The Web Uncovered

If you are a technology nut like me, you are always interested in trying out the latest applications or tools available. Several months ago, I was lucky enough to get an early preview invite to join Google’s new communication and collaboration tool, Google Wave. The online tool is reinventing email one wave (conversation) and blip (message) at a time.

The platform combines email, instant messaging and online collaboration into a real-time system. It can be used by two people or a whole group of people. Instead of cc’ing a person on a message, you can add that person to the conversation. Users apart of a wave can follow messages in real-time, play back the entire conversation timeline and even add to or edit any part of the conversation.

While it seems confusing at first, these videos shine a light on Google Wave’s simplicity and functionality: http://simurl.com/simplewave

Although my time on Google Wave has been limited, I can already see the value in this new form of online collaboration. Instead of having an inbox full of emails back and forth between two people or a group of people, Google Wave provides a live timeline of events and updates with full editing functionality. You can even collaborate on documents in real-time as a group and embed photos, videos and maps in to the conversation.

More than one million users are actively using Google Wave in preview mode. New outlets and publications like RedEye Chicago are hosting daily waves to discuss timely and relevant topics with their readers.

There are still some kinks for Google to work out, but once Google Wave advances past preview mode and catches on with the masses, I can see this as a revolution in the business world. A

Blip me at www.googlewave.com/jabraha7

Written by Twitter Handle @jabraha7

Marshall Mcluhan often criticized poor media placement based on the effects of the medium upon the content which was being presented. He best defined these terms by separating media into categories of “hot” and “cool.” In short:

Hot Media is media that is ready-made, in that it requires very little participation from the media consumer. Action movies are hot media, as little is left to the imagination, and it has a beginning, middle, and end.

By contrast, Cold Media, requires a certain level of participation, whether it be imagination, input, a vote. Forcing interaction between the medium and consumer, it wears away the consumers’ ability to remained detached.

Is the internet hot or cold?
Neither is the best answer, both is another possible one. While video, radio, and other inherently hot media are available, they often times can have a cool aspect such as video responses, polls, blogging, and more. It becomes paradoxically both. Facebook is detached enough that you are safe in the confines of your own home, that is completely cool in that all of its content is user generated.

The Takeaway: When creating anything online, you want it be initially hot enough to attract your audience, but cool it down quick enough that your audience response in the way you want, whether it be to buy now, read more, or tell a friend.

While there are many aspects to running an effective online marketing campaign, including video is seen as imperative, especially if there is an intent for going viral. The billion dollar deal that brought Youtube into the Google fold only reiterates this fact. Before we can appropriately address how to approach the use of video in online marketing, we need to understand why it works with people.

Coming back to Marshall Mcluhan, media is either hot or cold, either interactive or ready-made. The internet transcends these boundaries. I won’t divulge too much here as this is a post of it’s own. However, beyond the fact that humans are visually-based, and that culturally we put a visual emphasis on everything (“’see’ what I mean?”), video has been and will likely be the quintessential example of hot media. Whether it is a cooking recipe, a guitar lesson, or your product commercial, people will choose a video over a typographical description 99 percent of the time.

Another reason for this is that Video is a mixed medium. It can be visual, audio, and typographical at the same time. This solidifies it as a hot medium.

The Takeaway: Taking this all into consideration, your target audience wants to come as close to experience your service, product, etc, as possible within the confines of technological ability. If you don’t have a video showcasing your value-added, your competition will, and likely already has. To have an online presence to be multisensorial in a mixed medium.

Marshall Mccluhan maybe remember for his wonderful observations of how the media and society are inseparably intertwined.  However,  the vast changes in technology since his death in 1980 has astounding ramifications for those marketing in the digital age.

If the entity providing the message is the medium, they still may be tied to the message as long as the source is credible.   The appearance of credibility is so easy to create online that it becomes increasingly difficult for media consumers to differentiate between credible sources and well-performed shams.  However, if the medium is the internet, then the message is incoherent.  There is no message on the internet.

But this is not completely dreadful news.  In fact in means that the medium becomes so constant that the only thing left is the message, even if only in hot terms.  However, the issue is that many older marketing managers see the internet as the ready-made fix-all and fail to recognize that not only can content not be developed, but that it must be done in standard marketing terms; segmentation, value-added, and placement.

The Takeaway:

Large-scale web presence requires quality content.  The internet transcends McCluhan’s hot media/cold media labels, so pictures and videos can be followed with detailed descriptions of your product or services, in a multi-sensorial approach.  Technology is great, but the more technology-savvy your target audience is, the more clearly focused your message must be.  In short, online marketing is not a bandaid for a bad marketing plan.