We Are Q Inc.

The power of the digitally connected community is great. Marketers are understanding that consumers and their connected communities select and favour the products and brands that are engaged in the most relevant dialogue with them.

So, before a marketer can engage with an influencer, they first need to identify who those influencers are. To satisfy that demand, the race is on to create the algorithms and one stop-shops that will determine the influencers from the big mouths; the positive sentiment-ers from the detractors, the activist from the trend-setters.

In the May 2012 issue of Wired, Seth Stevenson article Popularity Counts puts Klout into context. In a quick and dirty effort to make sense of who the brand influencers are, Klout scores everyone with a single number, on a scale of 1 to 100 based on a mysterious, proprietary algorithm.

Photo: Garry McLeod

Klout has been criticized for not only its mysterious scoring algorithm but for what Forbes.com calls a Sneaky Klout Trick Designed to Suck You In. In his article, author Anthony Wing Kosner sets the expectation quickly in his warning “Prepare to be manipulated”.

Manipulation notwithstanding, Klout recently stepped up it’s game. The company is ready to infiltrate consumer marketing. Large corporations are discussing how to use Klout scores to determine the kind of service, perks or shopping discounts to offer based on a person’s score.

Joe Fernandez launched Klout in 2007. In the Wired article, Stevenson describes Fernandez vision as a “form of empowerment for the little guy”. Maybe it is. However, influencer research is not valuable if the marketer can’t understand the influence or measure the Vector of Influence.

The Vector of Influence is the nature of the influence that any particular influencer wields in a particular social space and the signals that influence. On Twitter, influence can be measured by who you’re following, followers, tweets, re-tweets, @mentions and replies. On TripAdvisor the vector is different. On Facebook, different again… and so on. Each social space has it’s own signals or collectively it’s own vector. And social space, by social space the vector changes significantly because it’s unique to the community.

So, do identify your influencers, but don’t put them all in the +K basket. I won’t attempt to wrap it up any better than Wing Rosner from Forbes.com:

Klout is a really interesting concept that fails in some important ways. Being able to apply a single number to a person is useful in some situations, and being able to identify the topics that a person has some clout with their peers about is even more useful. But the Klout score is still a blunt instrument, and as such, dangerous in the wrong hands. Your mileage may vary, so while Klout is scoring you (which they are whether you participate or not) be sure to keep a tally on what that score is worth to you, and drive accordingly. -Anthony Wing Rosner

There once was a company called ICE. In the early days of the World Wide Web, ICE collected some of the best creative minds in Canada and I’m thankful to have been a part of it. In 2002 or so, ICE officially melted. This Friday, April 13th people from far and near will gather to celebrate what would have been 20 years.

At ICE, I produced a web-series we called i-Live. Every month staff would submit videos and we’d build a website to profile the lives of the people who worked at ICE. So far, I’ve found these. Note the video quality is low. Streaming web video 12 years ago was a new thing.

Starring Doug Keeley, Chris Tait and Chris Sasaki

3D printing is incredible, mind-blowing even! Does this mean, manufacturing can one day be a DIY endeavour? The answer is Yes. Here the designer prints a number of small and giant wrenches from a CAD design to workable wrench, complete with moving pieces. The wrenches are printed in the toughness and rigidity of commercial grade plastics using the Objet Connex 3D printer.

The downside? It take about 24 hours to print what you see here. The cost? For the desktop and office environment 3D printer, you’re looking at about $19,000 USD.

Isn’t that what lazer printers cost 10 years ago?

Foray into eCommerce by Canadian fashion retailers has been embarrassingly abysmal. As a result, there’s no shortage of US eCommerce retailers advertising aggressively for Canadian fashion dollars and happily shipping to Canada: Internet online shopping by Canadians reached $15 billion in 2009.

Enter Simons.ca. La Maison Simons established in old Quebec City about 20 years ago and now has a bunch of stores all over Quebec. Simons is comparable to The Bay but more boutique than departement store with a focus on affordable euro-style for men, women and kids. When I lived in Quebec City, Simons was one of my regulars. In January, it’s one place I could always get a great cashmere sweater for under $100.

Simons.ca recently launched their new eCommerce store and asked me to provide some feedback on the shopping experience.

What I liked:

• Free shipping to anywhere in Canada – yes!
• Free returns
• Great products, good selection
• Convenient quick view of products with nice high resolution photography; close up views and in context product images
• Product information is in context including sizing chart, coulors and care instructions
• Easy check out
• Fast delivery

Opportunities for engagement with Simons fans:

1. The ability to add comments and share products across social networks should be table-stakes these days, but Simons has not included it
2. Simons is known for great markdowns; sale prices are translated to web but they’re not easy to spot – suggest make sale items more obvious
3. Integrating social commerce for both trending products and for allowing friends and family to go in on gifts would be a sweet addition to the experience
4. Saving products you like is not an option in the cart; I’d love to check out with some items and save the rest for another shopping visit – even get a notification when my saved cart products go on sale

Overall great job from online experience to quick delivery. Now, to all you Canadian retailers out there: who’s next?

Brainstorming as we know it – is the harvesting of ideas (good and bad) through a non-threatening, non-critical dump of ideas by a group. Right?

In the early 50′s, Alex Osborn of BBDO popularized Brainstorming in his surprise best selling book Your Creative Power. His ideas have permeated popular culture and even given rise to institutions like the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College and detailed pedagogical doctrines frequently employed by business consultants.

Well Brainstorm this, according to Ben Jones, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management brainstorming practices in organizations correlate to larger team sizes. In fact, over the last 50 years the size of the average team has increased by about 20% each decade.

Recently The New Yorker published an article by Johan Lehrer that not only questions the effectiveness of brainstorming but basically goes as far as to prove the practice detrimental to collecting creative ideas:  Brainstorming Doesn’t Really Work : The New Yorker

The underlying assumption of brainstorming is that if people are scared of saying the wrong thing, they’ll end up saying nothing at all. The appeal of this idea is obvious: it’s always nice to be saturated in positive feedback. Typically, participants leave a brainstorming session proud of their contribution. The whiteboard has been filled with free associations. Brainstorming seems like an ideal technique, a feel-good way to boost productivity. But there is a problem with brainstorming. It doesn’t work.

Read more: http://nyr.kr/xy4k99

“‘Do not criticize’ is often cited as the important instruction in brainstorming, this appears to be a counterproductive strategy. Studies suggest that groups who debate and even criticize each other’s ideas are most creative by far… On average criticizing groups create about 20% more ideas.”

So if Brainstorming, as we know it, is not a reliable model for group creativity, what is?  Here are three concepts, supported by research and examined in the article:

• Conflicting perspectives work to harness creativity

• Team composition with an intermediate level of social network connections produce a higher level of success

• The power of space can enhance a team’s effectiveness

If you’re working on building teams – and frankly what leader isn’t - GROUPTHINK by Jonah Lehrer is a good read.

How about you? Can you share any brainstorming good, bad or ugly stories? Go ahead and comment.

Happy Valentines! If you heart the Internet, you might love this. The IT Crowd pronounced the “it crowd” was a UK TV show about an IT department run by two barely socially functional geeks and their luddite manager of Reynholm Industries. The show preceded “The Office” and has a similar feel but funnier because we – after all – we are dealing with the IT department. Enjoy!


The IT Crowd – Jen Holds the Weightless Internet

Online advertising is great. It built the Internet. Online advertising mimed the TV broadcast model. We can thank online ads for the freemium model.

The problem is, online advertising’s best before date is immanent. Even Google thinks so! On January 19th, 2012 Google announced a search algorithm change that will affect page ranking. By placing too many ads “above the fold” publishers risk downgrading their page rank. It’s worth adding that according to Google, “This algorithmic change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally.” Despite the small number,  I believe it’s time for brands to start thinking about moving away from online banner ads to more compelling engagement models.

What’s the future you ask? I believe it’s “Brand Editorial” that can be mashed, shared, interacted with, modified, and talked about by fans and audiences. Let’s discuss.

Google is now down-ranking websites that dedicate, “a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads.” How much real estate is too much? Google won’t tell us and is not providing any analytical tools to provide the answer either. There are a few clues on Google’s Inside Search blog posting.

This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads. This algorithmic change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally.

If you get it wrong, it may take weeks for any corrections you make to be reflected in your rankings: If you decide to update your page layout, the page layout algorithm will automatically reflect the changes as we re-crawl and process enough pages from your site to assess the changes. How long that takes will depend on several factors, including the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content. On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site.

The bottom line with this update is, as so many times before, for publishers to focus on creating content-rich, compelling websites if they want to use natural SEM. Anything risks a randomly-timed ranking downgrade.- Chris Trayhorn, mTHINK

Merry holiday everyone and wishing you a wonderful upcoming calendar year. Best and most warmest wishes!