2006 In Picture

2006 is almost over and I need your help (feel free to pass this around).  I'd like to do one more visual before the end of the year, but I need YOU to provide the content in the form of an answer to this question:

What was the most significant event/aspect of 2006 in regards to marketing, advertising or user experience?

2006 was a big year between YouTube, fake blogs, 2.0 startups, the design renaissance, traditional media meltdowns and the overall customer experience.  What stands out to you?  Why?  You can be as specific or broad as you like.

I don't know what the visual will look like yet.  I'm depending on your comments for the fuel.  But I have a favor to ask.  Many of the readers here do just that—read.  I would like to invite you to participate.  Even if it's only for this time.  Some of you work in related industries for competitors.  This is a personal blog and I'm interested in personal perspectives.

If it makes sense I may use some of your words in the visual with credit of course.  So what do you say?

Comments

[Scott Weisbrod]

Here's some fodder:

- Business and design get cozier
- Blogging (55 million+ tracked by Technorati)
- Ethnography
- Branded utility
- Widgets (though I think this may be the big story of next story)
- Democratization of analytics (e.g, Google Analytics)
- Cripsin Porter + Bogusky

Looking forward to reading suggestions from others.

[Clay Parker Jones]

This sounds like a good Friday morning discussion. You're coming, right?

For me...
- Jeff Jarvis giving Dell a big, backhanded, blog-enabled slap in the face.
- Urban Spam and the advertization of (almost) every available inch.
- It was the year I started blogging. (I'm sure a LOT of people can say this one, and it's not isolated to 2006, but it's relevant for me)
- lonelygirl and the rise of "Oops Marketing"
- Fist-bumps and that sweet-ass agency pitch video
- Conversations like this begin:

Agency President: "Explain to me this 'blog' thing."

Young AE: [pauses] "Erm...well... there's these people, right? And they're writing about stuff online. And it's really easy, and search engines love it, and it's this amazing community of really engaged folks, and it's a lot of fun... but I never really thought about how to explain..."

Agency President: [interrupts] Get a blog up for us by Tuesday.

- Russell's APSotW and the beginning of free, decentralized adver-education.

- One million Flickr images geotagged in the first day of its availability.

This should be a good one.

[Mike Sansone]

Since the subject matter is 2006, Social Media (journalism, optimization, et al) and Viral Video are two cornerstones of this past year.

Have Business and Design really cozied up all over, or just in certain areas (geo or profession)?

Sure would like to see a visual on how that is happened so I can pass it around my neck of the plains. I'm not sure it's even an idea here yet.

[Scott Weisbrod]

Re: Clay's suggestion about Jeff Jarvis... let's classify that as "super empowered angry customers"; a riff on Thomas Friedman's super empowered angry individual from his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree.

[Clay Parker Jones]

Re: Mike's point about Viral Video and Social Media...

The most interesting thing for me to watch has been the huge gap between successes and failures in both areas. Seems as though the harder people try, the better chance they have of screwing something up. It seems as though there's a direct correlation between dollars input and disconnection with the actual community.

For instance, look at fixedgeargallery.com. It's probably the most web 1.0 site (from an user interface/technology perspective) but people love it and it has a huge following.

[Jon Speer]

For me, I think the whole blogsphere seems to be growing exponentially. The fact that blogs are also a "new" form of medium to reach consumers is quite significant as well.

[Cam Beck]

At the risk of sounding unoriginal, I'd say the most significant was the rise of the Internet as a viable profit center as demonstrated by the growth and acquisitions of Google, up to and including the purchase of YouTube for $1.6 billion, the stock price surging to $500/share, and the emergence of Gmail and Writely.

[Roger von Oech]

"2006 — ah yes! — it's the year I started blogging!" is a statement that can be made by many, many millions of people.

There's nothing quite like first-hand experience of a phenomenon to make it extraordinally significant in one's valuation.

[CK]

The Year of the Share Economy--companies learning to share power/control; social media enabling colleagues to share thought leadership; consumers particiating in content/video creation; the Long Tail enabling more abundance and sharing of newfound tastes/products. With the democrotization of, well, everything, we've become empowered and we've gone from a broadcast and control to a share mentality. That's significant and drives all of the above-mentioned items (even the flogs). The blogosphere wouldn't grow so exponentially if we weren't all so enthralled and energized by sharing ideas, products, services, mashups, methodologies, opinions.

Pardon me for not being more articulate (it's Monday), but the idea is there. And great idea your sharing this graphic...before it's even made :-).

[Kevin]

Another to add...Viral marketing - snakes and planes, mentos/Coke etc, and its effective use... sadly, I'm sure for some corp marketing folks - there is no presciption or process on how to effectively 'carry out' or implement viral marketing:)

[Maurizio Goetz]

2006 was the celebration of the "collaborative brands". Successful brand learnt to leave control to their customers. Amazing tools were developped during 2006. Maybe 2007 will be the year of "collaborative brand integration"

[shawnpetriw]

2006 was a year I saw something rare: a real business owner talking face-to-face with a real, non-virtual customer.

[Paul McEnany]

I think, most simply, 2006 was the year of the empowered consumer. Lots of changes are happening, and quick, but all of them are merely symptoms of a consumer armed with more tools to make both more emotional (recommendation-based) and more rational (information-based) decisions than he or she ever could before.

[jurgen wolff]

I'd say the increasing influence of product & service peer recommendations and reviews via personal websites and blogs.

[Adam]

"Metaverse"

There's so much more going on in virtual worlds than just Second Life.

[here be simon]

I'm going to be very specific and point to two events. The first would have to be the Mentos and Coke phenomenon. Why? Because it forced Coke to come to terms with the changing world, all of which was played out in public for other CEOs and Mkting Directors to see. Whether or not they truly embrace it we will have to see. The second would be the selling of YouTube, from the perspective of the UK/Europe, the sale, the figures involved and the ensuing debate about copyright forced a lot more people to notice what was happening away from their TV sets. Strange as it might seem, this was the first time a huge part of the population had heard of YouTube.

[gigi]

to me, the shining stars of this year are MySpace and YouTube

[Nick Rice]

It's all about the reversal of consumerism.

The power has always been in the hands of the consumers, but ad agencies MUST respect the user/consumer these days. The backlash is immediate and powerful.

Authenticity rules, fake gets you in a lot of trouble.

[gabby]

Nick's got it. Whether its Edelman suffering through a humiliating blog debacle or lonelygirl15 trying to pull a fast one, professionals in the online space have simply got to figure out that you cannot fake or buy authenticity. And if you're not honest with the people you're trying to reach, they will take you down several more pegs than you are prepared for.

[Toby]

To piggy-back on what Nick said, as social media becomes accepted as a "credible, marketing strategy" the importance of ensuring that no matter what type of blog is created (business, topic, character, sponsored, corporate, etc.) the Blog Mantra is kept top of mind: honesty. transparency. authenticity and throw in a little passion.

These elements underscore the importance of ethics in blogging/social media. This year we saw several times how neglecting or not understanding these concepts can question the credibilty and erode the goodwill of even large organizations.

Bottom-line I guess what I'm trying to say is ethics in social media.

One more .. blogger relations has emerged as an interesting and what will continue to play out significant subset of marketing/PR.

[brady]

With the corporate acquisition of Web 2.0 wunderkinds MySpace and YouTube, I'd have to say the death of Web 2.0... and the birth of Web 3.0 or 2.1 or whatever the they decide to call it. Once the corporations start writing zillion dollar checks the influencers out there take it as their cue to move on.

Which brings us to the real issue…CONTROL. If 2006 proved anything, it’s that advertisers, marketers, brands and agencies no longer have it. Consumers do. Consider the debate closed. The new ways in which we come to grips with that fact will determine our success.

[Jim Elliott]

2006 was a pivotal year for the user -- they gained more control over content and transactions, especially from mass marketers. As we move forward, those brand and sites that add the most experience value by enabling user control/contribution/relationships with other users and groups, will win.

[Kevin Keohane]

The year marketers shat themselves and realised they might have to (a) listen and (b) share power with consumers

[DA]

Great stuff everyone. Keep it coming!

Kevin K. I think I just shat myself after reading your comment. I think you captured a great deal with few words.

[Valeria Maltoni]

CK and Kevin K captured very nicely many of the points I could have made.

Toby talked about ethics in social media. A great point. One that is valid for all media and all communications that hope to connect.

Connectivity (you don't cut out any of the connections) as the new consciousness demands a complete body of ethics where we should be responsible for connectedness.

In essence, we should:

* Value each act of connection;
* Be responsible for sources (this is material learned through a presentation by John Timpane, Associate Editor of the Editorial
Board for the Philadelphia Inquirer);
* Be more than a receiver, be a filter;
* Be responsible for where we send information, and how we package and explain it. Context is very important;
* Regard ourselves as morally obliged to maintain an open, skeptical mind. Most of what’s worth thinking is worth debating. We should seek connections that challenge us, not only those that confirm what we already think;
* Learn how to play. Playfulness is at the heart of being human;
* Get plenty of rest. To remain responsibly connected, we should practice responsible disconnection.

The new marketplace is the conversation.

[Dustin]

Big Corp & CEO blogs

[Steve Portigal]

The rise of "camps" - unconferences, formalized informal get-togethers under new brands (FooCamp, BarCamp, MashupCamp, DCamp, MarCamp, any others) where it's all about beta/figuring it out together /bottom-up /participation. I think these events have a long way to go being valuable (do we want content? advice? interaction? networking? discussion?) and we need a range of environments to meet, but hey, it's something interesting.

[I had another in my brain but it evaporated while I was typing the last one]

[Karl Long]

For me 2006 really was a watershed year for Co-Creation. More precisely the year that the locus of value creation moved from the company to the customer. Personally i think a shift is underwiegh that rivals the industrial revolution. YouTube, myspace, flickr, yelp etc and every other 2.0 thing was providing a framework for customers to create value.

[Jessi Hempel]

I agree with much of what is above, and will avoid repitition. A second plug, though, for design as the new essential component to business.

A shout out to the OK Go treadmill video. (Check out the USA Today story on it - smart piece of journalism.)

And one thing that hasn't been mentioned: Algorithms Algorithms Algorithms. Who needs gut instinct with alogithmic formulas to devine what's hot, what's about to be hot, and what's really really not.

[Stan Lee]

For me the star of the year has to be YouTube.

My kids are a great source of inspiration and ideas. For my son, who's 10, YouTube is not the web, but a TV channel.

Strangely a lot of what he watches on YouTube is in fact TV!

[Tom Asacker]

2006 saw the U.S. marketplace shift from scarcity of goods, services and distribution to scarcity of awareness and subsequent interest. There is simply way too much stuff vying for consumers' attentions and many more media platforms for people to selectively narrow their perceptions.

This fact has resulted in marketers trying to "stand out" by being more relevant and empathetic in design, pricing, communication, distribution, media placement, et al. Et al except service (excluding online), which deteriorated as leaders focused on chasing the external madness and the "numbers" at the expense of taking care of their people and culture.

[Michael Wagner]

2006, from my perspective was the "now and not yet" year of marketing.

With 55 million blogs and all the other 2.0 solutions offered up we took a big step toward the much prophesied coming of the "marketplace as conversation". (Thank you Cluetrain) But we are not in "blog heaven" yet.

For the faithful the kingdom or social media marketplace is NOW here.

But another reality exists simultaneously - though there have been a few conversions business remains in the old kingdom of broadcast, advertising and mass markets. There are still many who are "lost" in the corporate world.

It makes the social medial believers crazy to see business not embrace the gospel of blogging et al. But it is true they have not done so.

And so the kingdom of social media is NOT YET come.

The NOW and NOT YET-ness of this year in marketing is exactly what strikes me as the most significant.

We are caught between two worlds!

NOTE: the NOW and NOT YET concept is borrowed from Christian theology that sometimes reconciles New Testament contradictory statements about the kingdom of God as "present" and yet, still "to come" with the notion of the "now and not yet" formulation.

[Steve Portigal]

I remembered my other one - the further commodification of "design" - with business cozying up to design (nicely put, Scott) the word increasingly loses meaning, throw in "design thinking" as a form of design without designers, or an anyone-can-play, mix in the commodification of terms like "ethnography" and "innovation" and you've got a lot of enthusiasm but a lot more confusion about what these things mean, who does them and what they get ya.

[Drew McLellan]

I think 2006 is the year of intimacy.

People are hungry to connect and share something of themselves (even to strangers) and so they MySpace, blog and create avatars of themselves so they can decorate virtual space with self-revealing clues.

On the business side...consumers want and are demanding the same disclosure, authenticity and accessiblity (read intimacy) from the companies they do business with.

We live in a world of increased isolation (fragmented families, stranger-neighbors, e-mail rather than talking to co-workers etc.)and this quest for intimacy is one of the results of that isolation.

Great question and project!

Thanks for letting me add my voice.

Drew

[Doug Meacham]

Wow, I'm a little late to the party. After reading all the great comments, I would have to say that the one biggest thing is that there were so many big things. Old school term: "Critical Mass"; new-school term: "Tipping Point". Either way, 2006 was the year that the individual took control of the technology in order to become the media.

We have been shifting media power to individuals for years now. Perhaps it started with the VCR. The internet shifted control of retail to the customer years ago. Today, individuals have the power to control markets, create and distribute their own content, build and occupy virtual worlds with new opportunities for commerce and entertainment. They don't have to rely on some corporation to provide the experiences for them. They simply use the new tools, which they are mastering as fast as the tool developers can build them, to build whatever they want, to be whoever they want to be and to let their voice be heard.

As a response, some corporations are starting to understand that they have no choice but to embrace the new paridigm and the innovators, the risk-takers, the ones with vision understand that co-creation can be a strategic asset.

David, thanks for the great question and the invite to participate in the discussion.

Doug

[Peter Kim]

2006 - Social computing had more of an impact within the marketing world than in the general business world. Look, Dell's customer service was already broken. My Comcast service isn't any better or worse. Time Warner [AOL] stock is up 19% since June 13th.

I agree with the crazy "NOT YET" post above - it's going to take a few years for social computing to become properly monetized, integrated, and implemented.

The impact of social computing in 2006 isn't a widespread connection of companies to customers - it's the connection of marketers and their ideas to one another.

[David Malouf]

1. People talking about interaction design (IxD): Moggridge, Saffer, Tidwell all put out important books

2. This blog getting mentioned in BW; it says that BW and others are taking ExpDes seriously, and looking beyond the usual crowd pleasers to find serious content that matters. The bottom is pushing the top.

3. I think unfortunately lonelygirl can't be ignored. As a phenomena it is too important

4. TV and movies creating narratives outside the box and theatre:
1. Lost's summer game
2. Battlestar Galatica's webisodes

5. Whole new world of placement adverts: Cisco in Eureka is just amazing!!! The video conference call device. Damn! that was smart.

6. Apple goes Intel ... This turned out to be the most amazing marketing move Apple could have ever done. It brought a new level of discourse around Apple's computers creating more buzz than the upgrades to the iPod Video and the Nano.

7. Speculation Design going to new heights ... fans posting their ideas for apple designs months/years before talk by apple even. This is a whole new venue of market data that companies have never had before.

8. Job market for UX goes insane in 06. Lots of looking, but instead of the old bubble where agencies hired anyone that could do a flowchart, agencies are hiring carefully and it is really competitive for all levels especially senior people.

[Mario Sundar]

Wow!

"What was the most significant event/aspect of 2006 in regards to marketing, advertising or user experience?"

I definitely would vote for the rise in prominence of social collaborative media, culminating in the purchase of YouTube and its subsequent adoption by mainstream media.

Interesting graphic, David. Can't wait to see it once it's complete.

Mario

[jens]

a significant event/aspect of 2006 in regards to marketing is probably the ZUNE launch and the learnings one will draw from that.

more:
free agents getting big in every nation in 2006 http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2006/11/life_as_a_spot.php

... design of course staying big in 2006.

and if i think about it, 2006 is probably the year where all those trends mentioned above slowly entered the mainstream.

a changing world...
not quite unexpected at the change of a millenium..
at least now we know what it will look like.

[Asi]

WOW, I wish I had the time to read all these interesting comments...with the risk of repeating what other people say, I'd like to think of 2006 as the year where the future of marketing trully bacome the present of marketing and the ideas of truth, beauty, esense and value have strongly diffused to the mainstream.

A.

[Mack Collier]

You mean besides the rise of the Marketing 2.0 A-Team, right? ;)

Great question David, and I used this thread in my next DF post. I think that the most significant development in marketing for 2006, was companies realizing that their communities of customers are actually empowered marketing PARTNERS for their messages. Or at least that they CAN be, if the companies are willing to take the time and effort to join them and communicate with them on THEIR terms in THEIR space.

But as we are seeing, many companies aren't willing to do so, and still want to control their message (IOW, TELL themselves that THEY control it), while trying to dictate to their communities on what terms they will ALLOW them to market for them (see how Mentos reacted to the geyser videos, and how Coke reacted).

So in 2007, I think companies will either 'admit defeat', and begin to make REAL efforts to join their communities of customers, or say that it's all too damned much work, and move onto something else. I used to wonder why other companies aren't creating marketing movements like the simply amazing initiative The Fiskateers that Fiskars created. I think the answer was painfully simple: Because it's too damned much work. And because the monetary results can't quickly and easily be verified.

[Clay Parker Jones]

Re: Asi

Asi, I have to disagree with your point. I think we'd be fooling ourselves to believe that we've really made the future of marketing come alive today.

There are many good examples of companies doing the "right" thing, but there are far more failures (not that that's necessarily a bad thing, you know, embrace failure, right?) or outright decisions to do the "wrong" thing...from a customer's point of view, that is.

I guess you tempered your comment with the idea of "I'd like to think that _____" ... but I don't think that's reality.

So in the end, I'd say that overall, this was a year where we really started to figure out what the future of marketing/advertising could be.

Thoughts?

[DA]

What I love about these comments are the range from aspiration based to reality. Like Mike's kingdom post. Personally, I dont know if 2006 was the year of the tipping point, but it sure as heck tells us that there is one and we are getting closer to it.

[Eric Kintz]

You mean besides the launch of Logic+Emotion? :)
For me, it has been the rise of video as the next frontier for both online entertainment and online advertising.
Eric

[henry]

The Power of Me
:)

For me i just feel that all the recent development and has all gone to enhancing the power of the individual and creating a balance between corporates' interests and the individuals' interests

[Mark Vanderbeeken]

A growing realisation within companies that innovation can only be achieved through putting people first in concept and project development.

[Tammy Allen]

I think the political climate forced marketing to make a stand on one side or the other of this polarized society. you can't appeal to both. I think my side won. I get the overall sense that listening to people and getting them involved, whether it's real or implied, has shifted how marketers have to appear. Their is a perception that people are being heard. Yet I fear it is just that a perception and not necessarily a reality. so next year we'll see where these bold steps take marketing...further into the arms of the public or just another bait and switch.

[Chris Brown]

I believe the most significant marketing impact of 2006 was the mainstreaming of Web 2.0. With an average of 100,000 new blogs created every day, community communication has emerged to mainstream. With YouTube, we have ability to share video. Accessible anywhere, instantly. Flickr and Shutterbug... we've got photos.

I can't wait to see what's in store for 2007!

[Karl Long]

The year of Logic + Emotion :-)

"I'm trapped in a glass box of emotion"

[Greg Verdino]

So called industry pundits began the year by predicting that 2006 would be the "year of video" and, at the end of the year, they were right. Not just because of the meteoric rise of YouTube (which is really more about community and control than it is about video per se, if you really think about it) and the GooTube event. But for a whole lot of other reasons too:

- The portals' year-long (and still ongoing struggle) to define and re-define their offerings to be more video heavy.

- The mainstream broadcasters' scramble to figure out ways to present their video content in new ways on new devices

- The flow of ad dollars into pre-roll video ads (sometimes from more traditional online channels but importantly sometimes from television budgets.) Not that pre-roll is a good idea (it's terrible) but it IS advertisers' on-ramp into web video and will hopefully soon give way to other, more innovative marketing uses of video

- The Nielsen ratings smackfest (not that we don't have one of these every year as the upfronts roll around, but this year the debate around the need for new TVmeasurement standards for an on-demand viewing world was profound.)

- Lonelygirl15: love it, hate it or be pissed that it turned out not to be what it claimed to be, this series may be looked at in hindsight as the first broadband video "hit show" and authentic or not, it is not insignificant that it didn't come from a major network.

- Amanda Congden (I don't know why, but how can you not love Amanda Congden.)

[Sull]

I personally have felt that Crowdfunding related projects are some of the most important examples of todays shift into a new progressive economy-culture. This can bleed into the 2006 spotlighted happenings since it pertains to things like online video and the music industry.... as well as politics etc.
The sustainability of independent content creators who blog, now experimenting with glorified paypal donate buttons (ie. Ze Frank) are also very much related to the Crowdfunding phenomena. People are willing to "give" to those they feel are deserving. This adds more emphasis on creating better content and being more transparent with your audience. Good stuff!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdfunding

Sull