continues to evolve over time. The exportation of Akiba-kei culture started in the 1960s and70s when Japanese manufacturers products were seen to be technological wonders, from hi-fis and watches to cameras.

Sailors, servicemen and ex-pat business people took (often superior) Japan-only models of the latest hifi home together with a step up transformer if needed. With TV syndication and video recorders interest in anime rose as well. The 1980s brought long term interest in games consoles. These cultural provided a bridge over time for the wholesale export of Japanese popular culture through and influenced by Akiba-kei.

Thanks to Peter Payne and the J-Box newsletter. More Japan related topics here.

March 3, 2007
Piper Jaffray trends
US investment bank Piper Jaffray put out some of the smartest publicly available thinking about the internet space at the moment: last week they issued a new detailed report called The User Revolution: The New Advertising Ecosystem and The Rise of the Internet as a Mass Medium. Piper Jaffray customers can get a copy from their representative, I am on their email list because of my long-term interest in this area.

Reading it at first, my initial reaction was that I thought that it was quite patronising, but then I realised that the document has to assume little to no knowledge because its main audience is going to be fund managers of all ilks.

The Piper Jaffray report has some great industry data points and articulates many of the key concepts that are shaping this market in an easy and articulate manner. In the accompanying industry note the technology analyst team pulled out those key points as an executive summary; some of which I expect to see being incorporated into PowerPoiint presentations at a meeting near you:

The User Revolution

The User Revolution – consumers taking control of content consumption and branding. User-generated content as well as user indent driven services (like Amazon, Last.fm and Yahoo! Music’s Launch radio stations).

Communitainment – The three areas that historically drove demand for internet services like Yahoo! and AOL of comunity, communication and entertainment are being directly addressed all at once by new services acting as an accelerant for for the market

The Golden Search – ’search as the new portal’. When I used to work at Yahoo! search was described as the front door to the web. A much quoted statistic was that over seven out of every ten internet sessions was started from a search enquiry. Piper Jaffray thinks that search will be increasingly used in branding campaigns (marketers really need to crack this as contextual and search adverts have encouraged brand disloyalty – Kelkoo’s whole business was built on the back of Google ads with pretty much zero brand marketing, and you have a generation of online marketers who use quantative data from search marketing without any regard to brand value, instead focusing purely on transactional data).

Video ads

Video ads will be the next thing – this is kind of counter-intuitive as ads have moved from banners and animation to text ads, but then services like YouTube facilitate in-programming ads a la television.

I found the following section of the report executive summary particularly pertinent, and as a PR consultant it is the concept that clients I have spoken to find the most difficult to grasp: The Revolution Is About Control. The uprising by the users is over control – control of the type of content users want, control of the place and time content is delivered., control of the advertisements that the users are willing to take, and control of the brands they want to create. Unlike most revolutions, where the masses revolt because of major hardship and grievance, the User Revolution was largely driven by the proliferation of media options, the emergence of the Internet, and the growing sophistication of consumers.

I find the last point of particular interest, particularly when I think of the adverts that run on UK television for products like the now defunct Courts Carpets or Cillit Bang – perhaps there isn’t that much wisdom in marketing.

And finally just a couple of the business risks that I through of interest:
- The loss of confidence by advertisers in the effiacy of online advertising and emerging business models.
- A decrease in efficacy of online advertising including display and search advertising
Media fragmentation

I particularly like how they show the fragmentation of media over the past 40 years!

More related content here.
February 25, 2007