As many people in my world have acknowledged, there is no invention that has affected society as profoundly as the printing press. Some would like to believe that social-media will have an even greater impact – I am among those people – but for now the safe bet is on moveable type -- the printing concept rather than Movable Type -- the blogging platform. It makes sense to look back on history, and evaluate the many innovations that the printing industry has brought to the art and business of communication. My favorite is a little-known tool called the cliché.
When we think of cliché today, it is usually in the negative, as in the Wikipedia definition: “a phrase, expression or idea that has been overused to the point of losing its intended force or novelty.” Unless you belong to the ink-stained class – in an earlier life, I worked as a typographical proofreader -- chances are you are unfamiliar with the original meaning: a “printing plate cast from moveable type.” The cliché – a moveable, interchangeable plate of type -- was an extremely useful thing. It enabled busy printers to do their work more efficiently, without having to manually set the type for stock phrases that writers often used. The cliché had practical utility.
Compare how we think of the cliché in modern life. As anyone who has worked in Silicon Valley knows, business conversation has been corrupted with an unbelievable number of overused and annoying phrases (I have made it my mission to analyze many of these phrases, in a weekly blog column). But we also understand that without clichés, business conversation in Silicon Valley – a place where the demands of innovation put great pressure on people to communicate efficiently -- would be overly burdensome. Thus, the cliché also has a practical use in modern life. But, as I have been urging clients and colleagues, we should examine those phrases with some care, for too often they reveal an unconscious struggle over the issues that most concern us, if not the clues we would need to invent more original and accurate expressions.
As I said, Silicon Valley, a hotbed of innovation (oops, a cliché), is especially vulnerable to the cliché mind. In the past year, life has gotten even more challenging, as people in the Valley (and beyond – the Valley itself is a cliché and a metaphor) have been helping people to navigate the new world of online life, work, and commerce. As the online world continues to develop and resocialize itself, and as the real world continues to flatten, many of our most cherished notions about reality – about blogging, faith, and money – are coming under attack. As a result, we’re reaching our conversational limits. And like printers in the early days of movable type, we may need to make some new plates, for without these new blocks of language, conversation would be impossible. Here are eleven tired concepts – clichés, shallow truisms, or just generally misleading terms -- for us to examine in 2007. Why eleven, and not ten, as the convention for New Year predictions goes? There’s an obvious answer, but I’ll offer another at the close.
11 - “Social media.” Steve Rubel, a well-known PR blogger, recently questioned whether this phrase is still useful. That end-of-year pronouncement triggered a rather aggressive response (and then a gentle apology) from Shel Israel, another well-known PR blogger. Steve’s point: all media is becoming more social. Shel’s point: Steve is looking at the world through Big-Media glasses. My point: the passion in this debate (many others have weighed in) suggests that this phrase is under stress.
UPDATE: FYI, of course, I am not above this debate. I am among the folks who believe social media still means something. But it may be time to spell it all out again, with specifics.10 - “The A-List.” At a recent blogging seminar, several participants sparred (lightly) over the use of the term “A-List blogger." The A-List, formerly just a Hollywood idea, is the short list of bloggers who generate most of the traffic and links in the blogosphere. Some people find the term offensive -- and misleading -- because it doesn’t quite capture the many niche markets that lesser-known bloggers serve. I think it’s time we question the term A-List, on both philosophical and practical terms.
9 - “Marcom.” Marketers will need to examine the words they use to describe what they actually do. In the old world, product marketing and marketing communications were generally kept separate; one develops product, the other communicates to the customer with expertly crafted messages. Now, many companies are looking for ways to include the customer as a participant not just on the marcom side of the house, but on the product side as well. In the end, it’s all “communication,” and marketers will need to retool themselves to meet the new challenges.
8 - “Marketing is about conversations.” There’s no question that blogging has liberated business communication, and that marketing, as a result, has become more conversational. Problem: if you look closely at what’s actually happening on blogs, it would be a stretch to call much of it conversational. Self-expression, bickering, harassment, debate, education, conversation … all of this is happening. Not that there’s anything wrong with this. But to pretend that it is merely conversation blinds us to the possibilities and inhibits thinking.
7 - Anything “2.0.” ‘Nuff said.
6 - “DIY.” “Do it yourself” was the theme of my New Year’s essay for 2006. I looked at how unstoppable economic forces were driving the trend toward developing DIY tools and technologies. And I wondered about the negative implications. I expect DIY to continue in 2007 – after all, “you” are Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” – but real innovation will come from companies that look for ways to connect with the burnt-out, unwilling, or disenfranchised. One company to watch is Presto, which is enabling people who use computers to send email to people who do not. If 2006 was about DIY, 2007 will be about DIFY (“we will ‘do it for you”’).
5 - “Money.” The resocialization of the Web is making good trouble in an unexpected area: currency. Because of the highly interactive and self-organizing nature of online communities, marketers and community organizers are experimenting with new ways to lubricate the flow of goods and services. Second Life (currency = linden) and Microsoft (points) are conducting early experiments, and in 2007, we’ll see more innovation. But will the I.R.S. open a facility in SL?
4 - “Home turf.” The resocialization of the Web -- and the flattening of the world -- is changing the way we think about place, a trend that Shel Israel is exploring in his next book, Global Neighborhoods. More and more, people are organizing around shared interests (things they like, and things they don’t like) and the implications for business and politics are enormous.
3 - “Church and state.” There was a time when almost any news organization could defend its honor by declaring there was a separation between church (editorial) and state (advertising). But what if church and state reside in the same person, as is the case with a number of top bloggers who subsidize their sites with ads and sponsorships? Both saints and sinners will emerge from this debate, and in the end we will probably need a new metaphor to describe the new realities. My bet: “transparency” will persist as the ultimate standard (we’re almost there).
2 - “Faith versus reason.” Speaking of saints and sinners …. I doubt many people will agree with me on this, but one of the most logical outcomes of our resocialized, flattened world is that atheism gets a new hearing. In fact, it may get its first real hearing, as many “global neighborhoods” of like-minded atheists are beginning to organize (here’s one). But in order for The New Atheism to become more than target of scorn and criticism, leaders in the movement – e.g., Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris – will need to reframe the debate and shift the focus away from what atheists do not believe, to what atheists do believe. Reminder: the prefix “a” means “without.”
1 - “Top-Ten Predictions.” OK, top-ten predictions are cliché, and they so one-dot-oh, but I can’t help myself. So my first New Year’s resolution is to never write another “top ten” essay. It won’t be easy; I am a repeat offender. To wean myself of this annoying habit, I have come up with eleven this year (as Nigel Tufnel has argued, 11 beats 10). And I have purposely left out the word “predictions” from the title (in case you were wondering, “eleven what”). The time has come to debunk the ‘my top-ten predictions’ meme, because it would be more truthful to call them “my top ten fantasies,” “my top-ten nightmares,” or, the most truthful of all, “my top-ten self-fulfilling prophecies.”
There are no true prophets in the business world, for we all have the motivation and opportunity to at least try to make our predictions come true. That’s even more so in this new world, where not only does it pay to participate, but to be transparent as well. And as I said, transparency is a cliché that will not go away. But let’s check back next January. I will have spent a year examining this term, and 51 others.
Thanks for mentioning the debate du jour in this very thoughtful post, Giovanni. I agree with you that someone should spell it out. That's a major reason why I am writing Global Neighborhoods.
Posted by: shel israel | January 03, 2007 at 05:29 PM