An Icebreaker - Read Between The Lines - thealphaswarmer project creatives

As the rain fell sporadically outside I signed into yet another day of monotonous work: encrypting, decrypting and modifying software codes for The Company. It was 8.45am, though the darkness of the sky and the musty smell in the air reminded me of how the earth seems to sigh in the early hours of the morning, just before it is awoken again by the sun creeping creeps over the horizon.  

I was feeling exhausted and depleted, like an empty reservoir standing only for the purpose of collecting water from a drip in the roof. There is much to do, but I cannot find the incentive or energy to do it.  Not even the fear of Manager Dell using my lack of application as an excuse to terminate my employment could motivate me today.  I have been told that my “optimum performance” is absolutely necessary if there is to be a successful channeling of software codes for the US’s new defense intelligence system, Maximus.

Deciding I needed to defrag my mind, I embraced the current solitude and entered a command.  Reading the next maintenance code, I was a bit taken aback when a window popped up on screen, informing me of an email sent from Mac, a colleague who was my complementary software engineer. I clicked on the link and found a spread of matrix codes that were encrypted in the language only used by the higher ranks in The Company. At the top of the email Mac had said, “Binary codes are acceptable, but not necessary.  Do you agree?.” Following was the binary codes for installing a new piece of hardware:  something that we did regularly and something that was above suspicion.   A feeling of uneasiness spread through me. I had never experienced such a thing before. Two questions circled in the air: what was Mac doing with top level codes and should I really decode them? Breach of security was a serious crime in The Company, and immediate termination of employees who use the internal email system for non-work purposes occurred.  My senses gnawed at me.  What was Mac up to?

I paused and then began decrypting the code using The Company’s top-secret encryption software, Labyrinth. It seemed like no more than one minute before the message embedded within the codes started to surface. What I read almost made me freeze and my perception of my employer flipped. Maximus had been intercepted and turned on itself. What was supposed to be our defense had now become a weapon more powerful and destructive than all the old atomic bombs. Someone, I don’t know who, had reversed the firewall function of Maximus and diverted it outside The Company. Now it had adopted a “seek, conquer and destroy” method that threatened to destabalise the autonomy of all other systems and bring them and the countries they protect under its command.

Naively believing my sense of horror could not get worse, I continued to scan the email.   At the bottom of the screen was a signature and from this I found that the Gatekeepers were behind it.  In second position in The Company hierarchy, they had the power to authorise the input of Maximus’ launching sequence and monitor all outside activity. The boss, Manager Dell, did not have control over them for they only answered to the Board, who were the ultimate bosses of The Company.

All I could do was ask why? Why would the Gatekeepers be behind this? Was there a mutiny going on? Or perhaps…no…it couldn’t be. I shuddered to think but then decided it must be true. The threat was coming from above. The Gatekeepers cannot act alone despite all their authority. If this were a mutiny it would have been interrupted and prevented by now. No, the Board knew what was occurring. Not only did it know, it was the one that was behind what was happening. 

At that moment another window popped up on screen. It was from Mac.

“How do you like them apples?” he said.

“I can’t believe it.” I replied. “But should we really be discussing this online? We don’t know who could be monitoring.”

“Never fear my friend,” Mac said, always confident, “I have scripted our conversation for our eyes only. It just looks like normal data entry to anyone else.”

Mac was always on top of things even though he was the most rebellious individual I had ever worked with. This was why The Company tolerated him. He was the only one who had the ability to formulate phantom worm viruses that couldnot be detected or destroyed by other systems until their missions were complete. Then they self-destruct so they can never be traced.

“I have managed to create new phantom worm viruses, they have the ability to hack into Maximus and create temporary diversions therefore allowing us to execute our disarming strategy” Mac said with obvious conceit. His ostentatious nature was always an attribute we viewed with high regard. “Once inside the control panel, we can manually disarm the launching sequence hence eliminating the imminence of its execution”.

“But how will we be able to stop everyone else forming alliances with Maximus?” I added, hoping to receive a comforting response.

“Well we cannot do much to stop the alliances, the software framework based on Maximus is too strong” Mac replied. His response plunged me into a state of defeat, I thought that there could be nothing in the world we could do, and an apocalypse had began.

Going through my files, I remembered that I once had a preliminary blueprint of the algorithm sequences for the software that governed Maximus. The Gatekeepers had given them to me as a ‘back-up’ in case the pilot software failed so that we could create another one without losing much of the logic that went through its creation. Remaining focused and persistent I searched doggedly for the file, I encrypted the Company’s archive, which my computer had priority over, and finally came across a corrupted collection of blueprint documents that were used in the initial stages of the Company’s creation.

Even though it was sort of prohibited to access things from the “old days”, the gnawing feeling would not go away. To my most pleasant surprise, I was able to open a crucial part of the blueprint document. Analyzing it, I found a way to defeat Maximus!

Following the immediate realization, I contacted Mac on the instant messaging service. By this time, the Company was informed of our rebellious plan and had set out  to come and destroy us. “Mac, Maximus is not able to extend beyond national boundaries without the assistance of satellites which need confirmation from other defence agencies in other countries” I said quickly, hoping to inform Mac of everything before our power sources were cut down. “Quick Mac! The perpetrators of this unethical act will lie to the senior delegates of other nations by saying they need their input codes for defence purposes. Send your log which contains all of the Company’s dark lies so we can get help, before it’s too late.”

Mac replied “Yes I will immediately.”

I was in suspense; the fate of the Earth depended on Mac’s transmission. The storm outside grew stronger! Lightning and rain pounded the earth as it had never before, the sounds of thunder pervaded the lines, and chaos was impending.

Whilst closing all the windows, Mac replied “I have successfully alerted the delegates of Australia, New Zealand, Europe.  The message has been sent as I received a posting confirmation. Adam, take care, the …. Are coming… oh no.. Mac… I a.”

The screen was dead, and so was Mac.  I could sense the virus coming down line to me…milliseconds only left.   Corrupting, my memory banks asked, “Is this what happened to humans, or was it only we machines who were so brutal?” 

Freedom Of Speech In Network Economies - A Subjective Perspective

As more and more consumers, employees, managing directors and big government politicians embrace blogs, wikis and public pages on social utilities like Facebook; there will always be a task force or activist group of people who have no faith in the emergence of transparency and have only intentions to restrict OR limit the nature of free speech in a Network based Economy.

An article on the Sydney Morning Herald today caught my most divine attention this morning and raised some quite peculiar issues which I believe thealphaswarmer project can address.

For starters, the Washington lobbyist from Facebook is immersed in a conception that they are allowing "too much, maybe, free speech" and that despite the compliance hurdles Facebook is trying to entertain in alignment with China's privacy law; personally I believe everyone should just take a breather and a chill-pilll and consider my proposition.

We (thealphaswarmer project and its members/fans and its professional affiliations) generally agree that there definitely is some "tensions" around the regulation of media (specifically Social Media) with the impetus being on the protection of free speech and another competing interest. In the federal courts here, we do not have an overriding protection of free speech like the United States First Amendment and therefore when governments are making the laws and the courts subsequently applying and administering them; all parties are required to balance different interests against each other.

The most common form of free-speech transgression on the internet falls under what mainstream society would attribute as "Defamation". Kimberly Heitman, on this very issue, wrote a paper entitled 'Free Speech Online: Still Shooting the Messenger' UNSW Law Journal Vol. 11, No 2, Dec 2005 (p62-64).

In this paper, Heitman identifies an apparent micro-trend eclipsing into a mainstream system of where "plantiff lawyers are advising their clients not to engage with the content provider, but, instead to threaten defamation proceedings against the Internet Service Provider".

Wow - this surely does bring into perspective the liability of internet content hosts and internet providers under State and Territory laws. More specifically, this is rather paradoxical to the outcome of the case between the Media Companies and Australias No 2. ISP (iiNet) - based in Western Australia.

In this case, what I remember (quoting Heitman) is that The Broadcast Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999 purports to exempt ISPs from any State and Territory laws - including defamation - which require monitoring of users' content or impose liability for content made available by the ISP's customers without the ISP's knowledge". 

This makes total sense! No wonder iiNet won the legal battle and they are not liable for the behaviours of their users. To me, personally, monitoring internet activity of your customers is like a totalitarian government in a 'The Minority Report' type of system - where they need measures as a pre-cursor to identification of breaches of various laws, which is not only limited to defamation but also extends to piracy and the proliferation and uptake of the "Torrent Culture".

Now I am no law professional and having only done one law subject at University (UNSW - Law In The Information Age); All I can perhaps suggest subjectively is that everyone concerned i.e interest groups and Facebook start looking into open-licensing deed systems for a) cases of privacy and b) try to shape an international framework that underpins the Creative Commons Deed Licensing System as a benchmark to define the evolution of the precedents relevant to freedom of speech and anything of that sort.


The main problem that will arise is that politicians, through cultural variance, will require a 'behavioural framework' that entertains the dissemination of laws to reflect the concerns of free speech in Network Economies.

*Article 1* Social Media In Enterprise 2.0 : The Network Economy Series

These days there has been an enormous amount of content and information flowing through the web about Enterprise 2.0 and how to specifically deploy social media tools within the enterprise that don’t

a) go stale with abandoned use 

and 

b) don’t expose people’s collaborative tendencies or lack thereof’.

Social Media relates to mainly web based tools, applications or utilities that generate and encourage conversation and activities that create degrees of participation and solidarity. Facebook, a social networking utility which falls under the overriding branch of social media, is an exemplary example of what encapsulates the essential features of the Web 2.0

However, despite the utilisation of a cocktail of web and mobile technologies; organisations are still finding it very hard to create that type of idealistic environment with social media (e.g wikis); and things are not turning out the way higher level management thought it would when they championed the implementation of social media in their businesses in the first place.

A recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald entitled “Not every blog has its day – Lia Timson has some interesting points. As a point of reference, it should be noted that the innovation manager of Deloitte Australia – Simon Townsend – has a strong belief in how the general wisdom of the crowds shape their own direction. Within these contexts, the crowds will have tribes or castes of people who prefer one tool over another; as he puts it “the failing of wikis is that they are not completely intuitive. Not everyone likes that way of working”.

The article delineates the urgency of comprehending and acknowledging the “human being part of the equation”. This view is concurrent amongst others such as Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer whose primarily role is to drive “practice [in collaborative web based tools ], not just interest”.

In all totality, Deloitte’s Townsend’s says that something will be more like twitter and less like Wikipedia; and it will have to be intuitive and be underpinned by a robust databank with advanced search and tagging functions. At Deloittes, half of the company’s 4500 staff use the micro blogging software Yammer – which is very similar to Twitter except that organisations can purchase a “claim” to their network and gain administrative control of their employee’s ecosystem.

As with most social media software, it all starts out with a simple executed function such as a request for business question (in Deloitte’s case). What then develops is a concurrent culmination of knowledge and expertise which creates a repository of information from all tiers of individual expertise.

So in this light, one can appreciate there has to be some kind of high level social media maturity model. Lets classify them in stages shall we:

Stage 1: Pioneering – Where the three perspectives [Employee;Organizational;Technological] are aligned against a bottom up; 

open source chartered technology and platform 

architecture; together with a high social media focus 

aligned against a solid vision with the right leadership and 

governance.

Stage 2: Facilitating – Again, all perspectives are taken into account with more emphasis on the social/employee perspective to encourage community and a centralized approach to team building. Enterprise tools at this stage could start to be embedded within the social media tools scoped out in the pioneering stage.

Stage 3: Strategic Operations – In Stage 3; On demand and user centric technology platforms are rolled out initially and aligned against the overall organizational perspective and ergonomics. Although the tendency during this stage is to induce a freeze through Lewin’s force field analysis and induce a pull type of behaviour in employees which induces a higher propensity for participation and technology adoption.

We can surely appreciate the complexity which arises when digging into the blueprints and tasks schedules for teams involved in any facilitation or creation of technology platforms. In fact, the hardest part would be to align the existing capabilities of staff with cross and up-skilling. Different organisations have various approaches for coaching and people development, but in today’s Network Economy; what is required is something that aligns capabilities of teams with the necessary etiquette and know-how on using the plethora of free web based technologies out there. 

In addition, to maintain congruency and a degree of control or moderation over employee behaviour and discourse (think Deloitte with Yammer); companies need to actually create a standardised behavioural system on team members defining how they are to achieve sustainability in agility, integrity and still manage all the changes to systems and processes and not to mention re-deployments during times of significant organisational change.

At the moment, I strongly believe the only way to achieve team-oriented outcomes is to create a clear and public accountability mechanism that ensures total transparency and optimistic outcomes. In my experience and affiliations with one of my root sources of inspiration, Bioteaming and the founder of this school of thought – Ken Thompson – I have learnt that the future of work in a network economy will be based on self-organising teams which are highly proficient on internet and cloud based applications.

Bioteaming as a business practice will emerge as the 

new Team 2.0 in the greater World 2.0 spectrum. As 

Ken Thompson puts it

“As enterprises gradually decentralize their operations 

and new networked business ecosystems start to find 

their way into profitable niche marketplaces, virtual, 

networked business teams gradually emerge as the 

wave of the future.

To be successful, virtual, networked business teams 

need a strategic framework in which to operate. They 

also need good planning and in-depth project analysis, 

effective and accessible technologies, constant 

coaching, systematic fine-tuning, feedback processes 

and the full understanding that their success cannot 

be determined by a pre-designated set of 

communication technologies by itself”

So this basically sums it up and defines the need for virtual teams to flourish with new working practices based on simple principals of mutual trust. 

If you are therefore looking for a reference to where to start on how to engineer your Team 2.0 – visit Ken Thompson’s shared knowhow blog www.bioteams.com and specifically this article http://www.bioteams.com/2005/04/06/bioteaming_a_manifesto.html and take interest in the link to the Change This dot com article.

 ==================================================================

Ken Thompson is an expert practitioner in the overall sphere of social media and sales optimization together with delivering keynote conference speeches and in house consultancy workshops. His direct speciality lies in utilising real time simulations, creating high performing teams, incubating business networks, social media and sales optimization and a plethora of team building workshops rooted in biological theory. He has been the prime source of inspiration for my blog: thealphaswarmer. 10/03/2011

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***Article 3*** [ The Network Economy - The N Gen and Employee Retention ]

With “81% of all organisations percei[ving] [employee] turnover as having a negative effect on their effectiveness”[1]; how can organisations in todays network economy engage their workforce in a cycle of continual excellence that leads to high employee retention?

To really dig into this we need to firstly analyses the fundamentals that define a Network Economy [ since like I haven’t really done that in the introductory post as effectively as I would like to in hindsight ].

Kelly and Liebowitz in a publication I have which I will scan on my Google Picasa public page soon indicates that a Network Economy is more like a “all for one and one for all” type of economic system made up of millions of different types of networks – where a network – per se – can be anything from users to a forum, mailing list subscribers and facebook fan page members, collaborative or networked businesses, computers, trucks and even fax machines!

Now when this is put into context, we can appreciate that businesses have always relied on a network of any king – whether be its supply chain or vendors or even campaigns that incite word of mouth advertising. Therefore, the concept of the Network Economy is not a new concept; but more so the result of an alchemy of industry trends, technological advancement and global intellectual appreciation which consequently manifests in the form of exemplary examples of network economics at work.

A very vivid example would be the Blizzard Network which incubates and actively self-propagates an active subscriber base that interacts with a global network of gamers in a computer generated fantasy world.  These types of virtual worlds are prime examples of the increasing popularity of collaborating or finding alternative lifestyles through the power of the internet. This provides anyone with a poignant point of reference to understand the mechanics of how the future of work may be i.e. virtual avatars and real time simulations.

So basically, to be successful in maintaining your employees in anticipation of this paradigm shift, businesses need to understand a) the changing nature of relationship management with employees and more significantly b) the N-Generation as an army nurtured through the rise of the internet.

This new generation of workers have a new work ethic which aligns themselves to the interests and paradigms of their time. Things such as openness, freedom, authenticity and innovation are endemic attributes each one possesses.

Therefore, attracting what is known as N-Gen Capital will require companies to revamp their employee development model from recruiting, training and retaining to initiating their development and helping them evolve their relationships and capabilities.

Now these are just the basics! The complexity arrives when organisations need to align their research and people departments with a seamless integration of the new workforce with existing organisational values and systems. So things like what is the role of technology in an N-Gen workforce and how N-Gen norms will change management will arise in all levels and forms.

Attraction and retention will take a whole new form with individual and organisational influences requiring a flexible approach in creating a culture of engagement to accommodate this new breed of worker.

Doesn’t this sound like an excellent means to promote a pay rise for yourself guys? Go for gold!

---

[1] Source: TalentDrain statistic sourced from slideshare.net

**Article 2**[ The Network Economy : Doom or Bloom ]

Right, thealphaswarmer seems to be getting some interesting traffic these days and most of them are from business oriented enterprises. So, we will start by saying that did you know that embracing “work anywhere” can reduce your HR/staffing costs by a whopping 40%!!??

As the baby boomers reach transitionary retirement and start accessing their preservation benefits (superannuation), there is a literal army of Generation Y and younger who are emerging into the workforce.

This generation is like no other, equipped with astute emotional intelligence and discerning antennae for searching ‘what’s new and happening’ in I guess every dimension. I mean this new workforce is now capable of ‘broadcasting’ information about anything ranging from who is dating who within their social circles to intensive feedback or tribulations about services and products in what we now appreciate as the Network Economy.

Information flows like open rivers, asymmetries exist only for a small time (I mean traders who look for arbitrage openings only have minutes if not seconds to respond – hence the proliferation of artificial intelligence software systems used by traders). 

These days, before a prospective interview, job seekers can run complex (and often real time) searches about conversations about that employer, company, its products/services or even about its people. The Network Economy facilitates these conversations in what we can now attribute as the world wide web 2.0 transitory into the www 3.0.

Now back to the point; what would the new worker value? From traditional values to emergent ones; aspiring to the management hierarchy is now outstripped by the dissolution of fear to change jobs frequently. New roles will emerge. Companies will need people to fill positions such as Collective Intelligence Officer, Ecotects to things like Neurological Training Officer.

Amongst the change or manifestation of new roles and career pathways is the core requirement that the future worker be highly social, highly collective and be able to tap into and contribute to the intelligence of crowds.

With the rise of another field – which will be another volume in fact – Enterprise 2.0 in the future of work means that knowledge management will take a whole new perspective. Aligned with the emergence of new roles such as Collective Intelligence Officer (as mentioned above) will be the utilisation of collective platforms, predictive markets, crowdsourcing and wikis to a whole new level.

Co-working in its own right will be re-defined as the means to band together in an ad hoc fashion to create infrastructure and community through diverse means including virtual worlds and environments which enhance augmented cognitive abilities and coordination skills will become innovation imperative.

Complex computational systems will treat everything as a multivariate algorithm; from crowd dynamics to staffing and real time administration of departments such as administration and customer contact centres.

With all this in light – its strongly foreseeable that tertiary courses within social sciences, environmental sustainability and change management will equip the worker of the Network Economy with an arsenal of tools to create, sustain and manage the future workplace and its dynamics that is upon every one of us.

**NEW KNOWLEDGE SERIES**: The Network-Economy: Doom or Bloom [Article 1]***

So, in a return blog post (NB: I haven’t blogged anything for a while now as you can see if you have been following), I aim to define what will happen over the next say five to ten years globally and ten to fifteen years locally (Australia). NB: I may be a bit rusty on my writing at first so bear with the personal monologue. Also remember, this is like a whole new series of articles so I am basically going to develop and dedicate a separate ‘mini-blog’ which is yet to be ‘named’.

Ok – so in the past twenty years we have seen the real proliferation of micro-economic reform the transition from the industrial age into what is now being referred to as the Network Economy. In this type of economy, things such as centralised decision making and mechanical business processes have evolved into democratic, participative and ‘emergent’ open processes and systems. In mediocre examples, we see the utilisation of state of the art electronic and computer infrastructure which has accommodated the rise in e-business and related tiers of business phenomena that is happening on the internet.

Of specific interest to me is how this ‘Network Economy’ will define the next transition of the business value chain – i.e. mergers, vertical and horizontal integration and most significantly, conglomerate style diversification. Now, we need to be very careful here when you look at these things separately.

Firstly (my view) – which is consistent with a report sponsored by Cisco Systems tagged the Economist Intelligence Unit: Foresight 2020. Here, I would like to talk about what the report has classified as Atomisation. Essentially, this is a state whereby it states that as “network technologies” and “globalisation” proliferates;  firms will be able to “better use the world as their supply base for talent and materials. Processes, firms, customers and supply chains will fragment as companies expand overseas. As a result, effective collaboration will become more important. The boundaries between different functions, organisations and even industries will blur”. 

So basically its saying that with businesses in the network and internet age operating purely on an e-business, value-laden model will need to seek other like minded or complementary businesses for strategic partnership. These partnerships form the basis of intra-company collaboration and will define how value (through better product/service) will be delivered to the customer or supply chain partners.

So, with Atomisation, effective collaboration becomes the point of focus and organisations will need to develop powerful conversational frameworks (aka ‘rubrics’) to cultivate this culture of ‘reasonable enquiry’ and understanding of clients (internal or external) needs.This like ‘needs analysis’ will take a whole new form and shape and we will also have the emergence of ‘financial supermarkets’ which require project focus on product innovations in ‘white labeling’ or anything that creates vertical value-add to the business model (i.e distribution partners).

Now its interesting to take a slight tangent here – I mean all the business speak and nerds these days always talk about cost right? Ofcourse they do! Now my perspective which aligns with the report prophesizes that although retail face to face branches or anything of that sort to offer financial products and services will exist – but – with a much limited function.

State of the art contact centre technologies that integrate social media and targeted campaigns such as the experiential marketing post I blogged earlier will mean that finding growing demand for advice on managing personal wealth outside of disappearing final salary pension schemes, including helping individuals to invest funds under defined-contribution pensions. Such self-directed investments will, over time, greatly exceed the volume of investments managed under final salary or defined-benefit pension schemes, particularly as pension funds gradually lose their tax-advantaged status owing to fiscal pressures. This is aligned with the directive predicted by Mr Watt of Martin Currie Investment Management where “individuals rather than organisations will make pension decisions…there will be more savings outside of pension funds, and more funds in wealth management. This is where niche players in fund management will find growth markets”.

Wow, I mean that’s nice! But how are you going to create that ‘kick-ass’ sales delivery ecosystem?

So for this post (which is series I of the II where I delineate the good, bad and ugly of the network economy); the network economy sheds some gloom on the sales service delivery model. For starters, I am developing my own integrated sales model yet to be known. Open to feedback, comment or send me an email!!

So here it goes, we all know that in todays dynamic world sales conversion is contingent to the value of the conversation.

Conversation is graded with higher grades equalling higher probability to transfer to the conversion or sales close part. All contact centres have some kind of call quality dictionary on what is acceptable in these instances (or compliance frameworks per sa).

To enable these conversations, sales campaigns (internal or external to any system) need to be integrated right through to a channel to speak directly with agents who perform the conversation.

For more details on this, lets say outbound campaigns are generally tiered with each tier defined through internal or collaborative sales/business process engineering.

So lets say these are metrics, and metrics only make sense on a scorecard and maintaining focus on 1) the sale and 2) retention where relevant. This brings to mind what Stephen Corey once said about focus “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing”.

Interestingly, with this in mind, the report cites the top three skills to be the following:

In an upcoming blog post, I make detailed references to the Economist Intelligence Units Foresight 2020 report which outlines those future employees will be technologically and social media entrepreneurs with organisational incentives such as performance indicators or ceilings/floors to certain minimums or maximums to this whole sales process.

So in nut-shell, part two of series one of the Network-Economy: Doom or Bloom, we will look at this ‘future employee’. As a hint, it may have some biological references – so you nerdy scientists may be impressed!

The Idiots Guide To Experiential Marketing

In my research endeavors, practical applications and commercial activities, I have come across many forms of marketing which all have their individual jargon, lingo and paradigms. However, nothing intrigues me more than two of the following:

1) Engagement Marketing

2) Experiential Marketing

Now, Engagement Marketing is something I will discuss in detail in an upcoming post, but the focus for this article will be Experiential Marketing.

Recently, I purchased an iPad, and it is ergonomically and economically the best decision I have ever made! I can integrate all my feeds into an intelligent application known as FeedlerRSS which unifies your Google Reader account and all of your favourite feeds in one simple interface which is useful when on the train or travelling in the car.

Nevertherless, back to the topic! Experiential Marketing is something that is not comprehensively defined so I am going to have a shot at it!.

Firstly, it is marketing that focuses on creating experiences with audiences. It evolves from face to face, digital, virtual and social forms of marketing to provide a unique 360-degree perspective on the whole engagement process between consumers and their brands. Whilst it also transgresses into the Engagement Marketing spectrum, Experiential Marketing holds the distinction of creating a fully immersive brand experience by interacting with consumers and bringing the brand 'alive'. Sending an SMS message to a mobile phone is not in essence experiential marketing. What would be experiential marketing would be sending an SMS to accompany a campaign that the brand is undertaking and delivering a unique value-laden experience with that brand through the engagement this relationship yields.

Secondly, Experiential Marketing has philosophical, neurobiological, psychological and sociological theories of the consumer at heart of its campaigns. It invokes a change of mindset by creating a sense and feel of the brand in a consistent, holistic and enriching manner. Its also, like Engagement Marketing, an invitation to be involved with the brand's product or service development architecture. Experiential Marketing also also uses an approach in which logical thought, emotional response and other thought processes are used to provoke an emotional response from the consumer about the goods and services offered to them.

Now, with this foundation in place, its often a lingering conjecture that Experiential Marketing fails at gaining audience 'attention' in the 'service economy' due to the proliferation of distractions such as pop-ups, banners, SPAM email and junk mail. To address these challenges, I propose (with special thanks to Ian McGonniga) the following framework for being succession in the sphere of Experiential Marketing.


- Create Indelible Experiences: This means driving sensory responses with your audience to naturally capture and hold their attention.

- Drive And Engage In The Conversation: Too often, I have seen marketers take a broadcast approach to their messages by creating environments of singularity. The idea here is to ask questions to tell the story, to create that indelible experience mentioned above and listening, engaging and fostering conversation with your audience to build on their experience levels.

- Create Social Destinations: The World Wide Web 2.0 provides brands with a plethora of technologies and platforms to create these destinations. For example, blogs, facebook and twitter feeds coupled with YouTube channels and Flikr are invaluable tools to create whats known as architectures of participation for audiences and consumers. Whilst building these is challenging, the real value to your enterprise will come from maintaining content and conversation on these sites through an experiential focus.

- Facilitate The Backchannel: This is of particular importance as research shows that audiences are most likely to engage in social media with the intention to facilitate and influence the conversation. Its important to be omnipresent and in control of your brand perception by mitigating the negative gossips and positive gossips in any social group.

- Create A Mobile Playground: I am reading a book called Mobile as the 7th Mass Media and its undoubtable that the most persuasive distraction brands compete with during a face to face event is the mobile device. By unifying all communication channels out there, including the mobile phone, its possible to regain audience 'attention'. Its also important to leverage developments in the mashable mobile applications space to keep audiences and consumers interested and immersed in your brands message.

- Immerse Audiences In Virtual Experiences: Second Life is an exemplar of the virtual world and using virtual experiences such as brand simulations are invaluable when it comes to adding the value into your experiential marketing campag

- Always Look To The Future: Emerging technologies will always surface thorough technological development and its important to keep up with the trends.

Therefore, this is a beginners guide to leveraging the tools of experiential marketing. Perhaps after writing this, I realise what Apple was thinking when it developed the iPad and making its platform available to so many developers.