Marketing on the Smart Web

Today’s the tenth Anniversary of The Cluetrain Manifesto – The end of business as usual. Here’s part of the introduction:

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.

Now, ten years on a lot of fundamental changes many brought about by this seminal work have happened and the 95 theses seem mostly as relevant as ever, however, what struck me is thesis 87:

We’d like it if you got what’s going on here. That’d be real nice. But it would be a big mistake to think we’re holding our breath.

I don’t know about you, but this still resonates with me. With all we have learned and the great tools at our disposal, how many companies don’t really seem to get it? How many are still practicing controlled one way communications and marketing speak? We all have our examples and they can be found in any industry.

Will this still be the case when we celebrate cluetrainplus15? I definitely hope not. By that time let’s hope everyone finally gets it.

at Davos 2009 IdeasLab, by Tom Ilube

I found this a very easy to understand presentation about what for the mainstream still remains somewhat of a mystery – The Semantic Web.

My favorite is the quote on the last slide by Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Great post by Kevin Kelly on his blog The Technium: Two Strands of Connectionsim The chart visualizes in a compelling way the space we’re in right now and the path forward which is often described as the semantic web or web 3.0 and what will happen beyond as the web continues to evolve. This has been the undercurrent to my blog and I’m curious and fascinated to discover how all this will affect the travel industry over the coming years, as it certainly will.

in this article Making sense of the ’semantic Web’ and presents a very innovative example by a German company of the kind of tools we will see being introduced over the coming years. The impact will be felt across all industries including travel. The huge amount of data about travel produced by so many sources and available is just waiting to be mined and better interpreted for improved results.

For an easy visual explanation, take a look at this video which I found very informative:

as John Markoff reports in this article Slipstream – A Software Secretary That Takes Charge on NYTimes.com about web based intelligent assistants. The company mentioned – Rearden Commerce – is a leader in providing this kind of advanced services mostly to business travelers today that we will see more of in future and that will be deployed in leisure travel as well.

DARPA – the original developer of the internet – is investing huge amounts in artificial intelligence development and although mainly intended for military use, there will be an inevitable spill over effect into the commercial world. The implications for the travel industry are huge and the changes in how travel is researched, planned and booked will undergo significant improvement over how it is done today. The circle of the pre- during and post travel phases will be completed with tools for each totally integrated and easy to use. It will be an exciting time in travel as we enter the next decade of the web. Who will be next the winners?

OK, web 2.0 is now officially part of the mainstream, as the Wall Street Journal reveals The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World!

So, the CMOs in companies of all sizes will now embrace social media, social networks, blogs etc. and know how to effectively deal with all things 2.0? Not so fast, I still have my doubts that this is the reality. There is still too much one way communication going on and attempts to control the message rather than enter the conversation, too many calls for traditional bottom line measurements of ROI and effectiveness when engaging in the social sphere. The recent stories about disappointing results of social media advertising have shown that the old yard sticks don’t apply in this new web 2.0 environment of customer empowerment, combine with low tolerance for marketing speak. One old marketing principle still applies – present the right message, to the right audience at the right moment. When people are engaged in social networks and social media that is usually not the right moment. Those are not secrets, just comment sense marketing.

The innovators have been using web 2.0 effectively for a number of years now and while the mainstream of corporate marketers are catching up, these companies, usually small and nimble, are already moving to the next phase of the web – the smart web, where semantics are added into the mix, data talks to data and the web becomes an ever more useful tool making it easier for the empowered and connected consumer to stay informed about products and services that are relevant to them and to make smart decisions about them. While web 2.0 is now established, welcome to web 3.0

is the title of this excellent article in AdvertisingAge by Marta Strickland. It outlines in non-tech terms what the next phase on web technology is about and how it will improve the relevance of marketing. We already see some of the semantic web in action in travel on sites like UpTake an innovator in the travel planning and research phase where 95% of the action happens prior to the actual transaction and where the industry needs to get a lot better to make a much improved process a reality for today’s web savvy online travel buyers.

There’s going to be a lot of action in this space and the Travel Innovation Summit at last week’s PhoCusWright conference featured a number of companies that are active in this arena with innovative approaches that deserve the attention of the industry at large.

Social Influence Marketing: The New Way to Win Customers contains a number of very useful suggestions of how to be actively engaged in the conversation about your brand rather than just a passive bystander. While these ideas are certainly useful, I just wonder how many organizations have the right marketing structure in place to implement these activities. Looking at the large majority of travel sites out there, I haven’t noticed anyone in particular being at the leading edge of what’s called here social influence marketing. It will require a change in mindset that allows this happen and it can’t come too soon.

Technorati Tags: chief marketer, social influence marketing, social media

This is a great video by Nova Spivack of Radar Networks on this topic still often misunderstood. I agree with his definition of the terms web 1.0 / 2.0 / 3.0 being about time periods in the development of the web. We’re now just about at the end of the second decade (2.0) and will enter the next (3.0) around 2010.

There will be definite implications on travel and the customer experience of researching, planning and purchasing travel. Before there will be dramatic changes, however, the pendulum will have to swing back to the front end or user experience focus, which he predicts will be the case in web 4.0 or more than ten years out, as web 3.0 deals more with the back end or the data.

In the meantime there will be new initiatives that will introduce semantic web tools into travel as we have seen with Uptake and TripIt. The latter is actually shown in one of his slides.

One of his comments I liked a lot is that we should talk about “artificial stupidity” rather than “artificial intelligence” that is required to eliminate humans from having to deal with the mundane, or stupid tasks, and let us focus on the intelligent ones. Couldn’t agree more.

Nova Spivack at The Next Web Conference 2008 from Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Vimeo.