Big ideas have been essential to advertising since it’s early beginnings, and they are often the subject of great admiration and inspiration. Many have become interested in the process of identifying big ideas, executing them, and measuring their success, but what about the process of coming up with those ideas? Where do big ideas really come from? 

Glenn Griffin and Deb Morrison are the authors of “The Creative Process: Illustrated,” a fantastic book about how advertising’s big ideas are born. They are also university professors and scholars who have built great ad programs; Glenn at SMU, and Deb at UT and the University of Oregon. On the most recent “The Social Nerdia Show!” we talked about creativity, education, the brilliance of Old Spice Man, award shows, BP’s advertisements, and of course, the release of their book, which includes insights from some of the ad industry’s greatest (ie. David Kennedy himself).

Listen to this entire episode of “The Social Nerdia Show!” with Glenn and Deb on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe on iTunes, stream from your phone on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio.

While there has been some debate about whether education has an impact on creativity, Glenn’s research as a PHD student showed that there is ”largely a positive and significant influence.” It was as a PHD student that Deborah became Glenn’s mentor and their conversations about the source of creativity, particularly in advertising, is where the idea for the book became implanted in their minds.

The Creative Process: Illustrated

Deb told me that “process matters“ and “process is beautiful” so their book is an exploration of “how people think about thinking.” 

She told me that one of the most amazing things about working on the book was seeing ”writers using no words to visualize their process and art directors describing theirs.”

Metacognition is a concept that human being leverage their own understanding of how their own brains work and advertisers are “metacognitive powerhouses,” Glenn explained to me. There is a lot of  ”personalization and pride in peoples’ creative process,” he added.

Glenn: “This is a whole area that is largely missing in the scholarship in our discipline. It’s not observable. Developing this technique of visualization and drawing meaning is a really cool way of capturing process in a way that hasn’t been done before.”

Artistry, Brilliance, and Old Spice Man

I asked them if creatives in advertising were similar to artists like dancers. While there are similarities because creatives are using their minds as their tool, they explained some big difference. Deb expressed that  those in advertising are “artists who always have to be cognisant of whether it will help the brand and solve a particular problem.”

Glenn said the biggest difference was “anonimity. The people in advertising are anonymous.” He gave the example of Isaiah Mustafa from the Old Spice commercials because “they’ve made him a superstar overnight.. a lot of people know that guy’s name, but nobody knows Eric Kallman and Craig Allen, the guys who write every word he says. They are artists that don’t get to sign the canvas.”

We continue talking about Old Spice’s campaign and Deb said ”I love that Old Spice is such a story. My 16 year old loves it, my husband gets it, we can all watch and say ‘yes.’ Humor can be a great tool. The Old Spice campaign is a grand slam”  

Part of what made the story so big was that they decided to “talk to guys but let’s also talk to women. I know Craig and Eric, and I know, I know that they were writing and concepting that to make themselves laugh. It was just brilliant insight, and from a brilliant insight of ‘the man your man could be.’ I’m sure Craig, the art director, came up with ‘look at me, look at him,’ and Eric is thinking of ‘I am on a horse.”

The idea of the Old Spice Man commercials and the YouTube videos addressed to specific people but meant to be watched by millions is one that anyone can appreciate. But what is its long-term impact?

Deb: “This will be long-lasting and the interesting is we don’t know how long these memes will last. They’ve created something that will be a very high benchmark for that team. For the culture they’ve re-established Old Spice as one of those brand that will have to out-do itself.”

 ”Also, Wieden has an amazing media group. Weiden is one of those agencies where the creative has to be brilliant. Brilliant media, brilliant writing. Brilliant creative.”

Everyone Works in a Creative Field

In the book, Deb and Glenn go into how everyone has the potential to be creative and the importance in passion so I asked why not everyone worked in a creative field.

Glenn: “I think everyone does work in a creative field. We have a wrong sense about what creativity is. Every human being is creative. The problem is that the term has been wrapped up in the performing arts and that warm and fuzzy place that’s for poets and musicians. Creativity is fundamentally problem-solving and everyone of us engages in problem solving.”

“I tell my students, I don’t care what you’re passionate about, but be passionate about something because life is too short. That part of being a human being is essential.”

While, as Deb pointed out, ”our educational system forces us into looking for linear and very logical answers.. instead of a multitude of answers,” educators are starting to re-think education to enhance collaboration and creative thinking. Both Deb and Glenn agree that the art director plus copywriter team is a great example of something that is taught well in their programs and prepares them for real world collaboration and ideation.

Deb: “Collaboration is a must. A good advertising program makes sure people are working together, not just the art director and the writer, but the planner comes in, the account person comes in; doing big work trying not to segregate anyone, but let everyone be creative and strategic. The best agencies are doing exactly that.”

Building a Great Advertising University Program

So what else do you need to create a great ad program? Deb said it starts with  ”good people” and a “mission statement that is blissfully optimistic.”

Glenn: “You also need students that buy into it. The key is to give them tools, frameworks, and advice, and let them do the amazing things that they’re capable of doing. When they see the fruits of their own hard work, that’s the seed that germinates. It mushrooms from there.”

Deb: “Let’s face it, advertising gets a deserving very bad rap at times. I tell students that what we’re here to do is to change that. There are ways to be bright, brave, heroic and help people with what we do, and do work of meaning.”

Glenn: “We spend so much time with our students that we get to know them probably better than most professors get to know their students. A lot of times you sit and talk, and you do more listening, than speaking back.”

Since “The Social Nerdia Show!” is a live podcast on BlogTalkRadio, someone in the chat asked about students who might simply don’t have it to be successful in the the creative side of advertising. Glenn shared that he often helps students find out what else they could do. He also provided insights on preparing students for the difficult aspects of the industry, Glenn said:

 ”There is no way to prepare someone to get fired. I tell students not to work in advertising if they could imagine themselves enjoying something else more. The people that are the biggest successes are the ones that can’t imagine doing anything else. That passion is what can take you through anything.”

Deb: “I talk a lot about agency culture. It might take some time, but it’s important to find a place that fits your values.”

Awards and Award Shows

Deb sits on the board of the One Club and she believes in awards as “benchmarking. I don’t like the greed that comes along with awards. If that’s all you’re doing it for then priorities get mixed up. But when you see good work.. it’s a lovely thing.”

Glenn: “Sometimes stuff that I don’t want to hold up to students will win awards; from a students’ perspective awards equal success so you have to train them to see awards with some perspectives. I love it when my students win awards, but I also want that to be tempered with the ideas that it’s not about that.”

Overblown green claims and BP’s failures

I asked Deb about some of the things she dislikes int he industry and she said ”there’s so much hyperbole and overblown claims towards what is green. I don’t like that. I want adv to be honest and authentic. Telling the truth and using our powerful tools in the best way.”

“Many of the oil companies grab on to this sense of hyperbole. They look at 10% good that they do and claim that. BP is in a special place, they are in one of the rings of hell right now.. they have not done authentic work, they’ve claimed a lot of things they shouldn’t, and now of course they can’t claim anything. They can’t save face at this point.”

Despite BP’s huge fail, Deb agreed with me that the company is going to be fine due to the nature of their business. “They are in the ‘too big to fail’ category. My head spins about that. That’s awful for the culture, and awful for our sense of selves,” she said.

Living in an Anything is Possible World

Despite failures and problems in the industry, it is an exciting time. Technology has truly converged with marketing and advertising in a way that has brought much excitement to creative thinkers. And the opportunities don’t exist just in technology and the social web, but in all kinds of places.

Deb: “Right now we are living in an ‘Anything is possible world.’ It’s such a wonderful place to begin a career.. immense possibilities to do film, books, art exhibits, events, and beautiful brand thinking at a 360 degree level. A few years ago it was just print, television and maybe a billboard. Now we have incredible opportunities to do work of meaning at so many different levels.”

I’ve been thinking about the idea of crowdsourcing a lot this year. Last month, I wrote about giffgaff’s unique approach of crowdsourcing not just marketing and R&D, but also customer service. And, for the 33rd and last “The Social Nerdia Show!“ of 2009, I spoke with Robbie Hearn, the Chief of Member Experience at giffgaff to learn more about how this MVNO from the UK operates. Prior to joining company, Robbie was Head of Retention at Be Broadband, a O2/Telefonica subsiduary where he first realized just how powerful it was for a company to have a very engaged community.

Listen to the entire conversation with Robbie on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe to us on iTunes, stream from mobiles on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio.

giffgaff officially launched on Nov 23rd. “The project as a whole started to take form 9 months ago,” Robbie told me. “It’s gone from nothing to full launch in that period of time, which is very quick for a mobile company.” At first glance one might assume that giffgaff is just a regular MVNO, but giffgaff is truly changing the way a mobile company interacts with its customers.

I asked Robbie to explain what makes giffgaff so unique. ”We see a need and a gap in the market for a new model. We’re what we call people-powered,” he said. “In essence, we’re trying to really leverage all the great new trends and technologies around crowds; we want to engage our members more than any other mobile network in the UK.” Unlike other companies that try to control everything related to their brand, giffgaff lets its ‘members’ interact with the company and with each other online, and allowing them to be part of the company’s “marketing, R&D, and customer service; recruiting members and especially helping answer questions.”

Crowdsourcing Customer Service

Thanks to Wikipedia and companies like Doritos and Starbucks, we’ve all come to know about various forms of crowdsourcing, especially when it comes to marketing and R&D. But crowdsourcing customer service? Now that’s a new idea.

“Crowdsourcing customer service is almost like a misnomer. You don’t need a huge crowd, just a small group that’s absolutely motivated by helping other people; they are the super users,” Robbie told me. ”We don’t have a call center,” he added. “You go online, you type in whatever question you have, and the integrated search identifies an answer based on information giffgaff has submitted as well as information provided by users on the forum.” 

That sounds like what many of us have done in web forums and message boards, but the fascinating thing about giffgaff is that its model of rewarding engaged members allows for quick resolutions to all kinds of problems. ”What we want your experience to be like is to be quickly answered by another member, and interact with that person.” So far, according to Robbie, every question has been answered in the forum; not one has been escalated (questions get escalated after 20 hours without a response), and the top ‘super user’ is getting close to reaching 1000 minutes on the web site (if he hasn’t already).

I asked Robbie if we could call this ‘Social Customer Service,’ but he did not like the idea very much. “To me, I just think that sticking social at the start of everything has made it lose its meaning a little bit.” He then compared adding the word “social” to customer service to adding an “i” (as in iPod) to a product.

There are times in which the crowds won’t be able to help giffgaff customers. “If you really need to, you can actually contact a giffgaff agent that will reply to your query,” Robbied explained. ”I don’t believe you can rely 100% on crowdsourcing for every customer service problem because there are always things like billing or credit card information that are not suitable for public forums.”

The giffgaff Culture

As you might imagine, giffgaff’s culture is pretty unique too. Robbie described the people there as “very passionate about what they’re doing.” He said that going to work is fun for the team and they all “believe in the idea behind the project.” Sure, they’ve all worked really long hours, but Robbie assured me that it has been “very rewarding..  it’s not often that you get a chance to make things happen the way you want them to happen.”

In order for the low-cost giffgaff model to work, the company is running the way a start-up should. In addition to not having to invest in infrastructure (they are MVNO after all), “there are only 14 permanent employees.. we outsource everything possible, we use second-hand desks, and keep costs down wherever we can.” Low prices and member rewards, and of course profitability, depends on the company keeping costs down so I asked Robbie if he worried about users eventually not helping each other out. ”The model is already working. I’m not too worried about the costs running out of control,” he responded.

Brilliant Marketing and The Cuddle Monster

“We really want to give people a chance to get involved. We have a tiny budget by wireless company standards. We’re not going to do TV, etc. We’re trying to use creativity and letting others create videos for us,” Robbie said.  The “tool hire” campaign encourages people to make videos with “tools” that giffgaff actually ships to them and the community gets to vote for a winner. The cuddle monster, one such “tool,” is a 5-person monster outfit. As Robbie put it, ”it’s cold, everybody is in recession, who wouldn’t want a cuddle from a 5-person monster?”

Leading Member Experiences

Robbie first saw the power of having a strong community when he worked at Be Broadband, which he described as having an “open and transparent model, with a really engaged community.” Robbie got to know Be Broadband’s customers quite well, often running weekly calls with some of the most engaged customers, including gamers, to talk about their views about the service and the company.

After Be Broadband was acquired by O2/Telefonica, Robbie was asked to join giffgaff as their Chief of Member Experience. ”I’ve tried to explain to my mom what that means and even my friends don’t always understand what I do,” he joked about his role with the company. There are two main areas that Robbie leads, member service and CRM.  Everything that happens to a member, everything they experience and feel as a customer, is under his jurisdiction. He is responsible for setting up the community aspect of the site and all the messaging that goes out customers from the time they sign up.

Looking Ahead

I asked Robbie about any international expansion plans. “I’m a big fan of keeping things focused and making sure they work first. But, we do see potential or this working in othe countries and other industries. We would love it if giffaff went global.”

Regarding where he would like to see giffgaff in a year, Robbie said he would want to see a thriving community with very engaged super users. “I would also love to see innovations based on ideas generated by the community. With great ideas like a “people-powered call centers,” the giffgaff community is already coming up with great stuff.

“People love to communicate, we’re just facilitating something that people really want to do and trying to not get in the way as it has happened in traditional wireless companies.”

Cathy Brooks is a journalist, creative media strategist, and host of the Social Media Hour live podcast. She blogs at Other Than That, which is also the name of her consulting firm, and she has worked for companies like Tech TV (now G4) and Seesmic. In last night’s The Social Nerdia Show! I spoke with her about media, journalism, newspapers, technology, business, and much more. Cathy is not only highly entertaining, she is also incredibly insightful and thought-provoking.

Listen to the entire conversation with Cathy on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe to us on iTunes, stream from mobiles on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio.

Cathy’s tagline for her podcast is ‘it’s not about the tools, it’s about what you do with them,’ and it very well reflects her views on technology. She has much appreciation and enthusiasm for “the way that technology is used or not, successfully or not, and the impact that has on the way we buy things, share information, communicate with each other, and just evolve as carbon based life forms.”

The Two Medias

The fact that Cathy has much experience in traditional media led me to ask her about the now very widely use ‘social media’ term. She responded that there are two kinds of media, “media with a capital M and media with a lower case m.” The first one is ‘the media,’ and it includes outlets from large organizations like News Corporation and The New York Times Company, as well as blogs like The Huffington Post and Tech Crunch. “Lower case m (media) are the platforms, the technology, the things we use, the social networks, the real-time stream things like Twitter, Blogtalkradio, Facebook, YouTube, and the list goes on and on,” she explained.

While some would argue that the concept of media is not much more than a channel or a means to deliver some form of content, Cathy think that media has always been social. “Social media to me is a rather redundant term as opposed to an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp. Media is by its nature a social thing and it has become more so in its interactivity, crowdsourced nature, and user generated contributions,” she told me.

The Case for Journalism

There has been much talk about the death of the newspaper and the traditional media organization in the last few years, but Cathy thinks this has been “greatly exaggerated.” She continued to say that while “some of these types of media outlets, some of the mediums, may either die or change greatly, the need for journalism has never been more important.”

Even though journalists these days can easily become bloggers, “a blogger is not necessarily a journalist.” Cathy further expressed that she wants “reporters to be human, but at the same time if i want to know their opinion I’ll look for them to have an opinion somewhere else.” The web has allowed journalism to thrive in ways that were not possible before, but it is essential to not forget that journalists still have a responsibility to work with “integrity, fact-checking, looking for multiple stories to ensure accuracy, providing clear perspectives, etc.”

Of course, expectations can’t be unrealistic. We’re all humans so bias is impossible to avoid. As Cathy said, “if you have a human creating content that has a heart and an opinion, it’s going to bleed through somewhere.. the trick is, how do you keep that reasonable and how do you make sure you keep that clean?”

The McPaper and Ruper Murdoch

Cathy mentioned that one big problem with the news  is the mentality of the “mcpaper, the watering down and sensationalizing of content,” which she attributes in part to Mr. Ruper Murdoch. “For the record, I loathe Rupert Murdoch, I think he’s one of the worst things that have happened to journalism, not to media… that aside, i think he’s a genius businessman, absolutely brilliant businessman.”

Brilliant businessman or not, Murdoch has made some headlines recently. Here are Cathy’s thoughts on charging for content:

“The people who say that people won’t pay for things online, i believe, are wrong.. I’m not suggesting that eveyrthing should be a pay-model, but in the real world, in a capitalist society, which guess what? that’s what we live in, we dont get by with good looks and good cheer. We pay for things. Really good content is expensive to make.”

While Cathy sees a future where more people are ok with charging for great online content, she does not agree with Murdoch’s move of pulling content out of Google. Listen to the interview for Cathy’s recommendations for Rupert and his media empire.

The Survival of Newspapers Starts with Stolen Newspapers

All the talk about what’s happening with journalism and media made me think of EPIC 2014, a video about the potential future of the web and news, that went viral a few years ago. I told Cathy about how the EPIC 2014 video by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson imagined The New York Times of the future as an offline newsletter for the elderly. Cathy told me that she actually gets the NYT delivered every day and that for her, the newspaper is “a physical experience.”

She also expressed that people that grow up with newspapers have a “very emotional attachment to it.” She went on to describe how her newspapers started to get stolen at some point and she narrowed her thief search to eight people in her building. She fully made her point by asking “if newspapers are dying, then why is some schmuck stealing my newspaper every morning?”

Newspapers have the competitive advantage of compiling the news of the day and presenting them in one single package. “You can’t say to your (RSS) reader to show you things you don’t know about.. the newspaper provides you with information from around the world and all you have to do is browse through it.”

With the large quantities of information being published online throughout the day, we can rejoice in the fact that there are technologies that are helping “curate the firehose, curate the feedbag.” One such service is www.my6sense.com, which Cathy recommends because it “prioritizes and selects (news) based on your behavior on your reader.”

Cathy the Geek

It is not hard to see that Cathy enjoys two things: talking and technology. “I’m a total geek. I admit it.” She wasn’t always a geek though. After working in radio for many years, she found herself doing PR for tech companies. She found it fascinating, not for the tech itself, at least not at first, but because of the people.

She remembers thinking that the people she was meeting “were insanely smart, truly interested in changing the world and doing so in a very substantive way, changing processes, and enabling people to do things they couldn’t do before, connecting people, and automating things.” She was drawn to the “deep passion and incredible joy that so many of them bring to what they do.”

Having to understand complex ideas to explain it in simple terms to the media and the average person has allowed Cathy to become not just a geek, but also provided her with deep insight about the value behind the bits and bytes.

These days, Cathy has her own consulting firm Other Than That, and she has been helping clients navigate the social media world. She’s even helping large companies like Nokia. Regarding her relationship with Nokia, she explained that she always discloses the fact that she’s working with them, and that there are things she simply won’t do if she doesn’t feel comfortable about it. “As long as it’s relevant and they don’t expect that it’s going to be all sunshine, roses and unicorns, then it’s fine,” she said. Cathy’s also always very honest  about what she really thinks about their products.

We talked about how honesty and disclosure need to be integrated into blogs. Cathy has no problem with the FTC putting guidelines because “if someone is paying to say what you say and you don’t disclose that, it’s disingenuous.”

Have you ever wanted to see who is on your web site at any given time? I’m not talking about the number of page views that your web site got this month. I’m talking about now, right now. Well, Woopra might be able to help.

Last night, on The Social Nerdia Show! live podcast’s 27th episode, I had a conversation with John Pozadzides, the CEO of iFusion Labs, the parent company of Woopra, an innovative web analytics application that lets you see who your visitors are and what they are doing, in real-time.

You can listen to the entire conversation with John about blogging, analytics, marketing, social media, and much more, on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe to all our shows on iTunes, stream it from a mobile phone on Stitcher, and listen to it LIVE on Thursday nights on blogtalkradio.

Enter Woopra

Woopra makes me very excited about the future of real-time because real-time is how the web should be. It’s what the web needs to be. I’ve done my share of waiting, refreshing, and reloading, and if 2010 is not the year for the real-time web to explode and break out of the tech bubble and into the mainstream, then I’m going to hang out in real-time in real-life with actual friends under the real-time sky drinking some real-time water. So take note Google. And take note everybody else. Anyone creating online products and services has a bit to learn from the accomplishments of the FriendFeeds, FourSquares, Radian6s, and Woopras of the world.

I first heard about John P. and Woopra at WordCamp Dallas. I must admit that I did not realize what Woopra was at first. The words “live” and “real-time” simply did not sink in. But once installed, I was able to see who was visting socialnerdia.com at that point. I was used to getting some of this info from Google, but Google Analytics always provided it a day too late. Woopra is about the now, and that adds a whole new layer of meaning to how we measure the web.

“When you’re looking at Woopra, you’re actually seeing visitors live on your web site and you can watch them move from page to page and see how long and how many times they’ve been on your web site,” John explained about what Woopra does.”We have one section called ‘live’ and one section called ‘analytics.’ You can combine historical information with live information,” he added.

Taking on Google aka “Goliath”

“Woopra takes it to the next level,” John said about his company’s application compared to the widely used Google Analytics. “Instead of looking at what happened yesterday, we’re looking at what’s happening now.” Of course, Google’s “yesterday” might not remain that way, so I asked John about what how he feels about competing with Google . “This is truly a David vs Goliath kind of competition. Google has enough money to do whatever they want tomorrow.”

Woopra began John’s partners realized that they could try to solve a problem with web analytics applications. They were not trying to take on anyone.  Regarding whether he thinks that Google is coming after them to crush them, John responded “I don’t think the folks at Google are like that. If they see an idea they really like they make an offer.” The Woopra team is trying not to focus on the competition, but on their product and their customers.

In addition to real-time, Woopra also differentiates itself with a “chat (that) enables you to take action on what it is that you’re seeing” and with notifications about ecommerce activities.

Getting on everyone’s radar with social media

The product itself is what has created buzz online for Woopra. “We had a unique service offering that was of real value. We were very clear about the features of that offering.“  Now, listen to these numbers: 6 employees working on Woopra, and 100,000 web sites using it. Obviously, there is something in Woopra that people see valuable, including people like Leo Laporte.

And excitement becomes buzz. Woopra has received some attention from major blogs and podcasts, even though no money has ever been spent on marketing. “Our savior has been social media. Our users have been the ones driving our success. We genuinely listen to them and we love them, and they return the favor. That has been the engine.”

John thinks the corporate world may need to adjust its mindset towards social media. “The world is changing and people like Gary V. or Cali Lewis can instantaneously sway opinions by leveraging social media. Conversations are taking place… the only question is whether you choose to ignore them or fight the fight.”

While there is a risk involved in entering the transparent, honest, and authentic environment created in social media, John believes that it might be more risky to be afraid of making mistakes. “People will forgive you for making a mistake but they will not forgive you for ignoring them… Companies are going to make mistakes. The way you get forgiven is by having a broader, stronger relationship so people can see beyond it.”

We briefly discussed Apple and I’ll just go ahead and say that I’m skeptic of Apple’s ability to stay quiet online for much longer. And I think John, a recent Mac convert, agrees.

On blogging and specialization

John’s personal blog has been used for a lot of the Woopra demos so I had to ask John about his blogging philosophy.  The slogan of One Man’s Blog is ‘Specialization is for insects.’ He asked out loud, “why limit yourself to one particular thing? Back in the 17th century and 18th century, the people that were really admired were the ones that were very well-rounded. Somehow in our modern society we have moved away from that. We tend to specialize in everything.”

Woopra’s blog has a similar approach, bringing up various topics that are relevant to the community it is trying to reach, instead of just pushing out a lot of info about web analytics.

“Design may play some small role, but it is not the most important thing,” John told me about the importance of emphasizing content. “Unique topics and interesting stories will attract readers.”

The future of analytics

As I said before, I’m quite excited about all things real-time on the web. Traditional media has been unable to capture real-time information about its viewers/listeners/readers. I mean, you can’t know exactly how and when anyone is listening to a radio show. “The big problem with media in general is that we don’t truly know how many people are participating at any given time.” Woopra is working on ways to capture the information we need for various forms of web media, including podcasts and videos. That won’t solve Channel 8′s problem, but if we think of the internet as a new delivery mechanism.. then we’ll be able to use innovative technologies to solve some of those lingering traditional problems.”

And what about sharing the information that Woopra provides on a web site? John said that they are already working on this and are polishing it so that anyone can show off their live statistics as a widget. “It’s in the lab, and when we do have it ready, we’ll make it available.”

I told John that one thing I feel continues to be missing in web analytics is a means to understand what all the data means. If an application like Woopra could tell its users to Tweet more or less often, or chat with users in Madagascar, or add more advertising, then we could not just have a lot of fascinating raw data, but also get help on how to use it. “Today, we provide data. Ultimately, it would be very interesting if Woopra had an intelligent aspect to provide Predictive recommendations.”

Analytics going social?

We ended the conversation talking about adding social to the mix. I was wondering if we could compare things like our page views with Woopra’s billions of aggregated page views to get some social insight, and John gave me a hint about where Woopra could be headed for. “You can keep an eye out for some very social functionality down the road to allow you to do some comparison between the things you’re seeing and what the community is seeing,” he said, and I’m looking forward to it.

Doug Aamoth is the Reviews Editor for CrunchGear.com, a TechCrunch blog that covers gadgets, gear, and computer hardware. TechCrunch started in 2005 and CrunchGear was added to the network in 2006 when Michael Arrington expanded the site to include a blog that focused on gadgets. Doug has been with the CrunchGear team since 2007 and he now also hosts the CrunchGear live podcast on Wednesdays at 3pm Eastern.

Doug spends a lot of his time reviewing products so I asked him about some of his favorites. He mentioned the Acer netbook 751h and he also told me that he just got iPhones on a family plan with his wife. “It’s hard not to talk about the iPhone. It’s still so far ahead of other phones.” But not all of his reviews are about phones and computers. I’ve noticed that he often writes about random things and deals, from sandals with metal detectors to left-handed underpants. “We try to have something up at the very least every half other so it’s hard to fill a day some times.” CrunchGear as a site does about 50 posts and Doug writes about 5-10 per day.

A lot of Doug’s work is reactive. 10% of the time Doug contacts a company, while they will contact him the other 90% of the time. Doug wakes up every day without really knowing what he’s going to write about because about 90% of what goes up on CrunchGear is reactive. And reactive can mean hard work. “It’s not the picture that most people get of bloggers waking up at noon. I wake up at 7am and work full steam.. until about 9 at night.”

Regarding how the site is integrated with TechCrunch, Doug mentioned that there is some cross-over and reciprocal linking but the interaction between the writers is minimal. The CrunchGear and MobileCrunch teams work hand-in-hand all day though. While those working in Silicon Valley go to the TechCrunch home office, Doug works from home and he’s only met Michael Arrington once. TechCruch also has a Manhattan office but everyone on the CrunchGear teams works remotely spread out all over the US. Doug is technically a full-time contractor, which allows him to blog and guest-write in other media/blogs.

The culture at TechCrunch is laid back. “You don’t have the formality of going to an office. I know everyone and have met everyone at some point. We all get together at CES.” There is hard work going on behind the scenes but working remotely does not make it more difficult as some people would expect. “It’s not hard, we’re in a chat room all day long and we are held accountable by that. It’s very much like a work environment in that we work all day. It’s easier to get irritated at people, but at the end of the day it’s more fun and we joke around.”

With a BA in International Political Economy, Doug has worked at large companies like NBC and Verizon Wireless, as well as in a magazine startup, independent film, IT, and freelance web design. Such experiences helped prepared him for his current position at CrunchGear, but his passion for tech is probably what opened the door for him to become a full-time blogger.

“I was working for NBC and I would get my entire’s days work in an hour. I spent the rest of the day with Google Reader reading a lot of sites, including TechCrunch.” After NBC had a big management shakeup, Doug knew that things were changing, so he applied for a Summer internship at CrunchGear. He sent some writing and work samples, and they offered him the position. “I called my mom and I asked her to sit down, and I told her I was going to be a gadget blogger.”

In terms of what has changed since Doug went from enthusiastic tech news reader to a serious writer, Doug said that the way he reads blogs is very different now. “I read about gadgets all day.. as a technology blogger that has to cover it. Now, my leisure time has nothing to do with technology. And I don’t buy anything any more. I used to spent 10 to 20 grand a year at Best Buy.”

To prepare for his writing, Doug uses Google Reader and checks RSS feeds last. “The first thing I’ll do is check my email.. I have 20 sites I check out manually. The list of those sites changes all the time but I keep it at 20.”

I asked Doug if he still likes blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo. He said, “I still like them. The weirdest thing coming in from the outside is that I started going to events with other bloggers and journalists.. when they’re complaining, I tell them they don’t understand how great it is to write about gadgets all day. Believe it or not there are a lot of technology bloggers that don’t like technology. [We] get to play with toys and write about it all day!”

Still, the blogosphere can get nasty and Doug chooses to stay away from the drama. “There’s a lot of weird rivalries between different blogs. Certain people don’t like certain other people. [They] take themselves way too seriously. We blog about gadgets… who cares, have fun with it.”

The future of print media and the future of blogging are controversial because it seems like everyone sees it from their own point of view instead of the end users’. Doug mentioned that those with doomsday theories about newspapers and magazines are often the ones in technology.

“It’s weird, this whole ‘death of the newspaper and death of the magazine argument has been going on for a while. All that generates from the technology industry. You know, ‘newspapers are going to die because of the Amazon Kindle. But, if you talk to regular people and tell them there will be no magazines or newspapers 5 years from now, they don’t want to give them up. Even regular people know that you don’t go to the library to look it up, you go to the internet.”

“You have to look at it from the point of view of the user. The iPod has one button, it was mindblowing. I don’t think blogging will take everything away from mainstream media.”

Although Doug does not want to be biased, he is fully aware of the advantages of blogging. “I can break technology news faster than CNN or Newsweek,” Doug said and he compared tlarge media companies to slow machines where writing articles and getting them approved takes days. CNN is a great example of a big media company that is embracing blogging.. they use Twitter and iReport.”

Doug said that the future is not that blogging or traditional media are going away. Instead, “they’re moving closer and closer together.”

I brought up that opinion was something that blogs had made commonplace and Doug pointed out that while true, it can become a bad thing. “Part of the criticism of bloggers, and I agree partly with this, is that you can be too opinionated.. There’s almost too much opinion.”

Twitter may be the center of opinion these days and Doug said that he has only written two non-automated tweets: “I’m thinking of standing up” and “I’m standing up.” Doug even compared the MTV show The Hills with what is happening on Twitter and Facebook, “but in real life.” His tweets and Facebook posts consist of his CrunchGear articles. He does keep track of retweets using TweetDeck and likes to check out www.tweetingtoohard.com because it shows “how idiotic some people on Twitter are.”

Doug doesn’t have anything against Twitter though. He simply uses it in his own way, as all people should. He explained, “I see the value of it. It’s not dumb. It’s brilliant. It’s so simple and everyone uses it.”

Podcasting is something Doug started at CrunchGear and it has always been informal and fun. He mentioned that it is something that you have to keep doing. Both the CrunchGear podcast and his other podcast SportsFaction about football are hosted on blogtalkradio.

Regarding what gets Doug excited in the gadget world, he mentioned netbooks, eReaders (especially if they came down in price) and the Microsoft Courier. “If the Courier makes it to market, it will be amazing.”

I ended the interview by asking Doug if the CrunchPad really is coming out. “I haven’t persoanlly seen it but they do have it at the office. Arrington uses one and as far as I know, they are releasing it.” Doug can’t review it yet and they are being kept in the dark because it would be a conflict of interest.

“It’s real. There are working prototypes. The plan is to sell it, but I don’t know when.“

Carol Phillips is a Notre Dame Marketing professor, Millennial marketing expert, and Founder/President of the consulting firm Brand Amplitude. I had the opportunity to chat with her on “The Social Nerdia Show!” yesterday. You can stream the show in its entirety below, stream it on blogtalkradio, and subscribe to the iTunes podcast.

Carol started teaching Notre Dame sophomores in 2003 and she quickly realized that this generation, often called Gen Y, was “very different“. While she expected Millenials to be very marketing savvy, she realized that they did not know that much about marketing and that inspired an article she wrote for AdAge in 2007. It was that article about what college students don’t know about marketing that introduced me to Carol’s work and writings.

Her blog describes Millenials as the group that outnumbers Baby Boomers and is determined to change the world. The idea of “changing the world” resonates with me so I asked Carol to elaborate on this. “Globally, when they do studies of Millenials, of what’s most characteristic about them, the thing that comes back is the Obama optimism, a passion to want to make a difference.”

Millenials have been called many things, both positive and negative but the fact is that, as Carol told me, “Each generation reinterprets being young a little differently.. based on where they grew up, parenting techniques, the economy, significant events.” And not everything that is said about Millenials is true. “There are an awful lot of stereotypes.. There’s a positive flip side for all of those (negative things); another way of looking at entitlement is confidence.”

“Millenials are often shocked at how people interpret their actions. You see this a lot with Millenials entering the workforce with very high expectations and I’m not so sure that’s a terrible thing, but they get misinterpreted, particularly by Gen Xers. There’s some friction that’s developing in the workforce,” Carol added.

Some people believe Millenials are similar to Baby Boomers, but Carol told me that while “they get along great and share some values and are able to take about them,” the similarities between them “have been overrated.” The incredible thing is that Gen Y not only “likes their parents,” but they are also moving back in with them, which is something that wasn’t even an option for many Baby Boomers when they were in their 20′s. “We’re moving to a more traditional model of multiple generations living under one roof,” Carol explained.

Regarding what Millenials consider when entering the workplace, Carol said that “at the top is this idea of balance, they do not expect their jobs to define their lives.” She then brought up the fantastic example of Ryan, Pam and Jim on the TV show “The Office” (which was airing as we spoke) and how different those Gen Y characters are from Michael (who obviously finds his identity completely integrated with his job).

Carol also shared that her students at Notre Dame don’t like ambiguity and that they work hard because they want to excel. These difficult times have made it difficult for them, especially those graduating this year. She explained that the job market is not under their control and that while she thinks “the recession has changed them for good,” she also knows that “it has been very hard for everyone“, especially because many of the students that are not able to get a job today would’ve received several offers just some years ago. “It’s going to take a toll on them psychologically.”

The recession and other drastic changes in consumer behavior make it difficult for marketers to keep track of trends. Still, Carol points out that “social media has made it a little easier and it is an exciting time to be in market research.” Even without much social media efforts, some brands like Apple and luxury goods have managed to get much love from young consumers and Carol believes that marketers “need to be able to position things as necessities” without trying to mislead or lie to young consumers.

On Facebook, Carol said that the social network continues to be a place where people are social with friends. “Products can be there and they have learned to behave more like friends,” which has made it OK for brands and people to coexist on social networks. Sponsored tweets and messages might not be very well taken though.”I find it kind of offensive that someone would be paid to endorse a product and not be upfront about it.”

Carol also said that “marketing is figuring out what the consumer wants and giving it to them. The consumer is smart. Companies and celebrities have to be careful with their brand.”

At some point I went on a tangent about what the world would be like without the abundance of advertising and shared about how my initial reaction to Kanye West’s unique appearance at the MTV VMA’s was the assumption that it was carefully planned. Carol laughed and said, “It is very Millenial to be cynical about marketing.” It is very Millenial indeed. Side note: I’m guessing Millenials are the source of cynical videos like this “great” YouTube video about Apple keynotes.

All the talk about Gen Y made me wonder about the generation after my own. Those in Generation Y knew much more about technology than their parents (I personally can attest to this), but Carol thinks this “is not going to be true of the next generation.” The next generation, which includes kids up to 13 years old and might be too young to make assumptions about, is already incredibly tech-savvy. She also believes that this group is going to take the idea of “making a difference to a whole new level. The values they absorbed in terms of the environment and social justice, they’re going to take that Millenial agenda and drive it home.”

Carol shared that while she didn’t start her advertising career in the Mad Men era and loves the show, she did begin in a similar environment. She is excited about how marketing has changed over the years, but she in a little concerned about how we view things like social media. Just as the advertisers in Mad Men have departments that were focused entirely on TV and saw it as such a revolutionary concept, we often see social media in ways that are too focused in the present. Carol thinks marketers should focus on solutions instead of creating departments for every next big thing.

“Social Media is not strategic; it’s one more tool. It isn’t a thing by itself; it is another way to communicate.”

Marketers need to be agnostic about how they do marketing. Just as TV did not displace radio, social media will not displace television. Even though sometimes it seems like traditional media is going away, the fact is that media of all kinds will change and potentially merge, but they will not disappear.

And our Millenial desire to change the world? Well, that’s not going to disappear either.

Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins is the Managing Editor for SiliconANGLE, a collaboration blog that was founded by entrepreneur and PodTech founder John Furrier. I had a great time speaking to him about blogging, podcasting, old and new media on yesterday’s The Social Nerdia Show!, which you can stream below, stream on blogtalkradio, and subscribe to the iTunes podcast.

Before the term “blogging” was conceived, before Blogger became a huge success, and before WordPress was even an idea, people used to manually post updates on web pages full of animated GIFs, FastCounters and guestbooks. Regularly updating text on a web site on a regular basis, without the use of a CMS, is how many “bloggers” got started in the 90′s. Mark, who has been blogging at rizzn.com for about 11 years (check the WayBack Machine if you want) is one great example. Mark told me about his personal road to becoming a professional content producer, which included taking breaks, moving cross country in the age of desktops, and the fact that he became “addicted to the process… It’s more of a compulsion than a hobby.” AdSense is of course “not exactly a pay check” so Mark spent some time trying to figure out how to increase traffic and eventually live from his love for creating content.

Mark started podcasting after watching some Christian Slater movie (“Pump Up The Volume” maybe?). But, just as with blogging, it wasn’t really podcasting back then, unless you want to consider DIY recording of audio on a computer and distributing it with CD-Rs a podcast. Once the iPod came out and actual podcasting made it possible to easily distribute audio to the masses, Mark had already figured out the recording part of the equation. “The same show that we had 300 listeners across 7 different stations, we started putting it into podcasts and the first week we had 700 downloads. Nobody knew about it except for the people that happened to be in the podcast directory.” With daily shows and peaking at 300,000 podcast listeners, Mark’s podcast provided some income for him (even if it took 90 days to get it), but in today’s market, he believes it might be better to focus on text and video content instead of audio (at least from a monetizing point of view). Still, if someone really wants to podcast, sites like BlogTalkRadio and TalkShoe have made it much easier (and cheaper) than it used to be back then.

The advent of social networks has definitely helped bloggers and content producers. “The old way to get an audience was to spend all day commenting on other blogs and being a presence in other communities. With social networks the audience finds you.” I asked Mark if the word “content producer” loses its value due to social networks. Mark agrees that social networks make everyone a “content producer“, but “no one is going to build a media empire from Twitter alone.” Being able to use various sites and apps on the social web is the way to go and it will take some creativity and consitency.

Mark also told me about how he joined Mashable, one of the biggest social media blogs, as an Editor. Mark wasn’t able to tell me about how Mashable pays its employees/contributors/writers, but he did mention that Mashable is indeed a real company and that they’ve changed the way.

Most recently, Mark has been working as the Managing Editor for SiliconANGLE, a site that syndicates great articles from a community of about 150 people. This community has people that range from Robert Scoble to ”people with day jobs who maybe blog once or twice a month.. they’ve not blogging to be the next Michael Arrington.. so that good idea that they havemay not get air time so we’re acting as a service to them as a publisher that exposes it to more eyeballs.” Mark thinks of this site as a close-knit community kind of like that created by FriendFeed in its early days.

In addition to Mark’s experiences, we talked about social media narcissism, the rise of experts, and the scale of cynisism. It is difficult to determine whether others are on social media for authentic conversations or deceiving self-promotion, but it is true that we all have a combination of self-centered thinking and honest need for communication. Mark was really careful and respectful with his words but he did give me an example of what some people might be doing with social media: “If you’re charging somebody $1500 or more to spend 24 hours and show them how to use 140 characters or less, they might be less than sincere. It’s kind of like when you’re looking at the classifieds… and you see that ad that says ‘call this number and make $600 from home after you pay $700 for a kit.”

Regarding old vs. new media, we discussed the cost structure of print organizations, the advantages that sites like TechCrunch have in terms of adapting quickly, as well as Ars Technica new Premier offering and GigaOM‘s analysis services (which Mark believes might be priced too low, especially when you consider how much companies pay for reports from Gartner and Forrester).

We talked about a few other things, including Loren Feldman (and his hilarious puppets), the fact that Mark’s mom could probably create a mash-up using Yahoo! Pipes, and a newspaper manager that once told Mark that his company had been around for 150 years and that “this internet thing is a fad.”