The Solution to the Problem is Not a Solution at all, it's a Process,

In working with a client recently on a social media project, I found myself spending an inordinate amount of time trying to explain how things worked on the Internet. From the company website, to their blog, to Facebook, to Twitter, LinkedIn and the myriad of aggregation sites that crawl the web daily looking for what they, and they are all different, consider 'news'. Personally, I thought my charts and graphs were amazing - but probably it was all a lot more complicated than the client and I needed to get our heads around the problem - uh, solution.

So I recalled a conversation with architect Daniel Libeskind on Discovery Channel recently where he described his firm's inability to win a certain project because the solution to the client's problem they proposed, was not a solution in the traditional sense at all, but an actual process in which human nature would change in relation to the architecture, as the architecture changed. This seemed to perplex his client. The solution was a process, a change in behavior, not a rock solid thing in a box.

For all intents and purposes, the Internet has changed the architecture of communications forever by changing the balance of power between what used to be the broadcaster and who used to be the viewer, listener or reader. Now the broadcasters and the broadcastees are on a more even footing, allowing conversation and interplay between the two. And so that has shaken the business planning of the companies who used to just make it all and ship it out the door. No waiting for 'likes' or 'comments' or 'friends'. Just wait for the sales numbers - and if that didn't work - try something else.

I used the chart above from David Armano of AdAge a few years ago to take the Vietnam Advertising Association to task for not having a website. They do now. But this simply chart illustrates the change in working process from old commercial communications to what is going on now. Now all us Internet gurus and clients need to figure out is how to get paid and how much one should pay for this new process of thinking.

Consultancies are not inherently creative, so why not a creative consultancy?

A recent story in AdAge recounts a campaign failure at Anheuser-Busch and cites the positioning statement created by a management consulting firm. Click the links for I N F I N I T E W I S D O M 'S take on it - excerpts below:

Bud's Big Blunder: Letting Consultants Steer Brand - 'Drinkability' Campaign Flop at Anheuser-Busch Comes as Marketers Expand Influence of Outside Advisers on Ad Work

Consultants "can be outstanding at what they do, which is linear thinking and process," said Peter Krivkovich, CEO of independent Cramer-Krasselt. "It's just important for clients to remember that human behavior is not linear."

Old Numbers: Good Morning Vietnam!

I realize immediately, that any number I post here will be old before I hit the enter button. And so goes the Internet. But I wanted to follow up on my earlier post "Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market?" with a few numbers on Asia and Vietnam's Internet growth.

The first thing you've got to do is to stop looking at Internet numbers by country. That's not a true comparison of markets, and so the first chart here, the pie chart, uses continents rather than countries for a clear comparison. And yes, Asia is the largest represented with almost 39% of the world market.

The second thing you'll notice is that Europe, or the EU, is larger than all of North America – something for the boys in Cupertino and Redmond to keep in mind.

And the third is good old Vietnam. Ahh, that storied battleground of yore. Home to a few good movie titles and a ton of old war surplus (see the 'Citizen Mekong' post), Vietnam is quite busy carving out a brand new future – on the web. Ranked at country #16 today, Vietnam will steamroller over Indonesia, Spain, Canada and Mexico to nuzzle up just under Russia in the next year or so. Should Vietnam ever reach Korea's penetration of seventy-some percent that will put them at par with Germany, or solidly in the top ten.

Now don't go rolling in your capitalist coffins just yet over this one – just remember that you heard it here first. Martin Sorrell, chief honcho at communication giant WPP, made a serious mention of Vietnam as a hot market in his annual marketing outlook last year, but I'm not sure anyone heard that one. Even AdAge neglected to print it.

Good Morning Vietnam!