Traditional marketing and communication is about getting people to do things. Web marketing and communication is about helping people do things.

“If you don’t like a particular ad on your screen, just throw it in the bin but if you found it interesting or useful, why not share the ad with your other friends – this seems to be the new advertising formula for Digg and now Orkut,” writes Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration in June 2009.

“The traditional banner ads and even contextual advertising (like AdSense) is not really working on social news sites so web companies like Facebook and Digg are trying more innovative ways to get the advertiser’s message across to their users without actually annoying them,” Agarwal continues.

According to a July article in Revolution magazine, “In the UK 68 per cent of internet users were found to trust online consumer opinions, while only 58 per cent said they trust brand websites.” The article also refers to a Harris Interactive poll which found that “46 per cent of US internet users say they ignore banner ads, with just one per cent finding banner ads helpful in making a purchase decision.”

A recent Nielsen study found that, “Personal recommendations and opinions posted online are the most trusted forms of advertising among Internet users around the world.”

Advertisers and publishers are really struggling with the Web. They can’t seem to make it work. These web ads just aren’t as effective as TV, radio and print ads. Is that really the problem? Perhaps the problem is that modern advertising and communications are a house of cards that the Web is pushing over.

Why? Because the Web is measurable. For the first time, we can really see how effective advertising and communication are. Didn’t an advertiser famously say that half of their advertising worked; they just didn’t know which half? Now they can know. Maybe they will find out that much less than half is effective.

Organizations are trying to come up with new ways to advertise and communicate. New ways to disrupt, interrupt and annoy. New ways to grab us by the arm and shout in our ears about how wonderful they are and how much we need their products and services.

Marketers and communicators are trained to think like dog trainers. The dog is the customer and needs to be made do what the master (the organization) wants it to. That’s old school marketing and communication and it doesn’t work so well on the Web.

To succeed on the Web we need to change our mentality from seeing ourselves as a master to seeing ourselves as an apprentice. The customer is the master and we need to learn about what they need to do right now, and help them do that. The web customer is purposeful, directed, action-oriented. They are on a journey and we need first and foremost to help them get to their destination. Then and only then have we any chance of introducing to them the idea of taking a new journey.

Good web marketers and communicators apprentice themselves to their customers.

Gerry McGovern
mailto:gerry@gerrymcgovern.com

SAN FRANCISCO — License plates may be coming to cyberspace.

A government and technology industry panel on cyber-security is recommending that the federal government end its reliance on passwords and enforce what the industry describes as “strong authentication.”

Such an approach would probably mean that all government computer users would have to hold a device to gain access to a network computer or online service. The commission is also encouraging all nongovernmental commercial services use such a device.

“We need to move away from passwords,” said Tom Kellermann, vice president for security awareness at Core Security Technologies and a member of the commission that created the report.

The report, which offers guidance to the Obama administration, is a strong indictment of government and private industry efforts to secure cyberspace to date. “The laissez-faire approach to cyber-security has failed,” Mr. Kellermann said.

Restricting Internet access is one of a series of recommendations that a group of more than 60 government and business computer security specialists will make in a public presentation, “Securing Cyberspace in the 44th Presidency,” on Monday.

The report has been prepared during the last 18 months under the auspices of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington policy group, after a number of break-ins into government computer systems.

“The damage from cyber attack is real,” the report states. “Last year, the Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Commerce, NASA and the National Defense University all suffered major intrusions by unknown foreign entities.”

The report describes a laundry list of serious break-ins ranging from the hacking of the secretary of Defense’s unclassified e-mail to the loss of “terabytes” of data at the State Department.

The group recommends the creation of a White House cyber-security czar reporting to the president and the consolidation of the powers that have largely been held by the Homeland Security Department under the Bush administration. The report argues that cyber-security is one of the most significant national security threats and that it can no longer be relegated to information technology offices and chief information officers.

The commission included the top Democrat and Republican members of the House Homeland Security subcommittee that oversees cyber-security. The chairmen of the commission included Jim Langevin, a Democratic congressman from Rhode Island; and Michael McCaul, a Republican congressman from Texas.

Scott Charney, corporate vice president for trustworthy computing at Microsoft; and Harry D. Raduege Jr., a retired Air Force lieutenant general who is chairman of the Center for Network Innovation at Deloitte & Touche, were also on the commission.

The report calls for new laws and regulations governing cyberspace.

“We believe that cyberspace cannot be secured without regulation,” the report said. The proposed regulations included new standards for critical infrastructure providers like the finance and energy industries, as well as new federal product acquisition rules to force more secure products.

The report does not entirely reject the work of the Bush administration. It cites the creation of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, adopted by the government as part of a presidential memorandum issued last January as a good starting point for remaking the nation’s cyber-security strategy.

That effort has led to a commitment by the federal government to spend more than $30 billion in the next seven years to enhance computing security.

By Nate Anderson | Published: December 07, 2008 – 03:10PM CT

If you think it’s tough to be a blogger because your Google AdWords revenue has been in the toilet lately, the Committee to Protect Journalists wants to remind you that Internet journalist—including bloggers—can and do suffer much more around the world. According to the group’s new report, Internet journalists now make up the largest single group of imprisoned journalists.

Of the 125 journalists imprisoned around the world for doing their jobs, 45 percent are “bloggers, Web-based reporters, or online editors.” China continues its ten-year winning streak when it comes to tossing writers into jail, with Cuba, Burma, Eritrea, and Uzbekistan next in line.

The numbers are down slightly from December 2007, but CPJ notes that the arrests are hitting freelancers the hardest. Without the resources of a major media company behind them, lone bloggers and freelance writers often lack the resources to mount a vigorous defense when they are detained.

Data source: CPJ

“The image of the solitary blogger working at home in pajamas may be appealing, but when the knock comes on the door they are alone and vulnerable,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. “All of us must stand up for their rights—from Internet companies to journalists and press freedom groups. The future of journalism is online and we are now in a battle with the enemies of press freedom who are using imprisonment to define the limits of public discourse.”

The results of angering a regime can be severe; CPJ’s complete capsule summaries of the detained journalists contain story after story of lives utterly changed by publishing information or opinion that displeased the government. In Burma, Nay Phone Latt wrote a blog of his own and ran several Internet cafes, but he irritated the Burmese ruling junta by publishing online caricatures of various generals. He was hauled away on January 29, tossed in jail, charged with “causing a public offense,” and sentenced to 20 years and six months in jail during a closed trial.

The US makes the list, too, for its treatment of journalists in Iraq. According to CPJ, “US military authorities have jailed dozens of journalists in Iraq—some for days, others for months at a time—without charge or due process. No charges have ever been substantiated in these cases.” This is the fifth straight year that America has made the list.

By John Timmer | Published: November 20, 2008 – 08:55PM CT

Critical Media CEO Sean Morgan has some advice for TV broadcasters who are still using $50,000 workstations and a team of professional video editors to upload TV clips to their Websites:

Fire your editor, and here is your username and password.

The password he wants to give them is for Syndicaster, his online video editing and syndication platform. Launched in beta in January, he has now just released Syndicaster 2.0, which lets TV stations edit and publish video clips from their regular broadcast to their own sites and across the Web within a minute after the video airs.

Currently, it can take TV stations hours to process video for their sites. With Syndicaster, everything is done through a browser. So no special hardware or software is needed. And the video doesn’t even need to be uploaded because Critical Media captures and digitizes live video from more than 700 local TV stations.

I was given a demo of the product, and while the UI is a little Windows 98, the underlying capabilities are pretty impressive when you consider that the system is taking raw video feeds from TV and making it Web-ready in a matter of minutes. Search results come up as thumbnails, along with transcripts. Click on a word, and it takes you to that point in the video. The clip can be bumped to the point the editor wants it, and then it lets you pick a thumbnails, add a title, descriptions, and categorize the video with automatically suggested keywords that make it easier to target ads to each video. Says Morgan:

We want to own the ad taxonomy on professionally produced video.

Once the video is ready to go, a drop-down menu lets a video editor post it to his TV station’s Website, as well as to YouTube, AOL, and ClipSyndicate (Critical Media’s Web video syndication platform). Already, 80 TV broadcasters are using Syndicaster.

Morgan’s pitch to them: Instead of 10 video editors at 10 TV stations dedicated to uploading stuff to the Web at a cost of $30,000 to $50,000 per wokstation, Syndicaster can replace that with one editor at a cost of $3,000 to $5,000 a year in Syndicaster subscription costs. That one editor could see all the video from all ten stations and prepare clips for the Web. And he could do it all in his pajamas from home.

And while Syndicaster is only for TV video professionals at this point, many of the same capabilities will be available to everyone in a product called ConsumerCaster that should launch some time in the first quarter of next year.

by Doriano “Paisano” Carta

by Doriano “Paisano” Carta