Of course one of the key ideas in Gladwell’s Outliers is the 10,000 hours rule (i.e. you have to put in at least 10,000 hours to achieve mastery of a craft). The obvious question being if we apply this rule to the “Hive Mind” will we achieve the same outcome? (e.g. Could you crowdsource the writing of Mozart concerto?).
Even a casual glance at the global effort being put into Facebook in particular and the web in general would suggest the answer to that question is no. Although the hive mind is probably not quite akin to the equivalent of the infinite monkey theorem of Shakespeare in reality the hive mind is probably more about creating “shared speak” than creating Shakespeare. It is better equipped to provide answers to known questions than discovering something new and wonderful… at least at the moment.
The reason for that being is the Hive Mind is more about creating a shared environment that facilitates the navigation and pattern analysis of the preexisting capabilities and attitudes than creating an environment where the seemingly endless repetition required to achieve mastery can be undertaken either as a group or in solitude.
Of course advertisers and marketeers are more interested in if the hive mind can share a message than if it can compose concertos or solve complex problems.
Which brings me to this article on why Branding in a connected age is more about creating patterns than repeating messages that was shared by Fast Company earlier today.
Instead of being a single big idea, a brand must a smaller multiple ideas. – Marc Shillum
The article is an excellent read but it is of course the antithesis of the old school of Branding where it is about creating a Singularity. It is about owning a word, a phrase or concept in the audience’s mind that is exclusive to you and your product. Think: Just Do It or the iPhone.
Yes patterns were part of the equation. Just think of the media mix: Billboards, TV, Radio and Print. But the message was about creating a singularity in the market.
Here then is a call to action that suggests forget all this. In a fragmented world you need a collection of message fragments that when viewed or navigated reveal themselves to become the Brand. A kind of experiential storytelling if you like. Could it be that largely thanks to the data sciences the creative world of global Branding is moving from Roman Catholicism (i.e. In the beginning there was the word and the word was (Insert your brand here) to some kind of Zen Buddhism? True enlightenment reveals itself in the patterns all around you?
Take a deeper look at the article and you’ll see that it is little more than the old Branding rule book rewritten in the language of the data scientist. Repetition of patterns build recognition, but variation in patterns creates relevance and sustains interest. The pattern of course being the new description for Brand or advertising message.
Either way, be it a pattern or a word, it is this need for repetition that is at the heart of the success story that is Brand Awareness.
We see this in Farhad Mandoo’s piece on Does Social Media have a ROI?. This study of the Audi Superbowl hashtag campaign tells us that Audi utilised the services of 1,100 influencers who published more than 12,000 tweets in support of the campaign (i.e. an average of 12 tweets per influencer). If you are frequent user of Twitter you will see this technique employed ad-nauseum. The originator retweets the message multiple times through the day to increase the probability of the message being amplified within the Twitter echo chamber.
Indeed if anyone was to write the book on Twitter as an advertising and marketing platform it would be simply all about frequency and repetition. Tweet often. Better still tweet the same message (i.e. Look at me) often but in different ways (i.e. Patterns).
As they say it’s all lot easier to spend time in the market than to try timing the market.
The key insight then is patterns may be important when thinking about Social Media. But probably no more important than what they were in the traditional media mix. Frequency and repetition are still fundamental to the media equation if the strategy is to be executed successfully.
Perhaps in the end the fundamental weakness in all these fauxionary ideas about exploiting the patterns and relationships embedded within the social graph is they confuse the harvesting of data (i.e. Patterns) with the harvesting of engagement (i.e. Repeatable Actions).
Marc shilkum
August 21, 2011
Thanks for the insightful critique, I’m glad this is even a dialog.
I kind of agree, challenging repetition seemed irresponsible. But the
proof that there is a schism in the old principals is clear, BP, Toyota, Coca-Cola, Kodak, Blockbuster, all have powerful brands that became temporarily irrelevant, or at least disconnected and unresponsive. Repetition works, but in iterative mediums, it’s seemingly mechanized.
The clear point, patterns are repetition, just more complex repetition, that has the ability to respond to context. To react to audience. So let’s think less paradoxically about patterns, patterns are just how repetition stays relevant.