At this year’s recently concluded SXSWi conference in Austin, one of the highlights (and disappointments) was the keynote interview of Twitter CEO Evan Williams. The reaction to the talk from the tech community was harsh – many felt that interviewer Umair Haque didn’t push Williams on important questions: What’s the Twitter business model? How is it confronting the growing spammer problem? How is Twitter managing the complicated problems around performance and scalability?

When talking to clients, we often hear a whole other set of Twitter questions: Isn’t it just Facebook Lite? Don’t only adult geeks use it? Why do they limit messages to 140 characters?

It turns out, lots of different kinds of people have lots of different kinds of questions about the service. It may be that Twitter has done a less-than-perfect job of explaining the value, but more than that – some of the true power of the platform is only just being glimpsed. In light of the keynote, we thought it was a great opportunity to talk about what Twitter really is (spoiler: it’s not a social network) and what it’s becoming.

On its face, Twitter is a service that allows people to broadcast short messages or follow messages from a network of people or businesses that they select. This is common knowledge by now, right? “Tweets” are limited to 140 characters for a number of reasons, but chief among them is that a 140-character limit facilitates SMS support. This expands the reach of the service to the billion or so people in the world who have access to cheap mobile phones but not regular internet access. Consider Chile, for example: after the recent earthquake, many residents were using Twitter via SMS to trade information about recovery efforts and search for survivors.

How about the criticism that it’s simply a stripped-down version of Facebook? Here’s a big difference: Facebook was conceived as inherently closed while Twitter was built to be inherently open. That means that the vast majority of content created by Twitter users is public and SEARCHABLE. It also means that the kind of content people share on Facebook and Twitter is often different: many people use Twitter for their professional persona and Facebook for more personal content.

While sometimes referred to as a social network, Twitter prefers to think of itself as an INFORMATION network: all those tweets are just a vast data set, updating in real time, that developers can easily access through a free API. By keeping the service extremely open and simple, Twitter believes it’s facilitating powerful innovation, limited only by the imagination of its users.

A great example is Best Buy’s @twelpforce. Need to find out the best TV for your specific needs? Post a tweet @twelpforce and a few minutes or seconds later, you likely have a response from a Best Buy employee on Twitter that answers your question. Using Twitter, Best Buy was able to leverage the deep knowledge of its brick-and-mortar sales staff in the online space without making a huge investment, and it helped customers with articulated needs find real answers that could very likely lead to measurable purchases. A lot better than a text ad on Google that leads to a product page on a website, right?

Which brings us to our next point: Twitter is helping to reshape the internet as we know it. It’s becoming a key ingredient in facilitating what’s known as social search, and it’s one reason they have Google quaking in its boots. What’s social search?

It turns out that Google is great at answering objective questions (”what’s Frank Sinatra’s birthday?”) but bad at subjective ones (”what’s the best TV for me?”). Try something to this effect yourself: enter “best TV for me” into Google and you get a variety of marketing messages from advertisers, links to advice forums you need to sift through, etc. To quickly get a really good answer to your question, you need an opportunity to explain yourself and be heard by someone you trust. (Much of this information was discussed in depth at a great social search panel at sxsw – you can read a summary of that here)

This is where an information network like Twitter becomes very powerful – you can broadcast a question to the network and get a personalized response from a real person. Think about this in your own life: if you’re looking for a great Mexican food restaurant, do you turn to Google? More likely, you turn to your friends or you go to a site like Yelp that has reviews from real people. Twitter is just one of the services that is facilitating social search (oneriot and vark are others). And because the kinds of queries that social search is good at tend to lead to purchases (say, a reservation at a Mexican restaurant), it’s hugely valuable to advertisers and a huge threat to Google (fyi, Google recently acquired vark.com).
Google’s other big problem is that it isn’t real-time: people can get unfiltered breaking news faster in many cases (and by people I also mean businesses, who have a compelling need to manage their brand reputation online) by searching Twitter than by visiting Google. Bottom line: Google has been the best way to search for awhile now, but they are in danger of falling behind.

We’ve touched on some of the myriad ways Twitter is adding value, but the key point is that the simplicity and openness of the platform facilitates a nearly unlimited number of other uses – it’s an online brand reputation tool, it’s a notification service (your oven can tweet you when the cookies are done, as Williams pointed out), it’s a way of connecting with friends, it’s a channel for breaking news, it’s a medium for interactive art and games…the list goes on and on. Many of these uses are not yet obvious to the average user, or to our clients, but as we do a better job explaining the opportunities, we’re confident more and more folks are going to find Twitter a useful tool for getting all kinds of things done.

(BTW, you can follow us on twitter @bnoinc)

This past March, while much the interactive community was locked away in the Austin Convention Center for the SXSW Interactive Conference, thousands of people gathered on the banks of the Red River for some good old fashioned kite flying at the Austin Kite Festival. Beautiful to behold, it also underscored one of the key themes from this years’ conference – the evolving role of privacy online.

Like a profile page on a social network, each kite is a public manifestation of a real person. Kite-fliers (let’s called them users from here on) understand that they’re participating in a public interaction, but though they are waiving some privacy rights to do so, they aren’t implicitly agreeing to share more than what the situation explicitly demands. Danah Boyd, a social media researcher, spoke at length in her SXSW keynote address about the recent controversy surrounding Google Buzz and Facebook’s privacy policy changes. In Facebook’s case, they noted the rapid adoption of Twitter as a resource for real-time search, and realized their own users’ real-time posts could be the basis for a competitive product- if only they could convince their users to make those posts public. So they altered their privacy settings to require users to opt-OUT of making much of their personal information publicly available, instead of allowing them to opt-IN. While they argued that in fact they were protecting privacy by giving users more choice, you and I know that most people will ignore the fine print and click on past those terms and conditions, especially when all they want to do is get to Farmville.

And indeed, that’s exactly what happened- Ms. Boyd revealed that 65% of users ended up making their Facebook profiles publicly available. She spoke about the case of one young girl who was trying to escape an abusive relationship- when the Facebook privacy policy changed, she unwittingly unveiled identifying information that could’ve had dramatic real world consequences.

In short: it’s humbling to be reminded how far we have to go in truly putting our users at the center of our design process. Are we really trying to create value for them or are we just thinking about connecting the dots on a business model? In Facebook’s case, they were all to willing to cut corners on privacy to push forward on a compelling business idea. Our relationships with our users is built on trust and we must continue to protect that trust both for the viability of our long-term business interests and the benefit of our customers.

The SXSW Interactive Festival is underway in Austin and geeks from the world over have converged on this proudly weird town to make it patently weirder for a few short days. We’re excited to be here and commenting about what we’re seeing for those unable to attend.

Much has been made about the epic War Of The Location Based Services going on, and sure enough, all of the main players in that space are here. Events on the topic are packed, and chalk outlines of FourSquare games dot the sidewalks surrounding the Austin Convention Center. For all the hype though, I’m not seeing amazingly useful applications of this capability just yet. I suspect a critical mass of users to a service like Gowalla is going to be needed before the platform can come into its own as a place to find and enjoy relevant, locally sourced information. On the other hand, some of the new location-enabled augmented reality apps we’re seeing on mobile devices are starting to provide real value. As the next generation of smart phones (particularly the anticipated summer iPhone release) appear with faster processors and expanded graphics capabilities, the experience of using these kinds of apps is going to rapidly improve.

And to that point, let’s cut to the chase: SXSW this year is all about mobile. Even the raucous Cable vs. Internet TV debate with Mark Cuban and the President of Boxee digressed into a discussion about the future of broadband Internet – would consumers just opt to do all of their home computing on an Internet-enabled mobile device like an iPad and cancel their expensive cable Internet packages? At the excellent (and packed) panel discussion on the UX of Mobile, I was amused to note that virtually every person in the room was consuming or creating content on a mobile device during the talk. As this kind of behavior becomes more and more ubiquitous, I predict that we as designers and developers are going find ourselves thinking about our products and services with a mobile-first mentality. That is, rather than thinking of the mobile web (and mobile apps) as miniature derivative versions of a website, we’ll be thinking of websites as derivative versions of mobile apps, or as different kinds of beasts altogether. Insofar as mobile devices are becoming more and more powerful, some of the panelists noted, they are behaving more like sensors through which we will better experience our world.

For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, design thinking might be a misleading phrase since it has little to do with color, photography, illustration or typography. Design thinking is a creative process that innovative companies like Apple and Method use for creating greater business value. Here at BNO, we’re passionate about working with companies looking to inject right-brain creativity into traditionally left-brain processes.  By applying design thinking to business challenges, we’re helping develop meaningful solutions that delight customers and form deeper connections to a brand.

More and more companies are utilizing the right-brain to design products and services that create a competitive advantage. People are talking about how business processes should be reinvented given the massive shift in the economic landscape over the past couple decades. Advancements in technology and the transition to an Information Age have not only lessened the importance of old-economy left-brain thinking, but they’ve leveled the playing field to the point where right-brain thinking is becoming the true differentiator.

Companies will need to find ways for their customers to have more involvement with their brands. When presented with a range of equal, or nearly equal choices, a consumer will align himself with the brand with which he feels he has the greatest connection. This “connection” is directly related to the right side of the brain – the emotional thinking. What businesses are designing consciously, through aesthetics and marketing strategy, consumers are receiving subconsciously, leading them to gravitate toward brands who speak to the right side of their brains.

Design thinking is beginning to emerge as an accepted strategy in the business world. A prime example: GM and Chrysler. Both of these famous American automakers nearly collapsed during the Great Recession that started in 2008. Both companies had long-established left-brain driven processes for producing their automobiles. And both now openly admit that they lacked the focus on innovation and design that would have kept them relevant to consumers in an evolving economy. So what are they doing to remedy the situation? They have installed design thinking at the highest levels of their management teams. GM has placed a designer in charge of its Cadillac business operations. Similarly, Chrysler has placed a designer in charge of Dodge business operations.

Assigning a set, linear process to design thinking would be contradictory, but there are certain ideas that are consistent across strategies:

• The problem must be clearly defined in order to find the best solution.
• An honest assessment of the brand, product, process or service must be completed.
• Brainstorming, or the ideation process, is crucial to flushing out all possible solutions to the problem.
• Sometimes the best solution is the most radical, not the most practical.

Effective design thinking creates actionable ideas. It’s about bridging the gap between what is and what could be. While the right-brain may produce a multitude of possibilities, it’s the left-brain’s job to decipher those that can be actionable. Businesses and leaders that can do this are the ones that will lead us into the next great age of innovation.

Most of the corporate world will now likely admit that social media has shifted from a buzzword to a valuable channel for connecting with customers. That being said, the question now focuses on location and quantity. We’ve taken a look at where B2B and B2C marketers are investing their efforts in social networks, as well as how future spending may get allocated among existing social networking sites. Take a look at the infographics we developed, and feel free to share them.

The first infographic we developed illustrates which social media outlets are being utilized by a range of companies. As you can see, Facebook and Twitter dominate the B2C usage, followed by YouTube, LinkedIn, and then MySpace. When dealing with consumer-focused businesses, it’s not a surprise to see Facebook ahead. The social site has 400 million individual users, most using the service for personal, not business, motivations. A strong focus on consumers’ needs and wants has led Facebook to its current success, so it only follows suit that it would be a key avenue for B2C.

Twitter plays a similar role as Facebook, though to a smaller degree, thus resulting in a similar emphasis as Facebook. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is less about personal interests and more about career development and strategic networking. It’s quite logical that B2C usage would be less in this market compared to B2B. When it comes to YouTube, there’s a more balanced level of usage among B2C and B2B companies. A large portion of YouTube content is created and viewed by individual users. However, there’s also a large corporate presence, whether it’s subtle viral marketing or an obvious branded corporate video page.

MySpace clearly trails in B2B and B2C spending. Originally a direct competitor to Facebook, it slowly lost ground and attempted to reinvent itself. It now brands itself as more of a music and entertainment hub. It’s this evolving identity that has likely created its market follower position.

Now that we can see where companies are placing an emphasis in the social media universe, we want to know how much they’re spending on marketing. The next infographic we developed illustrates how social media spending in the U.S. projects out from 2009 to 2014. Starting around $700 million last year, the industry expects to see that number grow to over $3 billion in 5 years. As would be expected, this implies a shift in spending from more traditional marketing channels, even pulling dollars from other digital strategies. A potential $3 billion dollar industry in the U.S. alone isn’t something to be taken lightly. As the social media universe continues to expand and pull in users, companies are clearly poised to redirect their efforts. Facebook just celebrated its 6th birthday with 400 million users. In 5 years, we may be talking about a billion users and the most targeted marketing avenue ever conceived.

Steve Jobs did an interview session after the Apple keynote last week where he covered, amongst other things, his attitude to Google and Adobe Flash. The man didn’t mince with words, branding Adobe as “lazy” and Google’s “don’t be evil” mantra as “bull****”. I have a lot of respect for him, but I must admit to being disappointed with his comments.

Apple’s enmity with Google is somewhat understandable, what with Apple firing Eric Schmidt from their board of directors due to conflicts of interest, and Google entering the smartphone market with the Android OS. But their problem with Adobe is considerably more unfathomable – it can be argued that Adobe saved Apple when they were at their lowest ebb.

Adobe was Apple’s saviour for many years. Historically, many people bought Macs because it was the better platform for using Photoshop and Illustator, and the Mac became known as a “designer’s computer” because of it. These are the people who still bought Macs during their struggling, Jobs-less years in the mid-90s, and when the man himself made a comeback and announced the iMac, Power Mac and Powerbook ranges, they were the first in line to buy them. Apple obviously tries to occupy the “good for everything” space these days, but they can’t be biting the hand that feeds them – many current Mac users are long-time platform loyalists, brought to the platform because of the superior Adobe application experience. And since Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia, Flash has joined the fray – almost every Flash designer and developer I know works on a Mac, again for the superior user experience.

Flash occupies a unique space in the fabric of the Web – a proprietary, third-party plug-in that has almost universal penetration. Adobe claims 97% penetration amongst Web users, and, from what I can tell, they’re not lying. Sure, many people deride Flash for allowing people to design horribly bloated animations, clunky user experiences and valueless “eye candy”, but for every one of these, there’s a YouTube, Google Maps (street view) or Hulu – sites that make full use of Flash as an enhancement to the user experience. Much of what these sites do simply cannot be done any other way. It’s not a bad platform, it’s just that some bad designers and programmers have taken advantage of it, just like every other platform. HTML5 may be the future, but until it allows you to do all the things you can do with Flash, and do them in a user-friendly fashion that doesn’t require someone building a simple Web animation to be a Javascript guru, and until it gets mainstream support from Microsoft in Internet Explorer, it’s still going to be some time before it can take up Flash’s mantle as the preferred rich media technology on the Web. And, looking towards the future, some of the things that have been done in the augmented reality space in Flash, as well as in the realm of 3D, cannot be replicated with any other online technology.

Since its introduction as FutureSplash Animator in 1995, Flash has come along in leaps and bounds as a technology platform. Initially just an animation platform intended to replace the venerable animated GIF, it has evolved to have its own powerful programming and scripting language in ActionScript, hugely powerful animation support, incorporating elements such as inverse kinematics and physics, and simple and powerful video support that powers almost all video on the Web. Also, its abilities as a platform for rich internet applications are unrivalled – just check out any car manufacturer’s website (specifically, their “car configurators”) to see what can be done with it. What’s more, it does all this in a platform-agnostic fashion, meaning any site you build with Flash will render identically across all platforms, bypassing all browser compatability issues. There’s also the fact that it can be used to develop and deploy platform-agnostic desktop applications using Adobe AIR – this is the technology that powers the likes of TweetDeck.

Yes, I am a Flash apologist (not to mention a Macromedia Certified Flash Developer). I think it’s a great technology, and, what’s more, I think it’s the best route into a career in programming for young people. When I was a spotty, nerdy 10-year-old, I learned to program using BASIC on my Sinclair Spectrum. It was right there on the computer, enabled me to do “cool” things (well, “cool” being relative – this was 1982) and gave me a good grounding for the career I now enjoy. Computers these days don’t come with built-in programming languages, let alone anything that enables you to do something relatively “cool” with not too much work. For the most part, nowadays, if you want to learn to program a computer, you have to go to college. You could always install Visual Studio on your PC, or Xcode on your Mac, but you’d quickly learn that it takes many lines of code just to open a window and display, “hello world”. Plus, you have to worry about compiling, linking, dependencies, stack pointers and all those kinds of things. So, as a 13-year-old who likes computers and thinks they might like to do something a bit more ambitious than playing video games and going on MySpace, what do you do? You quit the application and fire up World Of Warcraft instead, because it’s more fun and doesn’t have a stupidly huge learning curve. Plus, in this increasingly social online world we live in, a window showing “hello world” isn’t exactly something you’d want to share with your friends. How about a technology that enables you to do fun animations with easy interactivity, all without doing loads of hard coding, then being able to output it in a format you can embed right on your MySpace page? And, if you do want to up the cleverness quotient, you’ll be using ActionScript, a programming language that, being an ECMAscript-based language, gives you much of the knowledge you’d need to program in all the commercially desirable languages (C++, Java, Javascript, etc), and which is also a career path in itself.

As far as Apple supporting Flash on their mobile devices, Adobe, on the surface, seems a bit stuck for options, since I’d imagine asking Apple to incorporate the Flash Player is like banging your head against a brick wall. However, there has been some progress – a very clever chap called Tobias Schneider has written Gordon – a version of the Flash runtime ported to Javascript, thus enabling a very limited degree of Flash support. It’s slow, it’s missing quite a few features, but it works. Safari 4 (including Mobile Safari, the iPhone and iPad browser) and Google Chrome have made huge advances in the processing speed of Javascript recently, so I think Adobe’s tactic should be to provide a feature-complete version of the Flash Player implemented in Javascript, therefore bypassing the whole plug-in architecture entirely. Mr. Schneider’s work might not be feature-complete, but it’s a very good proof-of-concept. In technical terms, you could have some sniffer code that detects if a browser is HTML5-capable, then sets up a custom <canvas> tag and interprets and displays the Flash content in there. Maybe something to put into Flash CS5, Adobe?

People, including the eminent Mr Jobs whom we here at BNO greatly admire, should stop fighting Flash. In fact, I think Adobe should make deals with Microsoft and Apple to provide a version of the Flash IDE on all new computers. You may deride it, but the Web would be a much more boring place without Flash. You wouldn’t have YouTube, Hulu and FarmVille, for a start.

So, yesterday was the big day. Mr. Jobs came out, did his “reality distortion field” thing and announced the Apple iPad. On the surface, it’s a typically technolust-worthy Apple device with a ton of cool features. But is that enough? I must admit, I’m somewhat on the fence about it. It’s certainly a beautiful object, as is almost everything designed by Jonathan Ives, but what will be its niche?

There are a bunch of missing features that the blogosphere has exploded in a paroxysm of discontent about – namely, the lack of ports, the lack of Flash support in the browser, the lack of a camera, and the lack of multitasking. Will these things cause the iPad to be stillborn, or is it not even aimed at these people? Did we set our expectations too high?

Let’s investigate their complaints a bit more closely. Firstly, lots of people are lamenting the lack of SD card and USB slots on the device – this, to me, is the least of its problems – for a start, Apple are offering USB and SD card adapters, and you can always sync to your desktop for any situation where this won’t work. It’s not a device designed to be used in isolation. It’ll function autonomously, but you’ll still need a desktop or laptop to make the most of it. In this regard, it’s like the iPhone. Meaning, those who are used to the iPhone will be right at home.

Now, Flash support I have a bit more of a problem with. Apple have thus far refused to support Flash on the iPhone – given the size and limited processor power of the device, this is somewhat forgivable. But on a device with a decent-size screen that claims to be the “best” way to surf the Internet – not good. I have previously posted on here about the wonders of the HTML5/CSS3/jQuery triumvirate as a way to implement rich media – Apple are obviously hoping that things move in this direction and are doing their best to nudge things that way, but until it is fully supported by Internet Explorer (which still, alas, has the lion’s share of the browser market) it’s going to remain a niche technology, requiring you to essentially develop your Web site twice. Apparently Flash has 97% market penetration, so, for now, it’s still the rich media technology of choice. Apple have definitely missed a trick here. They need to kiss and make up with Adobe, fast. And get them to do a version of Photoshop for the iPad while they’re at it.

Next, the lack of Web cam and multitasking. I’m going to group these together, as, in my experience, people tend to use messaging apps such as iChat, Windows Live Messenger and Skype while they’re doing other things. On the iPad, this isn’t possible right now. You chat or browse the Web, not both at the same time. The platform is perfectly capable of multitasking – you can listen to music using the built-in music player while browsing the Web, for instance, but Apple doesn’t allow for it in their software development kit – they’re keeping it to themselves. Multitasking functionality has already been enabled on the iPhone by the hacking community – it’s something that those people who have been brave enough to “jailbreak” their iPhones have been able to have for a while now. Official support for multitasking is something to hopefully look forward to in the forthcoming iPhone OS 4.0 (which may well hit before the iPad goes on sale), but, for now, it’s not happening. So, for those of you who were hoping to use the new iWork software while listening to Pandora and IM’ing your friends, you will be disappointed. The actual lack of a camera was probably done to keep down the price point, to compete with the Kindle DX, but it would have been nice to see the higher-end, 3G-equipped models with a camera. The other reason I can see why Apple are discouraging multitasking is that, despite the iPad having a decent amount of storage space, it doesn’t have much actual system RAM (memory) – if you run multiple things at the same time, they all have to live in RAM, so by disallowing it, they’re enabling developers to make better use of the available memory. But, for many, this won’t be a dealbreaker, especially if they’re used to the way the iPhone works. In fact, in terms of Web cam functionality, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple come out with an external Web cam for it at some point.

The other thing that Apple wasn’t clear about in their presentation was the capabilities of iWork – it offers that kind of hands-on document processing experience I was hoping for in my last blog post on the subject, but will people find it useful? On the surface, sure. It looks great, has a funky user interface, and can be used with an external keyboard. But will it save Word and Excel documents? They said it will open them, but will it save them again? According to the Apple Web site, it’ll save documents only in iWork and PDF formats. This will most certainly be a dealbreaker for many, many people who use Microsoft Office. The desktop version of iWork is a great and successful attempt at making a more user-friendly office suite, but it only has a fraction of the market penetration that Microsoft Office has. Apple knows this, hence the desktop version of iWork quite happily exports Word and Excel files, so it’s perfectly possible to do – hopefully this won’t pass them by. There are apps on the App Store that allow you to create, edit and save Microsoft Office files, so even if Apple don’t do it, someone else will. Also, Apple have broadened the scope of what they’re letting programmers do with the device – for instance, the new iPhone/iPad SDK, has opened up the possibility of using VoIP (voice over IP) apps over a 3G connection, hence it could be used as a phone if you really wanted to (not that I know anyone who’d want to hold something the size of a big, thick magazine up to their ear in public).

The main bone of contention seems to be, what can the iPad do that a netbook can’t? Netbooks have Flash, can multitask, can play media, often come with Web cams and aren’t subject to the software restrictions of the App Store. To be honest, in terms of actual tasks, yes, you can do more on a netbook, for less money. But that’s not really what the iPad is about. A netbook is, at the end of the day, a small laptop. The iPad isn’t – it wasn’t designed to be. It seems to have been designed to fill a narrower niche – primarily as an anytime-anywhere media consumption device, with some additional productivity functionality. Think back to when the iPhone was first announced – some people were underwhelmed with the hardware, some thought it was too gimmicky and some just downright thought it was crap. But nobody could have foreseen the impact of the App Store and how ubiquitous the device has become. Every mobile phone nowadays is trying to be the iPhone. That’s because Apple offered the iPhone as a platform, rather than just a device. What made the iPhone was what people did with it. So let’s see what the app developers out there can come up with. They have a whole new platform, new form factor and a new operating system that makes the most of them to play with, and, based on what they’ve done on the iPhone, I have faith in their creativity.

The best summary I’ve read so far of the iPad launch and people’s apparent ambivalence to it is by Stephen Fry, the British master of wit and wisdom, comedy partner of Hugh “House” Laurie, and dedicated Apple fanboy. He attended the launch, and has some very reasonable comments about the device’s pros and cons, stated far more eloquently than I can manage. Basically, the device isn’t aimed at people like me – it’s not designed to be a laptop replacement heavy on the geek credentials. I already own a MacBook for all that stuff. Think of it more as an appliance, like a portable TV, and it starts to make more sense. This is something your grandma could use while relaxing on the sofa – she could do some basic Web browsing and e-mail, read a Barbara Cartland novel and listen to some easy listening music in a way that she’d probably get utterly lost with on a regular computer. Am I going to get one? Maybe. It’d be an ideal device to help make those 7-hour flights back to the UK pass more quickly. Let’s see what software those clever people out there in programmer-land make for it by launch day – it’s the software that will sell it to me.

Whether or not you choose to manage it, your company DOES have an employer brand. That brand represents the cumulative reputation that prospective and current employees associate with your career opportunities. What that ultimately means, whether your business is a global enterprise or a small emerging business, is that people are thinking (and maybe even talking) about what it’s like to work for you.

The first logical question you may want to ask is, “so what?”

“We have a well known market presence and we’re seen as an industry leader,” you say… “People want to work for industry leaders, don’t they?”

Yes, that’s something a large number of people want. But take a closer look at the competitive environment and you may be surprised how many industry leaders there are out there. In his book Competitive Advantage, Harvard Business School professor Michael E. Porter identifies the two principle strategies for competing—price is one, differentiation is the other. Porter will tell you that there can only be one price leader in any category, and so that’s a tough position to retain. On the other hand, differentiation can help companies create categories of their own. And so they can become leaders in innovation, or speed to market, or quality, or any number of other relevant features.

In staffing-management terms we can draw some parallels to Porter’s key competitive strategies…

Does your company pay top dollar?  In other words, are you the industry leader on price?  Chances are you’re somewhere between the top and bottom… You may have a target of being, say, in the 75^th percentile of salaries among key competitors.  Nevertheless, very few firms can say they offer top pay to qualified candidates.

Does your company stand apart from its competitors?  There probably are features that differentiate your product or service lines in your business.  If customers know you, and prefer your offering, chances are your company has a clear strategy for “standing apart,” or differentiating its products or services. And when customers experience the value of that unique offering, they begin to spread the word to other potential customers.

In a very similar way, your most loyal employment customers are those people who have experienced your unique value for an extended period (your employees). When they’re feeling warm and fuzzy they’ll want to talk… and it very well may be prospective employees who they’ll talk to. Life will be beautiful and the buzz around working for your firm will thrive.

The problem is, the converse will happen when they’re NOT satisfied with the value you provide. Small companies may see this scenario create a sort of silence among their staff in the outside community… or even worse, a silence in front of job candidates.  In larger companies, workplace frustrations turn, almost instantly, into negative buzz. And those negative messages can drive high-quality candidates, or high-performing employees, away from your opportunities.

The next logical question you may be asking is, “Why do I need to compete in a job market with as much as 10% unemployment?”

“We have dozens of candidates posting resumes against each of our jobs, you reveal… “Right now, we’ve got the pick of the litter.”

Even in a down economy, good employees will leave your company. Staffing professionals call these movements “regrettable” losses. Finding replacements for those regrettable losses can be a tough job, even with a large candidate pool. The best of the best are often gainfully employed. They’re also MUCH less willing to risk a job change that may bring them into an unknown organization.

Wait a minute… Unknown? That would be a company that nobody’s talking about. They must not have a compelling employer brand.

If you maintain a strategic stream of candidates from university recruiting the impact of a down economy can be even more compelling.  The most aggressive, and well funded, employers are making their offers to highly qualified candidates almost as soon as they’ve met them. That may leave your firm inviting candidates to interviews or recruiting events that could jeopardize an offer that’s on the table for one of those top candidates. Chances are, if you don’t have a compelling employer brand position, the early bird will get the worm.

The bottom line is, it doesn’t matter if the economy is up or down. Competitive companies will always need to find the best candidates. A compelling employer brand will help you attract, hire, and retain people who can succeed in your business.

A third logical question you may want to ask is, “Why an ‘employer’ brand?”

“We already commit significant communication resources to our commercial brand,” you explain… “Don’t we really want a single, unified, corporate brand?”

You do want integration and alignment… but those things that help customers find value in your products or services are rarely the same things that offer career fulfillment to your most sought-after employment candidates.

McKinsey & Company, in its landmark book, The War for Talent, argues that companies need to provide the best and most qualified candidates with a value proposition that answers the question, “Why would a talented person want to work here?”

Unless your commercial brand is as enigmatic as Nike’s “Just Do It” or Apple’s “Think Different,” the chances are you’ll need to do some homework and establish a value proposition that connects with your products AND the career potential you offer.

Make a list of the top five companies with whom you compete for business.  Now write down a similar list of companies who may attract candidates or employees from your business. Are they the same companies?

Chances are your list of employment competitors includes companies in nonrelated industries, especially if they align with your geographic locations.  You may often find yourself competing for finance or IT professionals, even if you’re not in either of those industries.

Now we have a question: Have we asked enough logical questions yet?

Finding the right employer for me, hiring team members who have what it takes to succeed, staying engaged in my company’s day-to-day challenges, or telling other people what I love about working for my company, are all emotional activities. They are more about expression of gut instinct and personal feelings than of logical analysis and compliance testing. Finding a career direction, finding talented people, being fulfilled in your career are NOT simply logical. Neither should be our employer brands.

The most effective and enduring brands are highly emotional.

Saatchi & Saatchi CEO, Kevin Roberts, in his book Love Marks, explains how emotional connections can transform brands from mere marketing banter into concepts that the right people are ready to embrace.  Emotional expressions go straight to our hearts… they’re conclusions we feel… they require less proof.

Fortune, HR Magazine, and numerous other business publications have explored the aversions that Generation-Y audiences have toward traditional marketing… and toward corporate literature in general. They’re suspicious of much of the language, images, promotions, and brand phrases that worked for generations before them. But an emotional concept that brings their interests “front-and-center” can offer a big win for Gen-Ys.

So here’s our call for branding that goes beyond the easy lure of logical statements. There’s an immediate need to explore less-commercial messages that engage the emotional receptors. The kind of messaging you see here.

The Johnson & Johnson Global Employer Brand

One final question: Does your employer brand connect candidate aspirations with the unique career value that your company offers?

The key words here are “candidate aspirations” and “unique career value.”  It’s not a brand unless it makes you unique, but more importantly, it won’t work for employees and candidates unless it speaks to the career aspirations of qualified candidates.

When you do the homework you’ll find both greater efficiency and increased effectiveness.

Efficiency will come from a candidate identification process that will run independently of people. Good candidates and bad will easily compare their values and qualities with your jobs. Not from the logical job description, but from the emotional brand position. Sourcers and recruiters will select from a prequalified pool. Employees will know exactly what to say to qualified friends they might refer. Your best performers will remember why they joined the company in the first place.

Effectiveness will come from selecting candidates who have prequalified themselves. Top students will make a point of getting to your campus presentations. A level of positive buzz will engage the job seekers and employees in the challenges you face. Qualified candidates will be more compelled to say yes to your offers and high-performing team members will stay with your company longer.

Returns will be measurable. Action is required.  We can help.

The intertubes are awash with speculation regarding Apple’s big product announcement next week. Will it be the fabled tablet? Will it be some other paradigm-shifting innovation of earth-shattering, elephantine proportions? Maybe. But, let’s be honest here, none of us know for sure what it’ll be. But, if it is the tablet, it’s not like it’s something new. So, for the sake of this blog post, let’s assume it is.

Tablet-style computing has been available for a while now. From the nascent days of Apple’s own Newton (pictured at left), through the Palm Pilot and the briefly popular UMPCs, to today’s touchscreen laptops, it’s not a new technology. What’s going to sell Apple’s tablet will be the software. In order for Apple to succeed with a tablet, they need to come up with something that you can’t do on any other form factor.

The problem with tablet computing is, nobody’s managed to actually make it make any sense. What would you actually use it for? Why would you use it instead of a regular laptop? As any iPhone owner will attest to, using a touchscreen keyboard to actually do any work with isn’t easy. In fact, it’s downright frustrating. Ever tried writing a blog post on an iPhone? I have. No keycaps to feel, so no touch-typing, no tactile feedback… so, let’s assume that it won’t be targetted at the word processing or blogging fraternity. What if you’re just a regular Joe or Josephine who only wants to browse the Web? Again, as the iPhone has proven, a multitouch-enabled browser can work well, but again, what additional utility would a tablet have in this regard over a netbook with a proper keyboard? And then there’s media. A tablet would work very well as a video player – the screen’s big enough to actually watch a film on without hurting your eyes. But there are dedicated devices for that already, or you still have the option of a netbook or laptop. Same goes for e-reader functionality, and so on.

If you dare to think outside the box, there’s loads you could do with a multitouch interface that would be difficult or impossible with a regular keyboard/mouse combo. For instance, a 3D interface controlled by both hands, where you can grab, move and manipulate objects onscreen. Or even a game that works like this? Or, for classic productivity applications, a document processor program that fully supports manipulating page content with multitouch controls. How about a file manager (in Apple parlance, the “Finder”) that functions like a real-life set of document folders, where you can use multitouch gestures to actually manipulate them? This could even be the ideal interface for navigating the mythical 3D Web that we’ve heard so much about over the years but never actually seen. I mean, to date, has there been a computer-based touchscreen program that can actually contribute to your productivity over and above what you can do with a keyboard and mouse? Short of using a Wacom pad with Photoshop, not really.

It’s not that the technology doesn’t exist for something like this, it’s more that nobody has built an operating system to take full advantage of it. No other device, with the exception of the iPhone (or, perhaps, the Microsoft Surface), has been built around this kind of technology. Windows 7, while supporting multitouch, is still built around the notion of being used with the traditional keyboard/mouse combo. Even Apple’s own Snow Leopard OS, while supporting multitouch gestures via the funky trackpads on the MacBook range, or, more recently, the even funkier Magic Mouse, doesn’t have any intrinsically useful multitouch functionality to offer, since the Mac still has to work within the familiar WIMP paradigm, not to mention that most Mac legacy software doesn’t support it. If you have a new computing device built around the whole concept of a multitouch touchscreen, with no considerations of having to support legacy software, all of a sudden your boundaries open up.

Apple has proved, time and time again, that they can innovate like no other technology company out there. Look at the Mac. The iPod. The iPhone. They’ve all set the standard for virtually every other device that’s followed them. Every mobile phone nowadays is compared to the iPhone. Every portable music player is compared to the iPod. Every computer is compared to a Mac. Apple isn’t afraid to “think different”, and, come next Wednesday, us fanboys aren’t going to be let down, whatever it is they announce. But will it be the game-changer we’re all hoping for? We’ll know on January 27.

As we look back at the first decade of the 21st century, the meteoric rise of social media has to be one of the most influential events. The names Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn have become as commonplace as the word Internet. The phrase, “It’s a small world” used to signify an ironic, cliched attempt at humor. However, social media has turned the irony into a reality.

Do you still think social media is a passing trend? If so, you might want to take a look around. The world changed dramatically in the past decade. Communication and social interaction via the Internet has transformed the way we live our lives. While we’re still in the infant stages of social media technological development, think about the effect it’s already had on our world. Innovation occurs at lightning speed. Ideas can be communicated across the world in nanoseconds. Newspapers are outdated before they’re even printed.

Think about that last point for a minute. It truly was not long ago that newspapers represented the newest information on local, national, and world affairs. In the minutes it takes for a newspaper to be printed and folded, its contents can legitimately become outdated. New information can be uncovered and communicated to the world before the printer inks the word “The” at the top of the front page of The New York Times.

More important than the media aspect of social media is by far the social dimension. Do you remember when people went to high school reunions so they could learn what their old friends had been up to for the past 10 years? Social media sites like Facebook have even made that ritual outdated. Social involvement in the world has increased exponentially with the rise of social media. During the mid-90s, while sitting in my high school science class, my teacher demonstrated a Ham Radio. It was amazing at the time, even with current telephone technology, that someone could broadcast on a frequency to be heard by anyone in the world that was listening. Sounds like a prehistoric Twitter, doesn’t it?

In the business world, social media has been a true game-changer. Customer feedback is more accurate and efficient. Consumer involvement with brands has never been at a higher level. Companies can engage their markets with surveys, promotions, and brand-building experiences at a low cost and with relative ease. It’s now the norm for businesses to have a social media presence across multiple channels. Plus, advertising has been completely transformed. Traditional avenues to reach consumers, like print and broadcast, have lost out to new social media marketing. Recent studies have shown that consumers feel more of a connection with brands when they interact with them in the social media space. No longer do companies have to worry about people ignoring television commercials or flipping past a magazine ad.

Want further proof? Beverage juggernaut Pepsi has recently announced that for the first time in 23 years it will not be running a commercial during the Super Bowl. Pepsi (and Coke) ads have become synonymous with American football’s biggest game and the most-watched television event in the United States. From 1999 to 2009, Pepsi spent a whopping $142 million on Super Bowl ads alone. Instead of making another large television expenditure, the company is launching The Pepsi Refresh Project online. In this social media project, regular, everyday people can outline their ideas on how to refresh their local communities. Visitors to the site can then vote on the projects they like the most and Pepsi will then fund the most popular projects. The company is clearly gambling on social media, but one has to wonder if this famous marketer is trying to get ahead of the curve.

The exciting part about social media is that we’ve barely scratched the surface of what is possible. Companies like Google are readying new advancements (Google Wave) that will further transform our lives. However, before we know where we’re going, it’s important to look at where we’ve been. Mashable.com, a self-dubbed “Social Media Guide,” has published a list of the ways social media has permanently affected the way we live. Below is just an excerpt, but after reading the list, ask yourself again… do you still think social media is a passing trend?

Source: Mashable

Child Literacy
It stands to reason that children who read and write more are better at reading and writing. And writing blog posts, status updates, text messages, instant messages, and the like all motivate children to read and write. Last month, The National Literacy Trust released the results of a survey of over 3000 children. They observed a correlation between children’s engagement with social media and their literacy. Simply put, social media has helped children become more literate. Indeed, Eurostat recently published a report drawing a correlation between education and online activity, which found that online activity increased with the level of formal activity (socio-economic factors are, of course, potentially at play here as well).

Ambient Intimacy
Lisa Reichelt, a user experience consultant in London coined the very pleasant term “ambient intimacy.” It describes the way in which social media allows you to “… keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible.”

Consider the many communications technologies through history — the telephone, Morse code, semaphore, carrier pigeons, smoke signals — they are all fairly inconvenient and labor intensive. Lisa has hit on the idea that communication has become so convenient that it’s actually become ambient around us. It surrounds us wherever we want it, not necessarily when it wants us. We dip into it whenever we like.

Knowledge Was Power
From his Meditationes Sacrae, published in 1597, Francis Bacon was paraphrased as saying “knowledge is power.” Fundamentally, the more you understand about life, the more chance you have at success. But these days, Wikipedia and Google have democratized information to the point where anyone is able to acquire the knowledge they may want.

As a case in point, I had never even heard of Meditationes Sacrae until I looked up the term “knowledge is power” on Wikipedia. In Bacon’s time, the only people that had access to books and the literacy to unlock the wisdom within were the wealthy with the time and inclination to learn. Of course, books weren’t the only source of knowledge. Consider blacksmiths, dressmakers, cobblers or sailors who passed their skills and techniques from mother to daughter, from father to son. Back then, the friction that held people back from learning was low literacy, a lack of access to books and very little time. Now, that friction is almost non-existent. That is because of both the ability of computers to replicate information for distribution, and the the way that Google, Wikipedia and blogs have empowered people to share what they know. Now, the only real friction that exists is our own desire for knowledge. It’s there for you — if you want it.

The Reinvention of Politics
A recent report by PEW found signs that social networks may be encouraging younger people to get involved in politics. You only need look at Twitter’s recent impact on the Iran elections, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and even the election of Barack Obama to see that more and more people are getting involved in politics and are feeling they can make a difference. One of the most popular blogs on the web, The Huffington Post, is mainly political. Politics has a fast pace, and that lends itself well to social media. UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown said in June last year that because of the Internet, “foreign policy can no longer be the province of just a few elites.” Twitter even postponed an upgrade because of the important role it was playing in the Iran elections. These are all signs of both social media’s growing influence in politics, and the growing interest in politics from users of social media.

Marketing Flux
Marketing and advertising is transforming itself from an industry reliant on mass market channels to one which must embrace the power of the consumer and (attempt to) engage in conversations. The traditional approach of wide reach and repetitive messaging is now being replaced by many much smaller, niche and people-centric activities. Advertising isn’t dying, it’s merely changing form. We now have more power and more choice.

News As Cultural Currency
We’re no longer lazy consumers of passive messages. Instead we’re active participants. We now get news through the network we’ve created, and the news we pass to one another says something about us. It tells others what we’re interested in and what’s important to us. We used to call this gossip — and to a certain extent it still is — but unless you were a journalist at a local daily, the amplification that’s now possible through the likes of Twitter, Digg or StumbledUpon hasn’t been experienced before.