Baekdal Plus (25 сообщений)

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• Be More Than a Snack - (by @baekdal)
  

  Brands often reduce social media to a form of snacking. Not just in terms of what they post, but also (and more importantly), when it comes to the time and effort brands put into it.

  Snacking is good for filling up the void, but you have to be more than a snack to create a sale.

  One good example is Simon's Cat, by Simon Tofield. Simon's product is his cartoon books about a cat (think British version of Garfield), so what should his social strategy be?

  

  Some might say that he should just post funny photos of cats, and, in fact, he does that quite often. It will probably create a lot of traffic and a ton of engagement, right?

  

  Well, maybe the added exposure would generate enough traffic to make a difference, but most likely not. Just posting something funny is not going to persuade people to buy his product.

  Instead, what made Simon successful is his short animated cat videos:

  They are still snackable. They are usually less than two minutes long, so they are still very easy to consume... but the effort Simon and his crew had to put into making these is huge.

  Animation is a very tedious process. It requires planning, storyboarding, meticulously drawing all the frames, sound production, and so forth.

  And the result of putting in this effort is staggering. The two videos above have been seen by millions of people.

  This illustrate the problem most brands have when it comes to their social strategies. They spend all their time creating snacks, not just in terms of what they post, but also in terms of how much effort they put into each one.

  Simon became a huge success because he took the time and put in the effort to create social snacks that was worth spending time on.

  The same is true when Simon made this, for the Wallace & Gromit's Grand Appeal, the Bristol Children's Hospital Charity:

  Can you what happens when a kid sees this? She will run around it, crawl over and under it, just to see all the different cats.

  People reward those who put in an effort, not the brands who reduce social media to something they don't have allocate too many resources on.

  Don't mistake the social format (snackable) with the work you need to put into it.

  
  

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• Don't Optimize When You Need to Change - (by @baekdal)
  

  One of my pet-peeves about the world of analytics is that we spend far too much time on 'optimizing', even to the point where it's distracting us from making the right decisions.

  One of the big problems with analytics is that it's reactive by nature. Every report you look at tells you about something that happened in the past. In my recent Plus report about 'your most important marketing channel', I illustrate how this can sometimes leave us astray from our real goal.

  Let me ask you a simple question. Do you feel like your brand has reached its full potential? Have you achieved market dominance, or at least market leadership? Are you transforming people's lives and have your established yourself as the go-to place?

  No? Well... welcome to the club.

  The simple fact is that most brands are maybe operating at 20% of their full potential (which is probably even a high number for many). But instead of doing something about that, you are spending all your time chasing small incremental changes through tiny optimization techniques.

  You do A/B testing of how your product page should look, where the buy button should be, and whether the front page should have one big product feature or 5 smaller ones.

  All that is good, it may even help you achieve an extra 10% in sale. But 10% extra of 20% is still only 22%. You are not really making a difference.

  

  As an analyst, I absolutely love data. I spend most of my time with data. I can get totally giddy if I can play around with a really big and complicated data set, trying to find that elusive pattern that explains what caused something to happen.

  Data is fun!

  But too many brands are wasting their time optimizing the little things, when they should be focusing on fixing the larger issues. Look at Nokia. They tried to capture the smartphone market by optimizing their existing handsets.

  Apple, on the other hand, didn't try to optimize their business. They decided instead to change it, and look what happened. (Although, one might argue that optimizing the past is exactly what Apple today)

  Kodak tried to optimize their business for digital cameras by optimizing what they already had. They failed.

  Blockbuster tried to capture their future by optimizing their existing channels, they also failed.

  Most newspapers are trying to become digital by optimizing their current models, most are failing.

  Amazon, a company famous for hyper-optimizations, still went ahead and created the Kindle, Amazon Web Services, Amazon Prime, and many other ventures. They are succeeding.

  Google, also a company that is constantly hyper-optimizing, no longer just do search. Every time they realized that there was a bigger potential ahead of them, they jumped the chance to change. Google Cars, Glasses, Google+, Adwords, Gmail, Google Drive, etc... all products that you couldn't make by optimizing what you already have.

  But, sadly, too many brands spend so much time optimizing what they already have that they forget to look up and see their real potential.

  You can't optimize change itself, you can only optimize what has already been changed.

  
  

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• How To Determine Your Best Marketing Channels - (by @baekdal)
  

  One question that people keep asking is which one of your marketing channels is the best one? Which one should you focus on? Which one should you pay more attention to?

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

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• The Train Wreck Called 'Privacy' - (by @baekdal)
  

  Over at Twitter, I heard that a newspaper had decided to create a standalone app that wouldn't track its readers. Oh joy, my privacy is secured :)

  I don't know what the specifics are, but this whole privacy debate has become one giant train wreck. Instead of being a question of violating people's privacy (as in the act of exploiting data about people and making it available to others in a way that causes you harm), it has turned into a question of 'knowing stuff'.

  Knowing stuff is good. It's what makes people love you. Can you imagine if your friends weren't allowed to know anything about you? That's not what you would call a friendship.

  Complete privacy is not what we want. What we actually want is togetherness. To share our lives with others. To allow people to know something about you, so that you can get a better experience in return.

  

  Imagine if you were a frequent customer of a local sandwich caf. You have been there 100s of times before. But despite that, every single time you walk in, the staff greets you as a stranger.

  • They ask: "What can I help you with?"
  • You look at them with a puzzled expression because you always order a smoothie and a #2 sandwich. "Uhm... number 2!" You say.
  • They ask you: "Would you want cucumbers with that?"
  • You say: "Uhm... yes (you always do)"
  • They ask: "Chili?"
  • You say: "No!"
  • They ask: "Onions?"
  • You say: "No! (dammit)"
  • They ask: "Olives?"
  • You say: "No.. no! no!! How many times do I have to tell you"

  ...and you storm out and never returns.

  We don't want complete privacy. We want people to know who we are and what we like. We want that togetherness.

  This whole privacy debate has been completely sidetracked by fear of the unknown. And many startups are now trying to exploit that by creating private apps.

  We are not solving the right problem here. What we all want is that cozy comfortable feeling we have, when we are among people we trust. Like visiting that friendly 'mom and pop' store who remembers what you like, and whom you meet when you go for a run through your local park.

  That's the experience we all want. We don't want privacy. We want trust! Don't mistake one for the other.

  The problem we have with privacy is when people violate that trust, or worse, when outsiders steal our privacy.

  For instance, if I tell a friend about something I'm working on. I'm sharing my privacy with him because I trust him. But if he then starts telling other people about it, he is violating my privacy.

  I trusted him to keep it between us, but he shared it with the world. So the whole question about privacy has nothing do with keeping things private, or to know something. The problem is one of trust.

  Another example: Imagine that you walk into a local store to buy something you like. By walking into that store, you decided to trust that store with the knowledge of not just your presence in the store, but also what you are looking for and what you decided to buy.

  That's great. So the next time you visit the same store they already know what you like. And, instead of wasting your time showing you products that you don't care about, they can show you products that would work well with what you already have. Or they could tell you about a great tip they just heard about, which works with that product you bought last week.

  That's not a violation of privacy. That's what we call togetherness, and it's amazing for both you and the people you are around.

  It's awesome!

  The problem is if you, a week later, walk into another store, and suddenly they too are tailoring your experience. "That's odd", you say. "How the hell do they know what I was looking for? I never told them that?"

  This is when we have a violation of privacy. This 'other' shop is using information they shouldn't have. How did they get it?

  If it turns out that the first shop had shared your purchasing habits with every other shop in the city, then the violation of privacy is actually a violation of trust. Which is very wrong!

  Or, if it turns out that the 'other' shop had placed its security cameras so that it could track your movements in that first shop, then we are talking about it being privacy theft. They stole information about your person when you shared it with the first shop.

  Both are wrong and should be made illegal.

  Note: It's the same thing about the whole NSA scandal. The NSA is proactively stealing your privacy when you are together with other services. That's just wrong!

  But the point is that privacy was never the problem. We don't want to live 'privately'. We want to live in a world where we can be together with other people, business and services, and trust that our togetherness will remain between us.

  The problem is when people violate that trust, or worse, when outsiders steal our togetherness with others.

  When a newspaper says it's creating an app that doesn't track you, what they are really saying is that they are going back to old world of mass-markets. You will be over there, and they will be over here ... and neither of you or they will have any idea what each other want.

  Just like the sandwich shop.

  That's not the future. The future is trustworthy togetherness.

  If you want to be successful in the future, the short term plan is just to tap into people's fears about privacy and create 'non-tracking apps' or secure services. But that's not usable long term strategy. It's not what we want.

  What we want is trustworthy services that act more like a supporting friend.

  If I were designing the future newspaper, I would focus it on something that people would feel more like a personal assistant than a 'paper'.

  In "Google Glass For News: Flip the Model" I wrote about news being a companion.

  For instance, this morning I wanted to know what had happened in Oklahoma. Wouldn't it be nice if I could say, "OK Glass: What's the big picture about the Tornado in Oklahoma?" ... and the New York Times app would spring to life, summarizing what had happened with links to more specific topics, photo galleries and video clips?

  Or what if I, as I'm walking down the street, notice that the police had blocked it. Wouldn't it be cool if I could say, "OK Glass: What's going on here?" ... and the NYT app would tell me that it's because the Tour De France riders and teams will come through here in about 20 minutes - expanded with news stories about what had been going on so far, the standings, and commentary.

  That would be so cool!

  But you can't be a companion if you don't track what people need. It would be like hiring an assistant who never listens. Nobody wants that.

  The keyword is not privacy. The keyword is trust. Can I trust you with my privacy? Can I reveal my desires, and trust that you will only use it to give me what I want?

  Build trustworthy apps and services, not private ones.

  
  

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• Comparing The Active Past With The Passive Future - (by @baekdal)
  

  One big problem in any industry is when people use studies to further their goals. That itself is a contradiction in terms. A study is supposed to tell the truth, but the reality is that most studies are made to prove a point.

  A simple example:

  A short time ago, a new study came out about newspaper advertising for the automotive industry from Newspaperworks, the Belgian newspaper publishers' marketing platform. That alone should get your analytic ninja sensors tingling. It's not exactly what you would call a neutral bias.

  There are some good things in it, like finding that 44% plan to buy a new car within three years. But the study is also full of problems, and the media are making them even worse.

  One example is how INMA (an otherwise great organization) chose to report it, which was where I found it). They wrote the article: "Newspapers are a valuable source of information for potential car buyers". Not only was that article heavily biased in itself, but they also chose to report only the graphs that painted the best picture for newspapers.

  

  Can you spot the problems here?

  Whenever I see a study where only one channel is highlightet that's when you know it's actually a form of lobbying.

  Notice how all the graphs paints the newspapers in a positive light? They seem to be good for everything, and they are not annoying. I'm not saying this is wrong, but real-life marketing usually doesn't work this way.

  Newspapers are good for something, but not for everything. So something is missing here.

  Notice that the contents of each graph is different. The second set of graphs are missing most of the direct channels, like mailings and brand websites. Why did they design the study to exclude those channels when it came to the question of confidence?

  This alone makes me highly skeptical.

  Note: If you want to know why, read: "Analyze The Data You Don't Have".

  Then we have the problem of passive versus active. They are comparing active advertising platforms, where the ads are pushed into people's face (newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, posters etc), with passive platforms that people have to go to, like brand websites and showrooms.

  That is not a useful comparison. It's two completely different things. Why didn't they compare newspaper advertising with ... you know ... digital advertising or social advertising?

  This whole study seems to be based on how the world was back in 1997, back when brands didn't advertise digitally, and only a few had their own website.

  Again, I'm not saying the study is wrong. But they are not measuring anything useful in relation to the multi-funnel advertising world of 2013.

  A better way?

  How should they have done this? Well, one way would be to illustrate what each channel is good for. Like this:

  

  Note: There are several ways to illustrate this. What I have done here is to normalize the data around the midpoint for each topic.

  We see that if your goal is...

  • Objectiveness: Target the magazines and your showroom.
  • To get close to people: Target your website and/or showrooms, then newspaper and magazines (see how we are missing the social element?).
  • Your reputation: Primarily target TV and showrooms, followed by magazines, newspapers and websites who are pretty evenly matched.
  • Reach opinion leaders: Target magazines (Again, we see how dangerous it is to leave out the modern digital channels. One might argue that social is far better at this).
  • Get people to visit your store: Target your website and brochures.
  • Get people to talk about you: Get people to visit your showroom (again, social is missing).
  • Focus on promotions: Target your website, showroom and brochures (again, social + digital advertising is obvious elements). In other words, all the direct channels!
  • Learn about new regulations: Target the newspapers and magazines (they completely dominate this space).
  • And then we have questions about being informative, credible, confidence levels, and if the channel is annoying. But since they left out the direct channels, it's not relevant to compare it.

  This gives you a completely different picture. From an overly optimistic focus on newspapers, we now see the much more familiar multi-funnel world of advertising.

  And remember, they left out social and digital advertising channels. And they also didn't look at the all important mixed world of media. Back in March, I wrote about the positive impact of mixing TV and digital, in "TV Commercials versus Digital Advertising".

  Be careful about hidden agendas and mistakes by journalists

  Another thing caught my attention when comparing the study with the article posted by INMA. In the article, you can see the graph below, illustrating that, apart from showrooms, newspapers are the best platform for generating word of mouth.

  

  But the problem is that the study doesn't say that. Instead, the study says this:

  

  Granted, the numbers are not that far from each other, but what the heck? In INMA's graph, newspapers perform 24% better than brand websites. In the actual study, the difference is only 4%.

  It's the same story when we compare the other graphs. None of the numbers reported in the INMA articles seems to correlate with any of the graphs in the actual study. Granted, the numbers are kind of close, but they are not the same.

  What is going on here? Did they update the study?

  We started out with what we thought was a known-known. We knew what the study was about, and what the numbers were. Then, when we analyzed the result, we see that are critical elements missing, which caused the study to become a known-unknown.

  Then we see that the numbers themselves are reported as being different from the ones in the actual study, which leaves the question of which are the correct ones? This then turns the study into a unknown-unknown.

  So here we have a heavily biased study, which ignores all the disruptive digital and social channels that have emerged over the past 10 years. It hides data for direct channels when it comes to sentiment, and it's being reported more favorable towards newspapers than the study indicates.

  Not good!

  Takeaways

  So if we were to learn something from this mess, it would be this graph.

  

  What I have done here is to map out all the questions for each channel.

  As you can see, newspapers and magazines (greenish), do perform well across the board, but not in a spectacular way. The direct channels (blueish), being brand websites and brochures, seem to perform pretty much the same way.

  And keep in mind that they are not looking at digital or social advertising. This is the traditional web.

  TV only stands out when it comes to reputation building, but again, we miss the insights into the new digital forms of TV.

  So if you are a car manufacturer, when it comes to traditional channels, the answer is very much in the mix. No single channel seems to stand out in any significant way.

  Personally, I would focus more of my attention on channels that persuade people to come to my store, and back that up with channels that create awareness and encourage long-term connection.

  For instance, brand websites are almost twice as likely (according to the study) than newspapers to prompt people to visit your store. But since brand websites are something people have to go to, you have to mix that with awareness to make it work.

  In the short term that means creating awareness via digital and social advertising channels, along with traditional channels like newspapers and magazines.

  In the long term, it's more relevant to focus on building up your reputation (via TV, magazine and your shop), mixed with connecting with people socially and via influencers.

  In other words: Be awesome!

  
  

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• What Creates The Highest Amount of Sale? - (by @baekdal)
  

  We keep seeing these articles about how engagement is the new currency. And thousands of social media blogs are posting articles about how to get the maximum amount of engagement.

  But if there is one thing I have learned, it is that engagement and sale don't follow the same curves. Instead it looks a lot more like the graph below.

  

  Granted I am overly simplifying it, but the point is that the magic point of sale is not where your maximum amount of engagement is.

  Obviously, as a brand, you need to get people to engage. If you have no engagement, you probably have no sale, and thus zero (or negative) ROI. That's not good.

  But the overly optimized forms of engagement tactics are no good either. For instance, when people post "I love Thursdays because _______?", or when they post funny pictures, try to use cheesy internet memes, or attempt to capitalize on the latest hashtag trends.

  Those types of posts create a ton of engagement, but because they are silly and often pointless (although fun), they rarely produce any sale.

  So the magic spot is not the type of posts that creates the highest level of engagement. The magic spot is when you inspire people about what you do and what you sell. Those types of posts often have a lower level of engagement, because they appeal to fewer people, but because they are about something people actually want and need, they often lead to a much higher level of sale.

  It's easy to get people to engage with you. Anyone can do that. All you have to do is to optimize for the top performing tactics. But you create engagement at the expense of sale, which is not what you want.

  It's also easy to get zero engagement or sale. Just use your Facebook page for traditional marketing, where you post about yourself, using fake models, overly optimistic brand videos, and mass-market language. If you do that, nobody would care... and you would have no sale and no engagement.

  The hard part is not to get people to engage. The hard part is to get people to feel excited. Engagement without feelings is worthless. It's just noise.

  So the trick is to find that magic spot where your get the maximum results. To do that, you need to focus on making people feel excited about what you do. You need to focus on being inspiring and influential, more than focusing on the actual level of engagement.

  If what you do is so great, so inspirational, and so valuable that people are waiting for you to come back with more, your digital strategy is probably also going to lead to a sale. If it's just to push funny internet memes or shallow messages, it probably won't.

  Make people feel by giving something they care about. Something they will remember. Something they need. Something that inspires. Something with a purpose. Something with a vision. Something that's valuable. Something that makes people happy. Something that makes people feel that you are there for them.

  Don't define your success based on your level of engagement. Define your success by how important you are to people.

  Find that magic spot.

  
  

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• Understanding Change And Predicting Trends - (by @baekdal)
  

  Raise your hand if you've heard this one before. "We can't even keep up with what's happening tomorrow, so all we can do is react!"

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

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• Fixing The iOS 7 Icons - (by @baekdal)
  

  Yesterday, Apple revealed the much anticipated new iOS 7 design, and what a beauty it is. Gone are all the skeuomorphic design, the fake green felt, the fake leather, the shelfs, and the paper. It is all replaced with an ultra-simplistic flat design that can easily match some of the most beautiful 3rd party apps that we have seen so far.

  

  Johnny Ive's design sense is proven once again. And iOS can finally match the UI design levels that we see on Windows Phone 8 and Android. For too long, the design of iOS looked stale. Like something from the desktop era.

  Finally we have something new, something beautiful, and something that feels modern. The iPhone itself has always looked modern. But not the apps or the UI.

  And their video outlining the philosophy is just amazing. I agree with every single word in it:

  It's great, except for one thing...

  The icons

  The icons in the new iOS 7 are just a mess. My first impression when seeing them before the keynote, was that this couldn't possibly be what they looked like. But when they presented iOS7 on the stage, I was flabbergasted by ... well, I'm sorry ... but they are ugly.

  

  It's like Johnny Ive couldn't decide what to do.

  

  Some of them use gradients some are flat. The gradients don't use the same light-source. Some are 3D others are 2D. Some have no shadows others have drop-shadows. Some use moody toned down colors others seem oversaturated. Some use dark-gray as the base color others use deep black. And the padding inside the icons seems random.

  According to Apple, the icons are supposed to follow a 'grid'. But you quickly see that adhering to this grid is sketchy at best. Some follow the lines of the grid some don't.

  

  It's just... eeek!

  I can only assume that the icons will change before iOS7 is released. Because I cannot possibly believe that Johnny Ive would have such poor design sense.

  So, this morning, I spent two hours redesigning the icons so that they all used the same color palette and design language. And what I came up with is this:

  

  Now, they all look the same. They all have the same color palette... and they mostly follow the same grid lines. Remember, this is just two quick hours of sketching. Not several weeks of careful design work.

  And it makes for quite a difference in appearance. Now it's a much more relaxing UI to look at.

  

  BTW: Here is the high-res version.

  

  I don't know if this is better. Personally, I think the whole icon metaphor inside a frame is a bit old. On Android, we have free flowing icons (no frame), combined with widgets and other UI elements. On Windows Phone 8, we have these beautiful tiles. Even Blackberry has moved on.

  The whole icon design is a relic from the old days of desktop computers, and I wish Apple would have done something more than simply designing a new skin.

  As I wrote on Twitter:

  The new iOS 7 looks nice... But it's still based on the icon metaphor from the desktop era. I was really hoping for something new here. Don't get me wrong. The design of the iOS apps is stunning, but we have used stunning 3rd party apps for a long time.

  Remember, that the iOS icon design is identical with what we had back in 2007, except for this new fresh coat of paint. Isn't there a better way?

  Apart from the icons, I think we can all agree that the design of the apps is just stunning in its simplicity. It feels very Apple-ish. And let's hope the icon design they revealed yesterday is just a beta.

  
  

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• The Future of Digital Payments - (by @baekdal)
  

  It's simply staggering how many payment startups are being formed these days. Everyone is trying to see if they can come up with some way to become the next payment platform, the future digital MasterCard.

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

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• Let's Talk About Stress for a Moment - (by @baekdal)
  

  In the past five years, more and more people are suffering from stress. And because of all the changes in the world of media, I know a lot of people within this industry who are well into the danger zone. It's either because the company they are working for isn't doing so well financially (which puts their job at risk), or worse when their very existence is in jeopardy (for instance when we hear about news algorithms that can create newspapers automatically).

  It's the same with brands. Many brands are based on being the middlemen, or worse depends on middlemen to sell their average products to average people. And if you happen to be a print graphic designer, the new world of social doesn't need a staff of graphic designers to create elaborate full page ads. And when you look at the trends, the future of your existence might look sketchy.

  All of this results in massive levels of stress. And while the medical society don't fully understand it yet, we are learning so many interesting things about it.

  For instance, today we know that stress happens as a result of many things. We used to think it was just external factors like pressure from your boss. Or internal ones like not matching your own ambitions. But we are now also realizing that, as people, we have different stress level build into to our very DNA. And it's not that some people are more prone to stress that others. People simply react to stress in different ways, and we have different individual levels for different things.

  For instance, we learn that introvertism and extrovertism is not just a state of mind. There are physical differences in our bodies that partly determines if we are one or the other. And, introverts become stressed when they forced into extrovert situations, while extroverts become stressed when forced to be introverts.

  More important is the cure for stress... or rather the lack thereof. Many people believe that stress is something you need to cure. But what we are learning today is that stress is not a disease.

  Think of it like this. If you have been working for 36 hours in a row, you would be pretty tired. That's a perfectly natural signal for your body to send. And as a result, you go to bed and get a good long sleep.

  Being tired after a long day of work is not a disease. You don't cure being tired by taking pills, or willing yourself to stay up longer because that's your ambition. You go to bed, because you know that keeping that balance is good for you.

  Stress is exactly the same thing. It's a signal that your body sends, telling you that your are putting too much strain on your resources. The difference is that stress is often the result of an overtaxation of your synapsis in your brain, rather than pressure on the muscles in your body (although often it's actually caused by both).

  You don't cure stress, because, like sleep, there is no cure for it (at least not a healthy one). You can take pills that can keep you awake for 48 hours. Just as you can take pills that force your body to ignore your stress. But that's not a solution. In fact, you are probably just making things worse for yourself.

  Another way to think of stress is with a glass of water. Go into your kitchen and get a glass of water, then hold it up in your hand.

  

  You can do this just fine, and you can even smile while you do it. It just a glass a water.

  But, after five minutes, this glass starts feel heavier and heavier, and your body starts to tell you to put it down. Your body is feeling the stress if the weight of the water.

  And that's the key to understanding stress. Stress is not the result of the level of activity. It's the result of the sustained mass of energy of what you do.

  Now imagine that your boss told you that if you put the glass down, you would lose your job. What would happen?

  Well, strangely enough, now it becomes even harder to hold up that glass of water, and you will fail faster. Why? Simply because you are expending energy not just on holding up the glass of water, but also in worrying about the future.

  As a result, the sustained mass of energy has doubled, and you fail faster.

  And it's not just mentally. When you are forcing your body to use more energy than it can normally sustain, your body starts to inject chemicals into your bloodstream (adrenaline and cortisol). These chemicals allow you to use up more energy than you have, at the expense of the long term health of your body.

  Your body can sustain this for a short period of time without damage. But after a longer period of time, your survival instinct kicks in, telling you to return to normal energy levels. If you don't, you brain interprets this unbalance as 'stress'.

  It's that simple. There is nothing mysterious about stress. It's a very simple chemical reaction to using up more energy than your body has available.

  You might say, "But that second part is just 'thinking', which can't possibly use up that much energy?"

  But it can. Think back to the last time you were working on a big project, either creating a project plan, writing a report about your product strategy, or just spending a lot of time working on a complicated story.

  After three or four hours, you feel drained. You feel physically tired. Why? Because your brain is using up a ton of energy in firing its synapsis.

  Back in 2000, Daniel Drubach wrote in "The Brain Explained" that under normal day-to-day operations, our brain spend 20% of all the energy in your body. Meaning that people who think a lot at work (as we all do in the world of media) actually use up a lot of energy just in thinking.

  And if, on top of that, you have to worry about your job, your life, how to support your family, and your own ambitions, you very quickly reach the point where the energy used is unsustainable over longer periods of time -- i.e. you feel stressed.

  That's what stress is. It's exhaustion of sustained energy. And the keyword here is *sustained*.

  Everyone can run up the stairs, but you can't keep doing it all day. Everyone can think about a problem, but you can't keep up worrying about your future 24/7. It's not the level energy that you spend that is the problem. It's for how long you try to sustain it that causes stress.

  This leads us back to what I started with. If you think stress is a (mental) disease and something you have to cure, you are going to end up in a really bad place.

  Stress is not something you cure because stress is not the problem. Stress is merely a signal that your brain sends you when it feels that you energy levels have reached an unsustainable level.

  You can't cure that.

  If you want to get rid of stress you have to get rid of the cause of stress itself. Or in other words, you have to expend less energy, and focus the remaining energy into something more meaningful.

  Over time you can potentially increase your overall energy levels, and, as a result be, less prone to stress in the first place. But to do that you need to focus on putting your body into a state of balance.

  Eating well, sleeping well, and being generally healthy is a good first step to that.

  I know", you say, "that's why I should just exercise more!

  NO! Don't do that. That's not the right thing to do.

  Remember, stress is the result of using too much energy. Exercising uses even more energy ... so can you see where this is going?

  If you are stressed out, exercising is really bad for you. If you are already over the top, forcing your body to go even further is not the solution. Don't, ever, exercise when you are stressed. Exercise when you are NOT stressed.

  I know many people who say that, after a stressful day, they love to go to the gym to unwind. And yes, for a short period of time, you distract your brain from all the things it is worrying about, and the exercise makes you feel better physically.

  But from a point of stress you actually make it worse. So over time, you end up feeling more and more stressed, until the day when you can't 'fix it' by going to the gym.

  It's important to note that exercise is generally very healthy (obviously), but it's not the cure for stress. Exercise can help you *before* you find yourself in a state of stress. But it will damage you if you do it *in* a state of stress.

  The point is to look at the different stages of stress. Take a look at the graph below.

  

  We can all agree that being relaxed or just normally busy is good for you (especially if you also feel motivated in what you do). That's what keeps you active.

  The problem is once we start to move into the overworked and mildly stressed stages. This is when you reach the point like with the glass of water. We can feel overworked for a short period of time, but since we are actually spending more energy than what we can sustain, we have to limit our exposure to short bursts of energy rather than prolonged periods of work.

  The fascinating thing is that we are learning that ultra-short energy bursts can be good for us. For instance, in exercise circles people are now talking about HIT, or High-Intensity-Training. It's when you exercise really hard in very short bursts of time.

  We learn that this type of exercise is more beneficial for our general state of health than, for instance, spending 30 minutes running on a treadmill.

  The same goes for stress. Ultra-short exposure to stress can be good for you, but the keyword is 'ultra-short'.

  We are not talking about that months of stress is good for you, or even weeks or days. We are talking about an hour, at the most. Followed by the rest of the day, where you are in a non-stressed situation.

  So if you feeling stressed out at work (long term exposure), and your boss tells you that he just read an article that 'stress can be good for you', tell him to read the real study instead of some clueless blog post on a business site.

  Remember, it's not the level of stress that is the problem, it's the mass of it. Occasional exposure in the ultra-short term is fine. It might even make you faster. However, long-term exposure (which is most people are suggering from) is really bad for you. And if you induce yourself to short-term hyper-stress while you are suffering from long term stress, you start to cause serious harm to your body.

  The problem with long term stress, especially if you have convinced yourself it's a mental disease, and if you trying to will yourself to ignore it, is that it will eventually take over your body and your health starts to deteriorate.

  And the fascinating thing is that the human body is extremely intelligent. For instance, if you burn your hand while cooking, the pain receptors tell you that it hurts, but at the same time your brain learns not to do that again.

  Your brain physically alters its perception of reality to protect you in the future. And again, you can endure excruciating pain in the ultra-short term, but not in the long term.

  Stress works the same way. If you don't do anything about your stress, you body starts to become damaged. That sends a signal to your brain that what you are doing is dangerous, and you brain rewrites itself to stop you from doing it again in the future.

  But if you keep on doing it, your brain makes that feeling stronger. In essence, it rewrites itself to tell you that you should be afraid of stress.

  This is what we call 'Anxiety Induced Stress'. The problem today is that many in the medical society think of this as a mental illness, and give people medication to suppress it. But it's not a mental condition at all.

  Let me give you an example: Are you afraid of putting your hand in boiling hot oil on a pan? Yes, of course you are. Because when you were a kid, your hand got burned, so you learned to be afraid of it.

  Is that a mental illness? No, of course not. Putting your hand into burning hot oil is dangerous, so you should be afraid of it.

  Okay, so exposing yourself to conditions that cause you long term stress, is that dangerous for you? Yes, it is. So, should you be afraid of it?

  Yes, of course you should.

  Getting to the point where you are afraid of stress is not a mental illness, nor is it a disease. It's simply a completely natural reaction in your body. Your body is being damaged by stress, so it tries to make you stop by making you afraid of that damage.

  It's really that simple.

  But, if you still don't do anything about your situation, your anxiety induced stress elevates into a regular phobia.

  Just like some people are afraid of heights, have claustrophobia, or have a fear of spiders, you can have stress-o-phobia. In other words, you are afraid of situations or environments that you know to cause stress.

  Is that a mental illness? No, not really. It's an irrational condition, but not a mental one.

  Think of people who are afraid of heights. The reason why they are afraid is that, at some point in their past, something happened that caused them to be afraid of high places. They might have been hurt when playing in a tree, when suddenly a branch broke, and they fell down and hurt themselves. They might have seen one of their friends fall from somewhere, or maybe it was induced by a scary movie on TV.

  We don't know.

  But we do know that this fear is very real, and that it is caused because by your brain reacting to a real danger by making you feel afraid of it (which is a perfectly natural response).

  As we grew older, this fear turned into a phobia. Instead challenging it, we kept enforcing it in our brains. What people forget is that it was never about the height to begin with. What they fear is the impact with the ground if they fall.

  As an adult we know this, so this very real fear turns into an irrational condition. You are afraid of something that isn't dangerous in itself.

  It's the same with stress. Stress is dangerous, but remember that stress itself is just a signal that your body sends to your brain that you are using up too much energy. What you are actually afraid of is using up so much energy that it damages your body. Once you know this, you also know that if you keep yourself within your limits, then there is nothing to be afraid of.

  Of course, with all kinds of fear. You can't just 'not be afraid'. That's not how it works.

  Fear is a physical condition, just like cutting your finger is a physical condition. When you are afraid of something, it is simply because synapses in your brain has been arranged in such a way that this experience is linked with the emotion of fear.

  If you want to stop having anxiety induced stress, you have to first realign these synapses that make you afraid. You have to train your brain to reorganize itself ... physically. As in real physical elements inside your brain being placed in a different way.

  And that takes a long time.

  When people are afraid of heights, the first thing you do is to help them understand the rationale behind the fear. You have to understand that it's not actually because of the heights that you are afraid, but rather the part about hitting the ground if you fall.

  Understanding that helps a lot, but it's not enough. Your brain's synapses will still make your afraid because that's how the physical connections are.

  You then have to condition your brain, so that it learns that high places are not dangerous if you are just careful. You do that by giving people a safe environment (a place where falling wouldn't hurt you), and then you give people a step ladder.

  You tell them to walk up the steps, and If they start to feel afraid they should take one step down again. And slowly over time, their brain learns that there is nothing dangerous about it, causing their brain to rewrite the relevant synapsis, and away goes their fear.

  After a longer time doing these exercises, they will finally find themselves at ease, and they can visit the Eiffel Tower in Paris and just have a great time.

  The same is true for anxiety induced stress. First, you need to understand that stress is merely a signal your body sends you when you are using up too much energy. You learn that it is not damaging to you in itself, unless you are doing over longer periods of time.

  Then you put yourself into a safe environment. I.e. an environment where you are not expending too much energy. What that environment is depends on whom you are as a person. If you are an introvert, that place is probably somewhere where you can be alone. If you are an extrovert, it's probably with friends.

  The important thing is to be true to yourself.

  But this is where it gets tricky and what most people do wrong. If you are afraid of heights, you don't cure that by falling and hurting yourself. You cure that by going higher and higher, in a way that makes you feel safe, without falling.

  Same with anxiety induced stress. You don't cure fear of stress by gradually making you more and more stressed until you can't take it no more. That would be stupid.

  You fix it by going back to the basics. The point is not to find your limit. The point is to find the point of balance. The point where you feel that the energy that you spend is at an optimal level.

  Think of it like sleep. If you are feeling tired, the point is not to test yourself to stay awake longer and longer. The point is to figure out what is the optimal level of sleep for you, at what times, and for how long.

  The same with anxiety induced stress. It's not about challenging yourself to your maximum stress level. It's about challenging yourself to find more and more places where you are in balance.

  None of this is easy. In fact, it's seriously hard.

  But remember, stress is not a disease. It's not something you cure so that you can go back to the way it was. Stress is merely a signal telling your body that you are using too much energy, for too long.

  Stress is a terrible thing to live with. If you are stressed about external factors, like your boss making unreasonable demands on you while the company you work for seems to be heading over the cliff, you probably need to find a new job.

  If your stress is internal, as in being frustrated about the future, or because of failure to meet your own ambitions, you probably need to find someone to talk to about it. Someone who can help you see things differently (and someone who understands that stress is not a disease and should just be cured with medication).

  Find your balance! Not just in how you sleep, how you exercise, or how you eat. Stress is about finding the balance of how you live. It's about how you think, and how you focus on what you want to do.

  And remember, the future is a wonderful place.

  
  

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• What the New Google+ Should Do - (by @baekdal)
  

  As you already know, Google+ has been updated with a new layout, new fancy navigation, new automatic (and quite amazing auto-hashtag tool), way better use of images, and quite a number of other things.

  Several of my readers asked for my analysis of it, but if you haven't yet seen what it's all about, take a look at the videos below:

  --

  So, let's talk about this from a trend perspective.

  First of all, what we are seeing on Google+, and on several other sites (think Facebook and Twitter) is an increasing focus on being the place where users gather and organize all the content and people they follow.

  All the social networks talk about (or in Google's case, secretly hints at) how they want to be the future newspapers. Not in being the creators or even editors of the content, but being the platform for content.

  This is exactly the same trend that we see, for instance, with Flipboard, Instagram or Feedly.

  The new Google+ design is all about that. Instead of being a stream, it's your constantly updated newspaper. Especially if you are on a big screen where you can see all the columns.

  A lot of people are complaining about these columns, but I like them because of this trend. I also think the design is quite nice (except for a few things), but more about that below.

  It made sense to have separate content sites back when information was based on people only subscribing to two newspapers and three magazines. But today, we follow several hundred sources directly, and through them we are exposed to several thousand different sites every day.

  It makes a lot more sense to use a service like Google+ to follow the people and sites that you care about, categorized in circles, which allows you to stay on top of everything.

  So that's what the new design is all about. It's that service. That platform for following everything you love.

  It's the same thinking that goes behind the new automated hashtag feature. It's all about content discovery, i.e. being that unified content service across sources.

  Another element of this is what Mike Elgan wrote about. Google+ is now all about 'cards'. The idea being that these cards are not limited to one place in time. We can take them and reuse them anywhere. It's the same concept that Twitter is working on.

  It's all about not becoming a destination. They want the platform for content sharing, and to do that you need a unified element that can be used across destinations.

  All of that is very interesting. It very closely aligns with the future trends of content consumption, and it will be interesting to see how well Google can implement this going forward.

  Of course, it's not just about posts and content. It's really about people and how we communicate. And this is why we see so many new features too, for instance, Hangout, photos and so forth.

  If you think of it as just content, you are likely to miss the larger trend.

  However...

  As I was looking at the new Google+, there was also a number of things that really concerned me. One thing we don't want is for Google to start closing us into the platform, like what we see with Twitter and Facebook.

  The reason I'm so excited about Google+ is because it seems to be designed for the purpose of not being a destination. But the new design... well... it kind of takes us in the wrong direction.

  First of all, the new card design reveals a lot less information upfront than before. It's designed to be more about snacking than real content consumption. This is a 'disease' that is prevalent on all the social networks.

  To get more social interaction, you dumb down the content into shallow snack sized bits, and then you visually create an environment where snacking is the only usable form of communication.

  Let me give you a few examples:

  The new compose post form can only contain ten lines of text without scrolling.

  

  You might not think this is a big deal, but what it does is discourage people from writing more than one paragraph of text. I used to love writing longer post on Google+, but with this new layout, the compose box is so small that it just kills your motivation to go in-depth.

  In fact, this is a common tactic that every blogger knows about. If you want shorter comments on your blog, make the comment form smaller, and vice versa.

  This form is designed to encourage short social snacking instead of more comprehensive writing.

  Added to this, the new card design contains a lot less content upfront than before, once again encouraging people to keep things short. Here is an example from a recent post from +Avinash Kaushik.

  

  Yes there is a 'read more' link underneath it, but it's very light grey so that you don't easily see it. You can't tell when people are just posting a quick snack, or when they have something insightful to say.

  A simple way to solve this would be to create a subtle fade out effect that would illustrate that there is more content further down the post. Like this:

  

  It's such a tiny change, but it makes a huge difference.

  And if that wasn't enough, the new design also discourages you from using links as part of your content. In the past, I very often added several links to my post. But with the new design, links are deemphasized to the point where people would rarely click on them.

  Here is a post from +Mike Elgan.

  

  In this post, he added two links as you can see below. The problem here is that they are visually deemphasized to the point of looking like the rest of the text. As you read his post, your eyes see the link, but because they don't look like something you can *act upon*, you skip them and read the next line of text instead.

  

  This is a terrible design decision, because it means that it's less effective to use inline-links as a call-to-action.

  Look at my post as an example. This is how I used to post many of my articles. I would write a semi-long intro with a link to my article, and then use an image from the article to make it more it valuable in your stream.

  

  But now, I can only hope that people notice the 'read more' text, and when they do they get a link that doesn't look clickable.

  

  This used to be the best and most valuable way to engage with people. But now it's a lot less interesting from the point of conversions.

  Google didn't do this specifically to discourage linking. As Fred Gilbert, lead designer for the new Google+, told Om Malik:

  This new philosophy is reflected in this new version of Google+, which is marked by simplicity and fewer distractions. For instance, unless you are ready to engage with a piece of content, the links appear as regular text, without the distraction of the blue link

  In other words, without the distraction of a call-to-action to something a brand or a publisher wants people to see.

  I like the overall design of the new Google+ and the new design direction that we see across all of Google's services. Just look at the new Maps, which is absolutely stunning! Or the new Google Play Store.

  Google's new sense of design is amazing.

  But Google is also suffering from the same social shallowness that we see on all the other social networks. The overall design is great, but the details take us in the wrong direction.

  When Google first announced Google+, I was really excited about it. Unlike all the traditional social services, like Facebook and Twitter, Google+ seemed to be thinking of social media as more than just the social snacks.

  I envisioned a future where Google+ could be the social layer that connected people and content together. A tool that we could use to connect with content as much as we would connect with people.

  And this trend is important for brands because it's all about communicating your message in the most efficient and engaging way possible, as close to where people are, while eliminating as many unnecessary steps in between.

  But with these changes, Google+ is doing the same thing we've seen on Facebook. Instead of bridging the gap between people and content, they make it worse.

  The new design distinctly discourages us from thinking of Google+ as more than just a social snack where you post a short message with a single link/video/photo.

  I want to give you an example of what happens when you do this. Take a look at the +New York Times Google+ page:

  

  Notice how most of the posts are all shallow social snacks about food, celebrities, or other lightweight topics.

  It just makes me sad to see such a great newspaper, like the The New York Times, reduced to something as shallow as this.

  We can do better than this. A lot better. And Google seemed to be right place to do it.

  Social should be about more than just what people share when they have a moment, and it should be about more than just links and images. Social should be about the communication itself, and a big part of that is to support and enhance valuable and in-depth content.

  I used to use Google+ to post articles like this one, which is 1,187 words long. It's full article. And my followers loved it when I did this.

  I want to keep doing that.

  But when I'm limited to only ten lines of text in the compose window, and when people don't see that there is more to read, I kind of believe it would be better to just post it on this site, and then post a short summary with a link on Google+.

  I don't want to do that. I love Google+, I love the concept of it. But it needs to be designed for more than just snacking.

  This is post a post from +Jeff Jarvis. How many people do you think realize that it's actually two pages long?

  

  Google, You need to help us bring all that value to the forefront of people's minds. How can you help people see when someone takes the time to write really wonderful content on Google+?

  Links from the outside world

  So far we have only talked about links from Google+ to another site. What if the link was the other way? To Google+ from Twitter for instance?

  I do this all the time, and like all the other social networks, what you end up seeing is an empty page like this:

  

  What's this about?

  No blog would ever do this. We know that the individual posts are more important than the front page. So we create engaging experiences at an individual post level.

  But somehow the social networks haven't gotten that message. It's not just Google+, it's the same problem on Twitter and Facebook. Here is how they look when you link to them from another site (again using Mike Elgan as an example):

  

  This illustrates more than anything else how disconnected the social networks really are. This is probably one of the most important pages for getting new followers (via individual posts). This is what you would link to from your site or another social network.

  You don't post on Twitter. "Follow me on Google+", you give people value by posting a link to an article that you have written on G+, hoping that people will in turn decide to follow you there.

  But how are they going do that with an empty page like the one above? Look at Mike's info box. It's not even big enough to display his full description, despite all the empty space below.

  

  So Google, here is my concept for a page of individual posts. Feel free to be inspired by it (full size):

  

  Let's turn Google+ into more than just a social network. Don't make it about people and their snacks. Make it about people and content.

  
  

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• Google Glass For News: Flip the Model - (by @baekdal)
  

  I was reading The Verge's excellent article about all the different Google Glass apps, and something immediately stood out as a completely missed opportunity. The news apps.

  Both the New York Times, Elle and CNN has created news apps for Google Glass, and they all work pretty much the same way. They interrupt you by being based on notifications.

  

  As the Verge wrote:

  Before Twitter and Facebook showed up, New York Times was the flagship third-party launch app for Glass - which was a little sad. Not that there's anything wrong with the app: once activated from your MyGlass page, the Times will give you a new card once an hour with a roundup of new stories (there aren't any preferences, so you can't lower that frequency), along with an occasional lone breaking story. Inside the card you can scroll through the stories, and tap to have Glass read you a summary out loud, but that's all there is. A share button wouldn't go amiss, nor would an option to filter out subjects you just don't care about when you're wearing Glass - like politics, for instance.

  The problem is that news is not a product compatible with hourly notifications. There is no person in the entire world that needs that kind of information, that often, or in that way. None!

  They are completely missing the boat with this one.

  Right now, people are excited about it because it's new. But after a while, every single one of these apps will be seen as the most annoying thing on their Glasses.

  • Imagine you are talking to someone, and right at that moment the one-hour cycle is up, and NYT notifies you: "U.S. and Europe Set to Settle Chinese Solar Panel Cases".
  • Imagine you are in the middle of listening to a good audiobook, and NYT notifies you: "2 F.B.I. Agents Killed in Training Accident in Virginia".
  • Imagine you are driving your car, and right then NYT notifies you: "Hezbollah's Role in Syria War Shakes the Lebanese".
  • Or you are sitting at work, trying to get that project done that you have been stressed out about, and NYT notifies you: "Knicks Offer a Blunt Assessment of What Went Wrong".

  See the problem here?

  First, news is a non-necessity. I know that newspapers think they are the only important thing in the entire world, but to anyone else they are non-necessities.

  Especially the kind of news that newspapers write about, which, when you think about it, is extremely narrow in its focus. There is not a single person in this world that actually needs to know about any of the above stories.

  It gets worse when these news apps decide to create extra notifications in case of some kind of breaking news.

  Newspapers have a completely distorted idea of what a breaking news story is. For instance, all the big national newspapers in my country ran a 'Breaking News' story that a newborn child had been found in a hedge somewhere.

  That's not breaking news. I would even go so far as to say that it's not even news. It's just noise (carefully disguised as a reality drama show)

  Breaking news to ordinary people has nothing to do with what's happening somewhere else in the world, or to people they don't know.

  • Breaking news is when there is a car accident 10 miles ahead of you so that you can take another route before it's too late.
  • Breaking news is when the CEO of a company you are working with is arrested for fraud so that you can halt the project before it's too late.
  • Breaking news is when your local grocery store notifies you that the product you just purchased has been found to contain dangerous chemicals and has been recalled.

  That's breaking news, and, depending on what people are doing, might be worth notifying people about.

  As a newspaper, especially in combination with an up-close-and-personal product like Google Glass, you have to align yourself with the three vital elements:

  • Intent
  • Context
  • Relevancy

  And for 99.9% of all news stories, notifying people that "Massachusetts G.O.P. Hopes Lightning Strikes Again in Senate Race" is not relevant for people to know. It has no context to what people are doing at that moment, and nobody had the intent of wanting to get that information right there and then.

  These Google Glass news apps are just completely missing the boat. Sure they are fancy, but that's also all they are.

  Instead, focus on creating a Glass experience so that you give people what they actually need when they *intent* to need it. Make it contextually aware to whatever situation they are in. And, for the love of all that's holy, make it relevant!

  Flip the whole idea of news on its head. Instead of giving people random stories, give people what they ask for. For instance, this morning I wanted to know what had happened in Oklahoma. Wouldn't it be nice if I could say, "OK Glass: What's the big picture about the Tornado in Oklahoma?" ... and the New York Times app would spring to life, summarizing what had happened with links to more specific topics, photos gallery and video clips?

  Or what if I, as I'm walking down the street, notice that the police has blocked it. Wouldn't it be cool if I could say, "OK Glass: What's going on here?" ... and the NYT app would tell me that it's because the Tour De France riders and teams will come through here in about 20 minutes - expanded with news stories about what had been going on so far, the standings, and commentary.

  That would be so cool!

  Don't think of news as some random event that people just absolutely has to know about (the traditional model). It's the other way around.

  
  

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• Understanding The Importance of the Trend of Convenience - (by @baekdal)
  

  One of the most important trends in our world today, is the Trend of Convenience. It's what is shaping how products are made, how the digital world is changing, and how business models are transformed.

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

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• The Other Side of Amazon's, Apple's and Google's Tax Evasion - (by @baekdal)
  

  Do you ever wonder how European newspaper associations are so successful at convincing politicians to support them in punishing Google.

  The answer is that they all use the same argument about tax evasion. The problem is that these big US companies are all channeling most of their profit to countries with low tax rates, causing European politicians to feel like they are not getting the taxes that their countries deserve.

  So newspaper organizations approach the European politicians with the notion that punishing Google is a way to get some of that money back. This is then backed up with positive posts about how politicians are trying to stop evil US companies from cheating Europe, and negative stories about how tax evasion by US companies is bad and unfair.

  Here is an example from the German association of magazines publishers (roughly translated):

  ---

  The campaign by Google against the introduction of a neighboring right is a delusion.

  It is preposterous that the search engine company, with its tax avoidance strategy largely elude financing of government and public infrastructure, uses its dominant position for its own economic goals. The scaremongering by Google is without merit. The claim the search engine company makes that the search and retrieval of information in the network is made difficult by an intellectual property right is untrustworthy. The private use, reading, linking and quoting remain possible as before.

  ---

  Did you notice how they added that bit about tax evasion? That's what is called lobbying.

  Isn't it also curious that when you read articles about Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Starbucks they are mostly negative (in European press) ... especially the ones about Google, Facebook and Amazon who are all disrupting the monopoly of the traditional press.

  Here is one from the Guardian:

  ---

  David Cameron: We'll ensure foreign firms pay their fair share of tax

  David Cameron accused the likes of Starbucks, Amazon and Google of lacking 'moral scruples' for seeking to trim their tax bill.

  ---

  Notice how they are, once again, using tax evasion as the main point, combine with a positive endorsement of the politician. Again, this is lobbying

  Now, we can all agree that tax evasion is a problem. It removes a huge amount of money from entering the market, which, in turn, raises the tax level for everyone else.

  Amazon, for instance, paid only $3.7 million tax on $6.5 billion sales in the UK (which is misleading since taxes is paid on profit, not revenue). Apple has $144.7 billion in cash, of which $102 billion is in offshore accounts.

  Tax evasion should be stopped. It's just wrong on so many levels!

  But there is another side to this as well, one that we never hear about from the press. It's the reason why we have this problem to begin with.

  Why are all big companies doing this?

  Many people believe, especially after reading about in the press, that it's caused by greed and lack of moral scruples. But that's not really true. That is what it has turned into, but it's not why it started.

  The reason why it happens is simply because that you have no choice as a global company. Tax evasion is the only way that you can prevent Governments from double or even triple taxing your income.

  Take Google as an example:

  Google is a US company. For various reasons they have set up Google Europe in Ireland, and in the UK they have sale/consulting office.

  So let's pretend that Google paid taxes the way the European politicians want them to do it. What would happen?

  We start in the UK.

  1. Let's say that Google sells advertising for a profit of $100 million to UK based companies.
  2. The UK Government then demands that Google pays 30% of that in corporate income tax. Leaving $70 million in profit after tax.
  3. These $70 million is then transferred to Ireland, where it is taxed again, this time at around 24% (Ireland has two corporate tax levels, one for profit made in Ireland at 13%, and another for profit channeled to Ireland). Leaving Google with only $53 million in profit after (double) tax.
  4. These $53 million is then transferred to Google in the US, where, again, they have to be taxed, this time at 35%. The result is that Google's profit is only $34 million after (triple) tax.

  If Google was to do it the way the politicians want, they would have an effective tax rate of 66%.

  

  Yes, tax evasion is wrong, but being triple taxed by greedy Governments is much worse.

  The ones who are without moral scruples are the Governments who believe that global companies should be taxed again and again on the same money. Is it then really that surprising that these global companies try to avoid this? Wouldn't you do the same?

  Back in 2012, I wrote about my own problems with foreign taxes. Because I'm a Danish citizen and I'm selling my books via Amazon (a US company), the US Government wants me to pay 30% income tax on my profit before the Danish Government wants me to pay another 41% in Danish income tax.

  

  I'm being doubled taxed because I'm global, causing my effective tax rate on my books to be 58%.

  In other words. A book selling for $12.5 only generates an income of $2.4. The rest (more than $10 per book) is eated up by taxes or fees (including local sales taxes, which in Europe is 15-25%).

  It's just insane.

  The way tax laws work today is that each Government believes it is entitled to a piece of the pie, and that the size of that piece has no relation to how many other pieces you have to give to other Governments.

  So the solution is obvious. We need to change the tax laws so that the effective tax rate is fixed regardless of how many countries a global company operates with.

  Let's say it should be fixed at 30%. Then, in Google's case, they pay 30% in the country a product was sold (but not anywhere else). It would work like this:

  $100 million sold in the UK

  • Google USA: 0% tax
  • Google Europe (Ireland): 0% tax
  • Google UK: 30% tax

  Same as if they sold for $100 million in Italy:

  • Google USA: 0% tax
  • Google Europe (Ireland): 0% tax
  • Google Italy: 30% tax

  That would be a fair way to do it, right?

  Another way could be that Google should pay taxes based on their operations, like this:

  • Google USA: Research, Development, Administration, Data Center = 80%
  • Google Europe (Ireland): Development, Data Center = 15%
  • Google UK: Sales = 5%

  Meaning that their tax rates would be:

  • Google USA: 24% tax
  • Google Europe (Ireland): 4.5% tax
  • Google UK: 1.5% tax

  Again, this would be a fair model. The effective tax rate is still fixed at 30% of Google's total profit, but each Government gets their piece of the pie in relation to the size of the operations.

  Or we could simply leave it up to the corporations to decide where to pay taxes, by saying that 30% of your profit must go to taxes in any one of the countries of which you operate. Often this would then be the home country of which the company was founded.

  This would encourage competition between countries, which is always a good thing.

  And, again, this would be a fair model.

  Or even better, let's get rid of corporate tax altogether and instead create laws that force corporations to share their profit with their employees. Take Apple as an example. They have 72,800 employees globally, and made $41 billion in profit last year.

  But instead of giving their employees all that money, it is now sitting in an offshore bank account. If we were to say, for instance, that 80% of a corporation's annual profit must be shared with its employees, each Apple employee would get an annual bonus of $450,000.

  If that was how it worked, we would never have a financial crisis ever again. That's 72,000 people who suddenly have an extra $450,000 per year they could spend in their local stores (and that's just Apple's employees).

  Just think about that for a second...

  Of course, none of this would ever happen as it requires the world's Governments to agree on a global tax law. And that is the essence of the problem. The reason why tax evasion exists is because each Government is still operating within the notion that the world ends at the border.

  When you start to operate in more than one country, you are faced with the dilemma of either having to be double taxed, or having to use some form of tax evasion. It's the only way to avoid having to pay an unfair amount of taxes to greedy Governments who don't understand the global world.

  Of course, that doesn't make tax evasion right. It's wrong, and it should be stopped. But we have to solve the cause of the problem, not the result.

  We live in a globally connected world, but our tax laws are based on a local and disconnected market. If we sell a product with a global mindset, we should also pay taxes with a global mindset.

  That's the real problem that we have to solve.

  BTW: If you want to see just how absurd this whole tax evasion problem is, I invite you to watch the UK Government's select committee on tax evasion, when they interrogated Google, Amazon and Starbucks.

  It's three hours long, but it demonstrates the politician's complete lack of understanding of both tax laws and the globally connected world. On the other hand, Starbucks, Amazon and Google did a very poor job of explaining it (especially Amazon), so we are back to the status quo.

  But it's an enlightened view into a world of opposites.

  Update: Eric Schmidt (from Google) responded to the increasing level of misinformation in the UK with "At Google we aspire to do the right thing. So we welcome a debate on international tax reform": http://goo.gl/LU1L6

  
  

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• CPA, CPM, CPC ... WTF? - (by @baekdal)
  

  Advertising was simple back in the good old days. We had no way to measure it, and newspapers and magazines grossly exaggerated their circulation numbers. Do anyone really believe when a magazine, with a circulation of 150,000, claims that each issue is read by seven people on average, given them a total reach of one million?

  Yeah, right...

  Or as Mel Karmazin, president of Viacom said:

  You buy a commercial in the Super Bowl, you're going to pay two and one-half million dollars for the spot. I have no idea if it's going to work. You pay your money, you take your chances.

  Today, of course, we live in a very different world. Not only do we now have far more (and better) sources to choose from, we also have far more advanced advertising models that can both be targeted and measured in extraordinary detail.

  But the advertising world is still trying to play the game of hide and seek.

  Google recently came out with a study telling us that 'Users are up to 21 times more likely to click on viewable ads'.

  

  When you read a result like that, your brain should immediately go into hyper-alert mode. How can people click on ads that they don't see?

  Of course, when you then dig into the numbers, you quickly realize that this study is not really about viewable vs unviewable ads. Rather they are measuring what percentage of the ads that are visible on the screen, and for how long an ad is visible.

  And when you measure that, we find that the more of an ad that people can see, and the longer it is visible on the screen, the higher the click-through rate is -- and that is not surprising. It's really common sense.

  We also learn (which is nothing new for people in the industry) that the definition of a viewable ad is "at least 50% on screen for one second or longer" ...as defined by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

  On one hand this is great, as it's far better than the highly misleading impression count that we had before.

  But on the other hand, it's still not good enough. If I, as a brand, pay for advertising, I expect to get what I'm paying for. And I'm *not* paying to have only half my ad displayed for about a second. I'm paying to have my full ad displayed for a long enough time that people actually have a chance to decide upon it.

  We are moving in the right direction, and Google is one of the few who are showing the way forward. But we still have a very long way to go before the world of advertising delivers what it sells.

  It's interesting to see how big the difference is between view rates, but we are focusing on the wrong problem. I don't care that viewable ads (50% visible for 1+ sec.) are 21 times better than non-viewable ads. I want my ads to be 100% visible for long enough that people see them.

  At this point you are probably thinking, "I know, we should just drop CPM based advertising and instead focus on CPA or CPC based advertising" (CPA is when you only pay when people act and CPC when they click, regardless of how many times it is displayed).

  But there is a problem with this kind of thinking. Think of it in terms of call-to-actions.

  The purpose of any type of advertising is to make people aware of what you do and translate that into a sale. And we also know that, for every obstacle you put in people's way, you lose a substantial percentage of that sale.

  You want your path to sale to be as direct and as effective as possible, and that means using the right type of advertising for the right type of sale.

  For instance, if you are the WWF and you are running a campaign to save the BlueFin Tuna, putting up a CPM based ad asking people to do something, maybe tomorrow, isn't going to work. Instead, you need to do a CPA based ad (actions) where you ask people to "Call to donate", paying only for the number of calls people make.

  

  CPM (views), or CPC (clicks) is not very useful in this case.

  However, if you are H&M and you are running a campaign with Beyonc for bikini outfits that people can buy via their website, you want to do a CPC (click) campaign. The action that you want people to take is for them to go to your web shop (a click).

  

  A CPA or a CPM campaign wouldn't make much sense.

  And, if you are Stride, selling chewing gum in local stores, and via gas stations, you would want to do a CPM based campaign (views). In this case, your product cannot be directly linked to or acted on online, so you want to optimize for awareness and recall rates.

  

  Of course, if it's a social campaign, where your purpose is to get people to connect with you, we are back to a CPC campaign (a 'Like' is a click).

  You have to choose the right type of campaign for the right type of product. And this also means that we have to live with the rather odd definitions that the advertising industry use

  But as brands, we have to put higher demands on our advertising partners. I don't think it's acceptable to pay for an ad that people don't see. Most advertising providers don't make any promises to how an ad is viewed. They are simply counting how many times it is rendered on the page (regardless of where that is). And even the new definition of 50% viewable for one second, is not good enough.

  It's better than the complete bogus advertising metrics of the past, but it's still based on a deception.

  Also read: Magazines Still Try To Hide The Real Impact of Advertising.

  It's the same with native or social advertising. Native advertising, where a brand posts an article in a magazine, is currently paid for per pageview (or worse, a fixed price for which you have no idea what you get).

  Pageviews is a hopeless metric. It tells you nothing about how many people actually see your article, let alone read it. If there is a link, you can measure clicks. But many brands don't need the click. They need to spread the word.

  Same with social ads (sponsored or promoted posts). At the moment, we don't really know what we are paying for. Promoting a post on a Facebook page (boosting) is charged per view... but we have no idea what the CPM actually is. You might pay $10 and reach 6,000 views, and the next day you pay $5 and only reach 2,000 (real example).

  We are back in the old world of "I have no idea if it's going to work. You pay your money, you take your chances."

  Sure, we can measure it. But if we can't use our past measurements to estimate our future, what good is it?

  We are moving in the right direction, but, as a brand, be mindful of how you advertise. Demand more from the advertising providers, measure the results, and repeat.

  
  

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• Measuring Results: Don't be Fooled By Math - (by @baekdal)
  

  In my report about "Making Sense of Social Media Monitoring and Sentiment Analysis", I very briefly mentioned the problem with using averages. But a number of people commented on just that one thing as being a constant problem they have every day.

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

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• The Real Problem With Piracy - (by @baekdal)
  

  Earlier this week, I mentioned on Google+ that I had discovered that all my books are now being pirated on torrent sites. And, +Visnja Zeljeznjak asked me:

  What are your thoughts on your own stuff being pirated?

  That is a great question. So let's talk about it.

  First of all, we all know why piracy exists. It's the result of clueless publishers thinking that limiting and discriminating against their customers is a viable way to do business. We see it all the time.

  For instance, if I want to watch 'Finding Forrester', I just search for "netflix finding forrester" and I immediately find what I want:

  

  But when I then click on this, I end up on the Danish Netflix site, where Finding Forrester is not available for streaming.

  How dare Columbia Pictures do this to me? This is discrimination against me as a person, simply because of where I live. I can get so pissed off about this, and unfortunately it's a growing problem.

  Four years ago I created this comic to illustrate the problem:

  

  When it comes to piracy, I feel the same way as anyone else. Piracy is a fight for freedom against those who seek to oppress our ability to do the same as anyone else.

  I know this sounds a bit strong. But that's what it is. And media companies need to understand that.

  However... It all went terribly wrong

  As the media industry spent more and more time limiting and discriminating, via tools like DRM and organisation like the RIAA and MPAA, piracy changed from being a fight for freedom, to the new normal.

  Most people I know, no longer realize why they pirate content. They do it because that's how it's always been done, and that's what all their friends are doing. Piracy today is done for the sake of piracy.

  We have ended up in this terrible place where people steal other people's work, without even thinking about it.

  Take my books. Yes, you have to pay for them (about $8 - or free via a subscription), but once you have done that, you can download them either as a PDF, Kindle or an ePub file.

  There are no limitations for how you can use them. There is no DRM. You can use it on any device, in iBooks, Kindle, Kobo, Nook, in the browser ... anywhere. And you can copy it to as many devices as you want.

  In fact, it's so open that, if you wanted to, you could unpack the ePub file and convert it into whatever other format you desire. Just open it in Calibre, and save it as whatever you want.

  If you want the raw HTML (ePub is just a packaged HTML file), just rename the ePub file to zip and double click on it.

  So when people start to pirate my books, they don't do it because I'm limiting them. They do it just to be annoying. This is just hooliganism.

  I feel really hurt when I see that my books are being pirated. I spent months writing them. I spent months trying to figure out how give my readers the highest amount of value. There is no ethical reason for pirating them.

  It's just... ouch!

  It's really sad that piracy has evolved, from being a question of ethics, into a state where people can't tell the difference between right and wrong.

  It's the same when Louis C.K. made his show available to everyone online, in a non-DRM format, for $5. Within seconds the torrents sites were filled with pirated copies of it.

  

  Here we have a guy who is sticking it to the RIAA and MPAA, and as a thank you, people still pirate his content. Sure, he also makes a lot of money, but the problem is that piracy has turned into a 'new normal' for no other reason than to pirate.

  I understand why people pirate a movie if the movie studio is blocking you from seeing it on Netflix. Or if they delay the release for six months in one country while all your friends can see it today in another. I fully understand that. And I do not see a problem with it.

  But it's bad when people are pirating the good guys content. Those who spent time creating value for you, and giving it to you just the way you want.

  There is no excuse for that.

  The real problem

  This leads us to the real problem with piracy today. Because people pirate just to pirate, the market is getting skewed in favor of the past.

  Let me explain how this works:

  Imagine that you have $200 left to spend, and you want to buy a new pair of shoes, a new iPad bag (because you feel your old one is looking a bit out-of-date), a couple of books, a movie, an XBOX game, a magazine subscription, and Will.I.am's latest album.

  

  Clearly, you can't do that because the total sum is more than the $200 you have. So you have to make a choice. And because of piracy, this choice is suddenly very simple. You buy the physical goods, and pirate the digital ones:

  

  Do you see how piracy skews the market? Instead of people making a decision on the value of each product, the physical products win by default, as you can always get the digital products for free.

  This is a huge problem, and one that most pirates don't realize that they are causing. Pirates force us to live in the old world, where the only products worth buying are the physical ones. It's preventing the digital world from being a viable business model.

  I don't mind piracy if it was equal for all. If we had 3D printers and replicators capable of pirating iPad bags and Nike Shoes, then it would be alright. Because then people would choose what to buy based on what they really like.

  Media analysts (including myself) keep telling people to 'make yourself worth paying for'. And that's true. But not even Louis C.K. could convince everyone that $5 was worth paying for, while thousands of people are perfectly willing to pay $45 to go to a theater ... a place where you also have to pay for beverages, the trip on the subway, and so forth.

  Piracy is keeping us in the past. It's preventing the digital world from being able to stand on its own.

  We all understand why piracy exists. We all agree that many media companies are behaving idiotically by limiting and discriminating markets (and devices). We get that!

  But piracy is not killing the music industry. It's killing our digital future. I don't care about the RIAA or the MPAA, or the publishing associations who are trying to prevent us from being connected.

  I care about the rest of us, the digital natives. People who want to embrace the digital world 100%. People who want to give you everything they have, any way you want. And it's these people who are hurt the most by piracy,

  The RIAA is never going out of business (in fact, it's growing). But the digital natives are struggling because we need your support to create a digital-only business.

  My mom, for instance, runs a small knitting and tea shop. As a part of this, she creates knitting patterns that teach her customers how to create their own clothes. It takes days, sometimes weeks, to create these instructions, and she had to hire someone to test them out to make sure it's perfect. And each knitting pattern costs only $5 to buy.

  

  But her knitting instructions are, like my books, being pirated on knitting sites. And when she confronts some of the worst offenders, they tell her that she is an idiot and that she should give them away for free.

  It's just sad.

  Piracy is killing the wrong people, for all the wrong reasons. It's not destroying the traditional publishers. In fact, it's helping them by keeping us in the past. Piracy is really destroying the new world of digital creators. People who want to do it right!

  Think, before you pirate!

  
  

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• Making Sense of Social Media Monitoring and Sentiment Analysis - (by @baekdal)
  

  Ever since social media started to take off, so has the growing industry of social media monitoring and subsequently, the art of sentiment analysis. I have written about it several times before, for instance in 2011 when I wrote "I Would Rather Have Bacon Than Klout".

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

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• Always Take a Step Back Before You Act - (by @baekdal)
  

  One of the main problems in today's world of media is that 99.9% just react on impulse. The result is very often that instead of bringing people useful information, we end up just wasting people's time, or worse, leading people to believe something that simply isn't true.

  In the analytics world we call this correlation versus causation. But it's just a simple principle that whenever something happens, your first impulse is to take a step back and ask yourself: "What is really going on here?"

  One very simple example of this:

  Last week someone hacked into Associated Press' Twitter account and posted a fake message saying that there had been two bombs in the White House:

  

  Apart from getting a ton of Retweets by people who were just reacting to this fake news, Wall Street apparently noticed it too. Because within seconds, the Dow Jones Industrial Index dropped as automated systems started selling shares in US companies.

  

  The combination of the fake tweet and the knee-jerk reaction reaction on Wall Street caused the press (new and old) to start spewing out their pageview optimized stories, telling us how one tweet could destroy our economy.

  Or as Reuters wrote:

  A single fake tweet from the Associated Press account that briefly roiled financial markets on Tuesday, driving the Dow Jones industrial average down about 145 points, vividly reaffirmed the fearsome, near-instantaneous power of the 140-character message.

  Hacker communities were celebrating, telling us much of an impact they can really have. And traditional newspapers used this incident to point out that old media, like the AP, is still important. Not to mention all the articles blaming Twitter and social media in general, in the usual technopanic way.

  Okay, I agree that it's interesting that the Dow Jones could drop because of a single tweet. But let's take a step back and really look at what this is.

  Duration

  Let me start with how fast the market reacted. The duration of this drop, from the time it started dropping, to the time it had recovered, only lasted 7 minutes. That was it.

  So... no, one hacked tweet cannot destroy our economy (sorry hackers). This is the connected world. Sure, someone can send out a fake tweet, but it will be caught and corrected just as quickly.

  There is no lasting effect here. And as a result, the economy was never in danger. Sure, a few traders probably lost a bit of money. But who really cares about that?

  At the most, this is relevant as an article about the problem with automated trading systems, but those stories are only relevant to be published in the financial press, not in mainstream media.

  Impact

  Let's go back to graph above, which was the one most news sites used. The drop looks scary, doesn't it. As the CNBC wrote:

  Stocks ended a volatile day with strong gains Tuesday after taking a sharp nosedive in midday trading, following a false Twitter post of two explosions in the White House.

  But this graph is highly misleading. They are not taking a step back.

  Here is the very same graph, showing the Dow Jones for 2013:

  

  Do you see the drop? It's that tiny little dot up at the very corner of the graph. Let me zoom in a bit:

  

  That was all that happened...

  There is no danger here. Nor any cause for a technopanic. Hackers can't control our economy via a tweet. The market didn't really quaver. It didn't rocket the stock market. Nor did it send the Dow Jones plunging.

  This is a non-story. Nothing really happened here from the perspective of the public. In fact, this incident was so insignificant that it didn't even register on the daily averages.

  At the most, this is relevant as an article about the problem with automated trading systems, but those stories are only relevant to be published in the financial press.

  This is the kind the story that we get when people just react to news without thinking.

  So far we can find more than 10,000+ articles about this on Google News, and most of these articles are just knee-jerk reactions causing completely unnecessary panic for the public.

  Is there a problem with how Wall Street works? Oh yes, a big problem! Is this caused by automated trading systems and fake tweets? No, that's not the problem at all.

  We hear about these dangers all the time. But the reality is that for anything to ruin the economy, you first have to have a lasting effect, and automated systems and tweets are expressly designed for short term reactions.

  There is no lasting effect here and, hence, no lasting damage (or even a noticeable one). The problem with Wall Street is at a completely different level. Write about that, instead of non-stories about a fake tweet.

  But above all, the point of this article is to illustrate the importance of always taking a step back before you act.

  We don't need 10,000 articles about something that really doesn't matter. We don't need to make people scared of tweeting (as one newspaper wrote, "be careful what you tweet"). We need value, perspective, insight, and experience, and not knee-jerk reactions. And this is not just about news articles. We see the same thing with studies that people make and with the type of content that brands posts online.

  It's doesn't take a longer to think. It's simple a frame of mind. You need to train your mind so whenever you see something you ask yourself: "What is really going on here?"

  Whether you are a newspaper or a brand. People are going to love you for it!

  
  

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• The Old World of Media Licensing - (by @baekdal)
  

  Last night as I was finishing an article, I was sharply reminded by just how ridiculous the media licensing industry is. Not only are they still living in a print world, they also requiring all their customers to live in that world, preventing publishers like me from licensing their products and using them online.

  But before we go into that, let me tell you a story of something that happened to me ten years ago. At the time, I was working for one of the largest fashion companies in the country, as their 'digital manager'.

  This was back when the TV series "Sex and the City" was in full swing and extremely popular. And since one of our brands (we had several) was right smack in the middle of that target group, our marketing team thought it would be a great idea to get one of the 'Sex and the City' actors to model for us.

  The result was that we hired Kristin Davis to be our model for three months.

  

  It was a brilliant idea from the perspective of advertising. We have the right products, the right target market, the right celebrity, and it was all done at the right time and place. In terms of ROI, this campaign was a huge success.

  ...except for me.

  You see, when the CEO and CMO arranged the deal with Kristin's agent, they completely forgot about the web. The result was they only bought the print-only rights to use Kristin Davis in our advertising.

  They came back with all these wonderful pictures, I started working on creating a plan for how to create the best digital campaign imaginable. Until someone remembered to tell me that I couldn't use any of the pictures online.

  Wait... what??? Are you freaking kidding me? I can't use this? What the heck I'm supposed to do then?

  I ended up being forced to create a digital strategy that used none of the pictures, nor did it mention Kristin Davis or Sex and the City in any way. When people went to our websites, we were only showing our normal (and very boring) model pictures.

  Can you imagine how surreal this must have seen for our customers and shops? Here we had this brilliant print campaign, but when people went to our website to learn more, there was no mention of it. All because the images were licenced for print only.

  Actually, it was even worse than that. The images were not only restricted to a single format, they were also restricted for use within a specific time. Which meant that we had to point out to the press that they couldn't use them in their magazine if the next issue exceeded that limit.

  It was just awful. And I don't blame the CEO or CMO for this. It's wasn't their fault. The fault was in how media licensing works in the world of print. It's designed around these limitations. That's the business model.

  Of course, even with all these limitations, the campaign was still a huge success. But just imagine how much more we could have done if we had been allowed to use it digitally as well.

  Surely this is not how it works today, Right?

  It's now been ten years, so surely in today's connected world where digital is taking over everything, this *must* have been fixed? But no.

  These forms of licensing limitations are just as much a problem today as they were 10 years ago. The world of media licensing is still operating as if digital was never invented.

  Take Getty Images. It's a wonderful photo site filled with perhaps the best pictures you could ever want. The quality of the pictures on Getty Images is often far higher than what you will find anywhere else. But the licence for Getty Images' rights managed photos are impossible to use in the digital world.

  Last night, as I mentioned, I needed to find a photo and, after failing to find anything useful anywhere else, I turned to Getty Images. Within seconds I found just the photo I needed, and decide to buy a license for it. Except, this was what I got:

  

  First I was asked to define what the image would be used for. It makes sense to differentiate between advertising and editorials. With advertising, you imply an association with the people or places in the images and the brands using it, and that not always acceptable.

  With editorials, you don't have the same association. So it makes sense to define that some images can or cannot use for one or the other. But Getty Images goes a step further and demands that you define whether you are a newspaper, magazine, broadcast, or electronic... in other words, what format it is.

  What if I'm doing a broadcast that is used on more than one channel? Getty Images still lives in the old world of single channels. That world doesn't exist anymore. Look at New York Times. They have a printed, web and app newspaper. But on Getty images you have to choose only one.

  Secondly, when choose 'editorial - electronic', you are only allowed to archive this image for up to five years. In other words, after five years, you are required to delete the article from your site.

  I don't delete old article. Why would I do that? This a print mentality where the use of the material is limited to the print cycles. On the web, our content doesn't have an expiration date.

  Next I had to define the specifics of how I'm going to use the image:

  

  First they asked me about circulation, yet another thing that only exists in print. I have no idea what the circulation of an article is before I publish it. In print, you know because you define how many magazines you are going to print before you put them on the market.

  In the digital world, we publish the article and the circulation is then determined by how popular the article is, and how much it is shared. I have articles on this site that has been seen more than one million times, and others that only reached a couple of thousand people.

  I cannot define my 'circulation' because circulation is a print metric.

  Even I choose to define it as, for instance, 100,000, it would completely wreck my site. Imagine if I purchased a license for 100,000, and the article then became so popular that more than those wanted to see it. Once I had reached 100,000 page views, I would be required to delete the article.

  That simply isn't acceptable in the digital world.

  Next they asked me about distribution, yet another element from the print world. This is the same print mentality that causes so many magazines to create iPad only apps.

  The digital world is not defined by a single channel. It's defined by multiple channels. Imagine if I limited the image license to tablet and mobiles only. I would be required to disable sharing because, once people start to share an article, they are doing on the web.

  This is just ridiculous.

  Finally, I'm asked to define the duration, again another model from print. it makes a lot of sense when you are publishing monthly magazines. A monthly magazine needs a license for a monthly duration.

  But the digital world doesn't work this way. We don't operate with durations. We don't know when something is going to end. The digital world is endless by default.

  As you can see, not only do I have to define the duration (which I can't), I'm also limited to a maximum of two years. This just makes no sense from a digital perspective. It only makes sense in the print world where keeping something alive means doing extra print runs.

  Next, Getty images ask me to define the target market, and yes, you guessed it, it's yet another thing that only exists in print.

  

  In the print world, where you are limited to geographic regions (usually defined by country borders), it makes sense to only buy a photo for the country where you are selling your publication. But in the digital world, we don't have the limitation of geographic boundaries.

  When I publish an article on this site, it is seen by people from more than 150 different countries. In the digital world, we don't define target markets in geographic terms. We define our target market in terms of the interest of people.

  So the only way for me to license this picture is to buy a license for every single country on the planet. It's highly unlikely that I will get any visitors from Bhutan, I still have to buy the rights for it. I don't get to decide where you are coming from.

  Also, if I have already defined my circulation, why do I have to define the country? If I buy the license for 100,000 views, what does it matter if it is in Germany, France, or both? It's just a useless limitation ... even in print.

  But because print is naturally defined geographically, they insist I define it. They are creating limitations for the sake of limitations.

  Yes, I could just buy royalty free images, but those are often more expensive and not as good as the rights-managed ones. But the problem here is that these licenses are impossible to use in the digital world.

  I didn't understand this 10 years ago, and I certainly don't understand this today. But this is the fundamental problem with the world of media. Whenever a newspaper create an iPad only app, when a TV station limits a show to US viewers on HULU only, when a book publisher insists that a book cannot be purchased from Amazon.com by a person living in the UK, or when brands limits shipping to only a few countries, it's the same print mentality there is at play.

  What people need to understand is that the digital world doesn't revolve around the format. That's not what this is about. The digital world is eliminating the limitations of the past.

  • We don't have a single channel
  • We don't have circulation figures
  • We don't have a limited publication cycle
  • What we publish doesn't end after one month
  • And we are certainly not defined by a country border

  If you want to succeed in the world of digital, you have to let go of the limitations of the past. And when you do, you will realize just how much of today's media world that is defined by those very same limitations.

  It's the limitations that prevent you from embracing the digital world. Stop defining your business around them!

  
  

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• The Complex Path to Sale - (by @baekdal)
  

  Google Analytics is out with a new nifty tool that allows you to explore the complexity of the customer journey for different industries.

  Disclaimer: I was hired by Google as an adviser on this report.

  I want you to specifically look at the media vertical. As you can see, most sale requires several days of decision making, compared to the other industries where most sale happens on the first day.

  

  What is really interesting about this study is just how big a difference there is between verticals.

  Consumer packaged goods, travel and finance are almost exclusively based on instant sale. And this is where you need to understand the purchasing funnel. People don't just buy financial services on impulse. Instead, it's far more likely that what we are seeing here is that people are researching what to buy before they go to their bank or other financial service.

  The same with travel. People don't just buy a trip to Taiwan. Instead they spend a long time deciding if they want to go, and then once they have decided what to do, they go to the travel site, find a good offer, and take it.

  On the other hand, people probably don't think too much about what groceries to buy. They check their kitchen before they leave and buy what they need as quick as possible. You don't need to spend four days of interactions to decide what milk to buy.

  BTW: In the future this is likely to change. Once people start to buy groceries online, many will add products to their shopping cart as their run out (instead of managing shopping lists), and by the end of the week they will order all the products in the cart.

  With media products, however, people do spend a lot of time going to the store contemplating if they should or should not buy that new tablet or TV.

  This study helps you see these patterns. But it's up to you to figure out why people are behaving in one way with one type of products and another way with another type of products.

  We also see that average order value goes up with longer purchasing paths. There can be several reasons for this. It might simply be that people buy more expensive products and because of that take longer to decide.

  We can't really tell from this data, but it's something that you as a brand should look into. Why do some people take longer to buy some products? Is there a correlation between the time spent and the cost of the product? Is there a correlation between time spent and the type of products?

  You need to answer 'why' ... because the data can only tell you 'what'.

  But it's a very interesting study, and it's part of the shift to the next generation analytics where 'multi' is the new normal.

  
  

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• The Shocking State of Newspaper Analytics - (by @baekdal)
  

  Here is a case of the blatantly obvious. Journalism.co.uk posted the story that the New York Times has now set up an analytics team so they can learn something from what articles their readers interact with...

  Really? It took them this long to do this?

  Aron Pilhofer, who also runs the Times's interactive news team, social media team and communities team said:

  We know next to nothing in the newsroom about how people consume our content, whether we're publishing in the right way, whether all the time and effort we're putting into creating these interactives actually work

  Although the metered paywall has been in operation for two years now, this data stays on the business-side of the company, which is kept separate from editorial.

  Now, with a dedicated analytics team for editorial, the aim is to help the newsroom "make data-driven decisions" where appropriate, Pilhofer said.

  I don't think everything should be approached that way. I'm not even sure most things should be approached that way, but having the ability to make data-driven decisions, I think is super important.

  How could they set up a paywall without sharing the usage data with the people who had to bring value to it? And they are not even sure that most things should be approached this way? Are you kidding me?

  This is just surreal. I'm absolutely shocked that the NY Times is only now starting to bring analytics into their newsroom. This should have happened 15 years... shocked. In fact, this should have happened 50 years ago, back when they were only doing print.

  Of course, this is nothing new. Pretty much every single newspaper I have worked with over the past two years are separating their editorial teams from their 'innovation teams'. The people designing their digital future have no influence over the editorials of the newspaper, and the editorial teams have no insights into why or how people are consuming content differently in the digital world ... except for page views.

  For instance, I do not know of a single newspaper who can tell me which type of articles that create the most amount of new subscribers. I have yet to come across anyone who can tell you what articles create the highest level of loyal readers, or what type of articles that creates the most valuable form of sharing. Most newspapers are not even measuring actual readers.

  It's just shocking.

  In the same sense, last month Huffington Post talked about how they were planning to use reader engagement to influence what is displayed on the front page (and how), as if that was something new.

  How do they think Amazon works?

  It's shocking!

  The simple truth is that the newspaper industry can no longer exists by default. In the past, people would a buy a newspaper for the same reason they bought a TV. It was just something you needed to have. But in the connected world, this is no longer true.

  The reality today is that newspapers have become brands. Brands that has to sell a product. And like every other brand, you need to understand what is that your customers want, what they need, why they need it, how they need it and when they need it. This means you need to look at your analytics.

  I'm not saying that you should just follow the numbers. That's not it. The thing about analytics is that it only tells what happened in the past. It's your job to analyze this in such a way that you can identify the patterns, the trends, and the needs and desires for what your readers want you to do in the future.

  But analytics is the key to all of this, mixed with your expertise and your influence.

  I have written two reports about analytics specifically for publishers:

  The first one was in 2011 called "The Future of Analytics for Publishers". It's a good starting point, but it's also somewhat traditional in its approach.

  So in 2012, I took this a step further with the report "Modern Analytics for Subscription Based Media".

  And if you think this is only a problem for newspapers, think again. We see the same problem with most brands. Analytics from a brand's webshop is often only shared within marketing and possibly sales. But the product team, the ones responsible for coming up with new products, rarely (if ever) see the data.

  In a world of abundance, data is what helps you understand how to distinguish yourself from your competitors. Use it to win.

  
  

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• The Decision to Buy, And Defining The Value of The Conversion - (by @baekdal)
  

  Last month +Avinash Kaushik posted the article "Excellent Analytics Tip #23: Align Hits, Sessions, Metrics, Dimensions!", and it's absolutely wonderful.

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

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• The Three Levels of Uncertainty and the Boston Bombings - (by @baekdal)
  

  Yesterday, we all read about the terrible experience at the Boston Marathon. Two bombs exploded near the finishing line, killing three people so far and injuring 173. For anyone to commit such an act is beyond understanding or comprehension. The Boston Marathon is not a political event, or even an event associated with a certain country. It's an international event where people gather from all over the world to do what they love the most.

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

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• The Even Scarier Graph for Newspapers (and partly brands) - (by @baekdal)
  

  Recently, The Atlantic posted the article "This Is the Scariest Statistic About the Newspaper Business Today". In it you can find this graph illustrating the decline of print advertising in relation to the increase in online advertising.

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

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