Paul Springer - Pioneers of Digital: Success Stories from Leaders in Advertising, Marketing, Search and Social Media

This ebook published in 2012 by

Kogan Page Limited

120 Pentonville Road

London N1 9JN

UK

www.koganpage.com

Paul Springer and Mel Carson, 2012

E-ISBN 9780749466053

Dedicated to Andrea Springer, Ashley Seffernick, Maggie Carson and Dave Stobbs

CONTENTS

W riting a book like this is a huge collaborative process, so we owe a huge debt of thanks to many people across five continents.

There are a crowd that have drip-fed us leads and material throughout. They include: Zhang Yiping and Le Jianfeng (both Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai), Tang Lei (iMag Interactive Shanghai), the team at CKGSB Beijing, Antony Robinson (World of Advertising Research Council), Olivier Rabenschlag (TBWA\Chiat Day LA), Mark Middlemas (UM), Mark Egan (Havas Digital), Phil Mahoney (PhD), Santosh Padhi (Taproot India), Kaswara Al-khatib (Full Stop, Saudi Arabia), Mohammad HA Abudawood (P&G Middle East), Dr Abdullah Dahlan (CBA Holdings, KSA), Tim Stephens, Robert Urquhart, Matt Smith (The Viral Factory), Peter Hadfield (Universal), Nick Lawson (MediaCom), Jon Buckley, Vic Davies, Stephen Partridge, Richard Jones, Justin Luker, Tang Hi Yi, Shadi Elemar and Mohammad Kazeroun (all Buckinghamshire New University), Tamara Ramach, Dominic Lyle and the team at Edcom, the European Institute for Commercial Communications Education.

Theres also a crowd that made the interviews possible, most notably: Ajaz Ahmed, Bob Cianfrone, Liisa Juola, Alex Bogusky, Hannah Hickman, Katy McKegney, Thomas Gensemer, Jane Austin, Nigel Vaz, Malcolm Poynton, Rafael Rojas, Gurbaksh Chahal, Jeremy Barbour, Denzyl Feigelson, Jon Winsor, Ashliegh Buck, Angel Chen, Kyle MacDonald, Martha Lane Fox, Vanessa Fox, Danny Sullivan, Andrew Sampson (SamFry.com), Stephen Fry, June Cohen, Qi Lu, Jaron Lanier, Jess Greenwood, Avinash Kaushik and Carolyn Everson, Ronda Carnegie (TED), Andrew Ellis (WeAreLikeMinds), Andy Beal (Marketing Pilgrim), Judy McGrath, Matt McGowan (Incisive Media), Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), Guy Phillipson (IAB UK), Jim Sterne (Target Marketing), John Battelle (Federated Media), Jonathan Beeston (Efficient Frontier), Lee Odden (TopRank Online Marketing), Matt Cutts (Google), Rand Fishkin (SEOMoz), Richard Eyre (Eyre Supply), Shari Thurow (Omni Marketing Interactive), Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), Karen Adams (Kraft), Steve Clayton, Shelby Healy, Nickie Smith, Stefan Weitz, Mari Kim Novak, Marc Bresseel, Sandra LeDuc and Kaila Lightner (all at Microsoft).

For the pioneers material online filmed interviews and much more fun, content and chat we have our team of Kelsey Powell, Laura Robinson, Sander Saar, Becky and Dave Naylor (Bronco), Kean Richmond (Bronco), Bryan Schaeffer (SINTR) and Jess Slaney and Andrew Goddard (CherryUK.com).

We owe a debt of gratitude to our cottage-industry editing and transcribing teams: Andrea Springer, Ashley and Aubrey Seffernick, Colleen and Josh LaBelle, Trinitie Kedrowski, Chason Hendryx, Anne Evans and James Carson. And, of course, our patient employers, Buckinghamshire New University and Microsoft in the UK and the United States, who have been supportive throughout this rather large project. We would particularly like to express our thanks to Matt Smith, Jon Finch and Helen Kogan at Kogan Page for keeping the process smooth true pros.

T he internet as we know it today would be nothing without key people. An Englishman, Tim Berners-Lee, shaped the free network we now call the world wide web. Microsofts Bill Gates sought to put a PC on every desk and in every home. Googles Sergey Brin and Larry Page set out to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful. Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, now strives to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. And of course, the late Steve Jobs did much to put the digital revolution into peoples hands (and ears) and show how technology could enrich lives through simple but brilliant design.

True pioneers of digital, these innovators have pushed the boundaries of whats possible through the internet and created compelling, entertaining and useful experiences that have touched millions around the world.

But theyre not the only ones. Far from it.

When we sat down to discuss writing this book, we wanted to tell the stories of pioneers of digital that you might not necessarily have heard of. We wanted to write about people who had explored new areas of the internet, people who had developed groundbreaking technologies and businesses, people who had discovered new ways to reach new audiences, people who made the web look like it does today. These are the people who had inspiring insight and have great stories to tell.

Having communications backgrounds and an avid interest in digital media, we narrowed our focus to discovering pioneers in the fields of advertising, marketing, search and social media, to showcase individuals who had excelled in embodying an entrepreneurial spirit by creating captivating connections with consumers in a multitude of different ways.

Our voyage of discovery led us around the world, from the UK and Europe to the United States, India, the Far East and Middle East. We had conversations with pioneers of digital who helped us understand where they had the big idea, what drove them, how they accounted for their success and what they think we can learn from their experience.

The result is 20 stories that span multiple disciplines, platforms, campaigns and industries across the digital space. Each of our pioneers stories begins by explaining their digital discipline, and then their journey unravels in their words. With analysis of why their work has succeeded, each ends with sound bytes that echo the main takeaways from their cases. From big brand advertising to search engine optimization, from political campaigning to virtual reality, from social activism to digital creativity, from online video to celebrity social media its all in these pages.

Pioneers of Digital also includes some of digital historys more unusual stories. For instance, how did a political campaign have 80,000 unread e-mails? Why does the father of virtual reality now question the technological ideology he helped create? What do you do when your websites a global success but your client wants it taking down? Who went on to generate a billion video views online after being turned down by the BBC? From dilemmas to innovation, the stories behind digitals most consumed and followed content are told by the people who helped create it.

As this project progressed, themes started to emerge: cross-cultural themes, attitudinal themes, inter-disciplinary themes and astonishing themes. Would it surprise you that most of our pioneers had little idea, back in the 1990s, that two decades later the web would have become quite so huge and all-encompassing in our daily lives? Could one of the secrets to success truly be to simply love what you do? Is it really best to avoid originality and focus on agility in the moment?

Weve identified the pioneering territories of the world that are taking up the digital challenge. How have China and India the worlds biggest countries developed digital communications? How has the Middle East, with the largest proportion of youth buying into digital, been shaped for their brave new world?

In the final chapter weve reflected on the main issues, views and, in some cases, counter-logic from the cases that defines these pioneers views from commonly held assumptions about digital.