When 2 people close to me, (Josh and Maya) get their films fully funded via 2 different crowdfunding platforms, Indiegogo and Pozible, I sense a seismic shift. Both platforms and their most famous counterpart, Kickstarter, have quietly revolutionised the way product developers and producers can get their film, product, business model, or entrepreneurial dream off the ground.

What these crowdfunding platforms do is to connect those with great ideas, to those people who want to see the ideas brought to life – the crowd – i.e. the audience or market. And the logistics are very simple – a $10 donation by 400 people can mean the world to someone like Joshua Shaffer, the animal shelter worker who dreamed up Kitty Corner   – a privacy screen designed to calm frightened cats taken in to animal shelters, and help the shelters save money on bedding that had previously been destroyed by cats’ desperate need for privacy.

The crowdfunding platforms act like brokers. Fees usually amount to a percentage of the total amount raised, but most will only pay out if the full amount is raised.

The benefits of crowdfunding go beyond the monetary. It’s a way of gauging the market or audience before the product/service/artistic endeavour is fully developed, and the donors can “participate” in the process via feedback or simply cash. Meanwhile, interest garnered can help reassure larger investors that further money or development is worthwhile. Crowdfunding has helped democratise producing and product development, no longer the preserve of the well connected or companies with enough R&D to throw into a new product line.

And it’s also a genuinely social way of developing – only those products or endeavours which capture the crowd’s imagination get the money to progress, giving a whole new meaning to the term “tough crowd”.

There are now almost as many crowdfunding sites as there are niches for product development, and here are the top ones in Australia and globally:

Pozible is Australian arts focused, only fully funded (100% successful) campaigns get to keep the funds.

Kickstarter – product focused, global and only fully funded campaigns get the cash.

Indiegogo – global, arts focused, partially funded campaigns keep their cash, with a fee penalty. It’s the world’s earliest (founded in 2008) crowdfunding website.  They have helped to raise millions of dollars for more than 30,000 campaigns, across 194 countries.

Quirky – a site for inventors, complete with retail partners.

WeFunder – a site where 15,523 investors plan to invest $44,800,250 in startups

Until recently, giving the money for the ideas didn’t always guarantee a successful result or product at the end of it. Many entrepreneurs just don’t have product dev skill sets.

Which has given rise to Crowd Supply – one of the latest crowdfunding platforms to launch in March 2013, – a departure from the broker model.  Crowd Supply partners with its project creators from the beginning, and takes a 5 percent fee for support. A team of six engineers offer assistance on everything from engineering advice to crafting a production plan.

Crowdfunding is here to stay, so whether you’re an entrepreneur with an idea for a mobile app or a funder wanting to buy the Hapi fork (it vibrates when you eat too quickly) when it’s ready, check out the sites for inspiration and maybe donate some cash while you’re there.

Also where are the contextually driven landing pages when consumers are using mobile search to find your store locations? No more excuses – 35% of global shoppers surveyed by IBM were unsure whether their next purchase was going to be physical or internet based and if you don’t have a decent ecommerce site, you are even more likely to be losing customers to online stores thanks to showrooming, with a whopping 50% of online purchases being driven by showrooming.

What is “showrooming” I hear you ask? It’s a burgeoning trend in which consumers browse goods at a store, but ultimately buy them online

See this infographic from IBM which visualizes the opportunities available to retailers. Photo credit: IBM on flickr

“Showrooming” is driving 50 percent of online sales. (Credit: IBM)

Daniel Kjellsson, FELLT.com 

Daniel Kjellsson, is a cofounder of digital publisher Sydney Stockholm with the aim of reinventing traditional publishing. Their project, FELLT.com  launched earlier this year with 8 popular Australian fashion bloggers.

Patty Huntington, frockwriter

Patty Huntington is a Sydney-based, fashion-specialist journalist with over 20 years experience in radio, television, print and new media. In July 2008 she launched her own blog, frockwriter, whose stories are regularly picked up by Australian and international media outlets, attracting over 50,000 unique visitors and 100,000 page visits per month.

Matthew is an Australian based, digital PR practitioner, with experience developing and directing programs for major brands both locally and internationally. Matthew leads Edelman Australia’s consumer and digital practices.

Some of the questions discussed included

• What are the new ways bloggers are monetising their blogs? What new opportunities can come from blogging?
• Can bloggers in Australia make a living from blogging? Is this a full time job?
• What is the future of new publishing platforms such as FELLT in Australia?
• What are the ethical concerns around sponsored content and monetising blogs? Should bloggers be getting paid?
• Does sponsored content and advertising ruin the bloggers’ long term credibility and readership in the long-term (either disclosed or non-disclosed)?
• What do marketers and advertisers need to be aware of in terms of disclosure when working with bloggers?
• Should there the Australian government require bloggers to disclosure payment? (similar to the US laws from the FTC)

• Should blogs over a certain traffic number be treated as publishers?
• How do we define a blog?
• Are bloggers responsible for what they write? What is coming next in this industry in terms of responsibility for bloggers?

Below is the account of the evening as told by the audience of tweeters:

photo: Coletivo Mambembe

This was brought on by  two academics from Queensland Nicholas Carah of Queensland University, and Bond University’s Sven Brodmerkel, who were investigating the interaction between brands and consumers in social media. These guys, doing it as an “academic exercise” (*sob*) submitted the complaints to the ASB against Smirnoff Australia (Diageo) and VB (Carlton United Breweries) on Facebook, and according to the ASB process, all complaints are investigated, and the relevant complaints taken to the Advertising Standards Board for determination. The codes administered are very comprehensive, covering every aspect of advertising -from making sure ads don’t make false claims to preventing the depiction of people in inappropriate stereotypes.

Of the 2 complaints, the ASB ruled in favour of Smirnoff Australia, dismissing the complaints which included the Facebook Page being visible to under 18 year olds.

However in the case of VB, the ASB ruling will hold the brand responsible for alleged racist, sexist and anti-gay comments made by fans of the brand, on the VB Facebook page, and therefore made the brand liable for prosecution.

When you read the case notes, there’s no denying the VB Page administrator let a lot of dubious commentary from fans stay public, without reminding the community what the acceptable standards for participation are.

What’s at the heart of this entire matter is the ruling that all Facebook brand activity, including fan comments have been declared to be “advertising”. This is in direct contrast to what the majority of Facebook fans of brand pages are there for – they want to participate and engage with the brands. Sure, they are their to win competitions (Facebook is now the default digital competition platform) and get “free stuff” and even whinge about products or bad customer service experiences. But if fans of brands considered even for one minute that every interaction they were having was considered part of the brands advertising, they would not be there in the first place. Number one rule of social media from a consumer’s point of view is “what’s in it for me?”. Particularly in Facebook, the brand is there to help lift the consumer’s status to their friends and their network – or fulfil other utilitarian functions.

Getting back to the ASB ruling, its been made by authorities who look at “advertising” and judge what breaks or meets standards and criteria. So the biggest flaw is that they are looking at a two -way conversation and saying that the brand is responsible for what the other people are saying about it or the opinions and views expressed on the branded Facebook Page.

The ASB has now confirmed that both cases have implications for businesses that may have once thought onus fell on the comment maker. Social media is now being treated in the eyes of the law as a deliberate branded published forum, which appoints brands as the gatekeeper of conversation.

While Facebook Timeline for Brands changed the layout so that posts by fans are minimised to a small section on the top right hand side of the page called “Recent Posts by Others”, fans can continue to comment on Brand posts, the bulk of Brand page content, and there is very little a Brand Page administrator can do to comply with the ASB ruling except to take down objectionable content posted by fans as soon as they are aware of it. This puts additional resourcing pressure onto brands, meaning after hours and weekend work for community managers will need to be paid for. Alternatively, the Brand Page can be locked down to prevent “posts by fans” from being seen on the Page, or to prevent fans posting video or image content. This goes against the entire premise of Facebook engagement for brands, which follows the same engagement model as engagement with friends.

The ASB ruling has been made without clear understanding of the functionality of the Facebook platform, particularly that there is no pre-moderation of Fan comments available to Page administrators – the limitation faced by all brands in Facebook. However, as it stands the ruling represents  a significant increase in the workload for Page administrators and could have a serious impact on a brand’s ability to have the sort of real-time conversations with fans that have come to typify social media engagement.

ASB chief executive Brian Gordon admitted there were no guidelines for advertisers as to how quickly a comment made on a brand’s Facebook page would have to be taken down to avoid prosecution. The ACCC came out this week calling for a 24 hour or less turnaround for dealing with inappropriate comments made on large brand Facebook Pages, and giving SME’s “a bit longer” to get to moderate the page

While the ASB ruling stands, its best for brands participating in Facebook to pro-actively manage their Facebook communities, by clearly defining rules of engagement, acceptable comments and behaviour and defining what is and isn’t appropriate content. Close monitoring and using the basic Facebook profanity blockers available to brands can help mitigate risk and assist with ASB compliance.

Things to do for Australian Facebook Page administrators in light of the ASB ruling:

1. Under permissions, put the profanity blocklist to “strong”
2. Add additional, brand relevant blocklist words into the moderation blocklist box
3. Make sure your page has Community Guidelines, either as a tab, or you can just add a Note and then give it a link from the added page apps.
4. When people post inappropriate comments or content on the page, hide the content until a decision can be made on whether it will breach standards.
5. Remind the Facebook community about acceptable standards of behaviour, including what type of comments will warrant deletion or banning individuals from the page.
6. Decide on a timeframe to manage and moderate. It’s unlikely the ASB will have a prosecutors’ leg to stand on if offensive commentary is removed in 24 to 48 hours.
7. Don’t post “like bait” – posts like the Woolworths and Coles “finish this sentence….”, which is guaranteed to bring out the most juvenile to the most angry of fans to see who can out-gross or rant the most cleverly.
8. Don’t leave any “isms” up. That means racism, sexism, discrimination against sexual preference, or any other hatisms should be removed immediately. Repeat offenders can be banned.
9. If you have an iPhone, download the Facebook Pages app and get it to push notifications. That way, you’ll be alerted to fans’ posts and comments no matter what time, and can delete them quickly if necessary.

This will be a wakeup call will to brands who have neglected and/or abandoned branded Facebook pages. The other watchout will be brands with hijacked Facebook Pages. As Facebook reverts Page ownership to brands, the onus will be on the brand to make sure they administer all branded Facebook assets – even if they weren’t originally set up by the brand themselves. Because in the eyes of this ruling, they will be liable for all activity taking place on the Page.

Update: Have a look at this great legal summary from Stephen Von Muenster of Von Munsters Solicitors and Attorneys. His recommendations for tighter management completely  align with my suggestions for Facebook admins above.

What do you think of the ASB ruling? Do you believe it will dampen brand social media engagement in Australia?

 I spoke at ad:tech Sydney last week, the session Don’t Sell Me … Tell Me – The Attribution Of Digital Monetisation. In it, I put forward that marketers really need to learn to love measurement, because its the only way you can work out where your sales are coming from. How are your consumers going through your digital sales funnel in the way you’re expecting them to? Or are they jumping in from social channels? Which channels can you influence or buy your way into?

A big issue for retailers both online and offline is digital comparison shopping. Consumers can be walking around the store and checking out the price of those wineglasses on amazon.com. It’s consumers revenge because if we want to find the best price or don’t get good service, we can search & find or be vocal about what we want – on the go. Or as an online retailer, you could be winning the mobile race by having a mobile optimised product site, making it really easy for consumers to buy off their smartphone.

My top points for working out where those sales are coming from:

1. Look at search trends to see what the category looks like and then compare your brand to competitors and see how you’re doing.
2. Make sure you’re measuring all your own channels. Google Analytics is free. See where your customers are arriving from. Is it Facebook, Twitter or Stumbleupon? Search what the conversation looks like, where ever the customer has come from
3. Have a mobile optimised website. Always look at how many visits are coming from mobile devices. One client I’m doing SEO for, I’ve seen their ecommerce site go from 6% mobile visits to 17% mobile visits in less than a year, while revenue from mobile devices is now more than 10%.
4. How do your social consumers shape up? Do you know what your customers are saying about you on Twitter? Or forums? This is where social media monitoring tools are invaluable. Sentiment analysis, gauging your share of voice, identifying issues are all possible with a social monitoring tools such as SM2 and Radian6.
5. Make your customer relationship database more social. At the point of sale, identify where customers heard about the brand (or offer) from, rather than asking for their postcode.
6. Learn how much your social outreach is contributing. Track from a baseline to see the impact of your activity. (See the calculating return on investment graph in the Slideshare below)

Are their any other ways you attribute your return from digital channels?

Created by: MBA Online

Moby gets behind Vinnies Signed Finds

Signed Finds is a new social media marketing initiative for Vinnies, a.k.a St Vincent de Paul. The premise is simple: get Australian and international musicians and bands to sign and donate their t-shirts, with a photo of said musician holding up the signed tee. Then the t-shirts get hidden in a Vinnies retail store, the fans and followers of Signed Finds get issued clues as to where to find the t-shirts and then the race is on.

The intent is to drive people into Vinnies stores, to find the top selling musicians t-shirts, but also to look around and discover the other hidden gems hiding in the clothing racks. It’s reinventing the Op Shop (Opportunity Shop) to a new generation who have grown up  selling their unwanted goods on eBay, rather than donating to the local Vinnies. These are also a generation who are more likely to be into new clothes and accessories, rather than the “pre-loved” and vintage finds. Either way, it’s putting Vinnies onto the map as a retail destination for unique items, and what better way of doing it, than through money-can’t-buy autographed musicians t-shirts.

The campaign launches on Monday 5th December 2011 in New South Wales, the suburbs of Sydney and then also towns around the state. I’ll report back on how its going, as its a labour of love from the GPY&R Sydney creative team & the brainchild of one of my colleagues Luke Simkins, who has put in so much time and love into the project chasing the musicians and managers to get the t-shirts – he’s managed to get some of the best up and coming as well as supremely established artists, including Moby, Missy Higgins, The Living End, Sneaky Sound System and recent ARIA award winners Gotye and Boy & Bear

The artists themselves have been helping drive the organic growth of the Signed Finds community in Facebook, by tweeting and mentioning Signed Finds, many of their individual fans have jumped on board. Hope you do too!

Fans are being driven by the musicians taking part

Missy Higgins tweets about Signed Finds

I personally used Yelp in NYC when I visited earlier in the year, and found it invaluable because it turned up the best listings as part of a local Google search. The reviews pointed me to the kind of places I was interested in seeing. My gut feeling is that Yelp will succeed here if the social community gets on board and starts writing. It’s all about the quality of the reviews and the local knowledge.

I went to a new type of media briefing a couple of days ago. “New” because it was the old media world reaching out to engage with the new media world. The old media in this case was News Limited’s masthead The Australian – shortly launching their digital subscription/ freemium business model, a.k.a paywall. And as uneasy as it would have made the old guard feel, the proof was that we, the new media world of bloggers and social influencers, were there to chat, ask questions and perhaps offer insights, in our analysis of where the future of journalism was heading. The old guard is listening.

The death knell of print media, particularly newspapers, has probably been more drawn out than many expected. The rise of news being published online was only one part of the process killing print. The other, far more significant impact has been the rise and rise of social media and its importance in breaking and disseminating news. Facebook might be the monolith in social sharing, but Twitter has the unofficial crown for wider information sharing, and is the one to watch for breaking news and trending topics.

If I (or indeed any of us who live online for the majority of our days and nights) get my news via social channels (particularly Twitter), then clearly a premium masthead looking to monetize its content on digital platforms has a big task on its hands. Competing with breaking news that’s free content on Twitter is not where the bucks are going to be made. To be on the front foot of breaking news is an expensive process, and The Australian management assured us the majority of the new digital strategy investment has been in journalists. So those journos need to be offering deeper value in terms of insight and analysis. Luckily, The Australian has already built its value proposition around quality Australian journalistic commentary: led by Paul Kelly, the analysis offered on The Australian could be the central reason for subscribers and readers to move into the digital subscription model.

Pros (what The Australian digital subscription model has considered already)

1. Digital content is more than words on a screen. The Australian digital team spoke about journalists taking video crews to the interviews to create subscriber premium content. Here’s hoping they understand great digital is also more than video. The New York Times does superlative infographics and knows its strengths: its meta title is breaking news, world news and multimedia.
2. Curation. The 5 and 10 minute “Editors’ Choice” is ideal for the time poor and the decision fatigued. Here, subscribers will find a short list of the day’s “need to knows” as curated by The Australian editors.
3. A porous paywall. Commentary and in depth analysis are the main carrot for the paid subscriptions, but in the freemium model, editors have discretionary power to move content in and out of the paywall to serve other needs (I imagine getting unique browsers up on key days or for critical content will be part of this strategy)
4. The masthead as an offline content delivery platform. The Australian (and other mastheads) as a content platform – extending into events for example is a natural progression, particularly for the lifestyle sub-brands, which have the most mainstream appeal.
5. Mobile as a key consumption medium. We saw the preview of the mobile optimised The Australian site aimed at smartphones, steering away from phone app development, which is probably wise considering costs associated and the fragmentation of the Android platform. The Australian was first to market when the iPad 1 launched in Australia in 2010 and the iPad app is being reworked. We can only hope they will consider trends such as Nielsen’s recent report that shows 40% of tablet and smartphone owners use them whilst watching tv.
6. Try new things. The Australian delivery team seemed to be willing to try new things. Which counts for a lot. Best to use tech startups as your guiding principle – always be in beta, fail fast and learn from your mistakes quickly.
7. Invest for the long term. The Australian and News Digital team seem to be prepared for a long haul. They cited Foxtel subscription model. It took many years to become profitable, but now its more profitable than other tv networks.

Now here’s the rub. Where the future of journalism lies, is in the intersection of technology, content and the subscriber desires. Here’s where media companies need to start thinking like technology companies, to start to anticipate what their readers and subscribers want, and deliver it to them while enabling them to become part of the news gathering and feedback process.
Here’s my list of considerations on the future of journalism The Australian digital subscription hasn’t tackled yet, the cons:

1. Appealing to new/younger/digital savvy audiences. The Australian digital subscription platform is for the migrated and migrating – people who were already readers or subscribers of the print edition. Many of the other bloggers/commentators asked about plans for attracting younger audiences – how quickly that needs to happen is probably dependent on how quickly the existing subscriber base “die off” whether literally or whether to other titles, platforms or content. How to attract the younger, digital natives to the content The Australian is offering is a bigger picture strategy, and a long term one at that.
2. Mining data to deliver user centric content. The Australian’s Digital delivery could focus as a reader or subscriber-centric model. It’s likely to be (in the short term at least) an editor driven model. By its very nature, digital publishing is a technical medium. But not just tech for tech’s sake. What makes technology relevant to people is its ability to change people’s lives, habits and ultimately the businesses like media publishing that now rely on technology for delivery. What technology offers publishers such as The Australian is data – precision in a deeper understanding their readers and subscribers habits than media publishers have ever had before. While I’m certain that the new digital subscription will have basic analytics around the platform’s content consumption, there’s very deep analytics that could be used to develop smarter content delivery that’s genuinely user centric rather than driven by the journalists, editors, or publisher’s agenda.
3. Personalising the news. The idea of “destination” news versus the “personalisation” of news is at the heart of the shift to social platforms. With personalised/social news, I can subscribe to the topics, journalists or subject matters that interest me rather than have to sift through headlines, and filter out that which doesn’t. The popularity of news curation applications such as Flipboard is a key trend. Flipboard brings me news feeds based on my personalized interests. I can add in my trusted sources of news, and it serves me an integrated user experience in terms of topics, sharability and reposting to my social channels.
4. Frictionless sharing. Yes I know it’s the buzzword of the moment. In terms of competitors, the real competition in the space of digital news platforms are aggregators and third party RSS feeder news applications (see previous point). While the SMH iPad app might have a decent “consumption” user experience, it has an appalling “interaction” and “sharing” user experience. The Australian needs to look at Flipboard (iPad app), Rockmelt (social browser built on Chrome) and the deep social API platform integration used by The Huffington Post which serves me up the stories my Facebook friends have been reading. The Guardian have developed a deeply integrated Facebook app which does the same thing in Facebook – tells me what Guardian stories my Facebook friends are reading in my Facebook feed
5. Reader input on what makes news. The next progression? Leveraging social measurement and trends and crowdsourcing the news, and the opinion driving. The Guardian is also experimenting with opening up newslists, and using their readership to help decide what’s news. Real time trending topics on Twitter and heavyweight social sharing on Facebook can be analysed to give insights to inform editors decisions on what should and shouldn’t be behind the paywall
6. Making sure the journalists have personal digital brands. Curated news, sought after content and paid for commentary relies on personal as well as professional credibility, and while the Australian’s journalists and editors have oodles of “print” cred, their journalists are not very social. In 2009, when the majority of global journalists and broadcasters were jumping on Twitter to build communities of contacts and fans, The Australian editor was busy discouraging and frowning on their own people doing anything as modern as tweeting. This lag can be translated into a social disadvantage: while Twitter is busy promoting top US journalists and broadcasters in their Twitter for Newsrooms guide, The Australian is lacking any high profile “social savvy” journalists.
7. Sophisticated syndication to help build thought leadership. Syndicating content was an area touched on in our briefing. While UKs The Guardian was held up as a great example of application development, The Guardian has a very sophisticated digital platform, serving syndicated content via a content API to aggregation and curation sites such as PSFK.

It may be baby steps for The Australian with the launch of the digital subscription, but at least by intention, it seems like they are willing to take risks and try new things. By delivering content that’s relevant to their audience, in the places and times they want to consume it, The Australian can build a thriving digital media business.

Whether The Australian can work across the multiple fronts necessary and embrace technology more fully to transform their business in time, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Read more opinions at The Future of Journalism, Servant of Chaos, Mediahunter, Ross Dawson & Mumbrella