12.29.07

The wicked problem of poverty

Posted in marketsareconversations, wicked problems, MDG's at 7:22 pm by kevindjones

A blog of mine in a faith-based venue a network group focused on the Millennium Development Goals. How to talk across the divide to people who only measure things in soft ways, and who can see grass roots needs but not system problems. Measuring soft stuff is a wicked problem; you can’t let the measurement deplete identification they feel with the cause, with feeding the children they visited on their mission trip, etc. yet you have to get them to see broader food security issues, its relation to global health issues. The sick child and the system have to both be in the picture. And the money and the social capital at the table has to understand how they both fit into the solution set.

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12.16.07

User generated brands

Posted in Uncategorized, usergeneratedbrands, marketsareconversations, cluetrain, disintermediation at 3:33 pm by kevindjones

As you look at user generated currency and other democratic expressions of value that will have to be part of a social stock exchange, you have to look at what I’m calling (I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else call it this) user generated brands. It relates to the crisis in advertising, where intermediaries positions are faltering in the wake of citizen evaluation and product and service presentation; the public’s image of value creation has slipped out of the hands of the professionals. This Business Week story talks about it. Though the line “Advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking” has gotten the most attention, another quote from Intuit’s Scott Cook sums it up better for me “A brand is what a friend tells a friend it is. Not what a company tells them.”

This is a key emerging element in the first question that social stock exchanges will have to answer: what kind of value social returns create, and how can they be priced into the value of a company’s equity and expressed on an exchange. User generated brands are being built now. User generated currency might find a home on the social stock exchanges.

My thinking on this subject has been moved forward by online conversations with Nicholas Gitovsky. On the issue of what would constitute a meaningingful segmentation of online attention such that you could sell yourself or your group back to an advertiser (not through an ad agency) he suggests this. “Validated intention data coupled with certified profile data, perhaps. “Is that guy a good risk to lend a land rover for the weekend when he’s travelling on business?” Yes, because his driving record, credit report, intent to purchase and affiliations show that it’s not a 20 year old kid just looking for a joy ride, but a guy who owns a 5 year older model back home in Greenwich, where his dealer has stated a willingness to underwrite the insurance for the rental replacement”. Done.

Nicholas thinks about this kind of trade off a fair amount - and “so do people working on Vendor Relationship Management with Doc Searls (author of the Cluetrain Manifesto, which asserted markets are conversations) and his posse,” Nicholas says.

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